It’s no surprise that Hyrule Warriors made its way to the Nintendo Switch.
The game was one of the best on the Wii U, an excellent merger between the gameplay of
Dynasty Warriors and the world of Zelda.
Right out of the box, it had a ton of content and fanservice, but then Koei Tecmo kept adding
more via DLC.
New characters, new Adventure Mode Maps, new costumes, and even new weapons.
And then came Hyrule Warriors Legends on 3DS with even more content, including new story
scenarios.
However, while that version had a lot of great additions, playing a Warriors game on handheld
just wasn’t the same.
The character animation on a normal 3DS was horrendous and even on a New 3DS, there just
wasn’t enough enemies to make it feel worth playing.
The game suffered because it just wasn’t a good fit for handhelds.
Well, until now.
Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition takes all the content from the Wii U and 3DS versions
along with their DLC and brings them together in one complete package for the Switch.
That includes the main story, Linkle’s tale, Cia’s tale, and the Wind Waker scenario
plus every Adventure Mode map and the Fairy system from Legends.
Every costume, weapon, and playable character is featured as well making for an incredibly
robust feature set that is guaranteed to provide hours of gameplay even if you only play a
fraction of the content.
Many more characters are unlocked at the outset in Definitive Edition, allowing players to
jump into some of their favorites.
That’s not to say there isn’t anything to unlock though.
Each stage in the story has gold skulltulas, heart containers, and heart pieces to find
while the various Adventure Mode maps feature more characters, weapons, and costumes.
And it’s Adventure Mode that’s seen the most improvement with this iteration.
In every game before, it was a chore to collect the mode-specific items you needed to unlock
the special reward that a challenge provided.
It forced players to replay stages just to gain these items.
To alleviate this, the Definitive Edition introduces a new item card shop to make this
process much easier.
Once you’ve collected an item for the first time, you can then buy more from the item
shop and continue to make progress.
It’s a simple addition that keeps the fun of making your way through the Adventure Maps
while cutting back the hassle of collecting the item cards through repeated challenges.
It’s a good change but perhaps not the most exciting for those looking to play the game
again.
And unfortunately, brand new features are at a minimum.
The only other thing of note is the new Breath of the Wild-inspired costumes for Link and
Zelda.
They both look really good and are available right away but can’t really be called game
sellers.
A feature that was in Legends that is just great to have in general is the ability to
switch between multiple characters.
Like the item shop, this helps cut down the amount of times you have to play the same
challenge or stage over and over again.
Instead, you can choose the characters that get rewarded and all of them can be taken
care of provided you actually find the rewards.
But even without that, it makes the maps easier to manage as you can select different characters
as you need them or even command them to go to a certain point while you play with another
character.
It really does make each level feel more rewarding.
Really, what the Definitive Edition brings to the table is more hardware power to work
with.
The game runs at a silky smooth framerate that appeared downright strange to me at first.
I was so used to the lower framerate of the Wii U version that the the improved visuals
actually took a little while to adjust to.
But that’s a good thing as Hyrule Warriors looks great both in TV Mode and Handheld with
barely even a hint of stuttering.
And the color pallette has been brightened so that each stage now pops with even more
vibrancy.
The game looks and runs fantastically, especially in comparison to the 3DS.
Plenty of enemies can fill the screen now with no issue.
The music is as good as ever with classic Zelda tunes remixed with a rock edge along
with original tracks that are better in some ways.
Almost every song is catchy and memorable that I never minded hearing them again and
again.
If you haven’t played Hyrule Warriors up until this point and were ever interested,
this is the version to buy.
It is, simply put, the best iteration bar none, refining what came before and allowing
elements introduced in Legends to finally shine.
I couldn’t make it far into Legends before calling it quits, but I was always curious
about its content This was my chance to play it, and if you’re in a similar situation
or haven’t even played beyond the base Wii U version, it is still so much fun to tear
through enemies.
I liked it a lot and plan to keep playing it until I’ve finally seen it all.
It really is one of the best Warriors games out there, and if you’re not burnt out from
the sheer amount of content from previous versions, it’s worth playing on the Switch.
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