Let's go! Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment was released today and I'm doing my usual thing on this site, because that's what it's for. I've been a huge fan of the first two Hyrule Warriors games, where I have completed them for the most part and I bet that this won't be any different.
As for now, I've only completed the first chapter, which includes the same level that was playable in the demo, which you could find in some stores in North America (and maybe elsewhere) and which was the basis for a number of previews out there. So, I think this is a good cut to give you some very early impressions.
You get to set the most important settings right away. And like Age of Calamity, this has a difficulty setting for the entire game. Now, I'm not one of those people who pick the normal difficulty and then complain about how easy the game is. No, I'm picking the hardest difficulty and then complain about how tedious and unforgiving the game can be.
Well, I played Age of Calamity on "Very Hard" from start to finish and this has defined my experience of the game. It simply forces you to be more strategic and careful, while making the most out of everything. And after Hollow Knight: Silksong I'm craving more challenges. You can always change the difficulty at any time, but my goal is to not have any records on the lower difficulties at the end.
And this might take a while. The first mission already lasted for about an hour, while I guess it will only take like 15 minutes normally, maybe even less. Let's see if I can finish this, before Metroid Prime 4 comes out, but I doubt it.
Now, the game starts out quite differently from the other Hyrule Warriors. There you got thrown into battle as Link right away and the story unfolded from there. Age of Imprisonment starts with a series of cutscenes and some sequences where you can only walk around, but not fight.
These parts still make use of the usual confined battlefields and there aren't any noteworthy interactions – you can't even talk to people directly, they may only say something when you approach. But it's a nice opportunity to look around a bit and get a sense of this ancient version of Hyrule, which feels different enough. I couldn't even really tell where the game starts, but it should be the Forest of Spirits.
Yesterday I was watching all the memories in Tears of the Kingdom again and everything here felt very close to where Zelda arrived in the past, but it was filling the gaps, which is exciting. And while walking around the game immediately introduced something new: Shades.
The Hollow Knight fan in me has to think of the void here, but it might actually be something similar. These Shades can possess people and even Constructs, where I think that this could be a sentient precursor to the Gloom, or the "Gloom given form". Maybe once Ganondorf became the Demon King he took control over the Gloom, but as a result it wasn't able to act on its own any longer.
At this point it is acting as the main threat, though, before Ganondorf showed his face. Sonia and Rauru are even creating the Shrines of Light to vanquish the Shades all over Hyrule. And these things also leave Poes behind when you defeat them, while so far there doesn't seem to be any of the sticky Gloom around in the Depths, so I'm already intrigued what's this all about. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
When Lenalia was first introduced about a month ago, I didn't realize that this was meant to be the chamberlain, who had written all the Ancient Tablets that you can find on the star-shaped islands in Tears of the Kingdom. This fact alone makes this character already so much more interesting and relevant. They even make her do the story telling at the beginning of a chapter, which is such a smart choice. And they immediately visualized the scene where Zelda was riding on Mineru's Construct, which was hilarious.
So, they really embraced the part where Zelda just makes herself feel at home, while she tries to find a way back into her time. You also get to meet Agraston and the Gorons, who have an audience with Rauru, swearing their allegiance. Rauru gives him the Rudania mask right away and this had me worried for a bit that we really won't see their faces at all, except for Ardi's...
But then you're in for a training mission, where you first have to defeat Typhan, then Quino and finally Rauru. Typhan and Quino are "Hylian Warriors" (I first read this as "Hyrule Warrior", which would have been the coolest title ever in this game), who serve as unique faces among the many soldiers. And maybe you can even play as them at some point.
You clearly can't play as Sonia, though. She accompanies you through the entire training and assists you with her longbow. You can do unique Sync Strikes with her, but not swap to her. And she doesn't seem to have a full moveset. And it's fine. If this game truly is meant to be canon, then having Sonia as a playable character would be questionable.
While under the hood this seems to be the exact same thing as Age of Calamity with its gameplay, menus and everything, the general direction might become the complete antithesis. Age of Calamity really tried to become a Warriors game that covers as much from Breath of the Wild as possible, but in doing so it had to go a different path with its story in order to make it even possible.
