I preferred the original. In some ways I found AoC disappointing and like a step back... I spent hundreds of hours playing the Definitive Edition, whereas I got bored of AoC fairly quickly.
Which Hyrule Warriors Game Was Better?
- Thread starter Lozjam
- Start date
It was kind of a joke that you unlock it in AoC right when you no longer have any content left to play. I guess you'll be able to use it in the DLC at least...
This is where I'm standing, too. So indulge me in this rant, ya'll.
I respect the incredible move sets in Age of Calamity -- the way each character's abilities are so tailored to them, the vast amount of playstyles facilitated by using different weapons, the Sheikah Slate powers and so on. There's a lot to like in the game, mechanically speaking, but I ended up with such a massive distaste for the narrative that I deleted the whole damn thing as soon as I got to the post-game and have never looked back.
Straight up, the original Hyrule Warriors narrative is obviously bad. But it's full-on, over-the-top, fan fiction-y junk food and it knows that is what it is. It's fun, it doesn't intrude on anything, and it's a vehicle for stylish action. More than that, it's a package full of characters and locales and music and items from the whole of Zelda history, which I have infinitely more affection for than the characters and trappings of Breath of the Wild (obviously a masterpiece and everyone loves the Champions, but its lineup can't compare with a 30-plus-year trove of Zelda stuff).
Meanwhile, Age of Calamity led with the narrative; it was sold to us as another chapter in the Breath of the Wild saga, written by the Zelda team. So it just irks me endlessly that both the narrative itself and the way that it's told are so incredibly awful. It's through and through the most rote kind of "power of friendship" "transporting my soul into another body" "we wrote this senseless line somewhere with no buildup, framing, escalation or payoff whatsoever and therefore it is narrative canon because it's convenient in this moment" tripe, such as:
"When Terrako traveled back in time, a new world was created," which is literally conveyed via loading screen text.
It's gotta be the worst anime-adjacent video game nonsense writing that I have seen in quite some time. And I can enjoy that, but it's not even the fun kind of bullshit (see Sin & Punishment or Bayonetta). It's delivered in this typically dry, self-serious, "please interpret this as epic" fashion with occasional atonal humor that doesn't work and dialogue that sounds fresh off of Google Translate. Zelda's barely-there arc is exactly the same "why-won't-my-powers-awaken" song and dance as it is in Breath of the Wild, but here, it's much harder to listen to her sound like she's on the verge of tears for 30 whole hours while very little else actually happens and any attempts to add weight to Breath of the Wild are routinely whiffed (i.e. Calamity Ganon's origins). And to just really cap it off,
absolutely none of it matters in any way shape or form whatsoever.
When I learned about the time travel during the game's pre-release, this narrative was the worst-case scenario that my brain went to in about 7 seconds. And it turns out that's what they ran with.
Man, that game was such a miss for me.
AoC is way more polished and has much better presentation, but the original has buttloads of content and more of a tactical focus which I felt was sorely missing from the sequel.
It's hard to choose.
It's hard to choose.
Age of calamity definitely has characters that feel better to play, and adaption of the shiekah slate to gameplay is pretty novel, and works better than the items in the og game.
However, Hyrule warriors is better than age of calamity in every other possible sense.
However, Hyrule warriors is better than age of calamity in every other possible sense.
While there's definitely some stuff the first Hyrule Warriors did better, I think ultimately I kinda prefer Age of Calamity because the core gameplay feels a bit better, and I also wasn't super fond of a lot of aspects of the first game's adventure mode. In particular the weak point gauge is a lot better implemented in AoC, and the game doesn't have any super frustrating bosses like The Imprisoned.