Synduality: Echo of Ada

PS5 Review 

Synduality: EoA is an extraction mech based action game available on all consoles bar Nintendo Switch.

The game sees the player journey to the surface in an effort to gather resources to build up their base and fulfil requests by various companies under a time limit on the surface before their mech the Cradlecoffin runs out of power. 

Synduality: EoA is set 20 years before the Anime Synduality Noir and is supposed to fill in the gaps in the backstory for the Anime to explain how humanity returned to the surface after mostly being wiped out and forced underground.

Pro:

Graphical fidelity.

Synduality is a fantastic looking game and really brings the Anime to life with the Cradlecoffin and Magus designs. Both maps also have a good variety of locales from overgrown city ruins to a lava ridden landscape.

The only downside is the limited enemy variety as the game has to resort to doing colour reskins to bloat the enemy roster, I would have preferred more of the Enders from the Anime or even the splash screens in game from the cut scenes when it shows the large building size ones.

Story focused missions.

After the player makes enough progress with their requests by doing repeated trips to the surface by either bringing back specific materials in high enough quantities or by surveying certain parts on the map to recover specific historic artefacts.

Then after about 6 hours I received a new request with accompanying cut scenes and new dialogue about going into bandit territory using a premade load out in a new Cradlecoffin. By going on these new expeditions, the player can recover audio logs to help fill in the blanks for the history of the planet.

These maps were my favourite aspect of the game as the player goes through a gauntlet of enemy bandits with a predesigned loadout, so the player can rely on their usual weapons and armour from the scavenging mode. They are also a good challenge without being unfair like in the scavenging mode where you can get sniped and killed from across the map.

Certain audio logs also unlock cutscenes for the player to watch but since they are hidden behind such boring and mediocre gameplay for tens of hours most players will have already dropped the game by that point.

I would rebalance the game so the story missions are available from the get-go without having to do so much grinding as there is no point hiding the best part of the game, so that players won’t play it as it should be unlocked after the first return trip from the surface to help the pacing.

Character customisation.

The game features pretty good customisation for a live service game for the Magus, as it gives the player access to not only have customisation for the body dimensions but also a lot of different clothing options for the Magus, with a lot more being available in the in-game store and battlepass.

Then the Magus has the option for 4 different kinds of base design and each different Magus gets a different skill that they can use in the overworld map with the choice I chose was for the environmental shield. 

As the shield protects the Cradlecoffin from environmental damage like the acid rain, this meant I could explore and gather more resources without having the hide from the rain that spawns every 10 minutes on average.

However, I then discovered that the player cannot just easily switch between the Magus skills, and instead players have to spend real money on microtransactions on the ability too. This is a bad decision as it means that players cannot test out what all of these different skills do and are instead locked in if they do not give the game more money.

Con:

Repetitive gameplay loop.

The main gameplay for Synduality Echo of Ada is to deploy to the surface of the map on one map to begin with and explore a reasonable sized map using the player’s mech called a Cradlecoffin.

On the surface they pickup various items to bring back to base, encounter enemy players both hostile and friendly and A.I controlled bandits plaguing the map.

All the while the player is trying to manage all of that with a hard time limit before their battery for the Cradlecoffin runs out or they get destroyed by environmental damage by acid rain.

So the main gameplay loop sees the player go to the surface to gather a few resources go back to base then rinse and repeated for tens of hours until they upgraded their base and finish the few story missions available.

PvP always on.

Player Vs Player is always turned on by default with no option to only play the main scavenging gameplay mode without it. This means that at any time a high-level player can spawn on the map and instantly kill the player this happened to myself 4 times during my play through for review.

As the game does not match players by their gear or in-game level there is no balancing. So fresh players are getting dropped into the map as players who have already bought all the best weapons and armour in the game via the battlepass using real world money via the terrible microtransactions.

Each time it was always by an enemy player using a Bolt Sniper Rifle that then proceeded to 2 shot me from full HP without a chance to react. As even before I could move into cover my Cradlecoffin was destroyed and I lost all my equipment and items. 

However, I always went on my missions with insurance for my equipment but even when the player goes back to base there is a wait before the insurance money is paid out and it doesn’t cover the full cost of rebuying all equipment only a majority of it.

