The new ‘The Legend of Zelda’ game ‘Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity’ has come out on November 20th 2020! The legend of Zelda is a videogame franchise of Nintendo that follows the story of Link as the hero on his journey to save Princess Zelda and the land which is called Hyrule. Now let’s see what this game is like shall we?

It’s the second ‘Hyrule Warriors’ game in the franchise and it brought a lot of expectations from the fans. Age of Calamity tells the story of the 100 years before ‘Breath of the Wild’ takes place and serves as a prequel before ‘Breath of the Wild 2’ which releases in 2021. So let’s review!

The game starts when Calamity Ganon already has struck and shows the destruction it leaves behind. Then a new character gets introduced that somehow takes us to the past where the Calamity has not struck yet. From there on out the story follows the champions and Princess Zelda as they prepare for the upcoming war. Every time you open the game it shows you the Sheikah tower in Central Hyrule from where you will see the Sheikah Slate map with the directions of where you need to go next.

The storyline the game has is very interesting. The new cutscenes show more of the personality of the characters as well, along with fun scenes of interactions between all of them. It’s refreshing, especially for those who have played ‘Breath of the Wild’ and know what happens after the Calamity to see younger versions of characters like Impa, Robbie, Purah and even Sidon. Because of this, the game allows you to play as a multitude of characters such as the champions themselves, Impa, Hestu and even the Divine Beasts! It’s great to see each character’s unique fighting abilities and choice of weapons against the hordes of enemies.

The new character, a little guardian like robot, is also helpful during the game. When you play as Link, the robot is constantly around and will help defeat certain enemies. This little guy gets introduced in the first couple of second of the game and appears in Princess Zelda’s’ study. He then sees the Princess herself defending Link and gets triggered to defend her as well before he gets zapped to the past. There he tries to act as her knight and delivers some comedic relief in those serious cutscenes which make the game a little bit more light-hearted against the impending doom.

Gameplay-wise (Basically how the game is played and how you can control the characters) the game has most of the same controls as ‘Breath of the Wild’ along with the same visuals. The key difference here is that X isn’t used for jumping anymore but instead serves for a special attack. Another thing is that the ZR button is no longer used as just a guard system. Instead, every character has a special move they can do. Link can shoot arrows, for example.

In the game itself, there are different ways to level up and help your characters as well. You can do it either through battles and training, but also through barracks. This, you can unlock pretty early on in the game, allowing you to level up your characters with money. The higher the levels become, the higher the number of rupees it will be that you need for it. There are also various ways to give your characters more hearts. While following the storyline, small icons will appear on your map that represents stables, shops, training places and even a smith that allows you to fuse weapons to get a higher level weapon that does more damage and could have other stats as well. Some icons could give all of your characters hearts, icons for Fairy fountains, icons that will make the price of a certain region go down, icons that allow your sheikah symbols to recharge faster and even icons that represent the laboratories within the Akala region and in Hanteno. Lastly, there are the character icons, these will allow the characters to gain more hearts and last longer in battle. All of the icons can be activated with certain items that you get when finishing a battle or training sequence. It’s totally different from the first Hyrule Warriors game but it really fits the Breath of the Wild games.

In my opinion, I think it’s a very fun game that allows you to use different characters that otherwise wouldn’t be playable in a fun and challenging way. Even though it also has the features of the earlier Warriors game with capturing keeps and making sure those stay in your possession, Age of Calamity really gives a different spin to it with its general layout, graphics and storyline. The unique opportunity to see the characters interact and even being able to play as them to prevent the Calamity is worth the money, I highly recommend it!