Nintendo’s inability to furnish the Wii U with a steady stream of compelling games has led to its current role as the forgotten console. Mario Kart 8 at least brought the die-hard Nintendo faithful back to the fold, and now here is Hyrule Warriors, which on paper, is a Frankenstein’s monster of a game – an unappealing-sounding transplantation of Tecmo Koei’s ancient hack-n-slash franchise Dynasty Warriors into Hyrule, the world of Zelda, complete with familiar protagonists, enemies and environments.
Against all the odds, it somehow manages to make eminently good sense. It’s very much a Zelda game – Dynasty Warriors’ shogun and samurai are nowhere to be seen, and Tecmo Koei has clearly had fun indulging its Zelda fan-boy tendencies. Like Mario Kart 8, it shows that the Wii U has more graphical grunt than we initially thought, and a classic Zelda cut-scene establishes the story. Zelda, naturally, is spirited away, Hyrule is under threat from dark forces and, as Link, you must save the world.
Except this time around, the way you go about that is by hacking and slashing your way through vast hordes of enemies – who, in true Zelda style, generally look rather cute. You have a sword, naturally, with normal and strong attacks (the latter able to take out tens of enemies at a time) which can be chained into even more devastating combos. Plus, you have two meters for building up magic which enhances all your attacks for a period, and launching a special attack that inflicts vast damage on a single enemy. As you progress, you acquire most of the reassuringly familiar items from Link’s inventory of yore, including bombs, a bow, a boomerang and so on.
Those must be used in a semi-puzzle-solving capacity to access crucial parts of each map, and are invaluable against bosses. Hyrule Warriors’ story mode is split into giant battlefields with multiple objectives which, because they are set up sandbox style, you must approach with a considerable amount of tactical nous. You have an army (indeed, as the story progresses, several armies) at your disposal, and your troops follow your lead. You can raise morale by dominating areas, such as keeps, which you can win by clearing them out of enemies and taking down the keep bosses. At times, you must take executive decisions, such as breaking off from your current objective to help an ally in distress, and if your home base is taken over by the enemy, defeat ensues. Luckily, each battle is checkpointed, so you won’t go right back to square one.
Swords and satisfaction
There’s something deeply satisfying about Hyrule Warriors’ core gameplay – the way you cut down enemies makes you feel wonderfully heroic. One criticism that has been levelled at the game is that it can get repetitive, and after the first few battles, such thoughts do occur for a period. But as you progress, you can play as characters other than Link, with wildly varying weapons and attacks, and the game’s tactical element really kicks in, which brings you back. Plus there are some magnificent boss-battles, whose weaknesses you must work hard to expose – in stark contrast, say, to Destiny with its depressingly formulaic end-of-level face-offs. And strangely, the most unprepossessing-looking bosses are the ones that prove hardest to take down
There’s plenty of replay value, thanks partly to a bizarre board game-style feature with faux-8-bit graphics, which encourages you to explore parts of the world you haven’t visited (and rewards you with extra health and objects), and random events such as Golden Skultulas which briefly spawn, generally while you have your hands full elsewhere on the battlefield. Hyrule Warriors is also a tinkerer’s delight – you can open up new combos, upgrade your character and boost your troops by forging badges, and craft potions from materials you collect. You can play co-operatively, on a single Wii U, too.
Hyrule Warriors ought not to work – it smacks of Nintendo’s desperation to get any sort of game out for its overlooked machine – but it will certainly delight the faithful fans, and manages to remain utterly true to the world of Zelda while offering really fresh-feeling gameplay. It’s far from perfect, and won’t win any awards, but has the attributes required to gain cult status in the years to come. If you have a Wii U, it’s a must-buy.
