I have real mixed feelings on this one. It's cool to have a playable Zelda, but it sucks that she plays so indirectly. I'm so tired of Zelda games being built now around "making your own fun" with building **** instead of focusing on exploration.

There's just something distinctly "Kirby" about what they showed. "go do whatever you want to solve any situation, because we designed this game to challenge no one."

I've wanted a playable Zelda with magic Zelda game for over 15 years now. But the nagging thought in the back of my head was how to make the magic actually interesting and distinct from non-magical Link's items. The chemistry/physics engine of BotW seems to be their solution. While magic could break the game and make it too easy like Kirby, they can make it more limited and situational based to make it challenging. They haven't said anything about how you select summons so you might be limited to a set of local ones to find a winning combinations. I don't think they're going TotK building path (at least for the 1st game) and probably closer to great plateau BotW experience where you can rush enemies with spamming summons or you can find ways to exploit the environment + magic.

The only downside is they used the remake LA toy-like models, I rather something closer to the old artwork or anime. I get it that it makes the magic less jarring and out of place looking if everything has a toybox appearance but still...

I saw a breakdown on YT by Zeltic and they noted something I didn't notice in my hype for playable Zelda.

They noted there was triangles tailing Tri and that was how many uses you could get from the echo uses and certain items and/or foes who have a set amount needed to use them.  Also sounds like within the trailer it went from 3 in the jail scene to 4 at various points in the game.  So it seems like that power will grow in uses.    So all the memes about 27 pieces of furniture may not be a possibility but someplace within the middle of 3 and 27 is likely.

Glad to see them reusing the art style from the Links Awakening remake. Also, with playable Zelda, this is a day 1 buy for me.