Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 5

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 4
• Battles: 11
  
• Challenges: 51
• Quests: 116
• Contribution Rate: 31%
  

Koroks in the Wild

After the last battle in Akkala, I've finally unlocked the ability to see which missions still have Koroks in them. But it turned that I've been quite thorough, where only four main missions had some of them missing. There was one waiting right at the beginning of the Tabantha Frontier mission, where I sent Hestu personally to do visit his friend.

In addition, I was missing two Koroks at Death Mountain and Hyrule Outpost each, so I replayed these missions as well. In the latter I even found an entire new part of the town, which I previously didn't explore and where the two Koroks resided. But most of them are still waiting at Korok Forest, where I accidentally triggered the boss battle at the end, before I got to fully explore the Lost Woods. So, I'll have to do this one more time at least, but I'm saving this for later, much like the crazy time limit death run at Crenel Peak, which has three Koroks left in total.

Otherwise I found everything on my first try, which is a little bit disappointing. When I first played the demo, it took me multiple runs to find all Koroks in the Hyrule Field level. But that battlefield is so large and has so many optional parts, like the Lon Lon Ranch, that it takes quite some time to explore it all. The only other battlefield that was so extensive was Gerudo Desert and to some extent Hyrule Outpost, but otherwise the battlefields tend to be much more narrow with a corridor design. Literally, in the upcoming battle at the Yiga Clan Hideout...

And I don't like this development. Breath of the Wild was all about the large, open landscapes and you don't get a whole lot of this in Age of Calamity. It also makes fighting much more troublesome, if you don't have the necessary space. And it makes finding all the Koroks way too easy, because there aren't many possibilities for them to hide.

Scary Fairy

Next was a rather curious side quest... The Great Fairy Trials, where you have to collect a bunch of Rupees by defeating enemies and bring them to the Great Fairy waiting at the end. And reaching the end for the first time was quite the shocker, I have to say. (Please skip this part, if you haven't done any of this yet.)

For a moment there I thought that this game would do something nice, but no, you suddenly have a Great Fairy moving around in her plant pool and hitting you for massive damage. This was easily one of the scariest moments for me in the entire Zelda series.

It's up there with meeting my first Redead in the Royal Tomb in Ocarina of Time over 20 years ago, where naive, young me thought that the spooky looking figure might be a ghost of the royal family that just wants to talk. Well, it wasn't and this spooked me so hard that I was afraid of going near these things for the rest of the game...

 

Here it might not be as scary, it's super silly actually, but Age of Calamity tricks you into thinking that a reward awaits you, when it fact you have to face yet another tough enemy. Kind of like Maz Koshia in the Champions' Ballad. Good thing that I went back exploring all of the level to refill my health, once the time limit was over, just in case... And if you go through these troubles four times in total, one for each of the Great Fairies in Breath of the Wild, you will unlock what's effectively a secret character for this game.

When I first thought about the possibility, I was kind of skeptical with various questions in my mind. Will only Cotera be playable, but not her sisters? Will we see the rest of her body? What will her weapon type even be? Well, the game had answers for all of these questions in very creative ways, I must say, though the "Dazzling Bangles" weapon seems a little out there.

And yes, this is hilarious for the first time, but easily the worst addition to the roster so far. The Great Fairies are a living hitbox, where you really have to be careful with enemies around you. It was similar for the Great Fairy in Hyrule Warriors, but there each of her combos gave her invulnerability, almost as if her entire moveset was made out of Special Attacks.

But this isn't the case for the Great Fairies here and what they get instead is a shield, but this can only be summoned by one of the four, it seems. And without it you have to make good use of their other ZR attacks to stay clean of mooks, while any stronger foe can quickly stun-lock you with their attacks for some reason. This is by far the hardest character to play as (so far), while it probably shouldn't be.

But there you are, playing as the might Great Fairies who are trying to heal themselves with a couple of apples, because Hestu slammed them with his Maracas. It's up there with Vah Rudania when it comes to total failures in this game... How come that a young Zora lady can heal herself and others in battle, but not the Great Fairies?  They usually only have one job in Zelda games: healing you.

Their usage of the Bomb Rune is hilarious, though, I love it. It reminds me a little bit of Manhandla's seed attacks, only with bombs. I also love how Malanya shows up for a finisher. This is such a great detail, as usual. And imagine using this character for the final battle and kissing Calamity Ganon to death...

Well, since this is only a bonus character, there probably shouldn't be any more exclusive Challenges for the Great Fairies beyond their training battle. This way I can just invest even more Rupees in them to level them with the proper fighters and leave them be for now. So, I don't have to play as this character, if it just doesn't work out for me.

The great vulnerability of the Great Fairies also shows how quickly you can take a ton of damage by projectiles and alike, because you don't get any (or very few) invulnerability frames. This is a big issue with archer groups and especially a team of spitting Fire Lizalfos. If all their arrows or fire balls hit you, you will lose a heart (or more) for each of them. And you can quickly get killed by any multi-hit attacks.

 

Time Limits, Time Limits Everywhere

Another issue with the Great Fairy Trials was that all except one had you face a strict time limit. And I'm getting so sick of this, because it's often just not balanced properly for the "Very Hard" difficulty. I'm going at Challenges here with a recommended level in the 20s, while my characters have arrived in the 40s, and I often have to cut it very close or can't do it at all.

And it's simply not fun in a game, where 90% of the boss combat revolves around being defensive and patient, reacting to the attacks of your enemies. The only way to safely and actively expose your enemies' weak point gauges are Special Attacks and your elemental rods. But all of these come in limited supply, so for the rest of the battle you have to wait for your enemy to do what you want them to do.

