Cadence of Hyrule

Cadence of Hyrule is a wonderful Zelda game where you have to do everything to the beat. It’s based on a game called Crypt of the Necrodancer which I have not played but should probably check out.

Cadence of Hyrule is a roguelike so death causes you lose a lot of your stuff and resets a lot of items.

The roguelike elements are very light in this game. You keep everything important, and the items you don’t are quick and easy to replace.

The map and items are randomly generated for every playthrough which is super cool and gives a lot of replayability. Dungeon chests will even give you options of what special tool to take adding to the variance. You can play couch co-op and you can also do a fixed seed if you want to race with your friends. This is a blast if your friend group has also beaten the game. It gives the same vibe as Link To The Past Randomizer (although this is far more open than Link to the Past. You can pretty much do anything at any time here).

There’s loads of items to collect so you never go too far without some progress. This coupled with the whole gameplay of playing to a beat is a really addictive mix.

One issue is that it has a significant inverse difficulty curve. The beginning of the game with only a couple hearts you’ll die a lot. But once you get a good amount of hearts it gets way easier. Zelda games sometimes have this problem, but it’s more noticeable here.

Another issue is just how open the game is. Many of the items are pointless except for completion. Once you have a decent number of heart pieces there’s no real reason to explore further. It’s not like you need anything to progress.

The aesthetics are all 2D Zelda and the music is all cool zelda remixes.

This game is great and really lets you as the player make more out of it. Whether playing against or with friends, or playing through as different characters with different modes. Check it out!