Was Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom too easy?
Does Zelda's solo outing keep the training wheels on too long
When I first saw the gameplay footage for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom it certainly had me intrigued. Here we have the first mainstream Zelda title where you actually get to play as the Princess herself. In replacement of Links trusty sword and shield is a magical rod capable of conjuring ‘echoes’. The echoes are essentially replicas of objects and enemies found in the world. They range from simple inanimate objects like boxes and stones to iconic enemies such as a Lynel or Moblin.
Zelda makes her way through Hyrule using this new tool and aided by newfound companion ‘Tri’. The jist is that Link himself has been absorbed into the ‘Still World’. Essentially a dark and twisted mirrored version of Hyrule, similar to what we’ve seen in previous titles like A Link to the Past.
Zelda’s quest this time around is to uncover the mystery surrounding the rifts appearing around Hyrule and work alongside Tri to close them down and restore peace to the land. The actual story is more complex, with a few twists and turns here and there but i’ll keep this review relatively spoiler free.
The gameplay of Echoes of Wisdom is a real significant shift from any other Zelda game i’ve played previously. At first, you cannot directly engage with enemies. Instead you can either conjure up rocks to pick up and lob, or clone enemies themselves to fight alongside you. It’s not until later when you find Link’s sword, that you can temporarily use his power and fight with a sword and shield albeit for a limited amount of time.
Therefore, for the vast majority of the game you are really reliant on creating echoes of various enemies you come across in the world in order to fight for you. Whilst it’s an interesting concept on paper, the reality is that you create a couple of monsters and just sort of hang around as an innocent bystander until the fight’s over. For a character as iconic as Zelda, who has also been known as the warrior Shiek in other Zelda games, she felt pretty vulnerable and unable to hold her own. You also feel disconnected from the battles as you’re just waiting around for them to finish. For me personally, I didn’t particularly enjoy this gameplay shift though I applaud them for trying to do something different.
Where creating echoes is fun is exploring the world itself. In that sense it feels more like Tears of the Kingdom where you can use all manner of objects to solve puzzles rather than relying on a single scripted solution. I feel this is where Nintendo is taking the series generally and, for the most part, i’m on board with it.
Graphically, the game appears to use the same engine as the recent Links Awakening remaster. Almost a Playdoh, cartoonish art style, which is a natural evolution of the 2D Zelda titles. It works really well however I would say the framerate issues were slightly jarring.
My main issue with the game is not necessarily the divergence in the gameplay mechanics or even the switch of main character. The biggest gripe I have is the difficulty. It is perhaps the only Zelda game where I never saw the Game Over screen and if I did, it was probably because I was AFK. Zelda has the ability to recharge her Health at any time by creating an echo of a bed and resting. So whenever you find yourself low on hearts there’s a pretty quick remedy, if you run out of smoothies (this games equivalent of potions). Also, as you never directly engage in a battle, you don’t tend to take damage. However, it’s not just the combat I found lacked challenge, it’s the puzzles and dungeons themselves.
I’m not sure what it is about the Zelda games which followed Ocarina of Time but I don’t think any of them have ever really challenged me mentally. I probably had one or two moments in the whole game which were real head scratchers. I found I often solved puzzles by chance, throwing a load of echoes together at random until something worked. Apart from one boss, the rest of them went down far too easy.
It’s a real shame as I ended the game feeling a little flat. There was no sense of accomplishment. It felt more that it was just a tick box that i’d finished the most recent game in the series. For me, i’ve always enjoyed playing Zelda because of the dungeons and puzzles that I had to crack and solve. The combat and exploration came second for me. I have fond memories of trying to work out the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time, or the Eagle’s Tower in Link’s Awakening. So what happened? Is it just me and i’m getting too good at these types of games now or is there a shift to make them more simplistic?
In a bid to make the games more accessible I feel the balance has been lost and they’ve gone too far in the wrong direction. If the game had ramped up in difficulty towards the end I wouldn’t have minded so much but I didn’t even die on the last boss. Same can be said for the end of Tears of the Kingdom.
I hope that Nintendo re-introduces some difficulty and challenge back into the Zelda series because unfortunately I feel at the moment they don’t quite hit the mark. Let me know what you thought of the most recent game?
