Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Hopes Preview

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Back to Fodlan: The action spin-off lets you trim hordes of enemies in the world of Fire Emblem – Three Houses and entices you with three completely new stories.

All screenshots and game scenes are from GamersGlobal

The Studio Omega Force by Koei Tecmo once again brings the well-known mass brawl of the warriorsseries in a Nintendo universe. The first two collaborations between these companies, Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriorswildly mixed figures from all possible parts The Legend of Zelda– respectively FireEmblem together. This was followed Hyrule Warriors – Season of Calamity (in the test, grade 8.0) that is the history of Breath of the Wild swirling around in an alternate timeline.

And as with the step from the first to the second Hyrule Warriors, the new one is now dedicated Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Hopes the most recent offshoot of the main series, in this case the Switch pearl Fire Emblem – Three Houses (in the test, grade 9.0). I’ve already put a double-digit number of hours into the action spin-off and can say in this preview: Whoever has grown fond of the continent of Fodlan and the inhabitants of its three realms can look forward to Three Hopes.

The new main character Shez (purple hair) has the choice of which of the three established key figures Dimitri, Claude and Edelgard to join.

Everything will be different

Instead of reenacting the well-known story of Three Houses in a beating guise, you change the events with a new player character. She is called Shez by default and is a mercenary depending on your preference. The analogies to the main game hero(ine) Byleth don’t end there: Shez also has a mysterious being in Arval, whose voice only he can hear and who saves his life at the beginning of his life. Because if you remember: At the beginning of Three Houses Byleth was also a mercenary and in the prologue of Fire Emblem Warriors it would almost have happened to Shez if Arval wasn’t there. Before Byleth, Shez then meets the three known leaders of the Garreg Mach military academy’s student houses and joins one of them. So there are multiple story paths again.

Shez is schooled in Garreg Mach and then the events very quickly take a drastically different course: Each house has a smoldering conflict that is already established in the lore, but which did not (or not so soon) heat up in the main game. The military academy will soon have to conclude that. After a time jump of two years, you find yourself as a mercenary in the service of your house leader and from now on you fight small skirmishes on the world map that pave the way to the big story battle of each chapter.

Regarding the mechanics: Basically, you play Shez and the other members of the house you have joined in a third-person view and dish out plenty of cheeky fodder with exaggerated attacks. As in the previous Fire Emblem Warriors, you can bring in other fighters as your aides, who will occasionally join the fight. And just like you had Sheikah modules available in Era of Cataclysm, you now use the weapon maneuvers of the main game, but they reduce the durability of your weapon. The characters each have the move set of their current class, but some characters like Shez have unique classes.

Red areas must be conquered on each chapter’s map screen by winning a short battle. After the victory, rewards can be collected in the other small buildings in the zone (sometimes only in exchange for items).

Spear vs Sword vs Axe

Most missions and story battles send you into typical Warriors-style battles, where you gain the upper hand by capturing strongholds across the map, while dynamic events keep mixing up the dull-fun brawl. A special feature is, as in the predecessor, that the rock-paper-scissors principle of spears, swords and axes from Fire Emblem was adopted. It is therefore worth setting up a well-mixed squad at the beginning of the mission and issuing attack and defense commands to the characters that you do not control yourself, or using maneuvers or special weapons to inflict massive damage on specific units such as horsemen or Pegasus knights. Likewise, monstrous giant enemies appear that have multiple health bars, but also have four weak point meters that are emptied by given weapon or element types and thus additionally weaken the enemy.

Similar to the exploration of Garreg Mach, you can talk to your fellow combatants in the camp, deepen the relationship with them through meals together or expeditions and coordinate the training. The latter allows your fighters to master their classes faster and is a simplified version of the Three Houses lesson. Another twist on the main game: instead of killing enemy generals from other houses, you’re free to recruit them. But for this you must have collected enough strategy resources on the world map. To do this, you level up your warriors’ weapons, skills, coat of arms and much more.

Visually, the characters have the familiar style of Three Houses. The environments are only roughly modeled, but they are partly one-to-one conversions of the 3D sets from the template. And while Hyrule Warriors has had to struggle with inconsistent performance, Three Hopes has made a good impression in this regard so far – even in split-screen co-op.

Author: Hagen Gehritz (GamersGlobal)

Opinion: Hagen Gehritz

Fire Emblem Warriors is my favorite part of the Warriors series so far thanks to its gentle but fun strategy parts. I also loved Fire Emblem – Three Houses, especially for the lore and characters. So I’m really looking forward to Three Hopes and what I’ve seen so far has exceeded my expectations.

At its core, of course, there is only the well-known Warriors principle with its motivating masses of opponents, but the core is repetitive and only occasionally demanding constant beating. Also, the truckload of level-up opportunities across dozens of resource types may be overwhelming for some. But Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes offers all the subtleties in the combat system that have further expanded the attack repertoire in previous parts of the series. While most of the characters don’t have a unique moveset, each of the numerous fighters does bring their own special features: an active ability, bonuses for attack and defense orders, and finally special effects for wielders of those crests that play such a big part in the story of Three Houses.

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If I didn’t expect much from the story before, I was pleasantly surprised how the developers of Three Hopes took the opportunity to actually let previously only mentioned characters appear and to further develop other details of the lore and the involvement of the numerous noble families. If the story of Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Hopes pulls through this on the initial level, it’s going to be a fanservice celebration like no other, and as a dedicated fan, my heart swelled playing this preview.

FE WARRIORS – THREE HOPES