The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom review - Bokoblins, bombfish, and beds

The latest Zelda adventure has the princess as the protagonist.

Echoes of Wisdom title / Nintendo

Players have been begging to explore Hyrule as the series’ titular princess for as long as I can remember. Super Smash Bros. Melee teased players with the kind of abilities a playable Zelda would have, but Zelda herself being the protagonist of a Legend of Zelda game just hasn’t happened until now, with Echoes of Wisdom. It should feel like a huge moment, but it’s a bit too forgettable. 

When in the moment, exploring Hyrule, you’ll likely forget you’re even playing as Zelda. She moves and looks a lot like Link did in Link’s Awakening, and the fact that you are the princess of Hyrule is rarely all that relevant. The main differences come with Zelda’s moveset. She does have a sword and shield she can use in exchange for a limited supply of energy, but outside of those moments (best saved for tough enemies and boss encounters), she primarily uses the Tri Rod to spawn echoes of, well, anything and everything.

Early on in the game your only real method of defeating monsters is by picking up a rock and throwing it at them to inflict damage, but you quickly learn to spawn rocks, beds, and soon enemies (but mostly beds, which can be slept in to regain health, but will be your primary puzzle solving technique for much of the game). This turns combat into a miniature RTS, where your playable hero character spawns in various obstacles to take down foes. Enemies have natural weaknesses – slow foes aren’t going to do much against ranged attacks, and grounded monsters are vulnerable to aerial creatures – and experimenting with your available echoes to find the best method of taking on each challenge is a massive part of the fun.

Wizzrobes are a girl's best friend / Nintendo / GLHF

You can learn echoes of basically every enemy in the game, which has the unfortunate side-effect of making the game easier as you progress. While you’ll be hastily picking up and throwing rocks in the first hour, you’ll soon be spawning a small army of monsters and sitting back while watching the action unfold. It has the vibe of those Elden Ring mods that allow you to pit bosses against one another to see who would win. These are all familiar Zelda enemies, and now you can discover what’s more threatening, a gang of Bokoblins or three Peahats. For the record, my money is on the Peahats almost every time.

As soon as one of your echoes is destroyed you’re able to instantly put your resources into something else, no cooldown time. This means you can continually spawn enemies onto the field, and only the toughest monsters and dungeon bosses can stand up to that kind of offense. Zelda’s orb companion, Tri, is followed by a tail of triangles, and each echo you create costs a set amount of triangles. Some only one, while others will require multiple, or perhaps even more than your current total. This is the only thing stopping you from filling the world with creatures and beds. Lots of beds.

Echoes aren’t just for battle, they’re for exploration, too. The bed is one of the first echoes you obtain, and it allows you to create a makeshift staircase virtually anywhere. Ascending to higher heights will be faster when you get the Water Block, and beds lose their relevance entirely when you’re able to spawn a floating cloud, but the game encourages experimentation so you find what works best for you.

Zelda's in the Disguise for the start of the game. / Nintendo

Echoes of Wisdom draws heavily on the influences of both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It has the same elements of freedom – and the same ability to spawn practically whatever you want, whenever you want, in the case of TOTK – just without some of the restrictions, like stamina. These same design philosophies of an open approach feel very different in a traditional top-down Zelda setting. From playing games like A Link to the Past and Minish Cap, I know that Link can’t just climb on walls to hop to the next part of the map. In Echoes of Wisdom, Zelda definitely can. You can climb atop trees and walls freely, giving you the ability to ignore intended paths and carve your own way through the game, until you reach a rift.

Rifts are literal progress blocks, impassable voids that tear the map apart. With Tri’s help, Zelda can close these rifts by rescuing Tri’s friends that are trapped inside, in turn enhancing Tri’s ability to create echoes. Finding Tri’s friends within a rift is great fun, the inside of each rift turns pieces of the environment on their sides. Floors become walls, trees hang in a void, and you can swim up through ponds to reach new areas. Exploring each rift is brilliant, and despite clearing a bunch of them over the course of the game, I could’ve happily gone through a few more.

There are traditional dungeons, though. Dungeons somewhat break the open approach, once again implementing small keys, dungeon maps, and the usual trappings. In dungeons your ability to problem-solve and use echoes is key to clear each room, and while the puzzles are rarely difficult, clearing through a dungeon and ticking off each hidden chest is as satisfying as ever.

Zelda obtaining Link's sword. / Nintendo

But it doesn’t always work flawlessly. For example, bosses are mostly damage sponges, and you usually just spawn echoes on repeat while occasionally using your own Link-like abilities. Even one, which forces the use of specific ice or fire attacks, doesn’t feel like a puzzle. And that’s what Zelda bosses always have been – puzzles where you learn which attack or item used during which animation allows you to deal damage. It just wasn’t the case in Breath of the Wild, or Tears of the Kingdom, or now in Echoes of Wisdom. With the more traditional approach to dungeon design, a traditional approach to bosses would’ve been nice, too. 

On the flip side, small caves dot Hyrule and each has a short dungeon-like puzzle inside, and they’re reminiscent of Shrines. Rewards from each cave aren’t guaranteed to be useful, but they’re satisfying, and a great influence from the open world titles. Side quests are present too, encouraging you to revisit towns and characters to unlock items, outfits, echoes, and even Zelda’s horse. You’ll get Pieces of Heart and resources to upgrade your sword – for those few moments where you actually use it.

To flip the script once again, exploring the overworld comes with consistent frame rate instability that disappears almost entirely when stood still or indoors. It didn’t ruin my experience, but it was impossible not to notice, and made me really hope that the upcoming Nintendo Switch successor will mark the end of issues like this.

Zelda's horse / Nintendo

Yes, there are a handful of hiccups and issues that prevent Echoes of Wisdom from being a masterpiece, all-time classic Zelda game, but it’s still brilliant. The echoes completely refresh how you approach the exploration of a top-down Zelda world. While I certainly wouldn’t trade this echo RTS minigame for traditional Zelda combat in the series as a whole, it’s a lovely side-step, and an enjoyable experiment. I’d absolutely play a direct sequel to Echoes of Wisdom with the same approach, but maybe not a trilogy.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a lovely way to return to Hyrule, and the echo system revitalizes the experience of exploring this world. From combat to exploration, your approaches will be wildly different from any Zelda game before, and that’s what makes Echoes of Wisdom worth playing. While it’s not quite a Zelda masterpiece, it’s definitely an essential Nintendo Switch game.

Score: 9/10

Platform: Nintendo Switch

Be sure to read through our Echoes of Wisdom tips and tricks before you start playing the game.