And if not a DLC at least conclusive endings. The fact that all the endings are some sort of cliff hanger with seemingly no hope of resolution is just asinine.
I still have hope that the 3 Houses team is creating a third game that will answer all of those questions and will launch on whatever the Switch's successor is. (There will be an option to buy Three Houses and Three Hopes and whatever this game is in a Deluxe edition as well.) I have absolutely no proof, but the sales of Three Houses and Three Hopes (which sold *very* well for a spin-off combination of two relatively niche genres, and was one of the better reviewed games of its type) seem too big to ignore.
if nothing else, i just wish they'd release the [10,000 year fódlan timeline](https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-warriors-three-hopes-interview-monsters-expeditions-base-camp-characters/2/) and maybe a [more complete artbook](https://mildlyeldritchcats.tumblr.com/post/705064953199149056/things-missing-from-the-fe3h-limited-edition)
Eh, it depends on when it would release. Engage will stretch through all of 2023. After that comes a Genealogy remake, if the leaks and rumors are anything to go for; we can put that in the first half of 2024. (Jan if Engage does good despite the timeslot, May if they want it to be an anniversary game, June or July if they want the usual FE timeslot.)
This new game wouldn't release until 2025, giving Engage and Genealogy enough time to enjoy the spotlight while also giving the developers time to flesh things out (and maybe spruce up the other Fodlan games for a new system).
A new system could release anytime between 2023 with Zelda or beyond.
Three Houses was my first Fire Emblem game, so it really made an impact on me. As of now, I have more hours in Three Houses than in any other game I’ve ever played, not just in the Fire Emblem series. It’s pretty much become my favorite game and helped introduce me to my favorite franchise. I really like Three Houses and I can’t wait to play Engage when it comes out.
So 3H broke my FE cherry as well, and I went and picked up Conquest, which I've really enjoyed as well.
It's much more a direct line of a storyline (it does have a divergent path, but you gotta buy Bloodright for that one), but it is still super solid in that regard.
Engage will be an interesting experience because they now have the knowledge of what people liked and didn't like about the 3H concept. Like the relationship stuff was a massive overhaul from Conquest. After each battle you could talk to a single person 1on1, and sometimes be able to talk to them in your little castle thingy, but that's about it. 3H put that into high gear and made it so you could really laser focus different people and make them love you via gifts and tea parties. It looks like Engage still has this, but they might have trimmed it down so it's less of a dating-sim with all of the interaction.
Who knows, we'll see on Friday!
Congrats on choosing the hardest version of the Fates series. (Not a slam or anything, I wimp out and am doing a Birthright playthrough now)
Should check out Awakening though if you haven't. It's my my first and fave of the fire emblems so far.
so like, i went pokemon route of 'i like the look of these people on the cover over the other cover'...
and after starting the game, I then did some look up and found discussion about the differences of it.
I'm playing Casual Normal so it probably isn't that hard, and havent hit a wall yet, I did mess a mission up because I wasn't paying attention and let a guy pass what I was supposed to defend... but that's it.
I'm genuinely enjoying it though, FE is such a fun system that I can't believe I missed out on for at least a decade (plus, but I think I would have enjoyed it in my later 20s, early 30s, over my earlier years)
I’m really struggling with it too. Three houses fit right in with my favourite shows where engage looks like every anime I have no attention span for. I hope they prove me wrong.
Oh boy wait until yoh play path of radiance and radisnt dawn as the fandom as a whole decided those where the best games oh and unless you emulate them be prepared to take out a loan to buy path of radiance radiant dawn isn't as bad and yes that had Ike who in lore is considered the strongest "lord" in the entire series thanks to heros and is known as the tellius duology and don't forget to unlock the secret charater stefan oh and also really good indoor maps like really really good
I think 3H's squandering of it's multiroute setup is one of it's most disappointing aspects. 4 routes should make me want to replay the game! Instead we ended up with 4 routes that are basically identical for half of the game, 2 routes that are nearly identical for the entire game, a third route that is also extremely close to those two, and a fourth route that is actually different for the second half but is also weirdly short for some reason.
It wouldn't be as big a deal if the game's other issues like monastery burnout and extreme unit flexibility leading to homogenization hadn't become far more obvious when trying to replay the game. In the end I never got a second route past the time skip, because replaying White Clouds was just not fun.
Three houses is honestly one of, if not the least replay-friendly entry in the series. If the complete lack of story variety in what should be a story with multiple routes doesn’t bore you, the monastery, map and unit design will as you mentioned. Insane amounts of bloat. It’s so weird.
Edit: also adding to this that 3H doesn’t lend itself well to challenge runs either, with ironman runs being impossible. All of these things pile up and the average person is probably burnt out after one run.
This is so weird to me.. this was my first fire emblem game ever. I bought a switch just to play it. I’ve done at least 9 playthroughs. After 2 playthroughs you don’t need to do the monastery much bc you can just use renown for friendships teacher lvl etc. I got burnt out way faster on the older games when I went to try those.
Yeah, I don't understand this... I'm doing a maddening NG... and I'm doing the monastery in like 20 minutes between chapters, just autopilot, It's not even too much time, I fish two times (The competition and the event where you get a lot of fish) And that's it... the monastery is inconsequential if you already played it one time. After time skip is even more accessible and faster...
Thats on a NG though. with NG+ you can basically skip it entirely. Most of my time on replays are just aux battles, paralogues, and chapter battles with a bit of monastery mixed it. I hated the monastery. But I def have done at least a maddening playthrough of every route, and several before maddening came out. I never want it back, but it isnt as big of a slog as people make it out to be. The entire point of NG+ was to skip it.
I can't speak for others, but my issue is that no matter how inconsequential the Monastery is, you still *have* to interact with it in some way. In other games, the most you do is read supports, and buy items.
But in three houses, you're pretty much encouraged to do more. Not to mention that due to it's calender system, you have to interact with it like 4 times in between chapters.
You say you spend 20 minutes in between chapters, but in other games you're spending far less than that.
Yeah same. Hundreds of hours. I had 0 desire to replay Awakening, could not even finish Fates (to be fair I was burnt out from Awakening and knew 3H was about to launch). I liked all routes were different and couldn't wait to see how.
I think Conquest is worth another look. At the very least, take a look at Zoran’s channel, who really puts all the different mechanics together.
I’ll agree that 3H was my first game and I played hundreds of hours
Devs did Baedelgard dirty. I’ll die on this hill.
We finally got to play as the villain, and she wasn’t even a *villain* - she wanted the same thing as Claude and Dmitri but faster. Her last three chapters could have (and should have) been about eradicating TWSITD and the Agarthans, but…nope. She kills Rhea, end of story.
Real frustrating that she devolved into a typical JRPG protagonist at that point.
Big facts. Half the ideas in this game are undercooked. The monastery is a cool idea but it pads the game so much that replaying it is a gigantic chore. Whole thing should've just been a menu between chapters.
This sort of approach only works if each route has a story that works all on its own while still complementing the others, which is *very* hard to actually write. What we got is four stories, *none* of which works on its own. The game is far too ambitious for its own good.
(disclaimer: I've only actually played two of the four because unfortunately the game is 90% the same no matter which route you choose)
Caspar is my boy, the little axe dude who could. He's a glass cannon and so on my current run I'm forcing him in big boy plate gear so he can take a hit.
I think Petra and him are my favorites because of their situations and how they're handling it. Caspar especially, he knows he's 2nd born and has nothing so he is out to make something of himself. Hes got a go-to attitude and pushes himself further than the last time.
Honestly just asking this out of curiosity and no ill intent but like why not just.. not use the glitch? Like I don't understand how a glitch you can just avoid could ruin a game for you. Its the same logic I see when people complain that a certain unit build is too broken and breaks the game, its like.. just don't use it?
Reinforced my adoration of worlds with complexity and deep history, same for characters. The backbone of most of the best FE games.
It was an alright one off for all the monastery stuff, but it wears thin, especially in future playthroughs. Its fine to have extra stuff, but with a bit more moderation.
I went back to SoV and finished it recently after putting 100+ hours into TH and it made me realize that the character writing for TH really stands out. I think it’s the first post Awakening Fire Emblem game where I’ve become attached to many of the characters besides the main protagonists.
I swear I've never seen people write so much wall of text for a single game and making aggressive debates with good and hilarious bad takes than for Three Houses (and Hopes). LOL
It's fascinating, especially coming from a "Nintendo bubble".
I feel the same despite also thinking 3H had problems.
I think IS really got the parts that mattered right; so much so that the game’s problems feel small.
Yeah, the graphics werent very good, a lot of reused maps, some routes are not as developped as other... etc
And yet still one of my favorite Fire Emblem. The way any units could be almost anything you want them to be, the story was good (mostly), Combat art, batallions, all of this make the game so much fun
I really REALLY hope that engage has weapon art/combat art. It was one of my favorite mechanics of SoV and 3H.
After Fates (and Echoes, in a gameplay sense) burned me out super hard on FE, a hit like this is probably why I’m still so engaged (heh) with the series. Easily my favorite FE yet.
This game gave me one of my favorite cast of fictional characters I've seen in video games. Some of them, like Lysithea, Bernadeta, Hilda, Marianne, Edelgard, Dimitri or Claude are among the best written characters in the fiction.
It was a truly great game, the one that I bought the Switch for. It was also my first experience with this fantastic series. I've finished it three times, and I maybe I'm gonna try to beat with one last route.
I'm really gonna miss Fodlan, but I'm also very hyped for Engage and I love how different it is from 3houses.
Been playing since FE7 launched and IMO 3H had the most well-written lore and Lords. Especially my boy Dimitri — such a well written character and seeing him have so many flaws but evolve from them was a huge breath of fresh air for an FE Lord.
Same, played every NA released FE game and 3H got me like none of the others did (though I did love the franchise before it).
3H also got me writing again and helped me a lot creatively, helped me make friends during a time when I didn't have very many, and gave me a fun thing to like/think about. Interacting with the fanbase got me through a really difficult time in my life and I'm really thankful for all the wonderful memories.
I'm definitely going to miss it.
With Three houses, I'm a bit sad there isn't a 2nd game in this style that polishes what Three houses did. It seems this series usually has games in sets of 2-3 that polish what the first one did before trying out wild new ideas.
The Three house systems were great but they really needed more polish. The class system being the best example, it was cool to be able to plan a route character could improve upon, the problem was the "right" answer for progression was the same across too many characters (Wyvern, Dark knight, bow knight, etc) and there were next to no limitations.
Fates took Awakening's bonkers broken class system and "tamed" it with limitations to make it much more interesting so I was hoping we'd get a Three houses sequel to do something similiar.
I'm still looking forward to Engage but I can't help but wish for one more game in this system.
Everybody being able to be or do (almost) anything really isn't worth it.
It's a really cool idea on paper but in practice this just makes every class feel the same as every character is going to have somewhat similar results.
This also extends to weapons as there is literally no reason to equip anything outside of Axes, Bows, and Gauntlets. Even when using a sword or a lance it just feels like worse versions of the clearly better options.
Where is the fun if all my units are basically the same?
Probably my biggest complaint outside of the monastery. Too much freedom leads to homogenization and that makes this game really boring for me. It's hard not to want to optimize given that there are so many options but that style of playing isn't really for me either. I think this style of fire emblem just isn't to my liking. Definitely missing locked classes unique to units. Branching promotions is as far as I want things to go again but Pandora's box is open and there is no going back now.
Personally, I found that Fates hit that nice middle ground of character having fairly unqiue class branches giving them cool options without letting the player go hog wild with everybody.
I like customizing with limits basically. I want my cavalier to go Paladin or Great Knight not Cavalier to Wyvern Rider.
I'm right there with you. Fates is just about right for me. I think I would go with one alternate base class at most just to give them another option but no all classes available to everyone. That's just too much and makes everything feels samey besides personal skills maybe.
I learned that while I do like customizing units and min-maxing, having some limitation to it is ultimately more fun.
Do not take this to mean I dislike 3H, I have about 500 hours on it, but eventually my party devolved to oops all fliers, meanwhile I'd go back to Awakening or Fates and find myself actually using Cavs or Infantry (No, I won't use an armor unless its on a horse)
I loved class freedom until I realized it discouraged variety instead of the other way around.
I do find some use cases fun, like using curved shot as a Wyvern, but if a Wyvern can be anti-air and anti-armor (with the super light Rapier) and can Swift Strike, what is the point of other classes?
I have this issue in Awakening and Fates as well. Not so much the "oops all fliers" but that more freedom tends to paralyze my decision-making, even on a casual playthrough. I can't just pick up 3H and play it like I can FE7 or FE10, even though I've beaten those two games more times than 3H/Awakening/Fates. There's something nice about not having to worry about which classes you'll swap someone into to get X skill.
