2019 is about to come to a close and looking back on my unlikely GOTY it scares me that I had intended to skip this game right up until release day. I would not call myself a Fire Emblem fan by any stretch of the imagination, I bought Awakening on 3ds and played it for about 5 hours before ultimately dropping it in favour of Bravely Default. Awakening's story was compelling to me, but I could never get the gameplay to click.
Let's go 6 years later, after skipping both echoes and fates I see the first trailer for three houses and nothing really strikes me, I'm just as uninterested in Fire Emblem as I've always been and by the time we found out about the whole school thing I was completely turned off from the game. But, (the but that made my year, really) I decide to keep my ear to the ground seeing as how this is the first home console Fire Emblem in more than a decade and I'm so lucky I did. By the time release day comes around and I read the reviews about its strong cast of characters, intricate combat and the high customizability it supports. I decide to check it out. I was completely floored.
Three Houses has a lot of things going for it, but I want to begin with the story because, while I expected a good story, I wasn't expecting a story that would make me question my every action at every step making my morals go head to head against the empathy I felt for Edelgard (I should mention I started with Black Eagles and have since done 3 of the 4 routes excluding Blue Lions.) Edelgard is the first video game "villian" that felt so human to me in a long time, her every action rooted in a series of misfortunes since childhood that I came to understand in great detail and could empathise with, ultimately leading me to side with her because I wanted to see the world she would create. Was it the right decision? Maybe, maybe not. But that's the beauty of her route, the uncertainty in what was right drove me to drive blades through former students I couldn't recruit in time (which was honestly quite painful especially after doing a few supports with them) and go against a church that turned a blind eye to the struggles of those without crests and the abuse of power by nobles. It wasn't like Edelgard was the only well-written character either, my whole class had characters that didn't feel like tropes and who's past was used to touch on topics I would hardly expect a title published by Nintendo to touch on. Marianne who through the story begins to love herself more (and which we get to see in supports) because her crest is associated with a murderous beast who once served the people it now kills or Bernadetta, who is the way she is because of bullying and abuse, opening up to her friends who've been with her through thick and thin, becoming more confident in expressing herself. Three Houses has a lot going for it in the story department, through its use of support conversations and a strong overarching narrative that allow it to explore every single character to a depth few games could ever hope to achieve, especially when you consider the number of characters in this game. I liked every single character, with the exception of Lorenz, as a result which is an incredible feat in my eyes.
But it was never the stories of Fire Emblem that turned me off, what I was most worried about was the combat and gameplay that never clicked with me. However, I don't know if it's the new battle visuals or QoL, I found myself enjoying combat a great deal more than I did in Awakening. I found that the whole school teaching thing that initially turned me off became one of my favourite parts about the game, giving me ridiculous customisability over my units and what I wanted them to become giving me the ability to create my dream team right from the get-go. The whole ability system also gave another degree of customizability allowing me to give permanent buffs that I can customise before each fight so that my units are always prepared to destroy the enemy. Customisation is the name of the game with combat and it just felt good being able to strategise to a ridiculous level that I felt limited by previously. (I might've missed out on this as I didn't play Echoes or Fates so I can't say much about either.) To sum it all up, Three Houses made me finally enjoy tactics games which is an accomplishment in and of itself.
So there it is, FE Three Houses, my unlikely GOTY and one of my favourite RPGs of the past few years. Now that I'm done gushing about this amazing game I think I'm going to go back to playing Sekiro (another game which deserves a whole blog post) for the millionth time.
TL;DR FE three houses is amazing and has renewed my interest in going back and playing through the whole franchise. You should play it too!
Let's go 6 years later, after skipping both echoes and fates I see the first trailer for three houses and nothing really strikes me, I'm just as uninterested in Fire Emblem as I've always been and by the time we found out about the whole school thing I was completely turned off from the game. But, (the but that made my year, really) I decide to keep my ear to the ground seeing as how this is the first home console Fire Emblem in more than a decade and I'm so lucky I did. By the time release day comes around and I read the reviews about its strong cast of characters, intricate combat and the high customizability it supports. I decide to check it out. I was completely floored.
Three Houses has a lot of things going for it, but I want to begin with the story because, while I expected a good story, I wasn't expecting a story that would make me question my every action at every step making my morals go head to head against the empathy I felt for Edelgard (I should mention I started with Black Eagles and have since done 3 of the 4 routes excluding Blue Lions.) Edelgard is the first video game "villian" that felt so human to me in a long time, her every action rooted in a series of misfortunes since childhood that I came to understand in great detail and could empathise with, ultimately leading me to side with her because I wanted to see the world she would create. Was it the right decision? Maybe, maybe not. But that's the beauty of her route, the uncertainty in what was right drove me to drive blades through former students I couldn't recruit in time (which was honestly quite painful especially after doing a few supports with them) and go against a church that turned a blind eye to the struggles of those without crests and the abuse of power by nobles. It wasn't like Edelgard was the only well-written character either, my whole class had characters that didn't feel like tropes and who's past was used to touch on topics I would hardly expect a title published by Nintendo to touch on. Marianne who through the story begins to love herself more (and which we get to see in supports) because her crest is associated with a murderous beast who once served the people it now kills or Bernadetta, who is the way she is because of bullying and abuse, opening up to her friends who've been with her through thick and thin, becoming more confident in expressing herself. Three Houses has a lot going for it in the story department, through its use of support conversations and a strong overarching narrative that allow it to explore every single character to a depth few games could ever hope to achieve, especially when you consider the number of characters in this game. I liked every single character, with the exception of Lorenz, as a result which is an incredible feat in my eyes.
But it was never the stories of Fire Emblem that turned me off, what I was most worried about was the combat and gameplay that never clicked with me. However, I don't know if it's the new battle visuals or QoL, I found myself enjoying combat a great deal more than I did in Awakening. I found that the whole school teaching thing that initially turned me off became one of my favourite parts about the game, giving me ridiculous customisability over my units and what I wanted them to become giving me the ability to create my dream team right from the get-go. The whole ability system also gave another degree of customizability allowing me to give permanent buffs that I can customise before each fight so that my units are always prepared to destroy the enemy. Customisation is the name of the game with combat and it just felt good being able to strategise to a ridiculous level that I felt limited by previously. (I might've missed out on this as I didn't play Echoes or Fates so I can't say much about either.) To sum it all up, Three Houses made me finally enjoy tactics games which is an accomplishment in and of itself.
So there it is, FE Three Houses, my unlikely GOTY and one of my favourite RPGs of the past few years. Now that I'm done gushing about this amazing game I think I'm going to go back to playing Sekiro (another game which deserves a whole blog post) for the millionth time.
TL;DR FE three houses is amazing and has renewed my interest in going back and playing through the whole franchise. You should play it too!
