Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes review: a predictably fine Musou game

It was a chilly and misty evening in November of 2001 once I leapt up from my desk chair, grabbed my keys, and drove throughout Terre Haute, Indiana to get to the mall. Dynasty Warriors 3 had come out and utterly blindsided me, a factor that was a bit of extra believable within the pre-eternal media-blitz game-marketing world of the early aughts. I had to go get it, rush dwelling, and slam that child into my PS2. I used to be simply that excited.

As I’ve performed by way of Fireplace Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, I preserve reflecting again on how a lot these early Musou (“Warriors”) video games gripped me. I’ve loved my time with Three Hopes, don’t get me unsuitable — nevertheless it’s onerous to not discover that the sense of marvel I felt enjoying DW3 twenty years in the past was lacking as I labored by way of this newest title. In my final evaluate of a Musou sport for Polygon, I mentioned that I don’t actually know how one can speak to individuals about Musou video games anymore, and I believe that place holds true now.

Three Hopes is a superbly serviceable sport. The gameplay is okay. The story is okay. The graphics are superb. The music is okay. The controls are superb. Every thing’s … properly, superb. What I’m left asking myself after twenty years of high-impact mook homicide as a rotating sequence of one-person armies, although, is: “Is ‘superb’ sufficient anymore?”

Since Fireplace Emblem: Awakening, there’s been what I’d name a gradual Persona-fication of Fireplace Emblem video games, with a higher emphasis on help conversations and the social connections between characters. Three Homes was actually the end result of that, with the courting sim-esque social downtime within the central hub of Garreg Mach between fight maps. Three Hopes takes that very same slice-of-life construction and applies it to the core framework discovered within the first Fireplace Emblem Warriors sport. The participant alternates between wandering the “camp” social house to work together with distributors, character-building actions, and social gathering members, and selecting fight missions from a world map for the extra conventional Musou homicide sprees.

Edelgard leads Empire forces in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

In that sense, gamers who actually loved the social facets of Three Homes will in all probability discover Three Hopes a extra participating time than the unique Fireplace Emblem Warriors. Basically, Nintendo IP-branded Musou video games have efficiently tailored the core conceits of the unique IP to the “1 vs. 1,000” style, and Three Hopes is not any completely different. Talent ranks, weapon forging, help conversations, even class abilities and class-change timber — just about all the things aside from precise grid-based tactical fight makes a reappearance right here (besides fishing, alas; there’ll be no “Girls need me and fish concern me” meme t-shirts for fundamental character Shez).

Stated fundamental character can be one of many huge variations between Three Hopes and Three Homes, although, and in contrast to silent Byleth, Shez is a refreshingly enjoyable and sensible character who steadily speaks their thoughts and interacts absolutely with the remainder of the solid. Frankly, I discover Shez significantly extra participating than Byleth was in Three Homes, as a result of Shez looks like a personality with an precise developed character, quite than a sword-wielding, green-haired deus ex machina with no instructing credentials.

Three Hopes follows Shez and, because the demo makes clear, diverges fairly sharply from the occasions of Three Homes briefly order. Whereas the 2019 sport locations gamers within the “academy part” for the primary half of a playthrough, Three Hopes presents the selection of home (Black Eagles, Blue Lions, or Golden Deer) proper up entrance. After a really temporary tutorial and two-chapter prologue, there’s a time-skip on to the “everybody’s an grownup with rather more difficult outfits” portion of the present. Whereas I’m avoiding spoilery specifics, followers of Three Homes shouldn’t anticipate to only be enjoying the Musou-ified model of that sport’s story, although there are parallels and similarities. In my playthrough for this evaluate, I joined the Golden Deer, and the Leicester Alliance route has solely probably the most hint similarities to its Three Homes counterpart.

A character casts an offensive spell in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

That is in all probability for the perfect, as a result of every route by way of this sport is lengthy. The Golden Deer route alone took over 50 hours to finish in my first playthrough, and that’s only one possibility out of the three. There’s loads of homicide available right here, although not all of it’s notably satisfying in a story sense. Most chapters contain wherever from 2-5 largely plot-less maps in opposition to faceless goons with smaller stakes and a recurring set of total objectives (“kill [x] enemies earlier than time runs out,” “escort [x unit] to [y location] safely,” “seize all of the strongholds,” and so forth). You solely must clear as many goals because it takes to clear a path on the map to the chapter’s single defining battle. Sadly, virtually all of mentioned battles have been simply relentlessly boring. They felt extra like busywork than significant core gameplay.

