Back in 2020 or maybe late 2019, Fire Emblem Warriors was my first full attempt at playing a Fire Emblem game. I played a couple old ones online to see what they were like in the past but I never got around to actually trying to do a real playthrough until I got to Warriors. The only problem was that I don't think I even managed to play through an hour of the game. I just didn't like the game at all, I might have even hated it. I knew nothing about the characters, I didn't really like the graphics too much at the time, and I hated the gameplay.

I even tried multiple times to get one of my friends to buy the game off of me for like $10. I knew he liked it since he had the 3DS version but not the Switch one and I was desperate to get rid of the game. But that didn't work out and the game was left in my drawer for more than a year until I started playing Three Houses. I instantly fell in love with the series and thought that I should get into Warriors again one day. But, I didn't actually until around two months ago when Gamestop was selling the season pass for under $10 and that was when I finally decided that it was time to start playing Warriors.

GRAPHICS: 8/10

Overall, I’m a fan of the way that the game looks, especially when I was playing on the OLED because the game looked so much better. Normally, I didn’t like the way that many Warriors style games looked. I noticed that many didn’t have a ton of detail on the enemies because of how many there would be on screen at once and because of how fast they’d all be attacked.

But with Fire Emblem Warriors, it was a very different experience for me. Many of the enemies still looked very bland, but when it came to combat animations, it really changed the way that I looked at the game. I had a very good time actually battling because all of the combat and sword animations looked really good, and the special attacks looked so clean and colorful. Also, unlike the enemies, many of the playable characters had a really good amount of detail going on and looked really nice.

The cutscenes and animations all looks wonderful as well.

I also went back to play a little bit after I got the OLED Switch because when I first transferred all my data over to the new console, I saw that my videos were transferred over too. I took a lot of Warriors video on my old switch to help with the review and I watched some of them on the OLED and saw that the videos looked way better. That made me want to go back and reexperience the game all over again on the OLED Switch.

SOUND: 9/10

The sound was definitely my favorite aspect of Fire Emblem Warriors for a number of reasons. The first is the amazing music. The very first time I played, I heard the Fire Emblem theme for what I thought was the first time but I realized that I basically knew the song. Part of it was from my experience with Three Houses, since it’s apparently in that game too, but part of it was from hearing the theme in the wild.

So, I quickly grew to really enjoy the theme, and many of the other songs that played during the first few chapters quickly warmed up to me. Many of them were fast and energetic, and I really liked the way that they sounded, especially when battling. There’s also a ton of different tracks, and there’s a sound gallery that allows you to listen to all of the songs once you’ve unlocked them. This is something that I really enjoyed about Three Houses, so I’m glad that it was in Warriors too.

I also really liked the voice acting as well. For the most part, the game was fully voiced and many of the voice actors did a great job. It also just so happens that many of the characters that were appearing from other Fire Emblem games retained their voice actors from those games. I thought that was really cool because this ended up being my first time hearing them.

There’s also a very good amount of voice lines. The in-game cut scenes are all fully voiced and the dialogue scenes with just specific characters are fully voiced as well. While you’re in the middle of a mission and battling, you can also hear various lines from different characters that are with you. This is something that I really liked as opposed to Three Houses, where characters only spoke in battle when they were interacting. Those two aspects of sound were what really kept me invested in the game along with the character recognition.

ADDICTIVENESS: 9/10

The game started off about the same as it did the first time that I played and for the first 30 or so minutes, it was pretty uninteresting. It felt bland and uninspiring, but after the first couple chapters, things started to pick up in different ways. The first time I played, it was in chapter three where I gave up because I found it boring and didn’t like the gameplay. But this time around, once I got into the escape from the castle, which I believe was the second chapter, I started thinking that the gameplay was fun.

I definitely thought it was boring in the prologue and first chapter, but then once things started picking up again, I began to enjoy it more, and then once I started seeing characters that I recognized, I started having a lot more fun. I also found the combat to be a lot more fun the more that I played it, and I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to try the game over again on a higher difficulty.

