Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Review – Repetitive Yet Satisfying

If you’ve been listening to the Nintendo Entertainment Podcast over the last few months, you’ll know that Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes has been on my “most-anticipated list” for some time, and now, after 31 hours…I’ve completed exactly one path. Yes, that’s how long it took me to beat just one side of this game. So as you read this Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes Review, please take heart in knowing that I will play those other paths… even if it’s more of a slog than a fun grind.

Game Name: Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: Intelligent Systems/Omega Force
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: 6/26/22
Price: $59.99

I’ll keep this mostly light on spoilers for the “Azure Gleam” path because, again…that’s the only path I was able to get through in my two weeks with the game. But the main story plays the same at the beginning. You are the mercenary Shez (or whatever you decide to name yourself). After a fight with the “Ashen Demon” that wipes out your entire mercenary group save for you, you promise yourself and your new mysterious “partner in destiny” Arval that you’re going to get stronger so that you can fight the demon one day and win. This inadvertently sets you on the path of a set of familiar faces (See: Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude), and you once again have to choose what path to go on.

I chose Dmitri’s path because I loved the Blue Lion’s storyline in Fire Emblem Three Houses, and I equally enjoyed it here. What’s more, Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes (just like Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity before it) did the right thing by embracing the world, by changing/improving the story of the paths in order to make things feel fresher. For example (still not a spoiler), you aren’t going to be a professor in the game; you’re going to be a fellow student in the house of your choice. Then, certain circumstances will happen that’ll force a two-year time gap, and when that happens, Shez becomes a lead general in the army you’re not a part of.

These subtle differences open up a large part of the fun in this game. Not just because She is a new character and has a completely different personality than Byleth (and actually talks to everyone this time), but because the story plays out so differently that you don’t really know where things are going to go. Furthermore, certain characters that had a smaller role before (or straight-up died before) are more fleshed out here. For example, in Azure Gleam, we learn more about the woman known as Cornelia, who is an essential enemy. Felix’s dad Rodrigue is also much more involved in the storyline than before.

Finally, and this is a spoiler, so you’ve been warned, fans of Three Houses know that a “key transformation” for Dmitri was going from the “hopeful but burdened” leader of the Blue Lions, to the “Mad King” obsessed with nothing but blood and death, to eventually becoming the “Righteous Leader” of Faerghus, his home kingdom. In Three Hopes, they don’t let him become “the boar” in full. They tease it, and show parts of it at times, but a key arc is that his friends and advisors, and council ensure that he knows that the burden isn’t his alone to share. Together they can make a better world without having to wipe out everyone. It’s a nice twist, and he’s not the only one who “grows up” is arguably a better way than in Three Houses (See: Sylvain).

Per the standard Dynasty Warriors affair, Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes brings the 1v1000 gameplay to life, and I won’t lie, when it’s on point, it’s really on point. Every person on your team plays like an individual. Even when you have similar characters in terms of magic (for Azure Gleam, Annette and Mercedes are both magicians to start), they play differently. Mercedes was more of a healer, while Annette could be more offensive-minded. What’s more, the characters you get will have different “paths” for the most part, and that’ll help change up the moves they get, their final “Warrior” attacks, and so on.

One thing I fully appreciated was the true imbuing of Fire Emblem gameplay into the game. You’ll be leveling up characters as well as improving their classes over time. You can constantly manage the weapons they use, the abilities they have, and the special attacks they can wield to ensure that you have the best “version” of them at every time. Furthermore, in the “story battles”, you’ll be able to unlock strategies that you can use to help you turn the tide of battle or recruit enemy characters. I recruited all but two Black Eagles members and got all four Ashen Wolves in my Azure Gleam run. This was good because it gave me a more robust roster and some of my favorite characters to talk with.

For those curious, yes, the support conversations do shed new light on the various characters of the game, and as you also likely know, you can boost your “Supports” with them via having them as your partner in battle or by working with them on chores, eating meals with them, training with them, or taking them out on “Expeditions”, which are basically the tea times like before. Also, a small spoiler, while they don’t show it as much as in Three Houses, you can get married to a character in the game after you do a certain thing. I chose Petra for my run because…well, she’s awesome.

