REACH FOR MY HANDDD, I'LL SOAR AWAYYY, INTO THE DAWNNN, OH I WISH I COULD STAYYYY!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the sixteenth installment of the series Fire Emblem. As much as I like to joke about the game, I really enjoyed my time with the game, and from time to time I actually come back and play it. If I could describe it, it's essentially a persona-fied fire emblem, and that's not a bad thing, I love both series. It's definitely a lot different for people used to classic Fire Emblem but I think it has enough going for it to be a great game.

Just want to say that this was the first Fire Emblem game I completed. I had previously started Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright but got extremely bored near the end and never finished it, so this review may be a littleeeee biased, but I'll try to be as objective as possible!

Now, let's talk about the story, which I will try to keep spoiler-less. I love the concept of 'Three Houses' and us, as the protagonist having the choice of what house to teach as a professor. The game interests me with it's deep lore and many organisations, like the Church of Seiros, and then we have the three nations of Adrestia, Faerghus, and The Leicester Alliance. I'm a sucker for world building so I just love all of the lore about the game and it really gets me to hyperfixate on it. Now, time to talk about the actual story. The starting chapters make sense, considering every unit you have besides the protagonist is a student that isn't accustomed to fighting and killing, so no marks off for me. For the most part, I actually enjoy most of White Clouds, with peak being Chapter 7 (imo). I will say one major flaw I have with the story in this game. I just feel like the game is terribly designed for a replay, especially for a game that emphasises 'Three Houses' and therefore multiple routes that you can do. At the time, I had no issue replaying White Clouds three times in the span of the month, I was in the Fire Emblem rabbit hole, but now that I think back to it, that's probably what has drained me from Fire Emblem for a little bit. Honestly, that's really one of the only faults I have with White Clouds, it's essentially a set-up for the second-half of the game. Depending on the house you chose, you get a specific route to play, and I've played the three main ones so I'll focus my review on those three. I feel like Crimson Flower is good, but the ending just isn't it for me. It feels like we have a lot more to do, but it just ends. However, Crimson Flower has my favourite map of the game in the final chapter, so it doesn't lose that much points from me. Azure Moon seems much more cohesive (in my personal opinion and from what I'm remembering, it's been almost 5 years give me a break). Azure Moon seems much more character-driven, and that's probably why I enjoy it more. Not to mention I think I just enjoy the characters in Azure Moon much more. Verdant Wind was my starting route and probably my favourite because of how epic it is. Though, I dislike how much it shares in common with Silver Snow, but I guess there were time restraints in development time? Overall, I enjoy the story, and although there might be a couple of loose threads, they aren't terrible by any means.

Now time to talk about the characters. I enjoyed them a lot, and the three house leaders do make a good first impression, but Claude will forever be my favourite character. I wish we got to interact a bit more with the characters from each house before making a decision. I love seeing the supports between different students as I just love seeing the different interactions and situations that each support goes through. I enjoy the faculty and how much some of them bicker with each other, I love it. Also, I can't forget mentioning the ultimate Gatekeeper, what a great character. I actually don't think there's a single character I hate in this game, I might be meh on some, but there's none I can really say I hate (unless they're antagonists but I believe that's the point of what an antagonist should be).

Gameplay! This game was my first true introduction to fire emblem, and I enjoyed the gameplay. I want to start by saying that I played this game on Normal because for some reason I just suck at Fire Emblem on hard mode. There's Combat Arts, Crests, Gambits, and Hero's Relics. Combat Arts are interesting because they have different properties and consume a different amount of durability on a weapon depending on the type of combat art you used. Some can even hit from multiple tiles away. Crests are innately built into some characters kits based on a lore reason that I won't delve too deep into. Essentially they provide the wielder with a specific effect that enhance their combat capabilities. Some of them are quite good when they actually activate. I enjoy them, but I don't go out of my way to get them to work. Gambits are new to Fire Emblem, and this comes with monster enemies having multiple HP bars that need to be depleted in order to defeat the enemy. Gambits can hit multiple squares and can stun these monster enemies, and some even have supporitve properites like increasing movement or healing. I love abusing Stride on certain maps to achieve the win condition in one turn. I'll be honest, I rarely used Hero's Relics because I hate having to go to the armory to repair them with specific material that I may not have. Although, they're good to have when I might be unable to kill an enemy unless I use a Hero's Relic. Also, I want to talk about the elephant in the room, which are the Certifications. I love how they made it so that every character can become any class (except gender specific ones), but that is kind of made obsolete thanks to the fact that certain classes are just superior to others, and some are just not worth the investment. It's also painful to get skills from specific classes because of the number of times you have to engage in battles with enemies. Despite what I've said, I enjoy the gameplay in this game.

MUSIC. My favourite part. The music slaps. Edge of Dawn is GOATed. The battle themes arer so intense that they just make me pumped. The Spirit Dais is just so mysterious and it fits the theme. And he monastery themes are honestly perfect to convey the start of a chapter compared to the end of a chapter when you embark on a mission. Overall, great music.

