Hyrule Warriors Legends: Lorule Map Impressions

Complete. With the Lorule Map we can finally conclude the gigantic chapter of the Adventure Mode in Hyrule Warriors - Legends. A total of ten Adventure Maps (including the Rewards Map) provide you with numerous missions and tons of unlockables. The Lorule Map is certainly not an exception and keeps up the good quality that came with both the Koholint and Grand Travels Maps.

First of all, this is the Hyrule and Lorule from A Link Between Worlds in the glorious 8-Bit style. And it's quite the accurate representation, which is very nice after the weirdly distorted environments of the previous two DLC Adventure Maps. It's also surprisingly linear, unlike the original game. It does have a very nice flow to it, though. You keep opening up parts of Lorule and these separate parts are very suitable for individual play sessions. So, you might just go and play the Skull Woods area for today. With the confined areas it has a good structure and you get a much better sense of completion and progress than most of the other Adventure Maps, where you go all over the place.

You also don't have to replay missions for Item Cards, not even once. With the right course everything puts itself together very well. It does some teasing, where you early on see an ice statue, but you won't be able to get the Fire Rod until the very end, but otherwise you can usually get what you need within the vicinity. It's of note that this is the only Adventure Map that doesn't have a Compass Item Card. But you don't need this anyway, because it's always obvious where you have to use what item.

The Item Cards also activate Nice Powers, but this feels somewhat like wasted potential, because ten of them just change the recommended element. Only Bombs and Hammer give you some bonus effects, which are Rupee and attack power increases. You can have two of these effects at once, but the next item card used will overwrite them.

The options with the Instruments of the Sirens were certainly richer, but in the very least the Lorule Map keeps giving you double weapons, exactly like the Termina Map. I personally would have preferred some other bonus, like a constant EXP boost, but it does help with weapon grinding.

And it does so, because they did add "Divisive plan" missions for the characters who didn't have one yet, with the exception of Marin. And with the double weapon drops they are now the best way to grind for perfect weapons, especially the fight against three Yugas on D14. Sadly, both Volga and Ruto became low level missions, so you don't have a natural grinding spot for Lightning and Water weapons, but I do understand that they wanted to give Yuga and Cia the higher spots. It's just that again the best missions are preferred by Light weapons.

In general, this map plays very quickly, despite it also having the full size of 16 x 8 squares. That's because there are no missions with a fixed time frame, e.g. "Rack up your K.O. count" or K.O. / Rupee competitions. For the most part you can also chose a 2nd character, which lets you easily plow through the whole thing with your main character(s). The difficulty is about the same level as all the DLC maps. It can get a little tougher with the 4+ weapon missions, but it's nowhere near Twilight Wii U fake difficulty.

So, again it's all very moderate, but if you were hoping for a challenge for your fully built characters, then you will be disappointed. It does make sense in terms of the DLC, though. Some people might only buy the one map, because they don't have the time or the money for it all. And if you then get something ridiculous as the Wii U Twilight Map, it sure will feel like you bought the wrong content. Also, with new characters like Ravio and Yuga on the map, you don't want the difficulty to skyrocket.

(It just would be nice if you had something to do with your fully developed characters. The Wii U version has the Challenge Mode for this and while I really don't miss this mode, I do miss a good opportunity to use your high level characters with perfect weapon builds.)

Anyway, there are two new Challenge Battle types. One is called "Scour the battlefield in pursuit of victory!" and has enemy characters hide under some random officer monsters. You have to beat right one to uncover the hiding foe. This can be a little bit annoying, because like with the Turncoat Soldier missions they might appear sometime after the fact that you defeated the officer. The second new type is called "Hunt down and defeat your foe!" (which should have been the name of the first new type), which is basically a new variant of "Defeat all Giant Bosses" just with Bombchus. Those can remove a significant amount of health from the giant bosses, but you can also just ignore them and defeat the bosses without help.

In addition, they added a new Adventure Battle type, where you have to capture six keeps. Sounds simple, but it does feature some very aggressive and respawning teams of Keep Saboteurs, which swiftly take your own keeps. In fact, such enemy aggression is rarely ever felt in the game, where you really have to do some defending here. Otherwise Koei Tecmo focused too much on the same Adventure Battle types here, especially "Use diversionary tactics to defeat the enemy!" with the Magic Stash Troopers gets used one too many times...

There is also a new supporter mechanic, where Ravio appears on the battlefield, but he doesn't join you right away. As the coward he is, he waits for you to beat many enemies first, before he feels safe enough to join you. You can also just go and kill him first, which is the Cia thing to do. But since Ravio is a theme here, I was also playing much more cowardly than usual thanks to the new Magic Fountain+ ability, which lets you blast away everything with Fairy Magic by just tapping the touchscreen corner repeatedly. Strats.

For your efforts you finally get the remaining 4+ weapons, the last Heart Containers for everyone, as well as new costumes, where the selection is quite good, but not perfect. I like that Lana and Cia got a Zelda and Hilda costume pair, that's pretty nice. And everyone of the sages got featured as a costume. On the other hand it's weird that seemingly quite some characters, like Linkle, got a Ravio recolor (should I call her "Raviole" in that case?), but not Link himself. It's the first time that he didn't get a costume, while it's also the first time during this DLC season that a color costume for him would have been perfectly clear. While he did have a purple tunic outfit from the Master Quest Map, it doesn't have the dark hair or the striped scarf. So, no real Ravio costume for Link is really a missed opportunity.

I was also hoping for some good fairy clothing, since this is probably the last time, where we will receive a big batch of content. The new stuff is alright, but it still feels like there is a lack of options, especially for Fire Fairies. For example, I was hoping for something that could make the Din lookalike actually look like Din in terms of clothing. It's possible for Nayru, but not for Din, and overall the fire clothing is pretty lackluster. Also, completing the map doesn't give a new fairy slot, so we're still at 14.

The new illustration with Link, Ravio and Linkle in front of Yuga is pretty nice, but we did have much nicer illustrations with the DLC. The mission itself is solid, I like how it used the clear Lanayru Valley stage and the bridge building mechanic from Legend Mode. The part, where Yuga multiplies, was somewhat anticlimactic for me, though. I don't know, if it's always the one on the top of the ruins, but it was for me, and summoning the Manhandla Stalks and Ganon didn't do anything for him. All hell broke lose, but the battle just ended in the same moment. So, it's one of the easier Rewards Map battles, if you're lucky.

Overall, the Lorule Map is really good. It's full size, plays very fluidly and is neatly organized. It does leave some things to be desired, though, especially the lack of Hilda feels like a big chasm within the environment.

Hyrule Warriors: Ravio and Yuga Impressions

The A Link Between Worlds Pack for Hyrule Warriors and Hyrule Warriors: Legends gave us two character additions from the lands of Lorule, the cowardly salesman Ravio and the demonic art collector Yuga. Compared to some additions from the previous DLC offerings, they don't seem to be particularly outstanding, but let's still take a short look at how they turned out...

 

Ravio

While his running animation is certainly hilarious, Ravio doesn't seem to offer everything that you would have expected, like a varied multi-element moveset based on all his shop items. It's just all Darkness and not all of it are weapons from his shop.

With DLC characters Koei usually likes to recycle some assets from the game to get them done and he really got the short end of the stick with that. Instead of the items from his shop, the Bow, Bombs and Boomerang he uses are simply the Hyrule Warriors variants, mostly in their upgraded forms. So, instead of using the Tornado Rod to create tornados, Ravio throws the Power-up Boomerang at things... And that seems a little bit like a low effort from Koei Tecmo's end.

Only the Hammer and Ice Rod are really from his shop, where these two tools essentially work in combination with each other, which is pretty nice, because freezing things and smashing them with a Hammer was one of the first true item combos in the Zelda series. The Ice Rod gets utilized in most of the combos and it really should have been the "Hammer + Ice Rod" weapon type, where the Ice Rod also has visible tiers.

But I do like the Rental Hammer tiers, especially the Nice Hammer variant with the Triforce symbolic on it. The handle even resembles Hilda's scepter as a reference, which makes me a little sad that she wasn't part of the last DLC wave as well. Other than that, Ravio didn't get all that many references. You can't take off his bunny mask in any way, you can only look under it to catch a glimpse of who's really under there (but they didn't create an actual face). His buddy Sheerow is also nowhere to be found...

They didn't go all-in with this character, but this at least leaves some potential for a sequel. There he could get a Tornado Rod weapon type with Sheerow in it, a maskless costume and more.

The moveset in itself also could be better, while it isn't entirely terrible either. His charged C1 launches enemies inwards, which can be used for some follow-up combos, but he isn't really all that good at anything particular. Especially breaking Weak Point Gauges of Giant Bosses seems to be difficult in one turn. That he isn't the strongest does fit his character, though... I also do like how they captured his clumsiness within the moveset, e.g. the Focus Spirit Finisher, where he drops the big Bomb.

For his badges he needs mostly Impa and Gohma materials, so nothing special. It's quite weird that the drops Young Link's materials, though. Why not Link's? Link drops an actual SCARF like Ravio has, which would have fit much better. This is another devil detail that just annoys me.

