Disclaimer

I was sent a free copy of Echoes of Elysium to review for my blog. While I am very grateful for the opportunity, I won’t let it sway my opinion. This game is still in Early Access, so I will try to be a bit more lenient with my review. That said, these will be my honest impressions.

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Table of Contents

What is Echoes of Elysium?

Echoes of Elysium is a high flying, co-op survival RPG out now on Steam Early Access.

Hook

Take to the skies with up to five friends in a colorful adventure you won’t forget. Gather supplies to build the the airship that will take you across this scattered and abandoned lands. But the skies aren’t empty. The Heron faction hunts you down, but you can build the weapons to fight back. Explore the broken remains of a lost civilization or take to the skies in your powerful glider. What secrets will you uncover? Can you build a powerful airship and master the skies?

Gameplay

Echoes of Elysium early access offers players a small map to explore and mine. Like most survival games, players will start at zero. They collect resources and use them to build the tools and upgrades for their ships. What sets Echoes of Elysium apart from other games in the genre is the flying mechanics. Unlike other survival games that allow players to build a base, players are encouraged to build and customize an airship. Instead of moving over flat land, players are encouraged to fly across the map in both their unique airship, and their jetpack. There is a co-op mode (with some public servers to join if you don’t have any friends) but I play solo. Mostly because I don’t have any friends, but I do enjoy playing survival games at my own pace.

Floating Islands

The world of Elysium is made up of floating islands and boulders that are scattered across a sky. Players use their jetpack and ship to fly between these lands to collect their resources, and uncover their secrets. Early Access provides a good amount of room to explore, but you will hit the end after a while.

Impressions

Echoes of Elysium is rough, but it is playable. There are a lot of bugs and a bit of jankiness, but it is playable. You can do a lot worse for a lot more money. The main selling point for this game is the flying and airship mechanics. It does take some getting used to, and I ask you stick with it until the mechanics start to click. I was about ready to write this game off, but I am glad I stuck with it. It needs a lot more work, but I believe you will get $19 of fun out of it.

Art

The game looks fantastic. There are some sunsets in this game that had me frozen in admiration. I am a big fan of the tech design and archecture. Echoes of Elysium has the bones of a cool looking world I want to explore, I just wish there was more.

World

One of my issues with the game is how empty the world feels, especially in the early stages. Most survival games start off slow, but players have a large map to explore. The map for early access does have a good amount of exploration available, but it feels too spread out and it makes things feel empty. Before you can afford the upgrades that make the airship fly faster, the gathering feels like a chore. I prefer the chill early game of the traditional survival RPG, but it does get better. Once I mastered flying and got my upgrades, things got a bit more tolerable.

Flying

Players are either going to love flying or hate it. I was not a fan at first, but I quickly learned it was a skill issue. Once I learned how to fly properly, the game got a lot more fun. It felt so cool to zoom across from rock to rock or across one of the larger islands. It is a nice change of pace from those slower survival games, but there are times where I just want to walk and chop trees. Flying on the airship is a little more strait forward. This part still feels a little clunky, but I can see the potential.

The Airship

I am not a fan of the Airship. Flying the airship is fine, but I am not creative enough to build one. Building out the Airship feels very limiting, and it makes crafting a little cumbersome. This is honestly a matter of tastes. I have never been very creative when it comes to housing, and often go for simple functional designs. That said, if you’ve always wanted to build a flying fortress to explore the skies, the game does it well enough in this stage of development.

Crafting

Crafting in this game is fine, but a bit of a grind in the beginning. Once I got my ship upgraded and could get to my first large island, it got better. I don’t think the grind is worse than other game in the genre, but if you don’t like flying around or the Airship, it’s going to be a bad time.

Conclusion

Echoes of Elysium has a solid foundation to make for an interesting survival RPG. Unfortunately, the game is a bit of an acquired taste. You have to really love the airship concept otherwise you are going to have a bad time. Personally, I have to be in the mood for something like this. Sometimes I just want to chill and play something more traditional like Pathless Woods.

However, if you’ve always wanted to be a captain of your very own airship, Echoes Elysium should at least be in on wishlist. Just know that in its current state, you are paying to test, support, and help build a game with a good amount of potential. You will need to be okay with dealing with a rough and buggy game that still needs time to cook.

You can pick up Echoes of Elysium on Steam Early Access.