Echoes of Mystralia Review — This Spellcrafting Roguelite Is WILD

ScrambledAshton
23 hours ago
9 min read

https://youtu.be/cvGIJgB1G7I?si=exWXDdnM1czrZHMS

Mix and match!

I’ve got a bit of a challenge with this review. How do I talk about Echoes of Mystralia without referencing the game that it is clearly incredibly similar to? Because it is, in so many ways, cut from the same cloth as a certain isometric roguelike that stars members of the Greek pantheon and rhymes with Ladies. But listen, it is unique; it does have plenty of its own ideas and lots to love. But is its voice loud enough to be heard beyond the comparison? And will it be looked at favorably when it launches into 1.0? Well, I suppose time will tell… or I will tell you what I think right now, whatever you’d prefer, really.

Borealys Games is dropping ARPG Echoes of Mystralia into early access with promises of delivering a full 1.0 version within a year, and I have to say, from my time with it, I can’t say that seems unrealistic. But in the current early access build, you’ll get access to the first 3 regions, a bunch of bosses, and starting spells and items, so unless you’re about to blast through this whole game in a weekend, I don’t think you’d necessarily notice its current early access state.

Borealys Games’ previous linear adventure, Mages of Mystralia, is not (I don’t believe) a narrative predecessor to the story in Echoes. They just share a universe and probably a little bit of established lore, so you don’t need to worry about having played that 2017 story… though reviews say it was really good, so it might not hurt if you find yourself at a loose end before the 1.0 release.

That being said, the story in Echoes is pretty interesting. Our protagonist, Mazarim, is an apprentice watcher on a floating temple above the world of Mystralia known as the Cycle of Memorie. But when a huge rift opens up and threatens to suck the whole planet into it using its funny claw-like tendrils, the dragon-type goddess known as The Timeless One sends you on a mission to explore the lands, take out the shadows, and help those who remain on the planet. You’ll encounter many friends and foes and eventually fight the powerful guardians of each realm, none of whom are particularly chill about this whole rift thing.

There’s a little bit of intrigue and mystery and lots of dialogue to listen to, but I’ll leave you to discover that for yourself.

Quite a bit of content for an early access release!

The story is pretty good but is most certainly not the star of the show. If you play games exclusively to enjoy a deep narrative with depth at every turn, then this one won’t necessarily get your rocks off. But if you play ARPG roguelikes because you like the fast-paced gameplay and ever-changing gameplay loop, then this one has got you covered!

So let’s get into the gameplay. I don’t want to teach you to suck eggs, so let me quickly go over the very basics of it before we get into what Echoes does differently. You have, at any given time, 2 spells selected. Once you’ve unlocked all of the currently available ones, you’ll be able to swap which 2 you have equipped on your X and Y button (or whatever that may be on your respective controllers… god forbid we standardize all of those) and head down to Mystralia.

You’ll go from area to area, taking down enemies using those spells, and once you’ve cleared them all out, you’ll gain a boon of some sort: a charm, a spell modifier, soulbeads, or one of the other currency types. Once you’ve gained that, you may get to choose which room to progress into next, rinsing and repeating until you either die or take down the boss of the area. If you die, you’ll be spat out back at the Temple to spend any currency you may have acquired and then do it all again. Like I said, your usual affair.

BUT Echoes of Mystralia does do a few things differently from others, namely in just how much you get to choose how you play through it.

Spell crafting is the big selling point here, the thing that I would agree sets it apart from others of its kind. Every spell you have has a series of variants (unlockable after you’ve unlocked the 4 base spells and only if you have enough of the respective currency), and each variant has a certain number of slots that can be filled with the ‘memories’ you pick up. These can be anything from damage types to buffs to the very way these spells are cast. You can link buffs together to create hefty combos or just mix and match to see what kooky spell you can craft. Really, it’s up to you how you use them.

For a while, you won’t really get to be picky; after all, this is an ARPG, and the drops are random. But as you go further through each run and pick up more memories than you have space for, you can start to swap and change your spell modifiers, which can be done at pretty much any point in the game. This means, as long as you survive combat, you can bin off any annoying abilities that you’re just not vibing with.

Spell modifier slots can be upgraded within the skill tree (more on that in a moment), but the modifiers themselves require you to pick up 2 identical memories in order to beef them up. So if you have your eye on a special upgrade, you’d better hope the RNG gods are on your side! I enjoyed this mechanic; it’s a neat little way of making your playthroughs different every time and giving players the chance to adapt to how they play. But… and perhaps I just didn’t get far enough into any of my runs to really feel the effects, it doesn’t feel all that different from what is on offer in other games. Yes, okay, every modifier can be played on every spell and do something different, and you can choose to apply certain buffs to a modifier instead of the whole spell, but truly I didn’t notice much of a difference from the usual format of ARPGs like this.

The game features an impressive amount of spell combinations

Another way to control your adventure is in the path you choose to take. Upon reaching the end of an area, you’ll be presented with the world map and given the choice of 2 or 3 routes to progress down. Some offer story beats, some upgrades, and others take you straight to boss fights. But before you head in, you’ll be able to at least choose what reward you’d like to choose before you jump into the action.

