and today we're talking about Fire Emblem Warriors,
Three Hopes. Now this is the second warrior-style or musou game for Fire Emblem and another collaboration between Koei Tecmo and a Nintendo property and this one is pretty damn good.
It kind of depends on number one, if you love Fire Emblem but number two, if you love these warrior style games which is a bit more of an acquired taste but I gotta say, I think they got the marriage of the two genres almost perfectly here. It just makes so much sense. It feels like Dynasty Warriors, like obviously right? Big battlefields, plotting where to head next on a map and just slaughtering thousands of dumb dudes. But the level of more Fire Emblem style strategy and micromanaging stuff layered on top of here is pretty staggering. There's a lot, a ton of base camp activities to do, ways to train, things to manage, relationships to build, people to talk to, gifts to give.
Then of course, overall map resource strategy, classes, items, leveling up and then moment to moment in-battle strategy and orders. Now it's still action hack and slash, but there's way, way more to chew on here. It can still get a little repetitive from time to time, but man, oh man, like it could be entertaining and I think if you love this stuff and if you love this world and these characters, you'll be happy here. So story wise, I guess you can consider this like an alternate 'what if?' style story in the Three Houses universe. No spoilers here, just the basic setup. You play as a new male or female character that you create, who is a mercenary on a little adventure who happens to stumble into a much larger world.
You pretty instantly encounter a villain that is a very significant character from Three Houses and it's really cool and you also quickly realize you're also linked to this supernatural, otherworldly entity who bestows you with some crazy abilities. Now, as you slowly try to uncover what the deal is with that and everything, you end up running into the OG gang. You know 'em, you love 'em, Dimitri, Edelgard and Claude and they very quickly swoop you up into their ranks and right into their world of Fire Emblem politics, you know, warriors, clergymen, kings, all that and things get very complicated.
Now like Three Houses, you choose one of the houses here and you get what seems to be a specific branch of story. You're very quickly thrust into some more character stuff with your leader. So I chose Dimitri of course, our broken prince and it got really intense really quickly. Now I'm not through the entire thing so keep in mind, these are just lengthy first impressions but I'm really into the story. It definitely feels a bit crazier than Three Houses for obvious reasons, more supernatural, more chaos, more spinoff feel but that's what makes it kind of cool, to see this world and these characters in a slightly different situation with some different rules and just room for things to get crazier.
It may feel a little bit less personal at times, the character stakes may be not always as strong, but I still say there are some strong moments and you can still pursue and build these friendships and learn a little bit more about characters, at least. The story stuff is very subjective, I like Three Houses but I'm not a die hard. I know some people are ride or die for it so you might love it way more than me or you might have some very particular nuanced issues that I can't pick up on. I will say it's not always paced super well, the prologue is long and it feels like there are endless tutorial messages but stick with it. Once chapter four hits and you're set out on your own a bit more, it really picks up. I don't know how well it pacing is overall, but yeah. Game play wise, as you can see here, it can look, to the average person, like mindless, endless repetitive hack and slashing but it feels really satisfying, man.
The abilities at your disposal, the amount at your fingertips, using items, linking with other characters, working with other special characters right on the battlefield and finally unleashing some of those special abilities, it really feels satisfying, for a long time, something about clearing a screen of enemies, you know? I love the flare of a big explosive attack, cruising through a battlefield or a castle town just capturing every point or killing a boss as your whole army is at the end of their rope. The situations might not always look thrilling on screen here to the casual person, but they are fun. The only thing is that the camera absolutely sucks.
This is not a new thing for fans of this genre, but yeah, as you can probably see, it gets messy pretty often. The lock on isn't great and the cameras sometimes just can't keep up with all your cool moves and I guess I'll briefly touch too, visually, it's also not the hottest thing in the world. It's definitely working overtime. It doesn't have the greatest frame rate. It's not super sharp, it's not super detailed, but in terms of the actual characters and the music and the presentation, I think it makes up for it with that.
A generous amount of voice acting, good cut scenes and some visual flare do go a long way. That's one of my few complaints though, anyway, the game is broken into a war map for each chapter and each contains main quests and side quests. So yeah, the side quests might not always be as exciting but there are so many reward incentives. So it might feel like a grind, but at least so far, it feels like some of the rewards are really worth it.
Plus surveying the map and clearing it out and getting each and every reward and strategy resource used right per chapter, like if you're a completionist, there's a good amount here to really feel like you gotta accomplish something other than just killing everything, especially when it comes back to the base camp. The hub areas are large and there's a ton to do. There are shops, item vendors and weapon vendors. You can cook for bonuses and you can engage in chores to take care of the place. Polish the weapons, clean the horses, stuff like that. Now doing that and choosing certain characters to do it with improves your relationships, as does certain choices in the game; giving gifts, conversation and battlefield stuff.
A lot of the house players are around as well as some new faces so there's a lot to dive in and just revisit some of these characters and walk around, hidden things to collect. You have a certain amount of daily ability points to spend around the base so if you wanna do a bonding activity or train, you need to choose wisely. Training is key because it can bulk level up a few characters and there are a really generous amount of character classes and depth and abilities they're in.
Like for the main character, I actually really enjoyed one of the first few provided but swapping as other characters on the fly lets you easily test out some other approaches and then you can go from there in terms of leveling up and there's a lot of quality of life stuff that I thought went a really long way.
You can just instantly warp to any spot in the hub town areas instead of always trotting around slowly and getting around battlefields in fight is surprisingly zippy, even if the onscreen map can get a little cluttered and that's what I also really grew to like here. Some of the battlefield strategy stuff, it's all chaos, of course, but choosing certain units to go one way while you go the other or having some person hold down the fort here, all that is satisfying because eventually if you meet up or when a random side objective pops up mid battle and then you divert some people to go save someone or capture a new point, you can feel like a real battlefield force of nature at a point and if your whole team is optimized and you take the time to do the RPG stuff, it can be fun.
I didn't find a lot of the loot thrilling which is a bummer though, not the end of the world, but yeah, maybe it gets better towards the end of the game, but overall all the RPG stuff, all the strategy stuff, I think works very well. Oh, and I should have said this at the start, but there are three difficulty modes and there's also a normal mode and a classic mode, where if you choose classic mode like I did, you have to deal with the ramifications of characters actually dying on the battlefield, you know, like Fire Emblem. So having those level of options, that level of player choice, is great. Some people might like Fire Emblem but not dig the strategy stuff and wants to come here for the killing.
Some people really like the Fire Emblem strategy and just want to see these characters so they can still get a little bit more in depth stuff. If you want to crank it all up, there's a surprising level of enough strategy where hard mode and permadeath is probably really satisfying to some of you and also after a bit, you can unlock, during battles, split screen with another player. I was playing completely alone, you know me, but I still really appreciate having a little bit of couch co-op, especially for a complex game like this and that does work because the different characters and abilities each feel really distinct.
Now, again, I'm not a complete expert in these games but I've dabbled in both genres for many years and like I said, I think they cracked the code with this one. The first Fire Emblem Warriors didn't really interest me much, but this one just makes so much sense. I know people that absolutely adore Fire Emblem and specifically the Three Houses, this wonderful world and really freaking lovely characters
and I think those people will be very, very happy here.