The 7 Best (and Worst) Things About Echoes of Wisdom 

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I liked and used the smoothies a lot, because they were actually meaningful on Hero Mode. I feel like more people should give Hero Mode a shot.

I can't lie. Echoes of Wisdom is one of my favorite 2D Zeldas now. I enjoyed my time playing and then when I saw someone else playing I realized I hadn't even scratched the surface of ways to approach the game. And as a big fan of the Zelda games that feature the diverse races of Hyrule, I was so happy to have the Gorons, Zora, Gerudo, Deku, Hylians, Sheikah, and even Yeti (or Anouki?) all in one topdown game. I feel like I could replay it forever.

Conde does deserve his own segment. I love him so much and want only the best for him.

Something i haven't heard praised enough is the mini bosses. I LOVE finding them and sometimes having the reward be getting the echo for them. Botw/totk had overworld mini bosses, but their dungeons were too small to house actual threats beyond the main bosses. This game went crazy with them! Nothing quite like getting locked in a room with no idea of what monster you're about to face and hearing the music start.

The combat complaint feels more like you've been unintentionally limiting yourself to waiting on echos. There is always something you can do to be an active participant in combat, be it binding an enemy, so that it can't attack your echos and directly managing the spacing or resummoning your echo in a more ideal place and restting its cooldown time after its initial attack. Many echos immediately attack when summoned making them more like an attack spell than a constant combatant . Also sometimes holding an echo on your head helps as they dont bother getting into position, and just keep attacking, spear bokobins especialy.

No way! I LOVED the soundtrack. Very atmospheric yet melodic at the same time. A standout in the Zelda series for me that feels unique in the lineage of the series. Honestly, I’m not personally a fan of the gameplay at all, so the soundtrack is what kept me playing.

"The cutesy art style really lowered my guard" - You should know by now, the cuter the Nintendo game looks, the darker it can get.

I’m one of those guys that doesn’t notice frame rate issues so it wasn’t a problem for me and this game is awesome

About monster targeting The best thing is to use echoes that attack right away on spawn It basically become some sort of spell since you can just spawn them again and again if you need/want to reset their attack and they do it right away

I was really charmed by the writing/NPC interactions in this game! I found myself choosing not to skip cutscenes/dialogue , which is RARE for me. Even talking with the cats was entertaining! I wasn’t expecting that from a 2D Zelda, so happy they put the effort in to make the world feel full.

If you want to get the most out of the smoothies, you need to do 2 things. 1: Play the game in hard mode to disable heart and fairy drops. And 2: Don't pick up a bed. This thing singlehandedly invalidates the use of any smoothie when you're not facing a boss.

Ok, maybe it's just a nitpicky gripe, but Grezzo made this game, not the "Zelda Team". Even in the credits, Nintendo is only lightly mentioned.

Conde is the sweetest thing and deserves a children's cartoon staring him and his brother

Just finished it a couple days ago. Longtime Zelda fan since OoT. I thought it was a fantastic game. I loved the world, the mechanics, the references, and especially the DUNGEONS. Lord I didn't know how much I missed a true Zelda dungeon until I played this game. I wish it was a little more difficult, as I almost beat the final boss without taking damage, and mostly just spammed echoes the whole time, but overall I had a phenomenal time with the game, and it's one of my favorite Zeldas in a while.

Your opinion is definitely valid, but I have to disagree with you on the music. I spent way too much time not even playing the game, just sitting there listening to the music. I absolutely love the music. I'm sorry and a little sad you thought it was only serviceable.

So happy to see a Yeti again after not getting much new in TotK, ignoring how long its been since we saw Yeto and Yeta. Also River Zora living peacefully alongside the rest of Hyrule including Sea Zora, think I prefer the more amphibious appearance of them to the fish/shark people. Its a shame consumable buffs aren't stackable, I rarely used anything that wasn't defense up or energy refill because I could, just like in the Wild games, simply equip an item to fit the situation or the buff wasn't worth using. Was neat to figure out which combinations made potions but I wish there was a reward for finding all the recipes.

