Review - The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

“The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom” is the most recently released Zelda game and the very first game in the nearly four decade old series to feature Princess Zelda herself as the main playable protagonist. With 38 years of releases to build on, does this latest game refine a nearly perfect formula or do the unexpected changes ruin the experience?

I’ve been watching Echoes of Wisdom since it was first announced. Any new Zelda game is worth paying attention to, and 2D (ish) Zelda games tend to be my favorite. Couple that with the revolutionary decision to make Zelda the main protagonist instead of Link, and you have a very large number of gamers on the edge of their seats. This could be huge.

I expressed concern with the first gameplay trailer that it looked gimmicky. Zelda games have traditionally focused very heavily on Link’s swordplay. Removing that as the main method of engaging with enemies was a very bold decision, and one that would force this game to be notably different from the rest of the series. Better or worse would be up for debate.

Because my local library is awesome, they picked up several copies of Echoes of Wisdom and I was one of the first holds on the item. On October 15, barely a few weeks after release, I had a copy in hand. I wasn’t at all interested in paying for the game, but playing it for free while checked out from the library? Sign me up. Worst case scenario, I hate it and return it early. No skin off my back.

Even if I had my doubts from the trailer, I wanted to approach it with as open a mind as possible. Much like Skyward Sword as the origin story of the series, I felt obligated to play through and at least beat the game. Echoes of Wisdom will always be the first game to allow players to control Zelda. Later games may choose to do that again, but Echoes was the first, and I wanted to make sure I’ve experienced it.

Very early, I realized that my gut instinct from the trailer was dead on. The whole game just feels really gimmicky. Echoes are the bread and butter of combat, traversal, side quests, puzzles, everything. All Zelda can do without echoes is spin to cut bushes, pick up rocks or pots to throw, and telekinetically grab things. And that last one I consider sort of auxiliary to echoes, since Tri still performs the action.

You do unlock the ability to use a sword and other traditionally Link skills early on, but it is a temporary state that uses a very short resource bar (think magic bar from previous Zelda games). Zelda can only stay in Link mode for probably no more than a minute, even with all upgrades to the bar capacity. It’s clearly not intended to be the bulk of the game.

Talking with a friend who was also playing through, I learned that the game was originally developed with the permanent ability to use a sword. However, during play testing, players almost completely ignored the echoes and instead used just the sword. To better encourage (read: force) players to use echoes, they removed the sword from standard gameplay. That screams gimmicky bad design to me, but apparently they really wanted players using echoes.

I finished the game on November 6, fortunately well within the library checkout period for video games. Getting to experience a game without paying for it but still supporting the developers through my tax dollars is the ideal scenario, and you can’t change my mind on that. I’m glad that I invested the time to play, and even though I didn’t love it, I would be remiss not to give a more thorough analysis on the specific details for those who may be on the fence.

Story - 7/10

The story of Echoes of Wisdom isn’t quite like previous Zelda games, but it is analogous in a lot of ways. There is a tutorial area, two dungeons, a dramatic event, three more dungeons, and a final area. It feels a lot like the spiritual stones and medallions of Ocarina of Time or the pendants and sages of A Link to the Past. In that regard, I feel like the pacing of Echoes of Wisdom is really good. None of the map is explicitly blocked, so you’re more than welcome to explore well before you’re technically supposed to be in a place, and there are some benefits to looking around before you jump into the story properly.

Zelda as the main protagonist is a refreshing change of pace. Link isn’t boring by any stretch, but I was really interested to see the namesake of the series explored a bit more. And even though she was never really a damsel in distress type, I really liked seeing her as the “boots on the ground” so to speak. Sure, she held back Ganon for a century in Breath of the Wild, but she’s actually DOING the stuff in Echoes of Wisdom.

Tri, the new assistant character, is actually really well done. She? He? It? Tri seemed feminine to me, but I don’t think the game ever used a gendered pronoun. They, then. They’re actually helpful in a lot of cases, they give you good direction without being overbearing, and they aren’t intrusive the way Navi could be. With Zelda now serving as the silent protagonist, having someone with good dialog to drive the story, and Tri performs that function very well.

With a new villain and unfamiliar realization of Hyrule, the experience seems to parallel Link’s Awakening. I don’t know if the new villain will be featured in upcoming Zelda games, but the whole thing feels like it could stand alone without lasting impact or ties to other eras of Hyrule. Names of places will be very familiar, but don’t expect to recognize the dueling peaks area or anything like that.

