Age of Calamity ‘is an overkill spinoff of Zelda that works primarily

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a modern masterpiece whose influence can be felt in several big-name video games that have appeared in the almost four years since its release. His open-world, physics-driven sandbox was equal parts scenic, meditative, and filled with chaotic wonder. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the latest release in an unusually quiet Christmas season for Nintendo, is neither of those things.

That it isHowever, a quirky and over the top way to revisit one of the most memorable worlds in recent game history. The product of a collaboration between Nintendo and Dynasty Warriors developer Omega Force, Era of calamity attempts to marry the inherent silliness of traversing thousands of monsters at once with a serious narrative about attempting to avoid the apocalypse it sets Breath of the wild.

While this rare Legend of Zelda spin-off may not always be the most successful in that endeavor, Era of calamity he manages to be a great time despite himself.

Musou away, musou alright

Instead of following the end of Breath of the wild, this new spin-off is set 100 years before the 2017 classic. Link remains an ordinary knight tasked with being Princess Zelda’s personal bodyguard, who reluctantly tries to fulfill her role as savior in a prophecy of recent times at the insistence of his father. Most importantly, Hyrule remains a working realm that has not yet been devastated by Calamity Ganon and has become the world that many of us thoroughly explored in 2017.

The thing is, this time you won’t explore it the same way. Era of calamity fits under the umbrella of “musou”, the genre popularized by Dynasty Warriors and applied to countless derivatives of franchises like One Piece, Gundam, and Fire Emblem. These games try to cut through hordes of enemies that don’t put up much resistance because they mostly exist to make you feel good while eliminating them by the dozen. There’s an empowering rush to clear a screen full of enemies with just a few hits, and that’s what makes musou games tick. You won’t find serene adventure or puzzle solving here, just glorious monster slaying.

Said that Era of calamity mixes in some of Breath of the wildThe best features to make the people who loved that game a little more comfortable with the new format. All four powers of Sheikah Slate are present here, so you can stop enemies in their tracks with Stasis, use Magnesis to steal metal weapons from enemies’ hands, and do a lot of other fun things to get an edge in fighting fights. bosses. And just like in Breath of the wild, the grass will catch fire and the water will react to lightning and ice. It’s just that this time he’s in the service of a mass slaughter instead of solving puzzles.

If you think the combat sounds repetitive you’d be correct, but Omega Force always adds other variables to keep missions fresh. Many levels feature outposts to capture, bosses to take down, and secret treasures to find if you feel like straying away from the objective markers every now and then. You will almost always have multiple playable characters to switch freely during a mission and will often have to give orders to those you are not controlling in order to accomplish multiple objectives at once.

Speaking of which, the wide variety of playable characters is the spice that transforms Era of calamityThe gameplay from edible to delicious. Aside from Link and Zelda, you’ll take control of the agile ninja Impa, as well as the four Divine Beast pilots who were fully depicted in flashbacks in Breath of the wild: Daruk the Goron, Revali the Rite, Mipha the Zora and Urbosa the Gerudo. On top of that, there are several others to unlock that Nintendo would rather I didn’t tell you about.

Each of those characters has a totally different set of moves powered by unique mechanics. True to his Breath of the wild Link can use different weapons like swords and one-handed spears, while Impa creates holographic clones of herself to dish out absurd amounts of damage when used correctly. Urbosa can infuse his attacks with powerful lightning bolts, Mipha can generate sources that heal allies and act as jump pads for air strikes, and so on.

It’s an impressive amount of mechanical diversity for a fairly large character roster, and probably Era of calamityit is saving grace. This is especially true when it comes to everything. other what story missions. Instead of choosing missions from a normal menu, the time between missions is spent looking at the world map of Breath of the wild, which is now riddled with side quests and “quests” that amount to little more than ditching resources collected in battle in exchange for character upgrades.

This is simultaneously my favorite part of Era of calamity and the place where the replay can be set for the finalists. Even if sent solely through text blurs on a map screen, it’s nice to see Breath of the wildThe post-apocalyptic environment repurposed as a still intact world where you can help merchants, military captains, and researchers beef up their operations to enhance the war effort. In Breath of the wild, this world is fractured and broken. Here is everything and everyone collaborates to make it so.

Unfortunately, you’ll have a hard time getting everything you want without at least occasionally diving into optional side quests. These are usually quite short and have simple goals like killing many enemies or capturing outposts within a time limit. They’re decent stuff for listening to podcasts, but if you’re the type of person who needs to mark all the icons on video game map screens, they can quickly get overwhelming and frankly a bit boring. The advantage is that these side missions gave me the opportunity to try characters that I had been ignoring because the list is quite large; The downside is that I felt like I had to do that to avoid boredom at the 20 or so mark.

Still, you can theoretically stick to the story missions and have fun. Era of calamityThe gameplay is at its best in those sequences. Unfortunately, the story itself doesn’t live up to its great potential.

We don’t always have to win

When Era of calamity It was announced, the most exciting thing about it was the potential for a silly and elegant action game that nevertheless ends in failure and tragedy. Sorry to spoil a game from almost four years ago, but the events of a century earlier Breath of the wild don’t have a happy ending. A bunch of cool characters die, Link goes into a cryogenic sleep, and generally everything sucks for the next 100 years.

Nintendo doesn’t want me to go into detail about the story and wouldn’t want to spoil it anyway, but Era of calamity take things in a different direction that didn’t sit well with me. You lean too heavily on fan service in a way that feels thematically at odds with what Breath of the wild explicitly clear: Sometimes prophecies are wrong and the good guys don’t win.

Despite this (and despite some questionable English dub performances), there are still plenty of moments that work. At best, this is a coming-of-age story about Princess Zelda, a 16-year-old girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders who is not sure she will be able to play her part in this story.

Recent Legend of Zelda games like Sword to the sky Y Breath of the wild in fact, they’ve given the titular princess more to do than just being a kidnapping victim, but even those keep her adventures off screen. This time around, she gets most of the attention and is fully playable in a way that I appreciate. Your emotional heartbeats are easily the most effective parts of Era of calamityNarrative efforts.

The end result is a totally excellent video game story with some enjoyable moments that could and should have been much better. Era of calamityThe story had a chance to differentiate itself from the triumphant power fantasy of other action games, which would have been in keeping with the original material. Instead, Nintendo went a different route that is disappointing even if it manages to succeed on its own merits from time to time.

Even with a couple of major bugs, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a good excuse to return to one of the most beloved video game worlds of the last decade and have a good time with characters who were already dead at the time. Breath of the wild started. There is an irresistible charm to having Mipha annihilate dozens of monsters at once with a large, caricatured tornado of water.

It’s a shame about the story, but hey, at least you will never die because it started to rain while climbing a mountain in this game.