I ended up using smoothies enough to make it a worthwhile thing, IMO. Specifically, I used them for heart recovery several times, but I also used them for traversing severe environments, and sometimes I'd use a Tough smoothie before starting a boss battle.

I may be in the minority here, but I actually really loved Dampe's Automatons. I'm actually a little sad that there weren't more of them. I loved how both powerful and precious they felt, as they are pretty much ultra high powered versions of quite commonly used echoes. At first I was worried about them breaking too easily, but when I got into the flow of summoning echoes to tank somewhat while I got my automatons into gear, they felt amazing to use, particularly the Tocktorok, High-Teku Baba, and Roboblin. I used them frequently enough to have to repair them several times, and sometimes it can feel bad to see them broken without providing any value in return, but it facilitated some pretty interesting and devastating interactions that honestly made me wish I could play a more challenging game as an engineer character that is uniquely focused on this mechanic.

Salted milk is a very good smoothie to make because it fully refills both hearts and magic.

I love the summon mechanics and the first Link boss fight. I love that you couldnt take him head on but you have to scurry around, get behind him and bash his head in with a rock until he dies.

The balance of openness and direction reminded me of A Link Between Worlds, which is a game i absolutely adored and would rank higher than Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

I’d give Echoes about an 8-9/10. Lots of Pros, very little cons. And the final boss fight has become one of my favorite in the Zelda franchise. Not top 3 or anything, but def a top 10.

10:18 The uneven puzzle design really breaks a lot of puzzles, especially Jabul Ruins. Most of the peopelk I've seen play this game (myself included) found multiple ways to cheese the dungeon too easily, skipping that water puzzle and getting the boss key and reaching the boss in under 10 minutes ON THE FIRST PLAYTHROUGH. Not gonna lie, breaking this game is super fun tho

Smoothies/potions are really a matter of convenience. You never need any of those effects, but having the right immunity during certain boss fights can make a huge difference. And the defense buff, when stacked with the defense accessory is really nice on Hero Mode.

I was really worried about Echo combat at first because I was like oh my God this is so slow and clunky but Swordfighter Mode definitely makes a good equalizer

6:07 I found that the windup for attacks is faster on its first attack, so it's beneficial to keep spawning the same enemy and only using its first attack

Most crucial thing in the video for me was just 2 words: plushie Conde

Some advice I quickly learned on my own that will help a lot with echo combat: don't use echoes of the very same enemy that you're fighting, unless you're ambushing an enemy. If you're already in combat, that means the enemy is already winding up their attack, so your echo will lose.

7:00 I'm so confused. I feel the opposite. The echoes were so helpful. I sometimes forgot I even can transform into Link, because my Echoes were so good at killing stuff. Especially after the first few dungeons your echoes become unstopable.

The targeting works a lot better when you target a enemy then spawn a new echo. Your echoes won’t stop fighting that specific enemy until it’s dead. Then repeat for all the other enemies

I'm one of the ones that didn't notice any frame issues. I though it ran pretty well. Really enjoyed the game.

Volvagia was the only boss that felt especially 'OOT' to me. Ghoma has showed up in countless forms and variations over the years dating back to the original. Like Dodongo, OOT didn't invent Ghoma but adapted it to 3d.

I genuinely love this game. Love the smaller scale gameplay and echoes are fun

Volvagia is originally from Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.

I am doing a Hero Mode, No Swordfighter Form run and I am having a blast. It forces me to be more active with my echoes. One such use is binding my ball and chain soldier to push him into position for more hits or using ice keese to freeze smaller adds and toss them into an abyss

I grew up playing the original NES The Legend of Zelda. It lagged big time with “too many” sprites on screen. With that as my Zelda baseline, frame rate drops are rarely noticeable, and almost never a problem.

For combat, your echos attack as soon as the spawn, so after the attack just respawn them so the attack again immediately. I was never "waiting around" for them to attack. Combat felt fast paced for me. Going to have to disagree on the reward stuff as well. The echos themselves are rewards. I feel like this game had the most interesting rewards out of any zelda.

