Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (Switch) Review

Three Houses Gets the Warriors Treatment

Musou games have been around for a long time now. Twenty-three years to be exact, at least when counting ones from Koei Techmo. In those years not only has there been a ton of releases, but also balances and changes to freshen up the experience. With their spin-off Musou games like Hyrule Warriors or Attack on Titan, they feel more like you need to be into the source material to be able to enjoy. That being said that means that some Musou games will be less enjoyable to some, and that was my experience with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes.

To start, I want to mention that the only Fire Emblem game I have enjoyed is the more recent Three Houses. I had a lot of fun with that story and the turn-based strategy gameplay, but having played a few Musou games in the past I knew what I was in store for. 

Story-wise Three Hopes takes place in the same dimension but a different timeline than Three Houses proper.  The player starts out fighting a losing battle only to be saved by a mysterious force. After coming back to it, you save the heads of the houses from Three Houses. Edelgard from the Black Eagles house, Dimitri from the Blue Lions, and finally Claude from the Golden Deer. After a mission with all of them, we get to choose a house, bringing with it the characters that belong to that house, much like in Three Houses. You team up with one of the houses and try to save the world from a corrupted Byleth (the main protagonist and our character from Three Houses). My main issue with the story is that it just didn't feel as polished or well written as Fire Emblem: Three Houses. 

I felt myself not as connected to characters in the same way, and when the mechanic of characters can die forever is involved, it doesn't really work if a character dies and I don't feel anything. 

Gameplay is pretty standard for the Musou genre; we play as a one-man army being able to switch to other characters on the fly, and you can switch between depending on the mission and which house you decided to side with. Each character has their own special move with our main character having a demon-esque form in which you deal more damage. Overall it just wasn't for me, and I know that's because I don't feel for Fire Emblem what I do for Legend of Zelda or Attack on Titan. 

That being said there was something about the camp aspect of Fire Emblem that I really enjoyed. Mostly because it felt most in line with Three Houses. In your camp, you are able to upgrade its facilities, strengthen friendships, and upgrade characters. This does lead to a shock when it all opens up, but once you get into the flow of things the stuff between battles became my favorite thing in Three Hopes.

My biggest takeaway from Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is that this game some people will absolutely love. If you enjoyed other Musou games like Hyrule Warriors and you love the Fire Emblem series then this is for you. I wish it was for me; I enjoyed Fire Emblem: Three Houses but the other games in the series didn’t do anything for me. The gameplay of Three Hopes is fun and at points ridiculous but not in a bad way, just in that Misou way of one person fighting and destroying hundreds of enemies. The story is passable but when compared to the main series it doesn't hold a candle.

The last thing I want to touch on is performance. The performance is actually quite good; I played primarily in handheld mode and didn't have any serious drops, sometimes a bit of slowdown but nothing that ruined the experience.

All in all, if you enjoyed Hyrule Warriors and like that format mixed with the Fire Emblem setting then you should absolutely check out Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes.

SCORES

GAMEPLAY - 8/10

VISUALS - 8/10

SOUND - 7/10

CONTROLS - 7/10

REPLAY VALUE - 4/10

OVERALL - 6.8/10

A digital Switch copy was provided for review purposes. The featured image and screenshots were used courtesy of official press assets.

More information about Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes can be found on the official Nintendo listing. A demo is available.