Okay, I think it's time to actually talk about the main elephant in the room, which is the Monastery. As a concept, it's great, an explorable main-hub where you can do multiple things, such as improving stats on your protagonist, raising your support level with other units, tea time, gifts, buying things from the marketplace, gardening, fishing, petting animals, battling at the training ground, cooking, eating meals with different units, doing choir, and talking to the many NPCs around the monastery. Those are all great additions and the little sidequests make you go all around the monastery, however, on replays, the monastery is kind of draining. And if you decide to slack off at the monastery, then you're kind of screwing yourself over because there are just so many benefits that come from the monastery. Honestly, I enjoy the monastery, but I know that it is one of the main complaints of the game.

And finally, let's talk about tutoring/seminars. I actually like being able to set a course for each unit in terms of what stats they should aim to improve. They get different combat arts, and some units have budding talents that give them a boost when they are fully ranked up. Honestly, I have zero complaints with this system, except when you get a terrible session and all of their motivation goes down, that sucks.

Overall, this is a great entry into fire emblem if you're coming from some more story-focused games, though there are other entries into the series that might be a little better. I highly highly highly recommend you play this game! It's great!

The saying "it's the journey, not the destination" couldn't be more true. After over 70 hours, I was kind of surprised how abruptly everything wrapped up. 18 chapters about political intrigue and war, only for the final battle with Edlegard to kind of just happen without much fanfare. Then, the big baddies are finally revealed, only to immediately kill them lol. But wait there's more! A world ending threat appears?! That shouldn't take more than exactly one chapter to deal with...

Aside from the ending (which I thought was quite sloppy) the writing throughout the rest of the game was a bit hit or miss. The political backdrop was actually quite interesting, and seeing characters switch sides depending on where their house's allegiance was some of the best writing I've seen in a Fire Emblem game (or dare I say, in gaming in general). Then there are certain parts and dialogues (particularly in support conversations) that vary from stiff to down right comical.

Gameplay follows the writing in the middle of the road aspect. There is so much to do and so many options given to you in the "monastery" portion of the game that allow you to get stat boosting items, improve support ranks, boost skills, gain useful items and gold... only to be paired with one of the easiest Fire Emblems I've played. Ultimately the added gameplay elements introduced feel more like fluff more than anything. They added 20 or so hours to my playthrough probably, only for it to feel like it wasn't at all necessary. I maxed the supports on most of my team by the 3/4 mark without even trying for most of the playthrough, but I still have hundreds of gifts, lost items, teas, and ingredients sitting in my inventory.

Overall, really great Fire Emblem for the cast of characters and interesting story introduced, but ultimately against the larger landscape of games it doesn't hold up so well. I would suggest fans of the series to start off on a higher difficulty to avoid steamrolling the entire game and not getting much out of all the extra mechanics added.

An excellent and refreshing take on the franchise with one of the strongest and most compelling ensemble casts I have ever seen. The story & characters are handled incredibly well, and the combat & class system is opened up in a way that feels extremely fluid & fun (at first). Unfortunately, that's where the game's main drawbacks lie - the fluidity of the classes and lowered dependency on systems like the weapons triangles leads to much of the combat ending up feeling very static once you settle into things. Add in a sparse rotation of only a small number of maps and it begins to feel incredibly repetitive as you approach the latter parts of the game, however luckily the story keeps things interesting enough to make it well worth following through on. However, the story, as a whole, requires playing multiple paths to get the full bredth of, and while the New Game+ functionality allows you to skip a lot of the downtime stuff in the Monastary that soaks up a lot of time, it doesn't do anything to make the combat more interesting, the amount of changed dialogue between the paths is quite sparse also, making a hard sell to really consider pursuing. Don't get me wrong though - it's still a lot of fun, and the best tactical RPG I've played in a long time, it's just that it's main flaws in combat & class systems unfortunately kill all sense of replayability, despite the game otherwise being set up perfectly for it.

Either you love this game or you hate it. It's my first Fire Emblem so when playing, I never had any prior exceptions about what a Fire Emblem game should be. I first played on Normal-Classic. While playing I loved the concept of raising my students to become insanely busted units over the span of 40-50 hours, so much so that I refused to use any other units if they weren't apart of my class. Each character has good lore and has connections to other characters in and out of their house. Learning about them through the Persona like social sim activities is a controversial element, but slowing down the chapter to chapter gameplay makes you appreciate the characters more. I remember most units from Three Houses while for other Fire Emblem games, I only remember the most notable ones. The story is great and only gets better when you play all four routes, though I recommend spacing out runs and using the NG+ features. If I played a Fire Emblem before this, I might not have liked it as much as I do, but this is a strategy game with great writing, gameplay, soundtrack, and replay-ability. Golden Deer on top

Jueguen principalmente la ruta de Dimitri y la Ruta secreta donde decides apoyar a Edelgard qué es donde está el kinocore.

