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.

 

~ Back to the Jungle ~

Since I've been here very early in the game, right after Suthorn, I had a nice contrast between then and now. The Deku were acting all normal back then, not sucking on cotton candy made out of Gohma webs, and the difficulty of the monsters was quite tough with only five hearts... Which is why I only went through most of the area briefly at the time, snagging some echoes, but not all of them.

This time I found this guy right away: a Level 3 Lizalfos. And he's about as cheesy as the Lv. 3 Sword Moblin. He doesn't shield, but jumps so high that he can easily fight off all the enemies in the air around Faron. Almost feels like cheating to use these guys.

The real MVP during this whole part of the game has been the Igneozol, however, because setting things on fire helps with so many problems here. You can easily destroy plant monsters, like the Deku Baba, and the spider webs. And Faron has lots of dark underground areas, where you need to light all torches. I like how this game can make smaller and seemingly insignificant enemies so useful again. Alternatively, you can also use Bombfish to destroy the Deku Babas and webs, which is the preferred way whenever it rains.

~ The Latest Deku Craze ~

The Zora, Goron, and Gerudo all have been important tribes in the two big Zelda games for the Nintendo Switch, which makes the Deku feel the most special here. In fact, the only other time where the Deku were featured as a tribe was in Majora's Mask. And it's so good to have them back, because they are absolutely hilarious and by far the weirdest of the tribes in this Hyrule.

Today I've walked past by a small festival in my home town and some people were eating cotton candy... You can make an educated guess what I was thinking when I saw that. The whole idea for this quest, where an entire village is snacking on spider webs like addicts, is just absolutely bonkers, but the Deku make it work.

I had some good laughs here and I also love how the Deku define houses... It's essentially just some leftover ruins on the ground, where they put some large leaves on it and done. No roof, no nothing. If only life were so simple and carefree as when you're a Deku.

Then there was Tri commenting about their peeping sounds... You're one to talk, Tri! I still like you, you adorable ball with triangles. It was also quite funny how weirded out Tri is by the Deku overall.

Well, at first the main quest around the Faron Wetlands seemed a bit dull. You want to get into the "Sweet Spot" (so punny), where the entrance to the big rift is, but you first need to get the Membership Card for it. And this brings you from one small rift to another.

Things get more interesting once they throw you into jail for mending those rifts... Because it's how they get their tasty sweets from Gohma. I had previously said that this game already had enough stealth sections, but I'm making a special exception for this one, because it's uniting all the different "don't get spotted" parts from the Nintendo 64 games in one game: the soldiers at Hyrule Castle, the Gerudo, and now the Deku. And it's a bit more interesting, because the Deku have taken away your Tri Rod to use it as a cotton candy stick (much to the disgust of Tri). But I found that simply throwing the pots to distract them works best, so it wasn't overly complicated.

~ Faron Temple ~

If you've followed this blog series, then you'll know that I've been complaining about the dungeons quite a lot. They were all too simple and too straight-forward for the most part... Well, you can imagine my delight when I've made my way to the Faron Temple.

It starts with there being multiple entrances, some of them hidden, similar to the Skull Woods from A Link to the Past. I've even got into the temple via a side-scrolling section, which is something that has never happened before outside of The Adventure of Link. In Echoes of Wisdom this perspective is seeing a resurgence and is utilized a lot more than it was in the Game Boy (Color) titles, but not to the same degree as in Four Swords Adventures, where you had entire levels played from the side view.

It already shows how much more important it became, when these tunnels are fully detailed on the map now. And you will probably use the map quite a bit in the Faron Temple, because the dungeon is very open and requires a good amount of navigation for you to solve it. And that's exactly how I like it!

I think I even found a shortcut. In the above tunnel I think the intended solution is to enter it from below, which is very much possible. Then you drop two boulders through the grate on the right to reach the crystal switch on the left. But I came in from the top and then tried getting some echo to activate the switch by moving it there via Bind. This was quite some trial-and-error, because you can't target the switch from above, so your echoes will either do nothing or try to get back to you. But it finally worked with an Igneozol, again the MVP of this area.

The dungeon is so non-linear that I even had two keys at once! I don't think this was ever possible before, except for maybe the Gerudo Sanctum at the end, but I forgot... Of course, this pales in comparison to Link's Awakening, where you can easily collect four or more keys at once without using them, because the dungeons their give you so many options. But this is progress and I want to highlight it!

However, even though you can play the three temples in any order, the game's intended order is seemingly Eldin to Lanayru to Faron, because this is how the sanctums are placed on the save file and in the menu, and also the order of how the King of Hyrule lists the goddess areas. This means that we might be looking at another Ice Ruins scenario, where it was the only challenging dungeon in A Link Between Worlds at the very end, after a series of rather simple and short dungeons. But one good dungeon is better than none. And it proves that Grezzo can make proper dungeons if they want to. More of that, please!

