Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition Review — A God of War Clone with Icelandic Soul

Echoes of the End was released originally in August 2025, but due to feedback and player response developer Myrkur Games released an ‘Enhanced’ version in late 2025. I never had a chance to play the original and had delays playing this one due to technical issues, but once I played it I found a satisfying, if by the numbers, action experience.

The premise of Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition revolves around the vestige warrior named Ryn who gets pulled into a conflict she never wanted. In this original world of Aema vestiges control the ancient magics of a long gone race and are both venerated and reviled.

Ryn is the daughter of Valestin, a renowned warrior and vestige who trained her to fight and control her powers, but also ostracized her from their people and her half brother Cor. The story begins shortly after Valestin’s death as Ryn and Cor re-unite to try and trace his last steps and what he was working on.

The intro chapter is a nice way to introduce us to Ryn, she is standoffish, very capable and fearful of what her powers can do. Cor is eager to prove himself to his impressive sister and wants to finally become closer now that their father is gone. There is a few neat dialogues between them that shows how she was separated from him and how she accidentally hurt Cor with her powers when they were younger.

This setup introduces gameplay, the frankly basic and bland combat, powers and puzzle structures. Shortly after the intro the main story kicks in with an crazed enemy vestige and capable commander from a warring country destroying a key shield that protects Ryn’s people. During the course of the initial battles Cor is kidnapped and Ryn is seperated from him and vows to find him.

While this is a cliched story beat it was executed well and allows Ryn to meet her partner for the remainder of the game, Abram, a scholar and competent warrior was searching for Ryn’s father. Over the course of the game Ryn and Abram battle enemies both human and monsters, solve puzzles and try to stop the invasion and rescue Cor.

The Enhanced version of Echoes of the End focused on a comprehensive combat overhaul with refined animations, a new equipment system (outfits + relics) to customize stats, and a reworked, smoother first chapter with better pacing and streamlined tutorials. It also added a new difficulty (“Journey”) and New Game+ mode, improved character movement, performance, and overall quality-of-life features based heavily on player feedback to address “floatiness” and responsiveness.

I never tried the original game, but I have to say what I played looked and sounded great, with a terrific fantasy world and genuinely interesting characters, powers and motivations. This is an action experience that borrows heavily from the new God of War series in it’s navigation, chests and even look and feel.

What it doesn’t borrow, unfortunately, is the depth and groundbreaking combat God of War mastered. Echoes of the End: Enhanced edition has basic and fairly repetitive combat, despite the fact that Ryn can gain many powers and enhancements over the course of the experience.

She can lift and throw objects, parry, flatten creatures, do combos with her sword and much more, but I still felt each battle was lifeless, but they at least were smooth and easy to play through. There was just a secret sauce missing that made the encounters feel the same each and every time.

On top of the combat and exploration there is a great deal of puzzles both small and complex to navigate through as the story progresses. Some are based on ancient technology, others need Ryn or Abrams powers and sometimes all of it is mixed together. Generally the puzzles are fairly easy to get through, but a couple stumped me for a bit.

The world itself was interesting to explore, although the game is 100% linear, each area had great visuals and I felt like this original world was very well realized and pulled a lot from Iceland’s (where the developer Myrkur is based) lore. In fact the best parts of the game was the world as I discovered it and the the characters as they interacted and shared their past and present selves.

Despite some of the generic aspects I did have a good time with Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition. It took me a few months to start the game though as my high end AMD system seemed to have compatibility issues and I could not even launch the game till the issued a patch late December.

The game itself is great to look at, interesting to experience and has some good ideas, but the bland combat and generic exploration and puzzles hold it back from greatness. I actually truly hope Myrkur can continue in this series, because if depth and better mechanics are added I would love to revisit the world of Aema and see what else Ryn can explore.