Fire Emblem Three Houses sold 2 million copies

[Flere210]

1 hour ago, Harvey said:

I can't figure out how you found SMO or Botw disappointing but whatever.

Three Houses did everything that fans nearly wanted but the map design. To me atleast, the story is a major improvement of Fates.

 

For botw it can be summed whit one word really: Dungeons. 

[Sentinel07]

2 hours ago, Flere210 said:

For botw it can be summed whit one word really: Dungeons. 

For me, it can summed up in 3 words: Dungeons, music, story. All three of these things in BotW were garbage, at least to me.

[Troykv]

4 hours ago, Sentinel07 said:

For me, it can summed up in 3 words: Dungeons, music, story. All three of these things in BotW were garbage, at least to me.

Oh the music it was definitely affected for the change of focus in the game design, instead of being story-driven it was adventure and exploration driven, so it needed something that worked better for the game's focus most of the time: the environment and the exploration. So the more "ambient" music that the games has most of the time (you can still here melodies fighting special enemies and in some locations though).

The change of focus also affected precisely how dungeons and story are presented, because of the more "sand box" style of gameplay, and absolute freedom to do stuff after finishing the "tutorial".

[Fabulously Olivier]

9 hours ago, Harvey said:

I can't figure out how you found SMO or Botw disappointing but whatever.

Three Houses did everything that fans nearly wanted but the map design. To me atleast, the story is a major improvement of Fates.

 

I think that the map design problem specifically stems from the 3+ range bows. It's clear that this needs to be the new standard, because it's made archers viable for the first time, but it is going to be seriously difficult for the franchise to compensate for the ability to soften or kill targets from like 5 range. 

[Florete]

16 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I played plenty of both Octopath and Odyssey more or less to completion, they just weren't nearly as fun as the previous entries.

There was a previous Octopath entry?

8 hours ago, Sentinel07 said:

For me, it can summed up in 3 words: Dungeons, music, story. All three of these things in BotW were garbage, at least to me.

BotW's story was better than nearly every other Zelda's, though.

[Sentinel07]

1 hour ago, Florete said:

There was a previous Octopath entry?

BotW's story was better than nearly every other Zelda's, though.

I disagree. To me it was way too fragmented and relied too heavily on exposition dumbs (aka the memories) to tell everything. Most of its plot points and characters are severely underdeveloped, kind of like Awakening for that matter. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are simpler but they do their execution better, and Skyward Sword has by far the best story in a Zelda game.

Plus, it has the worst version of Zelda to date. I know they wanted to go for a more troubled version of the princess but she ended up as no more than an angtsy teenager who whines about her job. She spends more time goofing off with technology than anything else. Made her completely unsympathetic to me.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Sentinel07

[Florete]

4 minutes ago, Sentinel07 said:

I disagree. To me it was way too fragmented and relied too heavily on exposition dumbs (aka the memories) to tell everything. Most of its plot points and characters are severely underdeveloped, kind of like Awakening for that matter. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are simpler but they do their execution better, and Skyward Sword has by far the best story in a Zelda game.

Plus, it has the worst version of Zelda to date. I know they wanted to go for a more troubled version of the princess but she ended up as no more than an angtsy teenager who whines about her job. She spends more time goofing off with technology than anything else. Made her completely unsympathetic to me.

I disagree with pretty much every word of this post. Oh well.

[Alastor15243]

5 hours ago, Florete said:

There was a previous Octopath entry?

I meant in the sense of it being a clear spiritual successor to the Bravely series.

[daisy jane]

9 hours ago, Florete said:

There was a previous Octopath entry?

BotW's story was better than nearly every other Zelda's, though.

Octopath was heavily inspired by the Bravely Default series. I really enjoyed it. the stories were concise enough that if you just wanted to do one person's path, you got the complete thing, and if you did all eight to told the whole story, with a lot of overlapping links, i found it quite enjoyable. 

