Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda

Genre: Top-Down Roguelike / Music-Rhythm

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Cadence of Hyrule, much like its predecessor Curse of the Necrodancer, is a delightful blend of Roguelike and Music-Rhythm genres, with this game making use of the Legend of Zelda world and characters. However, rather than simply being a Zelda-skinned version of the Necrodancer gameplay formula, the developers at Brace Yourself Games have worked to ensure that this is a full-fledged meshing of the Necrodancer gameplay and the traditional Zelda-style gameplay.

What this means is that while the game is still a roguelike that gives players randomized items on their playthroughs and ramps up the difficulty to ensure that players need to scrabble for progress, the randomized world is set in place when you first start up the game, complete with dungeons, bosses, and items needed for progression.

This semi-permanence to the world gives Cadence of Hyrule a different feel than Necrodancer, and that both works for and against it. On the one hand, it does make it easier to gradually progress through the game, as you uncover more of the map and enable “Shiekah Stones” that allow you to fast-travel to places you’ve already been. On the other hand, the fact that this map is still randomized makes it feel like it’s lacking some level of cohesion that you tend to find in a Zelda game, while still gating off chests and bonuses in places players have no capacity to reach. It’s frustrating and disheartening to come across a new item only to find that you have no idea how to get it, and the randomized world means that the item you need to do so could be anywhere, for all you know.

On top of this, the game’s difficulty level is a bit of an issue. This game is on the whole much easier than Curse of the Necrodancer… but it’s also harder than the average Zelda game. At the very least the game does enable a mode that allows the rhythmically-challenged to ignore the requirement that movements need to be set to a beat, although doing so kinda’ misses the spirit of the game.

Speaking of the beat, this game has some excellent remixes of classic Zelda tunes, so players will definitely have a reason to keep exploring to uncover more of the game’s fantastic soundtrack. The visuals are decent too, with Necrodancer’s level of flair and animation, but with higher-quality 2D graphics on par with one of the more recent 2D Zelda games.

One thing that I found to work surprisingly well in this game was local co-op. I would have thought that co-op in a Zelda game would feel awkward and forced, but it’s actually well-integrated here, with players teaming up to take on the bad guys, or perhaps getting in each others’ way when in close quarters. And the game lets players resurrect their fallen comrade at the aforementioned “Shiekah Stones”, should they get offed. Here I wasn’t expecting much out of this mode, but it ended up working very well.

On the whole, Cadence of Hyrule does a good job combining the gameplay of Crypt of the Necrodancer and The Legend of Zelda, and pairing it with excellent remixes of some classic themes. There are a few problems with structure and difficulty that this pairing causes, but on the whole I feel that fans of both franchises will find something to love in this game.

tl;dr – Cadence of Hyrule does an excellent job combining the gameplay of Crypt of the Necrodancer and The Legend of Zelda, and pairing it with an excellent soundtrack… although not without a few issues cropping up here and there. However, the game’s co-op is surprisingly good, and on the whole, it’s still a solid game fans of both series should enjoy.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2019 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Music, Best Song – Kakariko Crypt by Danny Baranowsky, Best RPG / Action-RPG

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