This was originally part of the other Echoes of Wisdom review, but the length got a bit too long so I decided to split it into two articles as I do with most Zelda games. Echoes doesn't have the most dungeons and bosses (and a lot of the 'minibosses' for smaller dungeons become our minions anyway) but there are enough unique enemies to fill up a whole article.
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MINI-BOSSES:
Echo Link
So a huge crux of the original setting was that Link is gone, fighting the forces of evil in the Rifts, while the King and his advisors are replaced with echo doppelgangers. This does give the option for the game to throw Echo Links at us as bosses -- we fight these evil Links (not quite the traditional Dark Link) three times, and Zelda gathers Link's equipment from these doppelgangers. First the sword and shield, then the bow, then the bombs. Zelda has the power to call on Link's echo to enter a temporary 'swordfighter mode', and beating up the Echo Links throughout the journey does end up being a rather fun way to upgrade her 'Link mode'.
Echo Jabu Jabu
Lord Jabu Jabu returns from Ocarina of Time, albeit looking a bit more catfish-y this time around. Turns out, though, that this is a fake Jabu Jabu that ends up rampaging and destroying chunks of the two tribes of Zoras' domain! (Can I say how much I love that the traditionally 2D River Zoras and the traditionally 3D Sea Zoras are kind of interacting with each other in this game?)
Ultimately Zelda and the Zora leaders confront the false Jabu Jabu before being able to enter the dungeon that would close the rift in the Zora's Region. Jabu Jabu constantly sucks in the water in the pool you fight him in, and spits it out. Sometimes he spits out Octoroks and Tanglers! The idea is to get him to swallow up Bombfishes as he does the sucking. It's not the most intricate boss fight, but as a relatively early miniboss it's all right.
Bori
I just had this listed as 'Barinade' after the Ocarina of Time big Bari boss, but turns out it's called 'Bori' in the files. Okay? After dealing with the rifts in Zora's Domain, a mini-dungeon unlocks which is a sunken ship, and within that ship is this gigantic Bori with a swarm of tiny Baris circling him. Again, it's a 'classic' Zelda fight similar to Arrrghus of ALTTP fame or Barinade, where you need to take down the little Baris before the main body becomes vulnerable.
Not much to really say here, it's nice to see this type of fight even if I thought they could've done a bit more to make the Bori a lot more distinctive than just a bigger Bari.
Lanmola
The Lanmola graduates into being a miniboss status, and is fought three times in the Gerudo Desert! The presence of the Lanmola creates giant sandstorms that screw around with your minimap, preventing it from being used, and hunting down the Lanmolas will stop the sandstorm from being generated. There are three, with the final purple one needing a sidequest to unlock.
The Lanmola design is a lot more 'it's a cartoon centipede' than the more abstract look that the Moldorms have, and even the original Lanmolas from ALTTP or Zelda I. They create a zone of 'quicksand' and summon a horde of Sand Piranhas to harass you, while they bury in and out of the quicksand and launch rocks. The gimmick for all three Lanmolas is that when it's trying to burrow under the ground, Zelda needs to 'bind' the butt and pull the Lanmola out, at which point it starts thrashing and is vulnerable. The 'butt' is a spinning rotor similar to a fan, which I think is meant to show how the Lanmola drills through the sand. I'm not sure if the physics really works, but there you go.
Smog
Smog is a character from one of the Oracle games that I've never played, and Smog is encountered twice if you do his side-quest. First encountered in an independent abandoned temple, and later on in Faron Wetlands. I mentioned in the review of the monsters that there are a couple of temples that are very specifically running off of puzzles involving the Spark, and the Smog is the final boss of both dungeons.
Smog himself isn't that threatening when he's in his full form -- a giant cloud with a cyclops eyeball and a grin, He launches some electric balls, but other than that is quite easy to beat up. The problem is that Smog splits up into little invulnerable balls -- which is funny, because normally when one of these RPG boss monsters splits up it becomes weaker. But Zelda essentially needs to do a Spark puzzle to get the Smogs to all accumulate together, manipulating the pathway of their journeys, so that Smog reforms in his larger, more vulnerable form.
It's particularly challenging and I really did enjoy fighting Smog! It feels more like a puzzle than a traditional boss fight, if you know what I mean? M
Slime Eye
The mini-boss of icy Lanayru Temple is one such 'splitting apart' boss. Slime Eye borrows its name from a Link's Awakening boss, but has nothing really similar with it. For one thing, Slime Eye has got two eyes. A whole two eyes in that big zol body! That's Slime EYES, surely?
