spoilers will be abundant below the trailer

I never finished the Trial of the Sword, from Zelda DLC1.

The Switch (and I) have had a hell of a year. There've been a ton of good games coming out and coupled with a wild personal schedule and, of late, tons of travel during the football season, I never got back to it. I did plan to, but Splatoon 2 was released just a few weeks later which served as a distraction. A busy summer, the start of football and Super Mario Odyssey meant that I had gotten away from Zelda almost entirely.

The Champions' Ballad surprising drop in the fall brought me back instantly.

The DLC is structured as follows:

  • Return to the Shrine of Resurrection for the One-Hit Obliterator. Complete combat trials around the plateau and finish four shrines.
  • Find four platforms across Hyrule (one per Champion), each of which have three associated trials which unlock shrines.
  • Return to the Shrine of Resurrection and complete the final dungeon
  • Boss Fight
  • Master Cycle Zero

Let's discuss, shall we?

The Plateau

The One-Hit Obliterator is such a fantastically named weapon. I read of it on Twitter before I opened the game up and was pumped to see what challenge was introduced by a weapon that could kill enemies in one hit. And then I read the description of the weapon. You have 1/4 of a heart and cannot eat food to heal, or unequip the OHO. I should have known!

The combat trials were very stressful, but not difficult. I only died once, and it was on my first trial (the forest one) before I had my legs under me. The combat in the snow, with the Blizzrobe, was the most intense. When you've only got 1/4 of a heart, Lizalfos (and even Keese) are terrifying.

The shrines themselves were... well, odd. After the high-stakes entrance to the shrine, their simplicity and ease was jarring. I'll list them below in the order I did them:

  • Yowaka Ita (Collected Soul): This is the first shrine I did and it wasn't too challenging, to either figure out what to do or to execute. That's probably for the best, as you were still learning the OHO and what your limitations were. I did die once, from a rogue spiky ball that left its containment zone. I rolled my eyes pretty hard at that.
  • Rohta Chigah (Stop to Start): This was not the hardest shrine, but probably the most technical. The theme of this shrine was quite heavy handed (and sharp!--I'll show myself out) and the challenge it offered was fair.
  • Ruvo Korbah (A Major Test of Strength+): This was my favorite of these shrines. I didn't even notice the '+' at the end during my initial playthrough. The way the game toyed with your expectations of a combat trial when the floor opened up, and my thoughts as I entered the trial (from "Oh crap, a test of strength" to "Wait, I can kill the scout in one hit!" to "Oh, but it still has lasers") made it the best of this set.
  • Etsu Korima (Path of Light): This was the one in the snowy mountains and for having the toughest trial to get in, was by far the simplest. I didn't feel threatened or die at all inside.

Finishing them was rewarding and the gravity of the situation, where any wrong move would spell your doom, was really fun after 200 hours in the game where a sense of mastery starts to kick in. I really enjoyed this segment and appreciate that the reward you got was not an item, but rather more content.

The Champions' Trials

The formula for each one is:

  • Find The Monument
  • Complete three trials
  • Complete three Shrines
  • Defeat _blight Ganon in the Illusory Realm

I found the monuments done really well. I loved the aerial-photo-style of the maps, so that you could benefit from the color of the world (snow, lava, grass) to help you orient yourself. I thought the zoom level was a little too generous in some cases, and would have been a better challenge if it were zoomed in more. Particularly, it would have been cool if the maps were less helpful and in order to find the precise spots, you needed to talk to the people Kass tells you about.

The trials themselves were generally great. I'll give them simple star rankings below, ★ to ★★★★★, for how enjoyable I found the trials to find and complete. The shrines were... hit or miss. I think they were a higher quality, percentage-wise, than the 120 in the base game, but it's easier to make 12 shrines than 120, and it's easier when you can assume the user has already experienced a substantial portion of the game, too.

The Illusory Realm fights were... hit or miss. Noticing a trend? I didn't find any of the fights to be earth-shattering in the first place, and restricting your gear worked better in some shrines than others. The health-items given were basically useless, unless I missed something useful to do with the specific items given, and I found Waterblight, in particular, to be very challenging without abusing Urbosa's Fury.

