Was Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Worth It?

Three Houses may have been a strategy RPG at anime Hogwarts, but this spinoff is a hack-and-slash musou. Was Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Worth It?

Background

The first Fire Emblem Warriors dropped in 2017 for the 3DS and Switch. It sold well, pushing over a million copies. As far as musou games go, it wasn’t groundbreaking but it was decent. Looking back, you have to wonder why they didn’t just retool the Fire Emblem content instead of trying to kill the franchise with Dynasty Warriors 9.

This game follows the same pattern as the Zelda spinoffs: Hyrule Warriors was an “all-stars” type game with broad appeal for even casual fans of the franchise with its huge cast. It was followed by Age of Calamity, which spun off from Breath of the Wild, only featuring that game’s characters (and enemies, sadly). Fire Emblem Warriors had the big cast of well-known characters, while Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is a spinoff (not a sequel) of Three Houses, exclusively featuring characters from that game. Koei Tecmo was involved in the development for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, so this title didn’t exactly come out of left field.

What does Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes do well?

It’s a smooth play experience, and I hope that this is the template for future musou titles.

Strategy

Before the important story battles, you complete smaller missions to gather resources. Wipe out some bandits, protect some merchants; you get the point. Importantly, some of these missions will give you strategies and strategy resources for the upcoming plot-relevant battle.

When you prepare for the big battle, you can choose some (or none) of the strategies that you’ve acquired. Each one costs roughly 10-40 strategy points, and you may have somewhere around 60-100 points to spend.

This presents you with a lot of interesting choices. Do I use the strategy to bolster my defenses or do I choose one with offensive benefits? To me, some choices were obvious: I personally always want to recruit an enemy general if possible, and reinforce soft targets that are critical to mission completion. There was one mission where I built a bridge to reach the enemy bases faster, but it also meant that my flank was exposed and I kept getting backdoored by enemies using the same bridge that I had built. As my army grew stronger, I started choosing strategies that didn’t have the same “wow factor” and was pleasantly surprised to see the effects. Some examples include placing guards near priority targets, or fielding healers.

This system was quite well done. I can see it integrating seamlessly into the mainline Samurai or Dynasty Warriors titles, and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Friendly AI

I’ll never forget watching one of my generals impotently running into a wall in Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires. Not the case in this game, the AI is surprisingly competent.

It’s really quite simple: check in on them every so often on the map. Send them to go take objectives or kill targets, and don’t set them up for failure. They’ll faithfully putz along and you’ll get a notification when they’ve completed their task. I would take my overleveled protagonist in one route throughout the map while directing my friendly units in 2-3 different directions. I almost felt like an actual general.

Merc Whistles, Peer Training, and Classes

There’s some nuance here, so I’m not going to get into all the details, but some skills can be “taught” to other characters if conditions are met. You can also use a Merc Whistle to gain an accessory that allows a character to use a different character’s unique ability. Sure, you give up an accessory slot, but in some cases it’s a straight upgrade. I would recommend using your first Merc Whistle on Balthus so you can rake in the dough.

The TL;DR here is that between there’s a lot of room for customization and you don’t have to worry about screwing up a character build. In fact, the training facility is designed so that you can experiment, and you can reset characters to take advantage of the growth rates from different classes.

What could Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes do better?

Mild gripe: You can only get one Merc Whistle per playthrough. I wish you could buy them with renown or trade for them. Playing a single route takes long enough, there’s no way I’m going to do 40-ish playthroughs.

Main Character Favoritism

The main character, Shez, has an ability that grants a huge dash, and mobility is always key in these games. If you get out of position, Shez can also teleport (Shadow Slide) to a friendly base. You have four playable units on every map, but it’s hard to justify switching. This could have been mitigated if any of your characters could Shadow Slide.

There’s a small incentive to use other units, since Shez gets a buff when ordered to attack, but the sheer flexibility of having three free teleports in your back pocket means that you’d be silly not to use the protagonist.

Weapons

I have never played a musou game where I focused so little on my equipment. On normal mode, the game is not difficult, and I constantly used all my smithing stones as trade resources so I could upgrade the base facilities. I upgraded a few unique weapons for the associated crest holders, but just used a Brave Sword with some decent abilities for Shez.

Characters

I’m not a Fire Emblem fan, so I’m not familiar with how characters are usually portrayed. With that said, most of these characters suck. Male characters fall into two categories: relentlessly driven heroes or weird nerds. Female characters don’t have it any better, with many of them being a different flavor of “have I emphasized how neurotic/annoying/quirky I am today?” I get it, these are kids ostensibly dealing with the horrors of war, but a lot of the “social links” in this game make me feel like I’m on TikTok.

Don’t think that the protagonist is off the hook. The female version (you can choose your gender) is essentially Ryuuko Matoi from Kill La Kill, and the way she’s written is just way too cool for school. Sure, she’s a mercenary, but if she was really that jaded and worldly then there’s no reason that she would stick around with some of these dumb kids for literal years. They just aren’t selling it.

Plot

Without spoiling anything, the plots aren’t as strong as they could be. If the intent was to write stories about dumbass kids with too much power, then they nailed it, but I expected stronger writing. At least one route will leave you scratching your head, wondering “did we actually accomplish anything?”

Post game

There’s not a lot to do aside from the three routes, and no substantial challenges to work for. Sure, you can play on a higher difficulty, but that’s it. At this time, there is no announced DLC.

Convenience Features

You go to the facility master and realize you need a few more items to upgrade a building. You fast travel to the Supply Master and then realize that the names of the items are so similar that you’ve gotten them confused. Was it “Lavish Building Materials” or “Luxurious Furnishings?” Fast travel back to the facility master to double check. Rinse and repeat.

You’re training characters and one of them mastered a class. You think “Ok, I’m going to acquire a new class for that character.” You have to back out of that menu, go into another menu, and so on.

There’s too much back and forth through the menus. It’s annoying, it’s cumbersome. Just let me acquire classes from the training screen. Let me tag materials that I need.

Is Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes good value?

There’s plenty of content between the three routes. Replayability is entirely dependent on how enamored you are of the characters. I made the mistake of choosing the worst route (Claude/Golden Wildfire) first, so I was pretty over the game by the time I finished.

Who is this game for?

Principally this is for musou fans, but it helps tremendously if you also played Fire Emblem: Three Houses. If you haven’t, the only character you’re likely to be familiar with is Byleth, who isn’t the protagonist, and can even be killed off.

Was Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes worth it?

It’s a good musou title and a great framework for future musou entries. As a standalone game, there’s a lot of content, but as I said above, I don’t think most players will find the characters or story compelling enough to stick around for all three routes. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is worth it, but temper your expectations accordingly.

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