Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Part 5

[rynling]

The first two chapters of Age of Imprisonment are fun because they’re centered around characters we care about: Zelda, Rauru, Sonia, Mineru, and Ganondorf. The Goron sage and the Gerudo sage are good supporting characters, as is Zelda’s chamberlain and companion Lenalia.

But after that, the game has to focus on the Sages; and, aside from Rauru, we lose sight of the main characters. Ganondorf is off doing lord knows what, Sonia is dead, and you never really have to play as Zelda or Mineru if you don’t want to. Lenalia is technically the person providing the text for the sidequest battles, but we don’t actually see her again.

Instead, the roster is padded with a bunch of generic NPCs with no stories and no special moves, and the area bosses are random and boring.

Calamo the Korok is fun but doesn’t really match the tone of the overall story. Likewise, the Sages are interesting and well-designed, but any individual stories they might have are quickly subsumed under the narrative of “we must band together to defeat the Demon King.” The Link-coded Knight Construct is supposed to be central to the story, but there’s kind of nothing there. The Knight Construct doesn’t talk or otherwise express emotion besides “fight enemies”; and, for all that it’s said to be so powerful that it can destroy the world, its moveset is pathetic.

Maybe Age of Imprisonment will become more interesting toward the end, but it’s really sagging in the middle (ie, Chapters 3-5 out of six). If I weren’t motivated by the prospect of seeing Ganon with his tits out, I’d probably drop the game.

Comments

[scrawnytreedemon]

Gotta love it when a setting known for its oodles of interesting characters... Chooses not to centre its interesting characters. Or develop the new ones it's brought to the table to bring them up to scratch. Who on earth makes a roster-fighter where a solid chunk of that roster has as much intrigue as a lightly buttered slice of white bread? Hyrule Warriors was not perfect, but at LEAST they knew how to get funky with it. I want my funk back, Nintendo 😔

[rynling]

Yes, exactly. I loved Age of Calamity because it was stupid and silly. Do you want to play as Master Kohga? You can do that! Do you want to play as a Great Fairy? That's bizarre, but you can do that too! And there were so many poignant story callbacks in Age of Calamity, like the big battle outside Fort Hateno where Link was supposed to die - but he doesn't, because Zelda can now explode light out of her hands! So what if there were time paradoxes, who cares? Seeing Sidon and Mipha reunited with one another made me cry.

The decision to keep Age of Imprisonment "lore-accurate" doesn't make any sense, as there's almost no lore for this era of Hyrule. There are no cool ninja Sheikah in this era, and no goofy bad guys. And this would be such a cool opportunity to create new locations based on the 400 pages of unused concept art... but they didn't.

It feels like this game is withholding treats, and that's no fun. Just as you said, there's no funk.

[lassarina]

so many opportunities to create cool stuff squandered.....tragic.

[rynling]

It really is. I get the feeling that none of the people on the dev staff were having a good time with this game. It would have made money regardless, so why just go wild and make something stupid and silly and fun?

I'll probably come back to Age of Imprisonment eventually, but meanwhile I am quietly downloading Bravely Default. Agnès Oblige my beloved, let's put you in some outfits 💖

[lassarina]

The Bravely outfits are so cute. When I played BD2 I was so immediately charmed by the Monk costumes that I literally took a photo of my TV to send to my bestie going "LOOK HOW FUCKING CUTE." In my defense, they are REALLY cute.