It’s actually really fun to see all that transferred over from Three Houses into Three Hopes because it is a lot for better or worse. You’ll want to talk with everyone before you set out on missions, and build up your supports, so you know exactly what talking with each of these characters is like. And getting to see the expanded characters who were only mentioned in the main game adds new layers and dynamics to things that are truly wondrous.

Also back are paralogues, where you’ll take a certain number of characters on a mission that is important to them. They can really change up the pace of the game…and you will need that at times.

Easily my biggest critique in this Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes Review is that of the repetition of gameplay between main story missions. To be clear, I’m not talking about the 1 vs. 1000 gameplay overall because if you play it right…that’s not going to bother you too much. Rather, I’m talking about the missions you can do in order to progress to the main mission. For in Three Hopes, you’ll be given a set of places to fight on, and you’re expected to fight on many of them in order to progress.

At first, it’s not too bad, as you’re trying to level up, feel out the characters you have, and more. But over time…it gets really dull to have to go through mission after mission after mission just so you can do an even BIGGER mission for the story. Furthermore, many of these missions play out the very same way in terms of getting strongholds, killing key characters, and so on. Sometimes they even abandon the mission you were just doing to suddenly give you an “easy out” to advance. If there were only a true handful of these missions per chapter?

I wouldn’t mind. But when you’re sometimes doing 8-11 missions per chapter, and all but one pretty much play out the same? That’s a problem. I honestly went back to my Age of Calamity review to see how I talked about things there, and you could hear that I didn’t mind the missions in that game because they were laid out differently. I only occasionally got frustrated with the options there, whereas here…I was all but begging to get to the end quickly.

Another key issue is that at times the game pretty much overloads you with things you need to both remember and remember to do. You have a plethora of materials you’ll collect in the game so you can get weapons, buy items, upgrade facilities (which is its own annoyance at times), and more. Yes, this is what you did in Three Houses, but it felt less chaotic there. There were times I forgot to do the most basic of things, but I was trying to get through missions to progress. Even basic stuff like training sometimes were made pointless because everyone already ‘mastered’ their classes, and you’re basically doing it then for the support conversations.

In terms of the battles themselves, a key difference between this and Age of Calamity is that you’re almost always controlling a set of four characters. All the time. When you have a big roster full of competent characters? It can be a drag to try and give them all their due, and sometimes it can backfire based on the maps themselves. Then for the big fights you can have eight characters…but only be able to swap to four of them, and you WILL forget to swap the formation so that you can get the four characters you want to control. While you do get to guide the others, they aren’t always as effective as you want them to be.

No doubt the biggest problem in terms of gameplay, though, is the camera and lock-on system. In the game, you’re told to click one of the control sticks to lock onto an enemy, and the camera will ensure you always see your foe. Except, I can’t tell you how many times I clicked on that stick with my enemy right in front of me, and the system sent me looking at someone else! Sometimes it was someone who was literally dozens of feet away! Then I had to unclick and hope my next click would do a true lock-on. The camera didn’t help at times either with its sometimes wild swinging.

Finally, in terms of criticism, the ending of Azure Gleam was fine, yet also lacking in a true ending (just like what happened with Three Houses). While I won’t spoil it, a key victory was had, and things seemed to be progressing. Then the narrator noted that the fighting continued for reasons unclear. Furthermore, a key storyline was brought up by Claude as to what would happen AFTER the war…and it’s just left hanging there. What did Dimitri and Claude do after that war was over? We’ll never know.

In conclusion, I hope this Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes Review highlights my true feelings about the game. It is a wonderful experience, and even with the repetitive nature of things, I didn’t want to just stop due to being bored. I was never bored, but I did want things to go a bit quicker. The Warriors-style gameplay hits new heights with certain things, but it falls into familiar traps that hurt the overall experience.

Still, if you loved Fire Emblem Three Houses, you’ll definitely want to give Three Hopes a try just to have a fresh look and journey with these beloved characters and their world.