Systems: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: November 20, 2020
Publisher: Nintendo & Koei Tecmo
My Play Time: 93 Hours
Before going any further, there are going to be spoilers, of sorts, for both The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Since Age of Calamity is a semi-prequel (I will get into that designation later) to Breath of the Wild, I feel that I could not adequately talk about this game without revealing some level of spoilers. So y'all've been warned.
Secondly, this is a difficult game to write about. All told, there were 20 massive battle stages which often took upwards of 30 minutes to complete, and 150+ smaller stages that could take as few as 45 seconds to up to 20 minutes. A lot of the smaller battles were not as story intensive but did contain some level of a story or at least an interesting location so that it did not always feel generic location in Hyrule where you fought monsters. There are also a lot of points the story hits, from the introduction of each of the Champions to meeting younger versions of characters and visiting known locations in BotW.
I have also decided to break this article up into three sections as opposed to three separate articles, which is what this was slowly turning into. First, there are my expectations about what I wanted the game to be and what it ended up being. The second is how it relates to Breath of the Wild as a prequel that takes place 100 years before the events in that first game. Third, is how the game stands on its own merits and as my first foray into a spin-off game in the Warriors franchise.
Expectations.
If you have not yet read my expectations of this game article that I posted shortly after starting it
back in December 2020, I laid out what I thought the story in the game was going to entail, where it was going, and where I fully expected it to end by the time the credits rolled. I recommend reading that article because there is some important information that I am going to cover and I am going to be referencing some of my assumptions. Sort of. First off, I was wrong on several fronts. The game did not end with Zelda covered in mud and sobbing, and not all of the events that lead up to Link being placed in the
Shrine of Resurrection for 100 years would end up occurring. The Four Champions were not trapped within their respective Divine Beasts and presumably killed by Ganon Blights. And by the end of the game, with the story that was told and all of the characters that were involved, I was okay with how this story ended.
When you look at the
official Legend of Zelda timeline (which we all might need
a little help in following) you see that with
Ocarina of Time that there is a split in what Link decides to do after defeating Ganon, if Link is even able to defeat Ganon (which leads into the
A Link to the Past timeline). So with this alone, with there being three separate timelines in the official canon of this series, why should I be so dead set with Calamity Ganon taking over Hyrule? Perhaps in the
Breath of the Wild timeline, the diminutive Guardian was destroyed during the attack, which is why it never appeared in
BotW?
The presence of a character that traveled back in time to before Calamity Ganon attacked and took over Hyrule is the first key to coming to terms with a story that diverges from expectations. But this divergence was not presented in a way that came across as a slap across the face with a molten sledgehammer. A lot of the story seemed to happen the way that the events leading up to Calamity Ganon's arrival might have happened in the Breath of the Wild timeline (see below for greater clarification), even introducing the new character of Astor who helped to bring about the coming of Calamity Ganon who was never mentioned in BotW (more on Astor below).
How It Relates to Breath of the Wild
Because this game involves a character who travels through time, you could argue that if the Diminutive Guardian (DG) travels to the timeline in
Breath of the Wild, then its presence alone alters the timeline that it transported itself to. The in-game function of the DG is partly to explain how the functions of the Sheikah Slate, the item that Link uses in
BotW to create bombs, ice blocks, etc can be used by other characters who do not have a Sheikah Slate. So giving characters this advantage, no matter how small, will alter the past. That being said, there are some
questions about the timeline in
AoC compared with that to
BotW even in the events that had taken/were taking place when the DG showed up in the
AoC timeline.
For the first half of the game, there felt like there was little consequence of the DG traveling back in time to when before Calamity Ganon took over Hyrule, so the events that were transpiring felt like they could have happened even if the DG had not interfered. Zelda traveling to the four different regions of Hyrule to conscript the four Champions to pilot the four Divine Beasts against the forces who were intent on bringing about the Calamity was great to witness, seeing how each race and group interpreted what Zelda had to say and how she convinced them to go along with her plan. During the quests there was plenty of foreshadowing, but not so heavy-handed that it felt like you were getting hit in the face with badly written cheese (looking at you Troy).
