The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Review: Is It Worth Playing? Here's What Critics Are Saying!

I’ve always been a big fan of The Legend of Zelda. Some of my earliest memories are of playing A Link to the Past on a beat-up second-hand SNES, and since then, I’ve endeavoured to play every Zelda game I can get my hands on. But anyone who knows me knows that I won’t shut up about one thing: the idea of a playable Princess Zelda. I like Link, but after 30 years of games with him in the leading role, I was more than ready to step into the princess’ shoes, and Echoes of Wisdom offers just that.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom starts with Link getting captured by evil forces. Makes sense, really, because in Link-focused games that’s usually how Zelda starts her journey — though less so in recent years. After being imprisoned for reasons I won’t spoil, Zelda meets Tri, an adorable little sprite that offers Zelda a magic rod and a host of new abilities.

Chief among them is the ability to make a perfect copy of an object or enemy found in the world, called Echoes. We’ll touch on that a lot later, but for now, we’ll focus on the story. Dark rifts have been appearing and gobbling up big chunks of Hyrule, with people frequently falling into those rifts and rarely returning. Those who do return are usually afflicted in some way — some have fallen into a deep slumber, others are incapable of speech, and some are too afraid to leave their houses. Zelda, with Tri and her new abilities, has to find a way to close these rifts, rescue Link, and restore Hyrule to its former glory.

It’s a wonderful story, with some absolutely fantastic twists and turns. I won’t spoil too much here, but there’s a lovely cast of core characters and plenty more to meet along the way. Just about every character you’re forced to interact with throughout your journey is interesting and incredible, and the optional ones you seek out for yourself are just as fun.

And there certainly are a lot of optional ones, too. There are plenty of side quests in Echoes of Wisdom, many of which will have you showing NPCs specific echoes, which sounds like it should be easy but is actually pretty complex at times. NPCs don’t always know exactly what they want, and even if they do, they aren’t always the best at telling you what that is.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What is an echo anyway? Well, as I mentioned earlier, Zelda can create a perfect copy of many objects and almost every enemy, then summon them at will. There are a few restrictions, as each echo has a cost and you have a limit on how much of that cost you can expend at once, something that opens up a bit more as you progress through the game by lowering the cost and increasing the limit. For example, a single wooden crate costs one of Tri’s triangles, so at the start of the game you can spawn three at a time, while a Spear Moblin costs three triangles, so only one can be brought into battle.

That limitation is present in every aspect of the game. Echoes are your primary way of combat, and you’ll need to defeat and collect as many enemy echoes as possible to build up your arsenal. They’re also your best way of traversing the environment, with beds, crates, pots, and even sometimes enemies allowing you to scale mountains, cross ravines, and blow up cracked walls.

You can see, then, how these limitations on your echoes would come into play. But as they say, limitation is the birthplace of creativity, and with dozens of echoes available to you at any given time, creativity is an absolute must throughout your journey. It’s a nice gameplay loop, being presented with a problem – be it an enemy, a puzzle, or just an area you need to traverse – and then figuring out how to solve that problem with the tools at hand. Not being able to directly partake in combat (for the most part, we’ll get to that in a moment) means that picking the wrong echo can have dire consequences, so you’re always switched on, thinking about every moment as an opportunity to flex your creative muscles and come up with a suitable solution.

I was a bit worried going in that it would be far too easy to stick to just a few key echoes and ignore the rest, but the level design means that you’ll be forced to switch things up from time to time, too. That said, there were a few enemies that were my go-to in many situations — the Crawltula and Strandtula are essential for traversal, for example, and the various Wizzrobes are all very helpful in combat. Still, I was surprised at just how often I was cycling through my echoes, and finding the right tool for the job is very satisfying for an avid puzzling fan like myself.

In addition to echoes, there are a few other tools at your disposal. Bind is the most-used one, and it acts as an extension of something like Magnesis or Ultrahand from Breath of the Wild and its sequel, respectively. It lets you pick up an object or enemy and move them around, which comes in handy for solving puzzles or just dropping an enemy off a cliff. It can be reversed, too, so enemies and objects pull you around instead, which is somewhat situational but, combined with the trusty Crawltula, offers a surefire way to scale almost every tall cliff in the game.

