4/5 ★ – beemancer's review of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

Echoes of Wisdom is a game that I was really excited for, but I also had a lot of reservations. The Echo system is so cool, but I was super worried that you'd be able to solve most of your problems with a mountain of beds. Shockingly, though, I found the game presented me with plenty of circumstances where the bed wasn't good enough. The Echoes all had their own strengths and weaknesses, and while I didn't find myself using every Echo, my arsenal was pretty vast. Most of your progression throughout the game comes from finding new goodies to copy, and it works well. It's not quite what you're used to with 2D Zeldas, but this is a good evolution for it. I'm gonna try to remain spoiler-free, but it was exciting to get new types of building materials, mobility options, and even more powerful enemies to summon. You also get a few new actual abilities throughout the game, but they're mostly front-loaded. The game is super cute, obviously because of the absolutely adorable graphical style, but also the mannerisms of the characters. It's probably fine to mention that the Deku exist, because I'm gonna complain about it later, and they are just the silliest little guys. The musical score is always a highlight for Zelda, and this one absolutely sells it. This might be my favorite Zelda overworld theme of all time, and the competition is fierce. The Eldin dungeon theme also really stuck out for me, but the music was great the whole way through. The game was a good length. Even the side quests were compelling so I found myself doing most of them, which is pretty high praise. This is nowhere near as enormous as Tears of the Kingdom, but I will point out that it's also incredibly dense. You don't waste much time traveling through empty areas. There's a ton of content packed into the relatively small Hyrule. This resonates well with me, the game's graphical style worked well, but it's not picturesque, so long travel times through Hyrule field would've gotten old very quickly. The dungeons were top notch. You'd think that with all the tools you have at your fingertips, the puzzles would be a "build your own solution (out of beds)", but there's just tons of places where beds don't work (fire, underwater, tight spaces, etc.). There were plenty of noodle-scratchers, where I had to stop and think what I had that could actually solve the problem. At the same time, when I watch others play, some of their answers are a little different than mine. They really found the sweet spot between having a puzzle be so rigid that you get stuck and having it be too open where you can repeat the same solution over and over. I'm always surprised how creative Nintendo can get with dungeon layouts and progression, they never seem to run out of ideas. Now, a few issues. First, the combat. I didn't find it that compelling to summon echoes to do the work for me. Most fights were quite easy, because you could focus on dodging while your summons did all the work. Yes, there's a sword meter, but it was pretty limited for most of the game because there's so few ways to refill it. I wish Zelda had some magic tricks and attacks of her own instead of the sword mode, because it was more of a fall back than a new, interesting mechanic. Combat was often so tedious I would just twirl past most enemies, because even if it's easy it just took too long to wait for the AI to handle it, and I didn't want to waste sword meter. It wasn't always bad though, and sometimes it's funny to plead with your octorok to kill the goddamn moblin that's standing in the way of your platforming. There was a very good variety of monsters (this is core to the Echoes mechanic, of course) and the bosses were very good. Second, and this feels like a miss because BotW and TotK had the same problem, but 20 rupees is not a reward. I should also not find a pumpkin or a stick of butter in a treasure chest. These are not compelling. There were a lot of rewards worth seeking, but if the number of chests exceeds the number of good rewards, think of more good rewards or get rid of some of the chests. Last, and this is a bit meta, but I'm kind of sick of gorons, zora, the deku, etc. Don't get me wrong, the individual characters were great across the board. But Hyrule has been getting very rigid lately. There's always a Gerudo Valley, an Eldin Volcano, a Faron Wetlands, etc. There's always been a lot of similarities between Zelda games, but for the last few decades the map layout has been kind of predictable. I'd like to see them experiment more: new regions, new species, new legends. Echoes didn't really do much of that (although it does help fill in some gaps on existing lore questions). Echoes of Wisdom was an enjoyable experience that most gamers should enjoy. It was neither too hard, nor was it ever boring. I can't think of a single time where I felt really frustrated (although there were a few setbacks when I was trying to build a bridge or something and so jackass keese would fuck it up, etc.). It was a smooth ride. I think this is a great direction for the franchise. It felt familiar, both in gameplay and maybe too much in lore, but did a lot of things different, and it just worked. Also, I would love to hit this up randomized, even if I have to commit crimes to do it.