Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Doesn't Need Byleth

thegamer.com:

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes has always seemed like a strange game. Though it’s the second Warriors game, the idea of spinning off from rich existing stories into the musou genre (one typically light on narrative) in order to further tell their stories has always felt odd. Age of Calamity did it for Breath of the Wild, Strikers did it for Persona 5, and now Three Hopes is doing it for Three Houses.

That it’s a strange direction to go in does not automatically make it bad. Strikers is the ultimate send-off to Persona 5, and I would argue no Persona playthrough is complete without it. Pound for pound, I also think it’s a better game, although Strikers is admittedly standing on the shoulders of giants. While musous have traditionally been the ‘shut up and dribble’ genre, they aren’t inherently devoid of storytelling potential, that have just frequently been used as an escape from said storytelling. Games used to view stuff as a burden that got in the way of running around and shooting stuff. As stories have become more meaningful in gaming, the musous have been able to get a slice of pie.

Related: Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Needs To Let Edelgard, Claude, And Dimitri Be A Throuple

There is, much like with Persona 5, so much left to tell at the end of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It’s made more complicated by the choices involved - you choose which house you stand with, whether to cut ties with Edelgard, and many characters can be killed off permanently - but there is a rich story that you could explore after Three Houses. Three Hopes though is taking place in the middle, which on one hand makes perfect sense, and on the other, ties the game up right from the start. Now that Byleth is confirmed as a villain, it’s