 

Yuga

Marvel at the most glorious victory animation in the entire game! Koei Tecmo outdid themselves with that and Yuga overall leaves a good impression at first glance. At least on the Wii U. I really do like the visual and sound effects with his weapon on the home console, however, it seems quite butchered on the 3DS system. It just doesn't give the same strong feeling, when he whirls around the picture frame in a large area.

That's probably the best part of his moveset, the wide range of the attack string. In addition, he has an interesting mechanic, where you can leave a magic circle after each combo by holding down the button. These circles freeze enemies in place and explode after a little while, which can also be used strategically to capture enemies in your combos. He also uses the Fire element for his C3 combo, which works good enough on Manhandla, while his C4 wrecks Argorok.

That's about it. The moveset also does leave little to desire when it comes to references. He hops into a painting with his C1, he shoots strong electric bolts with the C4, he even summons Ganon's trident with multiple moves and there are various sound effects from A Link Between Worlds, which is nice. The only thing that I'm missing would be summoning soldiers by painting them. It would have been amazing to see the classic A Link to the Past soldiers in 3D...

He drops Ganondorf's materials, but he doesn't need them himself. You would expect him to be the big Ganon fanatic that Toon Zelda turned out to be, but he likes Argorok and Lana instead. Well, whatever... I also did get used to his new design pretty quickly and overall he seems like a solid addition to the game, but nothing extraordinary.

Hyrule Warriors Legends: Grand Travels Map Impressions

Another Adventure Map completed, only one more DLC Adventure Map to go. Last night I've completed the "Grand Travels Map" with all A ranks and everything unlocked, so it's time to share my impressions about this new map. And like with the Koholint Map I'm quite happy here, the Grand Travels Map is a very enjoyable experience with similar traits.

It's also the largest map that we've gotten since the original Adventure and Master Quest Maps. It uses the full area of 16 columns and 8 rows, so there's a lot to do here. It even makes me a little bit angry that the Koholint Map turned out so small and distorted. However, in this case they combined the worlds of two games into one: the Rail Map from Spirit Tracks and the ocean world from Phantom Hourglass. And the results are equally distorted. The center of the map has a final Dark Realm area and the other two maps sort of yin yang around it, so that the worlds aren't quadratic anymore and have some of their areas in the tips. For example, the Ocean Realm of the Rail Map is up in the north, east to the Mountain Realm. Or Gale Island lies to the Southwest of Mercay. Locations are not exactly where they should be, but in the least they are all fully recognizable.

It's also the first Adventure Map that gives you two starting locations and you can chose which half of the map you want to complete first. The only shared item card is the Cannon to unlock rewards under rocks. The ocean half then uses Cyclone Slates to make enemies appear and Fishing Rods for additional rewards, while the rail half has you collect Railway Tracks to unlock new squares and the Whirlwind for rewards.

The remaining item cards are the classic Compass, which you don't need at all, and three Ship cards and three Train cards (starter, steel/iron and gold), which give you different buffs. They are in a way similar to the Instrument of the Sirens, but you don't need to use them. In fact, I never used them once. The ships lower the requirements for A ranks, e.g. the Golden Ship lets you take more damage. The trains change the conditions on the map, e.g. you can lift character restrictions with the Golden Train.

It's an interesting feature, but luckily not required in order to proceed, because the difficulty of the map again is quite moderate and balanced towards level 99, not the new level cap of 200. Some of the 4+ weapon missions can be tough, especially Impa's Crackling Naginata gave me some trouble (just barely made it with 9400 damage), but thankfully it's not like you need to grind your characters all the way up. This might change with the final map, but right now it really does look like they are increasing the level cap only to give you some room for your favorite characters, not to artificially slow you down. And that's good. However, if you already had all the characters leveled to the last maximum, it might be too easy for your taste.

The map also uses some sort of time mechanic similar to the Termina Map. There is a Phantom Hourglass in the center and every three battles some sand falls down. The only way to get it back up is to beat one of the "Final battle!" dungeon boss battles and in the beginning it felt like some really stressful feature, but it then turned out that it only changes the rank requirements for progressing to "A" everywhere. And for a skilled player, who wants to collect all rewards, this does change absolutely nothing, because you're going for the "A" rank everywhere anyway. And even if you have trouble with it, you can always use the Spirit Train item card to turn it back into a "C" rank. So, it's negligible and I completely ignored the whole thing. A more threatening approach would have been if it really followed the curse of the Ocean King Temple and made you take constant damage in every battle. THAT would have been something to deal with, but probably massively annoying.

The Phantom Hourglass does go away, as soon as you defeat the two "Big Bosses", one at Mutoh's Temple and one in the southwest corner of the Rail Map, where the entrance to the Dark Realm lies. (Caution: there is currently a bug, where you won't be able to proceed if you leave the game right after entering the Dark Realm. Make sure to play at least one more battle or leave the Adventure Map menu first so that it saves the game!)

The time mechanic also gets used for item card trading. There are Song Stones and Linebeck Trading Companies all over the map, which you can use for your advantage. Song Stones duplicate an item card of your choosing and Linebeck trades item cards for golden foods. For example, you can give him the useless Compass cards in the beginning. Every once in a while he also offers are Two-For-One Sale. Thing is that time also progresses when you abort a battle. So, you can just make it so that Song Stones and Trading Companies quickly reappear to farm food. I haven't fully exploited this yet, but it does seem like the food you get is entirely random, so it's not a method of farming specific fairy food.

In general, the Grand Travels Map gives double food drops. So, it's a perk similar to the Twilight Map, where you get double materials, and the Termina Map, where you get double weapons. For the A Link Between Worlds Map they might give you more Rupees to follow the theme, but I personally still prefer the Koholint Map, where you can actually chose the perk.

At least this map offers more variety with its battle types. There's a little bit of everything in here, as well as some really enjoyable new battles types. The new Challenge Battles are called "Deal with the copycat infestation!" and "Thwart the supercharged enemies!". The copycat missions are funny, you have a series of character enemies and some officer enemies around them, who are transforming into the character after a while. However, this takes such a long time that I actually had to wait and see what happens, so it's not a fast way of farming certain character materials. In the "supercharged enemies" missions you also have a series of character enemies around the area and some small magic grunts, which you can defeat in order to take away the Super Saiyan God mode from the enemy characters.

They also expanded the "incoming support" mechanic from the Koholint Map in some of the Adventure Battles. Now, you might have Toon Link or Linkle come to your aid, who inspire or heal your troops. In their cases the background music also changes to Molgera's or Linkle's theme, which inspires even yourself.

I was also happy that they added four red zone "divisive plan" battles against Medli, Phantom Zelda, Twili Midna and TINGLE! While these battles got heavily nerfed compared to the Wii U version, they are still a nice and quick grinding place, where now you can also use fire element weapons and take it out on twelve Tingles at once. And with the 4+ weapons you have much more options now. In fact, I constantly check the enemy characters on the 8-Bit battle screen and chose my own characters accordingly to cover all the element weaknesses. The Grand Travels Map lets you chose 2nd and even 3rd characters a majority of the time, so you can chose what deals the most damage often enough.

The "Final Battle!" missions, which are helping you with the "curse" of the Phantom Hourglass, felt a little bit uninspired, except for the last two. The Temple of the Ocean King got represented by the Water Temple and Bellum by Gohma, while the final "Final Battle" has Toon Link and Toon Zelda fight Ganon.

The new Skulltula image "One with the wind" is pretty nice. It has all the characters from the Wind Waker and Spirit Tracks on one image around the Spirit Train. In the mission itself you fight them and their dark clones to recruit them in a battle against Phantom Ganon. It's a lot of fun, but sadly doesn't yield any reward yet again.

Overall the Grand Travels Map is great. The 8-Bit travel theme from Spirit Tracks is just lovely and there's lots to do, even though due to the size there are also quite some empty spaces without any rewards. But there's lots of variety and a good selection of new missions. However, from my perspective the whole "Phantom Hourglass" part was negligible and in the end they could have just turned it into a "Rail Map" and make this the "Spirit Tracks Pack".

Hyrule Warriors: Phantom & Train Rod Impressions

Let's take a look at the newest additions to the rosters of Hyrule Warriors and Hyrule Warriors Legends from the new Phantom Hourglass & Spirit Tracks Pack – Toon Zelda and the Sand Wand, which are both disguises for playing with the Phantom and the Spirit Train from Spirit Tracks. This pack is really about the weapons!

 

Toon Zelda with Phantom Sword

It feels really great to directly play as a Phantom for the first time, since in Spirit Tracks you only can give commands to them. Now you can run around, strike things with a sword and it feels really powerful at the beginning. My first impression was that this character has a Fierce Deity level to it, especially with the sword beams at the end of the attack string. It's a powerful sword moveset with the rolling move as an addition. She also has a similar move to Medli's C6 with a smaller range, but a period, where she seems to be safe from enemy attacks.

