You fight off hundreds of enemies at once as a single hero, sweeping through crowds with big flashy attacks that clear a dozen soldiers at a time. Between fights you pick which part of the battlefield to defend and which allies to upgrade. It tells a Zelda story set in the distant past, and it is more about spectacle than careful swordplay.
Gameplay video
More Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment gameplay on YouTube →Ready to play Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment?
Grab a physical or digital copy from Amazon — prices and availability update live.
This is an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
Screenshots & review notes
Overall
This is more about big satisfying spectacle than careful swordplay, and it delivers on that even if the fighting itself stays fairly simple. Sweeping through a crowd of enemies at once feels great the first dozen times.
Moment to moment
You clear soldiers with big attacks that hit a dozen enemies at once, then pick which part of the battlefield to defend and which allies to upgrade between fights. It rarely asks for precise timing.
Art and atmosphere
Battles are loud and busy with soldiers filling the screen, and the score swells during the biggest moments. Detail on any single character is less the focus than the overall chaos.
Worth your time?
There is a lot of repetition if you play many battles back to back. It suits people who enjoy the Zelda story and want an easy power fantasy more than tactics fans.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You control a single hero standing in the middle of a battlefield crowded with hundreds of enemy soldiers, and one button swings a light, fast attack while another swings a slower, heavier one that knocks a whole cluster of them backward at once. Within the first couple of minutes you are already carving through crowds ten or twenty at a time, watching numbers appear and soldiers fly off screen, which feels more like clearing a stadium than fighting a duel. A special meter fills as you fight and unleashes a much bigger flashy attack that clears even more enemies in one go.
The goal on each map is usually to capture and hold different points on the battlefield while a friendly base is under threat from multiple directions at once, so you are constantly choosing where your attention is most needed rather than fighting one long battle in one place. As you progress the maps add tougher enemy commanders who take real focus to bring down and multiple fronts that need defending simultaneously, which pushes you to think about the whole battlefield instead of just the fight in front of you. It tells a Zelda story set generations before the more famous games, giving context to characters you may already know.
A session usually plays out as one full battlefield map taking somewhere between twenty minutes and an hour, and it is easy to feel like a powerful hero mowing down crowds rather than a careful swordsman picking fights one at a time. It suits someone who wants big satisfying spectacle and does not mind repetitive button mashing to get there, less someone looking for a slow methodical challenge. The honest drawback is that the crowd fighting can start to feel similar from map to map, since clearing another wave of soldiers is still clearing another wave of soldiers.