 

8 hours ago, Sentinel07 said:

Plus, it has the worst version of Zelda to date. I know they wanted to go for a more troubled version of the princess but she ended up as no more than an angtsy teenager who whines about her job. She spends more time goofing off with technology than anything else. Made her completely unsympathetic to me.

that's probably because she is a teenager, who has no idea how to do her job and everyone basically telling her she has a finite time to do it and the only time she has any sense of peace/happiness/joy is goofing off with the technology.  but I mean each their own, to be fair. 

Out of everything people listed that they have issues with, the only thing I can agree with is SMO - and that's mostly because a huge chunk of SMO is post game "just find everything." which got boring after a while. 

I think i am just enough of a newbie where i don't have enough of a FE reference to complain about the maps. i just figure whatever i am given i will plan and I will do my thing. SO i never have an issue with them. (I suppose the argument is all the locations were the same but then you were only fighting in specific regions so they were gonna anyway). stuff like that doesn't bother me. I suppose i'm relatively simple though. 

 

 

[Flere210]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I meant in the sense of it being a clear spiritual successor to the Romancing Saga series.

FTFY

[Florete]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I meant in the sense of it being a clear spiritual successor to the Bravely series.

 

3 hours ago, daisy jane said:

Octopath was heavily inspired by the Bravely Default series. I really enjoyed it. the stories were concise enough that if you just wanted to do one person's path, you got the complete thing, and if you did all eight to told the whole story, with a lot of overlapping links, i found it quite enjoyable. 

Eh, guess I just didn't think of it that way since I didn't like Bravely Default at all. (But I did like Octopath)

[MoralityGames]

On 11/2/2019 at 7:51 PM, Flere210 said:

This may only mean that 3h is hoing to be the new standard tho. 

At least, I'm pretty sure the simulation aspects are here to stay. They persisted in Persona after 3 changed the formula established in 1 + 2, Three Houses is heavily inspired by Persona, and increasing simulation is just the overall drift of the series and story-driven JRPGs in general. 

 

 

Edited November 4, 2019 by MoralityGames

[Fabulously Olivier]

On 11/3/2019 at 5:22 AM, Alastor15243 said:

To be clear, I don't think all four are bad games. BotW is great at what it does, it just doesn't do much of what the previous games excelled at, and what little of them it does do it does terribly. It is, however, so good at what it does right that I still found the game plenty of fun.

I played plenty of both Octopath and Odyssey more or less to completion, they just weren't nearly as fun as the previous entries.

The only one of the four I actively hated was Three Houses, and that was because the game seemed almost perfectly tailored to make me hate it, with its clear disinterest in providing fun challenges, its inability to ever be hard and fair at the same time, and the immense amounts of padding they put between chapters, none of which I found fun.

So here's my question to you.

 

Does your alienation with the way Three Houses handles challenge stem from an active desire by the devs to discourage your playstyle, or does it actually stem from development difficulties regarding a new combat mechanic? 

 

You seem to believe that everything wrong with map design (namely ambush spawns) in Three Houses stems from the turnwheel/divine pulse. I would propose an alternative line of thought. Is it possible that the more aggressive approach to enemy design (over-reliance on fast, lethal enemies slipping past your frontline) is actually an attempt to compensate for the new archery mechanics?

 

The series has never had to cope with 3+ range archery on a consistent basis before (ignoring SoV, which was testing these mechanics on an old game with already piss-poor map design). Let's ignore mechanics such as Ballistae and Bolting/Meteor due to limited availability. We are now dealing with a game in which it is possible to poke or kill enemies from 5 or possibly even more spaces away every single turn, and this can seriously exploit existing map designs. Imagine playing some of the series greatest enclosed castle maps with the ability to pick off foes from a quarter or more of the map away while they have no adequate means of retaliation.

 

So the developers are essentially left with a choice:

* Return archers to their old, largely useless incarnation and try to find another way to bring them up to par.

* Use the modern archery style with the old map design, and just let players exploit it to their heart's content.

* Go with a design utilizing more aggressive enemies designed to attack your backline (as in Three Houses) and keep you constantly on edge.

 

 

I can't say I much envy their choice. With that in mind, my approach would personally be to revert archers to their old range and the game to its old map design style, while giving them close counter and increasing the availability of ballistae.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Etheus

[Alastor15243]

1 hour ago, Etheus said:

You seem to believe that everything wrong with map design (namely ambush spawns) in Three Houses stems from the turnwheel/divine pulse.

