Nintendo recently released The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. This game sees players take on the role of Princess Zelda on an adventure to save Hyrule and Link. Unsurprisingly, the game is available only on Nintendo Switch and was developed by Nintendo and Grezzo, the studio behind The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on the Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo was kind enough to supply me with a digital code for my review, but all thoughts below are my own. You can buy your own copy from your favorite retailer including GameStop (affiliate link).
After Princess Zelda was captured by Ganon, the swordsman Link stormed in to rescue her. After a fierce battle, Link appeared to defeat the villain, but was suddenly dragged down into a mysterious rift in the ground and disappeared.
These strange rifts began to appear all over Hyrule, swallowing up others, including the King and his advisors.
Left alone, it’s now up to Princess Zelda to save her kingdom in a brand-new adventure in the Legend of Zelda series!
Here’s my standard disclaimer: I have not finished Echoes of Wisdom yet. I have sunk several hours into it though and am thoroughly enjoying it.
If you read my review for Link’s Awakening, you know that I love the clay doll aesthetic that Grezzo uses in these Legend of Zelda titles. It’s adorable, it’s bright, it’s so clean. I’m glad that it’s not used in every game in the franchise, but I do love it both times that it has been used. In addition, the music is perfect as well. No notes.
As far as the story goes, I’ve been greatly enjoying it so far. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that you start the game as Link, end up in trouble, and then switch over to Zelda for the rest of the game. As Zelda, you work with a cute little fairy-like creature named Tri to close ominous rifts that are consuming Hyrule.
The overall gameplay loop is that you go to an area, help the people there with a local problem such as the River Zora and Sea Zora fighting with each other, and then enter a rift into the Still World where you’ll complete the game’s dungeons. Along the way, there are various upgrades to unlock, mysteries to solve, and smoothies to make.
To help you in your journey, Tri bestows the Tri Rod to Zelda which allows her to make echoes (or copies) of items and even monsters to fight enemies, traverse the land, and solve puzzles. Not too far into the adventure, Zelda is also able to utilize Swordfighter Form which essentially turns you into Link for a limited amount of time being able to fight foes with a sword and bow as well as jump higher than normal.
As you seal rifts, Tri will gain levels which provide various effects including having more power to summon echoes, the ability to create echoes at a distance, and reducing the cost of certain echoes. All of these are very helpful.
One of the best aspects regarding the puzzles and fights is that there’s a lot of flexibility. While some problems have specific solutions, many problems can be tackled in a wide variety of ways. Fighting a boss?
Well, you could summon echoes to fight them for you, enter Swordfighter Form to do the work yourself, or a blend of the two. There are tons of combinations of items that you can use to traverse the land as well. I’m sure you’ll find a few items and monsters in particular that you always come back to.
Speaking of, I do want to mention one of the best items that you’ll get access to is the bed. Now, I’ve gotten to a point where I have three different beds, but even the basic bed is amazing for two reasons. First, so far the beds are the only items that span two spaces long.
This makes it vital for crossing gaps. The other reason is because you can take a nap in a bed to heal. It does take some time which varies depending on which bed you are using, but it’s often worth it when you have a couple of minutes to wait.
Another cool tool that seems to be a little lesser known is that you can briefly change the camera angle. While the game primarily happens with an isometric camera, that means that there are times you lose track of enemies behind pillars or walls. If you hold the right thumbstick in, then your camera will go to a true overhead view for better tracking of enemies and hazards.
Even though I really enjoy the game, the game does fall short in one particular area: performance. The Nintendo Switch is a seven (almost eight) year old console that has always been looked down upon because the hardware was already a little dated.
The console’s age has really been showing over the last year or so and Echoes of Wisdom continues that trend. While performance is never awful or game-breaking, the framerate is not stable and often drops quite a bit (I would guess between 24-30fps).
When you’re in a high fps moment, the game is buttery smooth, but it’s hard to ignore the drop in framerates. I personally hope that the rumors are true that the next Nintendo console will have backwards compatibility with enhanced performance as Echoes of Wisdom would definitely benefit from it.
Another problem that I’ve personally encountered is that fairies don’t seem to work. I’ve captured two fairies on different occasions and yet when I die, they don’t seem to activate.
I don’t know if I’m just missing them activating or if this is a bug that needs to be fixed, but either way it’s annoying. If it’s the former, they should probably make it more noticeable.
One complaint that I’ve seen others mention and I do agree with is that the organization of echoes feels bad. Granted, I don’t know how I would fix it, but you just have to scroll horizontally until you get to the one you want with minimal sorting options available. It does make things feel more clunky than I would like, but once again, I’m not sure the best way to solve this.
Before closing out, I do want to end with a few tips. First, remember how I mentioned that you can jump higher in Swordfighter Form? Use that as you try to traverse terrain and solve puzzles. Swordfighter Form is not a combat-only tool. With it, you can jump from the ground on top of a crate which I have found incredibly helpful. Second, don’t be afraid to use Swordfighter Form to fight small monsters.
I know that you have an energy gauge that acts as a timer for Swordfighter Form, but it is a lot more effective/faster than purely using echo monsters. Third, it’s worth it to sit and make smoothies. I’m not the biggest fan of things like cooking or making smoothies, but I will admit that it’s very helpful to take the time to do it. I was struggling with a boss and took some time to go make smoothies and they helped a ton on my next bout.
I personally have really enjoyed Echoes of Wisdom. It’s not my favorite Legend of Zelda game, but it’s a really good one. I’m glad Nintendo is letting more of their princesses get to be in charge of their own games. I genuinely would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys the 2D Legend of Zelda games.
