The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Nintendo Switch)
Despite boasting her name, The Legend of Zelda was never about the princess, with players instead controlling elven adventurer Link as he saved the titular royal over nearly 30 games.
But just like this year’s Princess Peach, one of Nintendo’s iconic damsels in distress is finally stepping out of the shadows to take a starring role. Yes, the world’s most famous Zelda (after Fitzgerald and the wee woman from Poltergeist) is finally playable in a retro top-down adventure that embraces the creative open-worlds of Switch blockbusters Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Despite its cutesy look, Echoes of Wisdom is the darkest Zelda yet. Kicking off in traditional style, with tunic-clad Link charging into Hyrule castle, our series star is soon sucked into a dark realm known as the Still World, which spawns rifts across Hyrule. Blamed for the calamity, Zelda escapes the castle and ventures into Hyrule with mysterious sprite Tri in tow.
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Zelda is no warrior princess, instead using her smarts in a game that leans heavily on puzzle mechanics. Rather than swinging a sword, Zelda employs her magical rod to create copies (or echoes) of items found in the world. All defeated foes can be spawned at will to do her bidding, with elemental types summoning fire, ice, wind and the like to solve the game’s many puzzles.
It may just be a rod, but so was Roddy Piper, and Zelda’s mystical stick packs a punch – though don’t go in expecting a Royal rumble. Battles play out as real-time strategy, with players wrangling a vast menagerie of monsters to do their bidding. While this means the bulk of your time is spent as a doe-eyed bystander, Zelda can spare the rod, busting out Link’s blade for some traditional monster-whacking, though this is limited to how much juice her Swordfighter form has.
Drawing heavily from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, EoW invites experimentation, and players can fudge their way through its lands in a variety of ways, while on top of traditional dungeons, the Still World (think Stranger Things’ Upside Down) sees our heroine enter nightmarish rift wastelands. It’s the most ambitious a top-down Zelda has been, though not without issue, and its clumsy item-spawning mechanic can be more Norman Wisdom than Echoes of Wisdom.
Retaining the cutesy plastic sheen of 2019′s Link’s Awakening remake, it all looks gorgeous, though the poor old Switch is finally showing its years with frame-rate drops and stuttering when things get spicy. The music, however, is dependably wonderful, with earworm ditties parped out by an eager orchestra.
It’s the most ambitious a top-down Zelda has been, though not without issue, and its clumsy item-spawning mechanic can be more Norman Wisdom than Echoes of Wisdom
As someone who lives for classic dungeon-crawling Zelda, Echoes of Wisdom offers a long-overdue twist on the formula, occupying the sweet spot between Nintendo’s traditional adventures and its recent open-world efforts. There may be a missing Link, but it’s finally allowed Zelda to evolve - and while hardly a masterpiece by the series’ lofty standards, it still puts the competition to shame.
