It's not terrible, per se, but it's a tremendous disappointment.
If you asked me about my thoughts on the story after the intro sequence, I would have been ecstatic. The intro is honestly one of the best intro sequences ever put into a JRPG.

If you asked me about my thoughts on the story at the halfway point, I would have said that its story is good but it had the potential to be something legendary and it's being held back quite a bit. There are quite a few scenes at this point which I really didn't like - Benedikta was done really, really dirty, Hugo as the game's early villain is disappointing and felt painfully one-dimensional and the slavery allegories with the Bearers felt really hamfisted. Still, I was still satisfied at this point - the worldbuilding still seemed layered, the nations and the conflict at hand was still interesting, and the politics compelling. The thematic core at this point is compelling, the emotional core at this point is compelling - FFXVI had the setup to be an amazing, grounded political drama - if it wanted to, which makes the subsequent disappointment all the more crushing.

Unfortunately, the earlygame's thematic core of a cutthroat political drama revolving around conflicts over diminishing resources disintegrates completely at around the halfway mark. Having Joshua get revived was an utterly baffling decision when the emotional core of the earlygame was Joshua's death and Clive's attempts to get revenge for it. Instead, both the game's emotional and thematic cores are completely squandered for a nonsensical "attack and dethrone Ultima" plot. Even disregarding the disappointment I had at the genre shift, the second half of the game isn't compelling in the slightest - Ultima is a bland, generic evil JRPG god archetype with very little to differentiate itself from the legion of bland, generic JRPG gods - I honestly think he is the single worst villain out of any Final Fantasy game which I've played. He's not compelling and he has the charisma of a wooden plank.

Worse yet, almost everything wrong in FFXVI's plot can be blamed on Ultima:

The Mothercrystals? Ultima created them.
The Blight? The Mothercrystals pumping aether to Ultima is what causes it to spread.
Sanbreque? Whilst Sylvestre is initially in charge, he abdicates in favor of Olivier - who is possessed by Ultima.
Waloed? Barnabas is Ultima's lieutenant.
Dhalmekia? Hugo goes on his rampage because Barnabas (read: Ultima's agent) tells him that Benedikta was killed by Cid.

For as hamfisted and poorly executed the slavery analogies with the Bearers were, at the very least it's the one problem that Ultima didn't have that much of a hand in. FFXVI tries to make a climate change analogy with the Mothercrystals and the blight but because Ultima is behind the existence of the Mothercrystals and the blight, it is completely invalidated. It tries to say something about the impact of flawed nations and institutions, but these nations and institutions are influenced by Ultima, and defeating Ultima is enough to solve everything. The responsibility of humans in spreading the blight is severely downplayed, the human aspect of the wars that arise and the flawed institutions that govern Valisthea are equally downplayed as well. Because FFXVI's plot tries to blame Ultima for everything bad in the world, it ends up feeling incredibly hollow and refuses to say something meaningful.

IMO, the only major redeeming factor of the story's second half is the spectacle - and I have to admit that the fights against Titan and Bahamut are absolutely spectacular (though Odin was underwhelming) - but that can't redeem the plot when everything surrounding the second half is so underwhelming. If you asked me about my thoughts on the story now, I think it's mediocre. I think the first third to half of the game's plot saves it from being the worst Final Fantasy plot - but I think the second half of the plot is very much awful. I honestly think Yoshi-P and the writers didn't know what game they wanted to make - they tried to go for both an anime attack and dethrone Ultima plot and a gritty political drama - and I think they failed at both.

The removal of a party in FFXVI cripples its character writing - whilst Clive does get some interactions with other characters, they are for most part sparse and uninteresting. As such, whilst Clive is a compelling character on paper with a good arc, he has barely anyone to bounce off of and gets very few interesting character interactions. Jill freaking sucks - for the game's female lead she is incredibly underwhelming. She barely has anything interesting to say or do other than pine for and blandly support Clive, she gets sidelined way too often and she gets kidnapped multiple times. The other side characters are better, but aside from Dion who is excellent, I don't think they are anything particularly special.

It's a shame, because whilst the FFVII remake also had action combat similarly to FFXVI, it still managed to have a party and the character writing was far stronger as a result.

As an RPG, FFXVI's combat completely fails - levels are meaningless, new weapons and armor have very little impact and pretty much every RPG element has been stripped from the game entirely. As an action game, FFXVI fares better - the combat system is really flashy and really engaging on paper - but one major issue that I had is that very few enemies put up any sort of meaningful resistance to force the player to change their tactics, and instead act like pinatas to bash. Whilst this might have worked for a DMC or Bayonetta game where the game lasts 15 hours, FFXVI lasts around 50 hours - and as such, the combat gets very repetitive towards the end.

I think Jason Schreier put it best - "Final Fantasy XVI is truly inspired by Game of Thrones: medieval politics, brutal violence, and a terrible ending".

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.

I'm mixed at best.

