It's time for the big finale, the climax of the Imprisoning War. Spoilers for the final boss and ending incoming, so read at your own discretion. In addition, I took a first glimpse at the post-game and its offerings.
Difficulty: Very Hard
Scenarios: 24
Challenges: 128
Quests: 364
Map Completion: 90.89%
The Final Confrontation
The game cuts right to the chase. Rauru and his Sages await Ganondorf at the sealing grounds, who was dumb enough to follow them down there, just as they had predicted. And you first get to battle some of his minions, including a Silver Lynel, in some space enclosed by gloom.
It is playing the Calamity Ganon theme during this, which is an interesting choice. Either they didn't know better or they wanted to give a feeling of connection here, where inevitably the sealing of Ganondorf may be the cause of the Great Calamity (though, they never outright confirm this in the games).
You're locked into Rauru and Zelda, so you can only pick two of the other sages. I went with Qia, because she is still my favorite of the bunch and gives you an additional healing opportunity. For the last one I didn't have any gameplay preferences, so I picked Ardi, because she's the one who still has to settle a score with Ganondorf.
Well, the other sages will be around for Sync Strikes, until Ganondorf himself shows up and locks them out. But until that point nothing really matters, because there is no reason to play as anyone other than Rauru (and potentially Zelda) during this part.
Because this is one of those Sites of Sacred Power, which they never care to explain, the unique skills of Rauru and Zelda replenish so quickly that you can just keep spamming them. They should be strong enough to break through weak points instantly and after the weak point attack they will be ready again. I simply equipped Rauru's Secret Stone on ZR and blasted through the horde of Phantom Ganons in the second phase.
This was fun, but had me honestly wondering what Ganondorf was even supposed to do here. You could just obliterate anything with this power. However, for his battle this effect gets shut off, so you have to fight him fairly...
And Ganondorf does indeed flurry rush you, just like in the final battle from Tears of the Kingdom. In fact, it felt remarkably similar. He didn't extend his health bar to the edge of the screen, though, as a showcase of his supposed supremacy. And he can follow a dangerous attack with another one, so you have to throw out two counters in a row, which may also catch you off guard.
But just before you're about to defeat him, he goes into god mode and starts blasting gloom in a cutscene. This is to get everyone into the bad state that they were shown in during the repeated Imprisoning War memory in Tears of the Kingdom. But it has been going quite well until that point, where the boss fight itself could have gone a bit harder on you to really make you feel the terror yourself.
A Clash of Constructs
This game has actually a sixth chapter, but for some reason it's only one scenario and this scenario starts automatically after "the Final Confrontation". It is a battle between the Forbidden Construct, where it took remarkably long to reveal this generic name, and our Knight Construct, who is having Calamo at its side. And this is a second final boss, where this one will give you the satisfaction of actually defeating it.
This plays out simultaneously to the other final battle and also has three phases. First on the ground, then a sky battle, and finally back to the ground. During the first one you had to be careful to not stand in the water, similar to Grimgera. In both fights it happened to me that I was caught in a freezing / lightning attack immediately for lots of damage.
The sky battle was the perfect finale for that part of the game, but it was as easy as the rest of them. So, the Forbidden Construct had to flex during the final phase by stealing Ganondorf's health bar extension move.
Overall, the ground phases were similar to the fight at the Gerudo Desert, but it has learned a number of dangerous Gloom attacks, like those beams that it used to eradicate the other forbidden constructs. The battle music involves the game's main theme, making this extra epic, but overall there isn't much to say here. It is a very fitting final battle in the sense that it reflects everything else in the game: it isn't a standout, but it isn't bad either.
Though, the scene where the Knight Construct delivers the final blow, using an energy-based recreation of the Master Sword, just as Rauru mentions Link to Ganondorf, was well staged. That was just the perfect moment for these two storylines to come to a closure.
Journey's End
Now, I wasn't expecting a tear-jerker about the inevitable end of the Knight Construct, but they got me good with this one. Well... their ending is much more simple than what I had expected, but it still hit the right notes. The shard of the Master Sword powering the Construct breaks and it falls apart along with it. And Calamo decides to set roots right on the spot, so they end their journey together and he himself as a tree will serve as a memorial to the knight.
