Ash Echoes is a brand new strategy Gacha – and admittedly, what I experienced I didn’t expect. At all. On the contrary, while I had been eagerly anticipating it ever since its initial announcement, I didn’t think it would offer not only the challenge, but also style of gameplay that it does. You begin with a beautiful intro cinematic, showing you what I believe to be the world – in a state of chaos.
Like every Gacha game in the history of the genre, you regain consciousness, look in the puddle beside you, and have to contemplate whether what you see is a cute female, or a generic male. When I look in the mirror I often wonder the same thing.
I opted for the gender I am IRL – and named myself appropriately. Apparently I’m the Director – the Chief Officer of S.E.E.D. – the very same military organization from Final Fantasy 8. Now to find out where Quistis is hiding..
After listening to more of the story, attempting to understand what’s going on, we’re contacted by Young Lady on Call. She immediately recognizes me and has a little pouty face because apparently I’m bad at following directions.
I began hearing voices, which is never a good sign. I probably hit my head too hard on the ground when whatever almost killed me, well, almost killed me.
Together, we form a group, and Xiao, the blonde lady and I, make our way through a destroyed city, armed with.. apparently a rolled up piece of newspaper. Are we.. are we serious? That’s what we’re going with? You’re gonna fend off a swarm of alien creatures with an old newspaper?
We’re introduced to a unique style of gameplay – or game mode, that is further expanded upon later as we continue our story. As we run in a relatively linear line forward, we’re treated to quite the grand spectacle. Enormous battles going on in the distance – which really makes you appreciate just how far we’ve come in this genre.
When a mere few years ago we had games that were all but visual novels. While progressing through towards the end of the mission, we see some noticeable frame drops, which was cause for alarm.
This game suffers from occasional frame drops – more often in cutscenes, character ultimates, or when there’s too much visual clutter. Otherwise it’s as smooth as my ass after I get home from my monthly waxxing.
After a lot of cutscenes, a few battles to introduce me to the systems, and some insane ultimate showcases, some old guy smiles at me as he drugs my glass of water. I then go in this crazy acid trip, see all the incredible characters I’ll never obtain, including Jiyan from Wuthering Waves, and.. fall from the sky. And then I wake up in a taxi, with Xiao angrily pointing at me. She reminds me of my wife.
While we were taught the basics in the first 30 minutes of the game, they want to re-teach us the basics, and thus we’re thrown into another half hour of tutorials, cutscenes, and exposition.
Ash Echoes is a real-time tactical RPG. You field a number of units – all of which fit into one of several different class archetypes. Bulwark, Vanguard, Striker, Skirmisher, Ranger, Support and Tactician.
In addition to a class, heroes will also have their own elemental affinity. Physical, Water, Lightning, Fire, Ice, Wind and Corrosion. Elements are more than just a rock-paper-scissors advantage, much like Genshin Impact, they provide you interesting elemental reactions and interactions when utilizing certain abilities, like lightning abilities inside a fire spell.
Since combat is real-time, not only can you reactively move your heroes around the battlefield, but enemies move periodically, requiring you keep track of where each and every enemy – and ally, is placed.
Since each hero fits into a class archetype, they fill different roles, and as such, have different advantages to incorporating them into your team composition. Managing exactly who and what you need based on the encounter is paramount to your success.
Abilities tend to take one of two types: AoE or single-target. These abilities can be manually aimed, placed around enemies, in a cone, a linear line, some characters will require close proximity to utilize their skill, putting them in danger of being overrun by enemies if you’re not cautious.
You manually control your heroes, but an auto-combat feature does exist. I utilized it for most of the game because it handled things pretty well – as opposed to games like Blue Archive where auto-skills are possible, but the AI uses them every time they’re out of cooldown rather than reserving it for future use.
You also have a limited number of ability usages, denoted by the icons beneath each respective heroes avatar, thus you can’t just sit there and spam them all in rapid succession.
I enjoyed the combat. When necessary, I would take control of the battle, otherwise I would let the AI play for me. And even with the AI playing, the game looks no less impressive.
Which brings me to the aesthetic of Ash Echoes. This is arguably one of the most unique Gacha games I’ve seen.
It’s not a visual masterpiece like Wuthering Waves. It doesn’t have the expressive nature of Zenless Zone Zero. The bright, vibrancy of Genshin Impact or the character models of NIKKE. But this game is truly gorgeous.
The environments look great, the hero abilities look fantastic, and the character models – while seemingly not as good as the aforementioned titles, have this unusual uniqueness to them that enthralled me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them – some characters more than others.
The live 2D models during story elements, the fluid character movements during ultimate abilities. This game absolutely killed it when it came to the visual aesthetic of their characters.

