The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Echoes does what Tears of the Kingdon't)

Superb.

I've realised that Zelda is maybe the only franchise where I'll properly take time out to give the minigames the time of day.  This has led to me getting very annoyed about the lack of quick restart options, but also to this: the current Balladeer's Definitive Ranking of Echoes Minigames.
1. Slumber Battles
2. Horse races
3. This space for rent Mango harvesting
4. Go home Acorn Gathering, you're bad

I've only encountered Acorn Gathering so far. If there had been something below that on your list . . . I shudder at the thought

The good news is that you can come back to them with the Zora Flippers and Frog Ring accessories, plus a couple of well-chosen monsters, and turn them into utter jokes.

I've also stumbled across the automata, very late in the day (I've got one dungeon to go I think), and I'm probably going to utterly ignore them. I've got so many powerful monsters (including the one from the forest ) that won't break and don't need winding up. It seems like a strange inclusion, all told.

I finished this week and I liked it!

The automata were a weird inclusion, but I did get them all anyway. I guess the benefit to them is that there were no limitations to how many you have out because they don't use Tri pieces? But then there are so many echoes available that that in itself was never really a limitation.

I just did the boss fight with

Spoiler:

and stubbornly beat it while only doing damage with Ropes and only transforming to play tennis.

True man of the people, Buska. Champion of the pRopeletariat.

I need to get back to this! I picked it up on launch and I've completed the Goron, Gerudo and Zora regions, so I've got a couple more to go before a big finale, I'd expect. A couple of weeks off with loads of different things I had planned scuppered my playthrough, but I'll hop back in soon enough.

I've really enjoyed what I've played so far. It's the first 2D Zelda with BotW influences and that is no bad thing - having a bit more of a freeform approach to how you handle different puzzles or traversing across the world has been a treat and it scratches that BotW itch of feeling like you broke the game in solving a puzzle in a way the developers probably already expected.

I've not had any terribly bad bits of performance beyond a few stuttery zones in the overworld - I think this actually performs better than the Link's Awakening remake. Oh, and that Zelda's Theme overworld tune? Top stuff.

Buskalilly wrote:

I still think frame rates are something everyone made up to gaslight me.

I wish I had your eyes.

JayMoyles wrote:

I wish I had your eyes.

My doctor told me I have the eyes of a junior high school student. I ace distant and detail, maybe I'm less good at movement?

I see the frame rate in this particular instance but it doesn't really bother me, maybe I'm one of the lucky ones.

I rolled credits the other day and overall it's a lot of fun, it won't trouble my top Zelda games but it was nice to experiment with a lot of the different echoes and much like BotW/TotK it thrives off feeling like you've broken the game or wasting a good 10 minutes trying to do something the hard way just because you can.

JayMoyles wrote:

I've really enjoyed what I've played so far. It's the first 2D Zelda with BotW influences and that is no bad thing - having a bit more of a freeform approach to how you handle different puzzles or traversing across the world has been a treat and it scratches that BotW itch of feeling like you broke the game in solving a puzzle in a way the developers probably already expected.

While it's obviously the first 2D Zelda since the open-world shift, I feel like ALBW had a similar level of freedom, just directed differently. I didn't like it too much in that either - without wanting to go Full Mas, and having enjoyed EoW a whole lot as you might have seen in LGYP, the dungeons and puzzles are still nowhere near as tight as they were from OoT to SS inclusive. I'd love a good fully trad Zelda again, I just don't think it'll happen. Remakes of the Oracles and Minish Cap might do though.

The freeform stuff I've noticed less than just the BotW objective markers and stuff - that feels weird. To be honest, it feels kinda linear in each section, and while there is some freedom in puzzles, I'll often use echoes I recently acquired. I don't feel what value there would be in a game which is basically this but a little less room for creativity. Apart from for people without creativity.

Buskalilly wrote:

Apart from for people who don't want creativity in their games.

Fixed.  I think even you would find it hard to describe me as "without creativity".  Unless you're insulting your own podcast theme.

But... yep, I have enough creativity going on outside games.  In games I want complex puzzles with one satisfying feeling solution.  I want to use five of my items nicely together to figure out the solution to the puzzle, and know that it is the solution to the puzzle, meticulously designed to be solved that way by genii at their craft.  I'd posit that those solutions are more fun to discover in many cases than "use Platboom again".

Despite all of which I still really really liked this game and liked its dungeons a lot too. Zelda's good innit.

Balladeer wrote:

Buskalilly wrote:

Apart from for weak-minded, submissive specimens who need the nanny state to tell them when to wipe their soft little arses.

Fixed.  I think even you would find it hard to describe me as "without creativity".  Unless you're insulting your own podcast theme.

No now its fixed.

Jokes aside, I'm also not a big fan of games with no direction at all - I have no interest in Minecraft, and I bounced off the most recent Animal Crossing when I realised my animals didn't need me to work for their affection and I'd unlocked everything to do. But I feel like in Zelda's case, it's possible to play through the game and feel like a satisfactory answer was found, and then enjoy finding out other people had different ones. Just like I feel one could play through TotK especially as though it were a linear Zelda, going where NPCs say to go and following quest lines. I don't see why one would want to be more railroaded, only for the same eventual result.

