Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

I mean... by most metrics it's the longest top-down Zelda ever made. Sure, far shorter than games like BotW, but a lot of content for what it is. I admit wanting more though.

Agree that it's super easy 😆 A couple of the mini games/dojo trials are a little tricky, but most of the game is very easy. Given being able to carry lots of smoothies and fairies and the fact that you regain all health with your bed, I'm not convinced Hero mode would actually be harder; it would just make smoothies slightly more useful.

@FishyS Right, if hearts are the only difference in hero mode...

I think I'd really have preferred having to walk all over the map. Never been one to dislike backtracking, and one beautiful thing about Zelda games is that after a while you feel like you know the places. I'm now almost done with it and I have no idea what is where :/ They probably decided to do that with the young generation in mind. Short attention span, no patience.

@FishyS
Really? This longer than Link to the Past? It didn't feel that way to me at all.

Definitely longer than Awakening and such though, yea.

@rallydefault Yeah didn't feel like that to me, either.
And are you sure it's longer than LA? I need to compare the playtimes in the Switch user menu.

@NintendoWife According to how long to beat, LA is about 14 hours and EOW is about 20.5.

Howlongtobeat isn't always 100% accurate (and real playtime varies by person) but according to it, EoW is the longest top-down Zelda both for main story (20.5 hours) and 100% (32.5 hours).

I didn't submit my time, but personally I played EoW 45 hours so I guess I'm slow.

I took about 20 hours to finish the story, playing blind, but about 45 hours to get 100%.

The biggest slog in the game is finding all the Might Crystals, and that'll probably go a lot quicker if you use a map, rather than just the Might Bell, like I did.

@Matt_Barber tbh, I loved the concept of the Might Bell. Made it interesting to scour every inch of the map. There were so many I missed before I got the bell.

@FishyS It's pretty much the same concept as the Korok Mask in BotW/TotK, except that you've got a much smaller map, with a lot less in the way of hidden objects.

EoW is certainly a lot more completion-friendly than those games.

@rallydefault I recently replayed Link to the Past and it took like six hours to beat, even trying to pace myself and enjoy the ride.

It’s got that weird thing like the first Zelda, where once you know where to go, there’s usually very little set in place to stop you from just moving forward to the next location.

I feel like this one is similar to previous handheld games in the sense there’s sections of plot, questing, and character interaction in between the dungeons that pad the runtime.

@Eel
True.

I've played LA so many times, I can probably beat that thing in under 10 hours every time.

If you want to do everything the game is pretty long. Took me more then 45 hours. I also made all the smoothies though I only used them on the last dojo challenge (the energy smoothies). I actually love the waypoints, but never made much use of the horses (same with Botw and Totk). I now have also done the last dojo challenge, so I have 100% completion.

@Henmii
Congratulations for 100% completion! The game was really fun to go for 100% completion. It is good to see, that I am not the only one who made every smoothie.

Echoes of Wisdom is absolutely longer than Link's Awakening - I spent about 25 hours on it myself. Can't remember specifically how much time I spent on LA but I reckon Echoes was almost twice as long.

Not sure which is longer but I spent over 40 hours in Echoes of Wisdom. I think both games have the perfect length.

Links awakening is only about 15hrs. EoW took me about 23-25hrs.

I did most of the recipes extremely early in the game and then remembered to finish the rest at hour 40.

It's kind of hard to know what to call 100% in this game. There are so many things to collect and do and some aren't really tracked:

1. All Echoes
2. All Heart Pieces
3. All Might Crystals
4. All Bottles
5. All Outfits
6. All Accessories
7. All smoothie combinations
8. All rifts
9. All side-quests
10. All treasure chests
11. Max reward in all mini-games ( Mango, Acorn, flag race, dojo)
12. All Link-related power-ups.
13. All automatons
14. All stamps
15. Max 99 stack of all ingredients
16. All quest items in the special row for them
17. Talk to all npcs both before and after dialogue changes because of events.
18. Talk to all cats wearing cat outfit
19. All hidden non-respawning rupees
20. Find and explore all caves

Did I forget any categories?

I did almost all of the above but I'm sure I missed a few small things (and I didn't actually try to max stack all my ingredients although quite a few reached max naturally)

The one thing I'd add is completing the game in Hero mode, assuming that you did it in Normal first.

I certainly didn't do the 99 stacks. Given how rare the Golden Eggs are, they alone would take a while to accumulate. I suppose you could do it with a big pile of Amiibos and changing the system clock, but that's not my idea of fun.

@Matt_Barber 99 golden eggs would definitely be painful. I really only added that category to my list to be silly since it is something which gets tracked.

I was just looking at the rules for 100% at speedrun.com and they're interesting.

Including your suggestion, I guess other things are:

21. Both normal and hero mode
22. max level Tri Rod (implied by all rifts )
23. All waypoints activated. (I forgot this one above)
24. Other key items which are impossible to miss unless you use glitches.

speedrun.com only includes things easy to track in the menus plus waypoints:

1-9, 12-14, 16, 22-24. So nothing about caves, treasures or npcs, unless they are part of a quest/item. And it lets you skip the mini-games which don't have good rewards. And it only requires non-amiibo outfits.

No speedruns yet for that definition of 100% but I will be curious what the times are. Current record for glitchless any% is 3 hours 41 minutes.

@FishyS
Cool, congratulations for 100% completion and making every smoothie! Yeah I think your list is pretty good, plus the stuff like every waypoint. I am sure that I did not get the max reward in every acorn minigame, I might have missed a few chests, rupees and npc dialogue. You even mentioned the most important part, talking to all cats wearing the cat outfit.

For the most part, I feel like I accomplished everything. I feel that I should have played on hero mode though.