A Great Game That Feels Unfinished. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes REVIEW (Spoiler-Free) 

Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoyed. And always remember that these are just my opinions of the gameplay and your mileage may vary. With that said, I'm going to be enjoying a nice break! If you want to help support the channel, please subscribe :) and let me know what YOU think of the gameplay of Three Hopes! Likes and comments go a long way for this video to be found in recommended tabs! Happy mashing fellow warriors!!!

The worst part of the game’s plot is the under utilization of Byleth/Sothis’s fued with Shez/Arval

I always thought that locking the secret characters in only replayed missions is a huge mistake, and not being able to use characters that are unrecruitable from other routes in NG+ is such a weird choice Another thing about the game is the weird sudden endings, it's honestly not very satisfying....its like the progress bar hitting 90% only to then freeze forever But from aside those complaints, this game is pretty much amazing in every way.

I feel like I could describe three hopes’ current state as: “done but not finished”

My biggest issue with the game is the inconclusive endings. They're garbage. I get that they don't want to invalidate Byleth's part, but they could've made 'em a requirement for the good endings if they really needed to.

The biggest problem with this game (story wise) is making all endings intentionally unfinished. As if there's half a game left. Which feels even worse considering how well thought out most of the story is by building on the lore and world. Answering all these questions left from 3h but then making even more for dlc or "Three houses" actually being three games set in fodland

One aspect I was disappointed in was characters only having 1 unique special animation. In the first Warriors game you had a unique Warriors special, Awakening special and a Lead Pair-up special. It was also kinda lame to see units being locked to a single weapon for classes. If you wanna use Crusher as Annette, you have to change her to an Axe unit and lose access to all other magic attacks. She also loses her unique animations too..

Hope there will be possibilities of dlc route including new classes, lore, and more

Weirdly enough, one of my favourite things in the game is that stat caps are all the same. Something about Dedue being an insane mage makes me happy.

One very minor detail that I love in Three Hopes is that characters' eyes will randomly shift around to look at different things during cutscenes. It just makes them feel much more alive. That was one of the main reasons why I hated Tea Time in Three Houses, because characters staring wall-eyed at the camera can get pretty unnerving after a while.

I mostly agree, except on ONE major point. "... having truly unique characters like Fire Emblem Warriors did..." While you went into it a little bit, I feel like you were looking at it in reverse. You did me a favor by using the archers as an example, since Sakura was my most played character for a number of reasons I no longer remember. So I definitely have some thoughts to go into about your comparison. In FEW, Sakura and Takumi are identical outside of two things. The first is stats; Sakura is more mage-like in her stats, meaning she wants, at bare minimum, a weapon with "Topsy Turvy" to make her weapon scale with Magic instead of Strength. The second is item; Takumi can only hold a Vulnerary/Concoction/Elixir/Bond Charm, while Sakura also has the option of holding a staff instead. Meaning that, at best, Takumi gets +1 slot on his weapon since he doesn't need Topsy Turvy, while Sakura can heal other characters. This is literally the only difference you can really tell between the two in battle, outside of how they look. You do not magically play the two any differently due to any difference in stats. Yes, Luck affected the chance of skills like Luna and Lethality and was thus good, but you weren't just NOT going to take those skills on characters with lower luck, they were too important to pass up on; *every single ability was a passive booster, there was no active effects.* And since everyone could learn every ability, it was entirely a matter of the small optimizations, like "Okay, this person has identical Str/Mag, so I should give them the skill that raises stats based on how close the two are." It had zero impact on how you actually played the character. The only point I'll concede is the "Strong (X)" weapon modifiers, which powered up specific strong attacks, which, if used, basically forced you to spam one specific combo far more than adapting on the fly to what was happening. In Three Hopes, Bernadetta and Ignatz are polar opposites despite being the "default" archers (alongside Ashe but I'm doing two-person comparisons.) Bernadetta gets a crit rate boost in the circle for her ability so she benefits more from Range+ to poke at enemies normally outside her range and freezes anything that's too close. She also benefits from being unmounted, since Cavalry moves around a lot while attacking. Ignatz, on the other hand, excels as a close range skirmisher who's constantly knocking enemies back due to Dreamer's Paintbrush splashing damaging paint everywhere, so knocking enemies back is more damaging than trying to keep them close for longer combos. He also excels as a cavalry unit so he can more easily give chase to keep sending enemies flying. When commanding the AI to do things, Bernadetta deals bonus damage to enemies who are attacking a base she's defending, while Ignatz takes less damage when attacking a base, once again showing how the exact same movelist provides far more variety than it ever did in the original. In Three Hopes, 1) Unique Abilities change playstyles on a fundamental level, and need an accessory slot to transfer them which limits other build options if you go that route. Also, Merc Whistles are one per playthrough, so unless you're speedrunning NG+ you're not building teams around this. 1.5) See point 1, about Crests and Crest items. Sure, you CAN give Shez the Freikugel and Kalpa Dragon Sign, but then they can't ALSO use the Warm Scarf from Sylvain. You need to pick and choose, so the ability to pass things around is not robbing anyone of their individuality, and is in fact an equalizer to try to help some characters you don't like the playstyle of. 2) Yes, everyone *can* hit those stat caps... but are you *going* to without stat booster items and NG+ blitzing for events like "select someone to get +5 Mag" on the war map? 3) Notice how not everyone learns all the exact same abilities for the same classes; the game literally will not let you run the same setup on everyone. Shez not getting Dual Onslaught is a great example, since Shez has great Strength AND Magic even without stat boosters, so it would have been much more potent on them than someone whose stats lean much harder towards one than the other. I feel like the entire point is that FEW had a postgame mode where you could use anyone and had more limitations on challenge maps (Such as only being able to deploy mounted/infantry units, only characters from certain games/families, etc) so the game felt more like there was an endgame, while in Three Hopes all these optimizations feel pointless outside of Maddening Difficulty; we only have the main story. As such, the FOOS (First Order Optimal Strategy) is to look at what works in the earlygame (in my case, Facetanking with Lorenz until I can get Sylvain's scarf) and continue to rely on it without looking at what else works (Such as Lysithea whose entire point is to send enemies flying in groups so they all explode together, overlapping their damage AoEs to obliterate every enemy caught in it instantly, ergo a completely different playstyle that shines in completely different ways. This game desperately needs it's own version of History Mode or something.

