The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Released: September 26th, 2024
Developer: Grezzo, Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Systems: Switch
How are you going to cross the gap in front of you? Do you want to build a bridge out of beds, create a path of floating water and swim across, or summon a flying monster to use as a glider after jumping off a similarly summoned box?
How do you want to fight an enemy? Create a tougher one to bully it or one that fires projectiles from afar? You could make a wind machine that’ll blow it into a hole, a bombfish that triggers when attacked, or a good old-fashioned carnivorous plant. Then again, you might want to spend some magic to just become a swordsman and slash at the thing yourself.
Objectively, the correct answer to the second question is Octoroks. Lots of Octoroks that you can replace as easily as they can die. Pelt every fucking problem you have with rocks spat from the pumping mouths of squishy orange cuties. It’s the best choice until you find the one thing that beats it - better Octoroks that spit better rocks. What I’m saying is an incontestable fact.
Or, y’know, pick one of the many other options. You do you, but I’m all-in on the fantasy octopi.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is just as much a puzzle game as an action-adventure, but its central gimmick lends itself to so much creative problem solving that any given solution is just one of a ton. Whatever an obstacle’s intended method of progression is, there’s likely a dozen ways of doing it.
I’m only half-joking about the Octoroks, by the way. Octoroks have carried me through many battles, and they’re just so adorably squeaky I legitimately only stopped using them because I found the higher level ones. Echoes of Wisdom made me appreciate them to such a point they’ve become my new favorite Hylian monsters.
Sorry to the Poes: you’re out, Octoroks are in.
So this is the Zelda game where you can Finally Play As Zelda(™), and because Nintendo is Nintendo, that means they need entirely different gameplay in order to justify it. That’s certainly what Eiji Aonuma has a history of thinking, despite what a badass the rapier-wielding princess was in Hyrule Warriors.
Tempting as it is to be a snarky bitch about things (more so than I just was), I can’t deny that in this case the producer’s weird hang-up about female protagonists has led to such impressive design that Echoes of Wisdom is now one of my top installments to the series.
Hyrule is once again under threat, this time facing a series of rifts that are opening up, trapping people in another dimension, and occasionally spitting out evil doppelgängers of the abductees. Series protagonist Link is among the victims, leaving Zelda to quit her job as a damsel and do the legwork for herself.
Teaming up with a glow-in-the-dark bollock named Tri, the princess explores Hyrule in a “classic” format with a camera perspective and art style borrowed from the Link’s Awakening remake. While I acknowledge the popularity of the “Wilds Era” games, Echoes is exactly my kind of Zelda game, with old school dungeons and an overworld as opposed to an open one. I’m glad we get to have both types.
While Zelda’s solo outing is reminiscent of such games as A Link to the Past, her method of engagement is quite different and very clever.
As I suggested earlier, it’s all about magicking stuff up to deal with everything from navigation to fighting. A large number of environmental objects can be copied, saved, and reproduced as “Echoes” - essentially physical Xeroxes - which are used to tackle any hurdle thrown your way.
You can summon beds and stick them together to create your own platforms, you can make pots and hide in them, you can even take an enemy like a Flying Tile and use it as a hoverboard. These are just simple ideas - you may use any combination of this stuff in amusingly convoluted ways.
As well as creating your own stuff, Tri can be used as a fantastical tractor beam, latching onto objects and allowing Zelda to move them around as if by telekinesis. This applies to many enemies as well - I can’t tell you how pleased I was the second I realized I could yank Piranhas out of water and leave them flopping helplessly on land.
Naturally, Tri’s latching can work with Echoes to add even more creative solutions. You don’t just pull things, you can also have things pull you. Opportunities for experimentation are plentiful.
Zelda doesn’t physically fight as herself, but any monster that gets killed can be copied as readily as a boulder. Even here, there’s a variety of deployment methods - one enjoyable tactic is “shooting” faster creatures like projectiles, repeatedly conjuring them as they deal contact damage to the target.
Some enemies have specific defenses that require more than brute force. Using creatures who can outmaneuver agile monsters, damage armor, or fight underwater will be a crucial part of fighting, lending a minor hint of strategy. It helps to consider positioning as well, such as placing your precious Octoroks to attack a shielded opponent from behind.
Only one real drawback presents itself with summoned allies - they’re dumber than a pumpkin full of cement. Rudimentary AI means monsters wandering into pits or lobbing boomerangs into obstacles as they single-mindedly attack their opponents.
There’s no magic meter restricting how many successive times you create things. The only limit is a points system that governs how many are active at once, with each Echo having its own cost. Simple items like tables are one point while a strong late-game enemy may be five. Should you exceed your points, your earliest summoned Echoes will poof out of existence.
Beyond this fair regulation? Do what you like.
As soon as a monster dies, you may replace it immediately. If you can make enough platforms to bypass a hazard, that hazard is nullified. With creative thinking, not only can you solve puzzles in multiple ways, you can sometimes bypass them entirely.
