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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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It's my favorite FE game but that's mostly because of the sheer customization it provides and I find the challenge of Maddening fun. Played VW first, thought the story was alright by FE standards (though characterization and worldbuilding is a lot better tbh), but the flaws become pretty obvious during the subsequent playthroughs.

I can't say my opinions have changed much since my first playthrough, though. If anything they've become more solidified? I started ragging on the writing the summer it came out lol

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Three Houses dipped into Persona and Trails gameplay by adding some school stuff and minigames like fishing. It was a nice change, but it's nothing I would like see permanently in Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is suppossed to be roundbased tactical JRPG for me, nothing else. 

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Three Houses is simultaneously my favorite Fire Emblem and the most tedious of them all. It's like IS/Tecmo actively tries to prevent us from repeat playthroughs. They pulled the tediousness of the Revelations maps and decided to add them to the downtime in Three Houses. Common sense would have been one communal route (White Clouds), and then a split like Crimson Flower/Silver Snow but for the other two routes as well. And it should have been a starting point for new playthroughs too. That would have eliminated so much wasted time, and would not have arbitrarily locked us in a route until it was time for Things To Go Down. And seriously, what schools have one teacher per class, exclusively?

For every great thing Three Houses achieves, it does three small things poorly (or something to that effect).

In no particular order,

I like Byleth as a character, but they sucked as an avatar, and the "dialogue" choices were irrelevant.

I love the monastery as a concept, but keep the optional busywork away from impacting the actual gameplay. Having to force people doing optional minigames, if you will, in order to get the desired results for the main game is just cruel.

Love the story, though the routes, aside from Crimson Flower, didn't do enough to be different from each other and what differences there were felt arbitrary. TWSITD should have been removed from the story or massively reworked to be a meaningful addition. Part Two in general needed some love, and recruits beyond the students.

I really enjoy the music, though overall it doesn't reach the heights of Awakening, Fates and Echoes. Most Thunder variants are grating, and something feels off about the mixing, everything seems muddled together in the map themes.

The gameplay mechanics are great, with arts and beasts and all, and the freedom to choose how you build your army is nice. The maps, while not the worst in Fire Emblem, needed some love, and the excessive reuse is unacceptable.

There's more, but Three Houses overall is a diamond in the (very) rough.

 

Except Cindered Shadows, screw that DLC. Hated the concept when it was first announced, and playing through it did not make it better. Here we went into poor fan fiction material when those resources could have been used to patch up or expand other, more meaningful parts of Three Houses. Abyss as a location? Great, so we STILL don't get the leave the monastery. It's relationship with the Church? Poorly handled/explained. Another house instead of characters that have a place in the wider world? UGH. Revealing to us the same information about Byleth's parents that Silver Snow already did? DOUBLE UGH. Constance and Balthus, please put yourselves in the furthest garbage bin from Three Houses, so that I may never have to see you two again. Oh, and take the terribly designed Ashen Wolves uniforms with you. Yuri, Hapi, you two can stay, though I can't say I'm all that happy about it.

Cindered Shadows had great maps and good music though.

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My opinion really hasn't changed from: not good enough. Everything about it is just short of where it needs to be for me to really like it. It's the least likely of all the western released FE games for me to ever return to (aside from a possible Maddening run). I still prefer Fates in most ways.

I do like that it tried to take the series in new directions and I hope the next FE learns from the successes and failures of this game, because a well-made follow-up could be truly amazing.

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I do hope Intelligent Systems and whoever else is involved in developing these games put their focus back into the Strategy part of the game. All the fluff (cutscenes/voice acting, etc.)  and mini-games just dilute the game simply to add more hours to game unnecessarily. Map variety, objectives, goals, and a focus on improving the AI would bring FE to where it needs to be. 

As much as I liked all the work that obviously went into making Three Houses, It feels like the developers took ideas from all the previous titles and threw them against the wall to see what stuck. Some of it panned out great, but a lot of it also didn't. I'm perfectly fine with the story being told through semi-animated 2d panels where dialogue needs to be read. A compelling story doesn't need movie quality movie scenes to tell it.

I actually don't mind reading at all as this allows my imagination to fill in what the characters may sound like and read between the lines for possibly something deeper. As I said previously, just give me a 720p cleaned up combo version of Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn using the 3 houses engine on the switch. 

