The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Review - The Zelda I Was Waiting For

Nintendo and GREZZO's is my favorite game in eighteen years. I don't think that will be true for everyone, especially people who first started the series with or, but for people who missed the more linear approach, and for those players who have stuck with the series through decades, feels like fan service in the best way possible — and it does this without losing the creativity that made these most recent titles so popular.

I'll be honest here, nearly clicked with me, but it never really did. Unfortunately, I'm too much of a fan of the bespoke dungeons, multi-tier fetch quests, bustling towns, and item/ability progression offered by previous mainline entries for it to ever really stick. Even, which I loved mechanically and nostalgically, didn't feel like a game to me. does.

It almost feels like an experiment, and, knowing what we do about Nintendo as a company, it very well could be. One can almost imagine a one-sentence elevator pitch for, something akin to "" The answer, thankfully, is absolutely yes.

This freedom comes in the form of «echoes,» which Zelda creates using a magic wand given to her by Tri — who is, incidentally, my favorite companion character now. There are over a hundred echoes Zelda can find, from wooden crates and beds to blocks of water, clouds, and nearly every single enemy in the game, minus the bosses. Some are good for traversal, some are used to solve puzzles, and some are just plain fun.

My top five most used (and thus, most recommended) echoes:

Those more traversal-focused echoes (specifically the trampoline and the Platboom, an enemy in the form of a platform that rises up high and then smashes down) make getting around overworld incredibly easy and entertaining. Yes, you could simply follow the road and stay between the trees, but it's much more enjoyable to jump onto the trees themselves. The fact that the map feels so similar to the world map of probably helps with this — these trees and canyons have been barriers for decades, and