Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 6

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 5
  
• Battles: 13
  
• Challenges: 58
• Quests: 149
• Contribution Rate: 39%

 

Last time I've expressed my frustration about playing on "Very Hard" difficulty, mostly because of devilish double bosses or time limits, in worst case scenarios both. But the game has been really good to me, where yesterday had some great moments and was making some good progress, so I'm still sticking with the highest difficulty.

There is still this sick time limit fetish going on for the Challenges, where by now every new Challenge seems to get one, but at least I've finally managed to beat "Echoing Footsteps" after various attempts. With Mipha, of course, because she tends to be really good at large bosses, but the Lynel still required some excessive rod spamming at the end.

This unlocked yet another time limited Challenge against a single Molduga, which will be awesome to farm Molduga parts later on, but only when I'm actually able to do it within this time limit. This boss stalls forever, so of course Koei Tecmo had to slap a time limit on it...

There is also a new Challenge at the Lanayru Wetlands called "A Feast for Wizzrobes", where you get to fight a lot of Wizzrobes all at once. At first I was really excited about this, because so far there hasn't been a Challenge to quickly refill all of your elemental rods, but this one comes with a ten minute time limit and this may be cutting things close, depending on the character, because you need to defeat 17 Wizzrobes in total and they swarm you. With Zelda it was quite difficult...

Instead of this nonsense, there should have been an early Challenge in the game with three Wizzrobes, one of each type, to refill your rods and many crates to refill your apples as well... I wouldn't mind as much grinding for refills, if at least it was efficient. But ideally, there would be a service to refill these things, if it really isn't supposed to be happening automatically. Broken record, I know...

At least you also unlock one more rod usage after this Challenge, which will be extremely helpful with time limits going forward. So, that's something.

 

Anyway, I also got to try some of Zelda's new combos, which get unlocked by quests around this point in the game. One of them has her unearth a mine cart, which she uses to ride around for a bit. This is hilarious and I love moves like this. 

What I noticed during all these Challenges is that the two songs "Hold the Line" and "Battle of Liberation" are basically what "Under Siege" and "Kumite" used to be in the first Hyrule Warriors, which means they get used in Challenge battles all the time or whenever the developers didn't know what other music to use. At least they sound a lot more melodic and epic than a certain five second jingle on a loop. But they also sound so similar that I first thought this is one and the same song...

But overall the music in this game is excellent, where I can't really complain much. Especially the themes for the Champions Daruk and Revali are amazing and they are causing earworms all the time.

Also, the game now shows a completion rate at the center of the map now. And you'll get Link's outfit from Hyrule Warriors with the blue scarf as a reward for 100%, which is pretty awesome.

The Ancient Trial

When I first thought about a potential follow-up to Hyrule Warriors, I mainly wanted two characters from Breath of the Wild, other than the Champions: Hestu and Monk Maz Koshia. The latter felt more like a pipe dream, so to see the Master Monk make an appearance in this game as what could potentially be a playable character after all had me very excited. So, this had priority over anything else in the game.

And unlike the bonus character before him, you don't have to jump through a ton of hoops to get this guy to join you. Do three material collecting side quests and then face him mano a mano. No big "Final Trial" or whatever. 100 years earlier all you need are some gemstones and Lynel Trophies to prove yourself worthy.

Maz Koshia: "In the name of the Goddess Hylia, I offer you this trial!"

Me: "What? No puzzle?"

But... there is a catch. Can you guess it? That's right, a time limit! Of course there is... Because beating Maz Koshia isn't good enough, you have to do it fast. Very fast, even, because you only get three minutes here, which isn't a whole lot. I'd assume this is even quite difficult when playing on "Hard" or even "Normal", so things didn't look good on "Very Hard".

Imagine Breath of the Wild doing any of this... Of course in Master Mode you still have to be somewhat fast, because the enemies regenerate to a certain point. But imagine doing one of the trials on a timer... It wasn't necessary, because the combat itself was always very good and for the most part challenging. And while Age of Calamity certainly has some of this combat goodness, Koei Tecmo screwed up badly here if they felt the need to add a time limit to almost all combat challenges to make them actually challenging. Fighting the guy on his own isn't really hard. You have to be careful to not be hit by some of his crazy moves, but once you've figured the patterns out, it's an easy win. Well, it would be, if it weren't for the time limit...

But I really wanted Maz Koshia and waiting until later was not an option, so I've sent my best man to do the job, Revali, the Chosen Hero. I fused together the best bow that I could at the time and fed him all the damage boosting meals I had and prayed to Hylia that this would be enough. Revali's arrows can wear down all the strongest foes, even if they don't show their weak points. But of course he also spammed rods like crazy during the last minute... for a photo finish.

