Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

@FishyS The Pajamas are the best outfit in the game. About the only time I'd change out of them was to talk to cats or harvest some more mangos, because they're the only other outfits that do anything at all.

So far as the minigames go, the Frog Ring comes in handy, but that's about it for smoothies and accessories.

@FishyS Exactly. There are barely any climbing spots on the map, and the boost isn't really needed for any of them at all.

I used the glowing, oxygen, and fire-proof and ice-proof effects quite a lot.

But yes, smoothies are basically mostly for healing (and replenishing energy). And that’s fine.

Yeah, I've barely used smoothies. They're only really good as an emergency heal in a boss battle or other type of combat situation where you're locked in until you beat them. But if you can retreat, the bed is far better (because you know, it's free).

Anyway, just beat Eldin and Lanayru and no, they weren't like Faron. Disappointing, sounds like Faron is as good as it gets with the dungeons. And even then, I just realized that even Faron gets a bit linear later on. It's like they tried to make it Skull Woods and quit halfway through. So yeah, the dungeon design does generally suck, but Faron feels like a step forward. More like that and less like the others in the next game please.

@Bolt_Strike Yeaaah Faron is the best one in the game. Majority of the dungeons in this one are linear hallways instead of being like they usually are in 2D Zeldas. Strikes me as odd as well, given that the same devs worked on the Link's Awakening remake. You'd think they would've learned something from working on that.

Well they didn't really "learn" much given they were just working off the blueprints of an already successful title. While the dungeon quality here is subjective, it provides the team a better opportunity to figure what makes a good modern top-down dungeon.

@VoidofLight Ehh, Link's Awakening's dungeons weren't much better, they were heavily simplified because of the limitations of the GB and I don't recall them being particularly nonlinear or difficult to figure out. So I don't think that was a good game to really learn dungeon design from. IMO, ALBW, ALttP, and Minish Cap were peak dungeon design, those are the games you really want to learn from. Everything else is at least a tier below, usually because of system limitations (I mean what do you expect? The other ones were on ancient, archaic hardware like the NES and GB). And really that just adds insult to injury. Because the Switch is the most powerful of all of the consoles that's had an original top down Zelda and it's the only exception to that pattern. The dungeon design is bad due to a conscious choice and not because that was all the system could handle.

@Bolt_Strike This is why I wish Nintendo didn't dissolve their handheld teams. If they kept them around, I feel like we probably would've had a 2D Zelda made by the team that did Link Between Worlds, rather than by Grezzo. While Link's Awakening had some pretty weak dungeons, I still found them to be a bit more fun in comparison to the dungeons we got with Echoes of Wisdom. More impressive puzzles, along with themes that were more interesting (at least imo). It just feels like they fell flat on their face with the dungeons for this game. Had good mechanics, just didn't utilize them to the best of their ability. Had layouts that didn't have you backtracking unlike previous game's dungeons did.

@N00BiSH That's true I guess. If they make a new top-down game after this one, I hope they make something that ends up being on-par with A Link Between Worlds rather than something like Echoes of Wisdom.

It may have just been a conscious design decision. Backtracking is used as a curse word in a lot of gaming circles and it goes a bit against the 'do things in whatever order you want' philosophy. I feel like they could have added more puzzles without adding backtracking though; there were a few hard puzzles (at least the way I solved them ) but not many.

@FishyS Ehh, backtracking works if utilized right. The dungeons in Echoes of Wisdom inherently go against the "do what you want in whatever order you want," when you take into account how a good amount are pretty much going from room to room in a straight line. Even Tears of the Kingdom and BotW had a good amount of backtracking in their dungeons in order to get from place to place.

Most of the dungeons in previous Zeldas utilized backtracking to a pretty decent degree, which made the temples and dungeons feel like places that could actually exist naturally on some level or another. Many different rooms near one another, with multiple different exits and entrances. A soft hand guiding you to a specific door at the end, but it not feeling like you're forced down a linear hall towards that door even then. Echoes often feels like you're being forced down a narrow path within dungeons, with the illusion of being able to tackle things in the order you wish.

