The Queue: Together We Ride

Together, we ride. We go to some ranch and we rent some horses for two hours or something, I don’t know. We’ll figure this out.

This is The Queue, our daily column where if Qs were horses and As were also horses, we’d ride them! Together!

Battlegrounds. I have to remind myself to use Dark Gift, because playing without pressing that button is so ingrained.

Power levels seem VERY high. Some of the new minions are ridiculously powerful, and Dark Gifts kinda throw balance out of the window.

Activate doesn’t seem to have made that much of a splash for me so far, but maybe I simply haven’t found the right minions. The one I liked the most was the Elemental where you activate for it to gain the stats of the next minion you buy. In shop-based builds it can be really strong.

So far, it’s been fun. I always love it when a major shake-up happens and everything is new and there’s a ton of exploration and discovery. Time will tell if it’s in dire need of a balance patch.

All they changed was a single Battlecry, but I feel like they might have over-nerfed Demon Hunter, believe it or not. The difference between “guaranteed and instant Void Soul from a Battlecry + bonus, non-guaranteed Void Soul later from a Deathrattle” and “just the one from the Deathrattle” is massive.

Shaman is good and has two viable and completely decks built around the same Legendary, which is insane. It was the first Legendary I decided to craft this expansion, long before the meta settled the way it did now, so I’m bappy.

Classes that were bad, like Warlock, Druid, DK, and Mage, are still bad, so the buffs didn’t hit the way Blizzard intended. Priest too: Azalina is actually viable now, but still very inconsistent. But the Azalina buff was definitely much more of a success than the buffs those other classes got.

Hunter is still good, but I feel less bad about Confront the Tol’vir now than before its nerf. It’s still a very powerful card, but doesn’t feel as oppressive now as it did before.

I hate playing against Lotus Troublemaker Rogue. If it were up to me, that deck would be getting a “feels infuriating to play against” nerf.

Paladin could be a little stronger, but it’s okay that it’s not; lets other classes (like Shaman and Rogue) take the spotlight for a bit.

Overall, I’m having fun, but I feel like we need more buffs. More buffs! More buffs!!!

1) I’m just gonna give my impressions on the entire thing, because I’m a tiny little bit passionate about the subject of video game music.

The style of the Fortune’s Weave soundtrack starts out sounding very different from Three Houses music — far more “sunny” and less “dense” — but the more you listen, the more similarities you find.

• I love the Spanish influence in The Blaze – Cycle of the Sun. Spanish guitars, clapping. Then it turns more cinematic and Three Houses-like.
• Legend of the Flame incorporates the iconic Fire Emblem leitmotif that’s in every game. I love that stuff. Also very Spanish-influenced. (I just hope they don’t pull a “I am… the Fire Emblem!” like they did for Alear in Engage.)
• Hope Endures sounds much more like Three Houses, and has that “pulsing” effect that reminds me of the Sothis theme in that game. 99% sure it’s intentional.

Now for the heroes.

• Cai’s theme, True to His Colors, sounds very Fire Emblem but with a bit of an odd choice of main instrument — they picked something that would feel more at home in a Donkey Kong or Mario game, I think. Reminds me of the kazoo in the Pandaria inns. But the composition itself is pretty good and has a very memorable main riff.
• Dietrich’s theme, Shadow from Elsewhere (of course the edgelord gets the edgelord song title) is actually pretty great! Distorted guitars! It sounds like the kind of music I hear in fighting games — could easily fit into Guilty Gear or The King of Fighters. Could this be the “Shambhala” of Fortune’s Weave? Either way, this might be my favorite of the four heroes’ themes from a pure “feeling” standpoint.
• Theodora’s theme, Queen’s Gambit, brings back Spain in full force. I could see it being used as Vega’s theme in some Street Fighter game. When we get to the middle part it grows really intense and the violins go crazy. Really like this one.
• Leda’s theme, Storm of Petals, is by far the most experimental of the bunch. It features a “weird-sounding” riff, vocals (that once again make me think of the Sothis theme in Three Houses), time signature breaks, very clean and beautiful guitars, more vocals (this time just building atmosphere), and you never really know where it’s going. From a purely musical standpoint, this is A+. I guess it makes sense, given that Leda herself is a musician (who, by the way, plays a vihuela, a predecessor to the modern Spanish guitar).

Then the rest:

• A Life of Glory: WAIT A MINUTE, I HAVE HEARD THIS BEFORE. This is Together We Ride from Blazing Blade (which also got reused as Contract in Fire Emblem: Heroes)! But then it shifts away from that a little. Still, it’s a time-tested piece of Fire Emblem music returning one more time. I love the ending riff on this version.
• Bloodstained Arena sounds nothing like music that would play in a bloodstained arena if you ask me. But it’s a good piece of music, if a bit short.
• Voice Upon the Peak seems to be the theme of the new goddess, Fortuna (affectionately called “Alolan Sothis” by the community). And yes, I keep mentioning Sothis’s theme, The Spirit Dais, but this one even uses the exact same vocalization.

Overall, a very promising soundtrack so far, even if we haven’t heard anything like God Shattering Star, A Funeral of Flowers, or The Edge of Dawn yet. But there’s definitely hope we’ll get there! (And this soundtrack already impresses me more than most songs in Engage.)

2) The biggest factor on this is how much I end up liking the game and how much effort it takes to play the other routes. From what we’ve seen so far, it looks like you might be able to do everything in a single playthrough, just jumping back and forth between protagonists? If that’s the case, that makes it considerably easier to justify going all the way with all four of them, and I might just do that.

But if I have to pick, or if I simply don’t feel like playing all of them, my order of priority (right now) is Leda -> Theodora -> Cai -> Dietrich. Of course, as we actually play the game and understand what each character and each route is really about, this might change. (As much as I currently dislike Dietrich, I’m fairly positive that his route will have the biggest connection to Three Houses, so it might end up being very compelling.)

Dis is their land. Troll land!

They do whatever they want mon.

You wanna stay?

You stay there forevah!

They gonna bury you there.

Does Dalaran, floating in the sky, count as a landmark?

Dalaran.

Which version is up to you. The important part is that it has great ice cream!

This has been The Queue. Go play something this weekend, I don’t know!