Echoes of Wisdom Adventure Log, Entry 2 ~ Hyrule Tour

As for the rest of my first day playing Echoes of Wisdom, things took a 180° turn, as I moved on to explore all around Hyrule. I went to Lake Hylia, into the Faron Wetlands, to Seesyde Village, to the Hyrule Ranch, Kakariko Village, the graveyard, and finally to the Eastern Temple, where an unexpected blast from the past awaited me.

My main complaint about the tutorial phase was that it is too linear, but after the Suthorn Ruins the game really opens up, almost to the same degree as in Breath of the Wild, meaning that you can go pretty much wherever you want. The trampoline echo lets you bypass most of the basic borders made out of trees and such. And already in the Suthorn Prairie, the old swamp region from A Link to the Past, which lies right next to Lueburry's lab, you will get your first Crawltula, which then lets you climb up high walls at ease... (The game is really nothing for people with arachnophobia, by the way.)

There are still some boundaries, though. For example, I tried going up the snowy Death Mountain, but there you receive freezing damage and have to leave. Luckily, there is also no fall damage in the game, you can jump down from any height. Also, I have yet to find some echo that lets me blow up stuff, where I probably should have focused on Jabul Waters first to find a Bomb Fish. But you know me. When the game tells me to go either to the Gerudo Desert or Jabul Waters, I will go anywhere but, simply because I want to check out what's already possible.

Otherwise the game also sets limits via stronger enemies, similar to the modern 3D Zelda titles. If an attack takes off three hearts from you and you have trouble defeating an enemy with any of your current echoes, then it's probably best to go somewhere else...

But let's start from the beginning of my journey. First I checked out how returning to dungeons works and it's very simple, but also doesn't make much sense. The entrance to the dungeon can now also be found in Hyrule, but inside the way is blocked off. Instead you will find a portal into the Still World in front of the entrance, where you can also repeat the section before the dungeon, in case you missed any treasure chests there.

It's a bit weird, because thematically it would have made more sense if everything from inside the Still World got returned to the overworld, patching Hyrule back to normal. They could have placed the treasure chests and what not also into the areas that were initially missing... Well, the Still World is your main source of sword energy, so it's convenient to still have it around. But there are also the small rifts spawning shadow enemies everywhere, which will drop energy as well, so it wasn't really necessary. And you can refill your energy via smoothies and probably by other means.

Curiously, you can also heal yourself everywhere at any time via a bed, but it works in a weird way. Resting once restores half a heart, but you can just repeat to do it. Rise, rest, rise, rest... Why not just make it slowly heal you up while resting? (Update: it does actually work that way, but very slowly. Too slow. You're much faster if you keep rising.)

It's also weird to see all those old places of importance from A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds, stripped of their importance. The floodgate ruins are gone and replaced with a simple pillar... The location of Link's old house also doesn't have anything there, which is something that we already knew from Nintendo's footage.

It makes the world feel a bit emptier than it was, though it probably isn't. But it certainly can't match the richness of Koholint in the Link's Awakening remake, where you can find something like a Piece of Heart of a Secret Seashell around every corner. Echoes of Wisdom has a lot more junk to collect for you with the smoothie ingredients, which isn't as interesting or rewarding.

You can repeat those monster camps, however, to get more of everything, which is a difference from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Once you got the skull chests there, they were gone for good. But this way I might not even bother with playing the camps if there technically isn't anything to achieve, other than getting more materials that I currently have no need for.

At Lake Hylia I discovered my first "Mini Still World", which is a rift that you can enter, but which doesn't have a dungeon inside. Instead you will need to find three pockets with Tri's friends inside to restore the area. I was not able to learn the water blocks here, however, even though they were a feature in this rift... Or maybe the actual water blocks will be different and this was just floating water, don't know, but it didn't feel intuitive.

In general I haven't learned many new echo objects. Most of it were new enemies and I got lots of those, starting by going into the Faron Wetlands in the southeast, where you can find Hydrozols, some singing frogs that will make it rain (called Drippitunes), Piranhas, the Giant Goponga Flowers, Lizalfos, the Goo Specters from the Color Dungeon, and more... It was quite the haul.

But it's also something where I'm already getting a bit tired of the whole mechanic. It's really the opposite situation of the tutorial, where I enjoyed the echoes, but the game was too funneled for my taste. Now it's completely open, but fighting with echoes has lost some of its appeal, especially when the targeting doesn't do its job. I tend to respawn echoes all the time, just to have them immediately attack what's in front of me...

But I didn't really go into the Faron Wetlands to collect more echoes, my goal was to say hello to the Dekus, because it's been so long... Good to have them back and they are as freaky as ever. There isn't much you can do here already, other than checking out the main smoothie store, where I suppose you first need a large rift to appear in the area for the story to be going.

As a small surprise I also found my first Might Crystals in the wild, making them essentially the equivalent to the Secret Seashells, which means that you can potentially find and get them anywhere, not just from finishing dungeons. But they are bit like the Gratitude Crystals from Skyward Sword, where you can find single ones around Skyloft, hidden at night, as well as bundles of five for completing side quests.

You can display both the Might Crystals and Pieces of Heart on your map, in the same style as in Link's Awakening, but it's not a separate screen this time, but part of the proper world map, which is a nice improvement.

