The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom hands-on preview – be the princess-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom – that table is going to come in very handy (Nintendo)

GameCentral goes hands-on with the new Zelda game and the only one where you get to play as Princess Zelda herself.

The only problem with Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom last year is that you know it’ll be at least another five years until the next mainline entry in the series. Nintendo do like to have at least one Mario and Zelda game out every year but usually that’s a spin-off, remaster or remake. For example, Super Mario Party Jamboree and Mario & Luigi: Brothership are both out this Christmas, even though neither have anything in common with a mainline Mario game in terms of gameplay.

We don’t think anyone would be surprised if some kind of Zelda remaster launched alongside the Switch 2 console next year but in general Zelda tends to have less in the way of spin-offs, likely because Link is a little more grounded, and subsequently less malleable, a character than Mario. Which is just one of many reasons that making a game where Princess Zelda is the protagonist is such a good idea.

Despite the series being named after her, she’s never been the lead in a Nintendo-developed game before, so this is a big moment and it’s been clear since the initial reveal that she’s not just acting as a palette swap for Link. Zelda’s abilities are – almost – completely different and revolve around her using a new ability to create echoes of animate and inanimate objects, from a wooden crate to a Moblin.

It’s not clear who the developer is behind the game, as Nintendo has so far refused to say. If their last few games are anything to go by it won’t be revealed until you see the credits, which is a really unpleasant habit they’ve suddenly got into. Since the visual style and top-down viewpoint is the same as 2019’s remake of Link’s Awakening the assumption is that it’s third party studio Grezzo, but that’s not confirmed.

Either way, the graphics are almost identical, except with a more even frame rate and a less extreme depth of field effect. We’re not actually massive fans of the character designs, even though we’re sure some people find them cute, and yet we still found the game utterly charming from the first moment. Not so much because of the visuals but because the whole concept is such a classic Nintendo set-up, with very simple mechanics that lead to a huge range of initially unimagined possibilities.

Our demo skipped the very beginning of the game but, judging by the trailers and a few snippets of dialogue, the premise is that rifts have opened up across the land of Hyrule, spiriting away Link and various other innocents. At the same time, some malign force has started possessing or creating copies of major figures across the realm. As a result, Zelda is imprisoned by the king and starts the game in jail, in obvious homage to the beginning of A Link To The Past.

Luckily, she’s befriended by a fairy-like figure called Tri, who only she can see, and has been gifted the Tri Rod, which she can wave at almost any object and register it, so that she can subsequently create ‘echoes’ of it. The first example is a simple wooden table, which can be used to climb up to higher levels but can also be stacked multiple times.

A bed is one of the most useful early items because not only can you rest on it and regain your health, but its length means it’s very useful for creating bridges, with one bed stacked on top of another. At first you can only create three echoes of simple objects, like the table or pots, and less of large or complex objects – although we got the distinct impression you’d be able to increase this limit as you progress.

Even when you’ve only got a handful of different echoes every obstacle seems to have several solutions. For example, getting rid of crates blocking your way can involve dropping boulders on them (but only from a suitable height or otherwise it doesn’t work), setting fire to them, or trampolining over them.

There are several side-on 2D sections, more than Link’s Awakening, and we really liked the Strandtula enemies that you can copy. These are basically spiders but if you create an echo of them they produce a vertical strand you can use to climb on. Once they’re defeated (initially, simply by throwing a rock at them) any enemy can be copied and so Zelda can lead around a little army of Moblins, Keese (bats), and a very handy Zol (a basic Chuchu-like enemy) variant called Ignizol.

Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom – legendary tables (Nintendo)

The Ignizol can set things on fire and since you can target enemies for your allies to attack you can not only set them on fire but also anything flammable along the way, which is very handy. We’re not sure how powerful the enemies under your control get, but the biggest we got was a Darknut – which despite the cute name is basically an evil knight from Dark Souls.

There are other elements to the game as well, that are only hinted at when exploring the first village and in random items recovered from crates and pots. These are no doubt waiting to be explained later on but there seems to be some sort of food and recipe crafting element, with both basic ingredients like grapes and things like electro apples which, judging by the description, you can mix into drinks. We’re going to assume that indicates various elemental buffs, but that’s just a guess.

Everything in the game works in an elegantly simple way, with the demo culminating in a dungeon inside one of the rifts (we think Tri was going to end up erasing the rift and freeing the people in it, but we weren’t allowed to see beyond defeating the final boss). The dungeons work very much like a traditional Zelda game, complete with compass and map to find and collect. Except now, of course, all the puzzles and combat revolve around using echoes.

Two other key abilities are introduced in the first dungeon, the first being the ability to bind yourself to an object so that when you move it moves with you, or vice versa. This is used to do things like move out of reach objects or to attach yourself to moving platforms, so you’re dragged along with them. Although our favourite use was holding back the neck of a Deku Baba (basically a giant Venus flytrap) so one of your echoes could stab it without fear of being attacked.

The final ability is the chance to transform into an echo of Link and use his sword. We’re not entirely sure what the story explanation for this was, and whether you’re actually becoming Link or not, but you can only maintain the transformation for a short time, as it’s powered by collected orbs from the rift. That may mean you can’t use it in Hyrule but it seems to have a level ranking, although whether that implies a role-playing stat element we’re not sure.

To be honest, it’s the only ability that feels like a bit of an affectation, as it artificially limits how much you rely on just sword-fighting with enemies to progress. We do wonder whether the game could’ve just done without it, but it was the last thing to be introduced before the boss battle so maybe its use become more nuanced later.

The boss was great: a golem-like Talus with a number of powerful rock attacks who, judging by our conversations with other journos afterwards, could be defeated in a variety of different ways.

We’re sure that, as soon as the game’s out, YouTube will be filled with even more obscure solutions, in this very simplistic looking game that’s using the same graphics engine created for a Game Boy remake. Truly, it is the ideas and gameplay that matters, and everything else is just details.

From everything we’ve seen of Echoes Of Wisdom so far it’s shaping up to be a classic Zelda title and one worthy of the princess’ name. But in truth it’s different enough from the core games that it could easily have been a completely unrelated title and it’d still be one of the most exciting new action adventures of the year, if not generation.

Formats: Nintendo Switch
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: TBC
Release Date: 26th September 2024
Age Rating: 7

Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom – make the Moblins fight for you (Nintendo)

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Entertainment – MetroRead More