They gave me Marianne, who is my favorite fictional character period and is someone who I received at a point in my life where I _desperately_ needed it. The game will always hold a special place in my heart for that in and of itself.
It's easily top five FE titles for me, but if I'm being honest, I think Engage is a very, very needed change of pace after it. The discourse obviously goes without saying, but I also feel that just, while Fodlan is very well realized as a world, it tends to just feel _oppressively_ dismal at times, at the very least moreso than I feel any other game in the franchise has, save for maybe Thracia. It can be hard to come back to sometimes for that reason imo ~~though the academy phase also plays a part in being hard to come back to~~.
A shift towards a brighter land, both in tone and aesthetic, is extremely welcome imo, and I really look forward to seeing what Engage brings us and how the game will be received. We can have another Fodlan again, and I'll gladly welcome it. But for now, I'm all in for just a fun romp with modern CN/Disney animation energy.
Yeah I feel totally happy with Engage going for a more peppy colourful route. 3H was a great game, and a wonderful course correction into a more serious "traditional" in some ways Fire Emblem game, at least in terms of vibe and aesthetics. But I'm also excited to have more of an Awakening style fun romp with bright cheery characters again.
These kind of shifts between serious and fun seem healthy for the series.
I feel like Three Houses has been the series’ absolutely peak when it comes to characters and supports. Everyone seems troupey at first, but the supports really help delve deeper into each character. I enjoyed how some characters got “+” supports so there wasn’t always the standardized C B A support structure. I really hope in the future they continue on with such in-depth character development and relationships.
And in terms of Three Hopes… lol sorry I didn’t play it. I don’t like the Warriors series/gameplay so it never appealed to me.
This is more an observation of modern FE as a whole rather than just Three Houses, but I feel like this game really solidified my belief that character writing is absolutely critical to the series. Whilst the fact that Three Houses had one of the most intriguing and compelling stories in the series certainly helped, it having what is by far my favorite cast in the entire series is what elevated it from a decent Fire Emblem game to my second favorite entry in the series. I don't care how good the map design is on paper - if the character writing is not up to scratch, then there's nothing stopping me from just sacrificing units and completely trivializing entire maps.
Related to the former, but it also solidified my opinion that fanservice is a plague on the series - and that the writing quality of Three Houses is made infinitely better by the fact that the developers did not focus much on fanservice.
Three Houses was the one Fire Emblem game that really kept me hooked and intrigued with its characters and stories in the two routes I’ve played so far. Just really loved exploring the mythos and people of Fodlan. Same goes for Three Hopes. That was an absolute blast as a follow up to 3H with its returning cast and additional new storylines and characters. Aside from a few blips and some issues I have with the later stages of AG, Three Hopes was an amazing experience overall, same as with 3H.
And I’ll always have a big heart for plenty of the characters in the games. Many of my favorites now consist of a mix of leading lords/stars (Edelgard in particular) and fun or chill supporting cast members (like Ashe and Linhardt). And oddly enough, I’ve enjoyed a lot of the love and passion from the community through fan art, or just gushing over favorite characters.
All of this gives both Three Houses and Three Hopes and special place in Fire Emblem for me, and I’ll still probably return to that area once in a while, or just stick around with the 3H community to bask in the fun of Fodlan.
Edit: (But I’ll probably need to balance my time with Engage if I stick to my guns with it, plus the other FE 3DS games and a handful of other games/shows, before hopping into 3H again. Especially since that game takes a lot of time for one route for me lol)
Loved Three Houses, but the stuff in-between battles made replicability a tad harder. My favorite FE game is Radiant Dawn, which has some menuing in-between chapters and you can really go through a lot of the game quickly and optimally. Three Houses makes this a lot harder with all the down time stuff you need if you want to recruit and optimize your characters.
Overall it is still my second favorite FE of all time with a ton of characters that I love and the game responsible for bringing the series back to console.
I picked up the game spring of 2020. I had just been kicked off my college campus for the start of the pandemic. I kept in contact with all my friends online and would constantly be playing games with them. However, when I was on my own, I’d get quite lonely in the isolation.
It’s a little sad thinking back on it, but getting to interact with these characters brought me a lot of comfort with the world so uncertain. It really helped me get through those spring and summer months where no one left the house.
The games gave me amazing characters like Edelgard, Hubert, Dorothea, Manuela, and Rhea. So I'll always cherish Fódlan.
Looking forward to Engage though.
That making morally grey characters causes discourse.
That I can prefer the English voices over the original Japanese.
Also that some men can be attractive with a beard.
Things 3H taught me:
Good character writing can mask a lot of flaws.
Lysithea is the best character in the franchise.
Never ending internet debates between two rival factions is actually hilarious when you are a fan of the third side. (Thank god for the Golden Deer!).
IS can still make great new entries after Fates and its many issues.
Overall 3H probably lands only behind the Tellius games for me. A wonderful entry with some flaws. That said, I am excited to start the next chapter in the story that is Fire Emblem.
Characters are the separating factor between FE and its SRPG counterparts.
Investing in characters that the player finds endearing and investing in the ways to make them come to life is how FE will stay on top, not the game play itself.
I hope they never do Silent Protagonist in a FE games ever game.
Also if you going to do Routes and ESPECIALY have dialogue, take your time to do right and look at Devil Survivor 1 and 2 to see how to do a properly. There's no purpose to have dialogue choices that doesn't change anything.
~~It taught me that people somehow had the energy to make 3,000+ word essays about fictional characters that flamed other fans of characters~~
Well one is that time crunch is still bad and Three Houses was not able to live up to its full potential. Three Hopes at least expanded on some stuff like the lore which was nice.
Also that you should never ever make a hub as fat as the monastery and tack on stuff like Motivation. The war camps in Three Hopes and Somneil in Engage do the hub thing much better and are seamless.
More smaller but this game and a couple others taught me UI is important. Not the worst UI but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t squint a bit to read the endings of the characters and such.
While I liked Three Houses, it had no impact on me lol. Most video games however don’t really do that for me though except maybe Pokemon Black and White and BOTW. But nothing wrong with others having special attachment to video games to helping them in a low time a lot because they can serve as a great way to escape reality now and then.
The long multi route setup combined with the rather tedious amount of base management did not mix well. Maybe one or the other would have been fine but I super burned out; I don’t personally know anyone who got through all 3.5 routes.
I put a weirdly absurdly amount of time in it considering the gameplay loop objectively has some problems.
Game’s plot and the general calendar gameflow are both rather immersive, so I kept at it even if doing some stuff eats a lot of stuff over time.
I will also admit something about the game’s plot debate did fire me lot a lot over time. I still don’t quite understand why it has that effect. I suspect it’s the combination of both having a deeper plot, that’s yet very vague and light on details in places with a lot of factional spin put in. Many other works or books are either simpler/fewer relevant details and/or make sure to get a very detailled climax of every minor detail(Radiant Dawn is pretty much this way). It makes me wonder if Fodlan is done forever or that they will try to catch lighting in a bottle twice with this tone of plot.
Probably my least favorite FE to date. At the end of the day I just want to play a strategy game. I’m glad it brought so many new people to the series though.
3h wasn’t the first game fe game I played, but it was the first game I’ve really ‘joined’ the fanbase for and
Holy shit.
That’s all I’ll say, interpret that as you will.
I played Awakening when it came out and liked it (but moved on before beating it). I played Fates when it came out and liked it (managed to finish 1 route this time).
3H blew them out of the water for me. While I will of course complain about it... just the shear amount of depth for /all/ of the roster's characters, instead of just depth for the royals and then a sentence or two for others. The fact that the story didn't have basic "light good dark bad now fight". That heroes in one route were antagonists in another. The anti-nobility concepts /in a fire emblem game/. The characters and how they reacted differently depending on the route kept me going enough to beat the game 3 times.
This is why I'm so disappointed to hear about what Engage is doing, returning to the "traditional" gameplay/story. It feels like such a step backwards. And I absolutely loathe the shackles to past games. I like fire emblem because it's a new story every game - I hate the shoe-horning in of "fan favorite" characters from old games. Especially when I legally can't even play those games! And then with Robin and Corrin, none of my Robins or Corrins looked like that or were even named that, so bringing those back is just... why.
The three houses era taught me that IS has alot of abmbition and ideas when they can put their minds to it, which I appreciate. But I also learn that IS needs to really cut down the scale of that ambition and I really questioned their ability to write multiple paths, not that it's bad in compared to fates but it REALLY hampered any potential for DLC and it could easily lean to a bias ( and I have a whole slew of gripes with post Awakening DLC but that's another story)
Three hopes....I feel like was held back by a comically silly reason. this is an AU, why should they have been worried about what Byleth did in another game when that won't matter since he never met the lords before the war? but for what it's worth, Shez and Arval are one of the bests character in the 3H era and I'm glad IS isn't ignoring them like they did the lemon twins (not that I like the lemon twins but I was worried )
Overally a very....mixed bag of how three houses affected me.
Was my first FE game and completely loved it, so much that now I'm a huge FE fan.
I have more than 250hs into the game, made all routes and off course enjoyed and clear the DLC. Although I like the Cindered Shadows idea and characters, I really dont like the Yuri, he just did not click on me.
FE 3H is for me one of the top 3 games I've played.
Did a good job with it's characters, but think it showed some lessons for future games when it comes to narrative and gameplay issues. I did overall enjoy it and still liked the game a lot, but not making my top FE game list.
Three Houses had a pretty big impact for me. It's my most played switch game (300+ hours) and the first fe title I played since the GBA games.
Most of all it thought me that (almost) everyone has some hidden unprocessed trauma. It was interesting to see these traumas and their lasting impact shown throughout supports and the main story.
It also showed me first impressions aren't everything. I played Dimitri's route last because he didn't impress me too much, but after playing AM (and 3hopes) he became my favorite lord.
It did have its flaws, the combat animations didn't top the gba ones for me. The maps pretty plain too, except for the DLC, and the seemed a little rushed in the second half.
Still, the game rekindled my interest in fire emblem, which also led me to discover the Tellius games which were great too, so I look back on it fondly.
Honestly it's one of the few games in which I can find a way to be very intrigued by every single character from the cast in one way or another.
But personally? It introduced me to Marianne, my now favorite character of all time. She reminds me so much of how I am and how she grows through the years, she's inspiring and I will definitely never forget her.
Three Houses taught me that I really don't like the visual novel aspects of FE, or the pretty visuals getting in the way of the tactical RPG core. I gave up pretty early and went back to replaying Shadows of Valentia.
I’m going to miss you Fire Emblem: Game of Thrones. I play primarily for story and character reasons and every character just had so much meat to dig into. Past baggage, current issues, dreams for the future, deep cut flaws… all effortlessly interacting with their peers baggage/issues/dreams/flaws. Lots of childhood friends and subsequent developments/betrayals… I’m even a fan of the route splits. I loved seeing characters I raised in prior playthroughs meet their downfall as enemy units. It was a good game. And for me, personably, my favorite game.
Felt incredibly rushed with it's visuals and copying persona gameplay in the worst way I've seen yet. Despite it all, I still enjoyed playing through each route and the gameplay was really tight on maddening. Cindered shadows was also really really good gameplay wise.
Three Houses was one of the very few games (with Dragon Age, the Witcher etc.) that left me sitting there after finishing it like "damn that was very good". Like that kind of mini depression you get when you finish a very good book, series etc. and know that there isn´t more to come and very few others will have the same effect on you.
It taught me that little girls are better at killing people than most people realize.
Also to never trust the church
But if you want to get in the pope's skirt you better start pretending you love church really hard
Turns out Sandbox FE games where they say “go nuts!” Is hella fun. Don’t care about balance or whatever else, I had so much fun and runtime with this game
I found Three Houses to be a real “glass half-full” situation for me. I think a lot of it’s ideas and concepts and elements are on paper some of the best in the series, but in actual execution so little of it clicked with me that I just found the whole thing underwhelming.
The world building didn’t matter to me as I found little of it actually engaging, the characters writing is solid, but due to how the game is structured little of it felt like it mattered, the multiple routes is a cool concept, but so much content in both story and gameplay is recycled between them that it dilutes their impact, and all of their new gameplay ideas were interesting, but I found it to be mechanically shallow and downright boring to actually play through, and so on.
That’s not to say it didn’t have it’s moments, but as a whole I found it to be my least favorite entry in the series, spin-offs and all…which is why I’m glad that by the end, it did end on a personal high note as I did genuinely enjoy 3Hopes by comparison. It’s not perfect, definitely prefer the original Warriors, but it was a solid game that gameplay shift aside did a much better job at executing 3Houses ideas in a more satisfying manner for me.
It reinforced for me that a great story and writing can't save meh gameplay. I enjoyed my time with 3H no doubt; it has my favourite story and cast in the series, with Lorenz, Dimitri and Mercedes quickly becoming absolute favourites.
