Nintendo Music Released

The next out-of-nowhere surprise is the launch of Nintendo's newest smartphone app: Nintendo Music. Not to be confused with Wii Music, this is effectively their own little Spotify, where members of Nintendo Switch Online get to listen to video game soundtracks without any additional costs.

I gave it a try right away this morning and this is quite neat. The interface is clean and the playlists are extensive for the given games. At first I thought that these are only a sound selection, but those are the "highlights" with only the most important songs and you can also listen the complete soundtrack with everything.

For example, the default playlist of Breath of the Wild contains 62 songs, where you have the opening, the shrine music, the villages, the Champion themes, and so on. But the app also has the complete soundtrack with all 211 tracks, which only was available in Japan so far, like most of the official soundtracks. This one contains every piece of music you might want to listen to, including the DLC stuff and the epic trailer themes. It's a blast, and you also get a unique screenshot or image for almost every track to spark your memories.

Well, I don't know why the Windmill Hut theme from Ocarina of Time isn't part of the highlights, but at least it's there... And there are also playlists based on characters, which may even span different titles. Like, there is the Great Deku Tree, where you get tracks from both Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild. That's good to have when you're building the corresponding LEGO set, I guess...

The only problem with this app is the same as with any of the NSO offerings: they are drip-fed. So far there are 22 soundtracks available and they will gradually expand this over time, because Nintendo wants to keep this thing in the news. I can think of a number of reasons why they don't release all their old games at once to the service, since they still need to be tested and potentially re-rated, and so on. But in this case it's only music...

The biggest effort at this point should be translating all the titles into English and adding screenshots for every song. That's still a good amount of work, don't get me wrong, but hopefully this will see additions on a more frequent and extensive basis than what they are doing with NES, SNES, and so on.

Here's what soundtracks are included in the app as part of the launch, with the gaming system and the number of tracks in parenthesis:

• Super Mario Bros. (NES, 16)
• Metroid (NES / Famicon, 12)
• Dr. Mario (GB, 8)
  
• Kirby's Dream Land (GB, 15)
• Donkey Kong Country (SNES, 26)
• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES, 26)
• Star Fox 64 / Lylat Wars (N64, 39)
  
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64, 82)
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (GBA, 100)
• Metroid Prime (GCN, 36)
• Nintendogs (NDS, 50)
  
• Tomodachi Collection (NDS, 62)
• Wii Channels (Wii, 62)
  
• Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, 81)
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch, 211)
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch, 149)
• Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 136)
• Kirby Star Allies (Switch, 213)
  
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch, 407)
• Splatoon 3 (Switch, 118)
• Pokémon Scarlet & Violet (Switch, 199)
• Pikmin 4 (Switch, 153)

The ones of bigger interest to this blog are highlighted, so Zelda fans will only get Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild for now, where they've started things with arguably the two most popular Zelda games. But we will certainly get more in the future, where The Wind Waker and Skyward Sword are already announced to come soon, among others.

However, let's hope that they will keep it simple and not bring the NSO Expansion Pack into this. It would be lame if you only could listen to the soundtrack of Tears of the Kingdom, for example, as long as you're paying for the advanced subscription.

But it would be compelling, because this is some very good value added to Nintendo Switch Online, where for me personally this is fantastic to have. I love listening to video game soundtracks, but I've gotten very lazy about managing MP3s on my phone, since there is Youtube and I rarely listen to music out in the wild. Right now I mainly have some indie game soundtracks on there, which I got from Steam: Hollow Knight, Death's Door, TUNIC, Dorfromantik, and some others. I also have some soundtracks from the Trine and Unreal series, where those are some great tunes.

As for Nintendo music, I have two MP3s from Spirit Tracks, the main themes, because that's the music you want to be listening to during a train ride, but that's really it. The other Nintendo-related albums on my phone are remixes, like Essence of Lime... So, having this app will fill a big gap for me and I love it.

