I have not been able to stop thinking about Synduality Echo of Ada since I started playing it. When I wake up, I think of doing a quick run to get those last few cables I need to upgrade my crafting station. While I’m working, I think about what I should equip to deal with the snow bandits in the South Map reliably. As soon as I finish work, I hop onto the game and spend hours hunting resources, creatures, and other players. For years, I’ve been clamouring for a game that scratches that Escape From Tarkov-inspired extraction-shooter itch I’ve never had properly scratched. For Synduality Echo of Ada to not only grant that wish, but bundle it in with mecha combat, customisable characters, and rewarding base upgrades feels like all of my favourite things about gaming rolled up into one package.
Funnily enough, Synduality Echo of Ada isn’t just a standalone game release – it’s part of a wider Synduality multi-media franchise that kicked off in Japan a couple of years ago with the release of the anime Synduality: Noir. You won’t need to brush up on what happens in that anime to enjoy this game, though, and that’s for a couple reasons. For one, this game is set a few decades before that anime. For another, though, there’s only a whisper of storytelling happening in this game regardless. An intro cutscene sets you up as being a faceless mech-piloting contractor called a Drifter, who operates in a post-post apocalypse world alongside your own humanoid AI Magus companion. Once that’s set up, you’re tossed into your dilapidated garage of a base, told to start gathering resources, and so it goes.
Synduality Echo of Ada is much more about telling and discovering your own story, and it’ll often be a story of scraping by on a wish and a prayer – or not scraping by at all. As an extraction shooter, your goal is simple (on paper) – customise your loadout of weapons and consumables at home, then launch into a massive map at a randomised location. Your only mandatory goal is to find one of several extraction elevators and get out alive. Whatever happens between those two points is up to you – in the beginning, you’ll probably just want to get straight to that elevator and survive. Two major things stand in the way of that, though – roaming monsters, and other roaming pilots. There’s a pretty basic handful of monster varieties in the game that repeat frequently, but I appreciated the fact that this repetition made it easy to start learning how to navigate around them or consistently target their weak points.
Pilots are a whole other story, though. In Synduality Echo of Ada, you are never alone on the map. Some major locations will have AI bandits roaming around that are tough to deal with, but you’ll also have other real players out in the field alongside you. Typically, an encounter with another player leads to the two of you hitting the “Wave” emote and hopping up and down a few times before going your separate ways. There’s trepidation from both parties to engage in any kind of combat in a situation like this, since – as per extraction shooter rules – dying means losing everything you’re carrying. Whoever survives a theoretical PvP bout gets to loot their destroyed foe’s goods, though, and even take their mech parts.
On one occasion, I was deep in the city ruins, wearing my basic starter weapons and mech parts. I passed by another player whose back was turned to me, their attention focused on a box they were looting. My trigger finger moved before my brain could think. I blasted them in the back with a couple of shotgun rounds, and they swivelled around to desperately spray a few machine gun rounds in my general direction. A third shotgun shell smacked against their frame. I was locked in. They were turned back around and sped as far away from me as possible. I swapped to my machine gun and plucked rounds into them as they got further and further away, but not far enough to survive that last round. I ran to their deathbox to see what the spoils of my bloodshed were, and I discovered a rare mech set that could fetch me over half a million in-game credits if I could get it back home alive. I grabbed everything, sprinted to an elevator, and waved sheepishly at any other player I encountered.
I felt things I’ve never felt before in that moment of playing Synduality Echo of Ada.
The fact that loss matters so much in this game makes every run so immediately important and visceral. And with so many reasons to do a run, you’ll naturally have some goal to work towards each time you dive in. Requests pour in from various factions that reward you with new gear and Magus clothing items upon success, but you’ve also got dozens of rooms and features in your run-down homebase that you can build and upgrade by collecting and crafting materials. Eventually, you’ll unlock the ability to start a co-up crew with players who you meet in the field, which will spawn a huge boss monster you can fight together for some randomized rewards. There’s even a full single-player mode to unlock that acts as a psuedo story-mode, giving you a pre-built mech and Magus to tackle bespoke missions with and collect documents tying into the lore of the Synduality universe.
I’ve got to talk about the Magus. Your AI companion can be customized visually from head-to-toe, and the base unit you choose also indicates their personality and how they’ll talk to you. Believe me, they talk a lot. Your Magus will be hanging out all the time in your base when you’re not exploring, and when you are exploring, they’re floating by your side and regularly calling out nearby resources, gunfire in the distance, other players, incoming deadly weather, and more. There’s a constant stream of vital information pouring in from your companion, and the more you play, the more they learn about why and how you play – noting areas you frequently die in, potential locations for items you need, and more. Your Magus can also fall into several different classes that give them different special abilities to assist you – from a Weather Catcher that can spot incoming rain and shield you from it’s damage to another class that specializes in healing you and scanning for the quality of nearby resources.
The blend of endearing human interaction via your Magus and cold, calculated, cool-as-hell mecha combat is the sauce that really brings Synduality Echo of Ada together. So many things have been blended together into this one package, and the fact that it all works so well and creates such an addicting and immersive experience is an absolute treat. When PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds came out, it put a spotlight on the potential of the battle-royale genre and then Fortnite adapted that into a clean, accessible, and addictive alternative. Synduality Echo of Ada is the addictive and accessible extraction shooter that the world has been waiting for.