If you are a fan of Fire Emblem or just a fan of Warriors style games, then you’re going to get a good amount of enjoyment out of Fire Emblem Warriors and you’re probably going to end up playing the game multiple times on different difficulty levels and maybe even do a couple challenge runs here and there, which would work very well in this game. If you get the DLC, you’re going to get even more out of the game too.

If you just try to get through the game to experience the story and nothing else, you’re going to get like 20 to 30 hours out of it. But if you’re a fan and you love the game, there’s enough to keep you invested for more than 100 hours.

STORY: 8/10

The story revolves around two siblings named Rowan and Lianna. One day the kingdom is attacked by a bunch of monsters and as you try to escape, while their mother, the Queen, is captured. You learn that someone’s trying to revive a terrible dragon and the twins, along with friends from other games, try to stop that from happening and while trying to rescue their mother.

I get that it wasn’t the same people working on the game and that it had to be scaled down to better suit a Warriors type game, but the story and the weight and emotion didn’t really feel as grand or as epic as it did in Three Houses, so that was a bit disappointing for me at times. But it was still a very good and interesting plotline, and the fact that it was able to incorporate so many characters was a plus from me. But this game also made me hopeful that there could be another main Fire Emblem game in the future that revolves around a lot of characters from the Fire Emblem universe.

DEPTH: 10/10

Fire Emblem Warriors, just like Three Houses, has so much going on in the depth department. Just the number of chapters alone should be enough to wow you. The main story has 20 chapters to fight through. I mean, yeah, that’s nowhere near as what a game like Three Houses has, but 20 chapters is still a very good amount for a game. Even if you were to blow through all of the chapters quickly, there’s enough stuff going on to make sure that you keep staying invested for a long time.

CHARACTERS

One great thing that I like about Warriors is that there's a huge cast of characters from across the Fire Emblem universe. It's great for people who have been playing Fire Emblem for years and already have an attachment to many of the other characters. Before I actually talk about how big the cast is, I wanted to talk about three very small complaints that I had with the characters.

The first is that the large cast of characters was sort of devalued after the release of Fire Emblem Heroes and I think that played a part in what happened to the price of Warriors dropping steeply over the last few years. I can only assume that there was a lot of excitement when a game with characters from multiple Fire Emblem games was released. But then shortly after, another Fire Emblem game was released with lots of different characters and that one added even more.

I feel like if Fire Emblem Heroes was released later, Warriors could have held it's value for longer and might have even gotten more DLC packs with other characters added into the game. But since Heroes was released so soon after, and had so many more characters, people just moved on from Warriors. My second issue has to do with the selection of characters and the third ties back into DLC and Heroes in a way.

The amount of characters chosen from each game is very unbalanced, which isn't something that I really liked. For instance, the base game was released with one character from Echoes: Shadows of Valentia and one from The Blazing Blade. But there were six unique characters from Awakening and nine from Fates. Then once the DLC was released, each of those two games received an additional three playable characters. Even Shadow Dragon got three DLC characters but that game already had three characters in the base game. The representation of each game just seemed a bit off to me.

Lastly, there was no representation of Fire Emblem: Three Houses at all. It would have been great if towards the end of 2019, there was a DLC that added characters from Three Houses. That would have been more appealing towards people who were introduced to the franchise on the Switch and would have kept the game relevant for a little while longer. But I guess since Three Houses characters were being added to Heroes, there must not have been a reason to add them into Warriors. That's just lame if you ask me.

But now we talk about the good stuff, the number of characters that actually made it into the game. There's a good number of them, and they're sure to appease some Fire Emblem fans in one way or another. I own all the 3DS games but have yet to play any of them, so the only characters that I recognized were Marth, Chrom, Lucina, and Camilla. But even without knowing all of them, it was nice having access to them and I was able to slowly start liking a couple of the others thanks to Warriors.

In total there are 23 unique characters in the base game. You have the ones I already mentioned which are six from Awakening, eight from Fates, three from Shadow Dragon, and one each from Blazing Blade and Echoes. But you also have three original characters that are all unique to Warriors. Then the DLC packs brought in an additional nine characters, three each from Fates, Awakening, and Shadow Dragon. That brings the total number of unique playable characters up to 32 across six games. Sure, a game like Three Houses has more, but that's a very nice collection.

