Hands-on with New Hyrule’s princess
I was a bit surprised yesterday when Nintendo announced the next set of DLC for Hyrule Warriors had dropped. I knew it was coming, I just didn’t expect it to come that day. Rumors pointed to Toon Zelda being the next new character for the franchise and they were spot on.
Yes, she’s not Linebeck as I’m sure many of us would have hoped, but she did turn out to be another solid swordsmith for what has become easily one of my favorite games for the Wii U.
You may have noticed in that video that I nearly died. Yeah, this is the worst I’ve ever done at this game. Thank God I leveled up at the right time.
Anyway, the three or so hours I spent with Toon Zelda last night gave me lovely flashbacks to The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, one of my favorite Zelda games. Once again possessing that empty Phantom armor, Zelda combines her ghostly prayers with devastating swings of her sword, clumsy punches, and a morph ball attack, which is her simple and extremely effective Y-attack.
Toon Zelda reminded me a great deal of the regular Zelda character, but without the grace. She’s not used to her big body. She gets her sword stuck in the ground with her B-Y combo and runs forward swinging her fists with her 2B-Y combo. She’s also a bit of a coward. Like in Spirit Tracks, Toon Zelda does not like mice and that plays heavily into her Focus Spirit special attack.
She does feel a bit more confident in her other combos. The 7B and 3B-Y combos both ditch the awkwardness of her other attacks, giving the illusion she’s a calm and capable fighter. As a ghost, she freely uses her otherworldly powers and it’s these moments where she most reminds me of the regular Zelda. Two of their attacks, freezing the enemies in place and letting out a big burst of energy, are basically the same.
The more I played with her, the more I found her to be just okay. She feels too similar to many of the other characters for me to really call her a unique entry to the series. The same can be said for the Sand Wand, Toon Link’s newest weapon included in the Phantom Hourglass & Spirit Tracks DLC pack. As a projectile heavy weapon, it plays like a mix of some of the weapons we’ve seen before, such as Lana’s Book of Sorcery. The Sand Wand lets you summon blocks of sand to move about, taking out enemies all around you. Where the weapon does stand out for me is with the Spirit Train you can summon.
The train can be summoned with a few of his combos, at least one of which you can ride and throw bombs from using a special enery meter. While I have yet to master this move, when I did pull it off, it was amazing and devastating to large groups of enemies. This is an attack that was made for the Wii U version and its sizable enemy count.
Unfortunately, there is just one more DLC pack coming to Hyrule Warriors. The A Link Between Worlds DLC pack will launch this winter with two new playable characters, ending what has been a wonderful run to a wonderful game.
