Echoes of Wisdom ~ Hero Mode

(screenshot taken from Zeltik's preview)

With the PAX East demo and the recent previews, we got a confirmation that Echoes of Wisdom will feature Hero Mode as a difficulty option. It's really the most basic variant, meaning that you take twice as much damage and you won't find any hearts.

Some accessory effects also won't be applied, which probably relates to things like the Heart Pin, which makes more hearts appear  – but there are none. So, that would be different from the Medals in Skyward Sword, where the Heart Medal made hearts appear in Hero Mode, but since you can change accessories at any time, it makes sense not to have this any longer. You could just equip the Heart Pin, which you can find quite early, whenever you need to heal and then go with something else.

The main difference to Hero Modes of the past is that you can now switch between Hero Mode and Normal Mode at any time. The only Zelda game that did something similar was The Wind Waker HD, but even there you couldn't do it on the fly. You had to save and quit first.

This makes things more accessible, because you don't need to stick to a difficulty setting. If things get too easy for you, you activate Hero Mode, but if that gets too hard, you go back to Normal Mode. However, it does lack a sense of achievement, because without a fixed difficulty you won't have a completed Hero Mode save file in the end, unless the game will add some checkmark to your save if you stick to the Hero difficulty from start to finish.

Now, I personally will do the same thing as always: first beat the game in Normal Mode and then play it again in Hero Mode. Maybe there is still some sort of Second Quest or New Game+ that can be unlocked, in which case I will go with Hero Mode there.