The Legend of Zelda: Battle Chest will be a great addition to Nintendo Land, not as deep as I would have hoped

 

One of the games on display in the Nintendo Land collection this week was The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest. Like most of the games in Nintendo Land, Battle Quest seems as if it was specifically developed to train players how to use the Wii U GamePad, and as an added bonus the Wii MotionPlus controller.

 

The player with the GamePad plays the role of the archer, and must concentrate on enemies in the distance if you and your comrades wish to complete your quest unscathed. The two players using Wii Remotes act as swordsman, and swing them around in the same fashion as you would in Skyward Sword. In fact, I would wager that the swordplay is running on the same engine, because like Skyward Sword, you can raise your sword to the sky to charge it up and unleash a lethal spin-attack.

 

The enemies attack your group in droves, and at certain points there are other enemy archers out of reach of the group. The player with the GamePad must move the controller around in real space and pull back the right stick to draw back the bow. At certain points in the game there are switches that must be hit in unison. In the demo, the switch hitting was pretty obvious; the archer would shoot the globe above ground and the two swordsman the globes within swords reach.

 

The one caveat of Battle Chest is that other than the shooting of the bow, or the swinging of the sword, the player doesn’t actually control any movement. No, that is all handled by the game itself. The group just sort of slowly shuffles forward in a preset path, making the experience seem somewhat shallow at the end of the day. My time spent with Battle Chest was still an enjoyable experience, and I imagine that as the game progresses the enemies will become more difficult and complex to defeat, but out of all the games on display for Nintendo Land, I didn’t feel as strongly about this one.

 

 


Eugene lives in New Mexico and has been a life long gamer since getting his hands on an NES. Always partial to Nintendo, Eugene has made it a point to keep informed on all things Mario.