Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity · 8:53pm Jan 4th, 2021
So, I decided to give my opinion about this game because it seriously needs some positivity thanks to Nintendo's bad job. It's a very good game that's sadly very critiqued because Nintendo promised us that it would be a prequel to BOTW when it's actually not really the case.
Ah yeah, they didn't tell about the time travel and the whole fact that it would be a new split timeline, so it wouldn't exactly show what happened in the awakening of Calamity Ganon. So yeah, they lied, or omitted crucial information. GG Nintendo! *sarcastic applaud* As if you needed more bad pub after all the crap you did during the end of 2020. Satoru Iwata must be turning in his grave.
Anyway, yes, Nintendo screwed up, but the game is still very good. The scenario isn't exactly what we were told, but it's still excellent.
Like I said, it's a time travel, so as you can guess, it's one of these "fix it" scenario. In the original timeline, just as Zelda awakens her power to save Link from the Guardians, a little egg-shaped Guardian wakes up in one of the towers of the castle (in the middle of the Calamity) and uses its time-travel powers to go to the past and save Hyrule from the Calamity. He is found by Link, Zelda, and Impa, and with its help, they discover what will happen and are able to discover the Sheikah Towers in advance, and so, to better prepare for the Calamity. However, the little Guardian isn't the only one who has gone to the past. Calamity Ganon managed to send a part of himself through the Guardian's time portal, and with his influence, there will be more differences, like the apparition of a new villain: Astor, the prophet of chaos.
It's a musou, so it has the same problem than all musous: it's repetitive. So, of course, not everyone will like. But I didn't mind at all. I have played a few Dynasty Warriors, Dynasty Warriors Gundam, One Piece Pirate Warriors, Fire Emblem Warriors, Dragon Quest Warriors 1 and 2, and a few others, so I'm used, and I love it. It's always fun to wreck hundreds of enemies, or even thousands. And they retook everything from the first Hyrule Warriors, so we find again the system of weakness bar that you must empty to give a powerful attack to the stunned enemy. The giant monsters like King Dodongo or Gohma aren't back however, but they are replaced by powerful boss monsters from BOTW such as the Hinox or the Lynel, or the possessed Guardians.
Contrary to what we may have thought at first, there are a lot of playable characters: eighteen in total, including four secret ones that you unlock by accomplishing secondary missions. Among them, Link can use three styles of weapon (sword and shield, two-handed sword, and spear), and Zelda has two, so we can up the number to twenty one. And that's without counting the DLCs which promise probably at least four more characters. And the best is that each character has their own style of fighting. Everybody will have a favorite. From Link's classic gameplay to Revali's possibility to switch between ground and sky to rain arrows on his enemies, passing by Kohga who is the Xanto of the game, very goofy, but very deadly.
The story has twenty missions, the shortest about half an hour, and the longest about an hour. So, already, just by doing the story, you can count between ten hours and fifteen hours. But to this, you can add the many, many, MANY secondary missions that appear all over Hyrule as the story progresses. There are two categories of secondary missions:
-The resource missions, which are just missions that ask you to collect a quantity of one or more resources. This can be done by doing battles, farming monsters, buying them in shops, or by accomplishing other missions. The rewards of these missions are generally new combos for a character, new hearts to grow the health bar of one character or of the whole group, the opening of new shops or other structures such as the training field (to level up characters without doing battles) or the smithy (to upgrade the weapons or sell them, among other stuff), new recipes, or rare resources.
-The battle missions, which are smaller battles with simple objectives such as killing a number of enemies in a limited time, taking the enemy outpost(s) while protecting yours, reaching a given place, defeat the boss(es), defeat all enemies without taking a hit, protect someone, etc... They're here mainly to farm resources, level up characters, training you to use them, and give you an additional challenge, especially the post-game missions which will give you some hardcore challenges (how do you fancy killing two Lynels side by side without healing?). Most secret characters are also unlocked thanks to these missions.
So, these secondary missions will easily double, or even triple the time you will spend in this game, especially that some of these missions ask you to get the infamous korok seeds. Yes, you read it right. The koroks are back, forcing you to explore the maps in search of them (and chests). Thankfully, there aren't 1000 of them, just a little over 100 (134 to be exact, including 12 in the secondary missions).
What makes this game stand out for me compared to the other musous is that this one gave me some serious chills, especially at the second half of the game, starting from the awakening of the Calamity. Ah yeah, it seems simple at first. You charge in the enemy lines eliminating hundreds of bokoblins, lezalfos, and a moblin from time to time. Then, every now and then, they put you against a boss. A possessed Guardian here, a Lynel there, an enemy character... Easy!
Then! VLAN! You find yourself in the middle of epic battles where you can't do ten steps without encountering a boss or a mid-boss (and I'm barely exaggerating...)! High-leveled enemies (silver moblins, black Hinoxs, white-maned Lynels...), Guardians everywhere, elemental enemies (including moblins, Hinoxs, Lynels, and Guardians), powerful enemy characters! You find yourself in a war against the elites of Calamity Ganon, and there's almost no timeouts! And even if it isn't like in BOTW, you still find yourself going through events such as the terrible siege of the Akkala Fortress! And trust me if I say that this is easily one of the best musou battles ever done, all musous included! And this is just one battle! And cherry on the top, Koei did a real masterpiece ost for this game which easily doubles the intensity of some of the battles by itself.
And I'm still not done. You probably know about this if you saw the trailers, but you can pilot the Divine Beasts in this game, in some missions! and what a pleasure they are to control. That feeling of being all powerful, to crush whole armies under our feet... Of seeing a whole group of Lynels being turned into ashes by the laser of Vah Ruta... My favorite is probably Vah Naboris because that thunder god can do a real carnage very easily, and also because it can charge. And seeing it charge and destroy everything in its way... There's no comparison.
And to all this you can add the blood moon if you search more challenge. Near the end of the game, you unlock it, and to put it simply, it's the hardcore mode of the game. If you select a mission with a blood moon above it, then all the monsters in said mission will be boosted. In return, you get bigger rewards like more powerful weapons and more rupees. However, you can't decide of where the blood moon will appear. It's random, and it changes place at every battles.
The only little problem is that I find some of the voices not very good. For example, Kohga is perfect, but Zelda... 
So, yeah, Nintendo may have disappointed us, and because of this, you may think that the game is not that good, but forget what Nintendo said and give this game its chance. It deserves it. Koei did a very good work, it would be sad to not reward them because Nintendo screwed up the marketing.
Ah yes, the thing that's good on its own merits but nowhere near what we were promised. Not exactly a new phenomenon.