Echoes of Mystralia

Echoes of Mystralia asks a genuinely interesting question of the crowded isometric-roguelite genre: what if your build wasn't assembled from a shop's worth of relics, but crafted, piece by piece, from captured memories you combine into original spells? Play as Mazarim, a Watcher protecting a world unravelling into a Rift, and every run is an opportunity to reorder those memory components into something new -- "thunderbursts, freezing tornadoes, fire vortices," per the store page. "If you can imagine it, you can craft it." Borealys Games, returning to the setting of their 2019 title Mages of Mystralia, put the spiritual sequel into Early Access on 11 August 2026 for NZ$30.99 (checked 13 August 2026). Two days later it had already gathered 137 English-language reviews at Very Positive, 89% -- and a genuinely substantial, detailed disagreement about whether the game's core promise actually lands yet.

A striking premise, and reviewers on both sides agree about the art

Whatever else divides Echoes of Mystralia's reviewers, its presentation isn't in dispute. Even the most critical reviews open with praise for it: "It's a colorful Hades-like with great art direction," reads the single most-upvoted review in the sample (137 helpful votes) -- immediately before pivoting hard into criticism of everything underneath that art. A more measured critical review calls it "beautiful visuals" with "nice enemy designs" and "combat system is complex," while still concluding the current build is "INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING to play." On the enthusiastic side, reviewers go further still: "Combat is very smooth to play. Artwork, aesthetic, OST, all top notch," reads the most-upvoted positive review (155 votes), pushing back directly on the "mixed" framing some other outlets used to describe the launch reception. Another simply states "Hades structure with the great creativity to craft your own spells. You can get pretty insane builds going."

The spellcrafting system itself draws the same split-but-respectful treatment. One detailed positive review calls it a genuine advance on the isometric-roguelite formula: "combining individual elements within your spell(s) adds a nice touch to the buildmaking within your run," crediting real meta-progression through a talent tree that carries value across failed attempts. A critical reviewer, despite an overall negative verdict, still calls it "one of the most interesting skill systems I've ever seen" -- the disagreement in Echoes of Mystralia's reviews isn't really about whether the idea is good, it's about whether the current Early Access build executes it well enough to be fun rather than merely clever.

A specific, repeated balance complaint -- not vague difficulty grumbling

What separates Echoes of Mystralia's critical reviews from ordinary "too hard for me" complaints is how specific and how consistent they are with each other, often independently landing on nearly identical numbers. "Stuff hits me for like 18, I heal for 10 every run, and I reach the bosses with like 20-30 HP. Get two-shotted and that's it," reads one review. Another, more measured but reaching a similar conclusion, reports the game "requires a lot more polish and balance before it becomes truly enjoyable," describing a specific mechanical failure at the moment a build should be paying off: "when you finally get that broken build going, the performance drops like crazy and the screen becomes cluttered with all kinds of effects and projectiles and you just die, because you can't see/react to anything." That's a meaningfully different complaint from simple difficulty -- it's a report that the game's own reward moment is undermined by a technical performance problem, echoed independently by the most-upvoted critical review: "when you FINALLY manage to make a decent spell, you're sitting at 10 HP, only to wipe 10 seconds later and restart from scratch."

The Hades and Noita comparisons that recur constantly across both positive and negative reviews are worth taking seriously as a genre-specific yardstick rather than lazy shorthand -- several detailed critical reviews use the comparison specifically to diagnose what's missing. "Everything you like about Hades is missing from this game," reads one blunt review. "The animations feel wrong, the enemies' attacks feel wrong, the timings are too tight for act 1 and the damage is too high." A separate reviewer makes the Noita comparison instead, specifically about the spell system's feel: "the main point of selling is the spell system, but it doesn't feel half as good as Noita's wand system." Positive reviewers push back on the comparison just as directly, though: "People will complain about the difficulty, and then play Hades or Noita," reads one, implying the difficulty complaints reflect player skill rather than game balance -- and a genuinely useful data point buried in the discourse is one reviewer who reported translating and reading through the negative reviews specifically to understand the disagreement, concluding "they were focused on difficulty and gameplay loop, which are fair to critique, though I wouldn't normally be this demanding during early access where these two points are most likely to change."

Early Access, honestly

It's worth being precise about what this review can and can't say confidently two days into Early Access. The achievement data shows a reasonably healthy curve -- 94.1% for the earliest milestone down through the 50-60% range for mid-game goals, with true completionist achievements in the low single digits -- consistent with a game a genuine majority of buyers are engaging with meaningfully rather than bouncing off immediately, which lines up with the Very Positive aggregate score more than the loudest negative reviews might suggest on their own. One reviewer raises a specific, dated concern about developer responsiveness worth reporting exactly as given rather than generalising: "Still waiting for a response to my bug report submitted in June" -- referring to a pre-launch report about what they describe as incorrect in-game information about a core spell element. This review can't independently verify that report's current status beyond the reviewer's own account, and it's a single dated claim rather than a pattern this review has corroborated elsewhere -- worth flagging as exactly that: one specific, sourced account, not a broader verdict on the studio's responsiveness.

6.5 out of 10. Echoes of Mystralia arrives with real ambition, striking presentation, and a spellcrafting system that reviewers on both sides of its review split agree is genuinely creative -- the disagreement is entirely about whether the current Early Access build's balance and performance let that creativity land as fun rather than frustration. The praise is real and substantial (Very Positive, 89%), but so is a large, detailed, high-vote-count body of criticism describing punishing early damage numbers and performance drops at exactly the moment a build should feel rewarding. At NZ$30.99, this is a genuinely promising Early Access game worth watching rather than a settled recommendation today -- buy in now if the premise excites you enough to tolerate real reported rough edges, or wait for the balance passes several thoughtful reviewers on both sides say the game needs.