DLC

You already know that the Fire Emblem Warriors DLC gets you nine additional characters. That's cool on its own but you also get so much more than that. In total there are three DLC packs, one for Shadow Warrior, one for Fates, and one for Awakening. You can get all three together for $25 when you buy the season pass and that price is very worth it if you ask me. If I was already into the game, I would have gladly paid full price for the season pass but it was only like $10 at the time and was a steal.

Each of the three DLC packs are basically the same, just tailored to their specific game. Each one comes with three additional playable characters and three new maps for history mode. They also come with new costumes, new weapon skins, new armor, and new support conversations for some characters. If you ask me, I think it's the weakest of the recent Fire Emblem DLC because it has a lot of customization options but no real content. It's just a bunch of new characters and a bunch of cosmetic stuff.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a lot of stuff and is great if you love the characters and cosmetic items, but it's lacking when compared to the other Fire Emblem games. Take Three Houses for instance. I wasn't too fond of their expansion pass but it still came with a large story expansion in addition to a bunch of cosmetic stuff and characters, and it was the same price.

Don't even get me started on the amount of DLC in Fire Emblem Fates and Awakening, which have a ton of story and character related DLC. Overall, the Warriors DLC has a decent amount of stuff for a good price but there could have been more.

DIFFICULTY: 4

The game can be incredibly easy if that’s what you want it to be and the fact that you can switch between characters as often as you like (when applicable) can make the game a lot easier. There were plenty of times where I’d be playing as Rowan and I would get low on health so I would switch to another character and play for a few minutes and let the AI take care of Rowan for me. That may be an easy way out, but if the game gets too difficult for you at times, that might be the only way to go.

Not only that, but if you’re playing on the easiest difficulties, the enemies are going to be weak and you’re probably going to be able to get a 100 kill streak or something like that before you even take damage. Plus there’s a bunch of ways to improve your character to make them stronger and you’re able to grind during a mission or do missions over as many times as you like. Before you know it, you’re going to be too overpowered and you won’t have any more obstacles stopping you.

But if you do want a challenge, you can always choose a higher difficulty. You can upgrade to normal mode from easy and enemies are going to be the standard difficulty, which is five levels stronger. If you want an even harder time, you can upgrade to hard, which will give enemies yet another five levels.

If you really want a challenge and you’re crazy, you can try the Lunatic mode. In this mode, enemies are an insane 15 levels higher than they are in hard mode, but you have to already have beaten the story mode once to unlock this difficulty. So, you should already be a veteran by then and know what you’re getting yourself into. I’m probably never going to try it though, I’ll stick to easy and normal.

But it’s there if you need it to mess around with it. With three different options for difficulty and a lot of ways to upgrade your characters, it’s not hard to make your experience as easy or as hard as you want it or need it to be.

OVERALL: 8.9/10

Overall, Fire Emblem Warriors is a lot of fun and can keep you busy for many hours. If you’re a fan of either Fire Emblem or Warriors games, then this is going to be the game for you. But of course, if you never played Fire Emblem before this, like me, then it might be a lot harder for you to get into it. But other than that, you should easily be able to spend dozens of hours playing, if not more than 100. Plus, if you get the season pass, you’re going to end up getting even more enjoyment out of it in the long run.

The only downside is that it’s getting difficult to find the game for a reasonable price. I always see the 3DS version selling for around $10 to $15 but the Switch version is still constantly retailing for $30 to $40 and even more for a digital copy. But if you can get the game for a decent price, it’s going to be a very good pickup for your Switch or Fire Emblem collection. Fire Emblem Warriors is also a great game if you are a moderate fan of Fire Emblem but haven’t played all the games that are being represented here. For instance, if you haven’t played Fates, then this would serve as an introduction into those games in a way.

Honestly, when I first played this game, before becoming a Fire Emblem fan and back when I hated Warriors style games, my grade was probably closer to a 7. But now that I know the series, am invested in the characters, and like the genre, my overall grade for Fire Emblem Warriors is an 8.9 out of 10.