Starting off with the story, and its a child becoming an adult story. Rowan and Lianna are the prince and princess of the kingdom of Aytolis, the overarching location for the game's plot. After an unprovoked attack from the kingdom Gristonne, the two of them are accompanied by Darios, the prince of Gristonne who is a close friend of the twins as they try to charge the "Shield of Flames" by obtaining five Gleemstones from five warriors from other kingdoms/ dimensions/ timelines. Look, this is a crossover game, roll with it. The locations of the Gleemstones? With Chrom, Ryoma, Xander, Corrin, and Marth. Oh, I'm sorry, you count that as a spoiler? Not to burst your bubble, but its the five characters on the box alongside Rowan and Lianna. If you can't figure that part of it out, then I feel sorry for you. One big problem I have with this does go into the roster itself, as the roster pans heavily towards Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates. Out of the 23 base game characters you can play as, 6 of the characters come from Awakening and 9 come from Fates. The DLC doesn't help much either as it brings Awakening up to 9 and Fates up to 12 (hold that thought though). It comes off as ignoring the franchise's history in order to pander to the newer fans, which while there's nothing explicitly wrong with that, it feels lazy compared to Hyrule Warriors and how it treated the Legend of Zelda series. I'll come back to the roster though as there are other problems the game has in regards to the characters. Once the shield is complete, a possessed Darios betrays the group and uses its power to summon Velezark, the initial reason for the dimensions bluring, and it is up to all the heroes you've recruited to slay the dragon and save the world. For a story that exists to get all the characters together, its fine. Nothing exceptional, about the same complexity as the Hyrule Warriors story. But unlike Hyrule Warriors (can you tell I'm going to be comparing the game to that a lot in this review yet?), the story is more of a focus thanks to the fact that all these characters can speak a language more complex than "HAH! HAH! GUAH!!!". Cutscenes are longer as a result but it only helped point out the fact that the story exists to get these characters together rather than being a good story on its own merits. While it leads to some solid character interactions, it gets very predictable very quickly. "Oh look, we need to split up and talk to both of those armies at the same time" I wonder who the two armies are? Is one of them an army with a strong color pallet choice of Red and White sporting a very Japanese inspired armor design while one of them is black and purple sporting a more western design for its armor? "Oh no, Darios who we just remembered is the prince of the enemy kingdom has been separated from the rest of the group" I wonder if he's going to betray the group and how. I'm gonna guess either mind control or body possession.
In terms of gameplay, the core gameplay is traditional Dynasty Warriors, mixed with a bit of Fire Emblem. While you have the choice to enable "kinda sort of Permadeath that costs a lot to revive ally units if they die" mode, I personally had it disabled this game as I prefer playing this more like a Warriors game. Especially when characters like Cordelia and Camilla get destroyed by archers (I had the mode on until I tried reviving Cordelia). While the Fire Emblem Weapon triangle is in play this game, the goal of the game is still to kill any opponent still moving so the triangle is really only in play when fighting the Hero characters along with other "leader" units. You will learn to love that weapon triangle though as it can be the difference between you having an easy time-fighting someone, or enemies acting as overpowered damage sponges who cannot die! There is one mission in the second History mode map (this game's equivalent of Adventure Mode) where I was fighting Xander with Takumi and Sakura, and after 20 minutes I probably only took out less than five percent of his health. The only time I could actually see the health bar go down at all was when I did a special attack. One big problem that came with the roster, and potentially the rushed development was the number of clones. Some are understandable like Rowan and Lianna, but Takumi and Hinoka have the same move set (it should be noted I am still working on unlocking all their combo moves so while it might not be 100% accurate, I am saying it with confidence), Leo and Elise have the same move set, and even share a similar style of move with Robin. It makes the roster feel smaller because characters don't get alternate weapons in this game. If your character uses a Sword, that's all they can use. There are weapon classes so you can get stronger weapons, but the variety of Hyrule Warriors isn't there this time. But hey, at least there's no ball/ blade on a chain like there is in Dynasty Warriors 9! (Don't expect that review in anything less than a long time away). Controls are very customizable in this game so if you don't like the layout, you can easily remap the entire control scheme to something you prefer, which is a nice way to handle controls and something many other games could benefit from.
The presentation is very well done for the game. It looks great in docked and handheld modes (oh yeah I should say I reviewed the Switch version), and the soundtrack is once again gorgeous. There were a few times I had some slow down when I was performing special attacks as I spent most of the game playing in quality mode (looks better, locked at 30FPS). And battery life was decent for the Switch's handheld mode, but unlikely to last a day without a recharge or two. Voice acting is a bit hit and miss as they couldn't get all the voice actors to reprise their roles (all I can hear whenever Hinoka talks in this game is Amy Rose speaking), but some of the lines feel a little in poor taste. Not anything to get mad at, but I did feel kinda insulted when Camilla's victory animation was based on the whole "my eyes are up here" line. Some of the dialogue also felt overdone as they tried to ram into your heads what these characters were like in their original games. "Yes Fire Emblem Warriors. I KNOW ROBIN'S A TACTICIAN! STOP REMINDING ME OF THAT!". Another thing that got very annoying was every time I would buy a badge to help boost my warriors' stats, mostly because when I do, I generally buy them in bulk and every character has dialogue for this. So expect to hear "What shall we do?", "Marvelous", "It was successful", "Is this what you want?", "Will this suffice?", "Will this do?", "Success" (which sounds a little off for me and a tell that they couldn't get Laura Bailey back for Lucina. Still a solid recreation though by Alexis Tipton) and more over, and over, and over again to an almost insane amount of times. There was even a little nod to Dynasty Warriors of old with a "Feel the power of my Magic!" line in the story mode, which was a nice touch, but I can't help but wish some of these characters would shut up.
Like with Hyrule Warriors for WiiU and 3DS (at time of writing I am unsure if more content is coming to the Switch version post launch), Fire Emblem Warriors does have DLC, both paid and free updates and, personally I'm underwhelmed. Granted, the final DLC pack isn't out yet, so this could change when the Awakening pack is released. With the DLC you get nine more characters to play with, however only five of them are actually brand new characters. Oboro, Niles, Navarre and Owain are all in the game's story mode and you can fight them in History Mode. Along with that, Darios, Gharnef, Validar, and Iago are nowhere to be seen on the roster (compared to Hyrule Warriors where every Hero sized villain is playable. Cia, Wizzro, and Volga even came with an entire part of the story dedicated to them as (I'm pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong) free DLC). You do get other items in the packs such as more History Mode maps and a few costumes, but I can't consider the Season Pass as much of a safe investment as I could for the two passes for Hyrule Warriors were.
While I am having fun with this game, and find that it is a good game, its got some problems that hold it back from being a great game. I do hope this game could get a sequel (I honestly hope this one gets a sequel a lot more then Hyrule Warriors does) as a way to fix the issues the game has because most of them are foundation problems rather than issues like bugs. As it currently stands, I do prefer Hyrule Warriors over Fire Emblem Warriors, but a large chunk of that comes from me being a bigger fan of Legend of Zelda then I am Fire Emblem. There are changes made that do work better then they did in Hyrule Warriors (History Mode doesn't need anywhere near the same amount of repeat visits as Hyrule Warriors did), but there are changes that put it in a worse position, mainly how they handled the badges, and that you can't get everything until you use a Master Seal (and I also miss fairies...). Worth a pickup though, but there is room to improve the experience. Coming up on the Toybox is a battle of the Grimlocks. You can find the most recent review here: https://mediaholicstoybox.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/transformers-power-of-primes-deluxe_18.html. Coming up here though, Super Smash Brothers Melee.
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