Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 13

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 7 (Completed)
  
• Battles: 20
  
• Challenges: 143
• Quests: 341
• Contribution Rate: 90%
• Map Completion:  90.12%
  

Endgame spoilers incoming! Don't keep reading, if you haven't beaten the main story yet!

Malice Castle

Here we go. It was time to revisit Hyrule Castle to finally face Calamity Ganon. And I'm not sure I like what he has done with the place. The "malice" has spread significantly, where it covers the castle in a much greater rate than even 100 years later in Breath of the Wild.

Of course Ganon was sealed for most of that time and here he probably had a couple of days more to spread his goo. Another explanation would be that he grew much more hateful in this timeline, mainly because the heroes became much more powerful. In German the "malice" was even translated as "wrath", where this makes kind of sense. His wrath has truly grown here.

While it shares some areas with the previous Hyrule Castle stage, the visuals are entirely different. Also, some of the paths that you could previously take are cut off, while you can now explore other areas. So, like the Hyrule Castle Town battlefield before, it feels very different from its predecessor.

But other than the walls of malice, the castle seemed less threatening than in Breath of the Wild, mainly because they weren't as many strong monsters present. If Astor weren't there to summon the four Blights yet another time, you'd only have to face a couple of Guardians and a Stalnox, really. The only Malice Lynel you get to fight during the story already died at the front entrance.

So, while his malice grew, Ganon has seemingly lost a good part of his army, which again makes sense, but still felt somewhat underwhelming at this point. It's like Ganon was saving all his fiercest monsters to anger you during Challenges instead, where he certainly got his priorities wrong.

Well, luckily for Ganon, at least Astor is there to do the job and he gets a beating for it... From absolutely everyone!

This was quite the hilarious scene and I don't think this is supposed to happen. Most of your allies are actually waiting outside of the keep, while you fight against Astor inside. But I managed to blast him away to where the others were and then they all started targeting him at once, following him back inside for some comical brawl. He was covered in so many special effects all at once, I couldn't even see the guy any more.

But this is something that I really enjoyed in this mission: everyone was here. Well, everyone except for the two bonus fighters, but if you pick them for the scenario, there should be everyone present, joining the battle. And this was quite the satisfying sight.

 

Of Guardians and Ganons

We also get to finally meet Astor's buddy, called "Harbinger Ganon", who turns out to be the little Guardian from this timeline, which has been taken over by Calamity Ganon's Malice from the future. And the transformation was certainly quite disturbing. Similar to the "pendant" from Zelda's mother, which turned out to be a Guardian Shield, you could have seen it coming that the little Guardian is basically a modified Guardian Scout, so it comes with the weaponry and all.

But Harbinger Ganon seems to be another boss character, like Sooga and Astor, who isn't playable (yet). He gets added to the gallery as another NPC together with Astor after this scenario, but I'd say that Astor, Harbinger Ganon, and the four Blights could all become playable characters in a DLC villain campaign.

However, the game might already have Harbinger Ganon's counterpart ready as a playable character: the cute, little Guardian itself, who now gets corrupted by the malice and you have to fight him as Link for an emotional battle, where afterwards his name gets revealed from Zelda's early childhood memories: Terrako.

And I have to agree with King Rhoam here: this is no toy for a child! No matter how cute it might seem, this thing has sharp blades built inside... Better be sorry than not safe.

Now, the moment Terrako turned basically into a Guardian Scout, my mind was screaming "another playable character". This is the way Hyrule Warriors handles its playable cast. You wouldn't get to play as any Guardian, it has to be a special Guardian with a name, unique design and everything, so this makes perfect sense. Similar to how Sooga wouldn't be just any Yiga Blademaster if he were playable. Or if they were to add a playable Lynel, it would be a unique Lynel. (Called "Lionel", with an eye-patch or something.)

But right here and now you have to trash the possessed, little thing, which is super sad, and in one last attempt of helping the heroes it goes full self destruct into Calamity Ganon, who has transformed into a copy of Mother Brain in this timeline...

