Hyrule Warriors

Waiting for the next Legend of Zelda game time-honoured tradition, and Hyrule Warriors tries its best to satisfy fans of the franchise while introducing the familiar characters to the mayhem of Dynasty Warriors style action. The game opens with Princess Zelda and her bodyguard Impa overlooking some soldiers training in the castle courtyard. Immediately after Zelda notices a young soldier that might be the Hero of Time she has been waiting for, an army descends on the peaceful fields in front of her keep.

From there the player is swept into battle as Link, the aforementioned hero in waiting. The name of the game is dispatching as many troops as possible while taking and defending keeps and outposts on the map. Characters can learn combo attacks to kick the asses of large groups of enemies at once, with kill counts numbering well over a thousand per battle. Unlike a Zelda dungeon the maps are teeming with armies both good and bad, as well as allies and bosses.

As the game progresses all of the Zelda favourites are playable and there is DLC available for even more characters, like Epona. These characters can be played in any of the game modes. The main story is Legend Mode and there are also Free, Adventure, and Challenge modes. Adventure Mode uses the 8-bit world map from the original Legend of Zelda; within each tile is a challenge, which yields items and characters that can be used in Legend Mode. You can use familiar items like compasses and candles to discover even more treasure. Challenge Mode is basically the same, except the missions give you less time and it doesn’t have that kitsch 8-bit map as a main screen. Free Modeis a variation of the main story that lets you use any unlocked character on any level. Two-player play is also available, but not online.

The main story feels exactly like a Zelda story, amped up with a certain Michael Bay/Marvel zest that the stagnant mythos has needed for a long time. While the game goes out of its way to be more exciting than the repeated find the Triforce and save the girl schtick, it stays true to the spirit of the series while adding its own twists. The cinematic that tells the tale of the wicked witch Cia is told on an old parchment scroll, much like the opening to Wind Waker. Yet the story takes liberties that might be overdue for the long-standing and little-changing Zelda franchise. For example, Cia manages to get all three Triforce pieces by the end of the fourth map, and later on you play as Ganon as he retakes the eastern desert after a long incarceration.

The story is definitely worthy of being added to the official timeline somewhere – I’m thinking in the era after Ocarina of Time when young Link is allowed to grow up and Ganon is sealed in the Temple of Time – but that argument will probably go on until they release a second volume of the Hyrule Historia. There was only one level that didn’t seem to fit in the universe, where the army of Hyrule attacks the Gorons and slaughters thousands of them just because King Goron was a little out of his mind, but those rolling rock guys were always kind of jerks anyways.

The combo system is designed for button-mashers (like myself) and players looking for a more advanced combo system may be disappointed. There is also the old Zelda lineup of items and you can choose them from the D-Pad, but it is surprisingly clunky to switch through items, especially under pressure. An option is also available to change items using the touch-pad, but looking away from the screen poses it’s own problems. All of the characters use the same buttons for combos with different effects; the only one that stands out is the spell-caster and new addition to the team, Lana. Her combos use the same buttons, but she stands still to do some spells and if you didn’t mean to do one of her moves where she stops it can disrupt the flow of the fight. Master using her, though, and she can be quite powerful.

The game’s biggest flaw is that while you are gaining more combos, the enemy soldiers stay the same weaklings they were when you first fought them. Familiar bosses like Dodongo show up and they always have the same weak points. There is an armoury system that isn’t really necessary;  the weapons found in the field always seemed stronger than combining two weapons, especially with Adventure Mode available to find even more. There is no progression at all with the enemies and even the bosses in the latter part of the game are dispatched with ease.

Gold Skulltulas appear on the maps during the battle as well, yet hunting them has none of the fun of hunting for them in Ocarina of Time. The restrictive camera makes looking for them difficult and hunting for them almost always means sacrificing a fort or a keep with little reward. Each Skulltula will yield a piece of a picture; collect them all for the full picture. Boring. Useless. Speaking as a 3DS owner I have enough hassle tracking down picture panels without needing any here. At least on the 3DS getting the full panel unlocks the 3D version of the picture.

The graphics in the cut-scenes take full advantage of the WiiU’s HD capabilities. In game as well, the scenery and characters look like they were plucked right up from the Zelda universe. The only real liberties taken graphically are with Cia’s bust size, which is flaunted as well as her other assets as much as humanly possible. It’s not like the Zelda franchise had a clean slate to begin with as the fountain fairies wear considerably less.

For better or worse the sound is exactly what you would expect from a Zelda game, nice music but blatantly missing vocals. It may never have been part of the plan to introduce voice work for the cast, but the cinematics make it blatantly clear that voices are long overdue for the cast of Zelda. While text is scrolling across the screen with the audible “typing” noise from games of old, sighs, grunts, and giggles are the only vocals included and they don’t always sync up with the typing. At one point of a cut-scene where a serious bit of plot was going on the girls were giggling and gasping with noises that sounded more sexual than serious  when the group was standing around talking. With the 25^th anniversary of Zelda three years distant, it’s time for voices in a Zelda game.

DLC is available with more planned. The Master Quest pack was just made available and has five new missions that lead up to the events in Legend Mode as well as unlocking Epona as a weapon for Link. The next is planned for November and will include a new Adventure Mode map.

 Hyrule Warriors may not be quite the Zelda fix that we are all waiting for, but it is a solid game that is easy to pick up and jump in for both long sessions or a quick challenge. While I have not played Dynasty Warriors, I do have it on good authority from those that have that it lives up to that franchise as well. If carnage is your bread and butter, or if you wanted to see Michael Bay direct Zelda complete with enough T&A to make Megan Fox and Lara Croft blush, this game is for you.

*All pictures taken from game using Miiverse