Buy Hyrule Warriors

Hyrule Warriors takes Link, Zelda and the other familiar cast members out of their familiar surroundings and thrusts them into the middle of an epic war. The peaceful Kingdom of Hyrule comes under attack by the evil sorceress Cia, who watched over space and time. She followed the adventures of the various Links throughout history, and she grew envious and jealous. The evil lord Ganondorf possessed Cia and used her dark powers to bring together many timelines in an attempt to gain ultimate power. Now the heroes of multiple The Legend of Zelda games must unite to defeat Cia and save the multiverse from Ganondorf's evil.

Hyrule Warriors sticks close to the traditional Warriors style of gameplay. Players step into the shoes of one of the many Zelda characters and slaughter their way across fields of Moblins and other foes to conquer the battlefield. Every character has a fast attack and a strong attack. Every character also has a super move that requires building up a super meter. There's also a magic bar you can fill by collecting magic pots, and activating the magic bar sends you into a temporary focus mode that makes you stronger and allows you to ignore attacks. To Warriors faithful, most of this will sound very familiar, but Zelda fans should get the hang of it quickly.

One of the twists from the usual Warriors combat formula is the addition of Zelda-style tools. Every character in the game has access to the same selection of tools, including Zelda classics like the bombs, boomerang, bow and hookshot. They are unlocked by playing through the story mode, they can be used at any time. Most are extremely ineffectual in combat, but they're still useful. Bombs can blow up walls and break enemy defenses. The bow can hit enemies from afar or instantly slay certain foes. The hookshot allows you to climb certain walls or drag yourself to a foe. You can also power up each weapon with temporary boosts, which are dropped by enemies.

Hyrule Warriors borrows the "field" idea from the Dynasty Warriors: Gundam franchise but handles it better. Keeps, which are located throughout the many maps in the game, represent strongholds. Enemies and allies spawn in the keeps, and killing enemies there gradually lowers the keep's defenses. When the defenses reach rock-bottom, the keep guard appears. Kill him, and you capture the keep. Hyrule Warriors is fairly good about making keeps feel significant. Capturing keeps can turn the tide of battle, and keeping them out of enemy hands is a lot more tense than in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. Most maps have optional keeps that you never need to touch, but capturing them spawns chests with heart pieces or new weapons.

Hyrule Warriors is a fair bit harsher than most recent Warriors games. Individual enemies are weak and serve as cannon fodder as you make your way toward enemy commanders, but the individual enemies are very aggressive about controlling the battlefield. They don't pose much of a threat to your character, but if you don't keep them in check, they will take your keeps and conquer your home base.

Hyrule Warriors has a significantly smaller character selection than most modern Warriors titles, but it makes up for it by having one of the franchise's most distinctive casts. Sheik, for example, is based on music and elemental attacks. If you pause after doing a combo and use the strong attack, she'll strum her harp. If she successfully finishes the song, she unleashes a special attack based on the last combo she did. Midna builds up a special energy gauge by grabbing and crushing enemies. Once she starts on a rampage, she crushes everything in her path. Several characters, like Link and Zelda, have multiple weapons. Zelda can trade her rapier for the Wind Waker baton, which performs powerful AoE attacks and can summon a tornado.

This really helps to keep the game fun. Warriors games run into the problem of feeling repetitive after a while. Longtime Zelda fans may be disappointed by the absence of certain characters, but Hyrule Warriors' focus on a smaller cast makes each more fun and interesting. Each new character I unlocked offered a  chance to try something different.

One of the major differences between Hyrule Warriors and the other Warriors titles is its heavy emphasis on positioning and dodging. Combat in Zelda games, as fans know, is all about waiting for weak points to show before counterattacking. Hyrule Warriors extends that to an entire play mechanic. Enemies can be attacked in the normal Warriors fashion, but for "officer" characters, there is another option. When an enemy performs a special move or attack, he briefly becomes vulnerable, as signified by a "weak point bar" over his head. Damaging the enemy while this is visible depletes the bar. Once the bar is depleted, your character can perform an attack that does immense damage. It adds an interesting and very Zelda feel to the combat.

