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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

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Previews:

IGN

All in all, Echoes of Wisdom feels like an earnest and clever return to the Zelda games I grew up playing. Challenging, inventive, fresh, and genuinely just really fun. Every new puzzle and conflict is a blank canvas for experimentation, but it’s all wrapped in that distinctively familiar and challenging Zelda game vibe that made me fall in love with these games to begin with. It’s vintage Zelda mixed with the playful and creativity based gameplay that younger audiences are used to building their own stories with these days. It’s not pushing that side of things as far as games like Minecraft, Roblox, or even Tears of the Kingdom does, but it’s also not rigid and specific with the way it makes you approach it.

Attempting to juggle several of the core tenets of what makes the Zelda games so special to so many people across so many generations and make them all happy is an extremely tall order. The longer any franchise thrives, the more difficult it becomes to please everyone that approaches it with specific expectations. Every fan has a different reason why Zelda is special to them. But so far, Echoes of Wisdom feels like it’s taking the best elements of the most beloved modern and vintage Zelda games and making them work together in a pretty clever synchronicity. Whether they’ll get along for the whole trip remains to be seen, but right now it feels like a smart move and a truly exciting way to push the classic side of the franchise towards the future.

Polygon

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom may not have the gargantuan scope of recent 3D Zelda games, but it does appear to have similarly creative gameplay and player flexibility. It plays like a classic Legend of Zelda game, though, pairing old-school puzzle-solving and dungeon-crawling with ingenuity, resulting in a magical combination of styles. Zelda’s first solo adventure already feels like a winner.

Variety

In a hands-on demo ahead of release, Zelda finds herself imprisoned early in the game and must escape from jail. Using the Tri Rod, she can create echoes of wooden boxes and stools to climb high up and avoid her jailers. Or, she can make and throw breakable pots that distract enemies as she sneaks away. It’s clear early on that Zelda has many different ways to traverse the world, solve puzzles and navigate dungeons with her echoes and abilities — it’s a level of freedom that echoes (pun intended) the open-world possibilities of “Breath of the Wild” and “Tears of the Kingdom.”

But echoes aren’t Zelda’s only magical weapon. She can also magically transport objects and herself around with Bind and Reverse Bond. With the Tri Rod, Zelda can move her echoes and other large obstacles, like boulders and statues, across short distances with Bind. Using Reverse Bond, she can tether herself to things like floating platforms or wall-crawling spiders to reach new areas. Knowing how to combine those two versatile spells with the array of echoes is the key to mastering the game’s puzzles.

As for combat, Zelda is no pushover. When her echo army can’t do the job, she can take matters into her own hands with Swordfighter Form. During an early dungeon, Zelda gains access to this magical ability that transforms her into sword-wielding figure that looks awfully similar to the missing Link. For a limited time when using the form, Zelda swings her own sword, runs faster and jumps higher than normal. She gains this powerful ability after defeating a shadowy, mysterious foe who looks a lot like Link in the dungeon.

TechRadar

After playing through over an hour of the upcoming game at a preview event hosted by Nintendo, I’m confident that the next entry in the long-running series has all the makings of a fantastic sandbox experience. It could even become one of the best Nintendo Switch games of the year.

On the surface, Echoes of Wisdom looks most similar to Link's Awakening, a 2019 Nintendo Switch remake of a 1993 Game Boy title. It has the same adorable art style, which lends everything a cutesy, miniaturized look. The Hyrule setting is almost like a diorama, with a top-down perspective and shiny, plastic-like textures to really sell the effect.

That said, anyone who played Link's Awakening will know that the attractive overall look of that game was always a little undermined by its rough performance. Substantial framerate drops were common, particularly when entering or exiting a scene.

Thankfully, the build of Echoes of Wisdom that I played performed substantially better. It wasn’t perfect, with a couple of visible dips in particularly busy moments, but it was much more consistent on the whole which bodes well for the finished release.

TechRaptor

Fantasian Neo Dimension's UI still looks like it's made more for the phone than console, and while that is truth of the matter, I had hoped Square Enix would do a bit more to make it look appealing for gamers playing this new version on the big screen.

I'm just not a fan of the somewhat generic looking UI design, so it reminds me that yes, I am playing a mobile game. It's serviceable and does the job, but keep your expectations in check. Regardless, Fantasian is a coveted title for a reason, and I can see why fans were so quick to praise it back when it launched in 2021.

NPR

Nintendo had me play through the introductory prison break, an early dungeon, and a small patch of the game’s (relatively open) world. I have only one gripe: You’ll switch between echoes through a long line in a pause menu, akin to the Fuse power interface in Tears of the Kingdom. I quickly tired of scrolling and relied on sorting items by “Most Recent” and “Most Used,” consigning other handy echoes to oblivion.

