'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, 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.
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 for'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 '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.