Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 2

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 2
• Battles: 6
• Challenges: 17
• Quests: 49 
  

 

It's like they say: ladies first. And after adding Urbosa and Mipha to my entourage, the two gentlemen, Revali (aka "Mr. Dodo") and Daruk, were next, where right now I've finally assembled all four Champions and I'm ready for the next mission.

Most dedicated players out there will probably have made a much greater progress by now, maybe they've already beaten the game, but I'm taking my sweet time here. And I'm actually playing the game twice on two separate save games, at least for the weekend, because I'm playing with someone in coop on that person's Nintendo Switch. And then I try to catch up with my "Very Hard" playthrough on my own Switch.

But that has actually the advantage that I get to know the missions, before I tackle them in the currently hardest difficulty. It also lets me compare how the game plays in both single-player and two-player modes, where the latter actually runs much better than I remember it to. The frame rate still crashes tremendously whenever you attack the same enemy at once with flashy specials and combos, but it's usually more funny than annoying, because you're destroying both the enemy and the game.

(Update: the experience was actually much worse in the following missions. And not only does the frame rate go down, the resolutions drops significantly as well, where everything looks pixelated all of sudden.)

The biggest problem with the two-player mode is the split screen, where I often can't see where I'm going. It probably would have been better, if the screen was split vertically instead of horizontally. Of course then you might miss something on the sidelines, like a Korok, but at least you would see what's ahead of you. The coop playthrough will stop after today, however, where I will focus entirely on my own playthrough starting tomorrow.

Smashing (with) Revali

The next big mission on my list was going to Rito Village, where the highlight of the game awaits you: you can hit Revali on the head with a giant Boko Bat.

The mission itself goes for the (Hyrule Warriors) cliché of allied troops fighting against you, because they were tricked by a scheming enemy. Urbosa's mission also does this at the beginning, but here it's from beginning to end, where Revali is even the final boss.

So, there is some good variety with how the four Champion missions are set up. Mipha and Daruk join you right at the beginning, where you can play as them right away, Urbosa joins you in the middle and Revali only after completing the mission. And overall I enjoy the great variety of different troops and settings so far, where this game might even top the first Hyrule Warriors in that regard, despite focusing on a single Zelda game

It just shows how much Breath of the Wild has to offer, but at the same time I was always quite disappointed in how Hyrule Warriors didn't have stages based on Majora's Mask, or Zora troops, Shadow Beast troops, or even any Gerudo. But with Age of Calamity it seems like they are going all-in here and I like that.

The reasoning why the Rito fight against you is a little bit silly, though, because they confuse the friendly, little eggbot with the evil one. And despite the fact that you're a Hylian and taking out monsters, they don't stop fighting you. It's almost too bad that Link is perpetually mute or else you might have been able to reason with the Rito verbally instead of using the Boko Bat. Well, the club is more fun, of course...

The mission itself also felt a little bit simple, but maybe that's just me. But it reminded me of how in Breath of the Wild the whole Rito storyline seemed somewhat underdeveloped when compared to the other three Divine Beasts.

I really did enjoy the setting and music of this mission, though. Seeing the whole Tabantha Frontier area covered in snow, with Rito Village in the background, with that beautiful music. It's so good and that's all I can say. From the atmosphere it was probably my favorite mission so far, but the Gerudo Desert was also excellent, of course.

Now, unlocking Revali is quite the achievement, much like Revali's Gale in Breath of the Wild. His arrogant personality might be annoying, but it doesn't come from nowhere. He might be the best fighter so far, where his flying mode is insane. Well, it's insane for combat, not so much for the flying itself... As expected, he simply hovers over the ground where you normally can walk. This means whenever there's a small rock that acts as an obstacle, you will have to fly around it...

It's a little weird, but his normal attack string with the quintuple arrows is such a crowd pleaser and works also wonders on fighting any foes from a safer distance. He made the next mission easier than it probably should have been...

Smashing with Daruk

Last stop, Death Mountain! It's not that I like the Gorons the least, quite the opposite. They have been my favorite tribe in Ocarina of Time, where I adored them as a child. And it feels so great to be finally rolling around as a Goron again, the first time since Majora's Mask.