My enthusiasm was lowered by the fact that the Phantom doesn't seem to be overly effective against any giant bosses. The C4 with a following Strong Attack seems to do some good damage, but I also wasn't able to test it fully, because I haven't unlocked all Stamina Fruit badges for Ghost Zelda yet, even with my massive material collection on the Wii U. And there's a reason for this, Toon Zelda needs Ganon materials for pretty much everything. So far only few characters actually needed those and only for a few badges. Which was right, because you don't fight Ganon that often. But Toon Zelda really, really likes Ganon, which makes her hard to complete.

It's also a little bit of a weird character, since you're playing as Ghost Zelda in a Phantom and not really Toon Zelda herself. It's a little bit like Fierce Deity Link, who acts as a Focus Spirit transformation of Young Link, but here you have the Phantom as the main body and you only see Ghost Zelda in a few animations.

Sadly, the body also doesn't change with the tiers, which are different swords from normal, Teleport and Wrecker Phantoms. But why not change the appearance of the Phantom Body as well? It also feels like it's missing some interesting features. One combo could have involved Phantom Eyes and teleporting, another the flaming sword of a Torch Phantom. But I do like how they implemented the rats as the Focus Spirit finisher. It's a funny sequence and finally those rats get to be useful, instead of being utterly annoying. Together with Toon Zelda's dialogues, it's a really charming moveset and a beautiful addition to the game.

 

Toon Link with Sand Wand

The real star of the DLC, however, is what I like to call the "Train Rod". When I speculated about this DLC, I had both the Sand Wand and the Spirit Train as possibilities on my radar, but it never occurred to me that they would combine them into one crazy weapon.

And it's so crazy that it quickly became one of my favorite weapons in the game. Usually, the alternate DLC weapons for characters tend to be mediocre, but not this one. I was afraid it would be too similar to the Dominion Rod, but it isn't, it's train riding carnage. I love how the train gets summoned out of the gateway portals from Spirit Tracks and how Link just starts bombing everything around him with the cannon. This is exactly how I imagined a train moveset (or a boat moveset for Linebeck) and it's utterly satisfying. I can't get enough of it.

That it's actually the Sand Wand doing all this, makes little sense and it feels more like they didn't really know what to do with a Sand Rod weapon and then just turned it into a train weapon. The majority of moves actually involves the train, instead of sand blocks. But the train moves are awesome, especially the C5. It totally wrecks the Weak Point Gauges of giant bosses and is an amazing crowd clearer. And all the moves create so much havoc on the battlefield that it's hard for your enemies to do anything. Only downside is that you can't dodge cancel any of Link's combo attacks, but he seems to be pretty safe on top of the train anyway.

I also like how they incorporated the Sand Rod and the Nice Sand Rod designs from A Link Between Worlds as the higher tiers, even if this means that we're probably never going to get to play as Osfala (not important anyway). However, it would have been perfect if the train also changed appearances. The Golden Train could have been used for the third tier and one of the other sets as the second tier, e.g. the Steel Train. You get this as item cards on the new Grand Travels Map, but not with the weapon. It's similar to the Phantom, where the tiers only change the appearance of the sword. And maybe in a Hyrule Warriors 2 we're going to see a little more effort put into the various tiers, but overall I'm very happy with this new addition.

Hyrule Warriors Legends: Rewards Map Impressions

Right now I'm completely done with the current Adventure Mode of Hyrule Warriors: Legends, where I also want to take a look at the Rewards Map here on Hyrule Blog. Technically, this map isn't completed just yet, because the future DLCs will add two more squares, but I'll talk about the new illustration battles together with the upcoming Adventure Maps, once they got released.

Right now there is a total of 220 Gold Skulltulas in the game, most of them found in Adventure Mode. 20 Gold Skulltulas form an illustration, which then results in a new mission on the Rewards Map, where you can unlock new costumes on some of them. This includes the Dark Link costume and the five Boss Costumes, which originally came with the Boss Challenge Mode on the Wii U.

The following lists all illustration battles, where you can find the corresponding Skulltulas and what Boss costume they offer, if any:

• True Partners: Legend Mode Main Story + first two Hard Skulltulas (Dark Link)
• Boss Rush: Hard Skulltulas Main Story + Adventure Map (Zelda)
• Running to the Rescue: Adventure Map
• Chosen by Fate: Linkle's and Cia's Tale
• Scattered Seeds: Legend Mode The Wind Waker + Great Sea Map (Lana)
• Unity: Great Sea Map
• Evil Power: Master Quest Map (Cia)
• Rulers of Twilight: Twilight Map (Ganondorf)
• The Giants Gather: Termina Map (Link)
• A Prayer Received: Master Wind Waker Map
• Nightmare Looms: Koholint Map

The name "Rewards Map" doesn't feel all that appropriate anymore, because there aren't too many rewards here. In German this map is actually called "Extra Map", which probably puts it better. It's just some extra missions for you to enjoy, which unlike all the other Adventure Mode battles offer some special mechanics or story segments.

It used to feel quite rewarding on the Wii U at first, though. It was the only place where you could get alternative costumes for a character at the time – the blue and red tunic for Link. The only other costumes were from the preorder deals and costumes felt like something really special at the beginning. And the Rewards Map also had some of the best farming places in the game. That "Unity" mission and its relentless Goron Summoner was great for breaking all your weapon seals, while "True Partners" and "Evil Power" gave a lot of character materials in a short time. Especially "Evil Power" was one of my absolute favorite missions, because it felt so intense and crazy, there was nothing else like it in the game. But with the DLC all of this got outclassed. And now it's really just some extra missions.

On the 3DS I couldn't even get myself to hunt all the Hard Skulltulas in Legend Mode for the longest time. It wasn't before the Termina Map that I did that. On the Wii U I always enjoyed playing Legend Mode and replaying all its scenarios, but I probably played them all so much that I can't see them anymore. It was more fun to make progress in Adventure Mode instead and the costumes didn't offer enough motivation.

And that "Boss Rush" mission still is absolutely terrible. You need to beat it for Zelda's gorgeous Argorok recolor, but the mission with its 4000 damage limit can be unforgiving. One hit of Ganon's megabeams and the A rank is gone. And King Dodongo's constant distance spam for fireballs doesn't help either. Thanks to Double Bombos time is not an issue anymore, however, because you can one-shot each boss. You can also bring in two additional characters, though they are mostly useful to refill your magic. They don't fully keep the other giant bosses in place, like they are supposed to. What makes this mission usually difficult is the bosses ganging up on each other. And what's worse, your other characters might get into danger and switching to them, while they are close to the giant bosses, is generally a bad idea. Because then you might end up in a Manhandla Seed Attack... You have to command them to go to safety, bur then the bosses will run loose. It's not as bad as on the Wii U, but the whole mission is still very luck based and not very enjoyable due to its immense damage values.

"The Giants Gather" on the other hand got a lot easier now, since you also get to switch between three characters and use Double Bombos, which saves a lot of time with the three King Dodongos at the end. On the Wii U the 15 minute time restriction for the A rank was what made this scenario quite difficult.

The trick on the "True Partners" mission, where you wait five minutes and then join forces with a halfway healthy Midna, while all the other girls are near dead, still works fine, save for Agitha, where you have to get closer, before she starts losing more health. But it's a good grinding mission early on.

The new scenarios on the 3DS seem to be more story focused with a mix of the usual craziness, like in the new "Nightmare Looms" battle. That's okay, but it all seems quite forgettable with little replay value.

In the very least, every mission should offer a costume to make it somewhat more rewarding. "The Giants Gather" should unlock Lana's Skull Kid costume for example, instead of placing that on some random spot on the Termina Map, since it actually gets featured in this mission on the Rewards Map and this mission only. The other battles without a costume could have offered Link's Classic Tunic for example, which shouldn't have been some preorder bonus. They also could offer the Dark Toon Link or "Shadow Link" skin. Like the Dark Link skin, it would feel more special, because Shadow Link was quite the thing in Four Swords Adventures. And Toon Link still needs his red, blue and purple Four Swords recolors. So, there are plenty of easy options for alternate costumes.

And with the DLC Rewards Map battles there should be costumes for the new characters: Medli and Marin. If every mission had a costume, it certainly would feel more rewarding and worth all the trouble.

Hyrule Warriors Legends: Koholint Map Impressions

Play that Tal Tal Music!

The Koholint Map is easily my favorite Adventure Map in Hyrule Warriors so far, which makes me happy, because Link's Awakening is also one of my all time favorite Zelda games. I've just completed the whole thing and it was a very enjoyable experience without any frustrations. And that's a relief, considering that they increased the level maximum to 150. When they did this on the Wii U, they released the Twilight Map at the same time, where the game saw an awful difficulty spike that just wasn't fun.

But the difficulty of the Koholint Map was very tolerable. It may get tough here and there, but with the help of Fairy Magic (especially Double Bombos) it's all doable, even if your characters are still below Level 99. It's probably on par with the 3DS Twilight and Termina Maps, only easier in the beginning and maybe a little harder at the end. For example, in Daphne's Lvl 4+ weapon mission, some Dinolfos dealt six hearts of damage on his Level 80 highness with a single swipe, which is really the kind of obnoxious difficulty that you want to avoid, if possible. But this seemed to be the exception on the map.

