I have said at times that the roguelike genre is defined by the powerups and the mutations on said powerups that you find during a run. A game can have the most exciting setting, the cleverest level design, and the most satisfying progression, but the fun in a roguelike comes from the build you patch together throughout. If a game doesn’t offer exciting abilities to play with to begin with, and the only mutations it gives you are 1% power boosts or other invisible number buffs, I simply wouldn’t call that a good roguelike title.
Echoes of Mystralia seems to take this concept to heart: with its unique spell-crafting system, there are, in practice, no boring abilities in the game, nor are there useless mutations, and the ones that don’t excite are few and far between.
Said system is actually fairly simple. As you progress through Echoes of Mystralia, which otherwise plays as a fairly familiar beat-’em-up bullet-hell roguelike, you unlock a series of baseline spells, and you can take two into a run. These vary from a simple boomeranging projectile to a stream of channeled damage, to a flurry of orb attacks, and a charged, heavy-damage beam strike. There are currently only four base spells to collect, with variations on each spell unlockable, though the variations aren’t too drastically different from the original, mostly changing the elemental damage and projectile nature of the attack.
However, the game gets really interesting in the mutations you discover throughout your run, which apply universally to your spells. Each spell has a small “tree” of nodes you can expand throughout your run, with each node connecting to the one above it. Placing a mutation in that node applies its effect to the node above, and so on until you reach the spell itself at the center.
That’s a long way to say you can alter every spell in the game with the addition of more projectiles, changing the behavior, elemental damage, and so on, until your basic starting spell becomes utterly unrecognizable.
If you’ve ever played a “visual coding game,” it operates sort of like that. Each mutation you acquire is actually an “if X do Y” modifier that you can freely place throughout your spell’s tree, drastically changing how it performs depending on where you equip it. Modifiers range in complexity from “adds burning damage” to “adds multiple rings of damage,” and the potential for creating some really complex spells is there.
While I’m a big fan of this system, I wish it had a little more visual flair. Don’t get me wrong, a screen can get utterly cluttered with the right build, but I wish that the more passive additions, like burning damage or speed, somehow altered the visuals of the spell itself. I want to feel like every modifier I equip physically warps the spell I cast into something new, beyond the obvious, very intrusive changes.
That said, while the game doesn’t have many buffs that simply increase numbers, there are still a handful that feel unexciting and play awfully close to the “increase your damage by 1%” approach other games take. While not pervasive, I would prefer the few instances of such power-ups be removed or reworked to be more exciting.
Alongside this fun system is an incredibly interesting world, whose lore I couldn’t begin to explain to you, since it is deep and unfolds slowly through interesting dialogue segments and surprisingly great cutscenes. The whole thing gave me a strong Avatar: The Last Airbender vibe. On that note, Echoes of Mystralia would be incredible for an Avatar game, and I think the development studio should try to get that licensed ASAP.
As an Early Access game, Echoes of Mystralia has an incredible foundation. The game is solid, with plenty of unlockables, progression, and story content to explore and experience.
That said, I found myself wanting more as I kept playing. More base spells to explore, more mutations to enhance things, more enemy variety, just… more. It isn’t necessarily that the game is bare-bones, but it gives you just enough to wonder what else could be there. That is, perhaps, a greedy take, but the game’s Early Access nature leaves me hopeful that, one day, there might be even more fun to play around with in i. I certainly wouldn’t complain if the game’s already expansive library of possible spell combinations were further expanded to produce a metric heckton of possibilities.
Overall, my impression of Echoes of Mystralia is that it’s a solid Early Access title that doesn’t need much more added to it, but one that I would love to see more content for. The game plays incredibly well, with a solid bullet-hell roguelike formula dramatically enhanced by the uniqueness of its so-called spellcrafting main mechanic. The world and the art used to portray it are incredible, and the story hooks you pretty easily.
I highly recommend trying Echoes of Mystralia, even in its current Early Access state. The game has incredible bones, and while it doesn’t need much more, I would love to see what else the developers cook up as development continues. For $20, I think the game offers a good amount of content, and I doubt you’d be disappointed if the title has already captured your curiosity.
Pros:
- Excellent spell-crafting system that allows for genuinely creative builds
- Supremely interesting world, story, and characters
- Great art and surprisingly impressive cutscenes
- Solid bullet-hell roguelike gameplay
Cons:
- Could use more enemy variety
- Some mutations lack the visual flair to match their gameplay impact, and could be more than number buffs
- Spell variations are not dramatically different from their base versions
- Leaves you wanting more content than is currently available
Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC Early Access Review of Echoes of Mystralia. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page!
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