Alternative title: Bring Your Wisdom to The Echoing World
This is yet another subjective review by Midnight233 (Zhang Jingzhi).

WARNING: This article may contain scattered spoilers, browse at your own risk!

Introduction

The Legend of Zelda - Echoes of Wisdom (referred as TLoZ and EoW below) is a action-strategy-focused 3rd person (top down) role-playing game released by Nintendo, exclusively on Nintendo Switch. It's the newest main entry of The Legend of Zelda series, which story-wise typically feature Link the warrior as the protagonist and Ganon as the antagonist in action-heavy role-playing games.

Gameplay

The general navigation means and perspectives of the problem-solving process in EoW is radically different comparing to the earlier entry with the same set of technologies---The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening. It seems to be largely influenced by its unconventional storytelling bit: featuring Zelda as the protagonist instead of Link. Princesses (at least Zelda here) don't typically wield a sword and hold a shield. If strength is not something you can rely on, naturally you would want to exercise what makes human-beings prosper and sustain - Wisdom.

However, much of the game's core mechanics remain the same: You follow one big goal, and the big goal breaks itself down to smaller ones. Collect heart containers, or four pieces for another heart in your health bar. Beat monsters down or salvage the world for rupees (Apparently those shiny crystals grow from grass!) And spend them in stores for consumables and power-ups.

Personally, I consider this kind of indirect handling in RPGs can make wonders when properly designed and engineered. Introduction of more tactics is almost always a positive gesture.

Magic Wand

As the biggest selling point of this product, Tri-Rod is a magic wand given to Zelda by her little tooth-shaped fairy homie Tri. With this vibrant-coloured staff, Zelda is granted 2 amazing abilities.

Memorise & Recall

One is to remember a subset of things and monsters (those with an eye) and duplicate them (as Echoes) at her disposal, constrained by the amount of little triangles needed and available, seen as the tail of Tri. Echoes come in different forms, thus help Zelda in various ways.

Notably the bed is of half block height (the initial jump height of our princess, which is honestly impressive for a mortal) and 2 blocks wide. With the physics of EoW (which is really Minecraft physics), you can stack beds on top of each other to form stairs, so long as the first one sits on a solid surface. Another example is sea urchin (those black spiky balls you see in Super Mario games), which can be spawned right above enemies' head and foster quick damages. When you are approaching the grand finale, you can get some really powerful Echoes, like clouds that really sit on thin air and Lynel, the same big elite enemy that appear in previous games, now at your evil disposal.

It's worthwhile to mention that automatons, a non-mandatory mechanic, though conceptually has no connection to that splendid wand, can be counted as some special "echoes" that require more manual intervention to work, and have more special features.

Move & Follow

Another feature of the staff is to move stuffs, conventional ones or giant ones that are typically out of Zelda's control. The peculiar part is that the item "snapped" to Zelda follows strictly her movements, including jumping. This is used throughout the game for many puzzles, some of which are mandatory.

The "follow" feature is the exact opposite where Zelda follows strictly the movements of object instead, when an extra button is held. Particularly this is also used in some dungeons, where Zelda can observe periodic movement of certain objects, like a moving platform. However, this can also come in handy outside of puzzles, and it's often overlooked. For example, Zelda can follow the movement of a flying echo she summoned and move to previous unreachable places.

Limited Link

This game is after all a Legend of Zelda game. If no raw action is packed into it (except for the spinning ability), it may lost some of its colours. That's it! The old sword swinging, jumping, arrow shooting and bomb throwing action is still present in this game. However, Nintendo added a little twist to the formula: It's time-limited. You have a little blue gauge at the top-left side that indicates how much more you can do as the crazy-looking Link. You can collect might crystals throughout the world (or given on the finish of some dungeons) to either extend that time or strengthen Link's abilities. That's all a little classic TLoZ stuff while you play as Zelda.

Smoothies

You would expect some forms of an item combination system in modern TLoZ games, and EoW is no exception. But this time you combine fruits, various dessert ingredients and some bizarre stuffs to make smoothies. Almost every kind of smoothie give you some kinds of power-up. If not, then the amount of hearts it gives ought to be generous. If used wisely (and not overly conservative), these little drinks can make seemingly hard battles a breeze.

Mini-Games

Newer TLoZ games are never complete without games-in-game. As these are, literally, mini-games, you should not expect something like those in the Yakuza series where some of them can be a title of their own. Mini-games in EoW don't invent new mechanics for you, they are all clever usages of the existing ones.

The Mango Rush game involves careful control of Zelda and timely usage of echoes, and Acorn Gathering requires you to figure out a quick way to approach given locations. Flag Race is, literally, race with checkpoints. It's on horses of course. Notably, Slumber Dojo, despite the funny name, is a set of fully-fledged raids. Some of them comes with various restrictions to spice them up.

Narrative

Zelda takes the lead

Readers with experience of previous TLoZ games may know that this is the first The Legend of Zelda game that actually have Zelda as an gameplay-wise core character (not counting the Hyrule Warrior games), we are not even talking about Zelda as a protagonist. The twist in story makes a huge difference.

First of all, Zelda becomes mute like Link because of this.

As already mentioned in the Gameplay section, this have implications on what our main character can do, and how it solves problems. Whether Nintendo producers would think about more games like this in the future, this is absolutely a breath of wildness into the series. As the sub-title implies, a large part of gameplay in EoW relies heavily on your wise usage of echoes.