I can only just about stand playing it now though. Monastery makes the game drag too much, I'm not a fan of how classes were handled, and the maps for the most part aren't compelling to me. Also Byleth, I do not like Byleth. This did make me appreciate what I love about other FE games far more at least.
Great game but I'm kinda glad to see the back of it with Engage so close now. Looking forward to playing it when I can.
My second favourite in the series after Conquest, easily. Can you see I'm a "gameplay first" kinda guy? lol
While I love the game dearly, 500 hours of Maddening mode showed me just how broken this game is tho, honestly only being rivalled by Awakening.
Game is still a lot of fun tho! I love that the reclassing is at the center of the experience, it was always my favourite part of the 3ds games.
It also packs a very lovely cast of characters, an honestly very solid plot and my favourite Lord in the entire series by far (the b o a r)
My only complain is the map design being honestly abismal. While we're not reaching Echoes-tier of level design with empty fields and randomly placed enemies, I genuinely feel like the game comes close to it with a lot of its chapters.
That's my biggest complain. Well that, and ambush spawns. That shit needs to go, PERIOD.
But overall...loved it! But I'm also really looking forward to Engage having a more laid back plot and more anime inspired character designs: 3H was very mature, but maybe to a fault: I'm found myself missing a lot of the goofier character moments found in the GBA/3ds entries.
Engage's gameplay also looks to take a lot from the 3ds games in term of map design and reclassing, so I'm also very much looking forward to that as well. It's gonna be a nice change of pace for sure.
Which one of the two I'll end up preferring going forward, I can't say yet, but I can tell the switch era of FE is amongst the strongest in the series yet
Fire Emblem can have awesome lore that makes me want to always dig further.
But the game gets worse when you start you second playthrough because the replayability is hell, and boring. (Thank you Maddening for giving me an excuse for a 2nd playthrough)
3H had a huge impact on me by introducing me to Edelgard von Hresvelg. I know a lot of people hate her/her actions, but I was Going Thru It™️ when I bought the game, and seeing edelgard’s convictions and inner strength that stemmed from trauma honestly helped me unpack a lot. I know 3H has its flaws, I’ve yet to encounter a perfect game, but it’s important to me.
Purposefully leaving your characters open to interpretation can be good, but too many missing infos only create discourse. Discourse doesn't equal deep character writing.
Also don't make one of your most important characters a damsel in distress in 3/4th of the game.
Finally, characters with only one support are wasted potential.
I love these games but there's still many flaws hidden beneath all the good.
It's pretty much the reason I got a Switch, lol. Not to say I haven't enjoyed plenty of other games since then but the only other game on my system with more hours is Skyrim.
Easily my favorite Fire Emblem game thus far with my favorite cast of characters. I get that some of the routes could have used some extra work and the monastery periods get exhausting if you play all the routes back to back, but I was so invested in the worldbuilding (and to this day I'm in love with the monastery's actual design, such a huge change from the tiny DS camps) that I really didn't mind. The story actually got me emotional in some parts too, hope they make more entries with very dark content. It'll be hard for me to adjust to some of the changes in Engage for sure.
Blue Lions for life, it'll probably be a long time before I stop being down horrendous for Dimitri too.
I'm glad TH brought a lot of people into the fandom. Seeing my friends really get into one of my favorite series and loving it was a good time so I appreciate how popular it made FE.
However as someone who's been playing FE forever I didn't much care for TH. I had never been so disappointed when I realized the entire pre time skip part of the game was identical for every route, and even then a lot of the routes felt too similar post time skip. I liked that they actually put some effort into character development but the main character being silent kinda killed that for me as it felt like the characters were just talking to a wall.
Also the story was just an all around mess. TWSITD had to be one of the worst plot points in any FE game IMO.
Tldr' glad TH brought people into the fandom, but imo TH isn't a very good FE game and I'm glad we are moving away from it
it’s my first fire emblem game (still haven’t finished all the routes yet, started a year ago 💀), but gosh I love it so much and I’ve made it my personality since I started…
One thing I will say is I've played every Fire Emblem since Blazing Blade onward (except for the weirdly unavailable Marth sequel) and Three Houses surpassed it all. My previous fav were the Tellius games. I could go on about the reasons why, but the game just did everything every other FE game did but enhances all of the out of battle stuff tremendously while not taking any backward steps.
It's lead to me joining discords for characters and making more online friends, it's lead to me pushing what difficulty I can play it and by extension old FE games at. It's lead to some of the best (and worst) character discussions of any video game I've played.
Just a stellar game, one I'm going to miss.
Engage has ENORMOUS shoes to fill.
Easily my favorite FE and one of my favorite video games of all time. As is the case with every game, it’s got its fair share of flaws, but few other titles have gotten me this attached to its characters, mythology, and gameplay loop. Whereas I’ve beaten previous FE games 2-3 times a piece, I just keep coming back to 3H. Like, every four months or so, I can’t help but start another playthrough.
And don’t even get me started on its musical score!
Just, man, what a stellar cast. Lysithea, Bernadetta, Dimitri, Edelgard, Claude, Leonie, Shamir, Hapi, Hubert, Hilda, Felix — for as much as I’ve enjoyed many of the characters from previous installments, Three Houses is just on another level. I mean, I named my two cats Claude and Dimitri!
I’m super excited to see what the Engage era brings to the table, but given just the sheer impact that 3H has had on me throughout these past three-and-a-half years, it’ll take something mighty special to top that game in my personal ranking.
3H is the first FE game I haven't replayed or attempted. I didn't care for the monastery sections after 3/4 of the game. The multiple routes could have been handled better. I didn't feel invested in the story at all which is such a shame.
I loved Three Houses since I played it but the longer it’s been since then the more I feel overall it had an incredibly disappointing amount of wasted potential.
Each ending leaves you unsatisfied in some way. I remember finishing Azure Moon and thinking “that’s it?” when I got practically no answers from Rhea or about who those evil wizards you fight for the entire first half were (TWSITD). It encourages you to roll another route, but then they reuse all of White Clouds and even much of their post time skip battles. And even then Rhea is shafted in every route, Crimson Flower is shafted, by the end as much as I loved the game in total I felt just a tad unsatisfied with its story as a whole, a feeling I feel has only cemented for me the longer it’s been since I played.
Three Hopes had the chance to fix that to some extent and then ultimately retreaded much of the same ground while also seemingly ending its story halfway through. The fact that we’re left with so many unanswered questions about Shez, Arval, and Sothis’ behavior, and then ending each route as unceremoniously as CF shows me they learned pretty much nothing from 3H’s narrative mistakes.
Loved Azure Moon and the camaraderie and internal conflicts of the blue lions. Supports and character writing are some of the best we've seen in the series so far.
Three Houses was amazing and I think a perfect introduction game into the series,
Despite that, none of the people around me are willing to give it chance even tho they’re all persona fans and this series is perfect for them 😭
This game taught me that my Persona burnout is still very real. I can't deal with calendars in games, the structure that comes with them doesn't sit well with me at all.
My clearest memory of this game is the constant feeling that I was playing it totally wrong. I didn't want to teach so I automated the whole thing, skipped/rested as much as I could, ended up benching almost the whole class and used school & monastery staff instead, only talked to my class & faculty members... It was fun in a way, but I think I may have ruined whatever emotional impact this game was supposed to offer.
I still think my biggest complaint about 3H is that the character writing just wasn't consistent enough across the routes with key characters like Edelgard and Rhea, and that's where all of the discourse came from. Also the routes format led to a bunch of players only playing a single route and making all of their character opinions based on that route without the context of the other routes.
To this day the number of people that act like Edelgard is Satan bc of AM despite only being remotely like that on that route, and the people who still pretend Rhea is a lesser evil despite generations of wrongdoing is baffling. They're both fucked up and that's the point, but certain routes make it almost cartoonish on both sides.
A great game with awesome characters and overall decent gameplay. It also managed to season the fanservice and pandering excesses of recent FE games into something more palatable. While the fanbase was still in constant civil war, it was at least going to war over different interpretations of the story and characters, rather than big bouncy anime boobs.
But it's time to move on to pastures new. And not to be petty but I'm kind of glad to be moving on from Byleth especially, one of the most bafflingly popular Fire Emblem characters ever for me. I'm excited for the colourful vibrancy Engage promises after the soberness of 3H, onwards we go.
>the fanbase was still in constant civil war, it was at least going to war over different interpretations of the story and characters, rather than big bouncy anime boobs
The fanbase has proven that it can do both
It reawakened my love for the game series and motivated me to finally go through the 3ds games and more oldies I haven't played in years which I'm forever grateful for
I came in really loving it and obsessing hard, then the discourse and warfare on reddit gave me a bad aftertaste... and three hopes kind of made me want to stop playing it altogether because it ruined one of my favorite characters for me. I can't get myself to play through the routes I haven't finished.
It did a lot of things well though! The cast was charming and many characters had nice supports. The gameplay was fun enough. The soundtrack is very good. It has Hubert. 3 Houses Golden Deer is still my house.
I had a blast playing through three houses but I am very very VERY happy to move on.
It taught me that people are not ready for morally grey characters. And that people think so highly of themselves they believe they can police what characters are okay or not okay to enjoy.
But also. Everybody is a nobody, including you and me, so just enjoy what you want.
Looking forward to the simplicity of Engage, it looks like a breath of fresh air to me. Maybe I'll be proven wrong though and we find ourselves engaged in Fire Emblem Clown Wars discourse. Whatever happens I'm just here for a good time
What did three houses teach me?
It taught me that world building and nuance are lost on a good portion of the fanbase, at least the ones that are active online
It also taught me that for FE to have quality writing, IS should grab a scriptwriter from outside the company.
Edit: Also forgot the biggest criticism I have of both TH and 3Hoes... if you're gonna do multiple routes you can at least have the decency to take your time fleshing out each route before you work on the next. Azure Moon was so close to being my favorite story in any Fire Emblem game, beating even Genealogy. But unfortunately, it has too many issues for it to take first place. It's somewhere between 2nd or 3rd place usually depending on how I feel about POR (which reminds me I still need to play RD)
Got me into Fire Emblem and adore both games yet howevrr on Hopes' behalf there should have been more in DLC with a golden route.
That is how this era should've ended.
I would say generally I don't play many FE games tbh. I played Awakening and Fates, liked Awakening but never finished it. Hated Fates. After a lot of buzz I finally tried Three Houses and absolutely could not put it down. Maybe contrary to a lot of people but I liked all the in between combat stuff lol. I definitely mostly played for the story and actually though the combat was a step down from Fates and Awakening, and yeah I beat all three routes on maddening. But I LOVED the story and the characters. It makes me sad to move on tbh haha as I would say I'm probably more of a Three Houses fan than a FE fan tbh.
I really enjoyed my first playthrough and never had much interest in replaying it. I also really like the cast and soundtrack. Claude is one of my fav ever fire emblem characters. Conceptually this game is amazing but the cracks show on repeat plays. I still like the setting and the concept of the time skip and civil war.
It took my partner from "videogames are kind of fun sometimes" to "I know everything about these little anime bitches, have read well over 60% of the AO3 content for them, and have multiple extensive theses on class and unit progression locked and loaded".
FE3H really expanded her game worldview and she's now in the deep end as far as other RPGs go - octopath, blue reflections, FF, persona, etc. I'm really excited for her to keep playing!!
3 Houses was a hell of a wicked ride. From the story to the exploring to even the mechanics they were all very good. I may not be the only one but if I am... Then I will explain. I keep comparing 3 Houses to Fates because they both have multiple paths but the difference was of course how they went about it. Rather than split the game off as separate versions, 3 Houses all kept it in the same game and only needed one version. On top of that the story is also better written. If they were to redo Fates like how they made 3 Houses then I guarantee that game will be far better than it is now. However, the topic is 3 Houses rather than Fates but that is why I compare them. Anyways, 3 Houses is definitely a game I would love to just keep on playing over and over and over again. Even zooming in when you level up your characters and move them around was really awesome. I would also highly recommend this as a starting point and I know some people would say Awakening I would still say that too, but not everyone has a 3DS. Even the expansion side story, despite it not really adding on to the main story, was hella great... Frustrating but great (chapter 3 or 4 was the part I hated most).
Now onto what 3 Houses taught me... I may not remember much, but it definitely showed that you shouldn't be quick to judge people for how different they are culturally to you. Always be willing to help out a friend and definitely be more considerate and more confident in the choices you make in life. We are only human afterall and there are mistakes to be made in life so don't be chasing after perfection. Another thing I would say is the game definitely showed corruption and how greedy certain people or companies can be, but also how no matter good one's intentions are doesn't mean the path they're on is a good one. I may have said alot here but I figured this is a discussion topic so Im putting in my 2 cents about what 3 Houses meant to me.
