Preview: A closer look at the Champions’ gameplay in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

If you’ve played the demo of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, you’ve already gotten some hands-on time with three of the game’s playable characters: Link, Impa, and Zelda. These three characters all handle very differently, so it’s worthwhile getting a bit of practice with each!

While you can go into each map and button-mash your way to victory, especially on the lower difficulty levels, Age of Calamity actually can be quite a technical game as it allows players to have a bit more finesse with the controls. Knowing when to use each of the characters’ special abilities can get you out of a pinch, expose enemy weaknesses, and make boss fights so much easier. So today we want to introduce you to the next four playable characters in Age of Calamity: Mipha, Daruk, Urbosa, and Revali, the four Champions from Breath of the Wild.

But before we get into that, let’s talk about how the gameplay works in general.

Musou 101: Attack and defense

The good news about Age of Calamity is that it will be familiar to anyone who’s played either Hyrule Warriors or Breath of the Wild; the game blends the control styles from each game rather well. Whereas most of the bread and butter attacks are lifted straight from Hyrule Warriors, advanced techniques such as flurry rushes and parrying come from Breath of the Wild.

There are two major attacks each character can do: the light attack and the strong attack. Light attacks, performed with Y, can be chained in fast succession, and then a single strong attack (usually) can be added at the end of the chain with the X button. Those strong attacks can vary in effect depending upon how many light attacks came before it. Each character also has a unique ability using the ZR button, and it provides each character with a custom mechanic specific to him or her. For example, Link uses his Bow whereas Zelda will explode all the objects created using her Sheikah Slate.

The little Egg Guardian seems to be responsible for each character having access to the Sheikah Slate’s four runes — Stasis, Cryonis, Magnesis, and Remote Bombs — all of which are activated using the R trigger. The interesting thing is that the developers have made these runes subtly different for each character. Sometimes it doesn’t change your strategy all that much, but other times it will. Each character can also use a trio of elemental rods — ice, fire, and electric — that are acquired from enemies and accessed with L, but these rods always have the same effect from character to character.

And finally, each character has two specialized attacks. The Weak-Point Smash is a custom move that a character does by executing a strong attack when next to a mini-boss or boss after they’ve been significantly weakened. Each character seems to have a set of these smash attacks that are chosen contextually. On the other hand, the Special Attack is an attack a character can use once they’ve filled up their Special Attack Gauge and pressed A. The net effect of both of these is to deal some pretty hefty damage on everything around, but the animation that plays will vary depending upon the character you’re using.

And lastly, you can defend against attacks with ZL, which is where parrying at the perfect time comes in. And then you can also dodge away from attacks using B, and dodging at the perfect moment is how you execute a Flurry Rush counterattack.

Mipha, Zora Wellspring

You can recruit the Champions in any order, but we’ll start with Mipha. The Zora princess is very swift and agile. She can rapidly cross the battlefield and cut blazes through fields of enemies. She’s probably the character that is most similar to Link, and she starts out with her Lightscale Trident.

Her attacks generally involve usage of her natural element: water. One of her notable strong attacks is to spray a wide swath of watery bubbles through the enemies in front of her. Her unique ability is certainly a fun one to use. Press ZR once, and she’ll cause a fountain of water to spout from the ground; press it again, and Mipha will teleport to it, jumping out of the water and attacking her foes. It’s also a handy ability in two-player mode as these fountains will also restore ally hearts, albeit incredibly slowly.

When she uses her Remote Bombs, Mipha throws a cluster of Bombs centered around a single target. Mipha’s Stasis ability allows her to follow it up with a strong attack, allowing her to choose when Stasis wears off. Cryonis is her weakest rune as it merely causes a single ice pillar to rise up out of the ground to block enemy attacks. Magnesis will collect every enemy with a metal weapon into a ball for a few moments before tossing them aside.

And finally, for her Special Attack, water will erupt in a ring about Mipha, causing enemies to be tossed aside. The bonus for this Special Attack is that it will frequently heal Mipha and any nearby allies.

Daruk, Goron Stalwart

If Mipha is the speedster of the group, Daruk is the tortoise. He’s cumbersome and rather slow. However, he makes up for it with raw firepower, or rather, that and a few clever tricks he’s got up his sleeve.

Naturally, Daruk is all about fire and lava. Many of his strong attacks will cause magma pillars and ramps to shoot up out of the ground. If you manage to get a ramp, you can then follow it up with a single strong attack that Daruk can charge up; when you release it, he’ll perform a Goron Roll and speed up the ramp into the air, which you can follow up with either the Paraglider or smash into enemies from above. These magma pillars also lend nicely to his Unique Ability as well. Using ZR will cause all of the magma pillars to explode in enemies’ faces.

Daruk loves his explosives, so using a Remote Bomb attack will cause him to hurl a gigantic bomb into his enemies. After using Stasis, he’ll follow it up by hurling a fierce Goron punch to his frozen enemies. Cryonis will launch Daruk up into the air, where he can use the Paraglider to perform some aerial moves. Daruk’s Magnesis will grab all the metal-weapon-wielding enemies into a ball of metal; he’ll roll in place, spinning the metal ball round and round, hitting enemies with each rotation.

