Synduality: Echo Of Ada - We could have made R2D2 look like anything, but we made her look like US.

[Fyonn]

Table of Contents

• Introduction - That's this post, keep scrollin' down.
• Seafoam Sortie Power Hour - A couple multiplayer sorties so you can get a sense for what the game is.
• NUTRITIOUS WEEDS - The game introduces itself with biased in-universe training videos.
• TIMELINE OVERVIEW - A less biased perspective on the setting's timeline.
• AMASIA COLLAPSE INVESTIGATION COMMITTEE REQUESTS - This is the single-player stuff, and the main focus of the thread.
  1. Chapter 1
     1. Y'ALL ARMED? (Investigation Squad Base)
     2. FINAL WORK DATE (Bandit's Hideout)
     3. ON THE MATTER OF UTILITY (Mining Base)
  2. Chapter 2
     1. WELCOME TO THE FUTURE (Old Amasia: Grand Bridge)
     2. RAINY DAY (Old Amaisa: Outer Rim)
     3. CRONCHIN' ON SUPPLEMENT (Bandit's Headquarters)

Ada and Alba explore the surface in their BOWIERABBIT model Cradle. In the background, an OGRE model Cradle can be seen, as well as several Enders on an overlooking cliff.​

Synduality: Echo Of Ada is one of the three simultaneously-created works in the Synduality mixed-media franchise alongside the anime Synduality Noir, and the manga Synduality Ellie. Chronologically, Echo Of Ada is the first part of Synduality, but it's actually the last one to be finished. I believe Synduality Noir and it's incredible soundtrack came out first, but it takes place after this game does. The franchise looks at a post-apocalyptic future where rainfall now carries a substance known as Blueschist. Not only does it infect most of Earth's surface water supply, it proves to be fatal for humans and only humans upon contact. Catastrophic flooding accompanied it's initial appearance in 2099 AD, killing much of the Earth's population. Even when it isn't raining, the world is now host to Enders, massive monsters that seem to exist only to peel humanity off this mortal coil. But the danger is accompanied by a new, dangerous power source: AO Crystals.

We find ourselves some time after 2232 AD. Humanity has survived, at times even prospering in the following century thanks to various advances in technology. The Great Shield and the nation state beneath it, Amasia, has collapsed for unclear reasons in 2222 AD. Amasian technology has become accessible to surface dwellers and surviving Amasians alike. Among these technologies are the mechs commonly known as Cradles and the autonomous quantum computing companion androids called Magus. Perhaps most important are the CRADLECOFFINS. Mounted on the back of a compatible Cradle, they allow a Magus within to serve as an interpretation layer for massive amounts of data and make constant microadjustments to the Cradle, allowing the Drifter they're partnered with to pilot a Cradle almost as seamlessly as moving their own body. Together, human and Magus pairs explore the surface, battling Enders and Magus-hunting human bandits, risking it all to secure the AO Crystals necessary for the survival of the NEST cities they support.

This is my primary Magus, Seafoam. She's an IB-α-09 "Ibis" model, and has repair-focused abilities. You'll be seeing a lot of her, and hearing even more from her. Behind her is the kitchen, which mostly just a sink and a 3D food printer.​

Echo Of Ada is relatively new, developed by Game Studio (no, that's not a placeholder) and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment uh, earlier this month, January 23rd, 2025. I paid extra for it to get a few days of advance access to it, so I've been playing since the 19th. Unlike my beloved life-partner, Armored Core VI: The Fires of Rubicon, I do not think that Echo Of Ada is one of the greatest games of all time. I like it a lot, but I also think it's firmly a B+ game, at best. This has to do with why I'm doing this right now instead of finishing the other routes of Armored Core VI. Echo Of Ada is an Extraction Shooter, which is a genre of live service game. Extraction Shooters, broadly, are about going into a dangerous environment, scavenging supplies, and then returning home with what you've found. The returning home is the critical element here - if a player's Cradle is destroyed by an Ender, or worse, another player, they not only lose what they found, but they'll have to replace the hardware they brought with them. In the absolute worst case, a player may even (temporarily) be separated from their Magus.

