I usually do a quick status instead of a review for games I don't finish, but like with Bayonetta 3 I wanted to go a bit deeper on this one since it's unusual for me to bail on a game that I looked forward to like this. (I didn't even get through what I believe is the halfway point, but after several sittings of not having much fun or motivation to continue, I figured it just wasn't for me.) I found this attempt to blend Grezzo’s experience remaking traditional lock-and-key style Zeldas with more open-ended TotK-inspired gameplay an unfortunate disappointment that lacks the fun of either style. It's awkward to interact with and just oddly unsatisfying compared to the games it's building off of, some of the least fun I've had with a series that I've otherwise been as high on as ever.

Zelda largely interacts with everything here by spawning in objects and creatures she has collected throughout the journey. This is implemented with a long list that you have to open repeatedly to scroll through and select an item, and while you get somewhat useful sorting options, only being able to equip one thing at a time makes trying to synergize things or react quickly to a new situation feel unnecessarily cumbersome. There are enough options that within a few hours some already feel superfluous, yet despite the variety, the limited-use grid-based approach limits the freedom and nuance compared to TotK's more free-form, spontaneous-feeling building system and other easy-to-use abilities.

On the other hand, very little feels special like the key items of traditional Zelda, as even relatively powerful items, like a tile that can fly in any direction or a climbing spider that you can attach to, aren't that cool in a thematic sense and don't feel that satisfying to me to get and implement in these levels. Compared to even the worst dungeon of OoT, "Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly", which gives its boomerang several memorable bespoke interactions with the level's theme and encounter designs, I don't find anything I got in the regions I visited in this game to be as fun. Those lock-and-key style single interactions are by no means something that's needed, and conceptually I think this game's approach sounds interesting, but it just doesn't really work for me in practice in either direction that this series has previously worked in.

Summoning monsters to fight for you or objects to throw against this game's foes is about the most boring that Zelda combat has ever been in my estimation. (Granted, I haven't played the DS or CD-i ones, so who knows.) In seeming acknowledgement that some players would feel this way, you can also temporarily transform into Link with normal weaponry until a meter runs out, which adds a flash of more fun action that fizzles out all too quickly. Locking on doesn’t work very well either since your summons or less immediate threats can be mistakenly targeted without an easy way to swap. The combat also leads to a crafting system that has been needlessly made into something you do at a vendor with excessive menuing, and whose ingredients are often disappointing rewards for the game's optional objectives and exploration.

I was never in love with the visual style of the Link’s Awakening remake, particularly how characters look, but it’s fine and continues to be fine here. At the very least, it's got an appealing color and vibrancy to it when you're outside, other than the obligatory desert area. In handheld mode, I didn't notice many performance issues, but docked mode continues to have distracting stuttering while roaming the overworld like Link’s Awakening did. The writing is sometimes decent but usually a bit boring in terms of dialogue, particularly when the little companion Tri is talking, not awful but not very interesting. At least the game does as well as expected with the music, which is perfectly pleasant in the moment.

I want to say I wish this were just a puzzle game instead of trying to walk the line between styles, but it is very focused on the puzzles (and platforming) already, and even that stuff stopped being enjoyable for me very quickly. Glad most others are enjoying it, but I personally hope it remains a one-off spin-off and that Princess Zelda gets another adventure that I find more appealing in the future.

For well over a decade, Grezzo has made a name for themselves as the Zelda remake crew, beginning their tenure in the franchise with the modest 3DS remasters of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. In 2019, they leveled up with a fantastic from-the-ground-up remake of Link's Awakening. Grezzo treated that game with such a loving reverence, and made it apparent that they just GET Zelda. Five years later, it's no surprise that the studio has finally gotten the chance to make a brand new Zelda of their own, and it presents yet another "level up" moment for the studio.

