First released on the Wii U; Hyrule Warriors: Legends sees Nintendo’s famous Zelda characters mix it up with the Koei Tecmo’s – Dynasty Warriors gameplay style to create something completely new. Can this unexpected team up impress and work on the smaller screen?
Originally released on the Wii U and then ported over to the Nintendo 3DS, Hyrule Warriors: Legends follows a new tale inspired by the Zelda universe where we see Zelda shaken by a nightmare that continues to haunt her. Her attendant Impa, believing it could be a sign of darker times ahead decides to seek out the legendary hero. This is where the story kicks off and you are given fragments of it while playing through the game. It’s a pretty standard narrative for a Zelda title, so there isn’t much I can say about this.
For fans of the Dynasty Warriors series, you should be able to slide right into the gameplay as it’s pretty similar. Legend Mode is where the narrative plays out where each stage or act takes place in an area with several locations to it. The main goal; to reduce enemy forces in the area and make sure your team mates don’t end up fleeing from the battle.
There will also be objectives to complete as the battle rages on. These are split between main and side quests with the former having more importance. In-between scenarios you are mostly tasked with capturing keeps from the enemy. This involves defeating enough of their numbers and then taking down the keep boss. Once this is done, the spawn point will change to blue and your side will take control of the area.
Apart from the main keeps there are also Outposts that continue to spawn soldiers for the side that controls them. Defeating an outpost captain captures that outpost for your forces, however if an allied captain at an outpost is defeated, then the enemy forces will claim that outpost instead.
Sometimes a battle can be pretty hectic and your side can be completely overwhelmed due to the way the enemy forces are moving. This in turn will cause your playable characters or allied forces to lose a considerable amount of health. Injured allies can be aided by coming in to contact with the rescue area surrounding them. Rescuing an injured ally will restore that warrior’s health and in most cases, increase their morale too.
While there is a time limit that affects your score at the end, I never once found myself running out of time and therefore I urge you to go for the side quests also, even though the game makes it sound like you should only do so if you feel brave.
As you progress you will gain access to more characters to use and they all come with their own unique moves and special abilities. Once this option is available to you, you can take this further by customising weapons and increasing their strength. Warriors can be strengthened and further customized at the Bazaar, which offers four markets — the Badge Market, Training Dojo, Apothecary, and the Smithy. Rupees are used to buy upgrades, which are earned in battle by fighting enemies. The Badge Market allows Badges to be crafted using Materials received from battles to strengthen or add new abilities to Warriors. The Training Dojo instantly levels up Warriors in exchange for a determined fee of Rupees. The Apothecary is used to create Mixtures that grants a Warrior one passive ability for the duration of one battle and lastly, the Smithy is used to customize individual Weapons by transferring Skills from one Weapon onto the empty slots of another. However, doing so will sacrifice the source Weapon.
Discovering new items and opening Chests is also present in the game; various chests are scattered across the battlefield, some of which are hidden under boulders or in secret areas. They can contain new items for characters to use, Heart Containers and Pieces of Heart to increase their health, or other various items like Sealed Weapons. Gold Skullutas also make a return and once found, unlocks content in the gallery.
One other thing I adore is the way these iconic characters have been redesigned to fit the Dynasty Warriors style. The most notable clearly being the Princess Zelda as she now looks and plays like a total bad ass, and can totally handle her own.
Adventure Mode is a special mode in which you can acquire Heart Containers and powerful new weapons, power up your warriors, and unlock new Characters. Your goal is to access new areas of the map, modelled after the overworld map in the original Legend of Zelda, by winning battles with various special rules. Where your character can move on the world map depends on the battle rank you have attained in the battles on each map square. Item cards can be used to unlock hidden objects and other secrets on the search screen. You gain item cards by winning battles marked with item card icons, such as the compass or bombs. Item card icons will continue to appear as you win more battles.
The one greatest selling point about Hyrule Warriors: Legends is how all the modes work in conjunction with each other. Apart from characters which are set with the narrative. All rupees, weapons and materials earned can be used across all modes which is great as I don’t have to restart the grind again depending on what I play.
My Fairy Mode is definitely an odd one as here you can nurture and clothe your companion fairies and switch or exchange their various rental skills. Your companion fairies will become stronger as you feed them lots of food and outfit them with fairy clothing. Companion fairies can prove quite helpful in battles due to their unique abilities, so do take advantage of this by collecting food and clothing to strengthen them. Trust me they can come in handy.
Visually the game looks great and is expected for a title on the Nintendo 3DS. I did find it odd that they didn’t make use of the handheld’s 3D function as I believe it could have really added another dimension (no pun intended) to the over the top action.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4EkT5eqnDI%5D
I enjoyed Hyrule Warriors: Legends quite a lot and glad to have seen this unexpected team up work, so well. There are a huge variety of characters to mess around with and no one feels the same. The narrative surely felt lacklustre, but when you are hacking n slashing away, I doubt that will be the thing you will be focusing on the most. A good variety of game modes and customisation make this a successful entry! Seeing as Zelda has remained pretty stagnant for a long time, it’s refreshing to see Nintendo allow another company to put their own spin on the series and come out with something as cool as this.
