Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – Nintendo Switch Review!

As a long time Zelda fan, I was pretty excited when Echoes of Wisdom got announced. Though some might be surprised that a new Zelda game even exists, despite the series notoriety, info on Echoes of Wisdom, was surprisingly minimal for quite some time. Friends of mine barely even knew it was out, it’s a rather stark contrast to previous titles like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, which both saw significantly more advertising in the lead up to their individual releases. This might actually have been a good thing. Too much press, too much hype, can create an expectation about the game that may or may not always work in the developers favour.

Echoes of Wisdom, presents a big risk/reward scenario. Everyone could tell from the trailers that we weren’t going to be playing as the fabled hero of legend, Link, like we always do. This time, we’d be playing as the damsel no more, Princess Zelda. A reversal of roles like this can go only one of two ways; an absolute success, or a complete failure. Die hard Link fans could turn on the series, while a change of starring role might bring a whole new audience to the table. So it makes sense that Nintendo would want to play it safe and keep as much of the experience up to the player to feel for themselves.

And y’know what? It works.

Author’s note: I will try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible, however there will be unavoidable spoilers. Please read on with caution

The story opens up with a hooded individual sneaking up on a few armored monsters, as they guard a doorway deeper into this ancient temple. After a leaping swipe, it’s revealed to be the hero of legend, Link. Taking a leaf out of Tears of the Kingdom‘s book, the game wastes no time, gives no set up and instead gives the player immediate control. I very much enjoy this method of storytelling sometimes, you get to experience the set up, not just have it shown to you in a cutscene. There’s no need to establish any “previously on” sort of story or lore. We’re Link and we’re here to defeat Ganon, we know what’s coming but we get to push the buttons, swing the sword, fire the arrows as we experience it for ourselves.

A couple encounters later and it’s the boss man himself, Ganon. We get to fight and defeat him, but as he poofs into a cloud of purple smoke, defeated, he..laughs? Something’s not right but Zelda must be rescued, so we press on. But before we can, a darkness envelops Link, born from a rift appearing link cracks in the floor. We cannot escape and Link is taken by the dark void. But not before firing an arrow into the crystal holding Zelda captive. It cracks, and Zelda is able to break free from her crystalline prison. The only evidence remaining of Link is his cape, which you take with you for safe keeping. But oh no! The rift is growing! We frantically make our way outside as the temple crumbles around us, while the rift threatens to catch us and capture us too! But luckily, we managed to escape.

We make it back to the castle for an audience with the king and his Lefte and Wright hands. But before we can organise a strategy to save Link and Hyrule, a rift appears and swallows them all! Emerging from the right a shadowy echoes that demand the Princess be jailed under suspicion of being the true culprit, yes, us! But a visitor named Tri comes to see us, claiming to have the power to heal rifts and create echoes of items and enemies alike, with a wave of a wand gifted to us from him and with the help of Impa, our trusted friend, we make our escape from the castle. Now it’s up to us to repair the rifts and rescue the King, Link and all the people of Hyrule!

Gameplay

Zelda, as one might expect. Plays vastly different to the Swordsman of Legend. She doesn’t have, at least, not at first, her own method of going toe to toe with the monsters of darkness. In fact, at first, she doesn’t really have much of anything. She’s also weaker than Link, taking more damage to hearts and deals less damage to her enemies too. Oftentimes you’ll find yourself playing tactically, utilising all available tools to gain access to a hard to reach area, or outsmart your foes. You’re given the same freedom one might have experienced in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but in a far more traditional, or “old school” Zelda game style.

It’s a refreshing take on a system that rarely deviates from its core gameplay style with Link

After Zelda is thrown in prison, Tri makes themselves known and provides her with a wand that allows her to borrow some of their power. Granting her the ability to store and summon her own echoes of things in the world. Objects, food, enemies, you name it, the rod can copy it. This is her bread and butter, not only how she defends herself but also how she interacts with the world of Hyrule. Later down the track, she’s able to take on a spiritual form of Link and fight like he does, but this is similar to a magic gauge in previous Zelda games, allowing her to take this form but only for a short time. Even later down the track, you meet an inventor who can combine ideas into machinations that Zelda can prime with a wind up tool and simply stand back and watch the entertainment.