Echoes of Wisdom could have gotten away with being much less ambitious. The last "new" top-down Zelda we got was A Link Between Worlds, which itself was a reimagining of 1991's A Link to the Past, but framed as a sequel. Before that, it was the touch-screen Zeldas of the DS era in the 2000s. This is to say, if Grezzo wanted to make a basic title that stuck to the series' pre-Breath of the Wild traditions, I would have still been happy to gobble it up.

But as it turns out, Echoes of Wisdom is one of the most experimental top-down Zeldas ever. It all stems from the choice to FINALLY have the titular princess take the spotlight. They could have easily taken the lazy route and given Link's moveset to Zelda without much consideration--that's what they did in the CDi Zelda games, after all! But instead, they have cooked up an inspired gameplay style that better suits Zelda's role within the universe of Hyrule as a priestess and magic user.

In Echoes of Wisdom, Zelda is able to summon "echoes," copies of objects and enemies that she encounters during her adventure. This, along with the ability to telepathically move and be moved by objects are the only abilities you will use throughout this title, replacing the item system of traditional Zeldas in much the same way as Link's abilities in Tears of the Kingdom.

Unlike Tears of the Kingdom, however, this features a pretty traditional Zelda structure. Echoes of Wisdom tells a linear story, has dungeons, plenty of secrets, and even features a huge overworld inspired by--but not identical to--A Link to the Past. Even the echo ability, a definite novelty in the series, makes dungeons feel pretty traditional, as puzzles are usually based on manipulating and copying the objects found within that particular dungeon.

I enjoyed every moment of exploring this new version of Hyrule, and was delighted by how these new abilities affected exploration and puzzling. You are initially quite limited by your echoes, and are tasked with navigating the world by piling items on top of each other. You'll very quickly get used to making stairs out of tables, or bridges out of beds. Even insignificant items feel like they have potential uses to discover, like the ability to hide from enemies within pots, or resting on a variety of beds to recover health. My biggest criticism is that switching between echoes quickly becomes unwieldy. Echoes of Wisdom reuses the same scrolling item selection menu as the open world Zeldas, which is fine on paper--I never had a big problem with it in those games. But this game requires you to switch up your echoes very often and for a variety of reasons. By the end of the game, trying to scroll through over a hundred echoes just to find the one you are looking for becomes a frustrating task. It's pretty annoying that they didn't feel it worthwhile to add a simple pin option to keep your favorite echoes at the top, and the "Most Used" filter is only useful some of the time. As it stands, the UI seems to actively discourage experimentation.

Combat is the area that I feel Echoes of Wisdom fails at the most. The game starts by teaching you to summon enemies to fight on your behalf. It's a pretty cool idea, and has the potential to give this game a more strategic feel. Early on, you'll also unlock Swordfighter Form, which temporarily gives you Link's moveset and thus access to traditional Zelda combat. Aside from a few really well-designed boss fights, though, Echoes of Wisdom feels like the worst of both worlds.

Fighting against single enemies is fine, but when you are fighting groups, as you often do, your echo ally's AI is just not smart enough to protect you. You'll spend most of your time defenseless and scrambling to survive. Swordfighter Form seems like the intended solution to these situations. However, this form only lasts as long as your short energy gauge, discouraging you from using it lest you get caught in a bad situation without access to the form. The only way to recover energy is through smoothies that you can craft, or by defeating the rather rare "dark" enemy types. This is frustrating because so many of the enemy encounters in the game feel like they were made with Swordfighter Form in mind, but it punishes you for using it. I would rather they have not included this form entirely and design all of the enemy encounters around your summoning ability instead.

Luckily, the game is a delight otherwise. It inherits the beautiful visual style of the Link's Awakening remake, and features a really wonderful soundtrack full of fun tunes that made me realize how much I missed traditional Zelda soundtracks. Performance is still a sore point, and it's even worse now than it was in Link's Awakening. It's disappointing, but at this point I feel stupid expecting anything else out of the seven-year old Nintendo Switch.

The story is quite enjoyable, and it was a treat to experience Hyrule from a totally new perspective as Zelda. As the princess, reactions to your presence are obviously different to that of an unknown village bumpkin, and the game leans into it. The story is very simple, but it features both tantalizing new lore and plenty of winks and nods to the past. Plenty of those are simple visual easter eggs in the world map, which itself feels like a lovely exercise in coloring outside of the boundaries that A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds set.

Echoes of Wisdom is quite a flawed Zelda, but I enjoy it a ton nonetheless. If Nintendo EPD will continue to be making massive titles with long development times, then I really hope Grezzo continues to make smaller-scale games like Echoes of Wisdom to fill in the gaps. With it, hey have proven themselves to be more than worthy of developing their own Zelda titles, showing a level of creativity and experimentation that feels right at home in the franchise.

Almost every game in the Legend of Zelda series is excellent but, if I were to rank them, Echoes would sit somewhere in the middle of the pack, not at the top. It's still great but it's also flawed.

Pros:

- Innovative mechanics. I appreciate them trying something different here and the echo ability is really fun when exploring the world, dealing with what are effectively movement based puzzles – how do I get from A to B with a limited number of echoes.

- Cute visuals and excellent music. The remake of Link's Awakening is my favourite Zelda of all time so I'm happy for another entry in the series with a similar vibe.

Cons:

- Lacks its own identity. The most memorable Zeldas are the ones that break the standard formula of Hyrule; Triforce; Link, Zelda and Ganon. Majora's Mask for example. Echoes, for the most part, doesn't do that. The writing is bland at times. It shoehorns in elements of Breath of The Wild and Tears of The Kingdom. A character even quotes "It's go time!" from Tears at one stage. And there's a smoothie making mechanic that's a straight rip of the cooking mechanic from those earlier games, except the buffs they offer serve little benefit half the time – not once did I need to boost my wall climbing speed because, unlike Breath and Tears, there's very little wall climbing in this game. The quick select menu is identical too to Echoes' predecessors and just as frustrating this time around.

- Combat. I didn't hate it but about two thirds of the way in I realised I was having more fun fighting monsters as Link than I did using Zelda's echo ability. Given echoes are the focus of this game... that's not ideal.

So TL;DR definitely worth playing, had a great time, glad they tried something new but I would have appreciated just a tiny bit of extra polish.

Ack, I wish I liked this game more. As soon as I saw the announcement for it months back I was totally sold. I've always had a bit of a rough relationship with the 2D Zelda games but I loved the Link's Awakening remake a few years ago so I figured an original game in the same engine with the same dev behind the wheel would be perfection. You can tell that Echoes of Wisdom was crafted with a lot of love for the series. For me though, there're too many aspects of its design that just didn't sit well.

My main issue is a bit tough to articulate. As I made my way through the game's various dungeons I noticed how unsatisfied I felt with most of the puzzles. I don't think that's necessarily an issue with the puzzle design itself though. Hell, many of them are actually pretty clever in how they let you use many combinations of your echoes to solve them. My problem I think can be summarized with a metaphor.

Imagine you want to solve a jigsaw puzzle. You open the box and all the pieces are right there, assuming nothing is missing. So you go ahead and get to work solving it as you would, by finding where the edges link up and make a coherent picture. That's traditional Zelda puzzle gameplay in this metaphor. Now for comparison imagine if you had a different jigsaw puzzle box but it only has some of the pieces inside. But the box also came with a big bag of assorted pieces, many of which are from other puzzles. You can solve the puzzle you want to solve by digging around in this separate bag and figuring out which pieces sorta link up well enough to make a rectangle by the end, even if the picture doesn't quite make sense. That's this game's puzzles, for me.

Maybe that metaphor is a bit overdramatic but I don't find it quite as satisfying when it feels like I'm always just squeezing my way through each puzzle, some of which I'm not even sure I "got" before progressing past them. There was rarely an "Aha!" moment with this game. Usually I was instead thinking "Oh. Huh. I guess that sorta worked."

