The game I would call the most comparable to Echoes of Wisdom is Paper Mario: The Origami King. All the ingredients for a great game are there, but one boneheaded decision regarding the core gameplay drags everything down. For TOK it was the removal of RPG staples like EXP and combat abilities during the turn-based battles which were all already proven to work splendidly in the first two Paper Mario games. For EoW it's the removal of the sword (or any conventional weapon, because Zelda could have been given something other than a sword).

Due to the lack of a weapon, EoW feels all too often like you have to take an extra step to get something done. Instead of hitting an enemy directly, you have to summon something. At its core it's also absolutely idiotic to advertise a game as offering so many choices when the most basic and obvious choice is being taken away from the player. There's no "you can play this game like you want" like in Breath of the Wild, here it's a "you have to play it like we want you to." This culminates in the final phase of the story where

It's so infuriating.

What's left is a decent to good game which is not the level of quality you'd like to see and expect from a Zelda game. This is the kind of Zelda that Aonuma would love to make until the end of time. It becomes glaringly obvious when

Top-down Zelda games are faster to make than 3D Zelda games, but we are getting them at a slower rate anyway. Makes it sting all the more that this is this decade's new top-down Zelda. A Link Between Worlds had its shortcomings, but it did a lot more things right than Echoes of Wisdom.

Lastly, can Nintendo please move on from using A Link to the Past's overworld? They seriously embedded it in Echoes of Wisdom's center with a bunch of alterations, but it's still easy enough to recognize.

I already had problems in BotW with climbing - it uses stamina, which can be replenished mid-climb by going into inventory (which pauses game) and using stamina food/elixir, which are made with resources that are pretty much constantly respawning in the world, so practically no cost there - which for me was first step in trivializing exploration. This was actually easily fixable, but they didn't do it, so whether you climb something or not was maybe a decision in first few hours of the game, later becoming moot point due to overabundance of resources.

As I said, Echoes of Tiresome is not a terrible game - but it is disheartening seeing Aonuma striking again with his "puzzle-time" take on everything and instead of making 2D Zelda better, pretty much trivializing most elements of what made it good.

Which actually is not that surprising, he never liked original Zelda, thinking it's too hard. What I'm worried about is that, in mindset in which he obviously is now, if he is tasked with overlooking OoT remake (which is speculated to be next Zelda), he will fuck that up too with his "fresh" ideas.

Replaying through original Zelda for free right now on NSO instead of buying this game for $60. I think I made the right choice!

Let’s see how this game will sell, I have a feeling it is not going to be great! People are sick and tired of whoever is responsible for turning Zelda into this crap! I was so naive to believe that after BotW Zelda would finally move in the right direction, but this crap came back with a vengeance,  like a cancer and even 2d Zelda is now bad. Damn!