Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition from PLAION, Deep Silver, and Myrkur Games brings us a fun fantasy-themed action RPG on PS5. Check out our Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition review!
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Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition from PLAION, Deep Silver, and Myrkur Games brings us a fun fantasy-themed action RPG on PlayStation 5. You’ll be jumping into this adventure as Ryn, a powerful young woman vestige born with an affinity for ancient magic and a huge potential for power. After your brother is captured by a totalitarian empire, and with their forces attacking and consuming everything in their path as they ravage your homeland, you must step up and do whatever it takes to save your loved ones and your people. You’ll be joined by Abram, a seasoned scholar who will use his knowledge and expertise to hopefully steer you in the right direction.
The game can be played by choosing one of four difficulty settings: Story, Journey, Adventure, and Challenge. Story is ideal for those who want to focus on the narrative without having to worry too much about combat. Enemies won’t be as aggressive and will deal less damage, you’ll have a longer window to parry attacks, and health recovery will be boosted. For the Journey difficulty setting, enemies will be a bit more aggressive, deal moderate damage, and the parry window and health recovery will be more balanced. If you go with the Adventure difficulty setting, then enemies will attack you upon sight while dealing a good chunk of damage, you’ll need to time your parries just right, and health recovery will be moderate. And then we have the Challenge difficulty setting. This one is best left for seasoned gamers who are not afraid of enemies that hit with a vengeance, with a very short parry window and moderate health recovery.
As you can see in this review, since this game is now referred to as Echos of the End: Enhanced Edition, that means that some changes and upgrades have been introduced to the formula, right? And you’d be correct! Echoes of the End was released on PlayStation 5 a few months ago, in August. The developer and publisher took note of the comments and feedback from the community and worked hard on fixing bugs and making as many improvements to this release as possible. These include changes to animations, an overhauled combat system, and improved movement and camera control for more fluid action, a revamped and faster early game progression, being able to customize Ryn’s appearance and abilities with a new equipment system, and even a New Game+ option for you to do it all over again once you’ve rolled credits.
You’ll take control of Ryn by using the left analog stick, as you use the right analog stick to move the camera around as needed. Sprint by pressing in on the left analog stick. Jump by pressing the X button. Dodge incoming attacks by pressing the Circle button. Interact with objects and other characters by pressing the Triangle button. Light attacks are mapped to the R1 button. Heavy attacks are set to the R2 button. Block attacks by pressing the L1 button. You can parry by pressing the L1 button right as an attack is about to land. Your companion’s ability can be used by pressing the Square button.
Your powerful Vestige Powers are set to the L2 button. Blast away at enemies or structures by pressing the L2 and R1 buttons. Target an object and hold down the L2 button, pick a direction, and then release the button to shift it. You can use this to move objects, make platforms appear out of walls, or place structures exactly where you need them to be, so that you can use them to progress further on your journey. You can also use shift on enemies. More Vestige Powers will be unlocked as you progress through the game and make the most of the skill tree – more on this in a bit. Drain an enemy’s health by pressing the L2 and R2 buttons at the same time. This will allow you to recover some of your lost health during a pinch, which could save you from having to reload an earlier checkpoint.
Collect experience points by completing quests and defeating enemies and bosses. Once you’ve obtained enough, you’ll get to level up. When this happens, you’ll gain a boost to your stat values, as well as obtain skill points. As expected, you’ll be able to use skill points at the skill tree. The skill tree is split into four different sections, so you’ll be able to work on unlocking boosts in the Technique, Vestige, Endurance, and Companion tabs.
The Techniques tab will give you access to the aforementioned heavy attack, which you can use with the R2 button to unleash a slower but more powerful attack that can deal considerable damage. In the Vestige tab, you can use skill points to unlock Devastation, a powerful ability that will knock back and damage enemies in a wide radius around you. The Endurance tab will allow you to spend your skill points to unlock skills such as Battle-Hardened, which will permanently increase your health so that you can sustain more damage in combat. As for the Companion tab, it will give you access to skills like Prime and Ready, which will make it so that enemies affected by your companion’s stun take more damage the next time you land an attack.
The game features a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy waiting for you. The list is split into 30 Bronze trophies, 11 Silver trophies, and 3 Gold trophies for you to work on. What will you need to do for that shiny Platinum trophy? Some of the objectives to complete include defeating two enemies at the same time while pushing them off a ledge, finding every optional conversation spot in the game, keeping an enemy stunned for 6 seconds, shifting 5 enemies into lava, unlocking every skill in the skill tree, solving some specific puzzles without using hints, finding all collectibles in each of the game’s chapters, completing the game in the Challenging difficulty setting without changing the difficulty setting, as well as completing the game in 10 hours or less.
Since, as mentioned before, you have to grab all collectibles in the game, it would be best that you use your first run to complete the game on the Challenging difficulty setting, as you take your time to find all collectibles, so that you can kill two birds with one stone. That way, you can use a second run while playing in New Game+ to rush your way through the game with everything you’ve learned before and your boosted powers and stats, which should leave you with plenty of extra time to complete the game well ahead of the 10-hour mark.
Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition brings us a fun fantasy-themed action RPG on PlayStation 5. You’ll be jumping into this adventure as Ryn, a powerful young woman vestige born with an affinity for ancient magic and a huge potential for power. After your brother is captured by a totalitarian empire, and with their forces attacking and consuming everything in their path as they ravage your homeland, you must step up and do whatever it takes to save your loved ones and your people. You’ll be joined by Abram, a seasoned scholar who will use his knowledge and expertise to hopefully steer you in the right direction.
The game has now been reworked and revamped on PlayStation 5. These include changes to animations, an overhauled combat system, and improved movement and camera control for more fluid action, a revamped and faster early game progression, being able to customize Ryn’s appearance and abilities with a new equipment system, and even a New Game+ option for you to do it all over again once you’ve rolled credits.
Don’t forget to review the relics that you find, since you’ll need to make the most of the available slots for equipping them. Adding the Sentinel Rune early on will allow you to deal 5% extra damage with melee attacks. Equipping the Imbued Weaver’s Flask will lower mana costs for all abilities by 10%, which can make a big difference during the first couple of chapters, especially if you’re playing in the Challenge difficulty setting. You should also search for all treasure chests in each chapter so that you can find the health and mana crystal upgrades that will boost their respective max values. You can also collect Glimmerweave, which you can use to craft additional outfits from the patterns you find, which will grant new looks as well as additional relics to equip.
You can customize your experience by going with one of the two options for the game’s graphics. If you Favor Quality, the visuals will be adjusted to favor the visual quality while targeting 30 frames per second. If you go with Favor Performance, then the visuals will be adjusted to target 60 frames per second. Which one will you choose? Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition is out on PlayStation 5 with a $39.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Deep Silver.
