Main image
1st August
2019
written by Splash

Title: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Faiā Emuburemu Fūkasetsugetsu (Japanese: ファイアーエムブレム 風花雪月)
Platform: Switch
Genre: SRPG
Language: Japanese
Company: Intelligent Systems, Nintendo
Summary: Director Kasukihara wasn’t kidding when he said one House takes 80 hrs. I started off with Golden Deer (Claude) and have done all four routes in order of Golden Deer > Church > Blue Lions > Edelgard. My “final” New game+ with ALL THE THINGS (all students, etc) will be on my everlasting favorite–Golden Deer. But I do love all the houses to some extent and I’ll be doing a TON of replays (all on Maddening from now on) anyway.

The games were kind of Otome RPG-esque since Awakening, but WOW they stepped it up even more for this one. SUCH OTOME RPG (for Claude).
Story: Not sure how I feel about Edelgard’s house being the only one with more than one route, as I personally want more out of the other houses instead… IS waifu bias though.
Characters: I associate Kurahana Chinatsu’s art with dokidoki things, considering Lamento introduced me to her, and then Uta no Prince-sama and so on. I prefer Kozaki’s art overall (Awakening, Fates), but Kurahana Chinatsu still has a special place with me. And it feels really dokidoki. It really grows on you as you play through the game.

More on actual game characters later. XD
Sound: 10. I was a bit skeptical about the prospects of the music this time when they put out music samples on the site (I can’t find that sample site now lol)–none of it was too memorable back then. But… yeah, the actual game music is super good. I might have a personal bias towards Fates’s soundtrack overall, but Three Houses is an EXTREMELY close 2nd. My mildest critique would be that the Thunder version of the tracks aren’t as appealing as the Ablaze versions of the 3DS game tracks– but they’re still great to listen to.
Gameplay:

On difficulties:
On a scale of 100 for FE difficulties with 100 being near impossible, Maddening feels like 80. Normal feels like 0-5. Hard feels like… 15-20. I really wish they had made Hard mode closer to like… 35 at least. And even at 35 that’s still not even halfway to Maddening :\

I’m really enjoying watching streamers play regardless of mode to see their 1st time reactions to stuff but I’m kind of smh to see how effortlessly they get crits and dodges on Hard. XDDD

I realllllllly really wish they had made Hard mode at LEAST on the level of like… I dunno, Conquest before DLC (since those brought infinite grinds). The fact that it isn’t on that level even without infinite grind is just…

This guy also has a bunch of legit points about the gameplay. He’s also mildly objective on the story critiques too, but I don’t agree with him about each route bringing the other routes down. Although it could have helped that I started with THE OBJECTIVELY BEST route (for the game’s lore) Golden Deer, yooo. :V

Replay Value: 10. THERE IS SO MUCH CONTENT. 1st run took me 70 hrs, but I also didn’t bother recruiting anyone else in that run except for Sylvain, so I didn’t get to do a lot of Paralogues. Maddening no New Game+ (with healer farming abuse) took me 115 hours, completed Nov 15 2019 before Ashen Wolves added cheat items to the mix.

Overall: 10. This is an EASY 10/10 for the sheer amount of great content packed into one game, SO MUCH VALUE. It’s not absolutely perfect in every way, but IS really blew the water out of this one when so many other games lately demand that you pay up another game’s worth to get more than an initial ~20 hr run or so.

Screenshots, more gameplay details, and all the other deets to come!!!

JP site

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *