11. hyrule warriors: definitive edition
i don't remember if hyrule warriors plays a credits sequence when you finish the campaign. probably it does. i bought the game on 3ds in high school, played a zillion hours of it, then bought it on switch and played a zillion more. but i never finished any of the adventure maps until this year.
one of my roommates played ocarina of time a few months ago, for what he calls the first time since he was very young but which i suspect, accusatorily, may have been the first time ever. i became entranced in the magic once again, as happens to anyone when exposed to a zelda game, and began watching over his shoulder as he played. as we discussed the characters, i said "you know that character's in hyrule warriors?" enough times to just go and open the game. i believed myself to already be a big fan of the game, but somehow, it sunk its hooks deeper into me than it ever had.
hyrule warriors, i found out, has a sort of monster hunter-ish loop. you do repetitive tasks, again and again, while working incrementally towards being able to do those same tasks more effectively. what makes hyrule warriors better than both monster hunter and, i presume, other musou titles, is the zelda IP. i love zelda. i love zelda! i love the locations and the characters. i love the music and the enemies. i love the sound effects and the unique quirks of the iconic items.
i completely dropped every other game i was playing at the time and completely took over the living room my friends were graciously allowing me to live in rent-free. if i was awake, i was on the couch playing hyrule warriors.
i hadn't even considered that finishing one of the adventure maps was something i was capable of until i just googled how to do it. then when i finished the first one, the credits rolled and i added the game to my list of games completed in 2026. i started working on unlocking the best weapons for each character, grinding levels on characters i'd neglected before, engaging for basically the first time with the fairy mechanic, and just generally having a good time learning everything there is to know about hyrule warriors. i joined a discord server full of people who are still, even today, debating over tier lists.
i still play it, but less than before. the spell was broken when my roommate, the one who first infected me by playing ocarina of time on the crt in the living room, said, "so are you gonna finish any of the other games you started or you just play hyrule warriors now?" he said, not long after, that watching me play hyrule warriors all day every day for several weeks expanded his image of me as a gamer, or something. i don't remember, it was some flowery way of saying he didn't know i could get hooked on a grind but now he knows.
i've not played in a few months. i'm no-lifeing other games right now. when my other roommate started playing wind waker, hyrule warriors grabbed me again and threatened to pull me in even deeper. i remember making the conscious choice to not let it. i think one of these days i will, though. i do really just adore that game.