Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment?

I like both action games and Zelda games, but musou is something I can't stand regardless the wrap it's wearing. I bought first Hyrule Warriors, but solely because of the scarf as a birthday present for my friend. AoI doesn't give me the same reason.

I played the original Hyrule Warriors on WiiU, I think I've had my fill of the Warriors games.

not too much into warriors games. wont buy unless its a bargain

I enjoyed the Wii U Hyrule Warriors. It wasn’t lacking for content. It was a good spinoff.

Fortunately Age of Calamity was a huge game changer, in terms of gameplay, and also how it was a prequel to BOTW, set in that world. So despite the hack n’ slash element, a fresh follow-up with depth.

Once again Age of Imprisonment introduces some new mechanics, different story / characters. It’s different enough for me while being executed well.

Too early to tell. I would probably be leaning towards a 7/10 atm.

The game looks great and is fun but I'm not enjoying it as much as Age of Calamity. Still only on chapter 3 so that could change.

Also, I could agree with the other comments. Having a poll like this a month after release would probably be better than a couple days after.

Based on what I've seen of it, it looks like a 9 or 10 out of 10. Probably won't ever play it though, because I'm busy with other games 😅.

I haven’t played much, but what I have has been surprising. For a Musuo game it is quite impressive. I’m looking forward to playing more. As of right now I’d rate it an 8/10.

Is it better than the first one? Sure - in performance alone. Is it better than Hyrule Warriors? Maybe? It's close.

Is it the best Musou game ever? No, but it IS a solid 7 or 8/10 and I have zero regrets about picking it up.

LOVING IT but please no more side milking games!

Absolutely loved the gameplay and story, even if it was a bit different than I expected!

Does anyone else think it might be a good idea to make it a requirement that you need a Nintendo Life account to submit user scores? I discovered recently that you don't need one to vote in these polls, and that does seem to be opening the door to some reviewbombing, even if it would also rein in the sample size. Things do seem pretty reasonable here, though (Musou games certainly aren't for everyone) - just didn't know where else it made sense to mention it.

This game is the most fun Switch 2 exclusive for me so far. I tried playing Kirby Air Riders this weekend, was extremely disappointed by that city trial mode, but found solace in Hyrule Warriors. Great soundtrack, great voice acting, great variety of gameplay. This is a musou masterpiece.

it;s ceiling was low 80's at best still stuck at 79 on metacritic..

@PikaPhantom That does seem weird that you can vote w/o making an account since you need one to comment. Which is always annoying when my phone or tablet web browser signs me out b/c I have to go look up my password, but it is better than anyone else pretending to be me after having my same account for 16 years.😁

Could be a bug, could be an over site, could a crumb to get people to sign up. Feel like sharing any insight AD @antdickens 🤷‍♂️

I said 9. It's a great expansion on Age of Calamity which itself was a great expansion on the original game. Whoever gave it a 1 or 2 needs to their heads examined; not liking the game or finding legitimate faults with it is fine, but a rating of 1 or 2 would imply that the game is fundamentally broken.

just beat the game last night! it was so so good

I am loving it so far! The gameplay is fun moment-to-moment, and the cutscenes are solid! It's expanding upon TotK's story greatly, and I am excited to finish it out!I have it a 9, which is 1000% due to recency bias, but whatever. 😂

@SteveDaSteve I don't remember the first one in detail, but I do remember thinking that the second entry (on Switch) was a lot better. Just gameplay and settings and how it all worked was more fun and less confusing.

I love Age of Imprisonment!

Pros:
I appreciate the harder bosses and minibosses. I also like that the swarm enemies can actually interrupt your attack pattern while fighting more powerful enemies, so you have to pay more attention to them as well. As an Age of Calamity "veteran", I personally love the increased difficulty.
The soundtrack is simply incredible. There have been times where I've just waited on the opening screen to listen to the calming piano, and the music really matches the environments.
60FPS is awesome to have, too.
The voice acting is very impressive. I love the way the characters sound.
Also, Calamo probably has my favorite character design, aside from the Mysterious Construct.
Camps are a great idea.

