Review – Echoes of the End

It arrives as an ambitious project for the debut of Icelandic studio Myrkur Games, published by Deep Silver, with a third -person film adventure that proposes to tell a deeply personal story inspired by the epic landscapes of Iceland.

Developed by a small team and almost a decade, we have a title that presents itself as a masterpiece while suffering from the typical limitations of an independent studio trying to compete in the territory of major studios. The end result, fun and interesting, carries many influences from, and a “what” of.

Every magic carries a price

Echoes of the End builds his narrative around Ryn, a destructive magical vestigial, on a desperate mission to rescue his color from Reigendal’s imperial forces. The plot begins during a routine inspection to the millennial magical structures that protect the homeland of Night Syrouve, when the brothers are ambushed by invaders led by Aurick and Zara. This seemingly simple premise ends up unfolding into a larger conspiracy that threatens to rekindle ancestral conflicts in Aema, a fragmented world in which nations live at war after the collapse of an ancestral empire that dominated primordial magic.

The narrative dynamic between Ryn and his partner Abram Finlay, a scholar -haunted by the past, acts as the emotional core of the experience, exploring themes of sacrifice, redemption and confidence through gradual revelations about Ryn’s deceased father and the traumatic past of the characters. A good plot twit involving Zara and Abram add an extra layer of moral complexity to how the game works on their themes. Like initial developments, Echoes of the End becomes more interesting when we find out more about this magical world, as the journey often becomes quite predictable.

However, narrative execution fails to develop more of this rich and ambitious mythology, failing to fill details about Aema’s world and its dynamics that would further enrich history. Ryn ends up being extremely archetypal, as the reluctant traumatized warrior, without developing the character to sustain interest throughout the experience, while dialogues superficially treat established situations or bonds. The linear structure of gameplay, with invisible walls, corroborates all these limitations and reduces the vast world to a series of panoramic corridors that waste the whole potential of this world.

The secrets behind the invisible walls

Enough of talking about the story, even to avoid spoilers, let’s get down to business: gameplay. Echoes of the End has a combat system that represents its greatest potential and the main frustration throughout the game. From the base that Ryn uses both sword and gravitational magic, creating interesting tactical opportunities by pushing enemies or with area attacks, we also have the cooperation of Abram, which can immobilize enemies or offer strategic support, adding strategic layers to combat.

However, the execution ends up below expected, as the game suffers from responsive problems in defensive maneuvers such as dodging and blocking, and small attack animation errors unable to properly react to enemy onslaught and leaving your character stuck. Enemies slide unexpectedly and the speed of movement seems to be strange to some characters, as if they were clumsy. Add this to the fact that bosses are uninteresting and monotonous, despising any strategy to just become a sponge of damage, and combat in Echoes of the End can be viewed as median.

To compensate, puzzles emerge as the most interesting and successful elements, starting simple and evolving into complex challenges that require temporal and gravitational manipulation, they demonstrate creativity and logical progression. Through mechanics involving time manipulation and coordination between Ryn and Abram, puzzles are fun and varied, creating moments of satisfaction by the way it requires our intellectual ability and positively contrast with combat frustrations.

In addition to the puzzles, Echoes of the End adds many platform elements, making use of double jump skills and dash for you to engage with exploration, even if limited, looking for chests and rewards. These also provide experience and contribute to the progression of characters through skill trees, offering improvements that will rarely impact significantly on experience.

Echoes of trust and redemption

The look of Echoes of the End is by far the greatest triumph of Myrkur Games, making Icelandic inspiration exceed the mere reference, giving life to truly spectacular environments that capture the wild greatness of the Nordic landscapes. The use of actual photography of places such as the Glacier Sórdimajökull and Kirkjufell Mountain not only lends authenticity to Aema’s world, but demonstrates an innovative approach to independent and limited features.

The scenarios vary masterfully from incandescent lava fields to glacial peaks, each render with impressive detail that rivals much higher budget productions. Lighting, particularly during transitions between different biomes, creates moments of genuine contemplation where the player naturally wants to pause to enjoy the view. If Hellblade was already impressed by this digital retraction of the Scandinavian universe, Echoes of the End manages to take to a new level.

Not to mention the care of the design of the characters, having in Ryn and open a detailed modeling and quality movement capture animations, courtesy of Icelanded Amah Hamilton and Karl Anguish Ulfsson actors. Boss creatures and designs have a good level of creativity, especially in the fights against bosses that carry elements of the fictitious universe, but that ends up sinning the limited variety and visual repetition over 15 hours of play.

Viktor Ingmundsson’s work on the Echoes of the End soundtrack follows the same path of visual experience, offering a trail with many ranges and extremely competent sound, with good themed variety ranging from intimate themes to epic compositions to bosses. Music can establish an appropriate atmosphere during exploratory and contemplative times, effectively complementing the visual greatness of Icelandic landscapes, even if it is not memorable for bringing something more striking or emotional to accompany certain moments of history.

Echoes of the End suffers from a syndrome that afflicts many ambitious projects of independent studios, with a mosaic of very good ideas that suffer from the inconsistent execution. Although it demonstrates genuine moments of brilliance, specifically in puzzles and art direction, the final set disappoints through poor technical execution and lack of polishing in fundamental elements. Perhaps with more developmental time or additional resources, Myrkur Games’ work shone even more, even if it is not tedious or bad, but it requires an effort on the part of the player to understand the limitations of this title.