Cozy Gaming with ‘Echoes of Wisdom’

Let me start by saying the unpopular thing out loud: I’m not normally a fan of the Legend of Zelda franchise. I know. Hear me out though. My first Zelda game was in the 1980s. I got confused. I got lost. I rage quit. More recently, I tried to play Tears of the Kingdom. I got confused. I got lost. I rage quit.

Enter Echoes of Wisdom. I’m mostly a cozy gamer. I like to quietly meander through pretty graphics without dying or feeling anxiety. My aesthetic tends to be “cute things with big trusting eyes,” like Pokemon. I love playing female protagonists. When Nintendo sent me a review copy, I immediately downloaded the game and started on my adventure.

The good news for me: “Echoes of Wisdom” has all of the things I love. 

The less good news for me – but the good news for the Zelda fans – Echoes of Wisdom has enough to challenge you that you’re probably going to like it.

The Cute Aesthetic and a Female Protagonist

Ignoring the fact that some people wanted a Zelda-led game to look like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom would be disingenuous. However, as a cozy gamer, the aesthetic is precisely what attracted me.

Similar to Princess Peach: Showtime!, Echoes of Wisdom gives us adorable characters meandering happily across a 2D world. The graphics aren’t giving deep art, like Breath of the Wild, but they match the larger narrative and gameplay.

For example, Zelda’s got the proportions of a Funko! Pop, with a head that seems outside compared to her body. This “bubble” aesthetic works perfectly. She’s not a character with heavy fighting capabilities. She’s a protagonist who carefully chooses sidekicks and tools, unless she shifts into Ghost Link form to battle with his sword.

The art matches a lot of the gameplay that seems to mash up Mario, where I hummed the theme song while exploring dungeons, and Pokemon, while I let my little adorable animal echo buddy run around and battle for me. 

The Gameplay

My review may not be your review. The good news, for me, is that I’ve played more time in this game than any previous Zelda game without rage quitting. The good news for non-cozy gamers is that the gameplay isn’t simply about chasing after and capturing cute little monsters so you can weaponize their echoes.

Collecting Echoes

From furniture to monsters, collecting echoes is how you build up your reservoir of skills. Early on in the game, you collect things like tables, boxes, and trees that help you safely navigate through dangerous areas. For the cozy gamer, the bed echo is clutch. Pop yourself a bed echo, lie down, and watch as your hearts revive, even if you’re in the middle of trying to clear an area. I’m an exhausted person who would absolutely do this in real life. If only I could pop out a magic bed everywhere I go and doze off to re-energize in the middle of watching a youth soccer game. The dream, people. The dream.

As you progress, you start to collect the monsters that try to attack you. After winning a battle, you learn their echoes which can fight other monsters on your behalf. The good news is that  echoes are merely an embodiment of the monster, so you don’t really feel bad for using them. It builds on the best part of the Pokemon Scarlet/Violet mechanic where you send your buddy out to roam around for you.

Puzzles

The echoes also help you solve different puzzles throughout the game. Whether you need to jump higher with a trampoline or climb up a mountainside with stacked tables, you use the different echoes to help you solve the puzzles.

At its heart, Echoes of Wisdom is still a Zelda game. It asks you to think, but it doesn’t offer a single answer to any problem. Do you want to stack a bunch of beds to climb up something? Go for it. Would you prefer to use a spider and ride up it’s web? Sure, you can do that too.

Battles

As much as I love cozy games, I don’t always feel like farming and retrieving items for people. Sometimes, I have a little aggression that I want to get out in a healthy way. Echoes of Wisdom gives me this experience.

As you move through the story line, you have opportunities to battle monsters and bosses. In true honesty, I almost rage quit the game when I got to the first boss battle. I was thinking like a traditional game and fighting the boss as one does, except Zelda doesn’t have any weapons at that point. Thanks to the joys of the internet, a walkthrough explained how I could complete the battle without actually having to mash buttons frustratedly. This was the moment I realized that Echoes could be a cozy game if I wanted to play it that way. Yes, you can absolutely slice through monsters and throw objects at them. You can also take a more self- (or in my case, sanity-) preserving approach by letting an echo fight on your behalf.

Unlocking Cozy Creativity with Echoes of Wisdom

Although Echoes of Wisdom doesn’t have a world as vast as some others in the franchise, it still gives you all the opportunity for creativity. Like other Zelda games, your imagination is the only limit.

As I’ve been playing Echoes like a cozy game, I’ve mostly meandered around the map, unlocking new places and collecting new echoes. I found a horse, and I rode around the map a bit. I’ve explored dungeons and caves. I did a lot of resting in bed which is, honestly, a pretty sweet way to hang out in a game.

When I decide I have bandwidth to manage larger battles, I’ll go back to the main plot. However, in the meantime, I’m going to curl up on my couch with my favorite Mario plush blanket and swish my way through some grass to collect Rupees.