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Three Houses has now been out for one year! How have your opinions on it changed since release?


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Happy 1st anniversary to TH! Well, I think that was technically yesterday, but still. The game's been out a full year now. How have your opinions on it changed since the trailers and release? Please use spoiler tags, btw, as I have not played every route,. I haven't played the Ashen Wolves DLC yet either.

It's not common for my opinions to change, about anything, really, but they kinda did this time.

Before the game came out, the trailers got me interested in Edelgard and Claude. I thought Edelgard might for once be a female lord I'd enjoy (I found the ones that came before either meh or awful). And maybe that could still be the case since I've yet to play the Crimson Flower route (Or Silver Snow, for that matter). I thought Dimitri looked boring. I played through Verdant Wind first and then Azure Moon and I'm still kinda burned out. lol Although I also admit that after being on Rhea's side twice now and growing to like her a lot, I'm not really ready to go against her yet either.

Anyway, my opinion of the story hasn't changed, I still think it's pretty good overall, with Verdant Wind having great lore and world-building and Azure Moon having a lot of great character interactions and development.

But as for the characters, it has a little. Claude was my favorite for a little while at first. And as I said, I had some interest in Edelgard early on. But this is my character "tier list" now. I'm only doing Rhea, Sothis, and the playable characters here, as I can safely say none of the other characters in the game are anything noteworthy to me.

Spoiler

Absolute Favorite, I Love Him So So Much
- Sylvain (of course lol)

Favorite
- Claude
- Ingrid
- Dimitri
- Seteth
- Flayn

I Like Them A Good Bit
- Rhea
- Byleth
- Dorothea
- Caspar
- Ashe
- Annette
- Sothis
- Catherine
- Alois
- Jeritza

They Get Some Points For a Few Good Moments
- Raphael
- Lorenz
- Hilda
- Lysithea

Meh/Kinda Boring
- Hanneman
- Shamir
- Ignatz
- Leonie
- Marianne
- Mercedes
- Gilbert
- Bernadetta
- Petra
- Ferdinand
- Dedue
- Anna (I have liked Annas from other games though, to point out)

I Dislike Them
- Edelgard (Only as an antagonist for now, since as I said, she could be more likeable in her own route)
- Hubert
- Manuela
- Felix

Yeah, so Dimitri and Edelgard are the biggest differences here. They kinda swapped places. Dimitri went from boring to really cool and Edelgard went from interesting to...well, an antagonist that just did not appeal to me. And I kinda went from being a Golden Deer fan to more of a Blue Lions person after playing Azure Moon. lol I still like both houses tho!

Before anyone tells me "I recommend you play Crimson Flower!" I probably will do that at some point in the future, I don't know when. So please don't badger me with it. And as I said at the top of this post, use spoiler tags for spoilers.

Edited by Anacybele
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In terms of story there isn’t really much change. It’s a good game with a good story. It suffers from pacing issues and feels unfinished at points, but overall it’s a very good game IMO.

In terms of gameplay I think I’ve warmed up to it a bit more- lurking and occasionally participating in discussions about the gameplay has helped me gain a newfound appreciation for it overall. And the release of cindered shadows bumped my opinion up further, because there are some pretty great maps in there too.

Characterwise my biggest 180s in opinion are Ferdinand, Ignatz, and Dedue (all went from meh to I love them over the last year) Ingrid (I wanted to like her but she never really engaged me as a character and she got strength screwed too lol) and Lysithea (went from “hey she looks cool” to “I despise this Ricken rip off so much” then back up to “meh, she’s ok”). Other characters have also gone up opinion wise, like Felix, Sylvain, Cyril, Lorenz, among many others. My character preference kinda changes from day to day as I find some cool new support or line of dialogue that endears me to them.

So yeah, overall there’s a bit of change but my opinion on stuff like the story has remained fairly static.

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After playing the game about a dozen times, I'm still enjoying it, as I do with most FE games.

What did change, however, is how much I like certain characters. Weird enough, since their first introductions came out, most characters only changed from pretty good to awesome, from okay I guess to dislike, or vice versa. Only 2 that really changed were Ingrid going from meh to absolute fave, and Marianne from strong dislike to strong like. (Marianne reminded me too much of myself at her age, but her personal growth is so good that with every support she grew on me, only S support I truly loved.)