A Drifter and Magus overlook part of the Northern Region of Amasian territory. By her holographic representation floating next to the CRADLECOFFIN her physical body is protected by, we can tell she's a GR-α-01 "Grau" model Magus, the same model that Ada is. We could interpret this as Alba and Ada themselves.​

Now, I know, a mandatory multiplayer-only game seems like a weird choice for a Let's Play, especially since I'm already 60 hours into the game. This first part is footage of the primary multiplayer mode so you can get an idea of what the basic loop of the main game is. But once you've completed some of the early Requests, you unlock the Amasia Collapse Investigation Committee missions. These missions are more of a traditional singleplayer 3rd-person shooter. While you still play as yourself and your Magus, the CIC missions feature no consequences or rewards related to the multiplayer mode. As those missions are completed, the player gets access to surveillance logs related to a Drifter named Alba and his Magus, Ada. It seems these two are critical to unraveling the mystery of what exactly happened the day the Great Shield collapsed.

A Drifter is engaged in battle with multiple Enders defending a medium-sized AO Crystal. From left to right, we can see a Gazer, an Incubator, and a Chaser Baron.​

The CIC missions are accessed through a submenu once you're already logged in. Remember how I mentioned the game's not doing so hot? It is not immediately clear whether or not the game's singleplayer content will survive the game being shutdown. That's why I'm doing this instead of returning to the Armored Core VI LP I still intend to finish the other routes of - we might have an unfortunately short time period to get this done. I also understand that the CIC missions' storyline is not complete yet. I've only played the first one, so I don't know how incomplete the CIC missions are, and it's possible they never get finished. So this thread may go on hiatus periodically while we wait for, uh, more game to exist.

The current plan is to replay that first mission, and then do blind runs of each of the other existing missions. After each mission, I'll replay it off-screen until I've found all the surveillance logs for it, and then we'll take a look at all of them mission-by-mission. Being scavenged surveillance logs, we're extremely going to be getting the story of Alba and Ada out of chronological order, and I think preserving the order they can be discovered in is important.

Multiple players and their Magus wave hello. Other players aren't only threats. Fellow Association members will likely be indifferent or friendly. After all, we're ostensibly all in this together! And players working for the same faction can start an impromptu co-op mission in the field, spawning a unique objective for them to tackle. If you return after completing a co-op mission, you can get rare rewards, including things otherwise inaccessible like new Drifter titles. But if you take a lot of damage while completing a co-op mission, you would be a pretty soft target, wouldn't you? "Accidents" do happen sometimes...​

I'll see you with the first video in the next post, which probably already exists by the time you're reading this.

Rare Bonus Photograph of the Early Game​

You know it's a fixer-upper when you need to mow the floor. That table with the trash can next to it is the starter kitchen, and the crate Seafoam is sitting on is the starter couch.​

 

[Fyonn]

Finally, the moment has arrived! Part 00 of the LP!

In this video, we spend an hour, completing two of the standard multiplayer sorties. This is the thing I've spent 60 hours playing, and doing at least some of this is required to unlock the story missions we'll be tackling later. As such, I think it's important context to know some of what players would have done before getting the story missions.

There's a good 11 minutes of faffing about in menus up front, talking about the setting, showing off some of the home base features. I also talk about one of the game's most obvious influences, the weird and weirdly horny Blue Gender. And I talk about the different but slightly more palatable ways in which Synduality is weirdly horny as a franchise.

Once we set off, I explain the basic gameplay loop, complain about a rifle while using it wrong, talk about how I feel some players may be misunderstanding the game, and then complain about that same rifle after I started using it correctly. We visit both the game's multiplayer maps, the Northern Region and the Southern Region, once each. We end with some price sticker shock I'm very happy to have gotten on recording.

 

[Fyonn]

You may have seen a lore video post that I later deleted. I pushed my voice too hard making that video and then my desire to be comprehensive led to me second-guessing that video anyway. Oops! Instead, I’d like to let the game introduce itself.

Naturally, this means I started a new profile on a different Steam account. I won’t be doing the LP proper on that account because I actually do want the progression to be on my main account. I’m only speedrunning the early game requests in order to grab all the relevant intro videos we’d otherwise miss. The end result: now you get two videos in this post instead of just one!

