Expansion Pass Progress
- Difficulty: Very Hard
- EX Research Quests: 35 / 35
- EX Quests: 24
- EX Challenges: 16
And I'm done again. At least with the new Quests and Challenges that came with the first wave of DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, "Pulse of the Ancients". It didn't really take this long, where the focus was more or less on grinding, while there is only small number of new Challenges that need to be mastered, in fact only a tenth of what the main game had to offer. That's not counting the new "EX Alert" Challenges with the random "Vicious Enemies" that keep coming, where those were part an important part of the grinding, however.
Battle-Tested
Once you've progressed enough in the Royal Ancient Lab, you can unlock a special "EX Alert" battle, which stays on the map and doesn't really have to do anything with the other Challenges of the same name, where this could have been just a normal Challenge, really... But whatever. Curiously, it takes you to new place from the world of Breath of the Wild, which could already be seen in the E3 trailer for the DLC:
The Forgotten Temple! While the first DLC wave wasn't supposed to have any new stages, it's nice to get something small here, where this is very similar to the Sheikah Shrine battle stages in function, just larger.
Now, when they've announced that a Guardian was going to be playable, I was concerned about the fact that they were making a "regular" enemy playable in some form, which they have never done before in the Hyrule Warriors series. But that's actually not what they have done here, at least not really, where this "Battle-Tested Guardian" is supposed to be a very special Guardian that has guarded the Forgotten Temple for ages, one of its kind. So, it's treated like its own character and it's also not corrupted by Ganon's Malice, unlike all other Guardians.
In any case it leads to a very interesting boss fight, because this Battle-Tested Guardian really knows how to screw with you. The usual tricks don't work on this guy. It's the only enemy in the game that actively dodges your rod attacks. It reflects reflected Guardian Beam right back at you. And it has some attacks that are really tough to dodge, where overall this is one of the most challenging boss fights in the game. And that without any time limits or other enemies... imagine that!
So, of course it feels super rewarding when you finally beat this battle and add the "Battle-Tested Guardian" to your entourage. But like with similar characters of this size, the joy doesn't last too long, at least not for me personally.
It's great that you can play as a Guardian, since this has been the signature enemy for Breath of the Wild right from the start. This one is even very reminiscent of the first Guardian that we ever saw, in that E3 2014 trailer. I love how it crawls around on those many feet. I love how it only moves its head, when you change directions. I love you can target enemies as your ZR ability. And the Bomb Rune is crazy good.
But... this thing is another walking hitbox, where it's just hard to dodge stuff properly, especially things like Wizzrobe attacks. And since it would be too unbalanced, the attacks of the playable Battle-Tested Guardian are by far not as impressive as the real deal. You can lock onto an enemy and fire a laser at it, just like a real Guardian, which is awesome in theory, but in practice you can happy if that kills a single Bokoblin...
The Guardian laser is one of the strongest and most deadly attacks in both Breath of the Wild and this game, but once you get to use it yourself it becomes pathetically weak. It's like the Ganon's Fury mode in Hyrule Warriors, where you get to play as this gigantic boss monster, but it all just feels so weak and you're so vulnerable to all attacks around you. Koei Tecmo can't seem to get these playable boss characters to be really fun. It would be okay to let the players have something overpowered for once, especially if these boss characters only unlock after beating the game (which seems to be the case here).
Of course I haven't built a good weapon for it yet, where this will improve things, but certainly not to the point that you would expect. Speaking of the weapon, it's actually the same thing as the last two unlockable characters, so a type of Guardian Screw, Spring and Gear. If they make Harbinger Ganon playable next, they could have a full row of this stuff.
Interestingly, one of the Quests for the Battle-Tested Guardian actually uses up that one leftover Ethereal Stone from the main Challenges. The new EX Challenges don't give any of those, however...
EX Challenges
The moment the game spawned new Challenges onto the map I could only frown, because these things got considerably unfun after a while, with their never ending time limit and boss battle fetish. But the EX Challenges actually turned out rather unique, where Koei Tecmo was trying some new things for a welcomed change. Well, here's a full list of all the new Challenges:
There is a lot of focus on Robbie and Purah with these Challenges, who are studying combat situations in various ways and you have to help them out. In the two "Battle Research" Challenges for example they want you to fight enemies in a specific way, like going for Perfect Doges or killing a Lynel with a Remote Bomb.
There are also two new Challenges that are all about going for highscores, "Handle the Horde" and "Rupee Rescue". These are simply about scoring as many K.O.s as possible and collecting as many Rupees as possible within ten minutes, where the initial goal is easily fulfilled, but the goalpost gets shifted again and again. These are quite easy, but that's certainly refreshing and a fun change from the usual stuff.
Another unique Challenge is "Survival of the Fittest", which is the only other Challenge that takes place in the Forgotten Temple. Here you just have to survive for ten minutes, while it keeps spawning a ridiculous of strong enemies. My strategy here was simple: pick Daruk and hold ZL for ten minutes long, while spamming the R button to slow down time (but not the timer) for additional safety.
