Hyrule Warriors (Wii U) Review

There’s so much that can be said about my thoughts towards Hyrule Warriors, from the initial announcement of the game to its eventual release. But I won’t bore you with that. Just know this small piece of relevant context before heading into this review – I wasn’t convinced that Hyrule Warriors would be up to scratch of previous games in the franchise. But then I realised it wasn’t trying to be – it was trying to offer a different angle. And in that regard, it’s largely successful.

Hyrule Warriors takes place in a kind of bizarre “what-if” world of Zelda. Link is a solder in training in this rendition of Hyrule, and Ganondorf has long been vanquished and split into four soul fragments that are scattered across time. The Triforce is now protected in part by Cia, who is meant to manage its power with an air of objectivity. But when she develops feelings for Link, something strange happens to her. She’s overwhelmed with a feeling of evil and along with her subordinates, wages war on Zelda and Hyrule, opening the Gate of Souls to summon armies of monsters from Hyrule’s storied past. Link, Zelda and Impa must embark on a quest to stop Cia and restore peace to the world of Hyrule, while meeting a few familiar faces on the way.

Admittedly the story of Hyrule Warriors isn’t all that ground breaking, in fact it’s almost embarrassing how the motivations for the main villain, Cia, are developed. But on the other hand it does provide the perfect stage of sorts for characters and enemies from all kinds of eras of the Zelda franchise to make their appearance and come together in a semi-coherent manner. All the characters and enemies in the game are paid proper respect and behave similarly to how they did in their original appearances, which is nice considering who is developing the game.

Anyone who has played a “Warriors” game, like Dynasty Warriors, probably already has some idea of what to expect from the game. Hyrule Warriors is largely an action game – of which the crux involves players conquering a busy battlefield and completing key objectives along the way. Each map is pretty large and resembles a famous place from the Zelda games (for example, Lake Hylia and the Water Temple are merged into one big multi levelled battlefield). Within each world, there are “keeps” and “outposts” which spawn enemy soldiers until players take them over, after which friendly soldiers will spawn out of them. As you’d imagine, each stage has minor strategy elements in that you’ll have to suppress enemy forces enough to ensure your AI controlled companions can handle the onslaught while also moving on to complete more time sensitive objectives.

The objectives themselves are varied enough to keep the gameplay interesting. There’s typical ones that see players having to take out the key units (for example, leaders like Cia) or ones that require certain units to be protected while they carry out another objective. Sometimes certain items or objects have to be destroyed or intercepted before they reach their destination, or even some enemy types must be lured to a certain area before carrying out an action. All in all, there’s a good variety of objectives on offer which keeps the missions in Hyrule Warriors fun and exciting. Sometimes your allies in battle might need some support too, and having to rush over from one side of the map to the other makes for some pretty fun and adrenaline filled encounters.

The combat strikes a good balance between accessible and complex, with a simple two button system. One button is used for more standardised attacks, while the other is usually something more magical or unique to that character. Mixing each of these attacks will produce different results of varying effectiveness against certain enemies, so there’s definitely some better move sets and combos to employ in certain situations than others.

Characters themselves are incredibly varied – some, like Link, have multiple weapons each with their own unique moves. Others might only have one but are given more depth than others – Sheik’s harp can be assigned elements to buff her own moves or debuff enemies, for example. Others like Zelda can pray to imbue her attacks with a holy light, while Ganondorf can charge his swords with shadow power to deal more damage. All in all, there’s a grand total of thirteen characters, and even more weapons to use for most of them, so there’s a lot of different play styles accommodated for in Hyrule Warriors.

Between battles, which can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to ninety minutes, players can visit the bazaar to upgrade their characters using spoils gathered from enemies. These materials are well thought out and all have a Zelda flavour to them – collecting Stalfos bones or Lizardos scales is a small but nice touch for fans. Using these materials, players can open new moves for their players or buy defensive buffs that lessen damage someone takes. For those who use assist items more, like the Boomerang or Bombs, there are buffs for those items too that can be purchased.

