This week the first free update for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment has been released and one more is to follow. The goal of these updates is to make the game last longer, where Koei Tecmo is expanding the post-game, but the first update did very little here. So, what can we expect from the second one? Will it be the game's saving grace or simply more of the same?
For this exercise, let us try to stay within realistic expectations. After all, we are talking about free updates here, where there have been no announcements for any paid DLC so far. This alone makes new playable characters, battlefields and story scenarios rather questionable, because these are selling points.
To be fair, the first Hyrule Warriors has received some playable characters in its free updates on the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS – Cia, Volga, Wizzro and Medli. But they all served as hooks for the paid DLCs that were released alongside them. You could play with these characters and level them up, but you couldn't get their stronger weapons, alternate costumes, or additional Heart Containers without the new Adventure Maps. It doesn't work like that in Age of Imprisonment, where a new character should automatically come with a number of Quests attached to enhance their state and skills.
Age of Calamity on the other hand didn't give us anything for free. Even quality of life improvements were locked behind Quests that were part of the Expansion Pass, which has caused some criticism at the time (in the very least from this blog). Luckily, this isn't the case here, but we also shouldn't expect this to become a free Expansion Pass. The first update is by no means an equivalent to "Pulse of the Ancients".
Let's just take a look at the numbers of everything that got added this week:
- 6 new Quests
- 5 new Challenges (Lv. 81 to 85)
- 6 new Vicious Battles
- 3 new vicious monster
- 2 new weapons
- 1 new Sync Strike
It's a drop in the bucket. And it already feels incomplete, where it's likely that the second update will continue from what they have started here. So, we will probably be getting some more Challenges, spanning from level 86 to 90, as well as more Vicious Battles, potentially covering some of the missing vicious monster types.
Those are Lizalfos, Horriblin, Molduga, Chuchu, Aerocuda and Gibdo. This would be six in total, where ideally they will just cover them all and don't do any more experiments with horrible combinations of them, because these were not fun in the slightest.
With unique Sync Strikes there is also a lot of potential to close some more gaps. The most obvious ones are left by Rauru, who doesn't have unique actions with any of the four masked sages, even though he is acting as their leader. Or they could just do more with Calamo.
As for new Challenges, it would be nice if there was an equivalent to the "Rack Up Your K.O. Count" missions from the first Hyrule Warriors, where your goal is to score as many K.O.s as possible within a given time limit. They have done something similar in the first update with the Poe collecting, which was a lot of fun and probably one of the best additions so far.
Another very interesting Challenge was "The Struggle for Ash Swamp", where the Ash Swamp is one of two battlefields in the game that don't have a story scenario on them. The new Challenge emulated that and let us explore the battlefield in its entirety for the first time. And here it would make sense if they were to follow this up with the second side battlefield: Damel Forest.
This one is remarkably similar to its counterpart in Age of Calamity, but you only ever get to play parts of it in Age of Imprisonment, never the whole thing. This is a shame, but it doesn't have to stay like this. How about a Challenge where they are out to explore the mysteries of the ancient Zonai and run into a horde of possessed Constructs? A big horde. And let Mineru talk a bit about hiding sky islands in large thunder clouds.
That's it for the obvious additions, following the first update. However, if this were to be all, it certainly would be disappointing, especially when it comes to making the game last longer. But there are a couple of features still missing from Age of Calamity, where it would be nice to have them in Age of Imprisonment as well.
One of these things is the Apocalyptic difficulty. This is a no-brainer, really, and probably the simplest way of prolonging the game: let the players do it all over again in an even harder mode. There were also the Blood Mood battles, which increased the difficulty of the story scenarios. The only problem is that many of them are already under a Blood Moon, so they would have to come up with a different explanation or variant.
Another possibility could be randomized, rotating missions. Age of Calamity did this via its Vicious Monster Battles, but these are now fixed, so they are cleared normally like any other Challenge. And the new ones can be quite infuriating, where you probably don't want to replay them regularly anyway.
