I first found out about and became interested in Fading Echo when I was researching indie games for my Indie Wednesday article. Its bright colors and unique looking combat using various elements looked interesting, and helped set it apart from various other ARPGs. Plus, it has one of the best voice actresses in the game as one of the main characters, Laura Bailey. So, how did it turn out? Let’s dive into it.

In Fading Echo you play as One who is on a quest with her mom to investigate why their world is being erased. During the adventure she comes to a temple structure where she is fused with the raw power of Æther. Launching her into multiple realities called the Echoverse, she must traverse Corel and its Shadows (distorted realities of the same world), in order to find out what is truly going on with the destruction of her world.

Welcome to the Echoverse, One.

The story itself is a classic adventure, but I did find it hard to feel motivated by the story and its characters. I don’t believe in talking about spoilers, so I will keep it vague. Obviously, I understand the motivations behind One and her mother Rahne, but the rest of the cast and villain I’m not sure what their purpose is other than needing some other bodies. It also didn’t help I wasn’t the biggest fan of the very quick cut styled cutscenes. I feel like it jumped all around too fast and didn’t leave much time to flesh out some things.

Another element that gave me pause was that the writing has a bit of that new age cringey feel, and I don’t necessarily mean that in an only bad way. Some of it is playful and fun, but I generally didn’t care for how the characters interacted with each other most of the time. The banter with One and Vellum (the Ætheric AI that runs the Source) can be enjoyable, especially when Vallum changes personalities depending on which Shadow you’re in. All-in-all, I did enjoy the story, but it didn’t quite grab me due to the writing and cutscene presentation inconsistencies.

Unfortunately, a lot of information is dropped on you during these specific dialogue areas where you’re confined to an area for these conversations. If you leave the area they will stop talking.

Luckily for me, Fading Echo is still very gameplay focused. After One gets fused with the Æther she is able to transform between a large water droplet and her human form. Being able to turn into a magical water drop allows her to grab items and move through areas her human form can’t. Elements and how you use them is the main gameplay loop of Fading Echo, in the combat and its puzzles. Since you can transform into water, you will manipulate and interact with other elements as well. Each element will have its own benefit and use in combat and puzzles and mixing multiple ones will be very important.

There are four total elements you can use: Water, Lava, Toxic Waste, and Paradox corruption. Water is your base element that you will always turn back into when you use or get rid of the other elements. Since you can directly control water, you will be able to have special water attacks. You can dive down blasting enemies with a water splash, and the higher you are, the more damage you deal. Or you can create a large tsunami wave to hit enemies from a distance. Water also freezes enemies, allowing you take out enemies with just a handful of attacks.

Lava is something you can’t directly control, since you are water you basically turn into vapor when you touch the lava allowing you to float and glide long distances. Toxic Waste you can turn into and this element weakens enemies so you can do more damage and interrupt their attacks. You can also use Toxic Waste to jump really high by expelling it from you when you jump. Paradox is far more a puzzle element since in combat it just makes enemies unstable and explode when killed. However, it is one of the more important elements for puzzles and exploration later in the game. Paradox allows you to set a teleport point and as long as you don’t stray too far from the tether, you can instantly warp back to that spot.

Kick them into Lava to burn them, but watch out for the squids. They can heal or provide barriers to other enemies.

While water doesn’t mix with Lava, and Water just takes on the form of Toxic Sludge, you will be able to mix Lava and Toxic Sludge to become radiated lava. This is an important part of platforming as well since in this form you can use the best of both elements. Jumping will use the high launching effects of the Toxic Sludge and then turn into steam to glide long distances.

Now that you know the basics of the elements, let’s get into the combat. Obviously, using the elements is the key to success. Often times enemies will be fused with their own elements and you will need to counter that by using another. Lava enemies can be frozen, Toxic Enemies can be lit on fire and so on. Unfortunately, One is fairly limited in melee combat skills. She has a basic light attack combo that you spam with X, and then Y you can kick enemies away. There is an upgrade to add a sweeping attack by pressing Y in the middle of your X combo, but outside of that there are no other combos to do.

Honestly, the best strategy is just kick all the enemies off edges. Plus, you get to watch them do their silly Looney Tunes fall.

In fact, the most effective combat is to just kick your enemies off the level. The kick is very important in Fading Echo as you will be kicking enemies across the stage into pools of Toxic Waste, Lava, Water, and Paradox. This is how you will control a lot of your enemies and keep distance. However, I mostly used the kick to push them over to edges. It kept the fights shorter and less button mashing of the same combo attacks.

I think the biggest issue with the combat is the lack of enemy variety. There just aren’t enough enemy types to keep things interesting. There are maybe five different enemies, and the only difference is that they will come coated in the various elements. On top of that, one of the enemies doesn’t even show up until the final level of the game. The lack of enemy and combos really let’s down what is overall a snappy feeling combat feel.

As you turn on the Æther Sources and find hidden upgrades you can spend your points at the Bastion to upgrade.