Is anyone else angry on Sylvain being a holy knight and not a dark knight? I mean, he had a budding talent in reason on Houses :(

What has hurt the replayability for me has been the forced inclusion of Shez in EVERY story mission. Doing a maddening mode run with certain characters felt stunted due to only having 3 playable units to customize. I wanted to do a church-based unit run but that left me with having to choose 3 of Seteth, Flaynn, Catherine, and Shamir. Additionally, some maps also have specifc units you need to use ON TOP of shez being required, so I essentially had 2 playable units i could pick from for it. In 3 houses, yeah byleth/your lord was often required to be deployed, but you were actively controlling the entire roster so it didnt bother me. All i want is to be able to make shez a secondary unit or just not be forced out like I can with auxillary battles.

You forgot one very important thing. And that is I thought when I first saw the game that Arval and sothis would interact together. And have there own story. The whole time Arval wants to end the Ashen Demon by doing so would kill sothis. I thought those two would meet and fight each other or something. Another big miss opportunity for the developers.

Honestly I agree with pretty much all of this, especially in regards to the topic of Newgame+. The only content in terms of maps that’s given is two paralogues, and oddly two of the 4 Newgame + characters were excluded from this. I do wish that maybe they’d have given this game some more time in development. The highs are really high but the corner cutting is just really apparent whenever I see a random Hero hanging out in the training grounds, or think about How Holst is clearly designed for a class not in the game

I watched GW's ending out of context and thought "Wow, that sucked." Then I played it myself and saw it in context... and thought "Wow, that sucked." And the other route endings don't fair much better. Then again "ending" is misleading. Because it's not an ending. The game just fucking stops unresolved. And leaving Byleth out of the second secret chapter was odd. They really should have been present also. Even if just as a green unit.

Potential spoilers warning TBH my biggest gripe with the game is the amount of unplayable characters and scripted deaths - like, for example, Miklain's scripted deaths and unplayability even when his appearance seemed to actually hold story significance as element of broader portrayal of social changes in Ferghus. Let's be honest, the entire genre stems from Dynasty Warriors where saving characters AGAINST HISTORICAL EVENTS was pretty much commonplace even if often difficult and every character that wasn't outright generic was playable. I mean, sure, there is some feeling of game being unfinished like what you mentioned and some strange support decisions (like, for example Mercedes mentions Constance multiple times and has a paralogue with her but can't go beyond C support) so I guess they focused on delivering code on time and will likely end up adding remaining characters and extra supports in updates/DLCs, but

I've played through all the routes(except GW) twice each, with and without Byleth; so here's what I've got. Scarlet Blaze(First route): A very solid route that doesn't do anything creative. Its doesn't make any big risks or make any story decisions that really push the envelope. However, what it sets out to do, it does competently. The ending feels the most open ended, what with the war with the kingdom still going and that eyebrow raising "No way they could've survived that" death at the end; however it implemented the Byleth differences the best out of routes, even if its still done clumsily more often than not. Azure Gleam(Second route): With by far the best first part of the whole game, Azure Gleam's beginning is phenomenal and sets up fantastic growth for not only Dimitri, but the entire Blue Lions cast and more. However, due to poor execution with some admittedly interesting ideas in the second half, Azure Gleam became the hardest to pin down in terms of quality. It has terrible implementation of the secret chapters and Byleth, and their inclusion actively makes parts of the story make less sense, leading to the non-Byleth version being the better of the two story wise. However, it met many of the criticisms towards Azure Moon(lack of TWSITD payoff, poor execution of Rodrigues' death and its aftermath, and so on) in stride and allowed for great character development on the part of not only Dimitri or Felix, but the whole cast. Not to mention nice characterization for Rhea, even if it was often too subtle for its own good. Azure Gleam, higher highs than any route, and lower lows than them as well. Golden Wildfire(Third Route): I never expected I'd be saying this, but this is my favorite route and it made Claude my favorite lord. I adore Dimitri and Edelgard, but the realization of Claude as his own entity in the story, which wasn't done in Verdant Wind, is incredible to watch. Claude's development and being able to see his mind at work really helps show off the Master Tactician that was missing in Three Houses. Claude's own ideals are shown off and allows him to distinguish himself as something more than "Edelgard but nicer". He seems to me to be the most human of all the lords, exhibiting doubt and frustration while being allowed to develop genuine flaws in a way that he was refrained from doing so in Three Houses. While I think Azure Gleam's first half is better, Golden Wildfire's is still close and unlike Azure Gleam it doesn't become so shaky afterwards and remains consistently good throughout. Claude's natural skepticism and defiance also lets him stand out against the powerful personalities of Dimitri and Edelgard when they interact, especially when he lowkey calls out Edelgard to her face just before allying with her. Before this, Claude was well below Dimitri and Edelgard in terms of lord rankings, but that sort of humanity and character depth that he was allowed to have makes him seem like more than just the "Pretty upside down meme boy". His role in the war is also the most interesting, being the most determined to end the war on his own terms, rather than capitulating to anyone else while also setting up his own designs. Its official, I now Fear the Deer. My biggest disappointments are the lack of proper implementation of Byleth and the secret chapters and the lack of resolution for all the stories. I also would've like a Route split where you could join the Slitherers, maybe put it in Azure Gleam since that would be a nice parallel to Black Eagles in Three Houses and it is the most involved with the mystery of the Agarthans(compared to the other two).

I don't think the Merc Whistle negates the unique personal skills necessarily. You still only get one of those per playthrough, and equipping the resulting accessories is a trade-off, with e.g. anti-effect shields being unavailable if you use that. Still, the personal skills do play more into the unit feel rather than the mechanics. Ingrid's pegasus C4 makes enemies explode with ice while Hubert's personal makes them get spontaneously poked with darkness. Both basically just give you some more elemental damage, but half of the fun is the spectacle and that's very distinct between the two.

There are a ton of things I can say about the plot, some good, most bad, but when it comes to gameplay, I appreciate how much easier it is to get class skills from classes you may not want units to actually be in, and I like that male magic users aren't completely screwed out of a non-mounted Master Class. Still, I wish Advanced and Master classes could have the option to equip 2-3 weapon types, and that Relics and Sacred Weapons could be equipped by units with the correct Crest regardless of Class. EDIT: I honestly miss Garreg Mach as a large hub area to explore, and I loved the Monastery as a second home for the characters.

On the difficulty point, I actually just straight started in hard mode, and had a blast start to finish. One of the things that the higher difficulties in this game do is drop better equipment. And having a good forge goes a looooong way towards making up the level differences on the higher difficulties. My current NG+ maddening run of Azure Gleam features a team of units between levels 35 and 50, but because they're all packing either regalia or fully forged relics, their damage output can keep with the absurdly over leveled enemies.

Yeah, Hard mode has a very wonky early difficulty curve to get used to at first, but I think it's worth the ordeal once you figure out how to abuse the mechanics of the game. Also I never imaged the weapon seller would become completely useless. Like, she's kinda useful in the early game but once you've gotten enough weapons from maps, there's not much reason to buy stuff from her.