It would be nice if they were simply increasing the level cap, so that you don't have to hold back with your favorite characters. When a character has reached the maximum, you might feel inclined to play with someone else, because gained Experience goes to waste otherwise. It might also be related to the fact that the new DLC characters have actual missions on the maps, which is why the difficulty has to be toned down, because they can't be expected to be on Level 99 already. Also, the DLC Adventure Maps don't have to be unlocked, so someone new might try them long before the Twilight and Termina Maps. On the other hand you do get the best weapons for some of the characters here, so it can't be too easy, which it isn't.

Lets just hope it stays this way, because leveling characters takes a lot more effort in the 3DS version. I actually gain most levels from selling weapons and putting the money into the training dojo. But for a character to level up normally, you have to play him or her a lot.

Anyway, the Koholint Map does not only have the right difficulty, it also has a very good flow and a fantastic use of Item Cards. You're actually collecting all eight Instruments of the Sirens:

They remove the nightmares from the map, so you can proceed, but they also give you certain buffs called "Siren Rules", for example the Full Moon Cello lets you start with a filled Special Gauge. It's in a way similar to the masks on the Termina Map, but with those you always feel like saving them for later and then at the end you never used them at all. The Instruments of the Sirens have to be used on the nightmare screens and the effects are global and last for three missions at first. So, you're getting a good taste of every single effect. Some of these effects are very useful and can give the Koholint Map the same advantages of the Twilight and Termina Maps. Want to get double materials drops? Play the Organ of Evening Calm! Want to get double weapon drops? Play the Thunder Drum!

This is very useful when you still need materials from the new Wind Waker enemies. There is a "Defeat 1000 enemies in the given time!" mission with two Phantom Ganons, two Helmaroc Kings, Toon Link, Tetra and King Daphnes, all for the taking. You play the Organ of Evening Calms before that one and suddenly the badges of the new characters get more and more complete.

You can collect the instruments multiple times to use them again, but you have to use each individual instrument at least once to open the Windfish's Egg and gain access to the final battle of the map. This will also double the duration of the Siren Rules to six missions and drive away all nightmares from the map forever, which will otherwise slowly respawn. That wasn't an issue, however, because the nightmare screens are always completely empty, they don't hold any rewards or item cards, so once you're done with them, you can just proceed and ignore them.

The Instruments of the Sirens also are located at places where the eight original dungeons would be, but each instrument also does have an alternative spot. Up to Level 6 I was actually following the original order of the dungeons, but the the last two instruments are much quicker to get in the alternative spots. So, you don't actually have to explore all of the red zones in the Tal Tal Mountain Range in order to play all eight instruments and access the Windfish's Egg. There's some freedom involved and while you do follow the course of Link's Awakening somewhat, you do have options and it's not as terribly forced as on the Termina Map.

Now, you have a total of eight Item Cards helping you out and the typical compass, so there are only three Item Cards left to actually block your path and rewards: the Power Bracelet, Magic Powder and Ulrira. The latter is simply the most ingenious item card ever. It's just so funny to collect Ulriras everywhere and use them on phone booths. And instead of the usual "a reward got unlocked" message, you get Ulrira on the other end of the line telling you about a new reward. Nice. Both Ulrira and the Power Bracelet, which is the only thing that requires the Compass from time to time, get used very often, but you also find them equally often, so I never got into a situation, where I had to turn back and replay a mission just for item cards. The Magic Powder also gets used very rarely and isn't an issue. And this contributes to the overall flow of the map.

The missions are also quite tolerable. Many of the annoying mission types like "All attacks are devastating!" have been left out and for a change this map doesn't have any Challenge Battles with a fixed time span, e.g. the competitions. So, you can fully go at everything in your own pace. There are two new types of Challenge Battles, which aren't particularly fun, but they aren't bad either. Only problem might be that they get overused on the map, but luckily they don't take much time or willpower.

One of them are fusion battles called "Stop the enemy merger", where you get a hoard of officer type monsters, which want to fuse into one big enemy. These missions are quite good when you want to farm a certain officer material type, e.g. from Big Blins or Stone Blins. It also doesn't seem to be a problem when the enemies really get to fuse. They just form one larger enemy, where it's probably even easier to deal with one single enemy, instead of many at once.

The other new type of Challenge Battles, called "Defeat the shuffling forces", has you facing several copies of the same dark character, where only one is real. If you damage a fake one below 60%, they will heal and reshuffle, which is super annoying. You can take out the weaker sorcerer enemies to remove the fake duplicates, but if you happen to defeat the real deal, all the duplicates will leave weapon drops, so you're inclined to try your luck. At first I even was under the impression that they always start out the same, so you can quickly replay them, once you figured out the starting positions of the real versions. There are even three of these mission right next to each other in the the swamp area, which is a good spot to get the Ulrira and Power Bracelet Item Cards whenever you need them. But it turned out that this was just luck on my end and it's somewhat random how these missions start, so you can't just shortcut through them and get lots of weapon drops in the meantime.

There don't seem to be any new types of Adventure Battles, but the whole map uses a new companion mechanic in many of them. This is based on Marin and similar characters following you around in Link's Awakening. Here you suddenly get fresh support, where either Marin, Linkle or Medli appear out of nowhere and help you out. This is a nice idea and offers some new dialogues, but at first it also felt very unusual. Normally, all the odds are against you and the game doesn't just offer something nice to help you out. So, when Marin appeared for the first time, I actually expected her to turn and suddenly attack me, partly due to the misleading German translation, which says that "Marin is marching against you"... But overall the Koholint Map is oddly nice to you in many different ways.

What's not so nice is Koholint in the NES 8-Bit style. Not only does this look wrong, they translated the map very badly. The Koholint Map is 14 x 6 screens large, so it's one line shorter than the Wind Waker maps. And the Tal Tal Mountain Range is already taking two lines on the top, which looks too spacious. For example the screens above Level 4 almost only contain water to represent the flooded areas, which were quite tiny on the GameBoy. The entire rest of Koholint then got comprised to four lines! The Tail Cave and the beach share one screen and you get Mabe Village right above. And that just doesn't work out, it looks really weird and everything is all over the place. For example, the graveyard got placed two screens east of Level 3, while it normally would be north of it. And with some places I couldn't even identify what they are supposed to represent. And I know the GameBoy Koholint like the back of my hand, I grew up with that game.

It's too wide and too short in height. They should have made it 11 x 8 screens and the mountains should only take one line of screens, instead of two. Then everything could be where it's supposed to be. That's my only real gripe with this Adventure Map, but I can live with this weird version of Koholint, since the overall playability of the map turned out really great.

It's also full of rewards. Besides the empty screens covered by the nightmares, there are new weapons and costumes on every turn. In case of the new character and weapon type, Marin and the Pegasus Boots, this did feel very cramped, however. You basically just got the weapon's second tier and you already have to face the tier 3 mission next. There's little to no room to make actual improvements with the new additions when you swiftly proceed through the map. But I suppose, it's better than the Wii U alternative, where the DLC characters and weapons got completely kept off the new Adventure Maps. It's nice to have some missions for them.

At times it also felt quite thoughtful where they placed the individual rewards and how the missions were designed on the respective locations. That's not always the case, but the Eagle Tower would be a very good example. You actually fight a Helmaroc King on Skyloft and you get Linkle's Evil Eagle color costume as a reward. The same mission also offers the Organ of Evening Calm, of course.

I also really enjoyed collecting all the Skulltula illustration pieces in order, which formed another amazing illustration piece. I will put this under a spoiler button:

"Nightmare Looms"

Lana sure likes to sneak into these pictures... The first chunks uncovering the right side felt really mysterious and threatening. I immediately knew that it was supposed to be the Nightmares, but it was hard to tell the details at first. Is that Argorok? Does this belong to Wizzro? What are they up to here?

I was excited by the idea of reenacting the final battle of Link's Awakening with bosses from Hyrule Warriors, but the result wasn't very satisfying. You get Wizzro as the enemy commander, who probably is supposed to represent Dethl and who keeps spawning a series of boss monsters at the Forsaken Fortress. I would have preferred a scenario, where one boss turns into the next. You also have to reach and save two of your player characters, before you can use them, which just drags the mission on. The stage is simply too large and you spent a lot of time running around, instead of fighting the bosses. A nice, condensed fight with one boss after another would have been more fun.

The mission itself seems also tailored towards the new maximum of Level 150 and maybe even beyond. Even with my Level 110 Cia and Double Bombos in place every boss took up to three weak point blasts to defeat. And Phantom Ganon can be such a pain, if he doesn't get defeated right away... At least the damage input wasn't too bad, so the defense badges were probably worth their materials. (Water is the recommended element in this stage.)

More impressions about the Rewards Map will follow right after this post! That's it for the Koholint Map and I hope that the future DLC Adventure Maps will be equally enjoyable.

