The princess kneels on the cold stone floor, colour slowly returning to her. The hooded man, sheathing his bow after shattering the last remains of her prison, wordlessly turns to her and holds out a kind hand. Before the princess can grasp it, a jagged chasm of shadow tears through the very fabric of the world and snatches up the hooded man. Scrambling to her feet, the princess springs back from the void and flees its encroaching grasp. She must warn the kingdom. She must save Hyrule.

Building on the adorably expressive artstyle of 2019’s Link’s Awakening remake, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a brand new 2D-style entry in Nintendo’s iconic adventure series. Developed in partnership with Grezzo, who have worked on remasters in the franchise since 2011’s Ocarina of Time 3D, as well as Tri Force Heroes on 3DS, this title finally has players take on the role of Princess Zelda as the star of her own quest. The result of their efforts is a tightly-paced, wonderfully creative adventure who’s design philosophy expertly straddles the border between focus and freedom.

Echoes of Wisdom begins with a bit of a fake-out: you actually start off playing as Link, the hooded warrior storming a dungeon to defeat Ganon and rescue Zelda from captivity. Just as he’s defeated the demon king and shattered Zelda’s magic prison, a great rift tears through the fabric of the world and snatches Link. With barely enough time to grab the hooded garb Link left behind, now-protagonist Zelda flees the dungeon (dodging the edges of the rapidly-widening rift) and rushes to the castle to warn her father, the king. Unfortunately, the king is soon swallowed by a fresh rift, which also spits out sinister clones of himself and his advisers. Indistinguishable from the real deal, these doppelgangers quickly throw Zelda into the castle dungeons and sentence her to death.

In prison, Zelda befriends a creature named Tri, who bestows on her the magical Tri Rod. Tri and its friends together have the power to repair the apocalyptic rifts, but a sinister power has separated them and they need Zelda’s help to reunite. Zelda and Tri have no choice but to escape the castle as fugitives and find a way to rescue the king, his advisers, Tri’s friends, and Link himself from the deadly rifts. This quest sees them traverse the many biomes of Hyrule and solve the woes of its citizens along the way, who are themselves beset with rift-related chaos.

Controlling Zelda, you’ll have access to a basic jump action and a spin move that can block some attacks. The Tri Rod gives Zelda access to a bunch of abilities which let her traverse the world, clear puzzles, and defeat enemies. Bind works like a form of basic telekinesis, echoing Twilight Princess’ Dominion Rod and causing targeted items or creatures to mimic Zelda’s movements. It’s mostly useful for shifting blocks around to solve puzzles and yanking up subterranean creatures from the dirt, with the occasional (and very satisfying) yeeting of an enemy off a cliff.

You’ll also be able to use Reverse Bind, which causes Zelda herself to follow the movements of the target creature or item. I couldn’t find many uses for this in my playthrough beyond hanging from moving platforms in the ability’s tutorial puzzle, though it’s got “speedrun strat” written all over it. Instead, I found myself engaging most often with the Tri Rod’s most powerful ability and Echoes of Wisdom’s core mechanic: Echoes.

Summoning the Echoes of Wisdom

The Echoes mechanic is a playful and creative iteration on the free-wheeling spirit of the more recent mainline Zelda entries. It allows Zelda to record items and summon copies of them into the world, placing them directly in front of her. Objects can be stacked on top of each other or summoned at a distance, allowing for verticality and range. You can summon a limited number of Echoes simultaneously depending on Tri’s power level (which increases throughout the adventure), with each Echo costing a certain number of magic triangles to conjure. In addition to static items, Zelda can also summon copies of any monsters she’s defeated and they’ll fight on her behalf if she’s in danger. This ability instantly reframes how you approach your adventure through Hyrule, constantly on the lookout for new ways to explore the world or take on foes.

The aforementioned Water Cubes are usually an incredibly handy way to gain height, letting Zelda stack a pile of them on top of each other and simply swim to the top – however, they sizzle into steam in lava and freeze into bricks in icy water, forcing you to find a different strategy in more extreme environs. With how often you’ll be switching between Echoes, it is a little frustrating that the selection interface is identical to the slightly cumbersome arrow-fusing hot menu from Tears of the Kingdom (particularly with more than a hundred Echoes to sort through), but this is far from a deal-breaker.

Echoes of Wisdom celebrates Zelda’s traditional role as more of a mage-type character, reflected faithfully in the Tri Rod’s powers allowing monster Echoes to feel far more like an extension of her own abilities than mindless patsies. This is particularly the case during combat, where you’ll need to use your knowledge of each Echo’s strengths and weaknesses to gain control of the situation. Combat encounters are surprisingly common for such a puzzle-focused experience, and you’ll quickly be forced to understand which Echoes make for reliable allies and which are duds. The humble Zol, for example, will spend most of its existence blobbing around happily and getting destroyed. In most situations, you’re far better off hiding behind a high-level Darknut and letting it cleave through enemies with its mighty spinning axe attack.

