echoes of wisdom

note: this discusses plot beats and stuff in Echoes of Wisdom; if you don't want your experience altered by my (and my daughter's) experience, come back to this

We finished Echoes of Wisdom; it was fun! I'd like to go and collect a few last things I missed^[1], and Gooseberry just wants more--actually here, I'll just share her review first:

"Can we start it over? Where link gets swallowed up and then the king?"

She also noted her favorite part is when Zelda and Link work together to fight, and how Zelda would grab Null's arms and hold them for Link to chop. (I'd like to note that in that moment she was excitedly jumping around as Link shouting "Chop!!!" every time)

As for me:

"man, what a Zelda game 😌"

My favorite elements include the unconventional combat, the fact Zelda's the main finally, a good puzzle flow (with a few stumpers, even, something I didn't anticipate given the multiple "very nearly a win button" echoes), my besties the other zoras, and the music.

The music specifically really surprised me for some reason--it's Zelda, I go throughout most days with at least a jingle from one flitting through my head^[2], so of course it'll have some great songs--but I think what really caught me was the instrumentation, which frequently mixed brass and strings in some really surprising combos as well as threw in some square(?) wave synth along with it that was very fun--often to echo themes from previous games but also just to have a Good Sound.

The plot, of course, is relatively barebones, but with plenty of spaces to fill in with your own vision--this is extremely LoZ which makes me glad, but also bears new weight with playing with a kid who's only just begun stitching together plots that stretch over multiple sessions^[3]. Watching her grapple with the mystery of the rifts (Who's making them? How do we fix them? Why are Tri's friends trapped? Why are all the other people trapped? were a constant refrain the first half of the game) and work through troublesome imposters and people doing bad things to maintain their addictions^[4] with just the minimal dialogue and progress beats reminded me how it just Works Good. There's so much room to ask why and then fill in those whys with a mix of "let's keep going and find out"s and "what do YOU think"s makes it a delightful experience to share.

Speaking of sharing, in a lot of ways this playthrough felt like streaming maybe? (solo) videogaming is often a quiet experience for me--a recharge activity like reading or archery or (some) Making. I'll thoroughly explore, experiment, optimize stats, and often speedread dialogue. With a sidecar player I ended up playing much differently, deferring to her for priorities, reading much of the dialogue out loud, using her favorite monsters, and adjusting my pace to fit the attention span of a four year old. It made the experience much less restful, but it also brought its own delights: making sure to chat with cats, random detours just to go back and say hi to the sea zoras (for the record, the queen is also The Mom, potentially for literally all of the sea zoras?), and at one point, navigating half a dungeon inside of a pot because I had accidentally jumped inside of one in one room and it was too silly to not continue (sadly you can't actually go thru doors in one, but echoes let you pop out a new pot instantly).

We had a real good time.

• gooseberry
• video games
• legends of zelda