Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Nintendo Switch Review – Is It Worth It?



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Review written by Alana Hagues: https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/nintendo-switch/the-legend-of-zelda-echoes-of-wisdom

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43 thoughts on “Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Nintendo Switch Review – Is It Worth It?”

  1. Anxious to check this one out, as GameFly had sent it out to me despite my limit of rentable games already having been reached. Better knock this one out quick before they realize their mistake and come asking after Horizon.

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  2. I wish they just kind of released this when the Switch 2 is out which I imagine will address the performance issues… Would definitely be time for a replay of Link's Awakening, and a port of a Link Between Worlds when it does come out though.

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  3. I’m willing to bet that this game is just the natural evolution of the tech demo they used to prototype Breath of the Wild. It's kind of how Nintendo creates games.

    Most developers come up with the game concept first, then design the gameplay/world around it. Nintendo designs a "toy" that's fun to play with, then builds the concept around it.

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  4. I've been playing this game earlier than most and I have several issues with the game this review failed to mention.

    The UI is horrific in this game. Tears of the Kingdom's """quick menu""" is back with a vengeance. Scrolling through 100+ echoes to find the one you need is not fun and this game requires possibly more menu surfing than the aforementioned. Not being able to favorite summons is a huge issue. Being able to completely unselect certain summons from the quick menu would be nice as well (as there are a lot of the same enemies but +2 in power, leaving many to feel redundant and worthless later). There is more menu surfing in this game than in any other Zelda before it.

    It's crazy NL played in hero mode (so did I) and didn't mention the bonkers healing system which returns again from BotW and TotK. The healing is done in a pause menu and you can stuff 1000 peppers down your face to cheese healing at any time, defeating the purpose of hero mode by quite a bit. You'd think this would be disabled in favor of a more limited smoothie mixing option. Smoothies, btw, are just cooking from BotW simplified — if you had a problem with hoarding dozens of broken food items, it's back. In hero mode the enemies are very spongey too and it's borderline not fun especially when you have the combat system.

    The combat relies a lot on dumb af AI. There are several times AI summons got caught on objects or wouldn't perform and action it would otherwise (like attack). It's a bit ridiculous how little agency you do have in combat and the Link transformation mode is absolutely a band-aid solution to this issue. Relying on AI as much as this game does leads to frustration after frustration and I think it was a complete misfire to approach the combat this way as opposed to taking on abilities from enemies instead via Kirby or something adjacent to that. Not allowing players agency just becomes a dodge-the-enemy game while praying your companion does what it needs to.

    The sidequests and rewards for them are often bad, either providing rupees or fruit for smoothies or one of the many useless bottles (which only allows you to hold fairies now). In general, like Tears and Breath, the progression of your character isn't really felt as strongly in this game.

    Anyway, as someone who mildly enjoyed Breath and didn't like Tears, this is not a return to classic Zelda. It's fundamentally 2D Tears of the Kingdom with all the flaws that carries with it. If you're like me and miss old-school Zelda, maybe pass on this one. This review was not real or upfront whatsoever.

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  5. Wish these review titles didn't all have to contain "Is it worth it?" I feel like that casts doubt on a brand new release, where something could (and often should!) be an exciting experience! Like… Please let the positive emotions flow—or whatever people are feeling—without tainting their perspective from the get-go.

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  6. Watching this tomorrow after I pick up the game. Don’t want any spoilers or ideas on how to play the game. Thanks for reviewing. This is one of my favorite video game channels on YouTube

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  7. This strikes me as a game that you should play with no help or guides(more than most games at least*) It feels like the variety of customization will result in a ton of game breaks. But hey, it looks interesting!

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