Hyrule Warriors Legends: Level 4+ Multi-Elemental Weapons

Starting with the Koholint Map, there will be a new line of Level 4+ weapons throughout the DLC. They are basically the replacement of the 8-Bit weapons from the Wii U version, though quite different.

They have a rainbow background, instead of a golden one, and the main difference is that each of them comes with a 2nd element, as I previously expected. Since all officers are weak to a specific element, you increase the range of easy targets significantly with this. They don't let you actually do elemental attacks of the 2nd element, unless they already had them anyway, but this means that they won't give any advantage over giant bosses. It's still a big advantage overall.

They also have prettier names. Instead of a "Triforce Harp++", you get a "Shining Harp" or the "Cutlass of Light", where both the Harp and the Cutlass now feature the Light element, which is a fitting choice. So, they are named after the additional elements in some way.

Ingame they also have an overlay effect that represents the new element with its color. You can see this in today's trailer, where the Gauntlets look red, because they now also feature the fire element. But I'm not a fan of this effect, because it looks rather ugly. The Power Gloves really looked nice in combination with a variety of costumes, e.g. the yellow tunic or Fierce Deity Link. Now it seems like it only looks good together with the new "GameBoy" color costume for Link... But unlike the 8-Bit weapons you can't just ignore them whenyou don't like their looks, because the 2nd element gives a real advantage.

I'm just worried that some of the element combinations feel nonsensical. For example, with Agitha you would expect to get a "Thunder Parasol", because the weapon always featured Light and Lightning element attacks, but instead they made it a Light Fire weapon. And that's just completely out of place. Koei can make some ingenious design choices, but also some really stupid and unsatisfying ones.

Anyway, the following characters seem to get upgraded weapons on the Koholint Map:

• Link
• Sheik
• Lana
• Darunia
• Ruto
• Agitha
• Midna
• Young Link
• Skull Kid
• Tetra
• Daphnes

It's noticeable that Marin doesn't seem to get one. The same goes for Linkle's Boots. This probably means that all DLC weapons won't see any multi element upgrades, because they would have to be on the same map that came together with the new movesets, since the packs are still sold individually. Someone who buys the Link's Awakening Pack shouldn't have to buy the A Link Between Worlds Pack in order to get the "Boots of Fire".

But it was similar on the Wii U with the 8-Bit weapons. Only the original weapons got 8-Bit variants. These didn't offer any combat advantage, however, they were purely aesthetic, if you want to call them that.

 

Update:

Here's the full list of all the new multi elemental weapons on the Koholint Map with their elements. Source is JKiii on GameFAQs.

• Link: Burning Gloves - Lightning / Fire
• Shiek: Shining Harp - Lightning / Light
• Lana: Gate of Tides - Fire / Water
• Darunia: Darkfire Hammer - Fire / Dark
• Ruto: Sun Dragon Scale - Water / Light
• Agitha: Incandescent Parasol - Light / Fire
• Midna: Thunderhead Shackle - Dark / Lightning
• Fi: Liquid Goddess Blade - Light / Water
• Young Link: Inflamed Deity's Mask - Dark / Fire
• Skull Kid: Crackling Ocarina - Dark / Lightning
• Tetra: Cutlass of Light - Water / Light
• Daphnes: Supercharged Sail - Water / Lightning

There seem to be many of the same combinations, e.g. three Light + Water weapons, but there are only 10 possible combinations anyway, so this is bound to happen. My biggest gripe is probably still Agitha, which should have been a Light + Lightning weapon, as I said earlier, even if this takes away a unique combination for now. But I suppose that Link's Sword will be a Light + Fire type anyway, because of the fiery Spin Attack from the N64 games.

I don't have any big complaints about the others. Skull Kid could have also been a Dark/Fire type, but the Lightning type fits an Ocarina very well. They should have named it "Ocarina of Storms", though. Also, I don't see, how the Summoning Gate has anything to do with Water, but oh well...

Hyrule Warriors: Marin and Linkle's Boots Impressions

Before I check out what may as well be called the "Cucco DLC Pack" on the Nintendo 3DS, I returned to the Wii U version of Hyrule Warriors to try out the newest additions to the roster in pretty, featured in the Link's Awakening Pack. From today on you can also buy the Legends Character Pack if you only have the Wii U version, so you might want to read my impressions about Linkle, Skull Kid and the Toon Trio as well.

 

Marin

Marin plays like a dream (pun intended). Her Bell has quickly become one of my favorite weapons and is probably the best water weapon so far. Of course, all the water weapons have been fairly mediocre, so that's not saying much, but Marin seems like the real deal. Her attacks are fast, ranged and strong. Especially the Strong Attack can deal a high amount of damage and it works in a similar way to Twili Midna's Mirror, where you built up a meter by dealing damage. However, there is no real drawback to using it when the meter isn't full – the higher the meter, the more bubbles will appear in front of you, up to five at once.

The C6, where the Windfish wipes the battlefield in front of you, is pretty amazing as well, though the K.O. count seems sometimes underwhelming for such a big attack. Similar attacks of other weapons have more power, e.g. Narisha, but Marin makes up for it with her speed. Her attack string is very fast, even more so during Focus Spirit. You can easily attack with two C6 on a downed boss monster. That might not be enough, however, Marin seems to struggle a little bit with weak point gauges of giant bosses, which eventually prevents her from being a top tier character. Without using any Special Attacks, it is quite dependent on her C6 and fully charged Strong Attack, which is why she isn't as reliant as Cia for example.

The overall presentation of Marin seems to be pretty lovely. Link's Awakening was my first Zelda game and Marin was basically my first video game character crush, so she means a good deal to me. And she's well done here, she looks great, her weapon sound effects are awesome and she uses quite some comments from the game. It all seems pretty fitting. However, I have two complaints with the design choices.

One complaint is that you don't really get her to sing the Ballad of the Windfish that often. She does it during the Focus Spirit Special Attack, but only briefly. And it's not featured in her victory animation, where she bows in front of an audience of Cuccos. That does make sense, because she's a performer and she likes to perform for animals, but this way she only really sings in her intro animation. But you're not going to see that one on the Wii U...

The other complaint is the lack of any seagulls. I guess, having her transform into a seagull to fly over the battlefield as her "running" animation was asking a little bit too much, but it would have been nice to see her transform into a seagull in some way. The other Instruments of the Sirens are also absent, she's really only using the Sea Lily's Bell. I hope that she will get another of the eight instruments as a secondary weapon in a potential Hyrule Warriors 2. She could blow into the Conch Horn for example.

Anyway, in both versions she needs Link's materials, which makes sense, since he's her only reference point in the roster, but also King Dodongo's materials for some reason. Medli already used those as well on the Wii U and I ran out of crystals again... Luckily Marin is good enough that I could farm those with her in the first Boss Challenge battle. Also, from what I've heard, Marin does appear on the Koholint as a potential enemy and really does drop Zelda's materials. Nice reference.

 

Boots

Linkle's going full Sanji with this one, but it seems like an underwhelming weapon, especially when compared to Marin. It's weird to see a character in the game fight with his feet, the only other weapon that really does that is the Spinner and both weapons seem very similar, since they also share the same element type: Lightning. However, the Spinner has a very interesting mechanic with the little spintops that you can place around you and make them go crazy with various combos.

The Boots don't really have that. The Strong Attack does a small charge boost, where Linkle runs one meter and that's it. It does connect with larger enemies for an extended attack, but it makes the Boots feel very slow. They are supposed to be the Pegasus Boots, but like Epona or the Spinner they can't make you actually go faster, since every character is supposed to have the same speed. Maybe that's something that they want to change in a sequel, because actually running around with high speed would make the Boots so much more fun and interesting.

Out of the Combos I really like the C6, where Linkle spins vertically, stomps on the ground and creates a large blast around her, but that's something Link also could do with the Spinner. The Boots do play a little faster, so overall this new weapon feels like the "Spinner Lite".

The incorporation of Cuccos is very funny, however, they missed the chance to include the Flying Rooster... Which is disappointing, because it would have done more for the Link's Awakening theme of the DLC pack. Her victory animation, where a Cucco lands on her hand, is very charming though.

And Linkle's animation when you enter Focus Spirit Mode is also adorable. She looks like she's preparing for a 100 meter dash, it's cute. The 2nd tier of the Boots do look like the Iron Boots from Twilight Princess, which doesn't make any sense at all, because these are supposed to make you heavy, but it at least fits the electric theme. And the third tier, which is supposed to be the classic Pegasus Boots, looks quite crazy. It matches the Magic Sword in color, though in general the Link's Awakening DLC seems to have a thing for red and white color schemes.

Hyrule Warriors Legends: Termina Map Impressions

Just in time. Before tomorrow's release of the Link's Awakening DLC Pack, I'm almost done with the current Adventure Mode. I've just finished the Termina Map and got all Heart Containers, Heart Pieces, Level 4 Weapons, costumes and fairy clothing, which can be found there. Like with the Twilight Ma,p there are still some of the 2nd Skulltulas missing, but I will hunt these now, while breaking the 2nd seal on the Master Sword, which now is possible after collecting all rank 4 weapons. However, it's probably best to wait for tomorrow's update for this, so Link can also gain more Experience after the raised the level cap. Killing three birds with one stone so to say.