However, this annoyance hardly diminishes the achievement Echoes of Wisdom is shaping up to be. While the game’s story appears to be a simple inversion of the “Knight saves Princess” trope, its mechanics add astonishing depth and variety to a decades-old formula. Where Tears of the Kingdom felt like a triumphant end of an era, Echoes of Wisdom may well be an understated but confident start of something new.

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[James Sawyer Ford]

Seems so bland and boring with the worst parts of TotK

Will need to wait and see from people that like classic Zelda how it does with dungeons and bosses

Seems so milquetoast all around

 

[Robb]

Sounds great. I wasn’t very impressed with the initial reveal trailer, but the more I’ve seen the better it looks.

Scrolling through all those echoes like with the items in TotK still looks like it kind of sucks though. That can really slow things down if you can’t find the thing you need quick.

 

[Krathoon]

Gamestop gives you a fabric poster if you pre-order. Best Buy gives you a diorama.

 

[Krathoon]

For some reason, Amazon is not selling the game.

Not certain what happened there.

 

[Hookshot]

Problem with all these games going back to Scribblenauts is once you find a solution you've found the solution. "There are 20 different ways to kill a moblin" is still just someone killing a moblin, and killing a moblin doesn't need to be complicated.

I'm getting it because of the voucher system but I'm kind of worried I'll be bored when the traversal is trivialized and so are the dungeons.

 

[daclynk]

cant wait

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

I have my pre-order.

I would really love to play with Zelda but from the BOTW universe, as the main character.

 

[ahtlas7]

Not buying more games until I have Switch 2 in my hands.

 

[Robb]

Problem with all these games going back to Scribblenauts is once you find a solution you've found the solution. "There are 20 different ways to kill a moblin" is still just someone killing a moblin, and killing a moblin doesn't need to be complicated.

I'm getting it because of the voucher system but I'm kind of worried I'll be bored when the traversal is trivialized and so are the dungeons.

Disagree with this, although maybe not the combat specifically, combat doesn’t need to be very complicated.

But I’ve re-played BotW and it was a lot of fun revisiting the shrines in that game again, mainly because the solutions are open-ended and you don’t necessarily remember what solution you actually used the first time around. You might still remember where you’re supposed to end up though, and that information opens up a lot of fun experimentation by itself in a second playthrough in these games. At least it did for me.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

For some reason, Amazon is not selling the game.

Not certain what happened there.

It's been like that for a while now. Here's a recent GAF thread on it - https://www.neogaf.com/threads/so-what-is-the-deal-with-nintendo-and-amazon.1673979/

Oh, and the European and Japanese Amazon stores still sell Nintendo 1st party games so this issue is only with the US Amazon.

 

[RoboFu]

astrobot and this game at the same time period. I really cannot complain too much about gaming right now.

 

[Hanna7]

I love The Legend of Zelda games!!! I already want to play Echoes of Wisdom and see Zelda as a swordswoman. One of my favorite The Legend of Zelda games is Tears of the Kingdom. I also like other games like The Relax Gaming slot Ancient Tumble and The Aviator slot. I play those only because I follow DiceGirl Egle, but definitely, my favorite The Legend of Zelda game is Breath of the Wild (2017). It is highly recommended!

 

[digital_ghost]

Loved a link between worlds and links awakening remake. Got my pre order of Echoes for $34 on QVC.

 

[Barakov]

I have my pre-order.

I would really love to play with Zelda but from the BOTW universe, as the main character.

 

[Dafegamer]

Oh boy, I can already see a three-way battle between FF7:Rebirth, Astro Bot and TLOZ: Echoes of Wisdom for Game of the Year

 

[Touch fuzZy. get BizZay]

I love this nintendo thing of revealing a hype game and releasing it in the same year

they did that with xenoblade 3 as well

 

[_g h 0 s t]

i wanna play windwaker

 

[Trelane]

This looks like a lot of fun and I’m glad you can play as Zelda in this one, as you do t get many offshoot games in the series.

The puzzle mechanics look like they can really reward imaginative solutions. I think the kids would really love this.

 

[Zxnoshima]

Rather this is the most contemptible thing that has happened to the Zelda series since ALBW, hate the artstyle enough, but the stol-setting game mechanic!? really? is this neo-gamecube and neo-ds era nintendo all over again?

 

[Kings Field]

Used a voucher for this. Let’s fucking go.

 

[Danjin44]

Super hype for this, Zelda’s unique gameplay style looks lot of fun and creative way to solve puzzles.

 

[The Saint]

I am ready for this, though I do wish Zelda had magic was more in line with Light Magic, rather than summoning objects or monsters to fight for her. Light magic and light arrows would be cool. Prior to BOTW, this was always her skillset, and one I wish more Main characters in J/RPGs would focus on, rather than sword user number 8675309.