The Legend of Zelda is the only game series where I tend to complete every new game, even it takes a year. Luckily, in case of Echoes of Wisdom it's only been two weeks, where I generally prefer such more compact experiences for their replayability.
In order to complete the game, I still had to find four more Pieces of Heart, four echoes, one stamp, three accessories, and 16 Might Crystals. So, let's see what I was missing and where my brain was failing, because that's part of the fun. Spoilers ahead for locations of echoes and other things, so you may want to complete the game first yourself before reading this!
~ The Last Echoes ~
Let's get right to the most interesting part... What echoes had eluded me for the entirety of the game and where? Since I had been all over the overworld multiple times by now, I realized that I should probably revisit the caves. And beating the game shows you the exact empty slots in your notebook, so this gave me some ideas of what to look for.
One gap was right next to the Ghini and here it made sense that there might be a stronger version, like there is in Link's Awakening. So, I went back to the cave on the graveyard, where I first had learned the normal Ghini echo, as well as the stuffed toy. It turned out that I wasn't even finished with the cave, but forgot to leave a marker...
To get into the room with the giant Ghini you have to activate a switch behind a wall and during my first visit I didn't understand what I had to do here. I went there very early in the game, right after the first dungeon. And right before I ran into various obstacles where I needed echoes that I didn't have yet, the Bombfish (or Zirro) and Holmill.
Those are the only echoes that may create some backtracking if you explore certain places too early, but I didn't know that at the time and simply assumed I'm missing something else. In hindsight it's quite obvious what you have to do here, since ghosts can go through walls, but I had never used this ability before. And this now makes me wonder what other puzzles you may be able to cheese with the Ghinis..
It will be very interesting to replay this game with a better picture of all the things that you can find and do, though I'm barely scratching the surface here, because the game rarely challenges you to try new things. You can just keep using water blocks and beds to solve all problems and this will work most of the time. Though, at least it does a good job at teaching you what your new echoes can do, like in this case. Given that you understand what the game wants from you.
But I certainly prefer such a situation over the game telling me directly what to do. Imagine if Tri were to pop up and explain every new echo to you... "Hey, listen, this is a Ghini echo! It can go through walls. See that switch on the other side of the wall? Try sending a Ghini towards it!" That would be horrible and I'm glad the game avoided this route.
Moving on, I also had open slots next to the Lv2 Boomerang Boarblin and Lv2 Darknut. Of course, there was the possibility that one of these goes to the Lynel (which it does), but I was first trying to find more Lv3 monsters. There was also one more object missing, next to the cloud, where due to a certain side quest I believed this to be some sort of container. So, I went back to explore the entirety of the Stilled Hyrule Castle again, in hopes to find something there, including the strongest Darknut, but to no avail...
Eventually I found it in a misleading cave in Faron, which I had visited before, but for some reason missed the way forward. It's the temple on the east border, where you even have a Deku in front of it talking about a treasure in a cave around there...
You have this room with multiple Armos and I remember that I had defeated them, some of them at least, and then moved on... Maybe I thought that the echo of an Armos itself was the big prize here, maybe there were some Rupees hidden in one of the alcoves, I don't know, but I didn't see the ladder the first time I was there.
And that's too bad, because the Lv3 Darknut is very strong with its spinning attack. You also obtain the Spin Brace accessory here, which lets you push away monsters with your spin. So, that was a big win overall.
Afterwards I didn't know where to look any longer. There is this big, open space in the northeast of the Eternal Forest, which very much looked like the perfect place to fight a Lynel, but I didn't know what I had to do there. I was also a bit too hopeful that maybe the Lynel is a 128th echo, which only becomes available once you have everything else. So, collecting all other echoes would potentially trigger this fight somehow...
And I really liked the idea of a Lv3 Boomerang Boarblin, because none of the other Lv3 monsters have ranged attacks and the Boarblins haven't seen much love in this game. They are mainly found in the north of the Gerudo Desert and that's really it... I also kept exploring around Eldin Volcano quite a bit, since all the other Lv3 monsters appear in the later areas: Hebra Mountain, Eternal Forest, and the Faron Wetlands. It made sense for another one to be at Eldin, which is probably where they should have put the Darknut, instead of giving you two of the strongest monsters at the jungle.
