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Will Three Hopes be like Age of Calamity?


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I'm pretty excited for the release of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes since it includes the Three Houses cast, which made this game an easy preorder, though I have to wonder if this game will be somewhat similar to Age of Calamity.

Now, Three Hopes being like Age of Calamity isn't a deal breaker for me, I just hope that the game doesn't share my opinion of Age of Calamity. 

Age of Calamity isn't a bad game by any means, and I rather enjoyed the gameplay and additional characters that were included (playable champions + successors, Zelda, and King Rhoam were great additions, even if I still stuck with my man Link for most of the game), but Age of Calamity's story kind of ruined the game for me, since (potential spoilers):

Spoiler

Instead of playing out the events that happened 100 years ago and linking up with the memories in Breath of The Wild, Age of Calamity chooses to instead go with a what-if route and have Link, the 4 champions + successors, Zelda and Co. take down Calamity Ganon an entire century before he's supposed to be defeated (at least in the Breath of The Wild timeline). I suppose this was done so that the game could have a good ending, but I would've much preferred that the game ended like Breath of The Wild showed it in one of Link's final memories from 100 years ago.

Now, I'm not against what-ifs or alternate timelines, since I enjoyed games like Dead Rising 2: Off The Record, Fire Emblem Fates, and Fire Emblem Three Houses. I just prefer that a game stick with a canon timeline if there is one in order to maintain consistency (except for the newer Fire Emblem games, as I don't mind it as much with this series). 

It looks like Three Hopes will offer 3 different routes to play, just like Three Houses did. Since Three Houses was split up into different routes already, it's not an issue for me here, unlike Breath of The Wild, which has one, clear path for you to take (regarding Link's ultimate goal of taking down Calamity Ganon. Everything else he does it up to player choice). Age of Calamity let me down a bit in regards to this, given how BotW's events (including what happened 100 years ago) play out. 

As for gameplay, I'm sure that Three Hopes is similar to Age of Calamity in that aspect, given that they're both Dynasty Warriors-style games (like their predecessors, Fire Emblem Warriors and Hyrule Warriors respectively). I haven't played Fire Emblem Warriors, so I'm not sure if it'll play out more similarly to that or Hyrule Warriors in regards to its gameplay. 

I'd say that as long as Three Hopes doesn't do what Age of Calamity did in regards to its story, I'll be fine with the changes in plot, as long as it doesn't veer too far off course.

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I've actually more-or-less already made this prediction:

On 4/13/2022 at 4:22 PM, Florete said:

Had a shower thought so I begrudgingly watched the trailer again. It didn't change anything, though.

Everyone is saying this will be an alternate timeline, but what if Three Hopes is actually a sequel? Your first question to that idea is probably "But which path would it be a sequel to?" Easy, it's a sequel to the path that correlates with whichever path you choose in Three Hopes. If you choose Scarlet Blaze, it's a sequel to Crimson Flower, etc.

So how does it end up as a "sequel" when we clearly see younger designs? Time travel, of course. My idea is that Larva will create some time shenanigans that result in Shez saving the house leaders from the bandits instead of Byleth, thus leading to them replacing Byleth as professor a student at Garreg Mach. Byleth is going to be put in the villain role from Shez's and the students' perspectives, but it will ultimately be revealed to have been a sinister moustache-twirling plan from Larva, who will be the villain in the end and will have inadvertently created a better future for everyone else. Only Byleth, Sothis, and Larva will remember the original history.

There are two problems I can think of:

EDIT: Technically these are not problems with my prediction, as Three Hopes needs to address these regardless based on what we see from the trailers. I will leave them in this post, though.

Three Houses has a clear epilogue and character endings that detail pretty far into the future, which would all basically be retconned. But hey, Age of Calamity did something similar, so I wouldn't put it past them. Paired endings, at least, can probably be brought over, since they might not want people to feel like their ships have been sunk.

Jeralt's role. Based on the first trailer he clearly has a role, and it would be weird for him, as a past Knight of Seiros, to stand by as his child becomes the enemy of Garreg Mach. It would also be weird for the Knights of Seiros, who hold Jeralt in high regard, to fight him and his child without question. Maybe he dies very early and that shot from the first trailer is Sothis or someone literally reviving him to help Byleth.

