Echoes of the End

Written by Jason Dailey on 8/31/2025 for PS5  

Echoes of the End came a bit out of nowhere this year, having been announced and released within a matter of months. Coming from Myrkur Games, an Icelandic studio making its debut, I was blown away by the quality shown in its first trailer, if not a bit skeptical. We’ve seen these big, beautiful trailers before, and they don’t always pan out. But I’m pleased to say that Echoes of the End is not just a bunch of Unreal Engine smoke and mirrors (though it is pretty). It’s not perfect, but it left me excited to see what Myrkur Games does next, because it is evident that they’ve got the game development juice.

Echoes of the End takes places in Aema, a land inspired by Iceland—it’s topography, its landscape, and its folklore. You play as Ryn, a “Vestige” that wields volatile magic powered by massive glowing rock formations known as Wards. Ryn is part of a civilization that protects these wards, and that is where we pick up her story.

On a routine patrol, she and her brother, Cor, encounter soldiers from a group known as the Dalsman, led by an evil Vestige named Zara. Cor is taken captive and the Dalsman meddle with a Ward that sets off a chain reaction of events, putting Ryn on a path to not only save the world, but her brother as well. Both Ryn and Zara have daddy issues (don’t we all) propelling them forward, whether they realize it or not, which unfold over the game’s tightly wound linear campaign that took me about 18 hours to finish.

Soon after losing Cor, you meet a scholar with a deep curiosity for magic named Abram Finlay. It turns out that Abram was pen pals with Ryn’s father and offers his services for the journey ahead. He is a nonplayable companion, but he is far more competent that you’d expect. He’s developed wrist-mounted gadgets that can stun enemies and grapple to out-of-reach areas. More importantly, despite not being a warrior himself, he is not afraid to put an enemy in a chokehold so you can stab them in the gut (how does it not kill him, too?), or wind-up for a Dying Light-style drop kick to knock them on their butt. Abram’s inquisitive nature as a researcher and subtle contemplative musings are a nice complement to Ryn’s hard-nosed, wrecking-ball attitude. Ryn wants to slam her enemies into rock faces, while Abram wants to admire the rock’s beauty.

Ryn is a force of nature. Wielding both a sword and magic rather skillfully, she cuts down enemies in parry-based combat. Timing is of the essence, requiring you to learn enemy attack patterns to know when to attack, parry, or dodge unblockable attacks. Combat reminded me of the recent God of War games, companion and all, although not as dynamic or fluid as Kratos. In fact, I had some issues with combat. There are three difficulty options: Story, Balanced, and Challenge, which you can change at any time. I began on the Balanced difficulty, but after repeating the same encounter in the first chapter over a dozen times, I’d had enough—down to Story difficulty I went. Later, when I thought I’d gotten the hang of things, I jumped back up to Balanced difficulty, only to get swatted back down. Story mode is fine, but any higher and things are markedly more difficult, with any engagement that has more than two enemies presenting a stiff challenge, especially if ranged enemies are involved. I didn’t expect this game to be that hard. Thank goodness for Story difficulty.

A couple of other issues I ran across were the inability to block attacks that were not indicated as unblockable, as well as being locked in sword attack animations sometimes, preventing me from parrying an incoming attack from another enemy. Both are not very conducive to playing on the higher difficulties if the game is going to dish out cheap shots like that.

Beyond its issues, once you start unlocking new abilities in the skill tree, combat evolves from average to good. It takes a few hours, but eventually you can slam enemies against walls or each other using magic, suck the life out of them to heal yourself, and perform sword combo attacks using both light and heavy attacks. Almost every time you kill an enemy (like 95%) time will slow down for a nice, gory finishing move. Some people will hate that every enemy gets a Matrix-style takedown, but I quite enjoyed it. But, with that said, after a few hours, you’ve seen nearly every finishing move there is to see.

