Clickbait title: Fire Emblem Warriors if it wasn't terrible.
Revisiting FEW1 and finding it lacking in some- most- every aspect actually put a downer on my desire to play Three Hopes again, because I'm frankly not sure I have it in me to find out the game I once called the best Musou was bad.
Fortunately, I don't have to! Three Hopes is mostly great.
On the gameplay front, Thropes has traded out FEW's snappiness and relative speed for more deliberate and weighty combat. There's a greater spectrum of unit speed in terms of both movement and attacking here, which keeps the classes from feeling homogenous.
Instant skills from Pirate Warriors 4/Warriors Orochi 4/Samurai Warriors 5 have made their appearance in this game too, adding a little extra flavour and maybe some extra weakness exploits to keep things fresh. You only get two, though; no stacking 4 separate elements to instakill enemies.
What really makes the game feel phenomenal, though, is that every character has a unique ability that implicitly encourages the player to experiment, to find out the best class/weapon combo that'd augment their skill.
Take Sylvain, for instance. He's 'supposed' to be a mounted lancer unit, but... Gordian Stroke, his unique ability, boosts range and damage significantly as his combo count increases. Two buffs that apply to projectiles, meaning he's actually better off as an archer thanks to his ability to attack from several postcodes away.
Or you could take Caspar, a musclehead who's meant to be a high damage axe unit, but due to how his charge attacks work is actually much better suited to be a mage with some investment.
I could go on forever. The core here is one of those days.
Compared to FEW the strategy elements feel much less bolted-on, in part because every character has an oft-ignored Tactical Skill that gives them distinct roles and bonuses when commanded. While this can seem like a lot of numbers, the end result is less babysitting. Unlike its predecessor, maps actually feel designed to accommodate strategizing and those S Ranks come much easier if you split up like the Mystery Gang.
Really, though, the star of the show here is the blend of musou gameplay and Fire Emblem character building. Class changing is back after a grotesque absence in FEW and it requires markedly less investment than in mainline games. You are free to dick around and feel out certain class/skill/weapon combos, which will be necessary on higher difficulties because unlike FEW simply stacking more attack bonuses won't help. Hope you memorized the weapon triangle!
You'll note that I keep referencing FEW more than Three Houses despite this game fusing both, and we'll get to that later. First though, I keep referencing FEW because a lot of this game reads like Omega Force learned all the right lessons from the first game. Class changes are a thing, the weapon triangle isn't horribly unbalanced against you, Lords don't dominate entire missions, missions have way more variety, swords aren't omnipresent, weapons actually mean something... It is a total fixup of the last game's issues.
"So what's the downside?"
In my last review, I said that FE Warriors failed because the FE half of the game was lacking. Thropes has thirds; Warriors, Fire Emblem, Three Houses.
The Warriors third is fantastic. The Fire Emblem third is phenomenal. The Three Houses third is... perfect.
Hold your horses, because that's not blind praise.
Three Houses is a game of many, many issues. It is absolutely my favourite FE game and one of the most influential titles I've ever played, but it is a messy and incomplete game oftentimes characterized not by what it has but what it doesn't. It is a game where exceptional character writing and worldbuilding manage to solve stories that are at best boring and at worst terrible. It is a game where songs from the greatest Nintendo Game OST ever released are scores for some of the most narratively unsatisfying scenes you as a human will ever see.
Three Hopes, then, is a perfect adaptation of Three Houses.
On the character front, the supports are interpersonal interactions are better than ever. Annoying traits and poor-taste jokes are thrown to the curb, meaning people like me can listen to Bernadetta's supports without craving a cyanide milkshake, and characters like Raphael are now possessed of an actual character. In general, the sole word needed here is 'refined'. The supports were already 3H's best part and here they're better, although I do miss some of the darker ones like Sylvain's.
And Claude! Claude is a real character now! Not just a ghost from a rocky developmen! And he is an asshole, oh my god. It's great! Pre-release materials for 3H were very insistent that he was a sleekit scheming wee bastard, but this never manifested in the actual game.