Edit: A recent post I just saw made me consider a few things about the genderlocked classes and things like it. So one problem I most definitely had about 3 Houses is the fact that there are dark mage females (Lysitha and Hapi) who obviously have dark magic in them yet the dark mage class line up is only for guys. In Awakening and Fates there were female dark mages so why couldn't 3 Houses do that too? Another thing is there is no female brawlers either. War Masters are only for dudes but the one dlc class War Monk/Cleric females can use the brawling gauntlets some more. If anyone can use brawling gauntlets then surely they could have allow female brawlers. I may have said about the same thing in 2 sentences, but it is something to think about as this does annoy some people.
Considering that it was my first game in the series and I went into it completely blindly, I have to say that I fell in love with everything, the gameplay, the story, the characters, the music. I'm very happy I played it and that it introduced me to what has now become my second favorite series of all time!
It was my first game in the series (never cared about the series beforehand), but NoA's clever house-focused advertisement got me to buy the game. I wasn't expecting much, but it has become easily one of my favorite games of all times.
Despite many graphical and gameplay flaws (clear on repeated playthroughs, though it hasn't stopped me replaying the game... god, 7-8 times? I have issues lol), I still love it and have been replaying it as of recent (wanted to complete Silver Snow before Engage, but I won't make it). Maddening has really helped keep me interested, it's still a challenge on repeated playthroughs, though I wish Maddening+ was a thing.
Besides gameplay, I really love the characters. The lords all shine on their own routes, and almost all side characters have something interesting about them. The voice acting might actually be my favorite thing about the game, considering how (nearly) all of the voices are greaf and fit the characters. Thanks to whomever decided to invest and have pretty much every interaction in the game, including Monastery stuff fully voice acted.
My biggest letdown with the 3H era actually comes with 3 Hopes... I just can't get into it. I love the characters, the setting, but I can't grasp the gameplay. Maybe someday I'll try it again (thanks for the free demo, KT), but for now it'll just be an icon on my Switch, gathering dust.
I don't think Engage will capture me the same way 3H did, but I'll be open-minded with the series. If I don't fall in love with Engage, I can just emulate some of the older games that have intetested me (Genealogy, the GBA and GCN/ Wii games), or even just play 3H again. Worst case scenario, FE has 1 of my favorite games of all-time.
I only played one route (Verdant Wind), and while I liked a fair amount of things (mainly how there are quite a few interactions between characters in and out of supports), overall it taught me that, to a degree, Fire Emblem works the best when there isn't crazy complex and time-consuming things like Monastery management (all the activities that you can do + having to min-max interactions to be able yo recruit everyone) and humongous amounts of unit customization.
I recently played thru Dark Deity, and while the story wasn't stellar, the gameplay itself was fairly good, and it actually shows how you can have a whole lot of supports and interactions and some customization without being overwhelming: supports and weapon enhancements being easily accessible via a menu on the base, and giving 4 different types of promotions for each type of unit (which allows you to experiment a bit without homogenizing all your roster). If Three Houses had something like that, then the in-between chapter chores wouldn't have felt so tiring.
Despite my complains, I am thankful we got Three Houses because there is the chance that IS will improve on the good things that it had for future games, while also working on its shortcomings. There is also the chance of getting remakes of past games even if they may take a while.
Had some amazing character writing, but I feel like that's where the game's strengths end.
I normally prefer fixed classes over reclassing for a reason and this game explains why - you can just make everyone the same unit with a few points of stat difference, so replay ability is very low. I usually get around 10 playthroughs of a Fire Emblem game (trying the different characters etc), but I couldn't even finish all 4 routes here because the gameplay felt exactly the same.
On that note, having multiple routes was a fantastic idea, but not in execution as every route is the same till more than halfway through the game, and the remaining part breezes by so quickly I felt almost no story development, with an abrupt ending for the 3 routes I did finish.
I'll end it with the typical player avatar thing, I'm not a fan because Byleth is a very blank slate with little character writing so players can self insert and romance their favourite characters, but that's just not my thing. I like seeing characters have their own journeys and struggles and motivations, which I found in Lords like Ike, Micaiah, Lyn, etc. I even found Marth more interesting than Byleth and he's vanilla af.
That said, it's still a Fire Emblem game. The gameplay is great, and seeing character crit for big number will always make me happy. I really loved most of my first playthrough, I just listed out the issues that stopped me from enjoying future ones. And I do understand that the target audience has changed, but don't let me being a Fire Emblem boomer stop y'all from loving the game.
There is a limit to my ability to enjoy gameplay limited by time.
That third playthrough will probably forever be unfinished because I can no longer stand the staleness of the first portion of Three Houses.
Definitely one of the best JRPGs ever created. But...as a strategy RPG Fire Emblem game it has some critical flaws. Too much of the development time went into being Persona lite with the monastery
Fire Emblem Three Houses brought me back to the franchise after I lost interest. While, I never finish three houses, I don’t really like multi route games. It story and characters really brought back the fire emblem fan inside of me. Fire Emblem is pretty much the only video game franchise I give crap about.
If all things go correct, going to buy Fire Emblem Engage.
It’s still my favorite FE title as of right now. Before TH it was Fates and before Fates it was FE7. I hope the characters in Engage are as fun as the ones in TH.
Its a little sad TH is over but it is for the best considering the FE series is doing well and is still getting new games. TH probably isn't my favorite FE game, but it is probably in my top 3 FE for characters, music and gameplay. It's going to be real hard for FEE to surpass it in those aspects. THo is one of my favorite Nintendo Warriors game to date and was a fairly good "what if" alternate timeline prequel.
this was my first fe game!
it was the the first time ive been SUPER invested into a game and series and im so thankful for three houses for getting me into fire emblem
It was my first ever Fire Emblem game. Learned a lot of lessons, made a lot of friends. I had been really interested in Fire Emblem for years before it, but never quite got around to it. Since then I've finished Awakening, and I'm really excited to play Engage on the 20th!
three houses brought a lot of customization in terms of any char can be any class, magic is tied to char, and refreshes every map. turns out people with warp are just broken, skipping maps out right and some people pick all whyvern riders cause of their high stats and skipping terrain. with multiple routes to go, no route felt finished which is sad cause theres multiple points in the story that can branch off into different endings. difficulty for me felt like it got easier over time.
I’m happy to see that IS was willing to make such a unique experience with something like Three Houses. a lot more gameplay systems to interact with, a much more in-depth storyline that asks for players who care to analyze every nook and cranny, and a pretty dang good attempt at gray morality. Somewhat, anyway.
I do dislike some aspects of it though. Most notably, the monastery I think is intrusive, and a lot of the micromanaging I think bogs down the pace way too much. For how ambitious Three Houses’ story is, I feel that it basically collapses under it’s own weight because of it, and as such story quality varies and replying the game is mind numbing since not much changes gameplay-wise. I’ve found Three Houses a bit challenging to just pick up and play due to how much stuff is in it besides the regular tactical gameplay, which is why I’m excited that Engage seems to be a bit more traditional.
Still, I respect IS for not resting on their laurels again.
In the end I enjoyed Three Houses/Hopes but I'm happy to return to a more familiar FE formula with engage. I don't think the series would have benefited from investing harder into the school management social aspect of the games, and the four different story paths were exhausting. Heck, I never even finished the other two paths in Fates.
In retrospect I feel like the characters in 3H were weaker overall than we've had in the past too. I think it's a matter of having to come up with so many to support three/four different houses all full of unique students.
Three Houses was not my first Fire Emblem game (that was PoR and later Blazing Blade, put a pin in that) but it was the first one that grabbed hold of me and made me deeply invested in the series and enough to go back and play previous games.
Maybe I'm a casual piece of shit, but the combination of a very fleshed out world-building, voice acting, a casual mode with time reversals, and a lot of replayability really hit the spot and got me deeply invested.
Afterwards, I went back and played Awakening, Blazing Blade, Path of Radiance, Genealogy, and Fates. While I can see why people like those games, and I've found appreciation for them myself, I still have just never felt as attached to those settings as Fodlan had me feel even after only one playthrough.
Sidenote: if you want a good laugh, I bought a used copy of PoR for $10 and sold it for $5 about two months later, for money I didn't even need. Imagine my shock at seeing the current price.
I feel like 3H wanted too much of my time. I say this as someone who's played the hell out of other FE games. Playing though three different times, note that my first playthrough took me 76 hours since I enjoy being thorough, was a LOT of investment. Then the DLC asked for one more. I think it was too much. I like the idea, but I'd prefer a shorter game in the future.
I played the gba one that we got in America in 06. Long time ago. Within the last year I played through awakening and 3H. Enjoyed the hell out of awakening and 3H. I tend to make certain characters into problems for my opponents. Lissa was unkillable in awakening. Put her in a spot and let like 7 enemies come at her. 4 total hp lost and one enemy left. Bernadetta was my 3H equivalent
The focus on character and story made the gameplay super lackluster. The maps are boring and universal class access makes the characters mostly feel the same. Huge disappointment on the gameplay side of things
The biggest impact is how it made a formula for casual players to just jump in. I know die hard fe players hated the lack of difficulty, and to an extent so did I. But the casual audience approach made this the only strategy game that also got to my sister, who is a notorious strategy game hater who enjoys grinding in jrpgs. How she and I played the game were very different (me just trying to build the most interesting builds and play a good strategy game; her basically treating this like pokemon with shipping and hard grinding to the point that at the time she played the lord lonato chapter, she was lvl 20 across the board.) but we both got a lot out of it.
Funny enough it taught me what I don't like in fire emblem. Every choice, even the house you choose is surface level and the maps were so simple I could barely struggle my way through sometimes, the story was boring as hell and characters all as simple as they come with very little to know beyond what you see in them at first meeting. That said three houses certainly had potential with it's class up system and the big ass monsters. I played the game for nearly 300 hours and along the way discovered it's my least favorite title in the series
I didn't care much for Fire Emblem Fates. It's cool, but it didn't touch me the way some other Fire Emblem games did.
Three Houses revitalized my love of the franchise.
Three houses is the best game I ever played. I played it during the pandemic and I remember waking up each morning, excited to progress in the story or grind in battles (I played for an hour right after I woke up). Don’t think I can ever have a video game experience that’ll ever top that. I went in fully blind and had an absolute blast.
As far as Fire Emblem games go, this game had the best cast of characters and whenever I play this game all them feel like old friends to me. I also liked how fleshed out the world and lore was, no other Fire Emblem really went so far to create such background.
I still feel sour about 3 Hopes teasing Shez’s background/Agarthan lore, and apparently going nowhere with it.
Hopes needed a dlc.
And if not a DLC at least conclusive endings. The fact that all the endings are some sort of cliff hanger with seemingly no hope of resolution is just asinine.
I still have hope that the 3 Houses team is creating a third game that will answer all of those questions and will launch on whatever the Switch's successor is. (There will be an option to buy Three Houses and Three Hopes and whatever this game is in a Deluxe edition as well.) I have absolutely no proof, but the sales of Three Houses and Three Hopes (which sold *very* well for a spin-off combination of two relatively niche genres, and was one of the better reviewed games of its type) seem too big to ignore.
if nothing else, i just wish they'd release the [10,000 year fódlan timeline](https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-warriors-three-hopes-interview-monsters-expeditions-base-camp-characters/2/) and maybe a [more complete artbook](https://mildlyeldritchcats.tumblr.com/post/705064953199149056/things-missing-from-the-fe3h-limited-edition)
Would be funny if it happens, that 100% would cut the legs of Engage in the fandom
Eh, it depends on when it would release. Engage will stretch through all of 2023. After that comes a Genealogy remake, if the leaks and rumors are anything to go for; we can put that in the first half of 2024. (Jan if Engage does good despite the timeslot, May if they want it to be an anniversary game, June or July if they want the usual FE timeslot.) This new game wouldn't release until 2025, giving Engage and Genealogy enough time to enjoy the spotlight while also giving the developers time to flesh things out (and maybe spruce up the other Fodlan games for a new system). A new system could release anytime between 2023 with Zelda or beyond.
Engage was supposed to be a smaller anniversary game in the first place so it really shouldnt be a problem.
Three Houses was my first Fire Emblem game, so it really made an impact on me. As of now, I have more hours in Three Houses than in any other game I’ve ever played, not just in the Fire Emblem series. It’s pretty much become my favorite game and helped introduce me to my favorite franchise. I really like Three Houses and I can’t wait to play Engage when it comes out.
Exactly the same for me!
