The Cool Zelda Prequel You Might Have Missed
Like at least ten million other people out there, I’ve been playing through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I’m at something around forty hours of playtime, and I’ve done a whole bunch of side stuff and just two of the game’s main dungeons. I’m mostly enjoying it, even though it absolutely feels like Nintendo took the previous game and strapped a bunch of new stuff on top of it with varying degrees of success.
Sometimes when I’m involved in a big game, I need a palette cleanser. Since I wanted to stay in the Zelda mindset, I re-installed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. I’m a huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors franchise, and depending on the day of the week, Age of Calamity might even just be my favorite installment in the long-running hack and slash series. It’s certainly in my top three.
It excels in most departments far beyond the norm for Omega Force and Koei, blending gameplay elements from their ancient button mashing combat with most of the involved mechanics from Breath of the Wild. If you’re a Zelda lore enthusiast, it’s a must-play since it’s a pseudo-canonical prequel to both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, packing in more main story goodness than either of those “big” Zelda games.
The game sold well for a Warriors title, but still reached several million fewer households than either of its more expansive cousins. Don’t let its wildly different gameplay put you off, especially if you’re a fan of the Zelda series.
“My notes on” is my weird podcast-but-written-as-text idea. They’re articles where I write down random thoughts I’ve had while playing a game. It’s less formal than a review or an analysis article, and hopefully more fun to read. Nintendo didn’t pay me or ask me to write this.
Performance Concerns
Age of Calamity isn’t the best pick for the most framerate-conscious gamers out there, with more frequent and noticeable performance bumps than either of the open world games it’s related to. It pushes…
