Booted up Fire Emblem Warriors today, and it's pretty neat so far! It really feels like a successor to Hyrule Warriors in the gameplay department, except with some Fire Emblemy things thrown in. I just wanted to get to the point where I could do 2 players this morning, so it'd be all ready to play with my bro next weekend, and to do that I'm fairly sure you need to beat the first 4 missions (which will take like an hour, as they're not too long, but it's still annoying
).
Interesting notes:
-The weapon triangle is present! It affects everyone, from you to allies to big enemies to even grunts, but you can see whether or not you'll be good against an enemy captain with your current weapon by just looking at the big arrow above their head or on the map. Pretty cool, but Dynasty Warriors proper has had a kind of elemental weapons triangle in it since at least the 8th one from a couple years back, so it's nothing crazy new for the series other than now it depends on certain weapons.
-You can change playable characters mid-fight. Each character can only hold one weapon, so to try and diversify what weapon advantages you can get you gotta diversify your team's weapons. This is a switch from how DW8 does things, where to balance which advantages and disadvantages you can get, you can just switch between the two weapons your dude can carry.
-You can order your allies around the map. On the pause screen, the map is broken up in a FE-style grid, and you can tell them to fight a specific enemy by selecting and dragging where they are to where you want them. It's a pretty cool way to incorporate the FE system of tactical movement! Paired with the character swapping from the last point, this can be a great way to maintain a larger map-presence with only one character.
-Weapon durability is not a thing. You find a new weapon, you can use it as much as you damn well please, but only one character can use that weapon at a time.
-The game runs really well! Tons of dudes on screen and I didn't notice any frame-drops. Perhaps that will change in more graphics-intensive maps or in split-screen, but the base game runs just fine
-The English voice acting is alright, but I'm fairly sure a good portion of the VO's from the 3DS entries have been changed. Luckily, just like with DW8, the Japanese VO is free DLC, so you can use that if you wanna
-Controlling the game with just one joycon is possible, but I wouldn't recommend it. You'd probably want a second actual controller.
-None of the amiibos give you any special weapons like they did in Hyrule Warriors, at least so far as I can tell from my own experiences and reading online.
Verdict so far: Pretty fun! It's more Nintendo Dynasty Warriors, and it's still quality fun. I'm not sure the overall theme is as strong as the Zelda one, but if you like FE and Musou games, this is probably a safe purchase
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
