There’s been a veritable cornucopia of Dynasty Warriors spin-offs over the years, including anime adaptations like Gundam, Berserk, and One Piece and video game collaborations with Persona and Fire Emblem. The 2014 collab Hyrule Warriors and its sequel, Age of Calamity, are perhaps the most warmly received of them all, owing to their blend of Omega Force’s overblown hack-and-slash action with The Legend of Zelda’s iconic characters, locations, and enemies.
With Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, the two long-running series are more intertwined than ever, to the point where it feels more like a brand-new Zelda release than just another musou spin-off. It’s not without its faults and is unlikely to convert anyone unconvinced by this style of game already, but Age of Imprisonment improves upon its predecessors in numerous ways.
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The game’s story is the most obvious aspect where the two series are aligned. Unlike Age of Calamity and its alternate timeline ideas, Age of Imprisonment is considered canon by Nintendo, expanding on the fragments of information shown in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to reveal the full extent of Hyrule’s founding, Ganondorf’s rise as the Demon King, and the subsequent Imprisonment War. If you’ve played Tears of the Kingdom, there aren’t many surprises to be found here. Its most crucial story beats have already been covered, so part of the game involves revisiting these inciting incidents and exploring their aftermath.
From Zelda awakening in the past, to Ganondorf’s treacherous murder of Queen Sonia, and an ending that leads directly into Tears of the Kingdom, Age of Imprisonment fleshes out characters like King Rauru and Mineru, but doesn’t tell the most interesting story to fill in the blanks between these moments. It’s fine for the most part; the multi-pronged final battle is thrilling, pitting Hyrule’s combined forces against Ganondorf and his army of monsters, while the bittersweet ending packs a decent punch–deploying The Legend of Zelda theme to great effect. Yet, despite these late high points, the narrative doesn’t do enough to feel like a necessary addition to the story told in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It’s not a prerequisite that Age of Imprisonment fill in all the details missing from those stories, but it’s notable that its most memorable moments already occurred in another game.
Admittedly, the writing is restricted somewhat by Age of Imprisonment’s genre. Many of the cutscenes revolve around making alliances and discussing battlefield tactics in the war against Ganondorf, because you’ll spend most of your time fighting on battlefields with those same allies. In this sense, Age of Imprisonment builds upon its predecessors, iterating on the classic musou gameplay loop to create the deepest and most satisfying combat in the series to date.
Dynasty Warriors and its ilk are designed around the power fantasy of 1 vs. 1000 battles. You’re an overpowered killing machine, able to take down entire armies on your own as you slice through hordes of hapless peons like a knife through butter. And Age of Imprisonment’s new roster of playable characters shines by doing exactly this. Legend of Zelda protagonist Link might be out of the picture on account of the whole time-travel thing introduced in Tears of the Kingdom, but the series’ deuteragonist, Zelda, takes up the mantle of the balanced all-rounder with aplomb. By ditching the object-summoning Sheikah Slate for a Zonaite sword, she’s able to cleave through enemies with a mixture of melee strikes and magical light projectiles that extend the range of her attacks, recalling her sword as it dances through the air and cutting swathes through Bokoblins, Lizalfros, and swarms of Keese.
Mineru, meanwhile, commands a variety of Zonai contraptions in an ode to Tears of the Kingdom’s building mechanics. You can ride atop a giant spiky two-wheeler to plow through enemy crowds, summon a spinning paddle to thwack massive orbs into your foes, and unleash a weak point attack that conjures a group of spear-wielding Constructs to fight on your behalf.
Then there’s Qia, the Zora queen, who commands the tides, creating whirlpools and powerful jets of water to dispatch her foes. And the Goron chief Agraston, a wrecking ball who rolls through the battlefield and summons flames from beneath the earth. Or my personal favorite, Calamo, a tiny Korok who uses Hyrule’s various fruits to deal elemental damage. Each character feels unique, whether you’re alternating between regular and strong attack combos, weak point smashes, or flashy area-of-effect special attacks; the roster ensures that variety is an essential ingredient in its classic musou gameplay, as you send hundreds of bodies careening through the air with each attack.
It’s not without its faults and is unlikely to convert anyone unconvinced by this style of game already, but Age of Imprisonment improves upon its predecessors in numerous ways
While Mineru is the only warrior able to summon complex creations, every character can deploy a range of Zonai devices, such as flame and frost emitters, time bombs, rockets, fans, and more. There’s a tactical element to using each device, since they run on batteries that only last for a short time, and there are several different ways to utilize them, too. You can whip out a flame emitter and burn through groups of Chuchus, or set the device down to continuously damage your foes while you flank around the other side. Fans can deflect projectiles back to where they came, and there are enemy weaknesses to consider as well. Using a water hydrant will wash away the protective sludge covering some enemies, while a Frost Talus will suffer greater damage from any fire-based attacks. Some enemy types even maintain the same weak points from Tears of the Kingdom, making time bombs particularly useful against a Frox and its wide-open gullet.
