Nintendo Warriors: Spin-offs since 2014!

     In the year 2014, Koei Tecmo and Nintendo teamed up for a new kind of crossover that Nintendo hadn't been involved in before. The team at Koei Tecmo had made many warriors games over the years, the main series being Dynasty Warriors, as well as dealing with many other characters and properties like Gundam, Dragon Quest, and others, but with 2014's Hyrule Warriors, the two companies allowed players to focus on a story that utilized many different characters, many of which hadn't been seen in a long time. With it being Hyrule, this game focused on the Legend of Zelda franchise and allowed players to take direct control of many characters that had never been playable before in a context that allowed the land of Hyrule to feel much more like a battlefield like in the Warriors titles. I'll talk about this and some more titles in this post, as well as talk about the new game that's getting ready to come out later this month. With all of this out of the way, get your gear ready because today we're hitting the battlefield in some interesting and extremely over the top titles.

A Link between times!

    Let me get one thing out of the way before I dive into this. Hyrule Warriors has a completely nonsensical story, which is fine, because in order to fit all of the content into this game, they had to open the world of Legend of Zelda up with some plot-holes that bridge in time periods. The plot involves a goddess of time who has been watching Link and the other heroes of Hyrule over the ages defeat Ganon again and again, and over time becomes obsessed with Link and wanting to know what binds all of the versions of the hero to the Princess and against the forces of darkness. Eventually, she becomes jealous of Zelda and feels as though the Hero of Hyrule should be hers alone, and in feeling this way, she becomes corrupted by darkness and eventually succumbs completely, opening portals to several different periods of time to release Ganon from different tombs where his soul has been held. There is one in the time of Ocarina of Time, one in Skyward Sword's time period, and one in Twilight Princess. Truly this story is only put into place so that all of the characters from these different games are allowed to interact with each other. Link, Zelda, Impa, Sheik, and Lana (a new character created for this game) are all from the modern era, where the game begins, but then Cia opens portals to these other areas in time. Ocarina of Time is represented by Darunia, the Goron Elder, and Ruto, the Princess of the Zora tribe. Twilight Princess has more representatives, with Midna, Agitha, the girl from Hyrule Castle Town who loves bugs, and Zant. Skyward Sword has Fi and Ghirahim to round out the bunch, but the amazing thing is just how much content was added after the launch of this game. There were lots of unlockable characters that you got from just playing through the main story mode, known as Legends mode, but even more was awaiting you in the Adventure mode. Adventure Mode began as a recreation of the map for the original Legend of Zelda game for the NES, but with the releases of DLC as well as the other two releases of this game on the 3DS and Switch eventually, they added many new maps based on different games in the series. 

    Termina from Majora's Mask, Koholint Island from Link's Awakening, and several others were added, and along with them came different characters. They added a whole section to the campaign based off of the Wind Waker and allowed you to unlock Toon Link, the King of Red Lions, Tetra, and Medli all from that game. If you know me, you know how much I love the Wind Waker, so I was ecstatic to get them all in this game. Along with these characters, we got a whole lot more. Toon Zelda from Spirit Tracks where she was turned into a Ghost and possesses a suit of armor is certainly one of the most interesting. Young Link, Tingle, and Skull Kid all make their return from Majora's Mask, as does Marin from Link's Awakening. They even added Ravio and Yuga from A Link Between Worlds to the most recent releases and they also play pretty great. Honestly the best part about all of these games is just seeing how all of these characters interact as well as how they have different moves and references to the games that they come from, and it would be something of a disservice to talk about all of them, but I will point out a few of my favorites anyways. When Darunia wins a map, the camera zooms in on his face and he begins dancing like crazy to Saria's Song, just like he did back in Ocarina of Time, which is a really hilarious and wonderful touch. Young Link is a cool character in general because he's not very strong as a little kid, but once he gets enough magic to activate his magic burst mode, he puts on the Fierce Deity mask, the most powerful mask in Majora's Mask by far, and becomes Fierce Deity Link. It's a really cool touch, and I'm really happy that they put it in! Though Hyrule Warriors was a fantastic start to this little partnership, it was far from the end of it!

Fire Emblem is fitting for the next option!

    With Legend of Zelda being the first choice for this series of Nintendo Spinoffs, Fire Emblem, Nintendo's Strategy game on the rise, was chosen for the next game of this type. Fire Emblem Warriors was released in September of 2017 for Switch and New 3DS, and it used the same basic systems of the previous game, but it focused on the characters and storylines of Fire Emblem's recent past, specifically focusing on Awakening and Fates for large portions of the game. This was an odd choice at first, since this series has a long history of being turn based strategy games, as opposed to more action-focused titles like this. Looking back, however, this does seem like a natural choice since the theming for these games was similar to the medieval nature of Legend of Zelda, though since I didn't know anything much about Fire Emblem at the time, I didn't really recognize any of the characters other than the ones that I recognized from Super Smash Bros. Since then, however, my brother has really gotten into the series and since we played this game again recently to prepare us for the new game (which I'll get to soon, I promise), he was able to enjoy the game a lot more, though he wasn't a huge fan of the fan-fiction self insert-esque characters Liana and Rowan who are just here to allow the Fire Emblem characters bond with them as well as to bond the characters to each other. With this game, there were fewer characters, but almost all of them are unlocked from the main campaign. There is a History mode, which allows you to play through something resembling scenarios from different Fire Emblem titles, like several smaller versions of Adventure mode from Hyrule Warriors. There was some DLC that came from Shadow Dragon, Awakening, and Fates, but not as much as Hyrule Warriors had certainly. The irritating thing about these DLC characters is that three of the characters are introduced in the Story mode, but you just can't play as them, which is the worst way that DLC characters can be introduced in my opinion. It just screams, "Look but you can't touch" even though they're clearly fully playable. I don't have much to say about this game, though it was another fun time and still full to the brim of fan service, even if I feel like it was a bit more grounded this time, which makes sense since the series as a whole is more grounded in politics and strategic warfare. This fan-service angle was all about to change with the next Nintendo-inspired "Warriors" title.

