Age of Calamity War Log, Entry 14

Current Progress

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Chapter: 7 (Completed)
  
• Battles: 20 / 20
  
• Challenges: 157 / 161
  
• Quests: 373 / 376
  
• Contribution Rate: 99%
• Map Completion:  98.74%

 

Warning: Major post-game spoilers incoming! Don't read, if you haven't fully completed the game yet!

Against Two

Last time I was only missing five Terrako parts, locked behind the Challenge "A Royal Investigation", where you have to defeat a bunch of Lynels on a timer with Zelda. My plan was to improve my Bow of Light with a Special-Attack Charge and to get some more levels on Zelda, which worked splendidly. Since you're fighting the Lynels inside outposts and there quite some enemies outside as well, you can make good use of Special Attacks here.

The real Challenge started afterwards, however, because once you're done with the three elemental Lynels, you have to fight two Malice Lynels inside the Temple of Time... at once. And with another timer, of course, because fighting two Lynels of the strongest kind at the same time isn't already challenging enough... I wasn't even able to beat "Taming the Savage Lynel" yet, but at least here you can use rods and have other enemies around to build up Specials, so it's a different story.

It's still easier said than done, so my strategy quickly turned into screaming in terror and running from the Lynels, first outside and then back into the Temple of Time. Curiously, this strategy worked like a charm, because on the way back one of the Malice Lynels got stuck, where he was busy blasting fireballs against the still sturdy walls of the citadel. So, this way I could take care of one of the Lynels without getting flanked for 20 hearts of damage by the other...

The Legend of Terrako

After Zelda had finally done her part, it was time to welcome back Terrako to the family. And the little Guardian won't just return as a companion for Link during the battles or as a nice distraction during loading screens, but as the next optional character who's playable:

And he's awesome, probably one of my favorite characters in the game. He's tiny and cute, but shouldn't be underestimated. Terrako's ZR "pew, pew" ability is really fun, especially once you've upgraded it for the full laser. But you can charge the laser at any time, like during combos, while you block and even while you're running, so it's extremely versatile.

Otherwise, he has one of the best Cryonis moves in the entire game, because he creates a large cage that can capture multiple enemies at once. When fighting two or more Moblins with spears or other enemies that like to charge at you, you often get into a situation where you might want to hit them all with a Cryonis attack, but it's difficult to pull off with most of them. Terrako makes it very easy, though.

His usage of Stasis, where he fires lots of blasts onto the enemy, is also a lot of fun. And overall he has a good kit, where the tornado can be quite useful. I also love how he turns his legs into a propeller to mimic one of the Guardian Skywatchers.

So, Terrako is amazing and his revival gets a nice cutscene, which is both funny and emotional, as well as an alternative version of the credits, which was designed in the same style as the loading screens. It's also reminiscent of the silhouette levels in Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, where there's a nice sunset background and everything in the foreground is black.

And look at this... Sooga is still alive...! I hope there will be a little DLC story that tells us what happened to him after we last saw him fighting against Astor. This guy needs to be a DLC fighter, badly.

Anyway, Terrako also gets a little upgrade on the loading screen, where you can bring out his blades with the Y button for even more interactions. Unlike the little hatch, which gets triggered by the X button, he still will move with the crowd if you swap between the two modes. But it's still a little awkward how the little guy came with blades included into him...

His weapon type are none of the Guardian Scout weapons, however, instead it's special Guardian parts, like screws, springs and gears. And despite having unlocked Terrako, there is still no signs of the ancient weapons and armor stuff that Robbie has created in Breath of the Wild 100 years later... Might be another thing for DLC, together with a playable version of Robbie.

 

Against Two, Again

After unlocking Terrako and doing his quests, there was mostly a series of tough Challenges left that revolved around fighting the four Blights in different ways. In "Blight Ganons Resurgent" you have to face them in a Shrine one after another, with a time limit of course.

"Harbingers of the Calamity" on the other hand was another Challenge, where you pick four characters and have each of them locked in a different outpost with one of the Blights inside. Sadly, it seems to be entirely random which character gets matched with what Blight, so you can't say that you want to fight Fireblight Ganon as Daruk and so on.

That's actually a really good match, because Daruk's protection keeps you safe and steadfast from those fire hair attacks. Makes you wonder how he could lose to Fireblight Ganon at all... Overall Daruk is a really good choice against the Blights, because you can simply shield and stay close to them, whenever they are doing their large area attacks.

This still might not help you with the next Challenge, however, called "Remnants of the Calamity". Here you go with two characters on the Great Plateau, where each of them is greeted by two of the Blights... at once.