Story-wise, this change of identity shows in many aspects. An notably one is that Zelda is (at least theoretically) a royal family member rather than Link as a civilian. Then many, usually Hyrule civilians, often naturally know about her and pay utmost respect. This, albeit probably unintended, signifies the class differences. I would not comment on whether this is good, but it is certainly a particular spot that make EoW stand out from other instalments.

Witness the change

One of the best thing you can expect from a long elaborate story is the gradual change of some characters. Particularly in this game, Tri the fairy accompanies Zelda (the elf) throughout the game, and inevitable it takes some influences in from her. Modelled as an alien creature with a mission, Tri originally do not understand much of emotional stuffs, and all it wants is to drive the rifts (and the void) away and restore the world, thus fulfilling its (or their) mission. During the adventure it helped Zelda's cause, much for its own, but gradually it starts to understand what the wise princess is wandering about. And at the very last moment, when it is leaving, it finally takes in everything and comforted Zelda. For those loving character development, that's the treat for ya.

Lighthearted comfort

Comparing to more adult-facing TLoZ games like Tears of The Kingdom, Breath of The Wild or Twilight Princess, EoW is more like its same-engine sibling Link's Awakening, featuring a rather lighthearted adventure that you don't see real violence. I can imagine that its art style contributed to the tone, and certainly you won't want to see cute figures die in front of you by unpleasant means. This is not a bad thing, though. Players' burden to dive in is lighter too. And who doesn't like a treat of cute character summoning its way to the world?

Art Styles

Delicate 3D Visuals

As mentioned before, EoW's visual brings many features to the game, generally in good ways. Cute characters are adorable, animations are smooth as silk and the special effects are splendid, all while not demanding much from your poor eyes.

While Zelda (among others) can walk around 360 degrees to their liking, the objects are largely placed on the map in same-size tiles, it's not clear if it's technically so though. The sometimes overly-unified layered geometry adds a touch of classic (or retro, whatever you wanna call it). Also it contributes to the less-demanding nature of the game.

Attractive Music

Typical Nintendo games (like those from other big Japanese publishers) feature pieces stylish and attractive. Comparing to Breath of The Wild's often rather subtle and ambient-like ones, which are all too normal for big open world 3D games, tracks from EoW looks much like what you would expect from older games: big and sometimes intrusive, act on their own as a part of the narrative.

As for the tone of music, it reflects the lighthearted nature. Or you can say that this contributes to the overall atmosphere. I would say that it's itself a part of the entire circle of cuteness. Such music often has the positive side that most, if not all, audiences will happily take it in regardless of their diverse preferences. One thing is that this game doesn't use many recurring themes (in-this-game), so you are less probably to associate some motifs to certain ideas.

Technology

Models, Textures and Shaders

Things you can't really expect in a Nintendo Switch (NS) game are many. Among them the most painful one is breathtaking graphics. However there is one catch: You are not really seeing how technically complex the scene is. What players are really seeing is the perceived complexity. It's precisely why Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown could have a port on NS and look largely alike its home console counterparts. It's clever models, textures and shaders in action.

If it's not feasible to have more, then it's time to ask for more use wisely. One of the source of cuteness in EoW is the smooth surfaces and edges, which results in rather less demand in triangles and easier texturing and shading. All of these are accompanied by the layered flat overworld and steep-angled top-down camera that prevents you from seeing stuffs faraway. The demand for CPU resources (which is precisely the weakest part of NS) may also be lowered comparing to games like Breath of The Wild by using simple pseudo physics rather than full-blown ones.

3D-engineered 2D game

EoW is really a 2D game conceptually, like A Link To The Past and Link's Awakening (GB). But it's made in a 3D game engine that supports many features that wouldn't look good in 2D like fancy lighting, special effects, shadows and depth of field. The layered maps where you can jump to higher grounds or fall down is a nice touch, one of the things that would be confusing at best to implement in 2D. These are all done while preserving the precise movements you get from a 2D game. There are side-view platformer maps too, mostly caves.

Sub-par Performance

Although with much optimisation in place, this game feels inconsistent in terms of performance. EoW runs in 60 FPS (or at least way higher than 30) most of the time but a sudden change of it can be observed in more demanding areas, like villages and towns where more people can be seen. I felt that it's not the best solution a NS game by Nintendo could offer, and a consistent 60 FPS in such games with simpler-looking (may of may not technically so) graphics is somewhat important. Failing that is probably not a deal breaker since you 80% of the time do not wander near a town, but it's still annoying here or there.

EoW's render resolution goes noticeably low at some point, where some part of Zelda's model is no longer clearly intelligible. With a OLED version I was using to play it's supposed to be less noticeable (because of the sub-pixels), but the results are really unpleasant. I suspect that either there is no super resolution method in use because of the overhead, or the tuning is really awful to the point that it doesn't seem that better than simple filtering. That's surprising to be seen with so many kinds of supposedly optimisation-friendly techniques in use.

With all that left to be desired, it's also apparent that NS is choking with this game. It runs HOT, and I meant it. I suspect that the game is not well optimised, like those Pokemon titles out there.

Summary

Despite the sub-optimal performance from time to time, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is quite a delightful entry. With all that Zelda (literally) experience you get, all that amazing echoes that help you fight every enemy and reach every spot, all that cute figures and all that hot music, it could as well be your most distinct adventure in Hyrule!

VERDICT --- Overall exceptional, rarer but pronounced problems
REVISION --- Original version, Y:2024 M:10 D:27