This review contains spoilers
The best way I can describe Three Houses is that it's almost a masterpiece. What we got was really good, but it's also easy to visualise what could have been.
Firstly, the good. The approach to character writing that the writers of Three Houses employed was nothing short of brilliant and will probably end up being the gold standard which I use to compare every Fire Emblem cast going forward.
Almost every character in Three Houses feels like the writers carefully considered their place in the world and built off of that to create the rest of their personality traits - and as such, almost every character feels both substantial and very carefully designed. Each character's personality traits makes sense in the context of their worldview or backstory (Annette's a hard worker because the prospect of entering the Officer's Academy and finding Gilbert again is a powerful motivator for her, Lysithea's love of sweets can be construed as her wishing to indulge herself with the little time she has left, etc.), and no playable character in Three Houses feels like filler, which was an issue with even the GBA and Tellius games.
There's also an excellent balance between fluff that humanizes the cast and more substantial supports that delve into each character's backstory, motivations or worldview - something which I thought was severely lacking with the 3DS games.
Probably the best example of just how thoughtful Three Houses' character writing was is in Dorothea's characterization. She's the fanservice character that's seemingly obligatory in every modern Fire Emblem game (and every remake as well, if Faye is any indication) - yet she still ended up being one of the most grounded, compelling and multifaceted characters in the entire series. Even if she had Niime's design, she would still be an excellent character by virtue of her being the character in Three Houses that is the most deeply affected by bloodshed and the least tolerant of the class divisions that defined Fodlan - but she's also one of the very few characters in which the fanservice aspects adds rather than detracts to her character. Dorothea's motivations both cleverly deconstruct the idea of a fanservice character whilst also enhancing both the worldbuilding of Three Houses and Edelgard's motivation. If she was written by the Awakening or Fates writing team, she absolutely would have been just a one-note fanservice caricature, as considering that no matter how well a fanservice character is written, they will still be incredibly popular - if the fact that Camilla won CYL3 is any indication.
I consider Edelgard to be one of, if not the best antagonist I've seen in a Nintendo game. She’s extremely well-fleshed out, has a satisfying character arc as both a protagonist and antagonist, and is driven by complex motivations that are backed up very well by the game - which can thus be deconstructed through layers of subtext. Furthermore, Edelgard’s character is also humanised to a far greater degree than any other Fire Emblem antagonist, and as such, she isn’t solely consumed by her motivations, but she has genuine hobbies, interests and hopes outside of them. Most of the same also applies to Rhea, albeit to a lesser extent.
Similarly, Three Houses has what is the best set of lords in the series. Edelgard and Dimitri in particular are very flawed, complex and nuanced characters that both deconstruct typical Fire Emblem archtypes. Whilst I enjoyed Verdant Wind's story, I do, however, think that Claude's character, and especially his scheming nature, was underutilised in the main plot - and that something like how Yuri's character was handled would have been far more preferable.
Three Houses’ narrative is an interesting beast - to put it simply, it's the modern equivalent of Radiant Dawn's plot. My biggest issue with it is that whilst every route raises a set of plot points, and whilst I think that most of these are resolved in a satisfying manner in one way or another, some of these plot points are only answered in certain routes - hence, making each route's plot except for maybe Verdant Wind feel incomplete in isolation. Similarly, a few plot points are left to the game’s supports (i.e. the nature of the tragedy of Duscur, Dimitri's recovery after Chapter 17 is also largely left to supports). As such, it is a potentially exceptional story, forcibly ripped apart into four.
I don't know how to fix this - a lot of people would suggest getting rid of Silver Snow, but I feel that Silver Snow is a necessary part of Three Houses' plot, as without the choice to side against Edelgard, the game would have the same issue as The Last of Us: Part 2, where it demands that you stick with a character whose morality is questionable at best without a chance to side against her if you disagree with her morality.
That being said, the story, whilst definitely flawed in its delivery, is probably the first Fire Emblem story to be genuinely good to me since Path of Radiance. The highlights (i.e. the Flame Emperor reveal, Dimitri's arc in Azure Moon) of the plot are some of the most impactful and emotional moments in the series, emotional beats almost always land (I legitimately teared up at the final cutscene of Azure Moon), the story’s themes of classism, coping with loss and the influence of religion are interesting, and the plot is largely able to stick to its themes without severely undermining itself (which was the issue with Radiant Dawn and Echoes).