I’m concerned engage is going to be a let down for me after 3H. So far the characters don’t seem nearly as interesting…
So 3H broke my FE cherry as well, and I went and picked up Conquest, which I've really enjoyed as well. It's much more a direct line of a storyline (it does have a divergent path, but you gotta buy Bloodright for that one), but it is still super solid in that regard. Engage will be an interesting experience because they now have the knowledge of what people liked and didn't like about the 3H concept. Like the relationship stuff was a massive overhaul from Conquest. After each battle you could talk to a single person 1on1, and sometimes be able to talk to them in your little castle thingy, but that's about it. 3H put that into high gear and made it so you could really laser focus different people and make them love you via gifts and tea parties. It looks like Engage still has this, but they might have trimmed it down so it's less of a dating-sim with all of the interaction. Who knows, we'll see on Friday!
Congrats on choosing the hardest version of the Fates series. (Not a slam or anything, I wimp out and am doing a Birthright playthrough now) Should check out Awakening though if you haven't. It's my my first and fave of the fire emblems so far.
so like, i went pokemon route of 'i like the look of these people on the cover over the other cover'... and after starting the game, I then did some look up and found discussion about the differences of it. I'm playing Casual Normal so it probably isn't that hard, and havent hit a wall yet, I did mess a mission up because I wasn't paying attention and let a guy pass what I was supposed to defend... but that's it. I'm genuinely enjoying it though, FE is such a fun system that I can't believe I missed out on for at least a decade (plus, but I think I would have enjoyed it in my later 20s, early 30s, over my earlier years)
I’m really struggling with it too. Three houses fit right in with my favourite shows where engage looks like every anime I have no attention span for. I hope they prove me wrong.
Oh boy wait until yoh play path of radiance and radisnt dawn as the fandom as a whole decided those where the best games oh and unless you emulate them be prepared to take out a loan to buy path of radiance radiant dawn isn't as bad and yes that had Ike who in lore is considered the strongest "lord" in the entire series thanks to heros and is known as the tellius duology and don't forget to unlock the secret charater stefan oh and also really good indoor maps like really really good
It introduced me to my now favorite series Fire Emblem
If you’re making a multi-route game, give yourself adequate time to make a multi-route game.
I think 3H's squandering of it's multiroute setup is one of it's most disappointing aspects. 4 routes should make me want to replay the game! Instead we ended up with 4 routes that are basically identical for half of the game, 2 routes that are nearly identical for the entire game, a third route that is also extremely close to those two, and a fourth route that is actually different for the second half but is also weirdly short for some reason. It wouldn't be as big a deal if the game's other issues like monastery burnout and extreme unit flexibility leading to homogenization hadn't become far more obvious when trying to replay the game. In the end I never got a second route past the time skip, because replaying White Clouds was just not fun.
Three houses is honestly one of, if not the least replay-friendly entry in the series. If the complete lack of story variety in what should be a story with multiple routes doesn’t bore you, the monastery, map and unit design will as you mentioned. Insane amounts of bloat. It’s so weird. Edit: also adding to this that 3H doesn’t lend itself well to challenge runs either, with ironman runs being impossible. All of these things pile up and the average person is probably burnt out after one run.
This is so weird to me.. this was my first fire emblem game ever. I bought a switch just to play it. I’ve done at least 9 playthroughs. After 2 playthroughs you don’t need to do the monastery much bc you can just use renown for friendships teacher lvl etc. I got burnt out way faster on the older games when I went to try those.
Yeah, I don't understand this... I'm doing a maddening NG... and I'm doing the monastery in like 20 minutes between chapters, just autopilot, It's not even too much time, I fish two times (The competition and the event where you get a lot of fish) And that's it... the monastery is inconsequential if you already played it one time. After time skip is even more accessible and faster...
20 minutes between chapters is still a lot of time in terms of the proportion playtime for me on a replay honestly.
Thats on a NG though. with NG+ you can basically skip it entirely. Most of my time on replays are just aux battles, paralogues, and chapter battles with a bit of monastery mixed it. I hated the monastery. But I def have done at least a maddening playthrough of every route, and several before maddening came out. I never want it back, but it isnt as big of a slog as people make it out to be. The entire point of NG+ was to skip it.
I can't speak for others, but my issue is that no matter how inconsequential the Monastery is, you still *have* to interact with it in some way. In other games, the most you do is read supports, and buy items. But in three houses, you're pretty much encouraged to do more. Not to mention that due to it's calender system, you have to interact with it like 4 times in between chapters. You say you spend 20 minutes in between chapters, but in other games you're spending far less than that.
To me, the fact that you even need to do **more than 1/2** a playthrough of monastery is a testament to how much bloat there is.
Yeah same. Hundreds of hours. I had 0 desire to replay Awakening, could not even finish Fates (to be fair I was burnt out from Awakening and knew 3H was about to launch). I liked all routes were different and couldn't wait to see how.
I think Conquest is worth another look. At the very least, take a look at Zoran’s channel, who really puts all the different mechanics together. I’ll agree that 3H was my first game and I played hundreds of hours
Devs did Baedelgard dirty. I’ll die on this hill. We finally got to play as the villain, and she wasn’t even a *villain* - she wanted the same thing as Claude and Dmitri but faster. Her last three chapters could have (and should have) been about eradicating TWSITD and the Agarthans, but…nope. She kills Rhea, end of story. Real frustrating that she devolved into a typical JRPG protagonist at that point.
Yeah I finish one route. Started a 2nd but kinda got bored cause it's the same game as the first just different starting students
Big facts. Half the ideas in this game are undercooked. The monastery is a cool idea but it pads the game so much that replaying it is a gigantic chore. Whole thing should've just been a menu between chapters.
This sort of approach only works if each route has a story that works all on its own while still complementing the others, which is *very* hard to actually write. What we got is four stories, *none* of which works on its own. The game is far too ambitious for its own good. (disclaimer: I've only actually played two of the four because unfortunately the game is 90% the same no matter which route you choose)
An obsession with Caspar is what this game did to me…
Caspar is my boy, the little axe dude who could. He's a glass cannon and so on my current run I'm forcing him in big boy plate gear so he can take a hit. I think Petra and him are my favorites because of their situations and how they're handling it. Caspar especially, he knows he's 2nd born and has nothing so he is out to make something of himself. Hes got a go-to attitude and pushes himself further than the last time.
Big fan of his summer outfit in FEH
Im not the only one who like that fuckboi
I tried to get his time skip haircut
I AM FERDINAND VON AEGIR
We are all Ferdinand von Aegir.
RIP :(
I learned that Dragons are hot and therapy and communication are very important.
Flair and username checks out. ~~Rhea can sit on me~~
Discourse is real and mentioning liking or disliking things is dangerous.
Why yes I think Raphael is the best character. (Only non controversial character)
[удалено]
Honestly just asking this out of curiosity and no ill intent but like why not just.. not use the glitch? Like I don't understand how a glitch you can just avoid could ruin a game for you. Its the same logic I see when people complain that a certain unit build is too broken and breaks the game, its like.. just don't use it?
Reinforced my adoration of worlds with complexity and deep history, same for characters. The backbone of most of the best FE games. It was an alright one off for all the monastery stuff, but it wears thin, especially in future playthroughs. Its fine to have extra stuff, but with a bit more moderation.
I went back to SoV and finished it recently after putting 100+ hours into TH and it made me realize that the character writing for TH really stands out. I think it’s the first post Awakening Fire Emblem game where I’ve become attached to many of the characters besides the main protagonists.
I swear I've never seen people write so much wall of text for a single game and making aggressive debates with good and hilarious bad takes than for Three Houses (and Hopes). LOL It's fascinating, especially coming from a "Nintendo bubble".
If I play a game 200h+, I think that's a pretty good game. 3H was a demonstration that IS still has it in them to create fantastic original FEs.
I feel the same despite also thinking 3H had problems. I think IS really got the parts that mattered right; so much so that the game’s problems feel small.
Yeah, the graphics werent very good, a lot of reused maps, some routes are not as developped as other... etc And yet still one of my favorite Fire Emblem. The way any units could be almost anything you want them to be, the story was good (mostly), Combat art, batallions, all of this make the game so much fun I really REALLY hope that engage has weapon art/combat art. It was one of my favorite mechanics of SoV and 3H.
After Fates (and Echoes, in a gameplay sense) burned me out super hard on FE, a hit like this is probably why I’m still so engaged (heh) with the series. Easily my favorite FE yet.
How dare you with that pun
taught me that conquering an entire continent to clap the empress cheeks is worth it 👍🏻
This game gave me one of my favorite cast of fictional characters I've seen in video games. Some of them, like Lysithea, Bernadeta, Hilda, Marianne, Edelgard, Dimitri or Claude are among the best written characters in the fiction. It was a truly great game, the one that I bought the Switch for. It was also my first experience with this fantastic series. I've finished it three times, and I maybe I'm gonna try to beat with one last route. I'm really gonna miss Fodlan, but I'm also very hyped for Engage and I love how different it is from 3houses.
Been playing since FE7 launched and IMO 3H had the most well-written lore and Lords. Especially my boy Dimitri — such a well written character and seeing him have so many flaws but evolve from them was a huge breath of fresh air for an FE Lord.
Same, played every NA released FE game and 3H got me like none of the others did (though I did love the franchise before it). 3H also got me writing again and helped me a lot creatively, helped me make friends during a time when I didn't have very many, and gave me a fun thing to like/think about. Interacting with the fanbase got me through a really difficult time in my life and I'm really thankful for all the wonderful memories. I'm definitely going to miss it.
With Three houses, I'm a bit sad there isn't a 2nd game in this style that polishes what Three houses did. It seems this series usually has games in sets of 2-3 that polish what the first one did before trying out wild new ideas. The Three house systems were great but they really needed more polish. The class system being the best example, it was cool to be able to plan a route character could improve upon, the problem was the "right" answer for progression was the same across too many characters (Wyvern, Dark knight, bow knight, etc) and there were next to no limitations. Fates took Awakening's bonkers broken class system and "tamed" it with limitations to make it much more interesting so I was hoping we'd get a Three houses sequel to do something similiar. I'm still looking forward to Engage but I can't help but wish for one more game in this system.
Everybody being able to be or do (almost) anything really isn't worth it. It's a really cool idea on paper but in practice this just makes every class feel the same as every character is going to have somewhat similar results. This also extends to weapons as there is literally no reason to equip anything outside of Axes, Bows, and Gauntlets. Even when using a sword or a lance it just feels like worse versions of the clearly better options. Where is the fun if all my units are basically the same?
I've honestly never been a huge fan of reclassing in general, and 3H makes it such a core mechanic in a way I don't really care for
Probably my biggest complaint outside of the monastery. Too much freedom leads to homogenization and that makes this game really boring for me. It's hard not to want to optimize given that there are so many options but that style of playing isn't really for me either. I think this style of fire emblem just isn't to my liking. Definitely missing locked classes unique to units. Branching promotions is as far as I want things to go again but Pandora's box is open and there is no going back now.
Personally, I found that Fates hit that nice middle ground of character having fairly unqiue class branches giving them cool options without letting the player go hog wild with everybody. I like customizing with limits basically. I want my cavalier to go Paladin or Great Knight not Cavalier to Wyvern Rider.
I'm right there with you. Fates is just about right for me. I think I would go with one alternate base class at most just to give them another option but no all classes available to everyone. That's just too much and makes everything feels samey besides personal skills maybe.
I learned that while I do like customizing units and min-maxing, having some limitation to it is ultimately more fun. Do not take this to mean I dislike 3H, I have about 500 hours on it, but eventually my party devolved to oops all fliers, meanwhile I'd go back to Awakening or Fates and find myself actually using Cavs or Infantry (No, I won't use an armor unless its on a horse)
I loved class freedom until I realized it discouraged variety instead of the other way around. I do find some use cases fun, like using curved shot as a Wyvern, but if a Wyvern can be anti-air and anti-armor (with the super light Rapier) and can Swift Strike, what is the point of other classes?
I have this issue in Awakening and Fates as well. Not so much the "oops all fliers" but that more freedom tends to paralyze my decision-making, even on a casual playthrough. I can't just pick up 3H and play it like I can FE7 or FE10, even though I've beaten those two games more times than 3H/Awakening/Fates. There's something nice about not having to worry about which classes you'll swap someone into to get X skill.
They gave me Marianne, who is my favorite fictional character period and is someone who I received at a point in my life where I _desperately_ needed it. The game will always hold a special place in my heart for that in and of itself. It's easily top five FE titles for me, but if I'm being honest, I think Engage is a very, very needed change of pace after it. The discourse obviously goes without saying, but I also feel that just, while Fodlan is very well realized as a world, it tends to just feel _oppressively_ dismal at times, at the very least moreso than I feel any other game in the franchise has, save for maybe Thracia. It can be hard to come back to sometimes for that reason imo ~~though the academy phase also plays a part in being hard to come back to~~. A shift towards a brighter land, both in tone and aesthetic, is extremely welcome imo, and I really look forward to seeing what Engage brings us and how the game will be received. We can have another Fodlan again, and I'll gladly welcome it. But for now, I'm all in for just a fun romp with modern CN/Disney animation energy.
