Fire Emblem Three Houses

I've been contemplating my thoughts on this game ever since mid way through playing part 1 and since then I knew that this was going to be the longest and most in depth review I will have given on a Fire Emblem game so far. There is just so much to unpack that I cannot give a short and simple review, this has been brewing for ages and I am so happy to be finally at the point where I can compile all of it into one (hopefully cohesive) post for all of you to read and give feedback on.

This game is certainly infamous for it's discourse, I knew that well enough before playing it for the first time a couple months ago and I've become especially familiar with it as Engage has released and caused that discourse to form into something else entirely.

For this review, and all other reviews following it for these games, I want to drop out of internet discourse mode for a second a critically analyze this game for what it is and try and give a nuanced and good faith interpretation on it's contents

In short, I don't want you to read this and think that this is a grand take down of the game, nor do I want you to think it's an apologists take on a controversial story. I don't want the take away to be "I think this game is bad" or "I think this game is good" I know I've expressed a lot of cynicism on the game during my playthrough of it but for this review I want to be fair and honest on my thoughts with it, and as should be expected for a game with this many parts to it, I will have different opinions on the many aspects of this game, where I think the game went wrong or where it went right and see how you people respond and give feedback on how you thought of it.

This is the model I want this review, and all future reviews, to take.

So without further delay, let us as always begin with the story.

I never formally gave a review on Verdant Wind when I played that a few months ago so I will lump it in with Crimson Flower here.

First and foremost, Fire Emblem Three Houses is hugely ambitious, in a way that is almost unprecedented considering the state of the franchise at the time of it's release. I don't want to tell you that the writers and developers weren't definitely trying to make something monumental when crafting this game as even looking at it from a surface level you can tell you how much was poured into this game to try and make it as potent and rich as possible. The various cutscenes and image stills are beautiful and I personally believe the 2D artstyle of those scenes to be an upgrade from the 3D animated ones in the first two 3DS titles.

I want to talk about the cutscene that plays when you first enter the Monastery and are shown a little bit of every student character in one of the few times the game chooses to show you rather than tell you what's going on. There's no spoken dialogue in the cutscene and I love how the game shows via body language and other activities what these characters are about, it's a tactic I wish was used more often in video games as a way to show how characters are feeling without having to tell you, and it's something that Three Houses unfortunately doesn't continue much of past this one cutscene.

Now the cutscene I just mention could be seen as something that is meant to highlight character quirks which is something I'll also touch on a bit later, but for now I want to talk about the various image stills.

I made fun of the game when they showed these, but if we're being honest I love how just looking at these stills can convey so much emotion despite not being fully animated.


The image of Edelgard about to kill Dimitri especially struck me as being able to show so much while telling so little, and while it's nice to poke fun at them for using still images over animated cutscenes, I don't think it's fair to flat out dismiss them just because of that with how beautiful and well crafted they are. I think it was a genius way to show what was happening while being limited by time constraints.

Fire Emblem Three Houses is a game that made the brave decision to jump into the pool of experimentation, to try and tell a story that would be largely unknown to the franchise at the time, and yet it only dips into that pool half way as old tropes and narrative devices continue to be used religiously to convey certain aspects of the story. TH almost feels insecure about this fact in how much it will bring up certain complex ideas and thoughts, but a single playthrough of the story told me that TH is deathly afraid of exploring those complex ideas and is content to keep it's plot straightforward and simple as is what is familiar to the writers and to the audience.

The game wants you to believe that it's about political ideas and grand war time drama, I disagree, the story is much more centered on the mythological world building and more zoomed in drama between individual characters, something that is much more par for the course in a typical Fire Emblem narrative. It is a world in which the single crest of flames gets more world building and backstory than all three of Fódlan's nations combined.

This is a direction I will not demonize, it is a direction that Fire Emblem has engaged in for decades and has been able to tell beautiful narratives as a result. Three Houses is one such game where it wants to dip into more realistic political world building as a change of pace, but it's hesitation into going into that style of writing is a huge detriment to what was already a rushed story.

