Quite a few people were rapt at the idea of slaying hundreds of foes with Link’s trusty sword, so it makes sense to cover Hyrule Warriors for this week’s Community Review.
Whenever I see a game being ported to the Switch that often fills the screen with foes, my heart always sinks a fraction. It’s well known that the CPU really isn’t the strongest as far as the Switch’s hardware is concerned, and the more enemies that have to be drawn on screen and tracked, the more I worry.
Things might have been fine had the developers maintained the 30fps cap for the Switch, but they didn’t. Instead they went for a 60fps cap, which the Switch struggles to maintain according to a quick framerate comparison:
To be fair, this isn’t a huge surprise. The New 3DS port of Hyrule Warriors did a better job of maintaining a stable frame rate than the Wii U port. Dynasty Warriors 9 had performance issues at launch earlier this year, too. And I don’t know that I’d risk the added chugging of split-screen multiplayer.
The Warriors formula works well enough and the take I’ve seen across my feeds is that people are content enough with the Hyrule package. It’s still more a game about managing zones than waves of enemies, due to the lack of a challenge they pose.
But the Warriors series has always been a bit of a power fantasy just repurposed in different settings, rather than a genuinely challenging action-RPG. You’re a god amongst mere mortals, charging up your power metre until you can unleash nuclear-sized attacks on the battlefield.
How have you found Hyrule Warriors on the Switch though? And did you play the original on the Wii U or 3DS, or is this your first time on the musou rodeo with Link?
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