Hell of a week for Nintendo and Zelda series producer, Eiji Aonuma. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom just picked up the Sales and Grand Game of the Year awards at Tokyo Game Show, and their newest title, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, just released on September 26th.
Echoes of Wisdom, developed by Nintendo and Grezzo, was revealed out of nowhere during the June Nintendo Direct. It wasn’t even the final announcement during the show, I mean, seriously Nintendo? Bloody legends. Long suffering fans of the Zelda series are used to long wait times between releases, so getting a new title 16 months after Tears is a very welcome surprise.
Princess Zelda stars as the main hero for this adventure, and you just know someone, somewhere is raging about that. Too bad, this game rules.
I’ll summarise my first two hours with the game, so beware of spoilers beyond this point.
The game kicks off at the end of Links adventure to save the princess.. wait what? It’s a really cool introduction with Link going through a short dungeon sequence, finding the imprisoned princess, and doing battle with Ganon. Link saves the day, until that pig bastard does some evil magic and a big purple rift starts swallowing up everything in the area, including Link.
Now we change to controlling Zelda in an exciting chase sequence back through the dungeon, barely managing to escape. We meet up with some soldiers and travel back to Hyrule Castle and meet the king. Safe and sound, end of the game, right? Wrong. Things go absolutely tits up and Ganon’s rift appears again, swallowing the king and his crew. Some evil dopplegangers come back out of the rift and take their place. Zelda is arrested by this imposter king, and it’s in the jailcell that we meet Zelda’s Navi equivalent – Tri.
Tri gives Zelda a pretty cool looking staff and grants her the ability to summon echoes, which are copies of items, creatures, and equipment found around the map. You escape the jail by using this ability, and so far I’m having a great time.
The first few open areas include a beach, a township (where Link’s from) and a forest. This section is still linear, and leads to the first proper dungeon in the rift. The inside of the rift section is quite creepy, and the music is absolutely *chefs kiss*. The dungeon is a standard Zelda dungeon with maps and keys. If you played the Links Awakening remake then you know what to expect. Here we finally meet up with Link and Zelda’s shitty day gets even worse. Link’s eyes are glowing red and he attacks. This section was the standout for my short time with the game so far, as Zelda doesn’t have weapons to defend herself so you have to think of ways to deal damage with your echoes.
Beating this section unlocks Zelda’s “sword” mode, which you use to absolutely cook the Talus boss at the end of the dungeon. Upon exiting the dungeon and progressing the story, the rest of the world map opens up and you’re given freedom to explore.
What I liked?
The graphics are really cool, using the same style as 2019’s Links Awakening remake. Grezzo has been absolutely cooking with some of the environments, in particular the moody introductory sequence with Link and the creepy first rift you enter with Zelda. It may be some of the best 2D environments I have seen on the console.
The echoes gameplay system feels good for exploring and combat. Finding and collecting the echoes feels exciting and gives you the dopamine hits like catching a Pokemon. Using those echoes to then reach a new area or smash some enemies is very satisfying. As Nintendo said in the developer interviews leading up to the release, using these echoes almost feels like you’re cheating and using them in ways that the developers didn’t intend.
The story is giving me major A Link to the Past vibes, with hilariously ugly wanted posters put up around Hyrule. It’s early days, but I expect this title to be a standard “collect the magical items, save the day” Zelda story.
What I didn’t like?
I’m not a performance fiend. If I get the choice between performance mode and graphics mode, I’ll always choose graphics. But even for me, it’s noticeable that the game lags at random times. The Switch is old now, yeah yeah we get it. But hey, the Switch version runs better than the PS5 version right?
The echoes menu. It’s the same as the Tears menu, for better or worse. It’s fine until you start getting 15+ items and need to scroll to find the item you want. Surely they could have thought up a better solution?
Overall, my first session with this new release was really fun. I can’t wait to dive back in and experience another unforgettable adventure, as only The Legend of Zelda series knows how to deliver.
All image credits to Nintendo and their respective owners
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