I do think that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity will mean more to people who have played Breath of the Wild, and that's fine. For Zelda fans, there's no way they haven't played it anyway. For Musou fans coming to Age of Calamity from that angle, the sell's a little harder. The narrative that it weaves are great. The presentation is impeccable, and each and every one of the characters are fun to play with. It's just that where the original Hyrule Warriors felt like a love letter to the history and heritage of Zelda, Age of Calamity is more immediate, and that's just a little less of a celebration, though with the tradeoff being it actually contributes to the lore. For me, that's a worthwhile tradeoff, and I didn't even have the assumed knowledge going in.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a masterpiece spinoff as it is a game that is an alternative timeline in the Breath of the Wild Era, and the game shows huge amounts of key things around. The story is so well paced and very well written I love everything about the characters and how their personalities are, and I really love how Zelda and Link make a connection throughout with Link wielding the Master Sword, while Princess Zelda struggles to unlock her powers and to show her true feelings of herself. The gameplay is phenomenal it has true fast paced hack and slash gameplay that fits so well within the Zelda games. The content is huge as the game serves wide variety of characters weapons and huge amounts of costumes to wear foreach character especially Link. The game also introduces the sweetest guardian Terrako, who is a little robot guardian that goes back in time to help and stop Calamity Ganon's uprising. The game has very satisfying missions that let you grind, find and serve different kinds of difficulty for side missions, and main missions, for the story. Anyway, this was my full review of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and if you read this review thank you.
A great musou game that also comes with an excellent story that completes what we knew from Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The only comebacks of this game are some technical issues and the things that come with this game's genre, and even with that is a great game.
If the name "The Legend of Zelda" means a lot to you, and you can have fun with musou-style games, then Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity will not disappoint. Overall it is of the best games Omega Force has ever done with fast-paced and deep gameplay combined with some really great music.
As one of the better Musou spin-off games out there, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a welcome treat for Breath of the Wild fans. Its gameplay remains expectedly repetitive but there's still a ton of fun to be had with its variety of combat abilities.
The best Dynasty Warriors style game ever made, which means it’s slightly north of mediocre, with simplistic combat, weak storytelling, and a whole lot of repetition.
I'm a Muso lover through and through and I love when they have the chance to take other franchise and put the Warrios spin to it
Pros-
Cinematic - Finishers have very flashy close ups and dynamic camra action when doing a hand full of moves and i like that its not the same Finisher animation every one has about 2 or 3 Good control- movement felt fluid and not to stiff and being able to cancel out of a combo or action move still works as th Warrios series refine it each game Characters- each character playsuniquely different with more ways to add combos and a mix up of light and heavy attacks in find my self hard press on WHO I like to play as thr most rather it be thr Element master Korok or Mid-range Power house King Raruhimself Cons-
Limitations- Now the game looks amazing dont get me wrong but coming from how IMPRESSIVE Warrios Orgins was you wont see as nearly as much enemies on screen or attention to detail as that game has. Small Maps- the maps on Imprisonment are fairly small and short without to many distractions you can cut through the main fights in under 10-15m even less once you get powdered up,but there also NOT to small to enjoy still giving you JUST enough space to go off the path once or twice Items- As much as I love more ways to mow down bad guys, this game gives you way too many rock-paper-scissors type actions (items). Captains and enemies have a moment where they will use an unblockable attack. In response, you have a way to counter it, be it an item or a character's unique move, to stop it and open them up. Some characters don't have these moves and would have to use an item, but in the heat of an attack, sometimes you hit the wrong button or item, which will start your cooldown. So yeah that's my thoughts
I found the first HW game better, somehow. This game really drove home an immense level of tedium for the same A-to-B gameplay for 80 hours straight. It's otherwise close to a phenomenal game that's utterly plagued by a bad frame rate and the most barebones objective-based gameplay you could ever imagine. The irony is that whilst Breath of the Wild had phenomenal gameplay but was hampered by a lackluster narrative, Age of Calamity instead has terrible gameplay, but a far more compelling narrative world. It's tragic because, much the same as Hyrule Warriors was 'The Ultimate Zelda fan game' (an honoured claim by its producer), so too is Age of Calamity the Ultimate BOTW fan game. I love absolutely everything about this game except for how quickly the combat wears out its welcome after every level. I feel even people who didn't like BOTW's narrative will struggle not to love this game much the same- it was criticised for the time travel retconning, but I felt AOC did exactly what it needed to, as the ultimate outcome in BOTW was already told- playing 80 more hours of it wouldn't have made much sense, and it concluded appropriately in its own way. All you want is the characters to make it through the War, at least this time... Also had the best soundtrack of 2020, bar none. Nothing in any year could ever match this- not even popular ones like DOOM Eternal at the time. Age of Calamity is hard to recommend, but for what good it does bear I believe it was utterly slept on, especially for a Breath of the Wild spin-off.
Gameplay is pretty fun, although performance is a little lacklustre - sometimes it feels a bit stuttery, a lot more so than say, BotW. My big gripe is that the story requires you to have played BotW (which I have) to get the most out of it, but then goes on to become incompatible with BotW due to a weird ending that conflicts with the events in BotW. So it both relies on and retcons BotW at the same time. They could have at least embraced the non-canon-ness of the game and tried to be more original, or gone for a proper canonical prequel, but instead you get half of both and it doesn't work.
SummarySee Hyrule 100 years before the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild game and experience the events of the Great Calamity. Join the struggle that brought Hyrule to its knees. Learn more about Zelda, the four Champions, the King of Hyrule and more through dramatic cutscenes as they try to save the kingdom from Calamity. The Hyrule Warriors...