I didn't play the Termina Map right after the Twilight Map, instead I focused on cleaning up some of the remaining things and powering my characters up. So, this was my checklist before approaching the Termina Map:

• Got all hearts on the Adventure Map.
• Got all hearts on the Master Quest Map.
• Got all Hard Skulltulas in Legend Mode.
• Got Medli's Level 4 weapon.
• Got every character at least to Level 66.

As soon as I collect all the Skulltulas and clear the Rewards Map, I will have replayed all of the Wii U's content in Legends, so from this point on I can focus on character grinding, the DLC and maybe some other games for a change.

Replaying the Termina Map wasn't that much fun, though. Generally, I like how the map has a clear course that follows the path through the original Majora's Mask. You basically go for the masks and temples in order (the only weird exception would be Woodfall, where you need the Goron Mask) and you have to plan strategically on what to do next. But it's not stressful, because the 72 missions are more than enough to get to the Moon and defeat the Dark Ruler, while also grinding some item cards at the side.

But the item cards on the Termina Map are very annoying, constantly blocking you with everything. The three transformation masks and the Deku Stick are often required to continue. And nearly all the rewards are locked behind either Bombs or Ice Arrows. Half of the item cards have some other effects, where I'm personally not a fan of the Mask or Truth and Majora's Mask cards, because their effects should have been potion mixtures, My Fairy Rental Skills, or both. Especially the Mask of Truth, which boosts your defense for three minutes, doesn't make any sense at all, because the mask should have been used on Gossip Stones to unlock rewards. Only having Bombs and Ice Arrows for unlocking rewards gets stale very quickly, because you keep playing the same missions over and over again just to get more Item Cards.

And the selection of quick missions is quite bad. Many battles are "competitions", which was the cool new feature of the Majora's Mask Pack in its day. I always thought that this would have been better against actual players in a multiplayer mode, because fighting the AI isn't much fun. You have to fight over K.O.s or Rupees and there's often a fixed time limit for that, so you can't just replay them quickly – you have to wait out the 6 to 10 minutes. While the Twilight Map also kept asking for Item Cards, at least there you have some more variety and most of the challenge battles could be done quickly. And the double drops made it all feel more rewarding.

The Termina Map gives you double weapons instead, so you get up to six weapons per battle. Usually, that's all just junk, but selling lots and lots of weapons all the time does raise your Rupee counter quite fast.

And overall the Termina Map is certainly the most rewarding one. It alone offers the biggest selection of individual costumes in the game. You can find all five Ocarina of Time costumes (Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, Impa and Sheik), Link's Fierce Deity costume, Lana's Skull Kid costume, and all the different mask costumes (15 in total). But still it would have been awesome if they had added some more mask costumes for the new characters as well, for example a Skull Mask / Ocarina of Time version of Skull Kid would have been amazing.

And in a potential Hyrule Warriors 2 something like masks should be implemented as "hats" instead of just placing one accessory on the default skin. I want to use the Bunny Ears on Cia and Lana as well, for example. Of course some of the masks are really tailored towards the specific characters, e.g. Kamaro's Mask for Ghirahim, but it does make sense that each character should have his individual list of headgear. Take Cia for example, nearly all her costumes come in three variants changing the head – the Majora's Mask mask would then simply be a fourth variant that could be used in combination with all her color costumes. Just a thought.

To get all the stuff I had to use Double Bombos all of the time. I usually prefer Shade, but everything on the Termina Map felt quite tanky, even if you had the elemental advantage. I remember that on the Wii U it was only the giant bosses that had lots and lots health in Termina Map missions. Taking one down could take a significant amount of time. On the 3DS it never gets that bad, but everything can take quite some punches. It may be that the whole map is scaled towards Level 99 already and that my characters on Level 66 were still too weak, but Bombos always did the trick. It's just annoying that you really feel reliant on it and sometimes it gets frustrating, because you can't find any magic. It depends on luck really, you can cut all the grass and find nothing or get three small Magic Vials right away.

And inside the competitions you have to be very careful, because there are lots of (dark) enemies in Super Saiyajin God Mode around, who not only can tank, but also can dish it out fiercely. It never gets as bad as on the Wii U, where a single hit can cost you the A rank and where I constantly had to abuse the Item Power-Up Mixture to stay safe, but that's mostly because you can use fairies. It's fun to replay these missions, when you don't really have to care about the damage and can just go all out on multiple overpowered characters at once, but as long as the A rank is still on the table, you might want to prepare some curse words.

Also, there's some irony in the fact that this Adventure Map has actual Owl Statues on it, but rarely ever on its stages. And often you only get to use a single character this time, so there's some running around involved, which gets especially annoying with Skulltulas popping up or your base falling in danger... on the other end of the map! I seriously hope that all the upcoming DLC makes good use of Owl Statues. Why did they even bother with adding the Ocarina item when they rarely ever let you make use of it?

The fairy items were a nice surprise, though. The Bunny Heads are lovely, where I wish you had them for all elements. And there's this amazing Happiness Dress, though it's an issue that full body costumes take away one cost reduction. You really want the Fairy Magic to only cost 3/5 of the Magic Bar, so all dresses are essentially useless for now. I hope that they might fix this in an update, because the Happiness Dress would look great on my Hylia.

The Fire Fairy on the Termina Map also looks cool, which I added to my collection of fairy companions:

• Navi - Light Adventure
• Taya - Darkness Twilight
• Tael - Darkness Great Sea
• Leaf - Fire Termina
• Neri - Water Termina

I will add a "Ciela" Lightning fairy, as soon as one more fairy slot gets available. I don't have any intentions on building these additional fairies yet, because I mostly resort to my five established "goddess fairies" with double magic effects and useful Rental Skills, such as Water Wall or Repair Technician.

The most interesting part about the fairy stuff on the Termina Map was the food, however, where they used the five Magic Seeds from Oracle of Ages & Seasons, one for each element. So far that's the only reference to the Oracle games inside Hyrule Warriors and they completely renewed the designs, but it still shows that Koei Tecmo might be willing to consider content from the Capcom Zelda games in the future. We'll see.

Anyway, that's it for the Termina Map. Six Adventures Maps completed in total, three more to come. I've invested 260 hours into the game so far, which isn't half of the time that sunk into the Wii U version, which has less content. Less grinding and Fairy Magic make it possible.

Hyrule Warriors Legends: Twilight Map Impressions

Twilight Map completed. I got all A ranks, all Plus Weapons, costumes, fairy clothings and Heart Containers. Only some 2nd Skulltulas are missing, but I'll save those for the 2nd Master Sword seal. (The missions with the Skulltulas usually don't give any Item Cards, nor Fairy Food by nature, so replaying them wasn't worth it yet.)

Both the Twilight and Termina Maps get unlocked after the Master Quest Map and they even share the final set of fairies and weapons. So, originally I wanted to play them simultaneously and both maps start out quite sturdy. I quickly got the impression that with characters just above Level 40 I was seriously underleveled for the task ahead. So far I could avoid grinding just for the sake of becoming stronger, which you had to do way too much in the Wii U version. The thought repelled me and since the Twilight Map has some of the best grinding spots in the game, I decided to give it a try. And it wasn't bad at all. It actually went surprisingly well with very little backlash.

It's very different from the Wii U Twilight Map experience. There the map starts easy enough, but the more you advance, the more it turns into HELL, where every single mistake can cost you the A rank. But thanks to the rescaled difficulty and the fairy features on the 3DS the whole map is really enjoyable now. It still can be tough at times, but it never gets frustrating and unfair.

For example, the "Defeat 1000 enemies in 10 minutes!" mission next to the Dark Ruler square was awful on the Wii U, where an army of Argoroks with high resistance and damage output would turn your warrior live into a nightmare. But on the 3DS it's one of the fastest places to farm Argorok materials... You can make much better use of the double drops that the Twilight Map is giving you, now that the enemies aren't super resilient anymore. And that shows.

In addition, you can now use the Bombos Fairy Magic against the high defense of enemies. On the Wii U only the elemental weaknesses really helped. If an enemy character was weak against your weapon's element, he would go down very quickly, instead of being the tankiest tank in the existence of tanks. You can have now the same effect with any weapon, as long as a Double Bombos field is in place. For example there is this "Divisive Plan" mission against Zant, which always was easy enough with a light weapon, but you have to do it with the Magic Rod first. On the Wii U this could take forever, but on the 3DS Bombos is your friend.

Shade still gets to be very useful as well, e.g. with the "Balanced Attack" missions. Those worked exactly like I imagined. There's this one hellish mission where you had to fight three Dark Ghirahims with Ganondorf. On the Wii U you either had to use Coop mode or the Item Power-Up Mixture to make it easier, but on the 3DS Shade is your friend.