That was actually quite disappointing about Darunia in Hyrule Warriors. While he had some rolling attacks, he was running around the battlefield on his feet in this comedic fashion. But Daruk gets it right and his moveset is quite good as well. It's a little bit similar to Zelda's with his ZR ability, where here you can blow up any of your magma rocks around you with it. And you should, because otherwise they will block your path...

When going into this mission, I didn't really expect too much from Death Mountain. It's just bleak rocks after all. So, I was surprised to find funny details like this one:

 

It's a stage! With a microphone! I bet this is where Daruk does his stand-up comedy... Or maybe he's rock roasting Ganon. Apropos, there also was this little BBQ spot for the Rock Sirloins:

That's some nice attention to detail, where I didn't expect to find any. That related scene at the end of the mission was utterly disturbing, however... HOW?!!! Just how?!! My teeth hurt just thinking about it.

Anyway, the biggest challenge of this mission were the Igneo Talus, where you better bring a full stack of Ice Rod magic with you. (I can only repeat myself, Daruk using the rods like little tooth picks in his hand is absolutely hilarious.) These boss battles had a frustrating learning moment for me, because the rock giants have learned a new move in this game: they jump into the air and body-slam you. And you lose like eight hearts when this hits you... My problem was that I was applying Breath of the Wild logic here and tried to dodge these attacks, more or less successful.

But I was playing as Link, where I've tried his spear moveset for the first time, which worked wonders with keeping all the flame enemies at a safe distance. It didn't really work wonders with the Igneo Talus, however, because I always tried to dodge instead of blocking. But you can just stand there with your spear in your hand and hold the ZL button, while a magma giant as large as a building jumps on you like Super Mario, and nothing happens. You are safe, because you're blocking.

Yes, this isn't Breath of the Wild logic and physics, this is still a Warriors game. And this I had to learn the hard way. Daruk probably would have given this away more easily, since his shield employs Daruk's Protection, but I was shying from using Daruk on the big bosses, because he was severely under-leveled for playing this mission on "Very Hard".

Luckily, I brought the arrogant Rito with me, who does what he does best. Showing off and bragging about it. And again, you just have to spam your normal attacks while in the air to deal with the Igneo Talus...

Curiously, Revali handles the heat as well as any Goron, where fire attacks actually can harm them... Okay, this now finally confirms it, it's not canon. Move on, people! Gorons can swim in lava, but some Fire-breathing Lizalfos are a threat to them? That's gotta be a joke.

At the end you also get to try another Divine Beast with Daruk, so that's two out of four at this point. I wish that these missions were separate, so that you could quickly play them at any time, because playing the Death Mountain scenario actually took me over an hour... Of course you will be faster on repeat playthroughs, but it still would be nice to have a shortcut for the Divine Beast mini-missions.  Oh, you actually can select both the Divine Beast part and the normal battle separately on replaying. That's thoughtful and I have said nothing!

Controlling the thing didn't work as well as with Vah Ruta, however, because it would always put my reticle on the ground after using the magma rain attack with ZR. And pressing ZL to re-center didn't really work well... I almost died at the end against the Igneo Talus army, because I couldn't properly aim at them. But I suppose I'll have to turn off the motion controls next time and try aiming via stick.

However, it would be better if the Divine Beast had their own options for controls. Now every time I'm going to play with one of them I have to un-invert the camera controls, turn off motions controls and turn on the control help, because I like having them here on the HUD since every Divine Beast works slightly different.

And I hope that a Skyward Sword remaster on Switch will handle the motion controls a little bit better...

 

Preparations

The next mission will be the "Hylian Outpost", but the recommended level rose to 16... Okay, time for some side quests and grinding! And fusing weapons. Lots of fusing weapons.

I didn't notice this before, but one of my most wanted features from Hyrule Warriors made it into this game: locking weapons. This is quite important, so that you don't accidentally sell or fuse any of your best weapons. You can only lock five at a time, but that's only an issue with Link, who gets the most of everything in this Hyrule Warriors again. Three different weapon types (four if you count Boomerangs) with lots of different skins and all the different outfits, where so far none of the other playable characters seem to have any. But this might change later on.

