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.
Comments 30
I think what it needs is more time. Pokemon is trying so hard to be a yearly franchise when it doesn't need to be. Game Freak does appear to be learning that, though. I could be wrong
Echoes of Wisdom is Pokemon, but actually good.
"Ekans" of Wisdom?
Bruh... Chimechos of Wisdom!
I'm only a few hours into Echoes of Wisdom and hadn't made the "gotta catch em all" connection. I like the idea, Pokemon has become disinteresting to me, I loved it growing up so I'd be happy to see an awesome come back.
I'd love a Pokémon spin-off - how I wish we saw more of those nowadays like it used to be back in the day - with such mechanics which are also reminiscent of Pokémon Ranger, but I don't think you could add them to a mainline one without drastically changing its core mechanics and gameplay loop and so alienating their playerbase... which is the exact same issue others and I pointed out when another article here on Nintendo Life suggested sidelining if not straight up removing turn-based combat in favor of the social sim elements in Fire Emblem (https://www.nintendolife.com/features/soapbox-fire-emblemrs-future-may-not-be-in-turn-based-combat)!
"Monster Sanctuary" kind of does this and it rules! Golden Sun is one of my favorite RPGs because of how it also includes puzzles, and I'd love to see Pokemon include this better again - even if only for optional content or something. (If they're worried about it being exclusionary to kids)
@Pokemish Contrary to popular opinion, it’s ‘Onix’, not ‘Onyx’.
I do like the idea of a Pokemon game with more interesting puzzles. No reason to need HMs if any fire move can light a torch, any ice move can make frozen blocks, any electric move can provide a current, any water move can fill a bucket, etc. etc. I'd hazard that introducing these elements wouldn't necessarily require a complete reinvention of the gameplay loop in any way, either, since it's really just increasing the number of HMs, without needing more HMs. Also would take minimal effort, compared to a full Echoes-of-Wisdom-level implementation.
Really, Pokemon could do so much with just some small changes. Better environmental art and design would be my first choice, though.
I agree with the points of criticism regarding the latest Pokémon entries. They should just stick to the basics and make the core gameplay experience as good as they can.
Please, just drop all the unnecessary gimmicks such as Gigantamaxing and Terastallization.
I hate Pikachu so that picture disgusts me
@8bit-Man Ya terastallization (or however you spell it) made me really not want to try the newer games. I didn't play any of the 3DS games but the mega evolutions seemed cool enough, not sure how it affected gameplay but overall maybe just don't do any of that haha.
Or from Palworld. Or from pretty much any indie developers that put their hearts into their work instead of slacking off and producing such disheartening entries
It's been a while since I played it, but wasn't a large component of Pokemon Ranger using your Pokemon's unique abilities to get past obstacles? That was pretty cool from what I remember.
It was also done lightly in older games with HMs, as mentioned in the article. I have the unpopular opinion that HMs were a good thing - just executed poorly. Basically I think if you simply decouple them from the Pokemon's moveset then you get rid of 90% of people's issue with them. But if, as opposed to what was done in SuMo and SwSh, you still assign them to your own Pokemon, you still have the added touch of it feeling like your companions are helping you through the story (rather than some random Pokemon/item that was gifted to you).
Sadly, Pokémon is in more of a "I want to be the very best" in its design and wants trainers/players to care more about stats, natures and battle viability over all else with their formula. This is so they can get more people involved socially and competitively instead of creating a truly great video game.
Often times, they end up forgetting to put the actual game part together in the mainline series, which should really be the most important aspect of the entire project. I find myself caring less and less with every entry, until Legends Arceus showed up. That spark burned out quickly when Scarlet and Violet released within the same year though. sigh
@JohnnyMind The lack of spin-offs is also really hurting the series. More spin-offs would allow more time in-between main game releases, but all we get now are terrible mobile games. The entire Switch Gen we only got 1 new spin-off (New Snap), 1 spin-off port (Pokken DX), and 1 spin-off Remaster (Rescue Team DX), the rest were F2P/Mobile. Which is insane because even excluding things that couldn't/wouldn't happen again like Ranger and Colosseum, there's plenty of things they could be doing as full or budget releases, and just don't for some reason.
@shiftbarackyeaugh That's Nintendo and TPC pushing them to release more games so they can make more merch. I'm certain Game Freak wishes they had more time so they could actually finish their games, but they're under contract to deliver under specific timeframes.
@JohnnyMind I missed this article the first time around. That's ridiculous! The perfect Fire Emblem, if you ask me, was Awakening. I really miss when you could just select things from a menu between battles instead of having to run through a mostly empty hub world from activity to activity.
