Who’s been playing it?
Feels like the game just kind of dropped, probably because Mario’s next week. I still picked it up because I enjoyed Hyrule Warriors (never played other Musou games before).
I’d really encourage people to try this game, even if you are no fan of Dynasty Warriors-likes. Because of the affiliation with Fire Emblem, it seems like the developers upped the AI of your allied units.
As a result, opening the map and giving orders Fire Emblem-style really makes a difference.
Sending units to objective points and having them clear out forts on their own is a game changer. In Hyrule Warriors it felt like the game often took control away from me, because there is so much happening everywhere everytime and there was no way of keeping on top of things. It was always a struggle to get to the critical points of the map in time. HW Legends was a bit better in that regard, because you could switch between characters on the fly, but here planning and map control finally feels achievable.
Also: Thoughts on quality vs. performance mode? Performance seems to be unstable 60fps with questionable image quality, so I prefer quality with the mostly stable refresh rate.
About seven missions in, given the branching path. While the added leadership is a cool idea, on normal mode it seems it amounts more so to you positioning characters closer to a objective to lessen the amount of running rather than strategy as their reliability on claiming a section is low. Though Frederick manage to claim one, which is something I never saw in my twenty hours of Hyrule Warrior.
As for perfomance, the quality mode is a huge improvement over Hyrule Warriors on Wii U. While Performance mode is unpleasant for me to look at, as a fan of 60fps, my impression of the mode was “swimmy.”
I come mostly from Samurai Warriors and Samurai Warriors Chronicles, and this game is mostly like the latter with the four playable characters per battle and the ability to order them around the map. I haven’t really played Fire Emblem much on the other hand.
The strategic aspects of the game is rather interesting, the weapons triangle from the Fire Emblem series affects what sort of units you want to bring, in addition to effects that are particularly effective against certain unit types and the defense/magic defense distinction.
There was a map where I had to restart twice because I tried to use Frederick for his advantages with the Axe, but the presence of powerful mages really hurt with his low magic defense, and was able to do much better after switching him out. Additionally, using weapons that are particularly effective against certain unit types allow you take out those sorts of units really quickly. The healing staves are also useful and seem to only go on certain characters.
The characters so far don’t play drastically different, but I think that might be a good thing. One issue I had with Samurai Warriors Chronicles is that you’re basically presented with three new characters nearly every mission to learn and master, and since many of them played very differently from each other, you basically had to relearn how to play the game three times every mission. This presented a really high initial learning curve which wasn’t really pleasant.
I do like how the mounts work in this game, they were kinda awkward in the Samurai Warrior series.
I’ve been playing in Performance mode the entire time and haven’t had any real issues. Also Classic with Japanese voices.
I’ve generally really liked this game. If I were to have a complaint, it’s that the friendly AI doesn’t know when to run.
Yeah, admittedly oftentimes it comes down to „go there while I do this other thing“ but when the NPC unit has an advantage over the enemy, they often times take out commanders/ capture forts. Maybe this is my limited experience with the series, but I remember having to save my allies asses most of the time in Hyrule Warriors at least.
Regarding character variety: One thing I‘m already missing in this game are Path of Radiance / Radiant Dawn characters. Give me Nephenee!
Even Hector from 7 would have been great, but it seems like Awakening / Fates are the new hot thing right now so… sigh.
I’ve been sticking with Quality mode because the framerate seems a lot more stable. I’ll take a solid 30FPS over what appears to be an unlocked framerate in “Performance” mode any day of the week. If Performance actually locked it to 60 i would be using that though, despite the graphical downgrade.
Really enjoying the game so far, it would definitely benefit from including characters from a wider range of FE games though. Or at least more of a variety of styles. Even just a couple of big characters would be good, like where’s Effie?
I can’t say I’m interested in this one enough to pay full price for it. I like Fire Emblem, but I felt Hyrule Warriors was merely decent. My friend, who is trying to play though the whole Fire Emblem series (poor soul) offered to let me borrow FEW, so I’ll at least try it out to see if it clicks.
