Only a couple of weeks into the new year, publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. has brought out another game, this time with publisher Games Studio Inc. – Synduality Echo of Ada, a PvPvE extraction shooter.

Set in 2222, 200 years after humanity was almost completely whipped out during an event called The Tears of the New Moon, a mysterious rain fell upon the land forcing humankind underground. All that remained above ground was destroyed or killed, giving birth to deformed creatures called Enders. Humankind thrived below ground until a collapse forced them above ground again, and to survive humankind used its ingenuity by creating Cradlecoffins, Magus, and harnessing the power of AO Crystals. You are a Drifter piloting Cradlecoffins with your Magus to harvest AO Crystals.

It sounds like an interesting world and I was ready to jump in and learn more. Unfortunately, that is all I could learn; Synduality Echo of Ada has locked the single-player story section behind the PvE gameplay I cover below. So, with hours of gameplay required to unlock the story, I remained hopeful that the heavy lifting of entertainment would be here, but before getting to my opinion, let’s explain all these funky names and how they integrate into the gameplay systems.

Cradlecoffins are mechs. These machines protect and serve you while you are above ground, be it from its hazards of damaging rain by providing you with a resistance shield, or durable armour to weather the blows from the aggressive Enders, your Cradlecoffin is your lifeboat.

Magus are AI specifically built to assist a Drifter in all facets, either by alerting you to dangers or resources above ground, giving you tips and tricks based on your play style, or helping construct your garage. They are the guru.

AO Crystals are treated as currency, so finding this above ground is important, along with other materials like metal, timber, wire and the like. This will further your progression, be it upgrading your Cradlecoffin, your base, crafting, or purchasing items, everything is precious.

Now, as you may have noticed I remained hopeful. Unfortunately, as much as all these systems work well, they are not fun to interact with. These gameplay features are lazy and have all been done before, and in some cases, done better. Everything could be replaced by anything else, and the feel of Synduality Echo of Ada would not change. Replace the Cradlecoffins with a tiger-striped giraffe with a unicorn horn and pegasus wings and it would still work without making a difference.

The Magus is just eye candy, and you can use a character creator to design how he or she looks before dressing him or her up. With the Cradlecoffin already so empty of impact, the Magus could just as well be you for all it matters.

The collecting of resources is painfully slow, which in turn makes progression slow. That’s not to say that collection is slow, it’s more a case of everything being built to slow you down. The Cradlecoffin moves slowly and moves even slower when you collect resources. The damaging rain forces you to seek shelter, sometimes hiding for minutes at a time for it to blow over. They also run on battery power, so surface time is limited.

Extraction points are inconvenient to access, sometimes forcing you to abandon a lucrative area to get to one a quarter of the map away, and base upgrading and crafting are on timers further adding to the slow progression. As mentioned, these systems work and aren’t broken, they just aren’t fun to use, the family from The Hills Have Eyes has more depth in their gene pool than these shallow systems.

Lastly, the final two things that frustrated me about Synduality Echo of Ada being online play only, with offline to become available later, and progress further marred by cascade failure. For those unfamiliar with cascade failure, it is when a mistake only becomes worse the longer you remain in a situation. Unfortunately, I got caught in a cascade failure when I lost my first Cradlecoffin and had to start over from the beginning, rebuilding my Cradlecoffin from the ground up and using beginner weapons until I got a lucky run above ground where I didn’t get rained on or attacked by overpowered Enders.

The beautiful graphics depict a realistic and futuristic world with splashes of alien environments to complement the Enders that now rule the land. The smooth animations help greatly with becoming absorbed in the world, even though they are slow-paced, and out-of-sync English dubbing can feel jarring. The audio is there, but it’s uninteresting. Enders growl, guns go pew-pew, and music loops on repeat.

Voice acting is the only thing I would say was good, even with it being out of sync with character animations. With the Magus speaking so much, it helped to have something pleasant on the journey, and other voice acting, like the over-the-top plushie Yoshio, was entertaining.

Synduality Echo of Ada is a generically average game with the single-player story locked away so deep, that after many hours of play, I was still unable to experience it. I would not recommend it because the systems are too grindy and slow to promote progressional fun. Other games use similar systems, but they do a better job than Synduality Echo of Ada, and they come with the story from the beginning.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove