Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Switch)

 

Definitively the definitive edition

After playing Age of Calamity I got the urge to continue with the original game, which I also got for the Switch but never finished until now... or finished or finished, I got the ending of the legends mode and finished adventure mode, not 100 %. I basically stopped playing right before the end when I got it for the Switch. Pretty much the Ganondorf stages and it's a pity I did since they had tacked on a couple of extra stages after beating the original game. So after banishing Ganon from Hyrule... again, another portal appears bringing the Wind Waker universe into the Hyrule Warriors one. Apparently Phantom Ganon is... I don't recall his plan, he possessed Cia and brought her back to life, got Helmaroc King to kidnap Tetra so you gotta save Tetra with the help of King of Red Lions and then you fight Phantom Ganon and bring Cia back to life. You get the new sub-weapon in the hammer and a couple of extra modes. There was also Linkle stages, but those are pretty much the old stages with different scenarios focused on being grinding levels for materials from tougher enemies.

I started up my old save on the Wii U that I haven't played in ages and I could see I got a bit into it. Got all skulltulas in legends mode and all heart pieces and such. Then I noticed that Cia and her stages didn't have any heart pieces or such. So they added that. Skulltula missions changed and they added boss keys and fairies you could pick up in Adventure mode to enhance your character. If they added that to the 3DS-version I don't know. The Wii U got all characters so that's noting new, together with costumes and such. Mostly just got it as DLC so no need to play to unlock it as here. You got Linkle, Twili Midna, Medli, Toon Zelda, Tetra, Toon Link, King of Red Lions, Ravio and Yuga. So even more a celebration of the Zelda-series. 

Playing through it again, it doesn't grab me as Age of Calamity. I don't like the big bosses since they can really mess with you since if your unlucky and they don't use the attack that enables you to stun them and get the special attack on them you just wait on them. In Age of Calamity it felt more dynamic with the dodge mechanic giving more skill to the player. But then after getting into it I plunged another 40 hours into it. The addition of quick switch between playable character made the game go faster and when I realised I just could use Link in mission where you allowed 2 playable characters I could use the other slot for the character that would be needed to get the A-treasure instead of playing with that character. What are you gonna do when Link is level 111 and Ravio is level 17? You could probably speed it up even more with another player. 

Although I noticed that the game seems to glitch out a lot which I didn't recall in the original. For example when opening chest or if the camera pans over an area it just goes haywire at times, not loading the right asset and a couple of times Link was just sitting in the air as Epona didn't load at the victory screen. It also crashed at one time.

Hyrule Warrios: Age of Calamity

 

Hero Time!

As mentioned in the last post, I got this game and after playing through Breath of the Wild I could finish this of. I clocked 65 hours in to the game and pretty much 100 % it. It was marketed as a prequel to Breath of the Wild and it delivers on that. Begins as Link is mortally wounded before being put in the Shrine of Resurrection as Zelda's awakening of the power of light also awakens a mini-Guardian that was in the Castle. It escape through a portal and travels back in time. Link, Zelda and Impa is trying to stop Calamity Ganon from emerging and so gathers the Champions to control the Divine Beast as Zelda tries to awakens the sacred light within her while Link gets the Master Sword. At the dawn of the Calamity everything goes to hell. The castle is overrun and the Divine Beasts are corrupted by Ganon. Link and Zelda tries to rescue the Champions, but before they arrive, warriors from the future have returned to the past. Sidon, Yenobo, Tebe and Riju arrives to rescue their respectively Champion. So we enter a different timeline.

The king was also able to escape and Master Kogha of the Yiga clan switch sides after being betrayed by the seer Astor that killed his second in command. You also befriends Hestu the korok and you can find the secret characters Monk Maz Koshia and the Great Fairy. Everyone attacks Hyrule Castle, but after defeating Astor and a corrupted version of the mini-Guardian they merge, corrupt the good mini-Guardian so you have to destroy it. Afterwards you fight a humanoid beast form of Calamity Ganon, but no attacks are able to land, until the broken mini-Guardian comes to life and runs toward Zelda and kamikaze-bombs itself upon Calamity Ganon and allows the heroes to seal Ganon away, saving Hyrule. Damn, I never thought I would feel sad for the mini-Guardian.

Now, the main story is over, but you can still do missions for pieces of the mini-Guardians to unlock it as a playable character and also get Calamity Ganon. I actually 100 % it, the reward being the clothes of Link from the first Hyrule Legends. Interesting enough I felt rather disappointed by that since it was staggering with things all the time that made me continue (upgrades and the secret characters), but after that it just disappeared. Which was good since there wasn't anything else, but they could at least made some fanfare or something. Also, in the beginning I didn't like the map system since it didn't make sense, but I got used to it and some upgrades clearly improved it as it was easy to see which missions had the potential for parts to upgrade with and such.

It was fun game. Love the details, take for example that there is this only woman paegent in Gerudo desert, but the male Gorons are allowed in, like in the game since the Gerudos can't see if they are male or female. Love those small details. A bit of a cop-out with the split timeline, I was expecting to cry my eyes out watching the last stand of Link before being killed. Hope Breath of the Wild 2 arrives soon cause I got a craving for more of this world.

Update: Well, what do you know, they announce DLC just a week after me finishing it. Alright, at least Im in phase for this game compared to the first Hyrule Warriors. Pretty much expect Sooga, Robbie and Pura (or whatever her name is) as playable characters, maybe Astor too. Otherwise I don't know. A couple 100 more deku seeds as well.

