The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6rudqi4jk8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6rudqi4jk8

Ever since tears of the kingdom came out Zelda has been on a somewhat unset path, on one hand aonuma has said the future of the series will be open world and he cant see why people would prefer to go back to older Zeldas, but on the other hand a lot of people have come out to criticise tears of the kingdom and want a more traditional style Zelda game or atleast a new 2d Zelda in between the next 3d one that goes back to a more traditional style, well earlier this year they announced just that,

Although it doesn’t exactly go back to a more traditional style with Zelda now as the main character and with it taking many inspirations from breath of the wild, many people were nervous about it being too similar to tears of the kingdom and having the same issues that game has, me included,

But now the game is out how well does it manage to work as a 2d Zelda game while including aspects of tears of the kingdom and breath of the wild and does it come close to matching the feeling of a link between worlds.

In terms of how the story plays out and how it connects to the gameplay most of the world is covered in these poisen like things called rifts and ends up eating a lot of hylians including the king replacing them with shadow versions that impose as them forcing Zelda to get thrown in jail with the shadow king claiming she made all the rifts and if they kill her it will all go away, very similar to how a link to the past plays out with you being wanted by guards.

In jail you meet your companion named tri who much like navi never shuts up, if you get annoyed by the game pausing to show you dialogue be prepared since this game stops to have this fucker talk every 5 seconds, anyway tri gives you the tri rob which lets you create echoes, this was one thing I was worried about since it kinda looked like you could easily cheese puzzles with it but you are only able to have 3 out at a time before upgrading it as you go through the game so it does have limits. As you escape the jail you have to hide from the guards much like the castle in ocarina of time. They also explain how you can also use normal items like rocks to kill enemies which aren’t available to create echos off.

After you leave the jail it gets consumed by a rift and you get washed to the far south of the map which then opens up to you, the map and also the quest log screen is very similar to how it is in breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom.

Actually pretty much every menu in this game has been taken from tears of the kingdom including the awful item menu which is just as annoying in this game, many times I have had to spend multiple seconds scrolling through echoes to find the one I want, I don’t understand why they cant come up with something better than this.

Anyway after you obtain the map you get to experience battling enemies and since you aren’t playing as link you can’t use a sword so the only way you can fight is with echoes and rocks from the otherworld, this makes fighting a lot more difficult than other 2d zeldas like a link between worlds because the echoes aren’t as easy to use as a sword and don’t do as much damage, once you kill the enemies you can then turn the enemies into echoes and use them to fight other enemies, using the enemies to fight other enemies gives more variety to the gameplay but makes it a lot more tedius since you can’t control when they attack and are usually just waiting to see what they will do, the sword does come back but not in the normal way and even with a sword the enemies still do more damage with some early enemies dealing 2 hearts of damage which is a lot when you only have a couple hearts to start off with, this game very much feels like its taken inspiration from botw with its difficulty, but with this game its not as easy to find food and mass eat like with breath of the wild so I would say its more difficult overall.

The main gameplay is pretty similar to previous 2d Zelda games but also very different, you enter dungeons but this time they are in alternate dimensions in the rift, the controls unlike links awakening now have full 360 controls but compared to link between worlds im still not completely satisfied with them, just don’t feel as good as that game to play with, the new thing in this game is the spin ability which is very similar to deku links spin from majoras mask, it helps getting to places faster kinda like rolling in 3d Zelda but it kinda wears off when you obtain epona.

Another gameplay mechanic is bind which is similar to ultra hand in tears of the kingdom, I was kinda worried about this since it was so overused in that game but it isn’t used nearly as much as I thought it would be, you can use it to move enemies and rocks and you can also use it to grab onto certain objects follow them when they move.

in terms of puzzles pretty much all of them revolve around using the echoes, with a lot of them requiring you to use them to build upwards like making a staircase to get to higher ground, you can do this in multiple of ways but its limited to how many echoes you can have out at once, there are also puzzles you need to solve by using enemy echoes which is cool and there are the usual elemental puzzles like light a fire to solve a puzzle, there are even puzzles which make you go over water in which uses certain echoes that can float which I thought was pretty cool.

In terms of items there are barely any since the echoes have pretty much replaced all but a few, this is a shame since I like how items give variety in solving puzzles and killing enemies but I guess the echoes do that now, the items that do remain are very limited and are related to the sword you get, either way the lack of items makes this game feel more like a spinoff and not a real Zelda game.

Speaking of spinoffs in tears of the kingdom a big issue people still had was the sidequests not being that special and giving you crap rewards, well in echoes of wisdom unfortunately the sidequests aren’t anything special but some do give you some cool upgrade materials, they are mostly fetch quests with you having to find an echo or item to show the person in order to complete it, you either get food ingredients or materials for upgrades, I haven’t done every side quest yet but so far they haven’t been that great, though honestly the side quests in link between worlds wernt great either but atleast we had the baseball mini game.

