Developer: Nintendo, Grezzo
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Switch
Tested on: Switch
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – Review
Move over, Princess Peach! Earlier this year, the monarch of the Mushroom Kingdom got her place in the spotlight, and now it’s time for her Hylian counterpart to do the same. After decades of casual video game fans confusing Link and Zelda, leading to memes like “What if Zelda was a girl?” we’re finally getting a Legend of Zelda game where the titular character is also the playable protagonist. That alone should draw the attention of long-time fans of the series. Does The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom have more to offer than a protagonist swap or does it rely too much on the gimmick of having a playable Zelda?
Story
Our story opens with a prologue of sorts, where we take control of Link and must make our way through a dungeon. At the end of this dungeon, a familiar pig face is waiting for us: that of Ganon, who has once again kidnapped princess Zelda. After Link defeats him and frees Zelda, Ganon drags Link into a strange dimensional rift. The rift starts to expand and Zelda narrowly escapes under the guidance of a glowing orb. On her way back to Hyrule Castle, Zelda notices that more rifts have started appearing. While talking to her father, another rift opens up, this time inside the castle, sucking up the king and his advisors. They are replaced by imposters. The fake king has Zelda arrested and thrown in the dungeon. It’s here that Zelda encounters the glowing orb again. It turns out to be Tri, an entity only Zelda can see. Tri hands our heroine the Tri Rod, and helps her escape. It’s now up to the princess to deal with the rifts, save Link, and restore Hyrule to its former self.
Graphics
Back in 2019, Nintendo delivered a remake of Link’s Awakening, presenting the classic game with a new, cutesy art style that made use of tilt-shift effects. Echoes of Wisdom uses the exact same visual style, although the blurring of foreground and background that is typical of the tilt-shift technique is less prominent here. There isn’t a whole lot else that could have been done to perfect the original aesthetics, even five years down the line. Echoes of Wisdom’s cutesy art style works perfectly here. However, we really have to address the game’s framerate issues. Frame drops are prominent, especially when a lot is happening on screen. It’s a bit baffling to see that the game’s performance isn’t up to the standards Nintendo sets for themselves with much bigger titles. It’s not so bad as to outright affect gameplay, but it is distracting enough that we’re hoping for a performance patch down the line.
Sound
What can we say about Echoes of Wisdom’s soundtrack that hasn’t already been said about other Zelda games? We mean this in the best way possible. The music is great, offering a mix of classic Zelda tunes and new ones in the same style. The sound effects are as familiar as you’d expect. There is no voice acting here, but at this point, we weren’t expecting it either.
Gameplay
Despite its visual similarities to Link’s Awakening, there is more to Echoes of Wisdom’s gameplay than a simple protagonist swap. At its core, this is still a top-down Legend of Zelda game, but Zelda plays differently compared to Link. Our heroine can’t jump as high as her counterpart, nor is she as adept at sword fighting. Instead, her power comes from wielding the Tri Rod, which she can use to create copies of all sorts of things. Additionally, she can use the Tri Rod to move or attach herself to objects. Not only that, but Zelda also eventually unlocks the ability to transform into a Link-like sword fighter in short bursts. Both this ability and the Tri Rod are gradually leveled up as you progress through Echoes of Wisdom. The game sticks to the classic Legend of Zelda formula, with an overworld that opens up as you complete puzzle-filled dungeons with a boss waiting at the end. You move from town to town, talk to quirky inhabitants, and complete side quests. It’s familiar grounds for long-time fans of the series, but the focal shift provided by those Tri Rod mechanics successfully keeps things fresh.
While Echoes of Wisdom isn’t an open-world game, it is a non-linear experience in that you can often choose between different locations to go to. This makes for an interesting approach that encourages replayability, as you’ll have different tools available to you depending on the order in which you tackle the game. The nature of the puzzles is that there is pretty much always more than one way to approach them, and as you level up the Tri Rod itself, you’ll be able to summon more echoes simultaneously. More powerful echoes are more expensive to summon, so it’s often a matter of figuring out the best solution based on the tools you’re given. The same applies to combat: do you summon a powerful echo to deal with an enemy or multiple weaker ones? Or do you shift to your sword fighter form? Echoes of Wisdom may be a relatively simple game at first glance, but the ingenuity of it lies in how it challenges the player to get creative with their arsenal of echoes. If you’ve played Tears of the Kingdom, you’ll find that the Tri Rod mechanics are a logical extension of the building mechanics from Echoes of Wisdom’s bigger brother.
Speaking of Echoes of Wisdom’s bigger brother, the obvious elephant in the room is that this new title is much smaller in scope than Tears of the Kingdom. As such, it would be unfair to outright compare the two, and we won’t be doing that. Echoes of Wisdom takes a much more relaxed approach. It’s not the most challenging Zelda game out there, but it oozes fun and charm. You’re looking at a 20-25 hour adventure, which makes this a relatively short game by Legend of Zelda standards. In terms of quality, however, this is up there with the best that the series has to offer. Sure, you could complain about the game’s price point, which seems high compared to Tears of the Kingdom, but it is in line with other first-party Nintendo games. Fortunately, so is Echoes of Wisdom’s overall quality.
Conclusion
Being able to play as Zelda feels more like an evolution than a revolution. The Tri Rod-based gameplay adds a breath of fresh air to a familiar formula without compromising the integrity of the series. Our only real gripe with Echoes of Wisdom is that the game’s framerate can’t always keep up with the on-screen action, but apart from that, Nintendo has knocked it out of the park again with this one. Echoes of Wisdom offers pure, unadulterated fun, and that’s all that we could ask for.
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