Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
Playing as Link, Impa, Zelda, or one of over a dozen other characters found in Breath of the Wild, your goal is to do everything you can to stop Calamity Ganon and his minions from overtaking Hyrule. This is done via three main types of quests, all of which are found through the map of Hyrule, which acts like a hub to return to between battles. The most important quest type is the story chapters. These are sandwiched by fully voice-acted cutscenes, and are quite lengthy. Story chapters are the real meat of the experience, featuring light puzzle-solving and the genre-defining one vs. one thousand combat that puts awesome displays of power at the forefront. This makes for the most exciting gameplay and is complemented nicely by the most fulfilling character interactions in the title. You can technically just play these and have a pretty good time with the game, but I wouldn't recommend it. Without completing the numerous shorter side challenges that unlock between chapters, you'll likely be significantly underleveled. These challenges offer bite-sized samplings of the game's signature combat, but each of them provide a twist to make it more interesting than just pummeling your opponents. Completing these challenges is a nice way to earn some experience, but they also come with rewards that will be necessary for completing the hundreds of side quests that populate the quest selection screen. These quests each come with a small blurb of exposition and a list of resources required to complete them. They don't have any gameplay tied directly to their completion, but their rewards are invaluable. Ranging from teaching your heros new attacks to opening new shops, your team will suffer if you don't take the time to unlock these bonuses. The divine beasts also deserve a mention, as select sections of the game allow you to pilot them to take on thousands of enemies at a time. Each of the four beasts was epic in their own right, but playing with them just wasn't very fun, and I found their stages to be kind of a chore. Luckily, they don't pop up that often, so I can't say they really overstayed their welcome.
As a prequel to Breath of the Wild, this game may not be what everyone is looking for, but its story and characters feel just as alive and lovable as they did in the first game. As a Musou title, Age of Calamity is absolutely fantastic. There is great variety amongst the playable characters, the a amount of content is not stupidly overwhelming, and the game feels balanced in all but the last few challenges. I found myself wanting to play the story levels, but feeling driven to complete the challenges and side quests first, which was an encouraging back and forth up until the conclusion of the story. For those who want more Breath of the Wild in terms of its gameplay, this might be a pretty hard sell. However, for those looking to build on its world and story, this is an easy recommendation.
