Let’s talk about the new kid on the block Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore. Releasing on Steam today, Ethyrial is an open-world sandbox indie MMORPG that is being developed by Gellyberry Studios and published by Freedom Games. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a promising indie MMORPG, so how does Ethyrial hold up with those already on the market?
Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore announced that it is going to be a subscription-based game coming in at $10/month, but there will be a F2P option with around 20 Hours worth of unique content, limited to the Solitary Isles. While I’m not sure that I currently want to fork over money for another subscription, I’m also glad to see that they’ve made it a point of stating that there will only be cosmetics in the shop and no PTW elements.
Since my fiancé and I have been starving for a new MMO to play recently, we jumped into Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore together to test the waters. He typically plays the hard-hitting characters, and I drift towards support or magic so I was excited to see the large list of archetypes you can choose from during character creation:
- Fighters (Berserker, Spellblade, Brawler, Crusader, Warden)
- Protectors (Guardian, Earthguard, Dragon Knight, Demon Knight)
- Archers (Hunter, Ranger)
- Rogues (Assassin, Shadowblade)
- Arcanists (Elementalist, Shadowcaster, Infuser)
- Mystics (Enchanter, Priest, Cultist, Druid)
There are so many choices, and I’m drawn to all of them! As far as I’m aware, these archetypes are considered your “starting vocations,” so there’s much more room down the line to customize abilities, talents, and spells. I haven’t gotten to see much of that yet, but I’m very excited to dive into what makes two Druids different from each other.
I like the idea of using splash art for each character archetype because it allowed me to get a feel of what that class fantasy was all about at-a-glance. With that being said, we did agree that it was very reminiscent of AI art. The art served the intended purpose-which I assumed was to provide a nice, clear visual that established the tone and theme of the archetypes. However, if it is AI art, I’m a little disappointed. I had kind of hoped that we might have seen an artist hired on with the team to produce custom artwork for the title. Maybe that’s just me nitpicking. Regardless, the art is nice, but it didn’t really feel like it fit with the theme of Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore with the boxy avatars. Kind of like slapping an organic sticker on a Lunchable (yum).
Moving past splash art, there’s much more character customization than I expected in Ethyrial. And huzzah, you can have facial hair as a male character! A minor detail that my fiancé was really happy about. It’s hard to create attractive hairstyles when you’re limited to so many polygons, but I was also pretty happy with the hairstyles available for females. I was also pleasantly surprised to see an RGB color picker for hair. Green-haired druid, here I come!
After learning the basics on tutorial island, I found my partner pacing around the dock at the next island. A moment before he had declared “Oh my gosh, we have admin commands” while I was finishing up my last tutorial quest, so I rushed over to chase him down and saw chickens exploding en masse right before my eyes. I never would have dreamed he would have used that same power on me.
As I jogged forward to meet him, I momentarily forgot about the power at his fingertips. He turned to greet me at the well – and then my world went dark. A lot of cackling and yelling ensued, and I think that stopped us in our tracks for a solid minute or two of trolling each other. He did kill me, repeatedly, and I was able to resurrect at the dock again with all my items intact. I’m pretty sure that was not intended for our playtest, and I begged him not to abuse it. A few chickens later and he agreed.
One feature that I think will either make or break the experience for some players is going to be the lack of quest icons. Walking around the village, we noticed that there really isn’t any way to tell which NPC has a quest. Even so, you could talk to an interesting NPC that looks like they have a problem or quest to pick up, only to realize that there’s another villager you ignored earlier that leads you to them and procs the quest. Lesson learned-speak to everyone and everything. Exhaust every. Single. Dialogue option. Or, you won’t find your quests. I don’t mind that so much because I had already been exposed to that older feature recently with Embers Adrift, but the fiancé definitely didn’t like it much. I can’t really blame him.
For me, there was a certain element of accomplishment to finding quests in this way. I liked completing quests and the NPC telling me to go visit an NPC in another town for an extra reward. Such a quest occurs right at the beginning where you can choose to help a little girl whose frog got stuck in a well. If you follow up on her advice to meet her father in the next town, his wife will teach you a yummy recipe as thanks for helping their daughter. Little details that reward you for following through on those breadcrumbs are just *chef’s kiss*. Perfection. Like a true sandbox, it doesn’t force you into pursuing those quests. That’s all up to you. And just because it doesn’t force me to, I naturally want to.
A lot of our time during the test was spent exploring and talking to every NPC we encountered. One of my favorites is the guard who patrols the local bridge. A pack of rats stole his lunch, and he asks you to get it back. Of course, I had to. This man couldn’t guard a bridge on an empty stomach. He was even kind enough to share it with me, and I earned a nice meal buff for a while that helped me out in combat.
With all this fun and excitement, I didn’t get to progress very far in Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore before launch, because there were a lot of game-breaking bugs accidentally introduced during testing. All these issues are going to be fixed by the 1st, but there were some issues that halted my progress for a good while. Some of these issues were quest containers and mailboxes not opening on interaction, and quest items disappearing if you had a full inventory. Sometimes NPCs would send you quest items through the mail, so that caused me to fail multiple quests when I couldn’t receive or recover the items.
I’m definitely looking forward to playing Ethyial: Echoes of Yore on launch day and diving more into classes and how they evolve upon leveling up. While I’m not the biggest fan of PvP, I’ll probably dive into that as well so I can report back on how it feels to flail around during heated combat without diagonal movement. For classes that can’t heal themselves, I’m worried it’s going to be less about skill and more about who can hit first. But, more on that in our review to come!
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