Post-Famitsu FE:W Thoughts
I am actually more hyped for Fire Emblem Warriors than I was before this Famitsu dump.
“But only new FEs are getting represented”
Yeah, okay, sure, but I don’t have any particular animosity towards the characters in those games. My love for Tellius is prolific and unmatched, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have favorites from Awakening and Fates. No problems there. The characters ultimately wouldn’t be what would make me excited anyways. What makes me excited is actually the approach to the whole thing.
I’m not exactly embroiled in the musou fanbase. I’ve played Hyrule Warriors nearly to completion, but my only other experience is the Gundam crossover, and that was in a Walmart. I have no idea what other crossovers have been like, or even what the baseline is for your typical DW game.
I had a grand time with HW, but I’d be remiss if I said that the gameplay was deep in any sense of the word. It’s broad, but not deep. If I want to beat my foes with a hammer, I can do that, but I can only do that with one character, and most differences between hammers are immaterial in the grand scheme of things. On harder maps with forced units, it’s silly to even try without using a second player using one of your most powerful characters. And the general strategy is always more or less the same -- get to the fort, seize the point, beat the boss, grind up your KO count so you get an A rank. Usually, you’re not actually at risk of death or failure, only of missing the A rank. That’s fine, but not exactly the hallmark of the pinnacle of gaming. It lacks layers.
If the class system exists (which is confirmed via Famitsu), there have to be meaningful differences between classes. There also need to be meaningful differences and/or similarities between characters that share classes. Ideally, these distinctions go beyond moveset and quickness.
If the weapon triangle exists, it needs to be strong enough to carry weight but weak enough not to be overbearing. Imo, I think Heroes overdoes it a bit by making it proportional to the unit’s current Atk, making the advantaged state exceptionally brutal. Rather, I’d like to see relationships along the lines of “striking with an advantageous weapon (opt. as a specific class) allows the attacker to act immediately out of it, even if it was a heavy attack”. Give that to say, the Assassin class and restrict the “immediate action” to “dodge” and you’ve produced a class/attribute combination that
incentivizes quick movement
causes players to seek advantageous matchups (or requires them to adjust to disadvantaged states)
provides a means of getting in and out of your opponent’s face
draws lines between users of the same weapon and/or class
This is effectively what I’m looking for over all else -- reasons to play the whole cast, and to think critically throughout key portions of each map and objective. Everything else, I expect to be very similar -- wild combos, beating up hordes of enemies with a single move; all that can stay the same.
Now the pipe dream stuff.
Usually, when people say that “X exists” in a game, they mean more than the mechanic is present. They mean that the mechanic has a meaningful impact on the game. Then, to clarify the extent the mechanic affects the game and its overall complexity, they add qualifiers, such as “extensive” or “involved” or “trivial”. Using the Final Fantasy series as an example for a second, everyone thinks of FFV and Tactics as having “jobs systems”. Technically, FF1 and 2 also have these, but the inability to change classes midgame and the general lack of differences outside of basic attributes and spell usage kinda sweeps that under the rug. XIII has a crafting system of sorts, but it doesn’t seem to carry any real weight in how the game is played, so most people don’t think of it or bother to mention it.
This combined with the statement that “class systems exist” makes me hope two things:
That vertical class changes are possible (from tier 1 to tier 2)
That horizontal class changes are possible (from class family A to family B)
If (1) is true, there is cause for the player to try a wide variety of characters and classes if for no other reason than to see the divergence between, for example, a Myrmidon and a Mercenary after promotion. If (2) is true, there is cause to experiment with each character in all of their existing options to find the best combination of skills, stats, and equipment. Provided that no particular combination is gamebreaking, that on its own gives many opportunities for depth. (2) would also provide cause to lean more heavily on recent characters -- each of which already has an established class set that can be carried over relatively easily without concern for whether or not it diverges from the source material.
The other big part of my pipe dream expands off of the interplay between character, weapon, and class.
I’ve heard that in some DW games, every or almost every character can use every or almost every weapon, with the catch being that each has a specialty that they use better -- they can use the higher-rank weapons or have specific key skills that are weapon-specific. That’s so remarkably FE-like that there’s no reason it shouldn’t be brought to FE Warriors. Mesh that with stat differentials and character skills, and a wide variety of combinations are possible. Further distinctions build from how the individual attributes are distributed or earned -- specials can be weapon-specific while ults are character-specific, or something like that.
Expanding off of my example from before, let’s say that Gaius is the Assassin, he can use Swords up to B rank, Knives to A rank, and Bows to B rank, and he’s currently using the Sunrise Katana, which is a B rank sword. He’s a unit with excellent mobility and attack speed, but his overall damage per hit is less than other units. He gets a +30 attack bonus for using a weapon he has B rank in, and the Sunrise Katana has three skills: its “basic” katana skill, like a bonus against “Bandit” type units (Brigand, Bandit, Pirate, Berserker) in addition to WTA, its evasive skill as mentioned before, and another A-rank locked skill that Gaius can’t use in his current class. As a katana, the moveset primarily strikes directly in front of the user, with the special being an extended dash-slash that hits multiple enemies in a line for heavy damage. Gaius’ ult is an AoE “spell” attack that restores HP to all allied heroes based on the number of enemies hit. Switching to the Steel Knife would provide +40 attack (absolute, not relative) due to rank bonus, even though the knife type of weapon is generally weaker, and would have just two skills. The new moveset uses more sweeping, disjointed throwing attacks and some short-range thrusts and slashes. Now rebuild, except it’s Sully, she’s a Paladin using a Short Spear, etc., etc. Done poorly, it’s effectively the same as before (for me, at least). Done well, there’s a lot of value added.
And then support attacks. Dual Strikes would be a wonderful addition to a team musou.
And the most pipe of pipe dreams: roster expansion.
The prevailing thought right now seems to be, “if FE:W does well, FE:W2 might include representation from [insert favorite game here]”. I think that’s a valid line of thinking, but also there’s the potential for DLC. Continuing off of recency as a criterion for inclusion and the fact that SoV was done so well (and will hopefully sell accordingly across its lifetime), I think it’s fair to look for Alm, Celica, and their compatriots in a relatively early DLC pack. Beyond that, we may see a trickling of other characters from games gone by.
The obvious desire is to have characters that I like, but more importantly to have characters that I like in-game. I love Tetra as a character but there’s no real point for me to try to use her when better options exist. As a result, I am happy that Tetra is in HW but I never play as her. That’s the line I want to draw, rather than “okay but Ike is better than Chrom in-universe” or whatever other trivial complaints I can think of.
tl;dr -- I see FE:W as a title that has a lot of potential. Time will tell whether or not my expectations are realistic or justified, but I’m not dropping my hype for it anytime soon.
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