It's funny to think that at one point Nintendo didn't think Western audiences would get Fire Emblem. Now the franchise is considered a flagship in the JRPG/JTBG Nintendo stable, and fans can't get enough of it.

So much so, that it has made its way into the Musou genre, first with Fire Emblem Warriors, and now with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which we've recently spent a fair amount of review time with.

As fans of the IP we certainly went into this with eyes wide open, and while we definitely have respect for the style of game a Musou experience offers, a dated presentation and a few mismarriages of ideas left us a bit on the outer, as far as the hybrid experience is concerned.

Here's a snippet:

Newcomers, however, might find it all a stretch and a grind, especially given how the entire setup is geared. Three Hopes also isn’t any sort of visual or performance champion for the hardware. Framerates dip when you’re in handheld mode, while co-oping from the couch on a TV can also impact the game’s handling of its many, many sword fodder swarms. Environments are a flat-textured mess held up by sharp angles and repetitive architecture and landscapes. So much so, that it’s not a stretch to say this looks like it would have been happy at home on the Wii. This is at odds with the stunning CG cutscenes that bolster its delivery of soap, and perhaps isn’t how diehard Fire Emblem fans would have the series presented in a real-time 3D sense. And if you add the overall visual presentation to its mash-slash-repeat combat makeup, Fire Emblem: Three Hopes can be a hard sell outside of its key demo...

Click here for our full Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes review.