I was really not expecting to review this game guys. Not only is it outside my usual norm of what I plan to cover on this site, but it’s outside a lot of people’s norms for video games. There are just so many elements to this game that would turn off a lot of people, but the people that are interested are often weird enough to embrace it’s peculiar aspects and accept it for what it is. Some gamers may hate this franchise for what it represents and stands for, but what it does represent is something truly beautiful and hard to explain through just a few simple sentences. This is an RPG that aims to be more than just another generic RPG and for the most part it does do exactly that, but the flaws that drag it down is what makes it feel like the exact generic RPGs we drop within ten hours of playtime. Just like the game itself, the first few sentences to this review are extending way longer than they should and we could have revealed what it is by now. The game I am talking about is none other than Fire Emblem. More specifically the most recent entry in the franchise, Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
Now you may be asking yourself right now, “Why would I say that Fire Emblem is misunderstood of all the RPG franchises out there?” It is one of Nintendo’s most popular franchises and it has sold millions of copies worldwide. Plus there is a diehard fan base who are willing to support these games and smother their drooling love all over it. Why say such negative statements about Fire Emblem? Well first things first, the Fire Emblem franchise wasn’t massively popularized until the last decade. The franchise was near cancellation around the 2010s since the games didn’t sell as well as Nintendo hoped. Any attempts to bring new entries to the west were overshadowed or completely forgotten due to how far fetched this series was. Fire Emblem was pretty much an oddball and Nintendo was getting ready to pull the trigger on the franchise to pour fundings into other big projects. Fire Emblem was at gunpoint to being shotgun blasted right in the chest and thrown into a twenty-four foot deep river, but unbelievably then one last attempt was made to save this franchise from death.
Intelligent Systems, the team that works on the Fire Emblem games, decided to gather up all the knowledge they gained from previous entries as well as the brilliant minds who helped out in the past. With enough sweat and tears, this last effort development process is what led to Fire Emblem: Awakening. However, the development team was told directly by Nintendo that if Fire Emblem: Awakening failed to meet up to expectations and sell less than 250,000 copies worldwide then this would be the final entry in the Fire Emblem franchise. They would either save Fire Emblem or be the ones to take it out back and kill it with one good shot to the head. Seeing the past of this franchise, Fire Emblem: Awakening probably should have flopped. The game was set to be released on the Nintendo 3DS as one of the main selling points for Nintendo’s new system at the time, so this kind of helped out with sales for the game but at the same time also doomed it. Yet, despite all of these setbacks Fire Emblem: Awakening didn’t absolutely blow upon launch. Rather than blow, it instead blew up. Critics praised the game for how this game was a breath of fresh air for both the franchise and RPGs at the time, The game received really high review scores, was deemed one of the best games of 2013, and helped earn the fanbase that Fire Emblem needed all of this time.
Fire Emblem: Awakening went and saved the franchise from death. Nintendo decided not to pull the trigger on Fire Emblem and instead give Intelligent System the fundings they needed to grow stronger. The Fire Emblem franchise has been doing something incredible these past few years and Nintendo wants you to know how much dedication has been put into popularizing it once more. They’ve been trying a little too much is what I should say. So much so that some hardcore Nintendo fans get bugged out when they hear about Fire Emblem and say it's overrated without having played the other games. Look, I haven’t played the other games either and personally I don’t really care, but I wouldn’t go that far. The next entry was planned to be the most ambitious title yet as the team pushed Fire Emblem to the recent successful Nintendo Switch. There would be new changes, new direction, new view point, and fixes to make the latest entry the most accessible to date. The game was revealed at E3 2018 and was titled, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. There were high expectations for Three Houses especially with the change in setting from medieval fantasy warfare to a university full of students who have not much knowledge of warfare. The game soon came out one year later and luckily it did meet up to most expectations. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is not only one of the most well received, but one of the best selling games in the franchise. Selling almost three million copies and being nominated for GOTY awards back in 2019.
This game is brilliant and I can't believe I almost planned to skip out on it. With enough motivation from my older sister and the advice of someone smarter than myself, I was able to break through the walls and understand why Three Houses is well acclaimed. Is it a masterpiece? No. It’s far from it and to be honest there are a couple of problems that make the game severely flawed. Preventing me from giving it an excellent review score. It is still amazing though, so today we’ll be talking about why I quite enjoyed my time with Fire Emblem: Three Houses and why it is worthy of your attention.
