Friday, November 13, 2015

Tri Force Heroes: First Update + Free DLC Announced

One new area with four levels, new materials, costumes and an arena for 4,99€. That's what I kind of expected, what we would get and what would have been fine, and I was happy to be proven wrong with an even better deal: 30 new levels + new costumes for free. Feels just like Unreal Tournament. Good times.


I was kind of afraid that the DLC will be very short lived, if you only get one new area, but if that area actually has a total of 30+ levels, then this should be more than enough. Actually this area is about the size of the entire original game, but this depends on how complex these 30+ levels will turn out to be.

In any case my previous thoughts about the possible DLC areas seem to be spot on with the "Den of Trials" being very similar to the Hero's Trial from Four Swords Anniversary Edition. They're simply reusing all the assets from the game for this and there's lots of focus on fighting enemies, even some purple colored ones. I wouldn't be surprised, if it turns out that GREZZO are the ones doing the DLC, while the main game was done by the A Link Between Worlds team.

Now it also makes a lot of sense to schedule another update around the 30th Anniversary on February 21st, where they do something similar to the Realm of Memories, where we go back to familiar places from past games. This would be an amazing feature and it would be a good Anniversary gift to the fans, similar to Four Swords AE five years back (though they should re-release this as well).

Interestingly enough the uncovered Tripini dialogues suggested that the new areas will require payment. I think it's entirely possible that they had planned to charge for this, but then decided against it, because the game itself wasn't selling too well. Some good publicity like this could have more people buy it and in the end this will lead to more profit than leeching on the few people, who have actually bought the game already.

So, this was a good choice and it takes all my concerns away for DLC. Even with multiple 3DS systems at hand, I can just install the update on all of them to have access.


And it's great that they still went for the Fierce Deity costume idea! It was the first on my original list for ideas, but I gave up on it after I saw the Sword Suit. It's the third sword beam based outfit already, but it's at least different from the Sword Master Suit by shooting four beams in all directions.

Linebeck's costume on the other might prove to be a problem, if now many people are going to be using it, instead of chosing the right outfit for the job. At least in singleplayer it's a nice "risk" in order to get the materials you need.

I still want that Fairy and Bee costumes, but they are probably too boring for the DLC. The Linebeck and Fierce Deity costumes are the kind of exciting I was talking about in my last post. Now you'd expect something like a Ganondorf costume in the future.


By the way, the update also fixes a couple of issues. You can now buy Friend Tokens, you can blacklist disconnecters and you have better matchmaking. It's good. If the following update also fixes the singleplayer mode and maybe adds a local two player mode, while changing some of the annoying rules in the arena, I might not end up all too unhappy with this game.

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