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I'm actually surprised about the amount of negativity in this thread. Not saying people who didn't like it shouldn't be saying so or whatever, but I'm just surprised. The game has been very well received by most of my friends and myself, despite, it's true, its obvious flaws.

While reading this thread, I also once again wonder how people feel replaying an older FE game. Is it really that much worse replaying this game vs an older game? If anything I'd say this game has more replay value than previous FEs, especially when using your renown well.

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1 hour ago, whase said:

I'm actually surprised about the amount of negativity in this thread. Not saying people who didn't like it shouldn't be saying so or whatever, but I'm just surprised. The game has been very well received by most of my friends and myself, despite, it's true, its obvious flaws.

While reading this thread, I also once again wonder how people feel replaying an older FE game. Is it really that much worse replaying this game vs an older game? If anything I'd say this game has more replay value than previous FEs, especially when using your renown well.

If someone doesn't actually enjoy the base gameplay in TH, they may not want to replay it, stuff like customization and such only goes so far (and can arguably takeaway from a game if it's poorly balacned around it.) if you don't enjoy the actual base mechanics, so if someone prefers how the older FE games, then they'd do that.

The monestary itself is a reason that more than a good few people wouldn't exactly be jumping to replay this.

 

Edited by Samz707
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38 minutes ago, whase said:

I'm actually surprised about the amount of negativity in this thread. Not saying people who didn't like it shouldn't be saying so or whatever, but I'm just surprised. The game has been very well received by most of my friends and myself, despite, it's true, its obvious flaws.

While reading this thread, I also once again wonder how people feel replaying an older FE game. Is it really that much worse replaying this game vs an older game? If anything I'd say this game has more replay value than previous FEs, especially when using your renown well.

I can't speak for anyone else, but as for me, I enjoy replaying older FEs more because in them, I only have to read two or three scenes, do some preparations and it's battle time. With Three Houses, I have to sit through the monastery grind. I know it's optional, but I just miss out on too much if I skip it all. For example, if I skipped the monastery, I couldn't train my units as well because I couldn't feed them motivation, I couldn't build supports, I couldn't recruit people, I couldn't get statboosters by gardening, I couldn't get more adjutants or forging options - Heck, if I'm not mistaken, I couldn't even unlock the forge itself, or the batallions guild, unless I do their respective monastery quests!

It's just too much loss, but at the same time, getting those things requires too much time running around pressing the A button on people. I play FE not for the story or the characters, but for the gameplay, the battles. As such, all this fluff just makes playing the game feel like a bit of a chore at times.

Now, I could forgive this, but there are more problems. Another one is the difficulty. Three Houses has three difficulties: mindless, very easy and bullshit. I cannot stand maddening and its awful design choices, so my only option is hard, which, as of chapter 11 in my current run, is starting to get quite boring. The only remotely challenging thing I've encountered thus far is the Death Knight in chapters 4 and 8 - and both fights are optional, mind. Everything else has been a complete non-issue, because Three Houses's cast is absurdly powerful. In my first run (hard Azure Moon), the only times I ever had to use divine pulse were for unfortunate misses/crits and bullshit moments like the gronder field explosion and this nonsense here.

I feel less compelled to replay a game when it either bores me (hard) or pisses me off for all the wrong reasons (maddening).

Then there's the routes, which I feel is a very artificial way to add replay value. Sure, there's four routes. But for each route, the first 11 chapters are exactly the same. The monastery is exactly the same chore forever. Every non-Crimson Flower route is also really similar - I mean, for crying out loud, Claude's route is the same as Silver Snow except for the final map. And in exchange for its uniqueness, Crimson Flower traded away length. At 18 chapters, the Crimson Flower campaign is the shortest FE experience ever.

I don't care that there's four routes. With the amount of map overlap and White Clouds's existence, the game is no more replayable than, say, Thracia with its midgame route split.

Aside from all that, there's all the general issues I have with Three Houses. The monastery grind, the difficulty problem, the mediocre and uninspired map design, the small cast... It all contributes to driving me away from the game. A game like FE12 may have the same maps and units every time, but it is so tightly designed that it is more fun to play through multiple times, to confront the different challenges with a different set of units, stats and tools each time.

...Whoops, I wrote an essay again. But yeah, I hope that was a sufficient explanation for why I believe Three Houses's replayability is not so huge just because it has routes.

