Age of Calamity’s maps are a big upgrade from the first Hyrule Warriors

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is bringing the Dynasty Warriors formula back to The Legend of Zelda, but the experience aims to be quite different from what fans enjoyed in the original Hyrule Warriors for Wii U, 3DS, and Switch. This prequel to the groundbreaking Breath of the Wild is adding many new wrinkles to the classic hack-and-slash gameplay, one of which is the drastic change to the traditional battleground design.

It’s clear from the opening seconds of the first mission how much the environments have been upgraded. The action starts on the vast plains in front of Hyrule Castle, where Link and the Hyrulean forces engage an army of monsters amid hails of cannon fire. The windswept fields are a huge, wide-open plot of land for you to freely dash across. It’s the kind of setting that was seen in more recent Musou games, such as the open-world Dynasty Warriors 9 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. By comparison, the Hyrule Field stage in the original Hyrule Warriors feels cramped and tiny.

More than size, however, Age of Calamity’s stages are notable for their variation when it comes to layout. The first mission extends far beyond the mass of flat land where it begins, eventually spilling into the roads that run through Central Hyrule as well as several outposts. Other stages, such as the Gerudo Desert, see a similar mix of environments. When going to battle in that arid corner of Hyrule, you’ll be fighting on the vast seas of sand, through the rocky ravines near the Gerudo Highlands, and even within Gerudo Town. Several of the maps feel as if they were taken directly from the Breath of the Wild’s overworld with only slight variations to fit the Hyrule Warriors mold.

A quick glance at the bottom right of your screen tells a lot about Age of Calamity’s stages. The minimaps reveal how much more organic the environments are. Even the levels that are more corridor-like in design usually have their own unique layout. When you take a look back at the first Hyrule Warriors, and most other Warriors games like it, the maps are almost always square-shaped. They’re arranged in a grid pattern, designed to funnel you between keeps.

Age of Calamity bucks this trend by eliminating the Warriors’ prior emphasis on keeps. While the outposts in Age of Calamity serve a similar purpose, you won’t be forced to capture anywhere near as many of them on a given stage as you did in the first Hyrule Warriors. It’ll also be rare that you need to recapture any of them while playing through the game’s story. Your objectives are less about the repetitive nature of crowd control and defending specific spots than they were in the past. Once an outpost is yours, it’s pretty much guaranteed to remain yours until you complete the mission.

Outposts also aren’t quite as cookie-cutter this time around. The keeps in Hyrule Warriors all looked identical — square chambers that were completely empty, save for the enemies and maybe the occasional jar to break. Whether you were in a man-made environment like the Temple of Souls or more natural surroundings like Faron Woods, the keeps never varied beyond being a nondescript block. Age of Calamity certainly has some outposts like this, but it also has plenty of others that bring some fresh scenery with them. Sometimes the outpost will actually be an idyllic meadow in Hyrule Field; other times it will be a town square, complete with a fountain in the center and buildings encircling the plaza.

There are even instances when you can interact with all of that added detail. In past Warriors games, there normally was little-to-no interaction with the environment outside of an object or two that held a recovery item. Age of Calamity may not allow you to become one with your surroundings as you did in Breath of the Wild, but being able to cut down trees, smash crates, or shoot barrel bombs makes the levels feel a little more natural. There will even be instances where entire barricades can shatter under the weight of a powerful attack, like what we have seen from the Guardian Stalker in the demo’s second level.

One of the neatest ways that Age of Calamity is channeling Breath of the Wild is that it uses the same map of Hyrule as the main menu. Rather than have you select missions with a routine list of chapter titles or series of icons to select, Age of Calamity pinpoints your destinations across the very map that fans are oh-so-familiar with after playing Breath of the Wild for the last three-and-a-half years. Optional challenge battles, cooking sidequests, and shops such as the blacksmith will also appear on the hub map. It’s a great way to have every feature all on the same menu, and it goes a long way toward bringing more of an action/adventure vibe than the usual “arcade-y” nature of Warriors titles.

If you haven’t played the demo yet, or if you’re looking to know more about Age of Calamity, go look at our deep dive into the Champions’ gameplay. Also, 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.