This review contains spoilers
What a profoundly polarizing game. Three Houses is, frankly, uneven in almost every way. A game that feels like it was concepted entirely from the starting point and built from front to back in a way that would normally be impossible. At once endearing and ridiculous, well written and nonsensical, carefully considered and maddeningly slapdash.
Mechanically, I think this is the weakest of the Fire Emblem games that I've played, as it's clearly been stripped back to be more welcoming to people who might be drawn towards the fantasy high school / light dating sim aesthetic.
The Combat Arts system at the core of the tactical game is a weak replacement for strategic positioning and strong class roles - both of which are highly minimized in this game. Perhaps this is different on higher difficulties, but early on when the Combat Arts are useful, most characters lack the support ranking necessary to boost them. By the late stages of the game, however, their diminishing returns and high cost in weapon durability relative to the total durability of higher end weapons renders the offensive options mostly useless.
Battalions, also part of this broad restructuring of tactical importance for Fire Emblem (at least in my experience), suffer a similar fate. Tied to a stat that must be cheesed with exploits - or reliant on dumb luck on higher difficulties - Battalions' utility is mostly in their ability to control enemy units. However, with little in the way of hazards for the control abilities to take advantage of, low output in damage and healing broadly, and a generally poor presentation of what Battalions do outside of their lackluster abilities they are almost purely stats or backup replacements for things like healing.
The result is a game that devolves into one of two modes. Blitzing across the map with high damage flying units to quickly kill off the necessary enemies to end a fight, or grinding across it with tanky units as you wipe it clean, an initially satisfying task that becomes a late game chore on lower difficulties.
Pair all of this with a durability system that is poorly supported by a small, and regularly exceedingly rare, set of crafting components used for upgrade or repair and you're left with a game that has given all it has to offer by the halfway point. Your best weapons mostly remain in storage to preserve them for trickier late game fights, and your units primarily loaf into most battles in Chapters 10 through probably 19 with the same weapons and equipment.
A recipe for tactics brilliance this is not.
The monastery's systems meet a similar fate, petering out around the game's halfway point and devolving into a mindless slog of watching bars go up and listening to a couple dozen small chunks of dialogue about the upcoming mission for all but the most aimless approaches. The game's signature tea parties and other downtime activities wear themselves out around the same time as the rest of the game's system. If you care at all about what you're doing, the end of the game becomes mostly training or simply skipping through to get to the next big fight.
The characters and story are where Three Houses shines. Although not without its faults, particularly in its unwillingness to have Edelgard explain her reasoning for suddenly going rogue to kill all her friends purely to preserve the appeal of playing through for different paths, Three Houses broadly constructs a compelling world with endearing characters. Not every member of the cast is a winner - Petra's tortured portrayal and Ferdinand's, well, everything stand out - but there's enough of them that I'm confident saying most players will find characters that click with them.
Three Houses isn't a master class in subverting expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying a fair few characters that I didn't care about at all to begin with by the time I was done. And while the overarching narrative is nothing spectacular, it's well executed enough to convincingly carry the rest of the experience.
The game's strongest point is probably its visuals. While it's far from the prettiest game around, regularly employing environments that would be at home on a PS2 - excepting for some textures and general geometric density - the game is still quite visually polished. The world feels broadly cohesive (with the exception of one late game level randomly yanked out of Tron and paired with cringe inducing dubstep) and the characters feel like they fit in it. The only real exception to this being the bad guys employing magical nukes of a sort via what looks like literal modern missiles late in the game. There is broadly very little to complain about in most of the design work, similar to its other sibling post-Awakening works.
So what does this all boil down to? A good, but not great, game that wants you to replay it, but is probably only worth that effort for the most dedicated Fire Emblem fans.
Mechanically, I think this is the weakest of the Fire Emblem games that I've played, as it's clearly been stripped back to be more welcoming to people who might be drawn towards the fantasy high school / light dating sim aesthetic.
The Combat Arts system at the core of the tactical game is a weak replacement for strategic positioning and strong class roles - both of which are highly minimized in this game. Perhaps this is different on higher difficulties, but early on when the Combat Arts are useful, most characters lack the support ranking necessary to boost them. By the late stages of the game, however, their diminishing returns and high cost in weapon durability relative to the total durability of higher end weapons renders the offensive options mostly useless.
Battalions, also part of this broad restructuring of tactical importance for Fire Emblem (at least in my experience), suffer a similar fate. Tied to a stat that must be cheesed with exploits - or reliant on dumb luck on higher difficulties - Battalions' utility is mostly in their ability to control enemy units. However, with little in the way of hazards for the control abilities to take advantage of, low output in damage and healing broadly, and a generally poor presentation of what Battalions do outside of their lackluster abilities they are almost purely stats or backup replacements for things like healing.
The result is a game that devolves into one of two modes. Blitzing across the map with high damage flying units to quickly kill off the necessary enemies to end a fight, or grinding across it with tanky units as you wipe it clean, an initially satisfying task that becomes a late game chore on lower difficulties.
Pair all of this with a durability system that is poorly supported by a small, and regularly exceedingly rare, set of crafting components used for upgrade or repair and you're left with a game that has given all it has to offer by the halfway point. Your best weapons mostly remain in storage to preserve them for trickier late game fights, and your units primarily loaf into most battles in Chapters 10 through probably 19 with the same weapons and equipment.
A recipe for tactics brilliance this is not.
The monastery's systems meet a similar fate, petering out around the game's halfway point and devolving into a mindless slog of watching bars go up and listening to a couple dozen small chunks of dialogue about the upcoming mission for all but the most aimless approaches. The game's signature tea parties and other downtime activities wear themselves out around the same time as the rest of the game's system. If you care at all about what you're doing, the end of the game becomes mostly training or simply skipping through to get to the next big fight.
The characters and story are where Three Houses shines. Although not without its faults, particularly in its unwillingness to have Edelgard explain her reasoning for suddenly going rogue to kill all her friends purely to preserve the appeal of playing through for different paths, Three Houses broadly constructs a compelling world with endearing characters. Not every member of the cast is a winner - Petra's tortured portrayal and Ferdinand's, well, everything stand out - but there's enough of them that I'm confident saying most players will find characters that click with them.
Three Houses isn't a master class in subverting expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying a fair few characters that I didn't care about at all to begin with by the time I was done. And while the overarching narrative is nothing spectacular, it's well executed enough to convincingly carry the rest of the experience.
The game's strongest point is probably its visuals. While it's far from the prettiest game around, regularly employing environments that would be at home on a PS2 - excepting for some textures and general geometric density - the game is still quite visually polished. The world feels broadly cohesive (with the exception of one late game level randomly yanked out of Tron and paired with cringe inducing dubstep) and the characters feel like they fit in it. The only real exception to this being the bad guys employing magical nukes of a sort via what looks like literal modern missiles late in the game. There is broadly very little to complain about in most of the design work, similar to its other sibling post-Awakening works.
So what does this all boil down to? A good, but not great, game that wants you to replay it, but is probably only worth that effort for the most dedicated Fire Emblem fans.