I missed writing about games. However, the idea of trying to grind through games in a week to write about them isn’t going to happen with my current day job schedule. Instead, I decided I wanted to write about the games I actually spent time with. There are so many disposable games with yearly installments, it’s rare to find a game you’ll spend a hundred hours with. What makes a game like that fun to play? Or, at the very least what made it fun for me.

If there was one game that defined the WiiU for me, it was Hyrule Warriors. The multiplayer let one person use the gamepad as their screen while the other player used a controller and the TV. My wife and I picked our way through every DLC and play mode that game had to offer over a period of two years. So when I saw that Koei Temco was giving the same treatment to Nintendo’s other fantasy franchise, Fire Emblem, I preordered.

Hyrule Warriors was a pure co-op experience at my house. In fact, one of the first hurdles Fire Emblem Warriors had to jump over was that now it’s purely a split screen experience. This was a big contrast against each player with their own screen on WiiU, that means the minimap is really crowded for each player. Also, you have to play a couple of levels before it lets you add the second player. Not a great start for a two-player game.

Though to be fair, I questioned if Hyrule Warriors didn’t do this too. I don’t feel like digging out the system to check. However, after those early stumbling blocks, FE Warriors was enjoyable. The story is of two twins the prince and princess of the Kingdom Aytolis. Though they’re the stars of the story, no one really cares about them. Instead, you’re just waiting for the real stars of the show to arrive. As you play through story mode, you unlock characters from the last few entries and remakes in Fire Emblem series. If you only know Fire Emblem characters from their appearances in Smash Bros, Marth is included as well. (No Roy though.)

I have never really played any of the Fire Emblem series beyond the mobile game. After playing the various modes of this game, I can tell you it isn’t essential to enjoying this game. Fire Emblem, like most RPGs, has really compelling character design. I am sure that there are references that bounced off me, as well as allusions to the games these characters came from. However, the thing about these types of characters is that they are already archetypes, making it easy to understand them without much context.

The story is a huge mess anyway. But once you’ve played through that, you’ve got dozens of levels in History mode that space out some borrowed material from other games using repurposed maps from the main game. It can get a bit grindy, especially when you hit a particularly hard challenge and want to level up your characters to get through it. I don’t know how much fun this would be solo, but combining the strategy of ordering AI along with navigating two characters around with is a fun exercise in cooperative problem-solving.

Even if you aren’t a big fan of Fire Emblem at least check this game out. If you're looking for a deep story, this might not be the game for you. This is my second Warriors game, and I’m sold on the franchise as a fun co-op experience. Each of the games also has enough extra material and DLC to keep you busy for quite awhile. You can also grab the complete Hyrule Warriors for Switch right now. As the inaugural 100-hour review, this game earned its hundred hours.