So, I've been watching Zebra's let's play series of the game before I decide to buy it, and commented about how Conde is like, THE goodest boy in the Zelda universe... Imagine my surprise that he ended up on the list here! Even Arlo can see how amazing the big fluff ball is!

Honestly I can barely tell that the game dips below 60fps but I'm having such a fun time playing the game to even notice the frame rate.

The only thing I disagree with is the automatons. Roboblin is the most powerful summon-it wipes out everything with a single hit, covering half the screen! It made the boss fights feel trivial.

For what it's worth, Hyrules creation myth was actually told in the a link to the past manual before it was told in oot.

The actual black sheep of the Zelda family: Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks

One thing I'll add to the "rewards" criticism is that it would be so easy to fix by just distributing them better. There's more than enough might crystals to cover almost every chest and sidequest that are instead just hanging around or hidden under some bush in a random corner of the world. Often times you'll complete a tricky sidequest, get rewarded with a smoothie ingredient, then walk two steps and find a might crystal under a rock. Literally just switch those around!!! It's so confusing. That said I do think this game handles rewards a lot better than BOTW/TOTK. Might Crystals as I've mentioned are basically an improved version of Korok seeds. They can be found in chests, as a reward for sidequests, etc AND they work towards proper meaningful upgrades instead of just more inventory slots. They feel more like nice surprises instead of predictable filler. I also REALLY hope they keep and expand on the accesory system. Such a good way of adding cool unique rewards without even needing to put that much effort into them, just little trinkets that give you minor stat buffs. AND they give a real use to rupies in the form of increasing the amount of accesories you can carry, which makes finding rupies in chests at least more tolerable. If anything I just wish there were more increasingly expensive upgrades you could work towards. Like give me a 5000 rupee upgrade just so that finding rupies remains rewarding.

Use the dark nut and shark echoes for the whole stunlock issue

I'm so happy there's so much unanimous love for Condé lmao

"Theres no reason to make smoothies" Arlo, play the game on hero mode, I can guarantee you you'll sing a different tune. Those things are lifesavers. I'd say hero mode is probably my favorite thing about the game, I can definitely see the heart up accessories making the game way too easy otherwise but on hero mode I actually died a good few times. Id say probably the worst thing is echo management since it should have been handled the old school zelda way. Automatons were a pointless addition and could just be removed/treated as higher level echoes, and sword fighter mode could have easily been bound to R3. With that, allow 4 echoes to be bound to the d-pad at once so we spend less time scrolling through the list, and each d pad button changes your active echo. Why they didn't fix this after people disliked the arrow fuse system in totk I have 0 clue, but it definitely drags the experience down. Still a good fun game though, good 7 or 8/10 for me.

I found the smoothies pretty useful. Especially the energy replenishing ones.

I find it funny how there are Zelda fans saying how much they want a Zelda dungeon maker… and there are 3 currently on steam (and one has a switch port) that people can play right now. Obviously, they don’t have the marketing to each the full Zelda community in the same way as Nintendo, but I still find it funny.

Most echoes will attack immediately when you summon them. If you find yourself waiting for them to attack, just resummon them. Summon the echo, get one attack off, then summon them again. It's much faster and gives you more control.

Dampe's automaton are extremely overpowered, they aren't just useful in certain situations they're useful all the time. Of course you wouldn't think they were useful if you didn't use them.

*Here's how to drastically improve your Echoes combat experience (Fixes "Monsters Don't Cooperate" (**6:01**)):* 1. Target a ground enemy 2. Summon a Lizalfos within melee attack range of your target 3. The Lizalfos will immediately attack your target 4. repeat Steps 2 and 3 in a rapid summon-attack-summon-attack cycle Note: When you hit your summoning limit, your new summons will automatically despawn your oldest Echo; this means you can skip your oldest Echo's attack cooldown by replacing it with a fresh Echo which is able to attack immediately. This is much faster combat with higher damage and feels a lot more engaging than waiting around for Echo AI attack cycles, I don't even use Swordfighter mode for combat. Once you've got the hang of it, experiment with other Echoes and flying/underwater enemies (hint: try out Mothula or Ice/Fire Octoroks). I figured this out because I didn't want to rely on playing as Link, and taking down Ganon as Zelda with a barrage of Lizalfos stabs was sweet, satisfying revenge. (The targeting system still sucks really bad when there are a lot of objects on-screen though...)

