Which Hyrule Warriors Game Was Better?

[Lozjam]

So, having had time to sit and gestate on Age of Calamity. I started thinking about the series as a whole. Which one did I actually prefer?

I realize it's an interesting questions considering they are 2 different games going for different things. But I think there is a huge subset of people who may like one or another.

I an merely.... Curious. So please tell me why. To keep this poll as unbiased as possible, I will hold on my thoughts for a little bit, and give you all some time for your answers.

 

[Shinobido Heart]

Having played both, my vote goes to Age of Calamity.

Age of Calamity felt more streamlined compared to the first Hyrule Warriors.

Not to mention I wasn't a fan of the retro maps in the first one either, I forgot the name of that mode. It was a pain trying to unlock characters in it.

 

[Annabel]

I prefer the original simply for being a huge fanservice romp of a bunch of Zelda games.

Age of Calamity served to tell a story I ultimately found disappointing and didn't care as much about.

 

[Berordn]

at this moment in time, the original still wins out in my eyes. i preferred the original's greater focus on tactical maps versus age of calamity's action oriented gameplay with very limited number of enemy types which felt a little shallow, though i still greatly enjoyed my time with it. plus things like the weapons and fanservice gave the original much more variety.

that said, definitive has oodles and oodles of additional content with DLC and the legends additions so it's an unfair comparison. the AoC season pass could very well help in those spots where it feels lacking, since i do prefer the way it streamlined things like character upgrades.

 

[Waxy]

I really enjoyed both, but Age of Calamity is definitely the better of the two. The incorporated BotW elements are great and spice up the gameplay quite a bit.

However the amount of content the original has is staggering and, for me, got quite addicting clearing the adventure maps and unlocking weapons and characters even tho I never close to finishing it. Age of Calamity still has plenty of content and a good amount of characters but it just can't compete.

 

[CloseTalker]

Original has the fan service, but i feel like Calamity has more engaging gameplay and interesting move sets.

 

[Basileus777]

The first game had better gameplay, AOC removing the tactical elements and time pressure made the formula feel a lot more rote.

 

[Stopdoor]

I wasn't a fan of how the strategic element was de-emphasized in Age of Calamity. You almost never need to be multi-tasking, which I found made it really boring. I could see how some people would like that, but I don't.

The story on its face also appears higher quality at first, but I just couldn't stand the extremely shallow, routine, "epic" atmosphere it was trying to portray, felt really juvenile. Listening to the King or Zelda narrate it out was brutal. Breath of the Wild was at least understated with it all. This game was playing a "greatest hits" of BotW but cranking the cheese to 11. And then ultimately, it takes a turn into really just being a non-canon fan-service game anyway, so I don't really give it much credit over the original either. At least that one didn't put up any pretence.

I came away from the game being really unimpressed really, I feel like it's carried by its BotW dressing and it does have marginally better controls compared to the clunky items in the original, but it didn't bump it up that much. It still has its own awkward set of bizarre gameplay contrivances like needing to farm for rods or apples pre-mission.

 

[Burning Justice]

The original. I found Age of Calamity to be a disappointment, honestly.

The part of the original game that I liked most was the strategic element. I really enjoyed trying to figure out things like where it would be best to go first, which enemies I should kill first, and what tasks I should prioritize. Age of Calamity pretty much stripped out all of that and made the game solely about the combat, which I found kind of boring.

 

[BigTime_2018]

I'm really liking Age of Calamity, but I prefer the first Hyrule Warriors. Age of Calamity is missing the strategy element that it had.

 

[Nights]

I love the amount of content in Hyrule Warriors Definitive but after playing for 220 hours, I got extremely burnt out of the gameplay due to how simple it was and how easy it was.

Age of Calamity added Depth to the combat that was desperately needed, especially if it was going to last anywhere near the amount of time. The choices of difficulty modes + more advanced/free flow combat with way more tools available to use made me love my very hard 100 hours 100% playthrough waaaaaay more satisfying.

The one thing I did like more in HW:DE was that there's characters from tons of entries, but yeah, the combat gets way too repetitive after a certain point. Especially without a difficulty selection and very simple combat, so AoC was just my preferred game.

