Switch 2 Review | Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

As a long-time lover of the Zelda games, I feel like I have missed out on the Hyrule Warriors series because I always saw them as a sort of “Super Smash Brothers” entry in the timeline. Admittedly I was wrong, and I have already sought to correct my failings by purchasing Hyrule Warriors on Wii U, and making it my plan to play through them all over the Christmas period. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment has undoubtedly won my affection, and with good reason. Within moments of starting the game I was pleasantly surprised at just how faithful Koei Tecmo and AAA Games Studio have been with this franchise. It looks fantastic, it runs great, the story is perfect, and there is so much content available that you will be playing for hours. As I said before, up until now, I had never played a Hyrule Warriors game, but now that I’m awake, I can see why people really enjoy these spin-offs.

Things I liked!

• A Canon Story | At the end of Tears of the Kingdom, Princess Zelda sacrifices herself and is sent back into the past. Age of Imprisonment focuses on the events between those moments of her disappearing, and reappearing, with the game’s story filling in those crucial moments before being returned. What I liked about it was that despite everything, the game doesn’t try to focus too much on what happened in Tears of the Kingdom and remains largely spoiler free. This means newcomers who may not have experienced the full Zelda timeline can do so at their leisure.

• Addictive Abilities | With each character you play as comes their own set of unique abilities. Zelda has a light staff that she can twirl around and hit enemies from a distance, Rauru has his spear that can sweep enemies in large circles, while Sofia uses range-based attacks. But this is just for melee. Pressing the A button once charged lets you dish out health-destroying special abilities that have a very cinematic flair to them. It almost acts like its own cutscene. When you have a team member in range, pressing L lets you do a duo attack where both of the characters combine their strength to unleash one devastating attack. Since there are 19 characters to choose from, there are lots of opportunities to see the most outrageous attacks happen right in front of your eyes since there are a lot of possibilities for different team members to go into battle with.
  
  
• The Music | What Zelda game would be complete without its fantastic music? Age of Imprisonment holds nothing back when it comes to its soundtrack. The usual orchestral score fits perfectly with the hundreds of enemies on-screen making each battle feel epic, especially boss fights. Cutscenes get the same treatment with a heavy focus on helping portray emotions such as anger and sadness. Voice acting is fantastic too with the previous actors returning to reprise their roles. Each line is well delivered and you genuinely end up caring about each character as the story progresses.
  
  
• Side Quests | Age of Imprisonment offers a wide range of different side quests throughout your adventure. Some of these may be delivering materials to areas that have fallen to Ganondorf’s reign of terror, some might be liberating recently captured areas of the world map as well. Some of these can be timed missions, so it is important to plan ahead. What I liked about completing these side quests is that they reward you with character buffs when completed. For example, the land of Goron will buff the Goron characters by either rewarding them with additional heart containers, new combos, or new weapons. Each of these rewards helps you in some way as the game gets progressively harder, and makes the effort you put into doing them, much more rewarding.
  
  
• Character Roster | As the game progresses you will unlock new characters as you go. Starting off with Princess Zelda, Queen Sofia, and King Rauru, you will make your way through the Kingdom of Hyrule set in the past where it has been taken over by Shades. With each new region that you encounter, new characters will become available for you to play as. Ardi, Queen of the Desert is my favourite with her fast melee attacks and ranged electric stuns that shock massive amounts of enemies in a single hit. All in all there are 19 characters to play as, with many of them being able to assigned on the side quests.
  
  
• Optional Challenges | Age of Imprisonment offers up optional challenges as you play, meaning if you are somewhat of a completionist, the game will force you to use certain characters for the levels you play. More often than not, completing these challenges will shower you with extreme amounts of rewards such as rupees and materials. These can then be used to upgrade your weapons, or supply outposts that have been taken over by Ganondorf, which helps liberate those locations. However, since they are optional there isn’t a need to do them if you would rather grind out your character the old-fashioned way.

Mixed & disliked!

• Can get repetitive very quickly | It isn’t often that I sit here and struggle to think of something that I had mixed feelings about, or outright didn’t like about a game. But with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, I think it is safe to say that the game is almost perfect in every single way. It offers a wealth of freedom to tackle missions as you see fit, a detailed but fun tutorial section of the game that feels more like an introductory chapter, and a wonderful cast of heroes each with their own special abilities, special moves, and fusion attacks. The only problem I felt after several sessions is that even on harder difficulties, the game can get very repetitive, very quickly. In each of my sessions, I found 2 hours were roughly all I could manage before I started feeling a little fatigued with it all.
  
  While the abilities are fun, and pulling off combos and special moves delivers a cinematic flair to wow you, I felt that embracing those small play sessions kept the magic alive. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is a fun game at the very core, but moving from point to point defeating waves of enemies can feel a little underwhelming at times. This is the only point I felt let the game down, and at the end of the day, even that is subjective.

CONCLUSION

Score: 95/100

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is a fun, engaging, addictive, cinematic, and gorgeous game in the Hyrule Warriors series. It offers a brand-new canon story that fans will love watching play out during the game’s progression. It offers a rewarding progression system, which drip-feeds you new weapons, abilities, and characters at the perfect pace. Optional challenges allow you to unlock new materials to help complete side quests, resulting in additional buffs for your characters. It feels as though every part of Age of Imprisonment has been refined to the point of perfection, and Koei Tecmo, AAA Games Studio, and Nintendo should be proud.

Aaron

Gaming is in my blood.  Be it handheld games, Xbox, PC, Switch or Playstation, I am all over it.
I make my own games as part of my profession and love playing co op games with friends in my spare time. Avid dog lover and camper van enthusiast.