This first video is completely new. It’s composed of biased and misleading in-universe training videos, the tutorial, and a few cutscenes that happen after that. It’s presented mostly without commentary, but there isn’t a ton of room for that anyway. I was speed-running the tutorial, so the Instructor Magus was talking pretty much the whole time.

This second video is a re-edit of the lore video I initially made. It’s still useful because it’s more accurate than the stuff from Yoshio. If you don’t care about The Facts, or you’re one of the two views for the previous version of this video, you can safely skip this one.

There are actually a bunch of the Fallout-inspired DEAR NEW DRIFTER training videos. Four or five, at least? I’m thinking I’ll put those all in another bonus video without commentary at some point in the future. All together, I think there’s at least 5 minutes of them, and I suspect it’s more like 10-15 minutes. I’m hoping that this weekend will be kind to my voice and that I’ll be able to provide another video by Wednesday of next week (2/5/2025).

 

[Fyonn]

Wow! I thought these missions were going to be like 20-30 minutes long, but between the intro, the preamble, and watching all the story bits, turns out we’ve got another hour-long video! You know I was considering putting two missions per video before? We’re definitely not doing that!

This time, I touch on the state of the multiplayer balance as it exists on 2/4/2025 (hint: it’s not great). Maybe that will change after the 6th, when the Season 1 content hits, two weeks after the game’s initial release. I also know exactly how many story missions are in the game now - there’s eight of them, across three chapters. And I have confirmation that the story mode is not yet finished. So there may come a time where this LP has to go on hiatus because there’s no more game left to play. We’ll figure out how to cross that bridge when we come to it.

I had a lot of fun with this first mission. I’ve gotten pretty used to how the game plays using the kind of bad netcode, so it was a special treat having the game be so immediate and responsive instead. Though, inspired by this session, I started using a SMG in the multiplayer, and I almost took out a Rabbit +1 (a Rare Cradle) while using a Birdwatcher +0 (an Uncommon Cradle), so maybe I should give SMGs and the Birdwatcher more credit!

CONTENT WARNING: There's a scantily clad woman in this video from 16:42 to 17:14. Her outfit is pretty much just a two-piece swimsuit with fishnet stockings. That might still be still more than you signed up for. I had forgotten that Bandits put their Magus in revealing outfits, and I use CDS on one to demonstrate that it lets you view their equipment.

One last thing, this video includes the game's title screen opening, which is blocked in Russia. So if you're in Russia, I'm sorry.

During the fight at the end of the first mission, the track Y’all Armed? from the Synduality Noir soundtrack makes a cameo appearance. It’s a very cool track that I like a lot, but the music mixing for the game isn’t great. I wanted to include a link to someone else’s upload of the track itself because, again, it’s great:

 

[Second Duke Revier]

I do not mean to be rude, but, err...what do you like about this game? Why do you find it worth LPing? I went through the posts(and a small bit of the videos) and I still don't get it.

 

[Fyonn]

I do not mean to be rude, but, err...what do you like about this game? Why do you find it worth LPing? I went through the posts(and a small bit of the videos) and I still don't get it.

Well, your reaction to this game is part of it.

First, I'm a big fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game franchise, it's originating source material, the novel Roadside Picnic, and the film the game franchise... borrows it's name from, Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker. All of these are influences on Escape From Tarkov, the original extraction shooter. Being the original extraction shooter, Tarkov is chief among Echo Of Ada's influences. This lineage is fascinating to me. It's just so strange that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl and Synduality: Echo Of Ada are game design and narrative cousins.

Second, I'm a big fan of mech fiction in general. I tend to prefer things closer to the Real Robot side of the genre than the Super Robot side. I've mentioned Blue Gender previously - it's one of the few pieces of mech fiction that heavily features Real Robot-style mechs fighting monsters. As for video games playing in that space, the Lost Planet franchise is pretty much the only other example. Both Blue Gender and Lost Planet are long gone at this point. If you're looking for something operating in that space, Synduality in any one of it's forms, is the only shop in town.

Third, among other things, the Magus concept is pretty clearly inspired by Droids from Star Wars. And unlike Star Wars, Synduality as a franchise is interested in what the relationship between people and artificially-created people is. Magus don't have human rights, and the Synduality franchise seems to understand that this means something, even if it's not clear to me yet what the setting's writers and think that something is. In Star Wars, R2D2 is a whole person and also Luke Skywalker's dog, and that's just how it is.

