Hyrule Warriors Legends: Link's Awakening DLC Detailed

Koei Tecmo just released the update page for the next DLC, which will be released in one week, on June 30th in Japan. This is about half a month earlier than I anticipated, but here is a summary of what we will get:

• Marin with the Sea Lily's Bell, calls Windfish
• Linkle with Pegasus Boots, gets Cucco support
• Koholint Map in NES 8-Bit style, mixed with some Link's Awakening DX sprites
• Hearts and Weapon Upgrades for Marin are on the map!
• New Level 4+ weapons for existing characters, have two elements
• 16 new Color Costumes
• 15 new Fairy Clothings
• Level Cap increased...

There's also a translation and screenshots on Perfectly-Nintendo.com. Update: You can find a video here. It will also be released in Europe next week.

So, there are some good news and some bad news...

Marin really just has the Sea Lily's Bell as her weapon type, while I hoped that we get to see all eight Instruments of the Sirens in action, e.g. when she's calling the Windfish. At least this leaves the option to give her other instruments as alternate weapons in the future. Her voice sounds a little bit too childish for my taste, but overall she seems very well done. Can't wait to drop the Windfish on everything.

The Pegasus Boots (as well as the Roc's Feather) were a common guess on GameFAQs for Linkle's second weapon type. I personally had trouble imagining these items as weapons, which is why I focused on the companions instead, especially the Flying Rooster. But it looks like it's a combination of the two, she will be accompanied by Cuccos with the Pegasus Boots moveset and even fly with one, though it doesn't seem to be the blue Flying Rooster. Seeing the artwork now, the Pegasus Boots do make a lot of sense for Linkle, since she likes to run around a lot (aimlessly) and uses her boots as holsters. However, this kick-based fighting style feels very weird, because so far most characters have fought with weapons in their hands. But I suppose it's similar to the Spinner.

The weapon upgrades for Marin's Bell and Linkle's Pegasus Boots are on the new Koholint Map and so are Marin's additional Heart Containers, as I had hoped. On the Wii U the DLC characters and weapons (save for the free ones) were kept and sold separately, so in the end there was nothing really to do for them. And I'm glad that this changed here, because the standalone characters are rather boring. And they will still be standalone in the Wii U version.

The map itself follows the 8-Bit NES style, so my hopes that we're going to get the GameBoy style for the rest of the DLC were finally crushed. Yes, this was to be expected, but it just looks so ugly. And some screens are not even recognizable:

This seems to be the entrance to the Mysterious Woods, but it just looks so wrong... I'm not a fan and they just should have went with the 8-Bit GameBoy style instead. But they probably had trouble with keeping the map small. The original Koholint on GameBoy was 16x16 screens large, which is twice as large as the normal Adventure Map. But the above screen already combines four of the GameBoy screens into one.

And it seems that like with the Termina Map you actually have to go for the eight main dungeons to collect all the Instruments of the Sirens to wake the Windfish and get access to the final square. There also seem to be "Nightmare Rules" on certain screens. (Update: And they used the Mt. Tamaranch music, which is great. Love that song.)

At least the color costumes seem to be pretty awesome. There is a silver costume for Link with a red scarf, which looks pretty cool, a pink costume for Linkle, which looks pretty cute, and seemingly a Richard costume for Ghirahim, which would be an awesome reference. And there's Link's Awakening styled fairy clothing, lovely.

There also are new Level 4+ weapons to collect. I wonder, how they are called ingame, since the Level 4 weapons were basically just Level 3+ weapons. Is it "Magical Sword++", then? Good thing that I haven't invested in any Level 4 weapon yet and it seems like every character will get a Level 4+ weapon over the course of the three upcoming maps. I hope these weapons will always have eight slots, so you don't have to worry about slots anymore and can focus on ranks and stars, but that's probably not happening. Still, they have to be better in some way, because they can't increase the attack strength without making the Legendary skill (which gives a fixed base value) obsolete. They seem to add a second element to the weapon type, though, which is interesting and can probably be a huge advantage. In some cases it should be obvious, e.g. Agitha's parasol will probably be a Light Lightning type weapon. Or Twili Midna's Mirror will be a Light Darkness weapon. But there are other cases, which shouldn't be obvious at all...

Getting stronger weapons to power up the characters further would be more than enough for my taste, but Koei Tecmo just had to do a level cap increase again... Like the tedious Challenge Mode this should have stayed as a Wii U exclusive feature. I only got two characters to Level 99 so far (Cia and Link) and leveling overall feels a lot slower in this version, which was fine, because they rebalanced everything so nicely that you can play through the entire Adventure Mode without ever grinding. It's all pretty well done so far and I seriously hope that the Koholint Map is not going to be the new Twilight Map, where there's an awful difficulty spike that kills all fun in the game and turns it into Hyrule Grinders 2.0.

Due to the E3 I didn't have much time to make progress in Hyrule Warriors: Legends, so I still haven't started the Termina Map yet. I only did some clean-up in all other areas, like collecting all hearts on the Adventure and Master Quest Maps, as well all Hard Skulltulas in Legend Mode. In the Boss Rush mission on the Rewards Map I already had the feeling that I'm totally underleveled with Level 99, because a single Red Beam of Doom from Ganon can cost you the A rank, so I already suspected a Level cap increase at this point. I just hope that they won't make it necessary to go beyond Level 99 to play the Koholint Map. There are just way too many characters now to level them all up.