Ultimately, I gave in and asked the Great Deku Tree, learning some of his wisdom. And he told me to look at Hyrule Field and the Eternal Forest. I still didn't know what I had to do at the Eternal Forest, so I went searching through the caves around Hyrule Field next... And similar to the tomb at the graveyard, there was another one that I had entered early in the game, but where I forgot to leave a marker... It's entirely made out of wood, close to the forest:
Here I found the spiked roller, where I must have missed that you can learn this thing. And that's so sad, because this is what the first mini-boss from Link's Awakening uses and it's another fun tool to go crazy with. This also never appears anywhere in the top-down perspective, but you can summon it there to make it roll over smaller foes, given that there is enough space for its width. Since it is made out of wood, it does break quite easily, though.
The cave also had one of my missing Pieces of Heart, where this one required the Holmill. But past me must have thought that future me will certainly remember this. Well, he didn't...
That left me with the monster in the Eternal Forest, where I still didn't know what to do, but I remembered that someone in the game was talking about a strong monster in the woods. Back then I had assumed that this was about the Lv3 Sword Moblin there, which is a very rare occurrence. In fact, there is only one more at Hebra. So, I didn't pay this much thought originally, but now that I knew that there was something else here, I had to track down the person.
At first I thought it might have been a soldier, but it was actually the priest at the Northern Cathedral, where this monster appears in one of his rumors. And he specifically says that you shouldn't follow any tracks... Well, looks like I was unintentionally following his advice, because I never saw the hooves in the dirt around the forest.
What could they possibly lead to, I wonder...? At least this gives the Eternal Forest its own Lost Woods moment, where you have to follow the right path to make something appear. And I really like the idea of following the tracks of a monster that just wants to be left alone, it seems. This was clever and also prevents the player from accidentally running into the Lynel at a point where you're not yet prepared to fight it.
But I certainly was, where my new Lv3 Darknut did the trick, only to be tossed aside afterwards, because I had gained a new toy. The Lynel is the only echo in the game that requires six whole triangles, but this was already reduced to five for me. And if you know about this secret, you can technically fight and obtain the Lynel very early in the game, but its spawning requirement will prevent you from using it that early.
It was the same for me with the Lv3 Sword Moblin, where these stronger monsters completely break the game. There's rarely a reason to go back to lesser monsters, unless you really prefer to spawn multiple echoes at once.
And the Lynel goes crazy, it combines the attack power of the Lv3 Sword Moblin and Lv3 Darknut with the agility of the Lv3 Lizalfos. It's too good. Those many Tektites (which are super annoying in this game by the way) in the one area at Hyrule Field? Spawn a Lynel and see them vanish.
But this is it, I've got all the echoes in the game. No big fanfare or some special reward, but collecting each echo is a reward in itself due to their different utility. And discovering them all was a lot of fun, where it will take a second playthrough to truly appreciate everything.
It's still curious what didn't make it into the game as echoes. There's the Lv3 Boomerang Boarblin, who only existed in my head, but I still think it's a great idea. There are no Stalfos in this game, even though they are among the most common enemies in the series, together with Octoroks, Keese, Tektites, and Armos – which are all present in Echoes of Wisdom otherwise. This is even the first Zelda game without any skeletal enemies of any kind.
After replaying Link's Awakening on the Switch, I was also hoping for an echo of Vire, because they looked really hot in the remake. And an echo of a Wallmaster would have been ingenious. So, it does feel like there are some missed opportunities, while there is also some redundancy (especially with all the flying enemies), so the echo collection isn't perfect, but it's very impressive overall.
~ The Precious Container ~
There was one side quest in the game that I wasn't able to solve for quite a while, where a Zora above the Sea Zora Village wants you to find a container for him, which lets him store something underwater. He reacts to your echoes, telling you that your pots aren't sufficient, because water can get into them, and your box isn't pretty enough. Since there are three different pots in the game for no good reason (it doesn't even matter which ones you use to hide in during the stealth sections), I thought that maybe at some point you will get a fancier box or so...
