I have heard a lot about a game series called Dynasty Warriors and the “Franchise Spin-Off” games that were made in its wake, but I never really considered playing them. I mean, sure, people rave about them like children rave about the newest Call of Duty, but it wasn’t enough to pick my interest. So, when Hyrule Warriors: Legends fell into my inbox, I was kind of skeptical.
Sure, it was the Dynasty Warriors spin-off of one of the two series that Nintendo makes that I really like (Pokémon being the other), but was it actually good?
Well, 4 days of playing later and I had to tear myself away from my 3DS to write this review because I think I might have found a new game series that I’ll be looking into!
One minor thing though: I played it on the New 3DS, since it apparently runs like utter crap on the original 3DS, so keep that in mind.
Story:
As with every game that takes place in the land of Hyrule, Princess Zelda gets herself into a pickle and gets kidnapped, and Link has to go out and search for her… Oh, no, wait, she’s on the front lines, cutting down Moblin minions with the flair and finesse fitting for a princess. Is this Zelda or did she trade places with Xena?
Jokes aside, the game starts off with Zelda, Link and Impa, Zelda’s counselor and right hand, battling alongside each other on the grounds in front of Hyrule castle, fighting an ungodly amount of Moblins that would make even Peter Jackson jealous.
The Wizard that’s apparently controlling the enemy army sees his victory slip through his fingers as our heroes manage to claim keep after keep, defeat his general Volga and deal a devastating blow to his armies by calling upon The Great Fairy for help (who still has that creepy witch laugh), and he decides to take a different route and summons none other than King Dodongo (more about that in the gameplay section).
“Put the Battle of Helm’s Deep to shame with this Gem of a Game!”
After defeating Dodongo, the Wizard takes over Hyrule Castle and Zelda is missing. Tracking the enemy army to a mountain far away, Link and Impa set out to find what’s causing this and find Princess Zelda. Soon, they’re joined by Sheik and new character Lana (who couldn’t look more out of place…) as they go up against Cia, the Corrupted Goddess who tries to steal the complete Triforce to resurrect and ancient evil (three guesses who that is).
After falling for Cia’s trap, portals to 3 different times are opened: the times of Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword and our Heroes split up to close these portals, defeat Cia and her master, and restore peace to Hyrule!
That’s where I’ll end the synopsis of the main story because there’s a side-story that deserves a bit of attention as well: the story of Linkle. Now, I actually had to dig around on the internet a bit to find that Linkle is a character created specifically for this game. While she sports an uncanny resemblance both physically and in name to the main hero Link, she’s not related to him. The creators wanted to go that route but decided against it. Might be because they feared fan backlash, but I like Linkle more since she’s her own thing. Anyway, Linkle is officially one of my favorite characters in the Zelda Universe now. She’s a directionally challenged heroine who tries to get to Hyrule castle to save it from the monsters that have taken over, thinking she’s the Legendary Hero reborn. She wields her Dual Crossbows with deadly accuracy and her fighting style is akin to Gun-Kata from the movie “Equilibrium”. Because she can’t read directions, she stumbles across battlefields in different time periods, helping out where she can, as she continues to try and find the castle. She’s an adorable character, with a fiery spirit and an indomitable will that even scares off Majora’s Puppet Skull Kid.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is phenomenal. Being someone who hasn’t played any Dynasty Warrior games, this was all new to me and seeing the thousands of enemies crawling in front of me as I made my way to the battlefield kind of got me worried… Until I used one combo and killed a hundred in one go. The combos in this are incredibly rewarding, seeing enemies fly across the map because your finisher slammed them into the air like a home-run hit is satisfying as all Hell. This is a game where you feel extremely powerful. You mow down enemies with the same ease as you mow a lawn. However, this is only true for the weaker mobs that crowd the map. The stronger mobs take a few more hits and sometimes you need to hit them after they did a powerful attack to drain their Stamina Bar that appears to cause massive damage. While you can kill them with normal attacks, it’ll take a while and the longer you focus on one enemy, the more chance you have of losing a keep to another.
Capturing keeps is relatively straightforward. You massacre the forces inside until the Keep Keeper appears and after demolishing him, the keep is yours. However, you can still lose it to other mobs and this is where I’ve got a bit of a gripe with the game: If you get the message that one of your keeps is about to fall, going there to save it is a wasted effort. Even if you beat the stronger mobs that are inside, your Keep Bar won’t go up again (once it’s drained, your keep falls). So if it isn’t your Allied Base (main base), there’s no reason to rush towards it, since you’ll retake it just as easily and the Keep Bar will be completely refilled if you do.
I thought that I had a solution for this, by sending one of my other characters over there to defend (you can assign the AI Controlled Heroes to go to certain places) but I still lost the keeps. So, wanting to investigate, I once again sent one of the AI characters over, and once she was in the base (Agitha, the Bug Princess) I switched over to control her to see what she was doing: Abso-friggin-lutely nothing. Mobs were swarming the place (powerful ones at that) and she was staring at a wall as if she saw a Golden Emperor Rhino Bug. So I had to abandon Lana, to use Agitha to regain control and then switch back over to Lana who was getting her ass kicked by Zant.
