The only constant in the Legend of Zelda series is change. From its perspective to its art style, Nintendo takes some surprising risks when it comes to one of its most valuable franchises. That often pays off. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, for instance, was a bold open-world reinvention of the classic adventure formula that put an emphasis on flexible gameplay and emergent moments born from creative thinking. That design didn’t just influence its direct sequel, the excellent The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It’s very much present in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom too.
I’ve been curious about how the first Zelda game to actually star Zelda would work ever since it was revealed. It looked like a return to top-down form, but its item-copying hook suggested that it might be more creatively open-ended than any traditional Zelda game. After playing 90 minutes of it, I can see exactly how Nintendo is fusing old and new to once again reinvent its tried-and-true formula. Echoes of Wisdom plays like a miniature Tears of the Kingdom, at least in terms of how it lets players tackle problems in multiple ways. That makes for a unique puzzle adventure hybrid that I’m already eager to return to.
Summoning echoes
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom begins with mysterious rifts opening up around Hyrule. Princess Zelda is blamed for their appearance and imprisoned. My demo begins in captivity, where she meets a little sidekick named Tri. The Navi-like partner gives Zelda the Tri Rod, an item capable of copying items and letting her freely summon them. I get to test it out right away, cloning an object in my cell and using it as a platform to reach a high-up exit. A stealth sequence ensues that introduces the basics of that echo play.
It’s a simple system. If an object has sparkles around it, Zelda can stand next to it and hit a button to copy it. That echo is then permanently added to her inventory and she can summon it out of thin air any time after that through a Tears of the Kingdom-like horizontal pop-up menu. The catch is that each echo has a summon cost, represented as yellow ticks. In my demo, I only had three ticks of summon power to work with at a time (Zelda gets more throughout the adventure). A Keese only costs one tick to summon, so I could have three out at a time. A spear-throwing Moblin costs two. There’s no limit on how many times I can summon echoes, but the oldest one I’ve created disappear if I’m at my limit and create something new.
I quickly get to put that loop to work as I expand my pool of echoes. Soon enough, I’m placing down boxes to hide from patrolling guards and stacking multiple beds on top of one another to create makeshift stairways to high platforms. The creative potential only grows from there as I copy objects like trampolines and enemies with specific functions, like an armadillo that can roll through boxes to break them. The fun comes from mixing and matching echoes in clever ways to solve open-ended puzzles.
At times, that hook captures the essence of Tears of the Kingdom’s enticing player agency. On one overworld screen, I come across a pack of moblins. Zelda herself is powerless to defeat them, so I need to summon other enemies I’ve turned into echoes to defeat them. In doing so, I accidentally stumble on surprising interactions. When I drop a fireball enemy, it ignites all of the grass in the area, smoking a few moblins. With my extra ticks, I send out a pair of snakes to finish the job. Unfortunately, they get distracted by a hunk of meat nearby, an item that acts as bait for both enemies and my own summons. Each challenge is a learning experience that teaches me more ways I can utilize the echoes at my disposal.
By the end of the demo, I’m solving puzzles and beating bosses in ways that go against the most obvious solutions. It’s the same small thrill I get whenever I complete a shrine in Tears of the Kingdom in some inventive way. Where Echoes of Wisdom feels more approachable is that it doesn’t require players to engineer machines to achieve that. Summoning is a quick process that makes trial and error easy. Echoes aren’t resources that go away either, so there’s no punishment for experimentation.
There are a few quirks to the system. Only specific objects can be turned into echoes, which creates some limitations on creativity. I can clone any enemy once I defeat it, but I can’t walk into a shop and make an echo of the inventory (yes, I tried). I’m also a little skeptical of its scrolling summon menu. Anytime I want to swap echoes, I need to scroll through a straight line with dozens of options. Filters help organize my summons, but it’s a shame that there’s seemingly no way to assign some key echoes to quick shortcuts — especially because I don’t know how many options Zelda can copy in the final game.
Even with those potential pain points, I’ve already found myself dying to get back into Echoes of Wisdom and try some new ideas. Is there a different way I could have crossed that gap? How many ways could I get past a wall of spiky enemies? The wheels are still turning days after playing.
Classic Zelda design
What’s especially exciting about Echoes of Wisdom is that it’s a bit of a return to form, even with its entirely new puzzle system. It’s a top-down adventure in the style of developer Grezzo’s Link’s Awakening remake (right down to some occasional 2D platforming interludes). There’s an overworld grid to explore, heart pieces to find, and traditional dungeons to complete. It’s been over a decade since the last original Zelda game in this style and the formula hasn’t missed a step.
I’d really get a sense of how true it is to the formula when I popped into its first dungeon. Here, I was clearing rooms full of enemies to unlock doors, solving bite-sized puzzles, and hunting down small keys in a multi-floor maze. And while echoes are Zelda’s primary tool, she does get some more traditional skills too. Early in the dungeon, Tri grants me a power called Bind. This lets me grab hold of heavy objects and move them around, a skill I need to use to move statues onto switches or yank shields off of enemies. That skill also has another use called Reverse Bond, which allows me to latch on to objects and follow their movement, which is useful for grappling onto moving platforms.
The only area where echoes don’t cleanly combine with the old-school Zelda formula is in combat. Since Zelda can’t attack foes herself, she mostly needs to rely on summoned creatures to passively attack. It’s almost more like a small-scale strategy game where I need to watch and wait as enemies attack. It’s a bit too passive in your standard enemy encounters, but Echoes of Wisdom seems to have a few solutions to that in the full game.
For one, there are clever boss designs that play more like action puzzles. In the dungeon’s end fight, I have to take down a Talus by weakening a core that moves around its body. There’s an obvious way to deal with that, but I discover a few alternate ways to tackle the challenge just by summoning creatures and seeing what happens. What can an aerial Keese do that a grounded Darknut can’t? That’s where fights get interesting.
Zelda has at least one more offensive trick up her sleeve, though. After defeating a dark version of Link who appears as a sub-boss, I obtain a sword fighter transformation. By pressing up on the D-pad, I embody Link’s power and can slash enemies with a sword. The catch is that I can only do so briefly, as a gauge depletes. I can only replenish that with items, so I need to be strategic about when I use it. That little feature should help mix up the combat and give players options beyond simply summoning monsters and hoping they attack just right.
There’s a lot more I’ve yet to see. The opening slice I played was fairly linear, but it seems as though the world will open up from there (handy fast travel points should make for quick exploration around the overworld). There’s also a smoothie crafting system I’ve yet to see, where Zelda can make perk-granting drinks with collected ingredients. Some on-screen UI and menus imply that Zelda might get a few more tools to work with, too.
After experiencing an introductory 90 minutes, I’m excited to see where Echoes of Wisdom goes next. There may be room for this new formula to improve down the line, but I’m already feeling like it’s a clever reinvention of the series that understands what makes Breath of the Wild appealing without simply replicating its staples. It’s a wise move that feels right for Zelda herself.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom launches on September 26 for Nintendo Switch.