LukeAlmighty 🇨🇿 @LukeAlmighty@gameliberty.club

JP is a rambler

Enough talk about that gay and Satanic Dragon Age game, let's give an actually GOOD video game some attention:

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Writeup part 1/6

Right away, there’s two things you ought to know about Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the first Zelda game on a Nintendo console where the eponymous princess is actually the main hero.

First of all, this is NOT some Feminist hijacking of a long-established franchise, but instead a natural experiment for the series to try out, given how princess Zelda has steadily gained popularity and prominence over the years, and has always had a lot of potential as a protagonist (ever since Ocarina of Time, Zelda has been established as a formidable magic caster and Triforce wielder, as well as surprisingly athletic), who’s been implied to have had plenty of off-screen adventures of her own over the years. This is after all a girl who in her various incarnations has been both a Ninja AND a Pirate, and who in Breath of the Wild stalemated Calamity Ganon for 100 straight years.

I’m quite confident in this charitable assessment for multiple reasons: for starters, the way Link is treated, despite him being sidelined early on, is nothing but respectful and appreciative. During the first 5 minutes of EoW, Link displays more heroism and badassery than the likes of Nu Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones showed over the course of entire 2-3 hour movies, successfully storming the enemy stronghold, defeating Ganon and crucially, Rescuing Zelda. While this version of Link hadn’t been into contact with the royal family until this point, he’s already well-established as Hyrule’s greatest hero among the common folk, and throughout EoW you’ll frequently hear tales about the Link’s achievements and about the people he heroically saved. Ganon getting the drop on Link through underhanded means and managing to capture him doesn’t really diminish Link as a hero – and hell, plenty of other Nintendo heroes have historically found themselves in similar positions, with Donkey Kong having to be rescued back in 1995 by Diddy and his girlfriend Dixie, and Mario having to be saved by Luigi multiple times over the years.

Moreover, despite taking over as the main character in this game, Zelda in no way serves as a straightforward Link Replacement. In fact, her unique moveset only serves to underscore her femininity. You see, EoW Zelda is not a physical fighter, but a Summoner (with the hero title of Priestess), who can copy objects and monsters with a staff granted to her by your new fairy companion Tri, and then summon Echoes of them at will. Of course, expecting long-time LoZ fans to play as a pure Summoner throughout the entire adventure would be something of a big ask, and so Zelda does later on get the ability to temporarily take on a Swordfighter Form, which does give her access to a basic Link moveset. However, this requires Zelda having access to Link’s discarded weapons (which themselves seems to possess a Memory of Link’s fighting style) AND being powered up by a special transdimensional energy source. If anything, the fact that being able to fight like Vanilla Link constitutes a time-limited Super Mode for Zelda just goes to show how special Link is

There ARE certain other culture war issues where this game fares kinda badly (I’ll get to that during the Based Morality section of this writeup), but feminism/battle of the sexes issues are not among them.

The second thing that’s important to note is that despite the different main character, Echoes of Wisdom is no cutesy throwaway spinoff, but a full-blown mainline 2D Zelda game, and in my opinion, one of the best. This is no Four Swords Adventure or Triforce Heroes, this game is arguably more of a true LoZ experience than Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. Moreover, EoW is the first new top-down Zelda game since 2013’s A Link Between Worlds – and the first original top-down Zelda game *with an entirely original, traditional overworld* since Minish Cap, which came out 20 years ago.

So even beyond its headline-grabbing change of main character, EoW is something of a landmark series entry, not only being the first post-BotW 2D Zelda, but also the first truly modern 2D Zelda, period, for better or worse. Thankfully, it’s mostly the former, because this game strikes a much better balance between the classic Zelda formula and the Switch-era open world design than I’d ever have expected. Indeed, EoW very much feels like the missing link (heh) between ALBW (which was a traditional Zelda game that made a big deal about letting you tackle two set of temples in the order of your choosing) and the almost entirely non-linear BotW, where you could take on the final boss 10 minutes after taking your first steps on the overworld. But at the end of the day, EoW sticks much closer to ALBW’s slightly modified take on the traditional Zelda formula than BotW’s radical departure – and it’s all the better for it!

Holy fuck

Kill yourself... But vote (for us) first!
Truly despicable.

@kaia "Flash コンテンツを表示しようとしていますが、Flash プラグインがインストールされていません"

Pronounced: Furasshu kontentsu o hyōji shiyou to shite imasuga, Furasshu puraguin ga insutōru sa rete imasen.

@kaia never forget what they took from us