When Nintendo first announced Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, I have to admit I was a tad sceptical of the whole affair. After all, Tears of the Kingdom didn’t explain a whole lot about the Imprisoning War, with the characters and content featured there mostly being flat and uninteresting compared to those in the present day.

So, it made me wonder what they’d even do. Would the sages be strong enough characters to carry a game? Would Age of Imprisonment add enough to keep things interesting, even with a storyline as basic as TotK’s one?

How would they differentiate this game from Age of Calamity?

All these questions and more raced through my mind as I saw the announcements, and I was initially uninterested in even considering the game because of it.

Having now played it though, I’m positively surprised, at least for the most part.

Since well, it does a better job of representing the Imprisoning War than I’d ever have expected.

With the big reason for this being that you actually care about the characters this time around. Indeed, while Rauru, Sonia, Mineru and the sages are from Tears of the Kingdom, the rest of the cast here is brand-new.

And many of them fill out gaps in the world that otherwise feel empty. You’ve got Typhan and Quino as new Hylian soldiers, Pastos and Sholani and Vence and various others as new supporting characters from the other tribes, and you’ve got that mysterious Construct and Calamo as the secondary protagonists.

They’re generally great additions, and go a long way to making the world feel about as alive as it does in the present day.

Same goes with the bosses too. Indeed, while Age of Calamity reused the Blights for its story (albeit with tougher attack patterns and slightly cooler designs), Age of Imprisonment goes a very different direction.

Namely, it creates the Archfiends instead, and gives them elements of the bosses they’re inspired by. So, instead of Colgera you’ve got the more Ganon like Grimgera, instead of Mucktorok you’ve got the more humanoid Grimtorok, etc.

And they’re all sentient villains with actual voice acting too.

So, instead of just facing a wild animal for each major regional threat, with very little in the way of foreshadowing or plot relevance, you’re directly fighting one of Ganondorf’s main henchmen. It’s a neat touch, and one that makes them far more interesting than in Tears of the Kingdom.

So, the new characters are a neat addition.

And so is the fact you actually feel like you’re in an actual war with this game too. The Imprisoning War in Tears of the Kingdom had shades of that, with lines like “the last free Gerudo village has fallen”, but it was mostly offscreen. You saw the sages against Ganondorf at the end, and the monsters being summoned at the start, and that was basically it.

Age of Imprisonment goes and makes it clear just how bad the situation really was. Seriously, Hyrule Field feels like hell for most of Age of Imprisonment. Like, it gets absolutely and utterly annihilated by Ganon’s forces, to the point most levels there look like a perpetually overcast nightmare hellscape with burning Gloom covered trees and the Blood Moon looming ominously overheard.

It gives you a real taste of Ganondorf’s designs for Hyrule, and they are not pretty.

Which kinda brings up to the visuals. Put simply, this game looks fantastic.

Yeah, it’s not gonna give you Tears of the Kingdom style vistas to look out over. With the exception of the Sky Islands, the areas from the 3rd chapter onwards are more war-torn hellscapes than medieval fantasy landscapes, and just about every village you can think of either doesn’t exist or has been mostly levelled by the invading hordes.

But by God it looks good nonetheless. The character models are nice and detailed, and perfectly in-line with Tears of the Kingdom. The environments are vast and detailed. The lighting looks excellent all around…

And the frame rate… well it’s basically flawless here.

Yeah, it’s a big improvement over Age of Calamity, that’s for sure. Indeed, while that game noticeably stuttered when things got too hectic, Age of Imprisonment performed nearly flawlessly in both docked and portable mode.

It’s incredible to see, and makes the game way more enjoyable as a result.

What’s a bit less incredible to see are the cutscenes. For whatever reason, these aren’t rendered in-game.

No, they’re static video files instead. Low quality ones that don’t even have the same resolution or framerate as the rest of the game.

And it’s absolutely baffling to me why this is the case. Like, why do this? Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom had some of these for the memories sure, but the majority of scenes in that game played in-engine. Plus, given the resources for them are clearly there, and the extra models would use less space than the video files…

Yeah, it feels like a bit of a clunky shortcut to say the least.

The music also seems a bit mixed in terms of quality too. It’s not bad, and there are plenty of good songs remixed from Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom or Age of Calamity…

But the new stuff hasn’t really stood out to me so far. From a quick relisten on YouTube it’s definitely fine, but it’s nowhere near Age of Calamity’s epicness here. No Rescue Operation or catchy sage level themes this time around!