Fourth, it feels good to me as an experience, broadly. The mech designs are colorful, well-animated. It feels good to move around. There's a great deal of attention paid to the sound design since it's so critical to the multiplayer. The environments are interesting, and getting familiar with them is fun. The map design gestures towards the needs and concerns of the people living in the setting, telling a story through what was deemed necessary and what was discarded. There are really solid fashion options here, especially clothing layering options I haven't seen to this degree since The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I mean, Morrowind still blows this out of the water in number of layers, but in not how the layers interact.

Fifth, your reaction to this game is maybe the biggest reason it is worth LPing. It is not an uncommon reaction for someone to look at this game and go "I don't get it." It is not an uncommon reaction for someone to look at this game, incorrectly go "I get it," and then get upset when they run into what the game actually is. In five, ten years, there will be a moment where I think, "I would really like to play Synduality: Echo Of Ada again," and I won't be able to. It's clear from the disastrous reception of this game that, not only is it doomed, there likely won't ever be anything quite like this game ever again. So I want to preserve it in some way.

I know almost no one is watching these videos, I can see the numbers. But I want to have a record of what it was like, what it was doing, how I felt about it. Someone has to do that work, and looks like it has to be me. Because a few years from now, when I want to experience these three minutes again, I won't be able to:

​

And now I've made myself a little genuinely sad, so I'm gonna go on another sortie.

 

[Fyonn]

So, serious big problem for the LP: there was an update to the game, and now it records really poorly. Like, remarkably bad. We're talking like 1-2 frames per second even though the game is running just fine the whole time. I've only tested in multiplayer scenarios, so I'm hoping that won't extend to the single player, but if it does, I'm not really sure what to do about that! Guess I'll figure it out or I won't!

EDIT: I fixed it! After an Nvidia driver update, OBS panicked and set me to software recording instead of hardware recording. I won't have a proper episode, but please look forward to a test video where I discuss William Gibson's Burning Chrome. Not really in any relation to Synduality: Echo Of Ada, it just kind of worked out that way.

 

[Fyonn]

Here's that bonus test video. No new plot stuff here, just a multiplayer sortie I recorded to confirm I had fixed the recording issues. Had some fun running around in a Jackbox and worrying about the types of things you worry about in a Jackbox. My voice sounds different, too, thanks to a new headset. And of course, the promised discussion of Burning Chrome is included.

 

[Fyonn]

The quality of the campaign’s map and encounter design continues to impress me. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but the subgenre of mech shooters with Front Mission or VOTOMS vibes is so starved that it’s easily best-in-class. What, are you gonna play Front Mission: Evolved instead?

I’m especially happy we get to see the live ammo bolt sniper rifle +0 in action here. You see, very shortly after I recorded this video, it was announced that sniper rifles are definitely getting nerfed. This is a critically needed change for multiplayer that I’m pretty excited for. Sniper rifles are a dominant weapon choice at practically all ranges, combining ease-of-use with extreme burst damage and very high ammo efficiency. The only thing that really outshines sniper rifles are shotguns at close ranges.

We listen to a few more examples of Ada and Alba’s daily life. In another cool motion comic scene, we get some information on exactly why Dothan scooped Alba out of the proverbial mouth of the lion. Finally, we’ll see some pretty cool Cradle versus Cradle combat involving the shoulder weapons that did not actually get implemented into the gameplay.

For the curious, here’s a breakdown of just how busted the strongest sniper rifles currently are:
While both energy and ballistic sniper rifles are getting nerfed, the biggest issue this will address is the bolt-action sniper rifle +2, or as it is more commonly known, “the purple sniper”. All weapons except for one increase in power by 30% per upgrade, including the purple sniper. But the bolt-action sniper rifle +1 jumps 80% over the firepower of the sniper rifle you see me using in this mission. These two increases combine to make the purple sniper the most powerful weapon in the game by a wide margin. Currently that weapon is so absurdly powerful that the remarkably durable Custom BOWIERABBIT we use in this video could only survive one shot from it, and only if it wasn’t a backshot.