Something else that I can also appreciate is that Three Houses is one of the very rare JRPGs to portray a religion as a nuanced, deeply flawed and human institution, rather than a generic "evil" organisation like in pretty much every other JRPG - and this is something that I hugely appreciate with Rhea's, Seteth's and Flayn's characterisation. Huge props to IS/Koei Tecmo for this.
This is a more muted point, but something else that’s cool about how paralogues are handled in Three Houses introduce and resolve small side-plots that build off of some character’s support chains. Examples of such characters include those of Mercedes (with regards to the Death Knight), Ashe (with regards to Christophe and Lonato), Annette (IIRC, you have to do her paralogue to progress through her support chain with Gilbert) and Marianne (with regards to her crest). This greatly adds to the development and depth of the respective characters, and I wish this occurred more often.
On the gameplay side of things, Three Houses introduces a lot of interesting mechanics, such as Battalions and Gambits, that provide the game with a grand scope and add to the strategic options available to the player. Similarly, Three Houses provides the player with unparalleled unit flexibility - though this does come at a cost, as it is impossible for the developers to take into account what resources a player will have access to. It's the main reason why I consider the maps in Cindered Shadows to be far better than those of the base game. Whilst I'd prefer having unit progression being rigid (similar to the pre-3DS Fire Emblem games), I'd take Three Houses' system over the half-measure compromises that were Awakening's and Fates' class systems, which I feel has the weaknesses of both the Three Houses class system and the traditional Fire Emblem class system.
Three Houses’ maps are fine. Not exceptional by any means, but they do have their fair share of side-objectives, split deployments and the occasional anti-turtling incentive - and outside of Chapter 13 on Maddening, I'd struggle to think of a map that's noticeably awful. That being said, the map reuse is very much not fine. It's not that much of an issue to me, given that it only rears its head on repeat playthroughs, but it is annoying if you're going for all of the routes - especially given that Three Houses' narrative structure encourages repeat playthroughs - which will inevitably lead to burnout.
A more glaring flaw of Three Houses’, though, is that it has major balancing issues. As cool as it is to have an army fully composed of wyverns, fliers are extremely overpowered. Similarly, most of Three Houses’ difficulty dissipates from the game being overly generous with Divine Pulse. On a similar note, while the monastery does its job of getting the player attached to their units pretty well, it has a major balancing issue of giving the player too many Activity Points, which results in the player having too many options - and as such, leads to Monastery tedium, especially in Part 2 where there's less content, but you have more Activity Points. Reducing the amount of Activity Points would make the monastery gameplay far more strategic and far less tedious. The balancing issues also extend to Three Houses’ difficulties – Hard Mode is easy, but Maddening Mode is very difficult with ambush spawns that feel outright tedious, with almost no space in between.
I suspect that Three Houses’ development process ran into either a lack of time, or a lack of budget. While the story is overall good, a flaw of it is that quite a few details are told, instead of shown – hence why I think this game ran into budget issues. This can also explain the map reuse in this game, especially between routes. Whilst I know that Silver Snow’s existence is necessary given the nature of Edelgard's character, it really could have been something other than a Verdant Wind copypaste. Claude is charming, but underutilised in the main story – a jarring contrast to Edelgard and Dimitri. Similarly, the game’s third villainous faction, TWISTD, is underdeveloped. It's a shame, given how good Edelgard's and Rhea's characterisation both were.
In my eyes, the greatest strength of Three Houses is its ability to provoke thought on behalf of the player. In particular, giving the game's main villain a route of her own was a genius move on part of IS and Koei Tecmo (even if the route itself was somewhat lacking). As such, if the Edelgard debates in the fandom are any indication, Three Houses very much succeeded in allowing its playerbase to think about and form their own personal interpretations of the characters through the game’s storytelling and under layers of subtext. To me, that is the hallmark of good character writing.
After how Fates (and Awakening, to a lesser extent) ended up being, Three Houses was a breath of fresh air and a huge step in the right direction. It feels like the game that IS wanted to make with Awakening and Fates, only with character writing that's good enough to hold the whole project up. That being said, whilst what we got was excellent, Three Houses very much could have been a legendary masterpiece if it had a bigger budget and more development time - and it's why I look forward to a potential remake twenty or so years down the road.