8 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

If someone doesn't actually enjoy the base gameplay in TH, they may not want to replay it, stuff like customization and such only goes so far (and can arguably takeaway from a game if it's poorly balacned around it.) if you don't enjoy the actual base mechanics.

That's how I feel about the customization, yes. I legitimately enjoy that aspect of the game, but when the battles where I actually put all that customization to use last 15 minutes and are as easy and mindless as they are, it feels like nothing I do matters. On the other hand, there's maddening, where you cannot play however you want, because then you get softlocked in chapter 13. No, that one requires you look for the most broken combinations, because the game is so absurdly stacked against you that running a mage army simply doesn't work. That's kinda sad, when you can get away with using Est in FE12 reverse lunatic.

The game breaks on hard, and requires you break it on maddening. How is that any fun? I mean, I respect you if it is fun for you, but it's not for me.

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1 hour ago, whase said:

While reading this thread, I also once again wonder how people feel replaying an older FE game. Is it really that much worse replaying this game vs an older game? If anything I'd say this game has more replay value than previous FEs, especially when using your renown well.

to bring you a personal example, Pokemon Fire Red is my most replayed Pokemon game, while i can't even imagine replaying Gen6/7 Pokemon games ever again

specifically about 3H, while it does have more replay value, it's ultimately irrelevant, when actually replaying, since many poor game design choices make it so boring and frustrating
yes, monastery is optional, but why would i skip the most marketed gameplay aspect of 3H? why would a game i'm playing frustrate me to the point it brings me to skip the single aspect that differentiates it from past titles?
the best and most optimal way to play a game should also be the most fun, but in 3H's case it's the opposite

Edited by Yexin
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I don't have any new complain about the game except the ones I already had since:

  1. DLC should be sold separately, like previous titles. I would like to play Cindered Shadows, but I don't need the rest of the expension pass... just give me an option to buy the side story.
  2. Crimson Flower being to short, compared to the others maps. (to be fair, Edelgard herself already made that path not that enjoyable to me, but that's me problem and even if I loved the character there is no reason to make this path havinf less chapters than the others).
  3. Academy Phase being iqual to all three houses. The only real difference is the final map of Part 1, and it's only different in Crimson Flower path. At least it should have 1-2 exclusive chapters in each. Like... Only Black Eagles play this map... Only Blue Lions play this map. They could keep the same story, but in different locations. Or use the same map but different objectives. Well... about that...
  4. The maps were reused too many times. I wish the paralogues had unique maps. Worst than 3H in reusing maps, only Echoes... but I accept Echoes since it's a remake, while 3H is a new game, so... no excuse.
  5. No explanation about some events and characters... THSITD being defeated by accident in Azure Moon, or not at all in screen in Crimson Flower, Dimitri's Death in Verdant Wind... pretty bad stuff.

This game is still my favorite Fire Emblem game because I really enjoyed the story, gameplay and  characters, but I know it has flaws.

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24 minutes ago, Yexin said:

to bring you a personal example, Pokemon Fire Red is my most replayed Pokemon game, while i can't even imagine replaying Gen6/7 Pokemon games ever again

specifically about 3H, while it does have more replay value, it's ultimately irrelevant, when actually replaying, since many poor game design choices make it so boring and frustrating
yes, monastery is optional, but why would i skip the most marketed gameplay aspect of 3H? why would a game i'm playing frustrate me to the point it brings me to skip the single aspect that differentiates it from past titles?
the best and most optimal way to play a game should also be the most fun, but in 3H's case it's the opposite

Yeah I pretty much don't like it, I'm on my first playthrough myself (really only checked into this thread because I'm curious.) but the Monestrary personally adds nothing actually worthwhile and just adds issues, it's only made characters worse due to poor dialogue (Hurbert always saying about "The battlefield can teach you" for instance, while not actually on the battlefield and Bernie never hides in the corner like her C-support claims, also she's real shy when I unlocked her C support super early on accident in the monestary.) and poor decisions (sorry Sylvian, I had to guess where Felix was when you asked because apparently the devs didn't want to let me just say "Oh no sorry, I haven't seen Felix today.")

I've even stopped playing today actually, I was bored after 1 exploration week, I have 2 more to get through if I want to play a battle, so I'm just playing a different game instead now, I have played for over an hour today and engaged entirely in essentially busy-work, it's a an actual chore to play to the point where I'd honestly just play pretty much any other game, hell, I'd rather do chores around my house and I've already developed a Hatred for the actual monestary at this point.

