Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

The Audacity of Hopes

When I played Fire Emblem Warriors on my Nintendo 3DS as part of my shopping spree due to the forthcoming closure of the system's eShop, I'll admit that it didn't completely blow me away, given its various narrative and visual foibles, although in my opinion, it did well as a musou game given that the main Dynasty Warriors series features hybrid action/strategy gameplay, the Intelligent Systems franchise faring generally well, especially in recent years, in the latter genre. Team Ninja and Omega Force would develop another title in the subgenre entitled Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which continues to prove that the tactical series works well fused with the signature Dynasty Warriors gameplay.

Three Hopes occurs in an alternate timeline to Three Houses on the continent of Fódlan, with three unique storylines: Scarlet Blaze, Azure Gleam, and Golden Wildfire, breaking from the narrative of Three Houses in that Byleth of that particular game serves as the primary antagonist. The main playable character is Shez, who can either be male or female and ultimately allies with one of the triad factions. The game generally weaves its plotline well, although there are some tried elements such as the hero or heroine having an inner demon, near-death experience, and such, and given the unskippable text at points, the story sometimes feels forced down the player’s throat. The translation is definitely legible, although there are loads of cheesy lines, and voice clips don’t always match text akin to the game's musou precursor.

The second Fire Emblem Warriors game largely builds upon its predecessor's action/strategy gameplay while introducing elements from Three Houses such as a branching class system with four levels that necessitate different seals for the playable characters to reach. Battles themselves are akin to those in the first game, with certain units being strong against others, such as bow-wielding characters being especially effective against winged opponents, and the "weapon triangle" from mainline games (axes beating spears, spears beating swords, and swords beating axes) returns. Despite having epic scales, missions are generally fast, and breezing one’s way through them the game actually encourages due to better rewards in doing so. There are some minor interface issues regarding combat, but otherwise, the gameplay contains far more refinement than in the game's precursor.

Control fares just as strongly. The general structure is linear, so there's pretty much absolutely no getting oneself lost and needing to utilize a walkthrough. There’s also fast travel in the player's base camp akin to contemporary Persona games, albeit with the supplemental convenience of instant conveyance to other playable characters to do things like give gifts and go on expeditions with them to build rapport. In-game maps for both the camp and combat exist as well, and unlike in the first Fire Emblem Warriors, players can pick up where they left off in battle should they create a bookmark save. Much of the text is skippable too, although much of the voiced dialogue isn't, alongside occasional long load times. Regardless, Three Hopes interfaces well with players.

The second musou Fire Emblem features a nice rocky soundtrack akin to its predecessor, with some excellent orchestral jingles as well such as that which sounds out whenever a new main or side objective reveals itself in combat. The sound effects are believable as well, as one would expect from a modern game, but the quality of the voicework is typical of the game's subgenre. Aside from the general unmemorability of the music as well, Three Hopes is generally easy on the ears.

However, the spinoff is another one of those games where the visuals are aesthetically pleasing, given some nice cel-shading, good colors, pretty environments, vivid illumination effects, and well-proportioned character models, but are technically weak. For instance, the framerate is often grossly inconsistent, there's a lot of popup of enemies during battles, the collision detection is poor at moments, and the scenery closeup has noticeable blurriness and textural pixilation. Even so, the game isn’t a graphical eyesore but could have certainly been better visually.

Finally, playtime is longer than that of the game’s predecessor, somewhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, with surprisingly-high lasting appeal in the form of sidequests, plot variations, different difficulty settings, and so forth.

All things considered, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Houses is in most respects an improvement over its precursor, given the general originality of its narrative that doesn't rely on crossovers, the solid musou gameplay, tight control, great soundtrack, and near-note-perfect lasting appeal. However, it does stumble regarding its hackneyed writing, visual blemishes, and weak voicework characteristic of most of the subgenre's games. Given the mainline Fire Emblem franchise's strategic roots, that it turned out as well as it did is hardly a surprise, and it's definitely far more playable and accessible than classic entries of the series. I'm far from hesitant to recommend the game and hope both Omega Force and Team Ninja produce more within and without the franchise.