Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 12

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 7
  
• Battles: 19
  
• Challenges: 127
• Quests: 286
• Contribution Rate: 76%

The End is the Beginning, Part 2

To the castle! This is the second time in the game, where we're revisiting a battlefield after the Calamity. But while the Akkala Citadel was primarily a visual change, here you get to fully explore Hyrule Castle Town and the battlefield was even named after it. So, it's technically a different battlefield from the Hyrule Field in the beginning of the game, but they share some of the environments, mainly the large field and the areas to the west and east of this field.

There are some inconsistencies between the two battlefields, though. The biggest one is probably around Mabe Village with the Lon Lon Ranch imitation. In the Hyrule Field map this looked remarkably similar to the original from Ocarina of Time with its buildings:

Now, after the Calamity it looks like this:

Okay, what happened here? Did the Guardians and monsters destroy the original building, but then King Rhoam jumped in with his crazy carpenter skills and quickly built a replacement house? I would believe it! It's important that they keep selling their Courser Bee Honey, after all...

But of course the most interesting part of the battlefield is the town, where you finally get to explore it, before it was destroyed completely. It did take quite a lot of damage already, but unlike in Breath of the Wild there are still some buildings standing. In flames...

I would pay good money for a Zelda game that let's me explore this town before the Calamity. Maybe the sequel to Breath of the Wild will have something in store here? From what's left here, it looks quite nice and it would be amazing to experience both this and Hyrule Castle during times of peace with actual people. Of course this is nothing I would have expected from a Hyrule Warriors game, so this setting here is fine, but in the least a cutscene within Hyrule Castle Town prior to its destruction would have been nice nonetheless.

 

The Blood Moon Rises... For the First Time

While writing this series, I've always wanted to make a Blood Moon joke somewhere, how all the tough enemies I've barely defeated would just come back. But look who's laughing now... I love that they made this a mechanic for one of the scenarios, but the execution was somewhat flawed.

First of all, Zelda seemed to be well informed about this event. So, this didn't come as a major surprise and she knew that this could be happening. But why are they attacking Hyrule Castle at a time like this, then? Why not wait for the next day, where they wouldn't have to beat monsters twice?

A good explanation would have been that they knew that the Blood Moon was coming and that they had to weaken Ganon before he can revive his entire army or something. Because in this scenario the Blood Moon only revived a couple of enemies, but not all of them. Imagine if all the Guardians came back as well. Or what about the 30.000 enemies slain by Vah Naboris just the other day?

Anyway, you have to defeat a couple of new Malice enemies at this point: a Malice Igneo Talus, a Malice Frost Talus, a Malice Hinox. And there is a Malice Lynel waiting for you at the end. So, are there any combinations of the elements and Malice possible? Could there be like a Malice Electric Lynel as well? Oh, the nightmares...

If they really wanted an upgrade for the Hinox, they could have started with a Silver Hinox, which for some reason was just not a thing in Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity could have made up for it. I'm still disappointed that the Master Trials DLC didn't introduce this, because it made so much sense.

And still no sign of golden enemies yet... I suppose they'll keep them for even later, but maybe they'll already appear in the next story scenario. Or they'll keep them for DLC, but right now I don't think I would want some kind of "Master Mode", so I hope they'll show up in some post game stuff.

As for the new Malice boss enemies, you have to defeat them and their Moblin friends to make it to lower a barrier at first, but they will be revived by the Blood Moon. You have to defeat them a second time, but in this process they might be revived another time... and I'm not sure how this mechanic works yet. Maybe the second revival is a scripted one time event or it's bound to a timer, which would be much worse.

But right now I'm playing each new story scenario in co-op first and then alone in my "Very Hard" run afterwards. This gives me the advantage that I already know what's going to happen, so I can prepare accordingly. Bring the right characters or do things in a way that normally wouldn't occur to me, which might prevent me from a frustrating restart.

In this scenario you are not allowed to use Mipha or any of the other Divine Beast pilots, so slaying boss enemies again and again isn't something that I could easily afford. But my strategy was simple: weaken all of the enemies, so that one final weak point blow will take care of them and then quickly finish them all one after another by switching between the characters. This at least saved me from the trouble of having to defeat the Malice bosses a third time.

