Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Echoes of Wisdom is absolutely longer than Link's Awakening - I spent about 25 hours on it myself. Can't remember specifically how much time I spent on LA but I reckon Echoes was almost twice as long.

Not sure which is longer but I spent over 40 hours in Echoes of Wisdom. I think both games have the perfect length.

Links awakening is only about 15hrs. EoW took me about 23-25hrs.

I did most of the recipes extremely early in the game and then remembered to finish the rest at hour 40.

It's kind of hard to know what to call 100% in this game. There are so many things to collect and do and some aren't really tracked:

1. All Echoes
2. All Heart Pieces
3. All Might Crystals
4. All Bottles
5. All Outfits
6. All Accessories
7. All smoothie combinations
8. All rifts
9. All side-quests
10. All treasure chests
11. Max reward in all mini-games ( Mango, Acorn, flag race, dojo)
12. All Link-related power-ups.
13. All automatons
14. All stamps
15. Max 99 stack of all ingredients
16. All quest items in the special row for them
17. Talk to all npcs both before and after dialogue changes because of events.
18. Talk to all cats wearing cat outfit
19. All hidden non-respawning rupees
20. Find and explore all caves

Did I forget any categories?

I did almost all of the above but I'm sure I missed a few small things (and I didn't actually try to max stack all my ingredients although quite a few reached max naturally)

The one thing I'd add is completing the game in Hero mode, assuming that you did it in Normal first.

I certainly didn't do the 99 stacks. Given how rare the Golden Eggs are, they alone would take a while to accumulate. I suppose you could do it with a big pile of Amiibos and changing the system clock, but that's not my idea of fun.

@Matt_Barber 99 golden eggs would definitely be painful. I really only added that category to my list to be silly since it is something which gets tracked.

I was just looking at the rules for 100% at speedrun.com and they're interesting.

Including your suggestion, I guess other things are:

21. Both normal and hero mode
22. max level Tri Rod (implied by all rifts )
23. All waypoints activated. (I forgot this one above)
24. Other key items which are impossible to miss unless you use glitches.

speedrun.com only includes things easy to track in the menus plus waypoints:

1-9, 12-14, 16, 22-24. So nothing about caves, treasures or npcs, unless they are part of a quest/item. And it lets you skip the mini-games which don't have good rewards. And it only requires non-amiibo outfits.

No speedruns yet for that definition of 100% but I will be curious what the times are. Current record for glitchless any% is 3 hours 41 minutes.

@FishyS
Cool, congratulations for 100% completion and making every smoothie! Yeah I think your list is pretty good, plus the stuff like every waypoint. I am sure that I did not get the max reward in every acorn minigame, I might have missed a few chests, rupees and npc dialogue. You even mentioned the most important part, talking to all cats wearing the cat outfit.

For the most part, I feel like I accomplished everything. I feel that I should have played on hero mode though.

@Jhena

I was thinking: Doing all the smoothies can't be to terrible, right? I mean, Totk had hundreds of recipes. The smoothies where actually doable.

@FishyS ,

Same with me. I didn't max out my ingredients though, I think I opened all chests, and I don't have the Amiibo outfits. Getting the "master" time on the first horse race course was actually much harder then the others, but I managed. There's also a fun easter-egg in the Scrub-jail that nets you some rupees, just saying.

@Henmii
Yeah it was doable, especially since I did not make them all at once.

@Jhena ,

Yeah, I also did them in a couple of sessions.

Why is this game so charming and cute?! Love the sound direction. Also Ganon needs a fricken hobby.

Edit: NVM Zelda has got some pent up rage. Should not be able to drown things so easily. Or push them off ledges.

What was the newest update for?

Some of you guys - preferably multiple of you - need to tell me how the echo gimmick holds up and how much..stuff you do in general that's not too repetitive in the game. I'm still kind of hesitant if I will enjoy the game, I do like top-down Zelda, I do like the idea of playing AS Zelda and the Echoes seem to offer a lot of free form solutions to puzzle design.

But I also saw how stupid huge the menu for them gets after a while, I imagine most players (and I see myself in that group) will eventually gravitate to a handful of the same echos for catch all solutions and I'm not sure how fun combat is gonna be with the ni no kuni 1 approach of summoning monsters to fight for you without...a lot of input from you.

Basically, sell this game to someone who loves A Link to the Last 1+2, Minish Cap and Link's Awakening but who isn't sure at all about how substantial the game and its systems are. I still try to avoid too many spoilers, I did look at some early game stuff and I saw the first two trailers, I think.

I did the endboss again yesterday because the first time I did it the wrong way (swamping it with pathblades and mothula's). I am actually surprised at how clever Link is in this fight.

@Dom_31 By the time I got to the end of the game, I was tired of the echoes gimmick. It feels less clever and more like “span your strongest echo when you get it.”

The few final dungeons had me start using the sword more and more because I genuinely wasn’t having fun with the echoes mechanic.

@Dom_31 Honestly for me the game was a huge letdown. The 'echoes' mechanic felt quite gimmicky after only a few hours, and I was craving conventional sword/Zelda combat. The game has charm for sure, and looks gorgeous, but ultimately I found it to be a very surface-level experience.

Playing as Zelda herself was great, but IMO the game needed her to have some sort of 'regular' combat moveset. Similar to how Hades 2 differentiated itself from Hades 1, swapping the protagonist and adding a new-ish moveset... albeit with slight similarities to what came before ("fresh but familiar")

Echoes is also very very easy, even on Hero mode, and at times feels somewhat patronising. I played Links Awakening remake straight after, which I think is superior in every way - even despite it being decades old in essence!

I mean being the damsel in distress for 38 years will do that to you.

Loving this game so far. I love that Zelda is an official Miko now and that the Golden Goddesses are taking a more centralized role. I love the Zelda/Hylia mythology but she is a lesser Goddess even if she actively protects the world via reincarnation. Impa is as always the show stealer for me. Be she 17 or 117 she is super cool. I just love that the LttP era continues on. Tri is the best mononoke ever, love the humor and warmth of this entry.

Love the echoes and figuring out all their traits. Not gonna lie, I walk around with a murder of crows because they knock rupees out of enemies. Who’s my cute little death thieves? You are! Its funny, didn’t care to build beyond the basics in TOTK but I am combining echoes all the time. I have probably burned down half of Hyrule.

@Dom_31 I loved it.

The main appeal of the echoes is puzzle solving IMO, and I think they did a great job there. Having a variety of tools at your disposal and having that "a-ha!" moment where you realise you can use an echo for a specific thing always felt rewarding. Traversal with the echoes can also be pretty fun, and I liked how this game had more of a vertical / platforming element than is typical of Zelda games.

As for combat? I thought it was pretty good. Personally I never really used my "strongest" echo - I found better strength in numbers (either using a horde of echoes alone to take out the enemy, or using them in combination with the swordfighter form so that they can do DPS / distract the enemy as I attacked them in a more "traditional" way). The echoes you choose to use in battle may depend on context as well - e.g. airborne and waterborne echoes for those scenarios, plus other unique traits like spewing fire or electricity, or being able to use ranged attacks.

You do get a lot of echoes but I didn't find navigating the menus to be that problematic. You can easily sort the quick-select menu according to "Most used" and "Last used".

All this on top of a world that is as fun to explore as any other Zelda game - I would recommend it myself.

I would note that the dungeons are a bit more simplistic in their layout than what I'm used to - can't remember if this is typical of 2D Zelda (been a while since I played one), but I didn't find it to be too much of a problem.