Edit: I would also like to add that the "Strategy" if HW:DE goes out the door if you have a favorite character or two, cuz they get so over levelled that you can just wipe multiple bases in like 2 minutes. Eh.

 

[EggmaniMN]

AoC is just a flat-out better game to play, the story isn't just boring fanservice fluff and the characters actually feel properly different. The first game just has CONTENT.

 

[etrain911]

I prefer the original simply for being a huge fanservice romp of a bunch of Zelda games.

Age of Calamity served to tell a story I ultimately found disappointing and didn't care as much about.

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This kind of echoes my thoughts. The other difference is content. Hyrule Warriors DE had just so much content, it's kind of unbeatable in that regard, even though Age of Calamity is getting a season pass. The battles have generally more variety and the performance is leagues ahead of Age of Calamity's.

 

[Morrigan]

The original (Wii U one, haven't played DE) is better in every single way tbh. Better characters, better pacing, less bloat. The story was trash, but so's the story in AoC, and caring about a story in a musou is kind of lol

The amount of filler side-quests in AoC is obscene and you have to sift through tons of them to unlock valuable stuff. So many of those are also just kind of "boss encounters" instead of proper musou and.... they suck especially in split screen. The game's combat mechanics are not remotely good enough to support so many missions or make them fun. And the divinity beast missions are a slog, too.

Original HW is a proper musou game with mostly actual musou missions, it focused on being a musou, and was a much stronger game for it. Also, Impa was a million times better so OG HW wins by default. :P

 

[TDLink]

Honestly voting the original/DE due to the sheer amount of content. Not only is the roster much larger and varied, but the story is pretty long and full-formed, and the adventure mode is terrific, providing hundreds of hours of gameplay.

AoC is great, and I think overall improved on the gameplay... But it seems like it has come at the cost of content in a big way. 100%ing the game takes far under 100 hours, providing only a fraction of the gameplay even the base game HW did. I -wanted- to play more AoC, but at some point there simply was no more.

HW1 on the other hand I played until I got tired of, and there was still plenty left to do... and I came back to it on occasion, did a bit more, and then when I got tired of it again, there was yet still even more to do.

In addition to this, the decision to limit the roster in AoC to a single title (BotW) really is a bummer and it DOES feel like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel instead of just re-adding some of the fan favorites that appeared in HW1 (and older titles), even if they were bonus characters rather than story-important (especially since there are already characters in AoC who have nothing to do with the story).

This is only exasperated by the fact that there were still a ton of potential characters that could have been added past HW's roster in a potential sequel.

 

[Mesoian]

As a Musou game? HW1
As a Zelda game? HW2

AOC has some pretty major problems when it comes to being a musou game. The camera is STRAIGHT UP BAD. Since the levels are based on BOTW, they're often too narrow and make combat with large numbers of enemies confusing. The rods make combat far to simple (every level boils down to, farm rods, use rods, win). And the game is just smaller and shorter.

But as a BOTW companion piece, it's superlative.

AoC is just a flat-out better game to play, the story isn't just boring fanservice fluff and the characters actually feel properly different. The first game just has CONTENT.

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...AOC's story is ABSOLUTELY 100% fanservice fluff.
A lot of it is cool, but it's cool in the same way that Sheik saving Link from a King Dodongo in the first game was cool.

 

[Jawmuncher]

HW1 has the best Impa so that one.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Spoiler: Age of Calamity ch. 6

 

[FF Seraphim]

I have both and I love both games. AoC has the better gameplay, the first one has the most characters. Every one of the AoC characters play in a unique way that make them standout. If you are looking for content though nothing beats the first game. There is just so much to do.
God... the music for both is great as well. I need to listen to both OSTs before picking either.

 

[Kinsei]

The original. I struggle to call Age of Calamity decent let alone good.

Age of Calamity axed the strategic gameplay of the first and you're left with a mediocre action game that has enemies which don't make proper use of the combat mechanics.

 

[Mesoian]

The original. I struggle to call Age of Calamity decent let alone good.

Age of Calamity axed the strategic gameplay of the first and you're left with a mediocre action game that has enemies which don't make proper use of the combat mechanics.

