No, seriously. I guarantee you can't even fathom how happy this announcement made me.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is unironically not only one of my favorite Switch games, but one of my favorite games of all time. And all it had to do was make Revali, my favorite character in all of fiction, playable.
Okay, that isn't the only reason I love this game, but most of the reasons I'm so fond of Age of Calamity have to do with that character. Take him out of the game, and I likely still like it, but it doesn't leave nearly the same impact as it did for me.
So, since the concept of Nintendo Switch 2 Editions were first announced in the Switch 2 Direct last April, Age of Calamity has been at the top of my wishlist to receive one. To me, it made perfect sense, what with the original game suffering with performance issues on Switch 1, and with a follow-up, Age of Imprisonment, releasing on Switch 2 in its launch year.
I put it down as a prediction for the Zelda Direct that happened last week, but that came and went without any sign of it happening. That discouraged me, and I was ready to accept that it wasn't going to happen, at least not in last week's pair of Directs.
Little did I know that, only three announcements into the general Direct the very next day, my wish would come true.
On the day of the Direct, I was occupied all day, and had to wait until that evening to watch it, having to avoid spoilers and building up my excitement throughout the day. This was the moment when all that pent up excitement absolutely exploded, and that enthusiasm ended up carrying through the remainder of what ended up being a very enjoyable presentation.
Interestingly, though, it's not a Switch 2 Edition, but a standalone rerelease. If you have the original Switch 1 game, you can get a 50% discount off of Definitive Edition, but that's still $30, which is kinda lame. Though, this is one of those games that I love enough to where I'm more than willing to buy it again.
So what's actually new in this version? Not a ton from what we've seen so far, but there are some meaningful improvements. The biggest upgrade is, of course, the leveraging of the Switch 2's enhanced power, bumping the framerate to 60FPS, seemingly upping the resolution, and allowing more enemies to be on screen at once. So basically, exactly the baseline that I was looking for out of a Switch 2 version of this game. From the comparison shot they show in the trailer, it really does look like a substantial upgrade in all of these areas, and I'm incredibly excited to reexperience the game with all of these enhancements.
As you would expect from a Definitive Edition, all the content from the Expansion Pass DLC is included out of the gate. I personally found the DLC to be pretty underwhelming overall, especially with the new characters introduced. There were only 3 new characters, and none of them really did much for me (I still think they should've added Kass, massive missed opportunity). Though, the second DLC did give us one of my favorite cutscenes in all of gaming, and helped to set up a certain character's expanded role in the then-upcoming Tears of the Kingdom. So there's that at least.
I'll be interested to see what it's like to play through the game from the beginning with all the DLC content there, as by the time the DLC started dropping, I had already completed pretty much everything in the base game (I'm telling you, I love this game to death and sunk a stupid amount of time into it).
One thing I'm very interested in is getting more usage out of the new moves certain characters got in the second DLC, especially Revali's (no way). My play style for him was pretty set in stone by the time I was done with the game, so I'm very interested to see how I could integrate the new move he got into my play style.
The only brand new addition announced so far is a new, even harder difficulty mode: Calamity Mode. This is interesting because the first DLC already added a harder difficulty mode with 'Apocalyptic Mode', so adding another harder difficulty mode does feel a bit redundant. The eShop description for Definitive Edition describes Calamity Mode as having tougher, more numerous enemies, and less effective healing items. I do hope it offers a more unique challenge to justify its existence alongside Apocalyptic Mode. Regardless, I do welcome a greater challenge, and I'll probably end up playing the game on Calamity Mode to get the most challenging experience possible and really push my Revali skills to their limit.
The game will also support GameShare for its co-op mode, which is always nice to see, and you'll be able to transfer your save data from the original release to Definitive Edition, though I likely will not be doing this, as my save file is completely 100%ed, and there's not much left to do. I intend to fully replay the game once Definitive Edition comes out, and I cannot WAIT to do so!
Unfortunately, we do have to wait a bit for its release, as it doesn't launch until February 25th, 2027. As far as I can recall, that's currently the furthest away first party Nintendo release that we have a concrete release date for. By the time this comes out, I'll probably have already finished Metroid Ravenous. Heck, this is a longer wait from reveal to release than the original game had, being announced in September of 2020 and releasing in November of the same year. Now, that was due to all the COVID weirdness going on at the time, but I just think that's kinda funny.
All that said, I am so unbelievably happy that we are getting a Switch 2 version of Age of Calamity, and even though I gotta wait a bit to get my hands on it, I cannot wait to revisit one of my all time favorites in its definitive form next year!
