Now Playing: Echoes of Wisdom

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a very clever and fun little adventure that successfully blends a classic Zelda progression structure with the more modern creative sandbox approach of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. In a first for the series, you don’t play as Link but as Zelda herself, on a mission to rescue not only Link, but all of Hyrule from mysterious rifts that are opening across the land and swallowing everything in their path.

The game utilises a similar ‘cute’ isometric style to the Link’s Awakening Switch remake which I wasn’t such a fan of in that game because of my nostalgia for the original visuals. But here, in a new game with such a fresh gameplay concept, I’d say it fits quite well.

As Zelda, you have the ability to create ‘echoes’ (copies) of items and enemies you encounter throughout the game. It seems like such a simple concept, and it’s so flawlessly and effortlessly incorporated into the game that it would be easy to overlook just how impressively complex it really is and how incredibly difficult it must have been to design and balance the game around it.

There are 127 echoes to collect in the game and I picked up 122 of them before I reached the end. You have simple item echoes that can serve various needs, to specific use tools as well as every enemy type in the game. Yes, that’s right – every enemy you defeat can then be learnt and recreated as an echo to fight alongside you.

All echoes have a power cost which limits how many you can have active at any one time, but this limit can be increased (and the power cost of various echoes decreased) as you progress and level up your cute little companion Tri. Weaker creatures and more simple echoes have a low cost, but more powerful creatures and more complex echoes have a higher cost. It’s a simple way to limit the player and force them to think about how to utilise their echoes in the most cost efficient way.

The structure of Echoes of Wisdom is pretty much what you’d expect of a classic Zelda – you journey to the different regions of Hyrule to close a big rift (dungeon) in each area. So you’ve got a rift in the Gerudo Desert, a rift in the Zora Kingdom, a rift on Eldin Volcano . . . it’s safe and it’s familiar and predicable but it works.

The map isn’t huge, but it’s large enough to incorporate lots of fun little locations to explore and discover with their own hidden treasures such as heart pieces, might crystals (to upgrade your gear) accessories and smoothie ingredients. There’s also quite a few side quests you can pick up from the locals of each region. They don’t typically take more than a few minutes to complete, but they add some more value.

Echoes of Wisdom is not a super long game, and I didn’t do absolutely everything but I did most of it and if I did go back and wrap up what I’d missed I’d probably have about 20 hours clocked. It’s a perfect length for a game with such a simple – but clever – concept.

As I said, Echoes may adhere to a more traditional Zelda structure in terms of progression, but it takes a more creative approach as seen in the more recent titles such as BotW. That’s thanks to your echoes, all of which can be utilised as you see fit. Echoes is the kind of game that no two people will play the same. Everyone will find their own solutions, using their echoes in their own unique ways.

I was playing Echoes alongside someone else and at one point they got stuck. I offered to help but when I tried to use the echo that I had in the same place, I realised they hadn’t collected it yet. So instead, I had to look at what they did have and find a different way. And it really shouldn’t be underappreciated just how impressive this is – how they designed the game in such a way that you can find so many different ways to progress through the creative use of whatever echoes you have available.

I’m very interested to know what the minimum number and types of echoes are you’d need to finish the game. There are some you have to collect as a requirement to progress, but I suspect the number is actually quite small. In addition to your echoes, Zelda also has the use of a charge limited special form that lets her move and attack with a sword, bow or bombs like Link.

It’s a fun addition, but was it a necessary one? Early on, with such a limited charge you have to use the form sparingly, but once you upgrade your charge meter, it becomes a bit too easy to pop in and out of the form and brute force your way through nearly every encounter.

So far, so impressive, right? But this is where I’m going to get a little more critical of Echoes and explain why I liked but didn’t really love it. First of all, let’s address the performance concerns. There are areas where you get a noticeable drop in frame rate but they’re petty rare. I’d say I found Echoes to be far more stable and smooth than Link’s Awakening.

I’ve also seen people say the UI can be a mess in terms of echo selection. This can be a bit annoying when you’re scrolling through for a specific echo, but the game does let you sort echoes according to specific criteria – such as the ‘most used’ category – and that’s usually all you really need.

No, my main criticism of the game is that it’s just too damn easy. Now, that’s not me trying to brag about how clever or skilled I am. It’s just a fact. Echoes of Wisdom is a very easy game. No, I didn’t play it on the ‘Hero’ mode but that wouldn’t make the game more difficult in the way that I want. It wouldn’t make the puzzles more complex.

The Zelda games have always been this careful balance of action and puzzles, but Echoes of Wisdom is far more weighted towards the puzzle side of things. And if you’re going to be a more puzzle focused Zelda, you really need to deliver some very clever puzzles to engage and challenge the player.

But Echoes never really does this. Don’t get me wrong – the puzzles are clever in how you can utilise your echoes in various way to complete them – but they’re also all incredibly simple and straightforward. There’s always a very obvious and easy solution. I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I actually needed to stop and consider how to solve a problem.

The game is just too f**king easy to the point that I felt like I was progressing on autopilot. I just don’t feel like the puzzle aspect of Echoes reaches anywhere near its potential. With so many echoes, I’d have loved some more complex puzzles and dungeons that really forced me to think outside the box and combine my echoes in new and unexpected ways in order to progress.

But you never really need to do that. In fact, I’d say many echoes you collect are largely useless. That’s going to be a controversial opinion as I’m sure people will argue every echo has a use. But using them for your own enjoyment doesn’t make them actually all that useful compared to others.

There are some echoes – like the water block – that make progression in some areas entirely trivial. Why wouldn’t you use it? Sure, there are other ways to say, cross a gap or reach a high ledge, but the water block is the fastest and most efficient. And that’s kind of a problem when despite having so many echoes available, there’s a small number that do everything you need faster and more efficiently than everything else. I barely used the ‘armed’ monster echoes for example because they’re so slow and cost too much. A smaller, faster and cheaper monster is always the better option.

The puzzles are never testing. Everything is too simple and easy. And for me, I feel like I need some resistance, some challenge to my progression to really make me sit up and engage with the experience. It doesn’t necessarily have to be through gameplay – a strong narrative can offer the engagement I crave, but Echoes doesn’t really have that either.

The story is fine. It’s fine! It’s exactly what you expect it to be and plays out exactly like you think it will. And that kind of sums up how I feel about Echoes of Wisdom – it’s all too easy, predictable and familiar and it doesn’t push the player or its own – admittedly ingenious – gameplay mechanics as hard as it should.

It’s a sedate, fun little adventure but one that won’t really test you in any way. It’s very clever. It’s incredibly well designed. But it really needed to do more to engage the player. To really challenge them to be creative with their echoes – all their echoes – and to find new ways to progress as they go.

You actually use a wider variety of echoes early on when you have less to pick from than you do later in the game when you have more. Because by then you have a core 4-5 that will solve nearly any problem. After that, you just collect echoes for fun but you’ll never really need to use them.

What else? Oh, I also think the ‘smoothie’ system of making drinks for health or certain buffs is totally unnecessary because you never really need them at all. And the ‘automatons’ you can learn through a side quest are also entirely useless. Okay – maybe not useless in the sense that you can’t find a use for them – more that you don’t need to.

Overall, Echoes of Wisdom is a very good, unique and fun entry in the Zelda series but it’s a game I feel is falling very short of its potential. I wouldn’t have cared so much if the main quest was so simple and straightforward if the game also offered some challenging optional content. But sadly, it doesn’t. As I said, I felt like I was playing the game on autopilot much of the time and as a result, it’s probably not a game I’m going to recall much about in a week from now.

7/10