Do you like the new mechanics in "Fire Emblem Three Houses" ?

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

First of all I have not completed one single route, not even played one halfthrough yet, but it does not require to play that far to share the new features this game offers:

1. Exploring: Exploring is not quite new since it was already introduced in Echoes, but in 3H you do not explore dungeons but natural environment. You have to fulfill obligatory and optional tasks which give you items, experience or deepen bonds between characters. Most of them have been really simple so far, but I expect it will change later on. 
2. Dialogues: Dialogues affect the bond to a character depending on your answers. Good answers raise a bond. I do not know if it is the case that certain answers affect the story and its end. This, however, would not be new since FE13 had these questions. 
3. Day organisation: The Persona series is likely the most popular franchise regarding lifetime simulations or how I may call it. You plan your day by doing various activities like studying, hanging around with friends or going to the cinema. In 3H it is the same. You have certain amount of activity points you have to spend for like cooking with others, having lunch in a group or studying. Each activity raises a certain stat or a bond to other character(s). You can also use optional battles to grind and / or fulfill optional quests. 
4. Studying: It is also a thing which exists in Persona, but it is different in 3H since you do not only get taught, but you also teach. The purpose is to select which unit will prioritize which weapon by training several weapon levels. 

There might be more new mechanics in this game I have not explored yet or simply forgotten already. 

 I was burnt out of Fire Emblem and honestly only these new additions, mainly first mentioned point, made me want to play this game. And now I am really enjoying it. This gamestyle is absolutely refreshing!

Edited August 11, 2019 by Lysithea

[Alastor15243]

Honestly, I feel all the added fluff between battles kinda kills replay value by making it take longer to get to the action. This game doesn't really do much of anything outside of battle that the older games didn't do inside of it. Really, the entire school system is just bonus experience for weapon levels except way more time consuming, and the game's insane runtime isn't actually due to having more map content. Hell, one of the routes only has 18 chapters. But I still took longer to beat that route than I did with basically any other Fire Emblem game. I don't think what they added really justifies the padded runtime.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Chocolate Kitty]

I would reword the name of that poll, as it doesn't make sense to say this is going to be the direction for every fe, as IS is not known for consistency

 

Despite saying I enjoyed what they did in three houses (I've done 2.5 routes at this point), I agree that there's a lot of added time to the game that's not actually related to gameplay or story, just idle time. But I also had 0 issue with investing extra time because the content is great, character development is great, and the extra features are for the most part done well, and largely skippable if you really don't want to do them.

[Yexin]

i like how 3H is, and some features would be cool if added to future games as well (correct answers to increase bonds, exploration, etc.), but i don't want every FE title from now on to be Three Houses 2.0

my best scenario is that the next non-remake Fire Emblem is as original and """fresh""" as 3H, but in a different way

 

also PLEASE IntSys, make a 2D fire emblem, just like the gba ones, but in HD: it would be GORGEOUS

Edited August 11, 2019 by Yexin

[Flere210]

I should separate the issues, but in general i was liking much more Conquest direction when it come to gameplay( dragon veins, weapons having actual pros and cons instead of an ammo system, a certain kind of map design.) And while i don't dislike the game  i feel it's not really the right direction for the franchise.

While the story was better than usual is still not particoularly good and for all i care they can repeat Archanea plot to the end of time because this is not a franchise i follow for the storytelling. The direction is right, but i doubt they will ever do something really special here. I just hope that they turn back to "gameplay first".

Th route system imo is not working too well for a combintion of issues, but character related (people betrying their countries and friends because 5 years ago the professor they talked with twice was kinda cool) and gameplay related. Most people hated the pokemon structure of fates, so this is not an option, but the next time they should either make a shorter common route or at least avoid repeating the same maps verbatim.

If reclassing is there to stay, they need to adress balance problems and make sure that every class has an actual niche that is needed  even cutting some of them if necessary. If everyone can be the best class the game has to give me a reason to no put every single unit in that. Fe is not fft. It should not become a game of "find the overpowered expoit and use it to trivialize the game", and 3H is like that. The first thing they should do is that in the next games stride work only on infranty and warp either don't exist or is super limited. That alone would fix half of 3H problems.

[Strullemia]

Overall I'd say I like them yeah.

I do hope that they expand on the exploration part and maybe give us some dungeon like areas in the future FE if they give us the option to explore in future fe games. It would be cool to have multiple places to explore instead of just the monastery.

