Time has gone very squiffy in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. Set during Tears of the Kingdom, and following Zelda’s disappearance into a sinkhole beneath Hyrule Castle, Zelda awakens in a clearing in the forest. This isn’t her Hyrule though, and it soon becomes clear that she’s travelled back in time, all the way to Hyrule’s very beginning. There she meets King Rauru and Queen Sonia, the original founders and rulers of the iconic kingdom, and they take her in, lost as she is.
Since Breath of the Wild, the Legend of Zelda timeline has become deeper and more interconnected than before, and Age of Imprisonment is the next step in furthering the series’ lore and Hyrule’s history. It’s been interesting to see Hyrule Warriors becoming an integral part of Nintendo’s flagship series, and here that connection between the mainline entries and the spin-off are closer than ever.
Here in the past, you see the origins of Hyrule, and the initial union of the Zonai and Hyrulean people, while getting a different perspective on the Constructs and Zonai technology we first saw in Tears of the Kingdom, but there’s also further ties back to Breath of the Wild. At the start of the game, the realm is beset by Shades, and these lead to the construction of the shrines that come to litter the world, built to hold back these nightmarish shadows. It’s an interesting little bit of history for returning fans who have spent hundreds of hours in the shrines’ hidden depths.
With the arrival of Ganondorf, though, there’s a crushing sense of inevitability to the opening hours. Age of Imprisonment charts the war between Ganondorf the Demon King, and the rest of Hyrule, and the game spends a great deal of time bringing the different races together in preparation for the final showdown. In terms of character building, I don’t think I’ve ever truly hated the red-haired Gerudo leader as much as in Age of Imprisonment. He’s manipulative, deceitful, cunning and two-faced, and while he’s always ostensibly been these things, he feels like a true villain in Age of Imprisonment, rather than a faceless big bad, who’s evil because we’ve been told he is.
The large cast of characters, led by Zelda, are immediately fascinating, and you’ll undoubtedly enjoy spending time with them, particularly if you’re a longtime fan of the series, or even if you’re just coming to this straight from Tears of the Kingdom. The regal Zonai King Rauru, who is as powerful on the battlefield as he is in the throne room, swiftly became my favourite character, while his sister Lady Mineru brings a different flavour to combat, commanding Construct weaponry while riding around on a tiny chariot.
Zelda herself feels more settled and rounded than ever before, and her distant ancestors teach her a great deal about her own strength and the power that resides in her bloodline. On the battlefield she becomes capable of utterly ruining entire battalions, and she feels hugely powerful. No one can do it alone though, and one of the greatest joys of Imprisonment is switching between characters, exploiting enemy weaknesses, and teaming up for massive damage.
While Musou games are notoriously single minded, and fundamentally repetitive, the team at Koei’s team at AAA Games Studio have added as much to the formula as possible to keep boredom at bay. Elemental weaknesses are a great way to implement the different Zonai devices, and as you unlock dispensers on the map, you can slot them into your special skills, with the only limitation being your battery charge.
So, if you come up against water-based creatures, you’ll have more effect with ice or electricity, while being close to a body of water will amp up the effects even more. You can mix effects together, setting down fans and then combining them with fire or the other elements to create devastating tornados. It’s an organic and clever way to enhance combat, and does a good job of replacing Age of Calamity’s Sheikah Slate runes.
The only issue about this is that if you don’t have the devices slotted in – and that often means replacing a skill or two – then you’re hopping in and out of menus, pausing the action as you go. While that is also true for both its inspiration and its predecessor, it breaks the flow of combat to the point I ended up mostly relying on a single device and my character skills, rather than mixing the device effects together. It’s an option though, and some enemies will fall much quicker if you utilise them.
The Musou, 1v100 combat is as crunchy and enjoyable as it’s ever been, and as you increase your roster, they each introduce unique mechanics into the mix. You can’t help but smile at being able to play as Korok Calamo, decimating armies with a tiny leaf chap, whose ultimate attack involves throwing a beehive at the bad guys. Other characters introduce perfect parry techniques into the mix as well, and combat is at its best as you move back and forth, utilising each character’s different techniques, and watching the kill count stack ever higher.
The only real downside at this point is that very little of Age of Imprisonment feels wholly new. The narrative is well told, the visuals excellent – performance is also mostly very stable on Switch 2, though one Rito character’s moveset seems to stress the engine more than everybody else – and there’s been a lot done to further amalgamate the Musuo fundamentals with Tears of the Kingdom, but there is a sense of familiarity which lurks around every corner that you bump into yet another Moblin. That familiarity is mostly staved off by the steady feed of new moves, characters, weapons and ingredients, but after Age of Imprisonment, I feel as though the Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom arc is now done.
