It’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Zelda as she finally stars in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. You must traverse the land and fight through dungeons as the Princess of Hyrule, armed with summonable tables, potted plants, trampolines, and other household objects. I got the chance to play as Zelda for a couple of hours at Nintendo HQ, and I had a truly wonderful time.
Echoes of Wisdom sees dark times befall Hyrule once again, with mysterious rifts appearing all over the place and taking citizens, homes, and scenery captive, including Princess Zelda who ends up in a jail cell under the castle. It’s now up to Zelda – with the help of a fairy named Tri – to figure out what’s going on and to save the princess er, I mean the world, and Link, as he’s also disappeared somewhere.
To start, tiny chibi Zelda has to sneak past the guards using any means necessary. By that, I mean you’ve got to get creative. Tri, a friendly fairy who happens to appear in the cell with you, gives you a Tri Rod, which you can use to absorb ‘echoes’ of certain items. First up, you can get a bed, then a table, then a pot plant, and so on in that fashion until you have a summonable roster that resembles an IKEA catalog.
Tri is the vessel for creating the echoes of the things you pick up. It has three charges of energy – most echoes cost one charge, but some can cost two, so keep an eye out and don’t put things down willy-nilly if you’re in a tight spot. I spent the preview of Echoes of Wisdom mostly finding different things I can create echoes from, which quickly spanned to enemies and natural bits and pieces instead of just furniture.
Being able to summon items lets you get very innovative very quickly. To begin, it’s a little straightforward, but it soon gets to the point where there are multiple solutions to any issue you come across. Do you make a path with tables and chairs, or distract the guards by throwing something?
Once you’re outside, do you set everything on fire or simply sneak past any enemies? There are plenty of ways to get around every area, similar to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom’s open-ended puzzles. Whereas some people may use a trampoline, others (me) didn’t find that so forged ahead with a path of beds at every opportunity.
That also lead me into some unique combat with classic Zelda enemies like the squidgy zols, sea urchins, and keese. Combat requires you to think outside the box and figure out ways to beat things that might not include weaponry. While you can summon echoes of enemies to fight things, you have to beat them first in order to absorb the echo. This can prove tricky, depending on which items you’ve found on your travels.
Most of the game is about finding echoes and then figuring out how to use them to get through puzzles, dungeons, 2-D side-scroller areas, and defeat enemies, of course. Speaking of – during the preview, after wandering around Suthorn Beach for a while and figuring out how to scale its cliffs, I entered a dungeon where I picked up a sword, and Zelda turned into her swordfighter form. This made slaying bokoblins and slime-y enemies a lot easier, even if it only lasted for a little while.
As I ventured further into deeper dungeons and across the map, I learned even more helpful things that Tri can do – and I’m sure there’s more to come. One such skill is the ability to bind Zelda to an object, then move the object with Zelda, or move Zelda by following a moving object. It works like Link’s magnesis skill in Breath of the Wild, mixed with recall from Tears of the Kingdom, allowing you to move with the highlighted objects.
I’ve never played anything like it, to be honest. It’s almost like an obstacle course. I can see myself potentially getting annoyed trying to stack up items or removing the wrong one when trying to get out of a hole or across a chasm, but this is a small price to pay for how whimsical the game feels. It’s really creative and looks fantastic on the Switch.
There’s a lot going on in Echoes of Wisdom, but the key takeaway is that dungeons are back and better than ever, you can play as Zelda, there are new systems and magic abilities to learn, you can play as Zelda, and you can discover another intriguing story set in your favorite place. Also, yes, you can break the pots. Look, I’m just excited to finally run around as Zelda instead of Link – Hyrule Warriors wasn’t quite enough.
If you want to brush up on your Hyrule-related lore ahead of the game’s release, we’ve got an explanation of the timelines in our guide to all Zelda games in order. We’ve also got a list of the best Zelda characters if you want to know our particular picks.