Two years ago, Hyrule Warriors for Wii U was announced, the first experiment in which Nintendo, in collaboration with Omega Force and Team Ninja, focused attention on war rather than on the adventure that has always characterized the titles of The Legend of Zelda series . The result was a more than discreet musou, undermined by some flaws (for the most part “typical” characteristics of the genre) but enriched by that touch that all fans of Link and company can only have appreciated. Now, a year and a half later, here comes an improved port in both content and gameplay: Hyrule Warriors Legends, and Nintendo has (almost) hit the mark again.
In reality the question needs to be clarified slightly: the title as already mentioned is a port of the original and therefore all those who have already stripped the Wii U version properly and who have even bought the DLCs will find in Hyrule Warriors Legends a real duplicate and the purchase, for obvious reasons, is completely not recommended. Different speech instead for those approaching for the first time the musou set in Hyrule: in this case the novelty effect combined with the actual goodness of the game make the title highly recommended, however taking into account that it will be necessary to deal with some defects. I'll talk about later.
A Hyrule full of things to do!
Hyrule Warriors Legends is indeed a port but Nintendo still wanted to make the game attractive to as many fans of the saga as possible: we therefore find many game modes including some unreleased: we have the mode Legend (the real story), the modality Adventure, The mode Fatin in addition to the unlockables that will delight all fans of collecting. The hours spent in this museum, therefore, are around the ten hours for Legend mode only, but I assure you that if you want to complete everything, from the Adventure mode to the collectibles, you will even reach a hundred hours, if you can still make up for the boredom that will come sooner or later. And here we come to one of the defects of the game but which, in reality, is a typical feature of musou and it is therefore almost wrong to make the repetitiveness on the overall evaluation of the game (it would be like taking as negative the presence of "too many jumps" in a platform). In the Legend mode we will have to deal with the plot of the game: nothing exceptional or particularly profound, but to see our favorites that we have learned to love in all these years behave in a more "mature" way, precisely because of finding themselves in a mysterious war between parallel universes, makes everything interesting and lets you play with pleasure for the duration of the mode. In each mission we will find ourselves catapulted into a very large arena, consisting of several bases and outposts that we will have to try to conquer by eliminating the leader guarding that area: obviously in the meantime we will have to kill hundreds and hundreds of enemies juggling between basic attacks, combos and truly spectacular special attacks.
In general, the purpose of each mission will be to prevent our base from being conquered by the enemies and to eliminate the general of the opposing army; obviously in all this there will also be secondary missions, enemy outposts and bases to conquer (to expand your army and minimize the chances of our bases being attacked) and allies to save. Chaos, therefore, will reign supreme: it will not rarely happen to have to make decisions about who to save or what to conquer, often having to give up a secondary mission in order to complete another whose location is on the opposite side of the map. Fortunately, in this version for 3DS we have a really useful addition: on the touch screen, in fact, during the course of the missions we will be able to choose which character to use and change it instantly, thus being able to opt for the warrior closest to a point to be reached, thus avoiding having to run from one part of the stage to the other with the hope of reaching the goal in time; to make matters worse on the map we have totems that will allow us to teleport at different points of the stage, so the question of "reaching the goal" was certainly easier compared to the Wii U counterpart. In addition to the Legend mode, as already mentioned before, we also have a Adventure mode in which, in a screen that is very reminiscent of the first The Legend of Zelda, it will be necessary to move from box to box and face different missions with imposed characters: if in the Legend mode the strengthening of our warriors is important, here it becomes fundamental: forget about carry out certain missions with the basic set of weapons and attacks, the difficulty will be really high.
The art of war
As in any self-respecting musou, even in Hyrule Warriors Legends we will have a large number of playable characters (which, however, do not reach the hundreds as in the various Dinasty Warriors), all drawn from the universe of Zelda and each with its own peculiar characteristics and moveset: if in fact with Link we have a balanced character suitable for most situations, with Linkle (whose storyline is really interesting) we have a perfect character to eliminate enemies from a distance, while for brute force we will have to rely on Impa or Darunia for example . In the course of the adventure, however, we will be able to unlock new weapons of different power and powers, as well as special abilities that will allow us to increase the number of executable combos, usable objects or negative effects that we will suffer in a minor way or that we will inflict more to enemies. Upgrading and leveling up characters will be very useful for the purposes of the Legend mode: despite a slightly lower difficulty level than the original title for Wii U, it will not be enough to continue fast and eliminate all the enemies to complete the missions; a minimum dose of tactical preparation, from strengthening the warriors to giving orders to the different characters on the map will be a must if you don't want to see the word "Game Over" too soon. But the Zelda effect is not only present in the characters, in fact we will find several typical elements of the saga, such as bombs, the bow, the boomerang or the harpoon, up to the rupees (the game's currency), the Radiant Fairies, the ampoules with related potions, chests and heart holders: what we actually seem to play is a real chapter of the saga in which, however, everything is concentrated only on war, which could make those who consider these experiments turn up their noses. but which, on balance, has led to an excellent result.
The war that brings desolation
Until now it seems that Hyrule Warriors Legends has hit all the objectives in full: if we do not make the boredom of repeating the same actions over and over for the duration of the game weigh too much (but as already said, if this is what worries you then the musou are not for you), the title might seem almost perfect, but here we have to talk about the technical sector of the game. If on Wii U, despite not screaming a miracle, we still had high definition graphics with really amazing special effects, for obvious reasons on the 3DS we miss all this: often sparse textures in the game world, washed out colors and a few hitches in the frame rate they make us understand how Nintendo's laptop is put to the test with this title. Let's face it: in general Hyrule Warriors Legends is well played with detailed characters, huge environments (albeit quite empty) e fluidity almost always at the top (on New 3DS), but it still feels like something castrated. Here too, however, as done at the beginning, a clarification must be made: the title played on the basic version of the 3DS offers a different experience than the same one on New 3DS. In the first case, in fact, the 3D effect will be automatically deactivated, everything will run at 30fps and the enemies on the screen will be less numerous, with the lighting effects of the various special attacks much less conspicuous. On the New, despite being essentially the same game, the situation changes, with a 3D that can be activated (but which if deactivated allows you to play at 60fps), a number of enemies on a higher screen (with the annoying pop-in effect absent compared to the version 3DS normal) and better lighting effects. Nothing changes instead on the audio sector in which we have normal sound effects with one soundtrack that winks a lot (or rather, the ear) to rock, with songs composed specifically for the game and others that will delight fans of the saga, with typical tracks of the series rearranged to better adapt to the frenzy of the title.
So was Hyrule Warriors Legends really needed? Currently the 3DS version, in general, can be considered better than the Wii U counterpart. If you pass over obviously worse graphics, we still have improved gameplay, more modes and all the DLC already included in the cartridge (in addition to other contents already announced), which therefore ensure dozens and dozens of hours of gameplay: it will be up to you and it's up to your "patience" to judge these hours as funny or highly boring.
