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Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes - Awakened Rivals / Demo Available


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Also only just realised each faction (and I suppose Shez's is either factionless or exclusive to them??) has their own Awakening mode theme (we've heard them in the faction trailers, funnily enough).

The random crit hits are in gold numbers for those not sure what Olivier is referring to.

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So here's my initial thoughts over a few hours of gameplay.

 

The story is unexpectedly compelling.

 

Shez has unexpected Shounen idiot energy, and it somehow makes them more endearing. Perhaps because Arval is there to call them out for it. (You've jumped off a cliff three times, baka!)

 

Combat seems slower and more methodical than other Warriors games, and a good bit more difficult as well. Not at all a bad thing, but unexpected and perhaps a better fit for strategy elements. On the other hand, S rank timers feel contradictally strict, and I consistently fail them.

 

Stage design is excellent, even in side missions. Looks like we probably won't be bogged down in boring bs like in AoC.

 

I rarely trigger critical rushes because the enemy just dies before I do. I don't necessarily hate that because it means combat is more varied than FEW was.

 

Character mechanics feel great. They really make clones feel distinct, and arguably even justify using them over native users of other classes (ie: Leonie attacks faster than anyone in any other class, Petra is super mobile).

 

Class variety seems unfortunately lower than one would hope for, and this is my biggest complaint. It would appear that Trickster is the only Abyss class to be returning. Which is unfortunate, because Dark Flier and War Monk/Cleric would have been great for variety. Soldiers can only become cavaliers, which is expected but unfortunate. And I suspect archers will be similarly limited. Class progression really seems strictly... linear in this one. Hopefully dlc will remedy that.

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I'm admittedly a little amused and a little jealous that Scarlet Blaze has more characters than any other route by the end of the demo, assuming I did everything correctly on the other two routes. They have: 

Current Black Eagles, Shez, Monica, Jeritza, and Manuela, giving them twelve characters to start with. 

Blue Lions only playable additions are Shez and Rodrigue (who is awesome and still married sorry F!Shez), so they have a total of ten. 

Claude's route has 10 as well, with Shez and Shamir. (Which means that the Golden Deer are once again my favorite house if they have both Marianne and Shamir by default.) 

 

I doubt this is indicative of the entire roster or even long-term story. Azure Gleam will most likely have more Church of Seiros members due to its storyline, alongside Gustav/Gilbert and possibly Margrave Gautier. (And I hope another Duscur character at the very least.) I'm sure Verdant Wildfire will have Holst, Nader, and Judith playable, as we know both are in the game, and if Rodrigue's playable it only makes sense that his counterparts are playable as well. (And anther Almyran please? We know Nader has a daughter. Maybe her and another sibling of Claude? That would be so fun!) Scarlet Blaze may have Hanneman if he's not with the Church alongside Count Bergliez, Randolph, and Fleche (the two of which we saw face off against Byleth in the latest trailer). So yeah, I'm not worried about the casts being too uneven, but it is something I noticed. 

Maybe it's payback for Crimson Flower having the fewest recruitable characters in the game.

 

 

The one complaint I can say for now is far less of a complaint and more of a worry - The game advertises three routes, but at least two of those routes so far have ended with the same major conflicts in the main game. Of course, the context, characters, and characterization are all different, and that's what makes the routes feel different, but I can't help but wonder if all three routes are going to the same destination, just with different journeys, not unlike Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep in some ways. If that's the case, I don't mind, but I'd like to know ahead of time too...

 

I have a LOT more thoughts about the demo, most of them positive, but I'll save those for when I'm through tinkering a bit. (I want to raise up Dimitri and Felix's magic abilities just in case later classes call for it. I doubt they will, but I want to err on the side of safety...and silly builds. I also need to S-Rank all of the side missions on Azure Gleam.) The demo gave me pretty much everything I wanted and did exactly what it was supposed to do IMO. 

 

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I feel, as a Warriors fan, that if the full game is of a comparable or greater quality to the demo, that this is the first time a Warriors game deserves to be in the GOTY conversation. It won't win because of big titles like Elden Ring and Horizon, mind you. If it were in a weak year like last year, and not literally one of the best gaming years of all time, I'd feel like it's a clencher. But this time around, it feels like a valid opinion for me to hold, rather than just a "this is my favorite game of the year, but definitely not the game of the year." 

