Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity vs Hyrule Warriors

[Azure Sage]

Now that the game is out, we have grounds for an accurate comparison to the first HW game. What do you like more or less about AoC compared to it?

For me, AoC is far, far beyond better than the first HW game. It's hardly fair to call it a comparison. It does everything so much better it's almost scary.

• The maps are a lot bigger and far more intricate, which is great. Keeps are no longer perfect squares, either, which is great for the map design. Even though the maps are so big, I've never really felt like I needed a warp function. If I ever did, it was because I was going out of my way into the farthest corners to search for koroks and treasure. Generally, you always have enough characters where you need them, especially if you play smart, that you don't really need to warp. I haven't found myself missing that yet.
• The music is utterly amazing and beyond compare. Like, wow. Holy wow. I was floored every time I heard a new track. I love the soundtrack so much.
• Combat is so much more fun and fluid than ever before. You have your combos, your magic rods, your runes, your character actions, your flurry rushes, and your special attacks. There's so many ways to mix and match moves for different tactics. It's so much fun. Some characters even have multiple movesets depending on what you're doing. The thought put into each of them is wonderful.
• Also shoutout to bosses being done so much better. I hated waiting for them to use specific moves so I could hit them with an item in the first HW. It was more of a waiting game than a fight and it was so tedious. Now you can actually fight them head-on through a variety of different ways, and it's so much fun. I'm very happy about that. I also appreciate how keep captains are treated as enemy captains instead of just slightly bigger mob enemies. That's really cool.
• Speaking of characters, I actually like using almost all of them. In the first HW I didn't like to use more than half. Now, there's only two characters I'd turn my nose up at using. Just two. Everyone is fun for different reasons, and I'm super impressed with them.
• The content is ideal. FEW was utterly barren and HWDX was overpacked, and I feel like AoC is just right. There's hundreds of sidequests and side missions to do, during the course of the game and in postgame. I'm very happy with it.
• The restrictions are also a lot more fair than in HW. Most of the dumb ones are gone, except for the no-hit missions. Thankfully I've only come across four of those. Even the ones with unique restrictions aren't also character-locked like in adventure maps things often were. If I had any complaints about this, its that these restrictions don't lift once you clear them like they did in HW.
• Speaking of the side content, I love how every single mission and quest has a story to accompany it. Instead of a random mishmash of events like the adventure maps were, every single one of these hundreds of quests manages to fit coherently into the narrative of the game. I think that's really excellent. They did a superb job at the worldbuilding with them.
• I'm so glad badges are gone. They're done through side quests instead, which as a system is already a lot better, but the material grind is also vastly improved. You can buy a lot of what you need, and the sheikah sensor tells you which missions can give you the stuff you can't buy. No more character specific drops, no more fighting the same character repeatedly hoping to get a gold drop only to once again get a silver drop and have to fight them all over again. All that frustration is gone and I'm so happy about that. I also like that there are quality of life upgrades that affect the entire cast and not just specific characters now. Also the fact that drops and chests are automatically picked up on their own now is a major improvement. No way to miss anything anymore.
• The story missions were all really good and satisfying, especially the later ones. I was on the edge of my seat during a lot of them. I feel like the second half of the story has some of the best missions in any of the Warriors games I've played. (I know that's only three Warriors games, but still.)

Honestly, AoC feels a lot more like a Zelda game than a Warriors game to me, at least compared to the first HW game. It felt like playing BotW with Warriors combat. I was really impressed by that.

How about you guys? Are you enjoying it more than the first HW or no?

 

[Spirit]

AoC is mostly the better game.

There are missions in AoC that are epic and impressive as hell. It really sells the Calamity in all its glory. Dashing around Hyrule field through literally thousands of bokos and tens and tens of Guardians, Wizzrobes and Moblins at night during a raging storm while the land burns around you and drips with malice looks bloody stunning.

The gameplay has been refined over HW and feels better in every way. Attacks have more impact and I love triggering the finishing blow manually when an enemy's shield is broken, rather it being triggered automatically like in HW. It feels cathartic, the way a Warriors game should.

Missions are nice and long, too, and really sell the struggle of what the characters are going through. The characters all feel distinct from each other and the added emphasis on the trigger and bumper buttons bring a nice depth to the moveset and add in some nice tactical strategy.

