Age of Calamity: amiibo Support

Thanks to the previews we now also know how the amiibo will work in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Well, it's exactly the same as in Hyrule Warriors... Who would have thought? You can scan five per day for random materials and weapons and if you scan an amiibo of a character who's playable in the game, then you will get a weapon for this character... 

The latter will most likely only work for Link, Zelda and the four Champions. Too bad that there hasn't been a single amiibo for Impa yet, so you're out of luck if you want to easily get some weapons for her. And if there are any more playable characters, then they won't most likely be covered by this either.

Well, it's nothing special, but still useful. I personally enjoy scanning amiibo for some daily rewards, where this used to be quite the ritual during every day of playing Breath of the Wild. And in the least they aren't locking an entire moveset behind the figurines, like they first did with the Spinner in Hyrule Warriors on Wii U.

Overall amiibo seem to be something that Nintendo slowly, but surely likes to forget about. There haven't been any amiibo for Animal Crossing: New Horizons for example, even though the franchise was previously littered with that stuff. Only Super Smash Bros. Ultimate seems to be getting new ones, but here there are also only doing the bare minimum (no female variant of Byleth) and they will take forever to come out.

This most likely has to do with current production shortages, but it might also simply be that the age of amiibo will be coming to an end. When it began I used to be heavily against the practice, but I became a small collector over the years, at least when it comes to the Zelda and Metroid figurines. And when they still offer some small rewards like in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, then it's certainly nice to have them, without taking away anything for the people who don't.

Apropos, Breath of the Wild had many exclusive amiibo weapons and armor items, mostly things based on other 3D Zelda games like Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask. Seeing how most of Link's armor collection got ported over, it will be interesting to know whether these items are actually also available in Age of Calamity or not.

Age of Calamity: Korok Counter Confirmed

Nintendo also has lifted the preview embargo for the west, where you can watch even more footage of Vah Ruta, Vah Rudania and the challenge missions surrounding chapter 2... But not actual footage from the story scenarios, which is probably good that all of this won't be spoiled for the public right away.

Anyway, GameXplain has shared some new details about the game, which takes away one of my concerns that I had after playing the demo:

Unlike in the demo, it actually shows you how many Korok Seeds there are in a level after completing it and how many of those you've already gotten. And that's certainly helpful. Ideally, it would also mark any found Koroks on your battlefield maps, but at least you will know which scenarios to play if you're still missing Koroks. Otherwise completing this game without online guides probably would have been a nightmare.

 

Another detail is that the Military Training Camp will act as your quick way of leveling characters for Rupees, like the "Training Dojo" in the first game. I could have seen this becoming an actual battlefield, but it's still a nice touch how all the features from Hyrule Warriors are incorporated into the main map here.

Age of Calamity: Chapter 2 Footage

 

Today Famitsu was allowed to cover the entire 2nd chapter of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, so that people can take a look at what comes immediately after the demo chapter. This includes a first look at Revali and Mipha in action, as well as one of the Divine Beasts, Vah Ruta. You can find a collection of the footage at NintendoEverything.com, as well as many new screenshots on Inside-Games.jp.

I'm not going over it all, because I feel like I want to explore most of this myself when the game comes out in two weeks. But playing as Vah Ruta looks a lot more fun than I originally expected. You get like 30 hearts per default, which is probably the maximum in this game, and you're taking out entire hordes of Lynels. You also get a cool HUD overlay with a reticle and instructions for the controls, where like Ganon in Hyrule Warriors the Divine Beasts play differently from normal characters and are really their own thing.

This also seems to be a small mission of its own, where the map is quite straight-forward. So, I suppose there will be special missions to play as these Divine Beasts just for the fun of it. And if there's no grinding involved, like there used to be with Ganon, while the difficulty respects what these mechanical beasts are supposed to be, then I'm totally fine with this feature, looking forward to it even.

Playing as Mipha herself and Revali also looks quite fun. Mipha seems so much more faster and powerful than Ruto in Hyrule Warriors, it's really something. But having the trident certainly helps. And with Revali it seems like you can just fly around and fight from the air as you please, which fits the character perfectly, while he also gets a different moveset on the ground. You can't seem to go very high up, though, so it's more like the Great Fairy, who floated above the battlefield...

Otherwise there is a first real look at the new villain's face, where this seems to be a male after all. That's a little disappointing, because this type of dark sorcerer is quite reminiscent of Agahnim or Vaati and it would have been nice to have a female character on the side of evil.

Age of Calamity: About the Data Mined Characters...

Originally I didn't want to look at the leak, but then I saw another spoiler and I decided to check it out anyway, because I was kind of skeptical. What got data-mined is a bunch of map and menu icons, which includes several characters. But I'm personally not convinced that all of these will really be playable characters, nor does the leak seem to have all the icons, because there is at least two map icons missing that we saw during the Treehouse footage, like the one for the "Meditation Shrine" and the Sheikah Sensor.