I don't think the reaction will be like it was (for some) with Age of Calamity, though. AoC presented itself as a prequel and ended up as a sequel. Three Hopes is presenting itself more as an AU (but also not clearly stating one way or another). The major difference is that AoC promised players the chance to experience something that had happened in canon and then didn't fulfill that promise (at least not in the way some people wanted), while Three Hopes is promising a brand new story, and it will be a brand new story regardless of if it's an AU or a sequel.

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I'm less worried about the story. Outside of Persona 5 Strikers, no Warriors game has ever told a competent original narrative.

 

What I'm more worried about is structural issues. Age of Calamity had a lot of unfun objective types (generic arenas, "don't get hit," and divine beast missions), and even the normal Warriors style maps were usually devoid of strategy as your AI allies were basically unkillable and the maps weren't designed with enough objective pressure to encourage issuing commands. And don't get me started on the absurdity of having to seek out hidden collectibles in a genre all about time efficiency.

 

Three Hopes has only shown off regular maps with the very little we've seen so far, thankfully, and the triangle should keep the strategy intact. Let's just hope that it avoids AoC's worst modes, as well as the worst modes from FEW (arena, escape, and especially escort the villager).

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As far as gameplay goes I hope Three Hopes doesn't take after Age of Calamity when it comes to time management. At times BOTW Warriors was far too reliant at just artificially increasing the difficulty by adding a strict timer around everything rather than actually making things challenging. It was my greatest problem with the game. Having to constantly worry about a timer going down just takes away the fun, and can get frustrating when you fail a stage you've been nailing just because an overly strict timer runs out. 

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1 minute ago, Etrurian emperor said:

As far as gameplay goes I hope Three Hopes doesn't take after Age of Calamity when it comes to time management. At times BOTW Warriors was far too reliant at just artificially increasing the difficulty by adding a strict timer around everything rather than actually making things challenging. It was my greatest problem with the game. Having to constantly worry about a timer going down just takes away the fun, and can get frustrating when you fail a stage you've been nailing just because an overly strict timer runs out. 

Generally, Warriors games are really good about timers that enhance the experience rather than detract (S ranks in FEW feel good AND they're realistic) though there are certainly poorly balanced timers in the series. For example, I fail to see how the S rank timers in Arslan are even friggin possible, and the game constantly throws them at you.

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8 hours ago, CyberZord said:

Age of Calamity isn't a bad game by any means, and I rather enjoyed the gameplay and additional characters that were included (playable champions + successors, Zelda, and King Rhoam were great additions, even if I still stuck with my man Link for most of the game), but Age of Calamity's story kind of ruined the game for me, since (potential spoilers):

  Reveal hidden contents

Instead of playing out the events that happened 100 years ago and linking up with the memories in Breath of The Wild, Age of Calamity chooses to instead go with a what-if route and have Link, the 4 champions + successors, Zelda and Co. take down Calamity Ganon an entire century before he's supposed to be defeated (at least in the Breath of The Wild timeline). I suppose this was done so that the game could have a good ending, but I would've much preferred that the game ended like Breath of The Wild showed it in one of Link's final memories from 100 years ago.

 

That was my biggest problem with Age of Calamity and was a massive deal-breaker for me. The only reason I was interested in Age of Calamity was that Nintendo falsely-advertised it as a prequel to BOTW; when I found out the truth, I thought, "There goes the only reason I was interested in the game" and didn't purchase it. To this day, I still don't understand why they did that; Torna: The Golden Country is proof that Nintendo is willing to make tragic prequels (yes; I know that game was made by Monolith Soft, but they're owned by Nintendo).

 

However, Three Hopes is already presenting itself as a what-if story with a new protagonist and doesn't seem to have any pretentions of being anything more than that; I don't really see how they could've made anything else given Three Houses' narrative and multiple routes.

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40 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

That was my biggest problem with Age of Calamity and was a massive deal-breaker for me. The only reason I was interested in Age of Calamity was that Nintendo falsely-advertised it as a prequel to BOTW; when I found out the truth, I thought, "There goes the only reason I was interested in the game" and didn't purchase it. To this day, I still don't understand why they did that; Torna: The Golden Country is proof that Nintendo is willing to make tragic prequels (yes; I know that game was made by Monolith Soft, but they're owned by Nintendo).

