But why Fire Emblem Warriors in particular? Because I'm crazy excited for it, even if there are a few things I would like to get off my chest concerning this game. For those of you who don't know what Fire Emblem is, it's a 30+ year old franchise of Strategy-RPG hybrid games famous for combining lovable characters with some punishingly hardcore tactical gameplay, set in a fantasy setting vaguely reminiscent of Lord of the Rings. It was a very obscure series until Super Smash Bros included Marth (the main hero of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon) as a playable character, inadvertently causing a massive surge of interest for this franchise. And then a second surge of interest when Fire Emblem: Awakening was released, as that game was intended to be the swan song of the franchise but made so much revenue that Nintendo decided to turn Fire Emblem into one of their "Golden IPs", big name franchises that are always guaranteed to make a lot of money (examples include Super Mario Bros, Pokemon, and The Legend of Zelda). And now, the mobile app Fire Emblem Heroes has become one of the besting selling apps of all time, making over $4 million in the span of six months.
Fire Emblem Warriors is a spin-off of the franchise, trading the head-scratching complex strategy elements for a simpler, more action-focused hack'n'slash adventure starring fan-favorite characters from across the franchise... Unfortunately, because there are a LOT of characters throughout the series, Tecmo Koei (the company working on Fire Emblem Warriors) has decided to focus almost exclusively on Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, Fire Emblem: Awakening, and the Fire Emblem Fates trilogy of games.
Personally speaking, the fact that they are focusing on the games they chose makes sense. All of these games (sans Shadow Dragon) already have 3D models to work with, which saves Tecmo Koei a lot of time, and are also relatively recent/popular entries in the franchise (again, sans Shadow Dragon). Something that is a little disappointing is how... What's the word? Safe? Yeah, let's go with safe, the playable cast is. Of course we haven't seen the full roster yet at the time of this post, but all the characters that are in are mainstays every Fire Emblem fan expected, like Chrom, Lucina, Camilla, Xander, and Marth. The problem here? There's no legitimately surprising characters revealed. The closest we got to an unexpected character was Cordelia (though she may be a fan-favorite, she doesn't have any relevance to the overall story of her home game). Plus, there's only one character from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Marth), technically two if the rumors that Tiki is also playable.
Something that I found humorous but was irritating to others, was one of the guys working on the game said they're keeping sword-using characters to a minimum, because they are bringing the Weapon Triangle (a rock-paper-scissors-like system found in most Fire Emblem games) into this game, and for the sake of variety in the roster. The problem here? If you look at the game's boxart, every character on the box art is holding a sword. Just be thankful that they are steadily unveiling more characters with a notable lack of swords in their arsenal. but it definitely doesn't help that the two brand new characters (Rowen and Liana) are both sword users. Which leads me to something I need to get off my chest regarding the two brand-new characters.
Now, I know a lot of people don't like the brand new characters, either because of their overly complicated designs (or for looking like Dragon Ball Z rejects), or finding them to be redundant compared to the preexisting characters. Personally speaking, I do genuinely think Rowen's design is rather bland, and Liana, while her design is not bad, per se, she comes across as kind of generic when compared to the rest of the cast. The fact that they are both sword-users, in a franchise with literal hundreds of sword-users, isn't doing them any favors. But if they have entertaining dialogue or decent character development, it'll redeem them in my eyes. I'm not a pessimistic person (I'm a bonafide optimist, because even though it's my job/hobby to critique video games, I don't actively look for flaws in the game itself) but I don't have my hopes up for these two.
