Current Progress
- Difficulty: Very Hard
- Chapter: 5 (Completed)
- Battles: 15
- Challenges: 66
- Quests: 178
- Contribution Rate: 47%
Half-Hearted Calamity
The game is getting serious or at least it pretends to. After the sudden outburst of Calamity, the Champions are now trapped inside the Divine Beasts, fighting to death against the Blights, but for some reason there is still time to save them and even do some side questing on the way.
The title screen and main map are now reflecting the Calamity with a darker background music, which is devoid of any of the hope that this game's main theme brought with it. The loading screen also shows the surrounded castle, which is visible during all the Hyrule Central Tower sequences as well.
And you're locked out of any side activities concerning the four Champions and their Divine Beasts. Like, you can't do the two-handed sword training any longer, because Daruk appears there. But you can still do the Remote Bomb Training at Happy Hyrule Castle for some reason or go shopping.
I try to imagine how it would be visiting the smithy at this time, which is located at the Rauru settlement just north of Hyrule Castle, where this certainly was one of the first places to be destroyed by the Calamity...
"Hey, Link? What's up, wanna improve that Master Sword of yours again? That'll be 200 Rupees. By the way, is there anything happening outside? We keep hearing these roars and explosions..."
It probably would have been more fitting and interesting if the game had gone all the way with the Calamity. Lock you out of anything that you shouldn't be doing right now and only unlock it later, once you've dealt with the Calamity. Basically like a reset of the map, where you start over with the Hyrule Castle mission. Important services like the smithy simply could have been placed at Hateno, where it was safe. The king even urged the people to evacuate, so changes like this would have made sense. But the way it is, it kind of takes away from the seriousness of the situation.
Utter Defeat
This is first time in the game since the four Champions in Chapter 2, where you get to make a choice of where to head next in the story. You can either go to Vah Naboris and Vah Medoh in the west or Vah Ruta and Vah Rudania in the east. And I made the wrong call (again) by going to the latter first.
The "Fire and Ice" mission has the higher recommended level, but it was only by one, so I didn't really take this into consideration. And from the perspective of Link, you should have the higher attachment to Mipha and Daruk, so you might feel like saving them first. Zelda has the highest attachment to Urbosa, but she's a tough woman, and probably no one is attached to Revali...
Of course in the end you want to save them all, but it's still a weird choice to make, especially since the game stresses in how much peril the Champions are, where you only have a couple of minutes to get to them during the story missions. Coincidentally, they always start dying right when you get near them, while both missions seem to be about half a day apart, because they take place on different times of the day. At first I thought it would be fine, because allies usually don't fall so quickly or at all in this game, but it turned that the health meter of the Champions is just a timer in disguise, so you really have to hurry here.
It's just run, run, run... No stopping for Moblins or other major enemies, unless the game tells you to defeat them. Don't take keeps, because it will waste time. That Korok you see over there? Forget about it! Run, run, run...!
I personally always try to find a spot within the main scenarios, where you can take your time and explore everything, look for Koroks, capture keeps and so on. But that's not possible here. You only stop to refill health, rods, or your Special Meter, because these things will help you fight the sturdy elemental Lynels that block the way into the Divine Beasts by being tanky tanks.
And on "Very Hard" I just couldn't do it, at least not on my first try. I had to restart the battle for the Vah Ruta part once already, because I wasted too much time exploring and used the wrong characters for the wrong parts. I went into this battle with Link and Maz, but I've sent Link to deal with the lonely Moblin, while Maz ran into the Ice Lynel. And that wasn't really ideal, because Link was still the stronger character.
So, I had to restart the battle to plan ahead and change routes, but after defeating Waterblight Ganon with only a quarter heart left, the battle continued relentlessly and you have to now save Daruk in time as well, with an Igneo Talus and a Fire Lynel in your way. Now, because I was so low on everything, I had to scavenge the battlefield at first, so by the time the Igneo Talus fell, Daruk was already at a third of his health. And since I was almost out of rods again, this couldn't be done, where the battle was lost, because the last checkpoint for the "Retry" function was right after the Igneo Talus...