If there is an option to change the AI from Mahatma Gandhi Passive to Genghis Khan Aggressive, I haven’t found it, so my workaround is: Send AI Character to base while fighting on with main character, when AI Character has arrived at base, switch over to control that character to clear base, once base is cleared, switch back to main character. It’s a hassle, but it gets the job done.
Weapons are a big deal in the game, as well as their Elemental Attunement (Water, Fire, Lightning, Dark and Light) and gaining more powerful weapons is a must. You can customize weapons with Skills that attach to them. You can remove them (for a hefty fee of 300.000 Rupees) or you can fuse weapons together to give one weapon a new skill (if the base weapon has an empty skill slot). The Elemental Attunement comes into play in certain missions where you get an advised element (most of the time this corresponds with the main character you play as). If you choose to replay the mission as someone else with an attunement different from the one that’s advised, prepare to be amazed. The weaker mobs will still go down without a problem but the stronger mobs (like ReDead, Darknut, Lizalfos, etc…) will be able to take quite the beating before going down, thus lengthening the time spent fighting them.
Now, there are also bosses in this game, and you’ll recognize them the moment you see them: King Dodongo, Argoroc the Twilit Dragon, Gohma and the hated Imprisoned. There’s also a new boss called Manhandla which looks like Audrey II from “Little Shop of Horrors” with four heads. I quickly found out that these bosses take little to no normal damage, so I had to find a way to damage them. That’s when I noticed: they had exactly the same tells as in the games that they appeared (ex. King Dodongo suddenly inhales for a few seconds before spewing out a ball of lava), so they could be stunned in the same way! This made my inner Zelda fan happy. Sure, the bosses were in the game, but being able to stun them in the same way we’ve always done it made it a million times better.
Besides the main story “Legend Mode” there’s a “Free Mode” where you can play unlocked stories with whatever character you want and “Adventure Mode”. This mode is structured like the map of the original NES Legend of Zelda and your character traverses it as an 8-Bit version of him/herself. This is the place where you unlock additional weapons, items, Golden Skulltula, characters and skins and consists of various challenges like defeating a certain amount of enemies before the timer runs out, defeating a certain type of enemy, defeating a certain amount of enemies with the twist that any and all attacks are devastating (meaning you’ll drop to 1/4th of a heart from 1 hit but your attacks also kill in 1 hit) or clearing a stage as a certain character. After completing the challenge, you’ll get a rating on Clear Time, Damage Taken and KO’s, ranging from A to C. Getting A usually means you can move in any direction (the directions are marked B or C. If you get a B, you can move in the directions marked B and C, if you get a C you can only move in the direction that says C) and you get the item that’s marked with “Cleared Rank A”, usually a new weapon, character or skin.
There’s another mode called “My Fairy” but I haven’t unlocked this yet during this playthrough but from what I can tell, this is a Tamagotchi-style of game where you can raise and nurture companion fairies.
Music:
After that gigantic wall of text, you probably think “This game sounds awesome!” and yes… It does sound awesome. The soundtrack is beautiful to listen to (which you can, since there’s a jukebox where you can listen to the themes! I love it when games do that) but it also amps you up beyond imagination.
You love the NES Hyrule Fields theme right? One of the most recognizable songs of the entire franchise, famously put to lyrics by The Rabbit Joint (which itself is famously and wrongly attributed to System of a Down), you know what I’m talking about right?
Okay, imagine that with booming trumpets, violins played by the heavenly Fairy orchestra, a heavy line of delicious metal bass guitar in the background and percussion that sounds as if Darunia himself is going ham on a double bass drum set. Got that? Imagine that while you’re cleaving through wave after wave after wave of enemies and tell me that doesn’t sound like the most epic thing you’ve ever imagined. What am I saying, you probably don’t have the imaginative capabilities to imagine such epicness! It’s physically impossible! But it exists within this game.
The moment this theme came on during the first mission it was clear, this game rocked (in a lot of ways). But it’s not the only theme that’s absolutely amazing. All of them are. All themes are still recognizable, but they are given that extra boost of amazing that’ll fuel your adrenaline pump and just keeps you going.
Conclusion:
All of that, coupled with the lovely sounds of Rupees exploding around you, the thuds of your defeated foes as their broken bodies hit the ground around you and Link’s well known “HAYAAAH!” makes this game an absolute gem to play.
Heck, it made me imagine what a good “Legend of Zelda” anime/animated series could be like, and if a game can do that… Well by all accounts it’s awesome!
For fans of The Legend of Zelda, I recommend this game, for fans of the Dynasty Warrior style games, I recommend this game, hell, for any gamer with a 3DS that wants to have fun, I recommend this game. I have had a lot of fun playing through, gathering new weapons to use, new skins, new characters to play as and I still haven’t unlocked everything. It says a lot that I had to put down my 3DS and force myself to write this. The sheer amount of enjoyment that I’ve gotten out of this game is borderline criminal and I’m sure you, dear reader, will enjoy it as well.
I give this game a 9 out of 10. It has a few things that I don’t like (the base thing is one of them) but they’re incredibly minor gripes.
Okay, I’ve done my review, BACK TO HYRULE!
