3/5 ★ – LLCoolRunnings's review of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

I love everything about this game except playing it. The game excels with its exploration and discovery. Its puzzle solving is so unique, because you can try 100 different things and suddenly just go "oh duh" and crack it in an instant. The characters, locations, dungeons and mini games are all great. They do a really good job of encouraging you to go spelunking in every cave, turn over every rock, and really seek out every little nook and cranny. But then, unfortunately and inevitably, you'll have to fight a monster, and you have 3 choices: 1. Cast monster echoes and watch them slowly fight. 2. Just become Link 3. Avoid it And I think that sucks. I think there's a great game you can make where Zelda casts and collects different spells and has her own way of fighting enemies that truly makes her different, but just as effective as Link. Nintendo couldn't figure it out though, so in combat, and especially in boss battles, you're often just encouraged or "rewarded" with the chance to just play as Link, which is a major bummer and a pretty blatant cop out, mechanically. The game has BotW/TotK's dirty stench all over it and I think that also detracts from the vibes. The title screen is beautiful, but it's silent because that's what Zelda games do now. The game has a lovely, bouncy soundtrack, but the title screen just feel dead and cold in silence. The menus, UI, and their sound effects might as well be pulled directly from those games, which doesn't make any sense because those sounds are from things that aren't present here. If you want to swap echoes, you can either scroll through a long single file list, or go to the pause menu, which is easier to navigate, but breaks up the games flow. It's not the worst thing in the world, but the ability to favorite a few echoes, or "equip" more than 1 at a time would have been most welcome. At the end of the day, the game is full of Zelda charm, and the world is a delight to explore and discover, but it's often just a chore when it gets down to the nitty gritty. I hope echoes don't become Zelda's thing if she's a playable character again, I'd love to see her branch out into a more interesting twist on that classic Zelda gameplay. But that just doesn't seem to be the experience Nintendo wants to get out the series anymore, so until then we can just stack beds I guess.