A Great Game That Feels Unfinished. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes REVIEW (Spoiler-Free)

Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoyed. And always remember that these are just my opinions of the gameplay and your mileage may vary. With that said, I'm going to be enjoying a nice break! If you want to help support the channel, please subscribe :) and let me know what YOU think of the gameplay of Three Hopes! Likes and comments go a long way for this video to be found in recommended tabs! Happy mashing fellow warriors!!!

I feel like I could describe three hopes’ current state as: “done but not finished”

The worst part of the game’s plot is the under utilization of Byleth/Sothis’s fued with Shez/Arval

I always thought that locking the secret characters in only replayed missions is a huge mistake, and not being able to use characters that are unrecruitable from other routes in NG+ is such a weird choice Another thing about the game is the weird sudden endings, it's honestly not very satisfying....its like the progress bar hitting 90% only to then freeze forever But from aside those complaints, this game is pretty much amazing in every way.

The biggest problem with this game (story wise) is making all endings intentionally unfinished. As if there's half a game left. Which feels even worse considering how well thought out most of the story is by building on the lore and world. Answering all these questions left from 3h but then making even more for dlc or "Three houses" actually being three games set in fodland

My biggest issue with the game is the inconclusive endings. They're garbage. I get that they don't want to invalidate Byleth's part, but they could've made 'em a requirement for the good endings if they really needed to.

One very minor detail that I love in Three Hopes is that characters' eyes will randomly shift around to look at different things during cutscenes. It just makes them feel much more alive. That was one of the main reasons why I hated Tea Time in Three Houses, because characters staring wall-eyed at the camera can get pretty unnerving after a while.

Weirdly enough, one of my favourite things in the game is that stat caps are all the same. Something about Dedue being an insane mage makes me happy.

Hope there will be possibilities of dlc route including new classes, lore, and more

One aspect I was disappointed in was characters only having 1 unique special animation. In the first Warriors game you had a unique Warriors special, Awakening special and a Lead Pair-up special. It was also kinda lame to see units being locked to a single weapon for classes. If you wanna use Crusher as Annette, you have to change her to an Axe unit and lose access to all other magic attacks. She also loses her unique animations too..

What has hurt the replayability for me has been the forced inclusion of Shez in EVERY story mission. Doing a maddening mode run with certain characters felt stunted due to only having 3 playable units to customize. I wanted to do a church-based unit run but that left me with having to choose 3 of Seteth, Flaynn, Catherine, and Shamir. Additionally, some maps also have specifc units you need to use ON TOP of shez being required, so I essentially had 2 playable units i could pick from for it. In 3 houses, yeah byleth/your lord was often required to be deployed, but you were actively controlling the entire roster so it didnt bother me. All i want is to be able to make shez a secondary unit or just not be forced out like I can with auxillary battles.

You forgot one very important thing. And that is I thought when I first saw the game that Arval and sothis would interact together. And have there own story. The whole time Arval wants to end the Ashen Demon by doing so would kill sothis. I thought those two would meet and fight each other or something. Another big miss opportunity for the developers.

Is anyone else angry on Sylvain being a holy knight and not a dark knight? I mean, he had a budding talent in reason on Houses :(

Potential spoilers warning TBH my biggest gripe with the game is the amount of unplayable characters and scripted deaths - like, for example, Miklain's scripted deaths and unplayability even when his appearance seemed to actually hold story significance as element of broader portrayal of social changes in Ferghus. Let's be honest, the entire genre stems from Dynasty Warriors where saving characters AGAINST HISTORICAL EVENTS was pretty much commonplace even if often difficult and every character that wasn't outright generic was playable. I mean, sure, there is some feeling of game being unfinished like what you mentioned and some strange support decisions (like, for example Mercedes mentions Constance multiple times and has a paralogue with her but can't go beyond C support) so I guess they focused on delivering code on time and will likely end up adding remaining characters and extra supports in updates/DLCs, but