In a sense. I believe it either caused them, in the sense that they were added in an effort to make divine pulse feel more necessary or less overpowered, or facilitated them, in that nobody noticed these things were a problem because the game was being developed under the assumption that everyone would use divine pulse. Very few of Three Houses' map design flaws would have been considered acceptable if the divine pulse weren't a concept. I have 100% confidence that "Foreign Land and Sky" would never have gotten past the concept phase if the divine pulse weren't considered by the developers to be a core and indispensable part of gameplay.

1 hour ago, Etheus said:

I would propose an alternative line of thought. Is it possible that the more aggressive approach to enemy design (over-reliance on fast, lethal enemies slipping past your frontline) is actually an attempt to compensate for the new archery mechanics?

First off, aggressive enemies keeping you from cheesing static formations is not a concept that demands ambush spawns. It's a concept many games have used previously to keep players on their toes and stop them from continuously baiting out enemies from a formation one at a time.

Second, I still maintain that even if that was the motivation, my point still stands that the divine pulse is the only thing making decisions like this tolerable from a gameplay standpoint, which means it's the only reason they aren't being recognized as problems. If ambush spawns were their idea to limit the dominance of archery, there is an extremely high chance that play-testing the game without divine pulse would have made it clear it was a bad idea. And I can think of better ones off the top of my head, like, say, not being allowed to shoot enemies through walls. Or maybe instead of ambush reinforcements, how about infinite reinforcements with something like the "no exp gained" skill that enemies in Conquest maps had.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Etheus said:

* Go with a design utilizing more aggressive enemies designed to attack your backline (as in Three Houses) and keep you constantly on edge.

What route was on this on and what difficulty? Please, tell me.

3H was the antithesis of enemy aggression I found on GD Hard. It pained me to note that nearly every single map post-timeskip consisted almost entirely of enemies who would do absolutely nothing until I got in their attack range.

And I noticed this problem even before the timeskip during chapter 12, and 11 too now that I think about it, and yes, Chapter... 6 was it- the one with the warp floors and Specter Knight being the alternative win condition? Heck, 17 got downright odd when a bunch of Dimmy's troops, including the Peg Girl and Cleric, chose to sit on the flaming platform after stealing it from 'Dette, being roasted alive as their king not on the platform came alone at me.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[eclipse]

On 10/31/2019 at 9:56 PM, Yexin said:

i honestly don't know if i should be happy or not

i guess i'll just wait and see how IntSys takes this sign

I'm gonna look at it from the optimist's side - success here means that maybe we'll see a Tellius remake!  And I do mean a remake - balance the stats a little better, and do something about the story pacing/supports.

---

This is in the wrong place.  Normally, I'd move this to Three Houses, but then it means I'd need to hand out multiple spamming warnings.  So as bizarre as this will be, I'm moving this to Far from the Forest.  Have fun talking about Zelda games~!

(and next time, post this in the correct subforum)

[XRay]

Nice to see Three Houses doing well. 3DS is still going strong too.

[Fabulously Olivier]

50 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

What route was on this on and what difficulty? Please, tell me.

3H was the antithesis of enemy aggression I found on GD Hard. It pained me to note that nearly every single map post-timeskip consisted almost entirely of enemies who would do absolutely nothing until I got in their attack range.

And I noticed this problem even before the timeskip during chapter 12, and 11 too now that I think about it, and yes, Chapter... 6 was it- the one with the warp floors and Specter Knight being the alternative win condition? Heck, 17 got downright odd when a bunch of Dimmy's troops, including the Peg Girl and Cleric, chose to sit on the flaming platform after stealing it from 'Dette, being roasted alive as their king not on the platform came alone at me.

Off the top of my head:

 

The Miklan tower mission and its infamous ambush spawn pass thieves (a major problem on Maddening).

 

The Battle of Gronder field (post time skip) - ambush spawn pegasus knights behind your army after first turn.