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I would like to see Intelligent Systems bolt this game engine to a Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn remake. My initial reception in seeing the game was poor but that was due to me watching over someone's shoulder playing it. At the time, I cringed at the thought of voice acting and style overbearing over the  importance of strategy. I was partly correct.

I only started playing it a short time ago. I do think the game is made well, and the voice acting and cutscenes are outstanding so pleasantly surprised. I find the teaching, recruiting, dialogue and exploring to be the best thing about the game. Unfortunately, the strategic side doesn't fare well as fatigue sets in after you realize everything is basically a skirmish map with diverting objectives. 3 houses is best played in short sessions so perfect for the Switch but lengthier runs show it's pacing issues and gaps in the storylines. 

My run with the Golden Deer House had me recruit pretty much everyone you can get, except ones you can't. The variety is great but gearing/maintaining/paying for 27 characters in the roster is something I don't think I can recommend. I imagine the second half will fill up with generic characters to fill in for the ones you recruit? 

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I remember sitting at the credits for my first playthrough thinking that it was now time to play other routes. And it gradually dawned on me that it meant being prompted to do all that monastery stuff again, and how useless that extra prep turned out being in my first playthrough. My opinion of the game went from "not great, but interesting" to "game that insists on being not fun for 50% of its play time just to call itself an 80 hour rpg". Three Houses is characterized by mechanical bloat and shameless filler. The next two playthroughs were auto battle only on the easiest difficulty, mainly focused on nabbing supports for completionism, as the stories of Dimitri and Edelgard somehow proved worse than Claude's. It's a cruel irony that I ended up playing the game the same way I play the mobile game - not even looking at the screen.

The fourth playthrough was what salvaged the game for me. Silver Snow Maddening mode, no NG+, no DLC, no stat boosters. I've never gone for super hard difficulties in the past, but I can't imagine any other game would do it better than this game's Maddening mode, which I'm sure was put together in a weekend with little to no playtesting. Afterthought or no, it's the best part of Three Houses for me. Maybe my heart was just eager to enjoy some thing. The DLC campaign looked like an easy skip. I was excited to see IS make a fleshed out Fire Emblem game on modern hardware, and a year later I am...still wondering what that looks like. Because we don't know what IS actually did in making this game.

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The biggest change was that the fatigue from playing White Clouds over and over (especially for players like me, who can't let themselves skip weeks/micromanages equipment for every battle etc) can really take its toll, and has resulted in a bit of burnout. With that being said, I've spent more hours playing 3H than any other game I've ever played, even Radiant Dawn, which I would call my favourite game of all time. So 3H definitely did a lot of things right for me. I was also insanely hyped for FE's return to a TV screen - my first playthrough I charged through basically on sheer excitement at playing FE with a cinematic feel (that the DS didn't bring), whereas now I notice its flaws far more easily. 

My impression of most characters has improved from what little I knew about them before, even though in general I've noticed where the writing has failed them. The only big exception is Ashe. Nothing wrong with his character, but he was the unit I originally wanted to recruit the most. He then ended up being useless in my first run and that shaped my impression of him massively.

The DLC could have been better (still annoyed about Anna) but it did help inject some extra motivation/interest into my most recent run, and both it and Maddening mode are welcome additions on the whole (even if Maddening could have been done better, the game needed a higher difficulty mode than Hard). 

28 minutes ago, grinus said:

I would like to see Intelligent Systems bolt this game engine to a Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn remake.

We'll never see this I think, but goddamn I want it. 

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In general, I give Three Houses a 8/10. It's a great game and very polish but it has its fair share of issues there and there.

The lore and the characters are by far the best thing about this game. The backstory of these characters show the harsh reality of the imperfect world called Fodlàn, no matter where you live in. And having a few of them having people they care about killed or be kill during the story only make these characters so much better as they get make it more personal to archive the leader's role. I like all the playable characters in this game, even if I didn't like how IS handled the Black Eagle's popularity. The villains are okay for the most part, not as terrible as those in Fates. Obviously, TTSITD could have used a bit more development. I don't like the concept of Byleth, they should have been their own character instead of their pseudo avatar that they tried to do. If you want to make a main character who is a mix of a silent protagonist/avatar and their own character, look at Joker from Persona 5 for a good example.

