Alright fellas, allow me to shill for a game I imagine most people here haven't given even five seconds of thought, but which took me by surprise and is a serious contender for my game of the year.
Three Hopes is a spin off that improves upon the original in many ways and has much more going for it than one would expect out of a musou. The strategy elements are fully present. I will do my best to keep this relatively brief but there's a lot to talk about. I'm currently up to chapter 11 of the Golden Deer route, a bit past the midway point after some 50 hours, on Hard.
+ combat is fought against hordes of weak mooks, stronger unnamed leaders as well as named bosses. Mooks serve to fill various gauges and the kill count required for a good rank, leaders may protect holds, named enemies often act as the boss of the map.
+ weapon and type weaknesses are present, determined by class, weapon type and battalions. Advantage obviously leads to more damage, but also easier breaking of the stun gauge on stronger enemies. When the gauge is broken, the enemy and nearby mooks can be rushed for huge damage which stuns, pauses time and sends them flying. Breaking enemy gauges is the bread and butter of the regular combat loop.
+ every class has unique qualities fit for different purposes. Combos and class specialties have enough depth to keep you learning. Shame only one of four 3H DLC classes is here.
+ amount of deployable units varies, but up to four can be personally controlled, while the rest are given generic commands. Controlled units have access to arts and can be paired with another unit, controlled or not, which gives lots of bonuses. Others can be told to move, attack a target, guard an ally or base, heal etc.
+ pairing units relies on support levels for good results. Adjutants appear periodically to damage or block and help in special attacks. If both units in the pair are controllable, they can be easily switched between mid combat which enables plenty of additional tactics due to all the weapon weakness considerations. Otherwise the adjutant unit will just be a passive bonus.
+ knowing which units to bring, balancing optimal teams vs grinding levels and class ranks, how to pair units, reacting to changing main and side objectives (claim base, defeat specific enemy, protect ally, don't let enemy escape, etc) and doing all this while getting good ranks leads to lots of planning and gitting gud to achieve better results. A satisfying gameplay loop overall.
+ vast majority of 3H systems are present but tweaked and condensed. There is a lot to do at the base but a lot of it can be done flexibly. A chapter's non-combat activities can be done in 15 minutes, helped by 'optimize' buttons. You get a fixed number of training and social points per chapter that you probably don't want to spend all at once. The biggest time and resource sink is facility management to get more out of the canteen, blacksmith, training grounds, tactics academy and so on. Resources are a constant bottleneck - I recently got my first master seals for master classes but lack the resources to upgrade my training grounds for the exams. Overall think of this as the monastery and lecture phases, except with more tangible results, less time wasted, and you can drop into a battle at any time without losing anything.
+ real sense of hands-on war campaign progression. You take over smaller areas via side battles, then reap the rewards from villagers, resource spots and other miscellaneous non combat locations. Claim areas until the main battle of the chapter where the story goes forward. Enemy units are recruited in battle by beating them.
+ big improvement in overall writing quality. Expansion of the world and setting, introducing many previously briefly mentioned characters like the noble house heads, a few new faces, even a new continent. Fleshing out old characters.
+ better support conversations with less tropey repetition. In 3H, Sylvain was always trying to woo women. Bernie was always a nervous wreck apologizing when someone bumped into her. The majority of characters were sucking off Byleth. Here everyone is given more depth, I even find myself liking Lorenz.
+ neat rivalry between MC and Byleth. The game gives Byleth the name from your 3H save by default (presumably if gender matches, so female in both games for me) and seeing "<your name> appeared on the battlefield!" never gets old. I'm essentially having a rivalry with myself.
+ very flashy and entertaining special attacks. Landing those at the right time, using arts to counter and dodge enemy arts, watching bosses go flying in slow mo, all very satisfying.
Lysithea's life expectancy just got even shorter. Too bad she's on my team.
+ a real unsung hero of a soundtrack with a crap ton of songs. Fittingly high energy riffs, remixed familiar themes, even fixed some of the more boring ones from 3H.
+ a couple technical details. Yuzu under Vulkan gives good performance at a nearly locked 60 for me. The most glaring issue is nuclear torches in night maps and some story cutscenes, and the occasional catastrophic graphical meltdown. Memory leaks at times too, which can be mended with tools like Mem Reduct. Entirely playable as it is, but it could still be better.
If you actually read this far, cheers. There's going to be people who think "Three Houses, lol, musou, lmao" and I'm not going be able to change their minds, but if I got even one person to try out this game, writing this was worth it. The question I don't have an easy answer for is who should play this game. If you liked 3H and want more of that setting, it's a no brainer. If you wanted to get into it but was turned off by something, changes are good Three Hopes fixes whatever that issue was. If you've never touched 3H... that's not so clear cut. A lot of my appreciation for this game is enabled by having played 3H, but I guess it could go the other way as well. Realistically though, this game was made for a specific audience.