I didn't even have to use the Item Power-Up Mixture once! On the Wii U I pretty much used it on every mission to clear the map, because the Power-Up Bow is the best way to keep enemies at a safe distance and (slowly) kill them. This never felt necessary on the 3DS and thanks to the Water Wall Rental Skill every character can now have Sheik's useful shield, even if it's only once per battle.

Sometimes I wished that I would have equipped the Repair Rental Skill, though, because relentless attacks on your base were usually the biggest danger on the Twilight Map. You get lots of Super Saiyajin troops spawning everywhere, quickly marching into the base and sometimes that's easy to miss, because of all the other stuff that has been going on... Suddenly you get the warning that your base is in danger, where it might already be too late.

But overall I was able to fully enjoy the Twilight Map without any major frustration for the first time, as I already said. The double drops also turn this map into my favorite grinding place, where replaying missions usually is worth it. And you nave to replay a lot of them, because the Item Cards requirements are quite demanding. Seemingly every unlocked square needs something that you don't have and I constantly moved around the map with only a couple of Ooccoos in my inventory. But since most of the challenge battles, like the Bombchu escorts or the Divisive Plan battles, can be beaten very quickly and you always get lots of materials out of your troubles, I usually didn't mind as much.

Only said Ooccoos were pretty much useless, because the portals on the map are a mess. On the 3DS you can't even see, where most of the portals are going, since there is no way to see the full map on the screen. But there's only one useful portal anyway, which leads from the Divisive Plan battle against three Dark Fis to the Western border of the map. There you have other useful Divisive Plan battles to keep you going, mainly the ones against Zant and Ganondorf. The Magic Rod Plus was even my first Plus Weapon to get.

I'm not a big fan of the Plus Weapons, by the way. They do have a golden background for their icon, they offer more attack power and they always have at least seven skill slots, but they still looks the same as all the Level 3 weapons. I do have some good Level 3 weapons, but now it feels like starting all over again.

It's also weird how they shared the Plus Weapons among the Twilight and Termina Maps. The weapons that originally came with the Twilight Princess DLC on the Wii U, the Dominion Rod and Midna's Mirror, got their plus versions for some weird reason put on the Termina Map, while Tingle's Balloon is found on the Twilight Map. Why, Koei Tecmo, why...? This might seem like nitpicking, but they could have distributed the weapons more meaningfully.

They also could have distributed more Owl Statues... Those were very rare in the Twilight Map battles, which gets especially annoying on large maps like the Gerudo Desert.

Anyway, all my characters are now at least Level 50 and their badges are starting to fill, thanks to the many material drops. I hope that one of the future DLC maps will also have double drops for all the new enemies, where I'm especially short on Phantom Ganon materials for Medli, who still hasn't gotten her Level 4 weapon yet. I did get all the Hard Skulltulas in the Wind Waker mission in Legend Mode, which unlocks a Rewards Map battle with three Phantom Ganons, but that still feels very slow compared to the possibilities of the Twilight Map.

But overall it was probably the right decision to focus on the Twilight Map first. I heard that the Termina Map is the most difficult one and it also leaves you no place for grinding, because you have to plan your steps on the map wisely and you don't want to waste any hours. Whenever it gets too hard, now I can use the Twilight Map for leveling and such, while working towards the big finale of the Termina Map...

Hyrule Warriors Legends: Master Wind Waker Map Impressions

Another map almost completed. I cleared pretty much everything, except for Medli's Level 4 weapon mission. You can't use any magic there, while she's my weakest character and completely underleveled for the part and the game is just not fun when you're too weak.

So far I could go through the game without grinding, thanks to fairies and the ability to chose secondary characters. My favorite character Cia even has reached Level 99 during the course of this map and Link is getting close as well. Now, on the Master Wind Waker Map I came to the inevitable point, where this backfired. All of my other characters are around Level 40 and this can be too weak for for the tougher missions. On the other maps you can compensate this with Fairy Magic, but the Master Wind Waker Map has the new "No Fairy Magic" and "No Magic" rules, which can be troublesome if you're also locked to a weak character. That's interesting, because you're essentially just falling back to Wii U conditions. There you couldn't use other characters (without Co-op) and you didn't have any Fairy Magic...

It's funny how much you can get used to these new comforts and rely on them. But it's a lot more fun when you can just rush through the game without the need of grinding. So far I have spent about 160 hours with Legends and I have cleared four Adventure Maps in this time. On the Wii U I wasn't even finished with the first Adventure Map in the same time frame. That's how much of a difference it can make, alongside the rescaled difficulty. The 3DS version is a lot more enjoyable overall. Of course, it will be necessary to spend some time grinding with the characters, but that's a lot more fun when you have different costumes and their best weapons available. And I personally hope that they won't increase the level cap with the upcoming DLCs like they did on Wii U, because that's when the Wii U version really started to become tedious and unenjoyable.

The Master Wind Waker Map itself is very solid. I enjoyed the Great Sea Map quite a lot and the Master Wind Waker version stays close to the experience, whiling offering more challenge, but not too much. Playing this map after the Master Quest Map felt just right, but the first half you could also start right after the Great Sea Map.

They did revamp the entire course, which I liked. You now start on the west half of Outset Island and (like on the Great Sea Map) the final mission is right next to you, on the east half of Outset. You can't get there in the beginning, because you need a Hookshot item card, which is found where the final mission of the Great Sea Map used to be. And for this you have to go around the entire map again, only in reverse this time. You can first clear the west half of the map, which goes down pretty nicely, and the you get funneled in the south, leading to Forest Haven. Medli's Level 4 weapon mission is actually on Dragon Roost and from there you spiral towards the center. They also put all the dungeon battles in more obscure places, like the islands with star formations.

The east half of the Great Sea Map used to be a green starting area, which made the map quite easy, if not too easy. You also only got two red squares at the end. On the Master Wind Waker Map this is pretty much the opposite, nearly half of the map is covered in blue and red zones, which is good for obtaining rare materials from some of the new enemies.

Item Cards are also well distributed. Only in the 2nd half I was short of some Salvage Arms, but for the most part there's no need to grind item cards to unlock awards, because there's usually something else to do, where you get the cards that you need. You just have to be willing to look for a different route whenever you happen to run into locked rewards or hidden enemies.

Looking for a different route also helps with the Great Sea Rules. Those are back from the Great Sea Map and the work exactly the same, so if you don't want to play with the nasty "Don't Get hit!" rule, you will need to get a Boomerang item card and use it on the Big Octo. But for the most part you can also completely go around and fully ignore them, because these missions don't yield any rewards. That's one of my biggest complaints with the map, because I don't like having empty spaces. Throw something in there, Koei Tecmo, even if it's just some fairy food.

In addition, they also added Master Rules to all the other squares, similar to the Master Quest Map. You still have "No Healing", "No Guarding" and "Speed Run" and those are essentially freebies. "Don't Get Hit!" and "No Item Attacks" are exclusive to Great Sea Rules, so luckily you don't have to deal with them, if you don't want to. New are "No Special Attacks", "No Rental Skills", "No Magic" and "No Fairy Magic". And these try to teach you not to rely on all these powers too much.

Especially the "No (Fairy) Magic" rules usually caught me in places where I really thought that it would be nice to use some. I wanted to try Shade in the "Balanced Attack" missions, because those are usually annoying, but naturally they prevent you from using Magic in them. And then they let you fight three Dark Volgas, which sting like oversized dragon hornets on Speed. With Shade you just could let them stand there and go cut some grass in the meantime. Luckily the Twilight Map doesn't have any Master Rules, so I can't wait to abuse fairies all over the map. Wait, that came out wrong...

Sadly, it seems that they also nerfed one of my absolute favorite mission types from the Twilight Map, the "Divisive Plan" challenge battles. On the Wii U those were godly to grind materials, weapons and Experience, because every clone would give you something. But that's not the case anymore... The more I hope that they won't go above Level 99 again, because I hate being stuck on the bottom left corner of the Master Quest Map with every single character.

The new Adventure Battle scenario is about having two forces, where you can make the yellow forces join your own by defeating their commanders. This can be fun, because you can conquer multiple keeps in an instant with this and easily double your forces, but it also takes away a lot from the potential K.O. count.

If you finish the Master Wind Waker Map's final mission, you will also be rewarded with another fairy slot. So, if all DLC maps do that, you will be able to hold twelve out of the 20 fairies in the game. The map didn't add any new fairies or new fairy food (it mostly just reused food from the Great Sea Map), but it did offer new fairy costumes, as advertised. I finally got a fire head gear (Keaton Mask) and a Darkness aura, so that Din and Demise are finally at their full potential.

Well, two months are left until the next DLC and my goal until then is to complete both the Twilight and Termina maps again, as well as getting all the characters as strong as possible. But I'm overall I'm looking forward to the upcoming DLCs.

Hyrule Warriors: Medli Impressions

Medli means a lot to me, since she's the center of my favorite part in the Wind Waker: the Earth Temple. She's just so adorable and I enjoy the team-up action between her and Link. I'm always sad to let her go at the end of the temple and of all the controllable characters besides Link in the Zelda series, she's certainly my favorite.

