Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 11

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 7
  
• Battles: 18
  
• Challenges: 116
• Quests: 271
• Contribution Rate: 72%

 

The End is the Beginning

It was finally time to advance to where it all began: the Great Plateau. This is where you took your first steps in the grand adventure of Breath of the Wild. It's one of the best video game tutorial areas ever made. It's a place so rich of ambient storytelling that it paints a picture of its history in ruins. And now you finally return there to explore how it all supposedly looked like 100 years before...

And it's quite impressive at first. The most interesting part is certainly the ascent and main gate that connects the Great Plateau with the rest of Hyrule. In the timeline of Breath of the Wild this got barricaded and flooded, so the plateau was fully disconnected. But in Age of Calamity there was no need to do this (yet), so you can look at the whole thing the way it was supposed to be.

If you find the time... It's another rescue mission and unlike your main allies, which normally don't take any damage, the Hylian Soldiers are in actual danger and you have to hurry. This had me frustrated a little bit, because I just wanted to explore the place, but you have to keep moving to get to those screaming soldiers and save them.

Only at the very end of the scenario, where a bunch of monsters are advancing on the Allied Stronghold, you can take your time, curiously. Nothing will really happen then or you can simply leave the one Silver Moblin, where only Master Kohga will be endlessly busy with fighting, just to be safe. But this is the moment where you can look around in "peace".

So, with all the nearly dead soldiers in need of rescue, this was another mission for Mipha, but I couldn't help it and also sent shirtless Link on the way for some true early Breath of the Wild feeling. Sadly, you don't have the Old Shirt and Well-Worn Trousers in this game, at least not yet, so I couldn't accurately match the look.

The freshly awoken Zelda had to come as well, of course. She must fulfill her duty and all. Though, I didn't use her much throughout the battle.

And otherwise I had to bring Maz Koshia, because this is basically his home turf. For a moment there I even thought that our heroes might have learned about the fifth Divine Beast and this will be the reason why you're going to the Great Plateau, but nope, it's just another rescue mission.

Overall I was somewhat disappointed that the mission goals were quite similar to the scenario at Fort Hateno and Akkala before: rescue a bunch of soldiers and then fight all the monsters coming out of nowhere. This scenario even used the same music as the one in Akkala... It's an awesome music track, so I didn't really mind, but I still can't help but feel that things are getting a little bit repetitive.

Up to the beginning of the fifth Chapter, where the Calamity strikes, each scenario was heavily distinct with music, mission goals and everything. Except maybe the fact that you had to fight Sooga over and over and over again. But otherwise it was all rich of variety... Now it's all "rescue allies here", "rescue allies there" and "oh no, where did the Hinox suddenly come from?"

The one thing that made this mission more unique was the teleportation aspect, but this was silly to begin with. It's already quite discomforting how narrow certain parts of the map were, where it just feels so constricted compared to the freedom you had in Breath of the Wild. But that our heroes can't even get past a fallen tree blocking the road is just absolutely ridiculous.

You can easily fell trees with everyone on the battlefield, but this one is a little bit too thick, eh? If only we had some guy with a large axe in our team... then this wouldn't have been a problem. Too bad. And it also seems Link's ability to climb almost everywhere 100 years later is literally the game changer that saved Hyrule. No wonder that everyone died when they can't even move past a tree.

Anyway, once you got past this "obstacle" and have saved everyone, you can now start exploring. And it's truly something else...

I get that Koei Tecmo couldn't easily replicate everything in their Warriors engine, where it's impressive how close the game looks to Breath of the Wild often enough, but standing on that infamous cliff didn't really do it for me here. Also, like earlier in the game, the scale of everything seems somewhat smaller here, which is especially notable in the Temple of Time.

It's still really cool to explore the fortifications and buildings before they got destroyed, where it looks completely different in certain areas. Other areas feel like they were directly copied over from Breath of the Wild, however, especially around the Woodcutter's House. I've always imagined how this is a place that the Old Man has build for himself over the century, even though this might not make sense, but it was already there 100 years ago and hasn't changed.

