ENDALOR Review – Crafting, Soulslike Combat and Wild Co-op Adventures
Endalor mixes stamina-based, Dark Souls–style combat with survival crafting and co-op. It’s raw, occasionally janky, but full of personality — impressive for a two-person dev team in Early Access.
I jumped into ENDALOR expecting a rough Early Access ride, and I got exactly that — in the best and the worst ways. This medieval dark-fantasy survival game blends stamina-based, soulslike combat with base-building and loot-hunt progression, and it wears those inspirations proudly. What makes it interesting is the weird hybrid of Valheim-style crafting and Elden Ring-esque momentum in fights, all shoved into a handcrafted open world that’s both charming and peculiar. It’s the kind of indie project that feels personal: you can see two developers’ fingerprints everywhere, and sometimes that’s delightful, sometimes frustrating.
Stamina and Blood: Swinging for Your Life
The core loop in ENDALOR is delightfully straightforward: explore, gather, craft, and fight — and then repeat, slightly wiser and slightly bloodier. Combat relies heavily on stamina management; you’ll queue up strikes, feints and dodges and then curse the one frog that decides to teleport through your animation. Weapons have distinct weights and reach, and you can feel the difference between a dagger, a spear and a war hammer as your character lunges or staggers; encounters reward timing and patience rather than mindless button-mashing. Outside combat the game leans into survival tasks — chopping trees, skinning beasts, and cooking food — but it resists becoming a pure grind by offering meaningful gear progression and loot that scales with your stats. Progression feels personal: you allocate stats, equip a ridiculous number of ring slots (yes, eight!) and tune your build toward power, durability, or utility. Playing with friends changes the rhythm entirely; four-player runs feel like organized chaos where a planned boss strategy can turn a one-shot wipe into an epic victory.
From Campfire to Castle: Crafting, Building and Conquering
Crafting and base-building are surprisingly satisfying for an Early Access indie. Foundations snap (mostly) where they should, workbenches let you upgrade gear, and campfires are more than cosmetic — they’re tactical hubs where you prepare potions, cook, and stage assaults on nearby strongholds. The world is hand-crafted enough to hide little nooks with rare loot and to produce vistas that actually made me stop and look, which is rare in survival games. There are rough edges: structure placement can be fiddly in odd terrain, some resources respawn faster than I’d like, and the building UI could use polish — but the overall feel of constructing a defensible little camp and returning to it after a nasty boss fight is deeply rewarding. Multiplayer introduces the usual caveats (occasional desyncs, reports of lost progress for some players), but when it works the tension of coordinating roles — gatherer, tank, healer, archer — is very satisfying.
A Gritty Canvas: Art, Sound and Performance
Visually ENDALOR trades high fidelity for character: textures and models are earnest rather than glossy, and there’s a woolly, old-school vibe to NPCs and enemies that I found oddly charming. The soundtrack and ambient sounds do heavy lifting — creaking trees, wet dungeon drips and clanging armor make exploration feel alive, even when the world lacks dense population. Performance varies: I’ve seen solid framerates and also stutters or higher CPU usage reported by others; optimization is a clear area for improvement. Accessibility is basic but growing — key rebinding works and the devs are responsive to feedback — yet controller support remains a frequent request that would improve the experience drastically. Overall the presentation suits the game’s personality: a little rough, proudly indie, with moments of genuine atmosphere.
ENDALOR feels like a promising, slightly raw diamond — not polished to a mirror finish, but worth the stroll into its forests and dungeons if you enjoy survival with a soulslike bite. Buy it if you’re okay with Early Access quirks and want to support a small team that actively listens; wait if you need a flawless, finished experience. For me, the highs (tense fights, satisfying crafting, fun co-op moments) outweigh the lows, so I’m sticking around to see it grow.
Pros
- Tense, stamina-based combat with satisfying weight
- Meaningful crafting and base-building loop
- Handcrafted world with rewarding exploration and loot
- Impressive scope and polish for a two-person dev team
Cons
- Bugs, occasional lost-progress reports and optimization issues
- Building placement and inventory UX need polish
- No native controller support yet and no in-game map
Player Opinion
Players are split but a clear pattern emerges: many praise the blend of soulslike combat and survival crafting, and they repeatedly compliment the world design and the responsive devs on Discord who patch issues. Common complaints center on bugs (save issues, occasional softlocks), building clunkiness and missing QoL features like a map or better keybind persistence. Several reviews stress that the game shows remarkable ambition for a two-person studio and that the core systems are enjoyable when they work; others urge caution — wait for a couple of patches if you’re sensitive to crashes or optimization. If you like Valheim-style base work plus tight melee that leans Dark Souls, a lot of players say ENDALOR is worth trying now, especially at its current price.