There’s nothing quite like the Warriors franchise.
It’s a cathartic release of showing just how powerful a character is as they mow down
thousands of enemies with increasingly elaborate combos.
It’s immediately satisfying, even more so when the player has a connection to that character
already.
And that’s why the Warriors spin-offs are so brilliant.
Take a franchise and mold its unique ideas around this formula and you’ll have something
familiar yet still distinct enough to draw in those fans.
It worked incredibly well for Hyrule Warriors, so much so that everyone began imagining other
Nintendo franchises in a Warriors setting.
One of the most popular suggestions was Fire Emblem, and it turns out that Koei Tecmo had
the same idea.
But does Fire Emblem Warriors achieve the same addictive quality as its predecessor?
The story focuses on two new characters, the twins Rowan and Lianna, who live in the kingdom
of Aytolis.
You learn just enough about their quirks before monsters begin attacking their home, forcing
them to flee.
They learn that these creatures are from between worlds and their presence has brought warriors
from other worlds to Aytolis.
They must work together to protect the kingdom while also searching for heroes that can complete
the Shield of Flames, the only object powerful enough to push back the monsters’ influence.
It’s a pretty typical Warriors spin-off story, once again creating an interdimensional
threat that provides an excuse for characters across a franchise to appear.
The problem is, I never felt like the game did a good job of making me care.
Rowan and Lianna as characters are fine and the search to complete the Shield of Flames
pushes things forward, but it lacks a compelling motivation.
What I mean by that is that there’s really no villain until nearly the end of the main
campaign.
Everything until that point can be boiled down to: meet a character, have a misunderstanding
or a test against you, overcome it so they join you, and repeat.
The basic story beats of Fire Emblem: Awakening, Fates, and Shadow Dragon are there but were
too shallow for me to care.
The game desperately needed a villain to focus on, the same way Hyrule Warriors used Cia,
Volga, and Wizzro.
They were something that needed to be overcome and Fire Emblem Warriors didn’t have that
until way too late.
Thankfully, the gameplay does stand out and feels quite different to Hyrule Warriors if
that was your only other experience with the Warriors series.
Now they do share some elements of course.
Attacks are kept simple with light and heavy variations but most follow the idea of inputting
several light attacks before a heavy attack completes the move with a flashy finisher.
A stagger bar can also appear above important enemies that can be worn down.
Once it’s gone, a focused attack will automatically be done for major damage.
Each character also has a special move that, once its meter is filled, can tear through
tons of enemy soldiers.
And finally there’s Awakening Mode, which allows the character to ignore enemy strengths
to build up a massive combo before ending it with a huge attack.
All this should sound familiar to fans of Hyrule Warriors.
But where Fire Emblem Warriors stands out is in the implementation of specific elements
from the main games.
First off, there’s the Weapon Triangle.
I honestly didn’t think it would matter that much and for the majority of grunts,
it doesn’t.
But when it comes to captains and other heroes, you need to be prepared because they wear
down your health extremely quickly.
And even if you’re able to dodge their attacks and keep them on the ropes, it takes a lot
longer to actually kill them.
It’s what makes the Awakening Mode so crucial if your character is at a disadvantage.
You instantly ignore the Triangle and can actually finish them off quickly.
It adds a lot more strategy to the game then I ever had to use in other Warriors games.
And this element of strategy permeates the gameplay so much.
Before each battle, you can choose which characters you’ll be using.
At the most, you can have eight of them on the field, all helping and gaining levels
at the same time, but only four are playable and you can easily switch between them.
The others can be seen as back-up.
At any time, you can pause the game to bring up a map and from here give orders to the
other characters.
They can defend certain points, attack forts to gain control, or even heal one another
if they have a stave.
And these jobs are done well.
Unless they’re at a significant disadvantage, they will carry out their orders.
They were never as efficient as I could be, but it still helped cover multiple points
at once with little issue.
Now while you can possibly have eight characters on the field all moving around to where you
need them, there’s also the option for them to pair up, allowing for even more possibilities
on the battlefield.
No matter who you pair-up, the supporter can protect the vanguard from a single hit when
a meter is filled or even be summoned for a hit to instantly bring up the stagger bar
or do more damage to an enemy weak to their weapon.
It’s also possible for them to combine their special attacks as long as both characters
have their meter filled.
This does even more damage at an even wider range.
There is literally no disadvantage to pairing up in the game other than the possibility
of covering less area but that never became an issue for me.
And like the main Fire Emblem games, pairing up or just fighting on the battlefield together
will increase the support level between two characters.
This has the advantage of allowing you use the special pair-up options even more frequently.
Any two characters can support one another but unfortunately, not all characters can
have a support conversation.