I'm not sure which mutation of Calamity Ganon I like more (or less), but everyone fighting Calamity Ganon together with the different themes of Age Calamity in the background was certainly great. I enjoyed this a lot, even though the battle itself felt somewhat underwhelming as well.

After the Calamity Is Before the Calamity

I was looking forward to beating this game for a while now, mainly because I wanted the adventurous map music back, "Overlooking Hyrule", from the beginning of the game. I was kind of sick of the Calamity version, but it looks like I will have to get used to it...

While there is now a new version of "Overlooking Hyrule", which is very calm, peaceful and maybe a little bit sad, the game also introduces the new Blood Moon mechanic, where it plays the Calamity theme again. While I like that you still both versions somehow, the Blood Moon appears so frequently that you're rarely get to listen to the other theme. Well, at least Link is humming the main theme from time to time.

Now, what does the Blood Moon do, really? One randomly selected story scenario will have a Blood Moon icon instead of the regular one, where it basically just raises the recommended level. During the battle it also adds the Blood Moon filter, so you can experience all of the battlefields with these different visuals.

This is nice, if you want to replay some of the scenarios and get more experience points, as well as a visually different experience. It's perfect for hunting down some remaining Korok Seeds or treasure chest, though in my case I've already got every one of those, so the Blood Moon missions are really just another way of grinding.

However, you won't get better loot, from what it seems. So, the collected weaponry will still be low-tier garbage if you're playing an early scenario.

This also would have been a good opportunity to introduce golden enemies by increasing the tiers of all the enemies that come in the five standard colors, just like Master Mode in Breath of the Wild. But it seems like this is another thing they'll be saving for DLC.

Alternate Attire

Beating the game also finally lets you change the attire for Zelda and the four Champions. This is something I was hoping for and it's always great when the game delivers and satisfies your expectations. You can even play with Zelda's winter clothes from now on, which is quite lovely.

Her blue princess dress isn't available, however, at least not yet. Maybe you can still unlock it somewhere later. As for the Champions, the only one where the original outfit might look better is Urbosa, where she wears the black skirt and her crown. Revali's old scarf looks good, too, but Mipha and Daruk just look weird without their Champions garments.

Meanwhile Link's armor collection has grown to three pages, where there were a couple of new Challenges that unlock an entire set for him. You get the Gerudo Vai set from a funny "Vai Contest" Challenge, as well as the entire Radiant Armor set from Challenge in the jungle. And you can even already get the entire Hero of the Wild set from a Challenge about fighting Hyrule's greatest heroes, which curiously includes Kohga and a surprise at the end.

You can also finally complete the Zora Armor for Link at this point with another Challenge for Mipha. Here I'm a little bit disappointed that there wasn't much story about Mipha's feelings for Link. In fact this has been covered even more briefly than in Breath of the Wild...

Otherwise, the only armor pieces from Breath of the Wild that I couldn't locate yet are the Old Shirt, the Well-Worn Trousers, Korok Mask, the Ancient Armor set and the Divine Beast helmets. I suppose, the Ancient Armor stuff will be available in the real final step of the game, but I'm not there yet (see below).

Likewise, it would be funny, if the first two armor pieces that you can find in Breath of the Wild are among the last pieces in Age of Calamity. And the Korok Mask might be another reward for collecting all Koroks...

This isn't counting any armor pieces from other (Zelda) games and Nintendo franchises, like the Nintendo Switch Shirt, the Salvager set from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, or stuff like the Fierce Deity set, Ravio's Hood, Midna's Helmet and so on. Though, the Zelda fan service items would be perfect for some (free) 35th Anniversary DLC.

R.I.P. – Rest In Parts

Facing new Challenges, collecting more armor pieces and playing Blood Moon scenarios is all nice, but not the main aspect of the post-game in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Instead it's main focus is all about bringing back the little Guardian guy, Terrako, by collecting new parts for him.

