I think this game was fun. It's not the best the series offers, but it is a good time with friends. I enjoyed working together in a team to solve Zelda puzzles, it wasn't something I had experienced before. The levels were fine mostly and the puzzles weren't overly easy or unreasonable.

Some of the levels were uninteresting or just lacking. Some puzzles and bosses were frustrating due to only being able to aim in eight directions. The game had some bugs that caused us to reset levels sometimes. I also don't love handheld gaming in general.

Overall I had a good time with this. I like co-op gaming experiences.

Beating every Zelda in timeline order 16/20:

If you're playing single player like I was, Tri Force Heroes is rough. The game simply isn't built for a single player, and honestly, why isn't it? Four Swords Adventures created a wonderful 4-player co-op game that could also be equally as enjoyable in a single player setting and Tri Force Heroes seems to just not want to try. Instead of controlling all the links at once, you have to switch to each of them one at a time. Some of the puzzles and combat encounters are damn near impossible playing like this. Your timing has to be PERFECT. Instead of leading to a challenging but fun experience, it's extremely frustrating and feels like you're fighting the game as it throws borderline unfair challenges at you towards the end. In multiplayer, I can imagine the timing of some of the puzzles being more lenient or the combat encounters being a bit more forgiving since enemies will go after all three players instead of just me. The story and characters are goofy and fun, but they're so far removed from the Zelda universe that this may as well not even be a Zelda game. Some of the puzzles and bosses can be fun (I especially enjoyed Prismantus). I also adore the music in this game, it's chock full of bangers.

In multiplayer, I could see Tri Force Heroes being a fair bit of fun. In single player, its an exercise in frustration and is certainly not worth playing.

You start each level as a group of 3 idiots throwing each other off cliffs, and you end each level as a coordinated team with designated roles in the boss fight.

It's satisfying, it's clever, but where are the damn outfits?! Those were a main draw of the game, yet upon completion I could only afford to unlock like 4.

With friends, I had a blast. Couldn't imagine playing with strangers w/o voice chat. Or, god forbid, by myself.

> Beaten just in time for Nintendo 3DS online shutting down in April 2024; I'd like to think we were the last ever group of 3 to finish a playthru :)

Triforce Heroes is a pretty fun multiplayer Zelda with a lot of baffling decisions that hold it back being anything really special. First off, whoever thought that putting literally no invincibility frames should be fired. It's such a baffling component to be missing, especially with how many enemies the game throws at you. This doesn't help by the lives system which makes you restart a level if you die four times which doesn't seem bad but by the end when there are so many enemies on screen and the enemies get hard, the game can feel pretty grueling. The clothing items was a pretty fun mechanic with slight buffs for each player making everyone feel like they have some important role to play in levels, along with multiple items per dungeon that only one player can hold. Some of the worlds were also a bit misses with not a lot of fun gimmicks but most of them were pretty good and one of them was actually pretty fantastic and used the game's gimmick of having three people incredibly well and shows how well the concept can work. At it's best, Triforce Heroes is able to have a lot of really fun puzzles using the three player gimmick or just be a stupid fun with friends, however, at it's worst, it's frustating and a grind to get through.

In some fairness to the game, it’s probably more fun when you’re not under a massive time crunch to finish before the servers shut down forever. Fuck Nintendo!

This one is tough bc stylistically I kinda love this game honestly, Hytopia’s obsession with fashion is so dumb but in the cutest way and it leads to some really silly moments that are perfectly self aware and charming. But actually playing it… wow this is so much worse than I remember.

The structure is an immediate red flag, instead of full on dungeons the game is split into 128 mini-levels, 16 per area. They can be fun, but just like the shrines in BotW, their extremely short length makes it impossible to get any real substance out of them, ideas come and go way too quickly to be worthwhile and the game never really has any good moments where you really have to think.

I think this was intentional bc of the way that you’re incentivized to grind these levels over and over for materials to make all the extra costumes in this game, so they make the challenge more about execution instead of figuring out tricky solutions. Fair enough I guess but… wow these levels suck!