I can safely say the monestary is the reason I will never replay this game and if I do replay it, it will be definitely in about 3-4 years at least.

 

 

Edited by Samz707
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1 hour ago, whase said:

I'm actually surprised about the amount of negativity in this thread. Not saying people who didn't like it shouldn't be saying so or whatever, but I'm just surprised. The game has been very well received by most of my friends and myself, despite, it's true, its obvious flaws.

It's been a growing sentiment for a few months, and unfortunately, not too hard to see coming. "Honeymoon phase" is something that is now openly recognized to be a thing by many people, but what we don't talk about much (I feel)is what happens to our perspective once we've been done with a game for a while. I won't talk like the psychologist that I am clearly not, but what I can say is that the community slowly shifting towards more negativity and cynicism is not unheard of, in fact it kinda seems to happen every time. To the point that when there's not been a new game announcement for a while, the idea that this is just its normal state starts floating around.

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Let me start by saying, not trying to say you should like this game more, to each their own, but I was wondering if you could expand a bit on these points?

19 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I can't speak for anyone else, but as for me, I enjoy replaying older FEs more because in them, I only have to read two or three scenes, do some preparations and it's battle time. With Three Houses, I have to sit through the monastery grind. I know it's optional, but I just miss out on too much if I skip it all. For example, if I skipped the monastery, I couldn't train my units as well because I couldn't feed them motivation, I couldn't build supports, I couldn't recruit people, I couldn't get statboosters by gardening, I couldn't get more adjutants or forging options - Heck, if I'm not mistaken, I couldn't even unlock the forge itself, or the batallions guild, unless I do their respective monastery quests!

Isn't that exactly what could make the game harder? Give it that extra challenge you've been looking for? You could only do the quests that you find important, like the forge unlock which hardly takes a minute to do. If you find your supports or skills lacking, buy some ranks using renown.

I'm currently playing a no monastery run, and to me it's almost as hard as a maddening run. (That said, I enjoy limiting myself rather than have the game do it for me in every FE, but I understand if that's not your cup of tea.)

25 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I feel less compelled to replay a game when it either bores me (hard)

I thought you said you liked FE8, isn't that one of the easiest FE games there is? If you don't mind me asking, where lies the difference in difficulty vs enjoyment for you?

29 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I don't care that there's four routes. With the amount of map overlap and White Clouds's existence, the game is no more replayable than, say, Thracia with its midgame route split.

Have you complained about Thracia's replayability too? Haven't played that game, but for instance FE8 I know has about a third of the chapters in common, and I've never heard people complain as much about replayability as they do for 3H? 

33 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

A game like FE12 may have the same maps and units every time, but it is so tightly designed that it is more fun to play through multiple times, to confront the different challenges with a different set of units, stats and tools each time.

In which case, may I be so crass to challenge you to try a no monastery (or minimal monastery) playthrough? It really ups the speed and challenge, and I do believe the game was designed with this option in mind.

I myself may be too addicted to Fire Emblem to be held back by Three Houses its flaws, though I do see them. But for instance even in a game that does sidequests a lot better, like the Witcher 3, there comes a point where sidequests start to get boring. But so long as the sidequests are skippable there is no need to let them hamper my ability to enjoy the game. Look at the monastery phase as a sidequest, that might help.

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18 minutes ago, whase said:

Let me start by saying, not trying to say you should like this game more, to each their own, but I was wondering if you could expand a bit on these points?

Isn't that exactly what could make the game harder? Give it that extra challenge you've been looking for? You could only do the quests that you find important, like the forge unlock which hardly takes a minute to do. If you find your supports or skills lacking, buy some ranks using renown.

I'm currently playing a no monastery run, and to me it's almost as hard as a maddening run. (That said, I enjoy limiting myself rather than have the game do it for me in every FE, but I understand if that's not your cup of tea.)

I thought you said you liked FE8, isn't that one of the easiest FE games there is? If you don't mind me asking, where lies the difference in difficulty vs enjoyment for you?

Have you complained about Thracia's replayability too? Haven't played that game, but for instance FE8 I know has about a third of the chapters in common, and I've never heard people complain as much about replayability as they do for 3H? 

In which case, may I be so crass to challenge you to try a no monastery (or minimal monastery) playthrough? It really ups the speed and challenge, and I do believe the game was designed with this option in mind.

