Fading Echo

Дата публикации: 21-07-2026 08:00:00

Born from developer Emetria and publisher New Tales, whose employees comprise former Ubisoft veterans, Arkane developers, and people who've spent decades working in the video game space, Fading Echo was initially imagined as a TTRPG. That idea was scrapped, but the world was kept, and transformed into a single-player action/adventure-RPG where we play as a plucky young hero who can transform into water at will.
In a world soon to be overtaken by the mysterious, hostile substance known only as the Paradox, our hero One must reclaim aether from other worlds or Shards, and bring them back to the Bastion (basically your home base/hub) in order to do away with the corruption and save their desert home. The world of Corel is littered with elemental enemies, and our hero finds likely and unlikely allies across a small but star-studded cast of supporting characters.
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I find it almost strange that Fading Echo has the RPG label attached in the game's description. Probably just a memory of its TTRPG roots, a fading echo, if you will, but one that may lead players to expect something they won't get when they boot up the game. Aside from a skill tree, you won't find much role-playing in this game. The story is linear, the world is explorable but not open, and you will not define One's character no matter what you do. Fading Echo is much more of an adventure game, perhaps even more accurately a puzzle platformer at times, but even if it's not an RPG in the way most would expect, it remains a very enjoyable experience and a super strong adventure game.
The combat is fast and tight. It's not overly punishing, but it isn't mind-numbingly bland either. Enemy types start with very simplistic bumbling blobs, and then evolve into dinosaurs all too eager to headbutt you, tentacles attached to drill heads, suited cyclops, and more. There's an additional layer of combat added in the elements given to enemies, and the powers One is able to wield. Each element provides its own status effect: too much water and an enemy turns solid, being instantly killed by a few hits. Too much fire, they'll burn. Too much acid, they get weakened. You can combine these, too. Acid and fire daze an enemy and cause big damage via an explosion, for instance. In reverse, these status effects (bar water) can also affect you. It's not the most complex combat system, and on the easier difficulty you can just mash attack and dodge to your heart's content, but the core loop is consistently fun and satisfying, with more mechanics and enemies being thrown in just when you thought you'd figured out the perfect elemental combo.
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The same is true of the environmental exploration and puzzles. When you're not fighting enemies in Fading Echo, you're figuring out ways to get past doors, or bring a prism that'll power a mechanism from one side of a room to the other. Again, each element you can absorb in your watery form will come in handy, and while no puzzle is frustratingly difficult, they're all rewarding. Fading Echo never goes the God of War route, either. No one tells you the solution to an area you've been stuck on for a few minutes. The game tells you very little about its mechanics and how to use them. Instead, you figure all that out on your own, being given almost all the tools you need right from the start. It leads to a lot more player satisfaction, even if you're not solving the trickiest puzzles you've seen.
Fading Echo has a hugely enjoyable game world, largely due to the vibrant visuals of the fractured realms and different biomes we explore on One's adventure. There's a great use of colour in the game's visuals. The colours of the different elements, the environments, they all really pop, giving you the feeling you've just thrown on some rose-tinted glasses and are enjoying a game from your childhood for the first time again. I especially like the look of One when you enter different realms, as there's a neon-pink aesthetic to their look that I almost wish was an option to keep throughout the game. Stylistically, Fading Echo is unique and well-crafted, even if some elements like the Borderlands-style enemy introductions feel a bit dated these days. The comic book-style cutscenes are a great way of working around a smaller budget, though, and the character designs are often instantly compelling.
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Fading Echo is a game that has a lot of great parts, but unfortunately for me I felt it missed the central thread that pulls a lot of similar games together, as it largely fails to make you engage with its story. Fading Echo has all the pieces of an interesting narrative, and you can see what Emetria is going for. It's part coming-of-age story, part family drama. One is reliant on their mum for survival, but when they get their watery powers they suddenly have to be the person that an entire world is relying on. The problem is that a lot of these core themes, ideas, and character dynamics aren't pinned down very well. There's a sense of vagueness that plagues Fading Echo's narrative, meaning that when you're coming towards the end of the game and finding the emotional peaks, they're not hitting nearly as hard as I would've liked them too. It's quite difficult to explain without experiencing the story for yourself, but it feels like at some point the team should've taken a big step back and emphasised the relatable, human elements of the story, as much of the dialogue in between the few cutscenes you get focuses on the setting first.
It's a bit of a world-first, story-later kind of game, with a lot of made-up words thrown at you that matter much more to the characters than they do to the player. The problem there is we would care about the shards, the aether, the bastion, and whatever else if we had first had it pinned down why this whole adventure matters to One. All we really see of their world is a desert and a ruin, without much else being shown to be worth keeping around. It's a bit like if 2018's God of War was only about saving Midgard, and didn't bother with the father and son bonding. There's no one else in Midgard you see in that game, so the world feels like one for exploring rather than one for saving. Fading Echo's setting of Corel creates a similar feeling. The cast, which features voice acting heavyweights like Samantha Béart, Laura Bailey, Matt Mercer and Liam O'Brien, give it their all to try and get you invested, but the specifics of the story aren't nailed down enough to keep you anchored to it.
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Long-winded narrative complaints and lack of RPG elements aside, Fading Echo is a fun, fast-paced adventure that makes an incredible use of its core mechanics. Its combat is satisfying without relying on upping the difficulty through massive health bars and enemy swarms. Its puzzles are always a fantastic excuse to show off its elemental mechanics, and the world is one I'd have gladly explored for double the time it took me to roll credits. A game that is more focused on being the best version of itself than attracting you with the buzzy genres of today, Fading Echo is well worth your time.

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