There’s also Swordfighter mode, which gives Zelda access to Link’s moveset, initially consisting of just a sword but growing throughout the game. I’m in two minds about this, personally. On the one hand, it feels like it cheapens the Zelda-playing experience if you can essentially switch to Link at any given time, slashing through enemies and firing off arrows to solve puzzles, but it’s balanced well enough that it doesn’t become a huge problem. You can only stay in Swordfighter mode for a short amount of time, and while you can extend that time later in the game, it’s still not particularly long.

This means that, in combat at least, Swordfighter mode essentially becomes a last resort. You can’t just use it as your go-to, because you’ll run out of energy very quickly and be switched back to Zelda’s move set. Energy isn’t particularly easy to come by in the overworld – although this can be abused with smoothies that restore energy – so you likely won’t be able to play through the whole game as Link. If you’re stuck in a bad position and can’t afford to rely on a friendly Moblin to deal with your enemies quickly, Swordfighter mode comes in handy in a pinch.

That said, it’s used extensively in boss fights, which feels a bit dull all things considered. Few boss fights rely on Zelda’s own skill set, often only requiring an echo or two to knock them down before opening up for a full-on onslaught in Swordfighter mode. I do wish there was more opportunity for Zelda to show off her more puzzle-oriented skills in boss fights, but all of the bosses are fun, at least, so I can’t complain too much.

There is one more tool at your disposal, but I can’t speak much to it, honestly. If you happen to come across Dampe, you’ll be able to follow him back to his workshop and get to work on Automatons. These essentially act as powerful echoes that don’t cost you any triangles, but can be damaged in combat and have to be repaired if so. I say I can’t speak much to it because I didn’t use them once throughout the main story. Not for lack of wanting, mind you, but because I never stumbled across Dampe until after the credits rolled.

Which brings me to my next point, which is the level of freedom afforded to Zelda in Echoes of Wisdom. Now, it’s worth bearing in mind that this isn’t like Breath of the Wild, where you can start up the game and zoom right into the castle to fight Ganon. There is a loose structure, with the game broken up into two main parts, each of which has a variety of things to do, and all of which can be completed in any order. The first part of the game offers two dungeons to defeat, and you can do those in whatever order you like, or you can just ignore them and explore the entire world, if that’s what you want to do. But if you want to unlock more of the story, you’ll have to complete both of them. After that, and some more story, more dungeons open up, which again can be completed non-linearly.

Even with the early tools available to you, traversal throughout the world is largely unrestricted. You might not be able to pop your head into every cave until you pick up a few upgrades and echoes, but every inch of the overworld map can be reached just a couple of hours into the game. And because you’re given the tools to climb anything, following paths is pretty much optional. That’s how I missed Dampe — I spent my time climbing over treetops and getting distracted by things in the corner of my eye, and I totally missed a very easy-to-find scripted sequence where you bump into Dampe in a path you’re likely to come across. This rules, honestly, and I love that the game offers so much freedom that you can skip important mechanics if you want to.

As much praise as I have for Echoes of Wisdom, I do have some small complaints, too. The UI isn’t really up to scratch, in my opinion, when it comes to selecting echoes. You know how, in Breath of the Wild, you can press right on the D-pad and scroll through your weapons? Imagine that, but instead of 6 weapons, you have a single row of over a hundred echoes. There are ways to sort these, but you can’t favourite them, so if you want a specific echo, you have to scroll through the entire list to find it and hope you don’t accidentally select the wrong one. If you do, you’ll have to scroll through the list again. There is a grid-based selection in the main menu, but when you’re in the thick of it, opening up the main menu isn’t really ideal.

There are, unfortunately, some issues with performance, too. The game is absolutely gorgeous, with a wonderful art style that borrows from Link’s Awakening before it and expands on it significantly, but it also borrows from Link’s Awakening’s performance issues. The frame rate drops quite substantially at times, much like it did in Link’s Awakening, but this happens much more frequently than in that game. It’s not a dealbreaker by any means, but it is disappointing, especially when the rest of the presentation is near-flawless.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is the Zelda game I’ve always wanted, putting Hyrule’s princess into the thick of it for the first time and coming up with incredible results. The gameplay loop is phenomenal, the story is lovely, and with any luck this will be the first of many adventures for the Zelda series’ leading lady.

Rating: 4.5/5