Snappy musou combat set in the TEARS OF THE KINGDOM universe is shackled by a flat story campaign that fails to deliver
Zelda takes a confident leap of faith and flips herself into the air. With a flick of her wrist, currents of holy energy burst forth from the ground and disintegrate the army of bokoblins on the battlefield. Yep, I’m playing a Dynasty Warriors game alright.
Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment is the third Dynasty Warriors x Zelda crossover title in collaboration between Nintendo and Koei Tecmo. It’s both a direct sequel to the beloved Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and a canonical prequel to Tears Of The Kingdom, promising to fill in the gaps of lore and story in TOTK’s zelda plotline that saw her traveling to Hyrule’s ancient past.
It’s quite the premise to deliver, especially after fans bemoaned the previous two Hyrule Warriors entries for straying into non-canonical fan-fiction and alternate universe storytelling to justify their bombastic plots and wild rosters.
Here we’re promised something else indeed. The sketching in of the epic events leading up to TOTK; starring Zelda as our heroic lead, trapped in the distant past and away from companions in the present (including the series’ lead, Link).
The setting? The Imprisoning War; a massive kingdom-spanning war which explained how Ganondorf rose from mere a Gerudo warlord to a powerful archdemon that threatened to throw the entire world into chaos.
It's a tantalising concept for loreheads, but AOI stumbles mightily, refusing to give centre stage to Zelda and instead complicates its plot with a squad of B-characters who never feel welcome. The leader of this secondary troupe? A silent humanoid Zonai construct who echoes Link’s appearance (and indeed shares his moveset from Age of Calamity) and his poochie-esque sidekick, the korok Calamo, brought to life with a truly appalling saturday morning cartoon performance by youtuber and voice actor ProZD.
Calamo and the mysterious Construct’s adventures feel quite at odds with the rest of the story, as they head out on a rickety collection of side-missions that unlock a b-roster of playable heroes (most of whom aren’t given screen time, cutscene prevalence or bring little to the main plot’s drama) and underbaked, side-scrolling Starfox style battles that neither challenge nor thrill. It echoes the tedium of Kingdom Hearts’ gummi ship missions and not in a complimentary fashion.
While the story may disappoint and drag at times, the combat of Age Of Imprisonment is still richly satisfying even if it fails to live up to the rather dramatic shake-up offered by January 2025’s Dynasty Warriors: Origins.
This is still a game of battling thousands of enemies at once, but the real meat of combat takes place during duels with more impactful lieutenant enemies that invade the battlefield.
AOI draws on the mechanics and systems of Tears of The Kingdom to create the backbone of its combat system. All characters use a combination of Basic attack combos (used with Y) that can be strung together with Strong attack finishers (X) to unleash a variety of special moves. Added into the mix are unique skills for each character that can counter powerful moves from enemies that come in four flavours - a charge, a leap into the air, reflecting ranged attacks or breaking a defensive stance.
Certain moves, countering enemies or inflicting status effects will reveal a weakpoint gauge on an enemy, and when broken, the enemy can be hit with a special weak-point attack move that does devastating damage. Combat then becomes a game of trying to tease out the weak point gauge of enemies as fast as possible to crush it and inflict maximum damage.
Along for the ride are the Zonai devices from TOTK, from elemental flamethrowers, fans and rocket launchers. Each of these weapons can be subbed in, use a limited battery/energy resource and can also target enemy weaknesses and counter specific moves.
Unfortunately, It all becomes a lot to juggle, with special moves, Zonai devices and even monster-fuse parts fighting to compete with a handful of shortcut buttons bound to holding down the right bumper. There’s a shortcut menu that lets you quick select from any of the options, but it pauses combat entirely and feels quite clunky in two-player mode (forcing a pause for both players when activated).
AOI’s big new addition to combat outside of the Zonai device shenanigans are its sync-attacks. These flashy moves see two team-mates slamming a quick hive five and executing some stylish and gnarly attacks on the battlefield. To achieve your sync-attack, you simply need to build a meter with both characters (by effectively using them in battle) and then be standing close enough to unleash the combo attack.
It’s fun and exciting, but it immediately de-prioritises you from sending off lone squadmates to defend camps or issuing orders with the tactical map. Not that you really need to engage with these mechanics though, as AOI never offers enough of a challenge to bother. You’ll easily win most battles on the default difficulty by regularly upgrading your weapons and being the appropriate level.
That brings us to the roster. Who is doing the fighting here? The game splits up your team members through most missions across two teams, one helmed by Hyrule’s King Rauru and Zelda, the other by the mysterious construct and Calamo the Korok.
Zelda’s squad (aka the a-team), features the mighty sages of each Hyrulean faction as well as the characters who tend to have the most impact in the moment to moment storytelling. Construct & Calamo’s team is the b-squad. They’re a motley mix of random side-characters who really lack writing development and mostly disappoint in their movesets and design.
There’s the occasional exception here (a particular Rito who pays homage to Dynasty Warriors’ legendary Lu Bu in design and moveset stands out) but for the most part you’ll be playing ‘that Hylian guy with a shield’ and ‘the Gerudo with a dagger’.
It feels like a missed opportunity, especially when Age of Calamity offered some truly wild characters and movesets in its roster, and that ultimately the feeling that sticks around long after each session with the game.
Age of Imprisonment yearns to be taken seriously.
It’s the canonical story of the ‘Imprisoning war’.
Along the way, it forgot to have fun and sanded off all the wacky, weird and wonderful moments that made the last two Hyrule Warriors games a blast to play.
A copy of HYRULE WARRIORS: AGE OF IMPRISONMENT on Nintendo Switch 2 was provided to SIFTER for the purpose of this review.
