It only took them 38 years, but Zelda is finally getting to be the star of her own legend. Sure, she’s had cameos as a badass in a bunch of the games that she lends her name to, but The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is the first time that she is the leading protagonist. It’s also the first time that hitting things with a sword or boomerang won’t be your first instinct when playing, and the blend of creative puzzle-solving at the heart of this game is a thoroughly refreshing change of pace.
Hyrule is once again thrown into complete chaos as a malevolent force reveals itself, dark and star-filled rifts spreading across the land, consuming the landscape, buildings and villages, and the people of the world. Some are even replaced by shadowy doppelgängers, including Zelda’s father, the king, who goes on to sentence her to death!
Surely some of the castle’s guards would have objected to such a dramatic change of tone, you’d have thought, but our hands on time with Echoes of Wisdom starts with Zelda locked up in a prison cell with only a mysterious new sprite named Tri for company. Gifting Zelda the Tri Rod, we’re quickly introduced to one of the most fundamental new ideas in the game: echoes.
The Tri Rod allows Zelda to copy and then recall all manner of objects that she comes across on her adventures, from tables and crates, to rocks, pots, trees, signs, trampolines, and even beds, if she needs a quick restorative nap! Right from the off, they lend a huge amount of playfulness to the puzzle-solving in the world, whether it’s creating steps to get up to a ledge, summoning pots to throw as a sound distraction (or to hop and hide in), layering trees and beds to make walkways, and so much more. It’s such a simple delight to use this ability as you’re getting around, and in a similar vein to Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo really leans into enabling player creativity when applying logic to overcome different scenarios – do you drop a heavy block to smash boxes, or set them on fire?
The only real limitation being that Tri can only provide so many pips of summoning power, with the oldest echo disappearing if you summon something new – you can, of course, manually dispel the most recent echo or all of them together.
But how does Zelda actually fight the army of beasties now roaming across Hyrule? Does she bop them on the bonce with the wand? Far from it. Hers is a more… intellectual approach, shall we say. Yes, you can pick up rocks and items and throw them at enemies, and she does have a grass-clearing spin move, though this might only gently stun an enemy. Once you’ve managed to defeat something for the first time, though, she can absorb it into the Tri Rod and make it as summonable as an overly keen waiter.
Summoning enemies makes combat more like the puzzling and traversal that makes up much of the rest of the game. Moblins can be summoned to chuck spears and Darknuts to wade in and swing axes, while Sea Urchins can be a handy spike barrier, and the Candle Zol is just the kind of summon that will get you to unleash your inner arsonist.
Where things start to get really special is with Tri’s ability to Bind to objects and creatures. This can work in two ways, to either have the bound item move with you, or to lock Zelda to follow the movement of the item. It’s powerful enough to shift huge blocks, flexible enough to reach through bars and pick up statues, or to attach to moving platforms above Zelda’s head, but it also enables a whole host of borderline game-breaking ideas.
Bind to a summoned spider, and that spider and crawl up and over trees, getting you to otherwise inaccessible places. in combat, you can summon and hold a fighter at arm’s length, whether making an Urchin in to spiky shield you bash enemies with, or that Candle Zol to set everything on fire. Again.
It’s all brought together within the dungeons, as is the case with so may classic Zelda games, but in Echoes of Wisdom, these dungeons might have been gobbled up by the rift as well. Tri can open a little gateway into the rifts, revealing to you the Still World with frozen chunks of land suspended in the cosmos. There’s some light platforming to be done here, hopping between islands and across impromptu bridges made of trees, and combined with summoning echoes. Reaching the first dungeon sees a fairly traditional style with room puzzles and using abilities to depress switches, defeat enemies and the like.
A fresh trick found here is the Swordfighter form that effectively turns Zelda into a glowing blue Link with sword and shield. You’ve only got a little time before her energy gauge drains and she reverts to normal though, and topping it up needs you to collect nuggets of blue energy from within the Still World, so you need to use it wisely.
It’s one of the most obvious options when facing off against the first boss, a rock creature that might make you wonder if Nintendo has something against Knack, but since the Swordfighter form can only be used sparingly, it’s a fight that’s about putting echoes and binding to use to hit a weak spot and then attack heavily during a damage phase. As straightforward as that might sound, there’s plenty of different ways to go about it and lots of different summons that can be useful.
All of this is rendered in the wonderful style of the Link’s Awakening remake from a few years ago. It’s a chunky, cartoony world with depth of field liberally used to give a dreamy tilt shift effect, and it’s just lovely in so many ways. However, just as Link’s Awakening had some frame rate struggles and hiccups, I fear that the added burden of spawning items on the fly and having the potential consequences of that – lots of fire, for example – does seem to leave this game with a stuttery frame rate as well. Hopefully the final release code is a touch more stable in that regard.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a wonderful surprise for the tail-end of the Switch generation, a game that’s full of charm, enables player creativity, and is generally just a quirky, playful delight.
