8/10 – 27 hours
12/31/2024
I had a serious honeymoon phase with this game, but it’s still pretty solid! It’s hard for Nintendo to make Zelda completely undercooked (they leave that for Mario sports). I’ve missed 2D Zelda and this is a good one.
- I like the Echoes system a lot. It was mind blowingly fun at first and I loved the process of gathering the Echoes and using them for different scenarios. Over time, the excitement died down a lot as the puzzles seesawed from being clever to just…fine? Nothing crazy most of the time. But the game still has its charm and the Echoes provide a cool new way to experience the “aha!” like Zelda games should.
- The game does open up after you reclaim Hyrule Castle, and this latter section is pretty fun and clever. They absolutely cooked with the Faron region and dungeon–that alone added a point to the score. Super clever puzzles, Hebra and Eldin are a little annoying at times with platforming.
- The vibes of the game are great too. When the game isn’t stuttering or getting fuzzy in quality you get to enjoy the cute aesthetics of the Link’s Awakening remake in a semi Link to the Past type world. The music is cute and has some nice chill songs here and there, and the story is chill and nice even if it won’t knock your socks off
- Some nice touches here and there, like having a horse that you can later summon at any time.
- I wish they moved on from TOTK more with the damn menu scrolling mid combat. You still have to juggle the different filters to find what you want. I find it easiest to use the “last used” menu, since you have your recent echoes right there, and any new ones can be quickly found by scrolling left and looping to the end. There really is a BOTW trickle down which is interesting, via the smoothie cooking, jump button, and save anywhere function. (The latter two are just modern game necessities.) The cooking system here feels less intuitive though, it’s not entirely clear which ingredients provide the “main effect” and which ones are a “support” or secondary effect. Kinda just made shit up until I found what worked.
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