This article contains spoilers for the final boss of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.
With Echoes of Wisdom, Nintendo brought back a longstanding Zelda tradition conspicuously missing from the two most recent games. Sure, traditional dungeons are back after being fully gone in Breath of the Wild, and not-quite-back in Tears of the Kingdom. And, yes, this game is the first new single-player 2D Zelda in over a decade. But those aren’t the traditions I’m talking about. No, I’m talking about Echoes of Wisdom being easy as hell.
How Hard Should Zelda Be, Anyway?
This really hit home when I reached Echoes of Wisdom’s final boss battle, a multi-stage affair against Null, the big bad who has been working behind the scenes to pull Hyrule into the void. It’s a good, challenging fight, and the one time in the game I needed multiple attempts to best a boss. It forced me to dig a little deeper, try out new echoes, and generally push myself until, on the final attempt, I barely got hit until the final stage. As someone who loves Souls games, but basically never finishes them, I’m not usually one to wish for games to be more difficult. But Echoes is the rare game that would hit way harder if its enemies did.
Related
Figuring Out What To Do With Monster Parts Is The Worst Thing In Modern Zelda
I can’t get the right monster mix.
Echoes of Wisdom is building on the formula Nintendo established with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It’s a more systemic take on 2D Zelda, with those games as clear inspirations, but those games both start pretty tough. When Link first steps out into Hyrule, he’s wearing underwear and wielding a stick. You have to sneak around, and rely on clever strategies, not Link’s inherent might.
This pushes you to experiment. Will I have a better chance against the Stone Talus I found immediately after leaving the Great Plateau if I place bombs around its big rocky body before it wakes up for the actual fight? Can I survive in this cold area if I cook up a dish with peppers in it? Can I climb this tall cliff if I scavenge some green mushrooms first?
Echoes Of Wisdom Doesn’t Push Back Hard Enough
As I played through Echoes of Wisdom, I kept expecting similar wrinkles to crop up. You can make smoothies that give you heat and cold resistance, that let you swim and climb faster, and that make you glow. That suggests that heat, cold, slow swimming, slow climbing, and darkness are problems you’re going to need to worry about, but I almost never needed any of these boons. Aside from a brief excursion along Mt. Lanayru’s peaks, I never needed to stay warm. I can think of one time, maybe, where Zelda being able to glow was helpful. Throughout the rest of the game, I needed smoothies that could heal and smoothies that could restore my magic power. That’s it, and those meters have been a part of Zelda for as long as I’ve been playing.
This lack of challenge also allows you to rely on the same Echoes over and over, instead of experimenting and seeing what they can do. There is cool stuff in this game. I saw someone make a hovercraft-style vehicle using a green fan and a bed. I’ve seen players use the fire propagation system to set their echoes on fire and do long-range burn damage. It’s a game that is way more open to experimentation than you would think if you play it the way it lets you play it 99 percent of the time. It just doesn’t seem willing to give you that push, to knock you down and make you figure out how to get back up again.
It’s a shame, because the Zelda games seemed to be moving away from the pushover difficulty that defined the games leading up to Breath of the Wild. Nintendo recently seemed to relearn that challenge is an important color on the palette. But Echoes of Wisdom abandoned that, and barring DLC that adds difficulty modes, I think we’ll have to wait for the follow-up before we see these systems pushed as far as they can go.
Next
Echoes Of Wisdom Is Fine, But Its Sequel Will Be Incredible
The latest Zelda is a good game, but its ideas need more time to cook.