‘The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ Review
Developer: Nintendo/Grezzo | Platform: Switch | Playtime: 21:05
It’s no secret that I thought Breath of the Wild was just okay and Tears of the Kingdom was a game I barely got a quarter the way through. I just really wanted a more traditional title. Echoes of Wisdom might not be the most traditional Zelda but it’s still one of the best I’ve played in recent years.
The biggest selling point here is obviously having Zelda playable in a main character in a main game. Captured by Ganon, Link comes to save her only for the positions to be reversed when a dark void swallows up Link and large portions of Hyrule. It’s up to Zelda and her new fairy friend Tri to save the day in this 2D top down adventure.
Zelda isn’t a fighter like Link but instead has her own ways of dealing with problems. This is the game’s main selling point of the game and an element that is similar to the aforementioned titles. With the power of the Tri Wand, Zelda can absorb the essence of certain items and enemies to create ‘Echoes’, letting her spawn items into the world. This allows for puzzle solving and dealing with enemy encounters. Each echo has a cost and when Zelda exceeds her usage of Echo charges, the first spawned thing disappears. Over the course of the game, the player earns more Echo charges as well as certain echoes losing some of their cost.
This system works well for puzzle solving but perhaps not so much combat. The player has access to echoes that will weigh down switches, light torches, blow piles of sand away. The game doesn’t really do anything so advanced as to require multiple at the same time but often the player can solve things in their own way. As for combat, Zelda can summon previously slain enemies to fight. They have different strengths and health but when they’re slain, you can summon them back straight away since there is no cooldown. Combat boils down to throwing your weight against an enemy without rhyme or reason - which isn’t inherently bad but there’s not much need for strategy.
There’s a great many echoes avaliable to the player but there’s no need to equip them into a slot. The player has access to all echoes at all times, with the menu split into ‘Most used’, ‘Recently used’, ‘Latest Learned’ and ‘Cost’. These menus work well enough but can be fiddly, sometimes the player will have to scroll through a vast number of echoes. If the player equips an echo accidentally but doesn’t use it, it still appears in most recent. It’s little things like that that cause annoyance. A favourites menu, more curated than most used, would be good.
It’s by nature of this kind of game that the player will latch onto their favourites. There’s maybe 100 odd echoes but why use the majority when you can summon a Bokoblin for combat and stack beds for ladders. There are echoes that are given in dungeons and used for those dungeons like more traditional zelda gadgets but they are few and far between.
My last point on combat is that despite this being a Zelda focused title, you can still play as Link. Somewhat. Gathering enough energy, the player can temporarily enter ‘Swordsman’ form which allows them access to a Sword and later Bow and bombs for a short (upgradeable) period. Initially I wasn’t a fan of the idea, believing it to go against the entire point of the game but as I was playing I came to appreciate how balanced it felt.
Taking place in Hyrule, the map isn’t super massive by any means but still manages to feature nearly all of the classic Zelda locations - Gerudo Desert, Death Mountain, Layanaru Wetlands. Each area is really fun to explore and I even went out of my way to uncover the entirety of the map. I do appreciate that while it is split into chunks, the player does have the option to explore various locations in any order. I might have gone the intended way but the game as a whole is fairly easy so I don’t think there is a right or wrong way. A small aspect that I loved is that this title has nearly all the major species that are seen throughout the games - we have the Deku back, both kinds of Zora. Sure there’s not everyone, but we’ve seen the likes of the Rito recently and others like the Goron are staples.
The dungeons in the game are very fun but none of them are particularly long are even challenging. Anything is better than the Divine Beasts but I suppose by the nature of the echoes that things will never be too difficult. I definitely noticed the potential for more variation in the solving of puzzles. All of the boss fights ranged from alright to really fun, none were bad except for maybe the last boss that just went overlong.
There were a couple things I wasn’t super sold on - side quests and ‘Smoothies’. The former isn’t anything new to the series but there’s nothing here that I would call essential. They’re fun but again nothing you’d want to write about. The other thing is the Smoothies. I assume these were included due to the popularity of cooking in BotW/TotK but here it just kind of feels tacked on. Most chests offer ingredients for smoothies - mix two with a Deku smoothie maker, you get a smoothie - these heal but also offer extra benefits like faster swimming or climbing, cold resistance. I suppose they’re fine they just don’t really do anything for me.
It’s funny that the things that I loved about the game might very well be the things that fans of the last few games might absolutely hate. If the games continue like this, I’ll be a very happy bunny. Grezzo have also proven they deserve to make more original games, Echoes of wisdom is testament to their abilty to make something original and cool.
