Fire Emblem Warriors seems easy to write off at a glance.
It doesn’t look especially great, the roster lacks diversity,
and the gameplay appears overly familiar.
Yet upon digging into Warriors it shows surprising depth,
carrying over a handful of mechanics from the classic strategy series in ways that makes sense,
creating a crossover far more interesting than expected.
As with many other Warriors titles, such as Dynasty or Samurai Warriors,
each map in the game consists of hundreds of enemies to hack and slash with different characters.
One of the biggest twists here is the implementation of the Fire Emblem weapon triangle,
where swords have an advantage against axes, axes beat spears, and spears win against swords.
Focusing on enemies you have an advantage over
enables you to tear through them, making things like capturing a fort or completing an objective
that much faster
There are class advantages to think of as well, such as archers who can absolutely devastate
flying units like Pegasus Knights.
To help compensate for such weaknesses,
it's possible to pair up units, allowing you to shield them from harm,
gain additional strength, and easily raise bonds between characters, much like in other Fire Emblem games.
While it is possible to ignore the triangle and brute force your way through a situation with a high-level character,
there’s enough incentive to play as efficiently as possible, especially on classic mode.
In classic mode, units that fall in battle can only be brought back to life
by paying an exceptionally hefty fee that requires cash and rare materials.
Such resources could instead go to leveling up units, acquiring new skills, or reforging weapons.
Since the stakes are so high, you naturally care about the units brought into battle.
It’s easy to go into a small panic whenever someone is in danger once you’re aware
of how troublesome it is to bring them back.
The same sense of panic is a key component of the main Fire Emblem games,
and it’s great to see how well that feeling has been translated by the Omega Force development team.
You can also play on casual mode where units are revived after every battle,
but it defangs the overall experience, taking away
one of the strongest reasons to engage with the various systems in the first place.
Considering the value of units, the amount of control you have over them is greatly appreciated.
Before a battle starts, you choose where to deploy units, swap out characters, or equip different weapons.
During the battle itself, it's possible to open up the map and issue commands,
such as moving a unit to a certain location, defending a fort or ally, or attacking a specific enemy.
The very best maps require constant micromanagement.
Several objectives need to be tackled at the same time,
and different opposing forces attack simultaneously at separate locations.
Having to adapt on the fly livens up the typical hack-and-slash style
and successfully adds a bit of Fire Emblem flavor without becoming needlessly complex.
Your available tools are far from perfect, however.
Before battle, you can set a behavior for each unit to act out when you're not directly controlling them.
Setting units to "attack" makes them aggressive, but also suicidal.
They seem to have no issue running into a clearly unfavorable situation time and again.
"Defend" is the exact opposite.
Units guard forts and heal themselves
but are so passive they refuse to deal with the simplest situations, even those
that are directly in front of them.
Such narrowness makes managing your army more tedious than necessary.
The roster is a little hit and miss.
Each member of the cast is enjoyable to play as
and has enough visual differences in their attack animations to stand out,
whether it's the nimble prince Marth or the seductive and dominating Camilla.
Unfortunately the bulk of the heroes come from Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates.
While these games have easily recognizable faces, considering the rich history of the series,
it's a shame there's a notable lack of diversity.
It's especially bizarre that seemingly obvious additions are completely absent, such as Ike, a favorite of many.
The story mode does a fine job getting players acclimated to the game and disappointingly little else.
Its narrative is about as bare bones as possible, taking the broadest Fire Emblem themes but
implementing them in the most basic ways, with almost no surprises
or really much else to get attached to.
There are thankfully a few amusing interactions
that make good on the concept of throwing together heroes from different eras.
Support conversations offer some witty and comedic exchanges, but
it's a shame they only appear when a bond is maxed between units,
making them fairly infrequent.
After finishing the story, there's quite a bit of incentive to dig into History Mode.
Here, players work their way through a sprite-filled map
clearing battles with different objectives and various limitations.
You may be asked to finish a battle within a certain time frame or with only a specific subset of characters.
The mode offers some of the most interesting and intense moments of the entire game,
demanding careful consideration both during and before a fight.
There have been moments when we’ve lost miserably in History Mode
only to apply different tactics to come out on top, making the victory feel well-earned.
There are also three characters who can only be obtained by doing specific things within the mode,
ensuring that the effort is worth the investment.
Fire Emblem Warriors absolutely makes good on its combination of strategy and action,
working better than many other licenses that have adopted the Warriors format.
While it's definitely rough in spots,
it does manage to capture a lot of the Fire Emblem spirit.
If Nintendo keeps mixing its properties with the Warriors style,
hopefully those games will learn a lot from this experiment.
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