I won't leave you in suspense any longer. Echoes Of Wisdom is actually really good.
To my surprise, Echoes Of Wisdom is an honest to goodness fusion between old and new Zelda, and it's glorious. While its main gameplay loop very much has a focus on immersive sim elements and solving puzzles and combat in your own way, and the overworld is fairly open for exploration, Echoes Of Wisdom also has a greater sense of progression, a genuinely solid story, and actual dungeons. It’s by no means perfect, but it actually feels deserving of the Legend Of Zelda moniker.
Echoes Of Wisdom's story is actually more interesting than I was expecting. The main premise is that it takes place at the end of your average Zelda game. Hyrule has been hit by these scary rifts that were presumably caused by Ganon, and Link has just reached his lair, defeated him, and saved Zelda... but Hyrule isn't saved. If anything, the rifts got even worse and sucked both Link and the King in, turning them evil. So now, Zelda has to save Hyrule in their place while also staying under the radar because the now evil King wants to have her executed. The first hour of Echoes Of Wisdom is really fascinating in how it explores the aftermath of Link’s adventures, as you meet NPCs who are grieving their loved ones lost to the rifts, and visit Link's old village and see all the lives he's touched on his adventure. Sadly, most of this is dropped once the adventure begins proper (still better than whatever the hell TotK was doing), but Echoes’s narrative still managed to be enjoyable in other ways. The game’s true villain, for example, is not only surprisingly clever, but they introduce some pretty wild implications for the rest of the series.
But for the most part, Echoes Of Wisdom consists of little vignettes in each of the different regions like a Gerudo warrior trying to prove Zelda's abilities, the two species of Zoras getting into a spat, and a rare intellectual Goron trying to be chief. The highlight for me was definitely Lanayru Region’s story which hits some emotional beats I absolutely wasn’t expecting from the game. I love how this version of Hyrule brings back elements from so many prior games, both in terms of the species and characters featured. We got the Dekus, River and Sea Zoras, the Yetis from Twilight Princess, the three goddesses, everyone’s here! Despite using the same toylike artstyle as Link's Awakening, I also feel like the characters are more expressive than they've ever been in a Zelda game, especially Zelda herself. She's constantly emoting and gets all these cute little animations that really help bring her to life. It's especially important since bizarrely, Zelda's mute in this game? Like, I get it, the Zelda team likes to let the player insert themselves into the protagonist's role, but I feel like Zelda has always been a bit of a talkative character. Spirit Tracks showed Zelda has the potential to be the most charismatic, funny, and multi-faceted member of the cast with good dialogue, so it's a bit of a shame her starring role doesn't have that same level of writing. That being said, the fact that Zelda's animations are as lively as they are mostly make up for this.
Gameplay-wise, Echoes Of Wisdom obviously changes things up a lot. Zelda can't use a sword or attack traditionally, so instead, her moveset revolves around spawning echoes of items and enemies to use them for platforming, puzzles, and combat. I was initially worried this would feel a bit cumbersome, but my fears were quickly dispelled within the first hour. The controls for spawning echoes are very simple especially compared to all the building mechanics in TotK, and combat scenarios often felt really tense and frenetic as I was frantically sifting through my inventory and throwing everything but the kitchen sink at my foes to see what worked. It reminded me a lot about the very early game of BotW where weapons broke so frequently that I had to constantly swap tactics mid-fight. You can totally set up builds and arrangements if you want, but you'll never have to bring the pacing to a complete halt just to build some large contraption like in TotK. My one gripe with the echoes is mostly just how much of them there are. The menus just aren't comprehensive enough to make finding the one echo you need feel fast, and the sheer amount of echoes with duplicate or almost useless purposes (signs? multiple types of pots?) did leave me wondering if the Zelda team should've focused more on quality over quantity here.
The other major mechanic is the bind which you can use to grab onto stuff and move them around. It's obviously given less of a focus than the echoes, but when used in conjection, you can come up with some pretty clever combat solutions. I like binding myself to an enemy because it's almost like I'm using an actual weapon. But on top of that, bind is often used for more strict environmental puzzles compared to the more freeform puzzles the echoes are used for. It helps the game maintain a nice balance between more rigid bind-focused brain-teasers and the more imaginative echo puzzles. But beyond the new stuff, Echoes Of Wisdom even goes the distance to refine older mechanics in 2D Zelda. You don't get to use a sword much, but the times you do use it is some of the most fluid swordplay in a 2D Zelda game thanks to the addition of lock-on and mid-air attacks. The game also replaces your roll with a Paper Mario-style spin you can use to go fast and cut grass, and it's an absolutely brilliant addition that I hope more games include. Realizing I could draw lines in the sand with the spin move unironically gave me minutes of fun just doing that.
My biggest concern with Echoes Of Wisdom was that the sheer freedom that echo/bind allows would end up trivializing the puzzles, and I'm pleased to say that this is generally not the case. Most echoes are single-use only, so there's never any one-size-fits-all solution. As a matter of fact, in the case of combat, you're often encouraged not to. Each enemy works best with a certain other enemy, so there's this sort of rock-paper-scissors aspect to finding the right strategy for each foe. This applies to puzzles and platforming too, they vary enough so that using the same echo every time is never going to work. So while I did find myself cheesing puzzles occassionally, it at least felt like I was cheesing them in creative ways. There were these constant ah-ha moments where I would ask myself "what if I did this?" and it usually worked. And because the interface is so simple to use, actually putting those queries to the test felt easy and quick. But sometimes, I'd also just solve things by complete accident. There were so many situations where I was randomly tossing out enemies that just so happened to solve things for me, and it always made me laugh whenever that happened. It's fun to see a 2D Zelda game with so much detail put into how everything interacts with each other, it's easy to set up a Rube Goldberg machine of pure chaos if you really want to.