In addition, you can create your own playlists, and shuffle things while hiding certain games as spoilers. You can also extend songs where applicable, so that they loop like they do ingame (which is very clever). They have thought of everything important and I highly recommend to check this out.

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Announced

Nintendo can be curious sometimes. A couple of weeks ago they've announced an alarm clock out of nowhere, while the gaming world is waiting to see the successor to the Nintendo Switch. And now they casually announced one of the most anticipated ports for the current system, which is Xenoblade Chronicles X, one of the last standing Wii U titles.

The Xenoblade Chronicles series is something I have yet to get into, so please excuse my lack of insights about it, but ever since Monolith Soft had helped creating the amazing world of Breath of the Wild, it has had my interest. And I will be happy to have the entire series available on Nintendo Switch, from March 20th on, now all I need is the time to play it all...

The Switch Swan Song

Anyway, the Nintendo Switch certainly has arrived in its last year, where we can be really happy to have gotten games like Echoes of Wisdom at this point, because otherwise they will go for the low-hanging fruits, which are ports and remasters. We had Luigi's Mansion 2 HD in June, there's going to be Donkey Kong Country Returns HD in January, and now Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition in March. And there's a lot more where these games came from...

As the author of a Zelda-focused blog I'm obliged to bring out the broken record of The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD for the hundredth time, but there is a chance that we might still get these in 2025, as long as the Nintendo Switch is still a thing, because porting over these remasters is a much lower effort than giving them a better looking remaster or even a remake on the next system. And fans have been asking for such ports ever since the announcement of the Switch, so that's easy money.

For the Switch successor we already know that we're going to see a remaster of Breath of the Wild, where the U-King-O leak was proven twice by now, once by the internal codename of Echoes of Wisdom, which is in fact "Edward", as well as the recently leaked codename of the Switch successor, which is "Ounce" and therefore really starts with O.

I'll be talking about this a bit more later this year, but what matters now is that they've already moved on to remastering the next 3D Zelda game after Skyward Sword. And at some point they'll start all over again with a remake of Ocarina of Time. But that's all for the Switch successor, while the current Switch could still receive the aforementioned ports to expand its Zelda line-up.

Now, I'm personally still hoping for a Metroid: Samus Returns HD, because after Metroid Dread this would be perfect for a quick follow-up and the game could really profit from some improved controls, next to prettier visuals. Better controls is also what could give Star Fox Zero another chance, which is probably the biggest missing Wii U exclusive after Xenoblade Chronicles X.

And Yoshi's Woolly World is another candidate, similar to Donkey Kong Country Returns. They both got a Nintendo 3DS "demaster" for some reason, where it can't hurt to have an ultimate version of the game on the Nintendo Switch, as with various Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games before. It's not going to make the cow fat at this point, as we would say in German.

Echoes of Wisdom ~ Parallels to A Link Between Worlds

This year we got The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the newest top-down Zelda experience, and it's been a while since we got a brandnew Zelda game in this style. In fact, the last ones were on the Nintendo 3DS, where nine years have passed since the release Tri Force Heroes, and eleven years since A Link Between Worlds – if you're looking for a classic singleplayer Zelda. Curiously, there are many similarities between Echoes of Wisdom and the latter, where this post will go through the most important ones.

The most obvious parallel is, of course, their return to the Hyrule from A Link to the Past. And that's generally a good thing, where these games respect their legacy, instead of coming up with a completely new land that happens to have places called "Kakariko Village", "Lake Hylia", and "Hyrule Castle" on it. A Link Between Worlds stays much closer to A Link to the Past here, only altering smaller parts of the map, while the Hyrule in Echoes of Wisdom is loosely based on the original and expands it around all borders, in an effort to add territories for the different tribes that weren't present in the SNES classic.

Both games also feature some dark and twisted version of Hyrule, much like A Link to the Past did with the Dark World. In case of A Link Between Worlds it's the mirror kingdom Lorule, while in Echoes of Wisdom we have the Still World, made out of fragments from the actual Hyrule. These are quite different from each other in concept, but they have a similar feel to them and both are entered via fissures or rifts visible in the actual Hyrule.

