I bought a Wii U system back in 2013 and to be honest i haven’t played any games on it, i tried out some demos and i was just not impressed, my PS3 had better graphics and more interesting games. Fast forwarding 3 years, i saw Hyrule Warriors on some newsletter offer from my local game store and decided to give it a shot and dust off my Wii U.

Well i don’t know exactly how to explain this but Nintendo games always have some kind of quality that is hard to grasp. This was my feeling when i started playing Hyrule Warriors. The game reeks of fan service, it felt like playing Ocarina of Time on speed with HD graphics. The presentation is nicely done, the game features a main campaign with its own storyline combining all the Zelda games in a unique mashup but also has a secondary campaign called Adventure Mode where you get to play the original classic Zelda via unique battles connecting it to this game.

People familiar with Dynasty Warrior games will feel at home here, if you don’t know the franchise, let’s just say you are some kind superhero wreaking havoc in huge armies that attack your strongholds. Every level has a number of forts which you need to kill the boss to occupy, moreover there are objectives and quests given to you in real-time that you need to accomplish in order to finish the level. You need to be careful tho, enemies can easily destroy your base and your mission will then immediately fail.

Combat-wise the game is pretty basic having 3 main attacks and a dodge button as well as some special combos that can be executed when your power bar is full. Even tho the combat is simple it is very satisfying, and having a lot of playable characters makes things even more interesting. There are some subtle RPG elements here, you gain exp when killing mobs thus becoming stronger as you level, get drops from mobs which you can later craft,sell or use them to enhance weapons and lastly there is a skill tree which you can unlock passive skills and new buffs.

Graphic wise Hyrule Warriors looks pretty and is fluent, unfortunately co-op suffers a bit with FPS when too much stuff is going on. The online battle system is very well done and the game has some exceptional support with frequent updates. Finally the music is an excellent example of how to remix old tunes and make them sound new while retaining the “old” feel.

Hyrule Warriors reminded me that Nintendo may not have a lot of games in their console library but the ones they got are of very high quality. After this pleasant surprise i will be trying out other games for Wii U i missed these past years, i’m pretty sure that i’m in for a treat.
Oh and btw, Hyrule Warriors Legends is coming out on 3DS this March, so get ready to wreak havoc on the road!

Available for : Wii U