That left me defeated, exhausted and frustrated, but I knew what I had to do. What I should have done from the start... No, no... not setting the difficulty down to "Hard", I won't wuss out now. I had to get him first. The Chosen Hero, the one and only, Revali. I knew with Revali at my side I could just do this easily. His arrow spam will help tremendously with all those bosses and time limits.
Rescue
And it turned out that this was the right call, but not because of Revali, since he didn't really help in the end and I did all of it with Master Sword Link. But the "Air and Lightning" scenario was a lot more doable and I could beat it on my first try. It's not that it's significantly easier, though, it even throws encounters with your first Fire and Ice Hinox at you, while the mission to the east only has another Igneo Talus in your way.
Maybe it's because I was mentally prepared for the whole thing and knew that I should just rush and focus on Link, while Maz is only there to offer two additional Special Attacks for the boss enemies. Both scenarios follow the exact same repetitive patterns. You need to hurry to the first Divine Beast, where a bunch of Moblins need to be defeated, as well as a new type of elemental Lynel at the end. Defeat the Blight inside the Divine Beast and repeat the whole process, only with some bigger bosses in the way instead of the Moblins.
It's super lame how these missions were set up and maybe the key difference here is that the battlefield was seemingly smaller and the terrain was easier to traverse, so I wouldn't waste as much time with running around as before. But what also helped was that the Blight battles weren't as bad.
Thunderblight Ganon was surprisingly easy. He used to be the toughest and most dangerous of the four Blights in Breath of the Wild, while here he seemed rather basic, because his speedy attacks didn't translate as well and you can just block most of it or easily dodge it. So, he had to change his strategy to one of the two ways of turning boss fights in this game into a true nightmare... Nope, not a time limit. The Blight battles are actually the only section during these missions, where you can take a deep breath and play with patience. As soon as you arrive there, the Champions won't be hurt any longer, as the usual AI allies. Even though they constantly get hit by the Blight's strongest attacks, they don't lose any health any longer.
So, what did Thunderblight do? Of course he created clones of himself for some cheap offscreen hits. But if you stay calm and focus on taking out the clones first, which only takes one weak point attack, then you're good. I had much more troubles with Waterblight Ganon at first, who gets to use a cool, new spiked ball and chain made out of ice. That's new. Anyway, for my efforts I got a Tree Branch from the chest that Thunderblight Ganon dropped, which was kind of funny...
Windblight Ganon also wasn't as hard, because you can simply block all of his attacks and just wait for those that can be stopped by the Sheikah Slate Runes, where for the most part I just bombed the guy into oblivion. Using Link's ZR arrows also worked on the eyes of the Blights, much like in Breath of the Wild, but the attack window is only very short in this case.
And because the whole mission wasn't already exhausting enough, you have to do another Divine Beast battle afterwards, taking outposts down as Vah Medoh and fighting Windblight Ganon yet again at the end. It's a good thing that I like Vah Medoh the most, but because of it I was too careless and got bombed from all sides, where my expanded health bar was quickly down to two hearts at the end. Two hearts to defeat Windblight Ganon, while he keeps bombing at you like crazy? How was I supposed to do this...?
Luckily, Vah Medoh is one of the Divine Beasts with a shield, so I could just hold the L button and carefully observe what the right time is to strike. But I also noticed something else... With each impact on my shield, my Special Attack Gauge was rising... "Haha, bye, bye, Windblight, gg ez."
Frying the guy with a full Special Attack takes away about 75% of his health, so that's a huge help. I still failed twice at this point and I'm not even sure why. Maybe my left finger was getting tired from holding down L, maybe the game wrongfully registered some hits, maybe some attacks are actually supposed to go through your shield... I don't know, but Vah Medoh suddenly got destroyed and I had to retry. I could have restarted the whole battle, but I knew that I could do this with only two hearts and I did.