One of the highlights was being able to pilot the Divine Beasts, to witness what their intended power against Calamity Ganon's forces would have been. Each Divine Beast functioned fairly similarly with a standard attack, an area of effect attack, a blocking maneuver, and a charge attack that would instantly kill anything it touched; with the obvious exception of Ganon Blights. There were a number of "woooaaah" moments for me at least, witnessing the power of these machines and then knowing that in the BotW timeline, that even their power was not enough to repel Calamity Ganon's ruin upon Hyrule.
And those moments when the Ganon Blights would have won (kind of) happened in the game, but then there were deus-ex machina moments for each Beast brought about by the Diminutive Guardian that I will not mention further, so in a way you did somewhat see what the end of each of the Champions would have been like in that timeline.
Then there was the inclusion of the character of Astor who we are shown might be the one responsible for bringing about Calamity Ganon (back?) into being. This was a new character created for this game to fill in some of the gaps in the story from BotW, to explain how/why Calamity Ganon was resurrected/brought back/summoned, and for there to be a consistent antagonist who was not the constant threat of Calamity Ganon, especially for the first half of the game. I actually really liked Astor as the game's antagonist and was sad that there were not as many quests (both big and small) that included him.
I think what really intrigues me about him as a historical figure, is that no one in BotW mentions him at all, that he was forgotten as the catalyst to Calamity Ganon, which is explained away because the character did not exist until AoC, so it will be interesting to see if they are brought up in Breath of the Wild 2. In the post-game, after beating the main campaign there were a few battles that included fighting Astor that would have felt more appropriate scattered throughout the game at different points, in an attempt to stop the Calamity from happening. To me it felt like there were long stretches of the game where you kind of forgot that Astor was even in the game, especially leading into the end game.
The end-game itself, after the main campaign, felt like a mixed bag. There were a series of quests that were directly related to the end of the story which made sense why some events would continue on past the destruction of Ganon. There were even skirmishes with some of Ganon's remaining forces and I liked these battles because it felt more real, that peace would return to Hyrule immediately after Calamity Ganon's defeat would have been too clean of an ending. Then there were battles, some with Astor and others that did not seem to make sense coming after the end of the game, but I can understand from the developer's standpoint needing/wanting to have end-game content with some of the main antagonists.
How the Game Stands on its Own
I had previously never played any of the games in the
Warriors series, be it
Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition, Fire Emblem Warriors, or any of the
Dynasty Warriors on other non-Nintendo systems. I think it was the basic idea of the series from the outset that did not interest me, in that what if warriors from different time periods (or different games within the same series) all fought together against a common enemy. What was different about
Age of Calamity was that it took place within the story of a single game, involving the player in events that were hinted at in
Breath of the Wild. That for me was the biggest draw, to essentially play one version of history with the characters that were there during a time that was talked about by only a few of the characters in
BotW who had lived through it.
I do not know about other Warrior games, but the fighting mechanic here felt like a combination of knowing how the character you chose to fight fights, how well you can button mash, and how well you can remember which button-mashing sequence you are on to execute the specific attack you want to let loose with. I did a lot of button-mashing by the way. That is not to say that there was not any technique or skill involved, I would just frequently find myself mashing the Standard Attack button until I decided I should hit the Power Attack button and mash that for a while.
