I too didn't mind the re-use of the LTTP map, but it's also been 10 years since ALBW and 20 years since I played LTTP, so I'm not going to recall many landmarks anyway. That said, I agree that it'd be cool to get some more distinct takes on Hyrule in the future.

@TriforceBun I had a surprisingly hard time completing the goal time on the shortest course at Lon Lon Ranch, and I swear the downtime of failing and restarting the race was like a full minute.

@nate38 Yep that one got me too for awhile!

@nate38

The shortest race was somehow the most difficult one! It required flawless execution. The race was faster than the time it took to restart it!!

Yeah that first race was a toughie, took me several attempts as well.

I forgot to mention, but I'm also playing on Hard Mode like Zero. I recommend it for Zelda vets; it really makes the game's systems shine a lot more. Like, smoothies are much more crucial since you can't find hearts and everything hits like a truck, so consequently, smoothie ingredients are much more vital and become good rewards instead of things you don't need.

The shortest walk is the longest journey.

Beat it. Gonna try and 100% it, 'cause I've had an amazing time with Echoes of Wisdom and don't feel like stopping now. Not much more to say that hasn't already been said. I hope the game has done well enough for Nintendo to let Grezzo handle another old school Zelda experiment on the next console, 'cause I'd love to see it.

I've been enjoying Echoes of Wisdom, though I'll admit my daughter beat the game before I did!
I'm not sure if I've been playing Zelda for too long or if design has changed, but it feels easier than say Oracle of Ages or Link's Awakening.
Loads of fun, and I like to mix up the Echoes I use.

@r_hjort A new Tri Force Heroes with three Zeldas using these abilities would be pretty rad.

@Mop it up
That's a really neat idea! Personally I want my Zeldas to be single player focused, though. I know those won't go away just because they might make a multiplayer Zelda, but still.

I finally beat the game! I've already said a lot of my thoughts here so I'll try not to repeat myself too much.

On the plot/final boss/ending: I think it's interesting having a new villain, especially one that usurps Ganon's role in the game (rather than the other way around). And it's also interesting learning that the goddesses formed Hyrule (and presumably the rest of the universe) to essentially trap this villain, although you get this info very quickly and with little fanfare. I like Link's role in the game and enjoy hearing people talk about his feats. They managed to make a game where you play as Zelda but not one that makes Link feel superfluous, so yay. I especially liked the way they worked together during the finale, which kind of felt like a reversal of games like OoT and TWW. Pretty clever even if it feels a little funny to not be the one doing the hack-and-slashing in these fights. But it was neat.

What I don't like is that Null is just...another semi-formless blob monster with no personality. I feel like we've seen this archetype so many times, from Zelda itself (Bellum, Malladus, non-Minish Vaati) to other Nintendo series like Kirby and Mario & Luigi. It's not all that interesting fighting yet another abstract purple sphere as a final boss.

On the writing: it's too corporate/sanitized, as I implied earlier. This was emphasized to me when I did some minor Gerudo sidequest where a character was spooked by the beetles in a nearby cave and wanted Zelda to clear them out. After doing so, she fibbed to her superior and took credit for the extermination, which I thought was kind of funny. But then right after, she just had to say to Zelda something like "I feel bad that I said that, so I'll clear it up later and try to be a better person" or whatever. WE CANNOT HAVE OUR GOOD GUY CHARACTERS EVER DISPLAY A TINY AMOUNT OF MISCHIEF BECAUSE FIBBING IS WRONG, KIDS. Sheesh, I can't imagine how they'd handle a character like Midna or Mido nowadays, someone deliberately bratty and selfish. I guess the Dekus were mischievous, but fairly stupid/brainwashed. My favorite characters were probably Conde who has a neat little arc and maybe the Stamp dude? Tri really did nothing for me, I'm sorryyyyy

On the map design: the world is fun to explore and really the perfect size. I actually love the idea of all the OoT (etc) races just being slightly off-screen from ALttP's map. It's clever and it stokes my imagination seeing the borders of the kingdom expanded in that way. It might not be quite as dense as past 2D Zeldas but it's still a balance that works. Uhhh...no notes. Well done!

On the echoes: it was fun for a game and now I'm ready to move on. Some of these feel like genuine power-ups, while others probably could've been skipped. I think consolidating enemy types would've been a good move for menu navigation but we've all been down this road before, so moving on. Oh, but the puzzle to get the best echo was pretty interesting and I actually had my son help me figure it out, so that was cool.

Thank goodness for Hard mode because I don't think I would've enjoyed getting smoothie ingredients as rewards without it! But big props for having that available from the start and for being genuinely challenging.

It's a good game. It's fun and often creative. I feel like modern Nintendo is making weird mistakes that pre-Switch Nintendo wouldn't so it's not near the top of my Zelda series totem pole. But a mid-to-high 8 out of 10 is still a good time and it's among the best games I've played this year.

I started playing this game a couple of days ago. It's a little talky at times, but I'm kind of digging it! The mechanics are really novel and fun. It's almost like a real-time monster taming game! The free-form nature of puzzle solutions and traversal methods echo BotW and TotK without feeling derivative. It's cool and liberating to kludge my way around the world and crawl around the edges of it.

I'm not sure that the top-down view is the best choice for such a vertically-oriented world, but it works well enough. The uneven framerate is kind of a bummer, but the art style is absolutely beautiful. A vast improvement over Link's Awakening. The character designs in the Zora section were top-notch. I would totally play a He-Man action figure game in this style! I'm always amazed at how Nintendo artists can mine the same races and biomes in every Zelda game, but keep it visually fresh. The Rifts are interestingly wacked-out, too, like the eerie techno aspects of Twilight Princess.

Super-charming stuff. It looks superficially similar to a 2D Zelda game, but subverts so much of that formula. I could nitpick its little flaws, but the game is more than the sum of its parts. It's another weird Nintendo game!