Speaking of Link's weapons and locking them, I did get the Training Sword from my fresh Breath of the Wild save game, but these must be like the worst bonuses ever. I hope that no one out there actually pre-ordered the eShop version of this game just for Lucky Ladle. I suppose, these are nice to have, but ultimately they just clog your weapon space for now and Link runs out of weapon space quickly.

Once I make it to Hestu, I'll probably put all Korok Seeds into Link, until his inventory is maxed. If that's the way it works... Also, the weapons are consumables, so it's kind of weird to get a bonus item that could be lost forever at any time. So, hopefully the Training Sword and Lucky Ladle will become available on other means via an update or DLC later on. And I wonder whether you can get the Champion weapons back or not, if you happen to waste them....

I also tried some of my amiibo, where you can scan five per day for some rewards, exactly like in Hyrule Warriors. You'll get weapons for characters you already have. So, scanning Daruk only gave me materials at first. Some amiibo might also give you specific materials, where the Guardian will give you Ancient Screws and so on. But I have to experiment a little bit more here.

After recruiting all four Champions, you'll also have lots of side quests to go through, where many of them require "Trophies", which are certificates for slaying specific types of monsters. And with monsters I mean any monsters: Bokoblins, Keese, probably any enemy in the game...

And while this is a nice idea to have you focus on defeating many monsters and all kinds of monsters, it raises a very important question: who makes these? Like, is there someone always secretly following Link, Zelda, Impa and the Champions around to record any monster they've defeated? And are there like people in Hyrule who write and sign all these trophy deeds for every single monster that was slain?

"Oh, Link has defeated 3000 Bokoblins today again, this will mean after hours for all of us!"

It's funny to think about... What's not so funny are Link's training missions for the one- and two-handed weapons I got to play today. These are those typical "Defeat a couple hundred enemies in a couple of minutes!" missions, where in this case you have four and five minutes for 500 and 400 K.O.s respectively.

And... I suppose it's easy enough on "Normal" difficulty, where the cannon fodder dies quickly in one or two hits. But on "Very Hard", where everything takes at least two combos, it's super tough. Well, normally these missions aren't a problem on "Very Hard" either, because they have this mechanic, where everything gangs up on you towards the end. This makes it easy to score some cheap Special Attacks for the last 100 K.O.s or so.

But the Hylian Soldiers that you fight in these two missions were more like, "what, moving? I'll stay right over here, where I'm comfy." This way I came into the predicament that I had only 10 or 20 K.O.s left, but I couldn't do it, because the enemies were all scattered around the place... Ugh. I still managed to beat the two-handed weapon training with a couple of seconds left on the clock after a second try, but for the sword training I'll probably have to wait until I get a better sword for more damage. Maybe the Master Sword will do the trick. I guess, it's really my own fault, if I go into these missions with a Boko Bat and alike.

But at least the Challenges are actually challenging, so I'm not complaining. Except for the "Hair-Width Trials", where everything kills you on a single hit... That's like the one thing I didn't want for this game and I hate that Koei Tecmo couldn't resist adding this type of bullshit again. If at least it worked like the "All Attacks are Devastating!" missions, where you can also kill everything with one hit, but it doesn't – the enemies get to tank, so you have to defeat them "normally". The "Beginner" version only has you fight a bunch of Bokoblins, so I could do it on first try, but I dread any later challenges of this type. I bet they let you fight a Lynel or so without getting hit... In the least I'm playing "Don't Get Hit!" most of the time anyway, so I'm having some good practice.

Other Challenges are still quite easy, even on "Very Hard", where usually the time limit is quite forgiving and lets you explore the stage a little bit. And you might have to, because I found a Korok in one of the training missions... After the demo I assumed that Koroks would only appear in the main scenarios, but this doesn't appear to be the case. But it's these kind of assumptions that sometimes make me overlook one of the little tree guys. Like, when I was playing the demo, I wrongfully assumed that Koroks would not appear within keeps for some reason... And that's why I kept searching for one last Korok in the Breach of Demise mission for quite some time.

Anyway, one more reason to make my way to Hestu, where hopefully it then will show you what missions still have Koroks left in them...