You Cannot Play Triforce Heroes with Two People, Cross-Region

Now, look, no one is saying Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is going to be a bad game—far from it, even. Nintendo has an exemplary record with Zelda games, and the last game like it, Four Swords, was great fun. The only reason people were disappointed with it at this year’s E3 was because it wasn’t the Zelda game we already cared about. Plus, Link in drag was a disconcerting prospect for some gamers. You know, the sticks in the mud.

Now, since Nintendo has put a huge emphasis on multiplayer in the immediate future of their mobile games (Metroid Prime: Federation Force was announced at the same time, if you recall) how Nintendo plans on allowing gamers to actually play together is actually pretty damn important. After all, Nintendo may be keenly interested in getting people together to play, but they’ve proven in the past they’re not very good at it, with things like friends codes and a general lack of voice communication.

Thankfully Nintendo recently clarified how multiplayer will work in Tri Force Heroes during an Q&A session with Pocket Gamers, beyond its capacity in gameplay. From a technical standpoint, the game can be played either locally or online--but you cannot play online cross-region. It is region locked, so if your buds are in Europe or Japan or wherever, then you’re out of luck--you can still play by yourself, though.

It’s also worth noting that to play multiplayer, you need to have exactly three people--if you only have two, then you have to go online to find a random third person to join your party.

That… seems over complicated, especially the bit with forbidding cross-region play. I’m sure Nintendo has a reason for it… the question remains, though, if it’s a good reason.

Regardless, there’s no point in dwelling on it. Tri Force Heroes comes out October 23rd, we’ll find out how well it works out then.