I get some better results with certain fighters, especially Mipha and Revali, where by now Mipha is known as the Giant Slayer, not just the Molduga Slayer. Her Bomb Rune really is the bomb and her persisting water combos help quite a lot.

And with certain Challenges they get it right. The first Coliseum battle, which for some reason used the inside of a Sheikah Shrine instead of the Coliseum, seemed fair enough. Or there was another Challenge at the Hyrule Outpost, where you have to conquer some outposts and defeat a Lynel for the last one. You get like 12 minutes for this and that's also fair. But then you have missions like "Echoing Footsteps", where you have to defeat three strong Moblins and a Lynel in four minutes, which simply can't be done, if said Lynel takes six or more weak point attacks to be killed.

That mission would be totally cool without the time limit anyway. You have to face three strong bosses in a row. Why does it need these artificial time limits in addition? It's like someone at Koei Tecmo doesn't know how to make actual challenges, so they just put a time limit on everything and then don't test it against all difficulties. If it takes twice as long to defeat certain enemies, you need twice as much time...

Killing the Yiga to Death

This whole part of the game had a plot hole as large as Hinox. Purah sells you the Sheikah Towers as this amazing tool that lets them finally find the Yiga Clan Hideout... How was that even a secret? There seem to be hundreds of Yiga and you're telling me that none of the Gerudo ever made their way into the mountains to check out the environment? You could probably smell all those bananas from far in the desert...

Anyway, this mission lets you finally try Vah Naboris and I like the thing. It was my favorite Divine Beast gameplay so far next to Vah Medoh. For some reason the reticle for controlling the lighting strikes has inverted controls by default, but since my camera controls are inverted in the options, it negated that and I could control the reticle with the stick like you would expect right away. The motion controls don't do you any favors here, but you also don't need them, because you don't need to aim precisely. It's all about sweeping the areas with lightning.

Vah Naboris even gets the same shield as Vah Ruta, so you're mostly safe. The Sheikah must have really been drunk when they've designed Vah Rudania. Or maybe it was their first prototype of a Divine Beast and they hadn't come up with the shielding technology yet... I don't know, but it certainly sucks for Daruk. Good thing he's such a sturdy guy.

Now, after this fun part, I went into the mission with Impa and Urbosa, because I felt like these two have the largest score to settle with the Yiga Clan. And it made sense to sneak through the Yiga base as a ninja. However, I probably shouldn't have chosen the characters based on story, but on combat, because I should have known what awaited me at the end...

Well, the Yiga Clan Hideout battlefield was actually quite excellent. It had the original part that you already knew from Breath of the Wild, but it got also greatly expanded in a way that made sense. This way this turned almost into a proper dungeon, where it feels like a missed opportunity for Breath of the Wild, really. Having a real dungeon there instead of the simple stealth mission could have been a lot of fun.

So, I like what they've done with the place, but I don't like that I can't heal with all those bananas around me. Why does my team only eat apples? What's wrong with bananas? Plus, I've made another mistake by not refilling my rods before going into this mission, thinking in overconfidence, "nah, it will be fine".

Usually, you always get some Wizzrobes or find ammo in chests, but it was all bananas. There were only two elemental Moblins, but they don't give you that much. And again, this was poor decision making on my part, because I should have known what awaited me at the end...

That freaking Sooga... After defeating him in the previous battle, I was actually hoping that he was gone for good and I only had to take care of some Yiga Blademasters and Master Kohga at the end. But nope, I enter a chamber and get sword beamed right in the face by that persistent prick. And when I finally got to fight Kohga, I kept thinking, "Sooga is coming back, isn't he? He will be showing up in the middle of the battle, right?" 

Yup, he did. Of course. Well, in the least the game doesn't throw the Double Kohga on you in addition and it had the mercy of letting Sooga respawn with only half his health, but fighting against the two at once is still such a mess that you have to be super lucky. You can't react to both of their crazy "use the right Rune" attacks. One of the two will hit you, unless you can use Stasis.

Sadly, the new upgraded Sheikah Slate Runes, about which I was super excited at first, don't really feel that much faster with their cooldowns. I bet it's just something miniscule, like 5% faster, since this game really likes its single digit percentage values.

Anyway, you need the Yiga foes always at the same spot to do anything, because otherwise the other guy will "kill you to death" from where you don't see it. The battle was such a disaster that I ended it on a quarter heart yet again. With both Impa and Urbosa – they both were on the verge of dying and one more mistake would have resulted in a defeat...

It's a good thing that your AI controlled allies don't take damage (or only very rarely) or else this battle would have been lost for sure. And by now I don't even feel joy about such close victories anymore, because it's getting to be the norm and that's taking it too far. There are two things ruining the combat in this game and these things are:

1. Unrealistic and unnecessary time limits
2. Strong enemies hitting from off screen while you fight another

I'm honestly considering to lower the difficulty down to "Hard" and just enjoy myself breezing through the rest of the game, like I did with Hyrule Warriors, but so far I liked the challenge more often than not and if all fails I can always keep leveling. Let's see...

It also seems that now I can unlock a secret character about whom I'm a lot more excited about, because like Hestu it's someone I wanted for a new Hyrule Warriors long before Age of Calamity was announced. But I bet these trials will involve the words "time" and "limited" right next to each other once more.

And I really want those villains to be playable. Kohga, Sooga, Astor, the four Blights, all of them. Switching to a villain campaign, like Hyrule Warriors did, could really work well in this game, so let me be the Sooga for a change.