Therefore, I was quite happy about the announcement that she's finally going to be playable again, as part of the Hyrule Warriors roster. But the outcome doesn't make me as happy. Like the other Wind Waker characters, she's somewhat underwhelming and she sounds more squeaky than she used to, even though they apparently got her old voice actress back (Chiaki Takahashi). It's not as bad as Tetra, but it could have been better.

Anyway, her moveset is alright, but certainly not outstanding. I'm not a fan of tornado moves and she has two of them, her C5 and near the end of the attack string. The latter gets followed by a beam of light and while it seems like a good combination (the enemies inside the tornado get illuminated), I wish that the beam move was somewhat more accessible, because I enjoy using them with characters like Skull Kid and Wizzro. The Lyra was used like a Mirror Shield most of the time in The Wind Waker, so that functionality should have been a little bit more prominent. Her C3 seems quite useless to me and I would trade that without a second thought for more light beam action.

She also got a unique mechanic, where you can fill a bar with her Strong Attack or her C6 and then attack in the air with dodging during certain combos. It's somewhat similar to Tingle's Strong Attack mechanic, but different in execution, because you actually attack using the dodge button. However, to my experience this only seems to work with her C2 and C4.

Quite some of her attacks end with getting dizzy or clumsily dropping on the ground, which makes her even more adorable, but it's also an issue with her safety. She seems to be a very unsafe character. Especially her glorious C6 leaves her open for attacks, which takes away quite a lot potential. Some more dodge cancels and invincibility frames would make her a lot better. She also doesn't seem to do well against Giant Bosses. The C6 does take a way a good amount of the Weak Point Gauge, but it's not enough and you might have to throw in a Special to break the gauge in one go.

But I do like how she flies over the battlefield as her running animation. That looks really great and I had something similar in mind for Marin, who could transform into a seagull to fly around. But even if she doesn't, Medli gives me already my dose of fly-running.

I also like the design of the third tier of her weapon. It looks absolutely amazing and is certainly one of the best looking weapons in the game. Great job there. The fact that she actually uses a "Rito Harp" as the weapon type next to Sheik's Harp also opens some doors. For example a Hilda really could get a "Triforce Scepter" next to Cia's Scepter or a potential Nabooru could get "Gerudo Scimitars" next to Zant's Scimitars.

If Medli ever gets a second weapon type, I suppose the Grappling Hook would be the best fit, since it's a tool of the Rito and Medli originally gave it to Link. So, maybe that won't be Toon Link's weapon in the DLC, but something else, e.g. something with Phantoms. We'll see. Toon Link has more than enough possibilities for additional weapons and I hope that he won't take away from other characters.

Material-wise Medli seems to be a Ganon fangirl. She needs some Ganondorf stuff and a lot of Phantom Ganon materials, where I don't have all that many yet. I know that the new Reward Map battle has three of them, but I have yet to unlock this mission. Luckily, the new Master Wind Waker Map seems to have a large portion of red and blue zones, where getting better materials from the new enemies could become easier.

On the Wii U she needs a lot of King Dodongo crystals and she's actually the third new character to do so, where she's the first new DLC character, where I couldn't afford all her badges right away. Luckily, the Master Material Potion on the Wii U does a great job. I used it on the first Boss Challenge Battle with the ten King Dodongos and got nine gold materials out of it. They actually fixed the same potion with the current update for Legends, so it should work equally now, but it still costs way too much. 20 Silver Materials is nothing that I want to afford at this point. The Wii U version made much better use of the bronze materials, so you're not constantly stuck with 999 rubbish. And it seems like you can't get lots of silver materials from the "Divisive plan" battles anymore, which makes the whole situation on the 3DS even worse.

It's the similar with the Experience Potion. On the Wii U I used it together with Experience+ on the bottom left Master Quest square ("Rack up your K.O. count!" Lvl 12) and got Medli from Level 4 to to 37 in one go. Of course, it's still a long way to the 255 maximum with her... Which I probably won't do, because the real fun is on the 3DS with the new map and with less grinding. The Wii U version really lost all appeal to me at the moment and I probably will only use it to try out the new characters in full glory. 

Fun fact: "Medli" is actually spelled "Medoly" in other languages as a spin on "Melody". 

Hyrule Warriors Legends: Master Quest Map Impressions

Just in time for the upcoming Master Wind Waker Map, I'm about to be finished with the Master Quest Map. I unlocked all squares, got all weapons and costumes, as well as all fairy rewards. There are only a few Heart Containers missing, as well as some Golden Skulltulas. The latter I will get while unlocking the first seal on the Master Sword at the same time, which freshly got uncovered after I got all Level 3 weapons.

Some time before that (when I got the Level 3 Great Fairy) the game also started to give me Legendary Seals, which are still locked. Seals for Augment Skills started appearing right after collecting all Level 2 weapons, where I finally got "Hasty Attacks" for Cia, my main character. And you really can "main" someone in this version of the game, because it often lets you chose a second or third character, even for some of the Level 3 weapon missions, where normally you're locked to the corresponding weapon type. But e.g. "Artillery Fire" with Zant was always an awful mission, but here I could just breeze through with Cia. In addition, she got many missions for herself on the Master Quest Map, so I was able to play with her quite a lot. She's Level 90 right now, way ahead of Link, who's at Level 75. All other characters are between Level 30 and 50, which means that some of them are heavily under-leveled, but you can usually compensate this with Shade Fairy Magic.

When the Master Quest Map was first released for Wii U, I really enjoyed it, because it introduced the nice "Rack up your K.O. count" missions. Especially the bottom left corner of the MQ Map is very nice for leveling your characters, but here they increased the difficulty somewhat. On the Wii U even with a Level 1 character you could easily kill the Giant Bosses in one go, which now requires some more levels for the same mission. But it was my first goal to get there, where I faced little resistance on the path.

Anyway, what makes the Master Quest Map special are the Master Rules on each mission. Most of them can be easily ignored or even make the game easier. "No Healing" doesn't matter, because you want to have the A Rank anyway. It's the same with "Speed Run", where you now have 20 minutes on the clock. Again, that rule never really matters, because the A Rank turns all battles into "Speed Runs", in fact it's even handy to have a clock on the screen for that. And "No Blocking" makes the game even easier, because it takes away the damage requirement for A Ranks. I heavily enjoy these missions.

"No Item Attacks" usually doesn't prove to be a big issue, they even removed some more unfair scenarios with this on the 3DS. Only "Don't Get Hit" is a real problem and that one luckily is rare. I still hate it, but luckily there's now the "Water Wall" Rental Skill, which allows you to get hit a couple of times. It doesn't work with the "All Attacks are devastating!" missions, but the only real problem are the "Don't Get Hit" Adventure Battles anyway. Thanks to the Fairy Magic it became a lot easier on the 3DS, though.

They also added Owl Statues to some missions, which they curiously didn't do at all on the first Adventure Map. They are very scarce on the Master Quest Map, but still a welcome addition. Especially Owl Statues near Skulltulas and your base can be a huge help. In general, everything feels "fresh" enough that I don't mind replaying Adventure Mode that much. It took a long time on the Wii U, but thanks to the changed rewards and character requirements and the more balanced difficulty I don't feel like dragging myself through the exact same thing again. I'm also making progress at a much faster rate.

Still, what really annoyed me on the Master Quest Map were the Item Cards... again. They were well done on the Great Sea Map, but here you constantly have to repeat missions to get the necessary item cards for rewards and making enemies appear. You especially need a lot of Bombs and the Compass is required more often than usual. On the other maps the Compass is rarely useful, but here the hidden spots are often in the middle of nothing. Though, with the Recorder you can't actually use it on a wrong spot, so you can essentially just try until you find the right place. Bombs can be misplaced, however, and there are two spots right above the two screens at Death Mountain with rows of Armos next to each (where you would find the Power Bracelet in the NES game), where the cave entrances are one field next to where they originally were on the NES. That oversight was already there on the Wii U version and if you're using a map with all secrets from the original game, it might mislead you. And you're not getting enough bombs on your way, which is why you have to repeat the same missions over and over again.

The map also didn't feel as rewarding, which is weird. It has the Level 3 weapons and those are beautiful to have. One the Wii U those were the most important unlocks and here you have them all on one single map. This should feel like an amazing achievement to get it all, but they added the superior "Plus" versions to the game. They look the same, but offer more power, so you're not done with upgrading your weapons and can't get started building good weapons just yet. They are just another intermediate step before the real deal. Also, the Fairy Clothing for the most part was just Skyloft stuff, which got boring pretty quickly. I still need Fire head gear and Darkness make-up, where the Master Quest Map didn't provide anything... It was just differently colored Skyloft Shirts and Pants everywhere. Yikes.

Well, both the Termina and Twilight Maps got unlocked next, but I will go for the Master Wind Waker Map first. Hopefully, it will still be easy enough and not require all the Level 4 weapons already. But since the original Master Quest DLC map was also quite easy, I don't think that this will be the case. I just want something new, before I go at the dreadful Twilight and Termina Maps again.