Reviews from

in the past


This is the game that is responsible for me falling in love with tactic/strategy games. I remember blasting through the game during my exam season and being unable to put it down. The branching story is amazing and currently I've only played Edelgard's route but I have been feeling tempted to try and play the other two. I loved that the main character is a teacher and the dynamic with the students is adorable. All of the characters were well written and evolved throughout the story. The combat is super addicting and engaging. The music and art were also on another level. An amazing all around game.

Getting more in-depth into the issues with the class system, at first glance its designed so that any unit can go into any class and for the most part, they’ll preform their role in that class well. Adding to this, every unit has a different set of spell lists, combat arts and different innate talents in certain abilities, and weaknesses in others. A select few characters also possess hidden talents which when maxed while turn that ability from a neutrality into a talent, in addition to unlocking a skill related to that talent. On paper this sounds like a highly customizable system, but in practice it fails to encourage this customization. Despite the many class options most of them do not gave much to set them apart besides the mastery skill they grant once you master said class, and even those suck outside of a select few. It leads to a system where you get given a wide range of options, with a select fee of them being the implicit “correct” option. For instance Lysithea despite having a hidden talent in swords is geared exclusively toward the fully magic oriented class tree of Warlock > Gremory. It isnt helped that many of the class choices for certain weapon specializations are bad, leading to strange combinations. For instance any units that prefer to use swords do not have any master class options that help buff their sword usage outside of the magic focused mortal savant class, and have to rely on the inferior swordmaster advanced class. The biggest obstacle in class customization being gender locking. Certain classes are flat out unobtainable if the character is a guy or a girl, and some of the genderlocked choices happen to be the best for certain unit types. Gremory is by far the best magic type class, yet is accessible to women only, leaving any male magic oriented characters with no option except the vastly inferior mortal savant or dark/holy knight. meanwhile the best physical combat class, War Master, is male exclusive, despite there being a large portion of female characters that are heavily oriented toward being a war master, and have to contend with being stuck in warrior or becoming a Wyvern Lord. In the end, the experience becomes less like you are customizing characters and more like you are customizing classes.You could try to attempt to make some of the niche choices work but they will preform far far worse and will require far more resources to make them into those niche choices. In the end, most people playing the game, be they casual or Veteran, will end up slotting the same characters into the same classes, rather than having a variety of them.

Beginning to think Edelgard stans have caused major damage within the FE community

81 hours later and I finally finished one route out of five

Hoo boy....

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed this game a lot. I mean I was bound to. It's basically everything I like about Fire Emblem and more.

I picked the Golden Deer house because I've heard so many memes about this route and I wanted context. And yep, it's pretty damn wacky, especially the final map.

The combat is great as usually, I love the freedom of choice between classes. I do wish there were more weapons in the game. I had a lot lance users because more of the classes require leveling up lances. But eh, I wouldn't say that's a con or anything.

The English VAs are great, none come to the same level as SoV VAs but that's alright. I appreciate them going out of their way to voice everything.

The ost is alright, I'm not crazy about it. But now thinking about it, I never really a huge fan of FEs ost in general, aside from SoV.

The supports in this game are really wild. They range from really fantastic to absolutely awful. Which hurts a lot of characters who have really good premises but horrible execution cough cough Manuela, Ingrid cough cough.

The pacing in this route can be really off. Which is a very unique con to have on a FE game for me personally. The first half of the game is alright no problems there. But the second half, is kind of a big yikes.

(Spoilers) We spend so many chapters just preparing to attack defeat the Flame Emperor. And then we just get the full meat of the overall plot for Byleth and lore all dumped to us in the last two chapters.

WHAT?! HUH?! WHY?!

That's so lame, so much missed opportunities. I wanted to learn more about Shambhala, it looks so futuristic. Especially compare to the rest of Fódlan. Even learning about who the Shambhala descendants are, doesn't explain anything about the place. We also don't learn anything about the Final Boss, like why are they evil. I get why the one we fight is evil but why was the real one evil. I needed more, so much of the context felt heavily mishandled. Especially Rhea and Jeralt, they could do so much more with them but they don't. They hype up these characters but in the plot they serve as a hinderance more than anything else. (End of Spoilers)

Anyways, like I said earlier, this was only one of five other routes. Maybe they have hidden away some of my greater interest in the other routes or maybe not and I'll forever feel sad.

you people like those mediocre crackers too much


Three Houses might possibly be the most divided I have ever felt with a game. For everything amazing this game does, there is something terrible that meets its match, and I am not sure it fully balances out.