I wonder why they ditched the whole "Adventure map" thing that Hyrule Warriors had. That was really fun and dlc brouuht a lot of stuff in it, so many maps that you have a lot to do to finish it Costumes, weapon upgrades etc And thats what the endgame in HW was, there's also a bunch of extra things like bossrushes, killcount rack ups and whatnot I think FE3H would benefit greatly from a "free" mode where you can use all your units (without the weird "auxtillery is where everybody can be chosen") I had hopes they wouldn't lock characters out to JUST that, because it's a warriors game. I was waiting for the.... "fanfic everybody works together" path because THAT ONE paralogue hints to it very much...

*Spoiler warning* I love this game over the first warriors for sure, they made things less convoluted like the character level up progression and the characters were, in general to me, more fun to play as than the OG warriors. I also felt like the story was a lot stronger because we had these already developed characters with an already developed story. The OG warriors didn't really even feel like it had a story, just fan service to popular characters at the time. So much to the point I still can't even remember the story of that game because it was all over the place. However Three Hopes did leave me upset in a few aspects 1. I cannot STAND how some characters will appear in their normal outfits in classes as the AI but not when you control them. Dedue will have his personal outfit controlled by the AI even when he's on horseback, he will not if you control on Horseback, as seen when his clone shows up in the secret Byleth chapter he has his personal outfit on even on horseback. 2. All of the campaigns end way too abruptly, Dimitri's being the only one that feels like an ending. Claude's and Edelgards feel like they're should be another cutscene or battle afterwards. 3. They did absolutely nothing with Hedgemon Edel which made no sense. She showed up once and in a cutscene and then... that was it. They didn't even explain how they were suddenly able to control her like that. 4. If you save Byleth the story still pretends like they don't exist, they appear like 1 more time and that's it, despite being hyped up as a character 5. Too many paralogues that separate the characters and just straight up put you at an huge disadvantage just because you were leveling up that character I.E. Lorenz, Ignatz, and Rachael's paralogue, as it he has a stupid strict timelimit, that on new game ++ I still struggle to get an S on because those 3 cannot kill the enemies fast enough without my help this is on hard mode and I had to use so much money to level them up. Same with the Shamir, Jeralt, and Catherine Paralogue, as you HAVE to have prior knowledge of where enemies will spawn because they are retreated and are on wyverns so they will easily outrun you. 6. The Byleth and Shez rivalry goes absolutely nowhere. If you save Byleth Sothis just doesn't ever speak again, and if you kill Byleth you literally strike them down and then nothing happens, Shez regrets his actions, for no reason I might add because you spend 9 chapters making it your goal, then out of nowhere Shez is like "I just don't think that was the right thing to do" for literally no reason. I also get super annoyed at Shez constantly saying how Byleth is stronger than them after Iiteraly beat them in like 3 different chapters 7. They did not think characters like Annette and Seteth through. In Three Houses most classes can use almost all weapons, this worked for Annette who is a mage and her Hero Relic is an axe, she can use magic and her axe in her mage class... you cannot do that in Three Hopes she has to have one or the other. Then there's Seteth who literally is shown riding a wyvern and holding his perf weapon in cutscenes, but he cannot do that in game because there is no wyvern class that allows you to use lances. It makes no sense at all. Minor extra one, but they really need to find a better way to implement some of these characters into the story. Every character seems to play so larger part of the story than they did in Three Houses... except for Ignatz and Raphael. They always seem so one off with Raphael always talking about food or muscles and Ignatz only talking about being a knight. Leonie mildly suffers from this but at least she has her connection with Jeralt. Mercedes had the same issue as she doesn't even talk in very often in most cutscenes. Every other character seems to play a huge role now due to their family connections to the story, or even the location they are in like Dorothea's opera company even now paying a bigger role. Lindhardt is a great example of how they CAN give people bigger roles because of his crestology studies being more important now. All and all I love the game for what it is, I'm over 100 hours in, but there's definitely room for improvement

Just finished my first play-through. I went the Leischter route. Got to the end and thought “wait… where’s the rest of the story?”

My first playthrough was also Scarlet Blaze and it was some of the most fun I've had in a game, but my new game plus Azure Gleam has just been a complete slog to get through cause I feel like I've already done everything the game has to offer. I know the idea of a golden route is not liked by most people, but I think this game would've been better with just one route.

Just finished up Edelgard's and Dimitri's run and about half of Claude's and I must say too much protecting people on Dimitri's run very punishing when you start on hard mode. My biggest complaint is the extra unit's can't be used in main story maps nor can they be added to the trainer. They don't have support talks with each other which is fair for story reasons but I don't see the harm of letting me have my 3 lords work together in my story.

I thought the game had some major problems. Notably: * Rhea is only playable in NG+ * Rhea has no support convos * Rhea is mostly story-irrelevant * No Church route * Golden Wildfire just sucks in general * Rhea deserved better.

I wish they gave seteth a wyvern class cuz seeing him on a wyvern weilding his sacred relic but in game only calvary can optimally use Seteth use his sacred weapon.

The unique aspects of each character kind of begins and ends with the class specific abilities certain character unlock like Lysithea and Lorenz unlocking Proficient Witstrike. After playing all three of the good endings, I do wish the secret character were deployable and had more to it. The weapon locked aspects were a bit annoying as well. With tenacity, all characters can learn almost every magic/art through peer training.

It’s so funny bc while there’s like 100 hours plus of gameplay, I still feel like “damn. I really should have the option to play any map I have completed from any route from the main menu with any character I’ve unlocked” It’s why OP pirate warriors 4 and Age of Calamity are still my favorites. The post story stuff is just so open and accessible. At the very least tho I was really impressed with how well the game translated 3houses elements. The characters, the battalions, the unique skills, and many of the classes. man I love musou games and I think we’re eating pretty good lately.

The armorer is actually useful in that if you end up with excess money and a dearth of ore, you can buy weapons and trade them to the supply master for smithing stones.

It doesn't help that the logic behind the abrupt endings sucks. It's nice that you don't want to "invalidate Byleth's story", but that doesn't mean you should end every ending in your game with a massive anti-climax. And that's being charitable and taking them at their word, rather than going with the idea that they've purposefully held any sort of satisfying conclusion back for paid DLC.

one of the most baffling things about the class system is that the infantry Axe classes basically reused/adapted Lissa's move set from the first FE warriors and the same is also true for the infantry bow classes however in that game we also have Leo and Elise as Horse mages but they didn't reuse that to have the Valkyrie class in this game despite mages being the only class path with 1 master class

I think if they add a fourth route where everyone can be used and add characters like hanneman, Cyril, Judith, Alois, Nader and others will complete the game. Also let you purchase training points or earn more post game.

