The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

🎯 IGN Score: 9.0

It's Finally My Turn

After years of waiting, the protagonist of "The Legend of Zelda" has finally returned to the beloved princess. This time, players can play as Zelda, using a new "Pokémon" ability to defeat enemies and solve a series of puzzles in a beautiful world similar to Dream Island. Although some of the game's mechanics feel a bit naive and formulaic in actual play, it also shows the efforts made by the production team to enrich the gameplay experience. This work indeed opens up new ideas for the development of the 2D Zelda series. Let's take a look and see if this "Legend of Zelda: Zelda" meets everyone's expectations.

Not Bad, I am the Pokémon Master

The evergreen "hardworking" green-hat master only makes a brief appearance in the prologue and then quickly goes offline. Zelda will face the void that devours the world, starting an adventure suitable for all ages.

Entering the game officially, the most surprising part is Zelda's summoning ability. By touching items with the Torry Wand or defeating new enemies, you can obtain their duplicates. The new mechanism plays a crucial role in both decryption and combat.

In terms of decryption, Zelda can use tables to build stairs, place clouds that don't require support to achieve unlimited climbing, generate ice blocks to press机关, summon creatures to complete scene interactions, and even achieve remote summoning duplicates. Among them, the function of connecting items to synchronize movement can see some shadows of the 3D Zelda open world. The continuous emergence of new gameplay also makes the experience of the first few hours of the process full of fun.

Speaking of combat, the Torry Wand's ability to summon the characteristics of enemies is second to none. With a wave of the wand, players can directly become Pokémon masters, shaking people upon meeting, with troops including marine, land, and air.

If you can't beat them one-on-one, switch to a group beating tactic. Zelda can also hold a remote attack summon, becoming a mobile battery, mainly focusing on the enemy advancing and retreating.

The different attributes of the summon also reflect in combat, with elemental counterattacks ensuring the fun of BOSS battles. Even the beds used to replenish blood can be summoned anytime, anywhere. I can't remember how many times I fell asleep in combat, and I can only say that young people are in good health!

▲Don't fight yet, sleep first.

Speaking of this, you must be a bit impatient, but now I'm going to splash some cold water and cool everyone down. First, the summoning system, there are a total of 127 collectible duplicates in the game, but not many are commonly used, which makes the process of finding duplicates a bit tedious. Players need to spend time searching slowly, and at the same time, the game's own classification is difficult to meet the needs of players. Most of the time, I arrange them according to the order of use, at least not so troublesome to find. If you can customize the common slots, the operation will be much more convenient.

The second is that the combat experience is not as interesting as imagined. In order to balance the decryption and combat parts, the number of allies that the Torry Wand can summon is quite limited. Low-cost monster group beating means low damage, not as good as using high-cost monsters to quickly solve the battle. But this leads to another problem, many of the summoned monsters have a low attack frequency. Their own AI performance is also worrying, often entering a state of confrontation with big eyes staring at each other.

▲You four, are you still fighting?

Of course, there are solutions. Re-summoning eliminates attack lag and hit judgment, or directly wearing Link's equipment to fight in person can solve this problem to a certain extent. But the former requires players to keep pressing buttons and adjusting positions, and the latter consumes energy that needs to be supplemented additionally.

In this way, before improving the Torry level and obtaining high-cost summoning objects, the combat experience is hard to be described as refreshing. Especially facing flying enemies and death zombies that can cause hard straight, the combat in the early and middle stages is sometimes very suffocating.

A More Open World

Unlike previous 2D Zelda games, this work gives players more freedom in terms of maps. The mainline only guides the main labyrinth, and there are other areas scattered in the map for exploration and upgrading. Upgrade the Torry Wand, discover new duplicates, unlock additional accessory slots, play various side missions with different gameplay, challenge regional characteristic mini-games, and resident collection elements are all present. There are also a lot of content hidden along the way waiting for players to discover.

▲The great fairy in the island!

There are surprises everywhere. In addition, as the plot develops, some areas will also appear new explorable content. In terms of the map itself, whether it's following the main line bit by bit or licking the map for exploration, happiness will not decrease.

Low Threshold Labyrinths

As an important part of the game, the production team combines regular decryption with the "Void World" that focuses on jump and joy, and integrates the 2D scroll关卡 into it. It sounds a bit complicated, but the experience in the process is not as difficult as imagined.

The reason is that most of the summon needed to solve the puzzles can be collected during the exploration process. The complexity of most puzzles is relatively moderate, and by thinking carefully and using the abilities of the Torry Wand more, the corresponding solutions can be found. If you lack some key summon, you can also directly exit the labyrinth. After checking for omissions and supplements, you can use the large map and the fast teleportation inside the labyrinth to return to the original exploration position and continue the progress.

The collection of chests that troubled players is no longer a problem, as long as you get the map, you can know the exact location of the remaining chests. Follow the route and you can come straight to the BOSS door, and the difficulty of pushing the map has been greatly reduced compared to previous 2D Zelda games.

Another reason is that Zelda's performance is a bit too strong. Accessories that increase jump height, multiple bed boards, and wall climbing spiders that overcome gravity make jump-based levels basically not difficult. This leads to a high repetition of the box garden experience in the Void World, and it's not very interesting to play. After obtaining the duplicate cloud, similar levels are even more boring, basically just constantly overlapping and rising.

As for the 2D scroll rooms, there is no particularly eye-catching place. The summon is the only core design element, and the design is relatively conservative. Newcomers will have no problem starting, especially those who have experienced "Breath of the Wild" and "Tears of the Kingdom", and they can even feel a familiar taste. But if you want to revisit the experience of the old 2D Zelda, this work may not meet your requirements.

Gradual BOSS Battle

Zelda's iconic end-of-level battle is not absent. Considering the addition of summoning abilities, most of the game's BOSS battle design follows the route of "summons to create hard straights + transformation to increase output", which makes the battle more challenging. Based on the surrounding scenery and enemy attributes, players need to come up with solutions and look for opportunities to attack while dodging the different stages of enemy attack moves. The BOSS battle part indeed combines action and strategy, with a variety of abilities and young people's "high-quality sleep", making the tension of the battle full.

Visual Performance

Speaking of visual performance, the performance of the Switch is an old problem that has been talked about many times. The frame drop situation that occurred in Dream Island also exists in the wisdom of reproduction. When there are many things in the scene, the frame rate is prone to fluctuations. The most uncomfortable thing is not the low frame rate, but the frequent switching between smooth and fluctuating in the process of continuous movement, which indirectly intensifies visual fatigue. This situation is particularly prominent in console mode. It can only be said that, Lao Ren, hurry up and bring the new machine!

Summary

In summary, "The Legend of Zelda: The Wisdom of Reproduction" has made some brave attempts to expand the 2D gameplay. The addition of new mechanisms is bright enough, and the exclusive story of Zelda also allows everyone to further understand the image of the princess.

However, the design approach that is too close to the 3D Zelda open world, on the one hand, reduces the threshold and attracts new players. But to a certain extent, it also weakens some of the charm that the original 2D Zelda adventure should have.

It can be seen that Nintendo wants to make some changes in this type of game to adapt to the new market and explore new paths. I also look forward to the next 2D Legend of Zelda bringing us more surprises.