(Also, Windblight Ganon seemed kind of huge during this fight. Either that or Vah Medoh became smaller. Well, the Blights can vary in size, but it still seemed kind of odd, because normally Windblight Ganon would only be a fraction of the size of Vah Medoh.)
But at this point it also struck me... The other mission will be doing the same thing with Vah Rudania, right? The trash Divine Beast without a shield? How are you supposed to beat Fireblight Ganon with that thing...?
Well, you don't to have, thank goodness. While you also get a Divine Beast mission for Vah Rudania at the end, it was all about defending an outpost and blasting a ton of Guardians, where the whole level was really well designed around the strengths and weaknesses of Rudania. I actually liked it so much that I consider it to be one of my favorite Divine Beast sections so far, which is quite surprising when you consider how much I despised the giant lizard before.
So, playing the "Fire and Ice" scenario a second time went much better than the first, needless to say, where in hindsight is was probably the easier of the two. It's just that playing any of these missions for the first time might overwhelm you on the hardest difficulty.
Enter the Future Champions
I have yet to address the elephant in the room at this point in the game. And no, not Vah Ruta, that beast doesn't fit in any room... But let's finally talk about the "Champions" from the future: Riju, Teba, Sidon and Yunobo, who have now suddenly joined the fun.
First the game taketh, then it giveth... If you don't count any bonus characters, your team was basically cut down to half with the four Champions locked inside the Divine Beasts. But solving this dilemma not only gives you all four Champions back, it also unlocks all four of their successors from the future, who traveled back in time to support them against the Blights. So, not only do you get your four characters back, you get four new ones for your troubles, increasing your roster by 50%.
And it's absolutely amazing that they all appear here, but the execution is really not. While I had expected that they would appear to help out against the Blights and that they might even become playable, this is not at all how I would have imagined it.
First of all, they just get beamed in there by the little Guardian with no explanation whatsoever. This got seemingly triggered by Zelda's tears, but the rest just happens for the fan service. This reminds me of the one scene with Lana in Hyrule Warriors, where she summons some portals in desperation, which let Darunia and co. appear, all fully combat-ready. How is this even possible? Why does the Guardian have these powers? Why does he summon these characters from the future specifically and not just overpowered Link with his Master Cycle? Will any of this be ever really explained? Because like Daruk puts it: it doesn't make any sense.
It also doesn't help that they are actually not that helpful. In theory it would have been great if these characters were the key for the Champions to overcome the Blights and stand victorious. But I suppose they are too weak for this and all they do here is buy you a little bit of time, so that Link can come save the day... or whoever you chose to enter the Divine Beast.
You can only pick one of your two fighters for the Blight battles for some reason and at first I didn't know this. I thought that everyone would join the fight and since Maz was the closest to Vah Ruta, I just went inside with him and then had to do the whole boss fight with him alone. And I bet that Mipha was reaaaal happy to see who came for her rescue in that moment, while Link was standing around outside, doing absolutely nothing.
Overall these scenes are again one of those unintentionally funny moments. Imagine all the silly things you can do here. You get a fierce battle where Revali and Teba are fighting against Windblight Ganon. It's desperate and for a moment it seems like all is lost... But then Revali says that the wind still might turn in their favor, as a certain someone boards Vah Medoh... And it's Hestu, who smashes Windblight Ganon to pieces with his mighty Maracas. Yihaha!
Or what if you go in there with Riju? Revali shouldn't even know the young Gerudo girl and on first glance she doesn't seem capable to take down such a dangerous foe, even with that rabid sand seal of hers, so this should leave Revali more confused than anything.
They probably should have focused on Link with this to make these scenes more meaningful and to get less weird reactions from the other characters. They simply could have led both characters to the fight, instead of just one, so you can still play as whoever you want. And if you haven't chosen Link, he will be there as an AI ally, like so often. It's that simple and I don't understand why they did it in this weird way.
But the best case would have been if it didn't even come to this scenario. No silly time limits, no third guy needed for the rescue. You get those future Champions and they save the day. They should be the ones who shine here. But they really don't.