 

[Fyonn]

This time joined by the Locke model Magus, Snowbank, we stage a night-time assault on the bandit’s main fortress. This is a bit of an unusual mission, given the game usually does not feature night time. Gameplay-wise we tromp through some spare lava, encounter actual mid-mission dialogue between characters, and waste a bunch of ammunition giving a really, really bad weapon a shot. The campaign remains solid, though the boss fight at the end of this mission is very Deus Ex: Human Revolution-core.

Plot-wise, we’ve got a content warning for attempted suicide. That happens during the surveillance logs towards the end of the video, from timestamps 56:36 to 1:01:58. There are also warnings in the video itself. We briefly touch on standard Amasian stress relief drugs; Shion Junior’s ultimate fate and Nana Yonashiro’s response; and Amasia’s horrifying and whole-hearted endorsement of utilitarianism.

EDIT: We now live in a post-Sniper nerf world. Sniper rifles had their damage reduced by 0%. Instead, significant accuracy penalties were applied to jump shots (good) and hip fire (pointless, people quick scope instead). Sniper rifles, ballistic sniper rifles especially, remain the absolute best weapon class in the game.

 

[Fyonn]

We pay our first visit ever to Amasia proper, or at least the bridge that leads to it. I’m thrilled by the music choice, but I unfortunately had not made any changes to the audio settings yet, so I imagine it will be difficult to hear. We get to fight a large Ender as a boss this time, complete with unique attacks not seen in the multiplayer mode. Plot-wise, we get to see Alba and Ada meeting their main crewmates for the first time, Fari Garcia and Melas Sullivan. They are both characters you will recognize if you have ever once in your life played a JRPG or seen an anime before. Still, the voice actors do an admirable job with the material they were handed.

Here’s a link to My Name Is Electric proper, in case you want to hear it without pew pew pew noises over it.

 

[Fyonn]

I’ve adjusted my audio settings so the game’s music should be more prominent than before, I hope.

In our present timeline, the CIC’s position inside Amasia has collapsed. In addition to our typical surveillance log retrieval duties, we’re charged with a rescue mission! Before we can rescue anyone, we have to find ourselves a way inside Amasia. Between the rain and some unexpected opposition, this proved more difficult than the CIC anticipated.

We encountered the two most dangerous Enders in the entire game: anti-aliasing and platforming. I ended up having to turn anti-aliasing entirely off in order to play this mission without crashing, so it’s gonna look less good than usual. But this mission also features constant rain, so maybe it won’t be too noticeable.

In the Ada and Alba timeline, we learn that Alba is so bad at everything other than killing that he gets inducted in Amasia’s Drifters. I’m sure Dothan’s thrilled about that one.
Ada reveals her manic pixie power level includes cartoon hammerspace access.
Alba meets Shion for the first time as they observe a Terminal Union, a great cultural mandate everyone in Amasia is thrilled about. The two discuss how to die and how to live.
Surface-side, a woman named Yuki searches for Alba despite the mockery of her comrades.
Some time later, Yuki and Alba are already working together to survive on the surface, but there’s an obvious gap in our information timeline hiding what exactly put them in this situation.

Finally, back in our present timeline, I renovated my kitchen.

I definitely feel like this is when the game really hits its stride in terms of storytelling both in the present day timeline and the Ada and Alba timeline.

 

[Fyonn]

It’s been a while! I was busy being on vacation and also playing a ton of Monster Hunter. I’m still playing a ton of Monster Hunter. Don’t worry though, Game Studio Inc. heard about it and pushed back the release of Season 2 by an entire month, just for me. Wow!

The theme of the gameplay this time around is “missing stuff in plain sight for upwards of five minutes”. Don’t worry, I’ve cut those bits out of the video, but please keep them in mind. We finally probably definitely maybe finish off the bandits for real, and we fight a boss battle with a neat mechanic where you can pre-snipe his backup, but fail to really put together how it works.

On the story front, the “madness” of the Anti-Amasia group is finally displayed to us by means of a, uh, completely normal and unrelated interaction between Alba and Ada? Okay? Dothan Kuze’s super normal about some blood tests, we get a little more information on Yuki, Ada counterproductively makes fun of Alba for opening up a little bit, we find out Mosaic Disease isn’t fun to have, we find out that pretty much every knows Dothan Kuze is Jokerfied but useful, and Fari and Melas manage to pivot from flirting into weird nonsense.