Maybe he has build this house as a hobby back then? It looks a bit silly to have this measly house next to all those impressive cathedrals. The jump from poverty to nobility is almost instant on the Great Plateau, which takes us to...

 

The Hermit King

Like the previous scenario, this one ends with the addition of yet another playable character and probably the last one: King Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule. So, he survived and meeting him again in the Temple of Time on the Great Plateau was the most fitting place, since this is also where you got introduced to the King in Breath of the Wild.

I love the twist with the ancient artifact, which Zelda still had from her mother and then gave to her father. While I wondered what it could be, I never gave this any real thought. So, the reveal that this was Guardian Shield all along was really surprising, while in hindsight it also was something that you totally could have seen coming – and maybe you did. But that's what makes this twist so great and satisfying.

And since he was saved by Zelda's interest in ancient technology after all, he finally apologized to his daughter for a heart-warming scene.

King Rhoam: "I'm sorry for the kind of parenting that would cause a narcissistic personality disorder in the best of us."

Zelda: "But you love me, daddy!"

Ugh... Good thing the Yiga were there for some comic relief. It's funny how in these scenes, where the Yiga show the most emotion of all people, you always only see Kohga and normal Yiga, but not the badass Blademasters. Wouldn't befit them, hehe.

I really love the company of these guys, though I personally wouldn't have trusted them with R2D2 there. I'd watch my back with those Yiga around me all the time, since they may double-cross you... Of course Kohga has sincere motivations to join your cause, but you never know.

Anyway, King Rhoam instantly demonstrates his amazing skill right at the beginning of this scene by already having rebuild all those benches and candle stands in the Temple of Time, which got destroyed in the battle just minutes ago. That's some true carpenter skills, where Mutoh and Bolson could only learn from the guy.

Gotta fell that tree!

And it's so cool what they did with the playable character. When considering new fighters for the next Hyrule Warriors game, it was either "Old Man" or "King Rhoam", but here you get effectively both in one, where you can switch from proletariat to aristocracy with the press of a single button. This is probably my favorite ZR ability in the entire game.

Switching between the two makes for a difference in speed and power, where the hermit is faster, but the king is more powerful, which is an interesting trade. The moveset itself is pretty basic, though. The combos are for the most part just stylish spin attacks, no crazy summons or whatever, but I like that. Not every character has to be completely over-the-top and King Rhoam really shows who's boss in all of Hyrule.

Gotta fell that tree!

I also love the default pose, where he holds his claymore / axe above the head like an executioner who's about to behead someone. It makes for some hilarious scenes in combination with other characters.

Challenging Challenges

Last time I finally managed to clear all Challenges and Quests before going into the next main scenario and I want to keep up with that. And for the most part this was perfectly doable.

Both Yunobo and Teba got some new Challenges at this point, where these are two characters I rarely ever play. Overall it feels like the Champion descendants were only really there for the fan service and helping out a tiny bit with rescuing the Champions. Afterwards they hardly played a role in the main story, where only Sidon got to shine by piloting Vah Ruta in Mipha's stead.

And even with Sidon they could have done much more. For example his younger self is effectively vanished from the game by now, where it would have been interesting to see adult Sidon meet young Sidon...

Otherwise it unlocked the "Expert" variant of  the "Hair-Width Trial", which gave me an excuse to finally play some Revali again. When it's about safely doing damage from a distance, he's still your best guy. Too bad the battle takes place inside the close quarters of Akkala Citadel, where Revali's ability doesn't really work well. In hindsight, Master Sword Link probably would have been the best choice, because you're guaranteed to have the Sword Beams during the entire mission.

And you have to fight three Silver Moblins at once in the beginning (or the end, depending on the route you take, but I jumped down). I still did it and it was quite hilarious how Revali then died to a single Keese after this overcoming this intense hardship. Luckily, the game offers a "Retry" function at this point and you can get back into the battle right after defeating all those Moblins. Otherwise this could have turned out to be really frustrating...

I really disliked the "Don't Get Hit!" scenarios in the Adventure Mode of Hyrule Warriors, because for the most part there was no room for error, if you wanted that A-rank, at least on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. And you had to start over then... While the "Hair-Width Trials" in Age of Calamity give you an instant defeat instead of the fallback to a quarter heart, they are still much more manageable, because they are shorter and you get the checkpoints.