While the story is much better than in Fates, it has it's flaws. Creating different story paths depending on which house you choose is cool at first, but each path has its own issues:

Crimson Flower

  • Too short (adding a chapter to defeat TTSITD wouldn't add anything tbh, this map was copycat once already)
  • Lack cutscenes
  • All the others students become Edelgard's yes men and women, they don't have a lot of development in this story or any involvement aside of one liners.
  • Edelgard is too dependant on Byleth

Silver Snow

  • Being forced upon you if you didn't talk to Edelgard at one specific moment was a dick move
  • Very generic route over all
  • Seteth is a cool dude, but he can't replace a Lord
  • Final boss doesn't make any sense whatsoever

Azure Moon

  • Best story overhall, but a bit rushed at the end
  • Missed opportunity to have a meaningful choice with gameplay impact when asked to choose where to attack the Empire first or return to the Kingdom
  • Dimitri's redemption arc is too sudden and doesn't make sense (hello Byleth, don't you want to use Divine Pulse to stop Flechette to kill Rodrigue... no?)
  • TTSITD are killed by complete accident, you wouldn't known they even exist if you haven't played other routes

Verdant Winds

  • Worse story overhall, only saved by Claude and the students
  • Copycat of Silver Snow, despite having two extra chapters
  • The route doesn't do Claude any justices because of being a copycat of Silver Snow. We are told many times that Claude is a schemer and a master tactician much later, yet he doesn't do anything of the sort aside of ONE chapter and his amazing scheme is just him spawning at another side with a few green units at his side. Claude was better shown to be a master tactician in Crimson Flower when he was an enemy than in his own story!
  • Too much exposition, Hilda was basically the exposition girl for the time skip. How they handled Dimitri's death is a good example.

Another issue was Nitendo's dumb move to advertise the time skip. The time skip would also a bit more impact if we would have played one chapter without Byleth, with the students freaking out as they for once have to do everything on their own.

The music and the voice acting are excellent.

Aside of the reused maps, the gameplay was enjoyable even if a bit easy.

Maddening mode is not a good difficulty.

 

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My opinion on the game changed a bit. While I still like it, I now see the faults in it more clearly. I see how much better it could had been, and it makes me upset that it didn't reach it's full potential. 

The second part in the game should had been longer. I also feel that the second part lacked something which was in almost every other game, and I can't put my finger on it. I think it was....the political drama most FE games has? I remember seeing some people compare part 2 to Game of Thrones, and um....no. Past FE games were much closer to being that than Three Houses. 

In the end of the day, I think this was a very ambitious game, and it shows, but  it needed more polishing, especially part 2.

Edited by Rose482
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I think it is a good game with an interesting story and well developed characters but I wouldn't call it my favorite FE game (Mystery of the Emblem, Sacred Stones and Awakening are still the trifecta for my favorite FE game). Honestly I still forget Three Houses is a Fire Emblem game at times since it deviates so much. While I don't really like the whole school setting of the first half of the game I'm ultimately fine with it as long as it doesn't become the new standard for the series. I want the next new mainline title to have a different setting while still taking good ideas from Three Houses and improving on them.

Plus while I had fun the first two playthroughs it got boring playing the same first 11 chapters over and over again before you got to new material on the other routes. And the one thing that soured my opinion the most was its poorly implemented and rushed out DLC content that I'm glad I didn't spend $25 on since it leaves nothing but a stain on a otherwise good game. Personally, I kind of wish Three Houses was delayed until 2020 and be released as an anniversary title since 2019 seemed like it was still too soon since again the DLC seemed rushed out and even some things in the main game felt rushed at times.

So fun game but I'm not afraid to nitpick the things I didn't like about it.

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My opinion of the game has changed drastically since it's launch. It's gone from positive to not so positive to it's just a bad game. Like I don't even think the story is any good. CF is the only route I'd consider to have something of a complete story. In every route there's very little if any thematically relevant conflict to the characters. Edelgard and Dimitri have some(Edelgard actually has the most in fact) but overall a lot of the things that happen are just kinda pointless or completely irrelevant to arcs of the characters in question. For as hyped up as the battle of gronder was in the marketing, I would argue that it's by far the most pointless chapter in the entire game storywise as nothing really comes out of it. The story doesn't advance, no character arcs advance, nothing really happens. It's the three kingdoms fighting each other which is cool but again it's kinda pointless. It just kinda happens which is probably the best way to describe 3H's story as a whole. Things just kinda happen with little to no connecting thread.

