This review contains spoilers
It took me one month and 50 hours of gameplay, but I finally did it: I beat Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Crimson Flower route. It is my second time ever playing a Fire Emblem game, the first being FE7 on Wii U Virtual Console. I had never been big into the series- I did pour over a shit-load of hours into FEH for a while- but, like many new things, I was willing to try the newest entry on Switch. Having surrounded myself with friends who are big fans of the franchise- my best friend especially- and the general rising of FE's popularity, it seemed like Three Houses was going to be a popular, talked-about game. And sure enough, as soon it came out, almost everyone I knew that played video games was either talking about the game, complaining about how they were struggling to find a copy, and lamenting missing out on the launch weekend. Despite not pre-ordering, I was fortunate to get it launch after biking nine miles to my nearest GameStop in the morning. (Leg gang.) And after fifty hours and 1000 characters in, I can confidently say I am... not too impressed with what I have played.
Spoilers for Black Eagles and the timeskip.
Before I get into what I feel made the game a unique experience and what made it yawn-inducing and grating, there's one aspect about the game that doesn't fit with the review of the game, but with the marketing behind it. To keep things concise: I hate that the timeskip was not a surprise. During Nintendo's E3 2019 presentation, a month and a half before the game launched, the timeskip was revealed and while many were met with shock and awe, I was met with confusion and disappointment. How awesome would it have been to have discovered the timeskip for the first time in the game without IntSys spoiling it? Even the opening intro and the back of the box doesn't show the timeskip. Call me an Info Wars soldier, but methinks the timeskip that was supposed to be a surpirse was used as a marketing tactic, but IntSys decided to make a trailer from it during E3- the biggest event in gaming- and increase the game's appeal. I may be in the minority on this one but it was disheartening to see something that had the potential to be so impactful be wasted, and it honestly decreased my hype in the game.
Now, to get into the actual game, first the good shit:
-The character writing is gooooooooooooooooood. FE7 had room temperature character writing with the occasional burst of personality and charm, but IntSys clearly placed all their chips on the dynamics between characters and it paid off in spades. The voice acting is also surprisingly great. Usually with RPGs, English dialogue is very hit or miss, but I'm happy to say the actors did a great job bringing the characters to life and showcasing their personalities through their inflections. I was expecting to love some Black Eagles students and dislike others, but not a single one is forgettable or lame. For those who need the definitive Black Eagles student tier list (not counting Edelgard because duh):
Ferdinand>Linhardt>Hubert>Petra>Dorothea>Caspar>Bernadetta
Instead of lining your Pokédex with units that you'll never use (which you still kinda do but the game places focus on the students so it's comparatively better) you get to see how the events of the story affect the characters and how their world views and personalities affect the story and each other. Ferdinand and Linhardt in particular are two total chads who I thought were going to be one-note "muh nobility" and "muh naps" respectively, but they quickly grew on me to become my favorites, which was further enhanced by...
-The support system, when compared to FE7, beats the pants off it. In FE7, I had zero idea how supports were triggered. I would put my units next to each other and randomly a Support command with come up. In Three Houses, everything is laid out in clear terms and building supports between units is simple and easy. My only gripe with supports in this game is that it sometimes has characters get into arguments or fights, with obviously negative outcomes, yet according to the game, their bond had deepened. Seemed like a case of story-gameplay dissonance (get used to seeing that phrase).
-The main gameplay is solid. I kinda miss the weapon triangle, as instead of picking groups of units to put forward to best handle a situation, now it becomes a matter of putting your strongest units first. Aside from that, combat arts and battalions seemed like bigger additions than they actually were. Combat arts are huge in the early game, but as soon as your characters' stats get high enough, you almost never need them. Kinda similar thing with battalions too but slightly more useful. Map designs were nice to look at from the perspective of emulating a tabletop strategy game, but sadly lacked much variety in terms of obstacles. Divine Pulse is a great mechanic that should be in every strategy RPG, although gaining so many charges for it seemed like overkill. I thought getting a maximum of five would've been the sweet spot.