There is something about this act of eternal friendship that really gets to me. And it is only amplified by how picky Calamo has been about finding the perfect spot. Hebra was too cold, Death Mountain was too hot, the Gerudo Desert was too dry, and Hyrule Field had too many monsters... And then Korok Forest became in need of fresh trees. But in that last moment he didn't care about the location, he just wanted to stay with his bud.
Also, it feels like the final act of a Korok. They become a tree, but their spirit vanishes. It's almost like Calamo was looking for a place to die, but his adventures with the Knight Construct gave him an excuse not to. And for a Korok this is their way to give life, as he puts it.
For a moment I was confused about where exactly he set his roots, because the landscape was still very different. But it clearly wasn't the Korok Forest. From a certain angle it looked like it could have been Mekar Island, which always been a mystery with how there was nothing there but a single, decayed tree, but the island was too small for that. Luckily, the post credits scene shows you how Calamo has grown into a gigantic tree and the exact location where he did:
He became what is known as the "Ancient Tree". The crazy thing is that they even gave a clear hint from the very beginning – with that Gerudo Spear that he was holding on to. Now, something about a tree and a spear rang a bell, but I couldn't put my finger on it. The Great Deku Tree has a Forest Dweller's Spear on it, but that's different. I thought that maybe one of the large tree stumps at Crenel Hills had a Gerudo Spear in them, but that wasn't it either...
The real hint came from the newly implemented Voice Memories, given that you were paying close attention. In case of the "Ancient Tree Stump" Zelda said the following:
In Hyrule, there are a number of large, decaying trees that are likely over one thousand years old, not unlike this tree stump. There is a legend about this tree in particular that says it was inhabited by a dignitary spirit. I, too, sense something important from this tree. An archaeological survey will soon take place here, so I cannot wait to hear about their findings.
Previous archaeological investigations discovered a single ancient spear within this decaying tree trunk. It has stirred up spirited discussion among many researchers, but little additional information has been revealed, despite their piqued interest.
That fact about the spear was some odd, seemingly random detail, but a lot of these Voice Memories talk about rather insignificant stuff, so I didn't pay it any mind. Still, with this odd detail they had planted the seeds for Calamo already back in June, with the Nintendo Switch 2 update for Tears of the Kingdom, creating a small connection to the new game, while it was still in development.
And that's great, and makes more out of the Ancient Tree than a simple NES The Legend of Zelda reference. Calamo was even to rival the Great Deku Tree in size for a while, serving as a home to other Koroks, but then you realize what become of him in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom...
Well, tens of thousands of years pass between the games and no tree is eternal, but it still makes me sad to see. Even the forest around him is mostly gone. The next Hyrule Warriors game better be a conflict where the Koroks wage war against Hylians and Rito for felling so many trees.
And Calamo didn't become the Great Deku Tree after all, even though the game was also hinting at that possibility... Yeah, that would have created a whole bunch of questions, some of which I have raised before. Like, if any Korok could become something like the Great Deku Tree, then you would expect to find a lot more talking trees in Hyrule. The Great Deku Tree probably still needs a special (talking) sprout, like it did in Ocarina of Time.
But I also wonder where the Master Sword came from. It is apparently not to be found in this early iteration of Hyrule. Was a new Master Sword created in order to battle Calamity Ganon? Or was it somehow passed on from a different Hyrule from the Era of Myth? But if so, then where was it during the Imprisoning War? Are the Depths possibly connected to Hyrules of the past?
There are lot of questions that they could have been answered with this game, but instead they decided to show us the story of a Korok and a Construct fighting together, which now only creates more plotholes. And I loved that story, but maybe I was expecting a bit more out of it at the end.
It's especially disappointing how the two get left out in any traditions, including the murals and Lenalia's tablets. Sure, they had no idea about them back when they were developing Tears of the Kingdom. But that these Forbidden Constructs were the demise of the Zonai and therefore should be better erased from history is a lame excuse to explain that exclusion. In the very least they could have honored the Korok Calamo and his friend, the knight, without giving any specifics about the latter. Just say that it's a knight who fought heroically.
I'm also looking at the above statistic and suddenly feel bad. Don't tell me... was each of these trees once a Korok? I won't be looking at trees in a Zelda game ever the same again.