As a counterpoint to Link’s limited access to magical powers in previous entries in the series, in Echoes of Wisdom Zelda can instead transform into a Swordfighter Form that temporarily grants her the ability to wield more traditional items. Once unlocked, this form can be activated at any time and changes Zelda’s moveset to resemble Link’s. You can attack with the Sword of Might and block attacks with your shield, as long as energy remains in your steadily-draining Might meter. Eventually, you’ll unlock more of Link’s classic items, as well as a workshop where you can power up your abilities by spending Might Crystals found in the world.

Swordfighter Form feels perfectly balanced against Zelda’s regular moveset. It’s limited enough that you don’t want to rely on it for every enemy encounter, but suitably powerful for the moments that count. While the occasional puzzle makes use of this form (such as barriers that can only be removed with the sword), I found it most useful for speeding up boss fights where you’ll want to deal as much damage in their “stunned” phase as possible. There’s an intense, visceral satisfaction to carefully dodging a giant monster’s attacks, flicking an appropriate Echo to smash its weak point, and then switching into Swordfighter Form and just wailing on it with your sword. Grezzo have got the balance just right – these abilities never overshadow Zelda’s unique powers, but serve to complement them throughout the adventure.

There’s still a link between worlds

With the game’s core conflict revolving around giant rifts appearing and swallowing up parts of Hyrule and its inhabitants, it’s natural that much of Echoes of Wisdom is spent within the eerie and distorted Still World that lies beyond each rift. It’s a dark and unsettling reflection of the world outside, playing with elements of the landscape and dotted throughout its non-Euclidean architecture are slowly-decaying NPCs and souped-up versions of regular monsters. In most rifts, Zelda will be tasked with finding a bunch of Tri’s pals who have been trapped in cocoons of darkness around the place. Rescuing them all grants a boost to Tri’s power and closes the rift, returning that area of the overworld to its natural state. The larger rifts, however, contain dungeons.

Wise beyond her years

With another of Nintendo’s iconic princesses receiving the leading lady treatment earlier this year, you’d be forgiven for feeling a bit anxious at how Zelda might be portrayed in her own game. No shade to Princess Peach: Showtime! – while a fun little romp and a rightful cult classic with the girls, gays, and theys, it didn’t exactly break any gameplay boundaries within the broader Mario series. However, with Echoes of Wisdom, Grezzo and Nintendo demonstrate a deep understanding and respect for Zelda as a character, acknowledging her series’ expansive history and finding meaningful connections with her established traits that inform the title’s unique gameplay and narrative. Zelda plays differently from Link not because “she’s a girl!” but because she is different: she’s always been a scholar, a sorceress, a leader, and it feels genuine that her in-game abilities reflect this.

The story itself deals with heavy themes in a fairly non-threatening way typical for the series. Unique to this entry is its focus on trust and empathy as a solution to conflict, a subtle difference from the underlying mantra of “confront your fears” inherent to previous titles and a nod to Zelda’s wisdom and leadership. Tri and Zelda prompt characters to deal with their grief or lack of self-worth through introspection, seeking community, or simple kindness, with one of the more touching stories showing them just listening patiently to a new chief trying to live up to the memory of his late father. Link’s previous tales are also full of pathos, and his adventures usually revolve around uniting the world against a common threat, but there’s something personal about following Zelda as she builds genuine trust with her people that makes Echoes of Wisdom feel special.

On a mechanical note, Echoes of Wisdom is unfortunately let down by similar performance issues to the Link’s Awakening remaster, which I found particularly noticeable in the early hours of the game. The frame rate suffers when running around the overworld or when there are more than a few monsters onscreen – a regular occurrence with how effective summoning a horde of Keese can be in combat. To be fair, I didn’t encounter these issues as often after a few hours of gameplay, but they do detract from an otherwise seamless experience.

Clocking in at around twenty hours for its main story, Echoes of Wisdom may not be a grandiose, epic adventure on the scale of Tears of the Kingdom, but its smaller scope gives the entire experience a tight, perfectly curated pace without sacrificing the creativity and freedom emblematic of modern Zelda. Beyond getting to the credits, there are plenty of heart pieces and Might Crystals hidden across Hyrule to collect, a sensible amount of side quests to complete, and a varied bunch of minigames to challenge. Fans of classic Zelda titles will find Echoes of Wisdom a lovingly crafted, refreshing take on a traditional formula, while newcomers to the series will be treated to some of the best adventure gameplay Nintendo has to offer.