Review: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: ECHOES OF WISDOM is real fun

Nintendo recently released The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. In this game, players take on the role of Princess Zelda on an adventure to save Hyrule and Link. Unsurprisingly, the game is only available on Nintendo Switch and was developed by Nintendo and Grezzo, the studio behind it The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on the Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo was kind enough to provide me with a digital code for my review, but all thoughts below are my own. You can purchase your copy from your favorite retailer, including GameStop (affiliate link).

After Princess Zelda was captured by Ganon, the swordsman Link swooped in to save her. After a fierce battle, Link appeared to defeat the villain, but was suddenly pulled into a mysterious rift in the ground and disappeared.

These strange rifts began appearing throughout Hyrule, swallowing others, including the king and his advisors.

Left alone, it is now up to Princess Zelda to save her kingdom in an all-new adventure from the Legend of Zelda series!

Here’s my standard disclaimer: I’m not done Echoes of wisdom Still. However, I’ve put several hours into it and I’m really enjoying it.

If you read my review for Link’s Awakeningyou know I love the clay doll aesthetic that Grezzo uses in these The Legend of Zelda titles. It’s lovely, it’s bright, it’s so clean. I’m glad it’s not used in every game in the series, but I love it both times it’s been used. Plus the music is perfect too. No notes.

As for the story, I’ve really enjoyed it so far. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that you’ll start the game as Link, get into trouble, and then switch to Zelda for the rest of the game. As Zelda, you team up with a graceful fairy-like creature called Tri to close the menacing rifts that are consuming Hyrule.

The general gameplay loop is that you go to an area, help the people there with a local problem like the Zora River and Zora Sea fighting each other, and then you enter a rift in the Still World where you’ll complete the game’s dungeons. Along the way there are various power-ups to unlock, mysteries to solve and smoothies to prepare.

To help you on your journey, Tri gives Zelda the Tri Rod which allows her to create echoes (or copies) of objects and even monsters to fight enemies, traverse the land, and solve puzzles. Not too far into the adventure, Zelda is also able to use the Sword Warrior Form which essentially transforms you into Link for a limited time capable of fighting enemies with sword and bow and jumping higher than normal .

As you seal rifts, Tri will gain levels that 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 these are very useful.

One of the best aspects of the puzzles and combat is that there is a lot of flexibility. While some problems have specific solutions, many problems can be addressed in a wide variety of ways. Fighting a boss?

Well, you could summon echoes to fight them for you, go into swordsman form to do the job alone, or a mixture of the two. There are tons of combinations of items you can use to traverse the land as well. I’m sure you’ll find some particular items and monsters that you’ll always come back to.

By the way, I want to mention that one of the best items you will have access to is the bed. Now, I’ve gotten to the point where I have three different beds, but even the basic bed is great for two reasons. First, so far the beds are the only items that span two spaces.

This makes it vital to overcome gaps. The other reason is because you can take a nap in bed to heal. It takes a little while which varies depending on the bed you’re 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 is primarily played with an isometric camera, this means you sometimes lose track of enemies behind pillars or walls. If you hold down the right stick, the camera will switch to a true overhead view for better enemy and hazard detection.

While I really like the game, the game falls short in one particular area: performance. Nintendo Switch is a seven (almost eight) year old console that has always been despised because the hardware was already a bit dated.

The age of the console has really been evident over the last year or so and Echoes of wisdom continues that trend. Although the performance is never terrible or revolutionary, the framerate is not stable and often drops a lot (I imagine between 24-30 fps).

When you’re in a high fps moment, the game is smooth, but it’s hard to ignore the drop in framerates. Personally, I hope the rumors that Nintendo’s next console will have backwards compatibility with improved performance are true Echoes of wisdom would definitely benefit from it.

Another problem I’ve personally encountered is that fairies don’t seem to work. I have captured two fairies on several occasions and yet when I die they don’t seem to activate.

I don’t know if I’m simply missing activation or if it’s a bug that needs fixing, but either way it’s annoying. If it’s the former, they should probably make it more obvious.

One complaint I’ve seen others mention that I agree with is that the organization of the echoes is terrible. Of course, I don’t know how I would solve the problem, but you just have to scroll horizontally until you reach the one you want with the minimum sorting options available. It makes things clunkier than I’d like, but again, I’m not sure the best way to fix this.

Before we wrap up, I want to end with a few suggestions. First, remember how I said you can jump higher in sword fighter form? Use it as you try to traverse terrain and solve puzzles. The Sword Warrior Form is not a combat-only tool. With it you can jump from the ground onto a chest which I found incredibly useful. Secondly, don’t be afraid to use the Swordsman Form to fight the little monsters.

I know you have an energy meter that acts as a timer for the Sword Warrior Form, but it’s much more effective/faster than just using echo monsters. Third, it’s worth sitting down and making smoothies. I’m not a big fan of things like cooking or making smoothies, but I admit that it’s very helpful to take the time to do it. I was wrestling with a boss and took some time to go make some smoothies and they helped me a lot in my next fight.

Personally I really enjoyed it Echoes of wisdom. It’s not my favorite The Legend of Zelda game, but it’s really good. I’m happy that Nintendo is letting more princesses be in charge of their own games. I would sincerely recommend this game to anyone who loves 2D The Legend of Zelda games.