There is a new type of puzzle in this dungeon in the form of green switches, which all need to be powered with electricity at the same time. However, they store it for a while, so you have some time to do them one after another... And here I got the feeling that I was completely cheesing them all. Like, in the above puzzle I was just sending an Electric Keese to all three of them. Done, easy.

Or I was utilizing the Sparks a lot from the Eastern Temple, though they are a lot more erratic than I'd like them to be. They hang onto walls above an abyss until they don't. They are attached to one wall until they are not... I couldn't make much sense of them, to be honest, but it was still enough to make some cheese.

The Faron Temple also brings back the dual switches, or whatever you want to call them. Maybe a better term is "simulswitch", because you have to activate them simultaneously, but let's not dwell on that. But the dungeon teaches you what's probably the easiest way of dealing with them: Armos. Just get an echo of an Armor to walk over one switch and walk over the other yourself with the right timing. This trivializes these puzzles and should theoretically also work in the Lanayru Temple... I simply didn't think of this echo at the time.

All those many echoes will make the game very interesting to replay. But once you figure all the good stuff out, it might also break the game on multiple ends. But that can be fun as well, especially for speed-runners. I heard from the news that people are already beating this title in under an hour and I can imagine.

You will also love this game if you like classic bosses, that's for sure. In case of this dungeon's mini-boss you'll get Manhandla, probably best known from Hyrule Warriors. In the series its last appearance was in Four Swords Adventures, twenty years ago. But this one is entirely stationary, similar to the one from Four Swords.

It's also a throwback to another mini-boss: the Master Stalfos from Link's Awakening. In the beginning it steals the chest with the boss key and then you have to search for it in the dungeon. Well, you only have to do it twice, where I wouldn't have minded a third battle, but it's a good combination of classic ideas and I liked this quite a lot.

The main bosses so far were all new, however, and all quite excellent, so they aren't just relying on nostalgia alone with these. Ganon was pure nostalgia, though, and he now gets some company in the form of Gohma (and probably also Volvagia next). This was no surprise, because the Deku kept talking about a big spider and you've already fought countless Baby Gohmas before.

But despite the name and the spider form, it very much felt like a new take on the traditional boss, kind of like what they had done with Armogohma in Twilight Princess. You have to trigger some of Gohma's feet with electricity, it spits its spider webs everywhere, but is also able to do that fiery laser attack from Armogohma. Oh, and it hatches Baby Gohmas as well.

~ Void Given Form ~

After this excellent dungeon I also got another treat... Farore turned out to be quite informative, where you would expect this out of Nayru instead. But maybe this gets triggered after beating your second temple (let me know in the comments, I'm curious).

And I'm blown away by what Echoes of Wisdom is doing with its story. We're talking about a new top-down Zelda game here, which gets treated by some as a spin-off even (not by me), but yet this is delivering some heavy new lore that goes far beyond what Skyward Sword had done with Demise, the Goddess Hylia and the Master Sword.

You have this being called "Null", which just void. The three goddesses have created the world to contain this being and then created the Tris to take care of the rifts it makes. So, the big bad of the Zelda universe is essentially the Hollow Knight... Who would have ever expected that?

Well, it also leaves a sour taste in my mouth, because this is probably a one-time villain that came out of the idea for the echoes and the rifts. On the one hand it's nice that they are willing to give a smaller Zelda game such a huge backstory, on the other hand it might be wasted. Maybe Null will turn into a new series villain after this, but I daut it...

~ Hidden Ruins ~

Once the rift is gone, the Dekus are trading one addiction for another: cotton candy is out, smoothies are in! I don't know how they can keep drinking one infinitely, but this was such a fun and clever conclusion to this storyline, connecting this to the smoothie shop(s).

You can find the Fairy Fragrance from one of the new side quests, where you have to play a very simple game of hide-and-seek. But the Deku keeps telling you where he's hiding with very obvious hints, so this really feels like child's play...

A lot more serious is the awaited return of Smog. I first found its hideout on my own and immediately recognized the new music from the Eastern Temple... But the passage further in is collapsed, so I thought I had to search for another entrance (the Faron Temple had a lot, after all).

Instead, you first have to trigger another side quest in order to get this to open, where it will score you the Curious Charm, as an upgrade to the Ancient Charm. Curiously, this time it really upgrades the existing accessory, because a Deku is modifying it. So, you can't equip the weaker and stronger version together...

But I wonder if this is something that's technically possible to unlock before the rifts appear in this area. So, you clear the Eastern Temple and then go to the Faron Wetlands right after. I hadn't really been there after my first visit, so I don't know yet... That's something to experiment with in a second playthrough.

As for the second Smog battle, it's fought entirely from the side-scrolling perspective, making this very different from the first. Not much to say here, other than I was using the new Beamos now, instead of Octoroks, to attack him. Still very cool to have this boss back.