Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is Taking a Page Out of Pokemon’s Playbook

Highlights

• Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom lets players collect monsters for battle an exploration, not unlike Pokemon.
• Zelda takes the spotlight as the main playable character, wielding the game-changing Tri Rod weapon for unique gameplay mechanics.
• The release date for Echoes of Wisdom is September 26, 2024.

The newly-announced Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is taking a page out of Pokemon‘s playbook by essentially allowing players to collect monsters for use in battle and exploration. Going into the latest Nintendo Direct event, few expected to see a brand-new Zelda game. Even fewer expected a brand-new Zelda game where Zelda herself would be the main playable character instead of Link, but that’s exactly what Nintendo delivered with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

Nintendo unveiled The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom with a reveal trailer that confirmed Zelda as the playable character and showed off its Link’s Awakening remake-style graphics. The reveal trailer was followed by a video explaining the Echoes of Wisdom gameplay mechanics, including its game-changing Tri Rod weapon, which allows Zelda to create clones, or “echoes,” of objects and enemies that she encounters on her adventures.

Zelda can use echoes in Echoes of Wisdom to solve puzzles and traverse the environment, but she can also use them in battle. In the trailer, we can see Zelda using echoes of monsters to fight other monsters head-on, but she also uses them to get around obstacles in the game world. This is not unlike the Pokemon series, where monsters are used for battle as well as traversal. Based on the trailer, it seems Echoes of Wisdom players will be able to get extremely creative when it comes to dealing with the challenges they encounter.

Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Has Monster-Catching Feature Similar to Pokemon

While the Echoes of Wisdom reveal trailer shows Zelda using monsters she’s collected to simply fight other monsters, it also shows her utilizing them in more unique ways. In one instance, she summons some meat to distract crows and put them in position for a carnivorous plant that she summons to take them out. In another, she summons a spider to create a web to help as she’s climbing down from a ledge. The possibilities seem almost endless when it comes to Echoes of Wisdom‘s titular echoes, and it will be exciting to see how far players can push the concept.

Luckily, the wait to explore this new but familiar version of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom isn’t going to be a long one at all. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom release date is September 26, so fans only have to wait a few months to get their hands on the game and see if it lives up to the high bar set by the incredibly exciting reveal trailer.