I did enjoy this game initially, thought the supports were really good and the gameplay was solid as per FE standards. However I ended up dropping this game about 50 hours in after getting about 70% through the Blue Lions route because I just couldn't stand the stupidly long gameplay loop any longer, it was just too tedious and annoying that you basically had to maintain it after every single chapter if you wanted your units to stay at their best potential. Also, after reflecting on this game, I find that I barely remember any of the characters well despite enjoying their supports a lot at the time, even though I still remember the likes of Path of Radiance's supports and characters very well despite playing it much longer ago than this game (5 years as of this post). If this game wasn't so stupidly long with a tedious gameplay loop, I would've finished and probably rated it higher. Please let Intelligent Systems make FE mainlines from now on rather than another company, wasn't a fan of your work, Koei Techmo.

Some people say this has great writing, which is a little funny to me because the story is all over the place, trying extremely hard to be serious and imitating a particular type of plot that is clearly not equiped to do, not to mention a lore that I cannot imagine someone liking. The idea of having different routes is fine and makes sense from a mechanics perspective, but the pacing is atrocius as basically half the game is an introduction, and all the systems with which you interact with the characters aren’t as enjoyable to do them twice, let alone three or even four times. Any additional playthrough will have you spending at least five hours of repetitive chores and that is a crime for a game that basically begs you to replay it. The other part of the writing has no right being as good as it is; the characters. At the beginning I honestly thougth they were written by the programing department, a messy cast you can give cool perks in combat that sort of relate to their personalities, but as you advance they reveal all their personal trauma and funny querks, which I found extremely endeering. It is probably the best part of the game. The combat is good, but not excellent; I’m missing the regular rock-paper-scisors dynamic of weapons of other games in the series, or something similar. The maps are mediocre and lack some variety, and the unit specialization system is complex but in my opinion not tremendously well implemented. The graphics are merely acceptable and the performance is poor to say the least.

This game is pretty messy overall, but still has a lot of good qualities to it.

I think the concept of having multiple routes is interesting, but not executed very well. I takes the classic Fire Emblem mechanic of permadeath and applies it to characters outside your class too, as you have to go to war in part 2 of the game. It's pretty impactful to have to kill one of the students you hung around earlier in the game, you could've saved them by recruiting them or choosing a different path but didn't. A problem I have with the multiple pathways is that you have to choose which pathway you take immediately, before you even know much at all about the characters in any of the houses you can choose. There is a path split later on in the Black Eagle route, but that's the only one in the game and one of the paths is short and ends abruptly while the other is remarkably similar to the Golden Deer path which is kinda lame. The Blue Lion route is easily the best route in the game in my opinion because of the use of characters and seeing some of them develop in interesting ways, the backstory of Dimitri is well utilized and adds a personal aspect to the story. Another problem with the game is that part 1 of each path is pretty much identical to eachother which makes repeat playthroughs drag on for this entire portion.

The gameplay is ok in this game, I think my main problem with it is the map design, which usually is pretty uninteresting, it doesn't help that many of the map are reused in different paths and optional missions too. There's no weapon triangle here which makes the combat feels dumbed down compared to most previous games. There are bigger enemies that occupy multiple spaces on the map and have shields that can be broken, these enemies are actually pretty interesting and add a lot to the game. There's a new type of attack called a gambit that's pretty ok, in my experience it mostly just allows enemies to get a free attack on you without you being able to counterattack and allows the devs to make bosses with stupid stats that you have to use gambits on to weaken without getting killed instantly from a counterattack. The gambits are actually incorporated pretty well to fighting the monster enemies with how they break shields easily but make the monster target you if you use it on them. There's a mechanic called divine pulse that allows you to rewind time to alleviate cheap game design like, enemies suddenly becoming aggro for different arbitrary reasons and they suddenly get the ability to move and insta-kill your healer. The divine pulse also isn't used in the story aside from one scene where you use it once, then give up instead of using the 5 more uses it has, it cheapens some cutscenes when your character could've turned back time and saved a character from death but just doesn't for some reason. Towards the end of the game, it feels like (at least on the hard difficulty) the game just makes enemy units arbitrarily fast and/or tanky to inflate the difficulty, but it's such a lame way to increase the difficulty and makes the game drag towards the end.

I think the progression system is my favourite part of the game, it's really fun to plan out character builds and see them grow over the course of the game. There are some problems I have with it, like how almost every master class requires proficiency in horse riding or something you probably won't want to teach your characters. I also found that the way I played the game never changed over the course of it, I never felt like the game tried to challenge me to change the way I played it.

This game also has obnoxiously long loading times, which detract a lot from the pacing of the game. The monastery exploration sequences have a lot of slowdown, which is mildly obnoxious, but not a big problem.

Overall, I have a laundry list of problems with this game, but I still enjoy playing it for the story and progression, even if the gameplay should be better. The game is also way longer than the amount of interesting content in it can reasonably support. If you ask me, it does a better job at handling the multiple paths than Fire Emblem: Fates though.

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.

El Fire Emblem más inmenso lacrado por la necesidad de ser rejugado varias veces para exprimir toda su campaña.

Pros:
- El combate y el sistema de clases, esta vez más libre que nunca, sigue siendo tan entretenido como siempre.
- Los combates contra bestias añaden una nueva mecánica de ruptura de escudos muy estratégica.
- La parte social del monasterio es muy variada y entretenida, con el aliciente de subir el nivel de profesor constantemente...

Contras:
- ...sin embargo, en el tercer tercio del juego empieza a hacerse demasiado repetitiva.
- La desaparición del triángulo de armas casualiza demasiado los combates.
- La narrativa y el desarrollo de los personajes sigue siendo tarea pendiente de la saga.

If you're not in the blue lions we can't hang
Narrative: 4
Gameplay: 4
Visuals: 3.5
X-Factor: 3
Overall: 4

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.