Preview: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity’s Divine Beast battles supersize the joy of destroying enemies

Piloting the Divine Beasts in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is the ultimate power trip. If Hyrule Warriors is all about Link and friends laying waste to hundreds of enemies on the battlefield, then piloting the Divine Beasts and easily stomping upon, blasting, and ultimately lasering thousands of enemies easily takes that experience to a whole other level.

Let’s back up and look at how you get there.

Earning your pilot’s license

Age of Calamity starts before any of the four Champions ever had their job application to pilot large animatronic stone animals. And so, as we progress through the story, we get introduced to Mipha, Daruk, Revali, and Urbosa in turn. And during the early parts of the story, we get to see Mipha and Darunia’s first encounter with Vah Ruta and Vah Rudania respectively. It’s their trial run at learning how to take down Ganon by stomping upon and lasering all the Bokoblins one could ever hope to annihilate.

Both Divine Beasts have roughly the same controls, but since Vah Ruta and Rudania are based upon two different animals, there are significant differences in their specialties and arsenals. Broadly speaking, each Divine Beast has a defensive maneuver, three attacks, and the pièce de résistance: firing the mega-laser of death — you know, the one we see at the end of Breath of the Wild if you managed to save all four Champions.

Both the Divine Beasts we have played have some sort of blaster, which becomes the bread-and-butter attack you’re going to employ. Vah Ruta fires small icicle blasts while Rudania shoots small blasts of fire down on the foes. These will cause significant damage to larger enemies while outright killing weaker minions. You essentially have unlimited ammo, so feel free to fire at will. However, when it comes to the stronger attack, you do have limitations. Mipha’s Beast uses a cannon of sorts to shoot ice in a much wider blast, and Rudania’s tail hurls a chunk of magma at its foes. Once you use this ability, it suffers a cooldown of maybe 15 seconds before you can use it again.

The last common offensive ability is the melee task for dealing with enemies much closer to you. Rudania’s this time is way better as it tramples on the ground, killing everything even remotely near the Beast. As for Ruta’s, it’s more contextual as Ruta’s trunk comes up to destroy bridges and anything that happens to be on top of it.

But once you fill up the special gauge, you fire the biggest death ray you have ever been able to control. Simply point and shoot, and then adjust your aim as you fire. Practically anything it touches will be destroyed. It’s so satisfying.

Surviving the long gauntlet

The game asks you when you enter your first Divine Beast fight if you want to use motion controls. Now, I liked the motion controls of Breath of the Wild. They felt natural, and I learned to augment the control sticks and the subtle aiming that the motion controls provided. Here, in Age of Calamity, it just feels… off. It frequently feels like the controller gets uncalibrated, and you must resort to pressing ZL to reset the calibration. My wife and I gave the controls a red-hot go (and maybe you should, too), but we both turned it off eventually because it just became too cumbersome to work through.

But that said, you do get free reign in which direction you’re walking in and what direction to face. I mean, the levels themselves we played don’t give you that much opportunity to move freely, but in theory, you’ve got that opportunity. Movement is slow and clunky, but that’s exactly what it should feel like if you’re piloting ten metric tons of ancient technological sorcery. Outside of the walls denoting the edge of the level, there really was nothing that would stop you, save for maybe the bridges in Vah Ruta’s level, which you needed to melee or laser through.

Speaking of levels, the maps for Vah Ruta’s and Rudania’s battles are extremely simple: a straightforward linear path from where you pick up your new ride to some ending point conducive to the story. There are enemies on the floor of the valley and on the edges overlooking it, frequently tossing explosive barrels at you as you go. Yes, they can and will damage you, but your Divine Beast is easily equipped with 30 beautiful hearts when you enter into it, way better than the mere seven or so your champion has when sliding in.

The levels both end in something of a final test where you’ll face a large cavalcade of tough enemies, all shooting nasty things at you. In Mipha’s level, that means Lynels. Let me tell you that there’s nothing more satisfying than killing 15 Lynels in one hit from your death laser. Daruk’s final test involves a gauntlet of Taluses, and their claim to fame is that he can grab the rocks they are throwing and send them straight back.

It’s touches like this that have really taken Age of Calamity to the next level in terms of it being a proper prequel to Breath of the Wild. Naturally, since the Champions are protagonists of the game alongside Link and Zelda, it makes perfect sense to be able see each champion’s first encounter with the Divine Beast they trained to fight in.

Looking for more Age of Calamity?

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.