Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment plays on the Mac with a median of 60 fps, but with frequent long frames. Tested from a new save through the first-run settings, the opening movies and cutscenes into the first field, where Zelda walks. Battles have not been reached, and no iPhone or iPad app has been built yet.

How it runs

On an M6 Mac with 16 GB, the first field runs at a median frame time of 16.6 ms, about 60 fps, and most frames stay under about 18 ms. Every few frames, though, a frame takes 100 to 114 ms, so play stutters. Each frame needs only 3 to 6 ms of graphics work; the long frames come from how the Mac's graphics driver handles memory, and the 16 GB Mac had almost no free memory left. A Mac with more memory has not been tried.

The game's autosave points come later than the opening and the first field, so nothing is saved there, and every start begins again at the first-run settings. A save written and loaded again has not been seen yet. The autosave icon that shows after the first-run settings does not save anything.

Bring update v196608

Tested with update v196608. The game is packed from a single .nup file of 47 GB that holds the base game and the update. The file carries no display version, so the update is known only by this number.

Controls

The Packed app starts in the 3D touch layout, because the camera is on the right stick.

• About 40 seconds after starting, the first-run settings appear: press A (Next), A (Yes), then A at the autosave notice.
• The movies and cutscenes that follow move on with A, about every 25 seconds. A tap of Plus does not skip them.
• Zelda reaches the first field about 8 minutes after the game starts, and the left stick walks. Presses during fades are lost.

Good to know

• The .nup file carries no control data or icon, so the Packed app takes its name from the game's nxnative profile and has no icon of its own, and it has no Game language setting.
• A full Mac shader build was estimated at 13 hours. The project developers played with a smaller set covering the opening, the first field and the areas a 12-minute playtest reached, which took about an hour to build.