Arceus was the first Pokemon game I'd played in years (aside from the MOBA), and I really enjoyed the non traditional approach it took. I haven't played Echoes of Wisdom yet (want to), but putting some of these concepts into a Pokemon game could make for a very exciting approach to the franchise.
@shoeses Yeah, as much as I think that the mobile games have their purpose (other than clearly being quite profitable) they're certainly no replacement for the console spin-offs and I agree that it's one of the factors hurting the series.
@Bret It's a matter of taste as several others, me included to an extent, do enjoy the social sim aspects, hubs etc. (but at the same time I enjoyed also games in the series that didn't have those, absolutely including Awakening), but when present they should keep on being something that reinforces the core Fire Emblem gameplay, not almost if not completely replace it.
All of that sounds great, which is unfortunately why it will never happen. It's not that GF is allergic to good ideas or lack the passion, but these ideas just necessitate a development time that the franchise as a whole refuses to grant. Too many new plushes, cards, TV episodes, etc need to be released. And none of this is helped by the seeming stubbornness of GF to just expand their development team.
That said, what someone else mentioned about using spin-offs like they used to do (Ranger, Dungeon, Colosseum, Snap, etc) would be a great way to pad out time between games. Pokemon is such a great, wildly loved franchis and its just always a shame to see so many of our dreams for it, even ones that are near industry standard in other franchises, remain unfulfilled.
In addition to excellent & surprising points made in this article, EoW could also be a template for how Pokemon could return to a top-down 2D(ish) format.
I think the core battle mechanic of Pokemon is what will always make the game. I wouldn't like to see an Echoes style mechanism for beating and catching Pokemon. It nullifies the trainers and gym leaders.
But I would like to see their abilities in the overworld to climb, fly, swim, and reach new areas. That way your travel is limited by the Pokemon you catch. Its a better way of implementing the Pokemon abilities without the need for a HM slave.
Couldn't agree more, because battling has become the most boring part of the Pokemon series.
I've been bemoaning this for years; HM's were the original source of overworld interaction, leveraging your own Pokemon that you caught yourself to problem solve in the environment.
HM's were not a bad thing. They were an archaic, text-adventure system of abilities for a mostly text-based role playing game. That was the standard in the 90's, and that was okay, back then.
What Game Freak did wrong was leave HM's on the back burner generation after generation, and by the time they replaced HM's for some superficial fluff in Gen 7, they ended up throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and with it, all semblance of seamless, player-earned problem solving within the overworld.
Legends was a good first step to evolve seamless overworld interaction with Pokemon outside of battles. Even just being able to bump into wild Pokemon increased the level of immersion, which makes Gen 8 and 9's overworld interactions feel arcade-y by comparison.
But even Legends still suffers from the Ride Pokemon trope introduced in Gen 7, where clicking a button instantly and superficially generates a rental Pokemon that you did not catch or train, and it disappears just as quickly, reducing the very concept of the Pokemon themselves into nothing more than arbitrary tools.
Nintendo needs to lend its impressive physics advancements with the recent Zeldas to Game Freak so that they can leverage generative, seamless overworld interaction, using regular moves with inherent physics interactions to solve environmental challenges.
Astral Chain is also a great example of environmental problem solving with Pokemon. And even its action combat is a good blueprint for an ARPG, since the protagonists did so little with their puny batons anyway.
In fact, I would go so far as to say Platinum Games would be a good partner to develop a Pokemon ARPG spinoff.
However, to quote Yoda, there is another... Capcom. Long ago in a gaming era far, far away, they were commissioned to make Zelda games. So why not an ARPG Pokemon game?
For one thing the top down games (BDSP) could've ans should've had Pokémon in the overworld, not just in the grand underground.
Further, I think they should limit generations to one per console like the GBA days. One new generation and one remake, with DLC and such instead of a third version. And on the ain't gonna happen list, I'd prefer a single game release like Legends, rather than the series norm.
pokemon could learn a lot from..a lot of different things
To answer your question I’d say Gengar could be the pokemon to learn from zelda.
One thing I take comfort in is noticing the mainline games this generation are taking major cues from Zelda. Both Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet strongly reflected BOTW's influence, so I can only hope Gen 10 reflects TOTK's influence with a light attempt at physics-based interaction.
Kudos to Michelle for writing up a solid opinion piece by the way!
Pokemon could learn a lot from just about any other game company. They can certainly aim for quality like EoW but it's best to start small I think.
@obijuankanoobie Mega Evolutions were slightly more interesting in terms of mechanics. But since only a small portion of the monsters was able to use it, it felt pretty half baked in the end.
As underwhelming as many may have found it, the puzzle and exploration elements of Detective Pikachu Returns were a decent taste of what the core series could learn a bit more from in this day and age. For Pokémon, I have a strong feeling that the best is yet to come.
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