Echoes of Wisdom is a very interesting entry in the series for a number of reasons. The most obvious being that it’s the first time Zelda is directly playable outside of some dubiously licensed CDi games. While Aonuma maintains this was because the team at Grezzo had ideas that made sense to move away from Link I can’t help but think part of this perhaps is due to a fan-led campaign to ask for playable Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom. The initial teaser for Tears of the Kingdom, which we latter learned showed parts of the early intro sequence, gave the sense of Zelda and Link exploring as equals, give a distinct fan-possibility that this could be the case. It wasn’t and there was certainly a lot of display of frustration, especially in places where video games and representational concerns collide.
Given that Aonuma seemed open as long as playing Zelda had some sort of differentiation to playing Link, Echoes of Wisdom definitely meets this criteria. Zelda does not usually attack things directly, rather she uses magic to summon items and creatures to do that for her. This gives it it’s very own gameplay flavor. Combat is much easier as you can devote nearly all of your concentration to dodging at the cost of being much slower. Enemies have attack cooldowns and so they take some time. They can also be killed forcing you to resummon them. There is no penalty for this, in fact to increase the DPS you typically want to resummon as they will attack immediately on summon letting you bypass some of the cooldown. Combat is then less about survival and more about optimal usage of what you have to make fighting quicker. Most enemies have strengths and weaknesses. Armored enemies can negate certain weak attacks, plants are weak to fire, electricity can stun enemies, quicker enemies can stun lock slower ones etc. There’s a lot of variety to be had if you lean into that but it’s also not entirely necessary as you can just take a less optimal approach. As sort of a crutch they give you sword fighter mode. This is a mode you can enable that basically makes you become Link and gives you direct ability to attach and deal damage. It’s extremely powerful to the point that I didn’t really want to use it. There are limits, the collectables that charge the meter are scarce outside of rifts but it’s still an easy mode. Instead I used echoes for everything. This could sometimes be tedious for bosses but it made the game slightly more challenging.
The challenge itself isn’t all there even forgoing sword fighter mode. Unlike other Zelda’s you can recharge your hearts by lying in beds, which you can also summon. Bosses seem to be designed with just enough cooldown that you can sleep off a few hearts between attacks and since you can sleep anywhere you can summon a bed there’s not real reason to die while exploring. This isn’t to say that I didn’t die, but that most deaths came from being rash and aggressive without healing over time, rather than actual difficulty. There is “Hero Mode” which is the hard mode that has been present in Zeldas since Skyward Sword but it’s not an interesting difficult as it simply limits your hearts and ability to heal and doesn’t add new challenge as much as perfection of existing content.
Puzzles themselves can be a bit difficult though. It really depends on what echoes you have with you. There’s a lot of room for creativity which is good but some have somewhat specific solutions in mind. The best example were areas where flowing water pushes you down. As far as I can tell the only way around these is you use Tri’s power to have the enemy move you and use piranhas which always swim up. This isn’t obvious either unless you tried to use piranhas in side scrolling areas which is not likely given that there are much better aquatic enemies to summon. The game generally gives you something that will work next to where the puzzle is though so you don’t get stuck. It has a similar issue to Breath of the Wild though. Since you can mostly go anywhere (there are a couple of global gates) later puzzles and enemy encounters and puzzles become easier leading to a reverse difficulty curve as you have more echoes, equipment and hearts. But it also doesn’t have the Metroid feeling. Echoes are designed to be balanced. While there are some echoes that are clearly better they have some drawbacks with summoning costs. So things like traversal get easier but they plateau. There’s never a Space Jump/Screw Attack moment where suddenly the old areas become easier to traverse you still have to summon blocks of water or whatever to get around. So you get neither the full feeling of power and a downhill difficult curve which can be a bit unfulfilling.
The game setup overall is interesting borrowing from a few different places. Foundationally this game is related to Link’s Awakening and it’s obvious made on top of the Link’s Awakening Remake directly reusing the art style and assets. Everything is still on a grid system and there’s lots of side-scrolling areas as well. In this way it feels a bit like the Oracle series which did the same thing on Gameboy Color building on the origin Link’s Awakening. But gameplay-wise it does have major changes as noted above. Interestingly while it keeps a lot of engine restrictions (and performance issues) it’s no longer bound to screens and instead takes an open-world approach with a seamless overworld. This has its own impacts as screens in Link’s Awakening all have particular detail in them as an isolated gameplay area. As an open world you naturally get barren spots where density is lower and in particular transition areas where there are mountains or lines of tress to visually separate zones you can walk over those boundaries which feels almost game breaking even if entirely intentional. So it modernizes but still keeps a “game-y” feel to it. Also elevation is much more important. Since areas have true elevation this matters for traversal. In fact you have the jump ability mapped to a button from the very start, but traversing higher cliffs requires usage of echoes. This again creates more elements of freedom. By the end-game traversal is easier and does not require the same route memorization as older 2D titles. This is also true as their are copious landmarks from which to warp to. In this way it borrows much from Breath of the Wild keeping some of the open-world feel as well as some of the landmarks.
Another way it borrows from Breath of the Wild is via the item system. There are no normal items, just echoes and these can be obtained at anytime, so there’s no specific ordering of tasks but some puzzles that most rely on what you have on hand. There are however a few accessories which do things like make certain drops more common or enhance your movement. And there are different outfits. A few give you an extra ability like gaining hearts faster in bed, but many are just decorative. There’s also a smoothie system which is a simplified version of Breath of the Wild’s cooking where you obtain ingredients and mix them into smoothies that impart benefits like healing or resistance to cold. Systemically it is a simplified 2D Breath of the Wild for better or worse.
I was able to finish the game will 100% of the items (as far as I can tell). I did need a guide to clean up the last few might crystals and hearts. I wish they gave you some hints, even just knowing the quadrant the item was in would have been enough considering how many there are. You do get an item that signals when you are around might crystal but pieces of heart do not get the same treatment meaning it can be very hard to figure out what your are missing. Some are also tied to minigames, not get passing but often for perfect scores or being much faster than par so it’s not super clear if you’ve gotten everything.
As for my thoughts it was enjoyable but also slightly flawed. The reverse difficult curve was a big part of it. At the end traversing rifts was more of a chore, I wish they would have gotten a little bit more deliberate with the puzzles and picked some echoes to master similar to how Tears of the Kingdom’s shrine require you to master a certain object. The smoothie system was pretty unnecessary too. But otherwise it’s very good. Using the echoes could have gotten very tedious but they manage to make them fun to use unlike gadgets in Tears of the Kingdom by being quick and having instant effect on summoning. However the menu system needs some work because linear menus even despite sorting can be difficult to navigate. The music is also very beautiful but maybe a bit too mellow. It’s not clear if this is a foundation to build on for future games or just an interesting side route though. There are interesting parts but I suppose I want a more structured Zelda next time. Hopefully they iron out the performance issues if they get around to the Oracle series remakes.
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