The battle continues. After some struggles, I've beaten the scenario "Growing Suspicion", which is in the middle of chapter 2 and leads to the big turning point in the early story. There I had hit my first brick wall on the Very Hard difficulty.
Before we dive back into the game, I first want to complain about the Nintendo Switch 2 a bit, where there is one thing that is annoying me to no end: you can't wake it up with your Switch 1 controllers. As this is the prequel to Tears of the Kingdom, I naturally want to use my shiny Tears of the Kingdom Edition Pro Controller, but I always forget that I can't activate the Switch 2 with it for whatever reason. I sit down on the couch, turn on the TV, hit the Home button and then frown... Every. Single. Time.
I understand that's because of the "new" Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol being used here, but it's still inconvenient... Anyway, back to the game, where I will also complain, because my favorite annoyance from Age of Calamity has returned:
Arbitrary time limits. It has only been used for Challenges so far, but I remember how painful these could be in Age of Calamity when playing on Very Hard difficulty. I often had some very close calls.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the next story scenario, "Raging Sands". I love how the game re-uses the memories from Tears of the Kingdom, but either expands them or shows us some different angles, like those of other characters. In this case we see a lot of Ardi's perspective, who you have to fight with Rauru's group and who then gets double-crossed by Ganondorf afterwards.
This is the first time where you get to play as the Mysterious Construct, who is just called "???" in the game for now. Jeez, I wonder whose spirit could possess that Construct with all its Jump and Spin Attacks? But for real, while it's clear that this is meant to be Link, there is the question of which Link we're dealing with here. I'm still hoping that it might be the Hero of the Sky, because of the Fi stuff and because it is right-handed.
In any case, this character is a lot of fun to play. I like how this Construct extends its arms for some of the attacks, which feels a bit like the Flail weapon from Age of Calamity. You also learn a third type of unique skills here: shield breakers.
Calamo is great as well, where the two of them make for a fantastic comedy duo. But I was worrying for a while that Calamo might be a mere support unit, similar to Sonia, where I don't think that any of the trailer footage showed him to be directly player controlled, outside what might be Sync Strikes... Let's see, but it would be super disappointing if this were true.
It also doesn't look like they made much out of Koume and Kotake... If those are even their real names, where in the game they got titled as "Gerudo Captain" or "Gerudo Assassin" so far. And they don't seem to have any standout moves, certainly nothing with fire and ice in their arsenal.
Now, the story proceeds with Ganondorf swearing his loyality, where he conveniently blamed the Molduga attacks on the Gerudo he disposed of, and then six whole months pass! The memories in Tears of the Kingdom don't really give us any indication of how much time passed between them, but that's quite something.
I don't know what's funnier... That they let Ganondorf hang out at Hyrule Castle for half a year or that it took him that long to come up with his ingenious master plan to Falcon Punch Sonia on some balcony. Well, they show you now how he's hiding below the balcony, but they've skipped his goofy laugh for that scene – I guess, it became too much of a meme.
But there is another scenario to play before, "Growing Suspicion". Here King Rauru gets misled by Koume and Kotake (I will just keep calling them that) around Mt. Hylia, so Ganondorf can execute his evil master plan while he's gone. And this is where I hit my first roadblock on Very Hard.
The problems already start with the camps, which don't work like I thought they would. When you first set one up in the Depths, it fully heals and refills all your rations. The tutorial messages even tell you this. But in the following missions they done none of that any longer... I was wondering if I was doing something wrong, but apparently you don't get to heal so easily in the Very Hard difficulty. The camps probably heal you the first time on any difficulty to teach you the concept, but afterwards these niceties stop immediately. Awesome... I was crowing too soon, I guess.
So far I was unable to find additional rations on the battlefield, so this completely prevents you from refilling them. In Age of Calamity you at least had the chance to find an apple every now and then, even though the probability for that was reduced. Luckily, in Age of Imprisonment your rations will be refilled at the start of a battle... Playing the same challenge(s) over and over again to refill your apples and rods was quite a pain, so I'm happy that this isn't necessary any longer.
But this also means that the camps are only useful for additional buffs on Very Hard, like faster SP refills. It's basically like the cooking mechanic from the previous game, but you can do it in the middle of a battle, where I'm personally more inclined to. Both the mixtures in Hyrule Warriors and the cooking in Age of Calamity is something that I have ignored for the most part, because I usually just pick the fighter and then jump right into battle. I'm too lazy for battle preparations, unless it's truly necessary.
