Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment has a lot of expectations to live up to. For one thing, it has a chance to bridge the gap between two of the best Zelda games in recent memory: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Exploring the Hylian history behind TOTK‘s time-traveling plot, it’ll establish an important part of the Zelda timeline, directly portraying the Imprisoning War once and for all.
But besides that, Age of Imprisonment is also a sequel to two excellent Zelda-themed hack-and-slash games: the original Hyrule Warriors, and Age of Calamity. It’ll need to build on the mechanics those games have introduced, and right their wrongs by tweaking certain lacking elements, in order to meaningfully move this subseries forward.
Age of Imprisonment Needs To Keep The Story Focused
An Important Piece of Zelda History
To begin with, I believe Age of Imprisonment could benefit from a more focused story. That’s never really been a feature of Warriors games in general; they tend to portray decade-spanning epics, introducing large casts of characters and frequently jumping around in space, time, and focus as needed.
But that kind of thing doesn’t typically work for Zelda. Despite its deceptively complicated timeline, most individual games in the Zelda series stick to relatively simple stories: there’s a crisis in Hyrule (or, rarely, elsewhere), and Link needs to collect X, Y, and Z to defeat Ganon once again.
That goes double for Age of Imprisonment, which deals with one of the most central pieces of Zelda lore: the Imprisoning War, when Ganon first rose to power and was sealed away by the Sages. I suspect I’m not the only fan of the series who’s curious to see how it’s portrayed, and I hope Age of Imprisonment does it justice.
Age of Calamity wasn’t even a proper prequel, as its plot twist contrasts with the actual continuity. In Warriors spinoffs especially, stories tend to degrade into fan service, introducing beloved characters for no other reason than because fans want to see them. Age of Imprisonment can do much better, giving us a prequel with a story that makes sense.
Hopefully Progression Will Be Quicker And More Meaningful
Hyrule Warriors Makes It Difficult To Progress
In addition, I hope Age of Imprisonment takes the time to improve Hyrule Warriors‘ systems of progression. In order to power up your characters – especially as you approach the endgame – you have to do quite a bit of grinding. There’s a fair degree of farming and collectible hunting involved, which slows the process significantly.
And even when you do level up fully, it’s not all that meaningful: you’re the same character you started out as, just with more damage and defense. A more meaningful and flexible system of character customization would do it some good.
Age of Imprisonment is really the first brand-new game of the Switch 2 era, so I’d love to see it make some generational leaps. In terms of story and gameplay, there’s a lot of room for improvement in the next Zelda hack-and-slash installment. Hopefully, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment successfully builds on the series’ legacy.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
