| “ | Your Highness, I bring news. It regards your impending death. | „ |
| ~ Sooga |
| “ | You are blind, "seer". Calamity Ganon... is not for mortals to control. | „ |
| ~ Sooga to Astor, foreshadowing the latter's fate. |
Sooga is a major antagonist in the game Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.
He is the second in command of the Yiga Clan as well as Master Kohga's right-hand man.
What Makes Him Magnificent?
- While each typical Blademaster carries one sword with both hands, Sooga managed to wield two long heavy katanas, with the fact that he is the most muscular which shows that he is the strongest of them all. This contrasts to his once being a frail starving young man, which makes it more impressive with how far he has become since then.
- His voice actor Gerald C. Rivers gave a wonderful performance as Sooga making the character come across as a serious imposing character with tons of charisma about him.
- When in the hands of the right players, Sooga is a fun warrior to play as with his stronger moves, special and weak-point attacks, often has him freezing time as he goes into light speed, slashing his foes and putting both swords away in the grand finale, like a boss.
- Sooga is a highly competent soldier in the battlefield, and he is most often the one leading the Yiga army; and when he is in command of the army, he manages to keep them in line so well, mostly independent from Master Kohga, and he is often the one who takes the initiative, doing things without being told what to do. He also easily pulls up very impressive vanishing techniques and acrobatics to show his enemies just how formidable and intimidating he is.
- Sooga is the only member of the Yiga Clan who is the serious one, so nothing on his own is funny, but it's how he contributes to the organization, it does add a balance to the dynamic as Master Kohga and all of the other members often tend to lean largely on the zany goofy side.
- Shared with the Yiga Clan, Sooga is very good with disguising himself to spy on his enemies.
- With Master Kohga, Sooga often gains information through the seer Astor and Harbinger Ganon to find out what Link, Princess Zelda, and the Champions are up to, so that they can get a preemptive strike at the area where they will head to in order to stop them.
- Sooga treats his fellow members with upmost respect and is shown to be patient with them, even when he sees them running from a Guardian that sprang to life only to deactivate shortly after at Akkala Citadel. He is surprised at best, but he managed to regain his composure and focus. This even extends to his enemies, and he is shown to be very polite and courteous to them.
- Sooga is the only villain who has a clear conscious and he acts as the voice of reason amongst them, which is new and different in an otherwise less competent group. He knows full well about Calamity Ganon's history and how powerful it is, and he is wise enough to know that such an entity like Ganon is not a tool for mortals to control as he warns Astor about, even when the latter clearly doesn't listen to his words. And he is very much right about it, when Astor learns that the hard way when Ganon consumes him alive because he was ordering it around near the end of the story.
- Unlike the rest of the members of the Yiga Clan, including Master Kohga himself, each of whom aren't very smart, Sooga stands out as the most intelligent and it shows that whenever he is in control of the Yiga army, Sooga is capable of making them an even bigger threat than they were in Breath of the Wild:
- In The Yiga Clan Attacks! Scenario, he managed to effectively pull off a successful diversion, using fake info, to trick the Champions, Mipha, Daruk, Revali, and Urbosa into moving away from the building where Link and Zelda were hiding in, by having a large number of monsters, including a Hinox, Yiga Blademasters, and Footsoldiers take over the northern part of Castle Town to get them concerned for the safety of innocent people enough to deprive Princess Zelda of her much-needed protection and he starts a fire to force her and Link into the open. Even though he fails to assassinate Zelda due to Link blocking his kunai, he knows he's dealing with a highly skilled knight, and he gracefully admits defeat while stating that fate is at work, before issuing a retreat without any sign of fear of them.
- In the Akkala Tower Scenario, Sooga succeeded in taking over Akkala Citadel to stop the heroes from activating the Akkala Tower (which would risk having the Yiga Clan Hideout exposed due to the towers distilling regional maps into the Sheikah Slate) and he often finds ways to keep the warriors from entering the citadel, which includes having the Yiga Clan build blockades on the bridge to the citadel which required the heroes to use the Guardians to get through them. When they do, he sends the monsters in an attempt to destroy the ancient furnaces that power the Sheikah Tower. It's safe to say that he can easily think on his feet on the battlefield, which makes him a competent commanding leader.
- Even though Sooga does show that he does fear incurring the wrath of Calamity Ganon for speaking or acting slightly out of line, which is shown during a cutscene where he stutters a bit as he apologizes when Harbinger Ganon acts out and Astor reminding him about him betraying Ganon through killing him, they are more of a reasonable fear than actual cowardice since Calamity Ganon is an entirely evil entity who doesn't take kindly to betrayal and he knows what it's capable of when provoked and the moments where he retreats has him doing it are always done without any visible fear of his enemies and by the time Astor betrays them and sends the monsters after them, Sooga loses those fears and has no problems fighting Ganon's monsters since then as shown in the EX The Yiga Clan's Retreat, he doesn't care about what happens to him at this point as long as Master Kohga and the surviving Yiga are safe.