To the Castle not just yet...

Hyrule Castle awaits and the preview looks quite frightening, so of course it's time for some sidequests. However, the game only unlocks two new Challenges at this point, which was the lowest amount so far. Not that I mind... I've done my fair share of Challenges already.

Oh, well... of course it's not that easy and the developers were trolling here again. Beating one Challenge unlocks three more, which goes on for a total of at least a dozen new Challenges. Also, one of the two Challenges, "Hunting for Gemstones", introduces a nice new restriction called "No Carried Items". With this in place you won't be able to eat apples or use any rods, so have fun.

In this particular Challenge, where you have to beat a bunch of Taluses / Tali, it's not really needed if you use a character, who can easily damage an Igneo Talus without climbing on it.

For the most part the new Challenges were quite nice. One example is "Gerudo Fury", where you have to defeat a series of elemental monsters as Urbosa and Riju, but there is no time limit and the game even lets you fight within one of the hot springs of Death Mountain. How considerate!

Another fun Challenge puts Sidon against an army of Octoroks, which can be super deadly if you're not careful on "Very Hard", since every hit costs you about one or two hearts. So, the safest strategy was to play baseball with bombs to take them out from a distance...

Mhhh... this reminds me of something... Playing baseball with Octoroks...? Where have I seen this before? Well, I must be imagining things, so let's move on...

Nah, I'm just kidding, of course this is with all certainty a reference to the Octoball Derby mini-game in A Link Between Worlds. Except that the Octoball Derby didn't throw a Lynel at you at the end.

A new trend with Challenges also seems to be picking the right character for the right slot, where a good example would be "Elemental Uproar". Here you have three separate areas, each one featuring Moblins and a boss for one of the three elements. Coincidentally, I put Mipha against an Igneo Talus, Daruk against an Ice Hinox and Revali against an Electric Lynel, which was overall a good fit, except maybe the latter.

Another example is the "Reclaim the Land" scenario on the Great Plateau, where you have to conquer four outposts with different boss enemies with four different characters. Of course you can still swap characters in between, but this will cost time. 

About Daruk, I've really learned to appreciate Daruk's Protecion. Not only does blocking here protect you from all sides, so you can't be hit in the back, it also makes you immune against elemental effects or anything that might break your shield. Whenever you block and get hit by a strong elemental attack with other characters, they will tumble and can't do anything for a while. This usually makes fighting the elemental Hinox, especially an Electric Hinox, a lot more difficult. But Daruk is absolutely steadfast, so you can simply stand close and retaliate, whenever they do their thunderous body slams.

What seems to be a common theme around this part of the game with the Challenges are the Champions and their descendants. There is a whole series of scenarios, where each Champion fights together with their new comrade, like the "Gerudo Fury" scenario, which  I've mentioned above.

And here I have to say how much more I like playing as the original Champions in each case. Sidon and Yunobo are quite alright, where I'm really liking the latter now that he has his cannon move unlocked. That one is super satisfying to use. But Mipha and Daruk are among my absolute favorite characters in this game to play as, so they are no real match.

Teba and Riju on the other hand are simply not that easy to use, especially Teba. Riju is mostly fine, but she is heavily focused on crowd pleasing, so I struggle a bit with her against officers and bosses. I wouldn't want to fight a bunch of Lynels with her, for example. But Teba is just absolutely erratic and I have no idea how to use him properly and safely, except for loading his ZR ability while blocking. But this is like the slowest way of killing any enemy in the game.

Now, it's almost like the game could smell my resentment of the new generation, which is why it introduces the "Generational Conflict" Challenge as the culmination of all those Champion-focused missions. Here you have to face each of the Champions using their respective descendant, all in separate, isolated outposts. With a time limit of course...

This sounds tough at first, but this turns out to be a funny, little story, where the Champions go easy on their successors and give up after a single weak point blow. Well, all except one... Of course Revali's pride wouldn't allow himself to lose on purpose and he gives Teba a hard time. So, the whole Challenge was basically just about fighting Revali as Teba, which was challenging on its own right, because as I already said, Teba is my least favorite of the bunch.