This is the most in-depth world building and character writing we have seen in the series since Tellius. But the actual story is terribly told, paced and structured so it doesn’t hit as it should. Unit building is complex and free form, making it one of the most flexible and customizable games in the series. But the map design is weak, and balance is out the window, making for a mediocre gameplay experience that sacrifices unit individuality in favor of little substance. This is one of the most ambitious games in the entire series, with fully explorable environments, in-depth unit building, and three different stories with their own unique casts! But the monastery drags, unit building is tedious, and it’s arguable this should have been a game with two story paths at most. It has some really standout female writing for a JRPG, building some extremely strong willed and memorable women with some great social commentary of the patriarchy! BUT…but actually I don’t have anything bad to say about this. Edelgard hype is justified, she is unlike anything else I have ever seen in the genre. But everything else, and I mean, EVERYTHING ELSE feels like great ideas with questionable execution at best.

Three Houses is frustrating because it’s close to being the excellent game it tries to be, but at the same time it's also so far away from its lofty ambitions. It’s even more frustrating this is the most popular game in the series, because it tries to be more of a life-sim RPG hybrid than the strategy game series I actually cared about. A real fear of mine was that this would be the direction of the series going forwards, and while Engage thankfully proved me wrong (for now) this will always be a dark sheep in the franchise for me.

Three Houses is a mess I respect, because its sheer ambition is commendable, but a mess nevertheless. As a tactical RPG it is mediocre, and as a narrative experience it wobbles. Deserved Three more years in the oven, me thinks.
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I have had some specific beef with this game for the longest time, to a point I refused to buy a Switch and play it, even as a massive fan of the series. As an addendum I will post some of this beef as scattered thoughts, so that you can hopefully understand why it’s one of my least favorite games in the series.

-This is without a doubt the most viscerally ugly game I have ever played. I have hated the work of Chinatsu for the longest time, long before TH was announced, and her work here is just as terrible. I find most character designs painfully dull, if not outright repulsive. The graphics and presentation are somehow worse? Poor cinematics, poor textures, poor scene direction, poor menus... This is a game that makes me mad over how ugly it is.

-The concept of playing as a teacher, with your students as the rest of the playable cast, was off-putting to me. When you add being able to date them into the mix, regardless of their age, it’s genuinely uncomfortable. I will clarify I don’t judge people for not sharing my sentiment, I am aware it’s a personal thing.

-I have played and enjoyed plenty of homophobic, transphobic and well, generally morally questionable games, but Three Houses is one of the only ones that genuinely made me FURIOUS over how its male gay romance options were treated. It’s a pity because this game was a giant step for lesbian romance in FE.

-This is partly my fault for pirating this on the Deck, but the text size is TINY. I haven’t played a game that strained my eyesight this badly in forever.

-Hottest take? I think the overall cast is a mixed bag and I can’t agree with the common fanbase perception of being the best in the series at all. The house setup understandably sets the entire house as the main characters for that specific route, but the reality is that some characters are a lot worse and irrelevant than others. I think Blue Lions are probably the best of the three main casts, I am generally positive on most of them and their chemistry as a group (at least from the little I saw), but I found some real stinkers in Black Eagles and Golden Deer that negatively impact the experience in a way the series had never struggled in the past. Most Fire Emblem games have some really bad characters, but they were rarely the ones shoved at the player’s direction. It’s important to remember the series was explicitly built in a way where you could create the army that you wanted with your favorites, and it worked beautifully. Choosing a whole cast of characters you know nothing about at the start of the game that hopefully you like to carry the huge majority of the narrative is ass backwards to the philosophy of the series.

