Synd wality echo ADA review

Synduality Echo ADA is one of those games that is custom-made for me. A third-person mech action game that takes the extraction shooter formula and twists it into something more social and accessible, with an unusual structure hiding the wealth of optional story tied to the latest anime series. It aims high, but an compelling concept can only take you so far, and the end results here feel like three half-finished games.

I had syndaut pockets. Of the 20+ hours I’ve clocked in so far, the first 15 have been a compelling voyage of discovery. From selecting and customizing my first magusk (the Android second pilot who provides constant conversations and guidance in the Mech cockpit), to my first tentative forays into the post-apocalyptic waste From my Doer-Upper Mech hangar, to my first (random) PVP encounters in the field , I thought this was all building up. But synduty never gets better than opening hours.

Friendly fire

Synd wality is (at least initially) an extraction shooter inspired by the likes of Escape from Tarek, but with lightweight mechs that remind me a bit of Hawken’s twitchy but streamlined robots. You explore a hostile wasteland full of monsters and NPC bandits, collect loot, and then try to bring it home to sell or create useful upgrades for your base. Typically a mediocre genre, players approach it as a high-stakes deathmatch where everyone risks their best gear to gain a slight edge over the competition. But Synduality aims to ease newcomers into the action by making co-op (albeit with strangers – there’s no way to implement with your buddies) the default way to play.

Unless you decide to be dishonest and immediately start blasting other players (in which case you’ll be banished to a harder, more PVP-focused map), you’ll likely find yourself working with other players more than fighting them. While I had the occasional fight that usually ended with me apologizing for reflexively shooting at another player, my mage let me know if players that had a reputation for causing trouble, and a cordial “hello” emote was usually enough to defuse any tension, allowing you to focus on the satisfying loop of hunting post-apocalyptic monsters and bandits, collecting treasures and slowly transforming the hangar into a home.

I found basic renovations surprisingly fun. Between some lively animations and the chatter from my magician, there’s a real sense that I’ve returned a dilapidated, rusty building to my home, with a couch and coffee table fur parked in front of a moss repair platform. The game takes a long time to join your mage, endlessly pandering to the servant, reminiscent of the pawns from Dragon’s Dogma. You even install a bathroom so you can watch their (pure work-safe and PG-13) cutscenes… for the miniature in-game price of a bathtub session. Yes, this anime game is very anime.

Low roller

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Fully relaxed after bathing, rates remain low on the field. Deployed using the free default Mech chassis (which I found perfectly usable for most non-PVP runs), I just had to insure my guns. Even in the few cases where I died They take advantage of misfortune. Interesting design supervision and unfortunately pointing to a somewhat thoughtless whole.

Syndaut’s biggest failure is that the momentary combat is very flat. Enjoyed in brief bursts as a lightweight Mech game where movement carries more weight than your average third-person shooter, but you’re still running around with a very standard FPS hero. A melee attack, a pair of guns (SMGs, shotguns, snipers – all the familiar stuff exclusivized), maybe a few grenades, and a special power via your magusk, which can be used once every five minutes. The modern Mech chassis types offer only moderate stat boosts, no really compelling build options, and very little visual customization. Shooting is fun enough, and some of the guns are ecstatic noisy, but you’ll be doing a lot of stocking in the same sluggish and squishy targets, and the monsters are really a threat if they sneak up on you. NPC bandits require stop-and-pop tactics on the cover.

The choice to have a tender point on the Mechs, to be their back (where your mage is held) rather than their head, is a nice tactical twist, turning directing danger into a safer option. But unless you’re an actively dishonest player, PVP doesn’t happen often. For combat this predictable (especially against NPC enemies), the tension of leaving with a good draw that so many extraction shooters relied on was absent, replaced with an almost animalistic, cozy loop of hunting down resources and keeping an eye on the numbers. Not unpleasant, but hardly catchy.

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At least it’s somewhere to get a shot of more focused action, even if it feels barely tethered to the larger game and only slightly more focused than open-world scavenging. About 10 hours in, I had unlocked the first few missions of the oddly localized solo campaign. Scripted missions where you pilot a fixed mech through control-packed, scripted battles. Weird and made all the weirder, the only rewards for these single-player differences are “historical” cutscenes, animatics, and audio logs that seem to be from an earlier, more story-driven iteration of the game, but are otherwise unrelated to them z For looting and extraction shooting loops.

Small world

After 15 hours the cracks really started to show. I unlocked the “harder” second map, but quickly realized that this only escalated the stakes a bit. I still fought the same five NPC enemy types with the occasional elite variant, and not only did they rarely exchange fire with human players. The missions didn’t offer anything modern. The only thing that really speeded things up was my XP boost, which only serves to unlock more seasonal battle rewards. And yes, this is a Bandai Namco game, you can buy battle levels or exorbitant premium outfits for your mage in addition to the retail price of the game. Standard enough for a live game in 2025, but still exhausting.

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After 20 hours I just got tired of it all. Nothing changed. The runs remained pointless. I looped around the same two maps, collecting the same items. The simplicity of combat wore slim, and technical flaws such as excessive motion blur and the occasional performance rattle (potentially network-related) became increasingly nitpicky. Synduality’s goal to make extraction shooters more cordial and sociable is laudable, but once the novelty wears off, there’s not much here.

Perhaps everything will change if I give in to the growing temptation and become a bandit myself. After sailing towards unsuspecting players, building up my bounty and encouraging “law-abiding” players to try hunting me instead. But then I remember the gentle, animal-like vibrations from my early runs, and I don’t think I would have ruined it for anyone else.