Fire Emblem Warriors

[Nester the Lark]

I mentioned the visuals of Fire Emblem Warriors vs Hyrule Warriors in another thread, saying that I thought Hyrule Warriors looked better.

Well, here's a video from Nintendo Life that does a direct comparison of the two games. They seem to think FE Warriors is better looking.



From a technical standpoint, FE Warriors does look sharper, but Hyrule Warriors still looks more vibrant to me. However, maybe I'm just comparing the Fire Emblem art style to Zelda's style, and obviously, I'm much more of a Zelda fan.

I'm still kind of on the fence about FE Warriors. If any of you guys (YL?) have any impressions of the game, I'd like to hear them.

[Leon]

FE Warriors, is a more competent game than HW was. FE Warriors took the formula and refined it well.

[nocturnal YL]

It's been a few days since I posted here, and this game is exactly why. I was also busy at work this week.

I didn't get Hyrule Warriors because I lost interest the moment they announced a 3DS version. Quality versus contents? Why is this even a choice? Actually, why make a game that tries to put as many 3D models on screen as they could on 3DS?

For the recent Fire Emblem-related games, your best bet to get opinions is to go to Fire Emblem-related forums. As divisive as fans of this series are, they do make good points on what they do and don't like about the games.

I have beaten this game's Story Mode on Hard, and I don't think I'd have problems doing it on Lunatic (the only difference is the enemy levels; in Hard, enemy levels are 5 above the standard, and in Lunatic, 20). I have beaten the first four History Mode maps, and my most used units (Rowan, Lianne, Sakura, Elise, Lissa, Lucina, Cordelia, Caeda) are currently at level 50 to 65 (out of 99, which I do intend to actually reach).

My impressions:

• The one thing that I like the most about this game is the sheer graphics quality, although you will notice frame drops in fights against the final boss or when playing it in handheld mode. It's not perfect, but it's better than any other FE game you'd see on any other Nintendo system. I'm playing it on the Switch, by the way. I don't have a New 3DS.
• Along with all the other recent games, FE Warriors gives me hope on FE16's technical quality. FE Warriors also makes me want to see Fire Emblem in HD in a wide screen aspect ratio. (The Japanese version of FE10 did not support wide screen.)
• The music is decent, although it did not wow me the same way many previous games did. FE4, ♯FE and FE15 all had better music, and I'd argue FE8 too, although this probably has to do with personal nostalgia. That said, the music (which are rock variants of FE11, FE13 and FE14 music) did improve upon the original.
• The production quality is better than all of the other FE titles. More cutscenes, full voice-acting (which ♯FE and FE15 didn't have for dialogs with unimportant NPCs), and decent graphics for the important characters. If anything, it looks better than the other Warriors ports coming to the Switch.
• Difficulty-wise, it's easy, except for shadow battles. I played through Hard mode (Lunatic is not unlocked at first) without any difficulties whatsoever, except for Chapter 14. You are basically guaranteed to have a decently powerful Lord with a sword effective against monsters. Action game skills and weapon triangle awareness is enough to carry you through most of the game, even when you're 5 levels below the enemy.
• Now for complaints. This game's UI did not feel Fire Emblem-like enough, and it took me a while to get used to. I don't know what a Warriors game is like, but the unit selection process and the lack of manual saving mechanics both threw me off.
• It's also rather repetitive after you beat Story Mode. There aren't enough maps to make things varied, and History Mode featured battles very loosely based on the original events to the point the maps aren't all that interesting from a story standpoint. The game is also rather short, which may be a good thing.
• And of course, the characters. I have no problem with the game given a focus on FE11, FE13 and FE14, but why are Owain, Oboro, Niles and Navarre in the story, shown to be accompanying everyone else, but not playable? I've heard theories online ("they're replaced by Celica, Cordelia, Anna and Lyn"), which I think is nonsensial. Unless they have a hard limit on having only 23 characters, like Kirby (25 common abilities) and Puyo Puyo (24 characters) did.

It's actually quite a lot to say for a short game. Complaints aside (people who complain are the ones who care enough in the first place), I do recommend this game to Fire Emblem fans who aren't particularly terrible at action games. Don't know about what to make of it as a Warriors player or how it compares to Hyrule Warriors, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm absolutely enjoying it.

[Nester the Lark]

Thanks for the detailed rundown, YL!

I haven't really been in a gaming mood lately, so I'll probably hold off on this for now.