-I touched on it before but I really dislike how manual unit building and everyone being a blank slate is a core element of the experience. Fire Emblem is at its best when each character feels unique and interesting. Stats, skills, levels, classes… they can tell so much about a character with no words. I think how effortlessly the series flew over concerns of ludo narrative dissonance was a strong reason why I fell utterly in love with it. I am not going to deny experimentation isn’t great and healthy, but this is a similar case as Radiant Dawn and Genealogy for me, where the experimentation directly hurts core elements of the experience I love and replaces it for… a half assed teaching simulator I didn’t want.

-Three Houses’ premise, tone and character interactions fall apart in a conceptual level that bothers me a lot. Why are the heirs of these three territories participating in mercenary missions and putting their lives at risk? In fact, why do the nobles push for their children to join the monastery, instead of breeding armies of crest babies? Why can the students move between houses so freely without no political repercussions? Why are most of the students interacting with each other so casually, when they are directly interacting with high-rank nobles that could (and will) completely shape their future? If you don’t take your premise seriously, it’s hard to take anything seriously.

-I still love this franchise in its current state, but probably the most boomer doomer elitist thing about it I can state is that the turn wheel may have permanently damaged the series. It was already bad in Echoes. It’s terrible in Three Houses and it directly affects the game design in very negative ways. Why do so many people defend it? Guys, this is not the Classic vs Casual debate, this actually affects the core game design of the entire experience. I try to completely ignore the turn wheel in my playthroughs (and fail, because it’s so damn tempting), but I cannot ignore terrible enemy reinforcement spam if I play in Maddening. Let’s not even mention how the narrative bends around it’s inclusion very poorly.

FE3H budgeting

- Plot: $3
- Worldbuilding: $35
- Gameplay: $100
- 80% of the characters: $10000000
- Graphics: $15
- Soundtrack: $20

Someone who is good at game development help me my family is dying

excellent gameplay, horrible writting. Like, attrocious. Like a lot of their characters make no god damn sense. Intsys love writing trope based characters with no personality in their little war game and ull have some guy who just loves eating in the middle of a war for their country like damn man i wish i was eating lol. Some characters are great, some i could not give less of a shit Plot makes no god damn sense most of the time, it makes no sense that crimson flower is the shortest route, and verdant wind makes no sense Also the church sucks. Yes ive played like 350+ hours of this game.

Finished Black Eagles and working on Golden Deer right now. The characters in this are phenomenal. This truly feels like a real world with real people in it, just with a bit more flourish. I think my only real complaint about it is that I wish it would let you do the other routes a bit more easily and without having to retread everything every time.

Fire Emblem serisine hiç hakimiyetim yoktur. Bu oyuna da üzerimde çok fazla baskının olduğu bir dönemde kafamı dağıtayım diye başlamıştım. Başladım başlamasına ama cidden nasıl bir bataklığa düştüğümü anlatamadan yavaş yavaş batıyordum. Batıyordum diyorum ama kötü anlamda değil. Three Houses o kadar fazla içine çekmişti ki beni neredeyse o zorlu dönemimden beni alıp uzunca bir maceranın içine atmıştı. Hikaye olarak bir akademide profesör olarak başlayıp öğrencilerimiz şakalaşıp sonrasında savaş alanlarında düşmanlarla çarpışmak ayır bir keyifliydi. Birde bu çeşit taktiksel bir oynanışa sahip oyun oynamamışken benim için iyi bir deneyim oldu. Öncelikle oyuna beni en çok bağlayan etmeni anlatmak istiyorum. Oyunun başında seçtiğimiz eve göre o eve mensup olan karakterleri muhataba alıyoruz. Bu arada kesinlikle tavsiyem Blue Lions evini seçmenizdir. Blue Lions evindeki çoğu karakterin gelişimi fazlasıyla kayda değer ve ilgi çekici olduğunu düşünüyorum. Karakterler dışında oynanışı bana çok uzak gelmiş olsa da ilk seferinde beni içine çekmeyi başardı. O kadar akıcı ve hamleni doğru yapmanı isteyen bir yapıyla hazırlanmış ki oynadığım her dakika ayrı keyif aldım.
Oynanış dışında hikayede tam istediğim bir tat içeriyordu. Fantastik bir dünyada hem okul yaşantısı, insan ilişkileri, aşk, komplolar, savaş, trajedi vs. Three Houses bu konuları çok güzel sunan bir yapımdı.