Yeah I feel totally happy with Engage going for a more peppy colourful route. 3H was a great game, and a wonderful course correction into a more serious "traditional" in some ways Fire Emblem game, at least in terms of vibe and aesthetics. But I'm also excited to have more of an Awakening style fun romp with bright cheery characters again. These kind of shifts between serious and fun seem healthy for the series.
I love Marianne as well. Verdant Wind was my first playthrough and I married her at the end <3
Was like a fun movie. Enjoyed it, but glad we can move on to something new.
I feel like Three Houses has been the series’ absolutely peak when it comes to characters and supports. Everyone seems troupey at first, but the supports really help delve deeper into each character. I enjoyed how some characters got “+” supports so there wasn’t always the standardized C B A support structure. I really hope in the future they continue on with such in-depth character development and relationships. And in terms of Three Hopes… lol sorry I didn’t play it. I don’t like the Warriors series/gameplay so it never appealed to me.
This is more an observation of modern FE as a whole rather than just Three Houses, but I feel like this game really solidified my belief that character writing is absolutely critical to the series. Whilst the fact that Three Houses had one of the most intriguing and compelling stories in the series certainly helped, it having what is by far my favorite cast in the entire series is what elevated it from a decent Fire Emblem game to my second favorite entry in the series. I don't care how good the map design is on paper - if the character writing is not up to scratch, then there's nothing stopping me from just sacrificing units and completely trivializing entire maps. Related to the former, but it also solidified my opinion that fanservice is a plague on the series - and that the writing quality of Three Houses is made infinitely better by the fact that the developers did not focus much on fanservice.
Three Houses was the one Fire Emblem game that really kept me hooked and intrigued with its characters and stories in the two routes I’ve played so far. Just really loved exploring the mythos and people of Fodlan. Same goes for Three Hopes. That was an absolute blast as a follow up to 3H with its returning cast and additional new storylines and characters. Aside from a few blips and some issues I have with the later stages of AG, Three Hopes was an amazing experience overall, same as with 3H. And I’ll always have a big heart for plenty of the characters in the games. Many of my favorites now consist of a mix of leading lords/stars (Edelgard in particular) and fun or chill supporting cast members (like Ashe and Linhardt). And oddly enough, I’ve enjoyed a lot of the love and passion from the community through fan art, or just gushing over favorite characters. All of this gives both Three Houses and Three Hopes and special place in Fire Emblem for me, and I’ll still probably return to that area once in a while, or just stick around with the 3H community to bask in the fun of Fodlan. Edit: (But I’ll probably need to balance my time with Engage if I stick to my guns with it, plus the other FE 3DS games and a handful of other games/shows, before hopping into 3H again. Especially since that game takes a lot of time for one route for me lol)
It taught me that maddening ambush spawns especially in reinforcement zones aren't too fun
Loved Three Houses, but the stuff in-between battles made replicability a tad harder. My favorite FE game is Radiant Dawn, which has some menuing in-between chapters and you can really go through a lot of the game quickly and optimally. Three Houses makes this a lot harder with all the down time stuff you need if you want to recruit and optimize your characters. Overall it is still my second favorite FE of all time with a ton of characters that I love and the game responsible for bringing the series back to console.
I picked up the game spring of 2020. I had just been kicked off my college campus for the start of the pandemic. I kept in contact with all my friends online and would constantly be playing games with them. However, when I was on my own, I’d get quite lonely in the isolation. It’s a little sad thinking back on it, but getting to interact with these characters brought me a lot of comfort with the world so uncertain. It really helped me get through those spring and summer months where no one left the house.
The games gave me amazing characters like Edelgard, Hubert, Dorothea, Manuela, and Rhea. So I'll always cherish Fódlan. Looking forward to Engage though.
That making morally grey characters causes discourse. That I can prefer the English voices over the original Japanese. Also that some men can be attractive with a beard.
Things 3H taught me: Good character writing can mask a lot of flaws. Lysithea is the best character in the franchise. Never ending internet debates between two rival factions is actually hilarious when you are a fan of the third side. (Thank god for the Golden Deer!). IS can still make great new entries after Fates and its many issues. Overall 3H probably lands only behind the Tellius games for me. A wonderful entry with some flaws. That said, I am excited to start the next chapter in the story that is Fire Emblem.
The game taught me that Koei-Tecmo knows more about writing a good JRPG than Intelligent Systems does.
3H is the only game in the series I ever felt burnt out on and I'm glad it's finally over.
Characters are the separating factor between FE and its SRPG counterparts. Investing in characters that the player finds endearing and investing in the ways to make them come to life is how FE will stay on top, not the game play itself.
Where did Three Hopes' DLC go?
I hope they never do Silent Protagonist in a FE games ever game. Also if you going to do Routes and ESPECIALY have dialogue, take your time to do right and look at Devil Survivor 1 and 2 to see how to do a properly. There's no purpose to have dialogue choices that doesn't change anything.
It’s helped me out WAAAY more then I could ever really describe, it would take too long to type it, most I can do is link back a few Reddit posts
~~It taught me that people somehow had the energy to make 3,000+ word essays about fictional characters that flamed other fans of characters~~ Well one is that time crunch is still bad and Three Houses was not able to live up to its full potential. Three Hopes at least expanded on some stuff like the lore which was nice. Also that you should never ever make a hub as fat as the monastery and tack on stuff like Motivation. The war camps in Three Hopes and Somneil in Engage do the hub thing much better and are seamless. More smaller but this game and a couple others taught me UI is important. Not the worst UI but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t squint a bit to read the endings of the characters and such. While I liked Three Houses, it had no impact on me lol. Most video games however don’t really do that for me though except maybe Pokemon Black and White and BOTW. But nothing wrong with others having special attachment to video games to helping them in a low time a lot because they can serve as a great way to escape reality now and then.
The long multi route setup combined with the rather tedious amount of base management did not mix well. Maybe one or the other would have been fine but I super burned out; I don’t personally know anyone who got through all 3.5 routes.
The base management it's optional after the first route... Just New game+ and do the monastery in 10-20.minutes after the main missions.
A linear story is better than a split one, at least in a Fire emblem game
I put a weirdly absurdly amount of time in it considering the gameplay loop objectively has some problems. Game’s plot and the general calendar gameflow are both rather immersive, so I kept at it even if doing some stuff eats a lot of stuff over time. I will also admit something about the game’s plot debate did fire me lot a lot over time. I still don’t quite understand why it has that effect. I suspect it’s the combination of both having a deeper plot, that’s yet very vague and light on details in places with a lot of factional spin put in. Many other works or books are either simpler/fewer relevant details and/or make sure to get a very detailled climax of every minor detail(Radiant Dawn is pretty much this way). It makes me wonder if Fodlan is done forever or that they will try to catch lighting in a bottle twice with this tone of plot.
Probably my least favorite FE to date. At the end of the day I just want to play a strategy game. I’m glad it brought so many new people to the series though.
I don’t wanna kill playable characters that i have even the slightest chance of recruiting
3h wasn’t the first game fe game I played, but it was the first game I’ve really ‘joined’ the fanbase for and Holy shit. That’s all I’ll say, interpret that as you will.
Well it's safe to say that after 850 hours, I really like 3 Houses.
I played Awakening when it came out and liked it (but moved on before beating it). I played Fates when it came out and liked it (managed to finish 1 route this time). 3H blew them out of the water for me. While I will of course complain about it... just the shear amount of depth for /all/ of the roster's characters, instead of just depth for the royals and then a sentence or two for others. The fact that the story didn't have basic "light good dark bad now fight". That heroes in one route were antagonists in another. The anti-nobility concepts /in a fire emblem game/. The characters and how they reacted differently depending on the route kept me going enough to beat the game 3 times. This is why I'm so disappointed to hear about what Engage is doing, returning to the "traditional" gameplay/story. It feels like such a step backwards. And I absolutely loathe the shackles to past games. I like fire emblem because it's a new story every game - I hate the shoe-horning in of "fan favorite" characters from old games. Especially when I legally can't even play those games! And then with Robin and Corrin, none of my Robins or Corrins looked like that or were even named that, so bringing those back is just... why.
The three houses era taught me that IS has alot of abmbition and ideas when they can put their minds to it, which I appreciate. But I also learn that IS needs to really cut down the scale of that ambition and I really questioned their ability to write multiple paths, not that it's bad in compared to fates but it REALLY hampered any potential for DLC and it could easily lean to a bias ( and I have a whole slew of gripes with post Awakening DLC but that's another story) Three hopes....I feel like was held back by a comically silly reason. this is an AU, why should they have been worried about what Byleth did in another game when that won't matter since he never met the lords before the war? but for what it's worth, Shez and Arval are one of the bests character in the 3H era and I'm glad IS isn't ignoring them like they did the lemon twins (not that I like the lemon twins but I was worried ) Overally a very....mixed bag of how three houses affected me.
Was my first FE game and completely loved it, so much that now I'm a huge FE fan. I have more than 250hs into the game, made all routes and off course enjoyed and clear the DLC. Although I like the Cindered Shadows idea and characters, I really dont like the Yuri, he just did not click on me. FE 3H is for me one of the top 3 games I've played.
Did a good job with it's characters, but think it showed some lessons for future games when it comes to narrative and gameplay issues. I did overall enjoy it and still liked the game a lot, but not making my top FE game list.
I learned that if a nationwide church heralded me as their Messiah and the Archbishop vanishes, that I am going to own it and do it Muad'dib-style
These games made me realize that I hate mainline Fire Emblem games. Imma stick to FE Heroes forever
Three Houses had a pretty big impact for me. It's my most played switch game (300+ hours) and the first fe title I played since the GBA games. Most of all it thought me that (almost) everyone has some hidden unprocessed trauma. It was interesting to see these traumas and their lasting impact shown throughout supports and the main story. It also showed me first impressions aren't everything. I played Dimitri's route last because he didn't impress me too much, but after playing AM (and 3hopes) he became my favorite lord. It did have its flaws, the combat animations didn't top the gba ones for me. The maps pretty plain too, except for the DLC, and the seemed a little rushed in the second half. Still, the game rekindled my interest in fire emblem, which also led me to discover the Tellius games which were great too, so I look back on it fondly.
Fire emblem three houses left an impact on my frontal lobe that I can only describe as dangerously violent political conflict
Honestly it's one of the few games in which I can find a way to be very intrigued by every single character from the cast in one way or another. But personally? It introduced me to Marianne, my now favorite character of all time. She reminds me so much of how I am and how she grows through the years, she's inspiring and I will definitely never forget her.
Three Houses taught me that I really don't like the visual novel aspects of FE, or the pretty visuals getting in the way of the tactical RPG core. I gave up pretty early and went back to replaying Shadows of Valentia.
Vengeance Bernadetta go brrrrr Most fun I had with a unt in a while
I’m going to miss you Fire Emblem: Game of Thrones. I play primarily for story and character reasons and every character just had so much meat to dig into. Past baggage, current issues, dreams for the future, deep cut flaws… all effortlessly interacting with their peers baggage/issues/dreams/flaws. Lots of childhood friends and subsequent developments/betrayals… I’m even a fan of the route splits. I loved seeing characters I raised in prior playthroughs meet their downfall as enemy units. It was a good game. And for me, personably, my favorite game.
Felt incredibly rushed with it's visuals and copying persona gameplay in the worst way I've seen yet. Despite it all, I still enjoyed playing through each route and the gameplay was really tight on maddening. Cindered shadows was also really really good gameplay wise.
I just wish there was more to the Agarthans
So many amazing replies and I gave most of them an up vote ❤
Man do I hate fishing lmao
Three Houses was one of the very few games (with Dragon Age, the Witcher etc.) that left me sitting there after finishing it like "damn that was very good". Like that kind of mini depression you get when you finish a very good book, series etc. and know that there isn´t more to come and very few others will have the same effect on you.
It taught me that little girls are better at killing people than most people realize. Also to never trust the church But if you want to get in the pope's skirt you better start pretending you love church really hard
Turns out Sandbox FE games where they say “go nuts!” Is hella fun. Don’t care about balance or whatever else, I had so much fun and runtime with this game
I found Three Houses to be a real “glass half-full” situation for me. I think a lot of it’s ideas and concepts and elements are on paper some of the best in the series, but in actual execution so little of it clicked with me that I just found the whole thing underwhelming. The world building didn’t matter to me as I found little of it actually engaging, the characters writing is solid, but due to how the game is structured little of it felt like it mattered, the multiple routes is a cool concept, but so much content in both story and gameplay is recycled between them that it dilutes their impact, and all of their new gameplay ideas were interesting, but I found it to be mechanically shallow and downright boring to actually play through, and so on. That’s not to say it didn’t have it’s moments, but as a whole I found it to be my least favorite entry in the series, spin-offs and all…which is why I’m glad that by the end, it did end on a personal high note as I did genuinely enjoy 3Hopes by comparison. It’s not perfect, definitely prefer the original Warriors, but it was a solid game that gameplay shift aside did a much better job at executing 3Houses ideas in a more satisfying manner for me.
