It’s taken a few years for the influence of Hades to become truly apparent in the roguelite genre. Back when the series started, you didn’t have to spend much time with Supergiant Games’ behemoth to know it was going to be a seminal work for the studio and all the games that would come after. Now, Echoes of Mystralia, developed and published by Borealys Games is, for better or worse, one of the closest examples you can find out there.
The action-driven roguelite, which launches on early access today, kicks off with protagonist Mazarim meditating. It’s through this practice that he’s able to rekindle memories, an important skill as the watcher of the Cycle of Memories. Despite the general disapproval of his mentor, Mazarim plunges through the lands of Mystralia, where he fights against shadows and comes across souls looking for salvation. Funnily enough, meditation is quite the opposite of the core experience, which involves an excess of brawling with the help of spells.
Picking up cues from the Wizard of Legend games, you get to mix and match upgrades for your two spells of choice that you take into battle. Yet, the elemental aspect of Echoes of Mystralia is taken up a notch, and then some: an ability that starts as a simple lightning attack can be amplified or altered in a plethora of ways. Considering how relentless enemies are, coming up with interesting combinations on the fly can be quite satisfying. As much as I enjoyed this feature on paper, however, in practice, almost everything else seems to be working against it.
Whenever you start a run in Echoes of Mystralia, you get to pick two spells. The starting selection includes Cele Aer, which is a boomerang that springs forward and then returns, piercing through enemies along the way, and Exae Aura, which is a beam of lightning that applies static and also overflows after prolonged use. The latter means that, if you complete its whole cycle without interrupting it, Mazarim will be surrounded by lightning bolts while moving until the effect resets.
As you can tell, there’s already a decent complexity to juggle from the jump. This is before upgrades and modifiers come into effect, which are added into a skill tree of sorts that is unique in shape for each spell. First off, triggers add additional properties to the spell, which can be anything from casting fireballs in random directions applying burn upon contact or speedy ice shards that apply chill to enemies. Then, you have modifiers, which can affect either the spell or the trigger placed above them in the skill tree. The selection is aplenty: leaving trails of lightning in the area of effect of the spell, increasing damage and size of projectiles, extending duration and stack limits of elemental conditions like burn or chill, and much, much more.
Yet, Echoes of Mystralia is a roguelite, meaning that you never know what triggers and modifiers you’ll be getting during a run. There is a degree of autonomy at times when you come across a shop that simply offers a handful of them and you get to pick what works best for you (if you have the right amount of the needed currency, that is), and when you’re about to enter a room that indicates that an upgrade is waiting, signaling the elemental property with a distinct symbol and color. It’s similar to Hades in the way that, once you’re done with a zone, you’re always shown an icon for the reward or activity waiting in the next one. This can be useful when there are two or three doors available.
Even these instances are dictated by RNG. Simply put, each run is always randomized, which makes it tricky to plan ahead. There’s fun in experimenting on the fly, but the problem, especially in the beginning where you’re unaware of the effects of most upgrades, is that you may end up with a selection that doesn’t work as well. There’s a chance of your builds becoming better over time, of course – the issue is getting there in the first place.
I’m a fairly seasoned RPG and roguelite player, and I play Soulslikes quite often. These aren’t bragging rights of any sort, but rather a way of prefacing that Echoes of Mystralia isn’t exactly difficult. It is unbalanced. Enemies attack you non-stop unless you’re actively hitting them — similarly to foes in Hades, as long as they don’t have a shield active, you can stagger them in place by repeatedly causing damage. Yet, most attacks happen in an area, and there are always many enemies chasing you in a group. Unless your current spells allow you to hit all of them at once, you’ll have to use quick reflexes to continuously move out of the way, over and over, slowly chipping away at their health when you have the chance.
There are multiple examples of design decisions for combat that quickly became arduous obstacles for my experience rather than offering a challenge worth conquering. The attacks on area can be quite intrusive, and dodging isn’t as precise and helpful by default. Sometimes you end up having to take a few punches with no safe way of turning the situation in your favor. Then, when you’re in a zone that has you fighting special enemies who have a shield, there are always smaller foes around. This makes sense to add to the tension, but, unlike Hades, once you defeat the smaller enemies, they keep on respawning almost immediately. There were instances in which they stopped doing so, but you usually don’t want to be spending too much time in these encounters as healing opportunities are quite scarce. More often than not, I would just try to ignore smaller mobs to chip away at the special enemy, all while being bombarded by attacks left and right.
At the core of combat, enemies feel like a quarter more health than they should, they hit absurdly hard, and it can be quite tough to hit them at range. Here is where these examples connect with the overall shortcoming of spells since, unless you get quite lucky with drops and you’re also smart about how you place triggers and modifiers, you might end up facing a boss that takes an absurd amount of time to beat because you’re incapable of putting up a fight, let alone winning it. Some of these elements can be tweaked during early access, but there are larger design decisions that may not be as easy to change.
The influence of Hades in Echoes of Mystralia is, well, pretty much everywhere. The narration of Mazarim while you’re exploring zones, the sheer number of similarities in combat, the way progressing through runs looks and feels, talking to other characters and facing bosses, the hub where you return to after runs and the facilities that you can use. It can be a lot. Artists inspire other artists all the time, and iteration can be quite powerful when done right, but during my playtime, it was hard not to ask myself why I should be playing this instead of Hades or its sequel.
That said, there were a few moments in which Echoes of Mystralia prioritized its own tone and world, making for a substantial standout. I remember the first clearly, with this ethereal dragon-like creature called The Timeless One appearing on the hub with a wonderful animation and an imposing scale. The overall story and world seem still in early stages of development, but it was moments like this, as well as the interactions with certain characters, that have me cautiously invested, especially in the way that they all seemed to be trapped in past memories, and it’s your job to save them. Conversations with some NPCs indicated a big divide between “celestial” people like Mazarim and the folks living in Mystralia who lack the privilege of those looking down on them. I hope this continues to be further explored as more story threads are added into the game during early access.
Before Echoes, the developer worked on Mages of Mystralia, which is more of an adventure game. Unsurprisingly, it is a predecessor for the current spell mix-and-matching feature of Echoes. Yet, it also made greater use of elements during exploration and combat. In many ways, Echoes is both a different game altogether and somewhat of a simplification, fragmenting its potential in smaller chunks that are experienced one roguelite run at a time. The shadow cast by Hades is wide and imposing, but in the moments that it decides to lean on its evolving world, Echoes shows potential. Time will tell if the developers can embrace it to its fullest and let it flourish on its own terms.