A good evolution of the Fire Emblem formula, and I think one that in time will remain one of the franchise's highlights.

There's a lot wrong with it. Despite splitting its story between four routes, actually playing them all is kind of a nightmare, because most maps repeat between them and going through all of them will cause massive burnout. I should know, I did them all in a row, it was an awful idea. I don't like Byleth as they are, and think their presence takes focus away from the more interesting side of the story, which is the politics and the leaders of the Three Houses.

But ultimately, it's an interesting step forward for the franchise in terms of gameplay, and a pretty great story overall. A flawed game, maybe, but a worthwhile one anyways.

This review contains spoilers

(Beat Crimson Flower on Hard.)

Three Houses has one of the more interesting Fire Emblem stories by virtue of actually having themes (and surprisingly ambitious ideas about class, religion, and war--though I don't know if every path is quite as interesting or as complex as the Black Eagles') and branching paths that make at least a couple of your choices genuinely matter. However, exploration of these big ideas is occasionally too spread out by repetitive story beats. Take a shot for every "here's a never-before-mentioned place of strategic significance, we need it!" mission. These less dramatic moments are at least elevated by a charming cast of characters. Even if they lean into archetypal anime tropes a bit too much, they remain memorable, and reading through Support conversations is always a highlight--so long as you don't have so many back-to-back that you get sick of them.

Story missions are interspersed with vignettes with gorgeous, pseudo-medieval art. I honestly wish all of the game's portraits and designs were done in this style; it stands out in a powerful way. Still, the clean and decidedly modern anime-style art the game ended up with looks good in its own right.

The bulk of your time, however, will be spent on leisurely Persona-style social and teaching sequences at the monastery. These start out charming, but by the end, they start to feel like going through the motions. There is very little unique content here; it's all just a few si simplistic mechanics, repeated dozens of times. This only accentuates how bare it really is. You might get to read a few dialogue boxes where characters comment vaguely on the current narrative goings-on. You might find a lost item, which involves guesstimating who might have lost it (god forbid you be able to ask other students "who do you think this might belong to?" to get to know the characters better) or, if you care enough to even bother, just asking everyone until you get it right. You might have teatime, where you simulate having a conversation with someone to raise your bond. This sounds neat--more conversations with dialogue choices, great, even if it is just a frivolous slice-of-life minigame. Except, in contrast to the support conversations, teatime offers no actual conversation to read, just the suggestion of one. It's not awful, but it all rings slightly hollow. It clearly wants to crib from content-rich JRPGs with life-sim elements like Persona. It's been a while since I played Persona 5, so maybe I'm misremembering, but I recall the depth and quality of the side content being worlds beyond Three Houses' offerings, even if Atlus's games have their fair share of padding too. It's cool to see Fire Emblem tried something new, but it seems like there was a mismatch between their scope and their resources here.

You can automate these parts, but given that you miss out on making choices which meaningfully impact your units' performance during the fun part of the game, it just feels bad to do so. You can also spend your free time playing side battles, which are typically only interesting when tied to a character's backstory. Otherwise, they feel like shameless grinding opportunities when they're easy, and time-wasters when they're not. Three Houses has about 25 hours of the best Fire Emblem game ever in it, but the game is a generous 60 hours.

Within missions, the gameplay is as smooth as ever. The level design isn't always the most interesting, but it's consistently serviceable. Fire Embem's famous "weapon triangle"--axe beats lance beats sword beats axe--is technically gone, but it's just replaced with optional abilities that achieve nearly the same thing, so it's only sort of gone. The abilities themselves can be a bit overwhelming (and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize you can swap them out for new ones)--there's a lot of room for character customization and optimization, but without actually learning how the formulas for the different stats work, it's all a bit much to keep track of. I'm sure there's plenty to chew on for the hardcore challenge runners out there, but for those of us who just enjoy fiddling around with the classes and abilities that look fun, I'm not sure if all those options meaningfully improved my experience, since I never felt encouraged to experiment and actually learn how best to use them.

Monsters are one of the big new mechanics, and they kind of suck. Occasionally, they make for interesting strategic choices, but they're often just annoying bags of hit points and gambit tollbooths. They do require you adapt your strategy, but in my experience, that often just meant "do everything in your power to kill them in one turn, and if you can't, play extremely conservatively until you can." After their introduction, I don't think I ever saw a monster without groaning.

