Listen to the Rain

I have almost no experience with musou (無双, "peerless, unrivaled," referring to the skill of the warriors) games, other than playing Dynasty Warriors 3 with my high school friends. I had a soft spot for Pang Tong and played him in multiplayer a couple times, and the phrase "Humble the rebels!" is a meme among us to this day. But that's about as far as it went. Some of them continued further in the Warriors series, but I never did.

That means that I came into Hyrule Warriors without any preconceptions. I knew that I would be fighting enemy lieutenants and generals, that I'd be running around accomplishing objectives, and that I'd be killing thousands of enemies. And all of that definitely happened! I saw a stream of the game before I bought it and the streamer was complaining that it didn't feel like a Legend of Zelda game, and I can see that. There's no puzzles to solve. There's no dungeons to delve into. But Hyrule Warriors is a Koei game, and thus a musou game first, and it actually had more Zelda in it than I was lead to expect.

I mean, I was constantly throwing bombs at everything. That's quintessential Legend of Zelda.

I had originally planned to play this game in Japanese, but after I bought it on the eShop, I learned that, bizarrely, Koei games often have Western and Eastern versions and I had bought the Western version with only European language support. It's not a mainline Zelda game, so it doesn't really bother me, but it was a bit surprising. Had I played it in Japanese, the title would have been ゼルダ無双 ハイラルオールスターズ DX, "Zelda Unrivaled Hyrule All Stars DX."


I actually think that Legend of Zelda is a pretty good fit for a properly-formatted Musou game. Unlike the games where everyone is human and it's not entirely clear how a single warrior can kill dozens or hundreds of men in battle--other than their peerless skill, obviously--in the Legend of Zelda games, Link will easily kill dozens or hundreds of minor Legend of Zelda enemies in the course of a game. I probably killed thousands of bokoblins, and hundreds of moblins and lizalfos, over the course of Breath of the Wild. Link is the Legendary Hero, after all, wielding the Sword of Evil's Bane, so of course evil can't stand against him. And if Link can do it, it makes sense that most of the other characters can do. Impa is a mighty warrior, Zelda is also empowered by the Triforce and bears the blood of the Goddess, characters like Fi and Midna and Darunia and Ruto all have their own sources of power. There's less of a disconnect in why this is happening, even though I know that really none of it matters because video games.

Gameplay is divided into a series of missions, each of which has the same basic structure. The maps are divided into various keeps connected by corridors and open spaces, and keeps are owned by the player or one of the enemy groups. Most of the enemies on the map are fodder, nameless foot soldiers who die in a single hit by the titans who stride the battlefield, but keeps are guarded by minibosses, and sometimes special characters like aeralfos or big poes or stalmasters appear leading other troops or on missions of their own. Special character battles are more interesting, as they have special abilities--aeralfos breath flames, shield moblins have a spin attack--and vulnerabilities that can be exploited, as well as life bars that take more than a single hit to deplete. Most maps also have enemy generals, famous characters like Ghirahim or Zant, Hyrule Warriors-exclusive enemies like Volga or Wizzro, or Ganondorf, who have special abilities and life bars but, well, more of both. Some maps even have traditional Zelda bosses like King Dodongo or Gohma.

The problem is that I didn't find any of the boss battles particularly engaging. Fighting the special characters was fun, becuase their powers and vulnerabilities provided a nice change from mowing down hordes of minions, but the bosses were either easy but annoying or hard but annoying. Presumably there's a sweet spot where the battles become back-and-forth exchange, but I'd either overwhelm the boss with my attacks, constantly stunning them and sending them flying, or they'd do so much damage with their attacks that I'd hit them with my special attacks and then farm special attack energy from minions before repeating. There was almost never a real back and forth, just power overwhelming on one side.

The moment-to-moment gameplay of running around and beating up minions and special characters was a lot of fun, but all the times I was supposed to be fighting a legendary duel fell flat.


Even the battles against the traditional Legend of Zelda bosses were disappointing because they lean far too hard into the "expose the weak point and hit it for massive damage" style of Zelda battles. Despite the heroes' incredible prowess against all their other foes, most bosses are invincible until a specific action is performed, like shooting Gohma in the eye or using the boomering to stun Manhandla, at which point the weak point is exposed and you hit it for massive damage. Special characters and bosses have a kind of stamina wheel when they're vulnerable that's depleted by repeated hits, and when it runs out, they're automatically subject to a massive attack. That's the main way of dealing damage to bosses and it's extremely tedious, especially when their life bar makes it obvious that a single hit would have taken them out.

I mentioned the boomerang, and of course Hyrule Warriors has some of the iconic items from the series. The boomerang stuns enemies, the bow shoots arrows, the bomb blows up cracked walls, the flute allows teleporting to various owl statues, the hookshot draws enemies closer or lets the hero climb ledges, and the hammer presses switches. Throughout the maps are powerups for each of the items, letting the bow fire five arrows or the bomb turn into a giant super bomb that blows up most of the screen, but I almost never used these even if I found them. By far the item that got the most usage during my playthrough was the flute, because the presence or absence of the hero was the single most important part of any battle during the game. Second was the bombs, for blowing up boulders and finding secret chests. Everything else only got used when I had to damage a boss. The items, even powered up, just aren't effective enough compared to normal attacks to justify the time spent to to use them.


