Once there was a game called Dynasty Warriors that I never heard of. Then, ONTO THIS, NINTENDO.

You’ve all played a Zelda game right? You know the deal, be a hero wandering a vast landscape, searching in dungeons for relics, trying to prevent evil befalling the land all by yourself? (Four swords doesn’t count since they’re technically the same person) Well imagine that there were more enemies… and by more enemies I mean like a few hundred times the enemies. You won’t have the power, unless you eat a diet of smash balls and chaos emeralds. Or alternatively… get a third party developer.

Now this game is on the wii-u, and I’ll be making a review of it… IF I HAD A WII-U. But since our beloved Nintendo has a history of half-and-half good/bad decision making and this was a good month, we got an expanded version of Warriors on the 3ds, introducing more characters that the Wii-U can’t have unless they also get a 3ds, SO HAH! Oh and having both versions also gets you a free 3DS home menu wallpaper, so at least there’s a reason to getting both AKA free memorabilia.

Now we’re going to start with the why, I love a good story in games… unless I joined Vizzed 3 days ago…

“but this one is so good who NEEDS a friggin' story line am right? *crickets* yeah who cares”

EUCH BURN IT WITH FIRE!!!

Now I don’t know if this counts as canon or not, but the present day takes place in an era of peace, and on the Zelda Timeline it’s unknown if it takes place after the games from one of the 3 Ocarina of Time splits, or a completely different timeline. Well in this variation of the world, events in the past led to the (supposedly) final battle against evil, being Ganondorf. The hero of that era split his evil spirit into 4 pieces and split them across time and space, locking them away in secure locations, one being under the master sword, where under no circumstance a person would EVER be able to get all four pieces, bringing evil back to hyr- ok how did they mess up?

Well apparently all this time, The Legend of Zelda franchise had their own version of The Watcher, being a sorceress who maintained vigil over the timelines. This sorceress, being a watcher of time in a rift of time and space somewhere in a desolate forest and having nothing else to do, spent all her time watching the events of the worlds. The one thing that she enjoyed the most was the spirit of the hero, Link, who reincarnated time and time again to save the world. That, and he was like really cute. But it saddened the sorceress knowing that she was alone in her realm, and the guy she has a crush on would always be after another girl. Suddenly, GANONDORF. While he couldn’t resurrect without the parts of his body, his evil spirit or whatever remained, and in this moment of weakness for the sorceress, he went into her heart and corrupted her. Driving the light from her spirit, he commanded the sorceress to use her abilities to pull a Sonic Generations and open portals all across the timelines, letting in all sorts of evil from the past to wreak havoc once again.

Zelda of this “peace” era has been having dreams of darkness, like Zelda’s normally would when crisis would strike. So she and her era’s Impa went to search for a youth who could be the reincarnation of the legendary hero. This era’s Link actually happened to be a recruit in the Hyrulean army. When there was news of a monster army marching on the castle, Zelda and Impa leave to fight them, and rather than stay and watch, Link goes to fight as well. Oh and he finds a fairy named Proxy, cause silent protagonist. The rest of the story until the good part is as follows, castle gets taken, Zelda goes missing, Shiek shows up (we all know who he is at this point, but hey, he kicks butt well), the gang meets a girl named Lana, claiming to be of the same kind as the evil sorceress, named Cia, and they go to Cia, she gets the 3 pieces of the Triforce, and opens rifts in time, bringing locations from the past and alternate timelines to this world. So here we have an opportunity to have a wide cast of heroes, villains, and everything in between participating in an epic adventure, and boy is it epic…

For those who aren’t familiar with Dynasty Warriors, you play as a warrior for an army that is fighting another army. Around the battlefield are outposts, keeps, commanders, and other warriors. Your goal is to basically win the fight for your own incompetent faction, while keeping, umm, keeps and your fellow comrades in the fight. In Hyrule Warriors, the warriors are all legendary (and some irrelevant) characters from the Zelda franchise, such as Fi (apparently her name is like Fie), MIDNAAAAA, and… Tingle??? Mmkay. :l Each character has unique play styles and mechanics, and different types of combo attacks that can be used for separate situations.

Worth noting however, this is a rare instance in which the 3DS version is BETTER than the Wii-U version. Sure, the graphics are limited by the handheld system, but all the old elements are there, and more! In the 3ds version you can control up to FOUR warriors at once by switching between them, and the aforementioned extra characters are present as well. The main story has also been expanded and so has adventure mode, but I’m getting ahead of myself, there’s the little tidbits of the game to go over.

