The fine folks over at PocketGamer managed to get an early play of the upcoming Legend of Zelda spin off title, Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes. You can check out their thoughts on the game here. Of the many insightful remarks about the game, the most damning is the region lock on online multiplayer.
The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is a co-op 3 player Legend of Zelda dungeon crawler game of sorts. As mentioned in the post, there is a single player mode where you can switch controls with all three Links. However, it is mentioned that when not controlling the other two Links, the AI is virtually non-existent and slow. The game would seem to be a lot more rewarding with other players.
It is then that the point about the online region lock becomes an issue. It is mentioned that when the online connection for a player is terrible, the game suffers from extreme lag for everyone in order to remain in sync. Because of that, it makes sense that there is a region lock for online players. However, unless the game keeps a strong following for all regions available, there will no doubt be a drought after a few months and it will become difficult to connect to other online players, especially if the pool of players are segregated.
Tri Force Heroes is a spin off title that focuses primarily on combat. The most fun can be had when you play with friends. This is a sentiment echoed for most game experiences. Often times this can be difficult to fulfill. So whether or not this title will be successful will be difficult to justify. The often neglected Download Play feature on the 3DS does work for Tri Force Heroes, so that’s a plus at least.
Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is out for the 3DS on October 23rd, 2015.