Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

Genre: Action Brawler

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local Split-Screen)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, released on Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a follow-up to Fire Emblem Warriors and Fire Emblem: Three Houses in much the same way that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity was a follow-up to both Hyrule Warriors and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. That is to say that this game retains much of the same Musou-style Action Brawler gameplay as the original Fire Emblem Warriors, but where that first game featured a story that played out like a (pretty bad) fan fiction based on the entire Fire Emblem franchise, Three Hopes is specifically based on the story and presentation of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

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A New Story, or a Th-Reetelling?

Where Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity was largely a prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (sorta’… it’s a bit more complicated than that), Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is neither a prequel, a sequel, nor a retelling of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Instead, it acts as a sorta’ alternate-reality version of that game’s story (or rather, stories), with players taking on the role of a new character, the purple-haired Shez, a mercenary and rival to Three Houses’ Byleth, who finds themselves thrust into a comparable position to Byleth’s role in Three Houses.

As with the story in Three Houses, Three Hopes’ story diverges into three paths depending on which of the game’s three factions players ally themselves with, but in this game that divergence is far more drastic far earlier into the game, with the game’s three stories becoming completely different after just a few initial prologue stages.

Fans of the Fire Emblem series’ Game of Thrones-esque political machinations and especially those who enjoyed the plot of Fire Emblem: Three Houses will find Three Hopes’ story to be of particular interest, as it provides a different look at the characters and world of Three Houses, showing players three more paths the story could take if an entirely different protagonist was involved in the struggles of the game’s characters.

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A Fired-Up Presentation?

Of course, it’s not just the story that this game takes from Fire Emblem: Three Houses – this game also makes good use of that game’s visual aesthetic, with similar cel-shaded 3D characters. Having said that, Fire Emblem: Three Houses wasn’t exactly known for being a graphical powerhouse, and thankfully Three Hopes steps things up a bit by having battlegrounds take place in somewhat more interesting locales early on, most notably having players running through towns and labyrinthine castles. And of course, being a more action-focused game, Three Hopes has some nice effects for characters using various special attacks. These attacks are pretty over-the-top compared to the somewhat more grounded action of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but they are par for the course in a Warriors-style Musou game.

On a technical level, however, this game isn’t likely to impress anyone. While this game does a good job recontextualizing the art style of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, it’s hard to ignore the aliasing in the cel-shaded visuals, the frequently barren environments, and the occasional slowdown you encounter during busy moments. To some extent, this is all to be expected – both Fire Emblem Warriors and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity suffered from many of these issues as well, but it’s still disappointing to see how little things have progressed. At the very least, I can say that this game’s framerate issues don’t seem anywhere near as severe as Age of Calamity’s troubles with framerate drops, but it’s still not great.

I should also note that this game features the same high quality voice acting from its large cast of characters, as well as an outstanding soundtrack comparable to what was in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, albeit much more intense to reflect the greater focus on action, and with more drums and electric guitar to go with the militaristic orchestral sounds this time around. A few great examples of this are multiple versions of Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ excellent theme, Fódlan Winds (Fódlan Winds (Embers), Fódlan Winds (Inferno), and The Apex of the World (Inferno)), as well as Tearing Through Heaven (Embers), Shambhala – Phase 3 (Inferno). In short, while this game may not always look great, it sounds fantastic.

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Gameplay Befitting a Warrior?

Putting aside the presentation, the gameplay retains pretty much everything that the original Fire Emblem Warriors did to combine the Fire Emblem franchise with the Musou genre, including the weapon strengths and weaknesses, the ability to pair units to combine their strength, and the ability to pause the action to direct your units strategically on the map (which is far easier to parse in this game than it was in the first Fire Emblem Warriors). None of this drastically takes the game away from its fun (but somewhat shallow) Musou gameplay that has players fighting hordes of enemies at a time, but it places it within a greater context that gives players more strategic options to control the battlefield.

However, what’s new this time around, beyond the better focus on story, is the way this game changes the structure in-between missions to better resemble Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Now, rather than simply choosing options from within menus and playing whatever missions you want, Three Hopes has players progressing in a more linear fashion that forces them to carefully decide how to spend their limited time to develop their army, and how to best foster relationships within that army. Even more than the first Fire Emblem Warriors, this game tasks players with being thoughtful about the strategy behind their choices.