 

However, Three Hopes is already presenting itself as a what-if story with a new protagonist and doesn't seem to have any pretentions of being anything more than that; I don't really see how they could've made anything else given Three Houses' narrative and multiple routes.

That is the thing. What even is canon in a game that has multiple equally-canon routes as is.

 

If this is, say, a time travel story in which Byleth goes back to save Jeralt by saving Monica, that's totally feasible canon, but it also doesn't make any existing routes less canon. Those attempts at time travel may ultimately still fail to save Jeralt at the end of the game, or they may have other unintended negative consequences, thus explaining why Byleth allows the current routes to play out as they do.

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4 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I'm less worried about the story. Outside of Persona 5 Strikers, no Warriors game has ever told a competent original narrative.

I'd say Warriors Orochi 3 was pretty good. And the original Hyrule Warriors was serviceable enough.

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55 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I'd say Warriors Orochi 3 was pretty good. And the original Hyrule Warriors was serviceable enough.

I mean, it was pretty good. Serviceable. That's the nature of Warriors storytelling. It's fun and inoffensive. I don't even think AoC has a bad story (even if it isn't what I wanted to see), because I don't have a high opinion of mainline Zelda's rudimentary, sparse storytelling as is.

 

I do think Three Hopes will have the best story in a musou game. Because Three Houses has been Koei Tecmo's baby from the start. They know this world, they helped make this world, and they respect this world. I daresay they were probably at least considering this spinoff followup from the start.

Edited by Fabulously Olivier
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It's definitely gonna be the AOC of Three Houses. We're already getting elements of the "perfect timeline" with Monica being playable and the lords working together for some reason.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm more worried about it emulating the gameplay of AOC than the story beats.

I really did not like AOC's enemy variety, map design, pacing, or character balancing at all. It was all style, no substance.

I'm a little cautious because we haven't even seen solid gameplay footage beyond seconds-long clips.

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19 hours ago, Anomalocaris said:

I'm more worried about it emulating the gameplay of AOC than the story beats.

I really did not like AOC's enemy variety, map design, pacing, or character balancing at all. It was all style, no substance.

I'm a little cautious because we haven't even seen solid gameplay footage beyond seconds-long clips.

Let's not forget how passive enemy AI was, runes shared cooldowns, viability was based mostly on how good your bomb and stasis runes were, how complete garbage aerials were, and juggling basically wasn't a thing. Oh and for some reason they decided to make weak point gauge reveal's duration scale with the difficulty mode....so a ton of characters are just straightup bad on higher difficulties because of that, or movesets falloff solely due to the WPG reveal being shortened, when they were fine before, such as 2H Sword on Link. I honestly consider it the worst of the crossover musou games, at least of ones that have gotten localizations

Edited by Vexal
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38 minutes ago, Vexal said:

Let's not forget how passive enemy AI was, runes shared cooldowns, viability was based mostly on how good your bomb and stasis runes were, how complete garbage aerials were, and juggling basically wasn't a thing. Oh and for some reason they decided to make weak point gauge reveal's duration scale with the difficulty mode....so a ton of characters are just straightup bad on higher difficulties because of that, or movesets falloff solely due to the WPG reveal being shortened, when they were fine before, such as 2H Sword on Link. I honestly consider it the worst of the crossover musou games, at least of ones that have gotten localizations

No way was it worse than the original Hyrule Warriors. Given it's enemy AI is just as passive, items are awkward to use and you're a sitting duck while using them, limited time to find golden skulltukas, and half the cast is hard to use because of how gimmicky they are.

Age of Calamity has at most maybe 3 characters that are difficult to use, but the remaining 90% of the cast is very easy to use.

Runes sharing cooldown is hardly a drawback given it barely takes anytime and prevents spamming them.

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1 hour ago, Sentinel07 said:

No way was it worse than the original Hyrule Warriors. Given it's enemy AI is just as passive, items are awkward to use and you're a sitting duck while using them, limited time to find golden skulltukas, and half the cast is hard to use because of how gimmicky they are.

Age of Calamity has at most maybe 3 characters that are difficult to use, but the remaining 90% of the cast is very easy to use.