Divine Pulse feels like a great addition that reflects how people actually play Fire Emblem--sure, characters can die, but I will reload 99% of the time that happens. The other 1% is when it happens to a character I don't love in the final mission (rest in peace Hubert, Alois, and Ferdinand, who died in the name of killing the pope). Now, I don't have to reload. I can just get back to having fun in seconds rather than minutes (though I wish I didn't have to skip to my turn to use it every time a non-essential character dies; it's a difference of seconds, but I felt every one of those seconds). The later levels are balanced around having over a dozen or so rewinds, which is objectively fair, but more annoying than interesting in play. The abundance of unpredictable reinforcements and monsters in this stretch of the game feels like a deliberate attrition on Pulses. I think I would prefer a lighter touch on difficulty with more limited rewinds.

Still, for as many little issues as I have, Fire Emblem is fundamentally fun, and this game, for better and worse, is a whole lot of Fire Emblem. I would love to see a title with Three Houses' ambition and depth mixed with the tightness (and the stylish pixel art, while I'm asking for things that will never happen) of the GBA games. Until then, this game will have to do.

if this were fire emblem: fates and each house leader got their own game, they'd be called
fire emblem: girlboss gatekeep gaslight
fire emblem: they don't know i have daddy issues
fire emblem: himbo hooters


It's like navigating your Private Catholic High School but you're all war criminals.

I don't think I've ever played a game like this, they achieved something quite special.

The first route you play is going to be very influential since that is how you are going to interpret the story and it is probably going to be the characters and the ideal that you have the most affection for.

Each route has its weight and I strongly recommend playing them all, don't get stuck with just one.

Each faction has its point of view and each route has its pros and cons to be considered canon or not, really at the end of the day the game doesn't really have antagonists (with a few exceptions) or a canon route, it all depends on the perspective and what is the ideal you want to follow.

The story has really epic moments and many others that are going to make you feel countless emotions, and it intensifies more with each new route you do since you are going to know all the background of the characters from other routes.

This new entry also adds a new free roam mode where you can walk and interact with other characters in the school, to be honest, is cool at the beginning, and talking with each character in the school is always cool but regarding the activities, there's not that much to do, and the few activities that are available don't really matter that much, so at the end of the day, you will just probably just go talk and skip most activities because they're just there to get a few goodies and to make the game longer, they get kinda monotone and boring.

The soundtrack has really memorable songs and in summary it is good, the weakest area of the game is definitively the graphics, many low-quality textures, and many scenarios that do not look that good, the character models are probably one of the few only things that it looks really good in terms of visuals along with the cutscenes.

Leaving that aside strongly recommended title!

My first route was Crimson Flower (Edelgard's Route)

And I did each one in the following order:
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Crimson Flower (Edelgard) > Silver Snow (Church) > Azure Moon (Dimitri) > Verdant Wind (Claude)
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My second FE game after Shadows of Valentia. Greatly enjoyed my time with it despite underwhelming visuals and some infuriating story decisions. Sylvain best boi.

Crimson Flower is the only route.

Hey! I wanted to say thanks for coming at me with this respectfully. I do have to say I didn't feel comfortable replying because of your user name, since it kind of implies you hate me for having a crest? But the tone of the reply made it seem like you were genuine. So thanks.

Playing through Azure Moon was a really stellar experience, but after finishing it I realized there were three other whole campaigns to the game that I just didn't give a shit about.

black eagles route - absolutely unhinged i loved it

I would gladly smoke a bong with lindhardt

Odd music choices, boring social sim elements riddled with fetch quests and monotony, reused content between routes and poor balancing among many other things make this the second weakest Fire Emblem game in my eyes. But its also still Fire Emblem so its still perfectly enjoyable. These are just my personal extreme nitpicks, and chances are if you can look past them, or if this is your first Fire Emblem, you'll like this.

