3 Affirmations To Start Your Day The Right Way

Affirmations can be a powerful technique in training your mind to be grateful and reinforcing positive thinking whether you’ve used them before or not; here are three examples that you can use each…

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Returning to the Age of Calamity

REVIEW

A spoiler-free review of the prequel to the smash hit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Despite the overwhelmingly high praise that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BotW) had been receiving since its release in early 2017, I didn’t get around to actually playing the game until late 2018. I hadn’t played very many games in the Zelda franchise. But not long after I started, I wished I’d done it sooner. It simply blew me away.

BotW took the standard formula of a Zelda game and turned it on its head. It was just similar enough to attract longtime fans while reeling in new ones like me.

You play as Link, who has awoken with amnesia a hundred years after the main villain, Calamity Ganon, has overtaken the land of Hyrule. Throughout your adventure, you gradually learn about what life was like before by exploring the various parts of Hyrule.

And the best part? Once you complete the tutorial, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

Want to rush into Hyrule Castle and fight Calamity Ganon straight away, with only the three hearts you were given at the start? Go ahead.

But for me, I chose to power up Link first by exploring the entire continent.

Personally, my favorite aspect of the game was the vast open-world environment. As of this writing, I have logged about 200 hours in my save file, and there are still plenty of things left for me to do.

In addition to exploring, this game has lots of other elements, like fighting, collecting, and even cooking. No matter what kind of video games you tend to like, BotW has something for you.

After completing the main story, I found myself thinking that if I had one of those memory-wiping sticks from Men in Black, then I would choose to erase all of my memories of BotW so I could play it for the first time all over again.

When I heard that a sequel and a prequel were in development, I couldn’t have been more excited. BotW had cemented its place among my top five video games of all time. I was eager to play another game that was set in this world.

It didn’t hurt that the prequel was set to come out in November of 2020. I hadn’t been excited about a game in months. For the past several months, I had pretty much just been running through my daily tasks in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for a few minutes a day, and that was all of the action my Switch got.

Until the release of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.

AoC takes place one hundred years before the events of BotW, around the time when Calamity Ganon began to overtake Hyrule. However, rather than only playing as Link, the game lets you fight as 18 different characters, each with their own unique move sets.

Also, instead of exploring a massive environment, AoC pretty much exclusively involves combat. It’s unlike many hack-and-slash games in that it has a significant plot. Cinematically directed cutscenes, extensive lore, and full voice acting enrich this game and the player’s experience of this world.

And man, did I love being immersed in this world.

The combat in AoC is fun as hell. There are a greater number of enemies, but most of them, like Bokoblins and Lizalfos, have much lower health than they did in BotW. You can mash various button combos to blast through dozens or even hundreds of foes per level. Some enemies from BotW, such as Moblins and Wizzrobes, actually have more health and have essentially become mini-bosses. Then, of course, there are the main bad guys from BotW, like Lynels and Hinoxes, that still take some time and finesse to defeat. They may seem intimidating at first, but once you’ve mastered the combat system, it becomes incredibly satisfying to whittle down their health bars.

Plus, AoC adds a few new factors to combat that BotW didn’t have — one of which is called the weak-point gauge. This is a separate bar (well, more like a circle divided into slices) that you gradually reduce with certain attacks. Once the weak-point gauge is depleted, you have the option to unleash a “Weak Point Smash,” which does serious damage. Some of the weaker mini-bosses, like Wizzrobes, can be eliminated with a single Weak Point Smash.

One way to quickly take down an enemy’s weak-point gauge is with elemental attacks, another new feature of this game. Remember the fire, lightning, and ice rods that the Wizzrobes had in BotW? In AoC, you can use them yourself. Each element has a certain number of uses, but you can fill your uses back up again by breaking boxes or defeating enemies that are infused with that element (yup, Fire Lynels and Thunder Hinoxes exist in this game) throughout the level. Hitting a foe with a blast of lightning, ice, or fire can rapidly deplete their weak-point gauge, setting you up for a devasting follow-up attack.

Another way to smash the weak-point gauge is with the Sheikah Slate runes from BotW — remote bombs, stasis, magnesis, and cryonis. Each one can be used to counter a certain type of attack. For example, you can use magnesis when an enemy is about to throw their metal weapon at you, which lets you fling it back at them instead. It keeps the combat interesting and varied as you stay on your toes trying to figure out which rune you should use next.

Lastly, there’s the special attack gauge. Every regular attack you perform fills up this meter. When it’s full, you unleash a powerful blast that can instantly kill multiple small enemies at once and do serious damage to bosses. You start out with only one special attack gauge, but as you advance through the game, you can eventually unlock up to three.

Another selling point for AoC is the fact that during some levels, you can play as the four Divine Beasts (well, technically, you’re playing as one of the Champions piloting the Divine Beasts, but still).

Playing as a huge hulking mechanical animal and killing hundreds of enemies at once is so satisfying. Especially when you can wipe out giant Hinoxes and fierce Lynels in just one blow.

Each of the Divine Beasts has a special attack gauge that, just like all of the other characters, gradually fills up with each attack. The Beasts tend to have a normal attack, like a concentrated laser beam that targets one specific area, as well as a strong attack that has a wide range.

Three of the Beasts have another unique move: Vah Ruta the elephant can swing its trunk around for massive damage, Vah Rudania the salamander can stomp around and create a sort of mini-earthquake, and Vah Naboris the camel can charge ahead, covering large distances in mere seconds and destroying everything in its path.

But Vah Medoh the bird? It ain’t got jack squat in terms of a special move. In fact, playing as Vah Medoh was probably my least favorite part of the whole game.

While the other three Divine Beasts move around on the ground, Vah Medoh flies through the air. Understandable, seeing as it’s a giant bird. But you also have less control over it than you do the others. It constantly flies at a slow-moving pace and you can’t really change its speed.

Plus, it tends to lose health much more quickly than the other Divine Beasts. Enemies that are on the ground (you fight in-air and on-ground foes in these levels) can attack you pretty much whenever, and you’re basically helpless as they damage the back part of the Beast while you fly around at a Sneaky River Snail’s pace.

Instead of unleashing a unique attack, pressing that same button while piloting Vah Medoh just switches the camera from looking out in the air to getting a better view of enemies on the ground. Sure, it allows for more precise targeting with your lasers, but personally, I would have greatly preferred having another way to deal out damage.

With all of the positive things I have to say about AoC as a whole, there are a few things, other than Vah Medoh, that bothered me.

For one, the gameplay tends to lag in certain places, such as when you’re grinding a character in a level where you’re significantly above the recommended level and you’re killing enemies faster than the game can load them. To me, it seems like a game in which one of the main points is to kill dozens of enemies at once, it should at least be able to render said enemies fairly quickly.

Another issue is that not all of the playable characters were created equally. Even after unlocking all 18 options, there were pretty much only three that I ended up using on a regular basis:

Many of the other playable characters have their own unique advantages (Daruk’s ability to create a forcefield around him, for example), but these three were my personal favorites.

Even if you haven’t played BotW, AoC could still feasibly work as a standalone adventure. But if you have, then it certainly adds to the already rich lore.

I would highly recommend playing BotW first. If you have, then I would say, overall, AoC is definitely worth it. In my opinion, it definitely lives up to its sequel’s hype.

If anything, it will tide you over until BotW 2 comes out.

3 Affirmations To Start Your Day The Right Way

Returning to the Age of Calamity

REVIEW

A spoiler-free review of the prequel to the smash hit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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