Four Swords Adventures was the only Zelda game that I didn't touch during my 30th Anniversary Replays for two reasons. One, I played all the games on either Nintendo 3DS or Wii U, where Four Swords Adventures was the only game that's not available on Nintendo's latest systems. Two, I didn't want to play through the entire game in singleplayer again, which is kind of dull, but instead experience everything in multiplayer for a change.
And during this week I finally got the chance to play the game with others at a Zelda fan gathering organized by ZeldaEurope. It's not easy to get a full round of Four Swords Adventures to happen. For a four player session you need a TV, a GameCube, the game, a memory card, four GameBoy Advance systems, four link cables and three more players willing to participate. I could only contribute two GBAs and cables, the rest of the hardware had to be brought by others.
But getting the players was probably the hardest part, because not every Zelda fan is interested in the multiplayer installments – some even downright hate them. In addition, there had been many different activities during said fan gathering, where people preferred doing something else and I had to keep asking around.
Another obstacle was created by the fact that we had four GameBoy Advance SP systems, where you can only charge them while playing with some 3rd party cables that don't cover the entire back of the the system, so you can plug in an AC adapter in addition for even more of a cable clutter. While I had one of those "special" link cables, the rest were the official ones from Nintendo. So, the GBAs kept running out of battery and had to be charged separately, which created some downtime.
With all these factors in place we only played through three out of the eight levels, where one level (consisting of three stages) was covered by one play session. But in each session I was playing with a different group of people for quite different experiences, which was nice to have.
The first session, where we played the "Whereabouts of the Wind" was absolutely chaotic. Everyone was fighting everyone, blocking paths with Fire Rods and Bombs, stunning each other with weapons, even bombing each other to death to steal the Force Gems, or simply screwing around for the fun of it. It was hilarious and the levels probably took twice as long because of all the shenanigans, but I had a good laugh and it was probably the most fun of the three sessions.
Sadly, one of the guys from the first session, who really wanted to play the game, had to leave the gathering early and the other two lost motivation / interest afterwards, so I moved on with a completely different group of people for the second level.
Here, during the "Eastern Hyrule" part, one of the guys fully played cooperatively, not caring about grabbing Force Gems himself. I played some Tri Force Heroes with him before that and this showed in the way he played. He was also really interested in the game, so that was good. Well, the second guy was screwing around a lot by accident, while the last guy played fiercely with a competitive mindset, going for the Force Gems whenever possible and voting very strategically at the end to solidify a win. I can go either way, but if you have a player like this in your team, I'm in for the competition as well. But playing against him wasn't much fun, to be honest...
Overall, the second session was the most cooperative one, probably because the stages really demanded that. "Village of the Blue Maiden" is a very puzzle-focused stage, where you have to keep guessing, where you can proceed, which is a little annoying in multiplayer, because switching from one big screen to the next requires the full team. And in the "Village of the Blue Maiden" you might keep running around a lot, because the course isn't exactly clear.
For me it's been over six and a half years since I last replayed the game, during the 25th Anniversary of the Zelda series in 2011. So, my memory was kind of foggy about the details in the stages, but this was a good thing. Since I wanted to play as much of the game as possible, I was kind of impatient, so I didn't take the backseat here and guided the team with my remaining knowledge of the levels. But since I forgot some of the details, levels like the "Village of the Blue Maiden" demanded the guesswork of everyone.
During the third and last session at "Death Mountain" things were much more straightforward again and the competitive guy got replaced by a greedy girl, who was so greedy for Force Gems that a good part of the gameplay revolved around stopping her in her greediness, which was fun. It also had some absolutely hilarious moments with the Hinox, because when they grab you, they drop ALL your Force Gems. All of them. One time I went from over 1000 to zero, while the other players would just enjoy the loot.
At the end of each stage, before the rankings are calculated, you can actually upvote and downvote one player, based on who was the most helpful and who caused the most trouble. The third session was the only one where this worked the way it was intended, instead of simply downvoting the guy with the most Force Gems (which was often me) and upvoting the guy with the least Force Gems for strategic reasons.
And it was quite interesting to see how the competitive factor kicks in here. Unlike in the first Four Swords game on the GameBoy Advance, where every player has his own savegame tied to A Link to the Past and where you need to collect the "Medals of Courage" by winning to unlock stuff, in Four Swords Adventures you have no good reason to compete. You don't get anything for winning a stage other than the win.
Still, people can go crazy for Force Gems just like that, while the original Four Swords might even incite players to cooperate more. "You collect all the Rupees this round for a Medal of Courage and I take the next one", until every player has enough Medals of Courage. Meanwhile in Four Swords Adventures you have people bombing each other to death just for the loot.
Four Swords didn't really allow that, because you had a common Rupee account, where every death was paid from this account and you needed to collect enough Rupees for the Great Fairies at the end of each stage. So, killing a player in that game for whatever reason would be very stupid, while in Four Swords Adventures you might just want to do it to steal someone's Force Gems or for the fun of it.
If I got this correctly, unlike in the singleplayer mode you don't even get a "Game Over" when you run out of Force Fairies, but it will take much longer for a fallen player to be revived, which gives other players the chance to loot more. So, go have fun and kill your buddies.
But with all this chaos I can fully understand, why Nintendo dropped the competitive part in Tri Force Heroes with its online play, outside of the Coliseum Mode. There were enough trolls in the game already, so there didn't need to be an incentive to play like that for real in an online environment.
In local multiplayer this can be a lot of fun, however, and hopefully I will be able to continue the game on the next ZeldaEurope gathering. Five levels are still left and sadly we didn't play any rounds of "Shadow Battles" yet, though the "Hammer Tag" game in the Tingle's Tower minigames was kind of similar and also quite some fun.
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