Warring in Hyrule

Why the fuck is this hot to me?

I don't like the Zelda games very much. I thought Ocarina of Time was absolutely breathtaking for a console game back in the day, but I didn't enjoy it enough to play much further than the water temple. Never touched another Zelda game (save for a bit of Twilight Princess on Dolphin) until Breath of the Wild, which is one of my all-time favourite games. I've completed the story in a matter of days, I've uncovered the entire map, cleared a whole lot of shrines and I still dick around with it on occasion. I've got my cool armor sets, my sexy horse armor on a really pimped-out mount, and I'm still going on weird adventures from time to time. I really love this game.

With that in mind, you can't deny that BotW isn't your typical Zelda game. "Dungeons" are bite-sized, apart from the four beasts, it's all open world and exploration and survival and a bit of Skyrim and a touch of Dark Souls and a lot of stupid breaking weapons and fun and mystery and wonder and I wanna fire it up again right now, just from writing about it.
Not that there's anything wrong with classic Zelda games. They're just not for me. I never completed one, they never kept me hooked long enough, it's just not my kind of game, I suppose. So the fact that I play the absolute shit out of BotW, while it's still Claire's only Zelda game she has never come even close to finishing, does suggest it's really unlike any other game of the series. Good for me. Yay!

And then came Hyrule Warriors. Technically, Hyrule Warriors came years ago, but none of the 36 people around the world who bought a WiiU happen to be me, so I didn't play the original release. I did play it on the 3DS for a while and actually quite enjoyed it, but that version is scaled down so much, I never really took it seriously enough to be more than bathroom entertainment. Look, it's a perfectly servicable version of the game if you want to play it on the go and you don't own a Switch, but the Switch version simply looks and plays a lot better for obvious reasons.

Not the prettiest game on the system, but the massively overpowered main characters are a sight to behold.

To be honest, I really just bought this game on the Switch because I have more money than sense. 2018 has been a bit of a shit year for the console, so far. Dark Souls is getting delayed (and I'm starting to wonder whether or not it'll be released at all at this point), there's a bunch of really shit new indie games (FUCK YOU, $30 Moorhuhn!) Donkey Kong is an overpriced re-release and, if we're being honest, so is Hyrule Warriors. But I just finished Telltale's excellent Batman, WWE2K18 was made completely unplayable by a recent firmware update with no fix in sight, so heyho, let's get something new(ish) already!

I went into Hyrule Warriors as a complete newcomer to all things (classic) Zelda and Dynasty Warriors. I had no clue that Sheik is actually Zelda, I only know Midna from the rule34 archives and I still don't know what fucking game Ghirahim or however the fuck you spell him is from. So most of the game's fan-service is clearly lost on me. But damn, am I having fun!
Hyrule Warriors reminds me of massive MMO-style battlegrounds, where countless players battle back and forth over territory, trying to capture keeps and resources. You do the exact same thing, except you're offline, nobody hides to go AFK and there's no chat where one guy with zero kills and 20 deaths complains about how everyone in his faction is a complete retard. Awesome!

I don't even know most of these characters, but they're all super fun to play.

If there's one thing I dislike about the game, it's the excessive amount of padding. Every level contains a bunch of hidden stuff (read: heart containers) for multiple characters, usually requiring you to beat each mission at least twice. And then twice more on hard mode after you complete the story for the first time, because let's put even more bonus crap everywhere.
One thing I do like, however, is jolly cooperation, so I forced Claire to play the split-screen co-op mode with me. The game becomes significantly easier that way, because we can focus on different goals at the same time, whereas it's easy to get overwhelmed by a million things happening all at once when you play solo. The downside is that Claire now keeps nagging me about wanting to buy the game on her Switch, which makes no sense, because she can just level and gear up her favourite characters on my Switch, where we play together, anyway. Ugh. Goodbye, extra 50 Quid for a re-release.

Hyrule Warriors is a great co-op experience. I can raid an enemy keep while Claire defends our base. She can hunt down a bunch of nasty summoners while I go after Gumblegorf or whatever. Combat is a piss-easy, button-mashing affair. You can give a controller to your fat aunt and ask her to sit on it and wiggle around for a bit and she'll fart out the most amazing combo-attacks, literally wiping out hundreds of enemies all at once. But you need to make decisions, come up with tactics on the spot, prioritize, that sort of thing. Basically, if you're an idiot like me, play with a friend to split the workload or you'll probably feel a bit suffocated by your responsibilities.

Beating up the same enemy hero together is rather satisfying, as well.

We haven't even touched the game's adventure mode, yet, where you can unlock 196 or so costumes, 120ish weapons, another dozen or so additional playable characters and customizable fairies, which can be fed and dressed and all sorts of weird creepy shit I'm gonna leave to Claire, because I don't want to do this. So, if you're the kind of person, who likes to sink hundreds, if not a thousand hours into a single game, this one's definitely for you.
I'm having fun. And now I know a whole bunch of characters from all sorts of Zelda games, as well as remixed theme music and other stuff real fans probably appreciate a lot more than I possibly could. Also, fuck Toon Link.

All praise aside, though - pull your finger out, Nintendo! Charging money for your online service, just because everybody else is doing it, sucks. Enabling cloud saves only as a paid feature sucks even harder. I don't care that it's a relatively small amount of money for a yearly subscription. Something as essential as cloud saving on a portable device, which is prone to damage and theft, simply shouldn't be a paid-only service! And no, adding a bunch of shitty old NES games to the package doesn't justify the price tag. And can we please have some quality control, before more broken, unplayable, hideous shit like Firefighters - The Simulation makes its way to the eShop? No virtual console, but ancient NeoGeo and PS2-era games for up to a tenner a pop, what the fuck? And let's not even get into the hardware exploit, which allows people to run all sorts of homebrew and emulators on their consoles right now, which can only be fixed by a hardware revision, just one year after the console was launched.

Funnily enough, one game that keeps me coming back is still Pokkén Tournament DX. It's the Pokémon fighting game, which I assume attracts toddlers more than anything else, judging by how people play online. Here's the thing, though - the netcode is excellent, I rarely get noticeable lag, there is no input lag whatsoever, opponents are found within 10 seconds or less at all times and the amount of rage-quitting is minimal in ranked matches. How the FUCK can a Pokémon-brawler for kids pull this off, while the online experience in Capcom's Street Fighter V is still such a pile of steaming raw turd?

I am god in a world of toddlers, who suck at videogames.

And you know what? Nuking the absolute shit out of people with a squeaky, annoyingly girly character, who shoots hearts and rainbows and crap, is immensely satisfying. Playing this game makes me grin like the total idiot I am ♥