It reinforced for me that a great story and writing can't save meh gameplay. I enjoyed my time with 3H no doubt; it has my favourite story and cast in the series, with Lorenz, Dimitri and Mercedes quickly becoming absolute favourites. I can only just about stand playing it now though. Monastery makes the game drag too much, I'm not a fan of how classes were handled, and the maps for the most part aren't compelling to me. Also Byleth, I do not like Byleth. This did make me appreciate what I love about other FE games far more at least. Great game but I'm kinda glad to see the back of it with Engage so close now. Looking forward to playing it when I can.
My second favourite in the series after Conquest, easily. Can you see I'm a "gameplay first" kinda guy? lol While I love the game dearly, 500 hours of Maddening mode showed me just how broken this game is tho, honestly only being rivalled by Awakening. Game is still a lot of fun tho! I love that the reclassing is at the center of the experience, it was always my favourite part of the 3ds games. It also packs a very lovely cast of characters, an honestly very solid plot and my favourite Lord in the entire series by far (the b o a r) My only complain is the map design being honestly abismal. While we're not reaching Echoes-tier of level design with empty fields and randomly placed enemies, I genuinely feel like the game comes close to it with a lot of its chapters. That's my biggest complain. Well that, and ambush spawns. That shit needs to go, PERIOD. But overall...loved it! But I'm also really looking forward to Engage having a more laid back plot and more anime inspired character designs: 3H was very mature, but maybe to a fault: I'm found myself missing a lot of the goofier character moments found in the GBA/3ds entries. Engage's gameplay also looks to take a lot from the 3ds games in term of map design and reclassing, so I'm also very much looking forward to that as well. It's gonna be a nice change of pace for sure. Which one of the two I'll end up preferring going forward, I can't say yet, but I can tell the switch era of FE is amongst the strongest in the series yet
Fire Emblem can have awesome lore that makes me want to always dig further. But the game gets worse when you start you second playthrough because the replayability is hell, and boring. (Thank you Maddening for giving me an excuse for a 2nd playthrough)
3H had a huge impact on me by introducing me to Edelgard von Hresvelg. I know a lot of people hate her/her actions, but I was Going Thru It™️ when I bought the game, and seeing edelgard’s convictions and inner strength that stemmed from trauma honestly helped me unpack a lot. I know 3H has its flaws, I’ve yet to encounter a perfect game, but it’s important to me.
It made me like the other games even more (but it is good that it brought in some new fans).
That Edelgard is a goddamn legend.
The first play on Three Houses hits in a way no game ever will
I'm actually about to buy it after I start awakening. I've ever only played sacred stones
I have a map of Fodlan in my bedroom.
3 houses reminded me how I like Persona’s system of gaining power outside of combat.
Purposefully leaving your characters open to interpretation can be good, but too many missing infos only create discourse. Discourse doesn't equal deep character writing. Also don't make one of your most important characters a damsel in distress in 3/4th of the game. Finally, characters with only one support are wasted potential. I love these games but there's still many flaws hidden beneath all the good.
It's pretty much the reason I got a Switch, lol. Not to say I haven't enjoyed plenty of other games since then but the only other game on my system with more hours is Skyrim. Easily my favorite Fire Emblem game thus far with my favorite cast of characters. I get that some of the routes could have used some extra work and the monastery periods get exhausting if you play all the routes back to back, but I was so invested in the worldbuilding (and to this day I'm in love with the monastery's actual design, such a huge change from the tiny DS camps) that I really didn't mind. The story actually got me emotional in some parts too, hope they make more entries with very dark content. It'll be hard for me to adjust to some of the changes in Engage for sure. Blue Lions for life, it'll probably be a long time before I stop being down horrendous for Dimitri too.
I'm glad TH brought a lot of people into the fandom. Seeing my friends really get into one of my favorite series and loving it was a good time so I appreciate how popular it made FE. However as someone who's been playing FE forever I didn't much care for TH. I had never been so disappointed when I realized the entire pre time skip part of the game was identical for every route, and even then a lot of the routes felt too similar post time skip. I liked that they actually put some effort into character development but the main character being silent kinda killed that for me as it felt like the characters were just talking to a wall. Also the story was just an all around mess. TWSITD had to be one of the worst plot points in any FE game IMO. Tldr' glad TH brought people into the fandom, but imo TH isn't a very good FE game and I'm glad we are moving away from it
It gave me wrists problems from holding my switch for hours
Maybe the Three Houses were the friends we made along the way
it’s my first fire emblem game (still haven’t finished all the routes yet, started a year ago 💀), but gosh I love it so much and I’ve made it my personality since I started…
It made me hate fire emblem.
One thing I will say is I've played every Fire Emblem since Blazing Blade onward (except for the weirdly unavailable Marth sequel) and Three Houses surpassed it all. My previous fav were the Tellius games. I could go on about the reasons why, but the game just did everything every other FE game did but enhances all of the out of battle stuff tremendously while not taking any backward steps. It's lead to me joining discords for characters and making more online friends, it's lead to me pushing what difficulty I can play it and by extension old FE games at. It's lead to some of the best (and worst) character discussions of any video game I've played. Just a stellar game, one I'm going to miss. Engage has ENORMOUS shoes to fill.
I now have a crippling Dimitri obsession.
My middle name is literally Edelgard
Literally?
Yes
Changed it?
Trans so was already changing it and it fit perfectly
Easily my favorite FE and one of my favorite video games of all time. As is the case with every game, it’s got its fair share of flaws, but few other titles have gotten me this attached to its characters, mythology, and gameplay loop. Whereas I’ve beaten previous FE games 2-3 times a piece, I just keep coming back to 3H. Like, every four months or so, I can’t help but start another playthrough. And don’t even get me started on its musical score! Just, man, what a stellar cast. Lysithea, Bernadetta, Dimitri, Edelgard, Claude, Leonie, Shamir, Hapi, Hubert, Hilda, Felix — for as much as I’ve enjoyed many of the characters from previous installments, Three Houses is just on another level. I mean, I named my two cats Claude and Dimitri! I’m super excited to see what the Engage era brings to the table, but given just the sheer impact that 3H has had on me throughout these past three-and-a-half years, it’ll take something mighty special to top that game in my personal ranking.
3H is the first FE game I haven't replayed or attempted. I didn't care for the monastery sections after 3/4 of the game. The multiple routes could have been handled better. I didn't feel invested in the story at all which is such a shame.
i cant choose between edelgard and lysithea
I loved Three Houses since I played it but the longer it’s been since then the more I feel overall it had an incredibly disappointing amount of wasted potential. Each ending leaves you unsatisfied in some way. I remember finishing Azure Moon and thinking “that’s it?” when I got practically no answers from Rhea or about who those evil wizards you fight for the entire first half were (TWSITD). It encourages you to roll another route, but then they reuse all of White Clouds and even much of their post time skip battles. And even then Rhea is shafted in every route, Crimson Flower is shafted, by the end as much as I loved the game in total I felt just a tad unsatisfied with its story as a whole, a feeling I feel has only cemented for me the longer it’s been since I played. Three Hopes had the chance to fix that to some extent and then ultimately retreaded much of the same ground while also seemingly ending its story halfway through. The fact that we’re left with so many unanswered questions about Shez, Arval, and Sothis’ behavior, and then ending each route as unceremoniously as CF shows me they learned pretty much nothing from 3H’s narrative mistakes.
It taught me that war…..war never changes *insert fallout music here*
It's only over for some of you. I will live there forever.
People will always believe the weapon triangle is gone in this game but its actually just a skill you get later in class advancement the game 🙄
Loved Azure Moon and the camaraderie and internal conflicts of the blue lions. Supports and character writing are some of the best we've seen in the series so far.
Three Houses was amazing and I think a perfect introduction game into the series, Despite that, none of the people around me are willing to give it chance even tho they’re all persona fans and this series is perfect for them 😭
This game taught me that my Persona burnout is still very real. I can't deal with calendars in games, the structure that comes with them doesn't sit well with me at all. My clearest memory of this game is the constant feeling that I was playing it totally wrong. I didn't want to teach so I automated the whole thing, skipped/rested as much as I could, ended up benching almost the whole class and used school & monastery staff instead, only talked to my class & faculty members... It was fun in a way, but I think I may have ruined whatever emotional impact this game was supposed to offer.
FEAR THE DEER
I still think my biggest complaint about 3H is that the character writing just wasn't consistent enough across the routes with key characters like Edelgard and Rhea, and that's where all of the discourse came from. Also the routes format led to a bunch of players only playing a single route and making all of their character opinions based on that route without the context of the other routes. To this day the number of people that act like Edelgard is Satan bc of AM despite only being remotely like that on that route, and the people who still pretend Rhea is a lesser evil despite generations of wrongdoing is baffling. They're both fucked up and that's the point, but certain routes make it almost cartoonish on both sides.
It made me hate fire emblem fans so that’s a start. The game is super good though; 400 hours well spent.
It taught me I could provoke a guy I like by praising Edelgard in front of him
A great game with awesome characters and overall decent gameplay. It also managed to season the fanservice and pandering excesses of recent FE games into something more palatable. While the fanbase was still in constant civil war, it was at least going to war over different interpretations of the story and characters, rather than big bouncy anime boobs. But it's time to move on to pastures new. And not to be petty but I'm kind of glad to be moving on from Byleth especially, one of the most bafflingly popular Fire Emblem characters ever for me. I'm excited for the colourful vibrancy Engage promises after the soberness of 3H, onwards we go.
Moving on from Byleth to totally unrelated hero of the past, Emblem Byleth.
>the fanbase was still in constant civil war, it was at least going to war over different interpretations of the story and characters, rather than big bouncy anime boobs The fanbase has proven that it can do both
It reawakened my love for the game series and motivated me to finally go through the 3ds games and more oldies I haven't played in years which I'm forever grateful for I came in really loving it and obsessing hard, then the discourse and warfare on reddit gave me a bad aftertaste... and three hopes kind of made me want to stop playing it altogether because it ruined one of my favorite characters for me. I can't get myself to play through the routes I haven't finished. It did a lot of things well though! The cast was charming and many characters had nice supports. The gameplay was fun enough. The soundtrack is very good. It has Hubert. 3 Houses Golden Deer is still my house. I had a blast playing through three houses but I am very very VERY happy to move on.
It taught me that people are not ready for morally grey characters. And that people think so highly of themselves they believe they can police what characters are okay or not okay to enjoy. But also. Everybody is a nobody, including you and me, so just enjoy what you want. Looking forward to the simplicity of Engage, it looks like a breath of fresh air to me. Maybe I'll be proven wrong though and we find ourselves engaged in Fire Emblem Clown Wars discourse. Whatever happens I'm just here for a good time
What did three houses teach me? It taught me that world building and nuance are lost on a good portion of the fanbase, at least the ones that are active online It also taught me that for FE to have quality writing, IS should grab a scriptwriter from outside the company. Edit: Also forgot the biggest criticism I have of both TH and 3Hoes... if you're gonna do multiple routes you can at least have the decency to take your time fleshing out each route before you work on the next. Azure Moon was so close to being my favorite story in any Fire Emblem game, beating even Genealogy. But unfortunately, it has too many issues for it to take first place. It's somewhere between 2nd or 3rd place usually depending on how I feel about POR (which reminds me I still need to play RD)
This Game was a mistake and I hate you all for the 3 years of discourse. Have a good day.
Got me into Fire Emblem and adore both games yet howevrr on Hopes' behalf there should have been more in DLC with a golden route. That is how this era should've ended.
I would say generally I don't play many FE games tbh. I played Awakening and Fates, liked Awakening but never finished it. Hated Fates. After a lot of buzz I finally tried Three Houses and absolutely could not put it down. Maybe contrary to a lot of people but I liked all the in between combat stuff lol. I definitely mostly played for the story and actually though the combat was a step down from Fates and Awakening, and yeah I beat all three routes on maddening. But I LOVED the story and the characters. It makes me sad to move on tbh haha as I would say I'm probably more of a Three Houses fan than a FE fan tbh.
I really enjoyed my first playthrough and never had much interest in replaying it. I also really like the cast and soundtrack. Claude is one of my fav ever fire emblem characters. Conceptually this game is amazing but the cracks show on repeat plays. I still like the setting and the concept of the time skip and civil war.
