Follow Zelda’s journey back in time as she meets Rauru and Sonia, the first king and queen of Hyrule, and experience the canonical events that lead to the Imprisoning War against the Demon King Ganondorf from the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom game.
Zelda meets new allies along the way, including Agraston, the worldly Goron chief, Qia, the skilled fighter and Zora queen, Raphica, the quick-witted leader of the Rito, and Ardi, a compassionate leader among the Gerudo. You’ll also meet a Korok named Calamo who travels with the Mysterious Construct that can transform and take to the skies.
Free updates for the game are now available that include fearsome enemies, a new sync strike with Zelda and Calamo, three additional weapons, an extra challenging difficulty level, and more.
Plus, you can receive in-game bonus items if you have save data from the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity games on your Nintendo Switch 2.
Ver. 1.0.3 (Released 18 December 2025)
Features added
Phantom Ganon:
- Phantom Ganon is a new feature that randomly triggers in battles that you have completed.
- In addition, when you defeat powerful enemies, there is a possibility that Phantom Ganon may appear. You will be able to acquire more Pure Zonaite Steel than in normal battles.
Forbidden Difficulty:
- In the new Forbidden difficulty level, you can experience high-difficulty battles that are more challenging than the battles in Very Hard difficulty.
- If you complete a certain number of battles on Forbidden difficulty, you will receive special rewards such as Pure Zonaite Steel or an increase in the number of Special Rations that can be held.
New challenges and quests added:
- Similar to the first free update, this second update also adds multiple new challenges and quests to the Hyrule Map after the main game has been beaten.
- Lizalfos and Chuchus appear as new Vicious Enemies.
- The Tanagar Meditation Hall on the sky island is unlocked, and you will be able to perform a sync strike if you enter with two characters.
New Unique Skills added:
- New unique skills have been added to the Mysterious Construct for its one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons, and spears.
- With the one-handed weapon unique skill Shield Charge, you can break through dangerous attacks from charging enemies by raising your shield and stepping into them. Also, with correct timing against an enemy attack, you can deal a powerful spinning slash.
- You can learn these skills by completing the challenges and quests that are added in this update.
New weapons added:
*The Forbidden Blade, a one-handed weapon that was touched by Gloom and ominously transformed, was added. The Mysterious Construct and warriors of various peoples are able to equip it.
- You can acquire this weapon by completing battles that are added in this update.
- The battles below will be added as well:
- Battles focused on the warriors.
- A life-or-death struggle with a certain powerful enemy.
Improved Features
- Aside Quests that involve sync strikes as a condition have been changed so that they can also be achieved by characters you are not controlling while performing sync strikes.
- You can back out of bonus conversations in the Gallery with B Button.
- Adjusted display conditions and frequency in Tutorials for Dodge and Guard.
- When you have hit the upper limit of Zonaite Steel you can possess, you will be able to use the weapon enhancements below at the end of combat:
- Raise Weapon-Level Limit
- Remove Seals
Fixed Issues
- Fixed an issue where, when assigning Electric Lizalfos parts to the Material Sensor, a battle in which Electric Lizalfos don’t appear (“Terror of the Sands”) could be tracked.
- Fixed an issue where the Challenge “A Flash of Steel in the Desert“ would not appear until a number of other battles had been completed, even after all displayed requisite battles had been completed.
- Fixed an issue where, during two-player split-screen play, the second player’s attack sounds and other sounds could not be heard.
- Fixed an issue where, when assigning necessary materials to the Material Sensor (Assign to Sensor in Unlock Weapon Arts) a player would only be able to remove them from the sensor via the Materials screen.
I completed that game just before this update. It’s a big disappointment really. Age of Calamity was a lot more fun than this one.
Characters are boring, both in moveset and design. The zonai artefacts make everyone feel the same whereas the sheikah slate had custom moves for every characters. The unique mechanic on the right trigger for every characters is gone too. The character specific attacks are technically different, but most feel like the same over all characters, and since they have long cooldowns and artifacts don’t, you’d better replace a lot of them.
The game doesn’t throw any challenge at you, even starting in hard mode. It gives you a lot of health feom scratch and nothing much to lose it.
Age of Calamity had enough mess going on that you occasionally needed to juggle through characters to meet the time limit and protect allies. Often it’d throw several serious enemies at you and force you to watch out for all of them at once. The feeling of urgency never happens in Age of Imprisonment, and engaging fights only happens in the few dangerous battles they added in the post-game.
Speaking of post-game, nothing worthwhile to unlock there, though AoC had a couple special characters left to throw at you.
It’s bad enough that I restarted my AoC game to see if it was just musou fatigue and I remembered it better than it was. Nope, even in the comparatively slower early game, AoC is still fun.
