Echoes of the End is a throwback by a decade or so to the days when action adventures followed the God of War and Uncharted formats, rather than the drudgery of the soulslike format we’ve become mired in. We’ve lost a lot along the way folks, so it’s always nice when a smaller developer takes a chance and launches something that these days feels fresh and different again.

There’s virtually nothing of the soulslike to Echoes of the End, apart from a parry command in battle – there’s no souls or equivalent currency, there’s no stamina, no bonfires, and no rebirth mechanic, it’s even a beautiful Icelandic daylight a lot of the time. It’s a narrative-driven driven AA or bargain God of War-style adventure, with emphasis on environmental puzzles and traversal, and action combat with some psychokinesis powers. And it actually has a story, with some hefty weight to it.

Journey’s End

You play as Ryn, a young ranger who’s handy with a sword. She’s also a vestige, a kind of shunned magic user with magical tattoos on her arms, who can’t touch people without burning them. It’s a bit like the shunned magic users of Final Fantasy 16 for a recent comparison, and has that same feel that while some are hated and feared, others are elevated and used by untrustworthy people in power.

Speaking of untrustworthy people in power, a mysterious general called Aurick and his tame/elevated (and crazy-eyed) vestige, have appeared in the kingdom of Syrouvia, intent on invasion and broken one of the wards that protects the realm from magic and monsters. Ryn and her brother Cor are just out on patrol when they stumble upon this, and are split up when trying to intervene, putting Ryn on her own trying to get back to and save her non-magical brother, and Cor salvaging his life by volunteering to guide the bad guys further into the country.

Ryn is saved from death by Abram, a middle-aged scholar who was wandering the region looking for Ryn’s father, who has recently passed away. The two team up to track down Cor, following in the destructive wake of Aurick and his forces, battling troll-like Durtar who have reappeared with the ward’s weakening, attempting to warn the nearby township, and find out what Aurick is after, and generally there’s a heck of a lot going on for a 15-hour adventure. I’ve only really touched on the first three or four chapters out of ten there, so you can see it’s got some mileage.

This Will All End in Tears

Ryn is a pretty strong lead with a fair bit of depth. Having burnt her brother once with her magic, and with her father recently passed away, as well as the whole vestiges can’t touch thing, Ryn has a healthy paranoia and is fiercely independent. Both traits that make her feel quite real. She doesn’t really banter in the way we’ve come to expect in modern games; she’s taciturn and standoffish. She’s like Kratos.

It was incredibly clear to me that someone who knows about crafting characters and narrative with depth had control over this project. Ryn has a past and a depth of character that most game protagonists can only dream of. It’s not achieved just by having a past; it’s from that past having meaning, prompting actions and decisions in the present. It’s not from characters having some sass, as is the frustrating modern attempt at personality; it’s from the audience coming to know a character and how they will act in a situation. I know how Ryn will react, in the same way I know how Nathan Drake would react.

Echoes of the End buddies you up for most of your adventure with Abram, giving each area that God of War feel of having Kratos and Atreus discuss what they are doing. But where a game like Forspoken inserted sass and snark and banter here, Echoes of the End does what God of War does; injects character and reminiscences, and shared experience, and asking each other genuine questions, and of course revealing lore. It has these nice little optional moments where you can pause and reflect, usually at a nice view, and have a little conversation. They aren’t skippable, which was a minor niggle, but they were appreciated.

Stick ‘Em With The Pointy End

That God of War comparison will get you far in knowing what Echoes of the End feels like to play. It’s got the same traversal sections and environmental puzzles to progress (complete with almost immediate solution offer), sections of combat to break up the puzzles and even a waterway section where Ryn and Abram ride in a boat and tell stories like Kratos and Atreus. Someone studied God of War and God of War Ragnarok with a healthy inspiration to make something just like it. And what a good game to emulate.

Let’s take a look at combat first. Ryn is handy with a sword and can use light and heavy attacks, a parry function and a dodge role, plus a dozen or so moves to learn and buffs/upgrades to increase power and health. She’s really capable with it. In fact she’s brutal with it. Again like Kratos. She has this brutal finisher that quite often just happens automatically when you knock off that last bit of health, and while its annoying that you aren’t really in control of it, the animations are brutal like slicing off the tops of heads, limbs, etc.

She also has her vestige powers, a kind of psychokinetic force that can throw objects and enemies around. You hold L2 and flick a direction, but it’s actually a little harder to get a guaranteed hit, or register what you’re doing. It takes just that touch too long to employ consistently in battle, and its jank meant I only used it when I had a fair bit of space or breathing room to weather a mistake.

