Nintendo recently released The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. In this game, players play Princess Zelda and embark on an adventure to save Hyrule and Link. As expected, the game is only available on Nintendo Switch and is being developed by Nintendo and the studio behind it, Grezzo The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo was kind enough to provide me with a digital code for review, but all thoughts below are my own. You can purchase your own copy from your favorite retailers, including GameStop (affiliate link).
When Princess Zelda is captured by Ganon, swordsman Link rushes in to rescue her. After a fierce battle, Link seemed to defeat the villain, but was suddenly dragged into a mysterious crack in the ground and disappeared.
These strange rifts began to appear across Hyrule, swallowing up others, including the king and his advisors.
Princess Zelda is alone and now it’s up to her to save her kingdom in an all-new adventure in the Legend of Zelda series!
Here’s my standard disclaimer: I’m not done yet echo of wisdom However. However, I’ve put a few hours into it and am really enjoying it.
If you read my comment Link’s Awakeningyou know I love the clay doll aesthetic that Grezzo uses in these pieces The Legend of Zelda title. It’s cute, bright, and clean. I’m glad it wasn’t used in every game in the series, but I did enjoy the two times it was used. Also, the music is perfect. No notes.
Story-wise, I’ve been really enjoying it so far. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that you start the game as Link, eventually run into trouble, and then switch to Zelda for the rest of the game. As Zelda, you team up with an adorable little fairy-like creature named Tri to close the ominous rift that’s devouring Hyrule.
The overall gameplay loop is that you travel to an area, help the people there with local problems, such as the Zora River and Zora Sea fighting each other, and then enter a rift in the static 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 aid you on your journey, Tri grants Zelda the Tri Rod, which allows her to craft echoes (or replicas) of items and even monsters to fight enemies, traverse the land, and solve puzzles. Soon into the adventure, Zelda is also able to use swordsman form, which essentially turns you into Link, able to fight enemies with a sword and bow for a limited time, and jump higher than normal.
As you seal rifts, Tri will gain levels, providing a variety of effects, including the ability to summon more echoes, the ability to generate echoes at a distance, and a reduced cost of certain echoes. All of these are very helpful.
One of the best aspects about the puzzles and combat is that there’s a lot of flexibility. While some problems have specific solutions, many problems can be solved in multiple ways. Fight the boss?
Well, you can summon echoes to fight for you, enter swordsman form to do the work yourself, or a mix of the two. There are also tons of item combinations you can use to traverse the land. I’m sure you’ll find some items and monsters that you’ll keep coming back to.
Having said that, I do want to mention that one of the best items you can use is a bed. Now, I’ve owned three different beds, but even the basic bed is great for two reasons. First, the bed is by far the only item that spans two spaces.
This makes it crucial for bridging the gap. Another reason is because you can heal by taking a nap in bed. This does take some time depending on the bed you use, but it’s usually worth it when you have to wait a few minutes.
Another cool tool that doesn’t seem to be as well known is that you can briefly change the camera angle. While the game mostly plays out using an isometric camera, this means you’ll sometimes lose track of enemies behind pillars or walls. If you hold down the right thumbstick, your camera will go into a true overhead view for better tracking of enemies and hazards.
As much as I really enjoyed the game, the game did fall short in one specific area: performance. The Nintendo Switch is a seven-year-old (nearly eight)-year-old console that has always been looked down upon because the hardware has become a bit outdated.
The console’s age has been clearly showing over the past year or so echo of wisdom Continue this trend. While performance was never terrible or game-breaking, the framerate was choppy and often dropped quite a bit (I’d guess between 24-30fps).
The game is very smooth when you’re in high framerate moments, but it’s hard to ignore framerate drops. I personally hope the rumors are true and that the next generation of Nintendo consoles will feature backwards compatibility and enhanced performance echo of wisdom Will definitely benefit from it.
Another problem I personally have is that fairies don’t seem to work. I captured two fairies on separate occasions, but they didn’t seem to activate when I died.
I don’t know if I just missed their activation or if this is a bug that needs to be fixed, but either way it’s annoying. If it’s the former, they probably should make it more noticeable.
One complaint I’ve seen others mention and I do agree with is that the organization of the Echo feels terrible. Of course I don’t know how to fix it, but you just scroll horizontally until you find what you want with minimal sorting options available. It does make things feel more bulky than I’d like, but again I’m not sure the best way to go about this.
Before I wrap up, I’d like to end with a few tips. First off, remember how I mentioned that you can jump higher in gladiator form? Use it as you try to traverse terrain and solve puzzles. The gladiator form is not just a fighting tool. With this you can jump from the ground to the top of crates, which I found very useful. Second, don’t be afraid to use swordsman form to fight small monsters.
I know you have a power meter that acts as a timer for swordsman form, but it’s more efficient/faster than purely using echo monsters. Third, it pays to sit down and make a smoothie. I don’t really enjoy things like cooking or making smoothies, but I admit that taking the time to do it can be very helpful. I was struggling with the bosses and took some time to make smoothies and they helped me a lot with my next game.
I personally enjoy it very much echo of wisdom. It’s not my favorite The Legend of Zelda Game, but a really good game. I’m glad Nintendo is letting more princesses take charge of their own games. I sincerely recommend this game to anyone who likes 2D games The Legend of Zelda game.