Edited by Fabulously Olivier
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So something that I noticed is that we are apparently getting 2 new Heroes' Relics. The Guardian of the Heroes' Relics achievement has a progress bar of 16. Currently we only know 14 relics. As Shez's relic seems to be part of their class and not an actual item, the most likely scenario would be we are getting the missing Noa and Timotheos relics.

2 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Class variety seems unfortunately lower than one would hope for, and this is my biggest complaint. It would appear that Trickster is the only Abyss class to be returning. Which is unfortunate, because Dark Flier and War Monk/Cleric would have been great for variety. Soldiers can only become cavaliers, which is expected but unfortunate. And I suspect archers will be similarly limited. Class progression really seems strictly... linear in this one. Hopefully dlc will remedy that.

I don't think Trickster is going to be the only one of the Abyss classes present. I think Trickster is just going to be treated as a straight up upgraded Assassin (Master tier version of the Thief/Assassin line) while the other three are probably doing to be their own thing since War Master is the Master version of Brawler and there are no mounted casters in Intermediate tier. So since they aren't sharing a moveset (or are more offshoot than upgrade), they probably aren't sharing any class unique skills with the intermediate classes.

Regarding Archer, they'll still have Bow Knights available. 

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Just now, Ranadiel said:

So something that I noticed is that we are apparently getting 2 new Heroes' Relics. The Guardian of the Heroes' Relics achievement has a progress bar of 16. Currently we only know 14 relics. As Shez's relic seems to be part of their class and not an actual item, the most likely scenario would be we are getting the missing Noa and Timotheos relics.

I don't think Trickster is going to be the only one of the Abyss classes present. I think Trickster is just going to be treated as a straight up upgraded Assassin (Master tier version of the Thief/Assassin line) while the other three are probably doing to be their own thing since War Master is the Master version of Brawler and there are no mounted casters in Intermediate tier. So since they aren't sharing a moveset (or are more offshoot than upgrade), they probably aren't sharing any class unique skills with the intermediate classes.

Regarding Archer, they'll still have Bow Knights available. 

The Heroes Relics questions comes down to Nemesis. The Noa and Timotheos relics aren't missing. It's implied that they were destroyed to make the Dark SotC (it having their crests).

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2 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

The Heroes Relics questions comes down to Nemesis. The Noa and Timotheos relics aren't missing. It's implied that they were destroyed to make the Dark SotC (it having their crests).

I meant missing as in we couldn't acquire them and never got to see them. 😛

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8 minutes ago, SearchingForGryphons said:

Hiya! I am loving the demo but one thing that has been bugging me, what exactly does a class being preferred mean, anyone have any ideas?

You know, I actually don't know the answer to that one yet. Don't characters actually still keep their unique mechanics since it's separate from the class itself, rather than an EX move? At a minimum, it seems like preferred classes are easier to train.

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I think I read the Special Moves ("Musous" in Warrior terms) are unique for that character when in their preferred class, and they may "gain class EXP" faster in their preferred class. (In other words, Specials use class defaults that are shared across characters. However, when a character is in their preferred, they get a unique animation is is presumably stronger than the defaults.)
-- Otherwise, I'm not sure.

As a random note, the level cap in the demo is 15. It will take a lot longer to master all the available classes if one wants to go that route, but doing so while losing EXP is a bit of a waste.
-- Edit: I just remembered one can reset levels through the Training Grounds. I wonder if this refunds gold...

Edited by Sire
I keep editing this post. Halp.
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9 minutes ago, Sire said:

I think I read the Special Moves ("Musous" in Warrior terms) are unique for that character when in their preferred class, and they may "gain class EXP" faster in their preferred class. (In other words, Specials use class defaults that are shared, but when a character is in their preferred, they get a special animation is is presumably stronger.)
-- Otherwise, I'm not sure.

As a random note, the level cap in the demo is 15. It will take a lot longer to master all the available classes if one wants to go that route, but doing so while losing EXP is a bit of a waste.

It actually isn't a waste. Because growth rates are determined by class, utilizing Training or exploiting this level cap on lower growth classes results in better stats in the long run.