The Age of "What if?"

    In late 2020, Mister Aonuma announced that the sequel to Breath of the Wild was still not quite ready to show, but instead unveiled something completely unexpected, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. This was a sequel in name, but it truly was just another Hyrule Warriors game, but instead of being based on the entire Legend of Zelda franchise, this game was completely based around Breath of the Wild, specifically showing what happened 100 years before that game began. In the lore of Breath of the Wild, Link got seriously injured and was put into a cryogenic sleep for the next 100 years. Once he wakes up, he finds a Hyrule that has fallen into extreme disrepair and he has to set it right. This game allowed for the new opportunity to see firsthand what happened 100 years prior to the game, and not through flashbacks like in the original. Going into it, we assumed this game would feature a pretty bleak story of the defeat of Zelda and her champions against the Calamity Ganon, but instead, we got a very different tale.

     Time travel changes everything, as we see here with the game beginning with a small guardian-like robot that travels back in time just as the castle is being destroyed. This one small figure shapes the entire plot of this new game, and warns them of the great tragedy that is getting ready to unfold. They're able to get this message ahead of time, they instantly begin preparing to defend against this threat, and it changes the entire course of history, so I won't spoil what happens in the game here, but I have to say that this may be my favorite version of Zelda that we've gotten in any game that she's been in. It's a really cool story, and much more interesting than I first thought it was going to be! The characters are really interesting this time around since we see the strength of the champions and actually get to play as them! The variety of the different heroes this time around is all over the place, and that extends to the unlockable characters (many of which I really didn't see coming)! The story here is front and center, and is honestly far more substantial than I thought it would be, which I love. Another huge difference in this game is the inclusion of the bonus content, previously included in the Adventure mode. There is no Adventure mode in this game, instead there's only one large world map which gets more and more fleshed out as you continue through the game. This really streamlines all of the gameplay and recontextualizes the scenarios from adventure mode as just that, they're training exercises which help out all of these heroes with becoming stronger. Gone are the days of crafting seals and scrolling through menus to upgrade all of your heroes, as the upgrades for the individual heroes are also located on the map, which felt much more straight forward to me. Now, there's only one more game to discuss, and it's one that hasn't even come out yet.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Redux? 

    Several years ago, in 2019, a pretty massive game came out for the Fire Emblem series, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This game combined a lot of features of the Persona series and made it far easier to feel attached to the units that you commanded on the battlefield, as normally you could potentially view them as anime models that basically take the places of chess pieces in battle. The ability to interact with the characters and move around Garreg Mach Monastery was almost certainly a selling point for a lot of people, as this game sold like hot cakes, and it makes me feel like they'll adopt similar systems and settings for more games going forward. I bring this up because back in February, during the last Nintendo Direct, we got the first trailer for Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which naming conventions aside, looks to be essentially to Three Houses what Age of Calamity was to Breath of the Wild, which is great for fans of the series! While it's too early to tell exactly how the story will turn out this time, It's clear from the demo that was released on June 8 that it is going to be another "What if?" scenario, much like Age of Calamity before it. You control a character named Shez (though in Fire Emblem fashion, you can rename him or her whatever you'd like) and you actually go against Byleth, the main character from Three Houses who is known as the "Ashen Demon" this time around, which is certainly a cool twist. The events of this game seem to be playing out in a similar way from the original game, though some of them happen in a different order, and some of them are major changes, such as your character just being enrolled in the knight's academy at Garreg Mach instead of being a professor. I don't want to give much away here, so I'll leave it at that, but suffice it to say that I'm certainly excited for this one, and I'm curious to see how everything plays out.

    Nintendo has a storied history of being very protective of their Intellectual Properties, but with games like these and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle or its upcoming sequel Sparks of Hope, we also get a glimpse of Nintendo learning to be more willing to work with other teams as long as they have an interesting idea or angle to bring to the table of a storied franchise. Fire Emblem has gotten really big over the last decade or so, since Awakening came out, but it's still not as big of a deal as Legend of Zelda over here in the United States, but it is really cool to see Nintendo trusting the teams over at Koei Tecmo with creating not only these "hack-and-slash" games that basically consist of pushing a few buttons over and over until you see what happens. These teams have actually started making these games that present really cool and interesting "what if?" scenarios that I think really help the series as a whole out. It's not going to be a new canon in the Nintendo released games, but they do present fun scenarios that people will certainly enjoy discussing for years to come.

    Thank you so much for reading this post, friends. I was thinking about Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes the other day and I felt like I haven't paid it enough attention so far, so I was inspired to give this little history lesson of this niche and very fan-oriented sub-series of Nintendo's franchises, and I really hope they'll make more in the future, since they're just a lot of fun! Do you have a favorite Nintendo Franchise that you'd like to see get a Warriors-style spin-off? Personally I would love something like that for Kid Icarus Uprising, though we'll just have to see if anything like that will ever come to fruition. Thank you so much for your support, as always, I really appreciate you all checking out my stuff and I hope you'll all have a good week! Until next time, I've been Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Spin-off fan, and I'll talk to you again soon!