After decades of serving as inspiration for the beloved franchise. The legend of Zeldathe series’ titular princess is finally getting her own game. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, releasing September 26 for Nintendo Switch, gives Zelda her own hero’s journey after Link goes missing. But unfortunately she doesn’t give him her own sword.
Players have been clamoring for Hyrule’s favorite princess to take the lead in a Zelda I’ve been playing for years, or at least to be playable in games like Tears of the Kingdom. The excitement surrounding Zelda’s triumph was immediately obvious on X after Nintendo announced the game on Tuesday during one of its Direct presentations. (Sample Post: “I make no excuses for the person I will become once I can play as PRINCESS ZELDA.”)
In Echoes of wisdom, is tasked with rescuing the residents of Hyrule, including Link, who are being swallowed by mysterious fissures. To save them, Zelda teams up with a fairy named Tri; Armed with the Tri Rod, Zelda can create imitations of environmental objects and enemies called echoes to solve puzzles and fight monsters.
In the game’s trailer, for example, Zelda learns how to replicate a table. She can then generate echoes from that table anywhere she wants, allowing the player to create stairs and bridges made of tables. Similar to Tears of the KingdomWith Ultrahand’s abilities to Fuse, the possibilities for echoes seem pretty open; The trailer shows her learning to make boxes, beds, rocks, and water blocks to get around and around potential obstacles. The echoes of the monsters become allies that fight alongside her.
Echoes of wisdom It has a visual style similar to the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening from 2019, but seems more in line with the experimental nature of the series’ most recent release, Tears of the Kingdom. During the presentation, producer Eiji Aonuma said that the team “wanted to create a new style of gameplay that breaks the conventions seen in the past” with other top-down games. As for how many echoes there are, Aonuma says he hasn’t counted them all yet.
Nintendo will also release a gold Nintendo Switch Lite, “Hyrule Edition,” along with the game.