It also thought that he might be looking for a treasure chest, because that makes the most sense for what he wants, of course. But this couldn't have been it, because... you can't make echoes of a treasure chest. Duh. [Insert facepalming Picard here.] Yes, it took completing the entire echo collection to realize my mistake here.
Since there was no sufficient echo, I finally understood that I had to bring him something via Bind. And this game keeps its treasure chests around, even after you've opened them... Which feels strange after playing hundreds of hours of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but that's how the classic Zelda games also did it... Except that you couldn't move the chests around.
It's a clever, little side quest, but it exposes how much of a blind spot the Bind ability had created for me. You could say it was a "bind spot", ba-dum-tsss. There were so many situations in the game where I didn't think of it and where I'm only now slowly start to learn what I could have done, also with the reverse bond. The horse racing, for example, where I struggled so much with the short track... You can move the trees out of the way with Bind! I will have to be a lot more conscious about this ability on my second playthrough.
~ The Last Stamp(ede) ~
Another Bind-related thing that I could have made much more use of is the Crawtula. If I had, maybe I would have found the last stamp station much earlier in the game and it would have made my early exploration of Mount Hebra more interesting. While I had reached Condé's hut and the cave with the Lv3 Moblin, I gave up there too soon, because secrets waited in the trees above between the two.
This is where my last missing stamp was, but there was also a Might Crystal hidden up there, as well as a secret entrance to a cave. This is the same cave that leads you to the ice lake above, where normally Condé needs to clear the snow in front of the normal entrance for you. But you can just use the alternate entrance instead... Or climb all the way up with a Crawtula, that works as well.
Anyway, you get the stamp suit for your efforts, which is the ugliest of the outfits, but also quite funny. The game needs a lot more like this, where it's a shame that there are only eight different clothing pieces in the game, not counting the amiibo recolors.
But this is also the reason why one of the stamp stands gets taken by a rift further up the mountain: they needed to make sure that you can change your outfits, before they let you obtain the stamp suit. And you can technically get to all stamp stations right after the beginning of the game.
Once you're done with the stamp rally, the Stamp Guy will then set up shop in Kakariko Village. The dialogue differs when you wear the stamp suit, but otherwise there isn't much you can do here.
By the way, there are five different colors / motives for the stamps, and each stamp stand gives you a specific color. If you want the stamp cards to look really nice, you will have to do them in a certain order. You could make each card in the same color or make sure that each card has all five colors.
In my case it's all over the place and I don't really look at the cards in the inventory, so it doesn't bother me. But in future playthroughs it could make for a nice challenge to fill the stamp cards in a specific way.
~The Last Heart ~
Four more Pieces of Heart wanted to be found and I mentioned one of them earlier, the one in the cave with the spiked rollers. I saw that one very early in the game, but couldn't reach it without a Holmill... and then forgot about it. That's what you should be using map markers for.
Another Piece of Heart awaited me on Hebra Mountain, on the hill above the large ice lake. And then there was one more side quest with the Zol fan at Hyrule Castle Town, who was looking for a special Zol that no one has seen before. At first I was confused what he meant, but once I could rule out that there was another Zol echo, I realized that he wanted to see the Gizmol, which was built from a Zol.
So, it's a similar story to the container Zora, where I was too focused on echoes. Except that no one can blame me for forgetting about the automatons. (Though, I heard the Roboblin is really good and even shreds the Lynel, where I might want to give it a try one day.)
The last piece brought me back to General Wright, who finally talks about big monsters again once you've saved Link. He informs you about the monster stuff after mending the Hyrule Castle rift, but then there is always some other topic on his mind, like the side quests he was involved in... And it seemed for a while that the monster intel never comes back.
You don't get anything from him for defeating all the monsters, but he tells you where you have to look for them. And he was still talking about the Lanmola, even though I already had defeated both the red and the green one, which stopped all the sandstorms in the desert... So, there was something off here. Plus, I had never gotten a side quest for the Lanmola, which was also different from the other optional bosses.
Well, it turned out that there is also a purple Lanmola in the game, which will only appear after you've started its corresponding side quest. And here it turned out that for some reason I never went back to the armory in the Gerudo Palace, where you have a pair of guards training to take down the strongest of all Lanmola. I don't know when it happens, but my best guess is that you need to defeat the other two Lanmolas first.