They’re either boring or frustrating with very few being genuinely fun. They also get super repetitive before long, making this game a nightmare to marathon for long sessions (again, fuck Nintendo!). There were plenty of moments where me and the friends I was playing with all asked each other how some of these levels could’ve possible been approved.

The most memorable examples include a minecart chase that’s hectic in the worst way and a room with a redead, an enemy you can only damage with fire, despite the fact that only one team member has the fire item, and then when you kill it it spawns four more, despite the fact that they all have an AOE attacks that takes up half the room. It’s not all this bad, but there is some baffling game design at points. Also who tf decided to implement limited lives in a Zelda game??

I played this as a kid but never had anyone to play with so I never made it far, I thought now that I was playing with friends I’d enjoy it properly this time but no this game is just flat out not good. Makes me really want to try out Four Swords Adventure though!

The single player is not fun but I have very fond memories of co-op multiplayer both in person and online. I am actually sad this game will be losing part of what makes it special to me. I decided to play this again on the last day before the 3DS wifi shut down. I found a few players named Not Link, Starkido, and GonnaPoo. I helped them beat some late game levels and it was just as fun as I remember. Thank y'all for making the last day fun. I will genuinely miss this game and it's really unfortunate many will never get to experience the game as intended since the single player sucks. Thank you Triforce Heroes for the many hours of co-op fun.

between this and the crew, this really is the year of playing midass games under the motivation of "ah fuck, guess i gotta finish this before i can't anymore". at least me and the homies were able to finish a playthrough of this with roughly 72 hours left on the clock baby

the game itself is okay, pretty unremarkable tbh. The game uses small levels instead of large dungeons to not only make things quick and snappy for portable play with friends/randos but also to add some weird element of grindiness to it. The big gimmick of this game are the various different costumes that you and your companions can wear to get various perks, which on one hand, yeah it certainly makes it a bit more personalized, but on the other you need to make the costumes with materials and you only get ONE mfin material per level at random which means time to hit that grindhouse if you want that tingle outfit, pig. I can't imagine how mind-numbing it would be to 100% this, doing the same dungeon levels over and over with randos of varying levels of cooperation just to try and get that 1/3 rare item. blegh

the real memorable moments really aren't from the game itself, but just from fucking about with the boys ngl. you'd think that 3 minds working to finish a zelda dungeon would mean we'd be 3 times as smart, but it really ended up being 3 links each taking one third of the singular collective braincell as we all bumbledumped our way through the levels. Shenanigans can and will ensue, as it's really easy to just be a little shit in this game. Picking up other players without their consent, trying to nab or use items in dubiously humorous ways, wearing some dumbass outfit that can actively hinder progress (shoutouts to the bomb suit baby), theres just a lot of ways to make this game either really funny or hair-rippingly irritating depending on your groups sense of humor. I can't really imagine it would be that fun if you tried to play this alone or with randos online, your friends definitely make or break the experience for sure.

It's not like this game is going anywhere when the servers get shut down, as there's still local play that's an option (you even get exclusive friendship token items when you play locally vs online), but unless you are in the particularly lucky situation where you live around or with people that still use a member of the Nintendo 3DS Family of Systems™ you are going to be shit out of luck playing this on stock hardware. Luckily, I believe the priitendo fan servers already have this games online functioning so hacked 3DS havers won't need to worry much in the future. I think you can also play this online through emulation, but me and my gang have still never been able to figure out citra netplay tbh. I def want to try out the four swords games for more multiplayer zelda shenanigans (those games have a whole extra link to share the same braincell with!), but alas it was already a herculean effort for me and the gang to schedule our busy adult lives effectively enough to play this and that was just with three people...

rest in pepperoni 3DS and wii U online servers, the nintendo netcode honestly wasn't that great and it died before 360 xbox live or PS3 PSN did despite releasing 5-6 years later, but it brought a lot of smiles and good memories regardless. From the premier titles like smash 4, mario kart 7/8, and splatoon to dumpy spinoffs like this game, its shutdown will make it a great deal harder to thoroughly experience this period of Nintendo's history.