Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom Prelude

I haven't kept it much of a secret that I think Tears Of The Kingdom burnt me hard. It's not something I've ever talked about much in depth here beyond the occasional mention, and there's a reason for that. I don't really trust myself to write a full review about TotK that doesn't devolve into mad rambling, it really is that bad. I at least had respect for the game at first, but then Aonuma had that interview where he claimed that people only liked the more linear pre-BotW entries out of nostalgia and it pretty much killed any remaining sympathy I had left to give it. Frankly, that interview almost killed my love for the franchise entirely, it made me finally understand what the Sticker Star haters were getting at. It wasn't until just a few weeks ago when I actually considered getting Echoes Of Wisdom, after seeing some footage that did actually make me hopeful for the game. I was still worried that I'd get burned again, or that even if it was good, I'd be supporting a direction for the Zelda series that I wasn't fully okay with. However, I had that same exact worry with the TTYD remake and it ended up being one of my most positive experiences of the year, so who knows?

But before I talk about my thoughts on Echoes Of Wisdom, I need to actually talk about why Tears Of The Kingdom fell so flat for me, and I'll keep it brisk because I really don't want to ramble. I don't deny that TotK has some really great moments and ideas (Great Sky Island, most of the bosses, the Lightning Temple, the fuse mechanic), but I think my biggest issue with it on a mechanical level is the repurposing of the overworld from Breath Of The Wild. BotW is a game that took me about 100 hours to fully get the most of, it's a real commitment of a game, so hopping back into Hyrule and realizing I was going to need to do pretty much all of it again, from activating the towers to completing all the shrines, already killed so much of my motivation to keep playing. There is a fair amount of new content, for sure, but they're spaced out between large stretches of dead air and stuff I've already done. This also hampers the exploration which is the element that makes Zelda such a great series to me. I love the sense of going on an adventure and exploring every inch of a Zelda game's world, but if I'm already familiar with every inch of the world, what is there to even explore? The three sky islands in the entire game? The flat, drab, and empty depths that are just an inverted version of the Hyrule map anyway? The dozens of copy-paste caves with nothing new after the first few? The 50+ empty Shrines?

The immersive sim elements of Tears Of The Kingdom, on the other hand, are something I'm a lot more mixed on. As someone with experience in game design myself, I fully recognize just how impressive the Ultrahand mechanic is on a technical level. The fact that the physics work as well as they do is just straight-up revolutionary. But is it a fun mechanic in practice? Ehhhhh, not really. This is your main means of traversal, but having to stop and build something every time you want to go somewhere screws up the pacing so badly compared to the first entry. BotW had so many great, simple mobility options like Cryonis, Stasis, and Revali's Gale, but now they're pretty much all replaced having to slowly build a contraption to do what you could previously have done at the push of a button. This tedium then breeds exploitation, people quickly discovered that you can build an overpowered air bike that lets you fly over the entire map with zero consequences. You can even smuggle it into shrines and dungeons to break their puzzles as well, completely removing any difficulty or engagement within the game, so now you have the opposite problem. Having the freedom to do whatever you want is great, but compared to its predecessor, Tears Of The Kingdom doesn't feel balanced around its freedom whatsoever. Its few limitations are arbitrarily placed, and yet, it never stops you from cheesing its puzzles in the least fun ways possible.

I get the sense that Nintendo spent most of Tears Of The Kingdom's development refining the Ultrahand mechanic, only to remember that they also needed to build a game around it because it's also incredibly lacking in cohesion, especially compared to both Breath Of The Wild and its sister sequel Majora's Mask. Breath Of The Wild had a naturalistic overworld and a consistently melancholic tone, with a simple but effective story about reminiscing about the past. It all clicked together incredibly well. Majora's Mask repurposed assets from Ocarina in a uniquely haunting fashion that heightened the emotional impact of its preecessor while also being a fresh new Zelda adventure with new environments, atmosphere, and themes. Tears Of The Kingdom, on the other hand, mars that overworld with sloppily placed sky rocks scattered everywhere, in turn making it feel more artifical. It uses the flashback structure of BotW, but with a more linear narrative so experiencing it at your own pace feels a lot less satisfying. And while Majora's Mask feels like it built on Ocarina, TotK tosses away pretty much all of the intricate worldbuilding of its own predecessor to introduce an entirely new set of lore. It's everything a sequel shouldn't be.

By nature, some of these issues automatically do not apply to Echoes Of Wisdom. It does not repurpose a massive open world, and by virtue of being a 2D game, it's a lot tighter and more condensed despite still being open. It doesn't have the baggage of being a sequel, nor does it have six years worth of expectations weighing it down. And the new Echo system, despite having similarities to the Ultrahand, already seems a lot more simple than having to slowly assemble a huge contraption. But as I said, Tears Of The Kingdom burnt me hard, and it was in a way that no other Zelda game ever had. I like pretty much every other Zelda game, it was the first one to show me that Zelda games could let me down. So naturally, I was quite wary about Echoes Of Wisdom. But I did also want to go in with an open mind, and to give the game credit, the more I saw of it, the more genuinely excited I got. I'll be starting with Echoes Of Wisdom tomorrow, and my proper review of the game will come out in a bit, along with a Dungeon Reviews on its dungeons. I really hope it's good.