The downside of the insurance system is that you have to wait a certain in-game amount of time before you can reclaim the money back and if you sortie onto a mission and then die again then the player won’t be able to recover the insurance as it will override the old claim.

No Co-op with friends.

Even though the player sorties onto a map with random other players the player can interact with there is no way to play with friends on the same map together by sortieing together.

So friends have to randomly hope they spawn on the same instanced map as each other as otherwise there is no guarantee of encountering each other making gameplay feel very lonely and isolated. This really cuts down on my drive to play the game because without co-op I was playing the same map from tens of hours wondering what is the point as it was incredibly dull.

Only 2 main maps.

For the game’s main mode of scavenging the player can explore two maps for resources but the player can only explore the Northern section for a very long time until unlocking the Southern section through a side quest.

This makes gameplay even more limited since the player will be gathering resources on the same map after about 16 hours but the difficulty doesn’t spike that much apart more environmental damage being a factor.

So gameplay gets very repetitive only playing on the same map for over 15 hours gathering the same resources and fighting the same enemies on loop as there is no way to progress the game otherwise.

Difficulty in collecting materials.

To make progress in the game the player has to fulfil requests and to expand their Homebase with various upgrades that only can be completed by picking up various resources in the overworld maps.

Unfortunately the item spawns are randomly generated so even if the player goes back to where they spawned originally will find that they are not there on subsequent trips.

The player gets access to a wish list for the materials but even then, it doesn’t help much as the spawn rate is still way too low and even if the player does find one of them then if their Cradlecoffin gets destroyed they lose all their items and progress made.

The other main gameplay mechanic that comes into play when scavenging is the weight limit that players have to deal with. As everything the player takes into the field has weight from weapons, ammo and medical supply. This makes it so the player can only bring back a limited amount of items that they pick up back to the base further extending how long it takes to finish requests and build orders.

Lack of easily accessible story.

For the story-based missions the player has to progress through the extraction resource grinding loop to upgrade their base and fulfil requests for the various corporations to progress.

After about 8 hours of waiting for the items, I need to randomly spawn in the map and progressing through the literal slog of requests the ability to play story missions finally unlocked and they were a lot better and more entertaining than the main gameplay mode of repetitive scavenging.

The story missions should of unlocked a lot sooner as the game doesn’t tell players that they are a feature so most players will play the game and just think that the scavenging mode is the only mode in the game and quickly tire of it.

Can’t pause.

Due to being a constant online game with other players in the map the player cannot pause the game when out on missions and supply runs. This even extends to the story missions that doesn’t have any other real players in the map so there is no excuse to not allow the player to pause on these missions. 

While this normally wouldn’t be much of an issue because if something happens in real life and the player needs to stop, they could just hide in a corner of the map without enemies like in a Dark Souls game for instance.

However due to the game having acid rain that will destroy your Cradlecoffin, enemy players hunting others down for resources and the fact that the Cradlecoffin itself has a limited battery means that the player cannot leave the game unattended otherwise they will lose all of their equipment and possibly go bankrupt.

Always online.

The game has no offline option at launch so if the internet disconnects then the player cannot access the game even to play the single player story missions or upgrade the base any further.

Pushes micro transactions heavily.

Synduality reminds the player at every opportunity that they can spend extra money on the game by buying in-game currency to spend on in app purchases like a mobile phone game.

There is the battle pass that has the best rewards hidden behind an upgrade track that the player pays for and pushes the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) by having the battle pass expire, so if players don’t make enough progress to unlock further rewards, they can spend more money to unlock them.

There is also the cosmetics shop also on the main menu that features expensive clothing for the player character and Magus all with countdown timers until they leave the store with no text saying that they will rotate back in.

The worst example in my opinion is that the game has a system to bypass the real time waiting times when upgrading the base so instead of waiting 30 minutes or several hours for the later upgrades the player can instead spend real money to finish the construction to progress in the story.

Conclusion: 

An extraction shooter that does not live up to its other source material like the Anime or the Light Novels, especially given the fact that the game is not free to play but instead players have to spend £35 for this game on top of all the other microtransactions in the game.

I would recommend players experience the franchise through other means rather than this boring, repetitive and slog of a game that does not do enough to elevate the franchise aside from the few enjoyable story missions.

Score: 4.0