Of all the musou spin-offs – Persona! Gundam! Fire Emblem! Was there a Birdo one or was that just another of my mundane dreams? – the most warmly received was surely 2014’s Hyrule Warriors, a fulsome blend of Omega Force’s overblown hack and slash adorned with all the baubles and trinkets of the Zelda universe. Its big trick was leaning into the authenticity, cramming as much fan service as possible into the Dynasty Warriors formula – so it makes sense that the follow-up doubles down on all that, to the point that Age of Calamity often feels nore like a legit new Zelda game than just another musou.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity reviewDeveloper: Koei Tecmo/Omega ForcePublisher: NintendoPlatform: Played on SwitchAvailability: Out November 20th on Switch
The set-up helps – taking place a century before Breath of the Wild, this is a prequel of sorts that gets to play with all the tools and toys introduced in Nintendo’s 2017 masterpiece, and a bit more besides. Age of Calamity is a thing of some ingenious thrift – the kind of thinking essential in the global environment it was made in, no doubt – with assets lifted wholesale from Breath of the Wild, from character models to outfits to models to boss battles.
Locations are repurposed for Age of Calamity’s sizable maps, delivering on the appetising premise of seeing the world of Hyrule before it was seized by disaster – a world more alive, and more populous, with thousands of invading enemies for you to mow down. You’ll tear through minions that line the aquamarine walkways of Zora’s Domain, scythe through armies lined up in formation outside the gates of Hyrule Castle, fight a Molduga and whole mobs of Gerudo out in the wastelands.
So complete is the transformation of Omega Force’s series here that for the first few hours playing Age of Calamity I was convinced the developer had simply been let loose on the Breath of the Wild engine itself – the HUD is entirely the same, and even if it’s not an open world that’s on offer the original map has been brilliantly repurposed with countless diversions and side-quests as you go about picking your mission. Enemies are there just as you remember them, from lynels and hinoxs to chuchus and everything in between, all with the same move sets and the same weak spots as your old familiars from Breath of the Wild. In that way, Age of Calamity is like a remix – a noisy, frenetic and slightly scratchy one too.