 

[Slumber]

I think the Monastery mechanics are way better than the MyCastle(Closest thing to the Monastery we've had in the series) mechanics, but I still feel that it could be streamlined quite a bit.

A good chunk of the Monastery stuff feels like an FE4 remake is coming. Given that months happen between chapters in that game, and where the "Instruct" mechanic late game 

Spoiler

stops being about teaching students, and more about  holding a war council.

It seems like something they will add to the Castles in FE4.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Slumber

[Zapp Branniglenn]

The Monastery stuff is inoffensive in concept but doubles the play time while also being quite mandatory for min maxing units, which in turn makes it feel mandatory for challenging difficulty settings. As for the time management, what makes Persona's feel so compelling is that there's always opportunity cost with different options on each day of the week. Sundays in Fire Emblem present the same four options with resting feeling like a waste of time, seminars feeling inefficient, and battles probably only good if you need somebody to master an old class badly against slightly weaker opponents. If this were a persona game, the choice to "explore" would be automatically made every day. According to this game, you can receive training 9 times in the time span of one day, yet a single seminar takes up the whole day, it's terribly thought out in terms of opportunity cost and realistic use of time. There's also other deliberate time wasters like how you'd better buy as much bait as the game allows and spend a half hour fishing each chapter to max your professor rank. I understand a lot of these ideas can be better executed in a sequel, but video games have limited development time so I'd rather they pick and choose the ideas that make sense for their game.

Exploration and hanging out with units can definitely be a thing in later Fire Emblems, but it needs to not dominate the game as whole. I think setting goals for units to achieve during their training sessions make sense in the usual Fire Emblem setting as well, just drop the constant motivation management. The dialogue options are another theoretically good idea but don't do anything besides potentially earn some support points. If these options ever affected the story they'd be pretty cool, but as is they do not besides the Yes/no option that leads to the Black Eagles route split. which 2 out of 3 playthroughs won't have the chance to see.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Glennstavos

[grin_fish]

1. Exploring the Monastery:

Pros: Quests, fleshing out history/lore/characters/etc, nice change of pace from battles

Cons: Fishing( I don't mind doing a little fishing, but I totally purchased all the bait and fished as much as I could to raise the professor level and now I dread fishing), monastery looks kinda of samey(if this is done in the future, I would much rather have a city or a town to explore)

2. Dialogues: I liked the different dialogue choices even if most had no bearing on the story direction

3. Day Organization: I only wish their were more options to choose from: like horse back riding to improve riding skills, more to do with battalions, etc

4. Studying: I would like to see a feature like this in future Fire Emblem games. It is nice being able to customize characters to this extent. 

[TDBooma]

I like the additions a lot and I think this is gonna be a super solid basis for the next FE game. However I do think a lot of tweaks need to be made. As much as I enjoy the amount of customization you can do, I feel like there needs to be a way to make doing this over and over a little less tedious. Maybe you can create lesson plans, and once you get to instruction days you can choose which lesson plans to give to which characters in order to avoid having to manually go in and pick every single plan for every unit. (almost like  quick instructions, but without worse stat gains and obviously you have more control in what happens)
 
Maybe they could add a Quick menu of sorts to talk to and gift items to units without needing to go through the entire monastery/fast travel to them, in face maybe quick menu options for all the Monastery activities would be a good addition. I do really enjoy all the dialogue you get in the Monastery, but sometimes having to go through it every single time gets tiresome. 

For Classes and Customization, while I like where they're going with it I still felt pretty limited with what was given to me. I know mounted units are basically better than foot soldiers in every way, but the fact that almost my entire army were mounted units, the fact that some of my units just didn't have direct master class options, the fact that i couldnt have a pegasus knight mage or a healing brawler, it got pretty frustrating for me late game. I still had fun, but those limitations felt pretty unnecessary imo. Add all of that to the fact that the weapon triangle is gone and I found a lot of my units starting to feel kind of samey. I hope they make each weapon/magic class way more unique with even more cons/benefits, and that applies to the classes as well. (i'm still pissed i couldn't make my Mercedes a Brawling Mage smh)

Edited August 11, 2019 by TDBooma

[Alastor15243]

5 hours ago, TDBooma said:

