Serving being an alternate undertake Three Houses, Three Hopes has a narrative that is mostly similar in structure and narrative beats to what is found in Three Houses. After completing a brief tutorial battle, the player character, Shez, falls into an unexpected situation at Garrag Mach Monastery. With Shez looking to pickup the pieces and uncover the truth behind a being only they can contact referred to as Arval, you’ll pick one of the three houses to enroll into at Garrag Mach.
One of the best elements Three Houses delivered to Fire Emblem was the ability to grow your relationship using the students at Garrag Mach, and Three Hopes isn't any different. Some of these characters initially seem surface level or stereotypical, it’s these deeper dives into their personalities and who they really are that fleshes them out and makes them this type of fantastic cast to interact with.
It’s clear they have the ability to different lineages and come from all walks of life, and even though I’d spent hours and hours together already in Three Houses, the brand new stuff brought along in Three Hopes only agreed to be as alluring, and try to had me looking forward to the next support threshold. It’s a real treat to be back with this cast of characters again, and it is easily among the best facets of Three Hopes.
I mentioned within my preview for 3 Hopes the overall narrative wasn’t doing a good deal for me, but that I’d suspected it would quickly improve as the pace picked up for the other half of the game. While there definitely was some improvement, there's a myriad of questions left unanswered after rolling credits on the Black Eagles route associated with Arval, Shez, and Byleth in particular.
There’s without doubt that the player is incentivized to replay Three Hopes many times in order to uncover all of the answers, and to also see the conflict from a different perspective. The problem, is the fact that Musou games don’t lend themselves particularly well to subsequent play-throughs, especially at the length of Thirty hours long.
Because the bulk of the narrative is one that treads ground much like those of which is found in Three Houses, I was ultimately left feeling underwhelmed in regards to the actual plot. While I’m sure it accumulates if you’re willing to commit time, Three Hopes simply isn’t created for it if this feels like the first playthrough already overstays its welcome.
Much like Chronilogical age of Calamity, Three Hopes looks to translate many of the mechanics and gameplay systems from Three Houses right into a Musou framework, to varying examples of success. The class system, for instance, sees units progress down a non-linear tree of potential classes they unlock because they take part in class certification exams. What this means is the gamer is afforded lots of flexibility into what each unit can perform, but additionally means there’s less individuality between units. Move sets and the way characters play are defined by their class, not the character themselves.
This product is a joy to test out on the first playthrough, because it essentially means you can customize your army exactly how you need to. Specializing into particular classes with particular units, watching them grow in power, expanding their move sets as they progress further on the tree.
Where it suffers, though, is incorporated in the fact it effectively means all three routes play almost identically from the move set perspective, in a game in which a lot of the core appeal originates from the ability fantasy of playing suped-up versions of those characters. While not a poor system on its own, it painfully highlights the possibility repetition right at the end of the game, which killed lots of my motivation to dive back set for another run.
That isn’t to say that your first play through is a bad one, though. While it gets off to a bit of a slow start, it eventually evolves right into a more fully-realized Musou/strategy hybrid in-comparison to 2023’s Fire Emblem Warriors. It’s satisfying to appropriately pair up units via the Adjutant system and issue commands for them while you decide to try the battle with another character, while you switch and swap involving the chosen units to complete objectives.
Battle itself is standard Warriors stuff, but where it really gets interesting is once you begin delving into deeper classes, and appear to synergize unit abilities and Adjutants together. The hack n’ slash stuff here's great, but battle reaches its most engaging when you’re considering which units will need to go whereby order to take advantage of weaknesses and enemy formations. Three Hopes provides you with more control over AI units than ever before, and even though they’re relatively useless once they aren’t given something to do, it accentuates the idea you’re commanding a little army.
Weaknesses are something I had been also a fan of in Three Hopes. Enemies are weak to particular weapon types based on which class they're similar to Three Houses, as opposed to the typical Fire Emblem weapons triangle. It forces you to not only bring several units to pay for all your bases, but also to be imaginative when challenged with a tough enemy with multiple weaknesses. Do you need to commit all of your team to bring it down as fast as you can? Or perhaps is it maybe easier to cycle units in and out to retain concentrate on other parts from the battlefield. This is all stuff I never got fed up with, and it was a refreshing break from the endless hack n’ slashing.
Each chapter happens within a smaller region of Fódlan, split up into even smaller battlefields. Each one has a main conflict you’ll work at to reach the following chapter, but these are only able to be undertaken when surrounding land is seized through the Side Missions they offer, battles which are smaller in-scale, but often net rewards.
The quantity of Side Missions in every chapter steadily rises because the game progresses, but there’s a nice degree of flexibility here for those who need it. Would you forge a path right to the primary conflict and do only the necessary Side Missions, or do you take the time to accomplish all of them to earn extra rewards, bolstering your army and progression further? You may also unlock special bonuses to help you in that chapter’s main conflict, or weapons that you normally wouldn’t encounter, making them almost always worthwhile, but never forced thanks to the other tools Three Hopes has when it comes to character progression.
One thing Three Houses was almost universally praised for was the social sim elements and the way they directly impact gameplay. Three Hopes converts a lot of exactly the same efforts, where between battles the different options are time with other students to enhance support levels with Shez or any other students, increasing their support capabilities when paired up as an Adjutant. The issue, though, is that there’s a restricted quantity of actions per chapter, and you’ll always have to pick and choose between whom you want to see grow.
It supplies a a bit more making decisions between battles, by no means makes other units arbitrary or useless. In-fact, additionally you gain a certain number of training actions that can be used to enhance class proficiency on units you don’t use just as much. You can also spend gold to achieve levels up to where Shez happens to be at, meaning you are able to constantly try out new units and sophistication setups so long as you have the resources. My only real gripe with one of these systems is that they function almost identically to how they do in Three Houses, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it rings true here.
Unfortunately, an area where Three Hopes really struggles is in its production values. Aside from through an excellent soundtrack, killer CG cutscenes, plus some nice character models, it doesn’t have much else going for it. The environments typically are bland and lacking in detail, with muddy textures and overly sharp edges drawing your attention away from the action.
Performance is similarly frustrating, where handheld mode tends to hold around 30 fps, with docked attempting to target a higher 60, but seldom reaching it. It's understandable that playing in coop only worsens these conditions, that is a shame, because none of those Warriors games took benefit of such a strong idea.
