Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment review: Musou mayhem meets Zelda magic

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Breath of the Wild revolutionized the Legend of Zelda series with its massive open world, and subsequent games have continued to expand on that concept. We’ve encountered memorable characters, discovered an ancient, sprawling story, and explored beautifully detailed environments. Tears of the Kingdom took this even further, offering players more creative freedom and tools to explore and fight in new and imaginative ways.

It’s been more than ten years since we first explored this version of Hyrule, but Nintendo isn’t quite finished with it yet. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment offers one last chance to revisit this world. Instead of focusing on the puzzles and heartfelt stories of the main Legend of Zelda games, this title delivers fast-paced, action-packed battles inspired by the Dynasty Warriors series. While the story sometimes feels hurried, the game is surprisingly enjoyable overall.

The Legend of Zelda to the Past

Age of Imprisonment is set a century before the events of Tears of the Kingdom. The story begins with Zelda being transported to the past, while Link handles the consequences of Ganondorf’s actions in the present. It’s highly recommended that you play Tears of the Kingdom first, as Age of Imprisonment frequently refers to its characters, places, and overall story. Playing Tears of the Kingdom beforehand will also give you the necessary emotional connection and background information to fully appreciate the events of this action-focused spin-off, which only touches on them briefly.

As a musou-style game, Age of Imprisonment has limited space for a deep story, but it delivers a much more fleshed-out narrative than Age of Calamity. The events fit more seamlessly with the overall Zelda storyline, and they expand on moments only hinted at in Tears of the Kingdom through brief cutscenes and flashbacks. We finally get a detailed look at Zelda’s experiences while she was trapped in the past. The game also introduces new characters and provides a broader understanding of the world, particularly as you fight alongside the original sages through important events that directly impact the future you already know.

The game doesn’t spend a lot of time on its story, primarily delivering it through cutscenes and optional dialogue during fights. Hearing familiar characters like King Rauru and Zelda, along with new faces like Colomo and Qia, is a nice touch that evokes the feeling of exploring this world anew. However, some of the new characters aren’t developed much, making them feel more like additions to the fighting roster than important parts of the story. While Age of Imprisonment tells its story as fully as possible within the constraints of its action-focused style, that style ultimately prevents a deeper exploration of the characters.

You Versus the World

At its core, Age of Imprisonment is all about fighting. Like other games in the series, you’ll control a team and battle huge groups of enemies, defeating them with fast-paced button presses. The game takes you to various locations – from Hyrule’s surface to the mysterious underground Depths – each with different battles. While regular enemies fall easily, bosses require a bit more strategy. The combat itself is straightforward: mostly you’ll be pressing the Y button to attack, with occasional use of the X button for variety, creating combos and powerful finishing moves. You can use the right shoulder button for special attacks and items, and the left shoulder button to defend.

Where you stand during combat is also important. Dodging is key, and if you time it right, you can unleash a powerful attack that briefly slows down time and deals a lot of damage. The timing for dodging is more forgiving than in games like Dark Souls, which seems to encourage a fast-paced, aggressive playstyle where you quickly defeat enemies.

During each fight, you can switch between different allies to help you. However, everyone shares a single health pool, so if one character falls, the whole mission ends. While the characters all handle similarly, each one has their own special combos and different ranges for their area-of-effect attacks. For example, Mineru uses technology to summon a giant, crushing machine, while Zelda fires light arrows and can even rewind enemy attacks to deal more damage. These attacks always look great, and the simple controls mean anyone can pull them off easily.

This game focuses on fast-paced, constant attacking, with special moves to disrupt enemies in the air or those rushing toward you. Even when you’re not directly controlling them, your teammates will keep fighting, and the game will let you know when they can block an attack. Team up your characters to fill a shared meter and unleash powerful combo attacks that change depending on who you’re pairing. Overall, the game provides lots of ways to stay involved in the action, though it doesn’t always demand complex strategy.

PROS:

  1. A deeper dive into Zelda’s time in the past complete with more lore that makes it a great accompaniment to Tears of the Kingdom;
  2. Zonai devices add a unique Zelda twist to battles;
  3. fast, satisfying musou combat with a good amount of characters to play.

CONS:

  1. Repetitive mission structure;
  2. side quests feel like filler to make the game feel longer than it is;
  3. story is limited by the musou format.

Musou Setbacks

Even though Age of Imprisonment is a hack-and-slash game, it feels more like a Zelda title than Age of Calamity did. The game heavily features Zonai devices, which you can carry and deploy as turrets. These devices add elemental attacks – like melting ice armor to stun enemies – making combat on the Normal difficulty much more manageable. They also offer a new way to solve challenges, replacing traditional puzzles with more flexible and customizable options during battles.

Most missions follow a predictable pattern: you’ll go to a location, save someone, fight off groups of enemies, and then defeat a boss. While the combat feels good, it’s very button-mashy, and I even found I could win without paying much attention. It’s a classic ‘musou’ style game, so don’t expect a lot of variety. It’s best played in short sessions to prevent things from becoming repetitive.

When you’re not fighting the main battles, the game fills your time with side quests. These often send you back to areas you’ve already explored. Some involve defeating more enemies, while others simply ask you to gather resources from previous fights and deliver them to camps. While these quests can feel a bit repetitive, they’re worth doing because they unlock useful upgrades like training grounds and stat boosts, and they also give you the experience you’ll need for the tougher story missions later on. Consider them a grind, but one that’s essential to winning the game.

Final Thoughts

Age of Imprisonment is a visually stunning game that generally runs at a smooth 60 frames per second in single-player mode, with only minor slowdowns during cutscenes. Playing with two players lowers the frame rate to 30 fps, but the game still looks remarkably detailed. The environments and characters are incredibly polished, rivaling or even surpassing the graphics of Tears of the Kingdom thanks to the improved power of the Switch 2. The energetic soundtrack, featuring remixed themes, further enhances the overall experience.

Ultimately, Age of Imprisonment is a great addition to the world of Tears of the Kingdom. While it isn’t a direct sequel or prequel – the way it plays is quite different – it does expand on the story and answer some questions left unanswered in the main game. However, in its roughly 20-hour playtime, the game could have spent more time developing its new characters or giving Zelda a bigger part, instead of focusing so much on the story of the Mysterious Construct and where he comes from.

Even if you don’t normally enjoy musou-style games, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment cleverly blends Zelda themes into its action, and tells its story in a more effective way than Age of Calamity did.

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2025-11-18 12:37