-Music is good. Paralogue theme is a banger... that's all I really gotta say about that.
-Edelgard was a refreshing protagonist to follow. Instead of being a lawful good lord who is incapable of doing anything bad unless influenced by an outside force, she is a believable portrait of a person doing bad things with good intentions. Her goal is to end the secret oppression of the country under a monster's rule via the church, but said rule isn't really hurting anyone. The church crushes opposition and subtly hints that it's doing immoral things in an effort to keep its reign. Her wanting to end that reign and allow people to rule is admirable, but also she had to do some awful things to get to a position to challenge the church. Whether it was her fault or not, the blood of countless innocents- like Remire Village- are on her hands. The only time I thought her to be retarded was the whole Flame Emperor thing. The way I see it, she worked with Those Who Slither in the Dark to disrupt the church and find weakness in it so that she could strike. But all Slither does are torment innocents and try to steal Relics. When she launched her assault on the Holy Tomb after becoming emperor, she didn't have Slither (aside from their Demonic Beasts which could've easily just not have been there in place of more Imperial soliders) there to help. So what was the point in allying with terrorists? One could chalk it up to a poorly thought-out plan, or a poorly thought-out plot...
Okay now the poopy stuff.
-Everyone who says Three Houses has the best plot in the series has made me question the quality of the series' plot writing as a whole. The story of Three Houses, while it sets up clear goals, is riddled with poorly explained plot points and ridiculous immersion-shattering moments. There were multiple times I saw a villain, and thought "Oh, that's _____" and I was right every time. There are Scooby-Doo levels of plot twists and rubber masks, and it always took me out of the game when I thought "Oh wow, I wonder who this new guy is. Oh yeah, it's _____" and my eyes roll into the back of my head. Then I correctly guessed Edelgard was the Flame Emperor and I had permanently checked out of the story. It didn't help that the game may as well have had a sign hover over Edelgard saying "Hey, wouldn't it be crazy if I were the Flame Emperor? You'd still like me, right, Byleth-sensei?" The story post-timeskip is better but that's only because it goes from a mess of """""plot twists""""" to a basic war story. It goes one battle after another until credits roll.
-Byleth is a terrible character and actively drags down the game. They're a self-insert blank slate, yet has a canon personality, that being one of a self-insert blank slate. Fucking what? I admit, I have a bias against silent protagonists (there's like, five good ones) but at least with blank slates like Link or Frisk you can say you're projecting onto them. You can't really say you're projecting onto Byleth, because Byleth is canonically a doll with no feelings or emotions, so anything you project onto them is not you, it's them. On top of being a silent robot, I will die on the hill that Byleth is a Mary Sue. Call it a cliche criticism, but what else do you call a character who:
-Becomes a professor at a school instantly
-Gets handed legendary weapons like they're Costco free samples
-Is beloved by everyone and everyone who hates/dislikes them is evil and dies
-Has loli dragon God sealed inside her and is granted the power to turn back time
-FUSES WITH GOD
The only bad things that ever happened to Byleth are their birth and Jeralt's death. Their birth made her the god emperor but killed their mother, but that really only affected Jeralt, not Byleth. Jeralt's death was the only thing that got them to show emotion but they get over it after a month and after fusing with God, it's no longer an issue. Anything else that ever happens to Byleth is purely in their benefit and works towards putting them up on an untouchable elder-god pedestal. Meanwhile, Awakening gave us Robin, a customizable protagonist with a defined personality, wit, and isn't an unstoppable god, who actually is technically the antagonist of the game. The game honestly would've been much better if you just took Byleth out entirely and made your House leader the main playable character.
-The game ain't a looker. Character models look good... that's about it. Environments are drab with textures befitting the PS2, animations are recycled among many characters, there are framerate drops when running around the monastery and during attacks with a lot of particle effects (magic) happen, and the resolution gives the whole game this jagged pixelation on certain parts. Also I'm gonna be that asshole and say it: I don't like how cutscenes look. There are three kinds: textbox cutscenes, in-game graphic cutscenes, and the fully-animated cutscenes by studio Sanzigen. The in-game cutscenes look the best and the Sanizgen cutscenes are directed more beautifully than they look, but I have a bone to pick with the presentation of the textbox cutscenes. The colored borders are fine, I guess, coupled with the huge textboxes and portraits. I don't understand why we need to see a picture of the character's face while their character model is on the screen physically emoting. At least in games like Persona 5 the camera angles are more dynamic in its textbox cutscenes.
