Echoes of Mystralia

Great game, I dont understand the people crying in the review. Steal for 20 euros

Definitely a Hades type of roguelike, which is a very good thing as that game basically set the status quo. The tldr; game is very good. It's Very polished for an Early Access game as well. Some slight tweaking of game mechanics, and some real run by run progression of the main hub would be nice. It does have some frustrating quirks to it right now. Some of the boss attacks are so quick you need to actually learn their patterns and preemptively dodge the strike. Some of the bosses feel entirely trivial. The spider specifically just feels annoying since it jumps away so quickly and lands so fast that it can very easily steal a hit or two and feel unfair. The bird fight has some moves that launch so quickly that getting hit feels like rng at times. Sometimes the sound volume bugs out during scene transitions to go back to default despite me having set the volume much lower. Sometimes the mouse can bug out and disappear or just not move how you expect it to. I've had fights happen twice during the transition upon entering a new room where I almost get hit before I could even move. When I've had some good runs going with some very chaotic spell combinations, I would sometimes get hit or even die just because the visual clutter started getting overwhelming. There are in level interactable things that you can go Forever without noticing that should probably be pointed out at Some Point, specifically referring to the little statues that you can hit with a specific element to get a free memory. I know we're starting with mostly bits of criticisms but I think it's important considering this is an early access game. You aren't going to get a perfectly balanced experience right now. You are going to encounter some weird bugs and glitches. You are going to hit a point of no more content. You are going to struggle with visual clarity. Do yourself a favor and try to enjoy what works. Despite all of this, the game is just Incredible. Story progression feels like hades. Do a run, encounter some rooms with npcs and get story. Encounter the boss, get some story. Get home after a death, some people want to talk to you. The current content of the game is a little bare bones for this, a lot less story to be told Right Now. Hades fixes this with the ability to renovate the main hub as you go. We have yet to see if this game will do anything like that to improve longevity But what we have so far is pretty good. Story itself is very thought provoking and philosophical at times. Looking forward to how things develop. Now we get to the Interesting part! The spells. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from run One this is the Most thought provoking combat system I have encountered in a roguelike. The ability to switch your modifiers and triggers At Will during a run at Any time is a design choice that I Love. When I saw this system I was worried about needing to be careful about what spell I craft from modifiers I pick up. Choosing carefully what node I'd put them on and trying to leave room for key components later. No, just slap stuff on, cast the spell, admire the effect. Like it? Keep it. Hate it? Change things around. This Alone is going to give this game So Much longevity for me. You unlock more modifiers relatively quickly as well. My Only wish was a refund on the different spell forms or a way to test the spell forms out in the main hub because the lessons are rather rare and 5 is a fair but steep price for new spell forms. I'd like the freedom to refund one I don't like or can't do well with but I found that doing a run with the new one I unlock and specifically chasing more lessons down during the run let me return and purchase a new spell form anyways, so not really a problem for Me but I imagine it can suck to grab a new spell and just Not like it. Then you struggle to put together 5 more lessons to try another form and don't like it either. And if you chase the victory every run, going for lessons feels a bit of a waste of a room since you don't scale your strength for that run in those rooms. Similar to chasing darkness in Hades. The difficulty is pretty solid in my opinion. Making healing a Little better or a little more accessible with less investment would go a long way towards lowering that difficulty curve. As is, even after specifically getting most of the fountain upgrades and taking the flower currency to get a small heal after encounters, it can feel like making just a couple mistakes in one early room can just kill my run. Especially because even with upgrades the fountain heals don't feel as good compared to the damage output of enemies. But the curve of difficulty is very similar to Hades so it's mostly an adjustment period before you just... Stop getting hit most of the time. I think a big part of this is that the flower currency upgrades are in a tree. So if you want more defensive or healing utility you also have to take some stuff Not defensive in order to reach some of them. Where as darkness in Hades let you spend on Whichever upgrades you wanted. So the 1% heal we get after an encounter in this tree is the same heal value as one of the chthonic upgrades in Hades After you up your max health in that game from 50 to 100. Where as you can grab the chthonic upgrade earlier and that 1 point of heal is equivalent to 6% of your hp per room. Plus the Multiple and Frequent health increase sources in Hades vs this game where you can Realistically go an Entire Run without getting a health boost At All. This is, all together, fine for me. I feel the difficulty is in a really nice sweet spot encouraging flawless runs and once you figure out some really strong combinations for your spells and you get used to each enemy's attack patterns you can achieve this consistently. But I also only work a single 40hour a week job and have a home life with an even split of chores and can put 8 hours on an off day to try and learn a video game if I wanted to. Adjusting the difficulty to make it less punishing wouldn't diminish my experience at all and would make it much easier for people with less consistent free time to learn a new system have more fun. Some of the best music and voice acting in the genre. Absolutely mind blowing art as well. Visual effects team knocked it out of the park. And my rig is on the more powerful side, so I experienced practically zero performance issues even with some ridiculous combinations Covering my screen in effects. Solid game. Definitely recommend.