Also this story has a fetish for just not following on plot points it builds up. Like who the fuck are the argathan's and what's their beef with sothis? fuck if I know. The game doesn't tell me. Even when you fight the agarthans they don't tell you anything. Like there's a book on it in the abyss but like I shouldn't have to do optional reading to understand the core motivations of the game's central antagonist and even then the stuff in the book is hardly ever built upon in the story itself so again it just kinda feels irrelevant. Like the game has so many questions that the story brings up but never answers for no reason. Like we don't really have a definitive for why the agarthans slaughtered the dragon people. At most we have two conflicting accounts from sources we can't completely trust. I don't things being open ended but they don't do anything with those conflicting accounts. It's just the agarthans are the bad guys time to go kill them. There's no real confict here. It's just kind go beat up the evil mole people.

 

Also I don't really care much for the gameplay. The monestary stuff was fun at first but only grew more tedious as the game went one. I hate the fact that there like only 10 unique maps that get recycled 20 million times. It's gets old fast. Honestly I just find 3H just a slog to play through.

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My opinion of the game is still high. I enjoy it a lot, but it also isn't my favorite Fire Emblem or even in my Top 5. Some of my opinion changes over the last year have been:

-Initially thought Dimitri would be bland, turned out to be one of my favorite characters in the game.
-Initially thought Claude would be super interesting, turned out he's pretty mild and reminiscent of a lot of other FE protagonists; still like him a lot, though.
-Initially thought Edelgard had some good motivation, and still kinda do, but now also think that she's pretty selfish/arrogant/etc.
-Didn't care for Ferdinand that much, now my opinion of him is higher.
-Really liked Sylvain and Lysithea, now not as fond of them as I used to be.
-Didn't initially mind the somewhat equal divide between pre-timeskip and post-timeskip, now think they either needed to extend post, or really differentiate pre a lot more...or both.

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Yeah, my opinions have changed based on how the game turned out, though I cannot deny that the fanbase might have also caused issues in there, sadly. I'll focus on the top three from each house.

Black Eagles: 

  • Edelgard: Went from liking her to absolutely loving her. I understood so much of the struggles she was going through, what she was fighting for, how hard the burden she was carrying for her, and how she needed to be supported by others. I love how she's the one that ever makes the concept of choices be really emphasized. She's one of the strongest characters I have ever seen. 
  • Ferdinand: Generally how most C-supports go. I thought I would dislike him cause he's so haughty or such. But he's the 2nd fav of the bunch. I love how he's really not afraid to speak his mind and how he's willing to put in the work for his words. However, if it bites him, he will concede and accept humility. His ability to bounce back after a rough fall is one of his best traits.
  • Dorothea: I saw her as a meme at first, with the Jojo hat, but she's really come through as an interesting character, with how she ends up being that person that was really affected by the war and lamenting how horrifying it is, but she perseveres through it nonetheless. Having her fight Ferdinand is heartbreaking in AM/VW, especially since she talks about it after.

Blue Lions:

  • Dimitri: I REALLY wanted to like him. I thought he would be someone I would really enjoy once I see his story. But when I did, and I understood, I felt like it was... done poorly. Like, the fact that I felt that the story bends over backwards with the characters and such just to push him up, I felt that it messed up so much from the other characters. Why are we focusing on Dimitri's suffering over Rodrigue when Rodrigue is Felix's father? The thing that messed things up is that Dimitri was way too into the "war is bad" category that he refuses to see what the fighting is about. I felt that he was that character that knows nothing, learns nothing, and understands nothing. Idealism is okay and all, but Dimitri comes across as that type of leader that is overall weak in comparison. The fact is, I never understood what I was fighting for in AM as I did in CF and VW, and that only hurt my ability to care about Azure Moon overall. 
  • Felix: Oh man. I thought he was going to be a badass swordsman, like Navarre, but he's basically a Navarre who is more expressive and has a backstory told. Like, geez, the guy's been through a lot. He's lost his brother, saw his best friend start to develop a monstrous personality, and ultimately he struggles in his paths. It's so ironic that he claims that he's become no different from Dimitri in CF, but he actually DOES become like Dimitri in VW/SS, where the latter has him obsessed with avenging the dead. It is best to give him specific endings just so that he can lead can find salvation and live life after healing. So I went from liking him to really loving him. 
  • Mercedes: Oh boy. That voice. It was... a major issue with me. It's like the VA was REALLY trying hard in there. So I thought I was gonna be annoyed by her. But once I got used to it and listened to what she went through, I really felt for her. It was really sad when I learned that she was actually Jeritza's sister, and how tragic it was in Azure Moon when he died in her arms. I was absolutely happy to learn that Jeritza being in Crimson Flower exclusive meant that she was perfect for Crimson Flower now. She's a really strong girl for enduring what she did, and I love how in several supports has her actually growing much stronger as a person. 

