- Publisher: Nintendo
- Release Date: Sep 26, 2024
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Oct 17, 2024It is a good game, but also a game that occasionally falters and makes it painfully clear that the Switch is now the gaming equivalent of an old-timer car. Nevertheless, the graphical style masterfully disguises the Switch's technical shortcomings. The music is also incredibly good. And this game is everything its predecessor was and better. With Echoes of Wisdom, you get to play a kick-ass sequel to the previous “classic” Zelda game: Link's awakening. But that's what it is: a sequel.
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Oct 16, 2024The closest analogue to the sorcery that Zelda gets to pull off throughout this game is the Scribblenauts series, and even then, there’s something so much more special about that idea of conjuring things out of thin air in a Legend of Zelda game, let alone all the charming secret abilities of some items and how much they encourage players to try and break the game.
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Oct 4, 2024This Echoes of Wisdom is a clever subversion, but a little more intrusive than it would like to be, due to complicated mapping and a few situations inherent in this philosophy. A minor Zelda game but one whose radicalism is commendable.
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Sep 25, 2024The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom has a lot going for it. There is a lot to do and discover without being overwhelming. The visuals are vibrant and fun, and the characters are cute. Although the controls can be annoying at times, it is satisfying when you finally get past an obstacle. It will be interesting to see where Nintendo takes us for the next Zelda installment in the future.
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Sep 25, 2024The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom follows a different approach than you are used to from the series. Instead of an action/adventure game, you play a puzzle adventure. This generally works out well. The gameplay is fun, with a fairly large world in which there is a lot to do. The puzzles are interesting and sometimes quite challenging in the dungeons. What does not work so well is choosing the Echoes. At a certain point you get so many that choosing takes a lot of time, which interrupts the action for too long. The optional rifts also become a bit monotonous quite quickly. The biggest thorn in the side is the performance, with a frequently changing frame rate and resolution, which makes the game not play well. That affects the experience. If the technical side is or is being addressed, you can add a whole point to the final score.
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Sep 25, 2024Echoes of Wisdom’s best parts are the ones that break away from what’s expected. My favorite moments largely happen in Still World rifts, where I need to carve my own path through twisted snippets of Hyrule’s world using echoes. I’m attuned with Zelda most when I find a large gap I can’t pass, but realize I can get to the other side by grabbing hold of a flying tile with my bind ability and following its path. In clever puzzle platform moments like that, I feel like I'm tapping into her third of the Triforce; I’m using her wisdom to meet any challenge that arises. And I’m doing that by drawing on her connection to all things within her kingdom and communicating her eternal royalty through tangible play.
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Sep 30, 2024The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom puts a new spin on the series’ formula but never quite finds itself. I like coming up with creative ways to use as bed as much as the next person, but I’d prefer if the challenges were more consistently creative in return. Instead, things just bled together until I could have just played on autopilot. It takes more than a dress and a bed to keep things interesting.
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Sep 25, 2024It’s great to finally get to play as Zelda, but working out how to take an active without being able to fight is rather hard work.
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Sep 25, 2024Despite some ambitious ideas, beneath the surface Echoes of Wisdom is surprisingly uneven Zelda adventure. Few of its headline mechanics are utilised to their potential which means that, while enjoyable and charming, it ultimately feels less essential than other modern 2D entries.
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Oct 21, 2024The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom is the perfect demonstration that Nintendo remains the queen when it comes to renewing and twisting its franchises to offer us something that is completely new and familiar at the same time. [Recommended]
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Sep 26, 2024Echoes of Wisdom successfully combines the feel of earlier Zelda games with the new creative direction that the modern entries have been going in. By fusing the classic key item progression of older Zelda games with the more modern, player-driven problem-solving of Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, Echoes of Wisdom creates something both familiar, yet distinct from every other game in the series so far. Also, our long-suffering Hyrulian princess finally gets some time in the spotlight, and that is a welcome change of pace.
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Sep 25, 2024It’s a fun as hell game. It’s challenging and satisfying. And it fits neatly in the established mythos as another incarnation of our beloved hero(es). There’s a real sense of accomplishment in conducting a herd of boomerang-wielding Bokoblins as they pepper every enemy with attacks and then conjuring a bridge made of beds to cross an unjumpable gap. Sure, you might not be swinging the sword, but Echoes of Wisdom proves that the pen — or the bed, table, crate, or boulder — can be even mightier.
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Oct 6, 2024Mind you, we don’t love every element imported from the recent Switch games to this new installment: Maybe we’re just broken-souled weirdos who don’t properly appreciate fine cuisine, but we didn’t feel like this style of Zelda game was necessarily missing cooking—or the various design decisions attached to it, including getting food ingredients as rewards that could have been something cooler, and the fact that enemies hit like Mack trucks to justify you needing to lug around a backpack full of health-restoring smoothies. (Also, Echoes retains Breath and Tears‘ shameless willingness to let you bury yourself in a 50-entry menu as you go digging around for the one tool you desperately need.) But these feel like small quibbles, in the face of Zelda continuing to execute one of the most fascinating re-inventions in gaming: Transforming from a series where you basically always knew what you were going to get, into some of Nintendo’s most aggressively weird design in decades. All that, and it looks cute as a button, too.
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Sep 25, 2024After 35 years of lending her name to the iconic franchise, I wanted Zelda’s first game to be a little bit more worthy of her intelligence and her strength.
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