If you rush straight through, you could probably beat the game in five or six hours. Exploring a bit and really digging in to find most of the good stuff, I’m thinking ten to fifteen hours. Really squeezing every drop of content and finding all collectibles, you’re probably looking a little north of twenty hours. All in all, I feel like a really good length and amount of content for a Zelda game.

Replaying Zelda games often feels like putting on a favorite comfortable shirt, but Echoes of Wisdom has enough options and permutations to genuinely give variety in subsequent plays. It is open world, which seems like the direction that the series has been going for a while now. I don’t see myself playing it again for a while, but the draw would absolutely be playing dungeons in different orders, using different echoes, and challenging yourself in different ways.

General Gameplay - 2/10

Leaning hard into gimmicks has often been the biggest downfall of particular Zelda games. Motion controls in Skyward Sword, microphone and touch screen for Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, the first Zelda game after a new technology comes out seems to be more of a tech demo than a quality video game. It’s often neat, but becomes impossibly tedious over the course of the entire game. Echoes don’t correlate to any particular technology, but it is a design that features too heavily in the gameplay and thus the game suffers.

Traversal, especially across vertical distances, depends on Zelda and Tri’s ability to summon progressively taller echoes. You can start with a trampoline to get an initial boost, then use a wooden crate to get a static place to stand. As you complete more dungeons and repair more rifts, you unlock a larger variety of echoes and the ability to summon more echoes simultaneously. You can stack beds diagonally for horizontal distance and vertical height, but you have to remain anchored so some piece of solid ground. A lot of these requirements force you to come up with creative solutions to navigate obstacles.

This system sounds great on paper, but in practice it just feels so hacky. Nearly every single puzzle or obstacle I faced, it felt like I was using some unintended functionality to trick the game into letting me pass, rather than genuinely solving a puzzle. Perhaps if you like finding unintentional solutions to problems, this might appeal to you. For me, I would much rather have an intended solution and some restricted way to reach that goal.

Beyond solutions feeling unintentional, there were also a lot of echoes that had some functionality that I didn’t understand for the entirety of the game. I didn’t realize until the final dungeon that some enemies with wings could be summoned and let you fly around. I was just trying to hit something flying with Tri’s telekinesis and hope to goodness that they flew where I wanted them to go. Signpost echoes are available pretty early on, but I never realized that summoning a signpost and reading it can give you a hint for the area that you’re in.

The intention, in hindsight, seems to be that you should try out each new echo as you learn it. I suppose part of that issue falls to me, as I stuck with the ones that I learned and ignored most new echoes. Still, I don’t feel like summoning every new echo you learn should be required to figure out basic functionality. I’m simply not interested in summoning a zol and watching what happens for a few minutes.

Heart pieces and might crystals are the main collectibles, and they’re very much in line with previous Zelda games. Perhaps you solve a puzzle, defeat a group of enemies, or stumble upon some secret location. There are some that are pretty easy to find, others are more hidden, and there is a side quest to get a piece of equipment that will help reveal those collectibles. It’s a good system, and you always have the option to look up a list if you’re really struggling to find one.

The predictability of the smoothie system is a far sight better than the cooking in Breath of the Wild. Where Link can use the same ingredients and get a different result every time, Zelda combines two ingredients once and then she knows exactly what she’ll get every single time with those two ingredients. Occasionally you’ll get an “unfortunate smoothie” which gives minimal health and magic recovery. You can just sell that to recoup some rupees and never make that recipe again. Playing around with new combinations of ingredients but also knowing exactly what you’ll get after you’ve made it once is a very satisfying system.

Combat - 2/10

Again, gimmicks are what make combat in this game less than ideal. Zelda has no way to directly engage with and attack enemies, outside the temporary Link mode. Instead, you’re intended to summon echoes and let them do the bulk of the work. Throw out a peahat and let it rip your enemies to shreds.

Much like world traversal, combat sounds great on paper but it fails in execution. Echo AI seems woefully idiotic. Wizzrobes are absurdly powerful, but the lead time for their attack often opens them up to a huge window for enemies to take advantage of. Instead of wreaking havoc on a bunch of lowly moblins, nearly every echo I summoned would get bombarded and subsequently destroyed.

Most of my enemy encounters consisted of summoning an echo and praying to Nayru while I ran around avoiding attacks. That’s frustrating. I could, if my echoes failed over and over again, shift into Link mode and make quick work of them. However, I’ve then used up some resources that I may not be able to adequately refill before the next encounter. That cost versus reward plays into every single encounter, and it’s frankly exhausting.

