Review: With ‘Echoes of Wisdom,’ Zelda finally gets the star treatment

One of the quirks about “The Legend of Zelda” franchise is that the protagonist’s name isn’t in the title. Princess Zelda is the damsel in distress, the person who has to be rescued, but over several iterations, Nintendo has fleshed out her character and she has undergone several transformations through the years.

Meanwhile, Link has mostly stayed the same. He’s the mostly silent hero who ventures through dungeons and overcomes adversity through courage and grit. In “The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom,” the roles are finally reversed. Zelda has gone from the one in dire straits to the hero forging ahead to the rescue.

A FRESH TAKE ON ‘ZELDA’
Thankfully, Nintendo didn’t do a pixel swap and call it a day. The team at Nintendo and Grezzo crafted a more thought-out take on an adventure starring Zelda. It begins with a familiar prologue as players control Link who confronts a porcine-monster who resembles the original Ganon. It’s an easy victory but what appears to be the end is really the beginning.

The creature’s defeat leads to a rift that sucks Link in, and in his final desperate act, he fires an arrow freeing Zelda. She escapes with an entity called Tri and discovers more rifts erupting through Hyrule. Together, they’ll have to close these voids and find a way to stop them.

NARRATIVE AND GAMEPLAY COMPLEXITY
On the surface, “Echoes of Wisdom” appears to be a typical top-down “Zelda.” The visuals feel like an extension of Grezzo’s other work with the franchise, a remake of “The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening,” but the gameplay and storytelling of this Zelda-focused title are far more complex. The rifts create corrupted clones of people and monsters. They infiltrate and cause misunderstandings and chaos in the regions that they sprout up in. It’s Zelda’s job to seal the voids.

For the most part, the structure is generally open, giving players free rein to venture through Hyrule. They’ll encounter sidequests and minigames, but “Echoes of Wisdom” never feels bloated as campaign markers keep players on the main path. It has a faintly familiar formula with each region having a dungeon and rifts to seal, but the story beats make each scenario different. If this were a TV series, each new biome feels like an episode that piles on to a satisfying finale.

INVENTIVE WAYS TO PLAY
The other half of “Echoes of Wisdom’s” fantastic formula is gameplay. Zelda doesn’t use a sword, but instead, she has a Tri Rod that copies certain objects so that she can use them later. For example, she can clone a bed and use that as a platform to create a bridge over a chasm. She can also create Echoes of enemies, but she must defeat them first. These monsters fight for her enabling her to defeat foes. It’s reminiscent of how a Pokemon trainer uses a pocket monster but it’s in a Zelda-like setting.

The big caveat when using Echoes is that they come from the power of Tri, and the entity has a limited amount. As players seal rifts, Tri grows more powerful, allowing Zelda to cast more Echoes along with stronger versions of them, but the limits on the power force players to use them more creatively.

Further in the campaign, players acquire the ability to bond to an item, letting Zelda move it around or letting it move the hero if it’s a moving platform or a box that floats to the surface. She also acquires Automatons, which act like Echoes but have more powerful abilities.

Although players will mostly rely on these three powers, she does have one final trick up her sleeve. Zelda can transform into an Echo of Link when she needs to do direct damage.

CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
It’s a diverse toolbox, but the magic comes in how players can come up with multiple ways to solve a problem using them. Players will encounter 127 Echoes that have situational uses. Ignizols, a slime that’s on fire, is effective against plant foes. Spear Moblins are perfect against agile flying foes.

Players can use them creatively by combining them in combat. They can use the ranged attack of the Spear Moblin and protect them by casting Sea Urchins to create a wall. The only issue is that there are too many Echoes at times and it becomes a chore to pick the right one for the job.

That same ingenuity carries over to puzzle-solving. Players have to combine Bond, Echoes and Automatons to reach new areas or open paths. With the diversity of Echoes, there are often multiple solutions to problems and “Echoes of Wisdom” has a “Breath of the Wild” flexibility to accommodate them.

All of this creates a new way to play “The Legend of Zelda” that’s as distinct as the hero herself. It makes players reconsider how they play the series and rewards those who think outside the box. For example, players don’t need potions for healing because Zelda can summon a bed to take a short rest to regain hearts. Instead of confronting enemies, it’s sometimes better to sneak around them using pots, trampolines and other tools to avoid them.

With “Echoes of Wisdom,” Nintendo creates an adventure for Zelda that’s as distinct and iconic as the character herself.

‘The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Four stars out of four
Platform:Nintendo Switch
Rating:Everyone 10 and up