While you unlock Sidon and Riju in the middle of the battle, with the time limit in place there is no time to learn their new movesets. And it would be idiotic to go into all those boss fights with their base damage weapons. So, ultimately they are there for no real reason other than to buy a little bit of time story-wise, where Riju even expresses her frustration about this. Rightfully so.
Sadly, these four characters were also quite underdeveloped in Breath of the Wild, where ultimately they were just a tool to get you into the Divine Beasts. All the rest was done by Link and the ghosts of the Champions, where Sidon and co. were quickly forgotten. It would have been at least something if they agreed to pilot the Divine Beasts, guided by the ghosts of their predecessors.
Age of the Calamity would have been THE chance to make up for it. But instead these characters get just thrown in here all at once, without any explanation nor relevance. And while I'm super happy that they are all here and playable, joining the original Champions on their Divine Beasts, I think the execution is a little flawed and disappointing. But let's see.
Four Movesets for the Price of Two
Well, despite the fact how it all happened, it's super awesome to get four new characters basically all at once. Riju, Teba, Sidon and Yunobo join the madness and by now there are already 14 characters available, which even tops the original Hyrule Warriors without any DLC. Of course this only goes for the number of fighters, not the number of movesets, because Hyrule Warriors had more characters with multiple weapons. Here it's really just Link and Zelda.
But I prefer this approach. With multi-weapon characters I tend to use my favorite weapon anyway, where right now Link just goes into battle with the Master Sword all the time. There are some of those black Royal Guard weapons from Hyrule Castle as a heavy damage alternative, but the Master Sword is often too good to say "no" to.
And having more characters is more interesting anyway. Imagine what they could have done with some of the second movesets in Hyrule Warriors... The Naginata would have been a good choice for Nabooru. Lana's Deku Stick was practically made for Saria, where five of the six Sages from Ocarina of Time could have been playable. And the Baton could have been used by a proper Toon Princess Zelda. Oh, the possibilities!
So, throwing in more characters for more fan service is the right thing to do, where Age of Calamity does exactly that. And I have to admit that I originally had my reservations about these four "Future Champions" being playable, mostly because they are in many ways quite similar to the past Champions and most of it could have been simply covered by those guys.
Teba for example is completely interchangeable with Revali. It's just two different bow movesets with a ton of arrow spamming. Teba's combos are much more crazy and devastating, but he moves around quite unpredictably and is vulnerable during his combos, so Revali's aerial attack string is still the better choice for doing lots of safe damage.
Overall Teba was the least interesting of the "major" characters in Breath of the Wild, where he's basically just a nice version of Revali. Back then I wished that they had gone with some Rito girl and that would have been more interesting for Age of Calamity as well. But I like the interactions here, where Teba is stumped by Revali's narcissism and bluntness. So, that's at least something.
With Sidon I didn't know what kind of weapon they would give him and the answer was shockingly simple: he also uses Mipha's weapon, but TWICE! It's the fake Ceremonial Trident, of course, but you get to dual wield the thing, where even Ganon would be jealous about these skills. One of Sidon's combos even has him fire a sword beam made out of water, which looks quite similar to Demise's lightning beams.
As you would expect from the guy, he is a lot less serious than Mipha in battle, where he even plays a baseball mini-game with the Bomb Rune. His ZR ability is quite hilarious, where you make him do is optimistic smile, which will strengthen your attacks at that moment. But it's so in character and he feels significantly different from Mipha, despite the fact he uses a very similar weapon and lots of water attacks.
The same can be said about Yunobo, who has Daruk's Protection as his main feature, but uses it in a completely different way. His weapon type are "Rock Roasts", which is ingenious. Eating them with ZR will activate Daruk's Protection in different forms to modify his attacks. But it doesn't save him from damage, whatsoever, which seems a little weird... And would have offered an insanely valuable moveset for playing on "Very Hard". Too bad.