I'd chalk it up to the same brain difference that sees you disliking choices in games, which I think is a case of FOMO for you but satisfaction in my own version of events for me, but then there's the Mas of it all. So I can only surmise that I'm a born leader, trend setting iconoclast, and you're just sheeple, the teeming masses that exist to lift up the exceptional few.

Also, you're the one who prefers exploratory Mario?!??!?!?
God, people are confusing. Just like everything I like, or at least be wrong in the same consistent way.

Odd isn't it as I do like choices in games, like now playing Dragon Age Veilguard, I'll use different party then Andy and make different choices. Even Elden Ring, that I did look at a guide as I said, but it was the long the lines of you need to get to Mountaintops of the Giants, and then I figured out how to get there on my own little adventure.

Yet BotW hated it wasn't linear, and you've seen me get lost in Dark Souls as I don't know where I'm going, so gave up.

Though also with ER, do have the sites of grace which do give a sense of direction as well.

Buskalilly wrote:

Also, you're the one who prefers exploratory Mario?!??!?!?
God, people are confusing. Just like everything I like, or at least be wrong in the same consistent way.

There's a big aspect I'm purposefully dancing around because it's not objec- not something I can look at dispassionately.  It's what the games were doing when I got properly into them for the first time.  Zelda was doing OoT and Mario was doing 64.  Zelda was doing prescribed puzzles and dungeons with a stronger story focus and Mario was doing exploratory stuff.  This definitely has an influence on what I like.

At the same time, for me exploratory Mario is closer to something like Xenoblade.  Huge worlds but prescribed one-approach tasks in them.  The illusion of non-linearity in linear worlds.  Actually I think you can say the same for my golden age of Zelda, which ends not at Skyward Sword (the last truly prescribed item-gated Zelda) but arguably with Twilight Princess.  After that you have SS but also Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, games which took away some of the freedom of the overworld for more regimented styles of movement but kept the other OoT-age Zelda fundamentals.  I like those three less than I like the BotW (or arguably ALBW) era.

What you say about choices is definitely FOMO for me and I do think that has some impact here as well, the fear of missing out "the intended" most satisfying solution.  I won't try to explain the Mas of it all.

Well, each to their own.

Except obviously, really, like everyone, I secretly don't believe "each to their own" deep down in my core. I think I'm right and you're wrong, and that my preferences reflect some way that I'm better than you and you don't quite know what you're on about. But it's not polite to say that, so we all join in the collective lie that we accept some things as a matter of taste.

Oh for sure, "each to their own" is code for "I don't understand your take at all and think you're badly badly wrong but I know from bitter experience I won't get through to you and/or can't be bothered, also stop buying games I don't like and driving demand for them and go buy the stuff I go on about all the time*".

* Beast Breaker

I think I was partially ripping off this, though I've not seen it in a decade.

Balladeer wrote:

the stuff I go on about all the time . . . Beast Breaker

I swear this is the first time I'm hearing about this game?

I do get the FOMO a tad, as Silent Hill 2 I did just go watch the other seven endings though with that had seen the dog ending back in day.

But still happy of the ending I got and my playthrough of Silent Hill 2, which as say be same for Veilguard.

Buska wrote:

To be honest, it feels kinda linear in each section, and while there is some freedom in puzzles, I'll often use echoes I recently acquired.

I think the linear aspect is why I'd often not play it for a week or so, there's just isn't as much to do in-between the main temples. I enjoyed the game overall but for all the echoes you collect throughout I think they missed out on having you earn some of them in more interesting ways.

Buskalilly wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

the stuff I go on about all the time . . . Beast Breaker

I swear this is the first time I'm hearing about this game?

No it's not.

I referenced it in my eShop song

The_Jaster wrote:

I think the linear aspect is why I'd often not play it for a week or so, there's just isn't as much to do in-between the main temples.  

I relate to this. I'll often do "a bit", and then decide there isn't enough time to do another "bit", so I turn it off.

Buskalilly wrote:

Balladeer wrote:

the stuff I go on about all the time . . . Beast Breaker

I swear this is the first time I'm hearing about this game?

Hooooooooooooooooo boy.

So if you want the short version, it's under the second spoiler here.  (Under 'B', natch.)
If you want my full views they're here.
Or if for some reason you'd rather read a professional writer's view over mine , here's the review that made me buy it in the first place.

Basically it's one of the most compulsive games I've played in the last few years, but also good as opposed to just being addictive.  It looks kinda simple and I guess came out without much fanfare, both of which I think have contributed to its presumed failure.  (The devs Vodeo Games were the first video game studio with a certified union in North America, before going under a year after BB's release.  Not to play on Buska's left-wing tendencies or anything.)  But the battle gameplay is unbelievably good, so long as you're willing to mix up the weapons to get the nebulous "renown".  Proper "one more go" stuff, only afterwards it feels satisfying as opposed to an empty husk of an experience.  Very woke writing and characters too, without being preachy.

I just about stand by that 8/10 but it's on the cusp of being a 9.  Or to translate that into non-numerate Buskanese, I really really bloody rate it.





...er, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Breaker or something. Wait. No, not that.

I also enjoyed this particular Zelda