We have been hyped for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity ever since it was announced. At the end of October, I talked about our experience playing the demo (which includes the first couple of hours of the game). Now that the game has been out for a bit over a month, I’ve finally finished it. 

I had a great time with Age of Calamity. In this post, I won’t spoil anything because the game is still new and lots of people haven’t played it yet. But I will share some thoughts based on my experience playing through the main story.

Telling the Story of A Calamity

We touched on the beginning of the story in our demo post, so I won’t retread much of that. Suffice it to say that Calamity Ganon’s imminent return threatens Hyrule, and Zelda and the gang have to unleash Zelda’s inner power, find a mythical sword, and figure out how to pilot giant mechanical beasts before that happens. You know, standard weekend fare for the Hyrule Homies.

I do have to admit that I was a tad disappointed with Age of Calamity’s story. The trailers and advertising materials pitched this game as an opportunity to experience the calamity that preceded Breath of the Wild’s plot. (If you need a refresher on that, you can check out our post about Breath of the Wild here.) And in some sense, it was. The  beginning of Age of Calamity doesn’t depart too much from what you learn from Link’s recovered memories in Breath of the Wild. The further you go, though, things do start to shift.

At first, I was confused. I thought that maybe I was misremembering events or that I had made stuff up. But at a certain point, it does become clear that Age of Calamity is telling a different story than I imagined it would. It tells the story of a Calamity, yes, but not necessarily the one leading up to Breath of the Wild.

Once I realized that, I didn’t mind too much. I could accept the story for what it was and filter out inconsistencies because I could see that this was supposed to be its own thing—an alternative Calamity. 

All the same, the story we did get, while good, was not as amazing as it could have been. You get story segments at the beginning and end of main-story missions. But the episodic storytelling lacked ligaments. That made it difficult to follow everything that was happening, and I felt the game didn’t explain certain critical points very well. 

For instance, one rather important (and potentially confusing) plot point never got explained in a cutscene. Instead, it was mentioned in passing on a loading screen near the end of the game. If I didn’t check those loading screens religiously to be sure I didn’t miss any helpful tips, I would have missed it entirely!

Because the narrative didn’t flesh out properly, certain storybeats near the end fell a bit flat for me. The story isn’t necessarily bad; it’s just not stellar. It didn’t really affect my overall enjoyment of the game too badly, and I still really enjoyed getting to see this version of the Calamity.  It just wasn’t what I was expecting (or hoping for) when I went into the game.

True to the Source

Story issues aside, Age of Calamity has a lot going for it. The core gameplay is just excellent. Like all Warriors games, you go into a battle scenario and slash your way through hordes of enemies to accomplish some objective (capture an enemy base, defeat a particularly strong boss, get all of those ding-dang korok seeds, etc.). 

There are eighteen playable characters in the game. Almost all of them should be familiar to folks who played Breath of the Wild. A couple of them only unlock after the main story is over, but you will still have oodles of unique battle styles to try out during your campaign.

When I played the demo, I favored Link and Impa because they were the best of the three characters available at the time. I won’t spoil who all of the other characters are (there are some pretty sweet surprises!), but I will say that I enjoyed nearly all of them.

The champions in particular control very well and have fun, unique combat styles and abilities. I constantly found myself unlocking a new character and saying, “Ooo! She’s my  new favorite!” only to then unlock another who quickly took their place.  By the end, I’d say there were only two or three characters I didn’t care for or use pretty much at all. Each of the others found a place in my squad from time to time.

Age of Calamity does a great job at tying each character and mechanic into its source material. Obviously, all of the character and enemy designs match Breath of the Wild, but it’s more than that. Their abilities and combat styles and personalities all shine through so well. I crack up every time Urbosa does her special attacks because she’s got so much sass and panache. Revali is (if possible) even more of a jerk in this game. Mipha’s gentle grace comes out in her combat style and special abilities.

Even Zelda’s battle style is built around the fact that she’s a scholar, not a fighter. She’s kind of clunky to control, but the clunkiness feels intentional. It’s like the developers knew that Zelda couldn’t fight fluidly, but they wanted to make her effective all the same.

Beyond just the characters, other little details throughout the game put a smile on my face. The overworld map, where you select missions and quests, is a recreated map from Breath of the Wild. The shops all hearken back to Breath of the Wild, too. And I loved getting to explore locations from Breath of the Wild in a time when they aren’t just ruins. It gives a sense of familiarity without ever getting stale.

