With Tears of the Kingdom just a little over two years old, and Echoes of Wisdom having come out last year, it seems unlikely that the Nintendo Switch 2 will have a new Zelda game to call its own for a while. But Nintendo has partnered with Koei Tecmo and their studio AAA Games to deliver yet another Zelda infused Warriors game to ensure fans of the franchise have something to compel them to look into the Switch 2.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is not unlike Age of Calamity, another Hyrule Warriors title that promised to tell the story that took place a hundred years before Breath of the Wild in a musou style action game format, except this time, we’re reliving the past events from Tears of the Kingdom instead.
Since this is now the third Hyrule Warriors game (and the fifth Warriors game based on a Nintendo IP overall), I have to assume most people know what they are getting into here. These games are not a lot like the franchises they are based on. So if you are hoping for Zelda’s dose of adventuring, exploration, dungeon delving, and upgrades, Hyrule Warriors Age of Imprisonment will not provide that to you. It is, rather, a game that prioritizes large scale battles with waves upon waves of trash mobs, taking over and holding objectives, holding off big bosses… that whole formula is all here. And since, like Age of Calamity before it, Age of Imprisonment is technically set during a war, the style of game does lend itself well to it.
In terms of pure production value and design iteration, this is the best Hyrule Warriors game. In fact, there is an argument to be made this might be one of the best Warriors games overall. For starters, unlike Hyrule Warriors and Age of Calamity, both of which suffered heavily from being constrained by the hardware they released on at the time, Age of Imprisonment looks and runs… fine! The gameplay targets and mostly holds a 60fps frame rate, which is especially impressive not just by contrast to the previous games, but also because this game emphasizes a lot more alpha effects and transparencies and colours and explosions on the screen at all times.
While there are frame rate drops when things seem to get especially hectic, the frame rate never seems to drop below the low 50s, which means that the drops, when they do crop up, almost feel more like hitstun effects rather than actual performance issues.
That right there I would argue automatically makes this game a good recommendation to anyone who likes the Hyrule Warriors series – you are getting the best performing and looking game right off the bat. That said, there are still issues here – the game’s resolution is extremely low, for example, running at 720p-900p in docked mode, and lower than 600p in handheld mode; these are resolutions that I would have hoped we had left behind in the Switch 1 era; unfortunately, Koei Tecmo’s technical proficiency has never been particularly great, and the Warriors games, in particular, always underperform relative to what you may expect of them.
I will say that by and large, much like the framerate, the resolution doesn’t stand out as an issue that often. It is most noticeable when the game switches from gameplay or in engine footage to pre-rendered cutscenes – the cutscenes seem to be rendered at a lower resolution than the gameplay, and the image feels a lot softer in them as a result. Unlike the rest of the game, the cutscenes are also all seemingly in 30fps, which makes them stand out even more.
It is, however, to the game’s merits that it runs well enough that the big complaints with its visuals and technical facets hew closer to nitpicking this time around. Age of Calamity in particular was infamous for its absolutely horrid performance and visuals on the Switch, and remains to this day one of the worst looking and performing games on that system, 5 years after its initial release. Age of Imprisonment has its shortcomings in this regard, but it also represents a big improvement over its predecessors.
“In pure gameplay terms, this is arguably the most fun and differentiated roster a Warriors game has had.”
This holds true elsewhere too. For example, the actual gameplay is arguably the best here than it has ever been across the Hyrule Warriors series. Now, Age of Imprisonment is limited only to the cast and locales from Tears of the Kingdom; not just Tears of the Kingdom, actually, it is limited to a very small part of Tears of the Kingdom’s story. This automatically limits what is arguably one of the biggest strengths of the Warriors games – the crossover from all sorts of characters, and how well and differentiated they all tend to be in how they play.
The original Hyrule Warriors, for example, pulled in major and minor characters from across the entire decades long history of the Zelda franchise. It was a delight to see fan favourites and deep cuts alike return in that game, and even more so to see how they were translated into the Warriors template. Age of Calamity was a downgrade in this regard, limiting itself solely to one specific Zelda game; but it did pull from the whole breadth and range of that one game, and, owing to its lack of regard for the canon of the events it was depicting, managed to have a fairly wide and varied roster too.
Age of Imprisonment stumbles here. Now, to be clear, I want to note one thing – it does an amazing job of fleshing out the moves of each character and translating them from the original game to this title’s Warriors style combat. Mineru, for example, the secret fifth sage from Tears of the Kingdom, returns as one of the primary playable characters this time around. In Tears, she took on a construct form, and knew a lot about Zonai tech and powers like Ultrahand Autobuild thanks to her extensive research; in Age of Imprisonment, that manifests with her combat essentially being her constantly pulling, summoning, and constructing Zonai devices and constructs to mow down waves upon waves of enemies. And this game is full of examples like this, where it’s a delight to see something familiar recontextualized in the framework of an action game.
The issue, however, is that the roster it can pull from is by definition limited – you get Zelda, Queen Sonia and Mineru, but in terms of familiar characters that is about it. You get other characters joining you, don’t get me wrong – from Koroks, Gorons, Gerudo, to even a construct that basically plays exactly like Link and is this game’s way of allowing players to have a Link moveset in combat without Link himself being there (since his presence there would contradict canon). These other characters are all incredibly fun to play with, very fleshed out, with very unique and differentiated moves.
