So this is the last passion blog post I’ll be doing for class this semester (however, I will be doing a review when the Diamond and Pearl remakes come out tomorrow. I’m planning on going to the midnight release at GameStop, so come by and say hi if you feel like it!). I figured I would end on a good note and review one of my favorite Switch games, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. My cousin had one of the previous Fire Emblem games on the switch, I think Birthright or Conquest, but honestly the only similarity between those games and this one is the unit and turn mechanics. The game developers did SO much here in terms of plot/lore/stylistic choices, especially with the addition of crests (basically helpful sigils that activate occasionally with entering into different forms of combat, healing, etc). I absolutely went feral for this game in high school. Basically, the premise is that your character or unit (Byleth, but you can rename them whatever) is the child of a famous mercenary and ends up a teacher at this monastery- and you have the choice of heading three different classes, all of whom are led by characters in line to be in major positions of power. You connect with characters inside and outside your faction, and then you end up having to fight against those other characters (and kill them) later on down the road. There’s major character death in this one too, in a couple different forms. This is a game that, at its core, is about the horrors of war, and how no side ever truly wins. Personally I recommend going with the Golden Deer, because their ending is the closest to the true ending, I believe (and I maintain to this day that it’s a crime that the final boss music, God Shattering Star, didn’t get into Smash with the rest of the main songs)- plus I have a soft spot for Claude (I always listen to English VA on this game just for his voice actor, Joe Zieja). As a side note, I’ll be making the images a little bigger this time so that you can read the dialogue. I screenshotted these for a reason. I don’t have a whole lot of screenshots of gameplay this time because I thought the dialogue was more interesting- however here is one of me finally catching the giant fish that I spent maybe two hours attempting to get:
FUN RATING: 4/5. Man, I had such a blast playing this game. It was my first Fire Emblem game and it definitely lives up to the hype that the series gets. There was some grinding to do in terms of leveling up my units- that’s what I always do, because I like smashing everyone down into the dirt. It’s enjoyable for me. But honestly, with some money management and a couple divine pulses (time rewinds) if anything goes wrong, you’ll be just fine. There were so many different options of things to do, from fishing to interacting with characters to dealing with lost items and having teatime, I literally never ran out of things to do. And then they added the DLC, and I sunk even more of my time into this game.
EASE RATING: 3/5. Fun, but can be challenging at times. If I hadn’t had Lysithea for the Death Knight I think I probably would have spent a lot of time extremely frustrated at this guy’s bonkers defense. The Death Knight got nerfed but in the opposite direction when they made this game. There’s a lot of strategy that goes into gameplay on this one (which is fair because its literally a strategy game). I really enjoy that it shows you the attacking paths where you move characters to certain tiles. I personally play on the normal difficulty without permadeath, but some people really enjoy the looming threat of the permadeath of their units. It takes some of the fun out of it for me and makes it more high-stress, but if that’s what you want to use, it’s there. Nothing is insurmountable if you just look at it from a different angle and try something else, similarly to Rune Factory Four (as discussed last week).
REPLAYABILITY RATING: 5/5. There are so many different plotlines to play through, and the game gives you numerous save slots to use. You’re supposed to go wild. With the addition of New Game Plus, you basically are set up to do multiple playthroughs. There’s some stuff you can’t access in the first playthrough, like dragon sigils (which are basically crests but manufactured) and finishing augmenting the statues in the monastery chapel. That said, it did take me over 100 hours to finish my first playthrough- however, that’s because I wanted to do everything.
OVERALL: This game is near and dear to my heart, and is one of the only games where I have had next to no complaints about anything in the game. They literally did so much well, even down to the little things like being able to pet and feed cats and dogs on the monastery grounds. And there’s cooking, growing, and harvesting vegetables! Another pseudo farming sim, but I’ve never disliked those. The main focus is on the combat, though! As I played through the games, I got really attached to the characters. I absolutely would recommend this game to anyone who asked me about it, and I have gone out of my way to tell people about it before unprompted. This game was so good to me. I liked it so much, in fact, that I’ve been wanting a spine tattoo of some of the crests for several years now. Hopefully this summer I can get it. If the universe didn’t want me to get a sick tattoo, why would it make the designs so cool?
The only thing I have against fire emblem is that nintendo keeps putting random fire emblem characters in smash like idek who they are and they’re sometimes so hard to play like goddamn!
This sounds like a great game! I’d heard of Fire Emblem before, but had never gotten the chance to play it. I love that the game is essentially designed for multiple playthroughs– it seems like it would be super interesting to try and do all the plotlines.
I’ve heard a lot about Three Houses, and I agree that the large number of variable endings should contribute to replayability. The feature reminds me of a prestige or New Game+ mode I’ve seen in some other games, and that’s definitely a good thing.