Echo and the Dalsmen

And that breathing room is hard to come by. Echoes of the End is hard, at least as hard as Ragnarok, and verging towards some of the souls games. You need to parry consistently and make good use of the space and roll out of danger, and generally have a perfect grasp of your battlefield, and that’s hard to do. When enemies come in groups of anything over three, or if any have parry-only shields, you are going to get hurt. Trying to fight melee guys, while there’s a ranged one out of sight is also a real pain. Enemies can take Ryn out in two or three well-placed or heavy hits.

Enemy variety is pretty lacking here. It’s a AA game, and it’s not going to have dozens of enemy types, but it can feel like there’s really just variations on three. Durtar trolls in melee, ranged and big shield versions, Dalsman humans in melee, ranged and knight with shield versions, and Glomori, the lobster/spider hybrids in the caves. There’s a scattering of bosses, and they are real tough, but they are really the only enemy variety.

Abram helps out of course, can’t forget him. He has a mechanical grapple/phasing weapon that can pause time or slow down and hurt enemies. Useful in battle to freeze guards and then wail on them instead of having to worry about parries.

Echo Park

And speaking of freeze time powers, Abrams and Ryn are pretty handy using these same powers to get around. The second pillar of the God of War formula on display here is the traversal and environmental puzzles. Because lo, no ancient civilisation could just make a road that A, stays complete and in a good state of repair, or B, they deliberately create ancient mechanical hydro works that obstruct any and all progress.

Ryn’s vestige powers allow her to clear ‘stonerot’, which is like a purple magical growth getting in the way, or to use time-turning build and break type puzzles to restore routes. This is a little like either having something built or broken, and one makes a route and one makes an obstacle, or its like a kind of scrubbing device where you can cycle through states of builtness, kind of like rewinding the Prince of Persia back to just before he fell, or winding forward and watching him fall again, only with buildings. The last type is Abram’s freeze power, which can be used to stop certain puzzle parts from moving until you want them to.

Combine these in dozens of ways across perhaps a few hundred puzzles to traverse the locales of each chapter, and you have at least 50% of the game’s runtime. They were good puzzles for the most part, and often not immediately obvious, making you consider for a moment pressing that emasculating hint button. There were maybe just too many, and some chapters that went on most of an hour longer than they were welcome because there was another puzzle, and then another.

My favourite part was always Abram taking no notice at all of these puzzles and just grappling almost everywhere, somewhat undercutting Ryn and my struggles.

Odds and Ends

Graphically, I thought Echoes of the End was right up there for a AA title and at this kind of price point. Pretty okay character models and good-looking, well-lit environments and some real nice views. However, this was maybe a little skin deep. Graphics are where most of the games’ bugs lie, and while these aren’t game-breaking bugs, there were plenty of immersion-breaking and janky bugs.

It’s all a little janky, you see. While everything is animated nicely, there are a lot of issues with parries connecting, moves stopping, and enemy hits registering. If two enemies come at you simultaneously, only the first parry will work, and you’ll kind of parry both, and when you are in the parry or finisher animation you can’t be hit, but it’s hard to gauge when you suddenly can be hit again. You can’t quite walk through an enemy, but you certainly can walk straight through your companion Abram, and I did regularly.

It’s also clear in the environments – ledges don’t quite register your grab when they should, or they do the opposite and kind of register from too far away. And jumps have that odd ability to be redirected in midair in just about any direction. As I said, not game-breaking but jarring and sometimes frustrating nonetheless. I didn’t find any that stopped progress, but plenty caused me grief trying to make certain jumps in puzzles, for example. I’m sure many got fixed in the first patch, and more will be fixed before long.

The voice acting was really great throughout, with great performances for Ryn and Abram – you might recognise Ryn’s actress or her voice as Astridr from Hellblade II – and the two have some good, believable conversations. As I said at the top, much of this is in the writing that makes Ryn more than a banterer, but it’s got to be delivered well, and it is.

Musically, there is not a great amount of really memorable music, but there is a high degree of dynamic music and great tension created by some of the pieces. I remember particularly the burning village early on, and the music in that section really elevating the whole scene into something fraught with tension and danger.

Echo Chamber

Echoes of the End echoes with the gruff voice of Kratos, and in the end, his influence is felt all over. From the traversal and progress puzzles to the brutal combat and punishing difficulty, from the single-player buddy co-op to the depth of character and narrative vibe, God of War Ragnarok is all over this Icelandic-developed AA title. And that’s no bad thing.

If you fancy a slightly old-school single-player adventure with very little of the soulslike saturation that’s taken over in the last decade, Echoes of the End is just the adventure to scratch that itch.

Echoes of the End is available now on PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox One and Series S|X and PC via Steam.

Developer: Myrkur Games
Publisher: Deep Silver

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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Verdict