Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition

A great trip it was in the great game it is.

An enjoyable single player experience. That said, the AA bones of this game do show through from time to time, especially in the occasionally clunky control responsiveness and the camera control. Other than that, it was a brisk, enjoyable single player experience. 7/10

TLDR If you like the newer God of War games, then chances are you are going to enjoy this game. The inspiration is very immediate and well imitated while managing to stand out with it's own ideas to combat and traversal. I beat the game in a little over 12 hours, so it's very digestible, plus they put a picture of the office dog in the end credits, and that made me smile. Definitely a studio to look out for in the future. Long Form -- Description -- This game is a directly inspired by the newer God of War (GOW) games. If the gameplay and story telling structure didn't immediately give it away, the God of War 2018 reference in the game did. You control the main character who's responsible for melee combat, and you call your companion character to do assist attacks during combat. When you are not in combat, you are traversing the world and solving puzzles. Unlike GOW, the game allows you to solve the puzzles without comments or answers given out by the characters, instead opting in for a "hint" button instead. -- Performance -- Played on high settings, and didn't run into any issues (except one minor inconvenience). The game looked good throughout my entire time playing, and I only ran into 3 bugs during my entire time playing. One persistence one; when I boot up the game, a notification always pops up about me unlocking an outfit that I already have equipped. Another was when I was in animation to climb a way with the help of my companion, and it teleported me to a different ledge to do the animation, and then back to where I actually jumped to trigger it. It's was jarring and funny, but ultimately harmless. The game hard crash once on me. I think it's because I managed to hit the enemy with an ability before they were aggroed, but I'm uncertain of this. The game has very generous save points though, so I lost no progress. -- Combat and Systems -- Combat is weighty in a way that feels solid and satisfying to land hits with your sword. You can use telekinetic based abilities to move around and do enhanced attacks while your companion can stun enemies on call or passively attack them to limit the amount of aggression on you. This breaks combat (in a good way) very early in the game if you get good at the dodge and parry timing windows of the enemies. Later as the game introduces more varied enemy types, you'll need to be more mindful of your approach, so it balances out the resource management aspect of your character's abilities. Abilities in the skill tree feel strong and immediately useful when properly applied in combat, and are unlocked through skill points which the game isn't stingy with. There isn't a gear stat system tied to equipment, but instead unlockable outfits that also unlock items with combat effecting stats. You can only equip two at time. This allows the both items and skills unlocked in the skill tree to feel impactful out the gate, instead of the slow drip feed the GOW games feed you over tens of hours of gameplay. The currency you need to unlock said outfits though did feel like a very tight economy at times, and there are multiple outfits I wasn't able to unlock on my first run. -- Story and Characters -- Without saying too much, the story is serviceable, but fairly safe. The most interesting part of this game's narrative to me was the in universe lore of magic, technology, and the many lost civilizations to time. The main motivation for the player isn't relevant in the story until the very end, and plays second fiddle to the real driving plot force of the game, which is essentially your counterpart in this game. The characters felt more like driving forces to plot with some character details/backstory that connect them all together. I enjoyed the more humorous moments of the characters, as they felt natural and were placed throughout the game appropriately, but I only every really felt attached to one character. [spoiler]Abram[/spoiler] was the only character that I felt was given real character, instead of feeling like a archetype or plot point throughout the entire experience. It wasn't something that hurt my experience playing, but is worth noting as an area to improve upon for future games. -- Level Design -- Somebody really took their time in designing these levels. The way you traverse parts of these map and the unique effects that some levels have in place to move you around was pleasantly surprising. Give that person a raise. The environments and sections you move through felt natural (as in no yellow paint to climb design), puzzles felt challenging but fair, and the set pieces on this level were top notch. The whole valcano scene was a stand out in my memory. -- Final Thoughts -- I really enjoyed my time with this game, and would easily recommend it to anyone who is curious to play or looking to scratch that GOW itch. I know the launch version of this game wasn't like this based on the developers own admission, but I never played that build of the game, and can only judge the enhanced edition of the game. Either way, the hard word and dedication to the craft shows in this game, And while I think there are some areas that can be improved upon, this is a very fine first game for a brand new studio, and I can't wait to see what more they have in store for the future.