Cadence of Hyrule: Foreboding Impressions

 

My coop journey through Cadence of Hyrule – Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda continued, where we've finished the game for the first time. So, we've completed the fourth dungeon, the Temple of Storms, as well as the final dungeon at Hyrule Castle, where the difficulty increased a bit, but not by too much.

The awesome weapons that you get around the final dungeon certainly helped, but overall we became so good at the game that things are usually easy enough. Not so easy that I would dare to play as the Deku or Aria, but certainly not as hard as they were in the beginning, where we've struggled quite a lot...

But you also get pretty packed the more you explore and do, where all we were missing was an entire Heart Container and one bottle. And if all fails, you can always use bombs. Unless you don't have any.

Well, without spoiling anything worthwhile, let me say first that the ending of the game was a complete joke. Suddenly Cadence gets put back at the center of the story, where she's rivaling the importance of Link and Zelda. Thing is, ever since we've unlocked Zelda, we've put Cadence aside and pretended like she didn't exist. So, to suddenly see her in the spotlight again, where the ending sequence revolved around her alone, felt completely wrong and out of place.

Seriously, this game would have probably been better without any Crypt of the Necrodancer crossover stuff. Just Link and Zelda against that Octavo dude, whose campaign we've started right after. His story might be even more like it, though so far his story mode seems almost identical to that of Link and Zelda's, just that he has a different starting point. But he has to do the same dungeons and bosses and so on, where you play the exact same world.

Well... not the exact same world, since this game has quite some random generation behind it. And while it makes replaying the game a lot more interesting, it's not really that impressive. There are certain areas that are always exactly the same, like Kakariko Village, Zora's Domain and the exterior of Hyrule Castle, and simply located in different spots. Curiously, this might even put the Kakariko Windmill (it's actually called that in German) far away from Kakariko...

The screens all around these fixed places are what's random, but from what it seems the screens and caves are based on a pool of presets, where you might have seen certain screens and puzzles already in your previous playthrough. A little bit like the different floors in Four Swords.

And that's okay, but the biggest problem about the world generation is that it's always the same areas and dungeons. You get Hyrule Field, the beach, the Lost Woods, the Gerudo Desert, Death Mountain and that's it. There is nothing else and for a truly randomly generated Zelda game you would need a larger variety of different terrains and areas, where a number of them then gets chosen. Swamps, snowy mountains, canyons, graveyards, ruins and so on...

The variety in music is equally slim, sadly. And I was super disappointed to try the "Melody Pack" DLC only to find out that the 39 "new" songs are apparently all just remixes of the 13 existing songs in different styles, like techno or rock. Eh... while they aren't bad, I was hoping more for something like Dragon Roost Island or Deku Palace. The music in this game is really good, it has to be, but it gets repetitive eventually.

Anyway, back to Octavo's Ode, where you play as the game's antagonist, who seemingly just wants to be a hero himself. He's using the Golden Lute from the game's logo as his weapon, which is quite powerful, but I can't really tell, because I haven't played as him myself. As player 2 I've opted for Impa, from the "Character Pack" DLC. I've really liked using the spear on our first playthrough, so she seemed like a good choice. Holding the spear in front of you is also quite fun.

But Impa has this unnerving ability, where she leaves behind a decoy doll when she gets hit by anything on full stamina. While this sounds like a cool feature at first, it teleports you to a field nearby and usually takes me by surprise, where I lose track of where I am. This is usually so confusing that I just might get hit by an enemy anyway, and to make things worse, it costs a full stamina bar. So, instead of losing half a heart or so, I might get damaged even worse and constantly lack the ability to use most items. It's absolutely terrible and I wish I could turn this "help" off somehow.

Apropos not using items, I'm not a big fan of all the depletable stuff in this game. It's interesting that you can have different shovels, torches, rings and boots for different effects, but not being able to dig through certain walls just because you're out of shovel isn't fun. It's like the shovels came from the Hyrule in Breath of the Wild, where everything is 100 years old. But unlike in that game you don't get an overabundance of decayed shovels thrown at you. Well, sometimes the game does, but there are also the times where you don't get a new shovel and you can't complete a dungeon floor because of it.

Anyway, we've completed our first dungeon, which was the Frozen Grotto, as well as the Kakariko Crypt, which was completely pointless, because Link and Zelda are sitting this one out. But at least we didn't die in the Crypt this time. In fact we didn't get a single Game Over so far, so we've gotten much better at the game already. And with a game like this, that is what I call progress.