Age of Calamity – Definitive Edition Announced

After the launch of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, there was the question of what Koei Tecmo will work on next. And one of my suggestions was a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition for the predecessor, Age of Calamity. If there's one game that absolutely needs the upgrade, then it's this one, because it heavily suffered from bad performance on the Nintendo Switch. Getting it to run in smooth 60FPS will be a selling point alone.

Well, and here we are. It's going to happen, on February 25th 2027. But it's not a "Nintendo Switch 2 Edition", where you can just upgrade your existing game. You'll have to buy the whole game again and transfer your save data.

At least the Definitive Edition will include the two DLC packs, Pulse of the Ancients and Guardian of Remembrance. All of this on one card is going to be a sweat deal. In fact, it's the one gripe I have with the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Breath of the Wild, because that one doesn't come with the DLC for whatever reason. It lacks the complete package and in times of "digital only" as the future it's nice to still get some complete packages on the card.

Sadly, it doesn't look like there are going to be any meaningful additions. Why are they adding a "Calamity Mode" when the "Apocalyptic Mode" was already part of the DLC and atrocious enough? Well, I suppose it behaves similarly to the Forbidden Mode in Age of Imprisonment, where you have additional checkmarks and rewards for it. And this will give the hardcore players an incentive to blast through the entire game again, even when they have completed everything already.

But why not change the enemy tiers in this mode and add the golden monsters from The Master Trials? This would have been much more interesting than just more bullet sponges. And this would be the chance to do some cool stuff, like offering Astor as a playable character, or give Zelda her blue dress.

Well, maybe they will announce some more things later on, but I doubt it. I do wonder, though, if we're finally getting that Lucky Ladle after all those years? It won't be the Definitive Edition without it.

Update: there are some reports that this is going to be a Game Key Card in Europe and Japan. That makes no sense to me, because Age of Imprisonment didn't need one and Age of Calamity is currently about a fourth of the size. The update can't be that big. But if this is true, then this will be a total bummer.