Fire Emblem Warriors

Fates of Awakening

So since playing Switch is more and more fun and easier than the Wii U that is stuck near the TV I felt a small pull to play a Hyrule Warrior kinda game (I know it's the Dynasty Warrior franchise that started it, but I've only played the Zelda one) and since the preferred Dragon Warrior game for Switch aren't coming to the west at the moment I had to go to the next best thing, a fire emblem version. And it was fun, but boy, I who can stomach clichés starts to feel that Fire Emblem really need to change its game, and this isn't even a main game. 

So basically, the Outrealm gates that are established since Awakening turns up in the kingdom of Ayolies where the the twin prince and princess Rowan and Lianna are sparing with neighbour prince Darios. They escape with the Fire Emblem (shield) and a quest to find 5 heroes to fill the emblem with the jewels to gain the divine dragons strength. So obviously it's the damn shadow/chaos dragon from earlier games like Awakening and the remake of the first game (if it's the dragon of Fates as well I wouldn't know, I've still haven't finished all parts of those games) and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. I'm getting tired of this plot mostly because the enemies are so one-dimensional. It's always the dark dragon corrupting or manipulating everyone to release him and then I have to stop him as he just breaks free. I start to find that may be the reason I like the first western Fire Emblem and the Radiance duology more. The world is more complex in those with political themes and in ways the villains are sympathetic. In the first western one the bad guy is Nergal who pretty much went insane from losing his children as they were half-dragons and he didn't want one special dragon, he wanted to purge humanity and they discuss power politics of the nobles that effects the lower classes and so on. Same goes for the Radiance games, the bad guy is the goddess of Order who tries to bring order and stop her "sister", the goddess of chaos, that almost destroyed the world last time, but since both are split from the original goddess it is clear they are in reality unbalanced. She's helped by people that have lost faith in humanity due to prejudice and greed. And Ike is the first main character that isn't a noble, a person more to the ideals and incorruptible. I love those games.

Best blue haired main character

So it plays pretty much like Hyrule Warriors, but different attacks and characters. I found some improvements that are wonderful. For example you can switch (haha) between 4 characters on the field and all of your characters (even non-playable ally characters) level up on their own, meaning it goes faster to get characters higher level (I would suspect it might be due to more characters than Zelda). They also put in the weapon triangle from Fire Emblem and I can get behind that (maybe since I know it by heart), you know swords beat axes that beats lances that beats swords. Attacking with the right weapon gives you advantage and makes it easier to break their "shield". Which is probably why they have the switch-mechanic. Overall, it feels better and smoother.

So I like the gameplay and the story is boring. But there is glimmers for a fire emblem veteran. For example first meeting with the Awakening players is a recreation of the first scene of that game. And at first I wondered if it was the original voices and I just now checked it out, yes, many of them are the same, some are not, especially enigmatic with Fates characters that was released not that long ago. So you got to meet the different heroes, Chrom first, then Xander, Ryoma and Corrin and lastly Marth. And here is another problem, it's the same games over and over. Why three from Fates? Really, the hero of those games are Corrin while Chrom was Awakening and Marth is Marth, but why not from other games? They just released Shadow of Valencia, why not some cross-promotion? I still haven't got that one. And were is my Ike and Eliwood characters (I see Lyndis is somewhere in the game, I assume the history mode which I need to grind up the characters to be able to tackle).

At least the models look like their games

Also, the mind-control thing was weird in Zelda, here it's just irritating mainly because in the Fire Emblem games it's overused. It's been there for me since Sacred Stones (also, why didn't we use that game as base, there were twins as well?). I can't stand it since it's so obvious and tired. Then again, I've had a hard time to figure out if one of the main characters in this games actually was taken over or did it for himself. It's framed like he was taken over, but they don't act like it. Could also be that I saw the Robin turn and just waited for it to kick in so I could kick him out. And the Iago chapters. Hate that guy.

There is a two-player mode, but I haven't played it and frankly, at the moment without looking at the history mode doesn't feel necessary (like I felt to manage some missions on the Zelda game). The history mode is pretty much a map from different games where they put out some enemies that are missions you need to play in order to get to the end. The only one I watched was the Lyndis one where they reimagined the intro with characters from this game. A pity they didn't use the right class since I believe it was Will the Archer and not Mark the Tactician that gave the news about the layout of the map. At least the ending battle with the dragon was awesome.

Hyrule Warriors (Post 500)

Post 500 and I will write about a Legend of Zelda spin-off, Hyrule Warriors. It's a button-mashing hack and slash game where you take control of famous Zelda-characters across the series as you fight the dark evil trying to pry the triforce from our heroes. I guess this was inspired by the final stretch of Skyward Sword where you are running down a spiral hole being attacked by hundreds of Moblins and you swing your sword and they fly. Awesome then, fun now. It doesn't get as awesome since then you were alone and that was pretty much the only time it happened. Here it's all about that. Enemies flies all over. Get's repetitive, but as I understand it that is the core gameplay of this type of games. I played through the main campaign and the story is pretty standard. Someone causes trouble, by the end of the second act Ganondorf returns and the twist is you got to play as him and the final is you defeating him. Around 20 hours. This isn't the main game. The main game is the adventure mode in where you travel across the original Legend of Zelda over world map doing missions to earn item cards too use to unlock secrets so that you can get new characters and weapons. I get it's at least 300 hours to complete it. You can have 2-players as well, sad for me there is no one around and the internet isn't the best.

So overall it's a fun diversion who knows how to cater toward action-oriented Zelda fans. The fan-service is all over... and with fan-service I don't mean catering to male sexual fantasies, even if its there as well in one case:

No, I meant more like the sound effects from Zelda when using some weapons, opening chest, even starting up the game. You have rupees, the music is rearranged hard rock covers of songs from the Zelda games and bosses have weakness that was from the games they come from. You at least have 300 hours to play away. A pity Smash came out last Friday taking up even more hours. At least the big console release isn't until December 5.