It's on full display in this game though and arguably makes him the most detestable of the lords? He makes Edelgard seem like a moderate sometimes and I'm all for it. It's frankly kind of nice to have an asshole protagonist, and though the term "morally grey" is fast becoming a pointless buzzword alongside "media literacy", his route in this game is really murky.
But this is a tale of higher highs for lower lows, and the actual storylines are reprehensible. You know it's bad when I, notorious Golden Deer disliker, think their route is the best.
I hate using "fanfic" as a derogatory term, but as a fanfic writer who's been at it since 2011 I think I have a right to say: The storywriting in this game is on par with every other ~Alternate Universe~ fanfic. Like AU fanfics, Thropes is a story for people who just do not want to engage with any darker parts of 3H's story, and in picking a faction you are essentially choosing which one will be aggrandized so hard as to be infallible.
Do you pick the Black Eagles? Cool, Edelgard is now free from Those Who Slither In The Dark, and her crusade against the other factions is now entirely clean because TWSITD have been meddling elsewhere. You can even end one sub-war if you make a certain choice.
Do you pick Golden Deer? Cool, you're just playing Three Houses' Golden Deer route again, except this time Claude arbitrarily dislikes Rhea despite being privy to nearabouts the same amount of information as his 3H counterpart. At least the final boss isn't as badly justified.
Do you pick Blue Lions? Cool, the narrative sands off every bad thing about Faerghus, corrals all the remaining bad eggs into a basket for Dimitri to smash, and just... Look, the real reason I used 'fanfic' as a perjorative up above is because this route reminds me of particularly bad fanfiction. In an attempt to make the story work within its confines, characters are hammered into holes they aren't necessarily meant to fill, and while 'character assassination' is a really intense term, I feel it applies here.
This segment is longer than the other two, and that's because while those routes are bad but inoffensive, this route displays a peculiar attitude towards the Blue Lions that simultaneously feels like contempt and veneration. If you bring this route up online you'll likely see people call it out of character, and this is the one time where popular opinion and mine are harmonious.
And the original elements running through the story, centered on newly arriving protagonist Shez and their psychic barefoot service toy Arval, are... Odd. They feel decidedly thrown in, and the resolution to their arc actually leaves more questions than answers. Part of this is due to the fact that everything regarding them is spoken in that particularly annoying Vagueity Vagueness cadence that makes so much amateur mystery fiction fucking unbearable yet is sadly omnipresent here.
All of this, ultimately, does make Thropes a true successor. I love Three Houses, but I'm not going to pretend the overarching story of any arc is any good. This game is just the natural conclusion to it; ostensible fanservice muddying the waters of a game that was already an hour out from being a Snowrunner map.
...
But it's still Fodlan, man, and I love it. The worldbuilding is as tight as ever and it capitalizes on some branches left behind in Three Houses to do some exceptionally fun stuff within the setting's confines. Many maps offer a newer look at some locations only glossed over or alluded to in the original. The inspired architecture, outfits, weapon design, it's all here.
And the music. My god, the music. I recently booted up Three Houses to test how it emulates via dumping my copy directly, and the menu music made me tear up. That's what happens when you play a game for 80~ consecutive NG+ cycles!
Three Hopes carries on its legacy with some truly inspired remixes and fantastic original tracks, including one for Byleth and an amazing medley of leitmotifs that occur in the secret chapter. Particular shoutout to Wrath Strike's remix, which includes a fucking guitar solo, or the jawdropping Apex Of The World remix which actually made me tear up the first time I heard it? Legendary stuff.
Despite the thrashing I gave the story up above, I really don't hold it against this game because bad stories are just Fodlan's legacy. It is everything else that gave it a permanent place in my heart, and through the good parts Three Hopes elevates itself to the peak of the musou pile.
Also you get Rhea as a postgame unit and it's confirmed she wears toenail polish, so no matter what I was always coming out of this game as a winner.
Edelgard was right btw.
