Hands on with Zelda’s first adventure – The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

It feels like it was just a week or so ago that Nintendo announced a brand new Legend of Zelda game, with a return to the lovely Link’s Awakening art style and with Zelda finally the main character! From the announcement trailer, it’s known that Hyrule has become engulfed in rifts/tears, leaving nothing but a void in its place. And even Link has not escaped the rift.

Thanks to Nintendo, I got the opportunity to spend about an hour and a half with Echoes of Wisdom before the upcoming release later this month. Given that the portion of the game I played included a lot of tutorials on the game’s main mechanics, I can only guess what we played was reasonably early into the game. Zelda finds herself imprisoned and meets a being called Tri, who gives Zelda the ability to create Echoes. If you haven’t watched a trailer yet (and you really should), Echoes appear to be one of the main mechanics of this new adventure. 

In the world, there are items that can be turned into Echoes. They are handily highlighted in the area with a healthy glow around them. Enemies can also be turned into Echoes, although they need to be defeated before you can gain their Echo. Given I was freshly introduced to the ability, it felt like I was adding a lot of new Echoes to the collection in a short time.   

To keep things interesting, each Echo has a cost. For the portion of the game I played, it was limited to 3 smaller items like small tables or Keese, or one Peahat or Spear Moblin. It makes sense to have this limitation to summoning Echoes, and it is managed in a way where you have enough to navigate the environment, but not to break the game with 100 tables on screen at once. Also, combat would have less impact if you can just fill the screen with monsters, and as I found you can be overpowered with just one really good monster/Echo. I discovered a Peahat Echo tucked away in a cave, where instead of the usual treasure chest or heart piece, the reward for exploration was a new Echo.

The Peahat has giant spinning spikes that would mess up any enemies once they got started up, to the point I was able to stroll through most enemy encounters. Even fighting a Shadow Link I could rely on good ol Peahat. I do anticipate that in the full game, my strategy of having a really deadly hovering Echo won’t work all the time, and I can imagine it getting pretty boring, too. What became clear quickly is that there are many ways to approach the game. If you want to, you can butt your head against the world and rely on powerful Echoes. But you’d be missing out on more efficient and entertaining ways to solve some of the puzzles, I look forward to seeing what’s possible when I get some more time with the game.

The more Echoes you accumulate, the more cluttered the scrolling selection menu becomes. Hopefully, the process is streamlined a little further into the game, or who knows, with limited time, I might’ve missed handy options to keep the most useful Echoes at hand.  

Along with summoning Echoes, Zelda is also given the powers of Bind and Reverse Bind. Bind allows you to link Zelda to an item/obstacle/enemy and move them around. In the trailer, Zelda could use Bind to move massive rocks out of the way or to drag enemies over pits. There were a few other uses to help with puzzles and combat, which are very reminiscent of how Ultrahand worked in Tears of the Kingdom. With the Reverse Bind working the other way to Bind, Zelda can link to moving objects/creatures and can be moved around by them. The example of Reverse Bind in the game was the same one demonstrated in the trailer, which is binding to a moving platform to have it carry her across a pit.

2D platforming sections have returned and allow another way to utilise your Echoes, and another way to approach combat as well. When in a top down/isometric view, enemies are fairly grounded or are unlikely to be out of attack ranger for your Echoes. In the 2D view it was initially a pain to hit the flying Keese because you couldn’t just fire an arrow or slash up into the air with a sword (not at this point in the game at least), so you will need to consider the different views when choosing your Echoes. 

After finding an entrance point into one of the rifts, Zelda finds herself in the Still World. The Still World is made up of things that were pulled into the rift, including people. To heal these rifts, Zelda needs to get inside and help rescue Tri’s friends. This part of the game involves exploring a dungeon.

The dungeon within the Still World is what you’d expect from a more traditional Zelda game, except that Echoes play a vital part in solving puzzles and exploring the dungeon. If you’ve been missing the older games, then you should be pretty happy here. As a surprise Shadow Link showed up to serve as the dungeon’s mini boss, which changed up the combat.  I was facing a more formidable enemy who could block damage, and has more mobility than the usual creatures. I can imagine there are a few ways to best take on this fight, and I hope to try them out soon. I took a more straightforward approach and it worked all the same, while simultaneously robbing myself of any feeling of discovery or achievement. 

Princess Zelda gains another, and just recently announced ability called Swordfighter mode. At the hit of a button Zelda gains the ability to wield a sword and directly attack enemies and obstacles in the way. She can also jump higher if that helps, but it’s way too early to know if that’s useful or makes you more formidable in combat. Given the rest of the game’s focus on needing to tackle puzzles and combat without waving a sword, it feels a bit strange to then be offered a mode in opposition to that. However it is pretty limited in how much you can use it, as it is tied to a meter. This can be refilled by collecting little pieces of energy. For the small portion of the game I got to see, it would appear you won’t be able to just start hacking and slashing anytime you leap into combat as the meter didn’t refill that quickly. 

The boss battle I played was a Seismic Talus, a large golem-style enemy made of rock. The Talus acts as your usual Zelda boss; you only need to rely on your Echoes instead of weapons. As the boss’s weak point becomes more difficult to hit, it will challenge you to get creative with how to overcome it. Even with the Swordfighter mode available, the ability is still limited – it won’t be enough to last through the fight. 

Echoes of Wisdom, so far, feels like a great mix of Tears of the Kingdom and more traditional Zelda games. Even though it was only about an hour and a half of time with the game, it was enough to get a really good glimpse at how Nintendo is shaking up the Zelda formula once again. I can’t wait to explore this new version of Hyrule with Zelda. 

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is out on September 26th, 2024. You can check out our bargain guide for game here.