For Classes and Customization, while I like where they're going with it I still felt pretty limited with what was given to me. I know mounted units are basically better than foot soldiers in every way, but the fact that almost my entire army were mounted units, the fact that some of my units just didn't have direct master class options, the fact that i couldnt have a pegasus knight mage or a healing brawler, it got pretty frustrating for me late game. I still had fun, but those limitations felt pretty unnecessary imo. Add all of that to the fact that the weapon triangle is gone and I found a lot of my units starting to feel kind of samey. I hope they make each weapon/magic class way more unique with even more cons/benefits, and that applies to the classes as well. (i'm still pissed i couldn't make my Mercedes a Brawling Mage smh)

This is pretty much my biggest issue/dissapointment with the system. The customization system basically doesn't go anywhere. Not only does the "only certain classes can use magic" restriction undermine the potential of crazy combinations, but so does the fact that most classes have a "faire" skill that, combined with the lack of weapon triangle, generally makes one weapon type objectively best for each class. Which basically means it's a wide open training system that then forces you into strict, bland archetypes that turn out to be less interesting than the stuff you'll find in other games. What's more, the strict skill requirements mean you can't do the kind of crazy class-dipping you could in Fates, where, if the idea possessed you, you could turn Elise into a wyvern lord for long enough to give her Rally Defense so that you could further round out Elise's defensive aura abilities. It was generally a stupid and impractical idea, but the game still let you do it, and there were lots of far more practical things just like it that you could accomplish by temporarily changing into a drastically different class to pick up some skills. Here, units are lucky to get access to 2 classes per tier, and most of those are just "last tier's version, but better". If you want Petra to be a wyvern rider, training her to also be a cavalry or armor class for some skills is generally just going to keep her from qualifying for wyvern lord until really, really late.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Alastor15243

[TDBooma]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

This is pretty much my biggest issue/dissapointment with the system. The customization system basically doesn't go anywhere. Not only does the "only certain classes can use magic" restriction undermine the potential of crazy combinations, but so does the fact that most classes have a "faire" skill that, combined with the lack of weapon triangle, generally makes one weapon type objectively best for each class. Which basically means it's a wide open training system that then forces you into strict, bland archetypes that turn out to be less interesting than the stuff you'll find in other games. What's more, the strict skill requirements mean you can't do the kind of crazy class-dipping you could in Fates, where, if the idea possessed you, you could turn Elise into a wyvern lord for long enough to give you Rally Defense so that you could further round out Elise's defensive aura abilities. It was generally a stupid and impractical idea, but the game still let you do it, and there were lots of far more practical things just like that you could accomplish by temporarily changing into a drastically different class to pick up some skills. Here, units are lucky to get access to 2 classes per tier, and most of those are just "last tier's version, but better". If you want Petra to be a wyvern rider, training her to also be a cavalry or armor class for some skills is generally just going to keep her from qualifying for wyvern lord until really, really late.

Exactly this. When I realized faire abilities, bowrange, canto, etc etc were tied to specific classes i was super disappointed. A lot of the fun of Awakening/Fates for me was class mixing and pushing units into classes you'd usually never put them in order to get certain abilities and benefits. I still vividly remember making my Lissa a dedicated physical unit and my Olivia a Dark Flier, it was extremely fun but that kind of stuff just isn't fully possible in 3H. I'm hoping they at least start introducing new late game classes soon to combat this.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I'm a fan of all of the new mechanics, except for two - fishing and lost items.

 

Fishing isn't fun or engaging. It is just a finnicky timing minigame. Hopefully they take inspiration from better fishing systems (like FF15's) in the future.

 

And lost item hunting is beyond tedious. They are a chore to seek out, and their descriptions can be so generic so as to apply to multiple units.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Etheus

[Ottservia]