Golden Deer:

  • Claude: I found him entertaining and thought of him as a jokester. Then I was impressed that he had more deep issues that, while sadly isn't as explored as Edelgard's or Dimitri's, it still shows hints of it. So my opinion didn't change too much, but I guess I am more disappointed by how they didn't use him to his full potential.
  • Lysithea: Oh boy! When I learned of her tragic backstory, and learned how she shared it with Edelgard, I was amazed and loved how the two could interact. It's amazing how she was being strong in how even after the horrors she faced, she was doing what she did because she wanted to help her parents out and live out her life in peace. But I wanted her to have a full life, so pairing her with Edelgard, Linhardt, Hanneman, or Byleth are great, so that Lysithea can live a full life. 
  • Leonie: Wow, I wish she didn't disappoint me like she did. I feel that they really wasted a lot of opportunities with her. I figured that her being Jeralt's disciple once upon a time would make her more interesting, but she ended up being really obsessed with Jeralt. Wish they took it to more meaningful approaches, like giving her a support with Edelgard, due to the Agarthan issue. But nope. They really squandered some meaningful things that could have been exploited. 

Church: 

  • Rhea: While I have animosity to her, I am glad that my initial opinion was wrong. My initial opinion was that she was pure evil. Since evil Church and all that. But nope. She's a sympathetic character that has suffered in life and it has tragically led her to mold the world into what it is today. Her efforts in what she believed was peace became warped and she ended up causing the suffering of too many people. So while I understand what she did, I cannot agree with how she went about it and believe she should have moved on from her suffering, rather than cling to it. 
  • Seteth: I like how he was the more straight man. He was making good points and overall was the only guy that ever voiced complaints, even though he never bothered to act against her or actually do anything to really oppose her. It makes sense when you get the context, but you can see how it is rather cowardly for him to just voice words but never act. However, I like how he does develop and begins to understand that things had to change, and he has to actually be more serious with problems that face society.
  • Flayn: I originally saw her as being an adorable girl that was no doubt a dragon. However, at times, I feel that while she is cute, I feel a sense of frustration with her in how naive she is. It's like she looks for or can only see the positives of the way things are, and never beyond what is problematic in the society itself. I wished that she would have developed more by understanding that there were so much suffering going on, but she never seemed to have learned. Which is disappointing, since it keeps her as a naive girl. 
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the only moment i was really enjoying 3H, was when i was actually playing it
just a few days after having completed the game, i started realizing many of its flaws

now my extremely shortened opinion about 3H is "great, you tried, but this is a clusterfuck regardless of your good intentions also don't you dare 'cursing' a potential Genealogy remake with your new mechanics and engine"

yeah, i like many characters and the music's good, but every FE game has good music and characters (sorta)
yeah, the game has a damn huge lore, but none of it matters until it's presented to you (spoiler, it's not), because in the end, what the games want you to focus on is how awesome Byleth is and how Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude (debatable) and Rhea are lost without you (seriously, they must have some really bad mental problem); also, the game tells you about things, it doesn't show you them, and this is REALLY poor storytelling, because it is functional to literally nothing, it seems like they either didn't have enough time or money to properly tell the story they had in mind

also, screw branched stories, FE made me downright hate them

finally, i want to say i don't hate 3H, because i quite like it, but imo it's so flawed i can't just look at its good aspects and ignore the rest

Edited by Yexin
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I love the characters and the game. Probably more than any other FE game, at least the cast as a whole, because in other games i only care like the half of them and so. 

However on a more technical side, the more i see (or play it) the more i think it is definetly rushed because has a lot of flaws and would rather wait some more months and play a more inmense and complete game. 

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For the first half of my first run (hard Azure Moon), I really liked it. During the war phase, the game fell apart in almost every aspect, and I ended up quitting in the final chapter when my patience ran thin. At this point, I disliked the game.

