When I was asked if I wanted to review Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition on the Switch, I almost turned it down. Having seen footage of other musou games it just did not look like something that would appeal to me and thus, would not result in a fully honest assessment. However, every once in a while a certain editor does say something meaningful and what he has said is that you never know what you might enjoy if you don’t give it a chance. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Booting up the game I was still apprehensive, the very idea of just running around a map swinging a sword at hordes of enemies still didn’t seem very appealing. Add in the thought that unlike a Souls game, combat can be reduced to button mashing thus removing any thought of strategy or skill and I was even more certain that I would not like the game. Admittedly I am not a Souls fan; the idea of hard as nails gameplay doesn’t appeal to me since I am old with old man reflexes and I simply don’t have time to “die” repeatedly in a game.



That started to change from the first mission. The initial view of chaos is confirmed, but it is more organised than I thought. The map looks large, but is in fact quite small and gated off. You have to progress through mini missions on the map to unlock the rest of the map and these generally consist of clearing enemies from the map and defeating Outpost Captains to capture a spawn point. Once you complete that the rest of the map opens up. These battles are actually pretty easy, even on normal difficulty, as I did not suffer major damage until much later in the game. Combat consists of your primary attack mapped to X. Repeated presses set up a simple combo that devastates every enemy and destructible object in your arc.

Once you start levelling up via the market place between missions you will unlock a stringer attack mapped to Y and a combo of X and Y button presses will give you a new combo. The attacks are spectacular and particularly satisfying as you sweep hordes of enemies out of the way. The stronger enemies pose more of a challenge as they take more hits to defeat, but each has a specific weakness that if you find will stun them as indicated by an octagonal indicator that appears; if you attack them then you will perform a specific ultra-type attack that will do significant damage.

If you aren’t coping with the hordes and are surrounded, something that easily happens, you have a power move, similar to the Golden Axe area of effect attack that will get you out of a jam. This attack is only available once you build up the power meter via defeating the hordes. This meter actually takes quite some time to build so you end up saving that attack for later, but given the number of enemies on screen, using it regularly to give you a breather is actually not an issue.



Bosses in the game are more difficult as your normal and even your power attacks do very little damage. The key here, like any other boss fight, is to find their weakness to put them in stun and bring up the octagonal indicator. My own lack of awareness almost had me fail the first mission as I forgot that I had unlocked bombs which were necessary to put the first boss in stun. I couldn’t understand why all my other attacks were not reducing his health bar by more. Only right as he almost reached his victory condition did I start using the bombs to defeat him.



As you progress you will unlock more and more characters to play with. Switching between them is seamless, using up or down on the D-Pad, and each plays differently. While Link is a medium damage and medium speed attacker with any weapon, Impa is your tank. She does massive damage but is slower and thus at the end of a sequence of attacks more vulnerable to a counter. She will however do more damage thus defeating enemies and hordes quicker. A character like Sheik is your faster low damage character allowing you dodge and run from hordes faster for lightning hit and run tactics. The AI controls these characters for most of the stage and that is the one downfall. When I have been in the same area of the map as them they tend to mill around and not attack, leaving most of the hard work to you.

Despite the lack of challenge, even for a “casual” like me, the combat is surprisingly fun and I would say leads to an almost zen-like state. You don’t have to pay much attention when playing the game, just load up a stage, run around and mash your controller. I found myself quite enjoying the fact that I did not need to concentrate much, I could basically just zone out for the 20 to 30 minutes it takes to complete a level. It does make a nice change of pace from most games where you are concentrating on what is happening on screen.



Another surprise for me was the fact that the game has a decently deep upgrade mechanic. Collecting crystals, materials and other loot during battle enables you to craft badges that unlock new abilities for your characters, bind skills at the Smithy and upgrade your weapons and attacks. The system is simple, but resources aren’t infinite so the challenge lies in upgrading different characters along different paths to min/max their usefulness to you on the battlefield. Doing this means that you can meet the different optional challenges that pop by switching characters. The market mechanic is not insanely complex or deep like ones in full RPGs, but deep enough to have you spend time between levels considering how to maximise each character’s path to benefit you during the coming battles.

The game features thirty two characters to unlock, giving you a wide array of attacks and styles to experiment with. Once you are done with Story Mode you can jump into Adventure Mode which is effectively a challenge mode as each map will task you with meeting a challenge, such as defeat x number of enemies within a certain amount of time without taking any damage. Doing that will result in an A ranking. Fail and your ranking drops. That challenge will keep you coming back to attain Rank A, adding tens of hours more gameplay.



I haven’t touched on story because honestly I have no idea what it is. All I can remember is that you and Impa are on a quest across Hyrule to find Zelda, why and how all this came about is something that I did not really pay attention to. I assume some big bad from one of the canon games is trying to conquer Hyrule once again.

Graphically, the game is gorgeous and bright. While not quite the recent Breath of the Wild artstyle, it is still cartoony, effectively evoking any memories you have of any Zelda game. Performance wise, I noticed no slow down between docked and hand held mode, something that seems to usually occur with other Switch games. This makes sense given that this game is basically a merger and port of the WiiU and 3DS games so should not be overly taxing on the Switch hardware.

I use handheld mode mostly even when at home, but with this game I found myself playing mostly docked. Simply the levels are too long for handheld with most having a 60 minute time limit and the mini-map in the upper left corner being difficult to read on the smaller screen. This is where the game falters slightly for me. When I am out and about, I used the Switch to fill the gaps when I am waiting for someone or waiting for a coffee at a restaurant. Given the long missions, the game doesn’t hit that sweet spot for mobile gaming that something like Mario Kart or Darkest Dungeon does.

Hyrule Warriors surprised me and changed my mind on musou games. While repetitive, they are not boring. The fact that you can zone out while playing them is an attraction in itself and makes for a welcome change of pace from the usual fare that is released these days. This is a game that anyone can pick up and play without needing to be taught the most intricate of systems. Those systems are there to an extent for those wishing to delve into them, but if you just want to button mash, you can do that too.