This review contains spoilers
I'm aware I'm like, 4 years late to the party on this one but if you can believe it - fresh off Fire Emblem: Fates, I wasn't super in the mood for the next (non-remake) Fire Emblem! I'm somewhat kicking myself for that right now because this is really good, probably the second best Fire Emblem game imo. (Awakening #1)
Its core gameplay is really great - I mean it's Fire Emblem which I always find fun, cringe as it may be. It doesn't look to reinvent the wheel which I appreciate because Fire Emblem at its base is already enjoyable enough, but I liked Combat Arts and Battalions a lot (even if Battalions were a bit poorly explained and a bit busted). Thanks to the freeform nature of Battalions, I was able to come up with pretty nutty strats like having Mercedes use Stride on my Wyvern Lord Felix so that he had enough movement to go all the way to the right side of the final map of the Blue Lions route and kill the black mage Mysom in one turn, eliminating all his reinforcements from the battle right away!
I'm writing this review having finished the Black Eagles route on Normal difficulty and the Blue Lions route on Hard - and therein lies a bit of the problem. I had great fun with this game, but I so do not have it in me to play the Golden Deer route and especially the Church route after all this. As such, I miss out on a lot of crucial context on major stuff in the story. Fire Emblem: Three Houses wants you to play through the game 3 separate times (or maybe 4) to get the full picture - yet the first 20 hours or so of every playthrough (the academy arc of the game, so 12 chapters of gameplay!) is practically identical regardless of which route you pick! I could play these same maps twice, but three times? Four? With almost no difference? Fuck off man, lol. That's Fire Emblem: Three Houses' biggest problem, it's structure. I've played two full-length campaigns, over 80 hours of this game, and I still don't know who Thales (the man who shot me into a canyon for 5 years between the timeskip and who helped my Dad's murderer escape) is. I had to find out through a YouTube video! What's shocking is that Fire Emblem has made this mistake before! In Sacred Stones there's a split between Ephraim and Eirika that somewhat begs a second playthrough through largely similar content and then do I even need to start on Fates? But Fates at least allowed you to go back and start at a specific point in the game at which you make a pivotal decision and choose differently! It doesn't ask you to play literally the whole game again to experience the different routes. Fire Emblem has made this mistake before, but it's never made it this badly, and I'm kinda baffled as to how this keeps happening.
I played Black Eagles' and Blue Lions' routes because Edelgard and Dimitri seemed like the most interesting characters. I was right! They're very good, I think. Some of FE's best protagonists ever, in fact.
And then there's the rest of the characters.
Somehow, despite actively deciding not to play a campaign that comprises a supposed 3rd of this game's collective canon, I don't feel like I'm missing anything. (Proverbially, that is. Because I still didn't know who tf Thales is.) In this 3rd route I would be partnered up with Claude, with whom every interaction I had convinced me he was utterly uninteresting and largely an afterthought. Conversations with friends and online discourse have since convinced me I was almost definitely right. This mfer Claude presents no drama and no stakes whatsoever. His literal capital city is under siege by imperial forces and innocent civilians are being butchered in the streets and he's doing a fuckin winky face at the camera like "haha, Dimitri'll show up to back us up, I just know it ;)" whatever man, give me something, please. Give me any character trait other than downplaying all of the stakes and drama the other characters bring to the story. Three Houses' characters, even by Fire Emblem standards are really quite bad. I suspect this is because there's so many of them that the writers struggled to find deep or interesting personalities for all of them beyond their like - one gimmicky character trait that they're allowed. Some of them pleasantly surprised me by being deeper than their "one thing" initially suggests, I'm thinking of Sylvain, Hubert, Dorothea etc. but man some of the most boring, one-note characters in Fire Emblem history are in this game and that's SAYING SOMETHING. Cyril, Leonie, Raphael, Mercedes, Ashe, get in the bin man.
Not even some incredibly shallow characters can drag down the game's overall story, though, which is far more complex and competent than any FE game since the Tellius games in my opinion. There are some flubs here and there - (in the Black Eagles route shortly after the Death Knight joined me, Edelgard goes "oh yeah he's with us, I'll explain later" and she literally never did. One of those random choir events came up on my calendar during the academy section shortly after and he's just there?? The fucking Death Knight?? I'm just singing choir with him?? Bro, explain yourself to me!! Someone explain this shit to me holy shit!!) but by and large the plot is far more mature and features far more moral ambiguity than any FE in like, 10 years. Overall, I agree with Edelgard's motives, but during her route I kinda felt like the bad guy! And I think Dimitri is ultimately ignorant and flawed in his approach by preserving the church, but during his route I felt like the good guy! I kinda like that! (Tho I think the game could've made Edelgard seem a bit less evil, ahaha)
Overall, it's a messy game but one with a lot of ambition that I really respect out of a series I was worried might be resting on its laurels after Fates. Some of the things it reaches for like the Academy actually work surprisingly well - its Persona-like gameplay and time management doing a really great job at making you think about and manage your resources. You can't just grind endlessly to get broken in this game, there's a very smart limit on how many optional battles you can do. Nice! But some of the other things it reaches for like the branching narrative and consequently huge cast come back to bite it in the ass. If this'd been "Fire Emblem: Two Houses" and you cut The Golden Deer entirely, you coulda used that time to add some depth to more of the characters, brush up on the structure and maybe make both campaigns (particularly Black Eagles) a bit longer. You also could've maybe made the Academy look a bit prettier! Good lord the Switch can not handle ambition like this! What the fuck is up with the fruit? What the fuck is up with the fruit?