Again, listed in the order I completed them:

Revali

I started with Revali for the simple fact that I was most interested to see what they did with his story, and I found his memory to be very well done. Target practice was a decent challenge and very fitting for Revali. I'd never shield surfed in the game, so I didn't mind that mild challenge, and found a forced run-in with a dragon pretty neat considering it's totally optional in the "main" game.

  • Target Practice at the Flight Range: ★★★★
  • Shield Surfing from Hebra Peak: ★★★
  • Shoot Dinraal's Glowing Horn: ★★★

Mipha

I don't share the internet's affection for Sidon, so seeing him as a wee babe wasn't anything to me, but I appreciate this bit of fan-service from Nintendo, even if it's lost on me. I found her trials fairly mediocre, though encouragement to fight flying guardians is something the game doesn't do often, so I appreciated this, as well.

  • Climb the Waterfalls: ★★
  • Reach the Ring in the Sea: ★★
  • Defeat Four Guardians: ★★★★

Urbosa

Urbosa's memory was phenomenal and got me borderline verklempt. Her trials were also, I thought, wonderful. The Molduking was a great fight against a foreboding foe. I don't care for sand-seals or the Yiga hideout, but I like having a shrine next to that massive, mysterious hole in the world.

  • Slay the Molduking: ★★★★★
  • Slalom Course with Sand Seals: ★★
  • Return to the Yiga Hideout: ★★★

Daruk

Daruk's memory was heartwarming if not super interesting or enlightening. Two of his trials were great, but kite surfing through rings was pretty lame.

  • Hang-gliding down Eldin Volcano: ★★
  • Stand in the Lava: ★★★★
  • Chill the Igneo Talus Titan: ★★★★

The Champions' Shrines

There were 12 shrines. I don't recall which ones went with which Champion, and won't review them individually, but some overall thoughts:

  • I thought there were some great execution-based challenges in this set. I felt a lot of mechanics from the game were explored in a more advanced way.
  • Nintendo doubled down on motion control puzzles in the shrines: I feel like every one of these puzzles would have been better served as a different test of the players skills or brain.
  • Best Shrine? Maybe the one in Eldin Province where you ride blocks along tracks until they drop into the oblivion. I appreciated the game forcing you to think on your feet and execute on a time limit.
  • Worst Shrine? Probably the electricity one where, while wearing the Thunder Helm, you can simply walk through it all. I know that wearing the Thunder Helm is optional, but I don't see why Nintendo felt this was a good end-game challenge.
  • I think the overall quality of these shrines shows just how thoroughly Nintendo missed an opportunity in the base game. It seems like Nintendo's goal was to have the shrines test a very isolated set of knowledge at one time and assume you knew very little (the "any shrine could be the player's fifth shrine" mentality) versus challenging the player to conquer difficult shrines and helping the player improve in the process.

Upgraded Champion Abilities

I'm a bit disappointed that the upgraded champions abilities only decreased their cooldowns. Urbosa's Fury has always felt overtuned, whereas the charge system on Daruk's Protection, Revali's Gale and Urbosa's Fury were points of frustration: frequently it was smart to waste the last charge or risk going into battle with a weakened power. Here's how I would have upgraded the Champion Powers:

  • Mipha's Grace: Press LS and RS simultaneously to use (regardless of Link's health).
  • Daruk's Protection: see below
  • Revali's Gale: Hold X, then tilt LS to create a wind tunnel at a 45º angle in any direction.
  • Urbosa's Fury: see below

Additionally, All Champion Abilities recharge in ten minutes. All Champion Abilities except for Mipha's Grace have individual charges which replenish in two minutes. This means that you're more than likely to go into battle with 3 full charges without having to waste them, but if you use all 3 at the start of a fight, you won't get more for 10 minutes.

I suspect Nintendo didn't change the specific behaviors due to additional programming and worries about Balance, but I feel these are good compromises. Being able to use Revali's Gale 3x every 2 minutes feels overpowered. Being able to use Urbosa's Fury 3x every 4 minutes feels insanely overpowered.

