HANDS-ON: Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a very smart play

You might remember that a while back, an interview with Legend of Zelda mastermind Eiji Aonuma surfaced that caused quite a bit of worry about the future of “traditional” Zelda games. Back in July 2023, Aonuma stated that he wasn’t “concerned with” the ways of older Zelda titles, and “preferred to look to the future.” To many Zelda fans, this was the death knell for a new entry in the franchise with a more old-school feel.

Fast-forward to 2024 and we now know that Aonuma was playing dumb all along!

To the surprise of just about everyone, Nintendo revealed The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom back in June of this year. Not only is it a fresh take on the early days of Zelda games, it’s the first installment to make Zelda herself the protagonist. Sure, we’ve had brief moments in past Zelda titles where we got to take control of Zelda, but Echoes of Wisdom makes the princess the star of the show.

Echoes of Wisdom also shows that Aonuma wasn’t kidding about being focused on the future of Zelda games. While Echoes of Wisdom may look retro in presentation, it employs ideas from the latest outings in the Zelda lineup. Both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom present players with all kinds of puzzles to crack in both brain-teasers and combat, but there are numerous ways to tackle them. The answers to these head-scratchers are left up to the player, and discovering what does and doesn’t work is a huge part of the fun. That spirit of experimentation is at the core of Echoes of Wisdom, proving you can very much teach an old dog new tricks.

Just this past week, we had the chance to go hands-on with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom for an extensive play-session, and we crammed a lot into the 45-minutes we were allotted. While we covered a ton of ground and unearthed all sorts of exciting things, the biggest point we came away with is how the marriage of old and new is once again revolutionizing the franchise for the better.

There’s no doubt how shocking it was to play Breath of the Wild for the first time. It was such a new approach to the Zelda formula that it was quite hard to comprehend. That said, it may be even wilder to see those design choices and gameplay mechanics transferred over to a more traditional Zelda. During our time with Echoes of Wisdom, it almost seemed like we were doing the impossible. Echoes of Wisdom looks and feels like a Zelda game from an era gone by, but the open-ended nature of solutions and puzzling opportunities limited only by your imagination go against everything you expect. We’re used to these retro-style Zelda games working in one very particular way, and Echoes of Wisdom takes that notion and throws it out the window.

This was on display from literally the first minutes of our demo session, which involved escaping a jail cell with the help of Tri, a fairy sidekick that allows you to create Echoes. Long story short, if you see something with a glowing aura around it, you can use Tri to copy that item and turn it into an Echo. Then you can use those Echoes however you see fit. It’s worth noting that everything you make an Echo of has a certain value to it, and you can only create so many Echoes before the first one you made vanishes. On top of that, enemy types have to be defeated once before you can turn them into an Echo.

As you’re working to escape the jail, in typical Legend of Zelda fashion, you’ll have to sneak around guards without getting caught. In previous Zelda games, you’d have to time your movements to make sure the guards didn’t spot you, and there was really only one or two ways to do it. In Echoes of Wisdom, you can use all sorts of methods based on whatever you can dream up with the Echoes you have. Throw out a box Echo to block a guard’s view, use a bed Echo to climb up on a shelf and walk above the guards, send out an enemy Echo to distract them, it’s 100% up to you. Without a doubt, as with every interaction in Echoes of Wisdom, figuring out ways to solve these conundrums is going to be equal parts satisfying and invigorating.

Again, much like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom before it, there’s an incredible excitement in not knowing how Echoes can be used. There are so many instances where you’ll have no idea what an Echo will do until you throw it out there. Can a keese Echo take out a Slime? Could you cross a gap in multiple islands with trampoline Echoes? Will a barrel Echo be enough to weigh down a pressure plate? Figuring out the answers to these questions is an absolute blast, but sticking with those problems and trying multiple solutions just for the heck of it is where the real magic lies. It takes what appears to be a tried-and-true formula and opens it up to a staggering degree.

This unrestrained gameplay setup allows Echoes of Wisdom to not only play with familiar Zelda puzzles, but create new ones never before seen within “2D” Zelda confines. The things you’re able to dream up and do in Echoes of Wisdom would have previously required Nintendo to come up with specific items for the player to use, and dungeon designs to take advantage of them. Now, with the design sensibilities of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom at their back, Nintendo has given Zelda fans the keys to the classic-style kingdom like never before. Just one or two of the ideas you can conjure up would have likely been the entire focus of a classic Zelda decades ago, but here you have hundreds, if not thousands of possibilities at your fingertips.

Those options go even further when you lump in all of Zelda’s new abilities outside of Echoes. As you may have seen in trailers, Zelda can also use Tri to experiment with the Bind and Reserve Bond techniques. Just as with Echoes, Zelda can basically attach herself to items and enemies in order to traverse pitfalls, deal with enemies and more. You either latch onto something and move it around through Bind, or you let the enemy/item move you through Reverse Bond. These two powers will let Zelda get around, up, over and beyond all sorts of barriers and stumbling blocks, and as mentioned before, the only thing stopping you from progressing will be your imagination.

The special skills don’t stop there either, as Nintendo recently revealed that Zelda will be able to take on a Swordfighter Form once she finds a “mysterious sword” on her adventures. This Form, which he had the chance to try during our play-session, lets Zelda basically channel the moves of Link to progress on her journey. Having Echoes to call out for your dirty work is invaluable, but sometimes an enemy gets the drop on you and you’re too frazzled to think of the perfect Echo to solve the problem. That’s when you can fire up Swordfighter Form to swipe at enemies with your sword or block their attacks with a shield. This Form can really come in handy when you need a quick fix to a bad guy in your way, but keep in mind it uses a constantly-depleting meter while activated. That means you won’t have forever to slash away at the henchmen, and once the meter empties, you’ll have to find a specific type of energy to replenish the Form.

It’s really nice to see Nintendo give Zelda some of Link’s attributes when players are in a pinch, but it’s clear they don’t want people to rely on them. Swinging a sword and using a shield are always fun, but the combination of Zelda, Tri and all of their new features are a lot more engaging.

Even in the small chunk of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom that we experienced, it’s obvious there is a wealth of possibilities in every facet of the game. Every nook and cranny we stumbled upon had us asking ourselves if it could be accessed by using a specific Echo, and the depth of that exploration is unlike any other in classic Zelda games. Wondering if we could use an Echo in a seemingly unintended way was supremely satisfying when it paid off. Seeing cliffs and coves and pondering if we could traverse them with the right Echo felt so darn good. Of course, more often than not, we also got to see that Nintendo predicted players would go snooping in these areas and rewarded us with treasure chests and other goodies, but that kind of setup is only going to make everyone question even more if they can come up with ideas, solutions, and methods of traversal that even Nintendo’s finest couldn’t anticipate.

While we only saw a small portion of what Echoes of Wisdom has to offer, we did sneak a peek at the full (albeit unmarked) map, and it’s clear there’s a massive amount to see and do here. The map fills in as you explore, so we have no idea what awaits beyond the limited area we were in, but that’s what excites us most. It’s always addictive seeing what lies beyond the next corner, and knowing we have Tri’s phenomenal abilities to help us chart our course is tantalizing in the best way. More so than ever before, we want to find every Heart Container, collect every hidden treasure, help every NPC, complete every side-quest and take on anything in our way. Just as Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom’s suite of mechanics and methods sucked us into those worlds even more, Echoes of Wisdom now lets our imaginations run wild in a 2D setting in ways never before experienced…and how could you not be truly thrilled by that?!