Anyway, keep reading at your own risk:

Source

The character icons are in order:

• Link
• Zelda
• King Rhoam
• Mipha
• Daruk
• Revali
• Urbosa
• Impa
• Sidon
• Yunobo
• Teba
• Riju
• Hestu
• A Great Fairy (Cortera?)
• Master Kohga
• A Sheikah Monk (Maz Koshia?)
• The Egg Guardian
• Ganon / Blight

The most interesting thing here are arguably the four "Champion descendants" – Riju, Yunobo, Teba and adult Sidon, who all might be brought back from the future to work together with the classic Champions. The modified tapestry of the battle against Calamity Ganon that we get to see in the beginning of the game even shows the four Divine Beasts with two riders each instead of just one, which might imply that the two generations of Champions will work together to defeat the Blights.

However, I'm wondering what the "Champion descendants" will bring on the table that the original Champions already couldn't. Yunobo's signature move is basically using Daruk's Protection. And the only one of the four to really use any kind of weapon is Teba, who is an archer just like Revali. But so far it doesn't seem like weapons will actually be shared between characters.

Riju could technically use the Thunder Helm as her "weapon", but that might also be part of her wardrobe, where it protects you from lightning damage if equipped, just like in Breath of the Wild. And Urbosa would have the exact same item, of course. Another possibility would be Sand Seal reins that she uses for Patricia, but this would make things awkward on stages made out of rock and stone.

So, it's possible that these four characters will be part of the story and might even help the earlier Champions somehow, but aren't necessarily playable. But Koei Tecmo could always come up with some crazy stuff, so you never know, and in the least Sidon and Riju are fan favorite characters, so it's good to have them in this game one way or another.

The Great Fairy might just be a map icon for a side quest. Yes, there was a playable Great Fairy in Hyrule Warriors as one of Link's "weapons", so it's possible. Each of the Great Fairies are also now individuals with different names and looks, where the icons resembles Cortera the most. But we never saw their upper bodies, so this would lead to something interesting, while they are also very huge. Not on the level of the Divine Beasts, but certainly a lot larger than any of the confirmed characters.

But it's likely that the Great Fairies will simply have their spots on the map for some side quest stuff, which could be similar for any Sheikah Monks. However, they probably would use a simpler icon for Shrines and it's possible that we might get a playable Sheikah Monk, like the infamous Maz Koshia, so this could really go either way.

As for the rest, King Rhoam, Hestu and Master Kohga got already presented with artworks that are strikingly similar to those of the confirmed playable characters, where all three have some sort of item that might become their main "weapon". So, they seem more likely after this leak, where it's possible that the King and Hestu are later unlocks in the game that Nintendo only wanted to tease.

But it's kind of odd how only Master Kohga and what might be Ganon or the Blights have character icons here, but not the Yiga commander or the dark sorcerer/sorceress. If they are going with playable villains somehow, I'd expect there to be more than just Kohga. And it's unclear what the Ganon icon will represent. That could really be anything tied to Ganon and simply be used for the final boss on the map.

Last but not least, there is the little Guardian. But it's already following Link at all times and providing everyone with the Sheikah Slate Runes, so it's questionable whether it really will become playable on its own. An animated version of its icon already gets used on the loading and map screens, where the Guardian seems more like a guide than anything. So, like with Ganon or the Great Fairy I'm having my doubts that this will actually lead to a playable character. But I could be wrong...

Age of Calamity: One-Hit Obliterator?

 

If there's one thing I really hated about the Adventure Mode in Hyrule Warriors, then it was any "All attacks are devastating!" or "Don't get hit!" missions, where anything can bring your health down to a quarter heart in a single strike – even if it's just a scratch from one of the 100 Bokoblins around you that usually don't do anything at all. It's simply one of the cheapest and most artificial challenge designs in video game history and frankly not much fun, because you have to play cowardly and cheaply, e.g by abusing the bow.

I wouldn't be all that concerned about the return of such challenges in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, if it weren't for the mediocre DLC of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where the "One-Hit Obliterator" got introduced for a very similar challenge on the Great Plateau. It's here where your flawless journey without any deaths might find a quick end, just because of a single Keese. It's by far the worst part of the entire game and I wouldn't be surprised if Koei Tecmo will happily re-use this weapon for some cheap challenges of their own...

In the least it doesn't seem like there will be any ranks this time around, so getting hit doesn't seem to matter much. This is already a good thing, because being excluded from rewards, just because you took half a heart too much damage was pretty lame, especially in missions where everything hits like a truck. It also made collecting additional Heart Containers for your characters completely pointless, because the damage threshold for the best rank was usually the ten hearts that everyone has at the beginning. (At least in the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS versions, because they've changed the requirements for the ranks significantly in the Definitive Edition, as pointed out by Marandahir in the comments.)

So, maybe they'll handle something like the "One-Hit Obliterator" better as well. If it's just a single mission for Link, I probably wouldn't mind too much.

Age of Calamity: Different Maps?

One of the things that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity does really well compared to Hyrule Warriors is how it combines all game modes into one by using the map of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. There you can play and replay the main story scenarios like in Legend and Free Mode, you can play side challenges like in Adventure Mode and you can fuse weapons, buy things, unlock combos and recipes like in the Bazaar.

