In my first few hours playing Echoes of Wisdom, every new enemy I stumbled across gave me a familiar thrill: Ooh, I haven’t seen that one yet! I can’t wait to have its power!
I’d flick through my Echoes, discerning the best one to fight the newbie. A Spark defeated a Hydrozol, a team of Ignizols set a Mothula on fire. And when it came to fighting the Electric Wizzrobe, my immediate thought was Do I have a ground-type Echo? before I reminded myself that I was not playing a Pokémon game.
Echoes and Pokémon have a lot in common: the same ‘gotta catch ‘em all’ sentiment, unique designs, elemental properties, punny names, and even the way players have their favourites on high rotation. But Echoes are used for much more than battle – in fact, they’re strongest in puzzles and travel. Echoes of Wisdom takes one mechanic and makes the whole game work around that. Pokémon already has that mechanic; it just needs to make the whole game work around it.
Game Freak’s recent attempts to add shiny new things often ignore Pokémon’s best asset: Pokémon.
In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, boss battles made trainers become third-person shooters and get hurt but not heal. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Gyms tasked us with challenges like rolling a giant olive around. I didn’t love these mechanics and I was disappointed that they kept my Pocket Monsters in my pocket. In contrast, Echoes are in every aspect of Echoes of Wisdom – and it excels for that reason.
By taking inspiration from Grezzo, Game Freak could bring a fresh take to Pokémon that leverages its established assets. As our review says, ‘Echoes of Wisdom is a near-perfect marriage of the old and the new’.
Whenever I encountered a puzzle, I browsed the Echoes in my Notebook, often devising multiple solutions. I’d love to see this sort of thing come to Pokémon: puzzles that you can tackle using the monsters’ unique shapes and abilities – opening up the possibilities for gameplay.
I admit, Pokémon doesn’t have puzzles in the truest sense. Older titles did have mazes, locked doors and floor switches, though these have faded over time. It’s unfortunate because the monsters, with their various shapes and types, fit so well into creative puzzle-solving. Use Onyx to crush rocks, or to form stairs. Have Emboar light torches. Transport items over water with Gastrodon. Get Yamper to help you sniff out (hidden) items, and Diglett to dig for them. You would get the satisfaction of not just solving the PokéPuzzles, but solving it creatively, with whichever Pokémon are in your party.
Adventuring across the overworld can be its own puzzle too. Exploring Hyrule and seeing a new Echo or Heart Piece often had me whipping up Old Bed bridges, Platbooms, or Crows to reach it. It also made me consider how Echoes react or thrive in different environments. When a Drippitune is present, for example, summoning a fire Echo is pointless.
In previous Game Freak entries, Pokémon have been restricted in the overworld. You only have a few (or in Scarlet and Violet, just one) that help you fly, swim, or climb. Otherwise, they mostly stay in their Pokéballs until a battle. But their forms and abilities lend themselves so organically to traversing the world. Rather than being limited to certain Pokémon or HMs (as with previous titles), imagine climbing trees with Mankey, or getting Spoink to bounce you up a cliff.
You could use them for stealth, sending decoy Pokémon to distract enemies as you sneak around them. Or have Petilil send out a puff of sleeping powder to put them to bed. Elemental properties could work out of battle, too – walk with a Charmander to stay warm in snowy areas or use Klefki to unlock doors. Mechanics like this would expand on the HM moves of old, but also allow free exploration.
As with Echoes of Wisdom, the game would encourage players to catch other Pokémon in order to reach certain areas. You might see a super high cliff and grind to evolve your Corvisquire so you can fly higher to reach it, or chance upon deep water and then hunt down a Dragon Scale for your Seadra. This fits nicely with Game Freak’s recent entries having the creatures roam the overworld, and makes sense in the Pokémon universe. It just needs to be enhanced a little — it could be super effective.
The possibilities for an Echoes of Wisdom-esque Pokémon game are endless because Echoes of Wisdom kind of feels like a Pokémon game. As Legends Z-A development is apparently “already finished”, I don’t imagine the next instalment will be much like what I’ve described. Still, I hope at some point Game Freak consider the incredible opportunity they have. Making a Pokémon game like the latest Zelda would evolve the format while using our beloved creatures in ways that feel natural.
There are over 120 Echoes in Echoes of Wisdom, but there are over 1,000 Pokémon. Imagine what Game Freak — and what we — could do with them.