The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes
Like its predecessors, Tri Force Heroes is level-based in order to accommodate its multiplayer focus. All of the stages are designed like dungeons, so they hold up really well for puzzle-solving challenges, but they lack a lot of the same charm you can find in Four Swords Adventures' character interactions. Luckily, the game makes up for that a bit with the overworld and the story. Tri Force Heroes aims for a unique tongue-in-cheek narrative that puts fashion above world-saving and builds the tiny overworld off of that concept. Instead of saving Zelda from a menacing, powerful villain, you are helping reverse a spell that forces this game's fashion-forward princess to wear an ugly, unremovable jumpsuit.
As bizarre as the story sounds, I think it complements the game's structure well by putting more focus on the dungeon-style stages than the narrative. The small overworld, being the castle town of Hytopia, is stuffed with fun little character interactions, but I especially like it for the fact that it has the full functionality of a plain menu but is offered in a way that feels more natural to the game. The previous multiplayer Zelda games only had menus for navigation between their levels, so the inclusion of the small overworld does wonders for Tri Force Heroes. Unfortunately, the gameplay just doesn't hold up in the same way.
Where the previous multiplayer games in the series had a focus on competition, challenging each player to outperform the other more than they ask them to work together. This focus meant that single-player gameplay was still largely compatible with solo play, but you always had at least one more Link trailing you just in case you needed the help. Tri Force Heroes instead focuses heavily on cooperation, building its puzzles around working together and encouraging players to diversify their abilities to be more efficient. If you are somehow able to find two other people that own a copy of this game, or you manage to match with two decent players in the online lobby, then this can actually be pretty fun. Earning the costumes that provide you with delightfully diverse enhancements can also be very rewarding. However, multiplayer was largely off of the table for me, and that's where the game starts to fall apart.
When playing alone, you don't get to control multiple Links at a time like you did in other games. Instead, you must control all three individually, tediously walking each of them around the map one by one. This game did introduce a maneuver where your stack each of the Links on top of one another for puzzle solving, and this can occasionally make traversal easier when playing alone, but most of the puzzles still boil down to tedium, making solo play a lot less fun than it was in the Four Sword games.
I still think back fondly on Tri Force Heroes' story, and I would be lying if I said I didn't have fun collecting all of the costumes, but the level structure really just didn't do it for me. The single-player is severely hampered by the inability to control all three Links at once, and the multiplayer is rather inaccessible, making this game frustrating to play for most of the experience. If you want more A Link Between Worlds, you'll get that a little bit here, but you'll have to put up with a lot of tedium (or have a couple Zelda-loving friends on standby) if you want to truly appreciate what's on offer.
Photos sourced courtesy of https://www.nintendolife.com/games/3ds/legend_of_zelda_tri_force_heroes/screenshots