I wasn't aware as many people had issues with the story, although I do understand the issue of things just kinda ending abruptly. NG+ I didn't mind either with the use of Vanguard Whistles. My first playthrough was on Hard, then my next playthroughs to see the next route stories were on Easy and that cut back a lot of playtime to experience the story and collect missions for the Record Keeper. Then I exclusively used Record Keeper to play through Maddening mode, which gave a lot more use to the Renown characters so I never had an issue with them other than maybe not being able to Train them. Also having played all versions of Hyrule Warriors (including AoC) and some of FE Warriors 1, I vastly prefer the weapon system in 3 Hopes to those older titles. Its much more braindead but I never found it fun to spend almost half my playtime simply unlocking the best weapon and also smashing as many good modifiers onto it as possible which also required thousands upon thousands of kills with other weapons to unlock said modifiers. 3 Hopes doesn't have the depth of weapon forging the other titles have but frankly I never found that part enjoyable in the first place. My biggest gripe so far as you mention is the lack of a postgame. Something like Adventure maps from Hyrule Warriors DE or FE Warriors history mode, while grindy and time consuming, at least gave unique rewards on a scaling difficulty curve. In 3 Hopes S ranking a map on Easy will award the S rank reward for all difficulties, so replaying the mission on Maddening is pretty much just fluff to get an achievement and put the S rank stickers on the mission for the difficulty. There's basically no actual tangible reason to play Maddening cause it doesn't offer anything new, just a harder experience for the sake of it. EDIT: I have a lot more to say about this game but I realized the post got away from me

For disclosure purposes I want to note I’ve only played through Dimitri’s route and recently started Claude’s (moving to a new place and reading the Warhammer Fantasy 6e rulebook which is a thick book took a lot of my time). There are things I like about Three Hopes such as making the female version of the MyUnit look good as opposed to female Byleth’s design (I know that’s personal preference but it is a complaint I have been if I’m in the minority), a story for the Kingdom that i was hoping for, fun gameplay and other things. There are definitely problems though. I won’t say by biggest problem since it has to do with the ending and I’m not going to spoil it but let’s just delay I was left with many questions about what comes next.

I had a lot of fun on my first playthrough, but story wise (especially regarding Byleth/Sothis) I really felt like there was a lot of potential left unused. But I'll save those thoughts for your eventual story/lore based videos!

Have not played the game yet, but as a Warriors gamer at heart I’ll say that post game and features are integral to long term play of these games. I have hundreds of hours put into Dynasty Warriors 8 and it’s expansion Xtreme Legends. I have 150 hours in Fire Emblem Warriors playing all difficulties, as well as history mode. To hear that 3 hopes has little to no post game outside replay doesn’t bode well. I love the Warriors games and I loved 3 houses, so I looked forward to this title, I’m hoping I still enjoy my time when I decide to pick it up.

I honestly have to agree. I honestly can't motivate myself to play the other two routes because... I won't really get individual characters. Like sure, I get the story, but to get that story I'll have to play for ca. 50 hours per route. I was honestly shocked when they announced that there would be a class system with no individual movesets. I was shocked to the core if I'm being honest and I would personally say that the game especially suffers because there is so little class diversity. Like in my one run I ended up with Shez as Azura, DImitri as Great Lord, and Byleth and Jeritza in their individual classes, but other than that I had 1 Great Knight, 2 Mortal Savants, 4 Bow Knights, 4 Holy Knights, 8 Gremorys, 1 Falcon Knight, 2 Tricksters, 1 Dark Knight and 1 War Master with several of them having been in the other classes as well. The class building system is incredibly unbalanced due to the sheer lack of available classes. Like why do we only have one magic master class when you get a total of 8 mages, even in the route supposedly centered around knights? Also some characters join so late that you barely get to use them (you don't even necessarily want to as those units will have to be leveled up...) and classes being weapon-locked honestly doesn't make it better. I think they would have needed to do an individual moveset for each character's favourite classes or at least have created such a wide range of classes that you'll have a maximum of 3 units in the same class at the same time (endgame amount of units). Like someone come and explain why I should suddenly start playing with Gremory Constance when I already have 6 other Gremorys who are just as good or even better on the team. NG+ could also have been better if I'm completely honest. It's extremly poorly balanced and doesn't really offer any new opportunities for the player (you basicly just get the chars you already played with at an insanely high level, but the whole sense of progress within the unit-building is lost. Also it's entirely useless if you use it on another route as you'll have one insanely overpowered part of your cast and one "normal" half which is certainly quite annoying and also quite counterproductive in regards to my fun if I'm being honest. Also, the End of the Story was entirely unsatisfying. It was like they run out of time to continue the story an then just said "Whelp, let's just write 3x4 lines about the war continuing but y'all are not gonna see or play it." If they don't deliver a good post-story game in the form of a DLC I'm not gonna play any of the routes soon. Like why would I to see the kind of the same text 3 times...

I strongly agree with you take on Three Hopes. It’s a phenomenal game but when you’re able to look at it objectively, from a gameplay standpoint and a story telling standpoint, you’re can clearly see that there are very positive aspects and equally negative aspects to it in addition to just feeling like it’s simply incomplete. The lack of post game content is seriously disappointing and it does make me really sad that we do not have a dedicated Church Route like Three Houses’s Silver Snow. The combat is FUN and theres always a feeling of satisfaction from getting to finally build your characters in the exact way you want to build them, equipping various abilities learned from multiple classes and what not, but even then, it’s bothersome that the classes lock you into using only one specific weapon type. In Three Houses I always recruited Dorothea and loved getting her to Gremory while equipping the Levin Sword on her and now I can’t do that here. And while I appreciate the heavier importance placed on Forging Weapons, not only is it extremely costly in the sense that Gold in this game is super tight, but other mechanics like Battalions were unnecessarily overshadowed and relegated to Type Advantage buffs which is a real shame. Three Hopes is still easily one of the most fun games I’ve played in a long time but sadly it suffers from feeling like an incomplete product that could’ve been even better if the devs had more time to work on it. But hey, here’s to hoping for DLC content that’ll perhaps remedy some of those negatives.

Admittedly I’m expecting the story to pick up and really finish with dlc. It’s a Warriors and there’s going to be dlc, do I think it’s a bad move. Yes, I’m just expecting it. But yeah not being able to use your other units in the story in NG+ is so dumb. Especially for the unlockable/purchase characters for NG+ bc I want to use them but it would require a repeat

I'm 275% through the three stories, loving the game so far The main problem I have is the ally UI, you have to babysit your other 3 units in the pause map menu to keep them on task, a lot of times I've been caught up in a main story mission only to realise my other 7 units have completed their objective and are idle or have adandoned their position to run all the way to my active character Missing a lot of excellent classes too, and appearence customisation is lacking - surely 3 Houses character models could have been made available?

