Fire Emblem Warriors strikes again! (Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes in review!)

     Hey friends, a few weeks ago, I took some time to talk about the different collaborations between Nintendo and Koei Tecmo to make special "Warriors-esque" games based off of Nintendo properties. A few weeks ago, on Friday, June 24, the latest game of this type was released, a sequel to Fire Emblem Warriors, and a spin-off of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, titled Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. There's a lot to this game that they pulled from both the Fire Emblem game and the "Warriors" formula, so let's prepare all of the units to talk about this lengthy spin-off today!

Your choices really matter (Kind of)!

    This game, as I said the other week, is very much a "What if" story, which eventually boils down to the timeline being pushed forward ahead of when it was in Three Houses. One little event and the introduction of the main character Shez, leads to things going completely differently for everyone, and though this game is based on familiar characters, the one added character adds a whole lot to the roster in terms of plot significance and personality. This is really cool considering Byleth was essentially a silent protagonist in Three Houses. Speaking of Byleth, with the new protagonist being introduced as Shez, Byleth is introduced as an antagonist of sorts. It's really cool to see him/her as a powerful adversary, as well as Jeralt's Mercenaries, and it especially gets crazy once you get into the later game. So far I've only played through the Golden Deer (called Golden Wildfire in this game) campaign with my brother, but based on his knowledge of the original game, the personalities and goals of the different characters are kept in tact, and they're actually expanded upon from that other game. Claude, the leader of the Golden Deer, is always talked about as being scheming, and his schemes are constantly referred to throughout the game without ever telling exactly what his schemes may entail. That changes in this game, as you learn about various different schemes, to the point where we joked that the whole plot could be summed up as "This was all just a big scheme!" I was worried that the bond conversations were going to be handled the same way that they were in Fire Emblem Warriors, where there was a generic quote for each character for C and B support, with A support conversations being unique to the two characters having them. Instead, this game has support conversations on par with the specific game that this one is based on. All of the friendships made in that game are still clearly observable here, and they use those characteristics and conversations as building blocks of sorts for the conversations in this one. Shez has all new conversations, of course, and Byleth is allowed to be much more expressive now that he/she doesn't have to just speak based on the text box that you chose. With the promise of two more campaigns on the horizon for us to play through, I don't think my brother and I are going to be bored with the storyline of this game for quite some time, especially since, without giving away spoilers, the game ends in a bit of a weird story cliffhanger, so maybe there's even more once all three campaigns end? We'll just have to see.

Gameplay!

    This is the easiest part to write about by far. The gameplay of this game is extremely similar to Fire Emblem Warriors, though the biggest change is the lack of a Crest Market for each character. This makes it way less tedious and grind-intensive than that older game was, and takes a cue from Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity in that sense. Instead of getting two or three abilities from the Crest Market, each unit has different combat arts that they unlock through training up different classes, which I'll get to in just a moment. This time, instead of a main menu which you simply select the different missions from, your menu is a camp, which allows you to interact with different units, cook meals, train with them, do chores, etc. In this sense, it again mimics the gameplay of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which had lengthy sequences where you would run around Gerreg Mach Monastery as Byleth, but you would do similar things there. A really cool thing that this game implements that I didn't expect at all was the class system. In Three Houses, you were able to train almost any unit to be whatever class you wanted them to be, and in this game you can do the exact same thing. This ends up having a positive and negative effect on the characters, because each class has a special moveset instead of each individual character. That isn't to say that they're not still unique, but their uniqueness is mostly constrained to their passive abilities, such as Ignatz shooting out paint to stick people to the ground with elemental effects, or Lorenz's tornado of rose petals that can either be used defensively to block attacks or offensively by unleashing the tornado on enemies and blowing them away. Their individual abilities and skills are cool, and the class system is even cooler that you can change what each unit is able to do at will. As I said, it is somewhat upsetting that all of them have a similar move set, but it's not that big of a deal, and the characters are still really cool. According to my brother, the characters all have similar quirks just like these in the original game, and it's really interesting how they've carried them over in this completely different type of gameplay. It's similar to how this team worked on Persona 5 Strikers and really put a lot of effort into making this type of game feel so much like it belongs in the world of whatever series it is based on. It's a really impressive effort, and something that I'm always intrigued with.

    Honestly there's not a whole lot to say about the game without giving away spoilers. Even with spoilers, there is so much to do in this game under the surface of the simple button-mashing combos that the Warriors games are known for, meaning that in that way, it's a lot like Fire Emblem Warriors. The good news about this game is that those processes are much more streamlined here, while still being almost as complicated as that older game. If you love Fire Emblem: Three Houses, then you'll love spending more time with the characters, I'm sure. It seems like they worked closely with the writers at Intelligent Systems to get the character personalities correct, and according to my brother, the true Fire Emblem fan of the family, they nailed it. The highest compliment that my brother has given since playing this game was that he felt as though he was able to reconnect with the characters from Fire Emblem: Three Houses after he played that game back in 2019. That's where that game really shone the brightest as far as I could tell, and I'm glad that this game was able to delve perhaps even deeper into the character components. I just hope that the hardcore Fire Emblem fans enjoy it!

    Thanks so much for reading this, friends. It took a while to finish the first campaign that my brother and I played through, or else I would have written this last week. We really enjoyed what we played, and are really looking forward to diving into it again for another playthrough on a different route soon! I hope you're all doing well and I hope you'll all have a good week. Until next time, I've been Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Warriors Expert, and I'll talk to you again soon.