But for **** sake, that ****ing story!!

Spoiler

God, just when you think we can move on from all of the timeline splitting BS of the last 25years, we get a timeline split two games in! Though, this is if we consider AoC canon.

Even if it isn't though, AoC does such a good job of portraying the Calamity that it would have had so much emotional weight and would have resonated so well had it just told the story we knew and had everyone die at the end.

As it stands, undoing the Calamity just trivialises everything. They should have told the story the way we knew it without any of the time travel crap and had BotW itself be the bittersweet hope at the end of the game.

The final cutscene could have been BotW's opening scene. That would have resonated.

But now everything is just tacky and convoluted and contrived and I bloody hate it. It makes it all feel so meaningless.

Because of that, I feel like AoC is the better game to play, but HW is more of a fun time because it feels like a lighthearted celebration, not a trivialising undoing of a tragedy.

 

[Quote]

I agree on pretty much everything, AoC so far has been way better than HW. There are a few things I prefer about the first game, namely the music. Also, this is totally personal but HW had a lot of really special moments that AoC hasn't quite matched, largely relying on nostalgia. But like you said, AoC feels a lot more like its own Zelda game, where HW was just an excuse to cram as many references into a single game as possible (not that I mind lol).

 

[Azure Sage]

Can’t believe I forgot to mention the weapon system. It’s so much better now. I never really liked it in the first HW, especially late into the game trying to get level 4 and 4+ weapons. That was awful. The weapon acquisition and upgrade system in AoC is really good.

I also forgot to mention how happy I am that the ranking system is gone. I hated having to replay missions in HW over and over because I needed something from an A rank victory and I just couldn’t win fast enough or avoid getting hit enough, spending thousands of rupees to level characters I don’t like because of dumb restrictions only to still miss that A rank. I’m so glad that nightmare is gone from this game.

 

[Vanessa28]

So far AoC winst this in every possible way.
Weapons: so much better! I like this system so much more than endless grinding and using potions to just get that weapon.
Map: do I even need to compare this? They have done a perfect job with the map.
Limits/restrictions: be gone! I loathed that in HW. I often refused to use certain characters because of their awful gameplay. I love it in AoC. No stupid restrictions for weapons and characters.
Badges: grinding for materials was a pain in the butt but now it's perfect
Music: it feels natural. It gives me a great vibe
Keeps: as Az already said they aren't squares anymore. They're part of BotW and I totally love them
Enemies: more variety of bosses. I love them! They're not too damn easy or predictable. Sure, you've got to wait for an opportunity to open their weak spot but it's so much more fun
Quests: also a lot of variety. Not the usual same. And don't get me started about the annoying A rank missions!!!
So yeah I'm very happy

 

[MapelSerup]

Pretty much everything has been improved in some way. Some more enemy variety would be nice, but I’m not that far into the game. Great improvements on all fronts!

 

[Hero-of-Time777]

I like AoC's content and cutscenes better, of course, but I wish it was longer. HW Definitive Edition has hours and hours of gameplay, mostly leveling up characters, but still far more content than AoC. I hope DLC might fix this, or at least add a bit more to AoC.

 

[Uwu_Oocoo2]

AoC was wayyyyy better than the first HW. First off, I hated HW. I got maybe 3-4 levels in, dreaded playing each of them after the first one. Every level was stressful, with the maps set up in a corridor-like way that made it difficult to backtrack quickly. AoC was a lot more open, and they never gave you more challenges than you can handle. When a stronghold is under attack you can finish what you're doing, go there, and come back without having to worry too much. I was able to run in, kill a horde of enemies and just have fun with it.
Another thing I liked in AoC was the sheikah slate system. On paper it looks really complex, but it was easy to use and added another fun layer of combat that HW was lacking. That game tried to break up the fighting with occasional confusing tasks and objects you had to interact with but didn't know how. Another nice touch was the flurry rushes, I think they had something similar in HW but not as easy.
My only complaint for AoC is that, like in BotW, the enemy types got boring after a while. Some variety would have been nice, but I suppose it's kind of hard to do that staying within the BotW species.