Fire Emblem Warriors as a general concept just has so much potential Even though it's a hack and slash, giving orders, at least in harder difficulties, can actually feel important. But then, aside from big story maps, there's a severe lack of unique challenges. And that's pretty much the same for the OG Warriors, but even that game has more unique map types, so- I could go for way more classes, I could go for a wider variety of mission objectives, but like the most important part for me is just POSTGAME. I enjoyed the game, I WANT TO KEEP PLAYING. And NG+ honestly doesn't feel the same I've thought up some mode where you start with a small party or even one unit, and gather units as time goes on, character additions like ALOIS where is ALOIS and other Three Houses characters that got demoted here, maybe even the new lords shown off- I wouldn't even mind if some copied abilities from other characters at that point, Matthias could just have Sylvain's Gordian Stroke, and some other support ability- and he's ready to go in my eyes. I just want things to DO that still feel rewarding. A lofty goal to work towards that isn't "Beat it but it's harder now I guess"

This was a great summary! I had such a blast with Scarlet Blaze, playing for almost 90 hours on that alone, but once it was done I was just so shocked that no other modes opened up. It seems like a huge hole in an otherwise amazing time.

I enjoyed my 3 routes, done with different difficulties (normal, then hard, then Maddening) but yeah, there're some points that feel... Empty. The fact that map gives a certain amount of EXP for your character, and is the same in every difficulty, is absolutely messed up. A level 2 enemy will give the same EXP amount as a level 100 unit (normal/maddening). It makes the game waaaaaaaaaaay too slow in the beggining of Maddening mode, forcing you to use the Training Grounds to level-up at least to level 40 all your characters if you don't wanna see them die in the first battle by sending them try to take a stronghold. The lack of endgame is also sad. Having to do the other routes is ok (imo), but at least give us something real to make us play all the characters we want, not juste like "re-do all the chapters you've done but now you can play anyone". A 4th route would have been cool for this game, even tho it would've gone against the Three Houses "law". There're some part where all the House leaders say that they may be fighting together to fight a commun enemy. It would have been nice having a route where you can play them all, not just a random hidden chapter And at last, all the ending feel off. Dimitri's ending is wtf, Edelgard's feels weird, and Claude's is... Mmmh... "Claude" ending. Same as Three Houses, I don't understand why Claude's end seems to always be the right ending. Like none dies, Fodlan'll be free from its rulers and Edel and Dimi can stop fighting. It started well, with the Almyra chapter, but... I don't know, it went weird at some point Still, this game was really fun to play, and i'll definitely keep playing 👌

My biggest problem is that they 3rd wheeled Claude AGAIN even in his own route. He either side with the empire or the kingdom and there's no in between, he can't stand on his own ground without having to rely on the other two. I would've love to see him destroy the central church without having to allied with the empire, butttt this is IS we're talking about... They bound to have lacking in writing always. Although I'm happy that they somehow expand his backstory and reveal one of his half sibling in the game, but i feel like they could've done more with him. His paralogue story is actually really good and i genuinely enjoyed seeing him telling judith the truth about himself and tiana. Secondly, WHY AREN'T CYRIL, NADER, JUDITH AND GUSTAVE ARE PLAYABLE?! WHY? I WANT THEM

oh my god *someone else speaking positively about the original warriors* that game fucked hard

My personal opinion is probably 9-9.5 out of 10. I loved so much of it and had a blast, but there were a couple minor bits that knocked it down a little bit. One was the treatment of Edelgard in Azure Gleam. This is coming from someone who wasn’t the biggest Edelgard fan in houses, but man did that route do her so dirty. Also I think certain things were just kinda too grindy at some points. But overall, the game is super damn fun

Am I the only one that’s left unsatishfied with the ending of just getting a letter with no romance like the first one?

I would have loved a personal skill for Ferdinand to reflect his love for weapons where you could equip him with an axe and lance and switch between them in battle (whilst I do like his skill already)

Spoilers for Endgame shenanigans: But before that, some non spoiler things: Hard mode is definitely something you will probably enjoy more on New Game plus, even if you revert the character levels of everyone on that route that you can use, because by then, you have upgraded your base to the max, so can level up your characters classes quickly. Allowing you to use your higher level weapons much earlier on, and mitigating the need to be near as high leveled as the game probably expects you to be. and Maniac mode knows it's designed around New Game Plus, considering the level of the battles, and the rewards you get from battles. Alright, all the people who don't want to see spoilers gone? Ok good This game acts as if defeating the main antagonist is the only thing the player cares about, even though in all endings, the war doesn't... end with the death of the antagonist, in the case of GW, they honestly should have had either a really long ending cutscene, or another chapter that shows the end of the war or something like that, AG basically ends with the main Antagonist going down, but... like... it just doesn't feel good. and it sounds like Crimson Blaze is missing half its game based off the ending lol. (Even though CB has the highest level for the final fight in the game.) (This also could be the ending you get only for the bad ending though, I haven't done the good ending yet for CB, and no one try spoiling it for me either.) There's also a surprising amount of characters you just, don't get access to play, ie, Alois, Gustave, Count Bergliez, Count Hevring, Cyril, and a surprising lack of playable villains, cause, come on, would have been kinda cool to play Kronya or Thales, yet you can play as the Gatekeeper if you beat 2 of the 3 stories and get to Chapter 4 on the 3rd story, now that's a pretty cool way to hide an unlockable character, there should have been more characters like that for beating certain routes, at the very least as unlocks for post game fun. If there is some good things I can say at least, the story up to the lackluster endings is, pretty good for modern FE standards, each side, minus those who Slither in the Dark, and maybe the Church, are all fighting because they know what's best for their region, and each of their philosophies because of it, come very quickly into direct conflict, like Edelgard wanting to force mass reforms on the continent quickly, but Dimitri trying to stop her because changes of that magnitude, that fast would very badly affect the continent (The kingdom most of all), but he doesn't see the reforms as a bad thing in long term, just a catastrophe waiting to happen at the speed Edelgard is trying to cause this to happen. How about that, actual decent grey area in a Fire Emblem game and not just pure black and white. And while I do see some people complain about this in the comments, I think it's interesting not being able to recruit everyone in this game on a single route, we don't have a situation like FE Fates where everyone says that Shez is always right and just joins their cause, unavoidable character deaths also adds more to the motivations of certain characters that you're up against in the story, do you think that Dimitri would be as motivated in CB to stop the empire if you didn't take Ingrid's life while you were trying to retake Ariahnrod? Last thing, why on earth does this game tease Hegemon Edelgard in AG and never use her for a fight?