In pure gameplay terms, this is arguably the most fun and differentiated roster a Warriors game has had. But the problem is, most of these characters basically amount to fanfic OCs; they are original characters who didn’t appear in Tears of the Kingdom (or were barely alluded to), all of a sudden taking centerstage. I can care about them because of how much I enjoy playing as them, but in terms of narrative investment, there is a barrier here – I don’t care about these characters because I have no reason to.
This ends up tying into the biggest problem that I feel Age of Imprisonment has – the story. Now, I am going to discuss general vague spoilers for Age of Calamity, the previous Hyrule Warriors game that promised to depict the events leading up to Breath of the Wild, here for a bit, so skip ahead if you haven’t played that game already, and care about spoilers.
When Age of Calamity was announced, it was announced as the game that would depict the cataclysmic events of 100 years before Breath of the Wild – essentially a prequel. At the time especially, this was a very exciting prospect. Breath of the Wild’s backstory and lore was arguably the most interesting part of its tale, and getting to see it fleshed out was a tantalizing prospect.
The game’s placement in the Zelda timeline at the time was unclear, so the idea of getting more information was exciting. And most of all, the actual events of 100 years before Breath of the Wild are essentially a longform tragedy – everything goes wrong, the good guys lose, and that’s how Link finds himself having to clean up the mess a hundred years later by himself. The idea of playing a Zelda story that had such a depressing and unflinchingly tragic bent was exciting too.
“To me, the story was actually the most disappointing thing, especially because of how much it limited the game elsewhere.”
However, Age of Calamity pulled a fast one on everyone by not being an actual prequel after all. Instead, it ended up being an alternate story set 100 years in the past, featuring a version of those events where the good guys do manage to win, in part due to assistance from characters from Breath of the Wild, who traveled back in time to help them out. In other words, it was not a prequel, it was arguably not even canon, what it was instead was a nonsensical excuse to have as many characters together as possible in the roster. And that was… fine. It was extremely disappointing that we didn’t get the story we had been looking forward to, but it was maybe wrong to expect that from a Warriors spin off game to begin with.
I went into all this detail to point out how Age of Imprisonment is different – unlike Age of Calamity, nothing that happens in this game contradicts canon. For all purposes, this is a true prequel. The issue is, it’s a bit of a nothing burger. Look, the stories in Zelda games, while compelling enough to frame the adventures they set players off on, and featuring rich tapestries of backstories that allow for decades long fandom arguments about the broader timeline, are ultimately fairly simplistic. They are like fairy tales – stories told in large scale motifs and archetypes, dealing in broad, universal, timeless themes.
Tears of the Kingdom’s story was like this too – sure, there is a whole past conflict (the Imprisoning War, which is what this game is set in) alluded to, but we learn everything important there is to learn about it in the game itself. Age of Imprisonment doesn’t actually bring anything new to the table. You are getting an expanded version of the same major events – but it’s still that same story, and it’s not a story that is good enough to be a motivating factor for a game this long. And unlike with Age of Calamity, by this point in time we know where these games fit into the broader Zelda timeline – and we know they are standalone and don’t really interact with the rest of the series much, which means there’s even less intrigue here.
To me, the story was actually the most disappointing thing, especially because of how much it limited the game elsewhere. If the developers had chosen not to stick to established canon, maybe we would again have had familiar characters I am attached to in this game, and I would have cared more about their participation in whatever non-canon events were transpiring, for example. We could have had Link, rather than Robo-Link at home, for example. But the developers did choose to respect the canon this time around, and all of that was in service to a story that is, ultimately, fairly dull.
It is especially disappointing because, as I mentioned previously, this is arguably the best playing Hyrule Warriors game yet; to have that tied to the dullest roster and story feels like a let down. Even a pure fan service story with absurdity powering the narrative, as was the case in Hyrule Warriors, would have been better, I feel. The story here was so uninteresting that I just didn’t… care.
“To be perfectly honest, I am a little fatigued by this Hyrule, this Zelda, this Link, and this version of the Zelda mythos overall.”
At least in part, I think this issue owes itself to overexposure. Look, Breath of the Wild is an amazing game, debatably the single greatest game ever made, but we have now spent nearly a decade in its world and continuity. Not counting re-releases, we have had Breath of the Wild, its expansion, Age of Calamity, Tears of the Kingdom, and now Age of Imprisonment.
To be perfectly honest, I am a little fatigued by this Hyrule, this Zelda, this Link, and this version of the Zelda mythos overall. One of the strongest points in the franchise’s favour in the past has perennially been how each new game varied from its predecessors in every regard – story, characters, map, even art style. But we’ve been stuck with the Breath of the Wild rendition of Zelda and Hyrule for so long now, that I am honestly ready for something new. That isn’t this game’s fault, mind you – but it does mean that its inessential stay rankles more than it would if I didn’t feel this way.
Eventually, the Switch 2 will have its own proper Zelda game, and when it does happen, I hope it is something completely new and exciting that introduces a new era for the franchise. In the meanwhile, for those fans who want something Zelda for their new Switch 2s, Age of Imprisonment is a fairly good game to look into – it is packed with content, looks and performs better than any previous game in the series, and has arguably the best gameplay and design in the entire subseries.
Its shortcomings with the story, and consequently deficiencies with the roster range, are unfortunate – but at the very least dedicated fans of the Breath of the Wild duology will probably find a fair few to enjoy in Age of Imprisonment.
This game was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch 2.