Runes sharing cooldown is hardly a drawback given it barely takes anytime and prevents spamming them.

Not what I mean by passive AI; the AI pretty much never goes for your bases, so lose conditions just don't exist outside of a select few missions. The reason for this, is the worse version of the Skultullas; the Korok seeds, as there's so dang many and they made the maps massive to account for them. And honestly, the only movesets in FEW that are hard to use are Epona and Summoning Gate. There are a huge number of bad movesets however, especially in basegame, which is one thing AoC mostly improved on....so long as we ignore the rune system, which is inherently flawed by the shared cooldowns and everyone having unique runes.

AoC has a similar amount of hard to use characters (at least not counting DLC, never bought the DLC for the game), being Teba and Riju....at least Teba was a case where the damage output made up for how difficult they were to use?

If you had a bad bomb rune or a stasis rune that wasn't dodge cancellable you were already considered bad when compared to anyone where those runes were good regardless of the rest of your moveset. Because of the shared cooldown, this also meant you couldn't make use of them for crowd clearing or clever use in combos, which some of the cryonis and bomb runes were designed for :V

Edited by Vexal
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On 5/15/2022 at 7:44 PM, Vexal said:

Not what I mean by passive AI; the AI pretty much never goes for your bases, so lose conditions just don't exist outside of a select few missions. The reason for this, is the worse version of the Skultullas; the Korok seeds, as there's so dang many and they made the maps massive to account for them. And honestly, the only movesets in FEW that are hard to use are Epona and Summoning Gate. There are a huge number of bad movesets however, especially in basegame, which is one thing AoC mostly improved on....so long as we ignore the rune system, which is inherently flawed by the shared cooldowns and everyone having unique runes.

AoC has a similar amount of hard to use characters (at least not counting DLC, never bought the DLC for the game), being Teba and Riju....at least Teba was a case where the damage output made up for how difficult they were to use?

If you had a bad bomb rune or a stasis rune that wasn't dodge cancellable you were already considered bad when compared to anyone where those runes were good regardless of the rest of your moveset. Because of the shared cooldown, this also meant you couldn't make use of them for crowd clearing or clever use in combos, which some of the cryonis and bomb runes were designed for :V

I don't have enough time/mastery of AoC (because I freakin hate it) to comment on the nuances of the rune system and how it effects character balance. I'll only say that it's 10x better and more fluid than the gadget system in OG Hyrule Warriors and its jank-ass item menu. 

 

However when it comes to the AI, I 100% agree. Age of Calamity is a boring game. Your objectives are almost never under any degree of pressure, the only reason to ever swap travel is that its maps are huge voids of empty space, and allied AI are both useless and nigh-invulnerable. It's everything I don't play musou games for.

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Gold skulltulas would have been trivial to get with unlimited time, like what would even be the point? Judging where they are from sound quickly before the timer ticks down was a big part of the fun.

Also I definitely agree with this:

On 5/17/2022 at 10:49 AM, Fabulously Olivier said:

However when it comes to the AI, I 100% agree. Age of Calamity is a boring game. Your objectives are almost never under any degree of pressure, the only reason to ever swap travel is that its maps are huge voids of empty space, and allied AI are both useless and nigh-invulnerable

To be clear, I still liked AoC pretty well; the core combat is definitely quite fun, but the map aspects are pretty snooze-worthy, while HW1's were an absolute blast. HW1 is still my favourite Warriors game despite not having a large amount of affection for Zelda. Really hope that Three Hopes can recapture some of that magic for me, at least on its harder difficulties.

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On 5/4/2022 at 3:05 PM, Seazas said:

It's definitely gonna be the AOC of Three Houses. We're already getting elements of the "perfect timeline" with Monica being playable and the lords working together for some reason.

Well, Three Hopes is confirmed to have three different routes to take just like in Three Houses, so I wonder how the routes will turn out considering that there's no real canon to base the game on outside of maybe Part 1, which (nearly) plays out the same no matter what. Worst case scenario in my eyes is if every route ends up being a "perfect timeline" route in some way or another.

On 5/17/2022 at 11:49 AM, Fabulously Olivier said:

However when it comes to the AI, I 100% agree. Age of Calamity is a boring game. Your objectives are almost never under any degree of pressure, the only reason to ever swap travel is that its maps are huge voids of empty space, and allied AI are both useless and nigh-invulnerable. It's everything I don't play musou games for.

