I think I enjoyed this game a lot more than most people in part because I wasn't that into Breath of the Wild and its lore so this game's more divisive writing decisions didn't bother me as much and in part because I'm just generally a huge Musou sucker and this game, mechanically speaking, is a very, very solid Musou game. Not as good as the original Hyrule Warriors but then few Musou games are. The movesets are largely great, there's a huge amount of content, and the system mechanics include a lot of super nice touches, like every character getting their own variations on the Sheikah Slate runes, and shield-wielding characters like Link and Urbosa getting to use the parry/reflection straight from BotW. There's just a lot to chew on and experiment with for fans of the genre.

That said, while I didn't consider it a deal breaker like some people, the performance definitely isn't ideal. I don't think it's a controversial statement to say this is like, the #1 game that would benefit from the existence of a Switch Pro. But it's also pretty old at this point so knowing Nintendo and Koei Tecmo they probably wouldn't even update this game to make use of the hardware lol

Best storytelling of any Musou game and that's including Persona 5 Strikers. No other game in the series even gets close to making you feel this much for the series' versions of the Three Kingdoms characters, as much as 8 and 9 make genuinely solid attempts at it. There's more moments that make me cry in this game's plot than there are in the rest of the series combined (aside from DW3 but those are tears of laughter). Powerful, powerful stuff.

Oh, yeah, and there's a game attached to it. I mean Legend Mode is pretty fun and has a lot of replayability but if you're not here for the writing the Story Mode falls kind of flat compared to its contemporaries and I do think this game suffers from the modern Musou moveset clone issues a whole lot, especially so since Story Mode doesn't let you choose your character on first playthrough. Yeah, you can weapon switch, and you bet your ass I'm gonna be weapon switching because nobody's been assigned the Bombs as an EX weapon yet, but if you're the kind of guy who likes to exclusively use each character's EX weapon, well, I hope you like the generic Sword, because you'll be using it a lot.

Also this version comes with all the DLC and for the most part that's great but if you're just trying to play through the story mode you're going to constantly get overpowered joke weapons auto-assigned to your second weapon slot and I hate it.

Full disclosure; I might have a slight amount of bias here. This is the game that got me into Warriors and I've since grown to consider it one of my favorite franchises.

But like... there's a reason this installment gets the amount of praise it does. It's everything a Zelda fan could want in terms of fanservice and everything a Musou fan could want in terms of gameplay and content. Everything from the amazingly well realized movesets to the multitude of references in the costumes to the absolute BEHEMOTH that is Adventure Mode; it was all wonderful in the Wii U original and in the many updates and 2 rereleases that followed they've only been further expanded upon.

Trying to write a concise review on everything that this game is as an overall package is, frankly, a fruitless effort. It's Hyrule Goddamn Warriors, man. While all the Nintendo Warriors titles are standout Musou games in their own right, the original HW is a lightning in a bottle that I don't think will ever be recaptured.

Weird amalgamation of DW2's style of Musou Mode and DW4's character roster, only with weirdly segmented battlefields and a UI that takes up a third of the screen. I mean, it's not unplayable, and if this were the only PSP Musou game I'd have applauded them for getting 1 vs. 1000 action to work on the system at all, but seeing how polished and faithful of a PSP port Warriors Orochi 2 would later get does not do this game any favors. I like the reworked bodyguard system though, it's probably one of the only things that actually stands out in a good way about this release. Feels like a prototype for what DW8XL's bodyguards would later entail.