Here's why you should care about Hyrule Warriors

[Administrator]

Koei's Musou series is 14 years old. That's older than GTA 3 and Call of Duty (even if you're so inclined to include Medal of Honor: Allied Assault), so at the very least it's a mark of endurance if not some fundamental, unique quality. Starting with a curiously educational setting in ancient China, the series has diversified by shifting its pseudo-historical locales to Japan and Europe. It's even spread into totally separate IP universes, adding manga/anime greats such as Gundam, Fist of the North Star and One Piece. As Nintendo joins in the melee for the upcoming Hyrule Warriors, it looks like the mega-series is about to enter a golden era of wider popular acceptance. What makes the Musou template so great that Nintendo was happy to offer up one its most cherished IPs to the altar of highly iterative en-masse brawling?
In 2014, the basic Musou framework is a well-oiled, well-tuned machine. It's wonderfully accessible and the basics are understood within a single stage, which is one of the series' real strengths. The longer tail of any Musou title is down to its freedom for replay - any completed stage can be replayed at will, with the same XP and pick-up rewards on offer every single time. You can adjust the difficulty (commonly with four settings, and four degrees of rewards), so the path of least resistance (plough through everything on easy, unlocking all the stuff) leads to a path of self-determination (complete everything on chaos by levelling your favourite to maximum).
It's always worth persevering with the levelling grind as the reward of an unstoppable crowd-clearing character, able to dive into dense crowds of the hardest enemies without fear of death, is a rare treat in modern gaming. It's total, assured dominance; the perfect reward for hours and hours of work. The challenge shifts accordingly - it stops being about survival and starts being about optimal performance. How fast can you duff up the entire stage? How long can you string out a combo? How many officers (named enemies with larger health bars that drop rewards) can you crowd together, and can you land KO blows on all of them in one string?
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