-The monastery gameplay, although tolerable at first, I ultimately grew to ignore. Getting stat bonuses and renown for doing quests to level up the party and more character dialogue is the only thing worth experiencing, and even then, I could only take so much. After hours spent running around doing fetch quests, giving out lost items like I was operating an assembly line, and I was begging to go back to the actual gameplay, but I knew if I didn't do the monastery gameplay, I wouldn't be getting support points, stat boosts and renown, so throughout part one, I had to grit my teeth and bear it. Once part two hit and the monastery thinned out, I mainly did seminars and rest weeks for motivation and magic sword juice.
-Menu-ing in this game is lowkey a nightmare. Support menus are simple and clean, but then you have your item inventory. Are you about to set out on a mission and are performing your check for every unit and their items and/or need to buy new weapons or forge or repair? Have fun dicking around your storehouse and trading menus for 5-10 minutes every time just to make sure no one is under prepared or are carrying too much. I wish there were more streamlined menu layouts, like not having a separate command for trading, or little button prompts asking me if I would like to switch out an iron sword for a steel sword a unit is able to use in the storage.
Overall, I'd rate my experience with Fire Emblem: Three Houses a 6/10. I felt similarly to this game how I felt playing Kingdom Hearts 3 earlier in the year. Both have bad stories, both have issues that undercut the moment-to-moment pacing, and I was happy to be done with both not because I was eager to see the ending, but that so I could say I played the game and form an opinion on it. I also gave KH3 a 6/10, but I will be fair and say Three Houses edges it out ever so slightly. I currently have zero motivation in playing the other routes or buy the DLC and if I one day feel the urge, I'll just go watch the cutscenes on YouTube because the thought of replaying part one again just with different characters is about as realistic to me as a Hresvelg family reunion is to Edelgard.
Finally, to those who say I can't judge the game because I only played one path and not all three (and yes, there are only three paths, don't you dare try to convince me otherwise) if you can invent a time machine and give me back the 50 hours of my life I spent playing the game, I'll never talk about Fire Emblem again. Until then, kindly keep your brainlet takes to yourself.
Spoilers for Black Eagles and the timeskip.
Before I get into what I feel made the game a unique experience and what made it yawn-inducing and grating, there's one aspect about the game that doesn't fit with the review of the game, but with the marketing behind it. To keep things concise: I hate that the timeskip was not a surprise. During Nintendo's E3 2019 presentation, a month and a half before the game launched, the timeskip was revealed and while many were met with shock and awe, I was met with confusion and disappointment. How awesome would it have been to have discovered the timeskip for the first time in the game without IntSys spoiling it? Even the opening intro and the back of the box doesn't show the timeskip. Call me an Info Wars soldier, but methinks the timeskip that was supposed to be a surpirse was used as a marketing tactic, but IntSys decided to make a trailer from it during E3- the biggest event in gaming- and increase the game's appeal. I may be in the minority on this one but it was disheartening to see something that had the potential to be so impactful be wasted, and it honestly decreased my hype in the game.
Now, to get into the actual game, first the good shit:
-The character writing is gooooooooooooooooood. FE7 had room temperature character writing with the occasional burst of personality and charm, but IntSys clearly placed all their chips on the dynamics between characters and it paid off in spades. The voice acting is also surprisingly great. Usually with RPGs, English dialogue is very hit or miss, but I'm happy to say the actors did a great job bringing the characters to life and showcasing their personalities through their inflections. I was expecting to love some Black Eagles students and dislike others, but not a single one is forgettable or lame. For those who need the definitive Black Eagles student tier list (not counting Edelgard because duh):
Ferdinand>Linhardt>Hubert>Petra>Dorothea>Caspar>Bernadetta
Instead of lining your Pokédex with units that you'll never use (which you still kinda do but the game places focus on the students so it's comparatively better) you get to see how the events of the story affect the characters and how their world views and personalities affect the story and each other. Ferdinand and Linhardt in particular are two total chads who I thought were going to be one-note "muh nobility" and "muh naps" respectively, but they quickly grew on me to become my favorites, which was further enhanced by...