I do think it would have been cool for each hero to have a branching upgrade. For instance, upon defeating Thunderblight Ganon, you could choose from:

  • Urbosa's Wrath: Link does 1.5x damage with all weapons and bows for 30s after use. Does not stack
  • Urbosa's Rage: Urbosa's Rage recharges in 5 minutes instead of 10 minutes (see above proposal).

Dungeon

So like... what is the dungeon? I think it's the Master Cycle Zero engine? But it's odd that Nintendo preached the Divine Beasts' epic size as a reason to be excited for them, and then failed to deliver on that for the DLC. It might have been cool if the dungeon was some sort of sea creature that you had to find, enter and master, with an entrance questline similar to the existing dungeons.

The puzzles within were mostly well done, but two things stick out to me about the dungeon. In my "review" of the game sans-DLC, I said:

The Dungeons felt eerily empty, with a few enemies there for... some reason? I guess to convey how truly evil they were? But I'm not sure those few enemies added much to the Divine Beasts. [...] I feel Nintendo should have modified the intensity / quantity of enemies depending on how many hearts you have or how many other Divine Beasts you've conquered. In this way, the dungeons could have been intimidating sparring grounds with Guardian Scouts, Lynels or even Decayed Guardians / Guardian Turrets.

I also said:

I also cheesed Vah Naboris by using Revali's Gale to ascend into its humps, which strikes me as ridiculous: why are Champion Abilities even usable inside Divine Beasts? They should be disabled inside / on the beast and re-enabled when you activate the main control unit for the boss fight.

Nintendo actually addressed both of these complaints! I suspect that they took away the Champions' Abilities because they added guardians, but regardless, I'm glad they did. It helps that Nintendo knew that you had already completed the other four dungeons, but still...

I also was pleasantly surprised that the number / difficulty of enemies in the main hall of the dungeon ramped up as you activated terminals, which made for little bits of surprise as you progressed.

Maz Koshia

I loved this. I loved every part of it.

I loved the anticipation of what would happen next, followed by the shattering of expectations when the fight started.

I loved the epic floating platform in the sky.

I loved the fact that there was no precedent for this in the game, so the monk's moves were completely unknown. And then I loved what they are. Nothing seemed too ridiculous: laser beams? splitting into ten copies? turning into a giant? Check. Check. Check.

Miscellaneous

  • The Final Memory was a good wrap up to the DLC. I wish it were more clear that Impa's sister, Purah, is the one taking the photo, but I did enjoy seeing the Champions interacting.
  • The gear in this DLC is pretty cool. Zant's helmet and Link's lobster shirt, in particular, are awesome fan-service for me personally.
  • The Master Cycle Zero is neat, but I wish there were a track or straightaway to take advantage of it. The fueling mechanic is neat, and it's quite fun to ride.
  • The One-Hit Obliterator is such a fun mechanic, and I feel like it's underused. it'd be so rewarding to be able to take on a gauntlet of Lynels or Guardians with this. If you can dodge and parry appropriately, you'll be fine. If not, you'll have a long day. I also like the idea of trying to complete shrines perfectly, and think this could have made for some more interesting execution-based Shrines.

Overall

The Champions' Ballad is bittersweet.

I loved all the content it gave, but my biggest takeaway is how hamstrung Nintendo was by the original game's go-anywhere, do-anything (or don't) in any order mentality. I know that's what made it the Game of the Year, but I can't help but think that upping the complexity and difficulty of the shrines would have resulted in an even better game.

This content was inventive, creative, fun, appropriately challenging and epic in scope. I feel that the designers—unencumbered by the need to make this content accessible to players who just picked up the game two hours ago—were able to really flex their muscles and deliver incredibly engaging content.

I don't know of a solution to this that would let the game feel as open ended as it does, so I won't propose anything. I do think the game could be more difficult and expect more of the player, which might alleviate some of this. I chalk it up to Nintendo learning how to make "open air" games.