I can attest to that. I remember having one of the playable allies at very low, near-death levels of health, but they never lost a single bit of HP when I switched to a different character. It's crazy how the AI is practically invincible but also useless in battle when you're not playing as them (they hardly do anything, really). 

Since Three Hopes is a sequel to Fire Emblem Warriors just like how Age of Calamity is a sequel to Hyrule Warriors, what things from FEW would you like to see added/removed/improved upon in Three Hopes? I never played Fire Emblem Warriors (Is it worth buying? Or should I just stick to Three Hopes?), but I'm pretty sure it was kind of similar to Hyrule Warriors. You seem to be a fan of Dynasty Warrior series, so I'd like to hear your "hopes" for Three Hopes.

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2 minutes ago, CyberZord said:

Since Three Hopes is a sequel to Fire Emblem Warriors just like how Age of Calamity is a sequel to Hyrule Warriors, what things from FEW would you like to see added/removed/improved upon in Three Hopes? I never played Fire Emblem Warriors (Is it worth buying? Or should I just stick to Three Hopes?), but I'm pretty sure it was kind of similar to Hyrule Warriors. You seem to be a fan of Dynasty Warrior series, so I'd like to hear your "hopes" for Three Hopes.

Well, the biggest issue the original game had was its questionable roster, an issue which this game is conveniently sidestepping by being up-front about focusing singularly on Three Houses. The thing I most wanted in a FE Warriors sequel was some reclassing mechanic, which this game is also conveniently introducing, so... I guess I just wanna see them keep a lot of the mechanics from the previous game and build upon them.

I'd like if they don't bother with a Casual/Classic mode split; it was completely pointless back in the first game (because by nature of the genre they can't permanently take characters away from you, all Classic Mode does is instead add a money penalty to resurrect "dead" characters). Just have the game be Casual Mode by default, and include a difficult side-mode where you play several maps in a row and any character deaths you suffer are retained from one map to the next. That can be the permadeath reference.

As for whether or not you should play Fire Emblem Warriors... that depends. Is the fact that the roster is entirely Shadow Dragon, Awakening, and Fates a dealbreaker for you? If not, then yes, I recommend it strongly. The gameplay is really solid, a vast improvement over Hyrule Warriors. All of the movesets feel satisfying to use, combat with enemy captains is much less of a slog, there's only one Giant Boss and it's much less tedious to deal with than Gohma or The Imprisoned, and there's a ton of quality-of-life improvements like not cluttering the battlefield with loot drops and making it easier to get max-power weaponry.

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3 minutes ago, CyberZord said:

Well, Three Hopes is confirmed to have three different routes to take just like in Three Houses, so I wonder how the routes will turn out considering that there's no real canon to base the game on outside of maybe Part 1, which (nearly) plays out the same no matter what. Worst case scenario in my eyes is if every route ends up being a "perfect timeline" route in some way or another.

I can attest to that. I remember having one of the playable allies at very low, near-death levels of health, but they never lost a single bit of HP when I switched to a different character. It's crazy how the AI is practically invincible but also useless in battle when you're not playing as them (they hardly do anything, really). 

Since Three Hopes is a sequel to Fire Emblem Warriors just like how Age of Calamity is a sequel to Hyrule Warriors, what things from FEW would you like to see added/removed/improved upon in Three Hopes? I never played Fire Emblem Warriors (Is it worth buying? Or should I just stick to Three Hopes?), but I'm pretty sure it was kind of similar to Hyrule Warriors. You seem to be a fan of Dynasty Warrior series, so I'd like to hear your "hopes" for Three Hopes.

FE Warriors has a lot of good and some area for improvement.

 

The good:

Better objective pressure in its map design (history maps specifically) than any other musou game. Makes excellent use of character swapping and commands. Further complemented by the weapon triangle encouraging you to consider who goes where.

Allies are really useful in this one. They can take forts, defend, heal base defenders while you focus on other objectives. Every kill they get counts towards your kill count.

Best mounted combat of any game I've ever played. Frederick, the Pegasus knights, wyvern riders, and especially Xander are an absolute blast to play, because they are designed with fully-realized movesets.