The Still World and Lorule also bring forth another similarity: these Zelda games did not shy away from expanding the lore, especially around the Triforce, which wasn't even mentioned in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. They have introduced a number of things that feel quite important to the universe of the Zelda franchise, while at the same they clearly serve the story of their specific games and aren't likely to return in the future... Whether that's Princess Hilda, Yuga, or the newest villain.

That's a fate shared with the main mechanics of these games, where both the wall merging and the echoes add a completely new dimension to how you're playing a Zelda game, also giving you much more freedom than you had in traditional top-down title. And as good as these gameplay mechanics were, they will probably stay exclusive to the games that invented them.

But maybe Echoes of Wisdom will keep following the example of A Link Between Worlds and spawn a multiplayer-based sequel in the next years. Here you could play as Link and Zelda, where the ability to summon echoes might even return...

~ Two Games Foretold ~

Sadly, another thing Echoes of Wisdom and A Link Between Worlds have in common are their overly extensive marketing campaigns. If you had followed Nintendo's coverage prior to their releases, you may have felt like you had seen it all before as you were finally playing yourself. And that's because you did, where Nintendo doesn't feel the need to hold back for the smaller Zelda games. They didn't spoil the final boss and dungeon, but everything else was fair use.

In case of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom they were a lot more delicate, focusing primarily on the start of these games, until the final trailers also showed almost everything... But at least those only had quick bits and pieces, where the Depths may still have been a surprise for you and various other things. You had to truly analyze the trailers and put a lot together to get an idea of the story...

The pre-release coverage of A Link Between Worlds and Echoes of Wisdom on the other hand was a lot more thorough. "This is Princess Hilda, Zelda's counterpart. And these are the dungeons in Lorule, take a look... Here are the Deku and what they are up to. We have both River and Sea Zora in this game and they are squabbling." It's like they felt the need to show and explain as much as possible, as if they were afraid that no one would buy these "lesser" Zelda games otherwise...

Echoes of Wisdom ~ Update Suggestions

No game is ever perfect, but in the age of updates and DLC there is at least the chance that player feedback will be taken into consideration to improve things. However, only two Zelda games got major updates and content additions in the past, Tri Force Heroes and Breath of the Wild, so it's not very likely that Echoes of Wisdom will follow their examples these days.

Nevertheless, it's worth looking into what could be done, where we always should give Nintendo and Grezzo some ideas. These ideas are not meant to be overly ambitious, however, so we want this to be something that could realistically be implemented as part of an update, whether that's free or paid DLC.

Most importantly, the 2.0.0 update should address the performance issues. They are mostly caused by loading things when you walk around in the overworld and there is probably something that can be optimized here. With that out of the way, let's move on to the good stuff...

~ Tower of Hebra ~

This is a new, optional challenge dungeon, similar to the Treacherous Tower from A Link Between Worlds. You will be able to find it in the Hebra Mountains, where it's meant to represent the old Tower of Hera. Tri can't enter the dungeon, so you won't be able to use your echoes or Bind, which means that you have to entirely rely on the Swordfighter Form and Automatons. You will also need the Mysterious Bombs / Bombs of Might in order to enter it.

As usual, you will have to fight through a number of floors filled with enemies. Whenever you beat a floor, it spawns a crystal that lets you refill all your energy. You can always return there, in case you run out, but this will reset the floor above. And there is a new boss at the end waiting, which is of course none other than Moldorm.

After beating Moldorm at the top of the tower, you can enter the Stilled Tower of Hebra, where now you have to reach its bottom. Tri will join you again, so you're free to use your echoes, but you will mainly be fighting the shadow enemies, where the Swordfighter Form is advantageous. You will have to rebattle all three variants of the Imposter Link and fight a new version of him at the end, who is able to use all three of his weapons at the same time.

