-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Is Fire Emblem Three Houses any good?
- Thread starter Jonnax
- Start date
Either I'm blind, but what is wrong with Petra? Also, better post her Three Houses art than Heroes.
I don't really mind but there is definitely still some mildly creepy stuff in this game
Unless I mixed something up and it was a different girl that was 15, then my bad
Unless you mention her outfit after the timeskip.
That's precisely why I'd recommend playing Blue Lions first. If one were to play it after any other route, then there'd nothing to be added lore-wise. I'm really glad it was the first route I did and I absolutely say that's the house everyone should go with first. A bunch of questions were left unanswered and it drove me to play the other routes to find out what wasn't explained.
I would not recommend if you actually care about the story, especially if you're a new player. This is my first Fire Emblem I finished and the Blue Lion route was so piss poor storywise I almost put down the game. I didn't feel it respected my time investment at all and when it takes 90+ hours to beat a game and it's story driven, they needed to do a much better job. The plotholes left in the Blue Lion route are the size of the Grand Canyon.
I mentioned this earlier, but in addition to it being rushed, it was farmed out. I think there were four IS staffers in the credits? It definitely does not feel like an IS FE for the majority of the game.
Really hoping IS decided to devote their resources to a big-budget Genealogy remake.
Off-hand I think it was 13. But yes, the vast majority of the staff were from KT, and it shows in both positive and negative ways. (Perhaps KT's influence is why the thought of a FEW2 set during Fodlan's war period makes me salivate and could hypothetically salvage the Part 2 narratives.)
I'm quite curious what IS themselves will prove capable of on an HD platform. They were upfront that 3H would have been impossible without KT's manpower, but it was also an overly ambitious game.
Ah, that's a shame...really looking forward to the Fire Emblem: Three Houses remake then.
About 90% through my first playthrough (Blue Lions) and really liking the game. It isn't perfect but the core gameplay loop is fun and the characters especially are top notch. A little tropey at times but there is also a surprising amount of nuance and pathos as you go through different support chains.
I also agree generally with the main criticisms, its way too easy to become OP and trivialize the combat even on hard and the fact that you need to play through the game 3 times to see the entirety of the plot is asking too much from 99.99% of the audience.
I also agree generally with the main criticisms, its way too easy to become OP and trivialize the combat even on hard and the fact that you need to play through the game 3 times to see the entirety of the plot is asking too much from 99.99% of the audience.
How's the main character?
I'm a huge Xeno fan, but fell off both Persona 5 and DQ11 because I found the interactions between the mute protagonist and the rest of the character jarring and unfulfilling (among other things).
I'm a huge Xeno fan, but fell off both Persona 5 and DQ11 because I found the interactions between the mute protagonist and the rest of the character jarring and unfulfilling (among other things).
I love it, already played over 100 hours of it and still on my 2nd playthrough. Bit disappointed with how little effort was put in the animation during dialogues, but considering how much there is between all 4 storylines, I can excuse that.
Really wish the music wasn't so repetitive in the monastery and some battles though. Considering how much time I spend in the monastery (especially at the start of each month), they could have at least bothered to make the music longer than 2-3 mins.
Really wish the music wasn't so repetitive in the monastery and some battles though. Considering how much time I spend in the monastery (especially at the start of each month), they could have at least bothered to make the music longer than 2-3 mins.
Three houses has an exellent first half and a surprisingly good story by JRPG standarts.
Decent themes and character arts and all that good stuff.
Sadly the gameplay falls off a bit in the second half. It's also one of the tactically less interesting FE's but someone that doesn't play too many tactics games probably won't mind.
I would at the very least recommend hard. Normal is way too easy even for first timers. Permadeath depends if you want additional challenge. Tbh. i'd play the difficulty above hard without permadeath for a decent challenge without too much furstration.
Decent themes and character arts and all that good stuff.
