Ever since Ocarina of Time, the Legend of Zelda franchise has been near and dear to my heart. When the first trailers for Hyrule Warriors were released, I didn’t know quite what to think about it. It wasn’t quite a Zelda game, really, at least not in the traditional sense. However, as Link bombastically destroyed huge waves of enemies with increasingly over-the-top weapons, I found myself intrigued. Nintendo doesn’t often trust its most popular franchises to parties outside the company, although that has changed in recent years as Retro Studios continues to release solid titles like Donkey Kong Country Returns and Metroid Prime. However, aside from the much maligned CD-i games (that would eventually become fuel for countless YouTube parodies) and Capcom’s handheld entries, Nintendo has rarely trusted another company with the Zelda franchise. In that sense, Hyrule Warriors is a unique animal, and I couldn’t wait to try it out.
Platforms: Wii U
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Omega Force, Team Ninja
Genre: Hyrule-Set Hack-And-Slash
Release Date: September 26, 2014
ESRB Rating: Teen
Having never played any game in the Dynasty Warriors series, I was completely unaware of what awaited me as I booted up the game for the first time. My best friend sat next to me for most of the initial experience; having played titles in the Dynasty Warriors series before, he helped me get on my feet– although it wasn’t exactly difficult to get the hang of. The controls are easy to learn, and the combos are fairly simple, consisting mostly of pressing the attack button a different amount of times to get different combo finishers.
As I began to play through the story mode, I was very quickly thankful that the cutscenes were skippable. The story is, tragically, the most boring and repetitious part of a game that is essentially composed of mashing the same two buttons for extended periods of time. Luckily, I was able to quickly jump into the battles I had awaited with anticipation. I was first struck by how satisfying the combos were to execute. Although one could survive the game through mashing buttons, the feeling of timing a combo just right and cutting through a ridiculously huge crowd of bokoblins was fantastic. The controls are responsive, and I never felt like the game was unfair in difficulty. Although Hyrule Warriors has a multitude of characters (most of them unlocked by playing through the story mode), I quickly settled into playing as Impa with her awesome but ludicrously large sword, only testing out the other characters for fun as I got them.
Each of the characters has their own feel as you control them, and their different unlockable weapons have individual sets of combo attacks that are often jam-packed with references to previous Zelda games. Impa was my favorite because of the range of her huge swords, but also because of their elemental effects, such as summoning a huge magnetic ball of exploding water that draws in nearby enemies, creating the perfect Moblin smoothie. Link’s Golden Gauntlets dig up and subsequently allow you to wield the pillars that blocked your way in Ocarina of Time, and Lana’s Deku Spear can summon the Great Deku tree. The equippable sub-weapons work well too, often coming in handy when fighting a specific type of enemy or boss. The Hookshot, when combined with a powerup, can even pull down the dreaded Moon from Majora’s Mask. I often found myself giggling at all the little references to the history of the series.
As much as I loved how the game felt, there were things I could have done without in Hyrule Warriors. Again, having never played a Dynasty Warriors game, I was unprepared for the absolute barrage of useless information that is thrown on the screen. Every few seconds, some character pops up in the corner asking for help. Slippy Toad has nothing on the soldiers of Hyrule Castle. If it’s not dialogue popping up, an annoying fairy character often stops the game to tell you how to use certain items, completely breaking the flow of battle. Worst of all, a banner about a third of the way up from the bottom of the screen constantly flashes with changes in the battle that are almost never useful. The sound effects that come with them get old quick, but once you get into the heat of battle, you learn to forget the annoying pop-ups. It is lucky that most of the information is completely uneccessary– the entire experience revolves around this kind of sensory overload that takes a little while to get used to. Eventually you learn to follow your instincts and the overarching goals of the mission, capturing small outposts or occasionally tracking down a Gold Skulltulla as you go along, but never spending too much time on the fool’s errand of eradicating every enemy, as they continue to populate infinitely.
Where the game really shines, however, is in its Adventure Mode. The player is presented with a huge map to explore based on the original Legend of Zelda. As you navigate the map, you collect new items by completing challenges within maps from the story mode. These items, based again on items from the original NES title, allow you to unlock new map squares, secrets, and even new weapons and upgrades. Secrets and unlockables have always been the way to my heart, and Hyrule Warriors delivers on that front. Zelda veterans will recognize where most of the secrets are on the adventure map, though, as they are based almost entirely on the original. The only issue with the Adventure Mode is that the small cutscenes introducing the larger boss monsters are still in effect in these challenges, although they are a minor nuisance at best.
The bottom line for me, I suppose, is that Hyrule Warriors doesn’t feel like a Zelda game, but it is very fun for what it really is- a Zelda-themed Dynasty Warriors game. I felt oftentimes as if I had loaded up an excellent Zelda mod on Skyrim (or Jedi Academy for you oldsters out there). A full conversion mod of Dynasty Warriors, mind you– but not quite a Zelda game. As I said, I mostly played it sitting on the couch with my best friend (and it is actually a blast to play cooperatively despite some reports to the contrary). As different as the game feels, it definitely deserves a spot in your finally-growing Wii U library.
Review Disclosure: A retail copy of Hyrule Warriors was purchased by Warp Zoned for the purposes of this review.