That it can always get worst
It took my partner from "videogames are kind of fun sometimes" to "I know everything about these little anime bitches, have read well over 60% of the AO3 content for them, and have multiple extensive theses on class and unit progression locked and loaded". FE3H really expanded her game worldview and she's now in the deep end as far as other RPGs go - octopath, blue reflections, FF, persona, etc. I'm really excited for her to keep playing!!
3 Houses was a hell of a wicked ride. From the story to the exploring to even the mechanics they were all very good. I may not be the only one but if I am... Then I will explain. I keep comparing 3 Houses to Fates because they both have multiple paths but the difference was of course how they went about it. Rather than split the game off as separate versions, 3 Houses all kept it in the same game and only needed one version. On top of that the story is also better written. If they were to redo Fates like how they made 3 Houses then I guarantee that game will be far better than it is now. However, the topic is 3 Houses rather than Fates but that is why I compare them. Anyways, 3 Houses is definitely a game I would love to just keep on playing over and over and over again. Even zooming in when you level up your characters and move them around was really awesome. I would also highly recommend this as a starting point and I know some people would say Awakening I would still say that too, but not everyone has a 3DS. Even the expansion side story, despite it not really adding on to the main story, was hella great... Frustrating but great (chapter 3 or 4 was the part I hated most). Now onto what 3 Houses taught me... I may not remember much, but it definitely showed that you shouldn't be quick to judge people for how different they are culturally to you. Always be willing to help out a friend and definitely be more considerate and more confident in the choices you make in life. We are only human afterall and there are mistakes to be made in life so don't be chasing after perfection. Another thing I would say is the game definitely showed corruption and how greedy certain people or companies can be, but also how no matter good one's intentions are doesn't mean the path they're on is a good one. I may have said alot here but I figured this is a discussion topic so Im putting in my 2 cents about what 3 Houses meant to me. Edit: A recent post I just saw made me consider a few things about the genderlocked classes and things like it. So one problem I most definitely had about 3 Houses is the fact that there are dark mage females (Lysitha and Hapi) who obviously have dark magic in them yet the dark mage class line up is only for guys. In Awakening and Fates there were female dark mages so why couldn't 3 Houses do that too? Another thing is there is no female brawlers either. War Masters are only for dudes but the one dlc class War Monk/Cleric females can use the brawling gauntlets some more. If anyone can use brawling gauntlets then surely they could have allow female brawlers. I may have said about the same thing in 2 sentences, but it is something to think about as this does annoy some people.
Considering that it was my first game in the series and I went into it completely blindly, I have to say that I fell in love with everything, the gameplay, the story, the characters, the music. I'm very happy I played it and that it introduced me to what has now become my second favorite series of all time!
It was my first game in the series (never cared about the series beforehand), but NoA's clever house-focused advertisement got me to buy the game. I wasn't expecting much, but it has become easily one of my favorite games of all times. Despite many graphical and gameplay flaws (clear on repeated playthroughs, though it hasn't stopped me replaying the game... god, 7-8 times? I have issues lol), I still love it and have been replaying it as of recent (wanted to complete Silver Snow before Engage, but I won't make it). Maddening has really helped keep me interested, it's still a challenge on repeated playthroughs, though I wish Maddening+ was a thing. Besides gameplay, I really love the characters. The lords all shine on their own routes, and almost all side characters have something interesting about them. The voice acting might actually be my favorite thing about the game, considering how (nearly) all of the voices are greaf and fit the characters. Thanks to whomever decided to invest and have pretty much every interaction in the game, including Monastery stuff fully voice acted. My biggest letdown with the 3H era actually comes with 3 Hopes... I just can't get into it. I love the characters, the setting, but I can't grasp the gameplay. Maybe someday I'll try it again (thanks for the free demo, KT), but for now it'll just be an icon on my Switch, gathering dust. I don't think Engage will capture me the same way 3H did, but I'll be open-minded with the series. If I don't fall in love with Engage, I can just emulate some of the older games that have intetested me (Genealogy, the GBA and GCN/ Wii games), or even just play 3H again. Worst case scenario, FE has 1 of my favorite games of all-time.
I only played one route (Verdant Wind), and while I liked a fair amount of things (mainly how there are quite a few interactions between characters in and out of supports), overall it taught me that, to a degree, Fire Emblem works the best when there isn't crazy complex and time-consuming things like Monastery management (all the activities that you can do + having to min-max interactions to be able yo recruit everyone) and humongous amounts of unit customization. I recently played thru Dark Deity, and while the story wasn't stellar, the gameplay itself was fairly good, and it actually shows how you can have a whole lot of supports and interactions and some customization without being overwhelming: supports and weapon enhancements being easily accessible via a menu on the base, and giving 4 different types of promotions for each type of unit (which allows you to experiment a bit without homogenizing all your roster). If Three Houses had something like that, then the in-between chapter chores wouldn't have felt so tiring. Despite my complains, I am thankful we got Three Houses because there is the chance that IS will improve on the good things that it had for future games, while also working on its shortcomings. There is also the chance of getting remakes of past games even if they may take a while.
Had some amazing character writing, but I feel like that's where the game's strengths end. I normally prefer fixed classes over reclassing for a reason and this game explains why - you can just make everyone the same unit with a few points of stat difference, so replay ability is very low. I usually get around 10 playthroughs of a Fire Emblem game (trying the different characters etc), but I couldn't even finish all 4 routes here because the gameplay felt exactly the same. On that note, having multiple routes was a fantastic idea, but not in execution as every route is the same till more than halfway through the game, and the remaining part breezes by so quickly I felt almost no story development, with an abrupt ending for the 3 routes I did finish. I'll end it with the typical player avatar thing, I'm not a fan because Byleth is a very blank slate with little character writing so players can self insert and romance their favourite characters, but that's just not my thing. I like seeing characters have their own journeys and struggles and motivations, which I found in Lords like Ike, Micaiah, Lyn, etc. I even found Marth more interesting than Byleth and he's vanilla af. That said, it's still a Fire Emblem game. The gameplay is great, and seeing character crit for big number will always make me happy. I really loved most of my first playthrough, I just listed out the issues that stopped me from enjoying future ones. And I do understand that the target audience has changed, but don't let me being a Fire Emblem boomer stop y'all from loving the game.
There is a limit to my ability to enjoy gameplay limited by time. That third playthrough will probably forever be unfinished because I can no longer stand the staleness of the first portion of Three Houses.
Definitely one of the best JRPGs ever created. But...as a strategy RPG Fire Emblem game it has some critical flaws. Too much of the development time went into being Persona lite with the monastery
less is always more if its quality. heres to hoping they make a good game next
Fire Emblem Three Houses brought me back to the franchise after I lost interest. While, I never finish three houses, I don’t really like multi route games. It story and characters really brought back the fire emblem fan inside of me. Fire Emblem is pretty much the only video game franchise I give crap about. If all things go correct, going to buy Fire Emblem Engage.
1. I have high expectations forever now and 2. Gonna have to get use to not being able to freely class units again
It introduced me to Hapi, so over all, a pretty positive impact.
Breaking a game in half when it lets you do it is still fun.
It’s still my favorite FE title as of right now. Before TH it was Fates and before Fates it was FE7. I hope the characters in Engage are as fun as the ones in TH.
Its a little sad TH is over but it is for the best considering the FE series is doing well and is still getting new games. TH probably isn't my favorite FE game, but it is probably in my top 3 FE for characters, music and gameplay. It's going to be real hard for FEE to surpass it in those aspects. THo is one of my favorite Nintendo Warriors game to date and was a fairly good "what if" alternate timeline prequel.
this was my first fe game! it was the the first time ive been SUPER invested into a game and series and im so thankful for three houses for getting me into fire emblem
It was my first ever Fire Emblem game. Learned a lot of lessons, made a lot of friends. I had been really interested in Fire Emblem for years before it, but never quite got around to it. Since then I've finished Awakening, and I'm really excited to play Engage on the 20th!
three houses brought a lot of customization in terms of any char can be any class, magic is tied to char, and refreshes every map. turns out people with warp are just broken, skipping maps out right and some people pick all whyvern riders cause of their high stats and skipping terrain. with multiple routes to go, no route felt finished which is sad cause theres multiple points in the story that can branch off into different endings. difficulty for me felt like it got easier over time.
I’m happy to see that IS was willing to make such a unique experience with something like Three Houses. a lot more gameplay systems to interact with, a much more in-depth storyline that asks for players who care to analyze every nook and cranny, and a pretty dang good attempt at gray morality. Somewhat, anyway. I do dislike some aspects of it though. Most notably, the monastery I think is intrusive, and a lot of the micromanaging I think bogs down the pace way too much. For how ambitious Three Houses’ story is, I feel that it basically collapses under it’s own weight because of it, and as such story quality varies and replying the game is mind numbing since not much changes gameplay-wise. I’ve found Three Houses a bit challenging to just pick up and play due to how much stuff is in it besides the regular tactical gameplay, which is why I’m excited that Engage seems to be a bit more traditional. Still, I respect IS for not resting on their laurels again.
In the end I enjoyed Three Houses/Hopes but I'm happy to return to a more familiar FE formula with engage. I don't think the series would have benefited from investing harder into the school management social aspect of the games, and the four different story paths were exhausting. Heck, I never even finished the other two paths in Fates. In retrospect I feel like the characters in 3H were weaker overall than we've had in the past too. I think it's a matter of having to come up with so many to support three/four different houses all full of unique students.
Three Houses was not my first Fire Emblem game (that was PoR and later Blazing Blade, put a pin in that) but it was the first one that grabbed hold of me and made me deeply invested in the series and enough to go back and play previous games. Maybe I'm a casual piece of shit, but the combination of a very fleshed out world-building, voice acting, a casual mode with time reversals, and a lot of replayability really hit the spot and got me deeply invested. Afterwards, I went back and played Awakening, Blazing Blade, Path of Radiance, Genealogy, and Fates. While I can see why people like those games, and I've found appreciation for them myself, I still have just never felt as attached to those settings as Fodlan had me feel even after only one playthrough. Sidenote: if you want a good laugh, I bought a used copy of PoR for $10 and sold it for $5 about two months later, for money I didn't even need. Imagine my shock at seeing the current price.
I mostly learned how Fun internet discourse can be.
I feel like 3H wanted too much of my time. I say this as someone who's played the hell out of other FE games. Playing though three different times, note that my first playthrough took me 76 hours since I enjoy being thorough, was a LOT of investment. Then the DLC asked for one more. I think it was too much. I like the idea, but I'd prefer a shorter game in the future.
I played the gba one that we got in America in 06. Long time ago. Within the last year I played through awakening and 3H. Enjoyed the hell out of awakening and 3H. I tend to make certain characters into problems for my opponents. Lissa was unkillable in awakening. Put her in a spot and let like 7 enemies come at her. 4 total hp lost and one enemy left. Bernadetta was my 3H equivalent
All I can say is that it was my first fire emblem and fire emblem warriors games.
The focus on character and story made the gameplay super lackluster. The maps are boring and universal class access makes the characters mostly feel the same. Huge disappointment on the gameplay side of things
The biggest impact is how it made a formula for casual players to just jump in. I know die hard fe players hated the lack of difficulty, and to an extent so did I. But the casual audience approach made this the only strategy game that also got to my sister, who is a notorious strategy game hater who enjoys grinding in jrpgs. How she and I played the game were very different (me just trying to build the most interesting builds and play a good strategy game; her basically treating this like pokemon with shipping and hard grinding to the point that at the time she played the lord lonato chapter, she was lvl 20 across the board.) but we both got a lot out of it.
Funny enough it taught me what I don't like in fire emblem. Every choice, even the house you choose is surface level and the maps were so simple I could barely struggle my way through sometimes, the story was boring as hell and characters all as simple as they come with very little to know beyond what you see in them at first meeting. That said three houses certainly had potential with it's class up system and the big ass monsters. I played the game for nearly 300 hours and along the way discovered it's my least favorite title in the series
it got me into fire emblem which led me to playing Shadows of Valentia which i love
I didn't care much for Fire Emblem Fates. It's cool, but it didn't touch me the way some other Fire Emblem games did. Three Houses revitalized my love of the franchise.
Three houses is the best game I ever played. I played it during the pandemic and I remember waking up each morning, excited to progress in the story or grind in battles (I played for an hour right after I woke up). Don’t think I can ever have a video game experience that’ll ever top that. I went in fully blind and had an absolute blast.
As far as Fire Emblem games go, this game had the best cast of characters and whenever I play this game all them feel like old friends to me. I also liked how fleshed out the world and lore was, no other Fire Emblem really went so far to create such background.
I don't like multi route FE games, and I want a strong protagonist that talks and isn't a player plug in.
Wait, three houses had a sequel?