Wayfinder – Echoes – Indie Quickie

If you are an MMORPG player, you have likely been stuck in a loop between games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, and Final Fantasy XIV. New MMO’s tend to never really scratch the itch for me, and I always go back to one of my big three. Wayfinder fills some of the gaps in what I am looking for in a new MMORPG, but also punches some huge holes in the formula in its own way.

However, Wayfinder is no longer an MMO. In November 2023 the Publisher, Digital Extremes, laid off employees working on developer Airship Syndicate’s Wayfinder. This resulted in the relaunch of the game as Wayfinder – Echoes as a standalone, single player RPG with optional co-op in June of 2024. The change included some major updates to the base game’s formula and leaves an echo (HA, get it?) of what the game originally was. While I never played Wayfinder before its re-release, I certainly feel the old MMO roots in the game.

Notably, the holy trinity of the tank, healer, and DPS still exists between the playable characters. When playing the different wayfinders (what the game calls the playable characters you can unlock and switch between) you can see the gaps that are meant to be filled by other party members. I mainly stuck to DPS wayfinders when I played and really felt how squishy they were. Gathering a large group of enemies to burn down with your big abilities became impossible if you didn’t kill them with your first rotation. Fighting a world boss, managing smaller enemy spawns while continuing to do damage on the apparently timed fight seemed impossible. I will say though, some of these issues could be resolved by not fighting the boss earlier than I likely was supposed to, or just having better gear, but it was still frustrating at times. At the end of the day, if you are familiar with the holy trinity, you will immediately be familiar with the feeling of missing something that would allow you to be fully self-sustaining in combat.

Speaking of combat, it is great. This is a point where Wayfinder – Echoes really shines. The small customization options you get as you level up, select your abilities, improve them and improve your gear to support your desired play style feels impactful. The game is similar to a soulslike in the way combat functions, but with a little MMO twist. You have three main abilities with shorter cooldowns and a pseudo ultimate with a longer cooldown. You must dodge in and out of combat and utilize your abilities to remove threats. For a familiar mechanic for the MMO crowd, the ground has AOE indicators to avoid, so don’t stand in the fire, dammit.

The game has a main questline in addition to side quests. I did not immediately fixate on the narrative, as is my experience with most MMOs. I want combat, I want challenge, and I want LOOT. The story seems fine, but it was nothing that had me enraptured immediately. The dungeon system (or “expeditions” as the game calls them) is interesting. You unlock new dungeons as your progress and can add modifiers or “imbuements” to create new experiences. Each expedition seems randomly generated from a set of tiles, so there is some variety each time you play. As a side note, within the dungeons there is a chance you run into the Trickster. This NPC allows you to do some various types of gamba (gambling, for those who aren’t degenerates) for extra items. Here at Bad Habit Gaming, we love some gamba and I appreciated the addition.

When you are not completing quests, running around the open world, and delving deeper into the expeditions you can focus on the main end game content in any MMO, cosmetics. As I mentioned earlier, you can certainly feel the origins of the original game and the micro transaction system is certainly still in place. Only its FREE now, and you can’t beat free. As you progress you can move through a pseudo battle pass system, the Towers, that allows you to unlock additional cosmetics. You can switch your gear appearance so you can look as fashionable as possible while wiping the floor with your enemies. Cosmetic items usually dropped for me from expeditions (plus the regular armor drops could be switched at will without ruining your stats) and they also included items for your apartment. You heard me right, you can finally realize the dream of the Boomers and have your own home. As you receive items you can fill your new household with beds, light fixtures, fish, books, whatever your inner designer desires.

For me, Wayfinder Echoes gently scratches an itch for a new kind of MMORPG. It is fun to play and does not feel like it requires me to sweat super hard to achieve my goals. It’s pretty, seems to run okay, the gameplay is fun, and like it or not, it’s a solo game now. Not having to rely on anyone else can be nice when you want the MMO experience without the toxicity of the other real human beings on the internet. I think the game is worth playing if you are a degenerate like me who always needs something new and wants an MMORPG-lite experience. At $25, I think you will get your money’s worth.

7.5/10