Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity has been on my backlog for a while and I've been trying to power through it for the last week or so. I can only hope that I'm almost done with it though, because the gameplay loop has become so incredibly tedious at this point and I don't really want to play it anymore.

I don't think I'm able to judge Three Hopes appropriately yet, because in comparison to Age of Calamity this is incredible so far.

Looking forward to feeling differently about it in a couple of days.

God damn this game sucks.

Honestly, you'd be better off playing the first couple of hours, and then watching the rest of the cutscenes on youtube or something if you have any interest in the story at all, because the actual game itself is just not good. It feels like the antithesis to everything fun about Breath of the Wild; exploration and creativity.

They managed to take the most interesting and engaging monsters of BotW and completely change their tone, exclusively for the worse. Strategically maneuvering around a giant ogre, sniping it in the eye, and then wailing on it in BotW feels exciting and rewarding. Landing the timing for rune attack or a weakness-bar break in Age of Calamity feels like an absolute chore.

I know it's a Musou game so it's obviously not fair to compare the two, but I never expected to be actively annoyed at the prospect of fighting a fucking centuar.

On top of that, I don't think there was a single time in my playthrough where there was any reason for me to take control of an enemy base that wasn't deliberately required for me to finish a level. I just couldn't find any degree of depth of any kind here. The most fun I had playing this, just like with every other Musou game, was when I got to execute big, flashy combos on swarms of enemies to wipe them out instantly. It just doesn't feel worth it to me though when the only reason to go out of my way to do that is to build meter in order to kill unfun bosses a little bit faster.

Probably fun if you know you like Musou games, but if you're on the fence just play something else.