As for the coup de grâce, Daruk’s Special Attack will cause a small earthquake around him when he claps his hands together.

Before we leave Daruk, we have to mention that his famous ability, Daruk’s Protection, hasn’t been forgotten. His ZL defensive ability causes it to engage, and it can block some environmental effects that will harm other characters.

Urbosa, Gerudo Tempest

Speed-wise, Urbosa sits about halfway between Mipha’s grace and agility and Daruk’s stockiness. Her unique abilities aren’t quite as varied as Daruk’s, but they’re much more visually impressive. Her main feature is that she has a special gauge that stores up electric charge. As she deals damage to enemies, this gauge slowly builds up, but you can also use her Unique Action to hold her sword skyward, which charges it much more quickly, although this leaves her defenseless while doing so. Her electric gauge allows her to chain together multiple strong attacks. So yes, this means she’ll be frying lots of enemies. Unfortunately, her electricity doesn’t shock enemies as it might in Breath of the Wild, but she’d be pretty OP were that the case!

When using Remote Bombs, Urbosa will hurl a Bomb forward, but it will also launch her into the air to use either the Paraglider or aerial attacks. Her Stasis works like Daruk’s, but she will automatically do a long-lasting sword spin, racking up damage. Her Cryonis is like Mipha’s, but she can follow up the attack with lightning to smash the Cryonis block. And Magnesis will grab enemies into a ball, whereby she subsequently electrocutes them with a lightning blast.

Urbosa’s Weak-Point Smashes and Special Attacks cause the most insane frame-rate-dropping visual effects in the entire game, especially in two-player mode. But she looks dang fine executing them, especially when she simply snaps her fingers and causes lighting — oh, so much lightning — to massacre her enemies.

Though really, her most impressive ability is being to fight so well in those heels. Classy.

Revali, Rito Warrior

Out of the four Champions, Revali is the most unique of the lot. And we (and arrogant Revali) wouldn’t want it any other way. It shouldn’t be any surprise that Revali can fly, but his Unique Action is literally to take flight. What makes this unique is that Revali has different attack patterns and combos while afoot and in the air. This makes him the most versatile fighter of the lot, and he’d agree. However, just because Revali can hover over the battlefield doesn’t mean he’s immune from ground-based enemy attacks when doing so; he can be hit just as if he were standing on two legs. It feels very odd, but I suppose fair is fair. It should also be mentioned that his momentum in the air is different as well, so making sharp turns is much easier to do when on the ground. At any rate, Revali loves to spam his enemies with arrows, especially Bomb Arrows, shot from his Great Eagle Bow.

When using his Remote Bombs, Revali spawns four and sends them hurtling outward in a wide arc. If he’s frozen enemies with Stasis, he will fire a rain of arrows down upon the frozen enemies, causing their momentum to build until Stasis releases. He also has the most defensive Cryonis as it will cause four ice pillars to fall in a line in front of them; they’ll even damage enemies they land on. For Magnesis, he’ll grab several nearby enemies and surround them with the metallic weapons both they and even further out enemies have, damaging them as they orbit around each other.

And then finally, Revali loves to show off in his Special Attack by summoning his eponymous Gale, using it to soar up high, and then raining down destruction with Bomb Arrows.

There’s more to Link, too

While you might have played Link in the demo and felt like you had a pretty good handle on him, Link’s actually more versatile than you might think. Just as in Breath of the Wild, Link has access to three different classes of weapons: one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, and spears. Link so far seems to be the only character with access to this versatility of armament. But that boon can also be a slight detriment as it’s easy to forget what weapon you equipped Link with when you last chose him for a mission, meaning you might be playing with a different playstyle than you expected.

Link is slightly slower when wielding a two-handed blade. But he hits with more force. The unique mechanic with this form is that his Unique Action is a special attack: the sacrifice strong attack. This attack is even stronger than his normal strong attacks; however, doing so will cause Link to temporarily sacrifice some health to execute it. (Link can’t kill himself by doing this, but do watch out if your health gets low!) To recover from the temporary damage, Link needs to use a regular strong attack button, which has him furiously chowing down on apples (or whatever dubious food he might have) to restore some or all of that damage. But be forewarned; the moment any enemy strikes you, any temporary damage you haven’t healed becomes permanent!

With a spear, Link will obviously have a bit more range compared to a sword. Many of Link’s attacks will now be running attacks, allowing him to glide through the battlefield. His Unique Ability also lends into this strength as he’ll charge and plow straight through enemies. Otherwise, there’s not too much more to say; it’s not nearly as unique as the two-handed blade.

Regardless of weapon, Link’s Sheikah Slate abilities remain the same. However, his Special Attacks are different depending upon the weapon. For a two-handed blade, he’ll chow down to power up before executing a vicious vertical strike on enemies. However, the spear Special Attack is his most glamorous attack. He’ll launch himself into the air, stab downward several times before dashing about through enemies before jumping up once more to stab his spear into the ground, sending out a shockwave.

Get ready to be a Champion

If you haven’t played the demo yet, or if you’re looking to know more about Age of Calamity, don’t forget to watch our first impressions video for a gameplay preview, and read our first impressions from both the perspectives of a Warriors newbie and veteran. And be sure to stay tuned to Zelda Universe for our full review of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.