Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Switch)
With the first Hyrule Warriors game and its many subsequent rereleases and content packs, characters from all around The Legend of Zelda series were able to join in the huge battles against armies of monsters. It only seemed like a matter of time before The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild would have its major players join in that action too. However, rather than expanding the ever-growing first game, a completely new title was created instead to bring these characters into this play style, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity not only focusing on the new fighters but using the art assets and story elements from Nintendo’s open world hit to make an experience that builds off of that title’s features while utilizing the gameplay mechanics of Hyrule Warriors.
Taking place in the titular fantasy kingdom of Hyrule, the game begins when the incredible malice of the evil force known as Calamity Ganon has begun to take form, the once peaceful land overrun with monsters and the ancient robotic protectors known as Guardians and Divine Beasts are corrupted by his power to turn against the citizens of the realm. One Guardian has managed to escape corruption though, a tiny little robot opening a portal in time so it can leap back and warn the people of the past of the threat that will take shape soon. The introduction of time travel into this storyline does mean this isn’t quite the prequel story to Breath of the Wild it was billed as since it follows an alternate history where they can start rallying their forces to try and prevent the oncoming calamity, but it does do an effective job of giving players a better picture of people they only got to know posthumously in Breath of the Wild due to that game taking place 100 years after the Calamity had overwhelmed Hyrule.
A small set of core characters are important to this quest to stop the Calamity, with Zelda being perhaps the most vital as she is the princess of the elf-like Hylians who rule over the middle of the realm and the massive Hyrule Castle. Zelda is but a teenager when this vital point in history arises though, and while she should be able to seal away evil forces with a power found in her bloodline, her inability to tap into it creates plenty of strife as she must also handle recruiting other warriors of the land to stand up against Calamity Ganon’s forces. Link is her personal knight and bodyguard, the silent hero of the series sort of playing the role of the land’s strongest protector but by no means is he the only playable character in this game so focused on playing as a big cast with varied skillsets. The four champions are the next most important characters no doubt, with each of them representing one of the major races of the land besides Hylians. Urbosa is the champion of the desert dwelling Gerudo women, Revali is the egotistical warrior of the Rito birdmen, Mipha is the soft-spoken princess of the fish-like Zoras, and the enormous but jovial Daruk leads the rock-eating Goron race. Petitioning these champions for help has a few complications that must be overcome first be they personal or related to some other present danger.
Most of the adventure focuses on this build-up to preventing the Calamity with various complications seeming to threaten the chance the diminutive Guardian has given them with its knowledge of the future. Zelda’s struggles are certainly the heart of the adventure and most characters are defined by their relationship with her or Link, although the late game does introduce some new faces who start to play off the four Champions a bit more and make for some late game character dynamics that add spice to a story mostly focused on gathering an army for a war. Some personalities still manage to stand out amidst it all though, such as the lazy and humorous Kohga who leads the Yiga Clan who work with Calamity Ganon’s burgeoning forces. Quirky behavior and a strangely casual attitude for a leader of a trained group of assassins makes every appearance of his something to look forward to, but he can hold his own in a fight so he’s not just an incompetent leader sitting atop a powerful group. Similarly amusing is Hestu who looks like a living tree with bushy eyebrows and a beard-like leaf, his appearance making him look old and wise until he whips out the maracas and starts talking like an energetic child. There are no shortage of stoic or serious warriors like Urbosa to carry the dramatic beats and characters like the friendly Impa can swap between serious and silly depending on the situation, so while the plot isn’t doing much but carrying the sequence of events forward, the cast’s variety can make the voiced cutscenes more interesting than they might otherwise be.
While the story’s connection to Breath of the Wild might draw in Zelda fans who never jumped on Hyrule Warriors before, Age of Calamity’s definitely primarily focused on its action. When you enter a battlefield, whether it be the lava-riddled mountainside of Death Mountain, the snowy peaks of the Rito’s lands, the Gerudo Desert, or the towns and grasslands of Central Hyrule, you’ll find your forces often outnumbered by the hundreds. While you are able to pick a few heroes to hit the battlefield with some required depending on the mission, even once you count whatever knights or basic warriors help back you up, the enemy simply has the number advantage. Luckily, the playable characters can easily carve through groups of simple enemies without much issue, and while some people dismiss this type of gameplay at a glance believing it looks repetitive or easy, the basic enemies you can dispatch without much issue aren’t really the point of most missions. Oftentimes these are there to build up your own power meters or as a prelude to a foe who can actually hold their own in a fight, although some simple enemies do prove surprisingly capable such as when the pig-like goblins known as Bokoblins form up for a charge or hurl their clubs all at once. Pesky archers and other little nuisances like the element-spewing Lizalfos lizard men mean you can’t always mindlessly slash away all the basic baddies in your path, but mostly they serve as a minor supplement to the more substantial fights with tougher enemies and boss characters.
