Hey, listen! It’s dangerous to go alone.
For nearly 40 years, these echoes of wisdom from the Zelda universe have been ringing in our heads, powering memes, references in film and television, and the filthiest dubstep tracks known to man. Materials provided.
But “The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom” makes some new attempts at the mainline works of this legendary series, making Princess Zelda the playable protagonist of the core work for the first time-ultimately, Zelda is a princess and hero.
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However, some things about The Legend of Zelda never change. Fittingly, the first thing you notice in Echoes of Wisdom is the iconic soundtrack, as the standout opening sequence perfectly showcases Nintendo’s ability to remix these classic themes into something fresh, ethereal, and atmospheric.
Then, as you enter a small chibi version of Hyrule, you’ll find a joyful and reactive world with an incredible variety of different things to collect. The most important one is the core mechanism of the game “Echoes”.
Utilizing the power of her magical friend Tri, Zelda can summon a copy for use in puzzles or combat upon contact with an object or enemy in Hyrule. From mundane items like jars and boxes, to trampolines and Minecraft-style disembodied water cubes, by the end of my adventure my collection had reached triple digits with tons of unique mob and level variants Waiting to be discovered.
These echoes, and the world they inhabit, are undoubtedly the most powerful aspects of the Echoes of Intelligence.
Many games claim you can “play your way,” but few truly give you the freedom to put objects together in novel ways that actually feel like you’re finding a different solution than everyone else. In Echoes of Wisdom, I feel like different players can really default to different Echoes in combat: Do you want to launch waves of tumbling armadillos from afar, hide behind a metal knight, or run up and kill them? The sea urchin is thrown onto the monster.
You can also take this approach to solving puzzles, engaging in an area’s “anticipation” mechanics when you find yourself stuck on the side of a chasm, or simply stacking beds together to create a bridge with the trampoline closed End by clearing the gap instead. Exploring new echoes from the exotic ends of the map can really provide new solutions to the problems you encounter, so it doesn’t feel rigid, and venturing off the beaten track is rewarded with more than just upgrade materials.
Although extremely condensed – you can circumnavigate the map in minutes – access to all the biomes and locations you saw in Breath of the Wild and Kingdom Tears in a tiny open-world format makes Wise Echo feels like a true Zelda game, as do the shared UI elements, and you can select your Echo from the same hot menu as weapons and Zonai equipment in Kingdom Tears ( I know this is Nintendo’s most critically acclaimed game) many games would be criticized for having the same user interface).
But unfortunately, while Echoes of Wisdom’s art direction is charming in its own right, the game also has some rough edges that make it unsuitable as a main series entry for a flagship series like The Legend of Zelda – on Switch. Now, like Ms. Impa, she was wrinkled and aging, starting to look older.
Some environment textures are muddy, blurry, or don’t look detailed. The lines for characters and other assets aren’t clear. Then, during scene transitions and when there are a lot of moving parts on the screen, the frame rate becomes choppy and the game slows down.
So while there are many impressive aspects to exploring Echoes of Wisdom, it’s not an entirely exciting experience. There’s a lot that looks sweet, or cozy, or cute, but not a lot of “wow.”
That’s not to say Echoes of Wisdom couldn’t deliver on some spectacular spectacle – the cutscenes introducing the different areas are lovely, and the climactic story beats have the necessary punch – but Link’s Awakening from five years ago looked Exciting in a way that Echoes of Wisdom is not.
And, because it’s made from the same framework as Link’s Awakening, there are some other borrowed parts from Echoes of Wisdom that don’t quite work either.
Link is the quintessential silent protagonist, and I don’t think it makes much sense to make Zelda the silent protagonist (he does talk to other people, but just without any dialogue). This means that while the story is good overall, the pacing is also a bit monotonous, causing the second half to feel substantial compared to the first few main quests, as you tackle a number of similar dungeons in quick succession.
Like I said, the puzzles in these dungeons are great and feel very organic, but some of these later dungeons also introduce frustrating mechanics – like stealth sections that fail instantly or gusts of wind that don’t seem to make you feel So high as they should be – which exacerbates the problem.
The echoes of wisdom will also be divisive. I won’t spoil their theme or what you need to do to beat them, but there are a lot ways to defeat themwhich is not a good sign. In a game that encourages you to use every aspect of your toolkit to overcome obstacles, having to box it in and only use specific abilities on bosses can feel uncomfortable.
But having said that, Echoes of Wisdom is still streamlined and light-hearted, so these shortcomings don’t outweigh their welcome. The game’s length isn’t small – similar to Link’s Awakening, which is around 15-20 hours – but it never feels overwhelmingly large.
Indeed, Echoes of Wisdom feels like a fitting end for the Switch, with new hardware reportedly on the way. It’s a colorful, accessible epic that pushes the console to its limits, with all the mechanical depth and invention, art design, whimsy and adventure you’d expect from a first-party Nintendo adventure Spirit.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will be released on Nintendo Switch on September 26th. This review was written using code provided by the publisher on Nintendo Switch OLED.