Overall, I think the gameplay is solid. I think Break is an excellent mechanic that encourages aggression on the part of the player and makes the game's combat player-phase focused. The Engage effects are really flashy, really cool and really interesting - if a bit overpowered (Sigurd's effect is pretty bonkers, especially combined with Chloe which gives her a ridiculous amount of movement). Whilst I don't think there's an astounding map in Engage akin to Conquest Chapter 10, many of the maps in the early and mid game are very good, with the highlight being Chapter 11 in my view.

That being said, though Engage's gameplay is an improvement over Echoes and Three Houses, I absolutely wouldn't say it has the best gameplay in the series. In particular, I think Conquest overall has better balance by virtue of not having the Engage effects be so powerful, and whilst the early and mid game's map designs are good, I think that outside of the (admittedly great) final boss, Engage's map design deteriorates significantly in the late game. Out of the last 10 maps, I think there are only two maps with meaningful side objectives (in Chapters 19 and 20) and one additional anti-turtling incentive (via a time limit in Chapter 24) - and many of the late game maps feel like open fields without much in the way of interesting terrain - to the point where I'd argue that if it wasn't for Engage's core mechanics, most of the late game maps aren't any better than those of Three Houses.

My biggest issue with Engage's plot is there is nothing that is at all compelling. There's nothing that is compelling enough to really hook players in and leave a lasting impression on them either. None of the game's emotional beats manage to hit particularly well and nothing the game presents has provoked any kind of thought. Whilst Fire Emblem has had its share of simple stories in the past, no story in the series has been this incredibly shallow. I would be perfectly fine with a simple story (Sacred Stones is one of my favorite games in the series because of how well it is executed) - but Engage isn't the next Sacred Stones. If anything, it's the next Birthright in how poor the story's execution is despite how little the story attempts to do.

The dialogue is abysmal - characters at times feel like they were written by aliens who read about how humans talk in a book. This, I would argue, worsens the game's incessant avatar pandering. Whilst avatar pandering has been an issue with every Fire Emblem game since Awakening, it has never been this blatant.

Another minor issue with Engage's plot that may have been forgivable if it was attached to a more interesting story is its tonal inconsistencies. Whilst I wouldn't have had that much of an issue if Engage had committed to being a more comedic Fire Emblem game (and the first few chapters are by far the best for this reason) - there are countless moments where the game wants me to take it seriously, and because of how jarring this is compared to the silly anime hijinks that fill the rest of Engage's plot, none of these moments land.

Whilst Engage is not supposed to be a groundbreaking plot, given that it is clearly an anniversary title, I also have to note the sheer unoriginality of Engage's plot - to the point where certain late-game plot points are flat out ripped from Fates.

Engage's plot really suffers in its pacing. Because it tries to rush players from plot point to plot point without giving the player time reflect upon events or actually showing the backstories of certain characters, nothing in Engage that resembles an emotional moment feels at all earned. Of particular note is Lumera's second death in Chapter 25 where she gets revived and dies in the span of one chapter just like Mikoto did in Revelation and which my response basically was "At least Mikoto had the decency to not drag out her death for five minutes". Compare this with Lyon where there are numerous cutscenes in Sacred Stones showing his backstory and humanizing him well before he is ever fought, or even Emmeryn or Jeralt's deaths, which occur far later in the plot that that of Lumera's and after the point where you've grown attached to these characters.

I haven't even gotten to the contrivances yet - and there's a lot of contrivances attached to Engage's plot. Key plot points seem to be driven by events that come out of completely nowhere. Most notable of which are the Chapter 10-11 sequence where Veyle magically steals your time crystal out of nowhere, or the Chapter 21-22 sequence where Sombron suddenly appears out of completely nowhere, only for Alear to begin fading despite the fact that the game never hints that Corrupted die after summoning Emblems only for Veyle to try to revive Alear and fail despite successfully doing so in the previous cutscene only for Alear to get revived out of nowhere by the other twelve Emblems revive them out of completely nowhere due to some sort of thousand year miracle (which they could have done the first time Alear got killed) that the writers were clearly making up as they went along - it's a contrivance on top of a contrivance on top of a contrivance.

All of these issues wouldn't be particularly problematic if they were attached to a more interesting story. The problem with Engage's plot is that very little works particularly well. It's an aggressively mediocre plot even on paper - and as such, all of these minor issues ultimately drags this story down from a serviceable plot to one that is barely better than Fates. Even Awakening, for all of the issues with its plot, managed to have some highlights in its story which Engage just doesn't have.

In my view, the character writing of Fire Emblem is arguably the most essential aspect of the series. In this stead, Engage's character writing isn't just a very noticeable step down from Three Houses (which admittedly was always going to be a very tough act to follow), but outright mediocre at best even when taken on its own merits.

On paper, Alear is a serviceable character. They're like Shez in that they're goofy and charming (albeit maybe a bit less charming), and their suggestion to run early on is a highlight of their character. The problem I have with them, however, are twofold: the constant avatar pandering which I mentioned above, and their presence in the story.

