After more than 200 hours and three playthroughs of The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, I thought I had seen everything thing that a Zelda game could give me. But lo and behold, Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom gave me new ways to play a Zelda game, and many head-scratching experiences along the way.
This new game is a vibrant colourful cartoony 2D-top-down action- adventure with a major emphasis on puzzle solving. In this game, you assume the role of Princess Zelda, not Mr Link the swordman, and being a princess, she is more likely to use her brain over brawn.
The story starts off with you, Princess Zelda, being captured by Ganon, one of the main villains of this series. Before the world is corrupted by rifts that swallow the ground and all living things into a stagnant dimension, a swordsman in green rescues you from captivity. A mystical being called Tri then accompanies you on your quest to rid the world of these rifts while giving you the ability to copy furniture, rocks, monsters or even elements that you pass. In the case of monsters, you need to best them first before being able to summon them to fight by your side. This is like necromancy (but without dead bodies to raise the dead), in my opinion.
You can summon as many monsters or things to support you as long as you have enough of Tri's power. You start with a three Tri power, which means that you can summon three things at once. By the end of the game, you'll achieve a six Tri power, giving you the ability to summon six monsters to gang up on your adversary. Not all monsters and things use one Tri power, some use two, and some may even use five.
Summoning monsters to do your bidding is just a small part of this game, as it pushes you to solve puzzles more than using brute force to make your way though hordes of monsters. Many dungeons in this game are straightforward and require you to go find switches and keys to open a door to fight bosses. However, dungeons later on in the game are mind-numbingly cryptic and require hard work to reach the switches and keys.
To make matters worse, each room in these dungeons is filled with monsters and puzzles that will require you to use your summoning abilities to reach higher or farther places. For a monkey-brained person like me, quite often I kind of missed the brute force approach of chopping everything into pieces to go forward.
Just like necromancers in other games, Princess Zelda deals with monsters indirectly by summoning "her" monsters to do her bidding, while hanging behind thumbing her nose (and sometimes sleeping on a summoning bed). She can also use the direct approach by temporarily summoning a "green swordsman" power into her for attacks, if needed.
Your copy and fighting abilities grow after completing dungeon challenges and after helping inhabitants of this game world. You will get horses, Link-like sword and arrow abilities, new garments to make you look snazzy and equipment to enhance your physical power. There are also dozens of side quests that give you equipment, healing items, or even new and powerful summons. This game has a Pokémon "Collect Em All" aspect to it, but the summoning menu is a little tedious to use as when you collect a lot of "echoes", you'll have to scroll to the right endlessly.
In this world, apart from interacting with normal city folks (Elves), you'll see tall and tan ladies (Gerudos), fish people (Zoras), rock people (Gorons), plant people (Deku scrubs) and talking animals. Their graphics and animation are cute with big heads and small bodies
The story of this game is most likely placed at the end of the "Fallen" timeline (in which Link, the Hero of Time, despite his best efforts, was defeated by Ganondorf the big baddy in their final battle in Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. Ganondorf obtained the remaining Tri force pieces from Link and Zelda and was subsequently sealed within the corrupted Sacred Realm by the Seven Sages).
The music in this game is pleasant to listen to. It's not obtrusive or annoying while you're thinking of ways to solve puzzles and make your way through the world, nor is it that catchy to stick in your mind when you go sleep.
This game, surprisingly, is longer than what I expected. I was expecting to finish this game in around 10 to 12 hours, but I think it took me around 30-35 hours to get to the credits without collecting all the summons or equipment. It was a fun ride, not as much as the previous Zelda game, but a very creative one. This game also has very few gritty optics and is suitable for girls and young ones too.
SPECS
Genre: Action adventure
Players: 1
Age: 10-plus
File: 5.6GB
In-game language: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese
Price: 1,790 baht
