The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

With the next The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo does more than honour Zelda with being the first female protagonist of the series. The open gameplay is deliberately reminding of Breath of the Wild's openness and player-centered creative solutions.

The next mainline Zelda game is a bit on the smaller side when it comes to scope, but certainly not in terms of ambition. The next game from the team behind The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom features a premiere and a return. A premiere, because The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom puts Zelda into the spotlight as a protagonist for the first time. And a return, because Echoes is the first new 2D Zelda title since A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS, the Switch remake of Link’s Awakening notwithstanding.

Instead of just swapping the model of the old swordfighter Link and calling it a day, Nintendo is doing much more to the gameplay to ensure a unique take on Zelda’s abilities. True to her Triforce of Wisdom in the game’s lore, Zelda is not fighting with shield and sword, but let’s the environment do the fighting for her. With her staff, she can copy a range of enemies and assets around the game world and use these copies, the Echoes, to solve puzzles and survive fights. She can, for example, build a tower of tables to reach a high cliff or summon a piece of meat to distract ravenous ravens from attacking her. For all that however, she has to find the Echoes first in the environment. The new gameplay features much of the openness of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, including the out-of-the-box puzzle solving these games allowed for players. Every situation, whether puzzle, fight or traversal, can be tackled in multiple ways and with different solutions depending on the creativity of players. Unexpected consequences and shortcuts can be expected, in turn producing a range of creative videos shared by players, much like in the last two Zelda games. The graphics take a big nod to the remake of Link’s Awakening Nintendo published for the Switch in 2019, with some minor improvements to fidelity. The clay look of the artstyle fits well with the figures in the Zelda universe, but is also an acquired taste for many players. A point of content with the remake was the vignette look of the top-down perspective, blurring the reaches of the screen and causing motion-sickness. We’ll have to wait and see if Nintendo has found a workaround for the performance issues of the Switch hardware that were assumedly part of the decision to blur the edges of the screen and of Echoes of Wisdom will provide a more accessible solution.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom releases for Nintendo Switch on 26 September.

Conclusion

A small, and yet very big new entry in one of the most important gaming series, honoring Zelda by more than just putting her in Link’s shoes

Features

• Unique solution concepts
• Open Design for every challenge
• First game in the series with a female protagonist