And this is a pain, because whenever you're trying to hit one of the two Blights, the other will most likely hit you for some insane damage. It's especially troublesome that some of the Blights might teleport behind you, so you're suddenly surrounded and getting hit in the back. This is causing flashbacks of the "Boss Rush" Challenge Battle on the Rewards Map of the first Hyrule Warriors, which pitched you against multiple strong bosses at once and which was way too difficult on the Wii U at first...

There is some grass around for Fire Rod boosts, but it won't help you out as much and on first glance it seems like this is another Challenge that couldn't possibly be done on "Very Hard". However, there is one thing suspiciously absent from this one: a time limit! And by now this is extremely curious, because Koei Tecmo puts a timer on nearly everything, even when they throw multiple boss enemies at you at once. If you can't do it fast enough, it doesn't count – that's their motto.

Now, if you keep this in mind, as well as the large terrain around you, it allows you to cheese this Challenge like no other. And my strategy was the same as when I faced two Malice Lynels with Zelda before: run for your life and hope for the best.

This does work, though, because in this battle they've paired one Blight who likes to teleport a lot with one who doesn't – Waterblight with Windblight Ganon, as well as Thunderblight with Fireblight Ganon. This way it's actually more likely that the "faster" Blight will keep following you, while other will return to his starting position after a little while.

I had some good success with this method by going up to the hill, where the old cabin resides. And once the Blights are separated, it's a very easy and straightforward task...

After "mastering" this battle, the only Challenge that was still left was "Taming the Savage Lynel" (which already came up in Entry 12), another two for one battle against Lynels. But with a timer, no items and no way to run. So, there is no real way of cheesing this, or is there?

Well, Daruk says "hi". Just hold the shield button and you're fine, because Daruk's Protection keeps you safe and steadfast here as well. The only exception are the large Lynel blasts, in this case you should get out of range or use a Special Attack, if you have one ready. I used some food to help out with this...

Of course just playing defensively won't help you much with a timer breathing down your neck, so I've been busy leveling Daruk and building a decent weapon for the guy by playing a lot of Blood Moon scenarios, so he does the right amount of damage.

During the battle you'll have to show a lot of patience. The best time to strike is whenever one of the two Lynels uses his swirling attack that can be countered with Stasis, because it will freeze the other Lynel for a short while as well. The Bomb Rune attacks are also really good to work with, because you will briefly be invulnerable during Bomb usage. Just not when using Daruk's ZR blasts afterwards, so you have to be really careful with those.

Ideally, you will wear down both Lynels at the same rate, so when you defeat one of them, you can quickly take out the other afterwards and then can fight the Malice Lynel normally for a quicker victory.

Afterwards it unlocks "Hold the Line" at the Korok Forest, where you have to defend two strongholds with two characters, while taking out four Hinox in all corners of the map. This one feels overwhelming at first, because the game keeps sending Moblins in regular intervals to your bases... However, they come from the outposts, where the Hinox reside, and once you take out one of the Hinox, the respective Moblin will stop respawning.

Here it's a good idea to focus on freeing one keep from regular attacks first, which I did with the one to the north. Then you can defend the other keep, while going for the remaining Hinox without going back and forth. Well, mostly, because it will also summon two Lynels in between, which you better fight before they make it to your strongholds.

Beating this Challenge gave me my last five missing Korok Seeds as a reward, so I could finally get another apple usage, as well filling the second weapon page for every character. Link and Zelda even have a third page, because the Master Sword and Bow of Light created orphan slots, since these are fixed weapons.

I also expected a follow-up quest for the Korok Mask, but this wasn't the case and this armor item doesn't seem to be part of the game yet, just like the Ancient Armor...

Charging Calamity

There was also a series of new Challenge all around Hyrule Castle, which were all uncharacteristically quick, nice and easy this late in the game. "Mysterious Arrivals" has you fight all four Champion Hollows at once, followed by Hollow Link. But since the Hollows all die very quickly, this can be done in under a minute with the right character, which makes this one of the shortest Challenges in the entire game. You're not getting much out of it, though, maybe one good weapon, but this might be good for leveling.

Additionally, you get two Challenges that let you fight Astor and Harbinger Ganon individually, which is ideal for practicing these two bosses. And you might want to do this a little bit for what comes next...

Clearing absolutely all available Challenges at this point in the game will unlock "Versus Calamity Ganon", where you fight the final boss of Age of Calamity in a Challenge for the first time. This naturally has a time limit and before you get to Calamity Ganon, you need to beat Astor and Harbinger Ganon first... And you need to hurry here, because Calamity Ganon tanks like the tankiest tank in the entire game.

