For the first time ever, players will step into the shoes of the titular hero of the Legend of Zelda series in a mainline entry, with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom launching later this month on Nintendo Switch. We got the chance to go hands-on with the upcoming title in a demo at PAX West 2024 last weekend, and I have to say, after just a short time with the game, September 26th cannot come fast enough.
Echoes of Wisdom puts players into the shoes of Zelda, who is adventuring to save her kingdom of Hyrule from mysterious rifts that are enveloping the land. It’s not just the iconic locations of Hyrule being sucked into the Still World, but also its people - and somehow Zelda is to blame.
One key character sucked into this mysterious realm is the normal hero of our story, Link. As a result, it’s Zelda who is saving him this time from whatever is the cause of the strife in Hyrule this time.
The art style was one of the first aspects of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom that caught my attention, as it’s using the same style as the recent Link’s Awakening remake. It’s vibrant, with the various colors of the world popping right off the screen, yet it retains a simplicity that I feel fits the Nintendo Switch hardware so well. It’s the perfect mix of graphical intensity and art style that I’m glad Nintendo is continuing to lean into.
Zelda is joined by the mysterious fairy Tri, who helps her in her quest to save the kingdom. Tri is a much more hands-on Navi, as the fairy companion lends their aid to Zelda in the form of the Tri Rod. This Rod in the hands of Zelda allows her to manipulate the world around her with skills such as Bind, which lets her drag objects around the world that she otherwise couldn’t. Reverse Bind instead moves Zelda with the object, like latching onto the underside of a moving, floating platform to cross a pitfall on a map.
Manipulating objects with Bind is incredibly satisfying, especially when it's used in interesting ways, which I won't spoil here. However, I was surprised by the sheer amount of intractability of the skill, and I'm eager to see how I can use it when I play the full game.
However, the main way Zelda will interact with the world in Echoes of Wisdom is through creating those titular Echoes. These can be anything from learning how to conjure a replica of a fallen enemy, such as Keese or Spear Moblin, to creating a bed to either stack on others you’ve made to reach a high spot - or just sit back and rest in the middle of a dungeon.
In practice, this leads to some incredible lateral thinking to clear the various puzzles that Zelda presets you in its dungeons. Having to figure out you can stack beds on top of each other to create a sort of bed ramp to reach a ledge is something I’m not sure I’ve really had to do in a top-down style Zelda game before - yet it’s something I found myself doing multiple times as I tried to escape the dungeons below Hyrule Castle in my demo.
It actually gives me…well…echoes of another Legend of Zelda game: Tears of the Kingdom. While Tears gave players an erector set and a literal open world to manipulate, Echoes of Wisdom takes much of that style of lateral gameplay and allows players to overcome obstacles in an interesting way.
Remembering that I could not only drop a trampoline to try to reach the top of a box I couldn’t normally climb, but I can also drop a table or stack a few to make a set of stairs, is incredibly freeing when I felt stuck.
As I moved through the dungeon, I was presented with quite a few traditional Zelda obstacles, from a gaggle of rotating, patrolling guards, to fending off enemies with the rocks I could conjure and throw early on. Conjuring an Echo takes a point of power from Tri (represented by the three triangles that float behind him), limiting the number of Echoes you can have out at a time. Some Echoes also require more power, so while that table might only cost a single point of Tri’s power, the axe-wielding Knights that guard the castle cost three.
One part I wasn’t a huge fan of was navigating the roster of Echoes I had acquired. It works much like the quick select menus in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, where you enter a horizontal menu and use the right stick to navigate to the item to create. With just a few Echoes this was fine, but later on in the demo when I had more than ten different choices, it got incredibly tedious. You can sort by type, most used, and more, but I kind of wish there was a way to hotkey my favorites or most used to the D-Pad or another key to take some of the menu management out of the equation.
That said, as I moved through the dungeon, I found myself falling into a groove, dropping tables, conjuring pots to throw and distract enemies, and event stacking those beds to reach higher places. It was about this time I turned to my Nintendo rep and commented that playing a Zelda game without a Sword was an interesting experience, and one that I was pretty happy with.
Literally, the next room had me facing down an Echo of Link himself, trapped as he was in the Still World.
Defeating him was a bit tricky, especially since he had a Sword and I didn’t, but once I was able to, I was rewarded with a sword of my own, unlocking Zelda’s Swordfighter form. In this form, Zelda can channel Link’s skill with a sword and shield, transporting us back to a familiar Zelda experience, though it’s only a limited time.
I do like that this traditional Zelda gameplay is still found here, and I’m incredibly happy it’s tied to a resource you have to recharge. It would be so easy to just give Zelda a sword and have your standard Legend of Zelda experience, but instead, Nintendo has made Echoes of Wisdom feel unique in that you can use a sword to overcome some challenges and help in boss fights, but at the end of the day the vast majority of time controlling Zelda will be using the power handed down by Tri.
As I moved through my demo, I eventually found myself out in the overworld of Echoes of Wisdom, which reminded me of those older, classic Zelda games like Link’s Awakening or A Link to the Past. It’s a large world with some familiar locations Nintendo has announced ahead of this month’s launch, such as Gerudo Desert, Eldin Volcano (home of the Gorons) and more.
There were spots I could tell the developers were clearly inspired by the design language of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, especially as I came upon a Moblin camp that looked almost like it could have been in one of those other games, tower and all.
I also appreciated that the soundtrack, while familiar, had its own unique flair as well. While Breath of the Wild relied incredibly heavily on piano (and as a saxophone player, I really appreciated its use in Tears of the Kingdom) as its driving force (to outstanding effect), here it’s a flute and an oboe that dominate. I appreciated the new riffs on familiar Zelda themes, such as the chime that plays when opening a chest or solving a puzzle. I love that interesting instrument combinations are being used as the feature instruments in recent Zelda games as well, and I honestly cannot wait to hear more of the Echoes of Wisdom soundtrack as I play.
Zelda will also eventually traverse the Still World itself, hopping into the Rifts themselves. It’s here we learn that those who were trapped by the Rifts are immobilized and eventually will find themselves fading away forever if Zelda can’t stop the malice behind the Rifts.
The Rifts feel like a bit of old-school platforming, where using the Echoes to traverse is incredibly important. Building a quasi-bridge out of a few tables or jumping onto the tops or sides of trees to cross a gulf between the floating blocks of land, suspended in the void of the Still World, transported me back to the old SNES and GameBoy days.
This is driven home even more when Zelda turns from a 3D isometric experience to a full on 2D platformer, which happens periodically. Some Echoes are actually better when Echoes of Wisdom finds itself in this new presentation style, such as the Skulltulas you can create that spin threads of web that Zelda can climb like rope.
They work in full 3D space but are especially clutch in 2D space when you need to avoid the ground—or the pit—below you.
When my time with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was ended, I found myself pretty sad I had to put the controller down. It’s a fun experience, and forcing me to think differently in nearly every encounter challenged me in a way few games have lately. Even as I went into other appointments during the rest of that day, I found myself going back to some of the puzzles and boss fights I encountered, wondering how I could have done them differently.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom has stuck with me as I left PAX in a way that very few games from any trade show has, and I honestly cannot wait till the full release later on this month.
