Cadence of Hyrule Review
A great rythem based Zelda themed game, that lacks the tenson of Crypt of the Necordancer
Cadence (Crypt of the Necordancers protagonist) gets transported to Hyrule where she teams up with Link and Zelda to defeat Octavo, who’s sent the populous of Hyrule to sleep. The game focuses on collecting musical instruments from the four champions (dungeon bosses) a quest reminiscent of Links Awakening. At its heart Cadence of Hyrule the Crypt of the Necrodance feat the Legend of Zelda (yes thst is the actual full name) is a Zelda game with the CotND movement system pinned on. It’s all about rhythm. Both you and your enemies move to the beat of the songs.
Cadence has two distinct areas the overworld and its dungeons. The overworld works just like every 2D Zelda game, each screen is separate to the others, scrolling to the next area when you go off the screen. Enemy’s respawn when you leave and comeback. The dungeons resemble CotND — with a Zelda spin. They’re randomly generated every time you enter, but all have a shop, a death room (where you’re locked in until you defeat all enemies inside) and locked doors you’ll need to find a key open to progress though. Then of course, there’s the boss room.
Unlike CotND when you die you keep some of your equipment. This breaks some of the games tension. Each run in CotND is stressful — dying means you lose everything — you’re back to the start again. Back to a basic dagger and spade. In Cadence of Hyrule dying doesn’t mean as much, any weapons and the majority of items you’ve collected you get to keep. You only lose torches (which let you see further in dungeons), armour, rings, spades and rupees. This makes sense in a Zelda game, losing your hookshot and having to retrieve it from the same place every time would become frustrating, however, because you keep your cool weapons Cadence of Hyrule loses this tension. While I personally didn’t like this, it makes the game more accessible than CotND was.
The same goes for the dungeons, in CotND you had the length of a song to progress to the boss and unlock the next floor. Times finite. Stressful. Cadence lacks this because of the dungeon design. They are very basic when compared with other Zelda dungeons. They give little challenge. This may be down to the procedurally generated nature of them, anytime you enter a dungeon the room placement and enemies change.
It would have been nice for some more puzzle aspects to have been incorporated into them. Although there are a few puzzles in the game, such as the series’ staple lost woods and some musical puzzles. These are my two main frustrations with the game.
Otherwise the sound track is awesome, it features some remixes of classic Zelda songs and combines them with some from CotND, the Shop Keeper even returns to bellow out parts of songs too. The bosses too are really fun and well thought out, offering some challenge, especially towards the end of the game.
There’s not much to fault with Cadence. It gives you a lot of customisable options to play about with too. You can set a custom seeds of the overworld and even turn on a perma-death mode – if you’re sadistic enough. These features are nice and give the game some replayability, and could be handily for speedrunners.
Cadence of Hyrule the Crypt of the Neckrdancer feat the Legend of Zelda is by no means a bad game, although its title is! It’s really fun and very competent, but if you’re expecting a Zelda themed Crypt of the NecroDancer game you may come out disappointed. On the other hand, if you’re after a good Zelda themed rhythm game you’ll be more than happy with Cadence.
Format: Nintendo Swtich
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Brace Yourself Games
ETA: Out now
Players: 1–2