This is some truly great motive for a post-game. After the heart-breaking finale of the game, where you had to fight the little guy to save Zelda and it then sacrificed itself to save everyone, of course you would want to repair Terrako. And even if you weren't emotionally impacted by any of it, you'd do it for getting him back on the loading screen alone, which are super boring without controlling the little robot.

And the game makes it seem easy at first with a couple of Quests, where you can quickly gather over half of the needed parts already... The rest is locked behind a series of new Challenges, where everyone has to contribute, so the characters are always restricted to specific ones. Link and the other Champions, Zelda, Impa, King Rhoam, and even Kohga – they all have to do their part in this, which is quite nice and gives you a reason to play with a majority of the cast.

Most of these missions focus on capturing outposts with a time limit, where there are always stronger enemies waiting within the outposts, like Guardians or Lynels. However, if you can't do it in time, there is always the possibility to push or lure the strong enemy outside of the outposts, so that the weak outpost captain appears. If you then defeat that Bokoblins or Lizalfos, you won't have to beat the strong enemy any longer... And I made good use of this when things got close...

A quite interesting Challenge is called "Hunting Partners", where Revali and Hestu have to chase after a Bokoblin through the Lost Woods. All you have to do is defeat the Bokoblins, but every outpost on your way will have its gates closed behind the Bokoblin and you need to defeat some stronger Moblins first.

When we played this in co-op, we finished this mission so quickly that we didn't even have to fight the three Black Moblins in the center. Of course in my "Very Hard" play-through things didn't go as well, where in the end you have to chase the guy through a path plastered with Guardian towers. And I was like eating one apple after another to not die there...

But otherwise things were going quite well. The Challenges were all tough, but doable. And I was getting close to re-assembling Terrako with only five parts missing that can all be gotten from one final Challenge for Zelda, "A Royal Investigation". It's very fitting that Zelda is the one to collect the last parts, but the mission itself was a huge blow in the gut. The game was effectively just saying "nope" and all my hopes for getting back Terrako were crushed by another over-the-top Challenge, which simply wasn't balanced well.

You have to capture outposts defended by three Lynels of the three different elements within a strict time limit. It's just one of these very unreasonable Challenges yet again, where it would have been a lot more reasonable if the Lynels were replaced with Guardians. And since I'm not really as good with Zelda, I didn't even manage to beat the second Lynel, before the time ran out... Everything in the game was telling me that I wouldn't be able to do this, that little Terrako would be lost forever.

So, I just gave up and closed the game, where thus this blog series finally comes to an end. I had a really nice time with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, where I consider it to be better than the first Hyrule Warriors in almost every aspect. Except for keeping me motivated, so thanks for reading, everyone!

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No, of course I'm not giving up... But I surely will have some work to do here if I don't want to lower the difficulty now after coming this far. While Zelda used to be one of my favorite characters in the early game, I haven't played her as much ever since Chapter 2 and also haven't made any real use of her awakened moveset yet. And because of this I went into the mission with my strongest Sheikah Slate, which was a mistake.

Now, I'm currently working on leveling Zelda, while practicing her second moveset and building her Bow of Light with the Special Attack rate increased. Since you're fighting these Lynels in outposts full of Bokoblins, using lots and lots of Special Attacks might be the key to victory here. Special Attacks will freeze the timer for their duration and do good damage.

And of course I can also resort to the method mentioned above, where I simply lure the Lynels out of the outposts and then capture them normally. However, this should only work with the last one, unless I want to fight two Lynels at once...

But I'm slowly preparing for this Challenge, where Zelda has already become my highest leveled character so far. Replaying the different scenarios during the Blood Moon really helps here. If you reach Level 77 with a character, you also get the final Heart Container, if you've done all the Quests so far, for a total of 30 hearts. (Correction: there are even more Heart Containers going forward, adding a third line.) Of course Zelda will be severely over-leveled for this Challenge, which has its recommended level at 61, but I'm taking no chances here.

Now, will my powered-up Zelda succeed? Will she overcome this final hardship to bring back her beloved childhood toy? Find out in the next entry!