The perfect Fire Emblem game is in here, in the same way that it's in most other Fire Emblem games. As ever, you've just gotta deal with a side order of shit to get it. But my experience with Three Houses errs a lot more on the positive side than say - Fates. I certainly respect this game a hell of a lot more for how much it goes for, and how much it pulls off successfully.
Its core gameplay is really great - I mean it's Fire Emblem which I always find fun, cringe as it may be. It doesn't look to reinvent the wheel which I appreciate because Fire Emblem at its base is already enjoyable enough, but I liked Combat Arts and Battalions a lot (even if Battalions were a bit poorly explained and a bit busted). Thanks to the freeform nature of Battalions, I was able to come up with pretty nutty strats like having Mercedes use Stride on my Wyvern Lord Felix so that he had enough movement to go all the way to the right side of the final map of the Blue Lions route and kill the black mage Mysom in one turn, eliminating all his reinforcements from the battle right away!
I'm writing this review having finished the Black Eagles route on Normal difficulty and the Blue Lions route on Hard - and therein lies a bit of the problem. I had great fun with this game, but I so do not have it in me to play the Golden Deer route and especially the Church route after all this. As such, I miss out on a lot of crucial context on major stuff in the story. Fire Emblem: Three Houses wants you to play through the game 3 separate times (or maybe 4) to get the full picture - yet the first 20 hours or so of every playthrough (the academy arc of the game, so 12 chapters of gameplay!) is practically identical regardless of which route you pick! I could play these same maps twice, but three times? Four? With almost no difference? Fuck off man, lol. That's Fire Emblem: Three Houses' biggest problem, it's structure. I've played two full-length campaigns, over 80 hours of this game, and I still don't know who Thales (the man who shot me into a canyon for 5 years between the timeskip and who helped my Dad's murderer escape) is. I had to find out through a YouTube video! What's shocking is that Fire Emblem has made this mistake before! In Sacred Stones there's a split between Ephraim and Eirika that somewhat begs a second playthrough through largely similar content and then do I even need to start on Fates? But Fates at least allowed you to go back and start at a specific point in the game at which you make a pivotal decision and choose differently! It doesn't ask you to play literally the whole game again to experience the different routes. Fire Emblem has made this mistake before, but it's never made it this badly, and I'm kinda baffled as to how this keeps happening.
I played Black Eagles' and Blue Lions' routes because Edelgard and Dimitri seemed like the most interesting characters. I was right! They're very good, I think. Some of FE's best protagonists ever, in fact.
And then there's the rest of the characters.
Somehow, despite actively deciding not to play a campaign that comprises a supposed 3rd of this game's collective canon, I don't feel like I'm missing anything. (Proverbially, that is. Because I still didn't know who tf Thales is.) In this 3rd route I would be partnered up with Claude, with whom every interaction I had convinced me he was utterly uninteresting and largely an afterthought. Conversations with friends and online discourse have since convinced me I was almost definitely right. This mfer Claude presents no drama and no stakes whatsoever. His literal capital city is under siege by imperial forces and innocent civilians are being butchered in the streets and he's doing a fuckin winky face at the camera like "haha, Dimitri'll show up to back us up, I just know it ;)" whatever man, give me something, please. Give me any character trait other than downplaying all of the stakes and drama the other characters bring to the story. Three Houses' characters, even by Fire Emblem standards are really quite bad. I suspect this is because there's so many of them that the writers struggled to find deep or interesting personalities for all of them beyond their like - one gimmicky character trait that they're allowed. Some of them pleasantly surprised me by being deeper than their "one thing" initially suggests, I'm thinking of Sylvain, Hubert, Dorothea etc. but man some of the most boring, one-note characters in Fire Emblem history are in this game and that's SAYING SOMETHING. Cyril, Leonie, Raphael, Mercedes, Ashe, get in the bin man.
Not even some incredibly shallow characters can drag down the game's overall story, though, which is far more complex and competent than any FE game since the Tellius games in my opinion. There are some flubs here and there - (in the Black Eagles route shortly after the Death Knight joined me, Edelgard goes "oh yeah he's with us, I'll explain later" and she literally never did. One of those random choir events came up on my calendar during the academy section shortly after and he's just there?? The fucking Death Knight?? I'm just singing choir with him?? Bro, explain yourself to me!! Someone explain this shit to me holy shit!!) but by and large the plot is far more mature and features far more moral ambiguity than any FE in like, 10 years. Overall, I agree with Edelgard's motives, but during her route I kinda felt like the bad guy! And I think Dimitri is ultimately ignorant and flawed in his approach by preserving the church, but during his route I felt like the good guy! I kinda like that! (Tho I think the game could've made Edelgard seem a bit less evil, ahaha)
Overall, it's a messy game but one with a lot of ambition that I really respect out of a series I was worried might be resting on its laurels after Fates. Some of the things it reaches for like the Academy actually work surprisingly well - its Persona-like gameplay and time management doing a really great job at making you think about and manage your resources. You can't just grind endlessly to get broken in this game, there's a very smart limit on how many optional battles you can do. Nice! But some of the other things it reaches for like the branching narrative and consequently huge cast come back to bite it in the ass. If this'd been "Fire Emblem: Two Houses" and you cut The Golden Deer entirely, you coulda used that time to add some depth to more of the characters, brush up on the structure and maybe make both campaigns (particularly Black Eagles) a bit longer. You also could've maybe made the Academy look a bit prettier! Good lord the Switch can not handle ambition like this! What the fuck is up with the fruit? What the fuck is up with the fruit?
The perfect Fire Emblem game is in here, in the same way that it's in most other Fire Emblem games. As ever, you've just gotta deal with a side order of shit to get it. But my experience with Three Houses errs a lot more on the positive side than say - Fates. I certainly respect this game a hell of a lot more for how much it goes for, and how much it pulls off successfully.