After reaching the game's midpoint, I've been tying up some loose ends before I'm headed into one of the three goddess areas. So, I've been mainly returning to previous places and doing some side quests. More outfits to unlock, more accessories to find, more mini-games to play... And another boss from the past was awaiting me.
~ Carrots and Tombstones ~
Since you're now recognized as Princess Zelda in the game, you can claim your own horse, the royal white steed, which was waiting at the Hyrule Ranch all this time. But surprise... it ran off and you have to find it again. For this you need carrots, but the carrot patch at the forest was taken by a rift, which brings you to another smaller Still World. The game now makes much more use of these additional rifts, where they have even appeared in the areas you've previously visited.
I've also cleared the rift next door at the Sanctuary, where previously I hadn't understood what I needed to do with the tombstones. Well, you can take an educated guess what ability I had been forgetting back then... but I've learned my lesson in the Gerudo Desert.
Once freed, the priest shares a number of helpful rumors about this part of the game, where it would have been interesting to hear what he had to say earlier... But I will explore this on my second playthrough. Maybe the dialogue options are simply cut in half in that case, because stuff like the Great Fairy already was relevant right at the beginning.
Anyway, what I certainly couldn't move with Bind in the early game were the carrots. Believe me, I've tried. But I suppose you could argue that they still had to grow. You can only summon your own horse with the carrot echoes, from what it seems, so that's why it's the way it is.
What I also can finally summon now is the very big Moblin, because mending all these rifts brought Tri to Level 6, which finally added a fifth triangle, so I can spawn the Level 3 Moblins. And these guys are ridiculous. They take a while to attack, but they do so much damage that they kill most enemies in a single strike. It's effectively a mini-boss that you can spawn into anyone's face now.
~ Desert Princess ~
Yesterday I left off the Gerudo Desert wondering about the one tower at the Gerudo Palace and the Gerudo attire, where now this all became clear. The story has been progressing and you're given new things to do in each area, which is fantastic.
In case of the Gerudo Palace, it's another mission about sneaking past by guards. If you use the patch of dirt on top of the roof, this gives Cat Thief Zelda a significant shortcut. So, this wasn't terribly difficult, but I still had enough stealth action for one Zelda game.
You receive the Silk Pajamas as a new outfit, which look a bit like Zelda's ceremonial robes from Breath of the Wild. So, that's fun to wear and also grants you a unique ability: it makes you heal faster in beds. I love how the game suddenly addresses my earlier complaints... Maybe I shouldn't worry too much and let it do its thing, but that would be only half the fun. Maybe I will even get the winter clothes that I wanted as well.
There was also a new side-quest about defeating the Beetle Mounds for a Gerudo who is scared of them. I already did that, but I had to do it again... At least I got an accessory for my efforts, the Heart Barrette, a stronger version of the Heart Pin.
Like the Energy Glove and Belt, you do keep both, but since you can equip them both, it actually makes sense to keep them both, because their effects will stack. At least I think they'll do. This is unlike the Magic Rings in Oracle of Ages & Seasons, where you can equip only one at a time. In that case the weaker versions of certain rings, like the Heart Ring, became completely obsolete.
It was even one of my suggestions for a remake of the Oracle games that you should be able to equip all your rings in the Ring Box at once, so five at them in total. Coincidentally, five accessories also is the maximum in Echoes of Wisdom, so this shows that such a change should be fine. And it makes me truly wonder if Grezzo wasn't working on the Oracle games to some degree...
Back to the Gerudo stuff, the Mango Rush lets you play its final variant, which also features Bomb Flowers as a trap, and this then lets you obtain the Dancing Outfit, which is advertised Gerudo attire. It increases your spin radius, which together with the Frog Ring makes this mini-game very easy, and this is probably the best of the clothing perks so far. It's honestly a little bit too good, because I feel inclined to wear it and not just play with style, so I would have preferred a "Dancer's Veil" or so as an accessory.
While it's nice that the outfits can also give you additional abilities, it would be better if they were all situational. Like, even more situational than quicksand or swimming. You wear the pajamas when you want to sleep, you wear the cat costume when you want to talk to cats... And for the rest of the time you wear whatever you feel like. But the increased spin radius is something that is generally nice to have, even though it's arguably not the greatest advantage outside of the Mango Rush mini-game, since it's mostly just there to cut grass.
~ Zap from the Past ~
It's not just the Gerudo where you can experience new things, but the Zora as well. It's just that there weren't any big indicators that something additional will be happening around the Jabul Waters in the future. Though, I'm not sure if one of the quests there wasn't possible already earlier, but you didn't receive the side quest until now. Some old man claims the boat wreck as his, but it's been plagued by a large electric monster lately.
Well, I already knew thanks to General Wright what was awaiting me here: Barinade from Ocarina of Time! Of course, I had to use a Boomerang Boarblin for the job, there was no other way... But I'm liking these classic bosses and the music that plays during the battles.