 

I'm not exaggerating here, as you can see, I've beaten Maz Koshia with only one second left on the clock. Luckily, the timer pauses during weak point attacks, much like with Special Attacks, or otherwise it would have run out in that moment. And this was on my second try... On the first try it actually ran out like one second before I could press "X" to perform the final weak point smash. But at least I knew that I could potentially do it, so I tried again right away.

This was another one of those extremely close calls on "Very Hard", but at least it counted. I even expected the game to show me the middle finger again by spawning three more Maz Koshias and telling me to beat them all in four minutes or so. It's what this game sometimes does to troll you...

But this victory counted for one of the most rewarding moments yet, because it gives you the next optional character and a fun one, too. You can summon ancient relics with your combos, like the spiked balls or one of the energy cells, and if you destroy them, you gain symbols similar to Impa.

Here the symbols let you grow large for a moment and slam your foes with a giant hammer, one of those that are used for the "mini golf" trials. This is an extremely good crowd clearing move. In addition you can summon an entire Sheikah Shrine wherever you are, which is quite hilarious, but can also get in the way.

It's easily one of my favorite characters so far in the game and I enjoy playing as Maz a lot, but this is not exactly what I expected from his moveset. His original boss fight in Breath of the Wild was heavily focused on him using ancient weapons, mainly a Guardian Sword, and creating many clones. Of course, Impa got the clone feature for her combat and Link will most likely get all the ancient weapons, so things had to be shared...

In the least Maz Koshia uses Guardian weapons, mainly the spear, and there are some moves where you attack with multiple clones. But you also get two entire combos about creating those spiked balls, which is something that I would have expected from a moveset for Master Kohga instead.

(Speaking of Kohga, there are two new time limited challenges at the Yiga Clan Hideout that feature the guy... I haven't tried them yet and something tells I don't want to anytime soon, unless they unlock the guy as a playable character, but that would be lame and not make any sense. Why would he join the good guys? Because he's sick of being beaten by them? If he joins, there must be a real good reason to make it not appear out of place...)

Anyway, what's interesting about bonus characters like Maz Koshia is that this is essentially how DLC characters could work in the game. You get some quests and challenge missions to unlock them, then you get their training mission and various quests to upgrade them. I can already get three Special Attack gauges for Maz Koshia, while Link still only has one.

Unlike the characters in Hyrule Warriors, you don't have Pieces of Hearts or weapon unlocks for them tied to specific missions or challenges. You get better weapons for them by playing later missions with them, where I already got a better tier for Maz Koshia, but not for the other bonus character, where I only dared to use it in early missions...

But this way Koei Tecmo could potentially sell characters on their own again, without most of the downsides that the DLC characters had on Hyrule Warriors for Wii U, where they've felt totally lackluster without any real unlockables. Here all you need is simply some more icons on the map and some small stories in text for them, done. This means they could keep adding more characters to Age of Calamity, without the need of any major expansions, like the Adventure Maps from the first game.

One downside still is there... If you're already finished with the game, then there is no point in unlocking any bonus characters except for the fun of trying them. So, unless you're going to start the game all over again, you might not find any use for them.

And these characters naturally won't have any story impact. I mean you would expect Maz Koshia to give them important information, like the fact that there is still another Divine Beast in the earth, but he is just there to support you in battle. Or not, if you just put him on the sidelines.

amiibo Awakening

So, I was scanning my amiibo yesterday in the hopes of getting maybe another bow for Revali, but I got this special bow instead:

 

Yay, Zelda has finally awoken her powers! We can beat Calamity Ganon now! Everything will be fine! And all it took was one figurine blessed by the Goddess Hylia herself!

Now that's what I call a spoiler. Well, it's not really, because Nintendo has shown her second moveset already in the launch trailer and this was to be expected to be part of the game anyway. But if you go into this game completely uninformed, this might come as a surprise.

This must be a bug, because so far I haven't gotten anything yet that I wasn't supposed to have. But it's kind of funny, because it let me play as the awakened Zelda already, while she still had her default clothes from the beginning of the game. I don't want to talk too much about this moveset yet, because I'm not supposed to have it at this point, but I can tell you that it's quite the shining light...

It did make the two upcoming battles unintentionally funny, though, because the story was all about how Zelda has yet to awake her powers, while she essentially already had them as a weapon... (The game still equips her with the Sheikah Slate, though.)

"What do you mean, King Rhoam? She has her powers now! Look, she can even fire light arrows! What else do you want...?"

 

Calamity Now

There wasn't actually that much side quest stuff to do between the major battles by now, except for all the time limited and/or Yiga stuff that I chose to ignore, so I've made some good progress yesterday in continuing the story. But this was also because the next two battles were unexpectedly nice, especially compared to the hardships from all the missions since the end of chapter 2.