I actually like how a lot of the mini-dungeon rifts let you find the things in any order... usually some routes were easier but other routes still worked and somehow you never had to cross your path which seemed kind of magical.

To be fair, they very specifically aren't real places that exist in EoW.... they are pieces glued together by space outside of the universe. Given the inside/outside nature I was actually worried when I first started playing that I would get completely utterly lost in the dungeons; I would have been fine with less linear but I was kind of happy they were somewhat linear.

That philosophy doesn't really come through in the dungeon design for the most part. Again, the first half of Faron Temple is good, the multiple entrances does give you some level of freedom to figure out your own way through the dungeon and progress as you see fit, but in the latter half of the dungeon (starting from the lower outside section and the second Armos puzzle) and in the rest of the dungeons, you don't really get that sense of choice. There's only one way forward and you have to do things in a specific order. Find the key to unlock the next door. Complete the puzzle to open up the next room. And so on. Creative use of Echoes doesn't help you circumvent these kinds of roadblocks, your only choice is to complete the dungeon in the scripted order using the scripted mechanics. If they could solve that then yes, that would be excellent and thematically fitting dungeon design, but aside from the aforementioned Faron Temple, they're not really there yet with these dungeons.

@FishyS Bolt is right honestly. The open philosophy doesn't come across in the dungeon design, and neither does the "good" linearity from the original Zelda titles. It's in this weird middleground where the dungeons just tend to feel far too simplistic and meaningless.

On top of that, the rift puzzles were pretty uninspired imo. Other than the big story ones with the dungeons, most of the small rifts that exist were pretty much just a repackaging of the "Tears of Light" concept that both Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword utilized. The whole "Silent Realm" sort of deal. This time it's "optional" though, with even more uninspired puzzles that tend to be repeated time and time again. After about the second small rift I did, I grew tired of doing them. I only continued to do them in order to level up Tri and get the might crystals I needed.

Um what? No, the dungeons definitely are real places, they got pulled into the rift, not cobbled together by pieces of real places. Some of those places we actually visit in both the real and Still World, such as Suthorn Ruins and Hyrule Castle, with identical designs between both. And then there's several which are mentioned as being real places multiple times throughout the story, such as Gerudo Sanctum and Lanayru Temple. The rest (aside from Eldin Temple, but we can't see the entirety of the volcano so it's likely somewhere a bit deeper in) seem to directly connect to real world places that are just conveniently blocked off by collapsed passageways to force you to access them in the Still World. We can see the parts of the Still World that are just cobbled together, they're the chunks of land and random objects strewn about. The dungeons though? They're all real places, the game confirms that.

While there was still a sidequest to complete by making smoothies, I was really enjoying it, but once that was done I lost all interest in the drinks.

@Bolt_Strike I was considering the still world/rift portions to be part of the dungeon, not just the main chunk of building so I wasn't trying to contradict what you just said. Regardless, the only point I was trying to make is that I feel like they were purposefully going for a surreal and unnatural vibe for the dungeons.

@VoidofLight Honestly I just thought of the mini rifts as mini platforming challenges, not puzzles. They were super simple, I just enjoyed the opportunity to jump around. And they had that horrifying sound if you fell.

@Uncle_Franklin Yeah, something happens when you get all recipes, but I kinda wish they had explicitly made it a quest; I got less interested after I finished the last quest for them also.

I am so proud of Zelda's cat. You are the one true hero of Hyrule.

@FishyS Even as platforming challenges, it still just got incredibly stale by the third one. Genuinely don’t get why they keep bringing back the tears of light concept.

So just beat the final boss.

I found it a sumptuous game,
but afterwards I felt that there should be another half rather than the end.

@Uncle_Franklin
I am glad you liked it. It would be cool to play some of Link's adventures before the beginning of the game.