between this and the crew, this really is the year of playing midass games under the motivation of "ah fuck, guess i gotta finish this before i can't anymore". at least me and the homies were able to finish a playthrough of this with roughly 72 hours left on the clock baby

the game itself is okay, pretty unremarkable tbh. The game uses small levels instead of large dungeons to not only make things quick and snappy for portable play with friends/randos but also to add some weird element of grindiness to it. The big gimmick of this game are the various different costumes that you and your companions can wear to get various perks, which on one hand, yeah it certainly makes it a bit more personalized, but on the other you need to make the costumes with materials and you only get ONE mfin material per level at random which means time to hit that grindhouse if you want that tingle outfit, pig. I can't imagine how mind-numbing it would be to 100% this, doing the same dungeon levels over and over with randos of varying levels of cooperation just to try and get that 1/3 rare item. blegh

the real memorable moments really aren't from the game itself, but just from fucking about with the boys ngl. you'd think that 3 minds working to finish a zelda dungeon would mean we'd be 3 times as smart, but it really ended up being 3 links each taking one third of the singular collective braincell as we all bumbledumped our way through the levels. Shenanigans can and will ensue, as it's really easy to just be a little shit in this game. Picking up other players without their consent, trying to nab or use items in dubiously humorous ways, wearing some dumbass outfit that can actively hinder progress (shoutouts to the bomb suit baby), theres just a lot of ways to make this game either really funny or hair-rippingly irritating depending on your groups sense of humor. I can't really imagine it would be that fun if you tried to play this alone or with randos online, your friends definitely make or break the experience for sure.

It's not like this game is going anywhere when the servers get shut down, as there's still local play that's an option (you even get exclusive friendship token items when you play locally vs online), but unless you are in the particularly lucky situation where you live around or with people that still use a member of the Nintendo 3DS Family of Systems™ you are going to be shit out of luck playing this on stock hardware. Luckily, I believe the priitendo fan servers already have this games online functioning so hacked 3DS havers won't need to worry much in the future. I think you can also play this online through emulation, but me and my gang have still never been able to figure out citra netplay tbh. I def want to try out the four swords games for more multiplayer zelda shenanigans (those games have a whole extra link to share the same braincell with!), but alas it was already a herculean effort for me and the gang to schedule our busy adult lives effectively enough to play this and that was just with three people...

rest in pepperoni 3DS and wii U online servers, the nintendo netcode honestly wasn't that great and it died before 360 xbox live or PS3 PSN did despite releasing 5-6 years later, but it brought a lot of smiles and good memories regardless. From the premier titles like smash 4, mario kart 7/8, and splatoon to dumpy spinoffs like this game, its shutdown will make it a great deal harder to thoroughly experience this period of Nintendo's history.