My favorite part of Echoes of Wisdom is how they wrote Tri as an Infinitely better version of Fi, and I didn't even hate Fi as much as everyone else did.

One thing I was a bit disappointed by is that the echo system is very much the focus on the game, but I feel like the Swordfighter form being so much less frustrating to consistently use really discourages using them in combat (you can of course do both at the same time). Plus, with smoothie ingredients being so plentiful it is super easy to keep your energy gauge full. Also, I was so engaged with exploring the world at the beginning of the game that it did kind of make the horse mechanic kind of redundant by the time I was fully able to engage with it. I did really enjoy the story though; it was the most engaged I've been in a Zelda story in a very long time.

In the defense of automatons, not only are they "free" in the sense they don't take up an echo point, but Tocktorok (Octorock fireworks) and Roboblin (Moblin katana) are easily some of the best summons in the game.

The frame rate hasn't been bothering me personally, and I've been loving the creativity of all the different echoes. I've already almost uncovered the whole map without doing many of the main quests. I like how if you're smart enough with the echoes you can get to almost any area early. Truly an open world 2d Zelda, never thought we'd see it.

For ZEOW The frame rate issues are sometimes annoying, but easy to ignore and not a big deal. The combat isn’t the best, it’s just more fun IMO to fight enemies as Link. The puzzles and ability to “break” the game by going to places which were normally out of bounds is very addictive. There’s a ton of optional content which keeps you engaged. The return of traditional dungeons is also fantastic. With a couple of menu updates (the ability to have favorite echos so you can have a short list of 20ish echos you actually use) and the game probably feels better. The game is fun. I 100% competed the game.

I'm one of those people who absolutely does not notice FPS issues whatsoever (I mean unless it drops painfully low - like maybe 10 or less). Like in this video it seemed like they were trying to show examples of where the frame rate was good vs where it was bad, but it all legitimately looked fine to me, and I've experienced absolutely zero issues that I've noticed playing EOW. It's hard for me, therefore, to relate to people who complain about minor or even moderate frame rate issues. They just seem like such silly unnecessary complaints.

For Arlo's issue with echo monsters AI. The AI is actually improved compared to TotK. Just gotta learn the timing of when to spawn the enemy depending and you can use bind to help them like a team move. Music I can agree with. I only like the hyrule field and all 3 Jabul Water themes. I also agree the puzzle dungeons are too easy. Like yeah, we can solve them however we want, but it also ruins the sense of feeling puzzled. Smoothies, Dampe and horses are easily too useless. The side effects of smoothies aren't needed. Echoes, fairy bottles, beds and swordfighter are all that is good enough.

1:01 purplesful choice actually

2:33 Camera orientation and art style have nothing to do with performance. I know what you probably meant was "the game has fixed camera angles, simpler models & textures, and a simpler physics engine so it should've been easier to optimize than TOTK" but the wording on that was a little weird

With Echos, I find just using the biggest/strongest one for the situation/environment tends to work just fine. All during the water scenes you showed, I was yelling, "Just use the shark!" Heck, I practically cheesed the battle with Echo Ganon by using the sword and shield Moblin lvl 2. And don't get me started on what a game changer the fireproof Lizalfos was against the dragon. Smoothies are great for recovering hearts, but also for cold resistance in the mountains. Yes, doom scrolling sucks! I feel like with the puzzles it all comes down to what you remember or feel like using. I always forget that I can grab a bird Echo, so the wind geysers gave me a bit of trouble. But then you showed the crow getting past the puzzle easily, and I was humbled by my ignorance, yet proud of my ingenuity for still getting through that part.

Bad thing: I haven't played it yet Good thing: I still get to play it

I'm on my first play through of the game and it's super fun getting new echoes and playing with them. Finding out how exploit each echo ability. Sure I can just use a Wall Tile to get across a room all the time, but figuring out I can use a Zap Zap to cling to a wall while Bind & Following gives a great sense of self discovery. I think this game is really going lend itself for fun replays like speedruns, three heart runs, not using echoes, or beating the game using only one echo. I can't wait to see all the cool exploits people are finding in the game, once I finally beat it.

