Koei Tecmo’s Warriors series nowadays is mostly a tactical beat them up game with simple controls that allow players to defeat hordes of enemies in order to take on a battlefield’s objectives. The tactical aspect differs from game to game, but it generally entails taking down specific enemies, and capturing or defending select locations. Even then, this is a very reductionist take because there is far more to these games. The default normal mode being far too easy and being easily brute-forced tends to be the reason that the average consumer often sees this series as “brainless”. On harder difficulties, enemy generals can dish out serious damage if you do not dodge, and they are far more aggressive, for example.
The series started off with notable Chinese historical figures as playable characters (Dynasty Warriors), but an offshoot was created from it featuring notable historical figures of the Japanese unification wars (Samurai Warriors). Then multiple offshoot were made to capitalize on various franchises like Gundam, Persona 5, Fire Emblem, and of course, The Legend of Zelda.
In these offshoots, Omega Force tries to include elements from the franchise they are basing the game on. For Zelda, they tried use multiple aspects, including using the right item to break a boss’ guard. That includes throwing a bomb into King Dodongo’s gullet, or shooting at Gohma’s eye with an arrow. Those boss battles feel very “Zelda”, but I believe that they are inherently flawed in their execution.
The issue comes with how said bosses move. In Zelda games, bosses tend to telegraph their attacks, and as such, you can use the right item for the situation and beat the boss. The boss in end of itself is a puzzle to solve. The issue with Hyrule Warriors is that they try to replicate that wait and react approach to combat, but there is no real pace to the battle. In Ocarina of time, King Dodongo has a fixed set of behaviours. He’d roll around, and then when he is done, he’d prepare for a fire-breathing attack. In Hyrule Warriors, there is no set pattern. The boss will use a move randomly from a pool of attacks in its moveset. As such, since you almost do no damage when not exploiting their weakness, if you are caught in a situation where you get unlucky RNG, you could be stuck waiting for a very long time for the enemy to show their weak spot. While rare, I have been in situation where I had to run circles around the enemy for over five minutes in the Wii U version. The 3DS and Switch versions thankfully add a system where you get more magic meter if multiple playable allies congregate around the boss. You can use the magic meter to force a weakened state, and that circumvents some of the issue. However, what happens if you have only one playable character for that scenario? And even with this set in place, it still takes a considerable amount of time to build up.
In terms of pacing, having to run circles around an enemy that simply refuses to do the right action heavily slows down progress. It also does not help that it adds a random element that can actually impede your progress. High score rewards are locked behind getting a good time, the RNG can have a significant effect on whether you get an A rank or a B Rank.
The first thing I would consider revising is attack patterns. I see no problems with a randomized set of attacks, but when it comes to the attack necessary to take these bosses down, I would implement a timer, which would force these bosses to use those said attacks after a set amount of time elapsed since the last time it was used. By doing this, you are reducing the amount of time spent running around the enemy waiting for the right opportunity.
You could also revise how much damage bosses take when the weakness is not taken advantage of. You technically do damage to bosses that are not in a prone state, but the amount of damage is extremely small, which makes a full combo barely even show any difference on their health bar. It could be possible to slightly increase the amount of damage that normal attacks have on a boss while still making guard breaks the optimal way to cause damage. This would make it so that actually attacking between guard break opportunities to cause some nice chip damage is not a waste of time. In a small way, this would keep the player engaged in the action. Mind you, I appreciate why they made the choices that they did, and they actually made improvements to their systems in the re-releases. The prime example I would list is the Imprisoned boss battle. In the original, the imprisoned would stop taking damage beyond half HP. In other words, no matter how much damage you would do, the Imprisoned would stop taking damage beyond the half HP threshold and start chasing you down. It would only begin taking damage again at the end of the chase. By removing that limitation in the remaster, it makes taking the Imprisoned down far less tedious.
All in all, Hyrule Warriors is a fantastic game with massive amounts of good content. It treats the game series with incredible reverence, and the passion shows. It is unfortunate that Omega Force does not always show that level of commitment to some of their other projects, like with Fire Emblem Warriors. Nevertheless, I would love to see a sequel with revised boss mechanics that can be more reliably taken-down. Challenge is welcome, but it also should not be a game of chance and grueling wait. This criticism comes from a place of love, as someone who played hundred of hours of this game.
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