We Touch Games – Echoes of Aetheria (PC) Review

Echoes of Aetheria PC Review by BijouxDemon of We Touch Games

Genre: Indie, RPG
Developer: Dancing Dragon Games Publisher: Degica
Release Date: Jan 15, 2016

From the Developers of Skyborn and the Deadly Sin games comes Echoes of Aetheria. With many elements reminiscent of some old school RPG’s with some newer elements added in. The story takes place between two worn torn nations and a wedding between the prince and princess to build an alliance. In the midst of the wedding, the princess is kidnapped and Lucian, the head of the guards, heads off on a rescue mission and accrues others in saving the princess. As the reluctant heroes progress, they find that the plot is much deeper than at first glance. With an engaging story and characters that grow and develop, Echoes of Aetheria is an RPG to definitely consider if you’re a fan of the genre.

Echoes of Aetheria (EoA) approaches combat with a somewhat turn-based, 15 tile grid system that easily turns in your favor with higher stats, such as dexterity, and certain abilities to give you the upper hand. All combat is not set at a random standpoint. Instead, they are visible on the map at all times with the ability to trick them and get a pre-emptive strike on them, but in turn they have the ability to get the jump on you and get the same opportunity on your party. As I mentioned before, combat is turn-based on a 15 tile grid, with certain characters having abilities that can have them strike first in a battle, get into stealth to do more damage, or strike twice before the enemy without entering pre-emptive combat.

The game also introduces a crafting system that is fairly simple to follow with enough leeway to create weapons and armor to take advantage of each map and defeat enemy. There is no definite bases on what objects will do in the game at this point, so it is a lot of experimentation. There has been talk from the dev company of improving that feature with patches, which is something to look forward to, but at this moment it isn’t implemented yet.

The graphics in EoA are pretty impressive. Wandering around, it has the basic RPG appearance to it. Once in combat, the characters are on a larger scale, with full movement and animated attacks and spells. There is quite a bit of attention to detail on that point, which fleshes out the game more and helps immerse the player into the combat.

A wonderful feature in the game is the Home Base. With it, you can replenish materials, do some crafting, purchase weapons and armor, and interact with the characters to expand story and gain experience between areas and story. And once you’re ready to move to the next area, you just leave and head back to the main map. From the main map, each area leading to forward progression in the story is visible, with certain places as repeatable ventures to gain more experience and get different treasures. There is also the added benefit of each area of combat having a difficulty level running from easy to normal and hard.

EoA’s soundtrack has been one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of listening to in a while. A good amount of it personally reminds me of the Final Fantasy series and helps set the tone for the story and events. As for combat audio and sound effects, each of them correlate to weapon attacks, abilities, or certain actions wonderfully without any glitches or lack of audio during any point.

All in all, Echoes of Aetheria is a wonderfully constructed RPG Indie title that many of those who are fans of the genre will enjoy. From story to music and combat, the game feels complete and fulfilling as a gamer playing it. I would highly recommend this to all RPG fans. You can get it on steam for $14.99 and the Collector’s Edition for $24.99 which has the strategy guide, exclusive artbook, and soundtrack which is a wonderful set!

Audio: 10/10

Gameplay: 8/10

Graphics: 8/10

Edited by: @sykottikkytten