HORI Nintendo Switch Battle Pad (Zelda) GameCube Style Controller – Nintendo Switch

So, this is the first ever review I’m leaving on Amazon, and it’s a shame that it’s for this controller. Keep in mind that this review is gonna come from the viewpoint of a Smash player.With that being said, let me be clear that I am NOT a pro Smash player by any means. However, I do consider myself to be mid level, with the goal of becoming high level. So, since the day I got this controller, I used it non-stop. Other reviews I’ve read here all ranged from a great controller, to a good controller with various issues. So, here’s mine.The controller feels absolutely GREAT in the hand. It’s bigger than the original GCN controller, but also a bit on the light side in terms of weight. There’s no rumble or other things like that, but none of that bothered me. It has all the normal buttons for the Switch, including + and -, home, and share. It also includes a Turbo button. So, right off the bat, this controller isn’t good for high level tournament play, as controllers with turbo buttons are banned. Sucks for me, as I do plan on entering majors whenever I feel confident enough to compete, and I can’t take this controller with me. But for friendlies and local tournaments, this thing is with me. It’s wired, which also doesn’t bother me. The cable is long as hell and that’s a nice addition. Would it have been cool if it was wireless? Sure, but whatever.The sticks are nice and tight, and the octagon gate has a really good cut to it. I have a worn out GCN controller, so switching to this felt amazing. They also click in, but there’s no use for that in Smash. Nice feature though, so no issues there.Now, enter the buttons, which is where my two stars come in. First off, let me give praise to what I actually like. All of the buttons feel extremely good and responsive, and have little travel to their activation points. It just has that “sweet spot” for button presses. Short and sweet, responsive, all that jazz. For whatever reason, Hori decided to reverse the L/R/ZL/ZR shoulder buttons. There IS a way you can remap them , but it never bothered me to do so. And I LOVE the way they feel. Instead of the concave trigger buttons on the original controller, these are more like a nice “pad” style. Press lightly, boom. Your input activates. I honestly wish more controllers did this style. It feels absolutely fantastic.Here’s where this controller crashes and burns. One of the face buttons (A/B/X/Y) seems to trigger the B button for me. The sad thing is, I can’t pinpoint which button, or how frequently it happens. If I have to guess, I’d say it’s the Y button that’s the problem, because when I’m in a heated match and I jump, all of the sudden, a special move would come out. That’s… Not good. The screwed up thing is, it doesn’t happen all the time. I’d say this issue happens 3 matches outta 10 or 12 or so. So right there, that’s a huge red flag. Accidental inputs can cause the loss of a stock, or even an entire game. I think this is actually a really well made controller, and I really, really, really, really, REALLY wanna like it, but this whole button issue is just…. Sigh. You almost nailed it, Hori. You were THIS close, and you blew it.Just today I got the Power A wired controller and thankfully the buttons all work properly on that, but that controller doesn’t feel anywhere near as good to me as this one does. Who knows? Maybe I just got a defective unit, because I’ve only seen one other person in the reviews talk about this button issue, so it’s led me to believe that I just got one from a bad batch. I almost wanna get a new unit, maybe the Luigi one, and see if it suffers from the same problem.So, in conclusion? It could be a bit of a dice roll for you. Like I said, I absolutely love the look and feel of this controller. If it weren’t for the malfunctioning buttons, this would be a 5 star review, but since that’s a thing… Yeah, 2 stars. If you already have this controller or proceed to still buy it and it works great, then you’re lucky. But for me? Man… Such a disappointment.

