Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom doesn’t test your intelligence enough

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, launching September 26th, is Princess Zelda’s archetypal standalone adventure. Her debut solo outing does an fantabulous occupation of establishing Zelda arsenic a protagonist unsocial and abstracted from that greenish guy. But the game’s sparse environments, formulaic dungeons, and simplistic platforming and puzzles yet swallow her up, making Zelda consciousness underutilized adjacent successful her ain game.

In Echoes of Wisdom, elephantine rifts person opened up each implicit Hyrule trapping everything and everyone successful a void of stillness portion spitting retired evil versions of the radical the rifts person consumed. With the assistance of an adorable carnal named Tri, Zelda indispensable usage the copying powerfulness of the Tri Rod to rescue her allies, decision the evil clones, and halt the rifts from swallowing Hyrule whole.

Before Echoes of Wisdom, each accidental we’ve had to play arsenic Zelda has been successful spinoffs, with gameplay designed to acceptable immoderate alternate beingness she’s successful alternatively than her ain personality. She’s a emblematic sword and committee protagonist successful her 2 Phillips CD-i games. She busts retired elegant fencing successful Hyrule Warriors and uses the myriad powers of the Sheikah Slate to combat successful Age of Calamity. And of course, she’s got a brace of lethal hands rated E for Everyone in Super Smash Bros. 

But what makes the astir consciousness for Zelda, successful her archetypal discourse arsenic the Princess of Hyrule, erstwhile Link’s not astir and there’s dungeons to delve into and monsters to defeat?

Using her wits.

In Echoes of Wisdom, Zelda indispensable fig retired however to usage echoes, oregon copies, of objects from passim Hyrule to prevention the day. If there’s a wide spread to cross, Zelda tin usage the Tri Rod to physique a span retired of beds. When a pig-like moblin is successful her way, she tin summon a bigger, meaner moblin echo to combat it. Echoes of Wisdom is astute successful that it allows Zelda to found her ain individuality arsenic a leader that feels authentic to her arsenic a character. She doesn’t request brute unit and inferior belt’s worthy of specialized tools, conscionable her encephalon and occurrence zol oregon two. She’s chiseled from Link but is arsenic formidable a unit arsenic helium is – scarier even. After all, who should Ganon interest astir more? The feline who tin termination him with a sword, oregon the miss who tin termination him with virtually anything?

In the game’s archetypal fistful of hours, using echoes to lick puzzles and combat monsters was earnestly fun, reminding maine of the archetypal hours of Breath of the Wild oregon Tears of the Kingdom. The vastness of Hyrule laic sprawled retired earlier maine filled with things to observe and it was up to maine to fig retired how. Puzzles and platforming sequences person aggregate solutions and routes depending connected what echoes you’ve learned. Instead of stacking beds to transverse a gap, I tin usage a flying tile. Or, I could usage Tri’s “reverse bind” quality to tether Zelda’s question to different moving object. 

But neither the possibilities nor the satellite were arsenic immense arsenic I initially thought. After a while, I realized there’s not overmuch to bash extracurricular of the main quest. There were smaller rifts to cleanable up, which were insignificant dungeons each with the aforesaid objective: find 3 to 5 of Tri’s friends hidden down monsters oregon elemental platforming puzzles. Or determination were a fistful of broadside quests to implicit which were usually one-and-done objectives that progressive either uncovering a happening oregon sidesplitting a thing. So galore parts of Hyrule were conscionable empty, populated lone by the occasional monster oregon treasure chest. Eventually, I didn’t fuss trying to research anymore, choosing alternatively to accelerated question from spot to place.

Though Echoes of Wisdom isn’t arsenic ample oregon arsenic agelong arsenic Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, each 3 games run connected the basal premise of, “here’s an unfastened satellite and a clump of abilities, fig it out.” What made BotW and TotK so amusive was that some games presented truthful galore antithetic kinds of puzzle and platforming challenges that required retired of the container reasoning to solve. Whereas successful Echoes of Wisdom determination are fundamentally lone 2 kinds of challenges – something’s excessively precocious oregon something’s excessively far. And successful astir each instance, those challenges tin beryllium solved with the aforesaid fistful of echoes. I had truthful galore of them, similar a gnarly rolling log of spikes, that I ne'er got the accidental to use. The crippled ne'er gave maine a crushed to.

You lick 90 percent of the game’s platforming challenges with beds and trampolines.

Combat was acold amended astatine incentivizing creativity than platforming. Each force has antithetic question and onslaught patterns requiring the cautious enactment of the close monster oregon point to antagonistic it. The snake-like enactment monsters are fast, debased to the ground, and hard to spot camouflaged successful its grassy situation making them intolerable to deed with melee attacking monsters. After I wasted excessively overmuch clip hoping my vertebrate echo would pluck it disconnected the crushed I discovered a overmuch simpler solution – airy everything connected occurrence with a torch. And erstwhile I couldn’t find the close monster for the job, Zelda tin usage Link’s sword, arrows, oregon bombs for a constricted magnitude of time.

I deliberation that the singular quality to usage Link’s sword gets astatine the bosom of what’s yet disappointing about Echoes of Wisdom – each of Zelda’s wits don’t truly magnitude to much. Sure I had dozens of echoes astatine my disposal, but halfway done the crippled they lone got successful my mode arsenic I scrolled past them to get to the aforesaid 5 echoes I knew would get the occupation done. Combat was better, but whenever I wanted, I could thwart a hard foe by simply stabbing it to death. That’s not to accidental Echoes of Wisdom wasn’t fun. I wouldn’t person taken the clip to wide each optional dungeon oregon astir of the broadside quests if I wasn’t enjoying myself.

But aft 35 years of lending her sanction to the iconic franchise, I wanted Zelda’s archetypal crippled to beryllium a small spot much worthy of her quality and her strength.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom launches connected Nintendo Switch September 26th.