If you’re like me, you probably haven’t given Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity a second thought since it was released last November on the Nintendo Switch. In my review then, I was probably too lenient in giving it an average score, citing its debauchery of a story and much too repetitive Warriors-style gameplay as heavy drawbacks. Admittedly, Age of Calamity was fighting an uphill battle when I took it up for review.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity Pulse of the Ancients
Developer: Omega Force
Price: $20
Platform: Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review
I’ve never been a fan of the genre’s main conceits, but it was a personal challenge to break out of my gaming comfort zone. The characteristic button-mashing it calls gameplay isn’t engaging to me, and I’d almost always rather fight one nuanced boss in a video game than any number of mindless mooks. In many ways, my Age of Calamity review is sort of like a failed experiment: I didn’t receive a newfound love for the Warriors genre, but I was happy to say I tried… At least until I learned “trying” meant having to endure another review of Age of Calamity when its first expansion, Pulse of the Ancients, was announced in February.
Pulse of the Ancients brings new content to Age of Calamity, but it doesn’t introduce anything that’s wildly fresh. It immediately appeared when I opened my original save, but I’m not sure if that’s because I was already through the story. The Royal Ancient Laboratory, the expansion’s main hub, first appears on the map of Hyrule as a pulsating icon, floating in a sea of countless other pulsating icons if you didn’t complete everything the first time around. (It’s denoted by the letters “EX” in the icons’ lower right corner, so at least the expansion content is easy to find). Going to the lab, however, reveals yet another web of icons with tasks to fulfill.
In essence, Pulse of the Ancients just adds to the impossibly long to-do list that caused me to put the game down seven months ago. Things are more presentable when you’re in the lab, but completing lab tasks further inundates the map leaving me overwhelmed and sometimes with a bout of choice paralysis. Anything “new” is technically so, though I’ve probably been using the term too loosely. Link can now wield flails fashioned from the legs of Breath of the Wild’s guardians, but ultimately how you’ll play remains unchanged. I suspect Zelda’s latest toy, the Master Cycle, is more innovative, but I still have a ways to go to verify that. (This is also true of Calamity’s latest roster choice, the Battle-Tested Guardian).
I’m not sure what the developers at Omega Force could have done to get me reinvested in Age of Calamity. I’d almost certainly rather be doing anything else. Maybe them straying too far from the Warriors-like mechanics runs the risk of alienating genre enthusiasts, and those who don’t like Warriors-style games are already likely to not pick this up anyway. I haven’t had much time with it yet — just enough to get the gist. For now, and much to my chagrin, I’m pressing on with Pulse of the Ancients hoping the back half of the content sparks something in me.
The Final Word
Pulse of the Ancients is great if you were able to get through Age of Calamity without a shred of buyer’s remorse. It’s more the same, and if you like that then good on ya. If you were the person to put this game down because it’s an endless slog, then it’s probably not worth the steep price tag. The $20 will get you more content down the road when the second expansion, Guardian of Remembrance, releases in November this year. With it promising more of the same, I doubt I’ll willfully be picking Age of Calamity again the third time around.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