So all that immersive sim stuff is neat and all, but where I think Echoes Of Wisdom really shines is in its progression. Finally, finally, Nintendo actually bothered to go back to be the two-arc structure that has worked for Zelda ever since the very first game. The game's still open world, but you aren't able to access most of the dungeons right from the get-go, let alone the final one. You do have the freedom to pick between the first and last few dungeons ala A Link Between Worlds, but there's also a dedicated mid-game dungeon you need to do to progress the story and unlock the second half of the game. Hell, the first hour or so of the game are pretty much entirely linear, the game doesn't even properly open up after Dungeon 1. This really is the perfect blend between nonlinear and linear Zelda, bringing back the satisfying feeling of progression that the older games had while still incorporating an element of player freedom.
And while we're on the subject of dungeons, there are dungeons! And a lot of them too! Coming off of the pitiful 5-6 dungeon rosters of the last two games, Echoes Of Wisdom has an impressive eight dungeons. An intro dungeon, two in the first arc, a midgame dungeon, three in the second arc, and a final dungeon. And on top of that, the dungeons are good too! There's keys and doors and boss keys, the terminals are completely replaced with a single endpoint, there are midbosses dividing the dungeons into distinct halves, there's a dungeon map encouraging you to explore every room, and while there still aren't any dungeon items, you do get a number of dungeon-exclusive echoes that serve a similar purpose. As I mentioned, there's a nice blend of single-solution environmental puzzles and more freeform puzzles so they never felt absurdly easy like the ones in the last two games. It does take a bit for the dungeons to really start branching out, though, the first few are fairly linear and easy to navigate. But in the second half of the game, things do get a lot more complex, especially with the Faron and Lanayru Temples. The bosses are pretty great too! This is one area where TotK was a genuine improvement, but I still think Echoes Of Wisdom has it beat in this aspect. There's a solid roster of unique boss fights each with multiple phases and well-telegraphed attack patterns. They're kinda like the fight with Odolwa in Majora's Mask where they usually have an intended convenient solution, but you can really just use anything to defeat them if you want to. There’s also so many surprising old bosses returning like Barinade, Manhandla, and… Smog… from Oracle Of Ages. My least favorite Zelda boss of all time. Honestly, it’s such a deep cut, I’m not even mad.
One thing that I always found a bit weak about Breath Of The Wild was its sidequests. There were some highlights, of course, but the vast majority of them are pretty boring fetch quests that pad out the sidequest count and just don't give you a good enough reward. But the perks of having a much smaller scope to your game is that your side content can feel a lot more meaningful (cough Majora's Mask cough), and Echoes Of Wisdom absolutely demonstrates this with its sidequests. While I skipped out on most of the sidequests in BotW and TotK, I went out of my way to do most of them here because they were usually varied, quick, and easy to do. From rearranging stuff with bind, to taking out enemies, to finding a specific echo, to beating minigames, to playing a game of tag, to even completing special optional dungeons, the sidequests were generally really enjoyable. But even beyond just the sidequests, Echoes Of Wisdom's overworld is densely-packed with things to do, and you do not have to go far to discover something new. Pieces Of Heart and Bottles are back and they're just as satisfying to collect as always, there's tons of uniquely designed caves scattered everywhere, there's a really charming Stamp rally quest, and even the echoes kinda serve as a collectible. It actually feels really satisfying and rewarding to go for 100% in this one, and that's really great to say.
As for the presentation, I don't really have too much to say about it since Echoes Of Wisdom primarily repurposes the Link's Awakening remake artstyle. There are a lot of unique assets and animations, and it's cool to see a lot of classic Zelda species and enemies translated to this toylike artstyle, but beyond that, most of my praises and criticisms remain the same as with Link's Awakening. Echoes Of Wisdom's visuals are cute, clean, colorful, and a joy to look at, but the framerate issues pretty much remain the same. The soundtrack, on the other hand, is pretty much entirely new and it's great. Super lush and varied, and unlike the Wild games, there's rarely a moment when you're not listening to music and that has me very grateful. Echoes has a pretty huge composer list composed of BotW/TotK alumni and a few new composers, and they did a really good job. There’s a lot of really strong original tracks scattered throughout the game, which makes whenever they weave in the series’ tried and true leitmotifs hit all the harder.
Overall, yeah, Echoes Of Wisdom is actually really good. So good, in fact, that it makes me like Tears Of The Kingdom even less because it shows the Zelda team wasted six years when they could've been making stuff like this the whole time. Echoes Of Wisdom is a great first showing for Zelda, with a unique but surprisingly fun central set of mechanics, a fascinating new take on a classic Zelda narrative, and loads of charm and polish. But on top of that, it bodes so well for the future of the series, showing off a perfect fusion between the nonlinear immersive sim elements that defined the BotW series with traditional Zelda elements, while also added some neat new ideas and quality of life improvements. It's the first game since ALBW to really have that Zelda magic again. There's a large open overworld that's a joy to explore, and more tightly-designed dungeons and setpieces, it's everything I could've asked for.
I'll need to wait a bit to see where Echoes Of Wisdom lands, but as of know, I can say it's at the very least a solid A tier Zelda game for me, on par with Skyward Sword, Oracle Of Ages, and Spirit Tracks (that's a good thing, by the way, I actually love all these games).
4.5/5 Stars
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