Anyway, the purple Lanmola also causes other sand monsters to spawn, which makes the battle a bit more difficult, and finally drops a Piece of Heart. There should have been a Slumber Dojo battle that pitches you against all three Lanmolas at once, also as a throwback to A Link to the Past. That would have been crazy, but maybe they would keep colliding into each other.
You also obtain the Gold Sash as a reward afterwards from Facette, where I need to remind myself that she isn't some evil imposter any longer. And this accessory makes you immune against winds, both from wind cannons and Tornandos, which is very useful in the right places. For example, there is a cave full of gust streams at Hebra Mountain, where you can just walk through it with a combination of the Gold Sash and Ice Spikes.
I love the accessories and they have covered almost everything worthwhile from the Magic Rings. The only perk that still comes to mind is the one of the Roc's Ring, which prevents cracked floors from crumbling. There aren't many of those in the game, but you could extend this to clouds, where this would be very useful.
~ The Last Might Crystals ~
With everything else done, all I was missing in the end were a couple more Might Crystals for some super secret reward from Lueburry. But I've also collected several of them while looking for the other things... Overall, I like how they are hidden everywhere in the environment, where you have to look for the little details. It's very reminiscent of the Secret Seashells from Link's Awakening, which are among my favorite collectible items.
But since I needed over a dozen of them, even though I had explored all of the world already, I had to consider that there might be hiding spots that I'm completely unaware of. For example, I thought that maybe one of the echoes lets you shake trees, like with the Pegasus Boots. This would have explained why I was missing so many, but this wasn't the case.
However, you can move the weather vane in Hyrule Castle Town. Of course you can... It's not that I never tried before – as a fan of Link's Awakening it's the first thing that comes to mind here –, but I tried pushing it. Same mistake as with the graves, where you have to use Bind instead. Ah, yeah... Bind... To be fair, you can target it, which gives it away, but there is otherwise no reason to use targeting in Hyrule Castle Town, so I never noticed. Afterwards I started spamming the ZL button everywhere, just in case I was missing something that could be moved with Bind after all.
But this was an exception and not the major thing that I wasn't seeing. The best explanation then was that they are hidden underwater, because I find it generally hard to spot things below the surface, because it's visually too busy (and the frame rate tends to drop around areas with water). So, I started looking more deeply, and a pond in the Suthorn Prairie then proved me wright, where there was a circular grass pattern underwater. Then I moved on to Lake Hylia, where I did find a new Might Crystal, but not at all where I expected it...
For some reason a new treasure chest had appeared at the Great Fairy's pond. This did NOT happen after unlocking all five accessory slots, because I already went back to see if there's more. So, I looked this up on the internet and apparently this triggers after clearing Eldin Volcano. And since this was my last dungeon, I didn't get this chest until the end of the game.
It wouldn't be a big deal if it only were about the one Might Crystal that's inside. But this spawns a new side quest, where you have to make a pendant for the Great Fairy. The shop owner in Gerudo Town is a jeweler, which is a nice reference to the Starlight Memories store from Breath of the Wild, but you'll also need a Floral Seashell from the Zora and a Magma Stone from the Gorons – which is why you need to complete Eldin first.
This is what has filled the three open slots among my trade items. Three birds with one stone. And the quest for the gems lead you to the other shop owners among the respective tribes, where I found the one at the Sea Zora Village quite funny. He wants to taste an Unfortunate Smoothie and absolutely loves how disgusting it is. It reminded me of Data in Star Trek Generations, where he had a first drink after installing his emotions chip.
"I hate this! It is revolting!"
"More?"
"Please!"
Now, you get the Might Bell as a reward from the Great Fairy, which is this game's Seashell Sensor, where turning this into an accessory is a very smart solution, since you can also turn it on or off that way. Of course, it becomes useless once you have all the Might Crystals, but that's okay.
In my case there weren't many Might Crystals left to find, however, and I was struggling with whether I should use it or not. Generally, I very much enjoy looking for the little clues in the environment and with such a sensor it becomes too simple. It's like the Maiamais in A Link Between Worlds, which would be one of the best collectibles if they didn't give their position away so easily.