Only one will ever happen at the max support and it has to be between two heroes that can
achieve an A+ support.
It’s a bit of a disappointment that not every possibility can be seen, but considering
the sheer amount of characters, it’s understandable.
The roster is simultaneously one of the best and yet most disappointing aspects of the
game.
20 characters can eventually be unlocked through story mode making for a lot of options and
playstyle possibilities.
However, certain characters are extremely similar to one another.
If one character uses a certain mode of transportation, either running or riding a horse or pegasus,
and wields the same weapon, they’ll pretty much have the same moveset.
The only differences are their unique specials, Awakenings, and stats.
While this bothered me at first, I eventually didn’t mind because there is a lot of variety.
And sword wielders are the exception as they all play completely different from one another.
But this also leads to another problem.
Like Hyrule Warriors, materials and new weapons can be collected from each battle.
The materials are used to strengthen the characters such as allowing them to use better weapons,
decrease damage from certain weapons types, and extend their combos.
This is also how the heroes are given a class change and unlike the main Fire Emblem titles,
a class change doesn’t reset that character back to level one.
So it’s a good idea to use them right away as the stat increases are immense.
However, if you want to keep every character at around the same parity, all these options
can be overwhelming.
It takes a long time to go through over 20 characters’ menus and see what can be upgraded.
Now granted, you could focus on a smaller part of the roster, but I honestly enjoyed
playing as every character.
So I would cycle through each one every few maps, and it was always tedious.
The same could be said for the weapons, but it is eased somewhat by having an Optimize
option that makes things a little simpler though not as nuanced as you could be with
the weapon abilities available.
A normal playthrough of the Story Mode took me around twelve hours to complete, but where
the real meat of Fire Emblem Warriors can be found is in the History Mode.
Much like Hyrule Warriors’ Adventure Mode, this utilizes the maps you know to create
different missions that can change up how you play and offer up even more rewards.
History Mode is where I had the most fun.
The goals of the main story never really changed that much, making them a bit dull if you decide
to marathon them all at once.
But the options in History Mode have a lot more variety.
There’s the normal fights of course, but then others have you fight through an arena
of increasingly difficult captains and heroes, take down as many enemies as possible in a
few minutes, or even place restrictions where only characters from a certain game or that
use a particular weapon type can be chosen.
It adds that extra challenge that makes you think just a bit differently especially when
it comes to choosing who you’ll use in each fight.
It’s also much simpler than Adventure Mode.
While that emulated classic Zelda games in how you had to find items in order to unlock
the way forward or even access certain missions, it still felt extremely tedious to get through
if you wanted to see everything.
History Mode, on the other hand, emulates a Fire Emblem battle with each enemy on the
map marking a different mission and certain ones needing to be defeated in order to move
toward the big battle that eventually unlocks other characters.
I loved the streamlined approach to this and there’s just as much gameplay with five
different History Mode maps.
I was only able to complete one in my time as it alone took around 8 hours.
So there’s plenty of gameplay here to experience.
The presentation in Fire Emblem Warriors is also good.
There are plenty of enemy soldiers on screen and the crazy attack animations are still
impressive, especially when the horses are performing insane acrobatics.
The levels themselves don’t exactly pop, but they didn’t come across as terrible
either.
Now there is the option to choose between Quality and Performance.
Quality runs at 1080p, 30 frames per second while Performance is 720p and 60 frames per
second.
And I honestly preferred to play with the Quality option for my TV.
I never minded the lower frame rate, but the lower resolution in Performance Mode did bug
me.
But that’s the beauty of this option.
You can pick what works best for you.
While the visuals aren’t spectacular in any real way, it does still feel like a Fire
Emblem game.
The characters look how they should and have the quirks you remember from their games.
It’s usually boiled down to just one key attribute, but it’s impossible to have nuance
in a game like this.
Still, they all stand out and are fully voiced.
The English voice acting gets the job done, but the script doesn’t really allow for
many standout moments though some actors still manage it.
As for the music, I was surprised how low key it was much of the time.
Unlike Hyrule Warriors, it doesn’t really have the rockin’ remixes of the classic
songs.
There’s quite a bit of recognizable music here that’s been remixed, but it never got
me pumped in the same way.
Fire Emblem Warriors is a polarizing game for me.
I loved what the Fire Emblem formula brought to a Warriors game and how it made it all
feel more strategic.
There’s a lot of great options and some definite improvements with how History Mode
works.
And yet, while it still plays great, it comes across lesser than Hyrule Warriors.
I like the game, and it’s still good with plenty of options to keep you engaged for
dozens of hours, but Fire Emblem Warriors never quite reaches the heights of its predecessor.
It just remains at a consistent level of quality.
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