Each character also has access to a number of Unique Skills, including powerful dashing and vertical attacks. You can use these whenever you’d like to carve through enemy hordes, but they’re most effective at countering the abilities of the more formidable enemies you’ll regularly face, including Moblins, Hinoxes, and Lynels. If an opponent like the Construct is lunging towards you, for instance, using your own dashing ability will interrupt their attack and leave them vulnerable, at which point you can follow up with additional strikes to hack away at their weak-point gauge. Being able to anticipate and shut down a tricky foe with a spectacular attack of your own is immensely rewarding and ties into a renewed effort to make your allies feel more present in the heat of battle.
Unique Skills are governed by a cooldown meter, but if you’re fighting alongside a fellow Hyrule warrior and the enemy triggers an ability while yours are still inactive, you can let your ally step in and assist with a Unique Skill of their own. Not only are these moments often cinematic, but they also sell the feeling that you’re part of a crack team working together. This is further emphasized by the new Sync Strikes, which see two characters combining to unload dramatic and powerful moves unique to each pairing. When Zelda and Qia sync up, the latter drops water bubbles from the sky that you can burst with Zelda’s arrows to deal more damage over a wider area. Elsewhere, pairing Ardi and Raphica creates electrified tornadoes, while Zelda and Rauru fire twin beams of light that you can aim independently with each thumbstick.
These harmonious attacks look cool, and I enjoyed every single time I was able to unleash them, but they don’t have any strategic impact. The very nature of musou games requires you to divide and conquer, spreading your allies out on the map to capture outposts and defeat tough enemies, before bringing them back together when the time is right. Sync Strikes alter that thinking, since having two or more characters working together is a more reliable way of clearing the battlefield. Yet the game’s lack of mission variety means you rarely ever need to strategize or reconsider where to send units.
Clearing a mission typically requires you to simply defeat the most formidable enemies, and the maps are laid out so you can quickly move from one to the next. Repetition is baked into the genre, but its zen-like nature is stripped away in the latter parts of Age of Imprisonment’s campaign as you’re forced to replay the same sorts of missions over and over again.
The only departure from this formula comes in the shape of Flight Mode battles. Like Tears of the Kingdom, Age of Imprisonment incorporates both Hyrule’s Depths and its Sky Islands, though not in a way you might expect. Rather than setting foot on the latter’s floating platforms, you’re able to soar between them as the Mysterious Construct, a new character who can transform into a small aircraft. These missions are Star Fox-esque, thrusting you into on-rails dogfights as you dodge incoming projectiles and fire rocket salvos.
Flight Mode is enjoyable enough and provides an effective palette cleanser, but it’s disappointing that the Sky Islands and Depths are underutilized. There aren’t many Flight Mode missions, and very few story missions take place beneath Hyrule’s rolling green hills. There’s aesthetic diversity elsewhere, from fighting in the ominous shadow of Death Mountain, electrocuting enemies in the waters of the Lanayru Wetlands, and traversing the scorching sands of the Gerudo Desert, but I expected more from two of Tears of the Kingdom’s most significant locations.
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Fortunately, the performance issues that plagued Age of Calamity–such as an inconsistent frame rate–are almost completely absent here, no matter where you’re fighting. Age of Imprisonment leverages the Switch 2’s increased horsepower to deliver a marked improvement over its predecessor. Not only are there more enemies on screen at any one time, but it maintains a steady 60 frames per second throughout. There might be infrequent frame rate drops when the action gets particularly hectic, but that’s not something I really noticed, whether I was playing handheld or with the Switch 2 docked. There’s still some enemy pop-in, and it’s clearly scaled down compared to a game like Dynasty Warriors: Origins, but this is still a much-needed turnaround.
Without any technical hiccups getting in the way, combat is still the star of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. Unique Skills and Sync Strikes bring increased depth to its hack-and-slash histrionics, while elements of Tears of the Kingdom are smartly adapted to fit the musou genre. The story doesn’t feel essential enough to satisfy pure Zelda fans, but by ironing out its predecessor’s performance issues and introducing a varied roster of rewarding characters, Age of Imprisonment marks a high point for the spin-off series thus far.
