Having only dabbled for a few hours in any Musou games, and not being a Dynasty Warriors guy, or having played the first Hyrule Warriors game, I’ve been intrigued by Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment as a more narrative-focused entry in the series. I got to check out a demo for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, and it surprised me with how cinematic the combat is and how unique it all felt.

The demo starts with Zelda, who has been sent back in time here in the ‘age of imprisonment,’ exploring what seemed to be the ruins below Hyrule. The narrative clues and threads in the demo were all low, but something was happening, and characters were talking about those things.

What I could understand better was that the combat is based entirely on combos, mixing it up with the other two characters, Zelda, King Rauru, and Queen Sonia, as they trigger these very cool team-up move moments in big fights.

The three characters all control very differently, with Zelda playing as this literal light-based fighter, combining that magic with her bow. At the same time, Mineru uses a bunch of Zonai Constructs to do huge attacks and even makes vehicles slam into enemies in parts of the combo. Then Rauru uses his massive sword to swing and clear many enemies in one sweep. All three of the characters also have access to Zonai items, which work off a gauge for how much you can use them, but it’s worth it, as items like the flamethrower seemed to decimate through crowds of enemies.

Back to the cinematic nature of the game, which mostly came from these ‘Sync Attacks’ and, oddly, reminded me of triggering special attacks in DmC and Bayonetta games. The characters would fling themselves on or off the boss battle enemy at the end of the demo and perform massive combo attacks, even creating some catapult-like slapping Zonai item. It was giving me a lot of ‘I dunno how I did that, but it was very cool,’ vibes.

It’s sort of a given now for anyone who has a Nintendo Switch 2, but it’s worth keeping stating, at least for a while longer, how much better games like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment look and play on the Nintendo Switch 2. I was taking on 50+ enemies in one big attack, and there were no issues; the game looked great. It’s a peculiar thing to celebrate, but let’s keep it going for a bit longer.

[Explosion Network attended PAX Australia 2025 with a provided Media Pass.]