Every Legend of Zelda game has had its quirky innovations, but Breath of the Wild revolutionized the franchise in ways that felt monumental and reflective of Nintendo being ready to try something — a number of things, really — new with Link. Breath of the Wild’s openness made its take on Hyrule feel unlike anything we’d ever seen from the series, and its story brought Link to life by building a big, rich world around him that you were meant to spend hours exploring.
Breath of the Wild’s innovative gameplay mechanics worked so well that it wasn’t shocking to see them return in Tears of the Kingdom, which was more of a direct sequel than an entirely new legend. But it’s rather surprising how strongly you can see the influence of those games in Echoes of Wisdom, Nintendo’s newest mainline Zelda entry — the first to let you play as the princess herself. During the time I recently spent hands-on with the game, almost everything about Echoes of Wisdom made it feel like a crystallization of the Zelda franchise’s recent era of experimentation. And while it’s a little hard to imagine at first how a Breath of the Wild-esque openness could lend itself to a more traditional, top-down Zelda game, Nintendo seems to have found a way to make it work beautifully.
After years of waiting on the sidelines while Link hacked and slashed his way through Hyrule, Echoes of Wisdom turns Princess Zelda into the hero as she sets out to stop Ganon. When we first meet this Zelda, it’s clear that she isn’t a stranger to the dangers Ganon poses and the important role Link typically plays in the grand battle between light and dark. But with Link and many other Hylians swallowed up by one of Echoes of Wisdom’s strange portals, Zelda’s left to her own devices to keep her kingdom from plunging into total chaos.
Lots of things about Echoes of Wisdom — like its assortment of monsters and focus on puzzle-centric dungeon crawling — make it feel like a classic Zelda game at first blush. But one of the most novel things about the new title is how much of a Zelda (the character) game it feels like compared to its predecessors outside of the fact that you can finally play as the princess. Zelda is a very different person than her trusted knight. He’s a warrior who runs around yelling and spinning at his enemies, but she’s a thinker who knows that her wits can be sharper than a blade. Echoes of Wisdom tries to make you feel that difference as soon as you’re given the game’s new signature key item, the Tri Rod.
By waving the Tri Rod at certain objects and defeated monsters, Zelda and her companion Tri can create duplicates of them called echoes. Early into my demo, the echoes I learned were of ordinary things you’d find in any top-down Zelda, like a small table and a bed. But rather than simply existing as visual detail, the echoes give you a variety of ways to tackle Echoes of Wisdom’s various puzzles. A single table doesn’t seem like much at first, but a stack of them is perfect for getting Zelda up high enough to sneak out of a prison cell. And in moments when Zelda might need to hide, being able to conjure a large pot she can climb into is very handy.
Even though the puzzles I played through were relatively simple, there were a handful of ways they could have been solved by using different echoes. One approach might make other onscreen characters behave in a certain way that opened up a previously blocked path, and another method could give me an entirely different route to take by creating walkways. Some of that variability comes from the way that echoes interact with their environments by default — one monster, for example, immediately started hopping around and setting things on fire after I called it out. But much of it boils down to the way Echoes of Wisdom encourages you to experiment.
The number of echoes you can create at any given time is determined by the number of triangles floating behind Tri and a point system that assigns different costs to things you can create. While a table echo costs a single triangle, a Moblin echo requires two. The game will automatically delete old echoes in the order you created them as you make new ones, so it requires you to put some thought into what you’re doing as battles become more complicated.
I had a ball summoning a swarm of Keese to sic on Moblins once I was able to get out into the open world, but it wasn’t long before I realized that brute force isn’t the easiest way to play when you start out. With just a few heart containers, it doesn’t take much to knock Zelda out, meaning that you have to be somewhat strategic in how to deploy echoes to fight for you while also taking care to avoid incoming attacks. And because your echoes sustain damage as well, you often have to be ready to conjure new ones at just the right time in order to take out difficult enemies. But the princess does have some other options at her disposal.
Because echoes are such a huge part of the game, it was surprising to see Zelda pick up Link’s sword and gain the ability to fight (and dress) the way he does. In her swordfighter form, Zelda’s more nimble and able to block attacks using a magically manifested shield. But Zelda’s transformations are temporary and tied to a magic meter that quickly depletes if you leave it running for too long. Echoes of Wisdom’s first boss battles did an impressive job of teaching me that as powerful as Zelda’s swordfighter form is, it’s not something you can just default to — at least not when you first start playing the game. The sword is important, but it’s just one of many tools you’re supposed to use strategically as the game pushes you to think about the multiple ways its challenges can be overcome.
Based just on the small chunk of Echoes of Wisdom I was able to get through, it feels like Nintendo’s supercharged the classic top-down Zelda formula by infusing it with many of the franchise’s cleverest innovations. It’s not exactly an open world or classic Zelda, but it’s something new — and it’s a perfect fit for the princess.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom launches on the Nintendo Switch on September 26th.