I picked Edelgard's route first because I was excited to play through all of Edelgard's story. My biggest criticism with Three Houses is that they didn't finish Crimson Flower. We're just told that it all eventually happens off screen. Boy was I disappointed when the narrator said Edelgard went to continue the fight off screen and left the story even more open ended than Crimson Flower. It almost feels like they released an unfinished game and will eventually expect us to pay money for the end of it.

The fact there's no "Free" mode/Challenge modes where you can use whatever characters you want really makes me prefer FEW 1 over this.

Great review, Ghast. I agree with a lot of your points on the game. I've definitely run into the same problem I did with Three Houses'** multiple route runs in that after a while I really feel like I have to force myself to sit through the grind/monotony to enjoy what I'm really there for - the story content. The problem I've found with Three Hopes is that I hit that "Okay, I have to sit down and grind this game out" feeling at the tail end of my first playthrough, which is much earlier than I did for Three Houses. There's a lot to love about Three Hopes, I just feel like it's a bit bloated altogether. Too many systems and battles that take too long to do, especially when there are three routes to play. IMO, there's no reason to have 8 auxiliary battles in a chapter when the Story map is also literally going to take me an hour to finish. Maybe it's because I just don't have as much free time as I used to, but sometimes there's just too much repetitive content for me.

Tbh I really agree with this review. I love Three Hopes and everything about it. I think Shez is a fresh restart when it comes to avatar characters and the most charismatic avatar character next to Robin. I really love the new character timeskip designs and the new characters they properly shown in this game. The stories are really interesting to witness and know more about. Everything seemed to go really well, but man they really rushed the final climaxes. If I'm gonna be honest, it seems like Azure Gleam is the only story to feel completed (but tbf I haven't beaten Scarlet Blaze yet so that might change). And the new antagonist they introduced seemed to be really interesting but besides a paralouge explaining a little bit about them, we still don't really know that much. Hopefully with DLC they'll expand a little bit more on the game's shortcomings.

We did a full co-op run through all routes, yellow-blue-red. It was a bit all or nothing. When we swapped to Maddening, it took impossibly long. When we went back down to Hard, we just mindlessly ran through the entire game. But honestly, it’s not that bad since that mindless rushing might just be the intent of Warriors games. The class roster felt like it had sooo many holes in it though.

I wish I'd seen this before I bought the game. Even though this video is 3 months old, 3 hopes has had no additional content dropped or even mentioned.

I think Three Hopes is better than the original in almost every way. I do have some criticisms. For one, the game creates a lot of excuses to go back and load into the camp in between battles, which really affects pacing. You have the extra activity and training points, collecting owl feathers, collecting supplies, and having to use the trainer to acquire and change classes as you master them in battles. None of these things can be done on the map - they always force you to load into camp and then fast travel to a bunch of repetitive places 100x throughout a playthrough. I really wish the camp menu was accessible on the map without having to load in and deal with navigating it, even if you're fast travelling. When replaying the game on another route, I wish they didn't lock away all the camp features for like 6 missions. That seems unnecessary. Everything should be unlocked after the prologue in new game+. The lock-on camera is really finicky. It tends to target captains and named enemies by distance rather than picking the one in front of you. This can cause the camera to spin around and target something else, even if it's behind you. This implementation is wrong - it should always target what is front of you. Also, the lock-on camera should not acquire a lock to a different target after you kill a captain. This was so frustrating to move forward and have my camera spin around due to locking on to an enemy I never locked on. What's worse is that it's inconsistent - it sometimes auto-locks and it sometimes doesn't. I hated that I could not turn this off. I also agree that this game needed some kind of epilogues and post-game.

Definitely agree with the lack of post game. After my fiancée finished Azure Gleam and got the bonus characters and weapons I just had a huge feeling of "now what?". Especially since going to the war map only shows the final battle and nothing more popping up. It does feel better than Fire Emblem Warriors and Age of Calamity, but can't say it was perfect

I love Golden Wildfire route and the start of Azure Gleam is absolutely brilliant. But once I got to Scarlet Blaze. Felt the exhaustion from the gameplay. My main nitpicksis the underutelization of Byleth, the Church and Rhea. Like they could have been the best antagonist ever and instead largely forgotten after and the gameplay is repetitive. I was only invested in the plot and hated going through each chapter. I enjoyed Shez because they add flavour to being a protagonist. But the replayability is nonexistent. After Scarlet Blaze, there isn't a need for me to play it again. With the many flaws of Three Houses, I did enjoy the new game plus feature. Currently taking a break from Scarlet Blaze and might return in the future.

personally i'm fine with the lack of postgame, i already have to play the game 3 times i don't wanna do more lol. haven't finished my first playthrough but it's so far very enjoyable. i guess the characters could be more unique but i disagree with their unique abilities, even if they all serve the purpose of dealing more damage, it's make them feel different from each other while playing and changes the way you use them 🤷🏽‍♂️.

I have MANY issues with this game, story wise and character wise. Gameplay wise tho, it's pretty fun to play and more enjoyable than I'd expected. My only issues are with the NG+ renown locked characters. Why are they so restricted? It doesn't seem like there's much point in having them at all. Wish Rhea had been playable in AG, and not locked to a renown only.

I thought the end of the the route I played so far was underwhelming. It didn’t really answer the question of what the outcome truly was. And the supports that I had built between characters didn’t play out at all as they had in Three Houses. So it took such a hit on the story that it was pretty soured.

honestly rhea as a ng+ character makes me stupid happy but the fact that her animations arent from the actual saint class and are just mortal savant make me sad also really disappointed she doesnt have archbishop as a class cus (at least) my rhea has higher mag than strength

When I bought Three Houses, I sat down and played each route back to back to back. After beating my first playthrough of Three Hopes, I couldn’t be bothered to play another one. Not even the promise of unlocking gatekeeper if you beat two routes could entice me.

So, the game is designed around you manually using your units for the most part, which does reduce the need of level ups in general. But i can see how someone who prefers to let the untis do their own thing would need so many level ups.

Hm, so far, sounds like a good story mode, but lacking anything like the challenge maps from Hyrule Warriors, or the history mode from the previous Fire Emblem Warriors. Though for both games, they added more stuff through updates later down the line. It might be worth the wait to see what kind of updates/dlc they might add to this game, if any

I'm really hoping that there'll be a dlc with another route and more playable characters and classes.