I think this is overall better than Hyrule Warriors, but I wouldn’t recommend you buy it, if you didn’t like HW. It’s overall still very similar (just like the rest of the Warriors games). Definitely borrow it first!
The heavier strategic element is something they could have easily messed up but with the weapon triangle and the generally more competent party characters it really is the strongest part of the game.
I’ve been binging this game hard this weekend. More hooked than I expected to be! I like that it’s more tactical than Hyrule Warriors. The weapon triangle definitely adds something. I’m constantly assigning new orders to my team mates on the map.
Hyrule Warriors was a hidden gem of the Wii U’s library which I spent an unhealthy amount of time with. As a Fire Emblem fan I was far more excited than I had any right to be when this game was announced for Switch. My enthusiasm was dampened by what I still consider a pretty disappointing final roster (Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn remains my favourite cast so far) but I still took the plunge on this.
Enjoying it so far. It feels like a nice evolution on what Hyrule Warriors started, and it brings in the Fire Emblem elements well. The strategy elements are great (and nice to have AI companions that do something for a change), as is the pairing up system. It feels a bit overwhelming having so many characters available to you and having to maintain their weapons/crests/levels, but at least it’s somewhat fun to grind.
I’m nearly at the end of the story mode, and lordy is the story bilgewater. I mean…I was expecting it to be bad but…It makes the bad roster even harder to swallow because the elements from each Fire Emblem game are so tenuous that you might as well have included a brand new cast. And what’s up with them all fighting each other before saying 'Oh sorry, my mistake, let’s all be friends now…THOUSANDS ARE DEAD because of your mixup.
Overall though I’m enjoying it, looking forward to delving into history mode next. Oh and I hope it sells well enough for a sequel.
I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit. I’m a huge musou fan. I’ve played every game in the genre since DW2. While I wouldn’t put it up there with the best, it is really good. I like all the Fire Emblem touches added. Roster is a huge disappointment though.
Between this and Marvel Infinite I’m getting really bummed out at being bummed out at rosters lately.
Just got my Limited Edition of this today and am excited to try it out though. I’m much, much more of an FE fan than a Musou fan so I’m curious what I’ll think of it
Yeah, the roster is lame. The only spear users in the game are Pegasus riders for example. I understand the recent games are wicked popular, but they didn’t need every royal from Fates for example.
I guess the roster is just indicative of just how vastly more popular the recent entries are than the older ones. I would have expected more of a showing from Shadows of Valantia though, being the most recent and all.
My only roster complaint really is the lack of Setsuna, my wife, whom I love very much. Oboro’s coming in DLC and I don’t think there’s anyone in the current cast I dislike.
I‘m pretty sure they are going to pull a Fire Emblem Warriors Legends and put in PoR / RD story and chapters like they added Wind Waker for Hyrule Warriors.
Yeah the imbalance among the spear users in particular is really noticeable. If you’ve got a map filled with archers, it’s almost not worth having a spear user on your team due to them all being weak to arrows. It’s particularly odd when you consider they could have used Azura as non-pegasus spear wielder and they saved her for DLC.
I think the roster would have been immensely improved had they just removed four of the Fates Royals and replaced them with Ike, Roy, Hector and maybe Azura to give some balance to things
The thing that sucks is a lot of the characters from games not covered in this game would have added some good weapon diversity to the game, even just looking at the lords. Ike as a heavy sword user…Erika and Ephraim as a rapier user and an on foot lance user receptively…Sothe, while not a lord, could add a cool thief class to the game…Hector would be a axe user/heavy general-like character…
Just stings cause it’s pretty clear where character diversity from both a gameplay perspective and a “covering the breadth of the series” perspective could have been better
I think the reasoning given was that if they had been broader with which games had characters in the roster, they’d wanna include every protagonist, which would’ve made the cast dominated by sword users, as there was no way they were gonna get that many other characters from each game.
Popularity likely did play a big role (which would also explain Lyn getting in over Eliwood or Hector), but there was really no way they were gonna please everyone to begin with, so I’m personally not too upset with the roster. …Well, except for Owain and Oboro making it in rather than, say, Titania. Or, like, almost anyone else.
