While I am not a platform snob (aside from detesting $msft for, yes, The Halloween Documents [& yes, I'm aware this puts me in the unenviable position of drawing attention to esr]) I do tend to play the vast majority of video games on the Switch (1). Before that it was on the Wii U. Before that it was on the Wii. Before that, GameCube. But that's where I started the run so it's approximately correct to say that I have only ever known a 3D Hyrule.

So I had pretty high expectations for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom game. tl;dr: the game radically exceeded them. It's a great game for people who like soft physics simulator puzzles, for people who want to play a powerful princess, & for people who just like spending time in Hyrule.

I hope it's no great spoiler at this point to talk about the game play loop being: Zelda faces an obstacle of some sort, Zelda uses either her powers of being a bad ass princess w/ a lashing ponytail or she uses her power of being able to summon a copy of any object she's memorized (from a limited but quite large catalog of such objects which appear in the game) to overcome the obstacle & is rewarded. The primary incentive for me is often finding new objects to memorize & later 'echo' for useful or useless purposes. Other rewards include quarters of hearts, ingredients (because ofc it has cooking), equippable accessories, quest items &m.

It's a big but not overwhelming world & it's so easy to wander around & miss things such that doubling back the way one came is not always as straightforward as one might want. Luckily it introduces the player to warp points pretty early on for all but the most obdurate players. It's delightfully colorful & renders well both on the small built-in Switch screen or on a larger display one might HDMI the game display to.

For true fans of Link, fear not. He appears, not as a playable character, but as a significant character who lends you a portion of his power, letting Princess Zelda effortlessly (if not w/o cost) transition to Warrior Zelda Who Resembles Link & use his sword, bow & bombs to solve may problems ... directly. Remaining Princess Zelda to solve problems can sometimes require a degree of creativity, stealth & subtlety so it's nice to be able to simplify the solution space by Linking Out from time to time.

There's no kind of New Game + but it's a pleasant enough place I might well revisit some day.