There are some ways to take more control in combat, but again, they feel hacky. Summon a water block, grab the enemy with telekinesis, and pull them in to drown them. Summon a wind cannon, jump on top, and summon sea urchins that fall into the breeze and launch at the enemies. Heck, just summon a sea urchin and grab it. You can walk at enemies and force them to take damage as you advance.

The options are nearly endless, but none of them are as satisfying as using a sword in my opinion. I can absolutely see why play testers would mostly ignore echoes when a sword is readily available. Sure, summoning a few extra echoes to boost damage and help me handle large groups are fine, but I would rather just stab them myself. Removing that ability outside of very limited quantities is frustrating and unnecessary.

The one small compliment I will pay the combat system is the bosses. There are some interesting boss designs that allow you to explore options and leverage Zelda knowledge. An enemy breathes in before it attacks you? Y’all know you throw a bomb in its mouth. The boss has an eye that opens occasionally? That’s waiting to get hit with an arrow. The bosses are cool, but nowhere near cool enough to make up for the otherwise dreadful combat.

Difficulty - 3/10

In a list of Zelda games sorted by difficulty, Echoes of Wisdom is pretty low. I died a few times when my echoes didn’t attack the enemy that I wanted them to, but the game gives plenty of recovery options and most of the enemies aren’t substantially deadly. You can craft smoothies to boost defense or attack power, or gain temporary resistance to certain elements. Bed echoes recover health over time. You get pretty good at evasion with time, so it becomes a balance between aggressing against enemies versus holding back and preserving health.

Graphics - 8/10

Although the echoes system is absolutely the most polarizing part of this game, graphics may be the second most polarizing part. The chibi style of the Link’s Awakening remake is back, and perhaps even more intense than before somehow. Personally, I LOVE the art style. It’s like a 3D evolution of pixel art, rather than the high fidelity models used in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. High fidelity is fine, but translating the overhead camera angles from 2D Zelda games into 3D while preserving the same visual effects is just fantastic. Top tier Zelda graphics, IF you like the style.

Music - 7/10

I suppose EVERYTHING about this game is polarizing. I’ve seen several complaints about the music, but also a lot of people that love it. Personally, I think it’s good. It pulls in a lot of older tunes, with slight changes here and there. It isn’t quite as timeless as soundtracks from previous Zelda games, but it’s undeniably higher audio quality.

My best explanation of the music in Echoes of Wisdom is a cover that makes something new. A lot of people want cover songs to be effectively identical to the original. Others want a new artist to make their own spin on the original. No cover is going to please everyone, but I think anyone should admit a good cover when they hear it. The Echoes of Wisdom soundtrack clearly isn’t the work of Koji Kondo, but it’s still good music.

My Take

The Good

Echoes of Wisdom takes a familiar Zelda formula and does some interesting new things with it. The pacing and story will feel traditional for veterans of the series if some of the design choices are very novel and unusual.

The Bad

The inability to engage directly with enemies and instead rely on echoes to do what you want them to do can be really frustrating in some situations. Furthermore, it isn’t easy to understand what any given echo does without actually summoning it and playing around with it.

The Ugly

Pretty much every facet of this game is polarizing, from the echoes system to the graphics and music, and basically everything in between. Maybe you’ll love it, maybe you’ll hate it, but you almost definitely won’t be apathetic toward it.

Overall - 4/10

I’ve played a lot of Zelda games in my day, and Echoes of Wisdom isn’t the best, but it also isn’t the worst. Would I start a fresh run over playing Adventure of Link or Phantom Hourglass again? Absolutely. And really, I have to respect the attempt to try something new with a series that can sometimes feel so entrenched. In this case, I don’t really think it worked very well, but you never know until you try it.

I’m glad we finally got a chance to play as Zelda, and I hope that we get another Zelda-focused game in the future. And if they balanced the echoes with some more consistent way to attack the enemy, I think I would’ve been much more open to it. Think Breath of the Wild, with the master sword in contrast to degrading weapons. Perhaps that’s what the Link mode was supposed to be, but I would want it more readily available without the resource anxiety of emptying the magic bar.

If you enjoy Zelda games, I think Echoes of Wisdom is definitely worth experiencing. More recent fans that really enjoy open world Zelda may appreciate it more than veterans of the series, but it is still canon material that has its place in the lore. Go into it with an open mind and no expectations, and maybe you’ll have a good time.