The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is an important game for Nintendo. Famously, it's the first mainline game where Zelda herself has been playable - no, I'm not counting Spirit Tracks - bucking a decades-long trend and finally putting the eponymous princess at the forefront of her own legend. But it's also the first game to exist in a world after Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. And while it's very effective at being one of those things, it stumbles clumsily over being the other.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom opens to calamity in Hyrule. Strange rifts begin appearing all over the kingdom, swallowing up anyone unable to outrun them, including both Link and the King of Hyrule. The latter is eventually spat back into the world, where he mysteriously pins the blame on his daughter Zelda, and sentences her to death. It's an unfortunate start for the princess, who begins her first-ever title game consigned to the dungeons of her own castle.