Sadly the gameplay falls off a bit in the second half. It's also one of the tactically less interesting FE's but someone that doesn't play too many tactics games probably won't mind.
I would at the very least recommend hard. Normal is way too easy even for first timers. Permadeath depends if you want additional challenge. Tbh. i'd play the difficulty above hard without permadeath for a decent challenge without too much furstration.
The way relationships work is definetly very gameified but i don't think the dating sim aspect is very pronounced? If one doesn't know that it exists in advance one can even miss it completely/ S rank by accident.
That's in stark contrast to awakening and fates where matchmaking was an important part of the game.
Byleth? They are your usual mute protagonist, only time you will hear their voice is in battle quotes or get new level/skill. Being emotionless is actually a plot point, though.
So, after finishing my 2. path this week after a half year pause, i know what i think of this game:
Is it a bad game? no.
is it a good game? Depends.
To be honest i like awakening und Echoes more.
fates...well, aspects.
and mostly:
replayability is either great if you love the tea drinking, eating etc for support, or horrendous if you hate the micromanaging.
Shure, new game plus makes some things easier, but you still have to manage to many things per unit (battalions, learning, support, items, abilities x2, class).
Awakening: 31h 37m to beat (average)
Main chapters: 25 +1.
Three houses: 47h 54m to beat (average)
main chapters (~)21
both games have paralogues and grinding/quest missions.
it is obvious, if you just want the strategic gameplay, this has a lot of fat with it if you are not a fan of it, and in my opinion even if you are, it gets to repetitive, since the stuff you are doing in gareg mach could have been done in a menu way faster (it would still be extremely tedious, but at least faster)
A lot of the activities are superficial, and don't contribute a lot by themselves, but together they differentiate a good army and a weak one. And you could argue "ignore it", but how do you know it this will ruin your run, when a map comes that expects more than your team can do, since it needs to account for both play styles?
And the beasts: great concept, that gets sometimes quite tedious, if you are not found of optimizing your battalions (train them, change them for new ones, your characters need to be able to take the better ones,)
By the way: I'm quite sure they accounted for the time wheel in this game by giving you situations where you had to fall into a trap, and rewind. Not essentially bad to have it, but the amount of uses and the designing around them made some maps a bit trial and error.
All in all, sure, not a bad game... but it left a similar sour taste in my mouth as fates, even if I played it nonstop when I started and the first impressions till the time skip where great.
Is it a bad game? no.
is it a good game? Depends.
To be honest i like awakening und Echoes more.
fates...well, aspects.
- characters are less sexualized than fates, that's good.
- writing is way better then fates.
- pacing was all over the place
- micromanagement gets extremely grading
- finishing the second route on normal (to get faster through it), i gota say, even on hard the game was less "can i be tactical" and more "have i gone through the menus to re juggle my aims, battalions, weapons, equipment, abilities right?".
At the same time, often the abilities felt to weak for the cost (especially compared to multi hit normal attacks), - a lot of the passive abilities were either just simple buffs, or seemed to situational
- in normal AND hard i started to ignore the classes, i knew just to use magic on armoured enemies, and arrows against flying ones. the rest was. not relevant.
- the classes were...well. half of my roster had black and white magic, in addition to bows/swords/lances and battalions. The units were kind of to universal.
- People like the 4 routes, but somehow all 4 seem...lacking in my opinion, you see how they obfuscate or plain just ignore some story parts. It would be okay, if you get the rest of the story by playing different paths, but after looking up the other 2 routes...these are story's that just aren't combinable, it's not "see the story from the other side", its more "see a completely different story with different plot holes)
- the mystery around beylith is...bad. it just feels like a side story, and doesn't fulfil its potential (and in edelgards route they kind of just...drop it)
- the classic jrpg/fire emblem problem: for every event, new information etc every character has to have a realtion line, so every news leads to 5-10 lines of "uh, i never had thought that" or "what should we do now" but in the flavor of the characters respective trope. and move on with the silent protagonist.
and mostly:
replayability is either great if you love the tea drinking, eating etc for support, or horrendous if you hate the micromanaging.
