Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

I mean being the damsel in distress for 38 years will do that to you.

Loving this game so far. I love that Zelda is an official Miko now and that the Golden Goddesses are taking a more centralized role. I love the Zelda/Hylia mythology but she is a lesser Goddess even if she actively protects the world via reincarnation. Impa is as always the show stealer for me. Be she 17 or 117 she is super cool. I just love that the LttP era continues on. Tri is the best mononoke ever, love the humor and warmth of this entry.

Love the echoes and figuring out all their traits. Not gonna lie, I walk around with a murder of crows because they knock rupees out of enemies. Who’s my cute little death thieves? You are! Its funny, didn’t care to build beyond the basics in TOTK but I am combining echoes all the time. I have probably burned down half of Hyrule.

@Dom_31 I loved it.

The main appeal of the echoes is puzzle solving IMO, and I think they did a great job there. Having a variety of tools at your disposal and having that "a-ha!" moment where you realise you can use an echo for a specific thing always felt rewarding. Traversal with the echoes can also be pretty fun, and I liked how this game had more of a vertical / platforming element than is typical of Zelda games.

As for combat? I thought it was pretty good. Personally I never really used my "strongest" echo - I found better strength in numbers (either using a horde of echoes alone to take out the enemy, or using them in combination with the swordfighter form so that they can do DPS / distract the enemy as I attacked them in a more "traditional" way). The echoes you choose to use in battle may depend on context as well - e.g. airborne and waterborne echoes for those scenarios, plus other unique traits like spewing fire or electricity, or being able to use ranged attacks.

You do get a lot of echoes but I didn't find navigating the menus to be that problematic. You can easily sort the quick-select menu according to "Most used" and "Last used".

All this on top of a world that is as fun to explore as any other Zelda game - I would recommend it myself.

I would note that the dungeons are a bit more simplistic in their layout than what I'm used to - can't remember if this is typical of 2D Zelda (been a while since I played one), but I didn't find it to be too much of a problem.

@Dom_31 Since you asked for multiple responses...

I played the game for 45 hours and it never felt stale. I'm planning to replay Link's Awakening (which is one of my favorite Zelda games) but I suspect EoW will beat it in my personal rankings. I really enjoy normal top-down Zelda, but fundamentally most of the combat is spamming your sword 😆 I worried I wouldn't like the combat in this game, but it was really fun — lots of choices to do everything; to some degree you have to find your own fun and mix things up to prevent combat from getting stale, but the game makes it reaalllly easy to do that.

As a side note if you like dodging and platforming (I do personally), that also adds a lot to combat options.

The puzzles are mostly simple but fun and it's always amusing to find super convoluted solutions only to realize later one different echo would have solved it. The bosses are easy, but they're still fun and you can defeat them in really entertaining ways and try for crazy speed strats. The way you grow so that somewhat hard things become easy with new echoes makes the game really feel like you are progressing.

There are a lot of echoes, but the ones I used most changed as I played. In any given area there were usually 5 or 10 I mostly used and (in the late game) another 20 I would grab occasionally which required a bit of searching but it wasn't too bad since most of the time I could go to the last-used list and I learned where other echoes were — you can scroll through the list blindingly fast which is nice. Compared to... honestly most RPGs, I spent comparatively little time in the menus.

Overall, definitely one of my very favorite Zelda games.

Late to the party here, but I picked this up a fortnight ago, straight after I finished Twilight Princess for the first time. Deliberately held off on buying Echoes while I had another Zelda on the go.

I'm halfway through the game, and my thoughts are mostly positive, with one bug bear or criticism.

I'll start with the positives: the Echoes are a breathe of fresh air, offering multiple solutions to puzzles, obstacles and platforming. Each new Echo learned feels like a big step forward.

The combat is also refreshing - at first I thought the energy gauge was stupid, but it invites a bit of thought to use if you're in limited supply of refills. There are some pretty neat Echoes to use in combat which makes it enjoyable.

I don't mind the boss battles either - they invite a bit of creativity as well.

The negative - I don't feel like exploration is as rewarded as previous games. Quite often I've made my way to some hidden nook or cranny to discover a chest, only to open it to a damn Rupee or lame food item. Heart pieces is what I'm after. These seem fewer in supply than previous games.

Hoping this improves in the second half of the game.

@Tendo64 I had a similar complaint partway through the game but eventually I realized there are a ton of heart pieces (40 which is more than Link's awakening). It's just that the 3-dimensionality and open world aspect means there are zillions of interesting places to explore and not all of them can have hearts or special accessories. Even with the many types of collectibles in the game, there are just too many nooks and corners and hiding spots. Kind of a curse of open world games. The only thing I can think of which might have improved it would be to have some really expensive optional thing to buy so that rupees would feel a little more exciting. Still, there are so many things hidden if you aim for 100% that thoroughly exploring the whole map still seemed fun to me.

Still a great game and I hope you enjoy the second half!

I'd say that they got it about right with the number of collectables. At least, once you've got the Might Bell it feels like its constantly going off and it was just starting to feel a little bit grindy when I was picking up the last few crystals. It's a better balance than with, say, Korok Seeds in Breath of the Wild.

Also, a lot of overworld chests respawn with something mundane in them, even if they start with a rare item.