After the Finale Is Before the Finale
Let's talk about what happens after the credits have rolled... Because that's one of the biggest letdowns yet. While there is a post-game, it doesn't really have a right to be even called that, at least not from a story perspective. In Age of Calamity you got new Quests and Challenges that continue the story after Calamity Ganon was defeated, but this doesn't seem to be the case here. Instead, you get more side missions that story-wise take place before the finale, but were withheld until now...
And it's not like the memories ended with Ganondorf's sealing in Tears of the Kingdom either. There is more ground to cover, where they had to prepare for the future. Zelda has yet to ask all the sages to give their aid. We have yet to see any other of the temples, which will be used to guard the Secret Stones from now on. We haven't even been to the Temple of Time once.
There is a lot missing here, but they would have needed the balls to exclude the characters from it who don't survive the finale: Rauru, Calamo and the Knight Construct. Just don't make them available when you play the missions for the first time. Stop continuing Calamo's travel journal, etc.
Most of the new Quests seem to focus on the nobodies, to enhance their unique skills, special meters, and so on. And maybe this could have turned into a part of the post-game story, where they keep training in order to protect Hyrule going forward, now that Calamo and the Knight Construct are no more. In their honor.
Then you get Lenalia's sketches for completing all Quests in an area. These are the same sketches that we see in the ending, where she burns half of them to keep the Knight Construct a secret to add insult to injury... Instead, we could have been raising the actual star tablets as a goal for the post-game.
At least it became much easier to fulfill all the Quests now. There is the Tusk & Talon shop, ran by a distant ancestor of Kilton, Tufton. This is where you can trade your Poes and earlier in the game this shop was only accessible via camps during main story missions, so you had to repeat those in order to make use of it. But during chapter 5 you can unlock that it also appears next to normal shops on the map, which is very convenient.
It appears that whenever you set something on your Material Sensor that this will shop will offer what you need. And this makes completing all the quest markers quite effortless.
As for Challenges, there is really just more of the same, for the most part. You conquer and defend territories, which are these simple missions using some outposts as a goal. However, there is quite a jump in the recommended level here, as if the game skipped an entire chapter. Which it basically did.
So far there was a natural growth, where it didn't need much for everyone to stay at the recommended levels or even above. But before going into the finale we were around the mid 50s and then it jumps right into the mid 60s afterwards, before quickly heading into the 70s. That was discouraging, because I didn't want to just grind levels in order to proceed here, but it turned out that it doesn't really matter whether you're under- or overleveled in this game.
There seem to be tight damage caps and floors in place. When I go back to the game's early missions now, I don't feel that much of an impact, meaning that I couldn't take out any foes in a single weak point blow. Likewise, even when I'm ten levels below the recommendations, I still do more than enough damage. Combine this with the usual Zonai Device and Sync Strike shenanigans and you're good to go.
The only new thing where it could get more challenging are the Vicious Monster battles, which return here from the DLC for Age of Calamity. I've only tried one so far, but it looks like they are solved like any other Challenge, so they don't randomly re-appear.
One thing I kept wondering about is how to change the attire of certain characters. In Age of Calamity this feature unlocks right after beating the game and you can access it from whenever you select characters for a mission. This didn't seem to be the case here and I also couldn't find any Quest markers to unlock it either. At first I thought that it might be tied to Lenalia's sketches, that each sketch would unlock a different outfit option, but that wasn't it either...
So, I had to look this up on the internet, because I really wanted to have this option... And apparently this also unlocks right after the credits have rolled, but the game doesn't give you any notification and it's a bit hidden. When you're on the map, you can go into a menu via the ⊕ button, which just gives you the character selection, where you can prepare their equipment and all that. Why you would ever use this, instead of the normal one that appears before any mission, is beyond me, but for some reason it's the only place where you can change the attire by pressing X.
You get "initial" outfits for Zelda, Qia, Ardi, the Knight Construct and Calamo. So, this is how they looked before they officially joined forces with Rauru. In case of Zelda this lets you play in her blue Tears of the Kingdom outfit from the beginning of the game, which is nice to have. And in case of the four masked sages you also get an "unmasked" variant, so that's really nice as well.
Sadly, you don't get to pick the "scorched" versions of Calamo and his bud, but this will still add a bit of variety for when doing the rest of the side missions... Of course, they could have done a lot more with costumes. There is no denying that, but it's better than nothing.
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