I have mixed feelings on the monastery and instruct systems of this game. Cause like early on it's kind of fun to sort of walk around, talk to people , improve Byleth's skills and the like but as the game goes on it becomes really repetitive and slow. Cause like there's not enough to really do especially post timeskip when you can't even recruit characters and all your supports are pretty much max. Like pretty much by the end of the game all your activity points are gonna go to raising Byleth's weapon skills cause there's no reason to do anything else besides maybe eating a meal to raise motivation and the like for instructing students. Cause like tea time at that point is worthless because your supports are already maxed with all your students due to battles and such. So unless you really like the character there's really no reason to do it post-timeskip. Lost items are no longer a thing post timeskip and doing those would be pointless anyway unless, again, you want to increase motivation. Like there really is no reason to explore the monastery late game unless you need to increase motivation or raise professor level(which is rendered pointless in NG+). And even then raising motivation that late into the game is almost completely pointless cause skill ranks by that point are all probably B or higher and all your students are already settled into their final classes anyway so unless you need to raise like authority or something there really is no reason to instruct anyone and even then the growth is just pitiful anyway. Also there's really no incentive to raise more than like 10 students cause that's the max amount you'd be able to deploy at any given time so raising anyone else is kind of pointless if you're not gonna use them. Like it's not like Persona where everything you do feeds into everything else and is tied to a strict schedule making everything you do matter. Also Persona is paced in such a way that if you manage you're time properly then by the time everything is maxed out(social links and social stats), you're already pretty much at the end of the game. 3H isn't like that cause every reason to explore the monastery is pretty much gone by the time you get to say chapter 15 and even then by that point there's very little reason to explore the monetary.

[Vince777]

Overall, I do but I still hold a grudge over throwing away the weapon triangle, a staple of the series, particularly for the reason they've given. 

 

[eclipse]

1 hour ago, Vince777 said:

Overall, I do but I still hold a grudge over throwing away the weapon triangle, a staple of the series, particularly for the reason they've given. 

 

It still sort-of exists, in the -breakers.  Which saved my butt a few times.

---

I like the concept, but the class balance needs to be better.  Bows are cool, but not when only one master class can make use of them. . .and don't get me started on magic!

Training my character to recruit others is a giant pain, though.  Kinda wish it didn't mean locking myself out of units unless I go with NG+.

[Vince777]

3 minutes ago, eclipse said:

It still sort-of exists, in the -breakers.  Which saved my butt a few times.

---

I like the concept, but the class balance needs to be better.  Bows are cool, but not when only one master class can make use of them. . .and don't get me started on magic!

Training my character to recruit others is a giant pain, though.  Kinda wish it didn't mean locking myself out of units unless I go with NG+.

Well you need to build the skills up, save a skill slot for them, which you should because they're good but the biggest problem is that the enemies will probably not be using them so you're not instantly in trouble if your sword unit gets jumped by a pegasus knight you miscalculated the range for. 

I get that there is something but it still doesn't feel to me like the WT is there. 

 

[eclipse]

1 minute ago, Vince777 said:

Well you need to build the skills up, save a skill slot for them, which you should because they're good but the biggest problem is that the enemies will probably not be using them so you're not instantly in trouble if your sword unit gets jumped by a pegasus knight you miscalculated the range for. 

I get that there is something but it still doesn't feel to me like the WT is there. 

 

At worst, it's neutral, and at best, you're at an advantage.  So. . .what's the problem?

(because bows > all)

[Vince777]

9 minutes ago, eclipse said:

At worst, it's neutral, and at best, you're at an advantage.  So. . .what's the problem?

(because bows > all)

Doesn't feel like a WT to me if "at worst it's neutral". I had two playthroughs and didn't plan any of it with the WT in mind. 
 
I don't ask for the WT just so that I get the edge. I ask for it because it's a FE mechanic that I love even when, and perhaps particularly when it puts me in a tough spot.  

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, eclipse said:

At worst, it's neutral, and at best, you're at an advantage.  So. . .what's the problem?

(because bows > all)

The problem is that it largely serves to render weapon variety meaningless. Swordmasters can use any weapon they want in this game except for magic, but... why on earth would they? Not only is it a waste of valuable weapon training they need to pass their tests, but they have a built-in swordfaire ability that makes swords objectively the best weapon choice for them. The only real difference is the unit type they get an effective combat art against. At all other times there's really no point to giving a swordmaster axes or lances. Maybe bows or fists sometimes, but axes and lances? Why? Ever? Sure, you could give them breakers to justify it, but to make it really worthwhile, you'd have to use like three whole skill slots (axefaire, lancebreaker and axebreaker) just to make it so there'd be any meaningful reason to pack a second weapon type rather than going all out on one.