Revisiting FEW1 and finding it lacking in some- most- every aspect actually put a downer on my desire to play Three Hopes again, because I'm frankly not sure I have it in me to find out the game I once called the best Musou was bad.
Fortunately, I don't have to! Three Hopes is mostly great.
On the gameplay front, Thropes has traded out FEW's snappiness and relative speed for more deliberate and weighty combat. There's a greater spectrum of unit speed in terms of both movement and attacking here, which keeps the classes from feeling homogenous.
Instant skills from Pirate Warriors 4/Warriors Orochi 4/Samurai Warriors 5 have made their appearance in this game too, adding a little extra flavour and maybe some extra weakness exploits to keep things fresh. You only get two, though; no stacking 4 separate elements to instakill enemies.
What really makes the game feel phenomenal, though, is that every character has a unique ability that implicitly encourages the player to experiment, to find out the best class/weapon combo that'd augment their skill.
Take Sylvain, for instance. He's 'supposed' to be a mounted lancer unit, but... Gordian Stroke, his unique ability, boosts range and damage significantly as his combo count increases. Two buffs that apply to projectiles, meaning he's actually better off as an archer thanks to his ability to attack from several postcodes away.
Or you could take Caspar, a musclehead who's meant to be a high damage axe unit, but due to how his charge attacks work is actually much better suited to be a mage with some investment.
I could go on forever. The core here is one of those days.
Compared to FEW the strategy elements feel much less bolted-on, in part because every character has an oft-ignored Tactical Skill that gives them distinct roles and bonuses when commanded. While this can seem like a lot of numbers, the end result is less babysitting. Unlike its predecessor, maps actually feel designed to accommodate strategizing and those S Ranks come much easier if you split up like the Mystery Gang.
Really, though, the star of the show here is the blend of musou gameplay and Fire Emblem character building. Class changing is back after a grotesque absence in FEW and it requires markedly less investment than in mainline games. You are free to dick around and feel out certain class/skill/weapon combos, which will be necessary on higher difficulties because unlike FEW simply stacking more attack bonuses won't help. Hope you memorized the weapon triangle!
You'll note that I keep referencing FEW more than Three Houses despite this game fusing both, and we'll get to that later. First though, I keep referencing FEW because a lot of this game reads like Omega Force learned all the right lessons from the first game. Class changes are a thing, the weapon triangle isn't horribly unbalanced against you, Lords don't dominate entire missions, missions have way more variety, swords aren't omnipresent, weapons actually mean something... It is a total fixup of the last game's issues.
"So what's the downside?"
In my last review, I said that FE Warriors failed because the FE half of the game was lacking. Thropes has thirds; Warriors, Fire Emblem, Three Houses.
The Warriors third is fantastic. The Fire Emblem third is phenomenal. The Three Houses third is... perfect.
Hold your horses, because that's not blind praise.
Three Houses is a game of many, many issues. It is absolutely my favourite FE game and one of the most influential titles I've ever played, but it is a messy and incomplete game oftentimes characterized not by what it has but what it doesn't. It is a game where exceptional character writing and worldbuilding manage to solve stories that are at best boring and at worst terrible. It is a game where songs from the greatest Nintendo Game OST ever released are scores for some of the most narratively unsatisfying scenes you as a human will ever see.
Three Hopes, then, is a perfect adaptation of Three Houses.
On the character front, the supports are interpersonal interactions are better than ever. Annoying traits and poor-taste jokes are thrown to the curb, meaning people like me can listen to Bernadetta's supports without craving a cyanide milkshake, and characters like Raphael are now possessed of an actual character. In general, the sole word needed here is 'refined'. The supports were already 3H's best part and here they're better, although I do miss some of the darker ones like Sylvain's.
And Claude! Claude is a real character now! Not just a ghost from a rocky developmen! And he is an asshole, oh my god. It's great! Pre-release materials for 3H were very insistent that he was a sleekit scheming wee bastard, but this never manifested in the actual game.