The Lanayru Temple that Slime Eye is fought in is an ice-themed dungeon, and Slime Eye, unlike many other RPG dungeon bosses, is actually weakened by the element of its own dungeon. You need to summon icy enemies to freeze Slime Eye, at which point he then becomes vulnerable to being broken apart... but you have to keep doing it as the Slime Eye splits into smaller and smaller and more hectic pieces. I actually find this fun; initially the expensive and powerful Ice Wizzrobe or Ice Keese alone is enough to trace one or two big slimes, but as they become smaller and smaller it's more efficient to spam your own army of Ice Octos and Frost Slugs and go for quantity and speed.
Not all the minibosses are particularly memorable or creative, but I particularly like Slime Eye here.
Volcanic Talus
The boss of a short 'follow-up dungeon' in the Goron Mountains, the Volcanic Talus is just a stronger version of the Stone Talus that's going to be described below. It sure is a Stone Talus that's on fire!
Oh, the Tweeluses are meant to reference these guys. Got it!
Manhandla
The miniboss of Faron Temple is also very memorable! I really do love Manhandla, and as the franchise remembers that old Manhandla exists, they've been slowly positioning it as a 'boss' for the more common Deku Babas. The heads of the Manhandla here is a nice touch, with its final form having two heads that are straight-up the classic Deku Baba heads.
Faron Temple is really fun to explore because of how nonlinear it is, and you have to keep hunting down Manhandla as its core bulb has swallowed up the boss key, and you fight Manhandla twice -- once with two heads, and once with four. You need to do the gimmick in this game of using 'Bind' to rip off a Deku Baba's head, except for Manhandla it's to expose a weak point in its neck so your Darknuts and Lizalfoses can swoop in and behead Manhandla. Multiple times.
Not much else to say, but Manhandla has always been one of my favourite classic bosses, so I'm happy to see it back!
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DUNGEON BOSSES:
Seismic Talus
The first boss of the first proper dungeon that Zelda goes through, Suthorn Ruins, is a rather simple affair as these things go. The Seismic Talus is an interesting 3D-to-2D adaptation of the Taluses that became a bit iconic thanks to Breath of the Wild, but interpreted in a less 'realistic' way (if you can assign realism to living rock elemental golems, anyway). In that it gets a face and hands!
The Seismic Talus is just that. A big golem guy with floating hands that he spins around. There's a very obvious glowing purple orb that's weak and it moves around the Seismic Talus's body. You're meant to hit it, either with Zelda in her Swordsman Form, or by chucking your Darknuts at it. Not much to say here, a rather simple opening enemy that doesn't really have anything to do with the theme of the beginner dungeon.
Vocavor
Vocavor is the monster at the end of the long Zora's Domain questline. After solving the overworld politics of the River and Sea Zora leaders, destroying the fake Lord Jabu Jabu, and going through the Rift world's version of the temple, the creature at the nexus of the rift is Vocavor. Who is this giant prawn or anomalocaris creature with a cartoon face. It's a neat enough design, and I like the kunai-like tail parts that Vocavor can detach and telekinetically manipulate. Vocavor's also got a bunch of light blue... tumours? On its back? Those soft bits are Vocavor's weak points.
Oh, the battle against Vocavor is also completely underwater and in a 2D side-scrolling section, and Vocavor's deal is that he keeps summoning giant whirlpools that take up chunks of the battlefield. Pretty fun little design, and I like him quite a bit.
Morgrpyh
The Gerudo Desert or the Zora's Domain questlines could be done in any order, but as you could probably see from the ordering of my monster review, I did it in the order of Zora's Dungeon followed by Gerudo Desert. Didn't really much care for the desert area if I'm being honest, but the Gerudo were quite fun this time around -- with a surprisingly long storyline about the Gerudo leaders bickering, Zelda trying to prove herself, and the majordomo of the Gerudo Chief actually being an echo.
The boss of the final dungeon of the Gerudo arc is... I expected a big Lanmola, considering how much it was spotlighted in the overworld, but I am pleasantly surprised by the Morgryph, which is surely the larger version of the Holmill. The Morgryph is a giant mole with a brown 'mane' like a lion and wings. It's a mole gryphon... but it's still goofy because it's got the face of a cartoon mole with the eyes reinterpreted as glasses. That's cute.
Morgryph's whole deal is that he alternates between diving down the sand or flying around, with Zelda needing to trick Morgryph into burrow-rushing and slamming its head onto a statue; or when it's flying, divebombing smack-dab into a statue. Pretty neat as well.
Echo Ganon
Ganon is technically fought as part of the very initial tutorial dungeon when you play as a full-powered Link. Zelda fights Ganon as well, and... it's essentially a remixed version of the A Link to the Past boss fight. Which I've done a couple of times. It's very familiar, and it does feel quite different since I'm playing as Zelda with completely different mechanics. Echo Ganon hits hard and fast, but ultimately I don't have much to really say here. It's Ganon! We know Ganon.
