An action-packed reunion.
Throughout its rich history, developer Omega Force has been the dominating team behind the Musou genre, creating action-packed games where you often destroy thousands of enemies on screen with a single character, racing back and forth between objectives, capturing bases, and vanquishing elite foes with often a single button press. While its own Dynasty Warriors franchise has been largely inconsistent, Omega Force’s attempts at integrating well-known franchises into this format have been far more successful, likely the result of having to work within set limitations set forth by the license holder. And while Three Hopes is far and away more enjoyable than the original Fire Emblem Warriors, its drawn-out story and repetitive mission structure significantly hold it back.
Many of my issues with Fire Emblem Warriors were based on how bland and largely boring its story was, how some of the best Fire Emblem characters were not well utilized and the lead characters, who were created solely for that title, were lacking across the board. The mission variety was not terribly great, and while the game did its best to integrate a lot of the core Fire Emblem systems, it just didn’t breathe enough life into what the game ended up needing.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes; however, addresses almost every major concern or criticism I had by adapting much of its story from Three Houses in an almost alternative reality version showing new perspectives and storylines that while familiar, certainly kept my interest in the same way Three Houses did only a short few years ago. And, like its companion title, features three different routes to pursue, allowing you to tackle the game in triplicate all while steering it into wholly different scenarios and outcomes based on your choice of house. It also gives you a chance to revisit some of the best characters across the franchise one more time. Now, all that said, the story can certainly drag, largely due to how core missions are the only ways in which that story unravels, and are only accessible after completing much of that chapter's lesser and more repetitive missions.
While the repetitive nature of how the missions are structured is as bland as most Musou games tend to be, the sheer variety of classes, abilities, and characters can often perform just enough heavy lifting for me to forgive some of it, but not enough for me to simply give it a free pass. Three Hopes is a enjoyable experience for what it does within the Three Houses framework, giving me almost everything I was hoping for, but lacks the type of gameplay variety that Omega Force brought with the likes of Age of Calamity and Persona 5 Strikers, their two previous titles that are significantly superior.
Three Hopes borrows a massive amount from Three Houses, and considering that Intelligent Systems assisted on the title, it is not that surprising. Apart from how battles take place in terms of gameplay, as there is still much of the same strategy to explore, a great deal of what you experienced in Three Houses is here in some capacity. This also includes nearly every character contained within that story and its DLC, as well as the often deep and complex systems built around relationships, classes, and customization. I will stress that there is an unfortunate lack of a true romance system as Shez cannot actively romance anyone, which is a shame since it is truly a Fire Emblem staple. Sure, I got a letter from Hapi at the end of my journey, but it just doesn’t quite hit the same.
While Three Hopes can get bogged down in an excessive amount of tutorial prompts and systems menus in the game’s first few hours, you’ll often find the game to be incredibly simple in regards to the overall gameplay loop, especially when compared to Three Houses. While battles are where the gameplay does distance itself from the turn-based combat of the mainline series, you still have the ability to engage in conversations with your companions to increase your bond with them, outfit them with stronger weapons and accessories, cook and visit with them, and put them through rigorous training to advance their class. While these systems all return from Three Houses, they do so away from the academic structure of the school, thus simplifying them.
Like Three Houses, the story still revolves around a young mercenary attending the Officer’s Academy at Garreg Mach Monastery, but you’ll do so as newcomer Shez and not that of Byleth. While Shez, who you can choose as either male or female, is certainly a better protagonist than those in Fire Emblem Warriors, their detachment from everything and everyone can offer the flexibility to adapt to the story at hand but sadly this doesn’t give them much purpose than just being a hired gun you control around the more interesting characters. They have this history of being a mercenary, and that does play into how the game sets up their past and their backstory, but they often came across as just being a carbon copy of Byleth, without the story having to be about them once again.
Like Byleth, you are gifted strange powers by a mysterious entity that initially pits you against Byleth for a solid portion of the game. Eventually, you’ll reach a point where you’ll need to make a choice about how to deal with said confrontation, something that will determine how some of the last few chapters, and your ending, play out. While you will join the academy as a student this time, instead of being a professor, your time at the school is cut short as the game quickly jumps ahead two years as the political turmoil sets the stage for the remainder of the game.
Like Three Houses, you are welcomed into the Officer’s Academy, and you’ll be asked to join one of three houses; Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer. For a more detailed breakdown of the setup of its world and the Monastery, check out my review for Three Houses as a great deal of the setup and structure are essentially borrowed and repurposed here, whereas the only big change is that you take on the role of Shez and that Byleth is a character that the students only know of as the Ashen Demon.
Depending on your choice of house is where the story will diverge from the game’s opening moments. Each route will take Shez to that side of the war, as well as which students are along for the ride. As I loved my time with the Black Eagles in Three Houses, I had to stick to that path, as its collection of students were my favorite characters by a mile. Still, that didn’t stop me from poaching my fair share of rival students as the missions went on, including another of my favorites from the Three Houses DLC, Hapi. This allowed me to build up my force substantially, allowing me to have my pick of students to bring with me, each tailor-made for the mission at hand as I would swap their classes and properly equip them. Still, despite how big my force grew, I often stuck to a half dozen that I would swap out here and there, building them up, increasing their attack power, and promoting them to their more powerful classes.