An alternative could be something like horde battles, based on "The Battle of Hyrule Field" scenario in chapter 5, where you fight off the Demon King's army. Those would randomly take place on different battlefields and even make use of a random selection of monsters.
Maybe these could even be used to threaten your territories after you are done with all the normal defense missions, where these now span the entire region and not just small parts of the map. But this could potentially be annoying.
And if there is nothing else left to do in a Warriors game, there is always grinding and weapon building. But the latter is very tedious and could use some improvements to make it more fun. Most importantly, you should get more Zonaite Steel after clearing a battle, not just one. The new Quests from the first update give you a piece of pure steel for each type, which was a nice gesture, but not a solution to the problem. Maybe they should add a Quest which unlocks more steel drops per battle. Alternatively, they could introduce some general Aside Quests that will keep rotating forever and let you obtain three pure steel per turn.
They should introduce a weapon shop among the services. Here you could buy more copies of any weapon that you've already obtained once, including one-time rewards, like the High Guard series or the new Longsword of Light. Right now, if you were to dismantle any of them, there is no way of getting them back. And that's unfortunate.
But that's all just peanuts. We know what the people truly want and that's more playable characters, first and foremost Sonia and Ganondorf. This is what would draw attention back to the game. But as stated initially, it may not be the most realistic thing to expect from these free updates.
Both characters also have clear story reasons as to why they were not playable to begin with. Honoring the canon of Tears of the Kingdom is what prevented Sonia from becoming playable, while following the structure of Age of Calamity, where everything on the map is from the perspective of the good guys, is what prevents Ganondorf.
Neither problem is particularly easy to solve. And in the context of the free updates we might be setting us up for disappointment when we are expecting either one. However, in case of Sonia, there is an alternative: Zelda could inherit her Longbow of Light as a second weapon / moveset for herself.
It makes sense from a story perspective and Sonia could even assist Zelda here in spirit, quite literally. And so far Zelda always had a second weapon type in all the Hyrule Warriors games, even a third with the DLCs. It's strange how now she has only one, even though she has become the main character. Inheriting Sonia's bow would remedy that and it also would be a meaningful addition.
In any case, there should be a second bow available. While there is Zonaite Steel specifically for bows, Raphica is the only recipient of these so far. And that is also rather strange. Since the first update has filled out some gaps in the base game, there is a good chance that we might get another bow with the second. And Sonia's is the obvious candidate here, whether as a new weapon for Zelda or in form of the queen herself. If there's one big highlight in these free updates, it will likely be this.
Another candidate for a bow moveset could be Calamo with the Forest Dweller's Bow, where fusing materials to arrows has been a big feature in Tears of the Kingdom, one that has yet to be utilized in Age of Imprisonment. But it would probably turn out quite similar to his default moveset.
As for Ganondorf... Yes, there is a lot of demand for him on the internet right now, but if they were to make him playable, then they should do him justice. And making him some bonus character, where he becomes a puppet for the good guys during the post-game, isn't that. With Ganondorf we are definitely looking at paid DLC territory, because he would effectively require his own game mode and map to properly realize a Demon King campaign.
There is some interesting potential here, though. He could become the antithesis to the heroes, where he is always fighting for himself and therefore doesn't perform any Sync Strikes. The L button then could be used for a weapon swapping feature, where you can swap between his sword, club and spear on the fly, which is what makes him stand out as a boss. But let's discuss this after the second update...
With Age of Calamity they also had no plans to release any DLC, but once they saw the demand they brought the team back together and made it happen. And history could repeat itself here, where Koei Tecmo has a history of listening to the fans. For the most part.
These free updates, however, are seemingly just there to tie up some loose ends, where one might think that this game got rushed out for some reason. After all, they had announced this for the winter season, originally, where it's not winter yet... So, let them complete the unfinished post-game first and then they can think about a proper expansion.