As a very casual Zelda fan who’s played like 6 games max, I’m loving this game. Artstyle is charming, music is catchy, and the mechanics are generally fun to mess around it. My only issues are the constant scrolling for a specific Echo and some of the minigames just feel tedious at times. Just beat the last dungeon today and I could feel myself returning in the future.

I feel like learning the attack animations and AI of your echoes is part of the core gameplay loop in this game. Yes that means that a huge percentage of monster echoes are completely useless outside of specific niche interactions, but it also means that you will find more of an appreciation for how the AI of each one is actually programmed. I find that certain ones such as the chompfin and the wolfos dominate their respective environments purely by being more aggressive than other choices, but even they have situations where you need to switch tactics, such as when up against any enemy that is armored or can defend itself with a shield.

It's funny cause I just cannot seem to pin down what Arlo looks for in a game soundtrack. Every time I think a game has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard, Arlo comes right out in his review and crushes my dreams, saying it's "just okay"

I actually love the sound track. One of my favorites in recent years

I am a HUGE fan of this new art style of the 2D Zelda’s. It’s what I wished Pokémon bdsp had the courage to do. But I do have a few rebuttals when it comes down to the overall experience. 1. The frame is 100% understandable, but it’s honestly something I never noticed till very late into game when I had to do a bunch of back-and-forth to get all the collectibles and side quests. The map it’s self, though larger than most top down Zelda’s, is relatively small and only takes about 3-5 minutes to cross in a straight line on foot. With that in mind and how much content is PACKED on such a small surface, it’s not so bad. 2. I will be honest, almost every puzzle there was I either needed a guide or did completely wrong. I genuinely had no idea I could glide using a bird echo until endgame, even when a the game spelled it out for me. A LOT of things can be solved with beds and stubbornness, which is kind of fun tbh. 3. When it comes to the echos, the sorting system does kinda suck. But I honestly had zero issues with them in combat, which is probably due to the fact that most of them I got WAY sooner than I was supposed to, especially the more heavy hitters. The bigger ones (except for the Lynel) tend to attack as soon as they’re summoned, but take a second before they’re next attack, so as soon as the first one finishes their attack, summon a new one for instant damage. 4. Smoothies are actually a lot more useful late game, especially in the final fight. Choose the right combo to get good effects AND at most 15 hearts. Plus you get a special reward for finding all the recipes. My one BIG complaint is the lack of replayability. Though the story is really sweet and I would kill for a yarn Yoshi style Condé amiibo, I can’t see my self doing it all over again. A lot of the rifts are the same, the mini games are stressful at best with the same rewards every time, and a lot of the side quests are fetch quests for specific items or echos. It’s not bad, but it’s just a lot of the same. But overall 9/10, would highly recommend.

I love love loved the story beats and characters. I liked the rewards/smoothies more than Arlo, as I was constantly smoothie-ing it up whether to get rupees by selling them in the early game or craft combinations to make the scrubs happy or just to use for defence buffs or heart buffs or ice resistance/cold resistance before I went to the cold area. They were mostly just pointless buffs but I liked crafting them anyway as they were super cute looking and could always be sold for rupees or drunk for quick hearts. I personally did like the balance between open worlding it and structuring it, but honestly I’ve never really felt the open world stuff added a whole lot so maybe I’dve preferred it if they just *eventually* made it fully open but started out a lot more limited. Beds, spiders and platbooms were all a little OP, and whilst I enjoyed that I’m sad that other people felt the need to explore the whole map before starting the dungeons and felt it made the game worse 😢 I guess you can’t please everyone though! I really loved my experience with it, and only wish it was longer. I agree that the echo management was a bit naff though, they need to put a team on that because either they need to reduce the powers/resources you can get in these games or they need to make it much more intuitive to manage them efficiently during combat/puzzle solving 😂 Also I did it all in hero mode, and think that really helped as it was a challenge to keep my hearts up the whole game and that was really fun and maybe is why I made so many smoothies! 😂❤ Also also, I just didn’t notice the frame rate issues at all even during your vid when you were presumably showcasing it being jarring! Sorry Arlo, I wish I could feel your pain! 💔

