Welcome back to Save State, where we up Hyruling our warriors. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment was a game that my wife and I were pretty excited for, but we couldn’t get it right at its release. You see, the original Hyrule Warriors game on the Wii U was one of our favorite pastimes because there was a massive wealth of content to do, tons of incredible characters throughout the series, and a very unique 2 player cooperative mode that let one of us play on the TV while the other used the Wii U gamepad as player 1’s screen. It was so great that we played for probably 300 hours on that version and loved it so much we picked up Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and enjoyed it a bunch too.

So, to explain what Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is to those uninitiated: Hyrule Warriors titles task the player with cutting through large swaths of enemy forces on battlefields just like the Dynasty Warriors games. In case the Warriors titling didn’t make it obvious: Age of Imprisonment is made by the same developer with Nintendo pitching in to do the story and cutscene elements. Age of Imprisonment has a greater focus on storytelling than the first two Hyrule Warriors games, with this one being treated as a canon extrapolation of the events that occurred while Zelda was in the past in Tears of the Kingdom.

Major players in Tears of the Kingdom’s story like King Rauru, Princess Zelda, and Mineru are joined by a great number of characters we have never seen before, or are learning of their names and personalities for the first time. If Ganondorf’s war of aggression against the first king of Hyrule is of particular interest to you, then you’ll probably greatly enjoy the expansion to the lore. I found the additional characterization added in the cutscenes in Age of Imprisonment to be a pretty decent accompaniment to Tears since that game placed story on the backburner, but other players may want to skip the cutscenes to just get back into the action.

Age of Imprisonment presents the stage select in a similar manner as the last entry, showing players a large map of Hyrule with story missions unlocking new missions, challenges, and deliveries to complete that will strengthen your characters. Items you acquire during stages can be spent on map nodes to increase the number of hearts of your cast, give them new moves, more special attack meters, and more. Of course, you’ll also increase your base stats by leveling up your characters through use, but every little bit of improvement always helps.

Gameplay in Age of Imprisonment is primarily what you’re here for though, and this entry of Hyrule Warriors has some interesting changes that help you cleave through enemies in short order. Every character you play as will have weak attacks and strong attacks, and you can use your strong attacks as combo enders. So, if you’re playing as Zelda and press YY then X, you may get an attack where you launch out orbs of light that’s good for damaging single targets. YYYX may produce multiple splashy pillars of light that cut through a whole mob of enemies at once. On top of this, you have access to a dash that you can use to dodge through enemy attacks, a guard that can parry incoming attacks if your character has a shield, multiple special attacks, sync strikes, and Zonai devices to turn the tide of battle.

Familiar to those who have played the Warriors series before, you have special attacks tied to a yellow meter underneath your character’s health, allowing you to unleash a devastating attack whenever you have the meter filled. Sync strikes, which are new to Hyrule Warriors, allow two characters fighting near one another to use a powerful attack that combines the power of both users. After that, each character also gets unique attacks that can do things like counter enemy charge or aerial attacks or blow away tough armored enemies. Every single character also gets access to Zonai devices, which can be used to create elemental combos that will set enemies on fire or electrify entire squads of the opposing force.

The Zonai devices in Tears of the Kingdom let you do fun things like build hover bikes or airstrike platforms to defeat Lynels and Gleeoks, but in Age of Imprisonment they largely exist to convert your battery gauge into added flexibility or damage. In Age of Imprisonment, you will largely use hydrants and fans to create electrified, freezing, or burning zones that will expose and shatter enemy weak point gauges quickly. Enemies that are hardier than your usual trash mob have loads more health, which means depleting their weak point gauge is generally the best way to handle these kinds of foes. In previous Hyrule Warriors games you would normally have to wait until the boss would commit to an attack that would leave them exposed (or use a special attack, etc), allowing you to break the gauge quickly to deal a Weak Point Smash attack that obliterates their health.

In Age of Imprisonment, especially at end game, practically any time that you’re approached by an enemy worth worrying about, you can dispatch them quickly by just dropping a couple of Zonai devices on the ground to create an elemental combo. If you choose not to do that, more power to you, but it’s just that you’ll take way longer to complete boss battles because these interactions are just faster for killing bosses than what most characters have in their kits. This has a benefit in that you have to wait less before dealing real damage to a boss monster, though it has the negative consequence of making end game play practically revolve around using Zonai devices.

Of course, one of the more oft-repeated downsides to the original Hyrule Warriors was how it handled giant boss encounters, forcing players to regularly wait for a turn in order to deal actual damage to Manhandla or The Imprisoned. If that was something that majorly bothered you in the first title, then the Zonai devices of Age of Imprisonment should excite you greatly mainly because you have the option to wait for an enemy to use an exposing attack like in previous games, by performing a well-timed counter attack or dodge, or by using some Zonai devices to skip directly to the part of the fight where your enemies now hear boss music. So, having the option is likely very nice for those kinds of players.

While on the subject of things that I wasn’t super enthusiastic about, the cast of Age of Imprisonment is also in a weird place, since this title is canon to the past of Tears of the Kingdom. The cast of Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition features iconic characters from across the entire series, while Age of Calamity featured characters full of personality from Breath of the Wild, like the Champions Urbosa and Revali, who had stories that greatly benefitted from being expanded upon. Conversely, with Tears of the Kingdom, the ancient Sages were so unimportant to the story that we didn’t so much as learn their names or see their faces in the source game. So, while it’s cool that we can play as the Sages or Zelda with a light saber, over half the cast is filled with random soldier units who I could not possibly care about and whom Age of Imprisonment doesn’t exactly do a lot to convince me that I should care about them.

Of course, speaking on any of the Hyrule Warriors games would be remiss without mentioning its cooperative multiplayer, and I can safely say that Age of Imprisonment is the one that finally replicates multiplayer of the Wii U original that my wife and I enjoyed so much. Using Gameshare on my Switch 2, we were able to stream this game to her Switch 1 while I played on my own system (I believe online game sharing works if the other player has a Switch 2 as well). Gamesharing Age of Imprisonment worked so well that I think this title alone sold me on this feature of the Switch 2 that I had originally dismissed as a gimmick. It’s very similar to Steam’s Remote Play Together feature, and I wish many more games supported Gameshare as it’s a pretty nifty feature.

Lastly, the visuals of Age of Imprisonment are buttery smooth, a far cry from how choppily Age of Calamity ran on a Nintendo Switch 1 back when it released. The frame rate gets reduced to 30fps per player when playing cooperatively through Gameshare, but it very much seems to be steadily locked at 30fps with no horrible frame drops like in the previous entry.

Musically, Age of Imprisonment is very much in line with Tears of the Kingdom for its soundtrack, with no hard rock versions of Zelda music like Hard Linked from the first Hyrule Warriors entry.

That being said, I think this is a great time to bring this entry of Save State to a close. Remember, it’s not polite to talk when your mouth is full of big bumblebees.

See you in two weeks!