Firstly, the good. The approach to character writing that the writers of Three Houses employed was nothing short of brilliant and will probably end up being the gold standard which I use to compare every Fire Emblem cast going forward.
Almost every character in Three Houses feels like the writers carefully considered their place in the world and built off of that to create the rest of their personality traits - and as such, almost every character feels both substantial and very carefully designed. Each character's personality traits makes sense in the context of their worldview or backstory (Annette's a hard worker because the prospect of entering the Officer's Academy and finding Gilbert again is a powerful motivator for her, Lysithea's love of sweets can be construed as her wishing to indulge herself with the little time she has left, etc.), and no playable character in Three Houses feels like filler, which was an issue with even the GBA and Tellius games.
There's also an excellent balance between fluff that humanizes the cast and more substantial supports that delve into each character's backstory, motivations or worldview - something which I thought was severely lacking with the 3DS games.
Probably the best example of just how thoughtful Three Houses' character writing was is in Dorothea's characterization. She's the fanservice character that's seemingly obligatory in every modern Fire Emblem game (and every remake as well, if Faye is any indication) - yet she still ended up being one of the most grounded, compelling and multifaceted characters in the entire series. Even if she had Niime's design, she would still be an excellent character by virtue of her being the character in Three Houses that is the most deeply affected by bloodshed and the least tolerant of the class divisions that defined Fodlan - but she's also one of the very few characters in which the fanservice aspects adds rather than detracts to her character. Dorothea's motivations both cleverly deconstruct the idea of a fanservice character whilst also enhancing both the worldbuilding of Three Houses and Edelgard's motivation. If she was written by the Awakening or Fates writing team, she absolutely would have been just a one-note fanservice caricature, as considering that no matter how well a fanservice character is written, they will still be incredibly popular - if the fact that Camilla won CYL3 is any indication.
I consider Edelgard to be one of, if not the best antagonist I've seen in a Nintendo game. She’s extremely well-fleshed out, has a satisfying character arc as both a protagonist and antagonist, and is driven by complex motivations that are backed up very well by the game - which can thus be deconstructed through layers of subtext. Furthermore, Edelgard’s character is also humanised to a far greater degree than any other Fire Emblem antagonist, and as such, she isn’t solely consumed by her motivations, but she has genuine hobbies, interests and hopes outside of them. Most of the same also applies to Rhea, albeit to a lesser extent.
Similarly, Three Houses has what is the best set of lords in the series. Edelgard and Dimitri in particular are very flawed, complex and nuanced characters that both deconstruct typical Fire Emblem archtypes. Whilst I enjoyed Verdant Wind's story, I do, however, think that Claude's character, and especially his scheming nature, was underutilised in the main plot - and that something like how Yuri's character was handled would have been far more preferable.
Three Houses’ narrative is an interesting beast - to put it simply, it's the modern equivalent of Radiant Dawn's plot. My biggest issue with it is that whilst every route raises a set of plot points, and whilst I think that most of these are resolved in a satisfying manner in one way or another, some of these plot points are only answered in certain routes - hence, making each route's plot except for maybe Verdant Wind feel incomplete in isolation. Similarly, a few plot points are left to the game’s supports (i.e. the nature of the tragedy of Duscur, Dimitri's recovery after Chapter 17 is also largely left to supports). As such, it is a potentially exceptional story, forcibly ripped apart into four.
I don't know how to fix this - a lot of people would suggest getting rid of Silver Snow, but I feel that Silver Snow is a necessary part of Three Houses' plot, as without the choice to side against Edelgard, the game would have the same issue as The Last of Us: Part 2, where it demands that you stick with a character whose morality is questionable at best without a chance to side against her if you disagree with her morality.
That being said, the story, whilst definitely flawed in its delivery, is probably the first Fire Emblem story to be genuinely good to me since Path of Radiance. The highlights (i.e. the Flame Emperor reveal, Dimitri's arc in Azure Moon) of the plot are some of the most impactful and emotional moments in the series, emotional beats almost always land (I legitimately teared up at the final cutscene of Azure Moon), the story’s themes of classism, coping with loss and the influence of religion are interesting, and the plot is largely able to stick to its themes without severely undermining itself (which was the issue with Radiant Dawn and Echoes).
