A flawed adventure worth takin

Given it’s been nearly 10 years since the release of A Link Between Worlds, I didn’t think we’d ever get a new top-down Zelda. Thankfully, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom has arrived, a game that expertly blends the long-running series’ structured past with more recent open-ended entries like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. The Switch game is also the first Zelda title to feature Princess Zelda as its main character (I don’t count the awful Philips CD-i game from the early-90s). This means that when your significant other or parent asks you if that elf-like character you’re controlling is Zelda, you can finally say “yes” instead of “no, that’s actually Link.”

But does Echoes of Wisdom live up to top-down Zelda classics like A Link to the Past and my personal favorite in the series, Link’s Awakening? The short answer is yes. Echoes of Wisdom features a stunning art style, inventive dungeons, a truly compelling mechanic that has you casting “Echoes” to fight and solve puzzles for you, and more importantly, it’s vastly different from any Zelda title that’s come before it, all while still maintaining true to the series’ core.

Unfortunately, it’s also hampered by distracting frame rate drop issues that threaten to ruin the experience, which are at times, worse than 2019’s Link’s Awakening remake for the Switch. Thankfully, these problems don’t ruin the experience, but they come pretty close.

Price, availability, and specs

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is available on the Nintendo Switch. It’s a full-priced game that costs $59.99 for the digital and physical copy of the game.

What I liked about The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Zelda finally gets her own game but it doesn’t change the story as much as you might expect

It’s undeniably cool that Zelda finally has her own game after all these years, but the role reversal doesn’t change much regarding the overall direction of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’s story. An evil force has swept across Hyrule and is turning residents into statues, including Link and Zelda’s father.

Your task is to push the “Still World” back, retake your kingdom, and save Link and your father. The twist is Zelda is accused of creating this rift and gets thrown in prison at the start of the game. Throughout the journey, you’ll encounter familiar characters, but also quirky new faces like Tri, a Navi-like floating being that helps Zelda on her quest to save Hyrule. It’s a fun shift from the series’ typical story, but it’s also not that different, either.

If you’ve played a Zelda title before, you’ll be familiar with the game’s structure. In Echoes of Wisdom, you’ll fight bosses, traverse dungeons, help local townsfolk with menial tasks, and of course, explore the game’s take on Hyrule, which seems to be a mix of A Link To The Past’s over world with elements from newer Zelda titles. What’s unique about Echoes of Wisdom is you don’t hunt for key items like the Master Sword or Hookshot.

Instead, you use the new Tri Rod to copy various enemies and objects that you then use to solve puzzles. Need to get up that ledge? Then stack a couple of beds (amusingly, beds are some of the most useful items in the game). Maybe you need a hand taking down a group of Moblins? Then don’t worry, cast your own Moblin and dispatch your foes. Maybe there’s a heart piece in an area that looks like it’s outside the map? Then build stairs with a few stools and place a trampoline on the top to reach it.

It’s a fascinating twist on the standard Zelda formula that works far better than I expected, and brings Tears of the Kingdom’s creative freedom to the top-down Zelda formula, including the Ultrahand-like ability that allows you to move objects. Like in Tears of the Kingdom, you can rely on a single powerful enemy or a trusty chair to solve a lot of puzzles, but the real magic of Echoes of Wisdom comes when you experiment with new Echoes and how they interact with one another as you gain the ability to cast more at the same time.

In a way, the game feels like a Pokémon spin-off at times, as you cast your trusty Fire Octo and watch it burn the surrounding grass and nearby foes to a crisp. The Echoes system is truly inventive and not something I expected to ever experience in a Zelda title.

And if you want to get hands-on with fighting yourself, you just need to turn into Swordfighter form, giving you a limited glimpse at Link’s classic swordplay (eventually you get access to other classic items like the bow and bombs). I’m also a big fan of the Link’s Awakening and the Zelda II: The Adventure of Link-inspired 2D sections of the game. They’re a fun throwback to an era of Zelda many people aren’t familiar with. Dungeons are challenging and open-ended, allowing you to decide exactly how to solve them, similar to the Shrines in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. However, puzzles don’t feel as connected as they are in classic Zelda games. They’re challenging and interesting, but often one-off problems you need to solve.

Echoes of Wisdom also cleverly integrates more modern Zelda features like Breath of the Wild’s and Tears of the Kingdom’s mission and waypoint system, adding a layer of modern paint to the series’ top-down formula that encourages exploration and taking on new missions.

What I didn’t like about The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom

Technical issues almost ruin the experience

Echoes of Wisdom is stunning-looking, but not exactly a graphical or technical powerhouse like Tears of the Kingdom, which ran pretty smoothly. But somehow, it still suffers from frame rate issues. In dungeons and smaller areas, the game runs at a smooth 60fps, but in busy areas of the overworld, it drops to 30fps. I’m usually not the type of person that cares about technical issues like this, especially with Nintendo titles that are as great as Echoes of Wisdom, but the frame rate drops happen frequently and are very distracting.

I experienced similar issues with Grezzo’s Link’s Awakening remake, but the frame rate drops weren’t that frequent and only occurred in a few areas of the map. In Echoes of Wisdom, the frame rate moves from 60fps to 30fps constantly, especially while playing docked.

In short, the state Echoes of Wisdom has released in is unacceptable, especially for Nintendo. It’s very strange the Japanese gaming giant didn’t push Grezzo to fix the issues with Link’s Awakening’s game engine when it came to Echoes of Wisdom. This leads me to think that maybe Echoes of Wisdom was at one time a Switch 2 launch title, but its release on the handheld was shifted when the release of Nintendo’s next console was pushed back.

Verdict: A top-down Zelda that rivals Tears of the Kingdom

Echoes of Wisdom feels like a top-down take on Tears of the Kingdom’s core building concept. It’s one of the most inventive titles I’ve played all year and I’ve had a blast with it so far, despite its rampant technical issues. Creating Echoes and watching them do your bidding as Zelda is just as compelling as slashing away at foes directly as Link. But I can’t help but wish the game ran smoother and was locked to 30fps; hopefully Nintendo releases an update at some point.