As a musou title it's an utterly phenomenal experience and is one of Omega Force's better games.
Tight map design lends itself well to a much faster pace than other musous and unlike Pirate Warriors 4 it never gets labyrinthian or hard to navigate. The name of the game is 'speedy'.
The trade-off here is that the game throws objectives at you at an utterly brutal pace that's really only matched by Fate/Extella Link. If you play on lower difficulties it's not much of a problem but on higher difficulties, where I reside, battles can fail within 2 minutes if you're not on top of your orders and character matchups.
The movesets on offer are ridiculously fun (besides Corrin's, which is bugged in so many ways) and there aren't any real 'bad characters' (besides Corrin, for she's a classic musou character in a modern musou). Sure there are a few clones, but on the whole the game just feels fantastic to play and I'd say only Pirate Warriors 4 can match it as far as feeling snappy and responsive goes.
Oh, and the sound design is pure joy. Everything sounds crisp and delightful, to the point where even navigating the menus to do upgrades/gear checks feels amazing. This might be OF's best sounding game.
You might look at all this and think "Okay that's a lot of praise, but you're never this nice about 2.5 stars, Mira" and you'd be right.
Unlike every other Musou crossover, FEW is the first time they've attempted to make an experience that's a mix of both Warriors and the source material. This, unfortunately, means that FEW isn't that great, because the Fire Emblem half of the game is miserable.
The roster on display betrays when the game started development, as it's dominated by Awakening and Fates characters with a few others thrown in for good measure. Those two games dominate the roster, individually possessing more characters than every other FE game combined. Lucina, Tharja and Owain somehow get in on pure popularity despite being full moveset clones but if you want an axe infantry unit that isn't Lissa, go fuck yourself.
There's also a distinct lack of uh... Every other Fire Emblem game? I'm not the biggest classic FE fan, but where the hell are the Blazing/Binding Blade reps besides Lyn? The Genealogy reps? WHERE IS IKE?! Sigurd? Looking at this game's roster makes me feel insane. It's such a barefaced, cynical marketing-driven lineup that I actually feel bad for any zealous dual-FE/Musou fans that were initially hype for this.
But, even putting aside the disrespect some of the older titles get, the roster sucks on a weapon front in ways that're actually harmful to the gameplay.
FEW keeps the parent series' weapon triangle: Swords beat axes beat lances beat swords. Some weapons have traits that give them more damage against certain unit types. Magic and bows exist outside this triangle, and the latter is tailormade to kill flying units.
Unlike its parent series, though, FEW does not apply for units to carry multiple weapon types, does not allow for reclassing, and only allows for one weapon to be carried into battle at a time.
Which is a major problem, because the majority of the roster is mounted units (who cannot dismount, and thus are massively weak to the various enemies who have mountslayer) and sword users (who, naturally, can't do shit against lance users).
In the main storyline the lack of lance infantry and axe users hands down isn't much of an issue, but the meat of the game is History Mode (a series of story-less missions that provide further unlocks) and there it becomes a killer.
To actually have unmounted lance units, you need to fork out for DLC. The Fates one, specifically.
NPCs aren't beholden to these restrictions seeing as generic units exist, which means team compositions are often homogenous and frankly kind of boring? It doesn't help that some of the more interesting characters like Tiki are made useless because the small roster means nearly every important character as an enemy possesses anti-dragon weapons.
And while I mentioned up above that a lot of the movesets are fun, whether or not they're good is a whole other matter. Axe users get shafted really hard in this game, for Lissa is easily stunlocked for reasons beyond my ken and Frederick is an armoured mounted unit who gets killed by the morbillion History Mode enemies made to kill him specifically. Your only true options are Minerva or Camilla, for there isn't enough indepth character building to buff out anyone else's issues.
Lastly, the macrogame parts involving the materials needed for skill unlocks, perk inheritance and everything related to weapons are... Just not fun. This game places an annoying emphasis on repeatedly grinding specific enemies for specific parts and gives you no guidance to acquiring them, or more of them.
Further compounding how bad it feels is that the real core of the game is breaking Weakpoint Gauges to force out a big damage attack, and unlike the games that come after it, FEW doesn't offer enough ways to expose the gauge manually. Most other stat increases are miniscule if they're not making it easier to break gauges, so progression feels like wading through spiritual mud.
In the end, my fondness for this game (as it was THE game to resurrect my musou love after I stopped playing them post-Dynasty Warriors 7) unfortunately doesn't blind me to the flaws. I've 100%'d it twice for some reason. Would've done it a third time using an emulator, but to be straight with you:
There's no reason to play this when Three Hopes exists.
Tight map design lends itself well to a much faster pace than other musous and unlike Pirate Warriors 4 it never gets labyrinthian or hard to navigate. The name of the game is 'speedy'.
