Zelda: Tri Force Heroes review: A forced try

There are a few things that distinguish a Legend of Zelda game as part of a long legacy that goes back over 30 years now. Chief among them is a sense of exploration: these games create the feeling of wandering a large, varied world, working your way up from a nearly defenseless elfin child to a well-equipped badass that can get past any obstacles and take on any challenges that come.

In this sense, Triforce Heroes barely counts as a Zelda game. Here, that massive world has been replaced with a single perfunctory town, which serves as a glorified warp pad to a long series of puzzle-filled dungeons. If you have the gall to try to leave that town, the game simply ends your play session and sends you back to the title screen, a tacit acknowledgement of just how limited your exploration actually is.

There's little of the epic, slow building story of world salvation that characterizes the usual Zelda game, either. Instead, we get a ridiculous and threadbare plot about a fashion-conscious princess who has been cursed to wear an unremovable plain brown wrapping, sending her into a tailspin of depression that brings down the entire kingdom. There’s a certain tongue-in-cheek self-awareness to the presentation of this silly plot, sure, but it’s more than a little unsatisfying for those expected a standard Zelda adventure.

Anyway, to help the princess out, you have to work your way through those aforementioned dungeons to find some magical Macguffins that will help you remove her curse. Along the way, you also find special items that can be used to craft a variety of special outfits at a shop in town. Each outfit gives a special ability that’s useful but never crucial to completing the game; bigger bombs, tripled arrows, more life, etc. Moreover, the game makes a direct appeal to the fashion conscious by focusing on how cute Link looks in these outfits, encouraging you to snap in-game photos capturing him looking his best.

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