I bought Zelda Amiibo cards, and they’re great

I wouldn’t say I like Nintendo’s Amiibo, and I think the company selling $15-$20 toys that lock gameplay elements behind them is borderline robbery.

The worst offenders are the Loftwing character that allows you to fast-travel in Skyward Sword HD and the Wolf Link exclusive dungeon in Twilight Princess HD. I understand some people like miniature statues, but I wish Nintendo offered all Amiibo in cheaper card form as it did with Animal Crossing.

You could argue that the two examples above are $15 DLC add-ons, but that’s only at launch. Since Amiibo are often sold in batches, the prices rise considerably as they become rarer. For example, many Zelda-affiliated characters are in the $70 range on Amazon. Therefore, if you didn’t buy that character at launch, you need to pay reseller pricing.

To get around all of this, I decided to buy third-party Amiibo cards. These aren’t official Nintendo products, but in my experience, they work great and cost way less than rare Zelda Amiibos.

I paid $26 for a 36-card set that included every Zelda adjacent Amiibo except for the brand-new Tears of the Kingdom-inspired Link model.

You might be wondering how there are 36 cards in the set when there are only 25 Zelda Amiibo, and I don’t have the answer to that. The cards are mainly meant for Breath of the Wild since they unlock special weapons and armour sets. For instance, the Majora’s Mask Amiibo offers the chance to unlock the ‘Fierce Deity‘ outfit and sword. Still, the card collection comes with both a Majora’s Mask Link and a Fierce Deity Sword, which unlock the same items and are both sub-labelled as ‘Link | Majora’s Mask.’

Both can be used on the same day, and as far as I can tell, they represent the same Amiibo. I’m not complaining since the game is only supposed to allow you to use each Amiibo once per day, so this is a useful advantage the cards offer if you’re trying to unlock rare items.

Each card offers a list of what it unlocks on the back. This makes it easy to see what a card unlocks without memorizing it or looking it up online every time. The final plus is that the cards are the same size as a Switch game card. This makes it easier to pack a few into your travel case and take them on the go, compared to an Amiibo statue.

I’ve verified that each card is tied to an Amiibo and scanned them into Breath of the Wild; confirming that every card represents the statue printed on it is a more challenging task. Scanning these characters in the game triggers a lottery for the rare weapons and clothing tied to each Amiibo, and in my tests, I only unlocked the Wind Waker boomerang, the Cap of Twilight and one ancient helm. I also got the Wolf Link companion and Epona. On top of that, all the Toon link/Wind Waker Links dropped fish along with an item, so I’m fairly confident that they all work.

You can find the third-party 36-card set Amiibo set here.

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