It doesn't even feel like a Fire Emblem game until part II, and even then, that's where the writing falls off. Dimitri and Edelgard are hypocrites, Rhea and the church are full of shit, and Claude wants to end racism I guess?? I mean his route is honestly written far better than the others probably because his inclusion feels like a last ditch effort to add a "Neutral" route of sorts, where you don't side with any extreme party. None of your choices matter aside from the house you choose, because instead of the route split taking place at the midway point, y'know, the part of the game where the content for each route actually starts being different (at least story wise. Most of the maps are re-used between routes, lol.), its at the very beginning, and you're locked into that for the whole game, unless you chose Black Eagles because they gave that route a route split of its own and not the others for some reason.

Cursor and map movement feels sluggish compared to pretty much every game prior, meaning making satisfying, quick decisions through menuing is basically gone, though the switch's d-pad being as bad as it is doesn't help matters. Map design is definitely better than Fates' Birthright and Revelation offerings, but that isn't a high bar, and Conquest still trounces Three Houses in this area. Its clear that this game absolutely LOVES ambush spawns, especially mid-turn ones. Normally I'd praise the turnwheel for allowing players to undo strategic mistakes instead of just soft resetting to circumvent permadeath, but a lot of maps seem to use it as a crutch for bad, unfair map design (especially in maddening) instead of being a proper qol feature.

There's a notably low production value compared to not only the 3ds games, but almost everything that came before it. The cutscenes aren't as well animated and in many cases a fade to black or still image pop-up is shown instead of what's assumedly happening. Every character conversation uses the same, still, warped pngs instead of having characters actually appear in 3d areas like in awakening and fates, or beautifully illustrated stills like in echoes. The fact that supports are encouraged far more here than any other game, given the social sim monestary sections, and them basically being required to recruit characters aside from reaching the bloated stat thresholds makes this ever more apparent.

Byleth is probably one of, if not the worst silent protagonists I've ever had the displeasure of controlling. Not only does everyone consistently suck on his inflated growth rates, stats, and long, extendable prf weapon, but he has absolutely no personality, and almost all of the multiple dialogue choices are things I wouldn't say if I were in his place. At least in the cases of Kris, Robin and Corrin, they have pre-established personalities, motives and character relationships. As "perfect" as Kris was, and as much of a mary sue as Corrin was, I'd take them over Byleth any day of the week.

Actually aquiring more units sucks. They're all locked behind the social sim stuff, or high stat thresholds, which means if you want to recruit everyone you just spam tea-time, eating together and gifts. This gets boring fast, and made up a huge chunk of my playtime, since the game punishes you for not doing this. The average FE game takes 15-30 hours, but this one took 50. Don't acknowledge any of that stuff about building supports if you're Caspar or Ferdinand, by the way, because for some reason, they are the only characters in the entire game who have their B supports locked behind timeskip, meaning you need to get their desired proficiencies up...both of which being things I wouldn't normally want to invest into Byleth. Gauntlets are at least a good weapon class, but considering Byleth's prf weapon is a sword, and mounted classes are unable to use them, there's very little incentive to invest into them. In Ferdinand's case, you need to level up Armour proficiency, because the idea of making the best unit in the game a slow armour knight with truncated movement, slow speed to compliment Hard mode enemies' unreasonably higher scaled speed stats and lack of Swordfaire sure sounds like the optimal build choice. Needless to say, I only found out about this in the last month of part 1, which also gives you fewer opportunities to do faculty training, when there are only two faculty members (with one being completely abscent for several chapters) who even increase armour rank. I was able to recruit Caspar, but Ferdinand being relegated to the only unrecruited character on the route I chose really rubbed me the wrong way.

What's worse is that, during the war phase, you can't convince them to join you, like you'd normally be able to in any other Fire Emblem game. You're forced to kill them, because the clear conditions for the maps that they show up in are "Defeat all commanders", and any playable unit in part 1 is dictated to be a commander by the map designers. Oh, but there's actually a single, arbitrary recruitable character per route for some reason. Yes, some characters that you recruit in part 1 become recruitable enemies in part 2, but you just have to beat them with Byleth and you get them back. There's no unique recruitment conversation between the enemy and an army member of yours that they have a connection to, they just say "Okay! You beat me professor, since you decided to spare me I'll join you!", and become playable again going forward or in the case of unrecruitable characters in part 2 - even if their best friend, or cousin, or sibling, or whatever tries to fight them, its always a "fight to the death". Why does, for example, in Black Eagles, only Lysithea get to join you and proceed to murder her former classmates, but even though Claude can be spared on the very same map, Hilda can't? Even when confronted by Balthus, or Marianne?