As a Warriors game, I hate how characters are pretty much the same. What makes these types of games great is how unique every individual character fights, with their own combos and specials. Every character is copy-paste in terms of move sets in this game. Aside from the trait abilities that may or may not trigger, every person who uses a sword for example, is gonna have the EXACT. SAME. COMBO. Nothing that sets them apart. Also how restricting the game is in terms of characters. You unlock them, but only for replaying old missions, in the same route (although no point when, again, everyone has the same move sets.) For a Warriors game, it's lacking in the individuality of it's characters in combat as well as a separate mode that most warriors games have. Story wise, I feel it's fairly rushed. For a FE game with warriors combat, its ok. I liked Age of Calamity, and despite no separate mode, I enjoyed it. It had a good story (up to a certain point), with it branching into an odd, but ok alternate timeline for BOTW. But this game fails its Warriors side. Cookie-cutter fighting styles just really bother me in these types of games.

I was honestly expecting them to reuse the warriors assets, even if only post game unlocks. It would've been great to unlock tiki or corrin to play as they felt the most unique to me.

As a long time Dynasty Warriors fan as well as a Fire Emblem fan: you summed it up. This is a lot more polished than other Warriors games, including recent entries in Koei Tecmo's main series. There are great loredumps and great characterization for some characters, particularly Ferdinand, Lorenz, and Sylvain in their respective paths. The paths themselves, however, feel unsatisfying as endings (particularly Azure Gleam), and the recruitment choices are pretty lackluster, as only the same pool of characters can be convinced to surrender, and only in Scarlet Blaze do the choices really make sense. It feels like there is

THANK YOU for talking about the lack of postgame content. Age of Calamity had the same problem and it’s ridiculous for both of these sequels to have so much less than FEW1 and Hyrule Warriors

I agree with the takes here. For me, this game is mostly positive with some glaring negatives, but overall I had fun. I was most interested in the story aspect and overall, I mostly enjoyed this retelling of the story. It does feel like KT intentionally withheld content for DLC, so I’m hoping they continue to support the game and we get more content.

Hopefully there is dlc that adds a post game sorta feature. That would round out this game. Like 5 or 6 new classes a post game feature with everyone unlocked would be real nice.

mild spoilers I’m really mad the shields don’t appear in battle. I recall being super excited after obtaining the Aegis Shield in Three Houses, and I loved how cool it looked on Felix’s model. Now, it’s just poof gone whenever he entered gameplay battles. It’s there in cutscenes (as is the Sword of Moralta which you don’t get until later), and it just makes no sense to me. Another big gripe I had playing through Scarlet Blaze NG+ is that I couldn’t use the secret unlockable characters in battle. I hadn’t poked around with the auxiliary battles, only the mock battles at the training grounds. I’ve only just started using them as I go back and S rank some of the battles I didn’t previously for the rewards. I was also very mad that you could only recruit a set crew of characters unlike Three Houses. I was really upset when I had to kill Ingrid and Sylvain, especially. The game also felt unfinished. I was very disappointed with the way SB just suddenly BOOM was over, and though I haven’t beaten GW yet, I felt more accomplished beating AG. I feel that the Lions will continue to be my favorite house and route in this game. I also got very aggravated when the characters would say something but the text onscreen had one or more words wrong (I found Hubert’s dialogue to have that error often). That’s just a minor thing I’m personally picky about. I also agree that the lack of postgame content (aside from repeating auxiliary battles from previous routes) makes the game significantly more boring after finishing that first run. The combat gets repetitive, like Three Houses, but at least you could have more options for classes and weapon choice in the first game. That was a mistake on the developer’s fault. I hope there will be an update or DLC for this game later on down the road that patches these flaws. I overall very much enjoyed the game and the secret secret character of my second NG+, but there’s so much standing out that I’ll probably finish this last route and set the game aside for a while. I much prefer Three Houses over Three Hopes at the current moment

i was looking into buying this game and wanted to say this was the best review by far I watched. most of the other ones were just full of genericness rather than covering the actual indepth and crucial aspects of game mechanics like you did. thanks for making this.

As for the treatment of hybrids. Yeah. I wish you could equip 2 weapons and the unit switches around with it. Or have access to one weapon to define your moveset but u are free to use combat arts of both weapons. Id rather a bow assassin than the annoying movement of the thief assasin sword users.

Yeah, for all the cool things it does with world building, and as a not-sequel to Houses, I felt like that were still holding out on us. And not in the way Houses felt where lore was deliberately made mysterious for interpretations. This just feels incomplete. I'm still not entirely sure if Shez is a human with an Agarthan intelligence implanted in them or if their entire body is Agarthan.

I had the exact same feeling with age of clammy. Which later got a dlc to fill up the game and polish off the tedious aspects of the game with new mechanics and methods. So i get the impression three hopes is getting this treatment too.

Love how he mentions to keep the comments spoiler free since it’s a spoiler free review, and people aren’t doing that at all. Oop

The fact that there is no post game really kills the experience for me, like why am I transforming ma boy Lindhart into a killing machine if I will not be able to use him any further. Even worse is that one of my favorite characters is locked to Azure Gleam and it’s by far my least favorite route right now because the story hasn’t been very interesting to me thus far. They should’ve just made a single golden route and made a huge post game afterwards. Like at first you fight the church due to some circumstances and then you fight TWSITD during the whole post game. Or viceversa.

I actually enjoy the part where every unit can be used in anyway. For exemple, I HATE Bernadetta (unpopular opnion, I know.), and without Crest Stones, she would be the only one to get a better use from The Inexhaustible. This way I can get the fun out of building Mercedes as a healer assassin(Trickster), if I want. Or I can have pretty much any 8 unites I love on my team and still have diversity on their builds... I can get Ashe (my favorite unit) and play pretty much any combat style I enjoy the most (shame about gender lock, tho... I'd love to play him as a Dark Flier on Three Houses and hopefully on future Three Hopes DLC) even using Heroes Relics if I wish to. What I do feel sad about is the weapon lock for each class, since on Three Houses I had so much fun on runs like: Full Armored Play Through. And I could still use any weapon. But I do understand it would might be harder to make so Pegasus Knights had moves a bit different for Swords, Bows and Axes to match the players desire. Anyways, loved the video! Thank you for sharing your thoughts! P.S: My Ashe is a Bishop(sometimes Warlock) with Petra's personal skill and Crest of Macuil. And I love that I have the option to do crazy stuff like that. ♥

I totally agree with you, it was a very fun game. I love that it was a Fire Emblem game that I can play without having to put to much thought into it. Mega fan of the series and have been playing since I was kid and I have to say that this was a refreshing take on the game. And is definitely a good game to tied me over until the new one comes out.

