NOTE: This review will not include any major spoilers related to the game or story. Obviously, general overall opinions will be given, but only the description of the opening cutscenes and features that have been revealed in official announcements or other promotional materials released by Nintendo will be explained in more detail. Similarly, all accompanying screenshots do not contain spoilers of later game location names or areas. If you want to go into this game blind, you can safely read this review knowing that you won’t be inadvertently spoiled for any aspect of the game that hasn’t been revealed yet.
If the show is called “The Legend of Zelda” then why isn’t she the main character? It’s a question that most of us have asked at one point or another, and one that Nintendo has very quietly sidestepped over the years. Since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening remake on Switch in 2019, fans have also wondered if we’ll see more titles in this style in the future. Who would have thought that Nintendo would solve both of these points in one brilliant counterpunch? The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom isn’t the first time the princess has been a playable character, but it does mark her first solo adventure, in the traditional 2D gameplay style that defined the series in its early days. But was this a smart move or is there more than one missing link?
Echoes of Wisdom begins at what would normally be the end, with Link entering the evil Ganon’s lair to fight him and rescue the imprisoned Zelda from his clutches. However, things quickly take an unexpected turn, as both Link and Ganon are suddenly swallowed by a mysterious void, and Link’s last heroic deed was freeing Zelda from prison. Returning home to Hyrule Castle, Zelda soon finds herself imprisoned (again!) in her own dungeon this time, after the king lays the blame for the rifts ravaging the land at her feet in a very uncharacteristic display of hostility. In the dungeons, Zelda meets a mysterious creature named Tri, and after helping her escape, their journey to save Hyrule begins.
Since this is a spoiler-free review, I won’t discuss plot details beyond this. However, it’s safe to say that the story beats here will be familiar to anyone who’s played the previous games in the series, except this time it’s Link who’s disappeared under mysterious circumstances, not Zelda. Timeline fans will still have a lot of new information to digest by the time they check out, but of course it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone experience and without too much theorizing. Although it probably lacks the more emotional scenes of recent 3D titles, Echoes of Wisdom still manages to tell a complete and satisfying story.
Echoes of Wisdom is presented in the same style as the Link’s Awakening remake, being a more traditional isometric 2D style title. This means that compared to more recent 3D titles like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, it’s significantly more structured, with a series of objectives and dungeons that you’ll need to clear in order to progress. You’ll also get more guidance and encouragement to progress in a certain direction instead of being left to figure things out on your own. However, it took a few cues from these open-world titles to offer a far less restrictive experience than its 2D predecessors. You are allowed to approach the main quest objectives at your own pace and in any order you choose; after the opening scenes, the world is almost completely open to you. The main story objectives must be completed eventually, but nothing forces you to do them immediately or in any particular order, and the land of Hyrule offers you plenty to do outside of the main story quests.
Each title in The Legend of Zelda series has its own unique core gameplay mechanic, and for Echoes of Wisdom it’s the Tri Rod. This gives you the ability to create echoes of various objects and enemies for a small energy cost, with the number you can create at once being determined by Tri’s current power and individual echo cost. Creating a new echo that exceeds Tri’s capacity will erase the oldest echo you made, providing a measure of balance and preventing you from flooding the screen with echoes to overpower enemies or skip every puzzle.
As you explore the land of Hyrule, your stock of echoes will grow, and you can use any echo you’ve learned at any time. There is a fantastic sense of progression through the game as your abilities are constantly expanding. However, this makes it a bit difficult to navigate as your tool grows. You can organize your echoes by type, price, and last used to navigate to the one you want, but it would be nice to have the ability to create custom lists to make the search process a little easier. Having to stop and pause every few seconds to find the echo you’re looking for can break the flow of gameplay, especially during combat.
Echoes changes the puzzle-solving dynamic in a way that’s more reminiscent of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom than earlier 2D titles. There’s always a clear intentional solution, but that can be completely ignored if you can come up with something else with the echoes you’ve learned. It can make some of the dungeons in the game significantly easier, depending on the order in which you choose them. The most remarkable aspect of this is that everything remains useful from the moment you learn it until the very end: I was still creating bridges out of beds to cross gaps in the final dungeon of the game!