With all that said, I kind of like the roster (aside from the brand new characters). I can understand WHY they would pick the characters they did. Are there some characters that I would like to see added (either in the base game or in DLC packs)? Yes. Definitely. Chief among them would be Donnel, because I think it would be funny to see this normal, average farm boy kick a ton of booty, Anna, because she's basically the official mascot of Fire Emblem (she is the only character to appear in every game in the franchise!), and Henry, because he's a pun-spouting, crow-loving maniac who also happens to be a respectably powerful Dark Mage. But alas, if we're getting a Dark Mage from Awakening, it's going to be Tharja (frankly the fact she HASN'T been announced is baffling to me, unless they decide to save her for DLC). Because everyone loves Tharja. She's a goth girl who is so creepy she actually is kind of cute (platonically) in her own weird, disturbing, gothic way. I wouldn't mind if Tharja got in, in fact I kind of want her in simply because A) she's a goth girl and this game has a notable lack of goth girls, and if Night in the Woods has taught me anything, everything's better with goth girls. And B) ever since they announced that the Support Conversations, optional cutscenes where the heroes take a break from the action to hang out and be friends, would be in the game, I had a hilarious mental image of Camilla and Tharja having a conversation together and complaining about random guys hitting on them. I don't know why, but if that happened in the game, I would die from laughter. And then become a Force ghost to continue running this blog. I just now realized that "become a Force Ghost" is my most frequently used joke on this blog.
Ignoring my Tharja rant, I have something important to say regarding the characters already in. I know I said the roster has been really safe, for better or for worse, but as long as the characters are fun to play as, I'm willing to let the roster problem slide. So far, the only characters that seem boring to me are the two brand new characters (but that's to be expected) and to a lesser extent Chrom, Lucina, and Hinoka. Cordelia looks really fun, what with all the flying around on a Pegasus and throwing explosive javelins. Takumi looks insane given the ludicrous range on his attacks. Just the idea of the pint-sized Lissa using a battle-axe twice the size of her entire body is hilariously awesome. Leo, Robin, and Elise all look fun with their magic spells causing lots of destruction on the battlefield. And OF COURSE, the character with the most interesting moveset shown thus far is Camilla. Which gives very mixed feelings. On the one hand, Camilla has a pretty fun looking moveset, complete with fire tornadoes and flying around on a skeletal dragon. On the other... I don't really care for Camilla as a character at all. Then again, I never played the game(s) she's from, and I've only seen snippets of Fates's story. So there's a chance she's actually the best character in the entire franchise. Second Best! Sorry, nothing is topping Henry.
Chrom has been seeking vengeance on Mr. Sakurai
ever since he kicked him out of Smash Bros!
Anyway, the last major thing I want to talk about is the gameplay. So far, it looks fun, even if it's a tad easy looking (judging from the fact that during that hands-off demo the only time the playable cast struggle was against bosses and mini-bosses and literally curb-stomp regular enemies). Of course, this might be a case of "For the sake of not taking a million years to make progress during this demo we're lowering the difficulty/buffing up the main heroes" syndrome that Capcom does when they let people demo most Monster Hunter games. The only major thing I want from this game is for them to show off some new areas, since as far as I'm aware the only area they've shown was a fairly generic looking forest region. Unless I am mistaken, and I'd love to be proven wrong. But still, it WOULD be nice to see some different areas, like a desert region or a snowy mountain. And the characters I mentioned that I really want in the game to some capacity.
Actually, one LAST, last thing I need to get off my chest. I am hoping beyond hope that the dialogue/voice acting from the "Twist of Fate" trailer wasn't from the final build of the game. Because it was pretty mediocre. I mean, Xander, Ryoma, Leo, Marth, and Robin sound great, but seriously, why is Hinoka's voice so unbearingly annoying!? And if that's her canon voice from Fire Emblem Fates, just... Why!? She sounds like a stereotypical American trying to do an English dub for a low-budget cartoon!!!
Long story short, Donnel, Anna, or Henry have to be in Fire Emblem Warriors to make me happy, there has to be more area variety to make me happy, the fact that Camilla has the most interesting moveset so far is causing me mixed feelings, why Tharja hasn't been announced at all is baffling to me, Hinoka's voice is pretty bad, but the game is shaping up for the better in my eyes. Now we got all of that out of the way, we'll have to wait until October for me to get my hands on the game before I can give a final review.
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