Each warrior in the game uses a specific weapon, and a few of them, mainly Link, can get extra weapons. Same warrior, completely different playstyle. Each weapon has an element, fire, water, lightning, darkness, and light. You can also find weapons in the middle of battle from fallen strong enemies, and you keep them only after winning the match. These weapons have stars and skills, representing the strength of the weapon with more stars. Skills can give a passive effect, buff the elemental power of a weapon, or boost a certain combo attack.

Aside from new weapons, warriors get stronger over time through leveling up, finding heart pieces and heart containers, and crafting badges at the bazaar. You gain experience for fighting tougher enemies, warriors, and boss monsters, and leveling up will increase default damage power. Getting enough levels can give an extra heart container too, and by finding containers and pieces in chests and by fulfilling mission requirements you can also increase max health. Badges are basically the games way of making you grind, by having enough of certain materials from monsters, troops, and warriors, and of course the right rupees, you can make a badge. Split into categories of attack, defense, and assist, you can unlock more combos, effects, defense power on certain missions, and increase the length of powerups or shorten the effort needed to capture keeps.

Don’t forget, this is still a Legend of Zelda game, and the elements are still here. I dunno what the original Dynasty Warriors had and what was added by Hyrule Warriors, but here’s what Zelda stuff we have in the game. Through story mode you can locate items that help you in the game to fight enemies and solve… “puzzles”? Bombs, a bow and arrows, a teleporting ocarina, boomerang, hookshot, and hammer. Bombs break open weaker structures, the bow can sever the stem of a poison spewing deku baba from afar and stun enemies briefly, the ocarina takes you to any activated owl statue in the field, the boomerang stuns multiple enemies and destroys vines, the hookshot drags you to enemies and certain high places, and the hammer stuns enemies and hits big switches. All items besides the ocarina can be used to hit weakspots of certain enemies and monsters. (the ocarina has an exploit where you’re invincible while playing it. Oversight or free godmode, you decide.) Also in story mode you can find many Zelda-esque events you won’t find in adventure mode.

What exactly is adventure mode? It’s where you’ll invest all your time into after storymode is finished. Pick a mission, get rewarded based on how well you did, repeat. It’s where bonus costumes, fairies, and many weapons and heart pieces/containers come into play. Even some warriors have to be found in adventure mode to play as them. There are also items required to be used in certain areas on the map to unlock rewards, and the map and items are based off the first Zelda game, so study up on your old secret finding Zelda ways. Or grind compasses, works just as well.

Finally fairies, which can be found in adventure mode, offer more diversity to the game. There are five fairy types for the five elements, and you can feed them to increase their personality points and trust level to learn new skills, or give them clothing to buff them up. The skills they get take a LOOOOOOT of work to get though, and food isn’t all too common, so 5/10 on the fairy mode balancing guys. If you need more skills per fairy you need to connect locally to a friend you can access who also has the game on 3ds, and considering today’s society based on online gaming, WHY ARE EXCLUSIVE LOCAL PLAY FEATURES STILL A THING!?

And that’s all the stuff I need to get on this review, but let’s check the Vizzed categories now…

Graphics: 6
The character models look good for the system, but I always had gripes with the environment... it looks so plain to me. They definitely could have put more trees or hills in the plains in my opinion.

Sound: 10
Ladies and gentlemen, the music is self-composed by the producers as Legend of Zelda medley remixes, most of which are rock and roll. Just look up the soundtracks of the game, it's beautiful. e-e

Addictiveness: 7
As monotonous as the game feels, there's always going to be a goal to work towards to here, something to keep you going. And let's face it, killing 30 things at once takes a while to get old. Or maybe it's just me, I dunno.

Story: 5
Story mode has it's twists and turns, but the endings tend to be a bit slow yknow... though credit where credit is due, they nailed the personalities of most of the characters, Midna is still Midna, Ghirahim is still Ghirahim, and Zant is... well I like playing Zant. -w-

Depth: 9
Adventure mode is pretty huge, and working to getting that perfect fairy definitely takes a couple millennia, so no worries on running out of things to do.

Difficulty: 4
While you are a demi-god, you can have trouble with enemies at lower levels, and no matter what level you are, your teammates will always be a clone army of Slippy Toads.

Overall: 8.3
This is a really good spin off game that is certainly worth getting if you like controlling a huge army's outcome in battle with a few OP guys. I understand it isn't for everyone, but it can only be judged through trying it first. I also hear DLC will be released for the game later, so it will be bigger and bigger. On the downside, Smash Bros proved to Nintendo that they can make people shell out more money for stuff they've already payed for... RIP pokemon pal park... T^T So enjoy Hyrule Warriors or whatever, insert outro here, goodbye.