| RolStoppable said: Finished my first playthrough of Three Hopes on the Black Eagles route. Took me almost 42 hours with almost all battles finished with an S rank; ultimately, I didn't go for all S ranks because I noticed that I somehow forgot to clear one area in chapter 13 or 14, so I couldn't play that particular battle at all anymore and then stopped caring to get it done before starting over on a different path. New game plus is what I had hoped for: Virtually everything gets carried over. The sole exception is the key item that you can give a character of your choice, provided you have an A support with them. But this once-per-playthrough item is meant to be used anyway. All other items, gold and weapons carry over. You automatically keep all EXP for class and skill mastery. You can choose to carry over support progress. Character levels could be reset/changed on the initial playthrough already, so new game plus influences nothing here. The two missing options in the menu where you spend your renown in the base camp are thankfully not anything like what they were in Three Houses. If you remember, you needed tons of renown to reestablish progress from a previous playthrough. But in Three Hopes, it's just a small selection of unique weapons and accessories, and at a low cost to boot. There's one more thing, but I am not going to spoil it; all I'll say is that if you didn't spend any of your renown on stat boosters on your first playthrough, you should have enough renown to get that stuff too. It's also nice that all of your characters keep their equipment (class, skills etc.) exactly as it was when you start a new game plus, and you can access all these characters in the inventory screen even when they are locked out for story reasons, so you can still switch equipment without any restrictions. The only stupid thing in all of this is the once-per-playthrough item, because there are so many characters in this game. Only relevant for the daunting task of 100% completion, but still, it bugs me. Now if only this item could be bought with renown as many times as you want after you've cleared all paths of the game, that would be something. ... My verdict for Three Hopes is that it's the best Nintendo Warriors game so far. It has a coherent story and retains all the good things of Three Houses that could be retained in a Warriors game. All characters being able to access almost all classes means that every character can be cool to play as. The ecosystem within the game is thought through as everything you collect can be used for something, either through selling or trading. The gameplay is fun, especially because the characters you give orders to are actually able to fulfill their objectives in a timely manner, unlike in previous Nintendo Warriors games where it could take them minutes. I am still not a fan of the whole camp idea in a Fire Emblem game, because all of it could be done faster via plain menus. However, Three Hopes wastes a lot less time than Three Houses. Not only because you can grind support and class EXP in the camp, but also because each chapter has a multitude of actual story battles instead of just a single one. Last, but not least: Koei-Tecmo has finally been able to reduce the loading times a lot. This makes going back and forth between the camp and battles a breeze, because it happens only occasionally that an actual loading screen pops up, and when it does, it's much quicker than what it used to be in the other Nintendo Warriors games. |
I agree with most of this. I actually liked the Garreg Mach sections of Three Houses because it let you get to know the characters even when you weren't using them in battles. But, it did take a long time and sometimes I really just wanted to get to the actual gameplay. Being able to flip back and forth helps even though I would have liked the camp segments to have more features. But, I do like how the facilities, equipment, and upgrading characters all tie together. It's way more intuitive than the character upgrade systems in FE Warriors and Hyrule Warriors. Plus, there are more ways to develop bonds between characters aside from the main characters, so Manuela doesn't have to die alone now.
Coherent is the right word for the story. Everything makes sense, but it just doesn't have the same impact as three houses. Particularly in the conflicts. In three houses there were deeply personal issues driving the action in addition to the general military conflict. Here, that's not really present. For instance, so far no mention has been made of Dimitri's connection to Edelgard. The story still works without it, but is just not as interesting and it doesn't feel as climactic when they battle.