Tengo mis quejas con la de alianza así que déjenla de último o no la jueguen si ya se hartaron xd.

No recomiendo para nada la ruta de la Iglesia.

Probably the best Fire emblem experience you can have., even if it is not my personal favorite entry in the franchise.

It basically takes what Fire emblem Fates SHOULD HAVE BEEN and offer an experience that will change drastically depending on the choices you make and what House you will join.
THis, couple with a level of progression that ombines the classic gameplay formula of FE with ways to interact within the Academy and its students similar to what you do in Persona leads to a really cool gameplay loop.
Especially on second playthought this loop can feel a bit repetitive, more specifically in the first half of the story, but the amount of stuff the game makes you do doesn't make it feel particularly heavy, especially considering the incredible cast of characters: all of their traits are nothign that original in the series, but the way they interact with each other and within the world they inhabith creates a really endearing worldbuilding.

I will say I don't think that all of the routes feel at the same level: Edelgard's route specifically feels kinda rushed depending on the choices you make, and it can feel kinda divisive depending on the outcome (Edelgad herself is a kinda divisive characters in the community for various reasons, so I guess this kinda fits her eheh)

Dimitri's story is also really good and follows a really cool characters arc for him and his gang, though I feel it doesn't really lead to the bigger revelations and plot twist of the game...... and that is why GOLDEN DEER SWEEPS BAYBEE WHOOOO GOLDEN CHAD DEER SWEEPPPP

But regardless of my bias,I enjoyed all of the routes and most people will for sure: 3H is a great experience for both veterans and noobies to the series, which accompany an amazing cast of characters with a cool gameplay loop, a lot of customization and an incredible OST. One of the be FE games on the market

Narratively speaking, Three Houses is by far the most ambitious Fire Emblem I’ve played, although I’ve played a relatively low percentage of the series so far. Radiant Dawn is the only one that comes close in terms of scale and the volume of important characters; a mix of endearing, heartbreaking, and philosophically challenging—with many characters being all three at once.

Three Houses’ grand scale and lofty ambition is perhaps its greatest strength, but simultaneously its biggest weakness, although that’s not entirely the game’s own fault, funnily enough.

The amount of compelling themes and storylines coming out of this game are nothing short of impressively epic (using the word in its non-ironic, intended meaning). Paired with incredible music, consistently engaging writing, impressive voice acting, and perhaps some of the best worldbuilding I’ve seen, the game is a fantastic experience that I would even describe as unmissable for anyone remotely interested in this type of story.

However, this great ambition from the writers was unfortunately cut short by the development time of the game, if I have it right. Several story threads are left either completely hanging or resolved off-screen unsatisfyingly. Several key characters are robbed of their incredible narrative potential because of one of the storylines recylcing 90% of the same content as another. One storyline in particular was evidently done rather late in development and lacked much needed animated cutscenes that other routes did have. These and other miscellaneous missing or questionably-written components to the storylines makes it all the more disappointing how this game was not given the opportunity to reach its peak potential as perhaps one of the best narratives in video games. Several instances of oddly (or even outright incorrectly) translated important lines don’t help us English speakers. The protagonist is also not my favorite. While they have a very interesting backstory, the silent protagonist trope does not do it for me in this particular game.

Another facet where the game struggles is the art direction. The Switch hardware does not allow the game to run at an acceptable framerate with its pseudo-realism style, even at the most important set piece battles. The textures are also extremely low resolution and muddy (especially compared to the higher quality character models) to compensate for the limitations of the hardware (and perhaps the engine as well), which clearly couldn’t solve the core issues anyway. The Support conversation backgrounds are some of the most perplexing workarounds to what I can only guess was a lack of time to design and/or model full 3D spaces, despite most of them being based on pre-existing game locations… The character models, while good looking, don’t have the most impressive animations, especially while speaking in cutscenes or Supports, with odd looking canned animations that don’t flow into each other very well. Despite all this, the actual character designs and drawn portraits are almost all incredible, which is probably what is most important by far to a lot of people. I myself am still disappointed in the rest of the game’s aesthetics.

When it comes to the gameplay, I’d say it’s rather enjoyable. There are many new or reworked game mechanics, terrain types, attack types, etc. The level design does what it needs to do, but it’s no Path of Radiance when it comes to interesting layouts. Three Houses does have several standout maps, though. There are very few maps I disliked. The way you can shape your units in whatever way you please, but still based on individual strengths and weaknesses, put an interesting spin on the class system you typically see in a Fire Emblem game.

At the end of the day, Three Houses is, at the very least, a must-play to even just see a glimpse at what could have been one of the best games of all time...if they had maybe a couple of more years to work on it.

All routes completed, 300+ hours logged, and no regrets.