My First Impression in FEW

[kingddd]

I wanted to make this write up since I finally got a chance to play a couple hours of Fire Emblem Warriors.  I can tell you right now, I feel this is the best Warriors game I have played in a very long time.  As someone who played hyrule warriors enough and played other warriors games from friends co-op, Fire Emblem warriors blends in the best elements from Fire Emblem and puts them into a warriors game that blends really well to create one of the most fun warriors games to date.  Keep in mind I will use hyrule warriors as a base since it’s their most recent entry.

So what is it that makes Fire Emblem Warriors more distinct from other warrior’s games?  In most warrior games, the base game is that you are a one man army who destroys an entire army and it has a lot of beat em up elements and objective based style gameplay combat.  So what usually happens is that you are placed in a map with a couple of forts and your objectives can be capture forts, destroy specific enemies in the map or kill the boss to beat the battle.  You also have AI partners that interact with you during the battles telling you how their progress is going, achieving objectives and attacking and defending your forts.  Usually keeping a good number of forts up will help make your progress and transition to the main objectives much faster.

Combat is your usual warriors game affair.  You got your light attack, heavy attacks and then your special attacks which usually involve the crit animations you see.  Just like in Hyrule Warriors you can upgrade their skills to add even more combos, make them stronger, change their weapons and become an one man army of destruction.  On video it pretty much looks like your standard beat em up and honestly that's not a surprising first impression with it but every character has these quirks and upgrades that will extend how you will play each characters.

However one of the biggest flaws with this system in previous games is that your AI partners are shall we say……………stupid or useless.  In Hyrule Warriors, one of the biggest issues is that your AI partners are always either calling for help, can’t defend for crap or constantly badgering you to help you and when a side mission comes up you’re either left with being to fend for yourself to either walk across all the way to the map to help them or stick with the main objective and hope you actually beat it before their forts are captured.  In Fire Emblem Warriors one of the biggest changes is that you can command those AI partners to do what you want them to do.  Do you want your Lissa to stay put and defend this one specific fort on the map?  Do you want your Robin to actually go out of his way to help this one unit who needs help?  And yes you can command your units to attack the bosses with you and help you complete sidequests.  So now if say 2 things happen to pop up like a sidequest pops up and you want a fort to be defended, you can tell 2 of your units to do either one and they will actually succeed in doing it.

Yes the partners in this game have a mind on their own and they will complete objectives for you even if you don’t tell them to do anything.  For example, one map I was in I didn’t tell any of my ai partners to do anything and yet they were able to capture forts, defend the main objectives and was competently moving around the map to help out whenever they can.  One scenario I had for example, was that my AI partner Frederick decided to be ballsy and take on the main boss on his own whom was a mage.  Of course we all know Great Knights resistance is bad against magic users.  So when I was wondering why Frederick was constantly talking about how much he was injured I checked my map and his hp and noticed he was at low hp and taking on the enemy himself I was like oh no and I can command him to retreat to a fort to recover hp.  Which is huge improvement in the scenarios that I can make happen and let the ai partners to not overstep their bounds.

There is now a lot of strategic and tactical elements put into this game that blends so well with Fire Emblem and the difficulty is now a lot harder and challenging.  Sure you can be a one man army but this game demands you to not play favoritism of a specific character otherwise you will be destroyed really easily.  For example, the weapon triangle that has been implemented in this game is very much prevalent.  Let’s say I am a sword user and I go into attack some Pegasus knights, the results would be total destruction for me and chances are my sword unit will get mobbed and combed almost to death.  When I was trying to attack the Pegasus knight boss with my sword, it didn’t flinch them at all and I couldn’t stun them and they took away 3/4 of my life.  I had no choice but to retreat and direct my axe users to fight them.

Another element is the pairup system, you can combine one unit with another to create a single powerful unit together so that you can both do huge combos together, build supports and at the same create an awesome musou attack.  However, the downside of this is that since they’re paired up with you, you have one less unit to say defend, attack or move to other locations.  Since the enemy AIs in this game are way more aggressive in taking your forts, it could be rewarding for you but on the other side of the map, it’s cause for danger if no one is defending your forts from across the map.

So there is a lot of tactical elements in this game that really blend well with the warriors games and the fact that it works so well with fire emblem and warriors is amazing.  I can’t just send in Lucina to battle lance units just because she’s the main character.  I gotta send in lissa or Frederick to combat them and make critical decisions immediately when certain events and actions happen during the battlefield.  You can't really play favortism or just say I only want to use Chrom the entire time.  The game really encourages you to switch frequently and I think this works and benefits the game really well.  There is a lot of nice risk and rewards in place in this game and I am honestly having a blast with this game.  Could the roster be better?  I would say yes but honestly, it is not a deal breaker and I highly recommend this game over something like Hyrule Warriors anyday.  This is the most fun warriors games I have played in years.

[geozeldadude]

cool. thanks for posting. did you play _hyrule warriors legends_? is commanding units pretty much the same as in that game?

[Jedi]

Nice to see you posted your thoughts after all. Well written, probably better done than mine.

[SoulWeaver]

2 hours ago, geozeldadude said:

cool. thanks for posting. did you play _hyrule warriors legends_? is commanding units pretty much the same as in that game?

I've played HWL. I haven't used commands much because I haven't really ever needed to, but the couple times I used it it worked out decently, so I'd say it's comparable.

[Linkmstr]

Couldn't have said it better myself. :3