My time with the Black Eagles saw Edelgard growing her empire, taking out force after force, recruiting new allies, and defeating those that stood in her way. While the storyline of Shez’s mysterious benefactor, the entity named Arval that granted them this power was present for some of the story, I was surprised that how minimal their involvement truly ended up being for well over 20+ hours of simply being there for contextualizing some moments more so than being the driving force of them. While it all eventually bears fruit in the last few moments, it felt so drastically underwhelming and the pay-off just didn’t contribute to anything memorable. That said, the narrative spun around Shez and her involvement in aiding Edelgard was mostly great, as is the way that I chose to deal with Byleth, all leading to a pretty satisfying end, it’s just a shame that Shez’s arc wasn’t given that same depth.
The story itself is largely told through cutscenes that take place before and after each battle, illustrating the political chess game that I was making as I would conquer fort after fort, noble after noble. The approach here is pretty much identical to that of Three Houses as you’ll often make dialogue choices that can either move the conversation around or play to the favor of certain characters, increasing your bond with them. While a lot of the presentation is identical, there is certainly a graphical boost to the clarity of the character models here, coming across with far more color and vibrancy. While I’ll dive a bit more into the game’s visuals later, know that your favorite characters now look better than ever.
The gameplay loop in Three Hopes repeats itself for the entirety of its 35+ hours, as my overall run time was just under 39, and that is with tackling every single mission that was presented to me. While some of the game’s special missions also rely on which characters you have in your party, I ate up everything given to me, but largely because I needed all the materials, resources, and gold that came my way as to level up benched characters, buy gifts to swoon my favorites, or upgrade and tinker with their weapons and classes.
The game is split into several chapters, which have you working through a few generic mission nodes as you work your way towards the core mission that pushes the story forward. You’ll stumble across side quests that have a mission timer to even reach them, but these often repeat throughout the entire game, complete with them being on the same maps against the same enemies almost a dozen times over. As you conquer locations on the map, you’ll unlock resource hubs where you’ll earn materials and items that you can use to upgrade facilities around your main camp that in turn allow you to learn new classes, increase a merchants selection, or boost the ability to earn supplies between each mission.
After a hard-fought battle, you’ll return to the base camp, allowing you to use those resources to aid in making your companions stronger or earning their favor. As mentioned previously, you can tinker with their classes, put them through training to make them stronger, or treat them to a meal as you try your hand at cooking. Each chapter resets their dialogue to allow for newer and more involving conversations, as well as being able to give them gifts or take them out on an expedition, which is Three Hopes’ take on Tea Time. You can also deal with a bit of commerce in the shops, repair and enhance their weaponry, equip battalions to assist them in battle or earn rewards as you gain Renown, a currency given to you as progress throughout everyday tasks.
This level of depth of interacting with its cast of characters is taken pretty much exactly from Three Houses, albeit a bit slimmer in its execution as you’re not teaching them or shaping their future. Each chapter resets the number of times you can cook, perform chores with your companions or train them, and you’ll earn the ability to tackle more of these tasks as time goes on. While you can retreat back to the base camp at any time, you’ll likely perform everything you need to do at the start of the chapter and only return to check in on your supplies, upgrade your weapons, or spend the Seals needed to play around with the numerous classes. Thankfully, you can fast travel to any shop or character, making navigating the base camp as fast as you’d want it to be.
Musou games often have large segmented maps that contain forts, elite enemies, and objectives that open up the map further. Three Hopes is this in a nutshell and leans heavily on this formula without detouring too much to shake things up. This means you’ll be regularly taking out smaller stations that pump out enemies, forts that come protected by a fairly challenging captain, to interacting with switches to open doors, or having to stop assassins from taking out key players on the map. You’ll often have to send someone to escort a VIP or race across the map to stop a sudden ambush, and the controls to instruct your companions is typical of what we’ve seen Omega Force do previously, but entrusting mission-critical objectives can often be less reliable due to some often lacking AI of your teammates or them not utilizing their power as effectively as they could. While upgrading their inventory and skills can sometimes help them get over a challenge, you also need to pay attention to their tactics, which can be upgraded at the tactics academy, as these can often cause your party members to pull their weight far more, despite the sometimes braindead AI getting in the way.
The combat nature of Three Hopes is exactly what you expect from a Musou experience with the trappings of the Fire Emblem series. Certain weapon types are better against others and some classes can have you mounted atop a horse or wyvern, giving you extra speed to traverse the map or flying over gaps that on-foot troops cannot progress through. Each class allows you to equip specific skills that all have their own range as well as strengths and weaknesses, as well as an accessory, which for myself, was always set to the swift speed ring that allowed me to almost float around the map as I would sprint. This accessory became so crucial as the blistering speed of how fast Shez would move around literally ruined almost every other character for me, often since they would move at a snail’s pace compared to what I was doing with Shez. It was night and day.
