Cadence of Hyrule: Further Impressions

 

We've continued playing Cadence of Hyrule – Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda in coop for a bit, where we've finished a total of three dungeons: the Gerudo Ruins, the Frozen Grotto and the Lost Swamp in that order.

In my previous post I complained about how the first dungeon, the Kakariko Crypt, seemed a little bit too difficult with its complete rogue-like approach. It was just a mini-dungeon, though, and the real dungeons are actually much fairer. You have a main floor right at the entrance, which doesn't change. This main floor holds the door to the boss and you keep the dungeon's main items, including the Boss Key, so if you die at the boss, you can try again right away without re-playing the entire dungeon.

Every progress made on the main floor, e.g. shortcuts to later floors, also gets saved. So, only the individual floors are randomly generated to keep them interesting. And if you die later on, you don't have to do the entire dungeon from the start again.

So, that was a relief and actually the dungeons became a little bit too easy, where we haven't died a single time in our last sessions. Once you get a certain amount of Heart Containers and many useful items, the game gets considerably easy, which is a problem that many Zelda games actually have. You're only at risk of dying early on.

Curiously, we completely missed the "tribe items" before going into the respective dungeons. We only solved the puzzle at Gerudo Town after the completing the Gerudo Ruins and we haven't actually found out how to wake the Zora Prince yet. That's a very cryptic puzzle and I think he will give you the Zora Flippers, but it's not like you need those, since there are always alternative ways of doing things. For example, you can still get into the Frozen Grotto dungeon with the Snorkel or the Ice Rod.

But this also sort of undermines the value of certain items a bit. Items like the Hookshot only allow you to take shortcuts for the most part, but they are not required to complete the game. And you do collect a lot of items in this game, where most of it doesn't feel all that useful. On the other hand it makes for some creative puzzles, where there are multiple solutions available thanks to the different items.

We also unlocked the Deku character, Yves, who only has one heart and can't use the majority of items. Okay... skip. And what's with that name? Yves? Did Tingle give him this? He's the first named Deku Scrub anyway, since the Deku characters so far always were called by their roles, like "Deku Princess", "Deku King" or "Deku Butler". And not Cindy, Kevin or Alfred.

Also, this is not the only of the "Super Ultra Hardcore Hard Mode" characters, since the DLC also comes with the weird Aria... I personally don't find "Don't get hit!" challenges to be any fun, it's by far the worst type of artificial difficulty... It's bad enough that there is a chest that requires you to beat a bunch of enemies without missing a beat and without taking damage. And then doesn't open anyway, because there is another artificial requirement on top.

Well, despite all the shenanigans we're still having fun and that's good. I'm actually looking forward to the next play session, but at the same time I can't shake the feeling that I'd rather have a proper top-down Zelda title with a two-player mode and a randomly generated world instead, with the 3D visuals of Link's Awakening and without all the nonsense. That would have the potential of becoming one of my favorite games of all time.