Another important element of Echoes of Wisdom is the Peaceful World, which you will often enter to restore the land of Hyrule to normal. While having a second kingdom isn’t something new to the Zelda series, this looks more like Distortion World from Pokemon Platinum in terms of design. The landscape is fragmented and disjointed, and these segments are almost like miniature platforming challenges as you move between smaller land masses to rescue Tri’s friends, who are hidden throughout the area behind small environmental puzzles or inside the bodies of dark enemies. These short sections are a nice break from the open world exploration and more rigorous dungeons and are some of the more useful side activities you can participate in, usually yielding fragments that you can use to upgrade Zelda’s abilities in Swordfighter mode.
Echoes will also drastically affect how you approach combat, as defeated enemies can be learned and then summoned to fight on your behalf. There is nothing quite as satisfying as defeating an enemy and immediately unleashing it on his former comrades. Enemy echoes will automatically attack the nearest target, but you can also target the enemy directly. This can feel quite clumsy at times, and you’ll often need to echo closer to enemies in order to reliably hit, while also having to be careful to avoid damage yourself. Zelda can also directly engage in combat via Swordfighter Mode, which allows her to transform into the ghostly apparition of Link for a short time, but the energy to do so is limited and drains quickly, meaning that for much of the game you’ll be relying on summoned echoes to defeat enemies.
As mentioned earlier, Echoes of Wisdom has a lot to do outside of the main story, and has incorporated many systems from recent 3D titles to flesh out the world and reduce that sense of linear progression. Along with the usual hidden Pieces of Heart and mini-games scattered around the map, there are also numerous side quests to complete, ranging from simple fetch quests to longer ones that may lead to areas you wouldn’t normally visit as part of the main story. They breathe some life into the world, as the various NPCs of Hyrule struggle to pick up their lives in the wake of rifts opening up across the land, and there are some interesting (though often not very rewarding) short stories from this one.
You can also make a smoothie in a simplified version of cooking, combining two different ingredients to restore the heart and for short passive flavors, depending on what you used; they are especially useful when you face environmental hazards such as extreme heat, cold, or when you have to dive underwater for a while. Zelda can also equip accessories, and there are a handful of costumes you can find with their perks, giving you a limited amount of character customization. How useful these minor features are depends a lot on the difficulty you’re playing with. The usual Hero Mode, which doubles damage taken and eliminates heart drops, returns to the game, although this time you can freely change the difficulty during gameplay.
Echoes of Wisdom has the same toy-like aesthetic in its visuals that we saw in the Link’s Awakening remake, however, the world design is far more expansive and immersive. No longer bound by the dictates of the existing map’s limited scope, the developers were able to unleash their full creativity, and it shows. There’s a much greater variety of biomes in this new vision of Hyrule, and they’re as spectacularly presented as they are diverse, with some fantastic lighting effects and colors that really pop on the Switch OLED display. For fans, there are plenty of throwback locations from previous games alongside new ones, which even come with a remixed orchestration of their original theme, making them feel fresh and familiar.
Although the game runs flawlessly, it implements quite a lot of blurring to keep the action constant per second and higher visual quality. This was thematically appropriate for the Link’s Awakening remake since the game takes place in a dream world, but for Echoes of Wisdom, it can feel a little out of place at times when the edges of the screen start to blur or when you’re looking down at enemies. It’s not something that ruins the overall ambiance of the game or the quality of its visuals and performance, but it can be a little distracting at times during certain parts of the game when altitude plays a bit more of a role in things and you need that sense of verticality to navigate.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom seems like the perfect compromise between old and new. It incorporates some of the best open-world design elements from recent 3D titles into the tight linear structures of classic 2D sequels to create something that feels familiar without being too stale, and structured without being restrictive. Regardless of your past with the series, you’d be wise to check this one out. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom releases for Nintendo Switch on September 26, 2024.
9.5/10
A copy of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was provided by Nintendo UK for the purposes of this review
