Completing this game took me roughly 150 hours and by "complete" I mean playing the 3 story routes, reading the supports, and playing the paralogues. However, if you sort the reviews for this game by "most liked" you'll find that most of the negative reviews for this game were made within the week it released. Am I saying these people are full of shit and gave the game a negative review after only playing a miniscule fraction of it's total content? Yes. I feel that people heard the premise for this game then immediately slapped it with the "fan-fiction" label and didn't give it a fair chance.
(That was actually entirely unrelated to my review of the game, I just wanted to complain.)
Three Hopes' story paths are a mixed bag. I think Scarlet Blaze is just thoroughly good, no complaints there other than an unsatisfying ending. I really loved the opening chaoters of Edelgard's route. The fact that everything moves so quickly shows that this is something she's planned for years and habing played Three Houses really enhanced the experience here. One of my favorite moments was when Jeritza volunteers to teach the Black Eagles and realizing he and Edelgard must have planned that way ahead of time. Golden Wildfire is also pretty good. I feel like the majority of the negative reaction to this route comes from people seeing red at the thought of their upside down meme man siding with Edelgard even though her winning makes for a better jumping off point for his own ambitions than the kingdom winning. Azure Gleam kinda sucks though. Removing Edelgard's agency also removes everything that makes her a compelling character and this route feels a lot more slapdash than the others.
The lack of satisfying endings for any of the routes also sucks. The devs said in interviews that they didn't want this game to invalidate Three Houses, but I honestly thinks that's a lie. They probably just didn't have the time or resources to make the extra chapters and so had to fabricate a reason for why the routes end like that.
While the main story can be hit or miss, Three Hopes has what I believe to be by far the best supports in the series. There's a much greater emphasis on world building in the supports which I hope continues to be the case for future games. It's structure is way less limited than prior games and there are certain supports that can only be unlocked after seeing different supports, meaning that they can reference each other. I desperately hope that future games keep this iteration of the support system, I don't wanna go back to 3 conversations and an optional S rank for literally every single pairing.
(That was actually entirely unrelated to my review of the game, I just wanted to complain.)
Three Hopes' story paths are a mixed bag. I think Scarlet Blaze is just thoroughly good, no complaints there other than an unsatisfying ending. I really loved the opening chaoters of Edelgard's route. The fact that everything moves so quickly shows that this is something she's planned for years and habing played Three Houses really enhanced the experience here. One of my favorite moments was when Jeritza volunteers to teach the Black Eagles and realizing he and Edelgard must have planned that way ahead of time. Golden Wildfire is also pretty good. I feel like the majority of the negative reaction to this route comes from people seeing red at the thought of their upside down meme man siding with Edelgard even though her winning makes for a better jumping off point for his own ambitions than the kingdom winning. Azure Gleam kinda sucks though. Removing Edelgard's agency also removes everything that makes her a compelling character and this route feels a lot more slapdash than the others.
The lack of satisfying endings for any of the routes also sucks. The devs said in interviews that they didn't want this game to invalidate Three Houses, but I honestly thinks that's a lie. They probably just didn't have the time or resources to make the extra chapters and so had to fabricate a reason for why the routes end like that.
While the main story can be hit or miss, Three Hopes has what I believe to be by far the best supports in the series. There's a much greater emphasis on world building in the supports which I hope continues to be the case for future games. It's structure is way less limited than prior games and there are certain supports that can only be unlocked after seeing different supports, meaning that they can reference each other. I desperately hope that future games keep this iteration of the support system, I don't wanna go back to 3 conversations and an optional S rank for literally every single pairing.