Was Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Worth It?

You know the deal, there are tons of games out there, but many of them suck or are just cynical cashgrabs (looking at you, Ubisoft). As a huge fan of both musou-style games and the previous Hyrule Warriors, I was excited for this title, even if I was a bit wary going into it. With that said, was Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity worth it?

Fair warning, just in case: This game is not a sequel to Breath of the Wild, and it is not an open world game.

Spoiler Alert

I’ll try to avoid spoilers as best as I can, but simply addressing the nature of this game’s narrative involves speaking frankly about the events. The Zelda timeline is like a snarled mess of Christmas lights, and it seems like every new entry just adds to the confusion.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a prequel to Breath of the Wild, and is a canon entry. If you played Breath of the Wild, then you’re familiar with the characters who are still alive at the time of that game. This title takes place a century before BotW, and branches off into another timeline.

How does Age of Calamity stack up the first Hyrule Warriors?

The first Hyrule Warriors is a fantastic game, with boats of content. It’s the kind of game that you can go back to and pick up right where you left off clearing maps and grinding weapons. There are many fun movesets and it’s a joy to fight with and against classic Legend of Zelda friends and foes.

If you didn’t play Breath of the Wild, then you might not be attached to some of the characters in Age of Calamity. That was my experience, as I had played other games in the franchise but had skipped on BotW. I will admit that some of them won me over, like the Zora siblings, but boy was I glad that Revali was dead in another timeline.

The main campaign is easy to breeze through in AoC. As I was approaching the end I definitely felt a slight sense of disappointment. I enjoyed the gameplay, but I could tell that I was rapidly running out of things to do. For reference, the vanilla release of Hyrule Warriors on the WiiU had postgame content in the form of adventure maps. I wasn’t looking forward to grinding Hynox hamstrings and Lynel livers in AoC to finish out a few sidequests.

There’s also a bit of an issue with scaling. If you do side missions when they unlock, then you’ll rapidly find that you have drastically outleveled the story missions. There’s also no incentive to change difficulty, as the rewards don’t get better.

I feel like I need to touch on the concept of supplies. You can store up ammunition for the various magical rods and apples to restore your health. These persist between missions, so if you’re out of apples you might want to go run an easy sidequest for some health drops. I think this system is creative, but weird. It’s similar to the armor system they seemed to have been going with for Link. Apparently they were originally going to make you wear certain armor in certain biomes (like in BotW). Fortunately, that idea was thankfully scrapped.

What does it do well?

The movesets are fun (especially the two handed sword), and they did a good job incorporating the runes from Breath of the Wild into your repertoire. It’s also neat that the cooking from BotW makes a return, even if I didn’t use it. Korok seeds are back, and I did like tracking them down in missions. Koei really seems to shine when they can develop movesets for characters that aren’t variants of sword/spear/polearm and the sheer creativity of the characters was welcome.

Piloting the large Divine Beasts is also a blast. They do feel a little clunky, a bit less Armored Core and more Mechwarrior. It was a nice way to break up the missions, though. Too bad you can’t earn materials for killing Hynoxes and Lynels while you’re in them!

What could it do better?

Character progression is lackluster. The game isn’t particularly difficult. This also might come as a surprise, but the game becomes trivial once you get the Master Sword.

Arguably, it is convenient to unlock bonuses like damage reduction for all your characters. However, I felt like this cheapened the fun of trying to strengthen individual characters. With titles like this, it’s always a struggle to find reasons to play characters that you don’t immediately jive with. The first game made you play with all the characters and I found that I appreciated some of them a lot more because I had to git gud with them, even if I despised playing as Tingle.

Is it fun?

To an extent. That said, it’s not particularly deep or engaging, and you aren’t going to feel the drive to keep playing once you’ve beaten the game. The lack of any modes aside from the story means that once you’ve cleared something, it’s done, and there’s no reason to revisit it unless you’re grinding for specific materials.

Value?

My Switch says I put about 55 hours into the game. This is a bit inflated, as I do tend to multitask while playing, so some of that playtime was the game sitting idle. HowLongToBeat pegs completing the campaign at 21 hours, which isn’t amazing, but I guess it’s better than a lot of AAA games out there.

I want to reiterate that with these kind of games, it’s not the story that keeps you coming back, it’s the progression, be it weapons, leveling, whatever.

Was Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Worth It?

If you like the gameplay, you’ll enjoy this title. It’s a Zelda game, so don’t expect any steep discounts, ever. The first title is still 59.99 on the eShop and it’s a port of a 2014 title. If you aren’t sure if you’ll like it, then try the demo.

Pros:

• The combat is fun and fluid
• Creative movesets

Cons:

• No end or postgame content
• Easy
• This is a straight up $60 game, no discounts to be had

Other:

BotW aesthetic (not my favorite, if we’re being honest)

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is worth it if you’re a big Zelda fan. If you’re looking for a definitive RPG or hack-and-slash, then this probably won’t scratch that itch. However, this might sate your appetite for Legend of Zelda content if you’re feverishly waiting for a new mainline title.

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