Lots of content (around 250 hours), but largely trims the fat of Hyrule Warriors. I wouldn't say that all of the objectives are fun, but most are, and nothing comes across as egregious either.

Structures its rewards very well, with Master Seals, prf weapons, and upgrades to those prf weapons scattered throughout the game's story and history mode missions.

 

The bad:

The roster is truly horrible. Which is what happens when you focus on 3 of the series' weakest casts. 

The story is both short and poor.

No canon stages from any FE were adapted. Which is unfortunate when Zelda fans got to enjoy so many of their iconic maps.

The menus are so noisy. 

 

What I'd like to see:

Reduced menu noise. I don't need a verbal confirmation every time I select a unit, command them, buy or sell, upgrade anything, etc.

Ability to chain commands (ie: take this base, then defend it. Take this base, then that one. Heal target, then defend target.)

More factors differentiating units. Hopefully stats will be better balanced (Luck was an uber stat in FEW) and personal combat art/spell lists and mechanics will help.

Stick to traditional Warriors objectives types while leaving out unfun modes from both FEW (Arena, Escort the Villager) and Hyrule Warriors (kill 200 enemies, don't get hit.)

Give plenty of attention towards realizing Fodlan's various locales as stages. Include plenty of variety.

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5 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

FE Warriors has a lot of good and some area for improvement.

 

The good:

Better objective pressure in its map design (history maps specifically) than any other musou game. Makes excellent use of character swapping and commands. Further complemented by the weapon triangle encouraging you to consider who goes where.

Allies are really useful in this one. They can take forts, defend, heal base defenders while you focus on other objectives. Every kill they get counts towards your kill count.

Best mounted combat of any game I've ever played. Frederick, the Pegasus knights, wyvern riders, and especially Xander are an absolute blast to play, because they are designed with fully-realized movesets.

Lots of content (around 250 hours), but largely trims the fat of Hyrule Warriors. I wouldn't say that all of the objectives are fun, but most are, and nothing comes across as egregious either.

Structures its rewards very well, with Master Seals, prf weapons, and upgrades to those prf weapons scattered throughout the game's story and history mode missions.

 

The bad:

The roster is truly horrible. Which is what happens when you focus on 3 of the series' weakest casts. 

The story is both short and poor.

No canon stages from any FE were adapted. Which is unfortunate when Zelda fans got to enjoy so many of their iconic maps.

The menus are so noisy. 

 

What I'd like to see:

Reduced menu noise. I don't need a verbal confirmation every time I select a unit, command them, buy or sell, upgrade anything, etc.

Ability to chain commands (ie: take this base, then defend it. Take this base, then that one. Heal target, then defend target.)

More factors differentiating units. Hopefully stats will be better balanced (Luck was an uber stat in FEW) and personal combat art/spell lists and mechanics will help.

Stick to traditional Warriors objectives types while leaving out unfun modes from both FEW (Arena, Escort the Villager) and Hyrule Warriors (kill 200 enemies, don't get hit.)

Give plenty of attention towards realizing Fodlan's various locales as stages. Include plenty of variety.

I agree with all of these (though admittedly as an Awakening baby, I'm not really bothered by the roster the way Elibe/Tellius fans are) but do wanna append one really important thing to "The good:"

Gameplay-wise, the roster balance is really good for a Warriors game. Every moveset feels satisfying to play as. Even the "worst" moveset in the game, Corrin's, is still fun and easy to use, and leagues better than any of Hyrule Warriors or Age of Calamity's absolute stinkers (Agatha, Link w/ Great Fairy, Tingle, Riju, and Hestu, for example).

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1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

FE Warriors has a lot of good and some area for improvement.

 

The good:

Better objective pressure in its map design (history maps specifically) than any other musou game. Makes excellent use of character swapping and commands. Further complemented by the weapon triangle encouraging you to consider who goes where.

Allies are really useful in this one. They can take forts, defend, heal base defenders while you focus on other objectives. Every kill they get counts towards your kill count.

Best mounted combat of any game I've ever played. Frederick, the Pegasus knights, wyvern riders, and especially Xander are an absolute blast to play, because they are designed with fully-realized movesets.