I mostly agree, except on ONE major point. "... having truly unique characters like Fire Emblem Warriors did..." While you went into it a little bit, I feel like you were looking at it in reverse. You did me a favor by using the archers as an example, since Sakura was my most played character for a number of reasons I no longer remember. So I definitely have some thoughts to go into about your comparison. In FEW, Sakura and Takumi are identical outside of two things. The first is stats; Sakura is more mage-like in her stats, meaning she wants, at bare minimum, a weapon with "Topsy Turvy" to make her weapon scale with Magic instead of Strength. The second is item; Takumi can only hold a Vulnerary/Concoction/Elixir/Bond Charm, while Sakura also has the option of holding a staff instead. Meaning that, at best, Takumi gets +1 slot on his weapon since he doesn't need Topsy Turvy, while Sakura can heal other characters. This is literally the only difference you can really tell between the two in battle, outside of how they look. You do not magically play the two any differently due to any difference in stats. Yes, Luck affected the chance of skills like Luna and Lethality and was thus good, but you weren't just NOT going to take those skills on characters with lower luck, they were too important to pass up on; every single ability was a passive booster, there was no active effects. And since everyone could learn every ability, it was entirely a matter of the small optimizations, like "Okay, this person has identical Str/Mag, so I should give them the skill that raises stats based on how close the two are." It had zero impact on how you actually played the character. The only point I'll concede is the "Strong (X)" weapon modifiers, which powered up specific strong attacks, which, if used, basically forced you to spam one specific combo far more than adapting on the fly to what was happening. In Three Hopes, Bernadetta and Ignatz are polar opposites despite being the "default" archers (alongside Ashe but I'm doing two-person comparisons.) Bernadetta gets a crit rate boost in the circle for her ability so she benefits more from Range+ to poke at enemies normally outside her range and freezes anything that's too close. She also benefits from being unmounted, since Cavalry moves around a lot while attacking. Ignatz, on the other hand, excels as a close range skirmisher who's constantly knocking enemies back due to Dreamer's Paintbrush splashing damaging paint everywhere, so knocking enemies back is more damaging than trying to keep them close for longer combos. He also excels as a cavalry unit so he can more easily give chase to keep sending enemies flying. When commanding the AI to do things, Bernadetta deals bonus damage to enemies who are attacking a base she's defending, while Ignatz takes less damage when attacking a base, once again showing how the exact same movelist provides far more variety than it ever did in the original. In Three Hopes, 1) Unique Abilities change playstyles on a fundamental level, and need an accessory slot to transfer them which limits other build options if you go that route. Also, Merc Whistles are one per playthrough, so unless you're speedrunning NG+ you're not building teams around this. 1.5) See point 1, about Crests and Crest items. Sure, you CAN give Shez the Freikugel and Kalpa Dragon Sign, but then they can't ALSO use the Warm Scarf from Sylvain. You need to pick and choose, so the ability to pass things around is not robbing anyone of their individuality, and is in fact an equalizer to try to help some characters you don't like the playstyle of. 2) Yes, everyone can hit those stat caps... but are you going to without stat booster items and NG+ blitzing for events like "select someone to get +5 Mag" on the war map? 3) Notice how not everyone learns all the exact same abilities for the same classes; the game literally will not let you run the same setup on everyone. Shez not getting Dual Onslaught is a great example, since Shez has great Strength AND Magic even without stat boosters, so it would have been much more potent on them than someone whose stats lean much harder towards one than the other. I feel like the entire point is that FEW had a postgame mode where you could use anyone and had more limitations on challenge maps (Such as only being able to deploy mounted/infantry units, only characters from certain games/families, etc) so the game felt more like there was an endgame, while in Three Hopes all these optimizations feel pointless outside of Maddening Difficulty; we only have the main story. As such, the FOOS (First Order Optimal Strategy) is to look at what works in the earlygame (in my case, Facetanking with Lorenz until I can get Sylvain's scarf) and continue to rely on it without looking at what else works (Such as Lysithea whose entire point is to send enemies flying in groups so they all explode together, overlapping their damage AoEs to obliterate every enemy caught in it instantly, ergo a completely different playstyle that shines in completely different ways. This game desperately needs it's own version of History Mode or something.

Honestly I agree with pretty much all of this, especially in regards to the topic of Newgame+. The only content in terms of maps that’s given is two paralogues, and oddly two of the 4 Newgame + characters were excluded from this. I do wish that maybe they’d have given this game some more time in development. The highs are really high but the corner cutting is just really apparent whenever I see a random Hero hanging out in the training grounds, or think about How Holst is clearly designed for a class not in the game

I watched GW's ending out of context and thought "Wow, that sucked." Then I played it myself and saw it in context... and thought "Wow, that sucked." And the other route endings don't fair much better. Then again "ending" is misleading. Because it's not an ending. The game just fucking stops unresolved. And leaving Byleth out of the second secret chapter was odd. They really should have been present also. Even if just as a green unit.

I don't think the Merc Whistle negates the unique personal skills necessarily. You still only get one of those per playthrough, and equipping the resulting accessories is a trade-off, with e.g. anti-effect shields being unavailable if you use that. Still, the personal skills do play more into the unit feel rather than the mechanics. Ingrid's pegasus C4 makes enemies explode with ice while Hubert's personal makes them get spontaneously poked with darkness. Both basically just give you some more elemental damage, but half of the fun is the spectacle and that's very distinct between the two.

Just finished my first play-through. I went the Leischter route. Got to the end and thought “wait… where’s the rest of the story?”

There are a ton of things I can say about the plot, some good, most bad, but when it comes to gameplay, I appreciate how much easier it is to get class skills from classes you may not want units to actually be in, and I like that male magic users aren't completely screwed out of a non-mounted Master Class. Still, I wish Advanced and Master classes could have the option to equip 2-3 weapon types, and that Relics and Sacred Weapons could be equipped by units with the correct Crest regardless of Class. EDIT: I honestly miss Garreg Mach as a large hub area to explore, and I loved the Monastery as a second home for the characters.