I really enjoyed this game for the first couple of hours. Now I’m abandoning it halfway through the fifth dungeon. There is a lesson here that gimmicks don’t always hold up until the end of the game.

The tl;dr is that I’m not having fun anymore with Echoes of Wisdom. The klutzy user interface is frustrating. In fact, it absolutely sucks, and I’m far from the only one who’s pointed it out. Every inkling of action, nearly every single input requires pausing the game to scroll through an endless list of things to summon. Due to this, along with the list of reasons I will now explain further, I am abandoning my first Zelda game since Spirit Tracks.

First, I must say that I already don’t enjoy these games where there are many solutions to a problem. I like to play games “the intended way”. I’m an engineer by trade and solving problems is something I enjoy doing, but I pride myself in simple solutions. This is the exact opposite mentality to have while playing Echoes of Wisdom.

Time after time I find myself entering a room in a dungeon that is clearly a puzzle. I can see what they want me to do (to say “this isn’t my first rodeo” is an understatement when it comes to Zelda games), but my first instinct is always to go with the path of least resistance, which so often is to stack beds or water blocks. I’ve side-stepped so many puzzles it doesn’t even feel fun anymore, like I’m just going through the motions.

I’ve been led to believe that if I can solve a puzzle in a creative way, I should do so. However, rather than scrolling around my echoes for 5 minutes figuring out wacky ways to clear a room, I can just stack the same 3 objects. Why would I sit around figuring out ways to avoid the path of least resistance? That’s the antithesis of solving a problem, and I don’t understand this endorphin rush derived from doing things in the most convoluted way possible like I’m making life-hack videos on TikTok.

Let’s talk about combat. It’s a fairly common occurrence that you get mobbed by enemies, and while you’re fumbling around trying to summon some echoes to defend you (assuming the AI doesn’t poop the bed), there’s also the nuclear option to take out my sword and tear everything down in an instant. Why does this feature exist?

The inclusion of the sword and bow abilities speaks leagues. It’s like the developers are speaking to me directly: “we realize not everything can be easily solved with summons, so.. just take this sword and bow. But you can only use it for a certain period of time so you have to go back to messing around with summons.” It feels half-baked and I never know when I’m supposed to use it, but I do know that, as with most things in life, instantly spawned swords and bows is a guaranteed solution to a problem. If Echoes of Wisdom truly believed in its summoning system, this would have been implemented differently, be it no longer available on demand, only available during boss fights, or 86’d from the feature set entirely in favor of something else.

If you played Tears of the Kingdom, you certainly remember learning to use Ultra-Hand. You are presented with a long, rapidly flowing river that you cannot possibly swim across. There are some logs, wood panels, fans, etc. on the river bank. At this point the game is teaching you (or more accurately, leading you to teach yourself) how to attach items to create something to solve a puzzle, which in this case is a sailboat.

Do you remember that part? Remember that feeling when you figured it out? Felt good, right? Like you cracked a code?

Now imagine if right next to all of those items, there was a jet ski. A fully functioning jet ski.

Now ask yourself: would you have had as much fun building the boat if there was already a water vehicle sitting right there for you to freely use? Would the mere existence of the jet ski diminished the satisfaction of finding a solution, knowing that you were, in essence, wasting your time coming up with an “extracurricular” solution?

This is how I feel about the inclusion of a sword and bow in Echoes of Wisdom. A solution that’s ever-present, but you’re only supposed to use it some of the time. Perhaps limiting its use to during boss fights would have made more sense, tying it to some “greater power” lore that was only present during such fights. But all of the time? Why would I choose to fumble around a menu when I can whack an enemy twice and be done with it?

It would not be a stretch to say that the rewards for exploration are one of the finest parts of Zelda games. However in Echoes of Wisdom you are essentially limited to finding golden eggs and other smoothie ingredients. Great, I guess… although does anyone really optimize their smoothie consumption to enhance certain scenarios? If you’re swimming underwater a lot, do you go through the trouble of scrolling through your smoothies to get better swim speed or breath time? I sure don’t. I use smoothies to heal, and any extra side effects are a bonus.

Perhaps it is obvious at this point, but I don’t generally enjoy “sandbox” games, or at least any longer, and I certainly don’t like the vagueries found in the most recent Zelda games. I did enjoy Tears of the Kingdom for the most part, but there is a simple comparison to be made. One time while I was playing Tears, I figured out that if you attach two fans to a steering stick, you can essentially go anywhere. This now became the path of least resistance. Now, doing literally anything else felt like a chore. Why should I intentionally make it harder for myself to travel from Point A to Point B? Well, tying this back to Echoes of Wisdom, beds and water blocks are the “hover bike”. The difference here is that I only invented the hover bike in hour ~80 of Tears, but I got the bed and water block the first night I played Echoes.

I can’t fathom the idea that taking a simple task and making it needlessly convoluted and complex can be fun for some people, but I guess that’s where we are in the Zelda timeline. I understand that it is for some, but it certainly isn’t for me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Ys X just arrived last night.

2/5