4.5/5 ★ – daneh's review of Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Calamity.

Being my first entry in the Warrior style games and also having the original Breath of the Wild as my favorite game of all time, for me this game had a high bar. But to be honest this is all that I expected and even more from this game, it did not disappoint at all. First of all is the flagship combat from the Musou series – it is fun as hell. Learning all the combos and all the different playstyles from each of the characters and making hundreds of tiny decisions every single minute to take out the hundreds upon hundreds of foes just makes dopamine go nuts. It is truly very satisfying. Then there's the botw related stuff. While this was developed mostly by Koei Tecmo, its very obvious Nintendo oversaw this project closely because it is truly a love letter to botw fans like myself. Everything, from how the game looks to the cutscenes to the characters to the locations and events its all so reminiscent of the first game and I absolutely love it And about the story (No spoilers here – yet), while the original game wasnt very focused on it and was more of an added bonus, I feel like here it took on a bit of a more important role. While its still not some massive mind blowing narrative, it is honestly pretty engaging sometimes. And the story also drives the events and context of the battles themselves, making it all much more important. And not to speak of the soundtrack. Many criticize the first game for its mostly ambient soundtrack (though I couldn't diagree more), however there is simply no way in hell you'll be disappointed by this one. It is just banger after banger after banger, and a lot of time you'll hear remixes of the themes in the original game making it so much better. It is just soooooo good. I honestly love this game a ton. So then, why I am I giving it 4 stars and a half? (I'd say its more of an 8.5/10 but I cant really translate that to the star system). There is mainly one flaw I had with the game and another smaller one that I will cover at the end of the review in a spoiler section. First, the main one: It gets repetitive. And you've probably heard about it and you probably imagined it yourself. This doesn't really lie on the game itself but the core formula of the Musou series instead; since its fully focused on battles and not much else, while the game will give you a ton of characters to play around with throughout the entire run of the game, it does get a little bit old sometimes. Especially with the hundreds of side quests – while the main missions themselves might last you around 10 hours, the side quests increase the total playtime to around 25 hours. The missions themselves are fun but at one point they get overwhelming and while you'd just wanna play the main stuff there's all this thing accumulating while you play through the game. And its not like you can easily skip that stuff since they're essential sources of XP, and the game would become extremely hard if you're very underleveled. That's what I have to mostly say about the game, if you havent played the game already then I throughly recommend it, I'd give it an 8/10. But there's one more thing I wanna talk about but its very spoilery, so if you havent beaten the game yet then scroll past. -------------- START OF SPOILERY SECTION-------------- . . . . Ok so the other tiny flaw I talked about was on the very first scene of the game and the final act; when the calamity strikes. As you already know, there was a timeline split at the beginning of the game, with Terrako travelling back in time to save the calamity – the one from Breath of the Wild. At first I was really cautious and slightly disappointed from this change since I didnt want the events of botw to be magically removed for the sequel. Later in the final act the new generation of champions from the original game also travel back in time thanks to Terrako to save the champions from their death. I honestly liked their implementation, their interactions with the other characters and overall I feel like they added good stuff to the story. I liked the turn where instead of being a sad game, you end up succesfull at the end, with all the champions alive in this different timeline, and they honestly managed this new timeline better than I expected. But while I prefer how they handled this game, I am slightly concerned on Botw2. I still stand by what I said about not wanting botw's events to be reversed. I still want to see the world being rebuilt. I still wanna see the version of Zelda and Link who just destroyed the Calamity and need to build the entire world from the ground up. I still wanna see the new generation of Champions. But all of that to be left behind to cater towards this new timeline in which there weren't any lasting consequences is kind of worrying to me. Maybe Nintendo will pull something similar from this game in which they take something im concerned about and make it something fun and engaging, but from what I can think at the top of my head there aren't many scenarios in which ill be satisfied with what Botw2 has. So to conclude my problems with the story, while I love the implementation of the new timeline and the new generation of champions coming back and all of that in this game, but im not sure if this is actually a good thing in the long run. And who knows, maybe Nintendo will continue the timeline from Botw, and honestly that would be my preffered scenario. But I got a feeling they want to continue in this one and I cant help but feel slightly disappointed about that. Still a minor flaw so far, especially considering the final act of the game was easily my favorite . . . . HERE LIES SPOILERY SECTION PLEASE SCROLL PAST!!!!!!!