Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition - Balance Changes

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition was already released last month in Japan for Nintendo Switch, on March 22nd. We won't get the western version before May 18th, but some guys on Reddit and GameFAQs already got the Japanese version and have been reporting various improvements to the game's overall balancing.

Director Yosuke Hayashi had already announced in an interview with Famitsu that they "adjusted the balance so that the game becomes easier to play" (source), but back then we didn't know in detail what this would mean.

Overall the game keeps most of the improvements that were made with Hyrule Warriors: Legends on the Nintendo 3DS, so the difficulty of the Twilight Map isn't absolutely ridiculous anymore and so on. But there are some additional changes on top of that.

This is what has been reported by players so far:

• A-Rank and 2nd Skulltula requirements in Adventure Mode are now percentage-based instead of a fixed value. It's 100% for basic A-Ranks and 40% for the 2nd Gold Skulltulas.
• You can now store up to 20 weapons per weapon type instead of just 10.
• Removing a weapon skill now only costs 30,000 instead of 300,000 Rupees.
• The "Exorcism" (and presumably "Legendary") weapon skill now only take 15,000 K.O.s to unlock, "Evil's Bane" needs 10,000 K.Os.
• Some Badge material costs have been reduced. The badges for powering items longer now only require silver materials.
• Rupee costs of Potions have been reduced. For example, the "Guard Breaker" potion now only needs 20,000 Rupees instead of 40,000, while the "Weak Point Smasher" went down to 5,000 from 25,000 Rupees. Material costs are still the same, however.

There are some really good news in there. Reduced grinding is always a good thing, where the Rupee costs in the original game were way too high in many situations, especially with removing weapon skills.

But the best news is certainly that the damage requirements for A Ranks and Gold Skulltulas are now percentage-based, instead of using a fixed numbers of hearts. This finally gives collecting more hearts for every character a real purpose other than powering the "Heart Power" weapon skill, which was introduced in Hyrule Warriors Legends with the "A Link Between Worlds" Pack.

This should also make it much more easier to get A Ranks and Gold Skulltulas in many situations, where originally you had to resort to tricks like shooting everything with a Power-Up Bow from a distance, instead of fighting for real.

They used the original games' basis for the percentages, where you could take 10 hearts of damage for an A-Rank in most missions, as well as four hearts of damage for the 2nd Skulltulas, while the characters usually start with 10 hearts in total. That translated to 100% and 40% respectively. So, with these percentages it never gets harder than in the originals, it only gets easier, the more hearts you collect.


Sources: Reddit, GameFAQs (1), GameFAQs (2),