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Yeah, ultimately AOC's lack of content really hurts it. When you realize that every mission for every character follows the same formula, it gets pretty droll. I was hoping the DLC would have some adventure maps so we could get that fun strategic gameplay again, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

 

[Tavernade]

This is really hard for me.

I love both but...

The original had moments that just annoyed the crap out of me. Bosses that constantly repeated and were just repetitive to fight, really hard to figure out retro maps that didn't value the player's time, and if I recall didn't it take until the 3DS/Switch editions for you to be able to swap partners?

Calamity has some really fun movesets and is super streamlined by comparison. I don't think I ever got frustrated at a level unless I went in knowingly underprepared/it glitched on me. That being said, it gets a little same-y quicker than the original did. I don't like how a lot of side missions limit you to one or two characters while Fire Emblem Warriors had nearly every mission available with not just a team of four but with back up units.

I imagine my favorite would be the Switch edition of the original, but I only played the Wii U version.

 

[Derkon]

The original by far. Preferred the gameplay and fanservice. AoC tried to have a story but was worse off for it.

 

[Dyle]

Age of Calamity is way, way better during the main story stuff but way, way worse with all the side and endgame content. The original is more well rounded and offers a far wider variety of scenarios to mess with. Age of Calamity could have been a lot better if it used everything it has to its fullest but it doesn't. The way it pretty much wholesale tosses out so much of the musou-ness of its musou gameplay is frustrating, to say the least.

 

[Morrigan]

HW1 has the best Impa so that one.

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Better Zelda, too, honestly. Zelda is insufferable in AoC.

Age of Calamity axed the strategic gameplay of the first and you're left with a mediocre action game that has enemies which don't make proper use of the combat mechanics.

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This.

What, you mean you don't want to fight 3 Talus in a row? /s

 

[Drayco21]

The original has a vastly better roster, more content and ran better. AoC is probably my least favorite of the Nintendo crossover Musou, and I think they'd have been better served by adding the Champion characters and some maps as DLC to the first.

 

[oxymoron]

Definitely agree with everyone mentioning the disappointing strategic gameplay in AoC. It took until I got to post-game content in AoC before I played a single mission in which I felt it mattered whether or not I captured bases, or which ones I captured. Without having to juggle or manage the flow and relative strength of the armies, AoC just mostly felt like a series of encounters with mini-bosses and bosses. I also preferred the extreme commitment to fanservice of HW to the BotW theme in AoC, so really a no brainer for me.

 

[Tochtli79]

Both have shitty stories, AoC has far better gameplay, and I think I like the roster of the original more since it pulls from several games and is also bigger (though it remains to be seen what the AoC DLC will be). It's a tough call.

 

[Mesoian]

Both have shitty stories, AoC has far better gameplay, and I think I like the roster of the original more since it pulls from several games and is also bigger (though it remains to be seen what the AoC DLC will be). It's a tough call.

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I'm pretty sure due to the data mining that we know EXACTLY what all the DLC is going to be.

The only thing that we can hope is that DLC1 contains everything we knew about, and DLC2 is something completely different. Because if not, that's a really disappointing spread of content over the course of a full year.

 

[Harpoon]

I feel like this'd be better asked after all of AoC's DLC has been released.

I'm pretty sure due to the data mining that we know EXACTLY what all the DLC is going to be.

The only thing that we can hope is that DLC1 contains everything we knew about, and DLC2 is something completely different. Because if not, that's a really disappointing spread of content over the course of a full year.

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I don't think anything was datamined in regards to the DLC outside of characters, was it?

 

[Dusk Golem]

My personal opinion at the moment is the Age of Calamity base game is better than Hyrule Warriors original base game, but Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition with all DLC is better than Age of Calamity. But Age of Calamity could turn out better if the DLC situation for its Definitive Edition raises it to that level.

 

[PAFenix]

I went with Definitive. Granted, I only played Chapter 1 of Age of Calamity before my daughter took over the game and I just kind of lost interest in ever picking it back up. Maybe it would have grabbed my attention better if I kept up with it, lol

 

[Mesoian]

I feel like this'd be better asked after all of AoC's DLC has been released.



I don't think anything was datamined in regards to the DLC outside of characters, was it?

