Well, here we go again... It feels really weird to return to this game for more content after four and a half months. At the end of January I had 100% completed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity in terms of Quests and Challenges, where only some grinding was left to do and (luckily) I decided against it in favor of some other Nintendo Switch games, mainly Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
I was also quite burnt out on the title, since I had forced myself through the "Very Hard" difficulty from start to finish. It was just fierce boss battles after fierce boss battles with time limits over and over again, where this Hyrule Warriors severely lacks some fun mission variety. And sadly, the first DLC doesn't really change anything about this, except for using time limits much more sparingly. So, going into the Expansion Pass felt really exhausting and somewhat overwhelming at first, because it removed the achievement of being done, without offering anything that's truly different from all the Challenges before.
But the gameplay is still great and after warming up for a little, it started to be fun again. The DLC is also very well put together, where it certainly helps that it's all sold as a bundle this time. You don't just get new weapons and characters out of nowhere, you have to earn them, where all of this integrates into the game very well via the Royal Ancient Lab.
You do Research Quests, unlock new tasks and new things on the main map, you go do those and then back into the lab to grab the rewards. Rinse and Repeat. It's a nice cycle and also shouldn't interfere with the main game as much, should you (re)start now, at least not as much as giving you a completely overpowered sword for free right at the beginning of the game, which is what the Expansion Pass bonus did... Come to think of it, both the Prototype Ancient Short Sword and the Prototype Ancient Gear probably should have been rewards in the Royal Ancient Lab, instead of being these things that you get out of nowhere.
While there is the new "Apocalyptic" difficulty now, I've decided to stay on "Very Hard" and keep that nonsense for later. It doesn't seem to be special, just another stat increase, where replaying the entire game in that difficulty might be extremely boring and not even make any difference for the early missions. I would have liked to have the gold tier enemies from Breath of the Wild here for an interesting change, but this way this feels like the most unnecessary addition of the DLC, since the "Very Hard" difficulty was already tough enough.
Expansion Pass Progress
- Difficulty: Very Hard
- EX Research Quests: 27 / 35
- EX Quests: 12
- EX Challenges: 8
Good New Weapons
Anyway... by now I've unlocked all variants of the Flail and the Master Cycle and got all their combos, so I can talk a little bit about those additions. Well, they are very fun, both in their own way. With the Flail it's interesting to experiment what the weapon grab will do, though it often turns out to be quite slow, and the Master Cycle is the Master Cycle.
That bike was my favorite thing about the Expansion Pass for Breath of the Wild, as well as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and its version in Age of Calamity does not disappoint. First of all, it's nice that Zelda gets to ride it this time, where this fits her character in this game very well. The attacks are absolutely crazy and it's more of a crowd pleaser, but that was to be expected.
Its ZR ability lets you go really faster for a change, which is very unusual, because they normally keep the speeds of the characters always the same. You couldn't go faster with Epona in Hyrule Warriors either, but the Master Cycle finally delivers, where it's fun to speed over the battlefields with Zelda.
It's also of note that Zelda gets yet another set of Sheikah Slate Rune abilities with the Master Cycle, unlike Link, who has the same abilities with all four of his weapon types. With the Master Cycle the craziest one is by far Cryonis, where you can just keep driving over a street made out of ice blocks. In order to unlock the Master Cycle you also have to do freeze 60 enemies with Cryonis for one of the Research Quests. If you want to get this done quickly, take Yunobo into the "Mastering Cryonis" Challenge, where his gigantic ice pedestal will freeze dozens of enemies at once in the water and you can easily clear this in one go here.
Otherwise I love the Special Attack of the Master Cycle, where Zelda fuels it with a Star Fragment in order to make it shoot a laser like the other Divine Beasts. Also, you can't put Zelda's dress on while you're on the bike, but that's okay. I wonder how the game handles this during the part where you're normally stuck with the dress...
Both the Flail and the Master Cycle come in three variants, where unlike other weapons they all have the same tier and attack stats, but instead they change the C1, where this is quite similar for both weapon types. The default version lets you do a forward moving attack, while you can also have a shield (Fortified Flail / Master Cycle Sentinel) or an aiming attack (Ancient Bladed Flail / Master Cycle Hunter). The shield is probably the most useful, because it can reflect Guardian beams, which is something only few characters could do so far. But I personally like the default variants the best.
This was also a little bit confusing at first and not well explained by the game. When I got the other Flail variants, I merged the default one into one of them without realizing that they had different attacks, so I had to purchase the normal Flail again. At least you can do that, which is more than what you can say about the three purchase bonus weapons. (And with that there are also more than five weapons for Link that you want to keep locked, but this is still limited to five...)
And if you want to build good weapons for the Flail and Master Cycle, you theoretically have to do it three times over to cover all options, which seems somewhat excessive. But I appreciate the fact that Koei Tecmo wanted to do something special with these DLC weapons.
Bad Old Weapons
Now, when finishing up the game back January, there was the question whether I would continue to grind for best weapons or not. I did it for a few characters, mainly the ones I liked playing the best, and then stopped, where this turned out to be a good decision by now. Why? Well, the potential maximum base attack values for all randomly obtainable weapons has been raised and there is still no way to increase this value manually, so this made all the best weapons you had so far suddenly inferior to what you can get now.
There are certainly a lot of players out there who have already invested a lot of time and effort into building "perfect" weapons, where I can feel their pain now, but luckily I don't have to share it to the same extent. Well, at least you can fuse already existing Level 30 weapon for a massive XP boost, but all the good seals on them will be gone, except for one. Getting weapons to the new Level 50 is an absolute drag otherwise, where it takes forever and just results in a ton of mindless grinding for weapons with all characters. And for what...?
If I were to invest into weapon building now, I would probably focus primarily on the fixed weapons: the Master Sword, the Prototype Ancient Short Sword, the Bow of Light and the three different Flails and Master Cycles. Because those are guaranteed to stay as they are, so that turning all these into Level 50 super weapons won't be for naught. With everything else there is the chance that Koei Tecmo might decide to increase the base attack values even further in the next DLC wave...
Vicious Grind
Sadly, unlocking everything in the new DLC takes a lot of grinding to get all the new materials. And for this the game introduced the new "Vicious Monsters" battles, which keep re-appearing on the map and have randomly selected "bosses" at the end, where these monsters simply tank a lot. But these new Challenges are okay. They are quite short, except for battling the tanks, and there is no time limit, which is always appreciated.
The only annoying thing here is that they keep throwing Moblins and Wizzrobes on top of you while you fight the lengthier boss(es), but there had to be a catch, because it would have been too easy otherwise. If you've mastered all the boss enemies in the game, the only real way of screwing you up are either strict time limits or other enemies attacking you from all sides. And since there no time limits here, it had to be the enemies.
However, there is a trick here, because both the bosses and the additional enemies are programmed to stay in a certain area, which you can use to your advantage. This works especially well for the Silver Lynels, where it is constantly conflicted between attacking you and returning to its spot, so you can lure it out. But of course this is also somewhat dependent on the map, where Akkala Citadel seems to be a good example for where you can avoid the other enemies.
What's nice about these new type of Challenges is that these keep giving you something to do, even if you're done with all the other Challenges in the game. They are always a little bit different thanks to the random bosses and there is a number of locations where they can appear, so they don't get boring as quickly as repeating some of the fixed Challenges. They are also on a high level and give good weapons, so it's worth it to do them.
No comments:
Post a Comment