The first time I lost my mech in Synduality Echo of Ada was on my second sortie, and a lot of things went wrong. I didn’t buy insurance beforehand and I took way too much stuff out with me because I hit the wrong button, and then I chose not to take a moment to repair right before I got into the encounter that killed me. I made a series of avoidable mistakes followed by a bad decision, and this mech-flavored extraction shooter made sure I lost everything I had for it – so it’s a good sign that, after I was done cursing Synduality and then myself, I was immediately excited to try and get it all back. Satisfying combat means going out on a sortie is always tense, but its slow start can really bog down an otherwise great run, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for dipping out before they see the good stuff.
There’s a pretty cool premise: In the far future, humanity has been nearly wiped out by a mysterious blue rain which, in addition to killing humans on contact, makes animals and plants gigantic and aggressive. To survive, society has moved underground and adopted the use of enormous mechs called Cradlecoffins to explore the surface world and gather energy-producing crystals. Your goal: Get up there, get the things you need to upgrade your base and make some cash, and get out before the locals turn your Cradlecoffin into a… gravecoffin?
Cradlecoffins aren’t your traditional mechs. They’re slower than something you’d find in Armored Core – though similarly armed – but faster than the behemoths you’d see in MechWarrior. Ready for a deep cut? They’re actually a lot like the mechs from 2002’s Phantom Crash, which is to say they are a nice balance of being reasonably fast but still heavy and limited in terms of, shall we say, vertical mobility. Armored Core mechs can dunk like Jordan; Cradlecoffins got no ups.
But you’re not out there alone. In addition to your mech, you’ve got a Magus — think a humanoid AI you can fully customize and play dress-up with — helping to guide you when you’re out on the surface by marking objectives on your map, alerting you to threats, and even keeping track of the weather. You can be as normal or as strangely intimate as you want about the creation process (you can bathe them, which is… weird), though it kinda seems as if Synduality assumes you’re more likely to pick a robo-girlfriend than a robo-boyfriend based on the clothing choices available. (Even the AI-controlled Cradelcoffins largely have robo-girlfriends.) There are several different personalities to choose from, including supportive mentor lady; demure, eager-to-please girl; encouraging big brother; and spicy athlete who just wants you to be the best version of yourself. They’re an oddly likeable little crew — I chuckled when my robo-girlfriend essentially told me to stop whining and eat my veggies (read: weeds that we had removed from the base) or she’d beat me up. And since they’re the only companion you’ll have for most of your time with Synduality, their presence is welcome.
In addition to their clothes and look, you can also customize the special abilities and focus of your Magus, whether that’s finding crystals, providing more info about different hostile creatures (called Enders), or giving you the lowdown on the other Cradlecoffins you’ll run into once you pop out on the surface. I liked both the option that’s good at protecting me from the evil rain and the one who has a knack for spotting other Cradlecoffins at range because hearing another potentially hostile player’s engine in this game is stressful, but I appreciate that you can tailor your Maguses (Magi?) to assist you be the best pilot (AKA Drifter) you wanna be.
You’ll run into other players in Synduality’s world, but in my experience, most of them aren’t out there to kill you and take your things. Usually, an encounter means the two of you being very cagey, aiming your guns at each other, until one of you finally uses the wave emote. Then the other returns it and you both go on your way, always facing each other as you retreat like you’re a gunslinger staring down somebody you’re unsure of, because the back of your Cradlecoffin is its most vulnerable point. It’s admittedly tense, as an extraction shooter like this should be, because you’re never more than a single uninsured run away from losing all your things.
The whole “we’re all working together to help humanity” thing sets up that cautious camaraderie, but there is always the danger that someone’s gonna see your shiny shotgun and think “I want that and I don’t wanna work for it.” I’ve exchanged some gunfire with other pilots, but it’s pretty rare early on. It’s very funny when three Craddlecoffins share one of the elevators that bring you to and from the safety of the underground, and very relieving when you’re about to put a sniper round through the back of someone’s Cradle but then notice that they are running with two buddies and your patience probably saved your life.
Of course, another time I saw somebody take a bad fight against some Enders with their back to me while I was above them with a sniper rifle, and… well, I hope they were insured. That was exhilarating and tense and, one day, somebody’s going to nail me and I won’t blame them. What’s that old Hemingway quote? “There is no hunting like the hunting of mechs, and those who have hunted armed mechs long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.” Yeah. Yeah. Admittedly, taking a golden opportunity like this will put you on the Drifter Support Association’s naughty list for a while (and doing it enough will make you a bounty target for other players), but if you go long enough without taking a shot at somebody when you’re only on probation you’ll be fine.
Managing each mission means making a lot of interesting choices. How far from the elevators are you willing to venture? What kind of materials are you looking to collect for your base, and how much are you going to risk to get them? How much ammo will you head out with? What kind of mech? Will you prioritize carrying capacity or defense? All of these choices matter, and you may regret your words and deeds when you’re sitting at low health with no repair kits, far away from an elevator in a world where everything wants to kill you. Knowing what you want to accomplish on a given run, and choosing the right tools to do it, is key.