I’ll break this down into a, hopefully, easier way to understand as there is quite a bit to breakdown:

Echos

With the power of Tri at her disposal, Zelda can copy almost anything from the world around her to make her life a little easier. As long as it’s bathed in a glittering cold aura, you can make it yours. This includes items like furniture; tables, beds, pots, crates etc. Miscellaneous like; boulders, rocks, food and stuffed toys. Or enemies you fight; Bokoblins, Moblins, Keese, Wizzrobes. Tri starts out at Lv1 with a limited number of summoning charges, starting at three. But the more rifts your heal, the more Tri’s friends share their power with them, the more Tri can do. Some levels boost the number of charges that Tri has, others will make certain summons a bit cheaper and easier to summon in groups. Everything that can be copied has a use somewhere in the game, everything will get used at least once. That being said, I’m about 3/4s through the game at this point and the number of summons are getting out of hand. You can exploit the in game sorting system however, set it to sort by most used and spam your favourite summons for about a solid minute. This will put those echos at the top of your most used list and hopefully make it easier to navigate.

There’s almost no limit to what you can do with the Echoes. With furniture you can make a bridge to cross a gap, maybe a ladder to climb to a hard to reach spot, or to sneak by an enemy unnoticed. Combined with the bond ability, which I’ll go over later. You can easily move heavy objects, or swap the link over and allow summoned echoes to walk up walls or speed across the plains. It’s easy to get distracted finding and trying out new echoes!

I’ll give a quick shout out to the automatons here, they’re combinations of monster traits to make a machine version which combines the two in a unique way. I didn’t give them a whole section, as so far they’ve been underwhelming combinations that I rarely use. It’s a novel idea and I hope that later combinations I unlock, provide more engaging fun.

Swordfighter Form

At a certain point in the game, Zelda acquires the sword that Link was carrying in the early game as he tried to rescue her from Ganon. With the energies within the sword, Zelda can transform into Swordfighter Form. In this form, she resembles an aetheric Link and is able to wield the sword like the legendary hero himself. Her jump height increases, she does a cool flip and even does Link’s trademark spinning sword attack!

It’s the simplest form to explain as it’s incredibly straightforward, as you progress through the game you get access to the Hero’s Bow and the Hero’s bombs, allowing you to shoot arrows and throw bombs while in Swordfighter form. The best part about this is that you can summon echoes with Tri and fight alongside them in Swordfighter form!

Bond

The final ability works in tandem Tri and the echoes. As the name implies, you can bond yourself to an object or enemy. In its purest form, you can move the object with ease. Or you can reverse the tether to allow Zelda to follow the movement of what she’s tethered to. This is similar in some respects to the Magnesis ability in Breath of the Wild. But in Echoes of Wisdom, you can use it to reach higher places, hold an enemy in place for your echoes to attack, drop an enemy off a cliff or drown them in a pond or lake. You can even use it on Deku Baba to rip off their heads or rip a shield from a Moblin’s hands! And people think Zelda is just a cute childrens game!

Say there’s a really high wall and you don’t have enough summons to get all the way to the top. How do you get up there? If you have a Crawltula, summon and bind yourself to it and watch it take you up the wall! What about that ledge just above your head in the 2D sections, it’s just out of jumping reach, but if you summon a Strandtula, it’ll cling to the ceiling with a “strand”, haha get it? Of the web that you can climb! What about that wide gap between two platforms in the still world? Summon a few beds and you got yourself the perfect bridge! Every problem has multiple solutions and it’s just a ton of fun to experience them all.

Graphics

Echoes of Wisdom, is simply charming. There’s no other word that really does it the right amount of justice. It retains a similar style to Link’s awakening, but offers up a new sense of exploration and adventure. The 2.5D world makes you feel like you’re playing a living breathing board game. I imagine this is what Hyrule would look like as an animated cartoon. It really feels like a modern take on the old classic top down Zelda games of decades past. The 2D sections give a Mario feel to the game, instead of pipes taking you up or down into the different layers, it’s ladders.

The art style is simply fantastic and adorable, whilst still being entirely recognisable and unmistakably the realm of Hyrule. From the castle itself, to the castle town, Zora domain and Goron volcano. It’s all so quintessentially Zelda, but in a more cheerful and easily absorbed media style. It’s a game that can be enjoyed by long time fans and newcomers alike.

