For a long time, fans have inquired about making Zelda the protagonist of a Legend of Zelda game. These fans aren’t as vocal or insistent as those clamoring for a new Donkey Kong title, or those banging their heads against the wall waiting for the official localization of Mother 3, but they’re out there. Well, their prayers were finally answered last month with the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, which for the first time puts the princess in the driver’s seat of a mainline franchise installment. Zelda isn’t the only thing different about this latest adventure, though; it also experiments with a new echo mechanic, which shakes things up considerably — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
Echoes of Wisdom begins in medias res, much like Symphony of the Night. We find the young hero Link at the tail end of his journey, slashing his way through a dungeon toward an imprisoned Princess Zelda. Just as he appears to have triumphed, he’s suddenly pulled into an expanding purple rift — but not before he selflessly fires an arrow and frees Zelda from her crystal prison. After she manages to escape with her life, Zelda finds herself on an epic journey to investigate rifts that have emerged across the land, and, hopefully, rescue those swallowed up by them, including Link.
The story in Echoes of Wisdom, generally, is quite good. By flipping the script, and giving Zelda top billing, developer Grezzo has managed to open up a few new narrative angles; the exchanges between the king and his daughter are especially meaningful. Not only that, but there are plenty of lovely little side stories. Perhaps the most touching involves a gentle snow giant on Hebra Mountain. The only disappointing part about the narrative arrives near the final climax. Without spoiling anything, there’s a stretch where Zelda’s heroics are diminished.
For the vast majority of the game, though, it’s the Zelda show, or, more accurately, the Zelda and Tri show. A sentient floating orb that follows the princess everywhere, Tri is the latest in a long line of special Legend of Zelda sidekicks that includes Navi, Midna, and Ezlo, among many others. Tri is also the one that grants Zelda the special ability that defines, elevates, and sometimes hamstrings Echoes of Wisdom: echo generation. Using a magical rod supplied by Tri, the princess can scan, copy, and then reproduce (as impermanent echoes) dozens of living creatures and inanimate objects. Using these echoes, Zelda explores Hyrule, defeats powerful monsters, and solves puzzles.
The echo system is, paradoxically, both liberating and restrictive. On one hand, it grants an intoxicating amount of problem-solving power to the player. As Zelda, you can create a tower of beds to scale a steep cliff, summon a platoon of moblins to protect you from enemy fire, or freeze monsters in their tracks with a well-timed ice keese. You can burn away spider webs with the brazier echo, summon wooden boxes to safely cross freezing water, or call forth a piece of meat to distract carrion birds. It’s a brilliant system that encourages and rewards experimentation and outside-the-box thinking.
On the other hand, it sometimes makes Zelda a passive onlooker, particularly in combat. While there’s a certain thrill in summoning powerful creatures and watching as they dismantle your enemies, it’s not quite a substitute for the tactile satisfaction of hands-on fighting. Now, to be fair, you can wield a sword, bow, and bomb in “swordfighter form”, but only for as long as your energy gauge allows. It’s best reserved for boss battles and emergencies. As a result, combat suffers at times from a slow, stand-back-and-watch approach.
Ultimately, echoes are a double-edged sword. They’re simultaneously one of the best, most invigorating things about Echoes of Wisdom and one of the reasons the game falls just short of greatness.
The other reason involves dungeons. While Echoes of Wisdom embraces the emergent gameplay and on-the-fly decision-making of modern Zelda adventures Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, it’s decidedly old-school when it comes to dungeons. They’re the sort of top-down lock-and-key affairs you’d find in A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, etc. However, they’re not quite as ingenious as those that came before. They’re not bad — far from it — but a fair bit easier and more linear than the best the series has to offer. The exception to the rule is Lanayru Temple, which introduces some clever puzzles where players must use hot air to melt ice and cold air to freeze water. It also boasts the best boss battle.
The game’s overworld fares better, in part because it’s so large and seamless and in part because it’s populated with plenty of diverting activities and rewarding side-quests. There are more than enough things to do outside of dungeons, including reuniting lost lovers, competing in horse races, harvesting mangoes, clearing out monster dens, fighting mini-bosses, talking with cats, and collecting hard-to-obtain materials. Some side activities are tedious (smoothies) or superfluous (automatons), but overall they provide hours of entertainment. Indeed, if you decide to take on every single quest and search for all those hidden heart pieces and might crystals you can expect to spend ~30 hours in the land of Hyrule.
Speaking of Hyrule, it’s lovely to behold in Echoes of Wisdom. Because of the isometric angles and sculptured figures, it feels at times as if you’re looking down at miniatures in a vast diorama. It’s a very charming effect. Can things get a little too glossy at times? Absolutely, but in general the aesthetic choice pays off.
So too do the musical choices. In fact, the soundtrack is one of the very best parts of the game. Directed by Hajime Wakai, most famous for the orchestral music in Skyward Sword, and written by a team of several composers, it’s an outstanding synthesis of old and new that repurposes classic phrases and introduces brand new melodies. Some of the tracks are ridiculously good, including the Sea Zora Village theme with its airy, lilting harp and flute and the Gerudo Sanctum theme, which, thanks to its electrifying, wailing, almost discordant strings, is simply one of the best songs in the history of the franchise.
Much has been made of the frame rate fluctuations in Echoes of Wisdom, but in my 30+ hours I never experienced anything egregious. I did notice early on when the 60FPS action indoors shifted to 30FPS outdoors, but observed those shifts less and less as I played, both in docked and handheld mode. Whether that’s due to post-launch patches that improved/standardized performance or my own tolerance, I’m unsure. Just know that your mileage may vary.
It’s been a long wait, but Zelda’s first adventure as the protagonist in a canonical Legend of Zelda game is finally here. And good news: it’s a winner. By marrying the expectations of a typical top-down 2D entry with the improvisational, do-it-yourself gameplay from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Grezzo has arrived at a winning formula that mixes old and new. That said, not everything is perfect. The echo system isn’t great in combat situations and the game’s dungeons demand more complexity. Hopefully, Princess Zelda will return in a sequel that irons out these issues and hits that next level of greatness.
Full Article – https://www.vgchartz.com/article/462562/the-legend-of-zelda-echoes-of-wisdom-ns/