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Hands-on with The Legend of Zelda: Four Sword's new single-player content on 3DS

Four!

Hands-on with The Legend of Zelda: Four Sword's new single-player content on 3DS

No-one is ever going to turn down getting free stuff. When that free stuff is The Legend of Zelda-related, it's even sweeter.

Originally released as part of an added bonus with the GBA version of A Link to the Past in 2002, Four Swords has now been given the 3DS Virtual Console treatment - and boy, what a treat is it.

The original was multiplayer-only, but this new version comes with brand new single-player content, featuring one player controlling two Links at once.

As far as free stuff goes, this is the sort that dreams are made of.

All four one

The game begins with Link and Zelda finding the Four Sword, a special sword that causes the beholder to split into four parts.

Suddenly, the evil wind spirit Vaati appears, grabs Zelda, and takes off. Time for Link to take Four Sword in hand and get foursome all over Vaati's ass.

Four Swords plays out like a regular Zelda top-down RPG, with all familiar items and weapons, such as the boomerang, bombs and Link's trusty shield.

However, the multiple Links need to work together to move blocks, pick up boulders and take out tricky enemies.

As you'd expect from a Zelda title, cleverness abounds, with plenty of parts that made us sit back in awe. With this new single-player mode, it's now essentially a regular Zelda outing.

You can definitely afoured this

However, it's worth noting that some of the magic of the original multiplayer action is lost during single-player.

Since most of the puzzles are meant to be done with multiple players, it means that lots of interesting parts are bypassed in single-player.

By pressing X, the second Link will teleport to your current Link's side, allowing you to get one Link to the finish, and then simply pull the other one straight to you.

The solution to this, of course, is to grab some friends and get some proper multiplayer action going. Unsurprisingly, this is still an absolute blast.

You all need to work together, but also want to grab more rupees than the others at the same time. It's frantic and profoundly enjoyable.

As a free title for your 3DS, Four Swords is a breath of fresh air, and it makes us eager for a new Zelda adventure for our stereoscopic console.

Until then, we're happy to play Four Swords a few more times over. Make sure you grab your copy from the eShop now.

Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.