Lots of content (around 250 hours), but largely trims the fat of Hyrule Warriors. I wouldn't say that all of the objectives are fun, but most are, and nothing comes across as egregious either.

Structures its rewards very well, with Master Seals, prf weapons, and upgrades to those prf weapons scattered throughout the game's story and history mode missions.

 

The bad:

The roster is truly horrible. Which is what happens when you focus on 3 of the series' weakest casts. 

The story is both short and poor.

No canon stages from any FE were adapted. Which is unfortunate when Zelda fans got to enjoy so many of their iconic maps.

The menus are so noisy. 

 

What I'd like to see:

Reduced menu noise. I don't need a verbal confirmation every time I select a unit, command them, buy or sell, upgrade anything, etc.

Ability to chain commands (ie: take this base, then defend it. Take this base, then that one. Heal target, then defend target.)

More factors differentiating units. Hopefully stats will be better balanced (Luck was an uber stat in FEW) and personal combat art/spell lists and mechanics will help.

Stick to traditional Warriors objectives types while leaving out unfun modes from both FEW (Arena, Escort the Villager) and Hyrule Warriors (kill 200 enemies, don't get hit.)

Give plenty of attention towards realizing Fodlan's various locales as stages. Include plenty of variety.

I think the OCs, our leads that we're forced to see so much, being so bad is a massive negative too.

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Yeah, I would definitely consider Rowan and Lianna to be a negative and moveset quality to be a positive.

 

I refuse to list the clones issue as either though. Because it's a gray issue. A lot of people do take issue with characters playing samey. But ultimately, the clones meant a bigger roster and a choice of preferred character. I would have enjoyed the game substantially less if it had say... only 20-25 characters without clones (and let's be real, that 25 upper limit was probably generous), and if I, for example, had to play a character I really dislike (Elise) to play a moveset.

Edited by Fabulously Olivier
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10 hours ago, CyberZord said:

Well, Three Hopes is confirmed to have three different routes to take just like in Three Houses, so I wonder how the routes will turn out considering that there's no real canon to base the game on outside of maybe Part 1, which (nearly) plays out the same no matter what. Worst case scenario in my eyes is if every route ends up being a "perfect timeline" route in some way or another.

Its possible the route split will work akin to the Three Kingdoms in Dynasty Warriors. Each route occurs simultaneously but you just see different aspects of it. There are stages where the Three Kingdoms fight and you can see things from the perspective of the side your playing as, Red cliffs being a triumphant victory for one Kingdom, but devolving into a flight mission if you play another, and there'd be stages where each Kingdom is doing their own thing without the others getting in their way. 

 

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7 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Its possible the route split will work akin to the Three Kingdoms in Dynasty Warriors. Each route occurs simultaneously but you just see different aspects of it. There are stages where the Three Kingdoms fight and you can see things from the perspective of the side your playing as, Red cliffs being a triumphant victory for one Kingdom, but devolving into a flight mission if you play another, and there'd be stages where each Kingdom is doing their own thing without the others getting in their way. 

 

Step into the shoes of Shez, as they meet Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude, and other Fire Emblem: Three Houses characters as you fight for the future of Fódlan. Align with a leader to build and command an army in 1 vs. 1,000-style battles and deep strategy. The house you choose will bring you through one of three compelling stories, each with a different outcome. Each Fire Emblem: Three Houses character you recruit on these journeys has a distinct set of flashy combos and powerful specials that can cut through hordes of enemies.
 

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4 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Step into the shoes of Shez, as they meet Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude, and other Fire Emblem: Three Houses characters as you fight for the future of Fódlan. Align with a leader to build and command an army in 1 vs. 1,000-style battles and deep strategy. The house you choose will bring you through one of three compelling stories, each with a different outcome. Each Fire Emblem: Three Houses character you recruit on these journeys has a distinct set of flashy combos and powerful specials that can cut through hordes of enemies.
 

Reminder that marketing also depicted Age of Calamity as something we see before BOTW. They might be exaggerating where there's still technically one story, we see through the perspectives of other characters. Like in Claude's POV, he gets certain encounters the others don't, the Almyran will definitely be Claude specific. I could easily see Randolph getting crushed only in Dimitri's route.

Edited by Seazas
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