In some cases, the pitfalls of TH could be blamed on it's rushed schedule release, but if you ask me, many of it's problems could be pinned on the developers just focusing on the wrong things.

The story's hesitation on exploring more complex ideas ends up making the whole experience feel messy and inconsistent with how it will bring up a dark glimmer of realism in one scene then a much more lighthearted cartoon like take on the situation in the next, it is a case where the tropes of old end up holding back the genuinely interesting ideas of Three Houses.

As an unexpected comparison, lets look at Fire Emblem Fates. While Fates may have the worse story compared to Three Houses, I personally think it has a stronger story in how much more consistent it is with it's themes. Fates certainly has it's moments but I don't recall a time where it felt like it was breaking it's barrier of narrative theming to the same degree Three Houses does.

In a way, Three Houses almost seems like it wants to hold your hand by making sure the player fully understands the focus of the plot. They leave the more complicated aspects of the story in the background to leave the easy to understand stuff as the foreground focus of the narrative. It was during Edelgard's war declaration on the church near the end of part one that tipped me off on this the most, as both Byleth and all the students end up joining her because of their shared friendship rather than Edelgard's ideas, ideas that I might add are hardly explained outside of support conversations.

This makes sense, the story doesn't want you to choose a route based on personal beliefs lest the game end up making a political statement, it wants you to pick routes based on it's characters and your personal connections to them. It doesn't want you to fight for something greater than yourself, it wants you to fight for your friends, and more importantly, fight for Edelgard.

Edelgard and Byleth's relationship is something that I will praise. An unfiltered explicit gay relationship between the two main characters of the story should be considered nothing more than a triumph considering the broader genre. Bonus points go the fact that Edelgard's actions and overall character towards Byleth is genuinely cute and portrayed in such a way where I can believe that she is in love.

However my problem with this relationship is not the relationship itself but something else entirely, and unfortunately it is kind of a big one.

Byleth

The main characters of Fire Emblem often go on and off with how truly invested they are in the plot, Byleth however is an outlier in just how disconnected they are from everything else going on. Byleth as a character is meant to be the players insert and it is astonishing just how much the story ends up sacrificing to make absolutely sure Byleth is an unbiased, unemotional, and perfectly vassalized character so that the player could put themselves into their shoes.

The time the story spends to explain why Byleth is there, why she's powerful, why she's important, who and what she's important to ends up robbing us of other aspects of the story that leave so many parts feeling hollow.

Byleth has no emotional core in the story and that's what makes them so uncompelling, their definitive personality trait is that they have no personality. I mentioned earlier that I think the game did a good job at showing that Edelgard was in love with Byleth, but it failed to convince that Edelgard would fall in love with Byleth in the first place. Almost none of the praise Byleth gets during the story feels earned as from day one they are endless loaded with praise by the main characters. They get no true moment of weakness and most importantly never have a moment where it feels like they're thinking for themselves.

That being said, I do think the game attempts to make it so Byleth is a more active participate in the events around her. The fact that she can say "That was a cute shriek" towards Edelgard in that one scene or "I-It almost sounds like you like me" towards Jertiza in their support are great beginnings to the characterization but it's just doesn't go far enough for me to forgive it.

I want to give my thoughts on what could've been done to improve Byleth's stance in the story, but for now lets touch a little on support conversations and character quirks.

One major flaw I think is in Fire Emblem is it's obsession with character quirks and how characters all have to have their own specific quirks for you to like them. Most FE characters have this typical set up and resolve when it comes to characterization: They have a character who has a singular personality trait, that singular personality trait is the focus of most of their supports, and then it's revealed that they actually have a deep dark backstory that explains their singular personality trait.

Fire Emblem refuses to have any actual flaws for these characters as they are more often presented to be just another one of their quirks that will always be part of them.

This is the setup most FE characters have and it's one of the many old story structures that I think holds TH's narrative back.

