The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Zelda: Echoes of wisdom is difficult to put down and offers a lot of freedom and creativity due to the echoes. Exploring the colourful world of Hyrule is rewarding as you unlock new items and echoes, while you encounter plenty of weird minigames and sidequests. The story itself focuses on the gameplay and the old school dungeons. Although the long menu of echoes can be cumbersome, the game’s overall experience is fantastic, and it sets a high bar for future 2D Zelda games.

Ultimately, though, these are minor complaints. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is another outstanding entry in this wonderful series. To bring back the 2D series style after nine years without missing a beat, maintaining the franchise’s identity while putting a unique stamp on Zelda’s first true starring role, is a major achievement and quite possibly the best Switch game of 2024.

Echoes of Wisdom is a marvel both visually and gameplay-wise. It's riddled with clever puzzles and gives you total freedom to choose to save Hyrule in your own way. An outstanding experience marred only by a few usability issues.

The new Zelda game, where you finally play as Zelda, offers an unexpectedly grand adventure, blending the best of the series' 2D titles with crafting-like mechanics inspired by Tears of the Kingdom. Echoes of Wisdom is more than a spin-off or mish-mash of previous concepts – it’s a well-crafted, refreshing addition to the legendary series.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdow combines the freedom of exploration seen in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom with the claymation art style of the Link's Awakening remake. It then tops it all off with a new and creative mechanic, and gives us Zelda as the main protagonist. The ever-expanding echoes mechanic is a marvel when solving puzzles and in combat, and it quickly becomes a key part of the gameplay experience. The gorgeous art style and exquisite soundtrack then wrap it all together in what is yet another Zelda classic that fits perfectly in the Nintendo Switch catalogue.

Echoes of Wisdom introduces refreshing ideas but it can't keep up the initial excitement.

Despite some ambitious ideas, beneath the surface Echoes of Wisdom is surprisingly uneven Zelda adventure. Few of its headline mechanics are utilised to their potential which means that, while enjoyable and charming, it ultimately feels less essential than other modern 2D entries.

I loved it. Its a another masterpiece in the Zelda collection. Its on a smaller scale and thats is appreciated. Its new game mechanic is fun to play around without the game feels nostalgic. And **** yeah to finally playing as Zelda.

This game was pretty good, a great Zelda entry. Glad you can finally play as Zelda in a Zelda game

It's alright. Very fun for the most part, but also pretty dull in many segments. Performance is unacceptable.

Let the art style not fool you - underneath a beautiful Switch 2-powered Hyrule is a shallow, generic story progression with combat that can be at best considered unengaged. Nintendo seemingly decided once again that women are ineligible to fight in battle and therefore Princess Zelda has to carbon copy every enemy she has ever encountered to fight on her behalf. Or, she may very temporarily present as a blue glowing male-presenting fighter figure that can attack with sword and arrow in brief intervals. I can appreciate how this game exists as a sequel of Link’s Awakening, a new approach to the same story world and a unique combat style; but as a standalone title, Echoes of Wisdom feels drawn out, uninspired and with hardly reward to motivate hopping into rift after rift. The story is cheap; why must after I repair three rifts and save my father several more appear instantly requiring me to jump right back in. Fighting multiple Link shadow fighters feels incredibly unbalanced. if this was the only game I had to play on a deserted island with my switch 2 and a solar generator, I would probably find mild enjoyment in it. But considering the wealth of other strong software releases of the last months and years, this game feels more like the “Super Luigi U” to spin **** exciting entry like Links Awakening.

I’ve been a Zelda fan since childhood. Over the past 30 years, I’ve played every major title – from A Link to the Past to Tears of the Kingdom. So naturally, I was excited for Echoes of Wisdom. Unfortunately, the game failed to win me over. The biggest issue: it’s extremely repetitive. You enter a region, close a small rift, do a bit of story progression, then close a big rift – usually featuring a rather uninspired temple – and move on to the next area. This formula doesn’t really change throughout the **** Echo mechanic sounds creative in theory, but in practice, you end up using the same handful of solutions over and over. Despite being able to collect what feels like hundreds of Echoes, you only need a few to complete the game. There’s rarely a moment where you’re truly challenged to think critically – most puzzles are simple and forgettable. The Sword Mode? Absolutely awesome – but unfortunately available for far too short a time, even when fully upgraded. If you don’t transform, you mostly just stand around in battles while your Echoes do all the work. The final boss? It’s basically just about dodging and watching others do the fighting. That doesn’t feel particularly heroic. What did I like? The art style, inspired by the Link’s Awakening remake, is beautiful and full of charm. I also appreciated the return of familiar faces like the Zora from A Link to the Past and the Deku from Majora's Mask. And yes, there are some classic “Zelda moments” in the story – emotionally touching in places. But overall, the plot remains too shallow to leave a lasting impression. As a long-time Zelda fan, it honestly hurts to give this just 4 out of 10 stars. Echoes of Wisdom feels more like a pretty filler title than a true milestone in the series.