The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Imbues Classic Zelda with Breath of the Wild-Style Creativity

By Alessandro Fillari | September 4, 2024 | 10:21am

Video Games Features Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Imbues Classic Zelda with Breath of the Wild-Style Creativity

For the longest time, it’s been a running joke among Legend of Zelda fans about how many newcomers to the series believed protagonist Link was Zelda. Generally speaking, the titular character of Princess Zelda was never quite the focus, aside from being the princess to save in a far-off castle. But with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, she finally takes the title role in a game that isn’t a terrible CD-I spin-off capitalizing on Nintendo’s fame.

On the surface, Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom looks to revisit classic Zelda adventures in the vein of A Link to the Past or Link’s Awakening but with a notable twist. With Princess Zelda taking the reins as Hyrule’s new savior, she’ll use a variety of magical powers that inject open-ended gameplay similar to Breath of the Wild into the classic formula, giving new ways for players to explore and overcome challenges.

I played over an hour of the game’s opening and first dungeon at PAX West 2024. Along with seeing just how bizarre and amusing Zelda’s new echo powers are, it also became clear that Echoes of Wisdom‘s whimsical adventure is shaping up to be one of the most innovative and clever takes on a classic-style Zelda game that the series has seen yet.

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Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom begins with a scenario out of any other game from the series. Link charges into Hyrule castle to face an evil foe, but instead of victory, Link gets sucked into a strange realm known as the Still World—which spawns further rifts across Hyrule. With Zelda being blamed for the mysterious rifts, she escapes the castle and ventures into Hyrule to uncover the source of the Still World. Guided by a mysterious fairy named Tri, Zelda takes ownership of the Tri Rod, granting her the means to rescue Link and save Hyrule from further corruption.

Playing Echoes of Wisdom feels like running through classic Zelda’s top-down perspective worlds, with enemies to battle, treasure to uncover, and hidden areas to find. The game’s visual aesthetic, with each terrain and character on screen, feels very much in line with a stylized miniature playset. This gives the large Hyrule overworld a great sense of style and atmosphere, which feels in step with the game’s heightened focus on exploration and taking control of the different elements of the world, which is Echoes of Wisdom‘s most intriguing and satisfying change to the formula.

Princess Zelda is given a surprising amount of freedom to explore and engage in action compared to Link. Along with jumping and swimming freely, Zelda’s Echo powers allow her to create echoes of items and even enemies that she learns to copy. Early in the opening, Zelda has to sneak past guards in the castle dungeon by conjuring up echoes of crates, using them to obstruct movement or to jump on top of them to reach higher places. The echoes you can learn are numerous, and the game’s puzzles test your ability to use them.

What makes the echo powers so novel for a classic Zelda game is that it offers players more latitude for solving puzzles and strategies in fights outside of the expected solutions. I was quickly impressed by how much I could push these abilities and see them play off different scenarios I found myself in. Initially, I summoned echo beds to create a bridge to get over gaps, but I found that beds can not only help Zelda restore lost health with a quick rest, they’re also very effective at blocking in enemies—which left them open for me to spawn echo snakes to finish them off.

The ability to spawn an array of imitations of items and monsters is such a refreshing change of pace, and it immediately sets Zelda apart from Link’s familiar sword and shield fighting style. She’s like a spellcaster and monster wrangler with her abilities, and these skills are quite effective at turning fights that seem daunting into raucous encounters where you toss objects and allied monsters at foes that couldn’t keep up. Along with Echoes, Zelda can also use Bind, which is this game’s take on the Ultrahand grab ability from Tears of the Kingdom. Along with picking up objects, Zelda can use reverse bind to allow objects to move her. These skills create some really satisfying moments where the systems all work in unison, but they’re all put to the test in the mini-boss and dungeon-boss encounters.

In the Suthorn Ruins dungeon, Zelda comes face-to-face with a corrupted version of Link. This battle sees you face off against Link, whose repertoire includes many of his familiar tactics, such as the defensive stance, sword pokes, and his magical spin attack. It’s somewhat of an unnerving fight as this corrupted Link stalks Zelda within a boss area filled with pathways and places for Zelda to get out of sight. I found that losing him around a corner of a rocky passage allowed me to set up an ambush of an echo Darknut knight—and, yes—snakes as well.

This battle against evil Link was a fun litmus test to see if I learned the game’s abilities, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of my early time with the game. In a surprising twist, defeating this version of Link rewards Zelda with a new power that temporarily grants her a sword-fighting form. The Echo and Bind abilities alone were compelling, but seeing that there are more layers to uncover really makes me itching to see more of the game.

Even though modern Zelda games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have taken up most of the spotlight for players’ expectations for a core Zelda experience, Echoes of Wisdom showed me that there’s still great potential within the classic formula. I was so impressed with just how creative and satisfying a traditional Zelda game can still be, almost 40 years after the original. Echoes of Wisdom immediately shot up my list of most anticipated games to play this year. I’m looking forward to my next return to Hyrule to find out how Princess Zelda will evolve in her adventure to save the land.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is set for release on September 26, 2024 for Nintendo Switch.

Alessandro Fillari is a freelance writer and content creator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow him on Twitter.