For certain characters in Crimson Flower, this was hugely apparently. Bernie's anxiety, Ferdinand's arrogance, Caspar's recklessness, these are all genuine flaws that are treated by the narrative as just funny quirks that never truly get resolved, but it comes in small doses too like Petra's accent or Linhardt's absent-mindedness.

Some characters are more initially complex than others but for just about all of them, FE wants them to remained unchanged throughout the entire story even if their support conversations suggest otherwise.

This creates a situation where these are teenagers who had to deal with 5 years of brutal war and yet don't feel affected by it at all, despite how often the story throws around the idea of the horrors of war, making the five year timeskip feel almost non-existent.

There is one or two moments that I'll praise. First Dorothea. She has a few lines in battle that are genuinely heartbreaking as a realistic portrayal of war. Her "more fighting..." line she says with exhaustion is something so small yet feels so impactful whenever I heard it. Another one being Bernie's "It seems like fighting's all I do these days" and "I'll be home again soon" Not having the same impact as Dorothea's but still leaving me wishing TH leaned much more into that anti-war sentiment.

In regards to the support conversation, while I liked a few of them, many of them felt the need to spell out exactly the conclusion of events that occurred in the support. "I'm no longer a recluse" "You proved me wrong on this one thing" "I used to think you were lazy, now I think differently" and of course many of these revelations are not permanent.

This also happened in the main story where many character motivations were explicitly told to me rather than showed.

That leads into another flaw I have with the game's narrative. Edelgard, and her motivations.

Edelgard discourse is infamous but believe me, I'm not here to try and tell you that she's a bad character because she's "problematic" I honestly think she is a very solid character, but my issue is that her character doesn't always match her actions. Fire Emblem Three Houses wants to create a morally gray situation with Edelgard but because they also want Edelgard to be another quirky cast member with no actual flaws, the game fails to convince that Edelgard would actually declare this war.

She seems smart enough to know that war is not the only option, nor does she seem blinded by trauma enough to think that war is the only option. Already it was left very vague why the horrific experiments done to her as a child led her down the path of anti-church sentiment and her war here seems like something she was forced to do rather than something she chose to take part in.

This especially feels true with how reluctant she sounds right before starting the war, it doesn't feel like a "I know this has to be done but I don't want to do it" and more "I was forced by the writers to do this even though I don't want to"

In some ways I wish Edelgard was more like Rhea. Rhea I find to be a really fascinating character because since she's not really part of the main cast it seems she was given freedom to be a more nuanced character. Rhea is FE scariest villain and it's all because of the humanity she has, you feel bad for her that she ended up like this and can understand just through her emotions why she feels the way she does.

Edelgard gets no such treatment, she has the terrible backstory but her trauma doesn't blind her and it makes me wonder why she even declared this war in the first place.

I have some ideas on what could've been done, but lets for now talk about gameplay.

I'm not an expert on this field so I wont talk about it too much but for what it's worth, I did find myself enjoying the maps far more than in Verdant Wind, but that's mostly due to how much siege tome bullshit I remember being in Verdant Wind.

One complaint I have with Three Houses map design is just how much it allows for powercreep. Archers and siegetome users often create situations where you cannot bring weaker units into the fray or else they will be killed instantly, and so that leaves your more stronger units to get even stronger and create more of a power imbalance throughout your team.

That being said, it's clear the game tried to make it so those overpowered units could face up against just as overpowered enemies.

The monsters near the end of the game are tough as nails, even with overpowered characters, but while this works technically, I find myself getting annoyed by them more often than not. The strategy to defeating a monsters is more or less the same each time and all the extra stuff they throw onto that are just ways to make the process take longer.

The other complaints are ones I'm sure you've heard before. The weapon system makes it hard for classes to have a niche expression so you might as well just make everyone Wyvern Riders and combat arts and abilities hardly matter if you just one round everything anyways.

And I will never forgive TH for making it impossible to make Byleth a dancer unit.

Now, lets move onto the juicy part. What I think could've been done to make Three Houses a more polished experience.