Of Runes and Ruins

One feature that I thought was massively important (and which will probably be criminally underrated) was the Military Training Camp. It’s a shop of sorts that you can unlock near the beginning of the game. It allows you to level up characters with rupees instead of hours of blood, sweat, tears, and thumb blisters.

At first, I thought this wouldn’t do. It felt like a cheap way to avoid the struggle and pains of actual training. But then I realized that it doesn’t do that at all. Instead, it allows you to incorporate lesser-utilized characters into your campaign without the hassle of grinding for levels. 

If you acquire a character whose level is a bit low (or if you forget that Revali exists because you couldn’t stand him and decided to bench him for a bit), you can level them up to be equal to your strongest character. You’ll still have opportunities to practice their combos in battle. But leveling up with the training camp saves you a lot of time.

The training camp even prevents overleveling because you can never enhance any character’s level beyond that of your strongest character. So if Link has the highest level at 30, nobody else can go beyond that. This means that you do have to level up naturally as you play, but you can catch other characters up so that you don’t have to worry too much about balancing experience points or grinding. I hate grinding. So this was a perfect feature for me that significantly improved my experience with Age of Calamity.

The game’s other features and mechanics are, admittedly, a bit of a mixed bag. I love the side missions. They’re tons of fun and incredibly rewarding to complete. I tried to be pretty dutiful while playing through and complete as many missions as possible in between main quests. Even so, by the time I finished the main campaign, my completion score was only around fifty-five percent…after nearly thirty hours of gameplay. It’s crazy how much there is to do here.

Sadly, some parts of the game didn’t thrill me. I though that piloting the divine beasts would be fun and energizing. Instead, I found the experience a bit clunky and gimmicky. I started to kind of dread divine beast quests because I didn’t think they were that much fun. There was a slight lack of enemy variety, though the game did try to spice things up with elemental variants of many major creatures. 

And sometimes the camera didn’t work properly if I got stuck in a tight corner. I’d have my visual field taken up by some lynel’s rear end while the front end ripped my arm off, but I’d have no way to see what was going on or get myself out.

Thankfully, for most of the game the camera works fine.

Other than that, my only complaint is with the artwork. I said in our post about the demo that the art felt unfinished and that I hoped it would improve by the time the game released. Well…it didn’t. The game still has kind of fuzzy art that feels unpolished. 

So, no. The visuals did not give me the same sense of awe that I felt when playing Breath of the Wild. But that’s really all right because the rest of the game was an excellent experience. The core gameplay was, on the whole, tight and enjoyable. There were tons of characters to choose from. And the overall experience of building up those characters, helping out the world of Hyrule, and plowing through hordes of bokoblins just makes me smile when I think of it.

Just one last question, then: Do you have to play Breath of the Wild before you can play Age of Calamity? Technically, no. Should you? Yes. Absolutely, yes. I don’t think a newcomer would be lost, and I think they could definitely enjoy the game. But those squeals of joy when your favorite characters get revealed and you get to play as them won’t happen if you…don’t have favorite characters from Breath of the Wild. Some of the story makes much more sense if you already have the foundation from the other game. I think playing Breath of the Wild first just enhances the experience of playing Age of Calamity immensely.

That said, Age of Calamity is a great game that can definitely stand on its own merits. I may have finished the game, but I am far from finished with it. 

Who to Play With

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is rated T. At first, I couldn’t really see why that was the case. Yes, you do a lot of slashing enemies with your sword, but it isn’t much different than in Breath of the Wild. There is no blood or gore. The enemies just puff away in smoke. Age of Calamity is more focused on the actual combat element than Breath of the Wild, so I thought that might justify the rating a bit more.

But the further you get into the game, the darker it gets. (Literally, the scenes and map get darker and sometimes it’s hard to see.) Some of the late-game bosses could be scary and intense for young ones. So, while I don’t know that your kids would need to be teenagers to play Age of Calamity, I would say 10 or 11 is the youngest I’d let mine jump on board.

There is actually a two-player mode, as well. All you have to do is click the left joystick, and you can add a second player for a split-screen experience. Michela and I had a lot of fun playing through campaign missions and side missions this way. There were some problems with lag when playing multiplayer, particularly if you’re in the same area of the map and somebody tries to do a special move. Nevertheless, we had a good time.

You can pick up a copy of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity over on Amazon, as well as a Nintendo Switch Console.

Have you already been able to play Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity? Have you just started and you need to gush about how cool it is that you finally get to play as Urbosa? Are you avoiding it because Revali’s attitude is just too much for you to handle? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

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