Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes review – Musou on fire

metro.co.uk:

The second Dynasty Warriors and Fire Emblem crossover is an alternative history version of Three Houses but does it really do anything differently?

Nintendo is never one to discuss its motives, but it seems clear that the company will go to relative lengths to support local, Japanese developers. Over the years, they’ve been very supportive towards the likes of PlatinumGames, the not-dead-after-all Treasure, and many other independent developers. To what degree, if any, that support is altruistic is unclear, given they did nothing to prevent the collapse of Alphadream or Cing, but they’ve certainly worked a lot with Koei Tecmo over the years; although it’s very hard to understand why.

Nintendo-published games developed by Koei Tecmo include such non-classics as Metroid: Other M, Fatal Frame: Maiden Of Black Water, and Pokémon Conquest, but what they’re most known for is their Dynasty Warriors crossovers. These aren’t official tie-ins, in that they don’t technically have anything to do with the Dynasty Warriors series, they just reuse the same gameplay and fit it around an existing game like Zelda: Breath Of The Wild or Fire Emblem.

This is the second Fire Emblem tie-in and in theory it should be a perfect fit, given Fire Emblem’s well established fantasy world. Conceptually at least, Three Hopes is not a lazy sequel either, as it adds several layers of extra strategy before you ever get to fight anyone. There is one little problem though, and it has to do with Dynasty Warriors being a terrible game.

If you’re not familiar with Fire Emblem, it’s a long running series of strategy role-players which, after years of being almost forgotten, hit the big time on the 3DS with Fire Emblem Awakening in 2012. Since then, it’s become an