I have similar criticisms of the combat, which often felt like an exercise in trying out different echoes against an enemy to see which one wasn't immediately killed by the pretty basic AI they had going on. Zelda can also temporarily gain Link's powers (sword, bow, etc.) to fight as you typically would in this series, but this kind of felt sour to me both because this is Zelda's game, I want to play as her, and because it felt more like I was circumventing the game's core summoning mechanic rather than engaging with it.

The final boss was especially disappointing in this regard. I feel like I spent nearly the whole fight dodging attacks while others killed the boss for me, which was lame.

I do want to say that I really appreciate that they didn't just slap Link's outfit and gear on Zelda and call it a day. There was a genuine effort here to differentiate her play style and also tie it into her role throughout the franchise. This is great on paper and admittedly also very cool in practice. I just wish the combat felt more like it was designed with her summons in mind. Link form seems kind of like a bandage fix for an issue that ideally wouldn't be present.

At first I approached this game with the mindset that because I had this ability to summon shit and move objects around I could also freely explore much like in the recent Breath of the Wild games. This actually isn't really the case. There's some freedom with the order you approach the dungeons in but it's still a Zelda game that pushes the main story over wandering and exploration. Even as someone who loved BOTW, I think this is a really good thing. It was refreshing to have a goal and pursue it (relatively) directly to its completion in classic Zelda fashion.

However, there are a bunch of sidequests to tackle and the franchise has of course never been totally void of exploration. The problem is these side activities just don't feel worth it. Whenever I saw a treasure chest, there was like a 60-70% chance it only contained ingredients for smoothies, which are this game's answer to the cooking system in Breath of the Wild. I understand this decision was made because rupees are significantly less useful in a game where you can spawn allies and objects at will, but the ingredients always felt like a massive disappointment to receive as a reward for my effort.

If I try to put aside all these criticisms, I am still left with a Legend of Zelda game that has a landscape that is colorful and fun to explore. The puzzles are still clever and some of the dungeons, especially Faron Temple, feel more ambitious with their layouts. The story is engaging enough, if a bit cliche, and characters/world are totally adorable. There are some frame drops, which is disappointing, but while I typically noticed them when they happened they never got in the way of the gameplay, so they're only so bad imo.

I don't think Echoes of Wisdom is quite the game Zelda deserves but it's certainly a solid entry in its own right. Fans of the old school games will be glad to have something to chew on, though I imagine they may not be too keen on the mechanics pulled in from the recent open world games. I'd love to see this dev team tackle a 3D Zelda entry with her as the protag again. Or hell, maybe even another 2D one where Zelda and Link team up, because there's a lot of untapped potential there.

Everything is relative. If I gave Big Dave's Stinky Fart Diaper Racers a four, y'all would be like wow good for Big Dave! But Zelda getting less than a five is like damn.

I think the core gameplay is fascinating and is worthy of an amazing game. The music is excellent and has some of the best compositions and original songs in a Zelda game in the console generation. The art style which carried over from the LA remake is still as expressive and compelling as it was in 2019. Stamp Guy is a wonderful addition to the Zelda canon.

However, that ends my unchecked praise of this game.

The difficulty floor is low which is not surprising, but so is the difficulty ceiling. I almost never died in combat despite setting the game on the hard mode, and I never found myself questioning how to solve a puzzle.

The plot is bare bones which isn't new for Zelda, but I find it easier to excuse when the game is enormous like BotW or TotK. In a smaller experience like EoW, it feels like the care is just not there. I don't need them to respect lore or anything. I just want characters, motivations, intrigue- the stuff that is in most every other adventure game that doesn't feature the Princess of Hyrule. I was so excited as they started to fill in Zelda's life with her cat and horse- only for those characters to not even be given names. While we get to experience Zelda's heroism, we don't get much else in terms of her character or relationships, and that's a shame!

