Finally beat the stiry portion of the game.
Overall I think it is a solid game. It performs well, it looks good, it has a good roster (more on that later), the story, while not being super great or anything is much better than fire emblem heroes story (which is a similar concept).
The most impressive was that it really succeeded in merging two franchises together. With mashup games like this you will see halfassed attemps of trying to bring over gameplay elements of one franchise to the other. the implementation of bombs, arrows and the hookshot in hyrule warriors is an example. This game however has none of such elements. Dont get me wrong, the game is more Mousou than Fire Emblem, but they did implement some of the elements of fire emblem into the musou franchise so seemlessly that its beautiful. The weapon triangle is there, the support system is there, pair up is there, class changes through master seals are there...
But most importantly you have a minimap where you can micromanage your characters. You will usually have up to 8 characters and 4 of them will be directly and indirectly controlable while the rest is only controlable indirectly. This makes the game feel much more like a real time Fire Emblem. Its a feature that somewhat exists in previous Musou games but not to the degree we see here. Pkus you can insta switch between characters which really means you have a lot of gameplay variety as Musou games tend to get really stale.
Now to the Characters... The team decided to focus on Fates, Awakening and the original FE, which I think is fine. However the set of characters really is too one dimensional. Out of the non-mounted characters you have a lot of sword users (doesnt help that the two original characters are sword users as well), one axe user, three archers, no lance user, one mage. Aside of that there are four characters on horses, out of which two are mages and one is a sword user and one is a axe user. There are four flyers out of which three are lance pegasus knights and one is a axe user. So overall, there is a severe lack of lance users both hourse mounted or on foot, which is baffling as a lance paladin or armour knight is usually a staple character (see cain, abel, draug, silas, effie, stahl, sully to name a few). Also having just lissa as a axe character seems really strange as well. Cord, Bord, Rinkah, Charlotte or Vaike would have been good picks to complement the lineup. Same with on-foot mages (at least we are getting tharja and linde).. There are no Bowknights and It also seems like an oversight to completely skip ninjas, thiefs, assassins and laguz type characters (okay at least they have a manakete)..
Overall I would recommend this game. It is a good mashup and I really hope it sells well enough so we may get more DLC and maybe a sequel. It is definately the best Musou game i played dispite its shortcommings in the roster selection.
Oh yes and one more thing. I really think permadeath is kinda pointless in this game. I normal FE games death oftentimes is a product of bad decisions while here it is simply a strong character stabbing you in the back ehile you are focusing on another enemy. Also since levels can get really grindy (and oftentimes you have to watch the same move over and over again) I turned permadeath off after a while..