Story
The story takes place within the grand continent of Fodlan, a place of prosperity and peace. The continent is divided into three regions each ruled by a faithful ruler. Located towards the southwest is the Adrestian Empire, to the north there is the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and finally far off towards the east there is the Leicester Alliance. All three factions try to maintain order between each other, but the true rulers of Fodlan aren’t any of the three. Instead it is the holy Church of Sieros which is located at the center of Fodlan at the Garreg Mach Monastery. The reason why the holy church rules the entire continent is because of a large-scale battle that took place thousands of years beforehand. The leader and founder of the church, Saint Seiros, led a tremendous army against a war tyrant known as Nemesis the King of Liberation who threatened all of Fodlan. It is claimed that Nemesis took all that Saint Seiros ever cherished and that the war was never ending when he was around. The battle raged on for months and years before Seiros had the courage to finally step up against Nemesis. The two of them clashed in an open field until Saint Seiros landed the final blow on Nemesis. She then proceeded to stab him until he was nothing but a dead spiritless body.
When Saint Seiros won the fight against Nemesis she then established the Church of Seiros and invented a new system of laws that would keep the people of Fodlan under strict peace. A period of peace that would last nearly forever. Flash forward to present time and here we are now. The Church of Seiros is led by the current bishop, Lady Rhea, and with the help of her followers the church grounds have been transformed into a grand university where students around the continent could gather around and not only train themselves for future careers but a future war if it were to ever so happen. It is thanks to peaceful laws and this university that people from the surrounding regions can gather around and share their ideas. Be likable friends with one another and worship the saint that helped make Fodlan what it is.
We don’t seem to be part of one of these humongous factions. We’re kind of a nobody to be honest with you. The main character is named Byleth and ever since they were little they were trained to be a mercenary by their stern father Jeralt. You never knew who your mother was or where Jeralt came from, all you know is that Jeralt deeply cares about you and wants you to know how to defend yourself. One day during the night you are awoken by your father and told that nearby there is a group of bandits. There are three students caught in the fight and each belonging to one of them are related to the leaders of the three faithful empires. There is Dimitri, an elegant man who hails from the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. Edelgard, an elegant woman who hails from the Edrestian Empire. Then there is Claude, a goofball boy who was recently discovered to be related to the ruler of the Leicester Empire. Byleth shows up to aid the three and luckily they win the fight as Byleth’s mercenary skills prove to useful.
However, a brutish knight is about to cut Edelgard down and Byleth is too late to save her. They are then kicked to this weird void-like place where a mysterious green haired girl talks to them. The little girl has recently been showing up in Byleth’s dreams and claims that a great fate lies for them in the future. She plans to help Byleth out with whatever future events may happen as the nameless girl has no recollection of who she is and needs Bylteh’s help to figure out. One of the many powers that the green haired girl lends Byleth is the ability to rewind time, and through earning this power this gives Byleth the chance to save Edelgard from the brute’s mighty strike.
The three students thank you for what you have done and make their way to the Garreg Mach Monastery. Jeralt realizes that they need a new safe place to stay at, so he decides to take you to a place that he has never shown you before. A place that he recognizes. The Garreg Mach Monastery. Once there you meet Lady Rhea and her associates who kindly welcome Jeralt back into the hands of the Church of Seiros. She treats you with uttermost respect and gives you a quarter to stay in. She then gives you a new job outside of being a mercenary or someone who defends people from harm. She states that you will teach one of three houses at the university with each one being run by one of the three students you met earlier. The Black Eagles who are led by Edelgard, the Blue Lions led by Dimitri, and the Goldeen Deer led by Claude. I decided to choose Golden Deer, because Claude seemed like the most exciting leader and my sister used puppy eyes and beg me to choose what she said was the best house.
Anyways, you settle into your new job as a teacher and you are performing extremely well for a newby. All the students extremely respect your skills and this leads Lady Rhea to offering new goals for you and your class. At the end of each month there will be an assigned mission to take care of threats to the Church of Seiros. You must train your students and lead them in these treacherous battles. Seems like a lot for university students who just want to learn, but somehow they all want to be fighters in some sort of way and want to aid you in your new life. Along the way you will learn how the Church of Seiros works, the drives of the three factions, the history of Fodlan, and the many enemies that want to work against the Church of Seiros. Especially this one faction that works behind the scene and wants to spark the flames to something devious. It’s up to you to guide your pupils and steer Fodlan towards the right direction.
