Hyrule Warriors

Hyrule Warriors is a fusion of two worlds that makes no sense on paper and works beautifully in practice. It took the characters, settings, and props from The Legend of Zelda series and dropped them into the structure of Japanese mass-battle action games, where the player alone mows down hundreds of enemies and captures one base after another. The result is a game in which Link, Zelda, Impa, Midna, or Ganondorf perform flashy attack combos in the middle of a battlefield, and where familiar musical themes appear in rock and metal arrangements. Each character has their own weapon, tempo, and special attack, so while the core loop is simple, the differences between the heroes are substantial.

The game didn't just borrow the scenery from Zelda. Battles make use of classic items such as the boomerang, bow, bombs, or hookshot, both against giant bosses and for opening up paths across the map. Bosses have weaknesses that need to be exposed just as in classic dungeons, which brings a welcome rhythm to otherwise straightforward action. Outside the main campaign, the game offers an Adventure Mode where progress moves across tiles of a map from the very first Zelda game, and every tile hides a different task or reward. This mode adds an enormous amount of content and easily stretches play across dozens of hours.

Technically, this was a compromise. To keep such a huge number of characters on screen, the game sacrificed resolution and environmental detail, and in two-player mode smoothness dropped even further. But splitting the picture between the TV and the controller allowed two-player games without splitting the screen, a rare luxury at the time. Contemporary reception was surprisingly warm, the game became one of the console's most commercially successful titles, and it kicked off a whole line of similar crossovers with other franchises. Today it's still a pleasant, undemanding, and very generous action game for Zelda fans, one you can switch your brain off for. The title's main strength lies in how seriously it takes its source material: despite gameplay that's completely un-Zelda-like, genuine knowledge of the series shows through in every setting, sound, and small reference.