In our house, the new Zelda is a great multiplayer game
In our house, the new Zelda is a great multiplayer game
Echoes of Wisdom might be the best Zelda game for group strategists
Officially, the second-most recent1 multiplayer Zelda game is 2015’s The Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes, a three-player game developed for the Nintendo 3DS by Nintendo and external studio Grezzo.
But the most recent multiplayer one for me is the newest Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. It’s also by Nintendo and Grezzo but this time for the Switch.
Technically, it’s a single-player game, but my kids and I are playing it as a trio.
One of us plays; the other two of us offer strategic advice.
To my surprise, it’s masterfully designed for just that, whether it was intended or not. And it’s how I recommend playing the game, if you’ve got kids or other potentially friendly helpers nearby.
Echoes of Wisdom plays from an overhead perspective, with a lone player controlling Zelda as she ventures through Hyrule to defeat monsters, solve puzzles and save the kingdom (aka: the usual stuff).
The twist, as readers may recall, is that Zelda does just about everything by summoning an “echo” of an item she’s found or an enemy she’s defeated.
Is she getting attacked by enemy Moblins? Have Zelda spawn the echo of an armored knight, or some snakes, or maybe some bats to fight them off.
Are her travels being stymied by a high ledge that she needs to climb? Have Zelda create a staircase of tables and boxes. Or beds. Or maybe a column of water she can swim up. Or who knows what else we’ll unlock. We’re only about six hours into the game.
The way my kids and I play it, one of us is at the controls while the others offer advice. In theory, you could do this for any other Zelda game, too, but it’s never worked this well.
A brief run-through of our Zelda experiences:
After I introduced my kids to video games in the summer of 2022, I discovered that Nintendo and Grezzo’s Switch remake of the 2D Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was great for unofficial co-op play. One of my kids would use the controller; the other would stand near the TV and point at things, making suggestions about where to go next. This was mostly a navigational thing and a lot of talking about what they noticed on the map. For two five-year-olds, that sufficed.
When we next tried the single-player Skyward Sword remake, they mostly just traded off the controller. It’s in 3D. While full of puzzles, it just didn’t generate the same co-pilot experience.
Last year’s Tears of the Kingdom, a 3D Zelda with all sorts of crafting options, may have been stuffed with challenges that an observer could help with. But the game was too complex for six-year-olds to control, and they mostly just watched me play and puzzle out solutions as I tried assembling its virtual Legos.
Echoes of Wisdom offers an ideal balance. It’s in 2D and therefore simple enough for any of us to play. Its been designed puzzles with the giant-toolbox approach of Tears of the Kingdom, meaning that, unlike Skyward Sword, players are expected to experiment with multiple possible solutions. Unlike Tears, though, Echoes offers a suite of solutions that are more digital, less analog.
In Tears, a challenge might involve how to cross a river. The ingredients to solve it might include some virtual boards and beams that players need to glue together. There are many ways to put those things together well, but also many ways to mess it all up.
In Echoes, we might need to cross a river, and it’s then just a matter of which echo to pick. We could make a bridge out of beds, summon a bird to take us for a ride, or maybe conjure a fan to waft us across the gap. Each is a selection from a menu, to be placed into the world to see what happens. Each is something a kid or a parent who is watching can easily suggest, and each is easy for the person playing to test. The options are simple and clear, even if the rapid pace of collecting new echoes can lead to an overwhelming amount from which to choose.
The other night, as I faced a new, speedy enemy, my daughter encouraged me to summon a wolf to defeat it. Good call.
When she was playing and nearly out of heart-health, I urged her to pause the game and have Zelda drink a restorative smoothie. She ignored me, directed an ally she summoned to keep the enemy busy and then made a bed for Zelda to take a healing nap. Good call, too!
While only one player can control Zelda, the rest of us are able to sit by and make suggestions. Our input feels meaningful, and we wind up playing a meta-game of seeing who had the best idea, or at least one that works.
Our success with playing Echoes of Wisdom as a trio (or a duo, at times) has been a relief, because I’m not sure how much I’d have liked the game solo.
The first dungeon we cleared was just okay. The game’s cast is overly chatty. Its map is, for my taste, too much of a Hyrule greatest hits. The overall design isn’t hitting the heights I’ve enjoyed in some prior Zeldas.
It all feels decent enough, but if I were playing solo, I wouldn’t be able to shake how much less I’m enjoying it than I did Zelda favorites such as Majora’s Mask, Tears of the Kingdom and Spirit Tracks (yes, Spirit Tracks!).
Good thing I’m not playing it that way.
In my house, Echoes of Wisdom is a multiplayer Zelda, and, so far, a great one .
Side note: Looks like my former colleague and fellow father-of-two Patrick Klepek had a similar experience. He’s written today about playing Echoes of Wisdom with his two kids , over at Crossplay, his excellent newsletter for gamer-parents.