-The support system, when compared to FE7, beats the pants off it. In FE7, I had zero idea how supports were triggered. I would put my units next to each other and randomly a Support command with come up. In Three Houses, everything is laid out in clear terms and building supports between units is simple and easy. My only gripe with supports in this game is that it sometimes has characters get into arguments or fights, with obviously negative outcomes, yet according to the game, their bond had deepened. Seemed like a case of story-gameplay dissonance (get used to seeing that phrase).
-The main gameplay is solid. I kinda miss the weapon triangle, as instead of picking groups of units to put forward to best handle a situation, now it becomes a matter of putting your strongest units first. Aside from that, combat arts and battalions seemed like bigger additions than they actually were. Combat arts are huge in the early game, but as soon as your characters' stats get high enough, you almost never need them. Kinda similar thing with battalions too but slightly more useful. Map designs were nice to look at from the perspective of emulating a tabletop strategy game, but sadly lacked much variety in terms of obstacles. Divine Pulse is a great mechanic that should be in every strategy RPG, although gaining so many charges for it seemed like overkill. I thought getting a maximum of five would've been the sweet spot.
-Music is good. Paralogue theme is a banger... that's all I really gotta say about that.
-Edelgard was a refreshing protagonist to follow. Instead of being a lawful good lord who is incapable of doing anything bad unless influenced by an outside force, she is a believable portrait of a person doing bad things with good intentions. Her goal is to end the secret oppression of the country under a monster's rule via the church, but said rule isn't really hurting anyone. The church crushes opposition and subtly hints that it's doing immoral things in an effort to keep its reign. Her wanting to end that reign and allow people to rule is admirable, but also she had to do some awful things to get to a position to challenge the church. Whether it was her fault or not, the blood of countless innocents- like Remire Village- are on her hands. The only time I thought her to be retarded was the whole Flame Emperor thing. The way I see it, she worked with Those Who Slither in the Dark to disrupt the church and find weakness in it so that she could strike. But all Slither does are torment innocents and try to steal Relics. When she launched her assault on the Holy Tomb after becoming emperor, she didn't have Slither (aside from their Demonic Beasts which could've easily just not have been there in place of more Imperial soliders) there to help. So what was the point in allying with terrorists? One could chalk it up to a poorly thought-out plan, or a poorly thought-out plot...
Okay now the poopy stuff.
-Everyone who says Three Houses has the best plot in the series has made me question the quality of the series' plot writing as a whole. The story of Three Houses, while it sets up clear goals, is riddled with poorly explained plot points and ridiculous immersion-shattering moments. There were multiple times I saw a villain, and thought "Oh, that's _____" and I was right every time. There are Scooby-Doo levels of plot twists and rubber masks, and it always took me out of the game when I thought "Oh wow, I wonder who this new guy is. Oh yeah, it's _____" and my eyes roll into the back of my head. Then I correctly guessed Edelgard was the Flame Emperor and I had permanently checked out of the story. It didn't help that the game may as well have had a sign hover over Edelgard saying "Hey, wouldn't it be crazy if I were the Flame Emperor? You'd still like me, right, Byleth-sensei?" The story post-timeskip is better but that's only because it goes from a mess of """""plot twists""""" to a basic war story. It goes one battle after another until credits roll.