In the least his use of Cryonis must be one of the best variants in the game. He creates a huge round ice stage around himself, where never won't have any problems with hitting rushing enemies.
The real star here is easily Riju, though, because she offers something totally different with her moveset, where she effectively just slams Patricia into everything.
- "A Moblin surrounded by a horde of Bokoblins? BAM, Patricia!"
- "A Lynel blocking the path? BAM, Patricia!"
- "Thunderblight Ganon? BAM, Patricia!"
That poor sand seal... It's also hilarious how the sand seal now works on solid stone and pretty much every underground, where it reminds me of the boat from the Red King of Lions in Hyrule Warriors. But I like the "bridle" weapon type, because that's clever and would have worked with Epona in Hyrule Warriors as well, instead of the different tiers from different ages.
Overall Riju's moveset seems to be focused on crowd control, where she might struggle a bit against bosses, but the she could be one of the best area attack characters in the game, especially with that ongoing lightning combo. Her Special Attack is excellent as well. Here she puts on the Thunder Helm and gets ready for a lightning attack by Vah Naboris. Really cool. She was one of my favorite characters in Breath of the Wild and I'm quite happy about her moveset, where seal surfing around on your shield is a lot of fun.
But this reminds me... where are the horses? You can ride around the battlefields with a sand seal now, but not a horse? In the memories from Breath of the Wild you can see Link and Zelda ride on horses all the time, but here it seems like they are going on foot everywhere, which is quite odd. I wouldn't necessarily want a separate weapon type for this, because Epona in Hyrule Warriors was super lame, but it would have been cool if you could find horses on the battlefield and ride on them with certain characters, like Link, Impa, or Zelda. In that case you could use your weapon only in a more limited way, but you would be faster...
A Jump to the Past
With
the "Champion sidekicks" in my team, I also went back to Chapter 2 to replay
the Champion story scenarios with the respective descendant, mostly to
get a better feel for these characters, learn some of their combos and
so on. So, I went back to the Gerudo Desert with Riju to slam Patricia
into some Yiga foes, blasted a lot of Ritos with Teba, defended Zora's
Domain as Sidon and mined Death Mountain as Yunobo.
And
it's a lot of fun to replay the older scenarios when you're way above
the recommended level and have much better weapons, because it
essentially plays like the "Normal" or "Hard" difficulties at that
point, even when playing on "Very Hard". Well, you still take several
hearts of damage, but at least the enemies don't tank too hard. So, you
can blast through everything, which also reduces the risk of being hit
by something. I'm repeating myself here, but it's nice to get this level
of accomplishment, where missions that used to be quite difficult in
the beginning can now be used for a walk in the park.
Even More?
As I said, there are 14 characters available right now and the next one has already been teased. I had been wondering how they will handle Master Kohga as a potentially playable character, where either there was going to be some sort of villain campaign or he joins the good guys for some reason. It's seemingly the latter, because Astor mercilessly betrays the Yiga to feed Calamity Ganon's power. I would be grabbing my bananas and join the heroes at this point as well... Turns out that Calamity Ganon wasn't as cool after all, huh?
Too bad that it seems that Sooga probably won't make it, but there is always DLC, right? I would be super disappointed if Sooga were never to be playable, because he's basically this game's Volga. And Volga vs. Sooga in the next Hyrule Warriors is a must at this point. Also, if Astor really becomes playable, I think it will be via some DLC "Villain Map", where you play the story from his perspective, similar to Cia's DLC campaign in Hyrule Warriors. Could be super interesting.
Otherwise I only expect the King to be playable as well for a total of 16 characters. If he wasn't playable, he would have gotten a character entry in the gallery already next to Robbie and Purah.
But for now I will focus on doing lots of side quests, before I go into the second Akkala Citadel mission. I've been postponing some of it, because of the time limits everywhere. Getting a new Challenge without a time limit is an absolute rarity by now. It's not even funny...
PS: Since my vacation is sadly over, I won't have much time to play the game going forward. So expect these posts to be less frequent than before.
