Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment Review – A Musou Feast

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment Review

Warriors (Musou) games are extremely simple ones. Just a string of intense battles against giant hordes of enemies with a sprinkling of story on top. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment doesn’t buck this trend. Instead, you get a refined version of a successful formula. An iteration, if you will. Between this and Age of Calamity, I’ve realized that the key to an amazing Musou game is the setting. Wiping out endless monsters with colossal attacks is cool enough, but you need the perfect window dressing to really make it stick. The Legend of Zelda franchise is a fantastic setting for this kind of gratuitous violence, maybe the best one I’ve ever experienced. But I’m a Zelda diehard, so obviously my opinion is terribly biased.

Whereas Age of Calamity felt like elevated fan fiction, Age of Imprisonment’s story feels more like a proper plot. Kind of like a prequel, in that you know the ultimate resolution (assuming you’ve played Tears of the Kingdom), but not how we get there. It’s a story that I genuinely wanted more of back when I played through TotK. What did Zelda do that whole time? Who did she meet, and what did she go through? And now you can find out! It’s a fascinating narrative that I’ll obviously be saying very little about, to preserve your own experience. Just know that I appreciated the refinement of this plot structure beyond the downright decent story beats of the previous Hyrule Warriors game.

Fresh New Faces Abound

On the one hand, there are a lot fewer familiar faces in this game. Since we’re stuck in such a disconnected time period, it’s mostly fresh talent and unknown newbies. The only people you’ll recognize are Zelda, Sonia, and Rauru. But this means you’re always being surprised by cool new characters with impressive skillsets. There’s a good chance a random Gerudo or Hylian will become your new favorite. I found myself fixated on some unusual fighters this time around. Who knew Koroks had such impressive moves?

The combat mechanics are quite similar to AoC, but there are a few key improvements. For example, there’s this amazing system where you get a whole slow motion counter window for certain powerful attacks. It’s just a couple of seconds, but you’ve got enough time to choose your response and fend off some nasty damage. You also have a lot more team-based skills. Other party members can either jump in and help, or the two of you can do a devastating combo strike. You add these to the shieldbreaker moves, the special attacks, and the flurry strikes, and suddenly the combat is pure excitement. There are so many ways to keep fights from devolving into mindless button-mashing.

Battles All the Way Down

But to be clear, it’s all fighting. Your map lights up with tons of little activities to do. It’s an illusion, though. Every activity involves combat or turning in quests you completed through combat. So you have two things to do that are basically one thing. And yet! I couldn’t put Age of Imprisonment down. I also couldn’t stop doing those side missions, even though they’re just more fighting. Which you already do so much of! And yet somehow it works. Combat is such a compelling good time that there is, practically speaking, no second activity in the game. Honestly, I don’t really need one. The fights are more than enough.

Although the fights are excellent, upgrading weapons is still an exhausting slog. At least on the standard difficulty settings, you don’t notice a significant difference between a level one weapon and like, a level six one. It takes tons of resources, you have so many weapons to upgrade, and doing so is also boring. I would love it if the whole system were removed in favor of something more streamlined. It turns out that anything that keeps you from fighting in these games is a huge drag. Who knew?

You end up with a ton of random items after every battle. But, much like in the mainline Zelda games, they’re actually useful. Not only do they help you fulfill the endless quest markers on the world map, but you can convert them into bonuses for battle. Age of Imprisonment uses a camp system, where you use items to boost your move speed, experience gains, and special charge rate. Suddenly, all that junk weighing down your inventory screen is worth its weight in gold. Plus, you can quickly juice up any party members who are lagging behind without spending all your gold in training camps. This one mechanic makes the whole item economy feel a lot more deliberate.

Just As I’d Imagined

When I was a kid, I had this Nintendo Power poster from Ocarina of Time on my wall. The sky was bloody red, with Link and Sheik facing off against a horde of menacing monsters. The scene was approximately a thousand times cooler than any fight that’s actually in the game. Somehow, Age of Imprisonment actualizes this specific battle early on in the campaign. It’s a perfect example of how the music and the visuals capture that Zelda aesthetic. Not just of the games, but of what the developers have always wanted the games to be. It’s downright remarkable.

For me, this game is a perfect fusion of the Zelda games and the Musou genre that I can’t put down. But I also recognize that this is a one-trick pony. You’ve got excellent combat and no second thing. Maybe you want more out of a Zelda game than fighting with a light layer of story on top. That’s totally fine! But the vibes are immaculate and the gameplay is terribly compelling. If you want an intense action game that really highlights the Zelda of it all, then Age of Imprisonment is exactly what you’re looking for.

***A Nintendo Switch 2 code was provided by the publisher***