The completion statistics below will already tell you the next story: over the course of the weekend I have advanced in only two scenarios of Chapter 4, but the number of Challenges and Quests has doubled, meaning that I was mostly busy doing side missions. Lots of side missions. But the roster is now almost complete with Ardi and four new recruits.
Difficulty: Very Hard
Scenarios: 15
Challenges: 76
Quests: 142
Terror on the Sands
Story-wise, the first scenario in the Gerudo Desert really could have been the finale of chapter 3. And maybe it should have been. In the third chapter we follow the two separate groups, where Team Rauru is recruiting the different masked sages, while Team Calamo is recruiting the nobodies. And in this scenario we're getting the last of the sages with Ardi, but the two groups also finally meet each other.
This would have been the perfect conclusion to this arc, but for some reason Koei Tecmo decided otherwise. Maybe later in chapter 4 you will return here, because this scenario doesn't deal yet with the archfiend version of the Gibdo Queen. Instead, it's ending rather abruptly after the fight against some electric foes. And that was weird, because the entire northwest section of the map remained unused in this battle, but you were even circling back towards there. I was preparing myself for another tough boss fight after a long battle, but that wasn't even necessary.
In between you fight a Molduga, which now has a new move: it can cover itself in sand, where you can use wind attacks or shield breakers to remove some of it. And it looks super ridiculous and uncanny, almost like a sand cocoon, or like someone made a hull for the Molduga out of sand-colored knitwear.
As for Ardi herself, she fights similarly to Urbosa, unsurprisingly so, and already makes stronger usage of her elemental attacks than the other sages did in the beginning. She cuts a good figure and I like the finger pistol pose for when she does some of her Sync Strikes, but I don't think that she will become one of my favorites. Which was also true for Urbosa...
The Crimson Omen
Once the battle is over, absolutely everyone gets to chill at an oasis, which may later become the Kara Kara Bazaar. And this is a wholesome scene. The Mysterious Construct also now becomes the "Knight Construct", where Zelda was probably outvoted in calling it the Link Construct. At least she mentions that it feels oddly familiar. And whenever someone calls it out during battle, I now keep hearing "Nice Construct", but this fits as well.
We also get the confirmation that the Nice Construct is indeed powered by a piece of the broken Master Sword, but this piece traveled here from the future together with Zelda. Now, if my mid-game theory – that they are going to grow this piece into another Master Sword after the dust has settled – was still to be correct, then this would mean that this Master Sword only exists within a time loop paradox. Which would be crazy to think about.
But otherwise the Master Sword must have been created at some point. Is it still the one from Skyward Sword or was another Master Sword forged, possibly in a preparation for the Great Calamity? I'm intrigued by all of this.
In any case, the Knight Construct got now matching scarfs with Calamo and a new hood. And you're left to fight its evil twin afterwards, which even got the same Zonai device combo upgrades. Unlike Rauru's first encounter with the thing, however, this counts as its own follow-up scenario, so your rations and batteries are refilled for this. And having a second character for Sync Strikes already makes a huge difference, so this wasn't particularly difficult. Phew.
Questing Hard
The real terror comes after. Once you're done with these two-in-one scenarios, you will be greeted by the following sight:
You're barraged with dozens of new Quests and Challenges all at once. And this isn't even including the stuff that gets unlocked in succession, like those missions to defend territories. Age of Calamity also had moments like this, if I remember correctly, but this here may be even more excessive. Of course, you don't have to do any of this. You can just move on and play the next story scenario, should you desire to do so.
But then even more will pile up afterwards and I prefer to clean house before I move on. It also helps with growing your characters for when you're playing on the harder difficulties. And as a result I spent the whole Saturday cleaning up this mess. This may sound like work, but it's part of what makes a Hyrule Warriors game fun for me: doing missions and getting stuff doing missions.
However, the side missions are more repetitive than they used to be in the previous two games, so it can get stale. There is a lot of defeating big monsters, either in a time limit, in order to rescue some soldiers, or to defend outposts. The game lacks some more unique mission types and constellations.
An easy way to fix this problem would have been more mock battles / training missions with the different tribes. There were some of these in the beginning of the game, but not anymore. But they keep talking about training and sparring sessions in the Quest descriptions, so why not make some of it playable? Like, there is currently no way of fighting against the Zora or the Rito in the game.
At least, there haven't been any "Hair-Width Trials" or "Don't Get Hit!" missions yet, where you lose all your health after a single hit. Those were the most annoying thing, so hopefully they won't come back here. That would be a silver lining to the lack of mission variety.
And you get at least some variety from all the new recruits. On the side of the Gerudo you can unlock Sholani and Ronza. Sholani is super cute, while Ronza goes more into the brute direction of Buliara, just without her impressive size and posture. She makes me honestly think that Buliara should have been a playable character in Age of Calamity...
