Here, order is maintained by the Church of Seiros, which hosts the prestigious Officer’s Academy within its headquarters. You are invited to teach one of its three mighty houses, each comprised of students brimming with personality and represented by a royal from one of three territories. As their professor, you must lead your students in their academic lives and in turn-based, tactical RPG battles wrought with strategic, new twists to overcome. Which house, and which path, will you choose?
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Good attempt at a new formula for FE, but I feel like a lot of the bells and whistles end up making 3H more cumbersome to play than necessary. Narrative and characters are easily what pull this game forward above prior games. Game probably deserves some flak for quite possibly having the most annoying fanbase of any FE game out there.
The simplification of a once formative strategy franchise. Three Houses is about one thing: Dating lovable anime people. This sole focus leads to dozens of hours of busywork, with even battles being used as a device to strengthen relationships.
There is, luckily, some payoff in the deepened bonds, with some truly charming moments for plenty of the interpersonal relationships. Almost every character is worthy of love and attention. The meat of the combat, however, quickly becomes a routine action. Poor scaling makes characters capable of one-shotting literally any supposed threat except for the very last enemy.
Three Houses isn't a "bad" game; there's enjoyment in helping to build the world, one monastery visit at a time. However, it could've done with a ton less of these chores or shortened its run to fewer than 80 hours, so that it would have the replay value it alludes to having.
I've only played the Blue Lions Route because I don't roll with facism and the units in Golden Deer are a little too "theater kid" for my tastes. But the Blue Lions Route rules, and is my fondest memory of gaming in the summer in the "before-times" of 2019.
After having played other Fire Emblem games, the level design of Three Houses leaves a lot to be desired, but the characters are incredible. This (Blue Lions) is probably the most compelling modern Fire Emblem character study, and it's quite a satisfying time watching Dimitri take back the throne.
Rating: [90]
i really liked the blue lions storyline(s). probably contracted a venereal disease just by playing through it but that's fine and to be expected. game is actually a 3/5 for me, but because they wrote sylvain into existence it gets like .5 more
Maddening isn't really worth it; halving EXP growth only results in having to do double the work
The storytelling and world-building this game has is incredible, but what really stands out above all else is characterisation.
Every. single. character. has a solid backstory, ties with other sub-plots, personal relationships, individual endings depending on how close they are with their allies. You can - realistically - fall in love with every single playable character, and even some of the unplayable ones are also easy to love and/or hate!
There are some weak storylines, especially when compared with the two "big ones". However, playing every path at least once is really worth it. Besides, you don't even have to buy three different games to get 100% in the main story! so that's really cool!