My Angry Opinions on Tri Force Heroes

Before I begin, no this is not a review. Please do not think of it as one. This is all just a very personal opinion.

Do any of you remember Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, or Four Swords Adventures? Those were Zelda games. They were multiplayer games. They were fun games. Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes was released more than a decade after those games. They had years to study and improve upon the formula found in those games. What the heck happened?

If it seems like I’m not being straightforward, let me spell it out: I do not like TFH. It is the first Zelda game I have felt truly disappointed in. I had such high hopes for this game (It has Toon Link in it, for crying out loud), and those hopes were pretty well squashed before I started the game’s main adventure. I had made it halfway through the typical tutorial nonsense before I started to have my doubts. I started with single player first, as I was already leery of playing online right off the bat, and hoped I could learn the game before tackling the multiplayer. It was all fine until I was given control of the Dolls, which act as their own independent characters, taking the place of other players. Switching between each doll to control them was not exactly clunky, but it could have been much better. I was also very upset that there was no way to control them all at once, or to call them all to one location like in FSA. It can be said the choice to exclude such controls were deliberate in order to more accurately emulate the multiplayer, but if that is the case, then why not add in the ability to troll you and throw you off cliff-sides, like everyone does online?

I was upset with the control of the multiple characters, but for a brief moment I thought, Well, I’m sure I can manage. They probably designed the levels accordingly. Of course, that was right before the NPC told me about the “Skip” button.

I never cringed before while playing a Zelda game. They actually had to purposefully develop a mechanic that lets you just skip ahead of the levels in the game. So much effort had been put into the multiplayer aspect of Tri Force Heroes that the developers knew the single player campaign was going to be complete bull. This was just horrendous. Now, you can justify it all you want, and tell me that the entire point of the game is to play it with other people. You can tell me things I am already well aware of. But can you tell me why I love Four Sword Adventures so much? Can you tell me why it’s one of my top five Zelda games? It’s because EVERY part of that eleven-year-old title is fun. Both multiplayer and single player are enjoyable. So why, with all the years of technological advancements, increased experience in game develop, and two previous installments in the series to take notes from, could they not make every aspect of Tri Force Heroes at least passable?

The answer is, from what I can glean of this game’s development, a simple one. They came up with the game’s “Totem” mechanic(The gimmick where the characters stand on top of each other), and were intent on making it work no matter what. And they did, at the cost of fluid functionality for half of the game.

Well, there are my thoughts on Tri Force Heroes. Was this a well thought out and polished review? No, it isn’t. Is this a result of me needing to vent because I had to quit playing this game because it only ever shifted from being either frustrating to boring to play? Yes, yes it is.

Side Note: For any Zelda fans eager to argue with me to blindly defend Nintendo and the Zelda series, please do not bother. There’s no excuse for putting out a full priced, retail game and not put in the work to make sure the entirety of it is fun. It would be like if Smash 4 had been released with amazing online multiplayer, but single player could only be played with the Wii Remote. I expect much better from the best in the business.