Our Verdict
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom brings a delightful entry to the classic franchise with Princess Zelda as the leading lady. Use your wits and a catalog of echoes in an incredibly well-rounded game to rediscover every corner of Hyrule in a new story.
I get very excited any time there’s a new Legend of Zelda game. As anyone rightly should – what lore will there be? Can I grab cuccos and throw them around? How about smashing pots and cutting grass? If you like the simple pleasures of a romp through Hyrule as I do, then The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is for you.
Echoes of Wisdom kicks off as you might expect – Hyrule is once again in a spot of bother, and it’s up to you to save everyone. Giant rifts belching out waves of foul monsters have opened up across the land and you must go into these dark and scary places to fix them. The difference is that this time, you’re Zelda. Finally, we get to run around as the Princess.
Though, it’s not all fun and games. Evil impostors have taken over the castle, and now Zelda is a wanted person. You start by being imprisoned in the depths of Hyrule Castle and must find your way out – thankfully, a friendly fairy named Tri is here to help. Tri gives you a staff that allows you to absorb echoes of furniture, enemies, items, and more to aid you on your journey. And so, clad in a dark cloak with a fairy at your side, you work to escape the jail and find those who haven’t turned into a rift monster.
On your way around the land, keep your eyes peeled for some rather unflattering wanted posters. Is that really what they think Zelda looks like? This also means you must avoid guards and anyone associated with the castle in case they recognize you from the posters and try to capture you.
Tri leads you across the map and through the story, though you can explore freely. Once you have some echoes in your arsenal, you can build paths and bridges to get over rivers and mountainous terrain. Should I have been able to wangle my way into the Faron region so soon? Probably not, but I did, and I felt accomplished. I can’t help but uncover the map as soon as I can in any remotely open-world game, and I’m glad that Echoes of Wisdom let me do that… even if I perhaps wasn’t supposed to.
Let’s look at the echoes you can get. The system is like nothing I’ve played before and can get a little overwhelming once you start finding all the options. You start with a bed, a plant pot, and a table, but soon, you have a variety of enemy units to choose from, along with half an Ikea catalog and some outdoor items like rocks and boulders. It’s a bit like Zelda goes Dragon Quest Builders.
The echoes are super easy to pick up and find. If you see a glowing item, you can get Tri to learn it, or if you defeat an enemy, chances are it’ll drop an echo for you to grab. You can use them to solve most situations you find yourself in. Who knew a pile of beds and a trampoline could solve so many of Hyrule’s problems?
When you get to 20 or more echoes, scrolling through the menu gets a bit tedious. It’s similar to the scrolling menu in Tears of the Kingdom when choosing what to glue to your bows – it slows the pace if you’re in combat and you can easily miss what you’re looking for. If you could favorite echoes, it would be very helpful. You can sort the menu by last used and type, but it doesn’t really narrow it down.
This leads to how combat works in this game. At first, you have no combat abilities and must rely on your surroundings or echoes. You can throw rocks, set grass on fire, or deploy a cloud of feral keese to take out enemies and clear your path. Eventually, though, you find a sword and learn the ability to wield it yourself. It comes with a catch – you can only use it for a limited time. There’s a blue energy bar in the corner, and once this runs out, you turn back into regular Zelda instead of cool swordfighter Zelda. I also got a bow, but the sword is my preferred weapon.
You can also use Tri to grab onto things – similar to Magnesis and Rewind in TOTK and BOTW. You can use Tri to move around by moving objects or holding onto them and following their path. If you send Tri toward a half-buried treasure chest, for instance, your fairy friend grabs it, and then you can unearth it.
It’s not all combat and exterior decorating, though. This game has a lot to do that fits right into the Zelda formula, bringing back older themes with newfangled bits and pieces to work on. Dungeons are back, baby, and provide plenty of puzzles and evil monsters to defeat to find the key that gives you access to the boss at the end. While I’m personally more of a fan of the openness of Breath of the Wild and its Divine Beasts, these dungeons posed a fun challenge and made great use of the available echoes and mechanics.
Maybe after all this fighting, you’re a little thirsty? Well, don’t worry, Hyrule has an answer. Smoothie shops! Run by Business Scrubs, you find them dotted across the map near the main civilizations, and you can give over ingredients to receive a delightful drink in return. These have properties based on the ingredients, like filling hearts, energy, providing resistance to elements, or even improving your ability to breathe underwater. I’ve been working toward unlocking as many recipes as I can, mostly because I love how the Scrubs talk with little ‘eee’ noises.
You’ll also run into Stamp Guy. You know, Stamp Guy! While I can’t confirm if it’s the same as Stamp from the Minish Cap, this guy sure loves stamps. I found a strange podium in the shape of a stamp, and lo and behold, he floated down from the sky and told me all about stamps. He gave me a card to collect them, so I’ve been feverishly filling it out to appease Stamp Guy.
These are just some of the activities you can fill your time with between running into rifts, saving Hyrule’s people, and expanding your never-ending catalog of echoes, of course. You can even stop for a chat with villagers or take your horse out riding. Yes – you can get a horse. A small, cute, round horse. I probably stumbled upon Hyrule Ranch before I should have, but as soon as I saw those horses and round cows, I had to know more. You can just go up and grab one and ride it around! The horses, not the cows. Sadly.
While we don’t get a huge expansion on Hyrule’s lore, and to be honest, I’m not sure which timeline branch this fits in, Echoes of Wisdom introduces some new Zelda characters along with bringing back familiar faces – on top of the classic major races like the Gerudo and Zora. In this entry, it turns out that Impa has a brother who runs a workshop, similar to Robbie in Breath of the Wild, where you can upgrade your stuff.
What we do get from Echoes of Wisdom is another one of the best Zelda games on Switch – it’s a truly lovely entry into the Zelda franchise. Visually, the game is great and has the same style as Link’s Awakening on Switch. Characters are a little crispy around the edges in a couple of cutscenes, but traveling the overworld is a delight paired with a soundtrack of classic Zelda themes perfectly suited to wandering through a medieval world.
I found no issues while playing the game in terms of performance or gameplay. Then again, that’s what I’ve come to expect from Nintendo’s games. I will admit I got absolutely stuck at one point – I got a vague quest to save everyone in Hyrule, but once in the rift, there was nowhere to go, nothing to kill, and nothing to loot. I was stumped. Now, I won’t say the solution, but my advice for any situation in this game is to look around. Carefully. If you’re not sure what to do, throw Tri at every object until something works.
I just had a really lovely time with Echoes of Wisdom. It has a good 20 hours of content, but you can spend as long as you like blasting through enemies as they respawn so quickly. Or, if you’re like me, you can expand the smoothie business empire across the land. It may not be a ground-breaking, timeline-changing entry, but it is a wonderful time for any Zelda fan.
Well, I’m off to consider where to put this in the list of all Zelda games in order. Perhaps you’re looking for some BOTW amiibo or Tears of the Kingdom amiibo now, in which case, we can recommend some for you.