This is even more prominent for the giant boss enemies, which are generally one of the low points of Warriors titles. Hyrule Warriors is surprisingly good about changing this. Every boss feels like a Zelda boss: deadly, powerful and nasty but vulnerable to a gadget. Finding the right moment to use a weapon on a boss is key. A boss who has been weakened also displays a weak point meter, and just as with regular foes, emptying it does tremendous damage. This is effectively the only way to beat the big bosses, since regular attacks hardly scratch them.

Alas, the bosses aren't really fun after the first couple of fights. There's a reasonable variety of bosses, but there aren't really enough. The main story mode is good about not overusing the bosses, but the other modes rely on them overly much, and they quickly wear out their welcome. Any enemy with a briefly appearing weak point and a fairly repetitive method of battling will get tiresome, no matter how well designed he may be.

Repetition also hurt the rest of the game. The main story mode, Legend mode, is quite well paced. It's constantly introducing new characters, concepts or levels. The Adventure mode that makes up the bulk of the game looks really cool on paper. You're given the entire world map of the original NES The Legend of Zelda to explore, with each grid square representing a level, which ranges from quiz shows to full-on levels. Finishing a level earns you a reward, including new weapons, characters or heart pieces. Finishing the stage with an A ranking can unlock even greater rewards or new levels. Some of the maps are fun, and some are tedious, but there's enough variety and challenge in each to keep you busy for a while.

The exploration element of Adventure mode is a bit mixed. You can travel to each square, assuming you've unlocked the path by finishing previous stages. There are two types of rewards: one for finishing the stage and occasionally one for getting an A rank. With this comes an iffy feature. As in the original Zelda, there are hidden items located all around the map. You can find them by using other items, which are won by completing stages. These hidden items are located exactly where they were in the original The Legend of Zelda, and they're unlocked by the same items. Use a candle to burn a bush or a bomb to break a wall. Use it in the right place, and a secret is revealed. Use it in the wrong place, and the item vanishes. Once you've uncovered a secret, you have to finish the stage on that square to unlock it.

It's a cool attempt to bring Zelda-style exploration to the mix, but it's kind of tedious. Unless you're a Zelda fan (or use an online map), the only way to find many of these hidden items is to use a limited consumable compass item. Since items require you to finish a stage to unlock them, this leaves them feeling rather grindy. You'll need to repeat stages you've already finished to build up a supply of items and compasses, so you can unlock an item by finishing a stage with a high rank. It adds an unnecessary and tedious extra step to the process. Adventure mode is pretty lengthy on its own, even without this addition.

Hyrule Warriors is still a Dynasty Warriors spin-off, so the core gameplay is basically a Diablo-style grind of killing foes to get better equipment to kill bigger foes.  It's one of the best games in the Warriors franchise, but any Zelda fan who wasn't fond of the concept probably won't change his mind just because Link and Ganondorf are doing the crushing instead of Heero Yui or Cao Cao. Warriors fans who don't really know the Zelda franchise should consider this title a mandatory purchase. Hyrule Warriors is possibly the most refined and polished Warriors game in ages. It lacks the sheer amount of content of Warriors Orochi 3, but it makes up for it with some of the most solid gameplay to date.

Hyrule Warriors looks great. The characters are vividly animated and absolutely full of detail. The combat animations look fantastic, and every character displays a ton of personality. Even the enemies stand out and are dynamic and memorable. Unfortunately, the frame rate is pretty iffy. Sometimes it runs buttery smooth, and other times, especially against certain big foes, the game slows to a crawl. The soundtrack is excellent and features a number of fast-paced remixes of classic Zelda songs that are a great accompaniment for slaughtering foes. This brings us to one of the game's bigger flaws. True to Zelda games, Hyrule Warriors has no voice acting. It has tons of dialogue, but it is done either quietly or with random squawks to indicate talking. This is weird in recent Zelda titles but is staggeringly out of place in a Warriors game. The lack of voiced dialogue stands out like a sore thumb and really detracts from the otherwise fun dialogue.

It's hard to imagine a bigger love letter to the The Legend of Zelda franchise than Hyrule Warriors, which is a really polished and well-made Dynasty Warriors game. It still contains many of the franchise's flaws or weak points, but it also boasts many of its strengths. It's certainly more Warriors than Zelda, but it makes excellent use of the source material, so it doesn't feel like Link's face was slapped on an unrelated title. Some may miss the Zelda dungeon-crawling and exploration, but Zelda and Warriors fans will find a lot to like here.

Score: 8.0/10