Fire Emblem Warriors For The Nintendo Switch Review

Fire Emblem Warriors is a good followup to Hyrule Warriors but still leaves me feeling disappointed. Fire Emblem Warriors released on the 3DS and Switch on the 28th September in Japan and October 20th to the rest of the world, This is the second crossover Warriors game Nintendo has allowed Omega Force to develop. Alike all other Dynasty Warriors games Fire Emblem Warriors is a hack n slash where you will mow down thousands of troops on a battlefield and only generals and fort captains offer up a challenge. I have a secret love for Dynasty Warriors styled games and absolutely adore the Fire Emblem Series so when i heard this crossover happening i was completely hyped with the possibilities the Fire Emblem Universe could bring to this new game. And that is where i started to get dissapointed…

Story

The story in this game is nothing special at all, it has just enough to it to keep the player moving forward but the plot twist in the game i easily realized way before the big “plot twist” but coming into this game i did not expect much. Most of the time you are just flinged into a situation which involves Fire Emblem characters from several of the games in the series. Once you win the battle they usually join your force and you move on in the search of characters from other worlds (the different games). The big bad guy in this game isn't even revealed until the last 3-4 levels in the game and in total the story will only get you roughly 12 hours of playtime

Gameplay

Fire Emblem Warriors plays very alike many of the other Warriors titles there is a light attack that can combo and a strong attack you usually use to end a combo, at the start of each battle you will get to choose from selected Fire Emblem Characters and control up to 4 at a time switching between them on the battlefield to ensure you’re never far away from some action. you will come across many men on the battlefield but usually the only people you want to care about are the ones with written names above them (Captains and Generals etc). This all follows the basic premise of other Dynasty Warriors game what differs is what excited me most about this game, not only was it showing off some characters i loved from the series it was bringing some of its own elements to the hack n slash genre. Fire Emblem Warriors is known for being a very hard Turn Based Strategy / RPG. i can tell you right away Fire Emblem did not bring its difficulty over. I played on the game's hardest setting “Hard” and on Classic mode which is brought over from the Fire Emblem franchise. When one of your teammates die they are dead for good.

Now i didn't have any difficulty with this game and wasn't really at risk of losing men until the final chapter in any 1v1 situation you are easily able to combo your opponent and avoid damage yourself. This was a massive disappointment not only were the computer enemies super passive they barely did any damage when they managed to attack me after the first few levels. I was so excited for Fire Emblem to bring some difficulty over and some more strategic elements which it did to a certain degree.
When entering the start screen during battle you are presented map which certainly brings over the look of Fire Emblems characters and maps.

From this map you are easily able to order units your units around that battlefield to attack bases or other captains. In the story most battles come down to capturing all the bases on the map and then taking out the commander.
Another feature to come over from Fire Emblem is you are able to pair up with any other fire emblem character which will provide you with boosts to your stats with a defensive and offensive support and able to switch in-between your character and whoever you paired up with on the battlefield even mid combo and be able to chain attacks together.
All of these mechanics would have come together much more beautifully if there was some more polish on the enemies i was hoping for difficult generals that would require more than hack n slash tactics to win but i was sorely mistaken.

Art & Sound

Now this game doesn't look the best but that's what happens when you try to shove as many soldiers onto the screen as possible but it gets the job done especially the models for the Fire Emblem specific characters. The battlefields were especially disappointing and quite bland the voice acting in the game is nothing great but keeps the job done. This game also gives you the option to lower the graphics quality in the game to get yourself a lovely 60fps while docked i did speak about this nifty little feature right over here

Conclusion

I feel like i've been quite harsh on the game but that's because i saw how great it could be. This game was fun to play still and i definitely will continue to play this but there was so much potential that was ruined and i hope that they come back to Fire Emblem Warriors after a proper upgrade to the game engine and possibly give the game some more of its own identity from the other Warriors games.