This particular battle could have been one of those cases, however. You first have to fight a bunch of Shade stuff, where then it gets revealed that the Gerudo were able to control the Shades (in the same way as the Molduga with those flutes). Koume and Kotake then both wear you down by fighting together with two stronger Shade things and a Stone Talus.
Quino was really the star in this. Luckily, your primary allies can't take any damage in this game either, unless you play as them, so Quino was able to distract at least one opponent and tank a lot of damage. And you can land the occasional Sync Strike as well, where this scenario teaches you the value of companionship... Especially when it's leaving you alone at the end to fight the evil Mysterious Construct.
This very much reminds me of Terrako and Harbinger Ganon, where it is really the exact same thing. They had created an original Guardian for Age of Calamity, who becomes a valuable ally, but they also made a Malice-infested version of it, acting as its evil doppelganger, even spreading doubt all over Hyrule. Swap Guardian with Construct and Malice with Gloom and you'll get this. But the whole Link-like thing makes it more interesting, to be fair.
Anyway, this fight was brutal. There is a checkpoint right before it, but when I first had arrived there, I only had two hearts and no rations left. And the checkpoints are not considerate. If you reach them with two hearts, then that's all you will get, where then it's best advised to restart the scenario. So, I had to restart...
The checkpoints also save your currently equipped skills and Zonai Devices, which is super annoying. For this battle I wanted to change my setup a bit, where now you can use the ZR button to directly activate something from your arsenal, without the need of holding down R. Well, I wanted to put the Time Bombs on them to spam them, and also equip the Flame Thrower. But the checkpoint changed this back every time, where you want to make sure that you're properly equipped before it.
This new selection system is a complete downgrade from the last game. It's too convoluted and there are simply not enough slots for all these many options. The R button should have been for Zonai Devices only, while ZR gives you access to four slots for unique skills and everything else. The worst part is that holding down R doesn't slow down time, like it did in Age of Calamity. This makes it very difficult to reaction to attacks that require a specific counter, especially when you can't rely on muscle memory, because the setup might be different for each character...
As for the battle itself, the Construct can attack quickly out of its downed state, which will punish you when you get too greedy. And that one move, where it shoots a vertical sword beam and then leaps up into the air for some ground, takes away most of your health at this point. I think this is actually the Construct's shield counter, where this will first hit you from above and then from below, even when you're shielding.
I was completely overwhelmed by this battle, where this had me second-guessing my choice of difficulty for the first time. Everything so far was tough, but it felt always doable and I wasn't forced to restart. After my second failed attempt of going through the entire battle, I even exited the scenario to upgrade Rauru's Spear and also level him for a bit. However, the recommended level here is 10, while he already was on 20, meaning that there was little I could do to progress. But I brought his Spear of Light to 7 out of 10.
Like so many things, the weapon system seems to work similar to Age of Calamity. The main difference is that you don't actually collect duplicates of weapons, but "Zonaite Steel". The steel comes in variants for the main weapon types: one-handed, two-handed, and spear, but you do share them between characters. So, both Zelda and Mineru both use the same steel to upgrade their main weapon. And this means that you don't need to grind with a character you don't like as much in order to enhance their weapon.
Third time then was the charm. After two failed practice runs, I arrived at the boss with one ration left and I also figured out the best way to cheese beat this Construct. You want to keep your distance, especially because of the aforementioned ground pound slash move. But you can thanks to the Ultrahand, Rauru's strong attack. So, I basically kept running in circles around the thing and fired my spear at it whenever the Weak Point Gauge was visible.
However, it can always approach you very quickly with a series of forward slashes, where either you want to block this or try to land a Flurry Rush. But I had trouble with the latter.
This Construct gets to be the reason why Rauru couldn't make it back in time to save Sonia... And this is where the Imprisoning War begin! The extended cutscene also shows the release of the four "Archfiends", the predecessors of the Scourges.
When the big Ganondorf head appeared on the map, I was getting excited for a moment... Is this where you change sides as the player and wreak havoc over Hyrule? But no, it's just covering everything in Gloom, where your goal is to clear the map piece by piece. Looks like there will be a lot to do.
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