However, it's completely ridiculous how there was this huge mini-dungeon inside the small ship wreck that you can find. The boat houses from Seesyde already scratch on that suspension of disbelief when you enter those three-by-two spaces to find a whole fishing mansion inside. But when I went into this ship wreck I must have put my Gnat Hat on. Anyway, the reward was another Fairy Bottle, where I have all four now.
There was also a side quest about the two Zora Chiefs to see what they are up to, which earns you the Gold Brooch for even more Rupees. You can also find a mostly side-scrolling Still World in the northeast corner, so the optional tasks get somewhat more sophisticated at this stage in the game. I still have to bring that one Sea Zora a fancy box, though...
~ Catariko ~
Someone in the development team of Echoes of Wisdom must be a big fan of cats. There are so many in the game and you can talk to them all with cat costume, and only them. Why make an outfit that lets you talk to cats, but no other animals? It's something that you could do as Wolf Link and would have been an interesting addition. I suppose the horses and Cuccos already have interactions, so this would get in the way, but I don't see why there shouldn't be a dog costume for Zelda as well.
In Kakariko you have some side quests about this, where an old man wants you to find his cat. For this it would be convenient to ask the other cats, but some woman has purchased the only cat costume from the Kakariko store. However, the game does account for the case that I already have gotten such a costume via amiibo, so that's clever.
But think about it... They went through the effort to write and translate additional dialogue for such a side quest, instead of simply locking the alternate clothing colors until you have found the original. I suppose they wanted to let you cheat with the amiibo, essentially, just for the fun of it.
You can still get the original cat costume, where having a different version of it also helps with that quest to find out what to do, because you can simply talk to the cat and see what she wants. Maybe this is the only case where getting outfits in advance via amiibo makes a different. But I could already think of another example with the Dancing Outfit: if there are colors of it, then you can use them to unlock the original more easily in the Mango Rush game. (Update: there aren't amiibo colors for the Dancing Outfit, nor any others than what I already had.)
Speaking of mini-games, I haven't been to the dojo in a while, but I was pleased to find out that this offers you the ability re-battle the bosses in the game, as I had hoped. In this first scenario you fight the three first main bosses from the Suthorn Ruins, the Jabul Ruins, and the Gerudo Sanctum, in that order.
There are no limitations here, so you can hit them with the best that you've got, where in my case the Sword and Bow of Might are already at their highest tier and the big Sword Moblin was put to good use. Hopefully, there will also be the optional bosses, like Barinade, somewhere in there. That would be great.
Three new missions were unlocked, where only the wind challenge with the Gibdos gave me some troubles. And the new rewards from the dojo included the katana and the "First Mastery", an accessory reducing your energy cost.
It looks to me like most of these trade items, like the katana, will be used to create the Automatons later on. I even found Dampé and visited his house, but for the mechanical Tektite I already need an enemy that I haven't encountered yet (I think), so I couldn't unlock this feature yet. Seems a bit late for something that was part of a trailer from Nintendo. I'm not even sure how useful the Automatons will even be when you already have Level 3 monsters at the ready...
~ Triforce Discovered ~
There was another Lv. 3 Moblin in the Eternal Forest, so I thought I should go back there and have it fight my own. Sadly, it was also a sword variant, so I couldn't receive anything new here. But I did discover something interesting:
If you mark the location of those pedestals on the map, it creates a Triforce pattern. There it is, I found it! Well, I'm sure the Lost Woods will become relevant in the late game, probably after the three current rifts are cleared, and I will learn the meaning about all this then. But that would also mean that Nintendo has shown a lot of late-game content, because they had released an image of the Deku Tree.
On a side note, I got the Survey Scope accessory from making ten different smoothies. This grants you more materials, so it's essentially like the Treasure Medal from Skyward Sword and another accessory that you might want to keep on most of the time.
~ Horse Race ~
If there's one thing I certainly do not want to return from Ocarina of Time, then it's the horse race stuff. I hated this mini-game as a child and hearing its music in Echoes of Wisdom again makes me unwell. Curiously, the short course, which goes around the ranch in a circle, just like in Ocarina of Time gave me the most problems.
You need to do it under 17 seconds and my best score was like 17.02 for a while... I felt like I was missing something crucial or like I'm playing for an S-Rank in Nintendo World Championships. Eventually, I did it, and then I cleared both the middle and the long course on my second try. They were much easier to manage for some reason...
(Update: I was missing something crucial and as so often it was Bind... You can move the trees out of the way with it! Alternatively, you can also shoot them off the track with a Tornando.)
Among the usual Might Crystals and Piece of Heart rewards, which is very similar to the mini-games in Link's Awakening, you also get the Prismatic Music Box, where I'm guessing this is another automaton building part, and finally the Charging Horn, an accessory that increases the damage of your horse. Neat, but certainly one of the lesser useful accessories so far. It would have also made sense to give this effect to a riding outfit instead.
But I have 16 accessories so far, looking forward to what the rest will have to offer. As you can tell from my obsession with them, this may become one of my favorite collectibles in the series.
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