Cons:
I don't like that the weak-point gauges can be so hard to break that sometimes the enemy will run so low on health by the time the gauge is depleted that it would be faster to simply use regular attacks than to perform a weak point smash.
Also, the fact that (as far as I can tell) you can't remove any of the Sage's masks makes them feel like they have less personality, and the inability to see their facial expressions during battle makes them feel almost boring and too mysterious when we know that they otherwise have a lot of personality.
The Unique Actions that you can perform are a cool new game mechanic, but they don't deal enough damage unless used at exactly the right moment. In Age of Calamity, you could use the Sheikah Runes a little too often, but I feel as though now the cooldowns have been nerfed too much. Also, I miss character-unique abilities that could be activated with ZR. To fix these problems (although they probably won't), give each Unique Action a separate cooldown. If this feels overpowered, then make the cooldowns slightly longer. That way, players would have a healthy number of versatile Unique Actions to perform at any given moment.
Also, there are no character-specific "gimmicks" this time around, as far as I know. In Age of Calamity, characters such as Impa, Urbosa, Master Kohga, Sooga, Two-Handed Link, Flail Link, Calamity Ganon, Master Cycle Zelda, the Battle-Tested Guardian, Purah and Robbie, Bow of Light Zelda, King Rhoam, and some more I probably forgot to name here, all have some sort of ability that separates them from the other characters. This strangely isn't seen in Age of Imprisonment.
Then there's the graphics. Look, I'm not asking for hyper-realistic visuals here. And I love the art style used in most modern Legend of Zelda games. But this is a game that is exclusive to the Switch 2, and the graphics should be at least somewhat better than the LoZ games on the original Switch. Instead, there are noticeable polygons everywhere. Now, some of you may argue that Age of Imprisonment takes a large amount of effort to run. As far as I can tell, my Switch 2 isn't using much effort to run the game. It generates hardly any heat.
The enemies have a very short render distance, too. And the characters are still very weak when you're not controlling them. It would be so cool to be able to send a character or two to capture an outpost while you work on fighting an enemy.

Overall: 7/10 for now. I haven't finished the game yet (only about 20 hours in so far), but so far I love it. And I'm sure it's going to give me a lot of stuff to do while I wait for Metroid Prime 4. Congratulations on a successful project, Koei Tecmo!

@LostWithoutYou

Would you care to elaborate please? How was it different from what you expected?

30 hours in, I give it an 8. I really like it! The combat is the #1 highlight - it is refreshingly deep for a musou. Simply put, this has the best gameplay of any musou game. (I'm playing on very hard and strongly recommend at least setting the difficulty to hard.)

In contrast to Age of Calamity, however, the story is really weak so far. Everyone was excited that AoI is officially canon, but the result here is apparently too much caution. I know a lot of people complained about the direction of the story in AoC, but it was undeniably engaging, colorful, and expansive. In AoI, at least through Chapter 4, the story really hasn't added anything new to what we already knew from ToTK. It seems like there are huge missed opportunities to expand Zelda lore, like where the sky islands came from, what became of the Zonai, who succeeded Rauru and Sonia on the throne, etc. Most characters are surprisingly bland too, albeit very well voice acted. Again, this contrasts with AoC, which had delightfully zany characters in addition to the well fleshed out main cast.

As others have pointed out, the battlefield maps are uninspired and a step down from AoC.

The game is very polished! The graphics look better than the specs would suggest. I love how it looks in handheld on the big Switch 2 screen. No bugs or glitches to speak of.

I recommend it for anyone with a Switch 2 just looking for something good to play or for Zelda fanatics. But there are better games this year on Switch 2. Hades 2, Bananza, and Cyberpunk are top tier. AoI is a near miss.

Too early for me to say. I'm not a reviewer, I don't rush through the game to finish it. The game is too big for that.

I guess so far though I'd give it around an 8 maybe, though I'm leaning a bit closer to 7, just because I don't feel like the story is doing much interesting so far, which was kind of a danger when keeping this game fully canon to TotK. But I'll have to see what twists and turns there will be later on.

A 7 is still absolutely not bad though of course, and would still absolutely recommend the game regardless.

Haven't played it, looks more interesting than the last one though.

Im loving it so far 11 hours in. Id give it an 8 out of 10. The combat is so much fun and satisfying

It’s pretty crazy how intense that first Depths level is: boss after miniboss. But on Hard the bosses can feel bullet-spongy (like my attacks don’t matter at all until the weakness gauge shows). On the other hand, it really does feel like you’re fighting those same enemies from TotK. The weapon building process also seems way slower paced this time. Game looks and runs great and is superbly acted and shot. Princess Zelda is finally a power goddess

Right now a ‘B’ for me

These games are lame, but apparently they are comparatively easy to churn out so I'm sure we'll keep getting them.

Hyrule Warriors 7: Calamity of Ages

Thanks Ant @antdickens 👍

We there ya go @PikaPhantom 😀

I wouldn’t want to score it until I’ve at least finished the basic plot. I’m 10 hours in.

I’m feeling a 7 or 8 so far.

Perfectly satisfied.

It’s a solid 7 for me. Not really a big fan of the world map, or those too-tiny “challenge” missions, and the lack of familiar characters in the roster doesn’t help things. But at least Zelda has a decent movesets this time.

I love Musou, but will have to wait for a sale.

I'm not a huge fan of the characters, and (very small point, but) I wish Zelda just stuck with the blue tunic outfit over the dress. She looks like she's wrapped a towel around herself after taking a shower.

@robotreptile hi!
So I finished the story in about 20 hours (only because I'm weird and I like speed-running to the end) But for the average gamer your gonna get your hours worth for sure. I do still have a TON of content in the game I have not yet explored. If your thinking about picking up the game, I really do recommend. The gameplay was truly peak.

@robotreptile of course!

happy gaming to you as well