Above: Probably my favourite song in Age of Imprisonment so far

Voice acting on the other hand is way better than past games. It’s not gonna win any awards no, but it works really well for this game, and everyone sounds exactly like you’d hope they would. Heck, the returning characters even sound a lot better than they did in Tears of the Kingdom, just like the returning cast in Age of Calamity did compared to Breath of the Wild.

That said, it does have one problem. There aren’t enough voice clips for characters here.

So, you’ll probably get sick of your favourite characters’ voice clips for finishing off bosses and using sync moves really quickly. Calamo’s line “I’m not just a traveller, I can fight too!” is amazing on its own, but it gets annoying the 55th time you hear it in a battle.

Still, enough about the aesthetics. What about the gameplay? How does that feel?

Honestly, a lot like Age of Calamity. If you enjoyed that game, you’ll enjoy this one too.

All the usual ingredients are here and accounted for. There’s a wide variety of characters to play as, with unique moves and abilities. Combat is done with a mix of basic attacks and combos using the X and Y buttons. Your goals in each mission are to reach a certain point after having cleared the enemies from the outposts along the way and the majority of the monsters you encounter are cannon fodder that die in one or two sword swings.

It’s the Dynasty Warriors style through and through.

That said, there are some additions to the formula. Flight sections, Zonai devices, sync moves and unique special attacks that can interrupt enemy actions.

The former are one of the nicest surprises in the game. Basically, instead of playing as the Divine Beasts and clunkily marching through specific maps, you get to fly around the sky islands as the Knight Construct and Calamo instead!

Yeah, it’s basically the best Star Fox game since Star Fox 64, and one heck of an epic way to break up the formula. There are bosses like Gleeoks and Moragia that are specific to these sections, your attacks work flawlessly in the sky, and the characters control like a dream overall.
They’re really fun overall, and help to make certain moments far more exciting than they’d have been otherwise.

Meanwhile the Zonai Devices are probably the biggest addition in standard gameplay.

Now, as well as using normal attacks to fight enemies, you can take out and equip Zonai devices from Tears of the Kingdom too. The flame/frost/shock emitters hit enemies for elemental damage, fans blast them backwards, rockets act as projectiles, etc.

They’re a really useful set of tools, and ones you’ll end up relying on again and again.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the similar Fuse attacks. They use monster parts as ammunition, and do massive amounts of gauge breaking damage to anything they hit.

And on paper, they’re a cool addition. They tie in well to Tears of the Kingdom, provide some attack variety for the secondary characters, and offer some nice special attack alternatives for tricky situations.

Sadly, they have problems that make them impractical in-game. You have to stay still for many of them, so they’re basically a death wish against bosses or powerful foes, and the UI for selecting them (and Zonai devices) is the same bullshit fuse UI from Tears of the Kingdom too.
Add this to their ammunition being limited, and well… we stuck to the Zonai devices a lot more overall.

Sync moves are another interesting feature. Basically, every time multiple characters battle alongside each other a meter fills up, and once it’s full for both parties, they can join together to unleash a powerful attack that’ll stun bosses and send most weaker enemies flying.

It’s a really cool mechanic, and one that definitely gets a lot of use here, due to how effective these moves are at clearing the battlefield and tearing through boss health bars. Honestly, this and your finishing moves are your best tools for combat overall, especially now that special attacks seem to be more about screen clearing than actual damage.

Which brings us to the other kind of special moves. The character specific ones that can be used to interrupt enemy attacks and open up their weakness gauges.

These basically replace the runes from Age of Calamity, and can be used alongside other characters by automatically swapping to the right character for a counterattack if they’re nearby and ready.

It’s a neat system, and I do like how it ties into each character’s unique abilities, but I feel it has some issues too.

First, it’s never really certain whether your characters will have the ability to deal with an enemy attack when they see it. The runes being consistent in Age of Calamity was boring yes, but it also meant everyone had a solution for any problem they might encounter. You’d have to time it well, but it was always there.

Age of Imprisonment’s solution has two issues there.

First, countering attacks can be clunky as hell now. Yes, there are solutions to counter every attack for every character. Character specific abilities do the job some of the time, and the Zonai devices fill in the blanks…

But your attack options are incredibly limited here. You can have about 4-5 attacks active at once, and have to manually switch them out for others if they’re not suitable for the task at hand.

As a result, you’re kinda put in a bad situation when it comes to dealing with enemy attacks in a heated battle. If you’re lucky, your current toolkit will do the job.

But if you’re using a side character with only two real attacks and a reliance on Zonai devices, or the enemy weakness isn’t covered by your normal arsenal, you’re kinda screwed. You either have to go into the menu and physically switch attacks around every time you want to counter something, or you have to deal with not being able to counter at all.