Barring character progression, there’s some other things you can do in the bazaar. Potions can be brewed that increase weapon drop rates or rare material drop rates in the Apothecary. If you’ve got a character who has been left behind, stats wise, they can even be power leveled using Rupees rather than experience, but this is obviously expensive and less cost effective than fighting naturally as a trade-off. Finally, some weapons have skills and weapons can also be fused together to create new weapons and transfer said skills. There’s a surprising amount of depth here and it is fun to just get lost in the menus and upgrade your characters and then take them into battle to see what’s changed.

Outside of the Legends Mode, which is the main “story”, there’s other modes such as Adventure Mode, Challenge Mode and Free Mode. Free Mode is exactly what it sounds like – playing whatever scenario you like with any characters. Want to see how Princess Ruto would fare in Skyward Sword’s Skyloft? Now you can! Challenge Mode puts players against arbitrary objectives in a more pick-up-and-play kind of approach rather than the longer more involved battles included in Legends Mode. But the most interesting of these modes is the Adventure Mode, which has been previously detailed in another Nintendo Direct.

Adventure Mode is deceptively the most in-depth mode of the Hyrule Warriors package. The game takes place on an 8×16 grid designed to look like a typical over world from a classic NES Zelda game. On each square of the gird, there is a mini battle to complete, and after each battle player performance is ranked and further squares are unlocked on the grid based on said ranking. Similarly, rewards are doled out depending on ranking achieved. If you’re online, you’ll see other Links on the grid and be able to help them out (or vice versa) too, which provides a nice online “environment” without being explicitly online.

Most of these are pieces of heart while others include new weapons to wield for character or even new characters themselves. Items can also be unlocked, and using them to search the over world (ie. Bombing a wall or burning a tree) can lead to even more unlockables to be found. Adventure Mode represents a major inclusion in Hyrule Warriors, with a grueling 128 battles to get through and even more items to unlock. It’s a different tone and a much different pace compared to the other modes on offer in the game but it’s also unique enough to keep players attention. Including a ranking system only serves to improve replayability too.

When you put everything together, Hyrule Warriors will easily take players more than twenty hours to complete and collect absolutely everything – and the pick up and play nature of its optional content helps to make it a more palatable experience. The game does have some issues, and definitely can’t be played in long bursts, but the design of the optional content seems be aware of this shortcoming, as does the save system in the main battles which allows you to quit and leave at any moment and pick up straight where you left off.

But I digress. Players who don’t want to keep playing the game beyond the Legends Mode will probably get at least eight to ten hours out of Hyrule Warriors. Nintendo seek to further complement the game with downloadable content across the next five or so months for a very reasonable price, so Hyrule Warriors seems like a pretty sound investment if the base game is the kind of game that appeals to you. There is a co-operative mode available, and it’s pretty great that players can play the entirety of the game with a friend, but the game takes a heavy performance hit as a result. The detail is much more lower and the resolution is reduced but as a result one player can play on the TV while another can play on the GamePad. As always, the entire game can be played off-screen using the GamePad too.

Considering how many enemies are being rendered on screen at any given time, Hyrule Warriors is a pretty good looking game. Character models are well detailed and effects like light bursts, flames, water droplets and lightning bolts are all rendered beautifully to give the game an intense and always dynamic look. There are some moments when the game is really full that the game drops in framerate, but generally speaking the game performs at a very stable 30fps for the most part. The soundtrack is similarly quite good, featuring some Zelda classics reworked and remixed with more rock elements. There weren’t many ways I thought you could rework the “House” theme from Ocarina of Time to be something exciting and upbeat, but the team have proven me wrong.

Hyrule Warriors is a game that many didn’t expect would be up to par with previous Zelda games. While it’s not quite up there with the quality of the mainline Zelda games, it certainly is a game worth bearing the name. While it’s easy to write the game off as a soulless cash in from Nintendo, commissioned in the heat of an unsuccessful home console – it’s not. It’s got as much soul and love poured into it as any of the games in the mainline franchise. While what’s offered here is from another perspective that most of us aren’t used to, it’s an interesting experiment that has proven to be largely successful. Sure, the combat is a bit shallow for a game like this, but the sheer variety of characters, game modes and in-game objectives help alleviate Hyrule Warriors from devolving into a mindless hack and slash.

Rating: 4/5