One of the more overwhelming aspects of the game that had nothing to do with the actual battles themselves was the growing roster of characters you could choose to use in a mission. When you start the game, you have control over Link and partway through the first battle, you gain access to Impa and you learn about switching characters mid-battle while sending off the other character(s) to an area where an objective needs to be completed, like dispatching a mini-boss or retaking an outpost so that you do not have to run your character halfway across a sprawling map. You gain access to new characters throughout the game and most appear to be at about a similar level with your highest level character so that you do not have to spend an hour grinding them up from level one. You also have the option of unlocking a training facility where you can pay rupees to raise characters levels, which I did not use at first, but by the last third of the game, it was the only way I could get all my characters to where I wanted them to be without spending over an hour with each one. By the end of the game, there were 18 playable characters, and with most missions using between one and two characters, leveling took a while (see the previous sentence); chapter missions you could sometimes use up to four characters, but those missions could take upwards of 35 minutes and the tradeoff of time spent to levels earned for only four characters did not feel worth my precious time. For me, I found that I favored a few characters when I knew that there was going to be a challenge and I ended up focusing a lot of my time with Link, Impa, and Mipha. My least favorite characters (without getting into spoilers) were probably the Great Faries and Revali; there are an additional three characters who I did not like using, but again, spoilers.
Once you decided which character you were going to use, you could also choose what weapon you would equip them with. Most characters came with their default weapon and throughout the game, you could modify it by combining it with other equipable weapons for that specific character to improve it at a blacksmith station (I will just say that this mechanic kind of confused me until the last third of the game). Most characters ended up with three similar weapons they could use while Link had the largest variety of swords, spears, axes, and a wooden spoon. I think the biggest issue I had with this mechanic, especially for Link, was that once Link gains access to the Master Sword, there was really no reason to switch to another weapon unless there was a side-mission that specifically called for a particular type of weapon, like the Two-Handed Weapon Traning. True, if I wanted to use a spear I would just use Mipha, if I wanted to use a great sword I would use Daruk, but in place of a weapon durability mechanic like in BotW, I would have liked to have had the option of carrying an additional weapon into battle, that you could switch depending on the specific battle.
One of the best things about this game was the scope of the battles, especially the chapter battles. in BotW, I would sometimes wonder how there were so many enemies that would respawn throughout the world and AoC helped to explain this when in any of the chapter battles, you would kill upwards of 1,000 enemies, more than 30,000 if you were piloting one of the Divine Beasts in the later stages. There were a lot of battles where I genuinely felt like a complete bad-ass in the midst of this massive war.
And I feel that the fighting in this game has spoiled me for BotW and I am a little afraid that when I go back into that game, that I am going to want to mow down hordes of Bokoblins and Lizalfos while utilizing the Sheikah Slate as you could in this game.
I do not think I would say that Age of Calamity has sold me on Warriors games for the future, especially if games are created from other IPs like Metroid Warriors, Street Fighter Warriors, or Dragon Quest Warriors. For me, the story would need to make sense for when the game is taking place, and not just "let's pull in fighters from all over and they can fight together!" kind of sense. All of the characters apart from the ones specifically created for Age of Calamity like Astor and the Diminutive Guardian were all pulled from the Breath of the Wild universe, not from every other Legend of Zelda game, otherwise, I would have played Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition. There have been other Warriors titles that were created in a similar vein like Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage which follows the story from the manga of the same name (minus the Ken's Rage part). The point is, while I loved what Omega Force did with the game itself as far as the story is concerned, I am still going to be selective towards additional Warriors titles in the future.
I know for a fact there are a lot of aspects of this game that I have only touched on and others that I have left out completely [cooking mechanic, spoken dialogue, deeper information on fighting mechanics, aspects of characters who I have intentionally left out to limit spoilers, frequently running out of rupees, grinding for animal parts, stupid Korok Seeds, and music (holy hell I fell like I could do multiple Game Scores articles about the music in this game)] and I probably could have taken up one or two more articles of this same size, but I feel that I have already taken up too much time.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity was a fun game, and I loved it a lot more than I was expecting. I went it hoping for one game, was given that game to a certain extent, and then more story beyond that which diverged heavily from what I was expecting. But everyone involved with this game, especially the writers did an amazing job with one of Nintendo's flagship IPs and I would love to see the same group of writers return for either another Legend of Zelda game or even have them create a new IP with all of the characterization and emotion they wrote into each/most of the scenes.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental
P.S. This was my attempt at a tl;dr and coming in at around 2,800 words, I feel like I managed to pull it off somewhat well.
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