The musou genre has seen many crossovers, adding everything from giant anime furs to superpower pirates to the action over time. While the developers at Omega Force initially stuck very close to their winning formula, newer crossovers with Nintendo characters revealed a desire to experiment. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes pushes things further than ever, adapting everything I like in the strategic franchise beyond its turn-based gameplay for action in action. This makes a healthy, crowded game with systems, menus and trees that fight for your attention. Still, nothing changes the fact that Three Hopes is a game of using a sword to push clouds of enemies into the air in a nice ridiculous 2000-hit combo, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
While Three Hopes is technically a direct sequel to Fire Emblem Warriors from 2017, it shares much more in common with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity from 2020. It offers an alternative look at the history of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, starring a mercenary. name Shezz in place of Byleth. The old hero becomes a villain as Shez joins one of the three houses and seeks revenge. Storytelling looks just like the fiery emblem of antiquity, thanks to the many fully sounded cutscenes and other opportunities for conversation. Things can get complicated when the characters talk about their distant relatives and which possession they plan to conquer in the future, but it works.
The whole action goes well on Switch OLED, with only rare cases of delay, no matter how many soldiers, pegasi or giant wolves are on the screen. There are still many enemies that appear and disappear as you run, but nothing technical hinders the game. The graphics, both during the game and in the scenes, are very close to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which helps the alternative story of Three Hopes feel like just another adventure in the same world.
This camp is a fully realized environment in which you can walk at will.
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Even beyond the main missions, Three Hopes does a lot to keep things going. Instead of living on a menu, the camp of this game is a fully realized environment in which you can walk at will. You can talk to any hero you hire, buy weapons and gifts, volunteer for your army to perform their duties, train and earn levels, or even prepare food for your comrades. This is a whole mockery, which is fueled by battles through the necessary improvements in health and strength of attack.
This is great for a while, but walking through large, open areas just to complete some orders quickly gets old. You’ll probably start distorting yourself with a handy menu too long ago, and even that drags on towards the end of the campaign. The progression may slow down, given that the action game moves elsewhere, but in the end it’s rewarding to see your favorite characters get a class upgrade or a brand new magic spell as a result of your efforts.
The Fire Emblem Warriors had a support system, but it feels small compared to what is available in Three Hopes. Although not every character pair has a scene when they reach certain levels of friendship, most of them do, especially with regard to Shez. It stops at marriage, but trading a unique item with Shez’s special friend will provide you with improvements you can’t find anywhere else.
The performance here is as awkward as it sounds.
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To get to this point, Shez can take horse heroes beyond the camp for a sitting conversation. These moments feel less like an intimate meeting and more like a pop test, as you judge yourself based on how well you can answer questions and comments through multiple choices. If you’re shrewd enough to guess the right answers three times in a row, the camera zooms in a little and lets you take a closer look at your coworker while he jokes about how you should stay respectful with your eyes. This style of interaction has been part of the Fire Emblem for some time, but the performance here is as awkward as it sounds, leading to an activity that is unlikely to please anyone.
What we said about the warriors with fire emblems
The malleable quality of the weapon triangle and the Fire Emblem pairing systems makes them naturally suitable for the hack n ‘slash genre. Even when I could barely figure out what was going on on the crowded battlefield and my troops were a little overly dependent, it was a pleasure to lead the action and jump to be part of the carnage. And while Fire Emblem Warriors misuses the story and history of the Fire Emblem universe, we still get traces of the relationships between the characters that make it memorable. – Megan Sullivan, October 24, 2017
Result: 8
Read the full review of Fire Emblem Warriors
Between improving camp facilities and striving for friendships, Three Hopes has a level of progression that many other musou lack. There are always a few things to do between battles and upgrades run at a good pace so you’re never overwhelmed with options. This almost compensates for the inherently repetitive nature of Warriors-style battles, and it would be great to see the Omega Force take what it learned here and apply it to the Dynasty and Samurai games, which could definitely use some ways to mix their gameplay.
Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes reveal trailer images
Most of the new ideas in Three Hopes are not on the battlefield, so if you’ve played any of this style of play before you know what to expect when you embark on a new mission. Your army consists of masters of swords, knights, magicians and archers, all with strengths and weaknesses, dictated by the weapon wheel of the Fire Emblem. Any character with a decent level can overcome most forage enemies and smaller generals, with only the biggest bosses posing a threat. The missions are simple and fun if you train your abilities properly, stick to a core group of characters and pay attention to ever-changing goals.
It’s kind of like Glory Kills from DOOM 2016.
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This does not mean that nothing has changed when it comes to battle. Three Hopes pushes you towards these enemies more than ever by expanding the stunning meters found in the latest Fire Emblem Warriors. Hitting the leaders of fortresses and other unique enemies over and over again will bring them down and allow you to make a super move that sweeps away forage enemies and generally deals a deadly blow. This is in addition to the return awakening mode and Warrior Specials and the resulting gameplay is much brighter than you would expect. It’s kind of like Glory Kills from DOOM 2016; battles push you in the right direction and reward you with more than the screen-cleaning madness that brings people to this genre in the first place.
Three Hopes has also learned to get out of its own way when it comes to battle, more often than its predecessor. Raising the level no longer pauses the action in the middle of the battle – instead, all the screens to raise the statistics are pushed to the end of the default level. AI characters can be assigned to fight specific generals on the map, not just entire fortresses, allowing you to effectively use their limited combat skills. You can also equip your extra characters with the best weapons and abilities at the touch of a button, which is remarkable considering how many swords, axes and spellbooks disappear from your inventory over time.
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Going around the battlefield has never been easier, as Shez can be teleported to friendly areas up to three times on a mission. Side goals and even some full missions explain this, giving the battlefield more variety than I expected. Changing the characters at will is necessary while rescuing besieged generals and stopping the wizards from bombing your positions with fireballs. No matter who you play for, you can cover a lot of land and clear those side goals while going to your ultimate goal.
These improvements are needed as Three Hopes expects you to go to war quite a bit. Each major mission has several unbeatable side missions and many more optional story quests. There is a military map where your army must advance towards the target by making smaller skirmishes, and here the formula begins to distort under its weight. You get to every musou game for battle, but Three Hopes contains too much refill, even when ignore everything of your choice that leads to some disgusting repetition for 25 hours. Unless you plan to live the story of a piece for one to two months, you’ll probably get tired of doing the same battles long before the final credits come out. I recommend walking.
This too long reproduction does not take into account the many twists of history in your first reproduction and the differences provided by the two nations that you do not choose immediately. You can hire characters outside the house of your choice in specific cases, but you will not receive the full breadth of the missions of each house, unless you are ready to go through the campaign repeatedly. Whether you are alone or playing with a friend in a co-op on the couch, there is a lot of content here. Even the improved progression can’t completely soften the repetition that comes hand in hand with any Warriors game, but it does a better job than we’ve seen in this genre so far.
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