Hands-on with Nintendo’s next bold Zelda game

Echoes of Wisdom feels like a cross between A Link To The Past and Tears of the Kingdom

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Screenshot: Nintendo. All images and videos in this article captured by Game File

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a surprisingly intuitive and thrillingly flexible game that plays like an intersection of two eras of Zelda adventures.

It offers the tight level design and overhead perspective of the Super Nintendo classic A Link to the Past.

And, like last year’s Switch blockbuster Tears of the Kingdom, it gives players an extraordinary toolset that encourages ingenuity to solve challenges—and tacitly dares players to do their best to break the game. 

Or so it seems from the 90 minutes I played of Echoes of Wisdom at a Nintendo preview event in New York City last week.

I ran through an early chunk of the game, as I learned protagonist Zelda’s core moves, ventured across the edge of Echoes’ Hyrule kingdom overworld and into its first dungeon.

This new Zelda is out very soon. We’re just three weeks away from its September 26 release. I figure some Zelda-loving readers might want to know a bit about the game, but not too much, so I’m going to cover and show the basics , plus some fun early finds (Good news, hardcore Zelda fans: This is the first Zelda game in 11 years with one of those screens that has specially shaped boxes for major items).