One idea I have that could improve gameplay is to simply structure TH more like a traditional Fire Emblem game, I.E have it so you start off with a small roster of characters but then slowly gain more as you progress. Instead of choosing your route at the very beginning, you could choose it right after the timeskip when you've already familiarized yourself with the characters and their personal beliefs and motivations, including the Three Houses Lords.

So essentially, you'd be able to build your own team right from the ground up, and that team would join you along with the single Lord you picked to follow after the timeskip.

I'm thinking a situation where each Three Houses lord would be playable until that timeskip, so this might also give chance for the lords to have interactions between each other before the timeskip, both in and out of support conversations.

Better yet, you could have it so each route still has it's fixed cast of characters, making it so if you favored a character that wasn't part of the cast you ended up picking, you'd have to fight them in battle after the timeskip which would make for some fun drama as opposed to killing students you had barely any connection to because you didn't recruit them.

This could also allow for a branch of fates situation so you wont have to go through part one every time you want to pick a new route.

Speaking of part one, lets talk about that.

Part 1 mostly focuses on Those Who Slither in The Dark, a cult who feels so disjointed from the rest of the story they may as well not even exist past the timeskip.

This is a story that is meant to put the existence of crests, nobility, and church power into question, if they really want to hammer home that theming then part one could be about showing us how those things effect the various lives of people in Fódlan. If Edelgard's philosophy is that nobility and crests should be dismantled then show me why those systems inherently create evil in otherwise okay people, not spend 5 chapters on chasing down the Death Knight.

With that in mind, lets consider Edelgard's motivations. There are two directions to go, either Edelgard is a little like Rhea and is blinded by trauma enough to seek vengeance with her war, or have Edelgard remain the same and instead have the story show as that there really is no other option other than war, show as how much of a low point the continent is in so that even Edelgard can agree that enough is enough.

Byleth is another change that is needed in my opinion. The potential in Byleth is strong, by having a character that starts of emotionless but grows to feel human as the story moves on, but if they want to tell this story then they have to commit to it. Have Byleth's lines be fully voiced, have characters look down on or slander Byleth for being so weird, give them a voice of their own and opinions of their own, have them fully breakdown crying when Jeralt dies and keep that grief with them for the rest of the game.

That's one direction Byleth can go, but another direction, and one I personally prefer, is just to not have Byleth at all. Remove Byleth from the story entirely and instead focus purely on the three lords and their relationship between each other and depending on which path you pick, you will be put in the perspective of them.

As far as the larger story is concerned, I believe it should be less mythological in it's approach and be more realistic and political, so much so that I think the first cutscene in the game you see, the one that shows the fight between Serios and Nemesis, should be replaced with an animation depicting the original battle of the eagle and lion. Telling us more about that battle and about the people involved could also be brought up in the story.

Thinking about it, maybe each route should represent different ideas on what this conflict is about.

Crimson Flower: This is about class

Verdant Wind: This is about culture

Azure Moon: This is about tradition

Silver Snow: This is about religion

And the resolution should be more than just an ambiguous unification of the continent

Three Houses was certainly ambitious and due to it's huge following has caused many debates among the community. But it makes me fear that an influx of more complicated ideas in FE stories will automatically not be popular among the community because of bad-faith arguments produced as a result of Three Houses massive popularity.

While it's bad that Engage has caused many gatekeeping TH fans call outcry on it's lack of story focus, I think it's also bad for people to believe that bad-fath takes by people on twitter is the fault of a game's story and not the fault of people not looking closely enough, as if there was ever a moment in history where such a toxic form of discourse never existed.

The ideas that Three Houses brings up is the direction I want FE to take, even if it stumbles along the way by doing so, I want FE to be able to tell a niche of story-telling without worrying about mass appeal, and if it makes a few blunders here and there in it's experimentation then that's okay

It all makes me think of this one quote that I don't remember where I heard it but it made me think of Three Houses

"A game that's bad because it's an ambitious failure is far more interesting than a game that's bad because it was boring and bland right from the beginning"