However, the fight takes place within Fort Hateno, where it rains. Unlike in Breath of the Wild, where bad weather is mostly a nuisance, rain is your best friend in Age of Calamity, because it super-charges your Lightning Rod all the time. In addition there are water puddles around to super-charge your Ice Rod...

Calamity Ganon is completely steadfast, so even a weak-point smash won't blow him away like any other enemy in the game. But you can use this to your advantage whenever he's parked above a water puddle. You can effectively unleash all your Ice Rod and Lightning Rod rounds one after another on him for ten easy weak-point smashes. Which still wasn't enough to finish the guy on "Very Hard", by the way, but it will buy you enough time.

Now, beating this Challenge will unlock something special and I will put this in a spoiler box just for extra spoiler safety...

You unlock Mother Brain Salamy Canon Calamity Ganon as the last playable character in the game...! Okay... What the actual f***?

Well, to be honest, I should have seen this coming, because I looked at the leaked map icons from the demo back in early November... But I was completely dismissive of this leak, because it was just a bunch of map icons and I didn't believe that all these characters would be really playable, because it was too good to be true. In case of Ganon it also didn't really make much sense. Why he would join a roster primarily made out of good guys...?

And it still doesn't make much sense. The gallery states that he is sealed now by Link and Zelda, which could pseudo-explain why he's suddenly out there slaying Moblins and Guardians for the good cause, all while spreading his malice. But it's still extremely weird...

Well, in the least it's equally funny, if you put him in the right situations:

I'm also not much of a fan of this new design, where this isn't really the Calamity Ganon from Breath of the Wild, but a humanoid version that was born from fusing two of Koei Tecmo's original characters, which they have created for this game.

But I suppose, as the final bonus character they really wanted to do something special and it doesn't get any more special than that. It's also a very fitting endgame reward. And like with Maz Koshia, it doesn't necessarily have to make much sense from a story perspective, where the Master Monk decided to help out the heroes, but still kept important information a secret. Or how the Great Fairies fight, but can't really heal anyone during battle...

It's still a very different beast from other bonus characters, however, where I personally feel that Calamity Ganon would have been best saved for some villain DLC, together with the Blights, Astor and Harbinger Ganon, where it would make more sense to play as the guy...

Anyway, he has the same weapon type as Terrako, just with a pink sugar coating, since he was born from Harbinger Ganon in this timeline, the Terrako infused with Malice. It seems like Koei Tecmo wanted to create these two final characters as the polar opposite of each other, mainly in size, but I feel like this should have been Harbinger Ganon's weapons if it were to become playable as DLC. But that might not be in Koei Tecmo's plans...

But at least this explains how the Hylian Blacksmith Guild could survive near Hyrule Castle for all this time... Calamity Ganon is a regular customer!

"Hey, Ganon! What's up? Need some more sugar on your gears? Sure, that'll be 500 Rupees... Errrh, I meant 200 Rupees, loyal customer discount, of course. Haha."

Maybe Ganon also likes to shop at the Mabe Village Ranch?

The moveset itself is interesting, where it uses combos based on the attacks of the different Blights. These will spread Malice all around you, which you can absorb with ZR to charge your malice meter. Once filled you will enter Malice Mode, where each attack will be a combo and reduce weak-point gauges.

He is quite large, though, which makes him very vulnerable if you're surrounded, similar to the Great Fairies. I tried the "Mysterious Arrivals" Challenge with him and quickly died without a real chance, while it's no problem with normal sized characters...

It's still fun to go on a rampage and replay the story scenarios with Calamity Ganon. You can effectively defeat Calamity Ganon as Calamity Ganon. It's Calamity-Ception.

And with a total of 18 playable characters and three additional movesets, Age of Calamity has now even surpassed the total number of movesets in the first Hyrule Warriors on Wii U without any updates or DLC, which was 20 that stemmed from 13 fighters and seven additional weapon types. Plus, there are the four Divine Beasts as well. So, this is overall really impressive

Almost Done

I only have one Quest open at this point to finally get that Hyrule Warriors outfit for Link. It's curiously a 10% discount for West Hyrule, but it costs four Ethereal Stones, which you get from clearing Challenges, one per Challenge. I have four more Challenges left open as well, where this should be all that's left in the game. The final push:

• The Fiercest of Foes (Lv. 76)
• The Heart of the Calamity (Lv. 77)
• The Siege of Fort Hateno (Lv. 78)
• Unnatural Disaster (Lv. 80)

I still will leave these open for a while, because I want to focus on character building for a bit, before I fully finish the game. Plus, it really might be needed to push my characters to their limits with some of these.