Here is my other issue with the game, which also carries over to the in-run path choices. I don't know what any of the symbols mean, and it took me ages to figure it out. The overworld does at least tell you what they are when you hover over it, but some things sounded way more important than they actually are. Sure, we can figure out the symbols for the currency once we’ve seen them in action, but I still had some weird orb rewards I couldn’t quite suss out for a while, and the specific damage type upgrade symbols took a little while to get used to as they’re perhaps a bit too stylized for their own good. But I can admit when I am being picky… and so I will say that perhaps this is one of those situations where I am being a pedant.

The other things to look out for are the various types of currency and shrines that pop up all over the place. Lotus flowers are used on the skill tree to beef up your stats permanently, from health points to speed to the amount of damage you can do. There are plenty of things to upgrade, with ever-increasing amounts of lotuses required.

There are also shrines of various types scattered about the areas. Some require you to light a candle with the correct element, some want you to fight another wave of enemies, and my personal favorite kind of shrine requires you to solve a little puzzle to create a shape with a series of light beams that connect circles. Now maybe I am just craving a puzzle game, but I personally loved these little breaks from the combat, and they are a lovely way to mix up the gameplay. These shrines may reward you with soulbeads or artifacts and charms that require cleansing at the temple in order to add to the stack of items that may appear.

Another problem I have with the game may be a skill issue, but my god does it get brutal as soon as you hit the second area. I was getting my ass absolutely beat by the tougher enemies, which may potentially just need a little tweaking as the difficulty spike may put gamers off continuing their journey with Echoes.

The game looks great; it’s colorful, vibrant, and there are plenty of jazzy designs to ogle during your playthrough. Each area has its own color scheme and theme, and all of them look fantastic, with the remnants of this pretty messed-up world scattered throughout the lands.

The spells themselves (and with them the modifications) have some lovely animations, and with so much variety in how they can work and what additions you can add to them, it is lovely to see that they consistently look great. Alongside the spells, our enemy designs are also fab, with bosses, minibosses, and your average shadow creatures having diverse looks, attacks, and animations that all look great in their own rights.

All of our NPCs and our protagonist have hand-drawn dialogue frames that look like they’ve come straight out of a fantasy anime or graphic novel, and while they may look reminiscent of other similar games, they do at least all look great in their own right!

One thing I have never liked about Hades is the truly ropey English accents, which to the American ear may sound fine, but to us Brits who have endured a lifetime of Americans trying and failing at sounding like a native, were truly brutal to sit through… so imagine my delight when the lovely folks in Echoes deliver their lines in what I can assume is their own accents! Oh, I failed my challenge to not mention Hades… oh well, I made it this far, sue me!

Voice lines are delivered with the (I think) necessary amount of drama, always sounding like they’re on the cusp of saying something profound but never quite getting there, much like any dubbed anime ever, but I can’t pretend I don’t love it. That energy is exactly what games like this, in these quirky fantasy settings, require to really sell the world.

Talking of selling the world, the music is a really nice mix of high-intensity battle music and relaxing fantastical ambiance, depending on the situation obviously. I'm sure a musician could tell you what instruments they’ve used to bring the fantasy to life, but as someone without a musical bone in her body, I will just say the ‘plucky guitar (?) strings’ make for a lovely motif throughout the music.

For the first time in my reviewing history, the majority of my playtime was spent on the Steam Deck, traveling back and forth on a train, and if there is one thing this game does well, it’s being a fab little travel companion… Just don’t ask the poor Scottish lady sat next to me her opinion, not sure me swearing under my breath every time I died was the relaxing train energy she was hoping for.

The game runs at a solid 60fps on the handheld, though you will need to have the settings on ‘low’ to get that consistency, which, despite the name, is really not noticeably less than its ‘high’ counterpart on PC. On the small screen, it looks really rather good. There is a little bit of a lengthy load into the game on both PC and Deck, and occasionally during play, but according to the devs, that is being solved in an upcoming patch, and given it is launching into early access, there are certainly much worse problems to have to be dealing with.

Look, I am not going to sugarcoat it, if you played Hades 1 or 2 and have been looking for something to scratch that itch, this would be absolutely perfect for you. There is enough shared DNA to keep fans of those games satiated whilst still bringing some much-needed variety with the spell crafting, shrine minigames, and path choices. It is its own thing and to say less than would be unfair… but it is also similar enough that I would be doing a disservice to pretend it wasn’t somewhat familiar.

Visuals are lovely and Steam Deck performance is good too!

Echoes of Mystralia is a colorful, fun ARPG that is certain to flourish in Early Access, and with it being cheaper now than at launch, I do think it is worth picking up, if only for the lack of awful English accents. I hope it does well over the next year and the devs get the credit they deserve. What they have made is already very good, so with community feedback and the extra time in the studio, I am sure we will see it up there with the greats, which is why I have decided to award Echoes of Mystralia with a Silver Genie Lamp of Approval!

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