They really went the extra mile to make all the summons look so detailed. Creature echoes have to be my favourite part. See, despite creatures you summon, doing exactly the same as their antagonistic counterpart. It somehow feels different, like they have their own character and char, despite being just and echo. Take the Crow echo for example, it flies around you like a fighter jet or attack helicopter, ready to defend you from approaching enemies. But the minute it makes a strike against anything not a dark creature created by the rifts, rupees come flying out of the enemy! And Crows being greedy, mischievous little guys, immediately change focus and divebomb to collect the nearest rupee for you! It’s little tidbits like this that add so much charm to the game and it’s just so cute to watch a squadron of crows flying a defensive formation around you.

The moment that Zelda ran up to the cliff edge and the camera panned out and upwards, Breath of the Wild style. I just know I was in for good, charming fun.

Audio

Let’s get the cat out of the bag right away, there are now voice lines in this game. Zero, zippo, zilch, none whatsoever. I have to mark it down for that, I know that might be harsh given that the majority of Zelda games have never had voice dialogue. But its two open world games did. Link may not have spoken, but everyone else sure did. And I feel like that’s we’re the series peaks. Link does speak, we just don’t see it because he is the link between the player and the world of Hyrule. He also doesn’t really need to speak, in my opinion, he’s expressive enough through franchise lore, via actions and expressions. But the supporting cast, do, an while it is implied they do since we’re given written dialogue to prove it. I can’t help but feel like the game suffers from a lack of voice dialogue. Especially for a game with as much charm and character as Echoes of Wisdom. They very easily have taken a more light hearted approach to the dialogue recordings, while still maintaining the looming threat that may consume Hyrule at any time. Point is, they had options and they wasted a perfectly good opportunity to make the game feel even more unique than it already is.

That said however, the score is superb. I don’t think I got tired of hearing a single one for too long. Perfectly capturing the mood of the area. From the iconic, upbeat Hyrule Fields, to the eerie and sinister music in the Still World. Every score has its place and really amps up the mood of a given area or fight. I love the various sound effects too. Going back to the crow echo from earlier. The crows caw as they’re about to attack and normally I might get annoyed hearing so many darn crows all the time but strangely, it just puts a smile on my face as I hear them caw right before divebombing the nearest threat.

The only thing that probably overstated its welcome, is the little 3 second just that plays when you discover, open a new route or treasure. It’s a staple in the franchise sure, but it definitely happens way too often, even as the sign I just opened the route I was so obviously already trying to open. It really doesn’t need to play every time I open a new door, especially if that was 100% the direction I was already going. At first it makes you feel triumphant, like; “Yay, I solved that puzzle and opened the door!” But by the hundredth time you’ve done it, you feel more like “Gee thanks game, I didn’t know I just successfully opened the exact door that I was trying to. Thanks for pointing it out for me!”

Instead of rejoicing every time that tune plays, after so long playing it. It just made me feel really jaded. No previous Zelda title spammed it as much as this game does and I never had an issue with it until I played this game. It’s just a small issue however and for the most part can be relatively easy ignore.

Final Thoughts?

Echoes of Wisdom, has one fault. One glaring fault I cannot ignore. It is, slow. And not just because of the framerate. Zelda is not Link, she can’t jump high or run fast, nor can she fully defend herself without the use of echo’s or the swordfighter form borrowed from Link himself. It isn’t a huge issue for me since I enjoy the need to employ tactics to overcome your foes. But for some people, it won’t be enough, or it simply might be too much for the average player. It’s not hard per se, it just gets tedious. And that, I can see as being a huge drawback for some. There’s also the demographic of those who just want to swing the sword, fling bombs and fire arrows. And for those, a game like this that invokes a bit more complex (albeit not much) thought. Simply isn’t for them.

The Legend of Zelda, a series older than me, a series that formed a huge part of my childhood. The series I chose, as the inspiration for my first tattoo. To a veteran gamer like myself, it feels like a series as old as time. I almost couldn’t imagine gaming without this beloved series. Now I might be viewing the franchise through rose coloured, nostalgia shaped glasses. It’s kinda like Star Wars, it’s a series now that has spanned generations, my parents were just the right age to experience the originals. It carried me through from infancy into my soon to be midlife crisis years. And I hope that I can continue to share it to my nieces and nephews for years to come. Zelda is still, to this day, an integral part of gaming past, present and hopefully, many years into the future. And I for one welcome titles like these in between our big mainline Zelda masterpieces.

Game Details

Game Genre – Action-Adventure
Developers – Nintendo EPD & Grezzo Japan
Publishers – Nintendo
Rating – PG
Year of Release – 2024
Platforms – Nintendo Switch
Mode(s) of Play – Single player

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