The amiibo functionality for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity literally does exactly what it says on the official website: unlock in-game weapons and other items. In the end, it’s not much to write home about.
Nintendo has gone out of its way to reprint the four Champion amiibos from Breath of the Wild. It’s also directly advertising those four amiibo on the official Age of Calamity website. So one might expect something pretty special to result from it.
However, the Champion amiibo don’t do anything different than most amiibo. In our experience, every amiibo operated quite the same.
Five times per day, you can scan varying amiibo into Age of Calamity from the title screen. When you do so, they will give you a series of items or weapons to utilize. The weapons can be directly equipped by Link and his friends, though more than most they’ll simply be used as fodder to upgrade your already better weapons at the Hylian blacksmith.
When it comes to items, you’ll usually get a small handful of a few random collectibles, like Voltfruit, Zapshrooms, and Hydromelons. These items can then be used across the map of Hyrule to help out the denizens of Hyrule, whereby you’ll trade these in for character upgrades, opening up shops, and gaining access to the Sheikah Slate sensor.
If you try to scan a sixth amiibo, the game will tell you that you won’t receive more rewards by scanning more. It’s a bit silly that they don’t tell you that you’ve reached your limit after the fifth, but oh well.
Nintendo’s website says that this feature works with only compatible amiibo, but we aren’t sure if there are some amiibo that don’t work or which ones might not. Every Zelda amiibo we tried certainly worked. We also tried several others — Pikachu, Mario, and Metroid, for example — and we’ve yet to find an incompatible one.
While it’s a nice feature, it probably won’t make a huge difference to your experience of Age of Calamity. For now, those amiibo will likely remain nice ornaments to keep on the shelf.
