You take control of Zelda characters cutting through massive crowds of enemy soldiers at once, moving from one point on a battlefield map to another to capture bases and defeat commanders. Combos are simple to pull off and the screen fills with dozens of enemies falling at a time, which makes it satisfying without needing much skill. This edition bundles in every extra character and map from earlier releases.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Overall
This is comfort food gaming at its finest, letting you mow down endless armies of Bokoblins with almost no friction. It never aims to be more complex than that, and that is fine.
Moment to moment
Combos are simple to pull off but satisfying, and the sheer number of playable Zelda characters keeps the moveset variety high even after dozens of hours.
Art and atmosphere
The crossover cast and familiar Hyrule locales give it an easy, nostalgic charm, and it runs steadily even during the busiest battles.
Worth your time?
With every piece of DLC included, this is the most content-packed version available, ideal for anyone who wants mindless, high-energy Zelda action.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You pick a fighter from Zelda history, Link, Zelda, Impa, Ganondorf, and dozens more, and drop into a large battlefield swarming with hundreds of enemy soldiers that go down in a few hits from your basic attack combo. Holding down the special button unleashes a flashy, screen-clearing move once your gauge fills, and each character also carries a unique weapon type with its own moveset, so switching characters genuinely changes how a level feels to play. Your job on most maps is to run between capture points, defeat enemy captains guarding them, and keep an eye on a battlefield map so allied bases do not fall while you are busy elsewhere.
The bulk of the game's content is in Adventure Mode, a grid of small challenge missions styled after old Zelda game maps, where each square is a short battle with its own twist, like a time limit or a specific way to unlock a hidden character. Clearing these squares over dozens of hours is how you build out your full roster and collect new weapons, and the missions get more demanding as you progress, throwing multiple enemy commanders or defense objectives at you at once. A single skirmish usually takes ten to twenty minutes, which makes it an easy game to pick up for a short session or sink hours into at a stretch.
What may wear on you is how similar the objectives feel after enough hours, capture this base, defeat that captain, over and over with new decoration but the same underlying task. The game also shows its age visually since it first came out years ago on other consoles. Anyone who likes Zelda characters and wants a relaxing, satisfying way to mow through enemy hordes without much difficulty pressure will get a lot out of this, especially playing alongside a second person.