~ New Echoes ~

The update will feature three new echoes, bringing the total up to 130. These include one new object and two new enemies:

• Vire (4▼)
• Boomerang Boarblin Lv. 3 (5▼)
  
• Energy Crystal (6▼)

Vire returns here from the Link's Awakening remake and it will split up into two smaller bats if it receives too much damage. The third tier Boomerang Boarblin throws a large, circular boomerang made out of bones, just like the Boomeranger from Tri Force Heroes. Both are featured in the Tower of Hebra, but since you can't use your Tri Rod there, they can also be found in a new cave inside the crater of Eldin Volcano. You will first need to clear Eldin Temple to enter it.

As for the Energy Crystal...

You will be able to learn it after collecting all 150 Might Crystals. It's the thing found in front of Lueburry's house, where after the update you will be able to learn it and then place it anywhere to refill your energy, as an equivalent to the beds. The refill takes a bit longer and if it gets hit by an enemy, you will lose energy instead. It will also take all six triangles from Tri to summon it, where there is no cost reduction, so it can't be combined with any other echoes.

~ New Slumber Dojo Trainings ~

There will be a number of new battle challenges available in the Slumber Dojo. For them to unlock, you will need to have defeated all the enemies and bosses featured in them.

• EX Strongest of All: All four Lv3 monsters and a Lynel at once.
  
• EX Imposters' Revenge: All four battles against the Imposter Link.
• EX Lanmolas' Revenge: All three versions of the Lanmola... at once!
• EX Playing a Game: Both battles against Smog one after another.
• EX Guardians' Gathering: Lord Jabu-Jabu, Slime Eye, and Manhandla.
• EX Secret Titans' Gathering: Bori, Volcanic Talus, and Moldorm.
  

This serves mainly as a way of repeating all mini-bosses and optional bosses. But you will also get more options for earning Golden Eggs, where right now "The Final Titans' Gathering" is the only way to do that, which takes a bit longer. And there are some new outfits and accessories as rewards, which leads us to the next sections...

~ New Accessories ~

With the update you can find a variety of new accessories in different places, which give you some new effects to utilize.

• Cloudy Feather: Crumble-Proof
  
• Earrings of Might: Unlimited Sword Beams
• Pegasus Boots: Walk Speed Up
  
• Scepter of Power: Echo Damage Up
• Courageous Compass: Monster Appearance Up
  

The Cloudy Feather makes you lightweight, so that cracked floors don't crumble. But that's not all, clouds also won't dissolve below your feet any longer, which includes your cloud echoes. It's a reward in the Tower of Hebra.

Beating the Stilled Tower of Hebra earns you the Earrings of Might. Wearing them will let you always shoot sword beams in Swordfighter Form, even if you are not at full health or don't have the Level 3 Sword of Might yet.

The Pegasus Boots increase your walk speed to the same level as the Swordfighter Form. You won't go any faster with spinning, however. It can be purchased for 1000 Rupees at the Hyrule Castle Town Shop (the Stone Anklet can now be found in the shop at Goron City).

Holding the Scepter of Power will give a damage boost to all your echoes. The boost is the same for every monster, so it will be more significant for weaker monsters, for stronger ones not so much. It's the reward for beating the "EX Strongest of All" challenge in the Slumber Dojo.

Finally, the Courageous Compass serves as another way to make the game more challenging. Equipping it lets more monsters appear, where it works similar to the +Monsters Effect from the Chamber Dungeon in Link's Awakening. This means that the already existing monsters in the game get duplicated whenever possible. It doesn't work on very strong monsters, on bosses, or in the Slumber Dojo. You can find it in Link's house, so it can be acquired early in the game.

~ New Outfits ~

In addition to the accessories, you will also be able to obtain many more outfits, more than doubling than what's in the base game. Most of them are just for the looks, but some come with smaller perks or new interactions.

• Dog Clothes (Let's you talk to dogs.)
• Winter Parka (Protects you from cold.)
• Angler Armor (Creates light around you.)
  