And with a title like "When Courage Fails", I fully expected the mission to spam Lynels at me until I give up, but it was just mostly Moblins and Zelda was never really in any danger, since your AI allies are made out of steel. So, I could take my time and explore the Damel Forest for some Koroks without worrying too much.

 

The atmosphere with the rain storm during the night was pretty nice, so when I played the mission for the first time I still felt quite uneasy about what could be happening next. And while some bad things happened, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I really thought that this would be where the shit is finally hitting the fan.

It does hit the fan in the next mission, where you still are at Hyrule Castle, before Zelda goes to the Spring of Wisdom, and the Calamity already strikes early. Surprise, mother fuckers!

This was completely unexpected and it was pretty awesome to experience the outbreak of the Calamity at first hand, where Hyrule Castle was suddenly filled with Black Bokoblins and Moblins, as well as various corrupted Guardians.

 

Later on it would even throw the first white enemies at you with a nice contrast to the dark castle interior, which was very well designed and quite close to the original from Breath of the Wild. My old sense of orientation for this castle still worked here, where it even had some of the same Korok hiding spots. And it's awesome how this game makes good use of battlefields with multiple levels. This is a huge upgrade over the flat battlefields that the first game had. It's a little bit weird how they escaped the castle with a secret passage leading to the docks, but then went all the way up again, though...

But it was a completely linear mission and you could just go at it step by step. One horde of Bokoblins at a time, one Moblin at a time and one Guardian at a time. The only exception to this was a battle, where you face two Guardians at once, but with the Master Sword these things are complete pushovers, even on the hardest difficulty. I almost feel sorry for these guys, because they instantly lose all their limbs on a Special Attack and then just sit there, nearly helpless. It's a shame that the Master Sword doesn't do its "BAM, BAM" sound here any longer, but at least it always depletes the weak point gauge whenever hitting an enemy with malice, which makes the Guardians even more vulnerable.

Well, I also had a lot of practice reflecting the Guardian beams while playing the demo, where I've even defeated the Guardian at the Breach of Demise on first encounter just by doing this. It took forever, but I was curious about what would be happening, where it simply skips to the final cutscene of the chapter and it unlocks Zelda with the Sheikah Slate without any real explanation. And doing this was good practice, which now paid off, because a reflected beam now deals a good amount of damage, just like in Breath of Wild.

But because of all of this, I didn't feel threatened or overwhelmed like in some of the earlier missions. I even went all the way back at the end to defeat six of the additional Guardians that have showed up, because I could. A part of the map with two Guardians was still walled off, though, so I couldn't get them all. It's like the Eldin Cave mission in Hyrule Warriors, where it pretends that you're in pursuit of danger, but you can just go back and defeat those Lizalfos easily without a worry in the world.

 

It also helped that Hyrule Castle was filled with grates full of healing items. King Rhoam must really love his apples and I thank him for it. Much more useful than bananas, at least in this game. And it made sure that I could keep those sword beams up.

I'm not even complaining. I love this mission, where it's probably one of my favorite missions so far and I had a blast blasting through Hyrule Castle in this thrilling scenario. But it probably could have been somewhat more threatening, given the situation...

And I'm not sure I like the story aspect of it all. I was actually convinced that this mission had the primary purpose of adding King Rhoam to your roster, since the goal was to rescue him. What's the point of altering the story like this, if not for some new gameplay possibilities? And how awesome would it have been to play as him at the end, smashing Guardians with the Royal Claymore of his? But instead it seems like he meets his demise there, just like he did in Breath of the Wild, while you have to run away with Zelda, similar to the original timeline.

But you also don't get that infamous moment of desperation. You are experiencing one version of the events, but it's a very different one. Instead of shedding tears in Link's arms, Zelda sheds tears on the Guardian buddy, who as a reaction creates this beaming pillar of hope, which changes everything for some reason.

"We can still fix this!"

And somehow I feel cheated out of what was supposed to happen. I personally would have liked it, if they first failed like they originally did, but only then you get some more time travel magic to change everything. Part of me now hopes that there really will be a villain campaign, where you play as Astor to prevent the good guys from preventing the Calamity. To fix the timeline.

I can already see the evil loading screen with him at the front, followed by the corrupted Guardian, Kohga, Sooga and the four Blights. (I love that you can control the Guardian with L, R, B and X by the way. That's such a good feature and never gets old.)

By the way, we never got to see Hyrule Castle Town in its full glory. That's one missed opportunity, if I ever saw one... And going this route, the game won't feature Zelda's journey to the Spring of Wisdom, which could have been used for another nice defense mission, uniting all the Champions one last time before it all goes down. Instead, the mission is now to save the Champions from the Divine Beasts... Let's see how this goes. Those missions don't look inviting, that's for sure.

 

PS: You can actually see Robbie's first wife in one of the cutscenes here, who is also a merchant at the Akkala stable. She's named Cheria, where Robbie later named Cherry after her.