Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes on Switch
I must admit, The Dark Knight was the last thing I expected to pop in my head as I was powering through Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. And yet, the more I played and the further I got into the game, that little voice in my head just kept going, “Stop pretending to care. Just get the job done and move on.” I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point, my brain started to shut out all the pleas for help from faceless citizens, and my sole focus was on trying to reach the end point as quickly as possible.
But I suppose I should start from the beginning.
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, as the name suggests, is a Warriors-style spin-off game based on Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It’s not a prequel or a sequel, though; it’s more of a retelling of the events of Three Houses, allowing players to view the story from a completely different perspective.
Instead of playing as Byleth, the kindly professor who just wants the best for all their students, you take control of a new character named Shez, a mercenary who finds themselves recruited into Garreg Mach as a new student. From there, you can then choose a house to join: the Black Eagles, the Blue Lions, or the Golden Deer.
The other key difference lies in the style of combat. Three Hopes makes use of the hack-and-slash action combat we’ve seen in all of Koei Tecmo and Omega Force’s Warriors games. You have a light attack and a heavy attack, as well as a special Warrior attack that you can use whenever your Warrior gauge fills up. You’ll spend most of your time spamming the attack buttons and cutting through waves and waves of enemies, while seizing strongholds and taking down enemy boss units.
Just like the original Fire Emblem Warriors, Three Hopes also sprinkles in a few tactical elements to keep the Fire Emblem spirit alive. You can have four playable characters on the battlefield in every stage (eight in main story battles, but you’ll only be able to switch between four of them), and you can swap between them anytime you want. While you’re in control of one character, you can bring up the map and issue orders to your other three characters, instructing them to defend a position or seize a stronghold, or guard or attack a unit.
There’s quite a bit of micro management involved, especially in the story battles, which often come with multiple main objectives for you to pursue. As your goals are constantly changing in the middle of battle, you’ll often find yourself going back to the map screen to hurriedly issue orders to your units. Someone needs to prevent this stronghold from falling, someone needs to take down this Gremory to stop the fire orbs from pelting our troops, someone needs to escort that citizen to safety, the list goes on.
There’s plenty to do outside of combat as well, and there were way more team-building aspects and upgrade components than I was initially expecting. Class promotions are back as expected, where you can upgrade a character’s class once they’ve mastered their current one. Going further than that, however, you can also upgrade each individual character’s tactics.
Once you’ve gained access to the Tactics Instructor back at your camp, you can spend money to strengthen your characters in various ways. For instance, you can give them up to three Warrior gauges, give them access to more Vulneraries in battle, and eventually you’ll even be able to unlock unique passive skills for each one of them and limit break their stats.
With the ability to recruit characters from other houses along the way, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes quickly turns into a team-building dream where you can party up with your favorite students and strengthen them up to become unstoppable powerhouses. A lot of the usual Fire Emblem-isms help to keep Three Hopes enjoyable, and even the story came as a pleasant surprise.
While I was most definitely bummed that we wouldn’t get Byleth as the main protagonist, the other Garreg Mach students more than made up for it. During my playthrough, I sided with the Black Eagles (because of course I did), and it was wonderful to reconnect with my faves all over again. There aren’t quite as many support conversations as there were in Three Houses, but the ones in Three Hopes are still really fun to watch.
Dorothea’s still a total sweetheart who will never pass up the chance to show off her singing chops, Bernadetta’s still ridiculously terrified of everything that moves, and Hubert’s still a total dick. I’ve missed my Black Eagles, and while I’m not the biggest fan of new protagonist Shez –who’s just a little bit too over-the-top anime in design– for my liking, it was nice to watch the characters bounce off them as a fellow student, instead of as a professor that they looked up to.
I should also note that most of the characters have new post-timeskip designs, some of which look way better than their Three Houses counterparts, while others are kind of a miss. I’m a huge fan of new emo Hubert, for instance, but Edelgard’s new look is significantly less badass than that whole awesome Adrestian Empire look she had going for her in Three Houses.
Without giving too much away, the story itself is serviceable for the most part. The story beats will feel very familiar to those who have played Three Houses, but there are a few significant differences that stem from the change in protagonist. I’m in the camp of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and personally, I found the Three Houses storyline to be pretty much perfect the way it was. As a retelling of that story, I couldn’t help but feel that Three Hopes really fell short in some aspects, though it does try its damndest to throw in a few surprises and twists to mix things up.
Ultimately, it’s a fun romp, but the bland main character (both in personality and in design) made certain bits fall a little flat for me.