Despite the repetitive combat, Fading Echo features some good puzzles. The goal in each level is to activate the turned block off Æther Source that powers the Bastion. This is your hub world where you will go back to unlock additional skills for One after activating Æther Sources or finding hidden upgrades. There are three main biomes to work through, each have two smaller Æther Sources and one large one. As you move through these levels, they are sectioned off with combat and puzzles. Opening the door to the next section requires you to hit various timed buttons or to place an Æther Core to power a device. You use your drop form to carry the Æther Core and place it into a slot to power the devices in the are.

It’s simple, but the mix of all the elements and how you use them is what keeps it very engaging. When in a Water form of any kind you can carry objects with you, whether that is an Æther Core or an Element Core. Element Cores are items you can hold onto and activate when you want to turn into that element at command. In most cases you will need to use multiple elements to accomplish your goal, but be careful, if you run into Lava while in water form you will turn into vapor and drop whatever you’re holding. Also, you won’t be able to move items through gratings. This is where the Paradox Element comes into play as you will need to chain together moves and use the warp points to get past areas.

Here you will need to use your Toxic Waste to jump into the tubes, avoid the fire, use the Toxic Waste orb you’re holding to jump over the round grating blocking the tube, all while jumping in and out of the tube to hit the buttons in a time limit.

It is a very engaging system, and while most weren’t super difficult, some had me stopping and thinking. Most of the time it’s being very accurate in your movements and planning which elements to swap to. You will be able to leave trails behind you that will stay a while on the ground. This allows you to swap easier between elements without going back to a pool of it.

Another aspect of Fading Echo’s puzzles is the use of the dimensions, or Shadows. There are three different dimensions, of course the main one that One is currently in. There is also a cool looking underwater dimension that is extremely bold in color and design. This level you will be traveling through tubes for puzzles a lot of the time. The third Shadow is a glitchy unstable one. This features darker more serious tones, Vallum is also not so nice here which lead to some funny banter. This dimension, with its unstable aspects, features a lot of platforming precision and timing.

These gates will allow you to swap between the three dimensions.

You will often need to swap between these for puzzles and exploration. That being said, for the most part it is pretty straight forward. You won’t be getting lost in the wrong dimension. It is pretty clear which ones you will need to be in for the next part since the devs find a way to block off the other dimensions if it won’t be used. Later on there will be puzzles that will require using all three, but by that time you will be caught on to the clues and the tricks of how it works.

Performance was rock solid on my i7-12700kf, RTX 5070, and 32gb of RAM since it isn’t quite a demanding title. However, I did try and play on the Steam Deck as well, and it’s definitely not optimized for that yet. I had to set everything on low and was getting low 20’s. Also the game is really blurry if you turn the Anti-Aliasing to performance modes. Hopefully there is more optimization on the way for the Deck because this would be a great game for it.

Unlocking Æther sources allows quick travel to the Bastion and back again. You also get some cool views of the connected world.

Visually, I really enjoyed what they did with Fading Echo with its amazing color pallet and illustrated art style. You can tell they took a lot of inspirations from various styles because there is a lot in here and I think it looks great. Cutscenes are in a comic book style with frozen frames (with mild animations), character models have a little cel-shading look, and some of it looks even painterly. There is a really deliberate style with some abstract visual design that I love.

However, I was REALLY hoping they would dive deeper into the surreal abstract aspects that I thought the beginning was setting up. There is this awesome cutscene in the beginning of the game when One is getting sent through the Echoverse where they were clearly having fun with the visuals. Ripping open universes, black and white hand-drawn areas, psychedelic color waves, and all sorts of things. I think it would have added a ton to the overall presentation throughout the game if that same over the top visual style was used more. Obviously my biggest issue with the visuals is the lack of design variety in enemies. There is a cool universe with a flying whale, but the enemies are just kind of boring visually.

There are definitely some really great looking art in here.

Sound design is also good, from the music, to the various sound effects, to the voice acting. The splashing, sloshing, and burning sound effect from the elements are all well done. There is an overall playfulness to the sound designs as well. Even down to pushing the enemies off ledges and they do an almost Looney Tunes style fall where they freeze in the air, wave their arms, and then fall down with a silly sound effect. It plays well with the cartoony visual design as well which is nice.

The voice acting is really great as well. All of the cast does a good job and Laura Bailey as Vellum does a great AI voice. It’s soft and gentle, calculating, but when she does break out of that to either be mean in the glitchy dimension or directly addresses one of One’s snarky comments, it is a fun change. Overall my only issue with the sound design isn’t so much the actors themselves as it is the writing and exposition. It can just be a bit cheesy at times and One is the biggest culprit. She also has a bad habit of talking to herself too much.

Fading Echo is a really great idea with some unique aspects which is exactly what I was hoping for when I first saw the game. I think Emeteria succeeded what they were going for and it is an overall enjoyable game. I do wish that there was more variety in combat and enemies, it just got quite a bit repetitive in that aspect. However, the puzzle design is great and that is what kept me engaged throughout.

Fading Echo is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on PC with i7-12700kf, RTX 5070, and 32gb DDR5 RAM, and Steam Deck.

A copy of Fading Echo was provided by the publisher.