The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is an action-adventure game from Nintendo available on the Switch. The game follows Zelda as she’s on a quest to close the rifts and save Link with the assistance of Tri, a magical being who can close the rifts. It’s an incredibly fun game and allows for open-world exploration and unique creativity. This review will break down the content, gameplay, and my overall thoughts on the game. This is NOT a spoiler-free review. 

Traditionally Zelda games follow Link as he journeys through the land to save Hyrule and Princess Zelda, but for the first time in history, Zelda is the one doing the saving. But she is not a warrior so she has to utilize the magic of the Tri Rod to summon echoes of items and monsters to assist her as needed. She can only summon a certain amount though, so they must be used strategically. She can also utilize Link’s sword to transform into her Swordfighter Link form, but they are timed and should be used in reserve. With the echoes and Link’s ability, it’s possible to explore the entire map and complete quests while being under level. 

The game is good about explaining concepts and providing instruction from the start, making it easy to start using your creative mind to navigate challenges and side quests. Using echoes is the main way to tackle these challenges, Tri can also bind to objects and move them as you move which aids in puzzle-solving. As you navigate between the lands of Hyrule and the Still world, the world the rifts lead to, you’ll unlock Waypoints for fast travel with Tri’s powers. As you explore these worlds, make sure you break everything you can, move objects, and cut down all the grass to find gems and other rewards to help you out!

Enemies, friends, and villages may be familiar from the previous games, but your interactions with them all have changed since Zelda is traveling in disguise and has different abilities. Once you can summon an echo of a strong monster it’ll make new land exploration easier, or you can travel on a horse to speed by enemies you don’t want to fight. But be sure to defeat each enemy once to gain its echo, otherwise you can’t summon it. 

The best part of Zelda games is the seemingly limitless exploration paired with creative ability. In Tears of the Kingdom, as Link, players could truly create whatever contraptions and devices they could think of, traversing quests and challenges in ways that made their way into memes. Echoes of Wisdom has a similar concept but with different strategies involved and the need for items or smoothies to boost abilities. Cheat your way to new areas by stacking beds or tables, defeat higher-level enemies by spamming fast monsters, or find easy ways to complete quests with creativity. If you think something is too crazy to work, try it! Or if you’re not sure what to use, try everything! There’s plenty of flexibility to navigate and solve puzzles with the echos. 

Overall, this was an extremely fun and cute game to play! I loved that I could blatantly ignore the main quest and explore everything I could get to with my creative chaos. I would strongly recommend this game to both Zelda fans and new players!

Fun Fact! This main character was originally meant to be Link but the creators were worried people would use weapons and not the echoes as intended. By having the main character be Zelda and limiting weapons usage, players use the echoes system to the fullest.

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