The stuff you bring back to base can be used to spruce it up, which is good because it starts off as a literal cave covered in weeds. That could mean something simple like adding floors to your living space, upgrading your Item Warehouse so you can store more stuff, or building a Production Space to create your own repair kits. Every little upgrade you manage feels meaningful, and it’s cool to watch your base go from an empty shell to something functional with a lot of different systems to make your life easier.
But this also brings me to Synduality’s biggest problem: the grind. There’s just not a lot of variety here, and the first dozen or so hours have you doing the same thing over and over again: you’ll go out on the same map, head to the same areas to find the upgrade supplies you’ve wishlisted so your Magus can track them, fight the same Enders, deal with the everpresent threat of violence from other players, and then head back to base and do it all again. That’s fine; this loop remains tense, and while fighting Enders loses its appeal after a while because you learn how to deal with them quickly and then just repeat those strategies, the threat of losing all your stuff carries the day.
Again, though, the issue is how long it takes to make real progress. Getting enough of the supplies you need for any given upgrade or to complete a Request (quests that send you to do something specific on the map, like collecting so many of X thing, killing so many of Y Ender, and so on) takes several runs, and a lot of progress early on is hidden behind unlocking the right stuff. Once you do, things really open up, but those early hours can drag.
Even when you do finally get enough materials, you often have to wait for an arbitrary, real-world time gate before your next upgrade goes through, which means you’re stuck either vibing in your base with your Magus in admittedly pretty enjoyable chatting sequences, taking a break to go do something else (like make a sandwich), filling that time with sorties to stockpile resources, or ponying up some currency (either in-game or real-money) to make it go faster.
That said, you’re only ever one run away from something really cool. Once, I had two back-to-back deaths to Enders; the first time I was repairing and a flying Gazer swooped in and ended me before I could react; the second, I got jumped by a group of Chasers. I was insured, thankfully, but insurance takes a while to pay out, and it doesn’t actually replace what you lost – it just reimburses the total cost of those items. I was… upset, to put it lightly. Some of the lost stuff I’d gotten from progressing through Synduality’s battle pass, which meant I didn’t actually have the means to replace it manually yet.
But on my very next run, where I was forced to play small ball with a basic mech that costs nothing to replace, I ran into someone else’s destroyed mech and took everything I could, which got me some parts I’d lost on my very first death and stuff I could use while I waited for my insurance payout. The luck I had early on had mostly been bad, but that was the moment things changed – including my view on Synduality overall, which had been more mixed until that moment. Once you get into the groove it’s a lot of fun, and you can really drill down on what you want to focus on each run, whether that’s finding supplies to upgrade your base, completing requests, or whatever else.
And you never know when you might find something cool. Once, I ran into two downed Craddlecoffins full of loot and grabbed as much as I could, then booked it immediately back to the elevator. Christmas came early. It’s just a shame it takes so long to get to that point – though, to Synduality’s credit, it does try to ease you in and is more friendly to new players than many extraction shooters because of the insurance system and the way it flags people who’ve been hostile to other players. I just wish it opened up for you faster after that introduction.
Synduality does, eventually, give you more to do. You’ll unlock another map with new environments, harder Enders, and more difficult objectives, but that also means more experienced players with better stuff, some of whom will be helpful and some… not. There are also single-player missions which play out like combat gauntlets, and I really enjoyed the ones I played. They’re a great way to learn to deal with other Cradlecoffins in particular. Unfortunately, they don’t give you anything you can carry back with you besides some video and audio logs that explain the lore. These missions are fun, but right now they feel disconnected from the main activity of hunting for resources, and that’s a shame; I just wish completing them gave you money or plans to build some of the mechs you use, or something.
Beyond those there are co-op missions you can do, but since there’s unfortunately no way to squad up with your friends before you head out onto a map you have to team up with players you run into. Joining up with them gives you a new co-op objective — the first one I did asked us to destroy a corrupted crystal protected by lots and lots of Enders who spawned in to give us trouble. The thing with these missions is you’re only squaded up for as long as that objective lasts, so once that crystal was history, our alliance was broken. Neither of us ended up shooting at each other, but we were both pretty wary as we backed away. Like everything else in Synduality, there’s a lot of risk/reward to co-op missions, but you also get a lot of good stuff if you get home alive.
Then there are the microtransactions and battle pass (we live in Hell!) that can speed up the process of getting a better Cradlecoffin (or goodies for your Magus) substantially, which chafes because this is not a free-to-play game. When I lost everything in that first run, I was able to get back on my feet pretty quickly because the code provided by Bandai Namco for this review unexpectedly came with the deluxe version of the battle pass and several level skips. If I hadn’t had that, progress would have been slow outside of regularly completing daily and weekly quests, which award a ton of experience – though at least you’re always making progress towards one and they rarely feel stuck.
Because of that, Synduality feels like it’s made to be played in chunks – but to its credit, the battle pass gives you a decent amount of stuff for free… assuming you don’t then immediately lose all of that stuff to another player. Whether it’s in-game currency or real money, you’ll have to pony up for everything, but Synduality is at least upfront about that, and it does feel like you can make progress at a reasonable pace even if you don’t open your wallet to buy the deluxe version.