You can come up with game-breaking ideas, and that’s honestly wonderful. What makes Echoes of Wisdom so enjoyable is that the people who made it simply don’t mind. They could have added more restrictions to make the game “harder” but instead they let imagination triumph over arbitrary limitations. Echoes of Wisdom places fun far above challenge, and for a game all about using Octoroks as rifle squads, it was absolutely the right call.
The only truly limited ability is Zelda’s “Swordsman” form, which allows her to play like Link and is governed by a magic meter. It’s a useful tool in an emergency or if you want to quickly dispatch an enemy with conventional attacks, but honestly the less direct method of combat is so engrossing I often forgot all about it. I mostly used Not-Link as an occasional timesaver since he jumps higher.
When it comes to monsters, Zelda has a ludicrous number of options. From basic Keese to imposing Darknuts, there’s a huge menagerie with varyingly effective choices, and some of them can make combat as delightfully broken as puzzles. Once Tri has leveled up enough to have more points, you can bring veritable swarms to bear on your enemies, or just pop out a Level 3 Lizalfos and laugh as it tridents the fuck out of almost anything.
One of the coolest things about Echoes is how it brings together so many creatures from across the Legend of Zelda series. While there’s a host of expected monsters like Moblins and Tektites, you’ll see enemies that haven’t been in a game for decades, with some notable returns being Deku Babas, ReDeads, and Spiny Beetles. From the iconic to the obscure, there’s loads to fight and then command.
Older monsters even appear alongside the ones that largely replaced them or share similar roles in different games - the presence of ReDeads, for example, doesn’t mean Gibdos are excluded. Likewise, Poes and Ghinis both turn up. In this way, Echoes feels like a celebration of the series’ enemy roster.
This does bring me to one of the biggest problems - with so many objects and monsters, you amass a vast list of options and will need to scroll along a lengthy horizontal menu to select them. While you can sort stuff by such categories as type, last used, etcetera, you can’t filter anything out, and there are a bunch of Echoes that are either redundant or worthless. The longer you play, the longer your scroll becomes. Without the ability to fully customize your quick selections, summoning specific Echoes becomes an increasingly inelegant process.
While we’re pointing out less thrilling parts, the overall story isn’t particularly interesting. Tri and the rifts are a rather dull addition to Hyrule’s lore, there’s a distinct lack of decent villains for most of the plot, and subplots revolve around tired old tropes. An evil impostor is misinforming a Gerudo leader, two squabbling Zoras must learn to work together, there’s a Goron who needs to be his own person, yadda yadda yadda.
There is an exception to my criticism - as well as the prodigal monsters, the Deku make their triumphant return to Hyrule after almost twenty years, cute as ever and genuinely funny. They’ve become obsessed with “cotton candy” made from spider webs of sinister origin, and they have a number of charming sidequests to boot. I love their childishness and how “bumpkin” is their go-to insult.
Deku are among my favorite creatures in the series. I love their designs, and I’m sad they were sidelined entirely for the Koroks. That they’re back for Echoes of Wisdom, and such a highlight, pleases me immensely.
Throughout the game you’ll run into a specific type of Deku, the Business Scrub. These Scrubs run smoothie stands and mix materials into drinks that heal and provide temporary bonuses to such traits as swimming speed and fire resistance. It’s a very simplified cooking system, mixing two items to get a smoothie, and its importance is lessened by the ability to regain hearts by sleeping in bed Echoes, but the passives can be useful in specific circumstances.
You get other passive boosts via wearable accessories and outfits. Only one accessory can be worn until you buy slots from a Great Fairy, which means you’ll likely swap them out a fair bit. This creates an annoying issue where you have to manually unequip what you’re wearing before equipping a new thing, since automatic swapping isn’t possible.
It’s not as big an issue once you get more slots, but it’s bloody aggravating for a good portion of the game, especially if you don’t find the Fairy early on.
As far as outfits go, I would like more of them. They’re very rare rewards for sidequests, the majority of which have disappointing awards like smoothie ingredients. While some of the quests are quite clever, such as using Echoes to get a fragile grilled fish from one place to another, it’s a shame the result is often something like a few bits of cold cactus.
Speaking of fish, you’re able to copy certain foods that distract monsters. It’s something I barely ever did and never needed to do, but it speaks to the fun this game has with its central concept.
And that really is the word I keep coming back to - fun.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom gives you a massive bag of tricks and allows you to apply the contents so freely you can legitimately bust the gameplay. Where this would ruin some games, here it just makes things more entertaining. Using your own creativity to solve problems in unintended ways makes you feel damn clever, but the ability to do the unintended is, in its own way, the intention.
It’s a game that gets a huge amount of mileage from what could’ve been a flimsy gimmick, and it wants its players to do the same.
While it likely won’t be remembered to the same degree as “bigger” Zelda installments, it’ll absolutely go down as a classic to me. Echoes of Wisdom is brilliant in its creativity and versatility, one of the best in the series as far as I’m concerned.
Also, Octoroks. Octoroks for days.
9/10