 

I do dislike that design decision so much though. Characters should have set growths, with classes just changing base/bonus stats.

 

Edit:

The level reset feature is probably to maximize character growth rates by leveling them in an endgame class.

Edited by Fabulously Olivier
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So not much as far as we know, that is good imo because it let's you be more flexible like in three houses, having all the classes available isn't much good if they all need to play in their preferred class. Thanks for the input!

Yeah, I wish it was set level up too, at least you can reset if you get crap for level ups.

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I mean, I can see why they did it like this. With the multi routes and the optional iron-man system, it seems to me like this game is intended to be replayed as many times as you want rather than played at endgame. Random growths help that. The only other musous I can think of with that design philosophy are All Stars and the Empires titles.

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19 hours ago, Armchair General said:

I saw the first half of Mangs' stream and I have to say that the writing is cringe. I get what they're going for, but it's kind of hard to ignore the fact that Shez is literally railroaded into this.

 

Arval is pretty nice, though.

Disagree. Mangs is just overly negative and was looking for thing after thing to complain about even when a lot of it wasn't an issue. 

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I played for maybe an hour to an hour and a half and the most prominent thought and feeling that I have after that time is that this game has absolutely no interest in teaching me how to play it. I've very little experience with Musou/Warriors games before. I played a tiny bit of Hyrule Warriors but bounced off it pretty damn quickly. So I was only really here for the Fire Emblem, but was plenty happy to give the gameplay a try. But eesh. The game just flashed up tutorial message after tutorial message introducing me to new feature after new feature and new button combination after new button combination, and there is no way in hell that I'm remembering all of that. Do they just assume that everyone already knows how the gameplay works and so there's no need to teach it and ease people in gently? Or do they just assume that new players will just play on easy mode (which I did) and not actually need to use half of the different features? Or am I just terrible at remembering instructions?

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24 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I played for maybe an hour to an hour and a half and the most prominent thought and feeling that I have after that time is that this game has absolutely no interest in teaching me how to play it. I've very little experience with Musou/Warriors games before. I played a tiny bit of Hyrule Warriors but bounced off it pretty damn quickly. So I was only really here for the Fire Emblem, but was plenty happy to give the gameplay a try. But eesh. The game just flashed up tutorial message after tutorial message introducing me to new feature after new feature and new button combination after new button combination, and there is no way in hell that I'm remembering all of that. Do they just assume that everyone already knows how the gameplay works and so there's no need to teach it and ease people in gently? Or do they just assume that new players will just play on easy mode (which I did) and not actually need to use half of the different features? Or am I just terrible at remembering instructions?

I've heard people say it was actually over-tutorialized, rather than under. And that was my impression as well. So I really don't know what to say.

 

What specifically are you struggling with in terms of mechanics you don't understand?

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18 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I've heard people say it was actually over-tutorialized, rather than under. And that was my impression as well. So I really don't know what to say.

 

What specifically are you struggling with in terms of mechanics you don't understand?

I wouldn'ty say it was either over- or under-tutorialised. Rather, I think it was badly tutorialised. It's not that I didn't understand the mechanics. It's that I couldn't remember everything that I was being told. It would pop up with some mechanic or other, and then before I'd had a proper chance to get used to it or sometimes even to try it out at all, it would give me another tutorial message about something else. and then another one. It was very enthusiastic about barfing out its tutorial messages, but didn't actually give any time or space to learn the game.

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Gonna miss Dark Flier/Valkyrie/War Monk but what can you do, I guess? Getting the Ashen Wolves at all was already a stretch - I think Trickster will just be Yuri's unique class to himself. The other 3 will be cut. There's no mention of them on any of the Intermediate class skills like how Trickster is.

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7 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Stage design is excellent, even in side missions. Looks like we probably won't be bogged down in boring bs like in AoC.

Music to my ears. I hated AoC's stage design.