• Cactus Costume (Enemies take damage when they touch you.)
• Showgirl Dress (Attracts attention of enemies.)
• Cheer Outfit
• Island Dress (Marin)
  
• Sheikah Garb (Sheik)
• Pirate Captain (Tetra)

Some of these are just uninspired copies of the outfits in Tri Force Heroes, but since those are pretty much the same thing, they will work nicely in this game as well. The most important is probably the Winter Parka, which you can get from Condé. It lets you pass the snowstorms without freezing.

After completing the "Still Missing" main quest, a new clothing store will open at Hyrule Castle Town, where you can purchase a good number of the other new outfits. The rest of them are rewards from the new Slumber Dojo challenges. In addition, you can obtain some new recolors from scanning amiibo:

• Blue Tunic (any Link amiibo)
  
• Purple Tunic (any Link amiibo)
  
• Pink Pajamas (any Zelda amiibo)
  
• White Dog Clothes (other Legend of Zelda amiibo)

This works the same way as before.

Finally, there should be an option to put down the hood while wearing the Disguise, once you've unlocked the option to change outfits. The modified outfit already exists in the game, where you can briefly play in this look right before you receive the Travel Attire. And Nintendo has used this quite extensively for their promotional materials... It's even featured on the game's box art, but you can't freely choose it for some reason.

~ Miscellaneous Improvements ~

The quick selection of echoes now will offer filters via the X button, which let you display only objects, monsters, or your favorites. The latter can be set via the A button. In addition, the notebook now will provide the same sorting options as the quick select.

On the map you can now view your "Heroine's Path", which is the same as the Hero's Path Mode from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, where it shows your journey via a green line. It records up to 100 hours of travel.

When you are in Swordfighter Form, you can now roll via the R button. This also works when playing as Link in the beginning of the game.

After completing the game, it will show you the total number of side quests, accessories, and outfits available (recolor outfits collected via amiibo will increase the total), exactly like with the echoes and automatons in the notebook.

Echoes of Wisdom ~ Magic Rings to Accessories

In Echoes of Wisdom there is a total of 28 different accessories for you to find and equip, which give you a variety of smaller buffs. And while this might be similar to the outfits and armor items from previous titles, it's primarily a translation of the Magic Rings from Oracle of Ages & Seasons.

It's more than that, because it improves on the system in every possible aspect. You can carry all accessories with you, instead of being limited to five. And you can now equip up to five of them at once, instead of just one. Each accessory also has an effect, no downsides, and a designated spot to obtain it. Grezzo essentially took the Magic Rings and removed many points of criticism that you may have had about them... And made them look more unique on top, because it's not just rings this time, but also anklets, pins, brooches, footwear, belts, and more.

Source

You can still see how the Magic Rings were the foundation here, however, mainly because a good number of the perks are basically identical... And some of them are uncommon in the series, like the protection from quicksands, where the only other game to feature similar ones was Tri Force Heroes with its outfits. Here is a list of what rings were turned into accessories:

• Swimmer's Ring → Zora's Flippers (Swim Speed Up)
• Zora Ring → Zora Scale (Dive Time Up)
• Quicksand Ring → Gerudo Sandals (Quicksand-Proof)
• Snowshoe Ring → Ice Spikes (Slip Reduction)
• Steadfast Ring → Stone Anklet (Knockback Reduced)
• Discovery Ring → Might Bell (Might Crystal Detection)
  
• Blue Joy Ring → Heart Pin/Barrette (Heart Appearance Up)
• Red Joy Ring → Silver/Gold Brooch (Rupee Appearance Up)
• Blue Ring → Ancient/Curious Charm (Damage Reduction)
  

That may not be a whole lot, but when you look at the list of Magic Rings, then you will realize that there isn't much left that would have made sense in this game. There is no need for something like the Bombproof Ring, for example, because you're already not taking damage from your own bombs or the bombs of your echoes. Or there is no gain from letting you transform into monsters when you can summon all of them. And many of the rings don't have any effect to begin with, since they purely act as trophies.

