With the change to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Koei Tecmo had streamlined a number of things when compared to the first game. The magic system was removed in favor of more powerful Special Attacks. And the clunky item selection was replaced with holding down either the L and R buttons to quickly trigger the three different elemental rods, healing, or the four Sheikah Slate Runes, which could be accessed by all characters.
Needless to say that the Sheikah Slate abilities won't return here in the same way or at all. Maybe Purah could still use some of them with an enhanced Purah Pad, but that would be limited to one moveset. And the Zonai abilities just wouldn't work so universally for combat, where it's more likely that they will be woven into individual movesets as well.
We can already see this with Recall and Zelda, where all the sages will likely get to use the powers of their Secret Stones in combat. In addition, Rauru makes use of the Ultrahand to attack from a distance, while Mineru will probably have "Autobuild" as part of her moveset. Maybe she or another character could even use Ascend in a whacky way... And the Flail weapon from Pulse of the Ancients was essentially a prototype for how Fuse would function in a moveset.
However, Fuse is the only ability here that could work well for everyone and everything, but there probably would be some limitations. Maybe it's mainly used to infuse weapons with elements when you need them, which is where the replacement for the elemental rods come in. There are technically no rods as basic weapons in Tears of the Kingdom anymore, instead they are all the result from fusions. But it would make sense if instead you were given the different types of elemental fruits:
- Fire Fruit
- Ice Fruit
- Shock Fruit
- Splash Fruit
- Dazzlefruit
The elements felt somewhat underdeveloped in Age of Calamity, but with the sages they should become a lot more important, where their movesets will give you clear advantages in certain scenarios, e.g. using the Sage of Fire in the icy Hebra Mountains. But in order for the other characters to be still able to do something, you also get the elemental fruits, so you can throw fire on ice enemies and so on.
Potentially there could also be Bomb Flowers, Muddle Buds and the Puff Shrooms, so eight items in total, which could be selected in a basic item wheel. Holding down R lets you select something to throw and holding down L lets you select something to fuse, where your character's main weapon will gain a temporary elemental boost.
Food is not part of this eight-way wheel, because it wouldn't make sense to fuse any healing items, but that is a topic of its own. Food is tremendously overpowered in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, so much that it breaks these games. Age of Calamity then went with the extreme opposite, where you only get a bunch of apples that heal only a little. It made the game in its higher difficulties completely unforgiving, where maybe they will find a middle ground this time.
Finally, it also looks like there are going to be new specials, where you can join hands with other characters to do some cool combo attack. This idea really fits the symbolism of hands from Tears of the Kingdom very well and opens up many new possibilities, where it's interesting to experiment with different character combinations. This could work similar to the pairing system from Fire Emblem Warriors, where another character will escort you in battle and together you build up a "Dual Attack" gauge. Alternatively, this could simply be triggered by using your Special Attack close to another character.
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