Review: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
There’s a joke, told in multiple permutations across several decades, about people who don’t realise that The Legend of Zelda is a game series about a kid called Link, not about Zelda. It’s a notion that has, over time, grown to feel more rote and strange – why isn’t there a game about Zelda? Earlier this year, Nintendo released the (very good) Princess Peach: Showtime!, a game where another oft-kidnapped heroine was given center stage in their own adventure. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom continues that trend, but on a bigger scale – Zelda has been given her own lengthy adventure, and it feels very much of a piece with Link’s own adventures rather than being a spin-off.
Echoes of Wisdom is set in the series’ staple land of Hyrule – the same Hyrule from the SNES classic A Link to the Past, in fact. A corrupting presence has spread across the land, coating all the familiar locations with big purple voids – and with Link having been sucked into one of these voids, it’s up to Zelda to set things right. Instead of a sword and shield, Zelda is armed with a wand capable of creating “echo” copies of objects and monsters, which you’ll use to traverse dungeons and fight enemies.
Echoes of Wisdom is a more “traditional” Zelda experience than some of the previous big Zelda games on Switch, like the recent Tears of the Kingdom, in that you traverse the land and complete dungeons to progress in a relatively linear manner. The world is viewed from a top-down perspective, like the old 2D games in the series. But Echoes of Wisdom also changes things up by doing away with a core series function – Zelda’s not really a fighter. Dealing with enemies can often mean picking the right echo monsters, unleashing them strategically while trying to avoid getting hit yourself.
But Zelda isn’t limited to summoning monsters. You can create food to distract enemies, or use a flame echo to start fires, which you can propagate further by summoning a lot of wooden objects. You can make a block of water and then force a creature that can’t swim right into it, making them drown. You can block enemies off with boulders, or surround a big enemy with lots of little enemies (each echo has a cost, but it’s possible to summon multiple small echoes at once). These strategies extend to how you move through the world, too – there are usually multiple ways to get past a wall, or an object, or any other challenge.
All of this leads to a far more experimental Zelda experience than the old classics in the series offered up, one that feels in keeping with the creativity that Tears of the Kingdom encouraged. Zelda has other tools in her belt – she can move large objects from a distance, and can “reverse” her connection to an echo, meaning that she follows the echo’s actions rather than the other way around – which means that many of the game’s encounters and puzzles have multiple potential solutions based on your lateral thinking. It’s great fun testing out all your new echoes as you unlock them to get to grips with how they work, and remembering, hours later, when one of them might come in handy.
There were times when I wished I could simply roar into combat and fight more effectively, though. Zelda can transform into a “fighting” form, but the game makes sure you only use it very sparingly. Some techniques and items are so effective that you’ll inevitably use them over and over again, leading to repetition. But these are minor quibbles in a game that genuinely rewards experimentation and outsider thinking. There are 120 Echoes in the game, which gives you a lot of scope for how to handle the situations the game throws at you.
While the game features traditional dungeons, it’s at its best when you’re exploring the overworld, trying to figure out how to best navigate the environments using the tools available to you. The world is filled with side quests and secrets, although it doesn’t run nearly as deep as some of the other Zelda games on the Switch – a lot of the missions boil down to summoning a specific echo in a character’s presence. Combat encounters in dungeons can be a little frustrating, and I did not find the puzzles particularly challenging – in fact, Echoes of Wisdom is on the easier side on the whole. But I still always had a good time working my way through them.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom isn’t trying to compete with the series’ all-time highs. If you only want the very best Zelda games on the system, you still want Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom – but then, if you only wanted two games on the whole system those would still be my recommendations. Echoes of Wisdom is a smaller, clever remix of the lessons learned from those games, and as Zelda’s first proper outing as a protagonist it’s very good indeed. Hopefully Nintendo won’t forget about her on their Switch follow-up.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is available now on Nintendo Switch. A review copy was provided by the publisher.
James O’Connor has been writing about games since 2008. He is the author of Untitled Goose Game for Boss Fight Books.