Hyrule Warriors Hands-On With Darunia, The Big Boss Of The Gorons

Nintendo invited Siliconera to play a new build of Hyrule Warriors that had Darunia as a playable character. Darunia is the Big Boss of the Gorons in The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and Link’s bro. Looking at Darunia’s size you might expect him to be a big bruiser – slow, but powerful.

Surprisingly, Darunia is about the same speed as Link. His attacks appear to have more impact on screen, but since most enemies fall after a few hits it’s unclear how much more damage Darunia does. Darunia has a speedy rolling attack where he bowls enemies up. If you keep mashing the attack button Darunia will continue to roll and scoop up more enemies. He also has a giant hammer with a wide swing, quite useful for crowd control. His special move, an over the head slam, is easy to combo into if you use the rolling move.

Darunia along with Link and Impa were in the Eldin Volcano which was full of baby Stalfos. Just like the Dynasty Warriors games, regular enemies pose little to no threat in Hyrule Warriors. The goal is to knock out the leader, a larger Stalfos classified as a Keep Guard or a Lizalfos. After a leader falls, morale for the Hyrulian Army rises and the small fry enemies just wander around. Most of the time, I chose to avoid the remaining enemies and get on with the mission rather than clear out zone after zone.

Darunia had bombs equipped, which could be used to open a secret path in the level. A Nintendo represented pointed out the path out to me. It wasn’t obvious like when you see a cracked rock in a Zelda game. The path was obscured by a wall which looked like any other wall inside the volcano. Breaking it down made it easier to roll to the next checkpoint.

The main goal in this level was escorting Bombchus, robot bombs that look kind of like mice, to stone spires. Bombchus automatically moved to their destination, but would stop if they ran into a wave of enemies. That’s Darunia’s cue to clear out the enemy leaders so the Bombchus continue driving towards their destination. After bringing one Bombchu to the right spot Hyrule Warriors played the classic Legend of Zelda puzzle solving chine and the Bombchu detonated. “Mission complete,” the screen said, but the level wasn’t over yet.

I ran to another area and fought a Poe, a ghost-like enemy from Ocarina of Time. The Poe had an ability to teleport out of harm’s way, but was never really a threat either. I mashed out a combo and used a special move at the end to take the Poe out. Then two more Bombchus showed up close to the beginning of the level. I backtracked and escorted those Bombchus to the stone spires. Hyrule Warriors upped the difficulty here by throwing in Wizzro, a one-eyed sorcerer enemy made for Hyrule Warriors.

Wizzro throw a spread of purple orbs that seemed harder to dodge due to Darunia’s size and a concentrated beam of dark energy, the only attack that did serious damage in the demo. Still, Wizzro was no match for Darunia and a full focus meter. The focus meter recharges when you find magic jars scattered in a level. When you use your focus meter, your attack power goes up and Darunia gets “super armor” since he can’t be hit stunned by enemies. Focus also changes your special attack into a more powerful move, which took out over half of Wizzro’s life. After that a couple more rolling combos and Wizzro was toast.

I escorted the last Bombchu in place and walked towards the exit. Darunia did a little dance to celebrate when Sheik (called ??? at first) showed up and talked about going to Faron Woods.

Other Hyrule Warriors notes:

• Darunia has a treasure chest animation where he peeks inside and holds the item towards the sky just like Link, except Darunia is bigger than the chest.

• Weapons like the bombs and boomerang can be powered up by picking up an item drop. The powered up boomerang is the Gale Boomerang. Throwing this will knock out smaller enemies. The regular boomerang just stuns enemies and is practically useless against crowds. It’s best used to stun leaders.

• The bow fires a single arrow that does a small amount of damage. It is possible to kill a leader by sniping, I managed to defeat a Poe slowly, but surely this way.

• The powered up bow is the Light Bow and it shoots five arrows in a spread.

• This build won’t be playable at Comic-Con, but attendees will be able to try Midna from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess later today.