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No, and that's the problem. Even looking at that roadmap they put out, it sounds like it's 2 characters in the spring with an assortment of special weapons and some new enemy variants, and another set of the same thing in the fall, with altered movesets for existing characters.

 

[KillstealWolf]

Definitive Edition is the only one with Midna in it, so it wins by default.

Maybe I'll give Age of Calamity a try if the DLC adds characters from other Zeldas in it. If it's just gonna be more BOTW characters, I won't touch it with a 6 foot pole.

 

[StrappingYoungLance]

I bounced off both. I think Age of Calamity kept my attention longer.

 

[Kyari]

They both do different things better.

 

[Beth Cyra]

AoC is easily the better game.

Thing is I voted for DE as these just like all warriors games live and die by the cast of the title for me, and no character in AoC comes close to my love of Midna.

 

[Terraforce]

HW1 has some fantastic fanservice and a ton of content. But otherwise idk how it's remotely better. In AoC the story is better, characters are more diverse, and everything feels more cohesive with the new map system in place of conventional menus.

Feels like a battle of quantity vs quality.

 

[JaggiBaggi]

I feel they're both different enough in scope, goals and gameplay to be unable to actually compare them.

 

[Morrigan]

Feels like a battle of quantity vs quality.

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AoC is quantity galore lol

Lost count of the number of times I cleared one mission and 20 icons on the map popped. What is this, an Ubisoft game? :P (Yes, I know some were just item deliveries, but that was also annoying filler/padding that the game didn't need)

 

[CaptainK]

Interesting to see the split opinions. I haven't played either game, so I'll definitely be reading this thread.

 

[TeraDax]

Both are so vastly different, but really good games! Kinda hard to choose to be honest.

I went with AoC simply because Iliked how it was more "focused". I was able to 100% the objectives in around 60 hours, which I felt was the perfect length. Gameplay also felt better, had more fun with each character. Other than Revali

Meanwhile, HW1 has like an infinite amount of content, with Adventure mode being the main "meat" of the game. Played around 150 hours and was far from completing everything. Some may prefer that, but on my side, I was burned by then. But still, the content is a thing to behold.

Story wise, for sure AoC is better. And at least, the character design from BotW is stellar, so no Cya there :P

But yeah, two vastly different games that clearly aim for a different result.

 

[Starphanluke]

Age of Calamity, and it isn't even close.

 

[QisTopTier]

HW DE but I still loved aoc, maybe the dlc will help it

 

[Radarscope1]

100%ing the game takes far under 100 hours, providing only a fraction of the gameplay even the base game HW did.

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My god

 

[Deleted member 33533]

I liked the original more. I realised halfway through AoC that the maps were never going to challenge me by changing up the objectives or having enemies take a camp from me so it just became a hack-and-slash.

I also didn't like how the majority of the characters played. I mostly stuck to One handed sword Link, Urbosa and Impa. I did like how the counter system was made more overt with the runes (it was kind of hidden in the first game) but then it also felt like enemies would spam those moves and it'd get repetitive.

I also really hate how the story turned out. It was such a disappointment. The first game had a much better story.

 

[TDLink]

My god

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Just for full clarification: HW is the perfect multi-task game. Like play while you watch TV. DE has well over 350 hours of content, which is frankly more than anyone wants or needs. AoC, on the other hand, is closer to around 50 -60 hours depending on play style (pre-DLC).

 

[fundogmo]

Age or Calamity didn't have a story full of twists or anything, but I was so emotionally invested with it by the end. It feels like the perfect companion piece to one of my favorite games, and going through it co-op with my partner was such a perfect experience.

Hyrule Warriors on the other hand, has enough stuff in it that you could probably put 500 hours into it and still get new stuff.

They're both good, but AoC really hooked me in.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Just for full clarification: HW is the perfect multi-task game. Like play while you watch TV. DE has well over 350 hours of content, which is frankly more than anyone wants or needs. AoC, on the other hand, is closer to around 50 -60 hours depending on play style (pre-DLC).

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HW:DE is like one of those american buffet restaurants—so much content to consume

 

[Indiana Jones]

AoC is the better game. It's way more polished.