Off to the last Challenge that was left, "Taming the Savage Lynel", I finally hit the end of the road here... The game dares to do what even Breath of the Wild wouldn't put on you:

Fighting two Lynels at once! The only way to do this in Breath of the Wild was luring one Lynel into the other at the Tabantha Tundra, if I'm not mistaken, but even that wasn't so easily done, since they like to stay in their territory. In Age of Calamity they might chase you all over the map, so you could achieve this earlier if you really wanted to..

Now, fighting two Lynels at once alone is already challenging on its own right, but of course this had to be the next Challenge using the "No Carried Items" restriction on top of a time limit. So, you can't heal, you can't play too defensively and you can't easily stun both Lynels at once with the rods. It's a nightmare... and I haven't felt as overwhelmed since "In the Clutches of Yiga".

Well, I gave this up for now, but I think I can do it with Daruk, once he's a little bit stronger. As mentioned earlier, Daruk's Protection is a great tool to stay safe. However, if you play it too safe, it's hard to do enough damage in time, so I'm also considering bringing back Revali for this one.

 

128

In any case, the double Lynel whammy was my 128th Challenge in the game, which is an important number, because that's the same amount of battles as the first Adventure Map in Hyrule Warriors had. The original Hyrule Warriors on Wii U without any DLC or updates had 13 playable characters, 14 different battlefields, 18 story scenarios and 128 battles in Adventure Mode, where Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity has already surpassed all these numbers for a truly extensive Warriors game. (Edit: Actually, it was 133 battles in Adventure Mode, because I forgot to count the Rewards Map, but Age of Calamity does top this number as well.)

The only thing of which the first Hyrule Warriors had more were different movesets, but as I said in an earlier post, I prefer having more characters with a single moveset over getting another Link or Lana, who had way more than they needed.

And while the quantity is already better, the quality is overall better as well. Yes, the mission goals are often similar, where it's all about defeating certain enemies or taking outposts within a time limit. But the Challenges all tend to use different parts of the main battlefields, usually doing quite different things with them. And certain Challenges are highly unique, where they often even have a small story to them, which makes them so much more charming than the motley scenarios in Adventure Mode, where it was just all thrown together somehow without much thought.

So, kudos to Koei Tecmo and Nintendo for all the efforts that went into making this excellent Warriors game.

All the Koroks... For Now

Since I wasn't fully successful with the Challenges this time, I decided to at least collect all the Koroks up to this point, where now I've gotten all Korok Seeds (and treasure chests) in the story scenarios, as well as all the Koroks found in Challenges.

The latter are extremely rare, where there are only ten so far in nine Challenges. It's so rare that I often miss it whenever the Challenge shows one, which they do before you've even beaten the battle, but the icon is so subtle that I usually don't even notice it before going into the battle.

Which was true for "Hair-Width Trial: Expert+", one of the nastiest Challenges so far. And the Korok was hidden in an Octorok hole... But I was able to beat this one time, so I can do it again, where this time I at least made good use of the Master Sword, which does tremendously well in these "Don't get hit!" missions.

Overall, I feel like the Challenges should have had a lot more Koroks, at least one in each Challenge with a larger terrain. It often feels like a missed opportunity and this way you would always look for them while playing the Challenges, instead of missing the few rare ones.

As for the story scenarios, I revisited the "Water and Fire" and "Air and Lightning" battles for the first time since I've rushed through them originally. In the latter I didn't even get a single chest or Korok, even though lots of them are actually right at the wayside. This is how focused I was on rushing from one target to the next to have enough time to beat the enemies.

Well, but now that my characters have grown, I was able to take my sweet time, look around, even conquer the outposts on the way and so on. And do some silly stuff, like following my joke from last time and actually enter Vah Medoh as Hestu to help out Revali and Teba. Imagine Revali's face when silly Maracas guy comes in to save his proud butt...

Now, the last missing Korok was on the Great Plateau, which finally was another stage where you get to explore a lot outside the scope of the mission goals. I wish the game had more battlefields like this, where there is just a lot to discover.

So, if I haven't miscounted, I have found a total of 121 Korok Seeds so far, not counting any Korok Seeds that you get as rewards from Challenges or Quests. And I'm ready for more.

I suppose, now it's time to finally go the castle...