I picked it up again months later, finished the run and started a Golden Deer maddening run. I hated it. Most poorly designed difficulty in any FE I have ever played (which, admittedly, isn't all of them). I struggled through it until I got to chapter 13.
That was the finishing blow to the game - I encountered an unavoidable softlock due to a number of factors (dead Hilda, RNG-screwed Claude, mages Byleth, Ignatz and Lorenz). I would've been perfectly fine in a well-designed game, but in maddening, you outright have to plan ahead to beat chapter 13, otherwise you just won't make it. It's that bad. Of course, I could've gone back to chapter 12 (I did have a save) and reduced the difficulty to hard. But I despise Claude, so I didn't have the slightest motivation to go on. So, I quit for good. Or so I thought.

Afterwards, I went on to play some of the FEs that I hadn't yet played, such as Echoes, the Tellius titles and Mystery. After disliking each and every one of them, I decided to give Three Houses another shot (hard Crimson Flower). I'm still on that run. So far, it's really easy and the maps are bad, but after the mindnumbing snoozefest that was PoR or the cesspool of horrible map design that was Echoes, I've gained a newfound appreciation for 3H. Which I suppose kinda makes me a hypocrite, as I always hated the "Better Than Fates" excuse to dismiss all of the game's flaws.

At this point, my opinion of the game is this: it's... really mediocre. The difficulty is either boring or plain awful, the map design is uninspired and relies on springing bullshit on the player to force them to waste divine pulse charges, the monastery is a huge waste of time, the cast is horrendously balanced and extremely ironman unfriendly, the class system is a hopeless mess... However, the game has some virtues. I legimitely enjoy the customization aspect, the game speed is fast and pleasant, and the story and characters are good (though I consider a game with good story and bad gameplay to be a bad game, period - story doesn't matter when I could just watch a playthrough for it and spare myself the torture).

While I wouldn't call it a great FE game, or even a good one, it's... tolerable. An unbalanced, unfinished, unpolished mess, but it's tolerable in the end. That's more than a few of the other FE games can say.

If you look at my signature's ranking of FE games, it sits right on the line between "enjoyable" and "unreplayable". It's a game that I've felt tempted to return to in numerous occassions (unlike every title below it), but once I do, I struggle to get much enjoyment out of it (unlike every title above it). Hurray Three Houses, I guess. You aren't complete garbage. Just mostly garbage.

 

...You know one thing about Three Houses where my opinion never changed? Graphics and performance. I have seen few games so technically inept. You basically have to dive into the meme tier stuff like Bethesda for Three Houses to stand a chance. The game is riddled with visual glitches and clipping issues, the FPS take a dive every time someone casts a spell or uses a combat art - which is doubly unacceptable considering there's a 30 FPS cap that is supposed to prevent exactly that sort of thing, the textures look like they belong in a wii game, there's no antialias to conceal the awful jaggies, scenes use stretched out, low quality JPEGs for the backgrounds, animations are reused and for the most part bland...
Graphics are very low in my list of priorities when it comes to games, but Three Houses's graphics are so hilariously awful that I can't help but take notice.

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1 hour ago, Saint Rubenio said:

For the first half of my first run (hard Azure Moon), I really liked it. During the war phase, the game fell apart in almost every aspect, and I ended up quitting in the final chapter when my patience ran thin. At this point, I disliked the game.

I picked it up again months later, finished the run and started a Golden Deer maddening run. I hated it. Most poorly designed difficulty in any FE I have ever played (which, admittedly, isn't all of them). I struggled through it until I got to chapter 13.
That was the finishing blow to the game - I encountered an unavoidable softlock due to a number of factors (dead Hilda, RNG-screwed Claude, mages Byleth, Ignatz and Lorenz). I would've been perfectly fine in a well-designed game, but in maddening, you outright have to plan ahead to beat chapter 13, otherwise you just won't make it. It's that bad. Of course, I could've gone back to chapter 12 (I did have a save) and reduced the difficulty to hard. But I despise Claude, so I didn't have the slightest motivation to go on. So, I quit for good. Or so I thought.

Afterwards, I went on to play some of the FEs that I hadn't yet played, such as Echoes, the Tellius titles and Mystery. After disliking each and every one of them, I decided to give Three Houses another shot (hard Crimson Flower). I'm still on that run. So far, it's really easy and the maps are bad, but after the mindnumbing snoozefest that was PoR or the cesspool of horrible map design that was Echoes, I've gained a newfound appreciation for 3H. Which I suppose kinda makes me a hypocrite, as I always hated the "Better Than Fates" excuse to dismiss all of the game's flaws.

