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A tip: if you play Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, stick with “classic” mode, whatever happens. Come on. In spite of his musou regalia, three hopes is still one fire sign Game, with all bets on life and death and ambitious strategy that entails.
To be clear, this is not a rating of the game’s inherent level of challenge. three hopesreleased for Switch last week is a spin-off of the 2019 strategy game Fire Emblem: Three Housesand can be played in three levels of difficulty: easy, normaland difficult. Not only are these settings a measure of health and damage stats, but they also determine how many enemies you’re attacking at once and how quickly your various special attack meters fill up. All settings are fully valid. (I personally play normally.)
three hopes is still playable in two game modes that longtime fans of the mainline entries will be familiar with:
- Casual: If a party member runs out of HP, they are useless for the rest of the fight, but will be revived at the end of the mission.
- Classic: If a party member runs out of HP, they’re dead forever. Sorry!
The actual branch of your choice comes into effect in the fourth chapter of the game, and you can go from classic to casual in-game game settings Menu. Fair warning: you can’t go from casual to classic. (During the first three chapters, fallen units are also brought back to life in Classic mode.) So there’s a little nudge to start a new game in Classic mode to see if it works for you or not before You choose a mode to continue playing at the end of the third chapter. If you just want to type YYYX Casual mode will serve you well as you navigate your way through some frenetic battles. But if you want to repeat the nerve-wracking agony of the traditional fire sign Phases, classic is the way to go.
three hopes supposedly takes place in an alternate timeline of Three houses, but stars most of the same characters. Early on, you’ll ally yourself with one of three factions: the Blue Lions, led by the stoic Dmitri; the Black Eagles, led by Edelgard, who are keen to make fascism fashionable; and The Golden Deer, which counts the swooned Claude as the frontman. And how Three housesyou soon get to know the people who make up these factions – and love them dearly.
In a tactical game, it’s one thing to send an inconspicuous, nameless “raider” unit into action. It’s quite another to have Hilda, your trusty, pink-haired, axe-wielding warrior, in the same fight. You know she likes singing and dancing and colorful flowers. You know she’s lazy as hell, hates responsibility, and will pass the buck at any opportunity. You know that she is close with Raphael, the hungriest member of the Golden Stag, and is a close confidant of Claude. If she dies, it will sting. The same goes for any member of the Goldener Hirsch whose name is not Lorenz.
In Classic mode, this dedication is reflected in battles. At any time, you can press the plus button to pause the game and pull up a grid-based map of the battlefield, then direct party members to attack enemies they have an inherent advantage over. (three hopes uses fire signis the classic”weapon triangle.”) You can also use the D-Pad to switch between characters, giving you more control over a specific party member who may be in a tight spot. As battles get tense, as your party members lose health, start making those moves more intentional because every mistake means you lose a favorite character – forever. This feeling is not possible when playing in casual mode.
And if you end up losing a character, then Yes, really how? Hey, that’s what rescue juggling is for!
