Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition Review

Echoes of the End arrived a little over a year ago as the debut title from Myrkur Games, a small Icelandic studio, and it wore its influences openly: God of War's 2018 reinvention, right down to the semi-open exploration, the boat-based travel between story beats, and the constant companion chatter. The Enhanced Edition doesn't rewrite that ambition, but it does something arguably more valuable for a debut this rough around the edges at launch, it goes back and fixes a meaningful chunk of what reviewers spent the last year complaining about, while leaving the game's more fundamental structural choices, for better and worse, largely intact.

A patched-up combat system that finally earns its comparisons

At launch, criticism of Echoes of the End's combat and movement was blunt and frequent. Reviewers described a protagonist who felt like she was "floating on top of the world," attacks that locked players into unavoidable animations while damage kept coming in, and ranged enemies whose projectiles clipped through terrain and other combatants to land hits that felt unfair rather than challenging. The Enhanced Edition patches appear to have addressed much of this directly. One detailed review, updated by its author after the changes, describes Ryn's movement as "more natural" and animations as both weightier and faster, enough that the reviewer says they no longer feel the need to have dropped the difficulty the way they originally did. That's a meaningful admission, and it lines up with other post-patch impressions in the sample: combat that was once merely functional is now described as legitimately satisfying, with throwing mechanics and elemental Shift Move abilities drawing specific praise for how much fun they add to encounters. It's not transformative, reviewers are careful to note this isn't suddenly a FromSoftware-tier combat system, but it closes much of the gap between what the game clearly wanted to be and what players were actually getting in the first weeks after release.

Scenery and performances that were never really in question

What almost no reviewer disputes, launch week or now, is that Echoes of the End looks and sounds like a far bigger production than its team size suggests. The game's Iceland-inspired vistas draw repeated, specific praise, with more than one reviewer noting personal connections to the real locations that inspired the world and describing the visual presentation as genuinely mesmerising rather than just competent. Motion capture and character animation earn similarly strong marks, cited by multiple reviewers as some of the best they've seen in an independent production, closing the immersion gaps that sub-par animation work tends to leave open in games with this scope. The voice cast, particularly Aldís Amah Hamilton as Ryn, is widely praised for restrained, mature performances that avoid the overwrought delivery common to games in this genre, though a handful of reviewers found Ryn's default vocal tone grating rather than compelling, a rare point of genuine disagreement in an otherwise consistent chorus of praise. The relationship between Ryn and her companion Abram anchors the story throughout, and reviewers repeatedly single it out as unusually well-earned for the genre, developing gradually across the campaign rather than being front-loaded or rushed.

The puzzle problem the patches can't solve

If there's one criticism that survives the Enhanced Edition's changes almost entirely intact, it's the game's puzzle density. Multiple reviewers describe the campaign as roughly 80 percent environmental puzzle-solving dressed up as an action-adventure game, and the frustration isn't with the puzzles' quality so much as their sheer frequency and their habit of interrupting combat and story momentum just as they're picking up steam. One reviewer who otherwise praised the story, world, and voice acting still marked the game Not Recommended specifically because of how often they were "torn out of the game and into puzzle mode," comparing the experience to a thriller novel that keeps abruptly switching genres mid-chapter. A more detailed critical review goes further, arguing the game's roughly 15-hour campaign is "artificially lengthened" by puzzle padding and would have benefited from being half the length, a sentiment echoed by other reviewers who otherwise liked what the game was trying to do. This isn't a universal complaint, players who enjoy methodical environmental puzzle-solving as a core activity rather than a chore report a much more positive experience overall, but the split is consistent enough across the review sample that it reads as a genuine design imbalance rather than a matter of individual taste.

Lingering technical rough edges and a shallow New Game+

Beyond the widely reported launch-week combat issues, several reviewers flag smaller technical problems that persist for some players even post-patch: an in-game clock that reportedly never matches any sensible timezone or setting, HDR configurations that have turned entire screens into a wash of incorrect colour, and general Unreal Engine 5 stutter during traversal or when new areas load in, even on capable hardware. None of these appear to be universal, but they show up often enough in the sample to be worth flagging rather than dismissing as isolated incidents. Completionists should also temper expectations around replay value: New Game+ is described by reviewers as offering little beyond a fresh coat of paint on existing enemies, meaning a second playthrough mostly means re-experiencing the same puzzle-heavy pacing rather than discovering meaningfully new content or systems.

Who this edition is actually for

Taken together, the review sample paints a picture of a genuinely talented small studio whose reach occasionally exceeded its grasp on a first outing, and whose publisher and team have since put real effort into narrowing that gap. Reviewers who came to Echoes of the End primarily for its world, its central relationship, and its scenery tend to walk away satisfied regardless of when they played it. Reviewers expecting a combat-forward action-adventure in the God of War mould are more likely to bounce off the puzzle density, even with the improved combat feel the Enhanced Edition delivers. It's worth noting the game's genre framing is stated plainly on its store page as action-adventure rather than open-world RPG, and several reviewers push back specifically against players who leave negative reviews for the game not being something it never claimed to be.

Final Verdict

Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition is a more honest, more polished version of an already promising debut, one where the combat finally feels like it belongs alongside the game's genuinely impressive scenery and performances. The puzzle-heavy structure that divided opinion at launch remains largely unchanged, and it's the single biggest factor standing between this being a strong recommendation and merely a qualified one. For players willing to meet Myrkur Games on its own patient, puzzle-first terms, there's a genuinely rewarding story here. For those wanting constant forward momentum, this is still likely to frustrate more than it delights.