But since the world is so big for a top-down game, I started using the bell to make sure that there truly is nothing left to find in certain places... Like Eldin Volcano, for example, but there it suddenly turned on when I got close to Kakariko.
The radius of the Might Bell feels quite large, because it started chiming when I was on top of the hill with the Mini Moldorms above. But it does get louder once you get closer. And in this case it seemingly guided me towards the broken tombstone, where I thought that I had to fix it by finding the broken off piece somewhere. I looked all around Kakariko, but there was nothing to find...
Finally, this was a problem that puzzled me where Bind wasn't the solution. I simply didn't notice the small patch of dirt next to the graveyard, which indicates that there is a Might Crystal buried right there...
But what I could do in Kakariko with Bind was opening the well, where the Bottom of the Well was neither dark, narrow, nor scary. And there were only some ingredients hidden there, what a letdown... I didn't have all the Pieces of Heart yet at the time, where I was so sure that this has to be the last one. And I can still feel my disappointment from that moment.
There was also the possibility that I was still missing a side quest somewhere, so I looked up the total online, which is 50. But I had all 50 side quests already and I also had gotten the better scores in all the mini-games, so the remaining Might Crystals needed to be somewhere in the environment.
Finally, the last two of them were actually underwater, like I thought they would be, both at the Zora Cove. There is a second circular grass pattern near the east beach, which I didn't see before. And the very last one was under the piers of Seesyde Village, I shoved it right under the Old Wayfarer's nose:
The worst part is that I had dived there before, below all those jetties of the village, just in case there is something hidden underneath them... But I completely missed the piece right at the front, what a joke. It was hidden in plain sight there, since the blue crystals are well camouflaged under the water. (But I still need to get my eyes checked, even though Tears of the Kingdom already told me to.)
Now, I was really curious what the reward from Lueburry would be. It couldn't have been another accessory, because I also looked up the total for those (28, including the two upgrades), which I had. Same with the outfits. And there were no inventory slots left open otherwise... So, I had no clue what I would get out of this.
~ The Mightiest of Them All ~
Just for fun, I wanted to show you my most used echoes, where this will probably be different for every player. Of course, there will also be some similarities, like how everyone's most used materials in Tears of the Kingdom are usually Bomb Flowers, Brightbloom Seeds, and Fire Fruits. But I think the echoes allow for a greater variety in play styles, where you may prefer to use beds for everything, or water blocks, or other things...
In my case it was definitely the water blocks, though I mainly used boxes to climb once I got the Frog Ring. One echo that is missing in the top, however, is certainly the Platboom. In combination with the Frog Ring it's really good, it lets you get up high very easily, but for some reason it slipped my mind that it existed. That's one echo I'm certainly going to use more in future playthroughs.
It's also crazy how quickly the Lynel made it into the top 5, even though it was the last echo I had learned. But once I got it I just spammed it everywhere for easy fights. I also went back into the finale with it, because I wanted to experience it with the full 20 hearts + all weapons glory.
The least used echoes aren't as interesting, because I had checked them regularly and then started to deploy them just to see if I was missing something. This means that it's not really representative, so I won't show them here.
On a side note, the Tangler becomes completely obsolete in the game once you have the Lv2 Tangler with reduced costs, because then both only take one triangle. And then there is no good reason to use the normal Tangler ever again... Poor Tangler. It's similar for the Octorok and the Zol, but at least in those cases you may not want to use the elemental effects of their brethren.
~ The End of a Journey ~
That's a wrap for this blog series, I have fully completed Echoes of Wisdom for the first time and I had a great time overall. There were some bigger complaints from my side, mainly the easy dungeons, but also how both the smoothies and Automatons were quite unnecessary. But otherwise I would rank this among my favorite Zelda titles, next to Link's Awakening and Breath of the Wild, where this combines qualities of the two, while also giving me lots of nostalgia of all the classic Zelda games.
What speaks for Echoes of Wisdom is that I already want to play it again. I won't have much time in the next weeks, but maybe I'll go for it in December or so. But then I'm going to play the game in Hero Mode from start to finish, while I will also take different paths and maybe focus on echoes I haven't used much before.