There is also a third collectible with the stamps from the Stamp Guy, which are just downright the same thing as in Spirit Tracks. The main difference is that you don't place them manually and that the motives are all just these weird depictions of the Stamp Guy as the most athletic human being ever. It's funny for the first time, but it completely lacks the charm of the stamps from Spirit Tracks, where you get something based on the actual locations. Here I can't even tell where I got the stamps from...

The stamp cards also take up the five slots below the Fairy Bottles in the Key Items menu, so there's that. It's also clear where the bow and bombs will go, but I have no real clue what the three slots next to the Tri Rod could be for. Which is nice, I want some surprises.

While I went to Seesyde Village after my tour through the Faron Wetlands, I didn't stay there all too long, because I still wanted to explore more around Hyrule Field and Hyrule Castle...

There I played the acorn mini-game for the first time, which turned out to be atrocious, because it immediately respawns all enemies around you and even adds some more. I expected this to be something more like Rupee Rush, but if you have to focus on dodging enemies that you can't actively fight, then this mini-game isn't going to be much fun.

Later I went to the ranch and got a horse there. Then I got chased by a Wolfos, who matches the speed of the horse, which was a bit frightening... I moved on to the north to check out Kakariko Village next, where I was greeted with the traditional Cucco collecting side quest for another Fairy Bottle. That's how you do the Ocarina of Time callbacks (take note, Minish Cap).

There is also the dojo there, which turned out to be more fun than the acorn stuff already. At least you can't actually die while playing it. And there are different conditions, where in the first challenge you have forgotten all your echoes and can't use swordfighter mode.

The second challenge overwhelmed me at first, but that's because I made the mistake to activate the switch. If you leave the bars up and simply spawn a Peahat behind them, it will take care of all the Carmadillos, while you can watch safely. Fight smart, not hard.

I took a sneak peek at Eldin Volcano, but the Moldorms were annoying me, so I kept going clockwise around Hyrule Castle. The Lost Woods, which are called the "Eternal Forest" now, have a similar barrier around them like in Breath of the Wild, so you can't just enter them from any side with your echoes. I did explore most of them nevertheless, where the barrier feels a bit pointless, but I don't know yet what I have to do here.

Same with the weird tombstones inside the Still World for the graveyard. So, I will have to return there as well... But it was nice seeing the cathedral in such an ethereal place. It does have stained glass at its back now, so the old secret passage is definitely gone.

At least this is a place from A Link to the Past that has kept its importance, somewhat, so that's great to see. The witch's hut is gone as well, but Dampé's new shack seems to be close by. He wasn't there yet, though.

And then we have the Eastern Palace, which is now called the "Eastern Temple". As far as I know, it was always called "East Temple" in Japanese, but they could have kept things consistent in English. This is where I found the first major surprise in the game for me, so better stop reading if you haven't checked this out yourself yet...

This turned out to be a mini-dungeon focused on Sparks, where you need to redirect them into some containers to power them up. Already in the first room with such a puzzle I thought that this felt quite similar to the Smog boss battle from Oracle of Ages...

But I quickly figured out that you can use Octoroks to defeat the Sparks, which trivializes these puzzles, because you can simply create echoes of Sparks right before the container. The dungeon also teaches you this shortly after, so it's even intentional.

And wouldn't you know it... At the end you have to fight Smog from Oracle of Ages, which is the first reoccurrence in the series. I had a feeling, because there was this voice telling you that it wants to play a game, and then you had these puzzles in the same vein.

And it makes so much sense to have this boss return in Echoes of Wisdom, since the Tri Rod is effectively the Cane of Somaria on steroids. The battle is also a lot more challenging, because Smog keeps firing at a higher rate and the environments are bit more complicated, since you can place more than just a single block.

But this is such a great throwback. This is for me on the same level of fan service as when they put Phantoon into Metroid: Other M, for example. Of course the Zelda series has brought back classic bosses countless times, but it's usually your Gohma, King Dodongo, and so on. This is more special, but also a very good fit. And that's how you do nostalgia!

They could have just thrown some Armos or Eyegores into the Eastern Palace and that would have been nice, but they decided to use this place as a celebration of one of the most unique bosses from Oracle of Ages.

It does make me wonder if Grezzo was secretly working on a remake of the Oracle games after all and now have re-used those assets. But I suppose there is simply a big fan of Oracle of Ages somewhere in the development team, since you also get the Sea and River Zora differentiation.

Smog also just flies away and you will meet again. My best guess is that this will happen at the old Desert Palace Temple, where they could have mini-dungeons in all of the three classic A Link to the Past dungeon locations.

That's it for today. Not much progress made, but I've seen a lot of the new Hyrule. I also wanted to highlight the new save system, which is probably the best of all the Zelda Switch games yet. You get five auto saves, one manual save, but also two different save files. And you can't accidentally overwrite the other, as you could in Link's Awakening. Once you've loaded a save file in the beginning, it sticks to it. The only complaint I have here is that it defaults to "no" when selecting a save file in the beginning. That's a bit unnecessary...

Apropos loading, I have this weird flickering whenever the screen gets dark and it loads an area. Not sure if this is a problem with my Switch, or my TV, or a general issue, but I don't have this with any other Switch game.