Alear has the same issue with Corrin in that they are the only protagonist in the game. In Awakening and Three Houses, having a bland avatar, whilst still problematic, wasn't as detrimental to the plot because there were other, far more compelling lords in these games which drove the plot. The problem with Engage, though, is that since Alear has no supporting protagonist, the story requires them to be a compelling character in their own right to hold up the story - and unfortunately, whilst Alear can be charming at times, they are not a compelling character at all. The only remotely interesting aspect to their characterization is the fact that they are Sombron's child - which gets resolved in Chapter 20 immediately after it gets brought up. It isn't even brought up in their supports despite the fact that Veyle being part Fell Dragon is brought up in her supports. It's a shame, especially coming off of the two most compelling lords in the series in Edelgard and Dimitri.

I don't like Sombron as an antagonist either. He has the same issue as the Agarthans in that whilst there's something to his character, it's let down completely by the fact that most of his presentation shows him doing generically evil things. Whilst the writers wanted him to be sympathetic to an extent given his motive rant in the final chapter and in his backstory, because he isn't humanized at all, it falls completely flat. Just a scene or two where he does do good things would have worked wonders for his character.

The side characters are a massive mixed bag at best. To its credit, I feel that Engage's cast has a little more to them than that of Awakening or Fates' casts, and there's no character that's quite as offensively awful as Peri or Camilla. That being said, I think Engage's cast is presented horribly. Almost all of the C supports and even most of the B supports revolve around each character's gimmicks or is needless fluff, and very little that is particularly enlightening is brought up at all. Whilst this wasn't something that was particularly noticeable when the game leaked and I first read the supports, it's feels outright grating when I'm actually playing the game and I can't just read all of the supports at once. The A supports are much better in this regard, but even these supports aren't at all exceptional. Even the more meaningful supports feel contradictory and incohesive - compare Diamant making a bit deal about how he has to be better than his predecessors and resist his people's temptation to wage war with his support with Framme and his support with Alfred where he all but admits that he will be willing to wage war if his people demand it, making him look downright cowardly. Or how Celine makes a big deal about doing anything to protect Firene but gleefully helping Mauvier without any hesitation despite the fact that Mauvier destroyed a city in Firene and never apologizes for it - apparently she only cares about named characters in Firene?

My biggest criticism of Engage's cast is that for one reason or another (i.e. maybe Engage's worldbuilding isn't particularly deep), many of the characters don't feel like they are grounded in the world they live in. As a result, many of the characters don't have a cohesive worldview that they can use in interactions with other characters, which I think the Tellius games and Three Houses did really well. For an example, Alfred trains a lot because according to his support with Celine, he has an old illness and he doesn't want his allies to see this weakness of his. Compare this to Jill from Path of Radiance, who initially is racist due to the systemic racism within Daein, or Dorothea from Three Houses, who is desperate to marry a rich noble due to her unstable childhood as a result of Fodlan's classism. The latter two are characters whose writing wouldn't make sense outside of the world they exist in - whereas Alfred (and most of Engage's cast, for that matter) feel like they could be in any other game in the series and not much would change.

The characters of Engage also feel far too idealized. While I don't think every character needs to be outwardly flawed, so many of Engage's cast feels generically nice that the cast begins to feel outright interchangeable. Almost every character interaction has the characters in question acting polite and friendly towards each other. Because of this, there is very little room for the drama, misunderstanding, character growth or ideological disagreements that are required to make a character compelling - and just because Engage's characters are nice people don't mean that there isn't any room for such drama or disagreements to occur (Dorothea's support with Ferdinand and Mercedes' support with Sylvain are excellent examples of this despite the fact that Dorothea and Mercedes are kind people). Hence, there is nothing in Engage's character writing that is nearly as memorable as Jill having to grapple with her racism, or Marianne finding her will to live, or Lysithea grappling with her own mortality, and that's simply a shame.

It's not all bad, though. In particular, there are some standout characters that do have some compelling character interactions. In particular, Ivy is a real highlight because it feels like the worldbuilding of Elusia was very carefully considered when the writers were designing her character. The fact that she's a worshipper of the Divine Dragon makes sense because she's had poor experiences with the fact that Elusia worships the Fell Dragon, and as a result, she changed religions in secret. Similarly, the fact's that she's very distrustful can both be attributed by both her mistreatment within the Elusian court and her mistreatment at the hands of the Fell Dragon's worshippers. In this stead, she genuinely feels like a Tellius or Three Houses character in that her worldview and personality traits are informed by her place in the world. Similarly, whilst Veyle has a similar backstory to Alear in that she is part Fell Dragon, this fact is meaningfully brought up in her supports, and she is a far stronger character as a result.

Overall, it's exactly what I expected from all of the trailers - good gameplay, but really poor storytelling and characters.