Now, I was looking forward to having more ladies on the roster, but sadly these two won't be for me. They make use of a new timing-based mechanic, where your combos follow up into some bubble on the HUD. This bubble is filling quickly and if you press at the exact moment when it's filled, then you will get stronger attacks. This mechanic is then also used for some Sync Strikes and finishers, where it doesn't seem to be a nice bonus, but more of a necessity. If you want to do proper damage with them, then you will have to do it right.
And this is where I struggle, because I just tend to mash a lot – not in the sense that I'm just doing random attacks, but I usually press the attack buttons more often than necessary, especially when you're going into the combos. But here you have to hold your thumb still and pay close attention to these new quick time prompts. And this isn't Cadence of Hyrule, where you have a rhythm to go by. It just feels very forced and needlessly punishing, where this isn't a thing for any other character. So, why would I want to play as these two?
I'd rather play as Cadlan, who is simping all over his queen. But I do like how Qia essentially has two retainers at her side and even says things like "Prove yourself!" to them. It reminds me of Fire Emblem, where all the important characters come attached with two not-as-important characters, which all are playable as well (this was especially true in Fire Emblem Engage). This here may even be inspired by that.
But I really would have preferred it if they had reversed the gender situation for the Rito. Raphica looks like quite the ladies' man with that quiff on his head, so why not give him two female retainers? Vencette could be all over him, while Pinneca is more of a tsundere... you know, the typical stuff. But anything beats that winged wannabe Lü Bu.
I also feel like this character selection could have been slimmed down quite a bit, especially since some of them make use of similar mechanics, like the two Gerudo extras. Maybe it would have been better to have them as one, with two supported weapon types for each?
Normally, I'm an advocate of having more playable characters over having characters with multiple movesets. Impa and Lana from the first Hyrule Warriors are a prime example for this, where their second weapon types could have led to a playable Nabooru and Saria instead. But we're not talking about fan favorite characters from classic Zelda games here.
Cadlan and co. are all new creations and it's getting a bit much, especially since each of them wants to be leveled and has a number of (Aside) Quests to be fulfilled. It feels cluttered and having less characters could have helped. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't make as much use of the different weapons in that case, and having so many secondary characters with two movesets would then make the main characters feel underdeveloped. It's probably for the best that only the Knight Construct can use different weapon types, where I'm already avoiding the spear, unless some Aside Quest is asking for it.
Speaking of Aside Quests, this is a topic on its own. I've already talked about the temporary ones for the camps during the main story scenarios, but for each character there are three of these to fulfill at any given time. This can be stuff like, "Defeat 100 enemies as Knight Construct using a spear," or "Smash 5 wooden boxes."
They are given in blocks of three and once you cleared all of them for a character, they will be swapped out for a new block. But there is an end to it eventually, where the majority of the new markers on the map are Quests for completing 100% of all Aside Quests for a specific character. So, they are part of the game's overall completion at the end, where I've only now started paying attention to them.
Curiously, some of it seems like it's potentially missable, especially the stuff for Calamo. Here you're tasked with finding new recruits, or collecting more Korok Seeds. But what if you have already recruited everyone and found all other Korok Seeds? Some Aside Quests also ask you to clear a number of Quests, where it's the same thing... What if you don't care about the Aside Quests until you are finished with everything else?
Apparently, in such cases they will be swapped for something else, so you're not locked out of completion (see GameFAQs). And that makes sense, where it would be a huge oversight if this weren't the case... But I'm also not willing to risk it, where now I try to check as many boxes as possible when going into a Challenge.
And this is actually a cool thing about the Aside Quests: they make you pick characters and combinations of characters that you may normally wouldn't go for. There is an incentive here to using everyone, other than when they lock you into certain characters.
Though, some characters might be locked from progressing for a while. It's basically the opposite problem to potentially missing something: you don't have the requirements yet. Like, you can be stuck on Calamo needing to recruit someone for a while. Or right now I have to perform Fuse Attacks with Sholani, even though I don't have her Quest yet to unlock them.
That's a thing, by the way. All of the nobodies can learn Fuse Attacks from the Knight Construct. I'm not even sure how this is possible... The Construct can use Fuse, because it's a Construct. And Link was able to use Fuse in Tears of the Kingdom, because he had a Zonai arm. But how can a normal person just casually learn this ancient Zonai technique? Are they simply using glue to put Bokoblin horns onto their weapons?
Among the new Quests also came the ability to see which scenarios still have treasure chests and Korok Seeds to be found in them. So, in addition to clearing all the new side missions, I was also replaying most of the main missions. Luckily, at this point you have a free choice of character for most of them, now that both teams are united.
