The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom review

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom feels like a natural step after Tears of the Kingdom. After the roaring success of the latest third-person title, why not jump back to top-down adventuring? Why not make a game focussing on dungeons, and what better way to do it than to tear up the rule book and make the player control Zelda as well. Echoes of Wisdom is a The Legend of Zelda game with a difference, that’s for sure.

Tasked with saving the kingdom from an overarching threat, Zelda starts out confused and imprisoned. Link is missing, rifts are appearing all over Hyrule, and it seems that people you should normally be able to trust have gone bad, hence the prison sentence for the Princess of Hyrule. Enter stage right, Tri, a small yellow being of light that manifests a staff for Zelda to wield, and quickly enables her to create echoes of items, enemies, and all manner of things that form the core gameplay of the Echoes of Wisdom adventure from there on in.

In terms of the echoes, there are multiple mechanics to bear in mind. Firstly, Nintendo has curated the list of things you can collect and then echo, so it isn’t a case of being able to copy anything that is or isn’t nailed down. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some daft stuff here, and an early find of a glowing piece of meat that you can echo in order to distract enemies is just a slice of what’s to come.

Secondly, everything has a magic cost. So you might be enjoying the fact you can make a staircase out of beds, but you will only be able to make a few of them at the start, as they cost one echo, and you can only create three. This, like much of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, changes as you play, though it’s one of the few criticisms I can label at it. While there are numerous side-quests and you can gain more echo-power this way, each time you “level up” the ability, it’ll either be a reduction in cost to previously found items that can be echoed, or you’ll gain the chance to echo more things. The systems ultimately play into one another, but by the end of the game, there’s a chance you’ll feel slightly underwhelmed at the amount of echoes you can summon.

But what the echoes represent is the more interesting thing to me. In Tears of the Kingdom, you’re given the tools to play with everything, and make anything from it. Here, it’s more like Nintendo has provided the blueprints in order to solve the plethora of puzzles inside the game. I won’t give any spoilers or solutions here, but to be completely honest, the amount of times I solved something utterly convinced it wasn’t the intended solution, is something I lost count of.

And there’s the beauty of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, really. You’ve somehow got that unique adventure despite it being more curated, and story focused. There’s loads of characters and side-quests to engage with, but the larger focus is going across Hyrule and healing the land by completing more traditional Zelda-style dungeons. There’s one puzzle I still don’t think I fully understood the actual solution to, but I’ve seen the credits, so that’s good enough for me.

The world is beautiful, too. Whether you like the art-style or not (and I do), it’s designed superbly. There are small effects that make Hyrule feel alive scattered throughout the overworld, and the caves and dungeons you will explore. Outside, in the main overworld, there’s a frame-pacing issue that slightly sours how gorgeous it all looks, but once you get used to it, it’s not so bad. It’s pretty much non-existent inside dungeons, too. The audio is on point, though I will confess that toward the closing moments, I did tire a little of the mute-style protagonist, and felt a little dialogue wouldn’t have gone amiss.

But the star is how pliable this version of Hyrule is. You can end up on top of trees, walking as though they are a floor, and that just feels both weird and excellent. I’m avoiding going into detail for obvious reasons, but there are so many echoes you can find and replicate, with so many odd little details that come with them. There are so many moments I found myself wanting to slap my forehead when I realised how to get round or past things, and that’s the marvel of what’s been designed here.

That said, side quests tend to vary from strong and worthwhile, to rewarding you with Rupees, which just feels like an empty thing to do. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a larger game overall than expected, and while it’s not Tears of the Kingdom long, it’s much longer than A Link to the Past, and has much more to it, overall.

I can’t pretend that there weren’t moments that I wish I could have had direct control over combat, during my time playing. Nintendo has revealed you can transform temporarily into Link, and this is best saved for emergencies, or dungeons where you can easily replenish the magic meter needed to do so. It’s upgradeable, and plays into the story and how Zelda’s combat evolves, but most of the time you will be summoning enemies you’ve grabbed the echoes of. They never change their animations, so you may find yourself skirting around the battlefield, waiting for the action to finish, and clicking the left trigger does target specific enemies, which speeds things up slightly.

Tri’s powers don’t even end with echoes, however. You can also grab things and move them from a distance, but also you can allow their movement to make Zelda’s motion follow them. This is mostly used in the side-scrolling elements you’ll see when you go down a ladder, and it can create solutions to yet more clever puzzles. But it also means you can troll enemies with summoned spike echoes, and chant “stop hitting yourself” as you use Tri to hold them in front of you, and repeatedly bump into them until they perish. Echoes of Wisdom is a surprisingly funny title, from the dialogue to the things you can echo, and it’s all the better for it.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a gorgeous, brilliantly clever game that relies on the player to create solutions, and feel good about it while doing so. A return to dungeons will be a boon for many people, but the more puzzle focused nature may put others off. I had a blast playing through The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and it’s fantastic to see yet another unique, ingenious take on a series that is so storied. This is a great time for all, and another Nintendo title that has surprised me.