Now Playing: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a sequel to the original Hyrule Warriors (which I’ve not played) and a prequel (but not really) to Breath of the Wild. It’s hard to say exactly why it’s a prequel (but not really) without dropping some pretty major story spoilers, but I’ll do my best to explain.

Age of Calamity is set 100 years before Breath of the Wild during the Great Calamity – the events of which, if you’ve played BotW – you’ll already be familiar with. What occurred during this period was quite well explored in BotW, but if you think AoC is just that story being retold, you might be in for a surprise.

Thanks to some time travel shenanigans, the events of AoC don’t necessarily progress in the way you might expect. I can see some people not liking this approach, believing the story should have remained true to the events as presented in BotW. But as I said, that story was already explored quite adequately in BotW, so I’m more than happy for AoC to diverge and tell its own tale.

AoC is like the best BotW fan fiction in video game form. Once again, it’s hard to say why without dropping major story spoilers. All I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed the story aspects and found it quite satisfying to play. 

Visually, AoC is a near perfect recreation of the BotW art style. And it really is quite impressive how AoC incorporates so many aspects of BotW into its design from the map, weapons, runes, outfits, items, abilities, locations, enemies and characters. If you’ve played BotW – and I don’t know why you’d be playing AoC if you haven’t – then you’ll feel right at home.

You’ll begin AoC by playing as Link but your roster of playable characters will rapidly expand offering a variety of combat styles and special moves. With so many characters to play as and switch between within missions, the combat has been kept simple and uniform across every character, based on a system of light and heavy attack combos.

The way every character fights is unique – even the way they utilise the runes – and feels appropriate for them. Link is arguably the most versatile, given he can use three different weapon types with entirely different attack styles – one handed, two handed or spear. I also really enjoyed playing as Impa and Urbosa. It’s likely you won’t take to every character style, but you should find enough to enjoy and the game rarely forces you to use a particular character. 

The main quest chain of AoC is pretty substantial with many missions taking 30-40 minutes to complete (or more – if you’re as obsessive as I am about killing every enemy and finding every korok seed). If you only focus on the main missions, I think you’ll still get a good 15 or so hours out of AoC, but you’ll also be missing out on a lot of fun, additional content. There’s a massive amount of side content in AoC to explore. Missions that test your skill using particular weapons, characters or abilities. Missions that test you against the clock. And every mission will grant you various rewards that can be used to unlock new character and weapon upgrades.

I honestly wasn’t expecting this level of side content in AoC – even post-game, you’ll unlock a dozen or more new missions plus a ‘blood moon’ difficulty modifier (in addition to the existing difficulty modes). It’s an impressive range of extra content and I can easily see you dropping 50-60 hours into AoC if you want to complete it all.

But I guess that leads me into my main criticism of AoC – player fatigue. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed playing AoC, I didn’t really feel like doing all the side content. I wouldn’t say there’s too much content – more that the content can become incredibly repetitive. 

There’s not a great deal of mission variety regardless of the unique modifiers, and every mission is really just another excuse to smash thousands of enemies to pieces. That’s certainly fun, but it can get rather tiresome the more you play, and that’s probably why I preferred to play AoC in short bursts, a handful of main and side missions at a time.

I also wish AoC had expanded upon the tactical aspect of its missions. There are many missions where you can capture ‘outposts’ which will then spawn friendly troops, but they don’t really seem to have any real impact on the battlefield.

I thought it would work more like a basic RTT system where the more outposts you capture, the more friendly forces will spawn and help you overwhelm the enemy. In reality, friendly npcs don’t really do anything other than provide some background flavour to the experience. You can direct playable allies to different locations on the battlefield but, once again, they don’t really do anything until you take direct control. 

The other main issue I have with AoC is regarding its technical performance. It’s kind of strange how poor the frame rate can get during some of the early, less intensive missions, yet run far more smoothly during some of the later, more intensive ones. It’s inconsistent, to say the least. I wouldn’t say it had a particularly negative impact on my experience, but it was annoying when it dipped during a crucial moment.

Overall, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a pretty fantastic game that offers a substantial quantity of good quality content. The missions may not offer the same level of variety as the character styles, but there’s plenty here to keep you engaged. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and I can see myself returning to complete those remaining side missions in the future.

8/10