The best (and worst) of both worlds.
Persona 5 Striker, Hyrule Warriors: The Age of Disaster, and now Fire Emblem Warriors: Among the three hopes, Omega Force dresses up the gameplay of the Shin Sangoku Musou series to some other perfect imitation. A franchise style that has earned a lot of mileage from its abilities. Unlike the original Fire Emblem Warrior, Three Hope fully adopts the settings and aesthetics of Fire Emblem Three House and acts as an alternative version of the event depicted in the game. As a fan of both Fire Emblem and Warriors games, I’m very happy with the results. Three Hopes shares many of its predecessor’s greatest strengths, but sadly it also shares many of its predecessor’s weaknesses.
When you think of the Warriors game (also known as the Musou game), you probably think of one powerful soldier tearing the entire army of sissy in a big, flashy, special move. You probably think of a fortress that must be captured by defeating the captain, and a powerful boss enemy with a radial stamina bar that will take great damage when the bar is exhausted. Three Hope is not far from its formula. In this respect, it has something in common with Age of Calamity’s classic Dynasty Warriors-style missions, rather than the fully explorable dungeons of Persona 5 Striker.
However, these basic gameplay mechanics are the only ones that this game has in common with other Musou games. In almost every other respect, Three Hopes is surprisingly similar to the original Fire Emblem: Three Houses. In between battles, walk around the camp, talk to army characters, and get a perspective on how the event unfolds. Full-length support to train units, learn different skills and weapon proficiency (similar to the Three Houses classroom), do chores to build bonds between characters, and learn about each character and their relationships. Witness the conversation. A little better.
In combat, the ability to issue commands directly to AI control units is becoming more important. This isn’t a new feature in the Musou game, but it’s more valuable in Three Hope due to the rock-paper-scissors effect of Fire Emblem’s weapon triangle. It is of great value to locate the unit on the order screen and guide the unit around the map to reach the goal, as you can be confident that the sword-using unit will defeat the ax-wielding enemy. This is necessary if you want to aim for the highest ranking in each mission. This is because it is very rare for a particular battle to have only one goal to complete.
The biggest innovation is the structure of how side missions are directly integrated into the progress of the main story. Each chapter has a war map with a clear battle zone between the camp and its main purpose. Each zone represents a quick side mission that defeats some minor enemies, possibly rescues one or two villagers, collects resources, and boosts the unit’s power along the way. To achieve your main goal and play your next story mission, you need to complete enough combat zones to clear the path for your army to advance. Theoretically, this is about the same setting as the Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity, which had side missions on the overworld map that drops resources. In fact, by integrating these side missions into the progression of the main story, you can give a sense of purpose, not only an obstacle to getting the specific character upgrade you need, but also something. You can feel like you’re achieving it.
Of course, Three Hope also emphasizes the story. Cutscenes are as frequent and long as three-house, and plots share many of their predecessor’s strengths and weaknesses. The Three House cast is one of my favorite casts throughout the franchise, taking advantage of Fodoran’s rich folklore and world-building to create stories with epic military bets and dramatic political plots. To do. In many ways, I like the story of Three Hope better than Three House. Because the progress of the war and the strategies being implemented by each faction are much more interesting and easier to understand this time around.
Sadly, like Three House, Three Hope can’t stick to the story in many big ways, and large plot threads can’t rush to give a satisfying solution, It will be completely abandoned. Note that we only played Scarlet Blaze, one of the three routes in the game. Also, one playthrough took more than 60 hours, so mileage may differ on other routes. But after a solid 55 hours of game lovers, in the last 10 or so, I scratched my head and thought, “Wait, that’s it?” If you miss the optional “True Ending Chapter”, the game’s plot threads are even less and it’s easy to miss it. Therefore, it’s a good idea to ruin yourself how to unlock these chapters.
The final big question of Three Hopes is how it works on Switch. Switch’s Musou game shows fairly inconsistent performance on Nintendo’s handheld. The multi-platform Persona 5 striker managed a nearly stable 30 fps on the switch, but the Age of Calamity struggled to reach the 30 fps limit. Three Hope targets the ambitious 60fps, but the word “target” puts a lot of strain on it. UI elements and menus consistently reach their full 60fps numbers and run butter smoothly. Of course, these menus aren’t really what you’re here, and the reality can often be disappointing. During combat, you often hover at a frame rate of about 30 fps. The exact frame rate can fluctuate quite a bit in the range of 35-25 fps, but as the action begins to get fierce, you’ll see a pretty big drop, as expected. With a flashy special move, the frame rate is a big hit at a low 20 fps, but the moments that are likely to cause even bigger drops are more stable and can maintain a value fairly close to 30.
If there are very few characters displayed on the screen, the height of the game can reach as high as 40 fps. At some point, the camera was zoomed in on one character’s model, and I was able to find the game running on the record, with no one in sight. Height of 50! Wow!
The game is technically better than the Age of Calamity, which struggled to reach the 30fps hard cap, but an unlimited frame rate can make things worse with Three Hope. The average frame rate can be high, but the drops are often much larger, and a 30fps cap can help mitigate this. If you want to find the bright side, once the Switch Pro is real, the unlimited frame rate will be of great help to this game, but until that day it’s full 60fps.
After all, Fire Emblem Warrior: Three Hopes lived up to my expectations, but after the first impression of the star from the demo covering the first four chapters, I made the mistake of expecting more. did. The scale and depth of the game’s commitment to match the style and structure of the three-house brought a very pleasing surprise and sadly even more disappointing when the ending flattened. Almost overnight, I didn’t get enough of the game, so I wondered if I could play another of the three story routes in the game. Three Hopes is a must-see for both Fire Emblem and Dynasty Warriors enthusiasts, but it’s not very committed to the scale of the story, and the last time it was poor and not a painful drug to swallow. hoping. ..