- Sooga is forever loyal to Master Kohga in every way, and it is shown through how he managed to save him during a scenario where Urbosa is being recruited as a Gerudo Champion when his leader is in most need of help. And when Astor betrays them and tries to get them killed as well, Sooga tells Kohga to get away but the latter refuses to leave him behind, and Sooga vows to protect him even if it would result in him losing his life. During the Guardian of Remembrance Scenario EX The Yiga Clan's Retreat, Sooga will assist Kohga in helping the Yiga Clan make their escape, and they do take the time to rush back to protect the other blademasters from falling to the Hollows and monsters (required not only to complete a Memory Quest but also contributes to unlocking Sooga as a playable character).
- In the cutscene after the aforementioned EX scenario, Sooga's flashbacks of how he first met Master Kohga and joined the Yiga Clan shows him as someone who's genuinely sympathetic; He was a starving young man who was almost killed before Kohga stopped him and offered a banana to him and has been told that he will repay him at a later time. In the present, when they are ambushed by the Blight Ganons, Sooga reacts by using a special technique to paralyze the monsters and urges Kohga once more to escape despite his wounds slowing him down, which Kohga reluctantly does. Even when he is at the mercy of the Blight Ganons at this point, Sooga stands up and draws both his katanas to take all four of them on alone, which shows that whether he lives or not, he is going all out with style, and preparing to even face a possible death with all of his dignity intact and he is doing it all to repay his kindness years ago while asking if he has done so.
- Even some of Sooga's Quests deserve a mention, whenever he learns of something that would benefit his training or weapons, he will head straight to it right away; other examples include the EX Burning Desire has him doing a training session in Gerudo Highlands, which is a freezing place (sub-zero conditions) and when someone suggest warm items, Sooga actually suggests cold items, which is him running the risk of cold-related injuries and ailments, and lived during his intense training; it actually helped to hone his mind.
- Despite being betrayed by Astor and played for a fool, Sooga helps his fellow Yiga Clan soldiers make an escape as Calamity Ganon's monsters and Astor's Hollows are targeting them. By slaying the monsters around them with Kohga, he is essentially turning against Calamity Ganon and by extension, Astor for using them this way and does it all to protect the Yiga survivors, and he still manages to be an awesome combatant who even goes back to save the Blademasters left behind from the stronger blins, the Hollows, and the Blights. With the adequate number of remaining Yiga soldiers, it helps that the Yiga not only redeem themselves, but it gave the Hyruleans additional allies who are fighting against the current threat. It's also worth noting that he knows the Yiga Clan well and they don't take kindly to anyone either leaving or betraying them so, even if he doesn't personally do it himself, he has the Yiga to avenge him and their fallen comrades.
- Sooga has proved to be a huge influence on Master Kohga and the Yiga Clan and they all look up to him, all for the reasons stated above. And it was because of Astor's treachery, Calamity Ganon's true nature, and Sooga's ambiguous fate that impacted the Yiga Clan so much that they didn't care if they made enemies out of Ganon anymore at this point and changed their allegiance to Hyrule instead so they can get their revenge on Astor and Ganon for how they were treated and what happened to Sooga and the Yiga Clan proved to be valuable allies to Link and his friends during the scenarios that follow.
- Out of all the villains in the franchise, Sooga essentially manages to stay calm at all times, even when he is sometimes authentically frustrated. And it shows from various defeats that he takes them much better than the other villains across the franchise do, and even when betrayed in the worst way possible, his sanity never wavered.
What Makes Him a Baddie?
- Sooga is a part of a long-standing cult, the Yiga Clan, that worships Calamity Ganon, the primal evil from the past, and have long planned to get revenge against the Royal Family for mistreating their ancestors.
- He’s resorted to several underhanded tactics and has no issues with causing property damage, such as starting a fire across a town just to get his targets into an open area, and he doesn't care who gets hurt along the way.
- He is a calculating assassin who managed to get the Champions away from the princess so that he only has fewer threats to deal with while trying to assassinate her, with Zelda's powers while still dormant, posing a huge threat to Calamity Ganon.
- Sooga, with the rest of the Yiga, temporarily works with Astor who is a Pure Evil seer, and because of that, they gain the privilege to get ahead of the heroes.
- He managed to successfully, albeit briefly, capture Akkala Citadel, a very important stronghold that protects Hyrule from various threats and used careful tactics to give the heroes a bad time.
- Sooga has led an attack on Kakariko Village in the EX-Battle for Kakariko Village in an attempt to take it over.
Trivia
- Given that Sooga has a charismatic air and very skilled in strategizing, he wouldn't have qualified as a Magnificent Baddie due to his final fate on-screen having him being betrayed by Astor. It wasn't until the Guardian of Remembrance DLC Pack 2 came out that showed the events after the betrayal that Sooga is shown to be protecting the surviving clanmates from Calamity Ganon's monsters and made his final stand against the four Blight Ganons with dignity, with his fate leaving an impact on the Yiga Clan that allowed him to qualify as an MB.