 

Everything about Petra's paralogue bait-and-switch objective and ambush spawns. Possibly the most infamous paralogue in the game.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Etheus

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 hours ago, Etheus said:

Off the top of my head:

 

The Miklan tower mission and its infamous ambush spawn pass thieves (a major problem on Maddening).

 

The Battle of Gronder field (post time skip) - ambush spawn pegasus knights behind your army after first turn.

 

Everything about Petra's paralogue bait-and-switch objective and ambush spawns. Possibly the most infamous paralogue in the game.

1. Paralogue or exclusive to Maddening? I don't recall a thief spawn problem anywhere, what chapter?
2. I don't remember those, are they not on Golden Deer? Or was it because I opted to avoid heading towards Bernie and instead went west and across that bridge that led me to avoid it? Reinforcements did appear behind the starting location, but I was miles away from there, when they showed up.
3. I never did cross-house recruiting, so I never saw that. But thanks for the tip for whenever I get to another playthrough of 3H, but that won't be for months I think.

 

When you say "ambush spawns", do you mean reinforcements that show up and attack on the same turn? Because I am almost certain never once saw those. I was just about able to negate the surprise reinforcements that spawn in Chapter 18 and 19 right behind the starting zones, but I could see people being forced to rewind because of them.

[Fabulously Olivier]

14 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

1. Paralogue or exclusive to Maddening? I don't recall a thief spawn problem anywhere, what chapter?
2. I don't remember those, are they not on Golden Deer? Or was it because I opted to avoid heading towards Bernie and instead went west and across that bridge that led me to avoid it? Reinforcements did appear behind the starting location, but I was miles away from there, when they showed up.
3. I never did cross-house recruiting, so I never saw that. But thanks for the tip for whenever I get to another playthrough of 3H, but that won't be for months I think.

 

When you say "ambush spawns", do you mean reinforcements that show up and attack on the same turn? Because I am almost certain never once saw those. I was just about able to negate the surprise reinforcements that spawn in Chapter 18 and 19 right behind the starting zones, but I could see people being forced to rewind because of them.

Maddening unfortunately causes enemy reinforcements to spawn and attack on the same turn, from what I hear. You will notice the pass thieves in Miklan's chapter then.

 

As for the one's in Petra/Bernadetta's paralogue, they can constitute ambush spawns even on lower difficulties because they absurdly spawn when Petra gets near the objective point during your turn. If your turn is almost over, it can put you in a bad situation. And because some of those enemies are particularly threatening.... well... yeah. 

[Freohr Datia]

I approve of this game doing well, it's been years since I've thoroughly enjoyed a new fe this much and I had gradually been just dropping out of the series

I'm also so happy the english voice actors have been participating and interacting with their fanbase so much, I think that made a wonderful change for the series and also the fanbase itself as well!

[Harvey]

20 hours ago, eclipse said:

I'm gonna look at it from the optimist's side - success here means that maybe we'll see a Tellius remake!  And I do mean a remake - balance the stats a little better, and do something about the story pacing/supports.

Frankly, considering how this game sold so well, I honestly think that Nintendo/Intelligent Systems should do remakes of their past games since many of them have aged especially PoR which the developers have said that it was only 70% completed before release. It would be interesting to see what the remaining would have been added if the remake were to take in place.

20 hours ago, eclipse said:

This is in the wrong place.  Normally, I'd move this to Three Houses, but then it means I'd need to hand out multiple spamming warnings.  So as bizarre as this will be, I'm moving this to Far from the Forest.  Have fun talking about Zelda games~!

(and next time, post this in the correct subforum)

I actually thought of moving it in the three house forum but then I didn't see any topic mentioning this before I posted so I assumed that posting it on general fire emblem would have sufficed but my bad.

 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Idk the sales of former parts, but I think two million sounds good. 

That said I like the new influences in 3H, but they should be an one time thing. 

Dungeons and day simulation do not belong to classic FE imo, but these things were refreshing and especially latter well executed. 

Edited November 10, 2019 by Lysithea

[Sidereal Wraith]

This...is good...

[BEST TRYNDAMERE PLAYER]

I really enjoyed Three Houses to the point where I picked up a capture card and going to livestream my Maddening BE run. No NG+, no poaching students from other houses