'The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom' Trades Tropes for New Tricks

Nintendo, after nearly four decades, is taking The Legend of Zelda somewhere new. With Echoes of Wisdom, the video game company not only builds on the experimentation of its last Switch release, Tears of the Kingdom--it also does something no other Zelda title has done before: Give the princess power that was previously afforded to only Link. "They gave Zelda a sword" has been the refrain for Echoes of Wisdom since it was announced back in June. But that isn't the entirety of what makes the game unique. Rather, it's part of a top-down 2D series for the franchise, one with a different look and feel than Tears of the Kingdom that still utilizes the freedoms that players got with previous games--like the ability to create everything from Korok prisons to giant mechs.