Age of Imprisonment on the other hand is following the events as they were depicted in Tears of the Kingdom, but it is trying to find its own identity while doing so. The majority of the game's roster might be made out of entirely new faces, like Agraston's:
There it is! Smile for the camera, big Goron buddy! And wow, that's another very unique design. I understand now why they didn't just want to name the sages after the ones in Ocarina of Time, since that wouldn't have done them justice. I'm quite honestly amazed how much variety they are squeezing out of the Gorons lately.
And the scene where this horde of Gorons comes storming in, because they want to join the sparring session for fun, was hilarious. I love it! While I don't like tutorials, this was the most fire tutorial I've witnessed in a video game. And it looks like each tribe is getting at least two unique, named fighters next to the sages, similar to Typhan and Quino.
But I'm really excited for the sages now. This takes me even back to when they had introduced the original Hyrule Warriors and only shown us their original designs for Link, Impa and Zelda, as well as the new bad guys with Cia, Volga and Wizzro. At the time it appeared like they could be doing their own iteration of Hyrule and I was looking forward to their takes on an equivalent to the Six Sages, but that never happened... until now!
It may even be a good thing that Tears of the Kingdom left these characters masked and ambiguous... and that they didn't reveal all their faces during this game's marketing campaign. They could have, but they chose to only show one of them. And seeing Agraston now in the game for the first time has a much greater impact thanks to all this secrecy.
The "Adventure Map" is making use of the exact same system as in Age of Calamity. It gets displayed on your Purah Pad and it looks much uglier, because you don't have access to the same geographical data. And I suppose they don't want you to see any details.
But it wasn't until here that I realized that Age of Imprisonment has also its own main theme... It's actually what the first trailer started with, it's just not as "striking" as the one for Calamity, I guess, and then they kept using them main theme from Tears of the Kingdom to promote this game.
The first real mission takes you down into the Depths at Tobio's Hollow, which acts as the main entrance to the Construct Factory, only that this hasn't been realized by Mineru yet. It's mostly uncharted territory and your goal is to unlock some ancient Zonai facility.
Instead of the Sheikah Slate Rune abilities, each character has now two different counter moves, their unique skills. One for charge attacks and one for leap attacks. These are on a significant cooldown, so there is more to it than just hitting the right buttons when prompted. But the enemy attacks they are supposed to counter can be rather devastating, so you're best advised to switch to a character who has their unique skills ready. It even triggers them automatically when you switch at just the right time.
I ended up constantly cycling between the three characters you have in this mission: Zelda, Rauru and Mineru. And that's actually a good change, so you don't just rely on the character who you are the most comfortable with. Sync Strikes need also be charged, where this is done autonomously by your inactive fighters. Only the SP gauge needs to be filled actively.
Sadly, these unique skills share the same input as the Zonai Devices and there are only four slots. I don't see why you would ever want to unequip the counter skills, so you will have to shuffle the Zonai Devices quite a lot. But you can also equip your healing item on these slots, where the L button is now reserved for the Sync Strikes.
Much to my nuisance, the healing system seems to be the exact same as in Age of Calamity. The only difference is that you're getting rations instead of apples, which makes more sense thematically, but it's as limited. You can only heal five hearts with one in the beginning of the game and you only get to use three, shared over all your fighters... That's not a whole lot.
And this first chapter is already quite demanding. It doesn't hold back at all. It goes from Captain Constructs I to II to III. And it throws three different bosses at you: first a Frox, then a Stone Talus and a finally a Flux Construct, which then gets "shaded". Before the latter I had no rations left and all my characters were down to two hearts... I was mentally preparing myself that I might have to restart the entire chapter. But then came a glimmer of light:
Encampments! By taking certain keeps you can now set these up. And you can use them to fully heal all your characters and refill your rations. This is such a redeeming feature to the overly strict heals that I'm already much more confident about playing on "Very Hard".
The chapter ends with the discovery of a collection of Constructs that were deemed as forbidden by the Zonai. And this takes you back right to the very beginning of the game, which doesn't start with Zelda waking up in the past. Instead, you follow Calamo, the new Korok character, who awakens one of these Constructs with some shard that was making Fi noises. Intriguing! I hope that we will get to meet these two very soon.
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