The world is open-ish. Having Zelda jump on top of trees and swim in the ocean is a blast, but you get pulled out of that freedom whenever the game gets you with an impenetrable cliff or a block in the ocean or an area completely cut off from the rest of the map. (I'm not talking about the Still World which I liken to BotW/TotK shrines. I more mean stuff like Hebra Mountain)* Four Swords Adventures was able to make the world feel interconnected in ways that EoW wishes it did, and 4SA is twenty years old!

There is lots to love about Echoes of Wisdom, but there is also a lot holding it back from entering the echelon of masterpieces like Majora's Mask, Link's Awakening, or Breath of the Wild. Regardless, it is a promising entry in what will hopefully develop into a new style of Zelda games that honor their namesake.

Should you check it out?

Pfft it's Zelda. Of course you should.

*My phone autocorrected Hebra Mountain to Hebrew Mountain which made me smile. I corrected the auto correction, but wanted to document the auto correction for all of our smiles.

I recently completed Echoes of Wisdom, and I had an absolute blast while doing so. Just like most gamers, I grew up with Zelda, and this game felt like a great return to form for a franchise that hasn't done anything but Breath of the Wild for the past decade, and although the game does rely a bit too much on a few sandbox mechanics, it's still a great experience that i would definitely recommend.

You play as Zelda, the princess of Hyrule, after she's been framed for attacking the king. A bunch of inter-dimensional rifts have started to show up throughout the kingdom, trapping your father inside, and replacing him with an impostor. Now that you've been exiled, it's up to you to find out what's causing this, and put an end to it.

Echoes of Wisdom decides to return to the original Zelda formula, but with a twist. It's still a linear fantasy adventure where you go through multiple dungeons and fight a big evil demon, but this time around, you aren't able to attack enemies directly. Instead, you summon "Echoes" of the enemies you've defeated so they can fight for you. I really like this take on the formula, and while it can feel clunky or easily exploitable at times, it's still a lot of fun to use, and the unique interactions the dev made for these mechanics are a lot of fun.

You also have access to a Swordfighter mode, which allows you to temporarily turn into a spirit of Link and fight using a sword. I think it's a cool idea, as it allows the designers to make half-puzzle half-fight challenges, but it's never used to it's fullest potential, as most battles can be brute forced by using Link's attacks directly. I think the game's at its best when it restricts the use of this form, locking you into Zelda's abilities and actually making you think about what you're doing.

While this is a great return to form for the franchise, I still think it's muddled by its overreliance on sandbox mechanics and BotW/TotK pandering. A lot of the mechanics, like Bind or Horse Riding, feel weirdly out of place in the game. They're not bad, but it feels like they were added only because they were in the previous games and this is now the status quo for Zelda.

A good example of this is the fact that this is an open-world game. At any point in time you're able to ignore the main quest and go out of your way and explore the entire map, with the Echo system even encouraging you to do so. And while exploring the world and finding side quests can be fun, the fact that you still need to hit certain flags for the story to continue makes the open world design feel kind of wasted. You can access a lot of areas with nothing in them until you go back and actually engage with the story the right way. It's like the game's both linear and open-world, with both designs conflicting at all times.

Yes, I understand that Breath of the Wild has massively outsold every other game in the franchise, but adding these mechanics just for the sake of franchise unification doesn't sit right with me. I love the classic Zelda formula, and I wish the game stuck to it a little bit more closely.

The story for the game is really good too! The franchise has always focused on Zelda and Hyrule itself, and I don't think Link has ever been the focus of a game (except maybe Wind Waker), but Echoes of Wisdom takes it one step further and gives us the closest look possible at this princess's story and relationships. Link does have his own story, but he's treated more like a mystery that the princess was never involved in. It's a really interesting take for this franchise and I'm all for it.

One of my favorite parts of this game is that the world actually evolves as you play, which isn't always the case for a Zelda game. Usually, you always need to be in a new area for the story to progress, and while there's some backtracking involved in certain quests, it's never that impactful. In Echoes of Wisdom, the kingdom is constantly being attacked by inter-dimensional rifts, and it feels like the world is actually moving alone as old areas continue to change by you mending these rifts, especially Hyrule Castle Town. It makes Hyrule feel more alive than ever before.