This should create a much nicer pace, where playing main missions and side quests one after another comes with a much more natural flow than in Hyrule Warriors, where only going into the Bazaar between scenarios was convenient enough. Or has anyone really switched between Legend and Adventure Mode regularly?

Anyway, it also makes you wonder how they'll do certain things. How will potentially playable villains be handled? And how will DLC be integrated, if there's any?

 

Villain Map?

The original Hyrule Warriors lets you play as Ganondorf and other villains during the campaign, where certain scenarios simply are tied to these characters. The map in Age of Calamity, however, seems to focus a lot more on the efforts of the good guys, where the whole thing even revolves around the Central Hyrule Tower as your base of operations.

Now, let's say that you also get to play as the villains somehow during the campaign. The existence of a corrupted version of the little Guardian egg, the "bad egg" so to say, which got teased in the demo, hints at this possibility quite strongly, because it would allow Team Ganon to use the four Sheikah Slate Runes freely as well. Master Kohga, his dual-wielding commander and the mysterious Gerudo sorceress would be the main candidates here. And they could even go for the four Blights as a counterpart to the four Divine Beasts...

Well, in that case I would expect that there is a way of switching between parties on the map, e.g. by pressing X or Y. The villain map might even use icons that are colored in the "Malice Purple" and here you would only see scenarios and side quests relevant for the evil characters.

 

DLC?

It would be very surprising if this game didn't get DLC, but what would be the best way of integrating it into this new map feature? Well, one possibility would be a "Master Mode", where you play through the same map again but with altered scenarios and challenges to make them harder.

One possibility would be playing the original story without the time travel stuff. This would mean that you can't use the Sheikah Slate Runes or even play as Zelda until later, where this doesn't feel all that likely... However, since this would be like a "Hard Mode", it's still a possibility.

But they could potentially also expand the main campaign with new scenarios, new challenges and of course more playable characters. Hopefully this would lead to something that also feels more integrated than what they've first done with DLC in Hyrule Warriors, where new characters were like a standalone package without any missions.

To be fair, they already did a better job with the DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Legends, but the focus there was entirely on the Adventure Mode. Ideally, a DLC Pack would come with one or two new characters, going hand in hand with new story scenarios, challenges and side quests for these characters. It might even be that a "Villain Map" will be DLC and not part of the main game.

Cadence of Hyrule: Further Impressions

 

We've continued playing Cadence of Hyrule – Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda in coop for a bit, where we've finished a total of three dungeons: the Gerudo Ruins, the Frozen Grotto and the Lost Swamp in that order.

In my previous post I complained about how the first dungeon, the Kakariko Crypt, seemed a little bit too difficult with its complete rogue-like approach. It was just a mini-dungeon, though, and the real dungeons are actually much fairer. You have a main floor right at the entrance, which doesn't change. This main floor holds the door to the boss and you keep the dungeon's main items, including the Boss Key, so if you die at the boss, you can try again right away without re-playing the entire dungeon.

Every progress made on the main floor, e.g. shortcuts to later floors, also gets saved. So, only the individual floors are randomly generated to keep them interesting. And if you die later on, you don't have to do the entire dungeon from the start again.

So, that was a relief and actually the dungeons became a little bit too easy, where we haven't died a single time in our last sessions. Once you get a certain amount of Heart Containers and many useful items, the game gets considerably easy, which is a problem that many Zelda games actually have. You're only at risk of dying early on.

Curiously, we completely missed the "tribe items" before going into the respective dungeons. We only solved the puzzle at Gerudo Town after the completing the Gerudo Ruins and we haven't actually found out how to wake the Zora Prince yet. That's a very cryptic puzzle and I think he will give you the Zora Flippers, but it's not like you need those, since there are always alternative ways of doing things. For example, you can still get into the Frozen Grotto dungeon with the Snorkel or the Ice Rod.

But this also sort of undermines the value of certain items a bit. Items like the Hookshot only allow you to take shortcuts for the most part, but they are not required to complete the game. And you do collect a lot of items in this game, where most of it doesn't feel all that useful. On the other hand it makes for some creative puzzles, where there are multiple solutions available thanks to the different items.

We also unlocked the Deku character, Yves, who only has one heart and can't use the majority of items. Okay... skip. And what's with that name? Yves? Did Tingle give him this? He's the first named Deku Scrub anyway, since the Deku characters so far always were called by their roles, like "Deku Princess", "Deku King" or "Deku Butler". And not Cindy, Kevin or Alfred.

Also, this is not the only of the "Super Ultra Hardcore Hard Mode" characters, since the DLC also comes with the weird Aria... I personally don't find "Don't get hit!" challenges to be any fun, it's by far the worst type of artificial difficulty... It's bad enough that there is a chest that requires you to beat a bunch of enemies without missing a beat and without taking damage. And then doesn't open anyway, because there is another artificial requirement on top.

Well, despite all the shenanigans we're still having fun and that's good. I'm actually looking forward to the next play session, but at the same time I can't shake the feeling that I'd rather have a proper top-down Zelda title with a two-player mode and a randomly generated world instead, with the 3D visuals of Link's Awakening and without all the nonsense. That would have the potential of becoming one of my favorite games of all time.