It's not often you can say this about a Zelda game, but Tri Force Heroes is a good old‑fashioned romp. Here is a series kicking back, letting its hair down, taking a break from the deadly serious business of saving the world and throwing a costume party. Yes, there are forces of evil to fight. And yes, there is a princess to rescue. But in this case, she needs saving from a fashion fate worse than death, as a witch curses her to wear a dull brown unitard in a style-obsessed kingdom. Link's job, then, is to venture into the aptly-named Drablands to obtain a brand-new outfit. The story setup says much for the overall tone: this is a more light-hearted adventure than most Zelda titles, with a rich vein of comedy running through the entire story.
Despite being a follow-up to A Link Between Worlds in terms of story and real-life chronology, the inspiration for Tri Force Heroes actually came from an earlier title. "I was the lead game designer on The Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and within that game, we had the phantom-Link element where you switched back and forth between controlling the phantom and Link, and I was always interested in that type of gameplay, but not with a person switching between two, but with two people," director Hiromasa Shikata told Game Informer in 2014.