I really enjoyed this game; it was interesting to see a top-down Zelda doing the Dragon Quest thing of going around and saving besieged villages, the way that 3D Zelda has been doing lately. Going into dungeons JUST to get a macguffin is fine, I guess... but you have that whole area you're adventuring in before reaching the dungeon. I like how Exhoes of Wisdom approached that. There were a lot of puzzles that legitimately forced me to stop and think... but part of that may have been because there are just too many echoes I never used. There are dozens that I literally never even summoned, because... why would I use something weaker than what I already have? Like, after Suthorn, I went directly to Jabul Waters, and one of the first things I did there was discover the shipwreck and find a sneaky way to kill the shark. Just like that, I had the best water echo in the game, and never used any of the others. Similarly, I ended up in the Eternal Forest immediately after liberating the castle, so had the level three sword moblin for the entire rest of the game. That's not even to mention all the random objects... once you have clouds, water blocks, and flying tiles, why would you ever use anything else for traversal?

I really wish they just had multiple rows for the echos. Add an object row and a living thing row. Maybe throw a few more in for good measure.

There are some echoes that I probably haven't used to their full potential (I could never get in the habit of using a Spinning Tile for transportation), but I don't think there are any echoes that I never used at all.

I wouldn't give up on a Zelda Maker yet. I think this just helps prove a 2D top down Zelda Maker has 2 major elements out of the way. Enemy and object placement, and dungeon designing. But before a proper 2D Zelda Maker can be done it needs one or two more major elements. They need to decide what level of freedom to give us when it comes to putting story markers/villager dialog in the game, and how to make a satisfying complete experience that encourages you to play multiple people's worlds in a single player session

6:12 The Poe's mechanic is to be chased by its enemies so it then drops the flames on them. Some echoes attack right away, some don't. They each have their own mechanic, different matchups works better than others. You can use bind on the enemy, you can use bind on your echo, instead of yelling at the screenn. The Swordfighter mode being a limited option, as well as the Echoes having their own little quirks, adds to the balancing of the combat. Otherwise people will be complaining about oh just use the swordfighter form all the time (if it was limitless) or complain about how the echoes are OP (if they didn't have their quirks)

The music is a banger. Some of the best in the series. I love the Hyrule theme and flute waltz with the castanets.

Black Sheep? Surely that's Adventure of Link? I'm assuming the CDi games have been disowned.

I saw conde next to the word worst.....but I was pleasantly surprised by an idea I agree with....condé is amazing

I think you called it with the music comment being controversial. I love the music in this game because it’s fun hearing some classic Zelda themes with little twists and changes that add to the concept of the twist of actually playing as Zelda, particularly when the classic melodies turn into something a little more playful or gentle. I think it works really well.

The summoned monster AI didn't really bother me because you can always recall and send out a new monster the starts attacking almost imediatly. Getting Sword Moblin Lv. 2 really early probably helped a lot there though. That was my main combat unit until i stumbled upon the Lv. 3 version in the Lost Woods, which is probably the best monster on land. The only AI I had trouble with was actually *spoiler* Links because in the final dungeon you have to build a staircase for him and he kept jumping off it instead of reaching the top which had me stuck for about 10 minutes.

The only thing i have to complain is the confusing menu for the echoes. Why did they only use one button for all of them. The down button was free all the time and also the left button only has the few robots. They could have put the sword mode to the R3 oder L3 Button and let us configure ourselve the 4 (right, left, up, down) buttons to get a better overview for the echoes.

Honestly I don’t understand the frustration with combat. Yes I experienced the failure of too long of wind up, or echoes not behaving like I wish them to, but the thing is that just told me my strategy wasn’t one that worked and I needed to devise something new. Every time I ran into that, I came up with a new strategy that fixed my issue. I think this game plays better if you explore a ton and collect a lot of echoes vs just go story point to story point. A few times I’ve collected echoes I wasn’t even able to use because I didn’t have enough triangles to use them. I feel the game rewards exploration.

