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.

Three Houses deviates from the usual Fire Emblem's formula, making it an original entry in the franchise, however, despite having some good ideas, execution leaves much to be desired.

With the house system, the game offers players multiple paths to follow, with different characters and stories, one can experience the whole game by playing each route available, or at least, this is what developers aimed for.

Sadly, the replay value is limited, until an advanced point in the game, the story remains the same for all houses. Furthermore, players can recruit students and teachers from other classes than the chosen one. Obviously it makes no sense, but somehow the suspension of disbelief is still intact, because one can understands this is mostly a choice in favor of players' experiences, allowing them to create their dream team, which is great no debate on that.

However, such feature should not be a thing for a first playthrough, instead it should have been one of the options players can buy/select to enhance new game plus, this way it would ensure that players would still have characters to discover during new game plus, also it would ensure the story is correctly delivered, not filled with nonsenses. Sadly, the story itself is somewhat predictable and quite frankly mediocre, to be fair this statement does apply to most Fire Emblem games, difference is, usually they do not focus that much on story, meaning it's normally easier to overlook such problem.

As for the characters, they are on the archetype side, from the reserved and quiet shy girl, to the wannabe comic relief guy whose only talk about food, to the teacher with big breasts, Three Houses has it all, unfortunately, only a few manage to become more nuanced. Sometime player don't even get the chance to witness their evolutions, and that's because the story contains a time skip, handy for lazy writing. Comedy peak for some, depressing fact for other, some main characters are so poorly written even the Gatekeeper might have better writing.

Regarding the gameplay, similar to its predecessors, to no one' surprise the casual mode is present, introduced during the 3DS era this optional mode disables perma deaths. What is new however is the absence of triangle weapon, meanwhile, Divine Pulse is now base kit meaning players can rewind time if they so desire, qualifying this game as a TPRG is a stretch, Three Houses is much more of a management game or a dating sim. A sad yet logical step for Intelligent System trying their best to target the widest audience possible, even if it means to sacrifice the very things that made Fire Emblem somewhat unique in its early days. Perma death and the weapon triangle, those two systems combined not only gave some weight to the decision making, it gave this franchise an identity.

In conclusion, Fire Emblem Three Houses isn't inherently bad, but it's a soulless experience which happen to focus on management and dating elements not due to a creative mind having faith in those systems or even for the likes of experiencing new things, but merely a marketing strategy trying to copycat the current trend of the time.

I think this has to have been the most boring of the FE games I've played. The maps were extremely unmemorable, lots of dialogue that never felt like it was going anywhere pre-timeskip, and I swear the whole monastery intermissions exist just to waste your time. I wouldn't say it's bad by any means, but just very bland and mediocre. There were lots of good concepts that I enjoyed and could've added a lot to the game like the calendar system, but they were all just way too repetitive in execution with too little actual, meaningful moments to keep you engaged unless you like having character discourse on Twitter.

Ended up leaving midway through Edelgard's route post-timeskip, I just couldn't take it any more.