At this point, my opinion of the game is this: it's... really mediocre. The difficulty is either boring or plain awful, the map design is uninspired and relies on springing bullshit on the player to force them to waste divine pulse charges, the monastery is a huge waste of time, the cast is horrendously balanced and extremely ironman unfriendly, the class system is a hopeless mess... However, the game has some virtues. I legimitely enjoy the customization aspect, the game speed is fast and pleasant, and the story and characters are good (though I consider a game with good story and bad gameplay to be a bad game, period - story doesn't matter when I could just watch a playthrough for it and spare myself the torture).

While I wouldn't call it a great FE game, or even a good one, it's... tolerable. An unbalanced, unfinished, unpolished mess, but it's tolerable in the end. That's more than a few of the other FE games can say.

If you look at my signature's ranking of FE games, it sits right on the line between "enjoyable" and "unreplayable". It's a game that I've felt tempted to return to in numerous occassions (unlike every title below it), but once I do, I struggle to get much enjoyment out of it (unlike every title above it). Hurray Three Houses, I guess. You aren't complete garbage. Just mostly garbage.

 

...You know one thing about Three Houses where my opinion never changed? Graphics and performance. I have seen few games so technically inept. You basically have to dive into the meme tier stuff like Bethesda for Three Houses to stand a chance. The game is riddled with visual glitches and clipping issues, the FPS take a dive every time someone casts a spell or uses a combat art - which is doubly unacceptable considering there's a 30 FPS cap that is supposed to prevent exactly that sort of thing, the textures look like they belong in a wii game, there's no antialias to conceal the awful jaggies, scenes use stretched out, low quality JPEGs for the backgrounds, animations are reused and for the most part bland...
Graphics are very low in my list of priorities when it comes to games, but Three Houses's graphics are so hilariously awful that I can't help but take notice.

So you hate every FE game, and basically talk about how you hate them all.

Why did you even bother coming into a Fire Emblem forum in the first place?

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I was really interested in the game when I saw the first trailers, I was SUPER excited for it. But the trailer that showed off the classroom mechanics just made all my hopes for the game crash and burn. I already have a distaste for both Awakening and Fates for "anime-fying" the FE series, and seeing the classroom stuff just made me think that Intelligent Systems had finally lost all sense of Fire Emblem and just made a high school anime as a video game. I ignored anything Three Houses related for a LONG time after that, until my little brother finally convinced me to buy it (I have no idea how because I am very stubborn lol). From the first moments of the game I was already intrigued all over again, though. The world-building in Three Houses is truly fantastic, it's the best world-building of any Fire Emblem game to date, and the mystery of Sothis and the Red Canyon just really drew me in. Now I've played Verdant Wind and I'm a little more than halfway through Azure Moon, and Three Houses has actually become one of my favorite Fire Emblem games! And it's not actually very much like a high school anime, which was a relief to me

While watching the trailers I always thought Claude would be my favorite, and that was one thing that stayed constant throughout my whole Three Houses journey. It's hard for me to play Azure Moon because I miss Claude lol

Edited by Marth von Riegan
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It's honestly still my favourite.

I was really sceptical about the school setting because I'm just a not a fan of highschool animes and the like.  Now, I don't really have anything against "the animes" and I honestly think the, "Ew they made FE an anime" argument is kinda silly.  I mean, it's teenagers stabbing dragons and also the power of friendship happens.  The premise is by definition very anime.  Now, the specific anime tropes of highschool settings, those aren't my bag and I was very worried that this was going to be just a corny mess of creepy cliches.

Oh, how glad I was to be wrong.

I've gotten really attached to this cast.  I've become exactly the kind of player who refuses to let any of them go unrecruited because he just wants to keep Byleth's massive family of adorable dorks together.  ❤️

Azure Moon's story is up there with the original Nier as one of the few tales that legitimately reduced me to tears.  A lot about Dimitri's mental state hit very close to home, and having seen all four stories I must say that I really, really like the world and its narrative.

The Flame Emperor is honestly one of my favourite villains in the series.  I think they are incredibly wrong but we live in an age in which fascism has been allowed to rise because people treat it with kid gloves, and that kind of complacent naivete is exactly what makes them such an interesting antagonist: they're so obsessed with sating their own personal vendetta that they don't realise how allying with the closest thing to white supremacists Fire Emblem has will inevitably pave the way for history to repeat itself.  Meanwhile, Rhea is a character I didn't expect to grow as attached-to as I am.  Similarly, she's wrong about an overwhelming number of things but her fallibility, vulnerability, and unwillingness to move on as well as the Church's own various shades of moral grey when it comes to the history of the world just makes for a much messier and more interesting character than just a straightforward good or bad shepherd type.  Claude is a precious sunbeam boi, Yuri's very pretty, and the memes keep me coming back to the fandom.