One thing that I personally hate, (though this is more of a personal nitpick than a genuine criticism towards the game), is the lack of unit identity. In any other FE game, characters join with a specific class, stats, growths, but in this game, any character can be anything. Yes, Awakening, Fates and Echoes all had sandbox-y elements when it came to building characters, but they still had established roles, professions and boons. This mostly doesn't matter since unrecruited characters have specific class paths that they take as the game progresses, which they keep when joining you, and characters that you start with come with pre-existing boons and banes or have story related classes or promotions. This is still very different from the fixed classes and roles of previous entries, and it changes my choice of units from "who would be best to deploy to handle this map's enemies" to "I'll just level the girls with big boobs (and Lindhart) into mostly fliers, horse riders and support bots". My biggest complaint regarding this rears its head when it comes to the Dancer class. I hate how, instead of the game allocating a dancer for me, I have to sacrifice one of my combat units to become a support bot. I chose Marianne, since I consulted forums on who the best option was, yet she finished the game having a higher magic stat than some of my other offensive mages. I still tried giving her levels in reason and faith, but it didn't matter because she was dancing half the time anyway, especially in the late-game maps that I 1-2 turned because my patience with the game was reaching its limit. She became a valuable part of my army, yes, but she was relegated to dancing out of enemy range so that my other characters could get all the work done, instead of doing more. You can't allocate more than one student as a dancer either, so she's locked into the class, and not using it would be a waste.

I don't have much to say for the soundtrack besides it being this weird orchestral-dubstep mishmash. It doesn't sound like fire emblem until the map themes in part 2, and even then the soundtrack is very derivative of itself, with a lot of tracks using the same recycled motif. It doesn't have the same feeling as the triumphant military marches of Archanaea or Jugdral, the boisterous, striking, orchestral themes of Tellius, Ylisse and Valentia, or even the culturally relevant European and Japanese tracks of Fates. To this game's credit though, God Shattering Star is fantastic, but it also only heard at the very end of the game.

Needless to say, I didn't like this much, even as a longtime FE fan. I may get branded as an elitist, but I actually started with Awakening and still like it a lot today. I don't think three houses is actually a bad video game, but its certainly a bad Fire Emblem game.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a medieval fantasy delight for trpg/srpg and visual novel fans. With lovely aspects of Irish lore, French aesthetics, and Germanic-inspired naming conventions, the game never felt like less than an absolute pleasure.

FE3H was my first game in the series, and I finished my first and second playthroughs in late 2020. It was an excellent introduction to the franchise. Besides having a highly pleasing overworld and artstyle (call it muddy if you will and muddy it was but i liked it), the voice acting is superb, and character development is rich. Oh, and the music is fantastic and immersive as well.

The story takes place in a medieval multiverse on the fictional continent of Fodlan, which is divided into three historically rival nations. Thus, the "three houses" refer to factions of these respective nations at the Garreg Mach Monastery, a neutral territory and base for members of the Church of Seiros that lies at the center of the land.

The gameplay itself is split into two major phases: school (classroom skill training, tutoring, one-on-one interactions, side quests, etc.) and combat (central battle gameplay, cutscenes, and story progression). The school phase has some aspects of open-world, training, and exploration, but it can feel limiting in some respects. I did enjoy how you can choose which NPC's to invest your time in. Subsequently, these school interactions yield extra cutscenes/lore AND increase cohesion during battle (unlocks combos between characters). I also enjoyed how customizable the class system is, and the idea of building and refining your team. As for battles, they're long, exciting, require strategy, and feel rewarding. Did I mention that the music is phenomenal?

The player, Byleth, will be fighting alongside whatever faction they initially chose: Black Eagles (Edelgard), Blue Lions (Dimitri), or Golden Deer (Claude). Your team is placed on a gameboard similar to that of chess but much more extensive; enemies scattered about, terrain, elements, and other environmental factors. Each character can be considered a chess piece with different roles, varying levels of mobility across the board, distinct classes, etc. Because each faction is larger than the permitted number of characters allowed on the gameboard, the player must decide which NPC's to invest their time in and ultimately utilize for battle scenarios.