And just when I finished this thought, the game unlocked the "Expert+" variant, which had me eat my words from almost a month ago, when I first played this type of Challenge at the Breach of Demise:

"I bet they let you fight a Lynel or so without getting hit..."

Cool, I won that bet. For better or worse, this game keeps doing what I expect it to do. And it even threw a Hinox on top, how nice.... But then I realized that it's an Ice Hinox and a Fire Lynel. "Okay, gg, ez." Of course the strategy here is to unload your Fire Rod on the Ice Hinox and your Ice Rod on the Fire Lynel for some safe weak point attacks. So, in the end the hardest part was not getting hit by archers or those annoying Octoroks, which I already hated before, but even more now.

Too bad that I didn't see that this Challenge also has a hidden Korok... I'm starting to hate this game, really... I keep missing whenever Challenges have a Korok, because the icon is so subtle, and since only every 20th Challenge or so has one, you don't really think about them, especially not with a difficult mission like this one. And missing this Korok basically nullified my victory here, because I'll have to do it all over again.

The remaining Challenges all revolved defending Akkala, where for "Defend Akkala Citadel" I protected the base as the King, while his new Royal Guard, Link, went for the outposts. I love that the game has this outfit as well, which originally used to be DLC for Breath of the Wild. I'm still missing the pants, like with many of the outfits, but that's not an issue. Who needs pants, right?

And in this game the outfits don't make a difference in defense, so you can just wear whatever you want in battle, without any downsides. The DLC armor pieces in Breath of the Wild can't be upgraded by the Great Fairies, so you would only wear the Royal Guard uniform if you either wanted a challenge or were relatively safe.

Anyway, when Link finished his new job, the game celebrated my victory with "The Allied Stronghold was kept safe", while it was swarming with Malice Guardians at the time... Yeah. Sure. I kept it safe. Totally...

Moving on to probably the toughest of the new Challenges, "The Guardians Counterattack". Here you get 20 minutes to defeat a dozen Guardians of all the different types, which sounds perfectly doable... Except that the Guardians are now pack animals and the game keeps regularly spawning Guardian Scouts to add to the madness. To make things even harder, the only Bokoblins you get are always near the Guardians, so you can't just easily fill up your Special Gauges.

Oof... I suppose, this is what Link must have felt at Fort Hateno in the original timeline. Taking down a single Guardian is easy enough, maybe even two of them, but if you're getting swarmed by them and they all start firing their lasers split seconds apart from each other, it's impending doom.

So, what did I do here? First of all, I went for some food that boosts your Special gauges. There is one where you get some orbs with Special boosts for every KO. And others just increase the rate of filling your Special meter slightly, but better than nothing.

Then I brought Mipha, because she makes everything easy. Originally, I was going with Urbosa instead, because she is the only character next to Link who is able to deflect the Guardian beams with a shield. But this didn't turn out to be as useful as I hoped. And who needs to deflect Guardian beams when the Guardians can't even fire at you, because they are too busy being juggled by water fountains? That's right, not Mipha...!

She then had to rush from the bottom area to the top to save the others with her three filled Special meters, because they aren't able to take down Guardians as easily, but I finished the Challenge and that's what counts.

By now I've also fully completed all scenarios in the first four chapters with all treasure chests and Korok Seeds. And I can only repeat myself here how it's a blast to revisit these battles that previously gave me nightmares. The best example was the Yiga Clan hideout, where you had to fight Kohga and Sooga at once, which I only survived with a quarter heart on both fighters...

Now two stomps of Maz Koshia do the trick and I feel insanely powerful. But it's this feeling that makes me glad that I went with "Very Hard" from the get-go, because it really lets me appreciate how much stronger you become during the game.

PS: R.I.P. Sooga. Last time I didn't notice that he was added to the gallery, right below Robbie and Purah, to what's essentially the list of important non-playable characters. And I also got the Windcleaver weapon now for Link, so it wasn't for Sooga after all, though it made sense for the guy. Too bad, too bad. But yeah, there is always DLC...