The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom finds us once again in the imperiled medieval fantasy world of Hyrule. This time, a mysterious force has been creating disastrous rifts that suck buildings and people alike into a dark and mysterious void. You start by fighting through a dungeon as Link, the protagonist of every previous Legend of Zelda game, but your time with him is brief.

For the first time, Princess Zelda takes on the mantle of hero.

Working with a diminutive yellow orb named Tri, Zelda sets out to repair the many rifts across the game’s midsize open world and to restore Hyrule to its previous idyll. How she accomplishes this task is what makes Echoes of Wisdom special.

Tri gifts Zelda with a magic wand that allows her to manipulate the environment in various ways. Not only can she grab distant objects and move them around — a mechanic familiar to those who have played recent Legend of Zelda titles like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom — she can also make an echo, or copy, of nearly everything in the game’s world.

Whether it’s a shrub or a clay pot, a block of ice, a plushly quilted bed or a sword-swinging Moblin, little lies beyond the reach of Zelda’s copy-pasting powers. It’s endlessly fun.

Instead of the familiar sword-and-shield gameplay that defines the franchise, Zelda can bring a bevy of creative solutions to encounters with enemies. She can throw a murder of crows at them; freeze them with an Ice Keese; set fire to the environment with a crawling Torch Slug; or simply pick the offending monster up with the wand’s tractor beam and drop it off the nearest cliff.

The magic also makes for fascinating and inventive solutions to the game’s many environmental puzzles. You can use stomping blocks as steppingstones to reach higher platforms. You can extend liquid bridges across chasms or choose to be carried over on a Flying Tile. You can stack up a pile of beds until you’ve made a very ugly, if perfectly functional, stairway. It’s powerful magic that makes for refreshing gameplay.