Gameplay
Three Houses is a combination between visual novels and tactical strategy RPGs. Two genres that I know turn off a lot of people. Tactical strategy for how skill based they are and how half the time they feel more reliant on chance rather than actual skill and mastery of the mechanics. Then there are visual novels where the entire gameplay loop is literally just hammering away at the dialogue button until the next dialogue sequence ensues. Personally I like visual novels and, unpopular opinions coming in for a landing, would rather prefer dialogue that allows the player to go at their own pace rather than a long cutscene that forces the player to sit through. I love cinematography in video games and some of my favorite Triple A games rely heavily on them like God of War.
There’s just something really authentic about a video game feeling like a book. Not a boring book you have to read for school or work, but a book that encaptures you and completely immerses you into the world. Writing so good that the characters feel like real individuals you would encounter in real life. It’s also great when the writing finds a way to interweave with the gameplay and the two work together to create an adventure that makes you care. A couple of weeks ago I reviewed a game called Pyre which is made by the same exact people who developed Hades. That game has the perfect mix between storytelling and gameplay as the story finds a way to push itself forward through the actions you make during the gameplay. It’s possible to lose and the story brings up these losing points which makes the stakes high. Hades does this as well where losing progresses the story in some way or another. There’s also Persona 5 which is another visual novel RPG and how the story and gameplay is engaging enough to push you forward. Come to think of it, Disco Elysium can also be envisioned as a visual novel for how it heavily uses dialogue. God, I just really love reading don’t I?
Anyways, there is a lot of dialogue in Three Houses and there are times when the game wants you to roam around the Garreg Mach Monastery and interact with the people there. The NPCs bumbling around will offer quests, give rewards for completing them, and occasionally you will find lost items which can be given back to their rightful owners. There are side activities like eating lunch and choir singing which can be used to boost motivation and your relationship with other characters, and you can give them gifts if you have them on hand. However, the real stars of the Garreg Mach Monastery are not you the player or what you can do in this sprawling location, but the individuals who view this place as a sanctuary. There are dozens of students and other teachers each with their own unique personalities, but it’s most likely you will be more attached to the students in your own class. Increase your bond with them enough and you will initiate a support conversation which raises your bond level. Bonuses from bond level would include leveling up their stats faster and gaining a few stat bonuses as well. I grew to love the members of the Golden Deer house and some of them I wanted to give my uttermost attention to for their background and how they live their daily lives.
You may not be here for the visual novel aspects that you see in games like Persona 5 or Valkyria Chronicles. What you are really here for are the full scaled battles, endless waves of enemies, and mastering the flow of each fight. At first I was really worried about the combat and if it would lean more towards putting things on chance like XCOM 2 rather than player mastery and skill like in Into The Breach. Luckily as time went on combat got better and I slowly grew to love it. It’s not as good as Into The Breach, but it does have enough depth to not make me chuck the controller due to boredom. You move your students across a grid, select what actions to perform, or whether they attack an enemy or not. Just like a majority of turn-based RPGs both sides take turns, but when attacking each other it works differently.
When you send a unit to attack an enemy they hit the enemy first and the enemy then hits back. Kind of like a real fight where two fighters exchange hits between each other. There are certain criterias though, like how melee characters can only counter melee characters and the same can go for ranged fighters. This does create good strategies like lowering a powerful melee enemies’ health using ranged fighters and since they are far away they can’t strike back. Then send in a melee character to finish the job. Whenever your allies hit an enemy or do so kill them, they will then level up and increase their stats. I like this, because it means you don’t have to win every fight just to rank them up. If an ally is slain in battle then you can’t use them for the rest of the fight, but if you make a mistake you can then use your time rewind powers to undo turns to a point where you can then re-envision them. There are a limited amount of times you can use this ability during a fight, but it’s well balanced and makes it so that if a player is losing then they can rewind and undo some of those deaths to have a better chance later. Every fight has a specific goal to work towards and depending on your strategy they can be easy or hard to get to. Slay every enemy on the battlefield, defeat the enemy commander which is the boss fight of the battlefield, defend a certain point for a period of time, win a fight within a specific number of turns, etc.
Outside of combat there are several other aspects to worry about. Every week you must go to a classroom and determine what traits your students specialize in. They will then study or look into these categories and then rank up. These include the efficiency of using specific weapon types, how much ground they can cover during a turn, and if they can use spells on the battlefield. If you reach certain trait points with characters then they unlock new skills to use in battle and can take exams which give them new classes. This offers a wide build selection for your team and good strategizing if you want to forge the best team for the rest of the game. For me I made sure Leonie and Lorenz specialized in riding and lance skills to exceed as horse fighters, made Ignatz and Claude highly accurate snipers, Raphael was a brutish brawler who evaded attacks easily, Lysthiea was a warlock who could easily dispatch foes resistant to melee attacks but weak to elemental damage, Hilda was a heavy armored knight who could tank damage, Marianne was our number one healer, and much more. The classroom isn’t the only place they can rank up their stats as they can do so on the battlefield.
