The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom's new Echo mechanic, with which Princess Zelda can summon Echoes of typically hostile creatures to fight for her, allowed me to turn what was once a childhood fear into my most helpful tool. As a kid, I was obsessed with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and to be fair, I still am to some degree: in addition to being one of the greatest games ever made, it remains my favorite. Ocarina of Time isn't a particularly scary game, though, even if it does have some light horror elements.
The Shadow Temple is the most overt, essentially a black site forZelda's usually honorable Sheikah tribe, where enemies of the royal family were once tortured. Castle Town post-Ganondorf-coup is also quite unsettling, filled with shrieking ReDead. Even some of the game's subtext peels away Ocarina of Time's jovial fantasy veneer – the Hyrulean Civil War that precedes the game indicates unaddressed societal unrest; the Gorons and the Zora effectively locked away in Death Mountain and Zora's Domain, respectively, their entrances barred to those without express permission from the royal family, hints at a pervasive xenophobia; and even the iconic, lilting "Saria's Song" can't detract from the subtle reality that the seemingly innocent Lost Woods turn non-Kokiri children into Skull Kids and adults into Stalfos.
But what terrified me as a child was something far more innocuous, one of those irrational fears that worms its way into your brain when you're a kid, so you avoid whatever it is at all costs. For some reason, I was deathly afraid of the Peahats in Hyrule Field.
Ocarina Of Time's Peahats Terrified Me When I Was A Kid
I first played Ocarina of Time when I was three years old. "Play" is a very generous way to put it. For years, I would turn on the N64 and run around in Ocarina of Time accomplishing nothing, not having the sufficient critical thinking skills to understand how to progress through what was, at the time, an extremely sophisticated video game. Instead, I would enlist my older brother or wait for my uncles to visit and have them to help me progress, i.e. play the game properly for me.
I could fish at the pond near Lake Hylia, chase after the dog in the Castle Town Market, and aimlessly wander Hyrule Field. This latter activity, of course, always brought the threat of being accosted by a Peahat. At the time, I didn't know what they were called. The massive plants emerging from the ground with their blades spinning violently as they chased me through the air triggered such a powerful flight response that I never managed to hear Navi's wisdom: "Peahat. Its weak point is its roots!"
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time was the first 3D Zelda game. While the series has since come a long way, I'm worried it's leaving too much behind.
It's such a bizarre thing to be scared of, but in hindsight, it kind of makes sense. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't know how to defeat it; all I knew was that if I got too close, the Peahat would pop out of the ground and spin its helicopter-like blades at me, and if I got hit, I would certainly see the dreaded game-over screen. Ocarina of Time's dated mechanics contribute to the frantic encounters as well – there's no way to turn the camera around while you're running away, so the only indication of the Peahat's presence is the whirring of its blades off-screen behind Link.
Funnily enough, the Stalchildren that crawled out of the dirt at night didn't bother me, but I learned where the Peahats call home in Hyrule Field and tried my best to never encroach on their territory. When The Wind Waker came out, its smaller iteration of Peahats in the Forbidden Woods wasn't frightening – I was older then, after all – and using the Clawshot to dangle from the harmless variants in Twilight Princess was pretty funny, considering how much I despised the ones in Ocarina of Time.
The Peahat Was My Most-Used Echo In Echoes Of Wisdom
Mortal Enemy Turned Greatest Ally
Imagine my surprise when, having caught word of a powerful monster inhabiting a cave in Suthorn Forest in Echoes of Wisdom, it turned out to be a Peahat. Powerful indeed, according to my personal experience with the creature. When you first get the Peahat Echo, it's likely the most powerful Echo you've acquired, as it's obtainable very early in the game. It also carries the hefty price of requiring three of Tri's triangles to summon – all of Tri's available power at the time. It's well worth it, though; the Peahat typically has no problem slicing through low-level monsters.
The Peahat Echo flies, which makes it difficult for both melee and ranged attackers to hit, and it can maneuver up to enemies at different elevations. Its rapidly spinning blades also do a swell job overwhelming most enemies in the game too, since bigger threats typically possess slower attack patterns. As a plant, though, its greatest weakness is fire, so the Peahat is unfortunately not especially viable when scaling Eldin Volcano. As Tri levels up, though, it's possible to summon multiple Peahats, especially once Tri hits level seven and the summon cost for a Peahat is reduced to just two triangles.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom combines the freedom of recent titles with the structure of classic games, and it's absolutely worth playing.
By the time you reach the endgame, you'll have access to seemingly more potent Echoes, like the level-three Darknut and level-three Lizalfos, and you may have been lucky enough to have found the Lynel Echo. For all the Echo mechanic's puzzle-solving cleverness, though, its combat applications tend to hew fairly close to strategies that work almost universally in turn-based and tabletop RPGs, where there's an inherent strength in numbers (meaning, a lot of the time, you want to take out lower-HP enemies first so there are fewer enemies dealing damage). Echoes of Wisdom's action economy makes multiple Peahats especially deadly; three of them can cover practically any skirmish in the game, and their rapid attacks continue to overwhelm most enemies even later on.
At level nine, Tri has a total of six triangles for summoning Echoes, which allows Zelda to command three Peahats.
Much like summoning an army of snakes to defeat Ganon, Peahats are an unexpectedly excellent Echo, even if they are considered a grave threat in Echoes of Wisdom's opening hours. A lot of my success in Echoes of Wisdom is owed to the humble Peahat, a creature that struck fear into me when I was a kid. To be fair, Echoes of Wisdom's art style does wonders to make the Peahat appear less threatening than it did in Ocarina of Time, even if it is still a menace mechanically. Ocarina of Time turned me into a massive Zelda fan at a young age, and leveraging the power of the Peahat in The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was an oddly heartwarming, full-circle experience for me.
Strange rifts are tearing Hyrule apart, and with Link missing, it’s up to Princess Zelda to save the kingdom. Armed with the Tri Rod and aided by a mysterious fairy, she must solve puzzles, create environmental “echoes,” and battle enemies while navigating new regions and uncovering hidden secrets.
Custom image by Kyle Gratton
English (US) ·