Finally, the Legend of Zelda lives up to its name, as Echoes of Wisdom makes the princess the hero

There’s an old, now-tired joke that to tell if someone is really a gamer, ask them the name of the hero in The Legend of Zelda games.

The trick, of course, is that barring the slimmest of cameos, you never play as the titular princess — you play as the swordsman Link, instead.

The latest entry, Echoes of Wisdom for the Nintendo Switch, finally lets Zelda take centre stage as the protagonist for the very first time in an adventure that, at least initially, involves finding and maybe even rescuing Link.

It also happens to be the first mainline Zelda game with a woman as a co-director: Tomomi Sano, who has worked in other roles for several Nintendo games in the past.

Echoes of Wisdom is a shorter, tighter adventure compared to the most recent Zelda games — the sometimes overwhelming Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

The approach takes the series back to its roots with a top-down perspective and dungeons filled with devious puzzles. And Zelda works so well as the star character it’s frankly shocking that Nintendo hasn’t tried it before.

WATCH | The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom trailer: 

Echoes of Wisdom immediately throws some surprising twists on the usual formula with a new story unencumbered by connections to past entries.

Mysterious tears in space-time called Rifts have plagued Hyrule Kingdom and the surrounding nations for years, and they’ve been getting worse lately — engulfing the kingdom’s castle, including its king and top advisors early in the game.

We see Link facing off against a monster who appears to control the Rifts, right before he’s captured — leaving Zelda to search for a way to close the Rifts and heal her wounded homeland.

Zelda’s main tools come in the form of Echoes, a power granted to her by Tri, a mystical being that looks sort of like a sentient emoji that follows her around.

With Echoes, Zelda can conjure replicas of objects or creatures found in the world to help explore her surroundings or fight enemies on her behalf.

Conjuring a wooden box or trampoline, for example, lets her reach ledges too high for her to jump atop. Creating a flaming torch while climbing a snowy mountain keeps her warm.

And when surrounded by a mob of angry bokoblins, she can protect herself with her own monsters — provided the player has previously defeated one and added them to their catalogue.

Not to eschew tradition, Zelda can also use Link’s sword and shield — but only for a few seconds at a time, leaving it as a last resort in the toughest enemy encounters.

‘This is exactly the game for her’

In an article on Nintendo of Japan’s site, series producer Eiji Aonuma said when the developers decided on using Echoes as its primary mechanic, it felt like the perfect chance to let players control Zelda instead of Link — something players had asked him about for years.

“When asked this question, I’ve always thought, ‘Of course, as long as it makes sense for the game and does justice to her as a character to be the protagonist,’ and answered that way,” Aonuma said.

“I had been trying in vain to figure out what would really do justice to her. But when I saw the team struggling to identify the ideal protagonist for this game, I thought, this is exactly the game for her!”

Emma Vossen, a writer and researcher at the University of Waterloo’s Games Institute, says a game starring Zelda is something she “and many other fans have been asking for, for the entire history of the franchise.”

She says she’s not surprised the developers saw Zelda as “the solution to a game design problem” instead of building the game around her from the beginning.

“But I am hoping it may be a good thing in the end,” she said. “Now we know they were putting the same care into the game as they would if Link was the protagonist.”

Devious puzzles and brainteasers

Eventually, once you build a large library of Echoes, picking which tool or monster to summon out of a couple dozen can induce some choice paralysis.

On the other hand, some will feel like cheating more than playing — summoning a stack of floating water cubes enables you to swim up the sides of sheer cliff walls, and a floating tile lets you fly across wide chasms.

But the level design takes those tools and charges you with solving some of the series’ most devious puzzles.

In older Zelda games, a level’s challenges often revolve around a single tool or skill you’ve recently acquired. If you find a boomerang in a temple, for example, chances are you’ll need to use it to hit a lot of out-of-reach switches.

In Echoes of Wisdom, there’s no telling what Echoes you might have at your disposal. How, for example, will you hit two switches on the floor at the same time to open a locked door? Use a big lumbering enemy who walks forward? Try to mush a big rock, or slide a block of ice forward while walking in sync?

It’s full of the kinds of brainteasers you might think are impossible at first, only for the answer to flash in your mind’s eye hours later.

Couple this with a “Bind” mechanic, that lets you pick up and move around most items or enemies, and you’ve got a similar, if limited version of the creativity from Tears of the Kingdom‘s contraption-building Ultrahand power.

Making Echoes the primary tool instead of the sword and shield is such a radical change to the formula of the Zelda games that other longtime features feel dated.

You’ll visit the wetlands ruled by the Zora, the deserts ruled by the Gerudo, and the volcanic mountains ruled by the Gorons. Just like in nearly every other Zelda game you’ve played for the last 20 years.

It’s an overly safe setup overshadowed by scant new additions — chief among them the Still World, tiny pocket dimensions inside the Rifts made of fractured parts of Hyrule floating in suspension.

The other major setback is technical rather than artistic: the frame rate is smooth when playing in the Switch’s handheld mode, but stutters regularly when connected to a television. It’s perhaps a sign that even Nintendo is struggling to fit their vision into now nearly eight-year-old hardware, as rumours of the Switch’s successor console have reached a fever pitch.

Princess spotlight

Earlier this year Peach, Nintendo’s other princess, took a starring turn instead of Mario with her own game Princess Peach: Showtime! While it had some promise, it was generally a dull affair with barely any challenge or complexity. 

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom thankfully doesn’t fail its titular princess. It’s a wonderfully crafted world that sits rightfully next to other entries in the series. For longtime fans of the games that came before Breath of the Wild, it’s a return to form.

And it can’t help but make one wonder if the next giant open-world Zelda game could feature both the princess and the swordsman as a powerhouse playable tag-team.