The music is kinda jammy and jazzy in this one, even proggy at times. And I love the electronic/psychedelic stuff in the Stillworld.

I did find that the echo management system wraps around itself if you push past the initial stop does help in managing if you need stuff near the ends.

Im playing through Echos of wisdom and I am really enjoying it. I will admit. I am NOT one of those people that notice Frame Rate drops unless Its down to like 15 or 20 or I am REALLY paying attention and looking for it. So that does not bother me. But Yeah. There are problems with the Game. That Echo Select..... Man it is a pain. And yeah. Some things are super easy. While Others are hard. But over all I really do enjoy the game. Not the BEST 2d zelda. But I think for the final zelda on the 1st gen switch and for Zelda's First Game as Main Character. Its a pretty good one.

Conde is one of the best zelda characters, if we're just looking at 2d games, he's up there with linebeck and spirit tracks zelda

You forgot the best thing of this game, "co-op" game between Zelda and Link, that final dungeon and boss were amazing and the way you can hold the boss so link can do his hits, just like zelda already did years agor for the players was my favourite part of the game

I didn't have any framerate issues not even on the horse and doing the mini games. Also love how doable the collection is 100 % this game. I still like BOTW and TOTK, but it's nice to have a not so open world game.

I would absolutely love if they expanded the eternal forest gimmick where you get less triangle as you go on because that was so cool but it was too short and easy…

I mostly agree with the Automatons point but I ended up using them against the final boss and it made it way easier in my opinion. Felt cool to have both a strong echo and a strong automaton whaling on the final boss. Also didn't have to worry about repairing it since the game reverts to pre-final fight state after the credits.

I really disagree about the music. I think it's quite good. Jabul Waters, Hyrule Field, Faron Temple, Eldin Temple, Gerudo Temple, and Lanayru Temple all have excellent themes imo. There are others as well. I think it's a solid OST.

The game has it's issues, but Zelda and her battle-system are so much fun that I easily would give up Link in favor of her for the next "big" Zelda (if they do a similar thing there). She opens so many possibilities.

Crazy how big the 180 was on the artstyle lol

Automatons are literally just the best echoes in the game, I used all of them all the time.

Important thing you missed to note for the review, you can go through the notebook feature in your menu, and you can select echoes from there. It's more convenient given that it's split into rows and columns, but they definitely could've done more.

Did you know, That you can hit the + button to open your compendium of all your echoes and select a echo from there and thus have quick and easy access to finding your echoes without having to use the mile long scroll bar?

Worst: Menu. Best: Actual MUSIC.

If Link stopping to nod at you every six seconds during Null’s Dungeon isn’t on the worst list, you need to rethink your priorities…

Hard disagree on some things. There are good music tracks in this. My favorite personally, being Gerudo Town. Also for the echos not attacking, or taking too long, really depends on the one that you are using. The Darknuts slash as soon as you bring it out. And then you can reset the animation but putting in another one. Also, I personally had no issues with frame rate, so I felt like that was nitpicky.

Gotta agree with most of the list here. Love the characters and locations in this game (including Conde obviously), and the story and dungeons were a pleasant surprise too. But yeah, things like the music felt like they could have been better, as could the echoes menu. Will say though, a few things that could be added: 1. Horses seem really underutilised in this game. They're used for the horse racing mini game and the two side quests where you get them, and that's about it. Given you can use echoes and bind while riding a horse, it's kinda surprising that side of things is never really explored. 2. Conversation UI is a bit lacklustre. You'll often not get a chance to instantly retry a mini game (or even quit mid game if things are going poorly), so you'll have to sit through loads of dialogue each time. 3. Enemy variety is incredible. Deep cuts like Arurodas, Moas, Bio Deku Babas and others come right out of left field, and offer a ton of gameplay variety. 4. Side content is a huge step up in general, with entirely optional bosses and dungeons to find in the overworld. Seeing a familiar face return in one of these just feels almost unreal too...