It took me forty hours or so to go through all the story scenarios of Hyrule Warriors, but I could play this game for literally hundreds of hours in order to unlock everything. In addition to the story, called Legend mode, there's an "Adventure Mode" involving a series of maps laid out in grids like in the original Legend of Zelda, each of which contains small battle scenarios that are graded on a scale. Beating these unlocks other battles or provides items, badge materials, or even new characters. There are a dozen characters that I haven't played with yet and that never showed up anywhere in the story, like Ravio from A Link Between Worlds or Marin from Link's Awakening, that are unlocked this way, and while I do kind of want to see Marin's special attack where she drops the Wind Fish on people, I don't want to unlock her, power her up, and then fight more battles just to see it.

And I definitely don't want to chase S-rankings. Not in Azure Striker Gunvolt, and not here.

Each hero has a level, which affects their health and damage. In addition, some maps and story mode scenarios have heart containers which directly increase their health. Weapons have different properties and some heroes like Link (Sword, Magic Rod) or Lana (Book, Spear) have multiple weapon types. But the biggest grind is the badge merchant. Every hero has an Attack, Defense, and Assist badge section, with "badges" that unlock combos, reduce damage taken on certain stages, increase the speed at which that hero takes keeps, lets them overcome enemy blocking, and so on. It's easy to find bronze materials, but silver materials only drop from bosses and gold materials are rare drops from bosses, so if I really wanted to max out every single character's badges in every category, I'd be looking at hundreds of hours of grinding. How Long To Beat lists a completionist playthrough at 343 hours, which is almost as long as it took me to beat the entire Legend of Zelda series up to Breath of the Wild. No thank you.

There's even a "My Fairy" mode, where you level up companion fairies by feeding them various kinds of food. I don't need to do all that. Maybe if I wanted to A-rank everything in Adventure Mode, but none of the story battles were hard enough to justify all this grinding.


I love all the aesthetics about Adventure Mode, and if it weren't more of the same, I'd probably play more of it. I mentioned the grid--beating stages unlocks other stages, allowing you to progress across the map. Some stages require a certain grade in previous stages to beat, some stages are hidden on the other side of mountains, forests, or rivers, and require an alternate route or the use of special items like the raft to reach. Some stages have hidden treasures that need items like the candle to find, and there's a little 8-bit animation of 8-bit Link burning down a bush and finding a secret stairway. Like the picture above, before every battle, there's a scene where the heroes and enemies line up and take a swing at each other before diving into battle.

Unfortunately, once the actual battle begins, the gameplay is the same, just on a smaller scale. The battles generally take less than ten minutes, rather than the thirty plus of the main story stages, so they're a quick play. But the problem is the kill requirement. For some of the battles, rushing straight to complete them means that you won't achievement enough kills to get an A-rank in the kill category, even if you A-rank the other categories. So the solution to this is to go into an enemy keep, where monsters continually respawn, and farm them until you hit the arbitrary kill number.

I know how I am. I'm a completionist when it comes to this kind of thing. My World of Warcraft main had The Insane title. I won't let myself do anything but get an A-rank on those stages, and that means I'll be doing a lot of pointless grinding. This is why completionists spent ten times as long as I did on the game, and why when I play this it'll be the way I play The Binding of Isaac. I'll load it up, play a level or two, and then put it down again.


Speaking of the story, it certainly does exist.

Danger threatens Hyrule and Zelda and Impa seek out the legendary hero! Fortunately, Link is literally in the courtyard practicing his swordplay as a guard, so it takes them about ten seconds. An evil sorceress named Cia is attacking Hyrule to seize the Triforce for herself, and as part of her plot she opens portals to other eras of Hyrule's history--Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword, which is the excuse to bring together characters from multiple Zelda games together so they can all fight side-by-side. Eventually it turns out that the whole thing is a plot by Ganondorf--of course it is, it's almost always a plot by Ganondorf--and despite defeating the evil sorceress, the King of Evil is undiminished and the heroes must unite against him.

Also, the Master Sword was part of the seal keeping Ganondorf imprisoned, but I can forgive that. Using the only weapon that can defeat them as part of the villain containment device also showed up in Four Swords Adventures, so while it's dumb, at least it's canon dumb.

The best story parts are the side-stories, what was originally DLC before it was all collected in the Switch version. My favorite is probably Linkle, the half-hearted answer to the legions of fans who have been wanting to play Zelda (though Zelda is also playable as a hero--she fights with a rapier and the Bow of Light). She wears green, she defends her village with her friends the cuccos, and her grandmother told her that she was destined to be the legendary hero. So when danger arrives, Linkle sets off to stop it. She shadows the main campaign, showing up before or after the other heroes do, before finally arriving at Hyrule Castle to defend it from a horde of monsters when the others are returning the Master Sword to its pedestal in the Temple of the Sacred Sword. She has a terrible sense of direction but a lot of heart and is always cheerful, and I have a big soft spot for dojikko characters. Also she fights with twin crossbows and an army of cuccos at her side, so how can that premise go wrong?


I wasn't expecting a great Legend of Zelda game from Hyrule Warriors, and that's good, because I didn't get one. It's not made by Nintendo and is far more of a musou game with a Zelda skin over the top, even with the items and other concessions to Legend of Zelda. Once I finished the story, and dabbled in Adventure Mode, all that's left is more of the same. I feel like it would be a lot more fun in multiplayer, actually--sitting side-by-side on the couch, just chatting while we sent thousands of stalchildren and bokoblins to their deaths and ran around unleashing overpowered attacks. Something to occupy our hands while we talked, the way some people have knitting circles. But I can't see myself finishing all the adventure mode maps, getting the costumes, leveling up the weapons, and so on. It's not that it's not fun, and it's not that it's too long, it just...doesn't clear the bar. I have other games to play.

I have the digital version, so it'll always be on my Switch if I want to play it. But I don't know that I will. Unless I find a co-op player, I think thirty hours is enough.

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