Sidequest #2: Why is Hyrule Warriors so Insufferable?

At least they reached the sufficient badass quotient

Contrary to the expectation set by all of the pieces I’ve written on appreciating mechanical depth in action games, I really, really like the Dynasty Warriors series. Sure, reviewers have historically complained about these games, chastising them for encouraging mindless button-mashing (typically square) to get through every 20-40 minute mission, as well as their hordes of identical, aggressively polite enemies that will swarm the player, then stand around waiting to be slaughtered en masse. They remark that the enemy commanders actually require a modicum of focus to deal with, or that the player movesets are needlessly large, or (if they’re genuinely exploring the mechanics) that it’s difficult to capture all of the bases on any difficulty above Normal.

However, as any Musou (the official name of this franchise) player will tell you, the above (shockingly) frequently perpetuated scenario, is only true if one is playing on the lowest of difficulties and isn’t remotely representative of the actual gameplay experience.

While one can spend every encounter killing every single helpless enemy on the map, it will not only take an offensive amount of time to complete, but almost certainly lead to an exceedingly poor score on the mission, if not outright failure. I don’t know why it isn’t obvious to reviewers, but one is not supposed to mindlessly revel in their inherent power, but determine how best to apply that strength in a given combat landscape.

A player typically wins a battle when they either defeat the enemy commander or capture the main camp (which often has the enemy CO in it anyway). In order to achieve these goals, a player will have to capture and hold enough enemy territory to push the opposing army back to their main camp. However, this is easier said than done as, many locations outside of the one the player is actively defending or attacking, will require player assistance simultaneously (the AI will almost inevitably fail to stave off enemy officers), and since one cannot be everywhere at once, this creates a sort of dynamic balancing act, entailing moving back and forth across the map to fortify and expand your tenuous territory until, eventually, the player reaches and triumphantly defeats the enemy commander.

The above gameplay format in conjunction with the absurdly large and ever changing character roster, vast array of combat styles (Dynasty Warriors 8 had around 80 unique and diverse movesets), and lengthy, but surprisingly controlled, progression system affords each game in this franchise enough simplicity to hook unfamiliar players and depth to sustain the hardcore. 

And yet, contemporary Dynasty Warriors games still go one step further and often contain specific scenarios that involve fighting unique enemies and capturing points of interest (for varied story purposes) to concoct wholly unique engagements (such as having specific generals switch sides after delivering to them damning information about their ruler), and regularly experiment with the basic combat systems (for better or worse). In short, these games are vastly more tactically and mechanically engaging than mashing a single button ad infinitum.

So, now that you know what Dynasty Warriors actually is let’s talk about Hyrule Warriors. 

courtesy gbatemp.net
Yup, this is undoubtedly a warriors game first and a Zelda game second

Everything I’ve described above, outside of the breadth of content is still in place. Movesets (or in this case, characters) are varied and fun to play with, missions force players into the enjoyably manic balancing act, and there is enough content in it to sustain a player for a long period of time. They even added the long desired three army engagments (though granted, Sengoku Basara has contained this feature for a while). But, unsurprisingly (at least for someone like me who loathes the 3D Zelda games), the Legend of Zelda mechanics, unique to Hyrule Warriors disrupt many of the delicately crafted (no, really!) Musou gameplay systems. 

Case and point, let’s look at Hyrule Warriors’ Weak Point mechanics. Whereas in a standard Musou game, enemy officers would simply be more intelligent enemy units with much larger health bars (i.e. require genuine attention to deal with), in Hyrule Warriors they are even more difficult to kill (prior to acquiring endgame weapons), unless you wait for the enemy to expose their Weak Point. This prompts a separate gauge to appear above the enemy, strongly reminiscent of the enemy health bars in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (or Super Mario 64 for those that noticed), that once depleted will initiate a special attack that inflicts a substantial amount of damage. Rarely does it actually kill the enemy, so one will often have to do this twice (until you get endgame weapons).