However, there are some rings left where they could have turned their effects into an accessory. The following ones probably make the most sense:

• Red Ring / Rang Ring L-1/L-2 / Blast Ring (Damage up)
  
• Light Ring L-1/L-2 (Shoot beams at -2/-3 hearts)
• Green Holy Ring (No damage from electricity)
• Roc's Ring (Cracked floors don't crumble)
  

There could have been an accessory that increases the damage of your echoes in general, which would be the equivalent to the Red Ring, Blast Ring, and so on. Another accessory could have made it so that you always can fire sword beams in your Swordfighter form, not just at full hearts, which would be similar to the Light Rings.

As for protection from elemental effects, you do have the smoothies for that, but they also could have offered accessories or clothing to achieve the same. But at least smoothies aren't entirely obsolete this way.

Finally, the Roc's Ring might not seem as useful on first glance, because there are only very few cracked floors in the game. However, they could have extended this to clouds, so that they don't dissolve when you stand on them, which would make this very useful. And the more useful accessories there are, the better, because it makes the choice of what to equip all the more interesting.

With that in mind, the Pegasus Boots also should have been an accessory that make you walk faster – maybe not as crazily fast as the Cheetah Costume from Tri Force Heroes, but a small buff. And it makes sense to have, since there is something to increase your swimming and climbing speeds, but not your walking speed for some reason.

Echoes of Wisdom Adventure Log, Entry 14 ~ 100%

The Legend of Zelda is the only game series where I tend to complete every new game, even it takes a year. Luckily, in case of Echoes of Wisdom it's only been two weeks, where I generally prefer such more compact experiences for their replayability.

In order to complete the game, I still had to find four more Pieces of Heart, four echoes, one stamp, three accessories, and 16 Might Crystals. So, let's see what I was missing and where my brain was failing, because that's part of the fun. Spoilers ahead for locations of echoes and other things, so you may want to complete the game first yourself before reading this!

Echoes of Wisdom Adventure Log, Entry 13 ~ Finale

Honestly, I was expecting the Eternal Forest to be another step in the adventure, before you venture into the grand finale... somewhere else. And it can be seen that way, but also not, so most of the post will go into one big spoiler box out of precaution. Final dungeon and boss spoilers ahead, so you've been warned!

Echoes of Wisdom Adventure Log, Entry 12 ~ Smoothies

Before heading into the Eternal Forest, I spent some time becoming Hyrule's biggest and most famous smoothie connoisseur. This will just be a very small entry, similar to the one for the Automatons, but I wanted to keep this separate from what comes next...

Echoes of Wisdom Adventure Log, Entry 11 ~ Eldin Volcano

One larger rift remained at Eldin Volcano and this brought me back to the Gorons, where I had explored most of the mountain earlier in the game, before parts of it got swallowed up. As you can see with the starting screenshot of this post, you don't get the intro sequence for these goddess areas until you have official business there. Even though I had explored the volcano before, it only now gave me its overview video. The same thing happened at Hebra and Faron, but I thought it was worth mentioning before we move on.

Echoes of Wisdom Adventure Log, Entry 10 ~ Automatons

Better late than never... In this entry we'll pay Dampé a visit and explore the topic of Automatons. This feature unlocks after the game's mid point at Hyrule Castle, but I hadn't made use of it right away, because I thought that I was still missing a monster...

Echoes of Wisdom Adventure Log, Entry 9 ~ Faron Wetlands

It was time to pay the Deku another visit and explore the Faron Wetlands for what's probably the best dungeon in the game... The music, the humor, and everything was top-notch during the quest, where this is on par with my favorite area so far, the Gerudo Desert.

Echoes of Wisdom Adventure Log, Entry 8 ~ Hebra Mountain

Three large rifts have appeared over the goddess regions in Hyrule and the player can go for them in any order. I picked Mount Lanayru first, because the neighboring Hebra Mountain is the only area I hadn't fully explored yet and where Nintendo has shown almost nothing in advance... So, it was the most intriguing choice for me.