So, yeah, it's my fave.  ❤️

Edited by Samven
Elaborating on original points.
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Since I don't own a switch i had to borrow a friends for 2 weeks, i played Golden Deer Hard Classic. It was okay, the fact that they reused so many maps felt kinda lazy, but since I didn't get all the paralogues I didnt come across the same maps too often. 

All in all, from my personal experience with the game, as well as what has been said about it by some of the people I know (mainly Rubenio up there), while the game is a neat, I don't think I could justify buying it for any more than €30-40 if I do ever get a switch. 

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1 hour ago, omegaxis1 said:

So you hate every FE game, and basically talk about how you hate them all.

Why did you even bother coming into a Fire Emblem forum in the first place?

Ergh... Where'd you get that idea? I don't hate every FE game, nor did I ever talk about how I hate them all. The post was mainly about my gripes with Three Houses. There was a passing mention about other games in the series, but even there, I only talked about how I hate some FE games. It's not nearly all of them - heck, I haven't even played the entire series. You won't hear me saying I hate Fates, for example, because I haven't played Fates. It'd be unfair to decide I hate it simply because most people don't like it and the artstyle isn't to my liking.

To be precise, I like FE6, FE5, FE11, FE12 and FE8. In fact, I don't just like them - these are all games that I love. They're why I'm in this forum in the first place; because though I don't enjoy every single title in the series, there are enough games that I quite love for me to consider myself a fan of the series. It's because I love so many of the games, as well as the core concept and gameplay of the series, that it frustrates me so much when one falls short.

 

That being said, I'll admit I probably came off too strong there. I get carried away very easily when I talk about the FEs I don't like. I apologize if I gave off the impression that I was just mindlessly hating on the series. I really don't want to hate any FE games, it just... well, it happened, with certain titles. FE may be one genre, but it is nonetheless a very broad series, and each game is its own experience. Liking all of them would be difficult.

So yeah, I'm sorry if I struck any nerves. I stand by what I said in my post, but I could probably have been more civil about it. My apologies.

Edited by Saint Rubenio
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My opinion remained pretty consistent since release. There were a few instances where I changed my mind. I did not expect Seteth, Hanneman and Dorothea to become some of my favorite characters but they did. However this discovery came very quickly after release. Once I completed my first route my opinion on everything was formed.  A year has passed and my opinion on matters has not evolved much since September 2019. 

I like to think I escaped the sentiment of a honeymoon period with Three Houses. My impressions were always positive but I've also always been capable of seeing the flaws in the game. The Slitherers being terrible, the non Crimson Flower routes being overly similar, the lack of minor bosses and the story being Fates level messy at times were things I observed from an early stage. My stance on those things have neither hardened nor softened over time. 

The only thing my stance hardened on is the monastery sections. I liked them in my first route but by the third route it started becoming a drag. 

 

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4 hours ago, omegaxis1 said:

So you hate every FE game, and basically talk about how you hate them all.

Why did you even bother coming into a Fire Emblem forum in the first place?

>Literally comes to a topic about speaking your mind on TH
>Gets mad someone doesn't like TH and proceeds to respond to them by putting words in their mouth.

Jeez people really can't read without thinking you said something else can they? ...

=======================================================

My opinions on it shifted quite a bit, I liked it a lot when I first got it but then not so much. I don't think it's Top 5 worst or anything but I dunno I just got bored of it, I tried a GD Maddening run and sure I got a few chapters in but no more. Monastery I also find to be a chore and it's very tiring. I like the voice acting, presentation and some of the characters but the story falls flat and the main character and lords just suck. I don't like how Byleth is shoe-horned in to a story that didn't need him, Edelgard is selfish and is impatient and dumb, Dimitri's way of getting over his psychosis in one day is so dumb and to some people down right insulting, Claude is a schemer who does absolutely nothing and their scheme in AM to attack you at gronder field is the dumbest thing ever... Rhea is probably the best one of all tbh.

I guess since people may assume I'm saying this with an angry nerdy voice, I am not. If you read what I said with that tone re-read it again with a calmer tone. I still like FE and like several aspects of the game, it's just that it's flaws do show a lot.

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