This last statement is expressed naturally through the scenario, which features a small robot that one would swear came out of Portal 2. This guardian has gone back in time in order to prevent the Great Scourge Ganon, whose misdeeds are already beginning to be felt since the monsters continue to multiply in the meadows of Hyrule. Guided by this sympathetic metallic being, Princess Zelda sets out in search of the purifying blade, the power of the seal of the royal family and four gigantic divine creatures. From the first clashes against the forces of evil, a young knight of the royal guard named Link stands out from the others and then becomes the main character of the story. As you will have understood, we are treated to a scenario typical of Nintendo games, which seeks more to do occasional fan-service than to enrich a unique and coherent universe, and which dares to introduce phrases such as "the Gorons live in the Goron village" or "the Gerudos live in a city in the Gerudos region". Amazing, right? In short, we are not here for the story, but for battles with musō sauce, which place us in front of hundreds of enemies in which we generally enter like butter, except for intermediate opponents and bosses. .
It's a particular genre and, obviously, you have to be sensitive to it to be able to appreciate Hyrule Warriors. But it must be recognized that the game does things rather well in terms of gameplay, which is richer and more interesting than average. Thus, we have a standard attack, a strong attack, a dodge and a fatal blow to trigger when the corresponding gauge is full. It is also possible to use rods (of fire, ice and lightning), to throw bombs from a distance, to create a block of ice to stop the charge of certain opponents, to cast a magnetic spell to attract coins of metal, or to immobilize enemies for a few seconds thanks to the mastery of time. The ultimate refinement comes from the weak point system, which makes it possible to hurt large enemies very badly by rushing on their Achilles heel after having successfully dodged. A few blows are then enough to put them directly on the ground or, at the very least, to seriously start their life bar, which often only drops slowly with standard attacks.
THEY CAME, THEY ARE ALL HERE
This system could have sufficed, but it is enriched by the presence of several characters with very different abilities. Thus, while Link is able to shoot a few arrows, Zelda throws some sort of elemental cubes, Impa summons ghostly doubles, Daruk has a shield that allows him to resist explosions and Urbosa controls lightning. And that's not counting the presence of Mipha, Revali, Hestu, Riju and others, for a total of eighteen well-differentiated characters. You are free to favor one in particular or to regularly zap from one to the other, including in the middle of the game since we go on a mission with several people most of the time. Note that at certain times we also take control of one or other of the divine creatures mentioned above, which could be compared to giant robots and which cause damage worthy of a musō squared or almost, since the enemies then no longer fall by the hundreds under our blows but by the thousands. It lets off steam ! The best idea of the game is still its affiliation with Breath of the Wild, whose tails The Age of Scourge tries to stick as much as possible. An approach that we may possibly consider opportunistic but which, let's face it, turns out to be very effective. Thus, you will certainly have noticed some names from BOTW in the list of fighters mentioned above. Even more obviously, the game takes over the "cel shading" artistic direction of the famous open world, and even seems to directly reintegrate several models of heroes and enemies. There is also a management of realistic elements, such as lightning on metal or fire that spreads in the grass. In addition, the game offers us a bonus weapon if it detects the presence of a Breath of the Wild save on the console, and reuses the principle of cooking recipes that provide advantages in combat.
THE ERA OF THE FLAIL...AND A FEW SOCKS
The Sheikah tablet is also making a comeback. Here, it is used to display the world map between two levels, and allows you to select the next one from several main, secondary or even "textual" missions. Achievable in two clicks in the menus, these true-false missions allow you to unlock merchants, learn new cooking recipes, increase the number of hearts of a particular fighter, access a blacksmith to merge the weapons collected during combat, or to open the "field of maneuvers", thanks to which one can level up a character that one has not yet sufficiently controlled. Even the paraglider answers the call in this second Hyrule Warriors. However, it can only be used in very specific places, because we are not (at all, at all) in an open world. Moreover, the game ignores a standard jump function. You have to make do with "wall jumps" to be triggered in front of a wall, to bounce off it and briefly float in the air (with a camera that no longer knows where to turn). We would have much preferred to be able to jump like a goat in the sets. This is not the only shortcoming of the title, which does not offer an online multiplayer mode and is content with a simple local split-screen mode. Finally, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity simply suffers from the lack of power of the Switch, more blatant than ever at the time of the next-gen. We must therefore be satisfied with rather vague graphics, a fluctuating and often very low dynamic resolution, as well as a framerate far from the sacrosanct sixty images per second.
