Age of Calamity @ Game Live Japan 2020

Today we got even more gameplay footage of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, as part of "Game Live Japan 2020", which you can find at NintendoEverything. This footage takes place at the Breach of Demise and at Death Mountain, where more gameplay of Link and Impa is shown, but also a first look at Daruk and Link using the Spear as a different weapon type.

First of all, it seems like every playable character has access to the four Sheikah Slate Runes somehow. Depending on which character you use, the Runes will even act differently. For example Daruk can use large Bombs that split into many smaller Bombs, while Impa does some fireworks with them. You can also use any magnetic objects in the environment via Magnesis, which is pretty cool and explains why the battlefields seem to be littered with those metallic boxes. With Impa, you can even attract multiple metallic objects, including enemy weapons, and form some crazy, large weapon with it (kind of similar to Kid from One Piece).

And from what I could gather, it seems like Zelda is doing all this. So, there is still only one Sheikah Slate and Zelda uses it to provide everyone with the Runes remotely, while she also uses the Sheikah Slate as her main weapon and moveset. But I'm guessing this will be explained early on. She looks a little bit silly, though, almost like she's playing with her smartphone during battle. Maybe she's doing some selfies with some Bokoblins behind her and posts them on Instagram. #MondayMorning

We don't see any gameplay of Zelda, however, where it raises the question of how much it will actually differ from just simply using the Sheikah Slate Runes, but I suppose that her new moveset might feel somewhat similar to her Dominion Rod from Hyrule Warriors.

We do see more of Impa, however, where her moveset revolves around attaching seals to enemies, so she can produce clones. The Sheikah letters below her health bar translate to "F", "S" and "T", which probably means first, second and third. If you have all three seals in place, it even changes her Special Attack, where she creates pile of those "virtual powder kegs", instead of just tossing one.

But they also show us our first gameplay of Daruk, who naturally feels somewhat similar to playing as Darunia, but has his own twists here. He can create these magma rocks at wish, which feels like his C0 attack, but apparently every fighter in this game has certain "character actions", which can be combined with combos. Link uses his bow for this and Daruk the magma rocks.

It also does seem like every character gets a special way of moving around faster, where Link gets his shield surfing and Daruk can roll around like any Goron. But he can also combine it with Daruk's Protection for some flashy action. Link can also use the Paraglider to fly around like in Breath of the Wild, which is awesome, but it's unclear how this will translate to the other characters. At least Impa has a sailcloth of her own.

The gameplay also confirms that the fighters can have different weapon types, like in the original Hyrule Warriors. In this case we see Link using a spear, where I suppose that he will also get a two-handed weapon type as well.

They also show the three elemental rods for the first time, where you can summon an area attack via a cylindrical reticle. These rods are part of another set of items, where the last item is food, probably to heal yourself. The item usage is also much quicker than in Hyrule Warriors, where here you press a button (like L) and then the A, B, X or Y button for the respective item. So, no browsing through a list of items with the D-Pad... And it looks very funny how Daruk uses these rods, almost like holding up a tooth pick.

There is also a first glimpse at a Guardian battle, which really gets classified as some sort of boss, but sadly the cut the footage off there. But it seems they are as sturdy as you would expect them to be. Link even reflects its beam, which does very little damage here, while it would subtract a third of their health in Breath of the Wild.

Before that battle you can also briefly see a Korok flower, which probably confirms them as a collectible in this game. I'd personally prefer it, if they would work similarly to Breath of the Wild and not like the Gold Skulltulas in Hyrule Warriors, because the "defeat 1000 enemies and rush to a certain location" requirement was rather annoying. It would be more fun to have little secrets all over the battlefield.

Apropos battlefields, while there are certainly some differences and you can't explore everything freely, it all looks like it has been taken out of Breath of the Wild directly. And that's a huge step up from the battlefields in Hyrule Warriors, which felt more like very loose translations. Places like Zora's Domain or Skyloft looked very awkward in comparison to their originals, where it's nice that Age of Calamity does things more faithfully. It really shows that they've been working together with the Zelda team.