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Tinkered some more with the demo, reaching 9 hours on my Black Eagles file (Standard Demo play is about 4 hours for one route, I'm just milking the demo at this point). I'm starting understand the mechanics a lot more, and I'm really liking the inclusion of Combat Arts/Magic into the usual Normal Attack/Strong Attack system.
-- So far I enjoyed the movesets I've been exposed to, although I haven't properly tried Archer, Grappler, or Priest yet. I also haven't tried Pegasus Knight at all.
-- I'm not really feeling the Bow Fighter and Cavalier movesets, although it does feel amazing when Ferdi just starts moving at the speed of light when attacking everything due to his personal skill. // I have a feeling Cavalier I'll just have to get used to, same with Bows. Its just I think Bows felt better in FEW for some reason, or I may be misremembering, or its just the early-game moveset that's lackluster.
-- Mages took a bit to get used to as I'm used to Strong 3 being a good AoE, but theirs is a burst of flame around the character. It does combo well with Strong 4, so I guess Mages are more of a setup class compared to spamming the same Strong Attack over and over. (My understanding is that usually the 1st is a Launcher, 2nd is Single Target, 3rd is AoE)

To recap and give some new info for Demo Caps...
-- Level is capped at 15, but you can reset levels at the Training Grounds. (Note: You get nothing for resetting levels, so any gold spent on leveling is lost.)
-- Supports seemed to be capped at C.
-- There are a limited number of Intermediate Seals available, so maxing out all classes on everyone will not be possible in the demo. (There is still a fair amount available and trying to max out everything possible here is overkill, but the option is there.)
-- At present, I have reached 41 Awards. I doubt I'll be able to reach 100 and somehow get a Battalion before I'm supposed to, and I don't think I'll be going that far.

* * * * *

As for story stuff, the supports are stellar here from what I have seen. While it is true that not every rank gives a conversation, it does mean that the supports that are present are meaningful instead of just being fluff.
-- I really enjoyed Edelgards and Ferdinand's support in Three Hopes as it was rather lengthy for C and it even touched upon main story events a little.
-- I imagine it will enjoyable comparing supports from Three Houses and Three Hopes to get a full understanding of these characters.

Edited by Sire
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Just now, Sire said:

Priest

It is the same as the Monk.

 

1 minute ago, Sire said:

Pegasus Knight

Honestly the best class for me so far. It much easier then FEW's version. I like the moves more too.

 

2 minutes ago, Sire said:

Its just I think Bows felt better in FEW for some reason

They are better in FEW, the animations are slower and seems to have delays on the hits. Archer C4 (the arrow rain on self) take to long to start damaging enemies.

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21 minutes ago, ciphertul said:

It is the same as the Monk.

 

Honestly the best class for me so far. It much easier then FEW's version. I like the moves more too.

 

They are better in FEW, the animations are slower and seems to have delays on the hits. Archer C4 (the arrow rain on self) take to long to start damaging enemies.

I'm of the opinion that they are more effective/fun due to easier access to stun gauge. Yes, they're slower at wave clear, but so is everyone else.

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Probably unpopular opinion: I prefer mostly-silent Byleth. It was just the one quick scene, so maybe things change later, but hearing her talk that much was uncanny to me.

Played through the demo on hard/casual/Scarlet Blaze. Maybe it was because I was on hard mode, but it was weird that enemy levels were so much higher than my own; they were hitting 18 by the end when my units are still sub 10, and with a cap of 15.

Right now I'm finding hitting enemy weak point gauges pretty annoying. Why is it up when they're about to attack, rather than when they're open after the attack? And enemies can just super armor through standard attacks, which is just awkward.

A weird thing happened once: There's a mission that needs 400 kills for S rank, which I failed my first couple tries. When I did get it, I definitely had ~450 at the end, but the results screen showed me with ~650. Even if there was some end-of-the-mission enemy wipe (which I've never seen on other Nintendo Warriors games), why didn't I get anything like it in previous attempts?

The story, uh, exists, I guess. I do find it a little funny how Shez is all "I must defeat the Ashen Demon!" at the beginning but pretty quickly just seems to forget about it.

2 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

People still watch Mangs? And respect his opinion on anything?

I still watch him sometimes, but I do not respect his opinions in general lol.

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3 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

People still watch Mangs? And respect his opinion on anything?

Based on his 102K subscribers, thousands of views and several comments, yes, they definetly do. 

I`ve stopped seriously watching him, I only recently checked with him to hear his thoughts on Traingle Strategy, but that is neither here nor there.

Edited by Metal Flash
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