You'd better get used to doing this

For a fan of Musou games, this ever present mechanic is mildly annoying at best with respect to a single enemy. And yet, for those who enjoy the 3D Zelda games, this was a welcome change that provided a sense of familiarity. While the effort to commit to the Zelda games is definitely commendable, I still fall in with the former camp, largely due to the way it slows the game down to a torturous pace whenever you have to deal with multiple officers - which is surprisingly often. You can’t ignore it, and the enemies guard and parry with a high enough frequency to make using it almost required (until you get endgame weapons). You know what, no, that clause is too important to be a parenthetical as it alone is the entire problem with these Legend of Zelda systems in the first place.

Character strength in Musou games is divided somewhat evenly between the character’s level and their weapons strength (supplemented by up to 8 skills). Acquiring powerful weapons in the Musou games, however, has never been particularly difficult and was even somewhat natural. In older games you simply completed one (yes, one) specific mission on a specific high difficulty and the game would give you one toptier weapon 100% of the time. In order to gain the strength to tackle those missions, you would likely need a weapon of the previous tier of power, and for that weapon one beneath that, and so on and so forth. Essentially, you increase the difficulty as you grow stronger eventually ceasing at the highest difficulty. From there you can take your one powerful character/weapon and unlock all of the others in a fraction of the time.

In contrast, the newer, more customization heavy Musou games require players to find or purchase a sufficiently powerful base weapon, and then (20-ish) other weapons with desirable skills (which the game heaps on you by the half dozen on every single map) to place on it. You then craft your weapon of choice by moving all of the skills you want over to your strongest base weapon. Because of the system's flexibility, you could gradually work towards this ultimate weapon over the course of the game, giving one a simple and inoffensive purpose to hoarding a ludicrous array of weapons, or just a amass a mountain of gold and go on a shopping spree whenever the difficulty becomes unbearable.

And yet, for some reason, Hyrule Warriors adopts the newer customization heavy Musou games’ approach to weapon gathering, but inexplicably limits weapon customization in a manner similar to the old games. You collect several weapons every mission, but their stats are fixed, and you can only add one skill to a base weapon per empty slot (which is also fixed) AND per weapon. So, if you have one weapon that has five of the skills you want and a base weapon with 5 empty slots, you can only transfer one skill to the new weapon, not all of them.

On paper, this idea should actually make developing a super weapon even easier, since you theoretically only need 8 weapons in total, not 20ish. But because you can only possess 10 of a weapon at a time (for NO REASON), always need at least one of those weapons for the character to be usable, and will likely be carrying one or more weapons with unidentifiable unlock skills, you invariably need to constantly trash potentially useful resources just to maintain a playable character. This is tedious inventory management that has never been a problem in this series, and should not be a problem in a game about slaughtering monsters by the hundred. And all of this is exacerbated by the process of acquiring strong weapons in the first place. In order to acquire a weapon with a sufficiently high base power, you have to complete a specific (usually difficult) mission while fulfilling a specific condition using an underpowered weapon. 

This single difficult form of strength progression would normally be acceptable as there are usually - though not here - ways to ameliorate the difficulty of repeating the process after you’ve completed it once, but given the slow pace of acquiring level ups in this game (or more accurately, the difficulty of gathering rupees to buy levels) and the mandatory need to complete some of these missions in order to access others, it transcends the palatable to become genuinely frustrating.

In case this wasn't clear by how fervently I'm complaining about this one aspect of the game, a Musou games’ longevity is tied to the weapon and character progression. As such Hyrule Warriors ultimately feels like a step backwards as opposed to a sidestep; a game that breaks features as opposed to re-imaging them. Though it is the most critically well-received Musou game since Dynasty Warriors 4 it is definitely the weakest entry in the series post-PS2 era.

Wow, this got a lot more rant-y than I expected. Above all, I’m simply disappointed. I know that Koei Tecmo can do better, and I don’t feel like this game is the kind of representation that their franchise needs to demonstrate to western audiences how well their Musou (or at least Dynasty Warriors) games are actually designed. Critics clearly aren’t doing them any favors, so they need each game to convey the best reputation possible. I guess it doesn’t matter given the success of the game, but it’s a shame that I personally can’t recommend it to almost anyone, other than Zelda fans who don’t care about “completing” games, in good conscience. Oh well, there’s always DW8: Empires.