The base game alone has a VERY high replay value...Did I mention there's DLC that's equally as fantastic?! You'll want to play each of the three factions, experience the diverse characters, their lore, and the DLC. Because this is a visual novel, there's much to see here. Highly highly highly recommend this gem. P.S. Marianne is the best character.


Kill them all. Don't let a single one of them escape.
SEVER THEIR LIMBS AND CRUSH THEIR WICKED SKULLS!

I loved this game at first but the more I played it the less I liked it. You choose one of three houses at the very start of the game. No matter which route you pick the maps and plot will be the same, the only difference being your students. You can easily recruit students from other houses though aside from one or two people which are locked to a certain house. On my second playthrough I recruited every recruit-able person before even halfway through the game. So what house you pick doesn't really matter at first.
After the halfway point the three routes split to be completely different. The Black Eagles route feels unfinished. Not only is is significantly shorter than the other routes, but the story also doesn't have a true conclusion. We know there's still more people to fight, but we don't get to do it.
The Black Eagles route has a route split right at the halfway point for you to instead join with the church. This route is pointless as it has the same maps and cutscenes as the Golden Deer route aside from the final map. Don't bother with it. However, you might accidentally end up doing it because it's easier to get forced into this route than to do the actual Black Eagles route.
The Blue Lions route is the most unique and finished route in the game, but the story mainly hinges on a misunderstanding, which is especially annoying if this route isn't your first. As the player I clearly know the answer and could solve the conflict in a single sentence, but I don't get to and instead I just watch the world burn.
Also this game has one of the worst maps in all of Fire Emblem: Hunting By Daybreak. As I mentioned it's very easy to recruit other units, so in my second playthrough I used units from different houses. However, this is the only map that makes you use only units from the house you chose at the start, regardless of if you've leveled them or not.
Anyway, it's almost a good game. The characters are detailed and their side stories are often pretty interesting, but the gameplay has huge problems. The common route is too long, the monastery parts are repetitive, the class system encourages units to often pick the same class, etc.


8/10
Não irei detalhar ou me aprofundar tanto nesse comentário sobre three houses.

O primeiro ato é bacana, tanto em gameplay quanto narrativa, funciona.
Mas aí vem o segundo ato.
Sendo curto e direto, só a golden deer é uma rota muito boa.
Ainda que tradicional, é BEM EXECUTADA.
O drama dela não é tão potente, mas o suficiente, os personagens dessa casa são todos memoráveis e carismáticos, as fases são um misto, algumas é só encher linguiça e outras são boas e a fase final é AWESOME.

Azure moons tem um drama muito falho e um tom mais agressivo e cruel falho também....
Os diálogos dessa rota são muito edgy, mas eles não beiram o inacreditável, apenas é forçado, existem muitos elementos nessa parte que são utilizados para deixar toda aquela situação mais crivel, mas temos um problema, os plot twist dessa rota realmente não me agrada e deixa uma questão no ar que não é respondida em nenhuma outra rota, nem nessa... triste.

No fim azure moons tem alguns personagens que acho carismático e alguns que não tanto mas tem uma bom background e desenvolvimento, então suave.

Num geral as fases dessa rota são exaustivas, mas são boas, com exceção de 3 mapas, mas aí suave.

Eu realmente não gosto de azure moon, pois é uma rota pretensiosa, mas eu sinto que ela consegue debater algo, mas o texto e o diálogo é forçado e muito conveniente num nível alto, ainda assim uma boa rota.

Agora a rota da edelgard, lixo.
A duração dela é curta o suficiente pra não desenvolver o suficiente os temas e a trama e fica algo flácido, sem dúvida foi um desgosto quase tudo nessa rota, tirando os personagens que mais uma vez carismático e bom desenvolvimento.

A conclusão tem um ponto interessante, mas sendo sincero eu não, eu importo, não tem impacto suficiente e fiquei indiferente.

Terminei com gosto amargo.

My first Fire Emblem game which was very enjoyable. I've played the Golden Deer route and Black Eagles routes so far and plan to play the two other routes sometime in the future.