Echoes of Wisdom turns Zelda into a Swiss Army knife

 The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom may be my favorite Zelda title. It is also almost assuredly the easiest one I've played. Those two things are definitely linked. Echoes of Wisdom isn't fun because its easy but because of the way that they made it easy.

Echoes is also the first mainline Zelda game that has a Zelda, not a Link, as the protagonist. (The games take place in many eras and the fantasy land of Hyrule apparently has very little imagination when it comes to naming kids) There were a couple of third party games that had you play Zelda but those were so legendarily bad that Nintendo denies that they existed.

And this is why that matters from a gameplay standpoint. (Representation is important too)  This Zelda does not play like a Link with a different graphics. Instead, she has her own, very different, play style.

Zelda's main power is summoning echoes, which are either objects like rocks or monsters that are on her side. She can also telekinetically move things around in a limited fashion. Oh and she can actually turn into Link for very short periods. Which is actually the only way Zelda can engage in combat.

As the game progresses, you of course level up. You can summon more powerful stuff or more of the little stuff. You can become Link for a longer time with more powerful weapons.

This Zelda is a different archetype than Link, who fits the dashing swordsman paradyme. She is a squishy wizard. Certainly nothing new in the greater world of video games and RPGs but it is new to the Legend of Zelda.

And, like virtually every Legend of Zelda game since at least Link to the Past, Echoes of Wisdom has lots of puzzles. But with all her powers, Zelda is like a Swiss army knife. Like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom before it, there are multiple solutions to every problem. 

And the echo summons alone offer so much flexibility that the game is less about finding a solution that works and more like picking which solution you like the most. At a certain point, Zelda can summon up her own army of monsters and stacking beds ends up being a technique you can exploit until the end of the game.

Everyone in our household has ended up playing through Echoes of Wisdom except the cat. And, with a few exceptions, we rarely felt like using the the Link transformation. The toolbox of echoes just gave us so many other ways of solving problems.

Echoes of Wisdom is a 2D game, one that looks like it would have been released on the DS if that was still an option. It is definitely much smaller in scope than Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. We were afraid that it would be too small and too simple and too limited.

Instead, Echoes of Wisdom offers endless choices. It isn't as challenging as earlier games but it gives you new ways to explore.