Shure, new game plus makes some things easier, but you still have to manage to many things per unit (battalions, learning, support, items, abilities x2, class).
Awakening: 31h 37m to beat (average)
Main chapters: 25 +1.
Three houses: 47h 54m to beat (average)
main chapters (~)21
both games have paralogues and grinding/quest missions.
it is obvious, if you just want the strategic gameplay, this has a lot of fat with it if you are not a fan of it, and in my opinion even if you are, it gets to repetitive, since the stuff you are doing in gareg mach could have been done in a menu way faster (it would still be extremely tedious, but at least faster)
A lot of the activities are superficial, and don't contribute a lot by themselves, but together they differentiate a good army and a weak one. And you could argue "ignore it", but how do you know it this will ruin your run, when a map comes that expects more than your team can do, since it needs to account for both play styles?
And the beasts: great concept, that gets sometimes quite tedious, if you are not found of optimizing your battalions (train them, change them for new ones, your characters need to be able to take the better ones,)
By the way: I'm quite sure they accounted for the time wheel in this game by giving you situations where you had to fall into a trap, and rewind. Not essentially bad to have it, but the amount of uses and the designing around them made some maps a bit trial and error.
All in all, sure, not a bad game... but it left a similar sour taste in my mouth as fates, even if I played it nonstop when I started and the first impressions till the time skip where great.
"plot point".
Hes not emotionless. he reacts and it is implied that he comunicates a lot of emotions. They cant have it bouth ways, on the one hand he is so kind, caring and sharing, you see him emoting with his animations and his face, not any less then a los of other characters... but at the same time "he has little to no dialog because he is emotionless because he is dead inside"...
So yeah, it kinda is, but at the same time it is a lazy excuse to make it easy for them
So yeah, it kinda is, but at the same time it is a lazy excuse to make it easy for them
Last edited:
It's not good, it's great hehe. It's super addicting to me. But I love the Fire Emblem tactical gameplay so much that I would probably enjoy it even if I didn't care for the story.
Well, to be fair, it's possible to warp places to places but it is still a lot of walking nonetheless. On a 50 hours playthrough, it is at least 10-20% walking around for the next character to speak to. That's too much padding for my liking.
The load times are bad enough that warping is frustrating at best.
I honestly found the game to be a chore, and really tropey. I finished it once and never bothered with the other houses. Awakening is better.
My long post in 3 sentences.... i need to learn to be more concise.
I find it funny, the positive and negative opinions in the thread are evenly distributet, but the poll is at 89.1% positive.
So its weird.
The main character is technically byleth, but in each route, you're trying to pierce the motivations of each of the house lords and they kinda drive the action for each route for the first half of the game.
That being said, the students absolutely fawn over you and its weid because the teacher is just a rather emotionless stiff.
Game completion thoughts
OP
OP
So taking everyone's advice and the overwhelming poll results (791 people saying to play it!), I decided to buy the game and play it.
I also ended up buying the DLC after the prologue because I realised that this is going to be pretty good.
Though I don't have Switch online so didn't really explore any of the online functionality.
SPOILERS Below
I was surprised how quickly the game made you make the decision of which class to lead. I presumed this was the case at the beginning and at first glance thought that the Black Eagles had some pretty cool characters.
The story took some interesting turns for sure. And though I don't have time to play the other routes. The ending was satisfactory and didn't feel too barebones. Was quite tricky near the end to keep everyone alive!
Of course, the perspective of the Church being evil and keeping a feudal societal hierarcy does make you think that the other people are misguided. I am curious how things are spun. Especially after seeing her set fire to the city at the end without remorse.
It was quite a unique thing having you face old school mates in battle. It was genuinly sad that you couldn't save everyone. It does make you feel that would want to try and befriend everyone beforehand and recruit them into your class.