Something else that I can also appreciate is that Three Houses is one of the very rare JRPGs to portray a religion as a nuanced, deeply flawed and human institution, rather than a generic "evil" organisation like in pretty much every other JRPG - and this is something that I hugely appreciate with Rhea's, Seteth's and Flayn's characterisation. Huge props to IS/Koei Tecmo for this.
This is a more muted point, but something else that’s cool about how paralogues are handled in Three Houses introduce and resolve small side-plots that build off of some character’s support chains. Examples of such characters include those of Mercedes (with regards to the Death Knight), Ashe (with regards to Christophe and Lonato), Annette (IIRC, you have to do her paralogue to progress through her support chain with Gilbert) and Marianne (with regards to her crest). This greatly adds to the development and depth of the respective characters, and I wish this occurred more often.
On the gameplay side of things, Three Houses introduces a lot of interesting mechanics, such as Battalions and Gambits, that provide the game with a grand scope and add to the strategic options available to the player. Similarly, Three Houses provides the player with unparalleled unit flexibility - though this does come at a cost, as it is impossible for the developers to take into account what resources a player will have access to. It's the main reason why I consider the maps in Cindered Shadows to be far better than those of the base game. Whilst I'd prefer having unit progression being rigid (similar to the pre-3DS Fire Emblem games), I'd take Three Houses' system over the half-measure compromises that were Awakening's and Fates' class systems, which I feel has the weaknesses of both the Three Houses class system and the traditional Fire Emblem class system.
Three Houses’ maps are fine. Not exceptional by any means, but they do have their fair share of side-objectives, split deployments and the occasional anti-turtling incentive - and outside of Chapter 13 on Maddening, I'd struggle to think of a map that's noticeably awful. That being said, the map reuse is very much not fine. It's not that much of an issue to me, given that it only rears its head on repeat playthroughs, but it is annoying if you're going for all of the routes - especially given that Three Houses' narrative structure encourages repeat playthroughs - which will inevitably lead to burnout.
A more glaring flaw of Three Houses’, though, is that it has major balancing issues. As cool as it is to have an army fully composed of wyverns, fliers are extremely overpowered. Similarly, most of Three Houses’ difficulty dissipates from the game being overly generous with Divine Pulse. On a similar note, while the monastery does its job of getting the player attached to their units pretty well, it has a major balancing issue of giving the player too many Activity Points, which results in the player having too many options - and as such, leads to Monastery tedium, especially in Part 2 where there's less content, but you have more Activity Points. Reducing the amount of Activity Points would make the monastery gameplay far more strategic and far less tedious. The balancing issues also extend to Three Houses’ difficulties – Hard Mode is easy, but Maddening Mode is very difficult with ambush spawns that feel outright tedious, with almost no space in between.
I suspect that Three Houses’ development process ran into either a lack of time, or a lack of budget. While the story is overall good, a flaw of it is that quite a few details are told, instead of shown – hence why I think this game ran into budget issues. This can also explain the map reuse in this game, especially between routes. Whilst I know that Silver Snow’s existence is necessary given the nature of Edelgard's character, it really could have been something other than a Verdant Wind copypaste. Claude is charming, but underutilised in the main story – a jarring contrast to Edelgard and Dimitri. Similarly, the game’s third villainous faction, TWISTD, is underdeveloped. It's a shame, given how good Edelgard's and Rhea's characterisation both were.
In my eyes, the greatest strength of Three Houses is its ability to provoke thought on behalf of the player. In particular, giving the game's main villain a route of her own was a genius move on part of IS and Koei Tecmo (even if the route itself was somewhat lacking). As such, if the Edelgard debates in the fandom are any indication, Three Houses very much succeeded in allowing its playerbase to think about and form their own personal interpretations of the characters through the game’s storytelling and under layers of subtext. To me, that is the hallmark of good character writing.
After how Fates (and Awakening, to a lesser extent) ended up being, Three Houses was a breath of fresh air and a huge step in the right direction. It feels like the game that IS wanted to make with Awakening and Fates, only with character writing that's good enough to hold the whole project up. That being said, whilst what we got was excellent, Three Houses very much could have been a legendary masterpiece if it had a bigger budget and more development time - and it's why I look forward to a potential remake twenty or so years down the road.