The overall combat itself is what you come to Musou games for as you hack and slash and dominate dozens upon dozens of soldiers in a single slash, repeating your strikes until hundreds of enemies are destroyed in a grand spectacle of powers and abilities. To that end, combat here is solid, instantly satisfying, and the variety of classes allows you to find your favorite mix of power and structure.
While much of the combat is based around simply hitting the Y button over and over again, there are combo attacks with the X button and special abilities to shake up that repetition. You can always have two special abilities equipped called Combat Arts or Combat Magic that are based around each weapon type. And, as you break their defenses, you can then press X to perform a special attack to likely finish them off. Combine that with air recovery skills, special attacks, as well as using Shez’s power via their Awakening ability, and you have a pretty diverse selection of attacks for what a Musou game naturally offers. It’s not a hugely deep system when compared to traditional action games, but it does keep combat flowing and the fights constantly energetic.
Another way to build up a bond between Shez and another character is by selecting someone as their adjutant. If you approach an allied unit, you can assign them as your adjutant, having them join Shez as one overall unit. With an adjutant assigned, damage dealt to enemies will fill the adjutant attack gauge, and as you take damage, or dish it out, you’ll also fill the adjutant guard gauge. Their use will provide a stat boost to you and defeating more challenging enemies will result in their bond increasing. You can also perform a partner special, even if it is simply their special attacks one after another instead of a legitimate team-up attack. Considering the vast amount of combinations there could be, I am not surprised at how this was simplified.
While Shez has their own element of power with Arval, several students will have Crest abilities that are their own central source of powerful stat buffs. Edelgard, for example, has two passive crest abilities; Crest of Flames, which gives a 20% chance to recover their own HP when landing a strong attack, as well as Minor Crest of Sieros, which gives a 25% chance to slightly increase the damage dealt by combat arts. Not every student has these, so it’s worth building your team with those that do, unless, of course, characters like Dorothea, Petra, and Shamir are among your must-have party members. Every character has their own special attack called an action ability such as Shamir adding ice with her attacks or Dorothea spawning musical notes around the battlefield that send shockwaves when the notes are attacked.
Now, while the variety of skills, classes, and attacks all service the gameplay rather well, the overuse of maps, objectives and the function of each standard mission is where the game can often become the same thing over and over again. While these missions are generally filler to level up your characters and earn currency and items to help you later on, they lack any narrative or structure to make them stand out. Main missions; which also allow you to choose eight party members instead of the standard four, often have gimmicks or the ability to choose special strategies like having a group of archers at the ready during a pivotal moment in the mission, special paths built to alter the map’s layout, or recruiting new students should you have met the criteria to do so. You’ll earn this currency to choose these options as you complete the rinse and repeat standard missions, so they at least serve that purpose as well.
Despite moving around the war map to push the story forward, swooping in to help your allies, or clearing out a fort of a rival faction, you often revisit a lot of the same locations, performing the same objectives, and this can often get tiring when you have a game that is nearly 40 hours long. The main missions are guilty of this as well, but they at least shake up some moments of the rinse and repeat structure whereas the standard missions before those are often joyless, despite how engaged I was with the story and its gameplay. I would often speed through later missions ignoring the side objectives because they often granted me the same resources and items that I had an abundance of, especially as I only really focused on about a dozen of my entire party members.
While the load times are something i wasn’t expecting to be so quick, with missions and the basecamp often loading in less than three seconds, the visual component to Three Hopes comes with both some good and some bad. Nearly anything to do with core characters, cutscenes, menus, and the flashy attacks you can pull off all look incredible, the environments themselves; however, don’t have that same punch to them. While seeing the same locations over and over again can lessen their appeal, the environments just don’t look great and are often bland, drab, and lacking the color and vibrancy of the characters that fill them. The fast loading times are certainly appealing, but I would have certainly waited for longer if the locations simply looked better.
Apart from the pretty noticeable pop-in and stutter in the split-screen co-op mode, which unlocks a few missions in, Three Hopes ran surprisingly well. During my entire single-player run, I didn’t experience any slowdown or framerate issues, and 95% of my time was playing on the Switch OLED in portable mode. Even using the limited fast travel system in missions was instant and loading in was met with zero pop-in or any sort of technical issue. I’ve heard other outlets talking about poor performance, but honestly, I never experienced a single pixel of anything.
Fire Emblem Three Hopes is certainly a better experience than its first outing, but doesn’t evolve to where it could have been, especially with Age of Calamity and Persona 5 Strikers showing us that Omega Force can break that mold and create fresh new experiences that still hint at their Musou origins. Still, with a wonderful cast of characters and three storylines to push through, there is a lot here to take in, despite the repetitive grind that can exist due to some locations being visited far too often and the AI often having you tend to every critical matter. Three Hopes won’t change your mind on Musou’s or be what you want from it, but its treatment of Three Houses is superb, and spending more time with some of these characters is time well spent.
Developer - Omega Force. Publisher - Koei Tecmo / Nintendo. Released - June 24th, 2022. Available On - Nintendo Switch. Rated - (T) Alcohol Reference, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch OLED. Review Access - Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes was purchased by the reviewer.