It’s not the end of the world by any means, but when your solution to many attack issues is “spend 30 seconds messing around in menus”, then things start to feel a lot more like Tears of the Kingdom than we were hoping they would.

There’s also a bit of a problem with boss variety here too.

Yeah, bosses do return in this game, and comprise a mix of giant enemy variants and unique foes. And yes, the variety is technically better than in Age of Calamity…

But there’s also a lot of missed potential here.

Firstly, Wizzrobes are just gone altogether. Yeah, despite being present in all three other wild era games, they’re nowhere to be seen in Age of Imprisonment.

No, I don’t get it either. It’s just a weird exclusion, and one that probably shouldn’t have been made.

Secondly, Gleeoks are surprisingly rare given how awesome they are in Tears of the Kingdom. You’ve got a Frost Gleeok in the first flight level and a King Gleeok in the second…

And that’s about it. You never face them as normal characters, and you never even seen Flame or Thunder Gleeoks at all. They’re relegated to two battles, and that’s it.

To a degree, I get it.

A flying three-headed dragon is hard to integrate into the Warriors style gameplay. Plus, the setup definitely lends itself better to aerial combat than the ground variety.

But they could have worked, and I really wished we’d seen them try. Gleeoks have ground based attacks after all (wings, tail swipes, beams of fire/ice/electricity, fire/ice/electric balls, etc), and I’m sure the team could have come up with even more to give them here.

So, not even see in normal levels just feels so disappointing to me. They managed just fine with Age of Calamity’s Guardian Skywatchers, why is the same not true of the Gleeoks here?

Then there’s Ganondorf. On the one hand, he’s an awesome boss in both Tears of the Kingdom and this game. Having us battle him with the sages is a great way to help cap off part of the story.

But at the same time, I can’t help feel a bit underwhelmed by how he’s handled here. Not only does he have surprisingly little dialogue or activity in the story, but his final boss fight is… basically a souped-up version of Tears of the Kingdom’s one. Which you ‘win’ initially.

Gameplay wise, it makes some sense. You want the player to have a satisfying boss fight, not a one-sided curb-stomp where Ganondorf barely takes a hit.

However, the implementation just feels really awkward here. Our characters don’t feel like they lose as much as simply get depowered after the battle, and it makes our efforts feel completely meaningless.

And it gets worse when you consider that logically speaking, we should be able to win here. Link does the exact same thing against Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom that the Sages do here, and wins with even less in the way of resources or backup. Why do we suddenly lose after seemingly doing just fine for the last half an hour or so?

It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and makes the story feel less like a hopeless battle against an overwhelming foe, and more like a normal battle that suddenly becomes impossible in cutscenes for no apparent reason.

So, perhaps it would have been better if Ganondorf was a more dangerous opponent in this game. If his fight had him as a super tough boss with fast, difficult to avoid attacks and almost inpenetrable defences.

That would have made for a much more satisfying conclusion, and fit the story much better than what we have in this game.

Heck, they could have even added a postgame level where you have to try and beat Ganondorf here. To win the Imprisoning War the first time around.

Yeah, it wouldn’t be canon.

But it also wouldn’t be part of the main story either. It’d be part of a set of optional challenges which throw you various curveballs to see how you cope with them.

Which is sadly what Age of Imprisonment’s postgame does not have. Indeed, despite Age of Calamity having crazy missions where you can fight all the bosses in a big finale at Fort Hateno, fight the Blights at the same time or battle through the heroes to conquer Hyrule Castle as Calamity Ganon and co…

Age of Imprisonment has basically nothing at all. With the exception of a single Archfiend boss gauntlet, all the optional levels are entirely ‘canon’.

Heck, there’s not even the option to play as villains like Ganondorf, Twinrova or the Forbidden Construct!

And it’s a real disappointment to be honest. There are no bonus characters to unlock, no wacky optional challenges, no real reward for 100% completion… Heck, the postgame doesn’t even feel like a postgame. It’s just more of what you experienced the first time around, and that’s about it.

Honestly, it may be the first Hyrule Warriors game I regret going for 100% completion in.

It’s a real shame to be honest. The bones of a good game are here, but the experience hasn’t been fleshed out that well. It’s just not worth playing past the final battle, at least for 99% of players.

Either way, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is still fundamentally a great game, and a solid follow up to both Age of Calamity and Tears of the Kingdom. It looks and runs great, the mechanics are the best they’ve ever been, and the story is told in such a way that you actually care about the Imprisoning War rather than ignoring it due to an abundance of talk about Demon Kings and Secret Stones.

Try it if you’re a Zelda fan, or need more of a reason to care about the backstory for Tears of the Kingdom. Just don’t go for everything if you value your time or sanity.

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