On the other hand, I think they did a great job with the skill trees, which feature the perfect number of skills, with none feeling meaningless or unattainable. If you take the time to acquire all the hidden resources in loot chests, you can probably unlock every skill in a single playthrough. There are Technique (sword) abilities, Vestige (magic) abilities, Defensive abilities, and Companion abilities. So, while the finishers may start to get boring over the length of the game, there is still a surprising amount of depth in the overall combat. I would say to be successful on the higher difficulties, you’d have to really master chaining attacks and magic together properly. Using magic depletes mana, but landing sword attacks restores mana, so you can imagine how the two start to play off each other.

One other important note regarding combat: the boss battles really surprised me, in a good way. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting this level (or quality) of boss fights from Echoes of the End, especially the final one. They’re fun, and a nice change of pace at usually the right time.

Outside of combat, you’ll engage in frequent environmental and traversal puzzles. Like combat, these seesaw from clever to maddening. Traversal is too “floaty” to be precise, leading to cheap deaths because you didn’t jump close enough to a swinging rope, or not at the right angle to grab a ledge. Thankfully, checkpoints – called Cairns – are generously frequent. I ran into a lot of traversal issues in Chapter 8, specifically. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to press forward, but after a good night’s sleep I carried on, and even though it was still frustrating, I made it through. Despite my frustrations, Echoes of the End does a nice job of adding something new to the mix with each chapter – a new mechanic, a new ability, or new equipment that keeps things fresh, even if it is occasionally annoying.

There are also frequent environmental puzzles that you’ll come across. Usually, it involved moving an item into a specific position—statues in a certain order, directing magic lasers towards gems to activate them, and so on. You’ve seen them done before in other games, but you might not have seen some puzzles this frustrating. Not all of them, just a few. But my word, those few will drive you bonkers. Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without YouTube for some puzzles. I don’t know how the game expected me to solve for its unknown variable in those instances. You can request a hint from Abram, and sometimes he is helpful, but other times not so much. He just always seemed to let me down when I needed his scholarly advice the most.

When the action and puzzling die down, Ryn and Abram finally get a chance to talk with each other. Early on, the dialogue is somewhat stilted and corny. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to handle it for the long haul. But over the course of the game, it gets much better as the two get to know each other more deeply, in a totally platonic way. They begin to let their guard down during their journey. They offer encouragement, perspective, criticism, and companionship at different times. Both characters grew on me quite a bit by the end of the game and the actors behind them performed admirably.

During the quiet times is also when you can best appreciate the beauty of Echoes of the End. It has a lot of triple-A gaming bells and whistles: motion-captured performances, Unreal Engine 5 graphics, and photogrammetry taken straight from Icelandic nature. Graphically, Myrkur Games has pulled out all the stops, and it shows. Rivaling some bigger developers with much bigger budgets, this is yet another game that desperately needs a photo mode to capture its gorgeous environments. You can choose from either a quality or performance graphical mode, with the former running at 30 frames per second, and the latter running at 60. I experimented with both, and I think they’re both viable options.

Due to its linear nature, environments change regularly, from snowy mountains to lava-filled caverns. I felt like I was on a singular journey, somewhat like watching one of the films from The Lord of the Rings series. It’s easy to stop and take in what is around you, thanks to a clean, dynamic UI that disappears when it isn’t needed, and is minimalistic even when it’s necessary. User interface is something they nailed all the way around, as even then menus, skill trees, and hand-drawn lore journal entries look great.

In a world with poorly made Unreal Engine asset flips that are essentially putting lipstick on a pig, I can confidently confirm that Echoes of the End is no such thing. It’s more of a rookie farmer putting lipstick on a cute, Icelandic God of War-esque pony. One day this pony might grow up to be one hell of a horse.

Silly metaphors aside, Echoes of the End is a gorgeous, focused adventure with combat and characters that grow on you over its campaign. It is not doing anything better than the games that inspired it, though trying to outshine God of War are big shoes to fill. Its puzzles and traversal will drive you crazy at times, and “Balanced” difficulty doesn’t feel very balanced at all, but all of that feels like growing pains for a brand-new developer. I’m excited to see what Myrkur Games does next.