One of the highlights of the game for me is the actual overworld itself, with it including many unique areas and things to find we finally have heart pieces back and empty bottles but not really much else, like in the side quests you can find upgrade materials in chests which is nice but it feels like a lot of chests either have money or something not worth getting like more food, I feel like if im going out of my way to do a puzzle to get a chest I want something more than money.

Another type of collectable is the stamp system, all over Hyrule are these stamp locations similar to spirit tracks you are given a book that you can fill in with stamps for the area, the rewards you get are nothing special as far as I know so its more just doing it for fun, either way the lack of collectables are kinda made up for with the different areas, the map is pretty big with it including a desert a lake, forest areas, mountain areas, it feels a lot more interesting that breath of the wilds world while being a lot smaller.

Now for the big thing I want to talk about the dungeons, in both breath of the wild and link between worlds the dungeons haven’t been great with them focusing on open designs that have been severely limited by following the same basic layouts, tears of the kingdom slightly improved upon them with more unique bosses but still had the same major issues, for echoes of wisdom they are somewhat better but I wouldn’t they say they are amazing or anything.

To start with before you even enter the dungeon similar to tears of the kingdom you have a big story event thing you have to go through where you go around talking to the villagers of that region, I like that they are incorporating some story to it instead of just having you go straight to the dungeon but I do think they drag on for a bit too long and there is a lot of going back and forth.

As for the dungeons the first dungeon you go to feels pretty basic but that’s expected for the first dungeon, the problem is the other dungeons feel too similar in design and aesthetics not really changing too much in how they operate, it really dosent go crazy enough in how the dungeons work.

In link between worlds we had tower of hera which was crazy since it was over 10 floors and it had an outside section, these dungeons are nowhere near as cool, the sand dungeon has you go outside for a bit but because its in the alternate dimension is just doesn’t look aesthetically pleasing,

I just wish they went outside the box a bit and did stuff differently, the puzzles in the dungeons are actually pretty good with them offering a decent level of challenge but the actual dungeons themselves design wise are lacking.

As for the sword ability about halfway through the first dungeon you encounter link except its not link it’s a shadow version of link, once you defeat him you obtain his sword except this sword can transform you into link in a so called swordfighter form, this form also lets you use arrows at a later stage aswell but you can only use it for a limited time with it running out pretty quickly, you can recharge it my collecting magic energy thingies which are flying around the place and also inside enemies when you defeat them, you can also increase the meter with the materials you get from finishing side quests.

I wish this power up didn’t run out so quickly but since its so op I understand why they had to make that addition, it just kinda sucks that the way to use a sword and arrows in this game among others is locked behind a limited time super ability.

To finish off I want to talk about the more aesthetic side of the game like sound and visuals, visually the game is very much based on the graphics used in links awakening but due to the bigger nature of the world it is cutback somewhat in terms of detail.

The overall lighting just isn’t as effective compared to the remake, the frame rate is also significantly worse due to the world being bigger though I expect when the switch 2 comes out that wont be an issue, to be honest I didn’t really like the visuals in links awakening either but I could cope with them due to the detail of the models and environments being very high quality for a switch game but here it just looks very plasticky and cheap.

As for music and sound I thought the music sounded very similar to the links awakening remake even though its using all new tracks, and honestly its not that great, my standards are ridiculously high but Zelda music since link between worlds has been pretty crap and this isn’t really helping anything, that’s not to say all the tracks are bad the theme in suthorn villiage I liked a lot but most of the time I ended up turning the music off cause I just thought it was bland and wanted to listen to something else, compared to link between worlds which had so many bangers like lorule castle, death mountain, even the baseball minigame theme was lit, this game cant really even get the overworld theme right.

Another thing I noticed which is more of a nitpick but when you get 4 heart pieces it dosent make the heart container jingle sound with it only appearing when you get an actual heart container, aswell as the chest sound not appearing either I think they should have spent a bit more time on sound and music for this game, it just feels very lacking.

So that’s the new Zelda, I will say I did have more fun with it than I thought I would but its not exactly anything close to the height that a link between worlds achieved when it comes to 2d Zelda, it very much feels like a spinoff over a new mainline 2d Zelda game which makes me hope they next do a proper 2d Zelda with link and bring items back, the puzzles and echoes were actually not too bad but I do prefer using the sword and regular items, unfortunately the dungeons were a massive letdown along with the sidequests but I wouldn’t say they were bad.

This is kinda this game in the nutshell, its not bad but its nothing amazing which is what you should expect from a new Zelda title, they keep highlighting all the crazy new ways they are changing the series but then don’t have the basic things be well done, if they cant get the dungeons right or the music, then they need to rethink how they do things, a big problem I think for this game is I don’t know who its for really, for new fans of the series that like 3d big open world games it feels like its too much of a niche game for them to be interested where for hardcore Zelda fans it feels too similar to breath of the wild for it to truly cater to them,

I would still probably recommend this game to fans of 2d Zelda as it does have somewhat decent dungeons and puzzles but it could have been so much more, and to finish off I have made this song enjoy.