The trade-off here is that the game throws objectives at you at an utterly brutal pace that's really only matched by Fate/Extella Link. If you play on lower difficulties it's not much of a problem but on higher difficulties, where I reside, battles can fail within 2 minutes if you're not on top of your orders and character matchups.
The movesets on offer are ridiculously fun (besides Corrin's, which is bugged in so many ways) and there aren't any real 'bad characters' (besides Corrin, for she's a classic musou character in a modern musou). Sure there are a few clones, but on the whole the game just feels fantastic to play and I'd say only Pirate Warriors 4 can match it as far as feeling snappy and responsive goes.
Oh, and the sound design is pure joy. Everything sounds crisp and delightful, to the point where even navigating the menus to do upgrades/gear checks feels amazing. This might be OF's best sounding game.
You might look at all this and think "Okay that's a lot of praise, but you're never this nice about 2.5 stars, Mira" and you'd be right.
Unlike every other Musou crossover, FEW is the first time they've attempted to make an experience that's a mix of both Warriors and the source material. This, unfortunately, means that FEW isn't that great, because the Fire Emblem half of the game is miserable.
The roster on display betrays when the game started development, as it's dominated by Awakening and Fates characters with a few others thrown in for good measure. Those two games dominate the roster, individually possessing more characters than every other FE game combined. Lucina, Tharja and Owain somehow get in on pure popularity despite being full moveset clones but if you want an axe infantry unit that isn't Lissa, go fuck yourself.
There's also a distinct lack of uh... Every other Fire Emblem game? I'm not the biggest classic FE fan, but where the hell are the Blazing/Binding Blade reps besides Lyn? The Genealogy reps? WHERE IS IKE?! Sigurd? Looking at this game's roster makes me feel insane. It's such a barefaced, cynical marketing-driven lineup that I actually feel bad for any zealous dual-FE/Musou fans that were initially hype for this.
But, even putting aside the disrespect some of the older titles get, the roster sucks on a weapon front in ways that're actually harmful to the gameplay.
FEW keeps the parent series' weapon triangle: Swords beat axes beat lances beat swords. Some weapons have traits that give them more damage against certain unit types. Magic and bows exist outside this triangle, and the latter is tailormade to kill flying units.
Unlike its parent series, though, FEW does not apply for units to carry multiple weapon types, does not allow for reclassing, and only allows for one weapon to be carried into battle at a time.
Which is a major problem, because the majority of the roster is mounted units (who cannot dismount, and thus are massively weak to the various enemies who have mountslayer) and sword users (who, naturally, can't do shit against lance users).
In the main storyline the lack of lance infantry and axe users hands down isn't much of an issue, but the meat of the game is History Mode (a series of story-less missions that provide further unlocks) and there it becomes a killer.
To actually have unmounted lance units, you need to fork out for DLC. The Fates one, specifically.
NPCs aren't beholden to these restrictions seeing as generic units exist, which means team compositions are often homogenous and frankly kind of boring? It doesn't help that some of the more interesting characters like Tiki are made useless because the small roster means nearly every important character as an enemy possesses anti-dragon weapons.
And while I mentioned up above that a lot of the movesets are fun, whether or not they're good is a whole other matter. Axe users get shafted really hard in this game, for Lissa is easily stunlocked for reasons beyond my ken and Frederick is an armoured mounted unit who gets killed by the morbillion History Mode enemies made to kill him specifically. Your only true options are Minerva or Camilla, for there isn't enough indepth character building to buff out anyone else's issues.
Lastly, the macrogame parts involving the materials needed for skill unlocks, perk inheritance and everything related to weapons are... Just not fun. This game places an annoying emphasis on repeatedly grinding specific enemies for specific parts and gives you no guidance to acquiring them, or more of them.
Further compounding how bad it feels is that the real core of the game is breaking Weakpoint Gauges to force out a big damage attack, and unlike the games that come after it, FEW doesn't offer enough ways to expose the gauge manually. Most other stat increases are miniscule if they're not making it easier to break gauges, so progression feels like wading through spiritual mud.
In the end, my fondness for this game (as it was THE game to resurrect my musou love after I stopped playing them post-Dynasty Warriors 7) unfortunately doesn't blind me to the flaws. I've 100%'d it twice for some reason. Would've done it a third time using an emulator, but to be straight with you:
There's no reason to play this when Three Hopes exists.
2 Comments
@Dreamboat Same. Ike and Roy being absent but Lucina getting in on pure hype was what soured me initially and time has only made it worse.
Engage has a better callback roster, for crying out loud.
Engage has a better callback roster, for crying out loud.
Dreamboat
2 months ago