It’s not very common in the long-running Zelda series for a game to be announced and released almost out of the blue, yet that’s exactly what happened with Echoes of Wisdom. Only one short year after the monumental and highly anticipated Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo decided to announce this game, for the surprise of everyone - at least from my understanding. From the get-go, it was clear this would be a simpler game than its predecessor, marking a return to the series’ 2D gameplay style. However, that didn’t mean it was more of the same - quite the opposite, in fact. After all, it was the official debut of the titular princess as a protagonist - considering Nintendo refuses to acknowledge the existence of the infamous Philips CD-i games that also had Zelda as the playable character. From my experience, it was a meritorious debut, but with some glaring issues on its execution.
The power of Wisdom
According to the lore of the series, princess Zelda is the triforce of Wisdom’s bearer and this game made sure to honour that. Unlike Link, Zelda isn’t equipped with a sword and shield, but with a magical rod. With it, we can create copies of various objects found in the world, known as Echoes, and use them to overcome challenges, whether reaching specific locations or defeating enemies. For the former, we can use echoes of boxes, trees, trampolines, beds, and even blocks of water. For combat, we can “fight fire with fire” by creating echoes of the enemies themselves. Obviously is not that simple, with some of them requiring a bit more creativity to defeat, but there’s some satisfaction in doing it purely by brain power and not brute force. This is by far the biggest change in paradigm present in Echoes of Wisdom, with the difficulty coming more in form of mental puzzles and less in mechanical skill. And of course, having Zelda save Link - rather than the other way around - marks another change for the series status-quo.
Apart from the main character skillset, everything else is quite familiar to someone who played a Zelda game before. The most interesting aspect of it in my opinion is the blend of concepts between the traditional 2D games of the series and the open world ones (Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom), bringing elements from those such as a mission log, quick travel portals spread across Hyrule, unlinear progress (although much more toned down) and even cooking recipes.
Echoes of issues
From all the elements this game takes from its predecessors, there is one that’s much more evident than anything else. Back in 2019, Nintendo released a remake of the Game Boy classic Link’s Awakening, in a completely new art style that resembled a diorama made with plastic pieces, looking almost like a Playmobil set. While initially strange, this aesthetic proved to work well once we acually the game. For Echoes of Wisdom, they decided to reuse the exact same style, but this time I found myself less impressed. Though charming, this style has creative limitations that lend a somewhat cheap aspect to the game - something difficult to explain in objective terms.
What I can explain objectively however is the terrible framerate the game has most of the time. This was already a problem in the aforementioned Link’s Awakening, that was also developed by the team behind this one, but here it gets even worse. By default it targets 60fps, but it can only reach them consistently in indoor environments, such as dungeons. While navigating through Hyrule, it rarely hits that target, sometimes going down to 20fps or even less. Sure, the Nintendo Switch is by today’s standards a very limited machine, but many games released for it proved that when well optimized, they can look and perform exceptionally well. Echoes of Wisdom should have been one of those cases, but unfortunately it isn’t.
Pros
- Zelda as a protagonist for a change!
- Echoes mechanic is quite fun to play with
- It borrows the best of the open-world 3D titles structure
Cons
- Awful framerate drops while exploring the overworld
- Toy-like aesthetic gets a bit old by the end of the game
Great✦✦✦✦✧
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a worthwhile entry in the iconic series, successfully blending old and new elements. However, its technical issues and over-reliance on a limiting art style prevent it from reaching the heights of some of its predecessors.
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