Volvagia
We also know Volvagia, making his grand return as a boss since Ocarina of Time. Volvagia serves as the final boss of the Eldin Volcanoes arc, which revolves around the Gorons. At the end of the Eldin Temple is Volvagia, and the fight against him is surprisingly faithful to the Ocarina of Time incarnation, with Volvagia flying around the volcanic arena, flying down into the lava lake, and periodically popping his head up and unleashing devastation. The green orb on Volvagia's neck can be binded and pulled to stun him. Volvagia has a bunch of different fireballs to blast apart entire phalanxes of Zelda's echoes, too.
The design is a bit cuter than Ocarina of Time, of course, and the additional shift from a 3D-Zelda-game boss fight to a 2D-Zelda-game boss fight does make him a bit more novel than the Ganon repeat.
Skorchill
The questline for the Lanayru / Hebra Mountains is quite a tearjerker with the yeti child Conde... and we actually see Skorchill menace Conde quite a bit, masquerading as his brother. But as an asshole brother. But the actual boss fight against Skorchill is... a bit goofier than I thought it was going to be. He puts on a weird helmet with googly eyes, and he alternates between a light blue one (which shoots ice) and a red one (which shoots fire). Theoretically, the three horns that pop up from the other holes are the weak parts that you have to take down one by one. But as long as you summon the right elemental Wizzrobe or Keese, or just abuse the swordfighter form's arrows, Skorchill goes down extremely fast. I spent more time fighting Slime Eye, the sub-boss of his dungeon, than Skorchill himself.
Gohma
Big Mama Gohma! Okay, so that's where the eyeball went. Taking a page out of Twilight Princess's Armagohma, the big Gohma in this game has a regular spider face, and a giant eyeball at the center of the cephalothorax. Gohma shoots lasers out of this central eye, shoots a bunch of webs to web up the battlefield, and also launches eggs that Baby Gohmas hatch out of. It mostly stays on its ceiling, but sometimes she will jump down and try to rake Zelda apart with its two spikier front claws (which seem to be based on the Hyrule Warriors incarnation.
Gohma probably shares a spot with Volvagia for having the best attack animations, but it's not the most impressive one to take down. Very obvious green crystals that you're supposed to launch electric attacks to are on the Gohma's legs, and it's a very simple 'zap her at her weak spot, beat her up' boss. A bit of a shame, since Faron Temple is easily by far my favourite dungeon in the game to explore.
Echo Zelda
Called 'Tekom' in the internal game files but never referred to as such in the game, the main villain of the game, the primordial evil Null, will manifest herself as an Echo version of Zelda... which is such a cool concept. But she doesn't do much but fool the king and his ministers for a bit, and then open the accessway to the final dungeon. Which... which, I'm not going to lie, is very disappointing especially after how much I liked the rest of the game. It's basically a corridor with some scripted fights, and no puzzles at all!
It does have two bosses, though. Echo Zelda serves as the boss before entering the dungeon, and she's... she's basically just Zelda! She spams monsters, you spam monsters, and it's a bit of a shame that she doesn't do much beyond just fly around while you take potshots at her in-between summoning creatures. She only really ever summons weak and mid tier monsters, and doesn't summon any more than Zelda, so realistically if you have a Lynel or any of the LV 3 echoes, Echo Zelda is just a massive cakewalk.
Null
And our final villain is Null, who is a primordial evil of doomy doom. His fight is... it's a bit derivative of Dethl from Link's Awakening, I'm afraid. Maybe it's just because its true form is a big shadow blob with two massive hands? Null initially appears like that, a giant orb with a face that's a mockery of your fairy companion Tri and her people. Null is fought in a room that's also the inner body of his big, eldritch, extradimensional shadow-monster form. And a lot of the fight with Null basically just extends to it summoning arms and Zelda needing to drag the arms so that her echoes and Link can hack them apart, similar to Manhandla. Null can also summon echoes of some of the previous bossed (mostly Morgryph, Vocavor, Ganon and Skorchill) but it's just for animations and unlike Dethl we don't even have to call back what we needed to fight it.
There's a side-scrolling part to the Null fight too, and eventually he breaks apart into that five-tentacles monster as he absorbs all of the other Tris. I do like his final form, with four undulating masks and an effect of screaming Tri faces warbling over its amoeba-like inner core.
I dunno. I really like almost all of Echoes of Wisdom, but Null is just a big... nothing. He's just a sealed eternal evil or whatever, making him a retread of Demise without a personality. There could have been something about him making echoes of people and there being an attempt to be creepy with that in the boss fight, but no. And for a game where I've summoned echoes to fight throughout the whole game, neither Echo Zelda nor Null really test that gimmick, not really -- the main thing you do when fighting Null is really just binding and pulling the arms while Link and your Lynel or Darknut cut them up. It's a bit disappointing, really, although I do like the weirdness of its final form.
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