Almost every mission in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, be it a main story quest or one of the plethora of special side quests battles, is focused on defeating key enemy troops or controlling key locations in the area. A small army of Bokoblins will often be lead by one major figure like the Wizzrobe magicians or the lanky heavy-hitting Moblins who come in various elemental affinities. Defeating these foes requires dodging attacks that can do good damage when they hit and striking to reduce a vulnerability bar that appears when the foe is caught off-guard, allowing you to do a more powerful hit to reduce their hefty health bars. The bigger and more capable the foe, the more you’ll need to fight smart both in how you dodge and approach and in what skills you use. For example, the enormous cycloptic Hinoxes can belly slam the battlefield so you need to be mobile enough to get away when they get moving, and the lion-like centaurs known as Lynels have a variety of different quick attacks that can deal hefty damage if you don’t know their attack patterns or when to dodge. Some playable characters can also be fought on the enemy side either because you’ll later unlock them, it’s a side quest where they’re testing your strength in some form, or they’ve had evil duplicate made, so every powerful skill you bring to the table that can take down so many basic enemies in a flash can be turned against you as well while still having periods of vulnerability you can exploit.
In fact, being able to easily knock away a bunch of cannon fodder before facing these foes leads to a nice rise and fall in the player’s sensation of power, the characters never feeling helpless (unless you bring an underleveled character into a mission) but also still facing tougher foes that take some time and skill to overcome without injury. Each character has a different fighting style, some even featuring multiple types depending on their weapons such as Link being able to utilize entirely different combos based on whether he entered the battle with a spear, broadsword, or sword and shield. Characters like Impa draw heavily from ninja concepts like after-images and teleportation for their movesets while others have clear advantages in certain situations such as Revali being able to fly up in the air and mow down hordes of enemies with his bow’s spread shot attack. Almost every character has some unique gimmick to how they’re meant to approach a fight, and while some are simplistic like adding a different boost to the basic attacks or being able to do a bit more damage with a combo if you time an extra button press properly, others have more complex ideas in play like destroying the objects they make with their attacks to grow giant for longer periods or being able to shift fighting styles mid-combo to change whether speed or strength is the focus. The weapon variety means there is plenty of diversity to be found in the basic combos alone, with characters like Hestu fighting by dancing around with his maracas, Mipha utilizing water on top of her trident strikes, and one unlockable character even holding the reins of a seal that moves through sand like water and swings its owner around wildly to strike.
The basic attack combos shift shape based on when you switch between the normal and stronger attacks during the chain, but these aren’t the only skills these heroes bring to the table. All of them have access to Sheikah Slate runes, these powers allowing them to unleash destructive bombs, freezing ice, magnetic power, or a time stop during battle. Each character’s use of these runes differs such as Zelda commanding a bomb robot that spits them all around the battlefield for a time or Impa climbing atop an ice block to ride it around, and while these have many uses just for their basic power or how things like ice interact with water, many stronger monsters and characters will leave themselves vulnerable to a rune while charging up their most powerful attacks. The slate needs time to charge after reach rune use so balancing them properly is key in a fight, especially one with multiple strong foes, and the magic rods you grab can sometimes fill in when a rune is unavailable. The electric, blizzard, and fire rods all can deal their elemental damage and sometimes leave a foe vulnerable, especially when you do something like light tall grass near an enemy on fire. In addition to some special showstopper moves that you can only execute once you’ve built up your special meter enough, the attack types in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity ensure that the battles that aren’t the brief infantry sweeps pack a good degree of variety and options that prevent the missions from growing repetitive.
Underneath all these battle options and characters is a deep system of leveling up, weapon fusion, and material acquisition that ties into an incredibly hearty batch of side quests and activities. While technically the side quests are individually optional, to keep characters strong enough for the main story you will need to make sure to diversify who you play as and build them up through these extra activities. Even if you are only playing as a few warriors and you suddenly find a mission that requires a weaker character’s use though, you can always spend money to level them up if you have enough. Otherwise, playing optional battles often involves fights focused more around gimmicks or concepts such as fighting a group of enemies with one elemental affinity, facing off with a group of powerful foes, or needing to wipe out a certain amount of foes to hit a quota. Even the quota missions still keep that focus on big baddies even though killing smaller ones earns the most points, as beating the bigger guys causes more of the weaker ones to spawn in as back-up. Admittedly, some concepts do start to tap into repetitive designs as they are rehashed but made a bit harder, but there’s usually plenty of optional battles available at once so you can visit the ones similar in concept at different points instead of back-to-back.
There are also a lot of side quests that aren’t even fights, the player instead needing to have certain items to turn in for a reward. These are accessed through a map screen and completed instantly if you have the right items, much of the spoils from battle going towards these as they are also the way you get new abilities and extra health for your different warriors. Stores can be unlocked to buy materials from for this purpose too so you don’t need to replay missions if you’re short on materials, but weapons come solely from actual fights so if you want your characters to use stronger tools or ones with special effects you must earn them, find them, or fuse them together to make better options. Battles also have little collectibles hidden off the beaten path to earn you extra goodies, and hopefully by now it should be clear that there is a lot going on to influence the battle system and reward players for participating in the quickly done turn-in quests.