I haven’t spoken a lot in regards to the precise fight, largely as a result of there’s little or no to say about it. Every thing from Fireplace Emblem Warriors returns: the weapon triangle, “vital rushes” after sporting down a common’s stun gauge, and so forth. The one addition that felt notably recent is the power to equip fight arts (weapon abilities and spells) and passive skills realized from numerous lessons. By and enormous, these didn’t really feel terribly rewarding till I acquired to the end-stage “grasp” lessons, which admittedly do grant characters some flashy skills which have a extra discernible impression on fights.

“Flashiness’’ has at all times been one of many strengths of a Warriors sport, however the enormous sweeping assault animations and locked degree of digital camera zoom typically make Three Hopes really feel “huge for giant’s sake.” Watching a Wyvern Rider stomach flop onto a whole fort filled with goons might be enjoyable, however when each struggle in opposition to an essential enemy turns into “put on down stun gauge, vital rush, repeat,” the bigness doesn’t really feel helpful and may even get in the best way of conserving observe of what’s occurring.

Claude and Dimitri stand back to back in a battle in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

This can be a drawback exacerbated by one of many severe flaws that Three Hopes has inherited from Fireplace Emblem Warriors: the extraordinarily restricted variety of transfer units. There are 4 tiers of lessons — Primary, Intermediate, Superior, and Grasp — and as every class advances in rank, most transfer units keep the identical, including another assault to the combo string. The result’s a slim subject of whole transfer units, even on the Grasp tier. In comparison with the enjoyable in older Musou video games of discovering out what the most recent unlockable character’s ridiculous weapon (a flute! a rake!) can do, this lack of variety feels kinda bland.

This monotony is ameliorated considerably by every character having some type of distinctive private transfer or passive — Shez will get a high-speed sprint, for instance, whereas Hubert can slam a magical spike right into a goal, then detonate it later for giant injury — however these really feel extra like novelties than character-defining gameplay kits. The full variety of distinctive transfer units has been diminishing in Musou video games for years, so this isn’t essentially a fault of Three Hopes alone. One of many nice joys of earlier Musou video games was experimenting with the nonsense and wild particular person repertoires of characters with weapons just like the aforementioned flute or rake. Seeing the potential for that pleasure get eroded over time has been a bummer for certain.

This isn’t helped by the unlucky proven fact that, as a lot as I beloved them in Three Homes, the foremost characters on this sport have severe One Persona Trait Solely Dysfunction. Anybody who performed Golden Deer in Three Homes will know precisely what to anticipate from their returning crowd in Three Hopes: Raphael will always speak about meals and muscle tissues, Marianne shall be a wince-inducing vanity catastrophe, and Lysithea will childishly insist that she isn’t a toddler.

A character performs a ground slam in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

Virtually each interplay with these characters in help conversations, and typically even in huge plot cutscenes, will hammer these one-element personalities dwelling repeatedly. Generally it finally ends up being charming and enjoyable (often due to the presence of Shez and their no-nonsense, simple going character). It might simply as typically be exhausting to listen to Raphael interrupt one other technique assembly with an off-hand remark about meat, nonetheless.

Regardless of all that, I’ve had some genuinely unimaginable laugh-out-loud moments with these characters. For example, the writers absolutely dedicated to Shamir as an unambiguous queer character, apparently, and one of many methods they did so was a help dialog that made me snicker so onerous I noticed stars. Whereas these dialog and story moments are pleasurable treats, there merely aren’t sufficient of them to make up for the rather more frequent one-note scenes.

Fireplace Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is a superbly cheap sport. There’s nothing about it that screams “new and thrilling,” however there are additionally no flaws so evident that I used to be tempted to place the controller down, throw up my fingers, and stroll away. The extra funding any given participant has in Three Homes specifically, the extra seemingly it’s that the great moments in Three Hopes will outweigh the unhealthy, and the mysteries of the sport’s slow-burn story will likely preserve some individuals sufficient to energy by way of among the extra boring, busywork-like fight maps.

Nevertheless, I can not assist however suppose again to that giddy anticipation as I drove dwelling with my copy of Dynasty Warriors 3 again in 2001. Asking myself if Three Hopes evokes the identical emotions in me, I’d must say no. It actually is okay, and all the right components are in place, however in some ways it’s additionally very anticipated and never notably modern. It makes me marvel, not for the primary time, how for much longer “it’s superb” shall be sufficient on the earth of Musou titles.

Fireplace Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes shall be launched on June 24 on Nintendo Change. The sport was utilizing a pre-release obtain code supplied by Nintendo. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. Yow will discover extra details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.