Zelda can finally take matters into her own hands! It’s about time, after all, Link has been the sole focus of the famous series for a long time. In The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, however, the Hylian disappears right at the beginning and it’s up to the eponymous princess to save him and the entire land.
We were recently able to visit Nintendo in Frankfurt and experience the first hour and a half of the game – including the first dungeon and, accordingly, a boss fight!
No helpless princess
The adventure starts in the dungeon that Zelda was thrown into after Link disappeared. The situation becomes even more bizarre because the king threatens to have Zelda executed. In most games, this is his own daughter!
08:37
Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – Be the princess yourself!
But not only he, but also other people in the castle don’t seem to be themselves. So it’s no wonder that the Princess of Hyrule no longer wants to languish in the dungeon and wait for her unjust fate.
During her escape, she gets help from a fairy named Tri, who, in contrast to Navi, looks more like a small, cute blob. She also has something very special in her luggage, namely the so-called Tri-Staff.
This means that Zelda can now create copies of various objects, which are called echoes in the game. However, this doesn’t work with just any scrap, but only with selected items that are visually highlighted by a sparkle.
Source: Nintendo Zelda then has to remember them by pressing a button, which means they will be permanently in her repertoire. Now you can create one or more echoes of objects that you have remembered at any time.
The escape from the dungeon gently introduced us to the new system and invited us to try out different options. Because once we had memorized a few pieces of furniture and decorations, different ways of dealing with a situation often opened up.
Greetings from the shrines
In between, we exchanged ideas with the colleagues who were playing next to us. It quickly became clear that we had already solved various puzzles using different approaches in the 90 minutes of playing time.
In principle, this reminded us of the shrines in Tears of the Kingdom. Sure, there was always an intended path, but we were always rewarded when we were creative. Even if it sometimes took a few clever but miserably failed attempts before we got the right idea.
Source: Nintendo This is exactly the feeling that Echoes of Wisdom gave us. We felt like we were in a magical playground where we could let off steam. It’s also worth looking left and right every now and then.
In between, for example, we looked around in a cave and were able to notice a previously unknown type of enemy who from then on really heated up our enemies with fire attacks.
That’s right: The echoes can even fight for you! They can not only create copies of inanimate objects, but also of enemies once you have defeated and scanned them.
Source: PC Games Now you could of course walk past the cute little slime balls because they can’t do much harm to you anyway. But it’s much more fun to put a fellow slime ball in front of them and watch the exciting showdown.
Or to send three cute poison worms after them at once – we almost felt sorry for the enemies. But be careful. Your summons don’t mean you any harm, but you certainly don’t want to end up in the crossfire.
The little spiked balls hurt you when you touch them, even if you summoned them yourself. And the fire creatures mentioned above don’t just set fire to your enemies, but also to the tall grass and, in case of doubt, to you too!
Courage and wisdom are closely related
At first glance, not giving the princess a sword but letting her fight with a magic staff and its magical powers seems a bit clichéd. After all, it’s the year 2024 and Zelda is considered more than capable enough to fight with classic weapons.
However, the new system was so charming and refreshing that we quickly dismissed this concern. We don’t want to give away too much about how you get into this situation, but we can reassure the melee fighters among you: Zelda also has a sword at her disposal at least in some parts.
