The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom Preview

One of the first things I did after being let loose in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was use a nearby trampoline to clamber onto a roof and say hello to a sleeping cat. It didn’t have anything to say, but the fact I co🍷uld explore so freely was already cause for excitement.

2D Zelda titles like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:A Link to the Past or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Minish Cap are normally defined by singular puzzle solutions and simple combat, with the players expected to complete each game in a very specific way. They’re still masterpieces, but never b🐭efore has one felt so rebellious. Because this time, you aren&rs♔quo;t playing as Link, but Princess Zelda, as she is called into action to save a Hero of Time who finds himself trapped in a land of perpetual darkness. Who’s the damsel in distress now?

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I was immediately smitten with the upcoming adventure during my brief preview, partially because I finally got to play as Zelda in a mainline title, and also due to the🥃 fact that she can summon hordes of spiders from the aether to slaughter her enemies. Don’t mess with this girl.

After Link is captured and a purple darkness begins to consume everything in sight, Zelda is locked away in the dungeons by the King of Hyrule and sentenced to death. Why her father is suddenly so filicidal isn’t explained, but tꦓhe narrative hints that perhaps a sinister force is pulling his strings from the shadows. Either way, we need to escape and avoid being executed. An🧸d tackle the dodgy framerate, since performance sadly hasn’t improved much since Link’s Awakening five years ago.

Echoes of Wisdom - Zelda sneaking out of the Hyrule Castle dungeon

Fortunately for Zelda, a strange spirit known as Tri soon appears and offers to help out. She quickly turns into a staff that Zelda can wield to clone and spawn the majority of objects and living creatures she encounters in the open world, using them as means of platforming,🎐 fighting, and solving puzzles. Zelda can’t defend herself through any traditional means, so Echoes of Wisdom will frequently have you sneaking around, jumping on ceiဣlings, and being a stealthy little Hylian ninja instead of squaring up to every single big bad you see.

Zelda can also jump into pots and hop around like Solid Snake in a cardboard box. It is adorable, anꦓd boꦜdes well for plenty more custom interactions to come in the full game.

Escaping the prison was a fairly traditional stealth sequence as I made use of beds, crates, and tables to build makeshift staircases to hop aboard massive bookcases while guards all patrolled bene🧸ath me. Get caught, and it’s back to the start, so I had to formulate a plan of action beforehand and consider how each echo could be used. It wasn’t long before I was trapping guards between crates, tricking them by throwing a jar from up high, or simply making an awkward run for it. So long as you get the job done, it’s more than valid.

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Echoes of Wisdom - Zelda meets a child who just got a trampoline as a present

After meeting up with Impa and receiving Link’s signature cloak - which Zelda notes has the smell of a musty dresser - we’re set loose in the open world to snoop around. Much like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom, there’s a general🐈 objective on the map to complete, but I spent several minutes exploring a nearby town, finding 🦋a load of new objects, and just doing my own thing. There are plenty of optional side dungeons and cute little interactions to be had that I didn’t want to miss. But since I was on the clock, I behaved myself and pushed forward.

It turns out that the purple voids that have emerged across Hyrule are known as the Still World, an alternate reality of sorts where the environment is sliced into pieces and time operates in a distinctly di𒁏fferent way. You will find people, animals, and objects frozen in stasis, with the only way to free them coming from finding the energy at the source and slaying it. Since this is a Zelda game, that boss normally sits waiting at the end of an elaborate dungeon. After a local man - he didn’t have a name, I promise - asked me to save his wife,🔯 currently trapped in purgatory, I took on the task and dove straight in.

Echoes of Wisdom - Zelda prepares to enter the Still World for the first time

Some of the things I gained echoes of during my preview were a spider, a spear wielding bokoblin, seve🍒ral varieties of rock, a tree, a vase, a trampoline, a snake that goes by the name🐠 ‘Rope’ for some reason, a flammable blob, a sea urchin, and many, many more.

The dungeon layouts aren’t dissimilar to classic 2D Zelda in that you’ll be searching for keys to open doors, hidden treasure chests containing unique items, and doing battle with deadly monsters. But this time,𒐪 the dungeons no longer revolve around a signature mechanic like the boomerang or hookshot, because Zelda can summon a never ending stream o😼f objects that fulfil the same purpose.

It forces you to be inventive at every turn, since there is no wrong or right way to solve a puzzle or defeat a boss. At first, I feared this might make things too simple, or dungeons would just be filled with a handful of new echoe🐽s to discover what would be required to emerge victorio🥀us. But so far, that isn’t the case at all.

Zelda is able to summon echoes with a touch of a face button, with the currentﷺly assigned object or monster decided by selecting them via the D-pad. Much like how you would fuse and spawn objects in Tears of the Kingdom, it’s a long list of items that cꩵan be sorted into different categories.

The list of echoes is endless, although you can only spawn a couple without run💖ning out of resources or needing to replace one with another. Exactly how many echoes can be summoned at any givenꦅ time can be upgraded by completing dungeons, just like how pieces of heart are earned. You can’t fill a room with trampolines and call it a day, you need to be more considered and strategic. But that doesn’t mean it won’t get silly with the combinations you can conjure up.

Whi💮le I didn’t see it in my preview, I’m assured that you can also 🥃unlock outfits and accessories, each with their own unique buffs, as well as mix together potions and smoothies that have similar effects.

I’m curious to see exactly 🤪how extensive the echo mechanic will be in the final game, and if a few extra bells and whistles will be added to make Zelda’s arsenal a little more fully-featured. Our princess protagonist can also transform into a Swordfighter Form, an ability gained from a dark version of Link that allows her to become a blue, sword-wielding spectre that controls like the Hero of Time. It’s a way of attacking boss battles wওhen a weak point is revealed or dealing with a much larger number of enemies. However, it needs special resources to be activated that, at least from what I can see, aren’t too common.

Even without t✨he signature gameplay hook that subverts everything we’ve come to love about 2D Zelda, Echoes of Wisdom presents a delightful world to simply exist in. Judging from its map, its vision of Hyrule is incredibly🔴 vast, while you can also place pins and symbols just like with Tears of the Kingdom, which will make tracking down side quests and retracing your steps infinitely easier.

I just love being Zelda and speaking to people and raiding houses to see how everyone reacts, because for the🦄 first time in decades, we’re the titular Princess instead of the himbo knight destined to save her. The tables have turned, and Zelda is building them this time.