You can also recruit new students from other houses to join your team and help in the future, but you as well must reach specific stat requirements. Either from studying, training, or gaining advice from your allies. On the battlefield you and your allies can strengthen bonds between each other by helping one another in fights, and your students can build bonds between each other as well which have benefits.
The last aspect I want to cover is your daily schedule and how you spend everyday. You know how in persona 5 you have to plot out what you do each day as time is of essence? Well here in Three Houses it’s each week. You can explore the monastery, rest, go to sessions led by other teachers, or do optional battles. Some of these battles are for either side quests or paralogue battles which not only further bonds but also can offer unique weapons and rewards. Especially the Relics later on. That’s all I have to say right now. What are my final thoughts on Three Houses?
Thoughts
This review has gone on longer than it really should have. By now I am guessing about the length of some of the essays I write on this site. What I want you to get though is that Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a great game and that if you give it a shot you might just go on and like it. There is a lot to love and even though certain flawed aspects are hard to ignore, dragging down the core experience as well as making certain movements a slog to go through, what the game does right is done tremendously.
The world and setting is great. I like the change from being the major head of an army to just some random person being assigned to be a teacher. It is not only a change in perspective, but let’s the player settle in much easier as the game knows they are new and don’t immediately know what is exactly going on. Fodlan is a really interesting place to learn about tand the game does a lot to make sure you learn and understand each bit of information. The students you surround yourself with are all exciting in their own rights and the more you spend time with them the more you get to sympathize. Some of them witnessed their parents die at a young age, while others get to watch their parents spoil themselves and forget their children exist. Some of them belong to wealthy noble families, while others are part of the lower class and must deal with weekly back bending labor. Some students are setting high expectations for themselves and what they will do in the future, while others are scared of what is to come next. Some characters and dialogue sequences get annoying at times as the writing doesn’t know how to present new information that majorly affects the story. It has that quality where you know what is going on and the twist is understandable, but the characters don't do it themselves and they have to go and explain it further. Basically, it’s like every anime dialogue sequence where 15 simple words are then extended to two long paragraphs. That is when Three Houses started to get a little annoying with the story , but I grew to ignore it as the stuff that drove the story forward was really interesting.
The combat and fights are really good as you get to see how wide scale the battles are. Not everything feels entirely based on chance as performing an attack will show what will come afterwards. When systems of chance or randomness come into effect they are often benefits rather than downsides like in XCOM 2. The chance your character dodges an attack or powers themselves up to unleash a critical blow. This may be due to how the speed stat scales for every character, but it does prove to be useful especially against heavily armored foes and bosses. There is enough build variety to allow the player to work around with what fits them best. The classroom system does get annoying as the game goes on and you sit through your one hundredth session of teaching the same overly confident kids you have been talking to these last few hours, but luckily there is an auto-instruct function which allows you to teach the students with the most motivation. However, you can’t select which students and there are also the weekly jobs which must be assigned by going into the classroom manually. Overall progression is good and the combat gets better after the first few hours.
There are downsides to the combat though. I mentioned earlier that speed scales like crazy in this game to the point your character can dodge a blast of lightning coming down on them like a nuclear strike. Beastly enemies later have attacks that cover mass amounts of terrain and are dangerous if not careful, but you can dodge them completely if those elements of chance and randomness kick in. Traversing across a huge battlefield is tedious as your characters can only go a specific distance and you have to drag each of them individually to the spot you need to go. Wasting countless minutes and making battles drag on longer than they should. Some of your characters can be extremely overpowered due to their stats and abilities. Lysithea was overpowered for, because even though she had low physical defense she could instantly kill a lot of foes due to how magic scales in this game. The main character Byleth is especially broken as the developers dumped a lot of health, speed, and attack power into them. At the end of each fight they list who the MVP is based upon how many enemies they slain or hit, and a majority of the time it was Byleth due to how powerful they were. They just want to make it really hard for you to die, but maybe that’s good because you at least want one good character to make a boss fight easier.