Even with Daruk you can't just be completely careless any longer thanks to the new Bomb-Throwing Moblins. These guys are absolutely ridiculous. Their bomb attacks come out of nowhere, deal an insane amount of damage and go through everything, even Daruk's Protection. Not sure what Koei Tecmo was thinking here, other than "this game isn't unfair enough yet".
Now, once you've completed all the Research Quests in the Royal Ancient Lab, it unlocks one final Challenge, fittingly named "The Final Battle". However, it doesn't really compare to "The Siege of Fort Hateno", where here all you have to do is defeat two Malice Lynels (staying together), as well as a Malice Guardian surrounded by the three new upgraded Wizzrobes.
You still have to defend your base, where it keeps sending Moblins there from three outposts all around it. Similar to "Hold the Line" in the Lost Woods, you can stop these waves by capturing the outposts, where in this case they are occupied by an Ice Hinox, a Fire Hinox and for some reason not a Electric Hinox, but a Electric Guardian. This sounds simple enough, but there is a catch. These three enemies keep respawning, where they take those keeps without warning, which immediately starts sending those Moblins again (which include those nasty bomb-throwers). It's extremely stupid how the game doesn't even let you try to save these outposts, they are just gone in an instant...
Two of these outposts are quite close to each other, so they can be handled by the same character, but you still have three places that need constant attention and only four characters available, where it takes a lot of back and forth to finish this annoying mission... This is exactly the stuff that's not really fun, where I feel like the name of this Challenge will be a false promise by Koei Tecmo, since there is no way that they are not going to add new Challenges for those new stages in wave 2. But those might be easier on the level requirements...
Except for the training missions for the two new weapons, all these Challenges start from Level 50 onward, where all of this is clearly meant to be endgame material. "Conquering Hyrule" even requires to have that final unlockable character, where here you team up with Master Kohga to fight the good guys. This is a really cool mission, because you rarely ever fight Link, Zelda and the Champions for real in this game, mostly only in training scenarios.
The Final Characters?
The "Conquering Hyrule" Challenge makes you wonder about Astor and Sooga, who are your additional allies in this mission, where you have to babysit them. If there were plans to make them playable, why wouldn't they save this Challenge for when all the baddies are playable?
As for Robbie and Purah, the first DLC wave puts such a huge focus on them, where it feels like they won't be playable at all, just support. But on the other hand, the entire Expansion Pass could be focused on the two, not just the first wave. We still haven't gotten the real ancient weapons and armor stuff, only the prototypes from the purchase bonus, where there still is a chance that Robbie might wield that stylish Ancient Blade Saw in the next DLC. I also like the suggestion of Robbie and Purah acting as a duo character that I keep seeing quite often.
In any case, I don't really know who's going to be playable after this. There are five unplayable characters in the game and five open slots, where they could go for all of them, some of them or even none of them... We will have to see. But I still hope that we're getting at least one free character in between, as some free bonus DLC outside the Expansion Pass.
Back to the Grind?
With all Quests and Challenges done once again, that leaves me back to building weapons and leveling up the characters. Leveling everyone to 100 seems quite reasonable, though, especially since the level cap doesn't seem to get increased this time.
It's still weird how there are these three extra hearts on a third row, it just looks so wrong. They could have made the maximum number of Heart Containers 30 and then add a food that gives you six extra hearts, so that the entire third row could be made out of yellow hearts... But that's nitpicking.
As for the weapons, in the very least I want to get the Master Sword and the Bow of Light to Level 50, because these are the two fixed weapons that can't be fused or sold. (It feels very wrong that you can remove their hidden seals then, however, because you cannot get these weapons back.) And if that's not enough grinding, I will focus on the DLC weapons. For both of this I will have to exclusively play as Link and Zelda from now on, however...
The "EX Alert" battles work relatively well for this, where they aren't too bad or annoying, while they also offer some variety. There still could be more than just the six existing stages, however.
These missions also give you some good stuff, but for the new base attack maximum it seems that you have to go with "The Final Battle" to get them and there's no way that I'm playing this Challenge over and over again. It's probably best to wait for the 2nd DLC wave here, because either the maximum base attacks gets increased even further or there might be some new Challenges in the Level 91 to 100 range, where you can get the best possible weapons more easily.
One incentive to work on better weapons could be the "Apocalyptic" difficulty, where I haven't touched this yet, only tried it once. It doesn't seem to make a difference for the lower level missions, but the higher levels might require you to have some really good gear. So, I'm saving this difficulty for later, maybe even for last.
1 comment:
As far as regular enemies being made playable go, I actually wouldn't mind a unique Lynel. Maybe it could be one that guards Death Mountain's peak since that's where they get the metal to make their op weapons. Doubt it'll happen but I'd love to see a BotW version of Linkle added. She could be in every Hyrule Warriors game as a tradition. Story wise it wouldn't matter since this is an alt universe from BotW.
Post a Comment