Fire Emblem Warriors Review [Minor Spoilers]

megaalatreon Full Reviews Game Reviews December 31, 2017 | 0

Number of hours played: ~70 hours

Completion status: Main story + most side content

Hey everyone! Alatoren here,

So back in my previous review of Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia, I noted that Fire Emblem fans were cautiously optimistic for the game back when it was announced in January of 2017. Well funnily enough, there was actually another Fire Emblem title that was announced at the same time as Shadows of Valentia, and if you’ve read the title of this review, you probably already figured out what that game is.

No, it is not Fire Emblem: Lights of Valentia. We don’t need another Fire Emblem Fates

To put it simply, Fire Emblem Warriors is a hack and slash game made for the Nintendo Switch and the New Nintendo 3DS, and was made as a collaboration effort between Intelligent Systems, Koei Tecmo studios Omega Force, and Team Ninja as a crossover series between Fire Emblem and Dynasty Warriors. It was announced in January of 2017, and released in October of that same year.

Let’s first start with a bit of a history lesson about Fire Emblem Warriors before it released. As you might’ve guessed, fans were pretty excited back when it was first announced, and understandably so, who wouldn’t want to see their favourite Fire Emblem characters crossover in a dynasty warriors style game; with so many games and characters to choose from, the possibilities were endless! However, the road leading up to its release was rough to say the least.

During the months leading up to its release, the game was mired in controversy surrounding its character roster, with the developers choosing to only include characters from 3 out of the 14 Fire Emblem main titles, those being Shadow Dragon, Awakening, and Fates. Developer interviews that were released certainly didn’t help much, and only served to add fuel to the fire, and by the end of it all, the hype had all but vanished once the game finally released.

We now live in a thrilling world where people are judged by what type of bladed weapon they possess. Also shoutouts to @MysticDistance for the great translation for various games.

However, despite all the controversy, I still wanted to give this game a chance. Deep within the bowels of my mind, I constantly said to myself, “It can’t be THAT bad can it?”

Guess this isn’t going to be that easy.

So, did Fire Emblem Warriors deserve all its controversy, or was it just a simple case of over-exaggeration made by the fans?

Only one way find out.

Story (Skip the first paragraph if you want to avoid any type of spoilers)

The story begins with the introduction of our two twin hero lords, princess Lianna and prince Rowan, bickering on who should be the ruler of their kingdom of Aytolis. Before their mom, Queen Yelena was about to step in to break up their petty fight however, the fellow prince Darios from the neighbouring kingdom of Gristonne arrives, and the twins joyously rush to have a sparring match with him. Unfortunately, their merry day was rudely interrupted when mysterious portals opened up in the sky, from which monsters came and attacked. The three make their escape, but not without being separated from Queen Yelena in the process. Luckily, the Queen hands them the Shield of Flames before they were cut off by a convenient pile of rocks. Now it is up to the three of them to power the Shield of Flames using gleamstones created from various Fire Emblem heroes so that they can save Aytolis, and cleanse this evil menace.

Either that shield is incredibly light, or the Queen has some serious arm strength.

If it’s the latter, I don’t think we have anyyything to worry about.

After reading the first paragraph, you may be thinking to yourself, “Wow! That was I would’ve come up with back when I was grade 6, where can I sign up to be Fire Emblem’s next scripwriter?” But I assure you, it actually isn’t that bad. Is it a good story? Certainly not, it is really more of an excuse for various Fire Emblem characters from different universes to interact with each other, and it gets the job done in that aspect. The story is very much in line with Fire Emblem tradition, so much so it almost makes it seem like it’s making fun of itself. There’s the collecting of gemstones for the Shield of Flames, finding Ancient weapons (bonus points if it has “Falchion” in its name), defeating an evil dragon, it’s all there.

Should have brought a lance instead, that way you’d have the weapon advantage.

Now did I expect a bit too much out of a story from a Warriors game? Perhaps, especially considering the fact that it takes only about ten hours to complete the main story, but it could also be the fact that despite all its flaws, I somehow found myself enjoying this story?

What can I say, perhaps I’ve developed an immunity to these things.

Fire Emblem fans will most likely find at least an ounce of enjoyment from this story, it certainly doesn’t have anything that’s offensively stupid. For everyone else however, let’s just hope that they weren’t turned off by the number of swords in this game, the directors tried really hard after all.

Characters

Despite Fire Emblem Warriors being a crossover game, it still features an original cast of characters as the main focal point of the story, those being Lianna, Rowan, and Darios. However, the only characters that are worth talking about are the twin lords Rowan and Lianna, since we just know far too little about the others. For example, there’s actually an evil dragon serving as the main villain for this game… and that’s all you need to know about him.

Seriously, this single line is all we know about the dragon in case you were curious

The twin lords are a very stereotypical brother-sister duo that you find in most stories, Rowan is the hot-headed Prince who would rather be a hot-shot knight than being the King (god forbid you can’t be both), and Lianna is the level-headed and compassionate counterpart to Rowan, often wanting to push the heavy responsibilities to her brother Rowan, despite her clearly showing that she is much better capable of being an effective leader than he ever could be. Despite their generic caricature types however, the game does a great job in showing that despite their differences, they very much depend on each other, and its due to these differences that they have such good chemistry with one another. Unfortunately though, this trait of theirs is only shown outside of the main plot, and so they weren’t given any moment to shine at all in their OWN story, instead being completely overshadowed by other Fire Emblem Characters from the other games.

And I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for some meddling dragons!

You’re welcome

So since they were overshadowed, you might then ask yourself, “Did they at least do a good job with the crossover characters from the other Fire Emblem games?” well thankfully they did. The characters from the various games all act just like how we remembered them, and their interactions with each other in the games story and support system (more on that later) were genuinely funny, and pretty heartwarming at times as well. This aspect of the game is the true appeal that initially drew me, and a lot other fans into this game. They even expanded on some existing character relationships from the other games, all in all providing a great amount of fanservice, perhaps even the greatest of any Fire Emblem game to date.