[eclipse]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

The problem is that it largely serves to render weapon variety meaningless. Swordmasters can use any weapon they want in this game except for magic, but... why on earth would they? Not only is it a waste of valuable weapon training they need to pass their tests, but they have a built-in swordfaire ability that makes swords objectively the best weapon choice for them. The only real difference is the unit type they get an effective combat art against. At all other times there's really no point to giving a swordmaster axes or lances. Maybe bows or fists sometimes, but axes and lances? Why? Ever? Sure, you could give them breakers to justify it, but to make it really worthwhile, you'd have to use like three whole skill slots (axefaire, lancebreaker and axebreaker) just to make it so there'd be any meaningful reason to pack a second weapon type rather than going all out on one.

Each of the weapons has its advantages and disadvantages.  Yes, you'll get more MT with swords with Swordfaire, but good luck hitting that magic tank over there at range.  Sometimes, I want to feed an enemy to someone else, so having a slightly-less-than-lethal option is also a plus.  Or maybe I want those last few points of mastery.  There's reasons to deviate from the recommended weapons, and it's up to you, the player, to figure it out.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, eclipse said:

Each of the weapons has its advantages and disadvantages.  Yes, you'll get more MT with swords with Swordfaire, but good luck hitting that magic tank over there at range.  Sometimes, I want to feed an enemy to someone else, so having a slightly-less-than-lethal option is also a plus.  Or maybe I want those last few points of mastery.  There's reasons to deviate from the recommended weapons, and it's up to you, the player, to figure it out.

Like I said, bows are sometimes a worthwhile option over swords, but axes and lances? The damage difference between them, even at the silver tier, isn't even as big as the +5 from a faire skill.

"Sometimes I want to deliberately do worse damage" can be accomplished in a mind-boggling amount of ways. Using a combat art when you can double. Bringing a broken weapon. Bringing an iron weapon. Learning subdue. The fact that you can also accomplish it by training in a deliberately suboptimal weapon type doesn't remotely justify the loss of depth and character-building fun caused by the removal of this system. Honestly, if they didn't insist on giving nearly every upper-tier class a faire and put the weapon triangle back in, there would be way, way more things you could do with their system, but it's like they intentionally hobbled it at the knees.

[eclipse]

2 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Like I said, bows are sometimes a worthwhile option over swords, but axes and lances? The damage difference between them, even at the silver tier, isn't even as big as the +5 from a faire skill.

"Sometimes I want to deliberately do worse damage" can be accomplished in a mind-boggling amount of ways. Using a combat art when you can double. Bringing a broken weapon. Bringing an iron weapon. Learning subdue. The fact that you can also accomplish it by training in a deliberately suboptimal weapon type doesn't remotely justify the loss of depth and character-building fun caused by the removal of this system. Honestly, if they didn't insist on giving nearly every upper-tier class a faire and put the weapon triangle back in, there would be way, way more things you could do with their system, but it's like they intentionally hobbled it at the knees.

Lances and axes have different weights and low-tier effectiveness.  It's saved certain characters from being doubled.

It's not my fault that you're unwilling to explore the weapon system at its full potential.  Rather than complaining about why things are the way they are, push their limits.  Why use multiple weapon uses on a combat art when I can poke something once with an Iron Lance and call it a day?

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Lances and axes have different weights and low-tier effectiveness.  It's saved certain characters from being doubled.

It's not my fault that you're unwilling to explore the weapon system at its full potential.  Rather than complaining about why things are the way they are, push their limits.  Why use multiple weapon uses on a combat art when I can poke something once with an Iron Lance and call it a day?

You are missing the point. You described a single situation where the fact that axes and lances are an objectively inferior option to swords in a class with swordfaire can be used to aid your strategy, as if that makes up for the loss of the strategic depth that the choice between using swords, axes and lances used to have. Do you feel this was an improvement? Do you feel the choice between whether to use a sword, axe or lance is a deeper, more interesting one than it used to be? Or even that it's the same? If not, why even contest the point I'm trying to make that the game would be better if they kept the weapon triangle?

[eclipse]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

You are missing the point. You described a single situation where the fact that axes and lances are an objectively inferior option to swords in a class with swordfaire can be used to aid your strategy, as if that makes up for the loss of the strategic depth that the choice between using swords, axes and lances used to have. Do you feel this was an improvement? Do you feel the choice between whether to use a sword, axe or lance is a deeper, more interesting one than it used to be? Or even that it's the same? If not, why even contest the point I'm trying to make that the game would be better if they kept the weapon triangle?

Yes.  Because the choice exists to use weapons outside of what the class wants you to.  This opens up far more possibilities than "you must use X weapon against Y weapon for best results".