It’s been a little bit over year since I’ve purchased this controller, and now is the time that I feel confident to tell the experience I had this controller.As the headline says, it’s a decent controller — it truly is. I had a friend recommend it to me to buy so I did because I was getting into Smash and I felt that using joycons weren’t going to cut it if I wanted to up my game as a Link main (LINKS RISE UP).When I first got this controller, it was pretty amazing. The controller was pretty responsive and I liked the feel of of it. The body of the controller is fully made of plastic. The back of the controller has grip, which I liked, but that too was also plastic. The controller had good snapback and most of all buttons were functional. The controller actually kind of simulated a gamecube styled controller very well regardless. The durability of the controller, however, is a different story.This is where I feel that I need to let you future purchasers know before making this purchase.Over the span of a few month with rigorous use of the controller for Smash, the direction stick began to drift. At first, I didn’t mind it since I was used to drifting joycons. Overtime, that got worse. The drift on this controller could put Tokyo Drift to shame. I couldn’t do diagonal inputs anymore and I would do misinputs frankly because of the direction stick not inputting what I want it to do. This made doing tech kind of hard to do and it would frustrate me because what I expect to happen just did not happen at all.I don’t know if it was just my controller, but the c-stick is kind of dysfunctional. I use my c-stick for tilts in Smash and frankly, I would run up to someone and flick my c-stick and NO INPUT WOULD REGISTER. No matter how hard I flicked or multiple times I flicked the c-stick, the tilt attack would not come out. The times when it does, it’ll be very late like two to three seconds afterwards. I felt it was kind of unreliable to use the c-stick.Fast forward to 9 months in where the drifting got so bad that I had no control over it and it took banging my controller on a surface to get it to stop, the impossible happen. I MANAGED TO FRY MY ZR BUTTON. It was due to a little static I had on my finger, and when I picked up my controller, my ZR button got the brunt of it. It was that day forth that I knew the buttons were DIGITAL inputs instead of ANALOG inputs. My ZR button was my grabbing button and I had reprogram myself to use the grab button with ZL.This was also the time I’ve learned about the turbo feature.Not only did I play Smash, but I also play Asphalt 9, a racing game that uses ZR to accelerate. I was very conflicted when I found out that my ZR button just gave out due to a little static, but it was enough to fry the input of it. I used the turbo button for it until I learned that Asphalt had an auto-accelerate feature. Turbo mode had like three modes before toggling off, so I would adjust accordingly.There’s also some red/orange turbo mode feature as well? The manual tells us about it, but I really never cared for turbo that much. I saw it as a useless option unless this whole ordeal kind of went down.Now since I had the turbo feature set to my ZR button (which somehow worked just for the turbo feature), sometimes in Smash, mashing out of grabs could enable the turbo feature if you’re not careful. This lead to me grabbing, spotdodging, AND rolling repeatedly in battle (honestly I had one fight with a quickplay Luigi and that Luigi player waited so patiently for me to stop rolling and grabbing. I wish they knew what was happening. I have a video of it as well I believe.). Whenever I start doing that, I have to look at my controller to see if I accidentally triggered turbo mode somehow and have to stop it as quickly as possible. To me, the turbo feature was both a blessing and a curse. You could do without it, to be quite honest.ON THE PCThe controller works very well for PC. You might have to remap your buttons, but it works nicely! It kind of registers as an XBOX controller for some reason. If your controller drifts, then expect to see some drifting on your PC as well. The control pad ( the + looking pad with the arrows) was something I used for TEKKEN 7. I honestly did not have much of a problem with it. I did not reliably trust using the direction stick; I felt more control in the control pad. Sometimes if I mash too much to tech off the ground in TEKKEN, the turbo button might trigger and release my rage art (because of course, it’s tied to my ZR button), so I have to look down at my controller and stop turbo mode from turboing it up.Oh, and the rubber on my controller is wearing out immensely. You might want to invest in getting rubber caps and good maintenance of the controller itself if you plan to have it for more than a year. I kind of rode this controller until the brakes fell off.I feel that I covered everything I wanted, but I’ll edit this if I forgot something vital to tell. I’ve debated giving this controller a 3 star due to some of the complications I have, but HORI is a pretty nice company and this is also my first controller for the Switch/PC. I’m currently using a new controller by PDP, which has analog inputs and generally more smooth and snappier, but I’ll miss the feel that was my first controller.TL;DR: Controller is nice, but the lifespan could be short depending how you use it. Plastic feel. It has digital inputs — beware of static. Drifting may occur after heavy use. It’s compatible with PC usage and games. It has a turbo feature, but very niche applications. Link is pretty cool. 🙂

i love it. beautiful box to add to my collection and a LOT of people say this has a cheaper feel compared to the original gamecube controller/powerA and ive tried both powerA wired and wireless im not sure if it’s because it’s a little bit bigger overall or if its the grip on the handles but this thing feels really sturdy(same sturdiness as a wireless powera) but i bought it because these have t3 sticks(great sticks and easy to replace), the turbo button, and overall just for the gamecube style design. so far it’s done me well in smash already 🙂 got the pikachu edition as well and added pics since i haven’t seen anyone else here do so. if u are inbetween controllers for smash and this is in your budget i recommend it 🙂 i will come back and edit my post if anything happens too although i plan to mod it with led’s since the back is transparent so wish me luck!

The media could not be loaded. Conclusion:Sadly the best controller I’ve tried, so I’m buying my second one now. Nintendo charges an arm and a leg for basic wired controllers, so I haven’t tried their official one yet, but am going to bite the bullet and try it once I find one in store (since apparently Amazon, unsurprisingly, does jack all to guarantee that you’re getting an official one). I’ll update this review after I try the Nintendo version.Pros:- Quieter than the PowerA controllers- The buttons align very well with their cutouts, so the buttons don’t get stuck under the plastic (again, unlike PowerA)- The joy sticks have decent anti-snapback. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.- The buttons feel great. This is obviously subjective, but I like them.Cons:- The grip is weird. Not a big deal and the grit does wear down a bit over time, but I agree it’d be better if they were just smooth.- The trigger alignment takes some getting used to. (SSB Ultimate spec

Got jipped on another controller this one is great though