It's on full display in this game though and arguably makes him the most detestable of the lords? He makes Edelgard seem like a moderate sometimes and I'm all for it. It's frankly kind of nice to have an asshole protagonist, and though the term "morally grey" is fast becoming a pointless buzzword alongside "media literacy", his route in this game is really murky.
But this is a tale of higher highs for lower lows, and the actual storylines are reprehensible. You know it's bad when I, notorious Golden Deer disliker, think their route is the best.
I hate using "fanfic" as a derogatory term, but as a fanfic writer who's been at it since 2011 I think I have a right to say: The storywriting in this game is on par with every other ~Alternate Universe~ fanfic. Like AU fanfics, Thropes is a story for people who just do not want to engage with any darker parts of 3H's story, and in picking a faction you are essentially choosing which one will be aggrandized so hard as to be infallible.
Do you pick the Black Eagles? Cool, Edelgard is now free from Those Who Slither In The Dark, and her crusade against the other factions is now entirely clean because TWSITD have been meddling elsewhere. You can even end one sub-war if you make a certain choice.
Do you pick Golden Deer? Cool, you're just playing Three Houses' Golden Deer route again, except this time Claude arbitrarily dislikes Rhea despite being privy to nearabouts the same amount of information as his 3H counterpart. At least the final boss isn't as badly justified.
Do you pick Blue Lions? Cool, the narrative sands off every bad thing about Faerghus, corrals all the remaining bad eggs into a basket for Dimitri to smash, and just... Look, the real reason I used 'fanfic' as a perjorative up above is because this route reminds me of particularly bad fanfiction. In an attempt to make the story work within its confines, characters are hammered into holes they aren't necessarily meant to fill, and while 'character assassination' is a really intense term, I feel it applies here.
This segment is longer than the other two, and that's because while those routes are bad but inoffensive, this route displays a peculiar attitude towards the Blue Lions that simultaneously feels like contempt and veneration. If you bring this route up online you'll likely see people call it out of character, and this is the one time where popular opinion and mine are harmonious.
And the original elements running through the story, centered on newly arriving protagonist Shez and their psychic barefoot service toy Arval, are... Odd. They feel decidedly thrown in, and the resolution to their arc actually leaves more questions than answers. Part of this is due to the fact that everything regarding them is spoken in that particularly annoying Vagueity Vagueness cadence that makes so much amateur mystery fiction fucking unbearable yet is sadly omnipresent here.
All of this, ultimately, does make Thropes a true successor. I love Three Houses, but I'm not going to pretend the overarching story of any arc is any good. This game is just the natural conclusion to it; ostensible fanservice muddying the waters of a game that was already an hour out from being a Snowrunner map.
...
But it's still Fodlan, man, and I love it. The worldbuilding is as tight as ever and it capitalizes on some branches left behind in Three Houses to do some exceptionally fun stuff within the setting's confines. Many maps offer a newer look at some locations only glossed over or alluded to in the original. The inspired architecture, outfits, weapon design, it's all here.
And the music. My god, the music. I recently booted up Three Houses to test how it emulates via dumping my copy directly, and the menu music made me tear up. That's what happens when you play a game for 80~ consecutive NG+ cycles!
Three Hopes carries on its legacy with some truly inspired remixes and fantastic original tracks, including one for Byleth and an amazing medley of leitmotifs that occur in the secret chapter. Particular shoutout to Wrath Strike's remix, which includes a fucking guitar solo, or the jawdropping Apex Of The World remix which actually made me tear up the first time I heard it? Legendary stuff.
Despite the thrashing I gave the story up above, I really don't hold it against this game because bad stories are just Fodlan's legacy. It is everything else that gave it a permanent place in my heart, and through the good parts Three Hopes elevates itself to the peak of the musou pile.
Also you get Rhea as a postgame unit and it's confirmed she wears toenail polish, so no matter what I was always coming out of this game as a winner.
Edelgard was right btw.
2 Comments
@MeowPewterMeow Be warned that if musous aren't to your taste, this is one at its core despite the excellent wrappings.
MeowPewterMeow
2 months ago