Our Demo of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment didn't tell me much, but it seems to run very well

One problem with trade show demos, is they're usually designed so they can be played in 15 minutes or less - and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is no exception. During Tokyo Game Show 2025, we had the chance to sit down and play a number of Koei Tecmo's upcoming releases. Naturally, Hyrule Warriors was perhaps the most important - a shiny new entry in the series for the equally new Nintendo Switch 2. While Koei Tecmo's previous releases in the Warriors series might have struggled on the original Switch, I was eager to see how the new one would hold up on Switch 2 - along with any of the gameplay changes and the brand-new story context for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

I didn't get much for the latter, of course. Our demo took place during a segment of the story where Zelda and her compatriots explore the depths, and in the context of this TGS demo acted as a tutorial for the game's controls, the Zonai items, and switching between different characters. Being what seems to be early in the story, there wasn't that much depth to be found here - though the different movesets each of our 3 characters had at their disposals were entertaining to say the least.

Zelda's attacks take advantage of light - extending the reach of her swings in various ways. One such combo has her swipes send out waves of light orbs, decimating enemies around her. Her attacks are slower, but damage a wide area while keeping Zelda herself mostly stationary. Mineru, then, is the opposite - her combos make heavy use of Zonia technology as she barrels right through hordes of enemies. Rauru, on the other hand, makes use of his spear to cut a path through enemies.

Of course, it's difficult to get a true feel for how each of these characters might evolve or feel different after progression through the full game. We also can't exactly say how the gameplay itself will change based on such a small slice of the overall experience; what we can share, however, is how the game looks and runs according to our time with the demo. The verdict? Things are looking good.

Visually, the game's resolution was quite sharp. We don't know what the exact technical spec might be, especially considering we weren't informed about the resolution of the monitors that we played the game on. Yet it looked good, even when seated close to the display. The framerate was 60 FPS, and if there were any dips from that target I didn't notice them during our play session. Even when the action got frantic with the boss fight against the Frox and when using combo attacks wherein two units team up for a special action.

That being said, it's not like The Depths are an especially busy area - and of course it's quite possible that more drawn-out battles may exhibit some framerate fluctuations. Yet it's still a rather good sign that things seem to be running so solidly at first sniff. I'm curious about how things might hold up with GameShare, considering how the way things work it should be rather similar to how the original Wii U version of Hyrule Warriors handled co-op between a player on the main TV and the Wii U Gamepad. It would have been nice if we had a chance to test the demo out in co-op - but it's not like we have all that long to wait before the game releases. Stay tuned for our full thoughts as we get closer to the game's November 6 release.