Also halfway through the game they introduce some very big lore implications for the entire Zelda franchise and it's really cool and weird and I love it.

I've always loved Grezzo's artstyle for Link's Awakening, and I'm happy to see it come back for this installment. It gives the world a very innocent and cutesy feeling, so all the evil entities and demons feel more out of place and like actual invaders (even when they're also super cute).

Unfortunately, this game also keeps the same blur filters around the screen, and suffers from the same performance issues as Link's Awakening. While the game looks great, these issues greatly hurt the presentation of the game and keep Echoes of Wisdom from looking its best.

I really enjoyed the soundtrack as well. There's a lot of remixes and new arrangements of old Zelda songs, and hearing them again after years is so nostalgic. The original music is really good too, and I especially loved how Zelda's Lullaby keeps coming back as a leitmotif in so many songs. Special shoutout to the river zora theme

In conclusion: Echoes of Wisdom is really good. It brings the Zelda franchise back to its roots and provides a very nostalgic experience that, combined with the new echo system, still manages to feel completely new. While it does have some issues, particularly in how clunky some of the new additions feel in a classic Zelda setting, it's overall an incredible game that I absolutely loved. 9/10

Echoes of Wisdom gave a sense of child-like while I was playing. Sometimes I felt like this game was for a younger demographic than myself, but most of the time I was enjoying it anyway. As someone who just played Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, EoW was a nice break from an overwhelming world with way too much to do. This game was much smaller than those ones (Main story + extras took about 31 hours, 100% complete after 40) and I consider myself a slow paced player. Another thing about this I really liked: almost every inch of land had a purpose. There were enemies to fight, an item was there, a person to talk to, or something else. Dungeons were this way as well. Not too long or too hard, and fun to go through.

Echoes is a really cool concept. Instead of swinging your sword like always, you need to pick the right echo to do the fighting for you. It also gives puzzles another level. Many ways to go about them, and I found some gimmicky ways to complete them. I always find that really rewarding in video games but nowadays it isn't possible as much. It's like you absolutely HAVE to do it the programmed way, and if an alternative is found, it'll be patched. Echoes get rid of that and it made it more fun. I said to myself multiple times "no way that was intended".

100% completing this game was way more doable than any other TLoZ game I've played. I very much appreciated that. There was no need to make things complicated, so for once, they didn't. The music was fantastic, too, as I say for literally every TLoZ game. Very memorable. Lastly, I just have to mention that Conde is amazing. The most likable side character I've seen in a while.

A few things I did not like:

• Echoes just did not work sometimes. There were times when attacking that they couldn't be accurate for their life. Sometimes they would literally just run off a cliff. I got pretty pissed off. If I didn't have enough energy for swordfighter form then I just watched helplessly and let anger build up. Echoes had the chance to be 10x better than they already were.
• Zelda and Tri have absolutely zero personality. This was extra disappointing because of why this game was made in the first place. I thought the whole point was to give Zelda some love? Make her the powerful one that Hyrule is relying on? Not only did she refrain from saying a word, but she barely even made a sound or changed facial expressions (I know this is true for Link, too, but it's 2024. Times need to change). Almost every piece of dialogue from Tri contributed nothing, except for some stuff early game I guess. All this made the points in between plot development dull.
• This last one could be my fault. I'm still not sure. There was so much stuff that I never found! Tons of useful accessories that I didn't discover until I beat the game. I also spent my entire playthrough wondering what Might Crystals do. This was unlocked like crazy early on so that's why I think it might be my fault. Either way, it was pretty frustrating to discover so late.

Just a few misses in this game. Overall, I enjoyed it. A simple game isn't a bad thing. If you're looking for a challenge, look somewhere else. Still, I recommend it.