After progressing far enough through the story, you unlock the Gacha. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they offer all players a free max rarity – 6* hero for their first 10-pull. The character is completely random, so re-rolling is entirely plausible, but it might take you a while to navigate the story each time.
Me being me, with my incredible luck when it comes to Waifu’s – ended up pulling Hassel. And while definitely effiminate, he comes equipped with a package I just didn’t want to unwrap.
Thankfully – the Gacha gods shone down upon me and provided me the opportunity for hundreds of additional pulls, allowing me to obtain a significant number of characters, filling every major role I needed. Unfortunately, even after almost 300 pulls I only acquired a handful of 6* heroes.
Which does make sense. There are several banner types available – both character and Memory Traces, which we’ll touch on in just a little bit.
The probability of obtaining a 6* hero is 1.2%, with 5* heroes at 7%, and 4* heroes at 91.8%. Pity honestly isn’t bad, and if what I read is accurately translated, after 60 pulls, if you don’t obtain a 6* hero your chances increase by 6% until you do, likely hitting full pity around 70-something pulls. Hitting pity resets it to 1.2%, with a 50-50 chance of obtaining the banner character. Unfortunately.
I hate 50/50 in my Gacha games, but I understand it increases revenue, so is a necessary evil. The Gacha is honestly relatively rewarding.
Character management is very different to traditional Gacha games. Where typically, every hero has their own individual level, that you break through as you continue through the game, in Ash Echoes.. there are no character levels. Not in the traditional sense.
You have an Ascension gauge, which increases your characters stats by specific percentages. These require resources you grind through the Field Ops Center, consuming Stamina to run.
Every character possesses their own Combat Skills that you can upgrade via resources. Upgrading them increases your heroes power, but is gated behind certain level-achievements.
You use your Seed to Ascend your character like you would in traditional Gacha games, and this is where dupes come in.
There is the Leader Record, which allows you to claim some goodies after meeting certain requirements.
Archive, where you’ll be able to learn more about your hero or replay certain dialogues, and finally Fitness Training, which I never unlocked. And am admittedly a little confused by what that would be.

There are certain game modes present in-game. The main story, which features a number of Chapters, each Chapter having several Missions, that involve a battle against waves of enemies.
Field Ops, where you’ll be grinding for various material types required to Ascend your characters. Ascension is limited, and higher Ascension levels require rarer materials.
The Nexus, that takes us back to the beginning of the game – you have a linear path and the ability to manually control your character. You move forward, engaging enemies as they spawn, slowly pushing through a set number of waves before finalizing in a larger-scale boss encounter.
Admittedly, I failed to defeat the boss upon my first attempt, and haven’t re-attempted it yet, slowly working through everything else – because there’s a lot to do.
After enough progress has been made, you’ll unlock Memory Traces. These are pulled via Gacha much in the same way heroes are. I’m not certain if there’s a way of attaining them outside of the Gacha, but they function similarly to Artifacts in Genshin.
They provide you a set number of beneficial bonuses depending on what you have equipped. They also directly affect your Engraving stats – which you’ll see before every engagement, meaning you’ll likely want to plan ahead accordingly. You’re capable of leveling them, as opposed to your heroes, which confused me as to why there’d be a leveling system in place for one and not the other.
Why not just allow you to Ascend your Traces, using similarly acquired materials? Unfortunately, Traces also have rarities, SR, SSR.
The story was surprisingly good. Many of the characters had rather distinct personalities, and I rarely felt bored. This was probably aided by the stellar voice acting – and also the stunning live 2D animations.
Although I’m beginning to grow a little weary of the “mankind is on the brink of destruction and ruin” theme that every Gacha game seems to so strongly want to pursue.
Outside of story and combat, you have what I believe to be a Cafe that you can relax in. This acts like a dorm – a base, allowing you to customize it however you want.
Characters visit the cafe, and you can chat with them or engage in a variety of different mini-games.
There’s baseball, which requires you move your reticle – or fingers, along the screen following the directions in an effort to hit the ball towards the back of the cage.
Darts, where you’ll drag the dart vertically, attempting to pin it on to the dart board. This one was much easier than baseball.
And finally, pool, where you’ll be able to put your geometry skills to use. Honestly I’m really good at this.
After playing through the mini-games, you’ll be able to get a drink with your favorite character. You choose the alcohol – or tea, along with a variety of additives. Sugar, fruit. It’s a very cool feature that has a direct impact on the outcome of your visit.
Ash Echoes exceeded my expectations in terms of enjoyment and quality, and I think could genuinely be an incredibly fun game to play on the side.

Now let’s break down my rating.
Combat – 7/10. I enjoyed having direct control over my characters with a tactical setting. The class archetypes, abilities and utility all felt great.
Story – 5/10. I’m growing tired of the theme, but it was told well, featured fun voice acting and honestly wasn’t nearly as filled with fluff as many other releases this year.
World – 3/10. There was little to do or explore, outside of the Nexus, sadly.
Graphics – 7/10. I think the characters are gorgeous in a very unique way. Not as flashy or detailed as WuWa, but that’s okay.
Sound – 3/10. This is where I felt the game was lacking. I honestly don’t recall a single song or theme that I thought was really good.
Overall – I’d give this 25 piles of ash out of 50 echoes – or 5 out of 10. Honestly a fun game, but not fun enough where I’d ditch any of my current games for it.