Learn about Skull Kid and Phantom Ganon in Hyrule Warriors Legends

Last week, the Japanese Hyrule Warriors Twitter account teased news about the upcoming 3DS game. Famitsu followed through by revealing a couple of new characters. We now know that Skull Kid will be playable, and Phantom Ganon will be appearing as a boss.

The mischievous imp Skull Kid uses an ocarina as his main tool. Famitsu describes him as a demon who stole the hero’s ocarina from a parallel world and then placed the curse of the mask upon him. He may be violent and love pranks, but deep in his heart he treasures his friends. Using the ocarina, he fights alongside fairies.

Skull Kid fights using the power of darkness to its full potential through the magic of his mask. By concentrating his magic into the front of his mask, he can release a heat laser. After restraining his enemy, he can use a ball of darkness to release a huge explosion. Skull Kid can also gather a number of enemies together and have attack them at once. If he uses his ocarina, he can call his two fairies Tael and Tatl to support him. Blowing his trumpet will cause scarecrow puppets to appear and fight for him, which is done automatically so players will not have to control the dolls. Skull Kid’s main feature is his ability to use all these tricky attacks.

Phantom Ganon is a new boss character, and he’s shown in Famitsu with dual swords. Wielding great magic, he appears before Link and company blocking the way. Phantom Ganon is skilled at confusing his enemies through the use of teleportation and controlling a number of illusions. Like in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, it looks like he can throw energy attacks at players. He also has a new feature that will allow him to intercept the use of items and gimmicks.

In Hyrule Warriors Legends, a maximum of four characters can be deployed. However, in battles against big bosses, if the player gathers all the characters that can operate together, they can activate the special effect known as Smash Boost Power. Using this restores the magic gauge as well as grants beneficial effects to the player. In addition, activating Smash Boost Power will cause lightning of sorts to appear on the screen. The enemy will be covered in green light, and will remain that way until defeated. More characters leads to more beneficial effects.

Finally, the Earth Temple and Wind Temple are both mentioned in Famitsu’s article. There also seems to be a new enemy (not a boss) in one of the screenshots that we don’t have information on at the moment.

We’ll be seeing Hyrule Warriors Legends in Japan on January 21. The western version will follow sometime in Q1 2016.