I myself may be too addicted to Fire Emblem to be held back by Three Houses its flaws, though I do see them. But for instance even in a game that does sidequests a lot better, like the Witcher 3, there comes a point where sidequests start to get boring. But so long as the sidequests are skippable there is no need to let them hamper my ability to enjoy the game. Look at the monastery phase as a sidequest, that might help.

The problem for me is that the Monestary feels like a thrown together Beta than a finish game.

The layout is very bad and Byleth's completely inablity to so much as drop down from a minor height is annoying, so you have to use fast-travel to move anywhere,

The quests are mostly boring tedious fetch-quests so far in my experience and it feels dead and lifeless with how you can barely talk to generics also you can clearly see people fade in/out of existence in a manner more obvious than a PS2 GTA game.

Most characters stand still, characters don't even get unique monestary lines for say, leveling up (Hubert just speaks about the battlefield despite the fact he hasn't been in the battlefield for nearly a month.)

Plus, you have the fact that you don't get to pick when you go there, so I can't skip out on grinding because I'll have to go back to an different save file altogether if i'm too weak.

Even then, considering other games have handled an open hub area outside of combat way, way, way better (Such as Deadly Premonition), its IMO, not that the monestary is side-content, it's that it's consistently low quality uninteresting side-content that gives stat boosts, it's the worst kind of side-quests where there's no actual interesting unique stuff going on, it feels just like padding but you have to do it because you can't exactly just stop before starting a battle to go grind.

It simply feels like it's something out of an unfinished indie game that actually makes the game's story/characters worse with it's poor execution, pads out the game time with filler content and in general is in my experience, completely terrible, every single thing it adds is bad in my opinion.

Before I played Echoes (and the good will of that game made me decide to give Three Houses a go), I figured the monestary would be a somewhat boring area where all the characters get in really cliche anime hi-jinks constantly, Even if I still had those low standards, what we actually got was worse, we got a boring large area where Byleth runs around doing fetch quests for an hour.

Having someone ask me where their friend is, then forcing me to lie because a "I haven't seen them" option isn't avaliable, is terrible design.

Edited by Samz707
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2 minutes ago, whase said:

Let me start by saying, not trying to say you should like this game more, to each their own, but I was wondering if you could expand a bit on these points?

Of course, I don't mind.

2 minutes ago, whase said:

I thought you said you liked FE8, isn't that one of the easiest FE games there is? If you don't mind me asking, where lies the difference in difficulty vs enjoyment for you?

I should clarify: FE8's terrible difficulty is a huge flaw that makes vanilla FE8 unbearable for me. However, with the randomizer and some basic hacking knowledge, it is really easy to buff the enemy and nerf Seth, fixing the issue. And that's really my only gripe with FE8 - every other aspect is pretty good in my opinion.

2 minutes ago, whase said:

Have you complained about Thracia's replayability too? Haven't played that game, but for instance FE8 I know has about a third of the chapters in common, and I've never heard people complain as much about replayability as they do for 3H? 

I have never complained about Thracia's replayability. It was merely an example. I find most FEs are quite replayable not due to route splits, but due to varied casts of characters that ensure each run feels different. I never use the same team twice, or at least I try not to. Three Houses, with its tiny cast that feels very samey in a lot of cases, is not as strong in this regard, and the routes are not enough to compensate, in my opinion.

2 minutes ago, whase said:

Isn't that exactly what could make the game harder? Give it that extra challenge you've been looking for? You could only do the quests that you find important, like the forge unlock which hardly takes a minute to do. If you find your supports or skills lacking, buy some ranks using renown.

I'm currently playing a no monastery run, and to me it's almost as hard as a maddening run. (That said, I enjoy limiting myself rather than have the game do it for me in every FE, but I understand if that's not your cup of tea.)

 

2 minutes ago, whase said:

In which case, may I be so crass to challenge you to try a no monastery (or minimal monastery) playthrough? It really ups the speed and challenge, and I do believe the game was designed with this option in mind.

I myself may be too addicted to Fire Emblem to be held back by Three Houses its flaws, though I do see them. But for instance even in a game that does sidequests a lot better, like the Witcher 3, there comes a point where sidequests start to get boring. But so long as the sidequests are skippable there is no need to let them hamper my ability to enjoy the game. