The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom reviewed by Tom Marks on Nintendo Switch.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is far greater than a gimmicky spinoff led by Zelda instead of Link. Its echo summoning is used to cleverly combine the expertly crafted dungeons, puzzle rooms, and item progression you’d expect from a classic-style 2D Zelda with the borderline unhinged freedom provided by Tears of the Kingdom. This experiment doesn’t produce an entirely perfect result, with a little bit of clunky menu management and combat that simply isn’t quite as compelling, but it’s an impressively successful one all the same. Echoes of Wisdom is also a glowing proof of concept for how a modern 3D Zelda could recapture some of what fans like me miss about the series before Breath of the Wild without sacrificing the intoxicating creativity it introduced. Creating echoes aside, if this is the future of Zelda, I can’t wait to see more.