Il Tokyo Game Show 2020 has focused its spotlight on various titles of interest to players, such as Nier Replicant, Scarlet Nexus and above all Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, or a new one Musou for Nintendo Switch that follows in the footsteps of Hyrule Warriors, released for Wii U in 2014, complete with a port for 3DS (Japanese exclusive) and Definitive Edition arrived on Switch in 2018.
Behind the development there was obviously Koei Tecmo, who will return to put his hand to the lands of Hyrule also in this new chapter.
Giving a temporal positioning to the titles of the decades-old Zelda series can be a very difficult task: several users have tried their hand at searching for a common thread for years, before Nintendo itself decided to provide its own official version. In the intricate tangle of timelines that arise from Ocarina of Time (which we will talk about maybe on another occasion), this Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is positioned in a clear way as prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which now more than three years ago accompanied the release of the Nintendo Switch on the market.
Thanks to this title we will in fact have the opportunity to experience firsthand what happened 100 years before Breath of the Wild started, in the struggle between the heroes and the forces of evil commanded by the Ganon calamity, in a battle destined to forever mark the fate of all Hyrule. We had already had the opportunity to discover some background through the memories of Link within Breath of the Wild: in Hyrule Warriors, we will be able to learn more about it, through in-game cutscenes that will deepen what happened during the great war, in what promises to be a title with a strong narrative component.
The game world will be made up of the same lands (not yet wild here) that we have come to love in Breath of the Wild, but this time stripped of their shiny open world guise and divided into large areas, within which we will find ourselves facing a large number of enemies, as usually happens in video games of this genre. Koei Tecmo has worked carefully with Nintendo to reproduce some of the most iconic places of the original game - before their destruction - which will not only have an aesthetic function, but will also vary the gameplay and the nature of our opponents, or the creatures we have learned about and faced in Breath of the Wild (and in years of The Legend of Zelda games), along with a few new addition.
Opposing these creatures there will obviously be our Link in full force and, as is the tradition for a musou title, equipped with a overwhelming force such as to make it capable of facing copious waves of monsters with Master Sword blows, but also wooden swords or kitchen ladles, respectively bonus weapons for those who have Breath of the Wild save data in their console and for those who will pre-order the new Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. The possibility of customize combat gear: in fact, the importance of using specific weapons against different types of enemies should not be overlooked, in order to exploit their elemental weaknesses and conclude the fight in a short time.
However, as we have already had the opportunity to discover in Breath of the Wild, Link will not be the only one to oppose the advance of the Ganon calamity and his troops: the hero of Hyrule will in fact be joined by four champions of Hyrule, the Sheikah IMPA it's the same Zelda, all playable characters in the new Hyrule Warriors. Being belonging to different races of the kingdom they will be endowed with special skills, which can then be used to gain advantages on the battlefield. As you can see from the demo, the same Link will present new special moves, along with some skills and tools that we had already encountered in the open world on Switch and which this time will obviously not have to be used to solve puzzles, but will only have an offensive function. During the various missions it will be possible to control the characters involved, through a dynamic change that will allow you to always have the situation under control and to better face every type of enemy.
As befits a large-scale war, such as the one told in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, we will never find ourselves alone in our fight: Nintendo has in fact confirmed the presence of a local cooperative mode (while it has not yet expressed itself regarding such an online possibility). In this way it will be much easier to free the game areas, joining forces to knock down the many mini-bosses present, usually made up of creatures with a lot of health and great attack power.
From what we got to see during the Tokyo Game Show 2020, Hyrule Warriors: The era of calamity could be a pleasant return to the lands of Hyrule, with an adventure of a completely different nature than the previous one. Koei Tecmo aims to offer a frenetic and varied product thanks to the different playable characters. Finally, the presence of a strong attention to the plot, could make this new Hyrule Warriors a very welcome appetizer before the release of Breath of the Wild 2.
► Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a Graphic-Action-Musou Adventure game developed by Koei Tecmo Omega Force and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 20/11/2020
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is a beautiful game that cannot be missing from your collection: we have decided to evaluate it with a 88%, if you are interested in learning more you can read the Review of Hyrule Warriors: The era of calamity