I did feel like the school days was a bit bare bones. Fishing was boringly easy and also I didn't really understand why I needed the fish except to sell and for dishes. Also once I had everyone's supports done for Byleth there wasn't much to do except go for dinner with other people so I could get their supportss unlocked. But it did feel like I was wasting time just doing busywork. Like gathering the lost items, and talking to everyone. Certainly that could be improved. But it was also nice to talk with people and see what they had to say.
I liked how you could train anyone into any class, the school setting did help in that respect.
The cast of characters were really well written, I enjoyed the support conversions they had between each other and I found myself organising the battle parties to get people to fight next to each other haha.
I wasn't too keen on Byleth being a silent protagonist but thinking in terms of there being both a male and female character as well as 3/4 story paths, it's a significant amount of writing you'd need. But because of the few word answers you could give to people it didn't feel like you had as strong relationship with the people even though they were super fond of you.
The music was pretty good, I don't think I got annoyed at any of the tracks. I liked the school bell being the Fire Emblem theme haha.
All in all it was a lovely game. I would recommend it.
I also ended up buying the DLC after the prologue because I realised that this is going to be pretty good.
Though I don't have Switch online so didn't really explore any of the online functionality.
SPOILERS Below
I was surprised how quickly the game made you make the decision of which class to lead. I presumed this was the case at the beginning and at first glance thought that the Black Eagles had some pretty cool characters.
The story took some interesting turns for sure. And though I don't have time to play the other routes. The ending was satisfactory and didn't feel too barebones. Was quite tricky near the end to keep everyone alive!
Of course, the perspective of the Church being evil and keeping a feudal societal hierarcy does make you think that the other people are misguided. I am curious how things are spun. Especially after seeing her set fire to the city at the end without remorse.
It was quite a unique thing having you face old school mates in battle. It was genuinly sad that you couldn't save everyone. It does make you feel that would want to try and befriend everyone beforehand and recruit them into your class.
I did feel like the school days was a bit bare bones. Fishing was boringly easy and also I didn't really understand why I needed the fish except to sell and for dishes. Also once I had everyone's supports done for Byleth there wasn't much to do except go for dinner with other people so I could get their supportss unlocked. But it did feel like I was wasting time just doing busywork. Like gathering the lost items, and talking to everyone. Certainly that could be improved. But it was also nice to talk with people and see what they had to say.
I liked how you could train anyone into any class, the school setting did help in that respect.
The cast of characters were really well written, I enjoyed the support conversions they had between each other and I found myself organising the battle parties to get people to fight next to each other haha.
I wasn't too keen on Byleth being a silent protagonist but thinking in terms of there being both a male and female character as well as 3/4 story paths, it's a significant amount of writing you'd need. But because of the few word answers you could give to people it didn't feel like you had as strong relationship with the people even though they were super fond of you.
The music was pretty good, I don't think I got annoyed at any of the tracks. I liked the school bell being the Fire Emblem theme haha.
All in all it was a lovely game. I would recommend it.
I haven't really played the other games but I didn't think they'd go back to mute protag after they began voicing them since a couple of games. It's kinda irritating, plot reasons or not, hard to care about Byleth, personally.
You should've stuck with it. It gets better particularly the story and characters.
Dimitri, Claude, and Felix are where it's at in terms of dudes.
One of the best rpgs in recent years. Characters are great and being fully voice acted really brings them to life. Any scene between these characters and the silent main protagonist is unfortunate though. Amazing OST, and the story is fairly well written; a good 10 steps ahead of the trash heap that was whatever story Fates had. Honestly, my biggest pet peeve was the underwhelming graphics, but it's still a step up from the 3DS games, so it's a valid excuse.
OP
OP
What about Alois that bundle of joy? haha
I also liked Lindhart, he was a very caring character even if he just wanted to sleep all the time.
I never really like the older male characters besides Seteth. He's the man.
I'll put Linhardt up there too along with Ferdinand.