It is really easy to tell where they cut the budget to Three Houses or where the developers got lazy, because at times this game can look beautiful while having the quality of something like Fallout 4. The artstyle is nice and kind of like how they went for a more cartoonish anime style. There is a nice array of colors, the voice acting is mostly good, and the monastery itself feels grand to explore. The soundtrack is also really nice as certain moments are made beautiful with how everflowing it is. Then there are all the lazy elements that dozens of other people have pointed out. Lighting is nonexistent so the game is really bright most of the time. There is no shading or value to the characters or monastery, so after a while the game starts to hurt to look at. You may be saying that "This is a Switch game, so of course there are going to be hardware limitations." Well I can understand that, but Breath of The Wild had better lighting and detailing than this. My sister even told me during development there were plans to have lighting systems in this game, but they cut that aspect to work on other categories. Every dialogue sequence, every character makes the same four to five gestures and it gets redundant at times. The facial animation is also really robotic, and yes I know that is also a limitation due to hardware, but they could at least try to match it up to the dialogue. It would be really hard to tell what scene is without the dialogue since all of them would look the same due to the gestures. Doors and gateways in the monastery can be walked through as the action that triggers to move or open are delayed. They didn’t even try for the backgrounds as they are poorly rendered and it is easy to tell when they are clipping. During one cutscene between my companions I looked at the background and found that it didn’t line up properly. Not every game needs to have perfect graphics or textures. You can have an ugly artstyle and still make a game that is fun to play. You have that budget to do it though, and that's the disappointing part.
One aspect I do want to touch upon deals with late game content so if you don’t want to get that spoiled then skip ahead to the next section. The game is fun to play, but the story doesn’t really get that interesting until time flies. When you are frozen in time for five years and awake to find the three factions at war with each other. All your friends have gotten much older and now you are involved with something you thought you couldn’t handle. An actual war that determines Fodlan’s future. They did the thing Fallout: New Vegas did where all the factions know their faults, but they don’t want to admit their own. It helps make the game more philosophical and makes you wonder if you are on the right side or not, or if what you are doing is morally the best thing to do. You then get to see how war has affected your allies and it’s really nice. I think time skip is the best part about Three Houses, it just sucks you have to grind twenty or thirty hours to reach the turning part of the story. It’s nice you can recruit students to join your class, but you won’t be able to recruit all the ones you actually want. You need to level up your own stats and if you plan it out poorly you might not be able to recruit anyone at all. This is made worse with how you can’t recruit students during time skip, even though your stats won’t be good enough to recruit until time skip. I understand it’s because they choose different sides or that they are loyal to their house leader, but this limitation drags down the amount of choice you have later on. There is this one battle that they could have done for everyone else. I was able to recruit Ashe before the time skip happened, and later in the story I got to fight him. The game then offered me to spare him and then he joined my party again. Why didn’t you do this for other students? Now I have to feel bad killing a person I formally knew but were doing what they were told to do. I also find it really weird how my students enjoy killing so much. This kinda demoralizes the cast and makes them look more like monsters than actual heroes.
Finally, and this may not be a problem to a majority of players, but I wish you can romance anyone rather than one particular gender. Now that sounds really weird to type down, but bear with me for a little. I chose a female character because I wanted to romance Claude. He looked really cool and his personality is what made me absolutely love him. You can’t romance him as a male though, so I choose a female to do so. As the story went on I started to grow attached to Marianne as she was a character I really liked. I checked to see if I can romance female characters as a female during time skip. Turns out you can’t. Now I don’t want to say Japanese developers and writers are reclusive. They probably looked over to the west and wondered what a majority of us think is “normal”. I’m not trying to be an SJW right now or enforce an opinion, but to today’s standard I wish games were a little more open to inclusiveness. Hades main character, Zagreus, is a bisexual. Hollow Knight even has a couple of gay couples in the game. Persona 5 makes you attracted to your best friend Ryuji, but doesn’t give you the option to fate him since he is a male like you. However, you can’t date a teacher and an alcoholic reporter which is weird. In Three Houses you can date people several years older than you and even a loli which is a little gross. Yet again, I don't want to dive too deep into the topic of gender or what you should love.
There are all these setbacks that make Three Houses really game, but remember that I really love this game. It got me into a franchise I thought I didn’t like, and told a story that other games couldn’t possibly. I do highly recommend that you play Three Houses, and with the amount of content and replayability the game offers it helps justify the sixty dollar price tag that Nintendo refuses to ever lower like the rest of their games. Three Houses is wonderful and I hope they fix the problems this game has with the next entry. I give Fire Emblem: Three Houses an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
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