Imagine Dorothea using Aura Knuckles+100 as a War Monk or War Master. Gender locked classes are kinda dumb, I mean sure the pegasus apparently hate males but maybe they could just get a different breed of pegasus or maybe bring back those giant birds from Fates (and other classes from Fates since there were a decent amount.) Malig Knights- Axe and magic on a wyvern Basaras- Lance and magic foot soldiers The Mechanists- Bows and Knives hell the Thief used bows instead of a sword

I really like how you worded that the whole cast doesn’t really feel unique. Because of the class system causing many of your characters to feel the exact same due to having the same animations, it’s hard to say one characters is more fun than another. Also the fact that Gilbert, Alois, Cyril, Hanneman, and Anna were all cut from being playable despite how easy it would be to do so because of the class system is really sucky.

The real purpose of the Armorer is to buy weapons to donate to the Resource Manager for smithing stones, then to trade for building materials to upgrade your camp. or if you need to it, or to buy various smithing stones. You won't need to do this after your first playthrough, but it's basically a requirement if you want to fully upgrade that camp on your first playthrough.

The title are basically my thoughts exactly. Three hopes in alot of ways was just like three houses. A great game that could of been so much more if it had been given all the time it needed. I am hoping we get some decent story dlc for three hopes.

The fact there isn't any S supports, which has been standard in most FE games, most of the endings end with "and then they did more stuff which you won't get to see" instead of actually....doing it, and coming to a better ending, and that there isn't any free/challenge/arena modes, and leaves a lot of questions about your avatar makes me feel like the game is unfinished, or they are waiting to release the rest as DLC. One thing I would of liked to see is a mounted sword/tome class

Regarding the feeling of uncompleteness, it feels like the game tried to reutilize as much characters and stuff as possible from 3Houses and that's fine but some things are strangely missing or felt barely used. (Warning possible spoilers) I'll just say it feels weird we get Rhea just for NG+ (she could totally be a Gotoh on AG), past playable characters like Alois or Cyril not being playable, some 3Houses classes are missing, no trace of Aelfric or Nemesis, no Shanbala map, Indech and Macuil in the initial cutscene but no appearence in game... weird, maybe I'm high on Copium but I wouldn't be surprised if we may get a mini new route as DLC with a focus on Church/Nabateans and Agarthans. Or perhaps they just got dirty, who knows.

I was very disappointed when I saw the Trickster class and no War Monk or Dark Flier class as those are my two favorite classes from the Cindered Shadows DLC. And I was also disappointed when i saw that the Hero class wasn’t in the game because that’s my favorite class in general. Dark Flier and Valkyrie could’ve been alternative Master Classes for female Tome Users and War Monk/Cleric could’ve been an alternate Master Class for the Brawler path. I can’t really give an opinion on the repeat play through being boring issue seeing as I didn’t do a New Game+ when I did the next route and just did every route from my demo save files. The only time I did New Game+ was to do a new Scarlet Blaze play through and now I’m doing the same for a new Azure Gleam play through, but honestly the hard difficulty spiking the levels from 30 to 50 to 70 from out of nowhere made it feel a little more challenging for me, though I didn’t get to really experiment with classes as a result. I may just have to do raw new games to experiment with classes. My absolute favorite thing about the game so far is the soundtrack. It has exactly two misses but everything else is a certified bop. Especially Golden Wildfire’s final battle theme and Byleth’s theme.

I like the game, it's fun. However, I also dislike the game because if feels rushed, incomplete and quite lacking storywise. Things I absolutely disliked about the game: 1) The entire mystery of Arval and Shez is basically a nothingburger; 2) The admission by the makers of the game that they didn't want to overwrite Three Houses' story led to them making something rather underwhelming past the prologue (the stories for each of the routes are okay but really could be better if they wanted to try more); 3) Byleth and Jeralt generally being misused or underused (who makes a scenario where you need to recruit certain characters to access certain stages but said required characters don't even have a role in said chapters? It's ridiculous); 4) the fact that we don't even unlock a route to play after finishing the game (ideally, we could have gone with Edelgard's route being the only playable route and finishing it would unlock both Dimitri's and Claude's routes; after finishing those we could unlock either a route for Byleth and/or Shez); 5) (this is more of a gripe) the missed opportunity for including introduction clips for unlocking/recruiting characters (they did it in FEW and HW so I don't see why they shouldn't have them in this game) 6) We don't have a different game mode like challenge or history mode (heck, I want to play the Shez single-handedly beating all three houses in the battle of eagle and lion just to see what kind of banter would be there) I hope the DLC at least gives us a challenge or history mode because this game sorely needs it.

For DLC, they should bring back the Hero class, along with having Fleche, Judith and Kronya playable. But it would be awkward for a story route where all three houses team up since Billy Kametz died. Maybe Kaiji Tang can be Ferdinand.

Leveling doesn’t make nearly as much as a difference as abilities and weapons in hard mode. I think the mode is meant to be played with forged weapons, good combat arts, and either good shielding or dodging. Most damage comes from your critical rushes and most generals will die from one in hard mode, if not close to dead, so Dex is maybe the only stat that makes a huge difference early on.

I may be wrong, but Three Hopes feels like it’s giving what Three Houses couldn’t. It is an opinion, that I think weapons like the Radill, Dark Creator Sword are now accessible, Rodrigue now being playable (sucks for Judith) and a certain character that got requested to death to be playable for Silver Snow and sure, Jeralt playable too. Claude’s gotten a route that doesn’t make him follow Silver Snow’s footsteps. Edelgard finally taking the fight to the Slithers and better insight of the tragedy of Duscur for Dimitri. It’s great get better insight into which lords conspired against Lambert and even if they are generics skins, we still get to see what they looked like. As well as many unseen mentioned characters in Three Houses. Holst, Rufus, Count Bergliz, Hevring and Varley. And I also think having the portraits of the people of Duscur having an actual darker skin tone is a nice touch

I really hope it gets dlc with more master classes and support conversations.

You should have talked about timelocked supports. WORST feature to ever return. My AG playthrough had me locked out of the Dimitri/Mercedes C support. So I had to redo everything just to get their supports up.

I'm currently playing through this. Was pretty hyped to discover that I could play through as Monica, given that her character was a (presumably dead) afterthought in the original. Honestly I'll probably just play through this once, and I'm just a casual gamer who puts no emphasis on "builds", and I've never played Warriors, so I have nothing to compare this to which in my experience would make this seem inferior or inadequate. What I really cared about going into this was recreating the magic of Three Houses. Some parts of this feel a little hollow in that regard, but for the most part it has lived up to what I expected.

The thing i hate the most in this game is no voice acting for the camp talks like why? They did it in three houses why can they not do it in three hopes

On Maddening my allies are fine without any grinding. On the training grounds I developed Shez into a Priest while maintaining her Asura class. If needed she can warp in and quickly to heal either an ally or villager. So far my allies rarely get routed and they get the job done. I got plenty to do on a second playthrough. I develop other classes on the returning characters. While building the new ones up. I enjoy my second playthrough maybe even more.