Yeah, slick action combos are cool, and cutting down hundreds of bokoblins in a single move is sick, but the best part of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment isn’t any of that. It’s that Zelda takes center stage at last. I’m not just talking about letting Zelda star in her own game. Echoes of Wisdom does that (and throws her under the bus at the end), and she plays a central role in Age of Calamity, albeit a stereotypical and predictable one. I’m talking about Nintendo finally letting Zelda be something other than a magical princess.
Wind Waker and Skyward Sword are the closest Zelda ever gets to seeming like an actual person, but she gets Princess’d eventually anyway. Once her identity is known in both games, she has practically no contact with anyone other than Link and exists only to assist and be saved. Even in Ocarina of Time, it’s not actually Zelda who’s traveling around the kingdom in her own capacity. It’s her alter ego. Yes, there’s a plot reason for that — but not for why that confidence and ability disappear once she’s just Zelda again.
In Age of Imprisonment, Rauru and Sonia become the family Zelda never had. They’re kind to her. They believe in her abilities and want to help her realize them in a nurturing way — all basic, emotionally fulfilling things that most people get to experience in life and all things that Nintendo’s flat-out denied the poor woman in every other Zelda game. She’s either watching her family die or internalizing heaps of shame because she can’t meet the outsized expectations everyone has for her. Instead, in Age of Imprisonment, she’s nerding out with Mineru and studying the past or joking around and bonding with with Lenallia the maidservant. She gets to actually be a normal human at last. (Or Hylian, or whatever.)
Anyway, she has more reason to care about in the past than the present, which says a lot about how Nintendo failed her in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. But, more importantly, it allows her to create a welcome bit of emotional investment in what’s going on, something that’s often missing from Koei Tecmo’s other Warriors games and, admittedly, a lot of other Zelda games too. She’s not just fighting for some abstract idea of a kingdom or for nameless, faceless people who only see her as a symbol. She’s fighting to save people she cares for and to avenge the death of someone you could reasonably argue was like a surrogate mother to her.
And for once, she’s more than capable of doing it herself. It’s evident even in her fighting style that Nintendo took Zelda more seriously this time. In Age of Calamity, she’s kind of a nerdy joke, using iPad magic to throw bombs or do some other combination of gimmicks. In Age of Imprisonment, she’s a badass whose martial prowess rivals Rauru’s and isn’t just limited to fancy archery and esoteric powers of light like in some mainline Zelda games. She can manipulate time to wreck enemies, turn light into a sword and slice through waves of foes, and, my personal favorite, cause a massive explosion when her special meter is full, and all on her own. She doesn’t need to lean on anyone for once.
It’s cool and satisfying in a way you don’t necessarily get with Link. Him? He’s just a hero bot programmed to win. Success means nothing. It can’t, not when he always wins. Now Zelda, the princess with confidence issues and a lot to prove to herself? That’s another, much better story. Turns out having a protagonist with a personality offers up a lot more storytelling potential and gives me more reason to care, and I hope Nintendo keeps it up in the future.