Hyrule warriors: Age of Calamity will see you fighting an absurd amount of enemies at once, that sense of war is really reinforced by the onslaught of hundreds of enemies in seemingly endless encounters throughout Hyrule. There is something very satisfying in seeing that many enemies fall at once, it’s a similar feeling to popping a spot or watching a knife cut through a mound of jelly. We’ve felt a similar feeling in Luigis Mansion 3 when you’re sucking things up through the Poltergust that’s reminiscent of actually sucking things up with a vacuum cleaner. The combat is satisfyingly chaotic and there are missions that see you take control of the Divine Beasts but other than that there isn’t much that deviates away from the tedium of fighting. Once you’ve played for an hour be prepared to repeat that same loop for another 29+ hours.

The character balancing however, is terrible, some are clearly more powerful than others. It’s almost pointless playing as most of the characters you’ll unlock on your way through the story which is a shame because the roster is actually really good. The Champions tend to feel more gimmicky than useful and when the novelty runs out you’re left wondering who decided it’d be a good idea to have a character stop mid battle to charge a bar or eat something.

There’s no beating around the bush, the performance is poor. I’ve seen more demanding games run better on lesser hardware, in fact we’ve seen Doom running on a pregnancy stick. I believe it might actually be due to a fault with the game engine and hardware limitations, in Breath of the Wild there’s a glitch called super menu overload which is achieved by duplicating a weapon 600 times and it causes the game to freak out and slow down etc. Essentially by spawning hundreds of enemies like they do it’s overloading the game. A similar thing happens in Breath of the Wild when you visit the Korok forest, you’ll notice the frame rate is abysmal. This is because the game has to process and render so many of the environmental animations like the leaves swaying in the wind or the gorgeous blades of grass.

The story of Age of Calamity is set on an alternate timeline to Breath of the Wild, in a timeline where Calamity Ganon was stopped by the Champions and Zelda with the help of the four Divine Beasts. The only things we can possibly consider canon is Terrako going back in time but everything after it is then set in an alternate timeline and the four Champions from the present: Riju; Yunobo; Sidon and Teba should have the memory of doing so presumably between the events of Breath of the Wild and its sequel. Although this timeline is a lot more optimistic and it’s nice to think that the four original Champions survived it is a headache to fans of the original game, it’s almost like they made a game for the fans whilst alienating them simultaneously. It feels much more like fan fiction than it does a story from an officially licensed Nintendo game. The legend of Zelda is already renowned for its increasingly complex but fickle canonical progression so it’s rather annoying that they’d make these decisions but a part of me is relieved because then fans don’t actually have to play this mess of a game to enjoy the story taking place after Breath of the Wild. As far as prequels go this is a terrible addition but as a spin off it’s very serviceable.

I can’t help but feel that the cutscenes had a lot less thought and love put into them, I felt far less emotion watching them as I did in Breath of the Wild. We even witness a death of an important character but the scene elicits almost no emotional response from the player, this should be a gut wrenching moment but it’s just slightly upsetting if that. When watching the memories throughout Breath of the Wild it’s undeniable that there’s so much emotion and expression crammed into each scene it’s rather polarising when comparing it to Age of Calamity.

I actually wanted to talk about the soundtrack but I think that’d be an unfair analysis coming from me, I’ll admit that the new tracks used were underwhelming at best. They’re serviceable but nothing revolutionary or even worth noting, that being said when Zelda's lullaby is played by Terrako I couldn’t help but feel that wave of nostalgia wash over me, that song never fails to pull on my heart strings and it was a nice inclusion overall. It’s somewhat disappointing that they have to rely on the series' legacy to elicit any decent form of emotion.

Conclusion

I can’t help but feel that this was a rushed attempt at a spin off to keep fans happy as they wait for the true successor to Breath of the Wild. While it is a good warriors game it is a terrible Breath of the Wild spin off that is almost an insult to the fans. I find myself being especially critical of this title seeing as it’s not only a game published by Nintendo but a spin off of the Nintendo Switches best game. I’m a huge fan of The Legend of Zelda and I can’t help but feel like Nintendo always fails to deliver what we actually want, hopefully we’ll get more promising content over the next few months with the free DLC being released.

Author: Gabriel Sewell