Building up your warriors to be more capable and unlocking new ones to spice up the battles with tough foes amidst huge armies is definitely the main focus of much of the content, but there are some special battles that involve climbing into giant robotic animals known as the Divine Beasts that have their own battle type as well. Here, you take control of an enormous mechanical beast in first person such as the water-spewing elephant Vah Ruta or the huge lava lizard Vah Rudania to wipe out enormous encampments of enemies who are practically ants next to these leviathans. While these can sometimes be one-sided affairs due to the shear power of the Divine Beasts, many of the stronger enemy types appear in heavy numbers here and can dish out constant damage if you aren’t quick to wipe them out. These definitely seem built as power trips first and foremost though even in the tougher side quests where you can utilize them, but the indulgent moments still aren’t toothless even with the right upgrades in play so they don’t lose their touch despite their rare appearances.
Some special note should definitely go towards the map design as well, partially just because the game does a good job of making its selection stay fresh even when it’s reusing content. Different missions will cordon off specific areas to explore, meaning even revisiting the less visually diverse forest known as the Lost Woods can feel very different because different segments are featured in different missions. The main story features few retreads but the optional content keeps retooling areas and objectives to focus on different sections of these varied regions, and the music that backs these location and missions is good at keeping up the energetic push to fight against a huge enemy force while also knowing where to play into the tone of an event to make certain moments more triumphant or desperate. The track “Mipha, The Zora Princess” with its use of brass to carry the main refrain really stands out as memorable and strong, “Sooga, Right Hand of the Inverted Eye” utilizes high tempo vocals and Eastern instrumentation for one of the more difficult enemy characters to fight, and the simple but lovely “Zelda’s Lullaby” is used to excellent story effect, many of the tracks fitting into the importance of the moment or the danger posed by the enemy with their specific leaning towards hopefulness or perilousness. Many songs will even evolve as you get deeper into an important fight or enter a specific area to match that progress. On top of reproducing Breath of the Wild’s already lovely art style so perfectly it could almost pass for that game at times, it’s fortunate that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity didn’t forget about the extra touches despite its story needing more oomph.
THE VERDICT: While the broad focus of the war effort against Calamity Ganon means that the plot of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity isn’t as focused on its interesting characters and personalities as it maybe should have been, the depth of its seemingly simple gameplay helps keep the game exhilarating and fresh. The battle system’s switch from easily mowing down basic enemies to more involved battles with tougher foes asks for more involved use of your plentiful attack options that change with each warrior. Through this the game is able to keep its fights varied before you even factor in aspects like its strong map design. Optional activities give you plenty of options to upgrade your warriors or participate in special battle types and smaller touches like the excellent music and the Divine Beast power trips mean there’s a lot to experience in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and it manages to stave off the sting of repetition for a surprisingly long time through the many different ideas at play.
And so, I give Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity for Nintendo Switch…
A GREAT rating. With the story scenes front and center guiding so much of the action, it really feels like the one spot where the game stumbles most is the way it handles its story. The time travel element isn’t bad despite making its status as a prequel a bit less meaningful, but the heavy focus on the war against Calamity Ganon means some elements slip through the cracks despite the cast having potential for more. Seeing the different personalities interact is fun when it’s given some time to breathe but then the game throws a lot of unvoiced text boxes into the battles as well where it’s harder to keep track of. Characters like Master Kohga stand out because every scene with him seems to be focusing on getting his unique perspective on the action in there somehow, and Zelda’s personal struggle with her inability to access her power is still a good through line even if maybe needed a bit more room to be explored more. The characters definitely carry their weight at providing plenty of battle styles that suit different play styles and purposes, their unique gimmicks interesting even when they’re not as pronounced as they are with certain warriors. Having the runes and rods on top of combo variation adds a lot more texture to fights with the big enemy types, and the willingness to shift around the areas of focus for the battlefields also ensure that the game doesn’t go through its pool of content too quickly. Repetition will sink in once you’ve reach the late-game side quests mostly because the game enjoys having difficulty tiers for certain battle concepts, but the main adventure and the side quests done along the way to keep your warriors strong and capable do a great job of diversifying how you play even if it is by including small segments in the overpowered Divine Beasts for a quick change of pace.
Needless to say, this fully featured game is a much better alternative to a simple DLC pack, and while it didn’t quite nail every aspect of telling a new Zelda story to fill in an interesting gap in another game’s storytelling, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is still an extremely enjoyable action game that spreads its focus quite well. Enjoyable action, wonderful music, and a surprising level of depth both to enemy combat and developing your fighting force make this a game that’s easy to play for hours or return to for small visits, the wealth of content and smart use of assets showing how good a fit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s world and characters are for such a large scale action game.