Zelda Rises to the Occasion: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Review

By Teepu

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

The Legend of Zelda franchise has been around for over 30 years now. Despite the name, Zelda herself has not been the star of a game; until now. In The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, players can finally control Princess Zelda in an adventure all her own. Her adventure is quite familiar for fans of 2D Zelda games, but also quite different in ways we'll discuss.

The moment you boot up the game, you find yourself controlling Link in what seems like the middle of his adventure, and then you face Ganon himself. Not long after this, Link and Ganon are sucked into an odd rift, Zelda is released from her crystal prison, and you must escape impending doom as Zelda herself. The game takes great care in tugging away familiarity from the get-go. Link is not here to save you or assist you, you are on your own and need to save your kingdom from some strange new threat. I thought this was an effective way to throw players in, by giving them something familiar while showing them how things are different. It sets the tone for the game.

The story continues to play out with Zelda traveling around, helping various peoples by expelling these odd rifts which are harming the world around them, with the help of her new friend Tri. The overall structure of the game does follow the classic Zelda formula: you have an introduction set of dungeons to face that help ease you into the world and mechanics, then after an intermission you enter the final set of dungeons which will test all your skills, creativity, and knowledge. It takes a page from A Link Between World’s book by allowing the player the freedom to choose what order to tackle the dungeons for each of the sets. Breaking up this freedom with a required intermission dungeon in order to move the plot forward was a welcome change to that formula, as it allowed for the narrative to move forward rather than force odd and unrelated pockets of story into an overarching narrative. (Something that the last three major Zelda games suffered from: A Link Between Worlds, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom.) Despite this, the story is still straightforward: you must rescue people from these rifts and close them and then defeat the villain. There are pockets of stories within each dungeon’s area that range from being engaging to cookie cutter, but the narrative here will not win any awards nor was it meant to. There are a couple of twists that certainly caught me off guard as a long-time fan, but nothing particularly illuminating. Though for lore enthusiasts, there are a lot of interesting tidbits to eat up here.

Let’s be real though, if you are playing a Zelda game, especially of the 2D variety, you are likely not in it for a deep narrative. You are in it for the gameplay. This is something the game excels at. My biggest gripe with the more open world Zelda games is the lack of fun and focused puzzles to have the satisfaction to overcome. There is nothing inherently wrong with using creativity to solve puzzles, but I long to have a set problem with a set solution and feeling accomplished for discovering and overcoming it. With that in mind, I was very wary of the approach Echoes of Wisdom takes to the classic formula. Thankfully, it meshes old and new quite nicely.

The main gameplay hook is the echoes you can create using the Tri Rod. There is a plethora of objects for you to learn by defeating enemies or simply seeing new things. You can then summon these objects or enemies into the world to navigate the world or fight other enemies. I have dropped beds on monsters’ heads, I have summoned spiders to climb webs and summoned octoroks to provide covering support as I explore. The catch is that you have a limited amount of energy to pull from, which limits the total number of objects you can summon at any given time. Thankfully, as time goes on, you can unlock more energy or reduce the cost of some objects, allowing for more complex scenarios the further you get into the game. It is quite clever, allows for the kind of creative exploration that the previous two Zelda titles prided themselves on, while not forcing the classic formula out of the picture. As a bonus, there is a feature where you can connect to and move objects, mainly echoes, many players underutilize.

Going back to the puzzle solving, each dungeon does still have a certain direction and theme for its puzzles, allowing each one to feel unique. You can progress the "intended" way, or you can find your own creative solution to the problem, which is something I have done more times than I am willing to admit. If your biggest concern is that all the dungeons will either feel too similar (Breath of the Wild) or too simple (Tears of the Kingdom), then rest assured that is not the case here. The first set of dungeons were quite straightforward, but the latter half of the game offered some intriguing and unique obstacles to overcome, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I would not go as far as saying it is among the best in the series, but they were incredibly good and made my time with the game worthwhile.

A bonus is the ability to "transform" into Link, which allows you to sword fight or use a bow, giving you immense power but only lasting for a brief time. It is mostly useful against the bosses, which will test you in every way imaginable and are among some of the best 2D fights in the franchise. Similar to the dungeons, the boss fights felt like they had an intended way to be defeated, but you can get creative and find other ways. For example, the gymnastics needed to use a trampoline to get high enough to drop beds on one of the bosses I fought were entirely unnecessary, but very satisfying.

Echoes of Wisdom had me wishing I had played the Link’s Awakening remake. This game is an absolute treat visually and aurally, and I am led to understand it uses the same style as Link’s Awakening’s remake on the Switch. That being said, there is some slight slowdown I have noticed. Slowdown, in a manner of speaking. The game jarringly transitions from 60fps to 30fps at seemingly random times. Normally, neither of those frame rates are bad, but transitions suddenly and randomly between the two during gameplay can be a bit upsetting to some. It did not affect the game enough for me to really care, but it is worth mentioning. I did not really notice any other performance problems though, so this is one of the better running late-console releases.

Another great aspect of Echoes of Wisdom is the exploration. Aside from the parts that the rifts cover up, you are free to explore pretty much all Hyrule from the get-go, if you can figure out how to use your echoes to traverse. Since there are no formal items or weapons to collect outside of the basics (Heart Pieces, Bottles, things like that), the game instead rewards you with one of four things when exploring: Heart Pieces for expanding health, currency for buying upgrades, ingredients for buffs, healing or other upgrades, or new high tier echoes. This may sound lame at first, it sure did to me, but you will quickly learn to appreciate this. It means that everything you get is useful, and you get to decide how it is used. You are not forced to find a specific weapon upgrade, instead you use the rupees to upgrade what you prefer. This motivated me to explore more and earlier in the game than I would in most other 2D Zelda games. Thankfully, the controls are snappy and simple, despite having to sometimes scroll through a ton of echoes on the fly to select what you want.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is an odd experience. It is a set of ideas that have no right to work so well together, yet they do. I have longed to play an adventure as Princess Zelda, and was fearful we would get some clone gameplay of other games or something out of left field to simply make her feel different for the sake of it. In many ways we got both things, but there is a lot of care put into making sure these two ideas mesh together well. There is plenty to enjoy here for veteran Zelda fans. As for newer fans who started with Breath of the Wild or none, it offers a more approachable open-ended experience than the recent 3D games, while retaining a lot of their core ideas. How they managed to combine the core principals of  Breath of the Wild, A Link Between Worlds, and A Link to the Past is beyond me, but they pulled it off. Either way, I highly recommend this game be in all Switch owners’ libraries, it is an exceptionally effective way to see off the Switch in its final year or so.

Check Out The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/the-legend-of-zelda-echoes-of-wisdom-switch/

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Story: B+
Gameplay: A+
Graphics: A
Music/Sound: A
Value: A+

Overall: A

Pros:
+ Game is a visual treat.
+ Echoes allow for an immense number of ways to approach problems.
+ Dungeon design is very solid, with some incredibly fun puzzle solving and boss fights.

Cons:
- Some odd framerate inconsistencies.
- For veteran fans, the first half of the game can feel like an overly simple slog.
- The story feels like it teased too many interesting points without exploring them.

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You are NOT excused!