And I said that I was going to use Calamo to look for any missing Koroks, simply for the fun of it, but there is actually a gameplay reason for this, too. Whenever there is a hidden Korok nearby, he will make a comment about it, so that's quite helpful. He basically works like the Korok Mask. Of course, you can also use the camps to show you the locations of any remaining chests and Koroks, but where is the fun in that?
Speaking of the camps, I've discovered that the bonus heart effect from their services also fully heals your entire team. In the menu it looks like they will only be getting the yellow hearts, but it also grants a full heal, just like all the hearty recipes in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. I guess, they fail to mention this, because you normally get healed by the camps anyway...
But now I'm taking back everything I said about the camps earlier in the game. This is super valuable. Well, it costs five tickets, but I'm not really using them for anything else and this is great for when you are about to face a big bad at the end of a scenario, like Grimgera in the Lost Woods.
Also, on the topic of healing, there are even more possibilities. Qia can still heal her comrades when they do a Sync Strike with her. You have to initiate this with the character in need and this will wrap them in a water bubble, which is primarily used to give you water effects while attacking, but you will also be slowly healed. You can get around five or six hearts from this, but that's already a ration.
Ardi's Scimitar of the Seven also has a special seal on it, which heals you while doing damage. I've also gotten it on some other weapons by now, but this is also very, very nice to have. You can effectively stay at full health by plowing through the masses, all while filling up your Special Attack meter as well.
Though, sometimes I'm experiencing a bug, where all regenerated health (may that be from weapon seals or Qia's aid) is suddenly lost when I switch back to a character. It's kind of odd... and quite worrisome.
In other news, Zelda is getting more and more powerful. And I love how this game portrays her progress, where she gradually masters both the powers of light and Recall. Her moveset is very basic at the beginning of the game, but it has gotten insane by now, where it may even be my favorite.
The other sages are also getting more and more combos imbued with their primary element, which is what I wanted. And this leads us to the next scenario...
A Time for Action
After successfully making alliances with the Rito, Gorons, Zora and Gerudo, King Rauru grants their leaders a Secret Stone each. This is one of the key moments in Tears of the Kingdom, but here you're shown that Rauru was not taking this decision lightly, since the Secret Stones are quite powerful and can be used for good or evil – as demonstrated by Ganondorf. So, he places a lot of trust in these new sages.
And they even comment on how these Secret Stones are ridiculous and can see why Rauru was hesitating. They do so during the next battle, where they have to defend the Forgotten Temple from incoming monsters and give the Secret Stones a try for the first time.
Other than some general buffs to your combos (I think), you mainly get a new unique skill for each of them. And that honestly doesn't make them so great after all, because they are on the same cooldown as all the other skills, which I personally prefer to use as counters. However, when you want to do an overload of a certain element, then these Secret Stones should be the way to go.
This scenario had some really cool ideas, though. You have a kaiju battle going on at the center of the battlefield, where a Fire Hinox is fighting a Flux Construct, which is defending the temple. This is totally awesome!
I think this is even the first time where a giant monster is fighting on your side in a Hyrule Warriors. They were always exclusively used as bosses, even when playing as a villain. With a new Ganondorf campaign this might become a more common sight, though... Maybe as DLC, Koei Tecmo?
Another thing I liked is how all the monsters got resurrected as their Stal counterparts during the midpoint. This was such a smart move and they even mixed living with dead monsters. While the Tanagar Canyon stage isn't particularly large, this gave me the feeling that this is truly an upgrade from Age of Calamity.
Using caves as an ambush was also quite clever, where it's nice that at least one battlefield is featuring them. You even get Horriblins as enemies (who have also appeared on Death Mountain before) and the enemy variety is the highest in the Hyrule Warriors series so far.
The side quests continue after this scenario, though luckily it weren't that many, but you can finally recruit the first Goron extra: Braton. And out of the nobodies, this might be my favorite so far. It's funny how he's a rock gourmet looking for some delicacies. And it's actually something else to play as an "ordinary" Goron for once, instead of the usual Darunia blends.
The nobodies also get to shine in one of the Challenges afterwards, where they are tasked with defending the Forgotten Temple in the absence of Rauru and the sages. Taking the matters in their own hands, I like it. And maybe these characters will grow on me over the rest of the game, but so far they have been the biggest controversy for me.
The last two screenshots look amazing, by the way, almost like one of those promotional edits that Koei Tecmo likes to release. And I'm impressed how good this game can look sometimes, but only sometimes. There are some ugly areas, like Death Mountain, and the enemy masses can get a mess as well. But you also have locations like the sky islands, which are super pretty.
Now it's time to bring it home to Ganondorf, who is still aura farming at Hyrule Castle... And this is going to be interesting, because this is a huge part of the events that were left out in Tears of the Kingdom.
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