The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Year: 2024
Rating: E10+
Time Played: ~20 hours
With the recent successes of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, I started to wonder if the top-down Zelda titles were now a thing of the past. Sure, the remake of Link’s Awakening looked awesome, but it wasn’t really an original idea. Enter Echoes of Wisdom, the first Zelda game to feature the titular princess as the main character (CD-i games notwithstanding). I was glad that Nintendo took a risk here to develop something new, even if the execution sometimes left more to be desired.
While Echoes of Wisdom holds the player’s hand perhaps a little more than the recent 3D games, it still feels like the map has the open-world freedom of these larger games in the franchise. There are problems, and as Zelda progresses through the game, she finds “echoes” of enemies and objects to solve those problems. Of course, with so many different things to summon, it gets a little overwhelming if you want to play with more variety. Still, a few tried-and-true solutions evolved as I played and discovered other echoes.
What felt somewhat disconnected was the combat. For most battles, I’d summon my powerful monsters to fight and then spend the time avoiding the other enemies while the CPU-controlled creatures I used battled my foe. Because I couldn’t necessarily control these summoned monsters, I often just spammed the summoning button so they’d be in the spot I needed them to be in. It almost felt like I was an NPC waiting for the player to play the game. Still, for a unique idea like this, I can at least applaud the choice to try something different for a franchise that’s somewhat strict with how each game is played.
A fresh idea for Zelda partly by using Zelda, I give The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom 4.0 stars out of 5.
