Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity opens on a Hyrule that is already lost. A small Guardian named Terrako wakes inside Hyrule Castle as the Great Calamity tears the kingdom apart, escapes through a time portal, and lands in an alternate timeline before the disaster begins. That premise sets up the game’s central promise: a chance to see the war that Breath of the Wild only showed in flashbacks, and to fight it rather than remember it.
Trailer, via Nintendo of America.
Terrako and the Alternate Timeline
Nintendo and Koei Tecmo released Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity worldwide on November 20, 2020, for the Nintendo Switch. Omega Force, the studio behind the Dynasty Warriors series, developed it. The game is a crossover: it drops the world and cast of The Legend of Zelda into large-scale, hack-and-slash battles against crowds of enemies. It is a spin-off of Breath of the Wild, set 100 years before that game, in the era the original only glanced at through flashbacks.
The plot does not simply replay the tragedy. Terrako is reactivated by Link and Impa during a battle, then taken to the engineers Purah and Robbie for study. From it they learn that it comes from a future in which Ganon destroys Hyrule. King Rhoam assembles four pilots for the newly discovered Divine Beasts — Mipha, Daruk, Revali and Urbosa — and sends them, Link and Princess Zelda to find the Master Sword in Korok Forest.
Waiting for them is the dark prophet Astor, who has learned the future from Harbinger Ganon, this timeline’s Terrako infected by Malice from the original one. Astor plots to revive and control Ganon with the Yiga Clan and its leader, Master Kohga. Link draws the Master Sword and forces Astor to withdraw. Rhoam then names Link and the four pilots as Champions of Hyrule.
Eighteen Fighters and the Divine Beasts
The combat is the Dynasty Warriors model: large battles, objectives, base capture, troop commands. Age of Calamity keeps the material crafting and weapon upgrading of the 2014 Hyrule Warriors and adds environmental puzzles, the Sheikah Slate and the paraglider from Breath of the Wild. Weapons do not break, unlike in Breath of the Wild. The map resembles that game’s map, and players pick stages from it and use the Sheikah Tower to move between regions.
There are 18 playable characters. Fourteen arrive through the main story; four unlock through side quests. Players can also take control of the gigantic Divine Beasts and wipe out large numbers of enemies. The maximum level is 100. Amiibo figures work with the game, and the four Champions’ figures relaunched alongside it.
The roster is the strongest argument for the game. Link and Zelda are expected. Impa, the four Champions and the rest of the cast are not, and each fights differently enough that the campaign keeps changing shape. The Divine Beasts are the best of it — a sudden shift in scale that turns a battlefield into something closer to a demolition.
A War That Refuses to Stay Lost
Age of Calamity does not commit to the ending Breath of the Wild set up. Terrako’s arrival creates an alternate timeline, and the story uses it. Characters who died in the original’s backstory live through this version. That choice drew mixed responses on release, and the dissatisfaction aimed at the time travel is fair. The game sells itself as the only way to see firsthand what happened 100 years ago, then rewrites what happened.
What the rewrite buys is real, though. The characterization is the best thing here. Zelda’s training to awaken her sealing magic, Rhoam’s command, the Champions as people rather than names on a memorial — the game expands Breath of the Wild’s setting in ways the flashbacks never could. The Yiga Clan, Astor and Harbinger Ganon give the war a face. The trade is that the dread is gone. You cannot spend a whole game bracing for a massacre that the game has already decided to cancel.
The technical side is the other cost. The frame rate is inconsistent, and on the Switch it shows most when the screen fills with enemies — which is the entire point of the genre. Some critics named performance as their chief complaint. It is not fatal. It is a tax on the best moments.
What the 8.0 Measures
The published critical score for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is 8.0 out of 10, drawn from an aggregate of nine outlets. That number holds up. The gameplay is solid, the character playstyles are varied, the content is generous, and the visuals and soundtrack do their job. The narrative is where the score earns its ceiling rather than its floor.
The best way to read Age of Calamity is as a companion piece that refuses to be a companion piece. It gives you the Hyrule you wanted more of, then declines to let it fall. That is a legitimate creative choice and a frustrating one, and both are true at once.
What matters most is the cast. Eighteen fighters, each with a distinct style, is the reason to keep playing long past the story. The time travel is the reason some players will put it down. The frame rate is the reason a few will notice both less than they should.
Key facts
- Release date: November 20, 2020
- Platforms: Nintendo Switch
- Developer: Omega Force (Koei Tecmo)
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Playable characters: 18 (14 via main story, 4 via side quests)
- Maximum level: 100
- Critical score: 8.0/10 (IGDB aggregate, 9 outlets)
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