Item 2: In brief…
🤔 Saber Interactive’s Space Marine 2, a top seller last month, was developed “affordably,” for less than half of the budget of id Software’s Doom Eternal (2020), according to Tim Willits, chief creative officer of Saber and former studio director at id.
“We don't need to sell four million units to make it [Space Marine 2] a success,” Willits told IGN. “There are many games, sadly, especially out of North American developers, where if you do not sell five million copies you are a failure. I mean, what business are we in where you fail if you sell less than five million?”
😲 Ubisoft and one of its top investors, Tencent, are considering a possible buyout or taking the massive publisher of Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six private, as its stock price has traded at decade-low levels, Bloomberg reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.” (Ubisoft tells me they don’t comment on rumors, speculation.)
In a note to investors regarding the news, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said Ubisoft “must take steps to address its low productivity,” citing high headcount and relatively low revenue per worker—about 20% that of competitors. Pachter told Game File that layoffs are likely, should the company remain public; if they go private, they’re likely to shift jobs from expensive regions such as the U.S. and Canada to cheaper ones in China, he said.
The Bloomberg report today sent Ubisoft shares up 33%.
👀 Ubisoft is facing a potential class action lawsuit over allegations that its online store and Ubisoft + website shared users’ personal data with Meta via the latter’s Pixel tracking feature, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in California on Thursday. (Ubisoft tells me they don’t comment on legal matters.)
Lawsuits over Pixel and alleged privacy and wiretap violations have been abundant in recent years, with similar claims in separate suits against an online pharmacy, a newspaper and a hospital.
The firm representing the plaintiffs against Ubisoft specializes in Pixel/privacy issues and lists on its website numerous potential targets, though no other game companies at the moment.
🥊 The makers of upcoming boxing game Undisputed are removing fighter Ryan Garcia from the game, including its early access PC release, Game Rant reports.
The developers cited Garcia’s ban by the World Boxing Council, one of the sport’s competing governing bodies, following a string of racist remarks from Garcia, including epithets against Black people, earlier this year. (Garcia later said he was misunderstood.)
🎮 Multiple top developers behind Ubisoft’s Nintendo collaboration Mario + Rabbids have launched a new studio called Day 4 Night, with backing from Krafton and others, Games Industry reports.
🇯🇵 Palworld is now available on PS5 in Japan, after a brief delay in that country, Eurogamer reports.
That’s despite the game’s development studio Pocketpair facing a patent infringement lawsuit from Nintendo and the Pokémon Company in Japan.
🛜 Sony’s upcoming remaster of the single-player hit Horizon Zero Dawn will require a PlayStation Network account on PC, a detail not going over well with users on the platform, IGN reports—especially given that Sony is also delisting the original PC version of the game, which did not require PSN.
☹️ Play, a UK magazine focused on PlayStation and one of the last print gaming publications in the region, has been shut down by publisher Future, ending a 29-year run for the print publication, Games Industry reports.
Play was known as the Official PlayStation Magazine before being rebranded in 2021.
❗️ Looks like Nintendo’s new museum in Kyoto has received a day one patch. In time for its opening this week—but after press toured the facility in September—the company has added an exhibit featuring previously unseen prototypes. They include a fidget-spinner-shaped Wii controller prototype and and a single-prong N64 controller, IGN reports.
The museum had been knocked for failing to offer many inside looks at Nintendo’s history, beyond what’s already publicly known. But this added exhibit, detailed first by Nintendo fan Kyle McClain, does that. (Nintendo prohibited photos of the exhibit, according to McClain).
Item 3: The week ahead
Monday, October 7
Rebots (PC) is released via publisher Astra Logical (recently profiled here), though in a highly unusual move, it’s being made playable in full for free between now and release day.
Tuesday, October 8
Diablo IV expansion Vessel of Hatred (PC, PlayStation, Xbox), Silent Hill 2 Remake (PC, PlayStation) and the book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment is released.
Friday, October 11
Europa (PC, Switch), Metaphor Re:Fantazio (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) and Undisputed(PC, PlayStation and Xbox) are released.
There was a co-op musical spin-off game, Cadence of Hyrule, in 2019.
This email's title alone transported me back to my gaming origins with my twin yet again, and actually reading it confirmed it: "One of us plays; the other two of us offer strategic advice." The path from feeling unnameably nervous watching twinbro navigate Mario Bros 1 like a pro to seasoned backseat gamer (which eventually gave me the courage to play solo) started with, again, Ocarina of Time. We turned into strategy guide collectors of a sort, so I took it upon myself to examine whatever section he found himself stuck in. Sometimes I'd freestyle it even with the guide though, lol. I also distinctly remember manning the C buttons during boss fights while David did movement and B-button-- weirdest multiplayer idea ever but also baby's first step to handling a controller alone :P
Go Phillies! The Phanatic will destroy you all! But enjoy the hopefully amazing baseball. 😁