And of course, before concluding this review, I once again have to mention the split-screen local multiplayer mode, which is once again a joy to play, as always, despite that it largely seems like an after-thought, as always. However, this time around the more linear nature of the game and how it limits resources, along with the way the game encourages you to keep stopping the action to give instructions to your troops, may make this multiplayer gameplay less fitting here than it usually is in these Warriors cross-over games. On the other hand, I noticed far less of a hit to the framerates than these games usually get in split-screen multiplayer… though the amount of pop-in did become noticeably worse. On balance, I’d say this is an improvement, though it’s still not ideal.

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Is it Emblematic of a Success?

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes succeeds brilliantly in some areas, and it falls a bit flat in other areas. By this point, I think we’re all probably used to the places where the game doesn’t succeed – its technical shortcomings are expected for these Warrior crossover games on Nintendo Switch, and the somewhat shallow nature of the gameplay is… well, it is a Musou game, after all. However, while Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes doesn’t ascend above these shortcomings any more than any other Musou game does, it still gives players an excellent combination of the over-the-top Musou action and the more strategic elements the Fire Emblem franchise brings to the table. And this time around it does so while fixing some of the flaws in the first Fire Emblem Warriors, most notably in providing players with a far more interesting and engaging story. As a result, while this game doesn’t do anything to truly change the Musou genre, this is nevertheless a game that fans of the genre will definitely want to play, and one that fans of Fire Emblem: Three Houses will want to look into as well.

tl;dr – Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes evolves the first Fire Emblem Warriors’ combination of Musou-style Action Brawler gameplay and strategic elements, pairing it with an excellent alternate story using the world and characters from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The Musou-style gameplay is still somewhat shallow, and the game still has some technical issues, overall this is a fun action-packed experience that both Musou fans and Fire Emblem fans will want to get.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Action Game, Best Action-RPG

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

Genre: Action Brawler

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

While the Fire Emblem Warriors games didn’t suffer nearly as much as Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity when it came to the limitations of the Nintendo Switch hardware, the massive number of enemies on-screen at any given time along with the explosive effects of larger attacks could make for moments of slowdown. With this being the case, it seemed prudent to check these games out and see how they perform on Nintendo Switch 2.

After checking out Fire Emblem Warriors, I expected the story to be similar in Three Hopes – stabilized framerates, improved loading times, and that’s about it. However, I was absolutely surprised to find that things are different this time around.

First, the loading times, while improved here, don’t see nearly as much improvement as the original Fire Emblem Warriors. On Nintendo Switch, it takes 40 seconds to load to the opening logos when first starting a game, and 3 seconds to load into a level. On Nintendo Switch 2, that is cut down to 33 and 3. Not much of a difference.

However, where the original Fire Emblem Warriors saw framerate improvements on Nintendo Switch 2 in the form of no more slowdown, here not only is the slowdown gone, but the framerates are overall improved to a full 60FPS, making the game play much more smoothly. This is true even in 2-player split-screen. What’s more, when playing on Nintendo Switch 2, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes doesn’t throttle the framerate of distant enemies, making the game overall look less choppy.

Three Hopes also sees improvements to resolution on Nintendo Switch 2, although this is far more subtle, and mainly due to the original game’s use of dynamic resolution, which is brought up to the max of 1080p docked and around 648p in handheld mode here.

Overall, this is a huge improvement over the way the game plays on Nintendo Switch, and I would argue it’s the most-improved Nintendo-licensed Warriors game on Nintendo Switch 2. True, Age of Calamity needed the improvement the most, but Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes doesn’t just see rough edges smoothed out on Nintendo Switch 2, it is actually improved. This is definitely worth a look if you enjoy “musou”-style Action games!

tl;dr – Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes evolves the first Fire Emblem Warriors’ combination of Musou-style Action Brawler gameplay and strategic elements, pairing it with an excellent alternate story using the world and characters from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The Musou-style gameplay is still somewhat shallow, but overall this is a fun action-packed experience that both Musou fans and Fire Emblem fans will want to get, and its performance is notably improved by the jump from Nintendo Switch to Nintendo Switch 2.

Grade: A-

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