-Byleth is a terrible character and actively drags down the game. They're a self-insert blank slate, yet has a canon personality, that being one of a self-insert blank slate. Fucking what? I admit, I have a bias against silent protagonists (there's like, five good ones) but at least with blank slates like Link or Frisk you can say you're projecting onto them. You can't really say you're projecting onto Byleth, because Byleth is canonically a doll with no feelings or emotions, so anything you project onto them is not you, it's them. On top of being a silent robot, I will die on the hill that Byleth is a Mary Sue. Call it a cliche criticism, but what else do you call a character who:
-Becomes a professor at a school instantly
-Gets handed legendary weapons like they're Costco free samples
-Is beloved by everyone and everyone who hates/dislikes them is evil and dies
-Has loli dragon God sealed inside her and is granted the power to turn back time
-FUSES WITH GOD
The only bad things that ever happened to Byleth are their birth and Jeralt's death. Their birth made her the god emperor but killed their mother, but that really only affected Jeralt, not Byleth. Jeralt's death was the only thing that got them to show emotion but they get over it after a month and after fusing with God, it's no longer an issue. Anything else that ever happens to Byleth is purely in their benefit and works towards putting them up on an untouchable elder-god pedestal. Meanwhile, Awakening gave us Robin, a customizable protagonist with a defined personality, wit, and isn't an unstoppable god, who actually is technically the antagonist of the game. The game honestly would've been much better if you just took Byleth out entirely and made your House leader the main playable character.
-The game ain't a looker. Character models look good... that's about it. Environments are drab with textures befitting the PS2, animations are recycled among many characters, there are framerate drops when running around the monastery and during attacks with a lot of particle effects (magic) happen, and the resolution gives the whole game this jagged pixelation on certain parts. Also I'm gonna be that asshole and say it: I don't like how cutscenes look. There are three kinds: textbox cutscenes, in-game graphic cutscenes, and the fully-animated cutscenes by studio Sanzigen. The in-game cutscenes look the best and the Sanizgen cutscenes are directed more beautifully than they look, but I have a bone to pick with the presentation of the textbox cutscenes. The colored borders are fine, I guess, coupled with the huge textboxes and portraits. I don't understand why we need to see a picture of the character's face while their character model is on the screen physically emoting. At least in games like Persona 5 the camera angles are more dynamic in its textbox cutscenes.
-The monastery gameplay, although tolerable at first, I ultimately grew to ignore. Getting stat bonuses and renown for doing quests to level up the party and more character dialogue is the only thing worth experiencing, and even then, I could only take so much. After hours spent running around doing fetch quests, giving out lost items like I was operating an assembly line, and I was begging to go back to the actual gameplay, but I knew if I didn't do the monastery gameplay, I wouldn't be getting support points, stat boosts and renown, so throughout part one, I had to grit my teeth and bear it. Once part two hit and the monastery thinned out, I mainly did seminars and rest weeks for motivation and magic sword juice.
-Menu-ing in this game is lowkey a nightmare. Support menus are simple and clean, but then you have your item inventory. Are you about to set out on a mission and are performing your check for every unit and their items and/or need to buy new weapons or forge or repair? Have fun dicking around your storehouse and trading menus for 5-10 minutes every time just to make sure no one is under prepared or are carrying too much. I wish there were more streamlined menu layouts, like not having a separate command for trading, or little button prompts asking me if I would like to switch out an iron sword for a steel sword a unit is able to use in the storage.
Overall, I'd rate my experience with Fire Emblem: Three Houses a 6/10. I felt similarly to this game how I felt playing Kingdom Hearts 3 earlier in the year. Both have bad stories, both have issues that undercut the moment-to-moment pacing, and I was happy to be done with both not because I was eager to see the ending, but that so I could say I played the game and form an opinion on it. I also gave KH3 a 6/10, but I will be fair and say Three Houses edges it out ever so slightly. I currently have zero motivation in playing the other routes or buy the DLC and if I one day feel the urge, I'll just go watch the cutscenes on YouTube because the thought of replaying part one again just with different characters is about as realistic to me as a Hresvelg family reunion is to Edelgard.
Finally, to those who say I can't judge the game because I only played one path and not all three (and yes, there are only three paths, don't you dare try to convince me otherwise) if you can invent a time machine and give me back the 50 hours of my life I spent playing the game, I'll never talk about Fire Emblem again. Until then, kindly keep your brainlet takes to yourself.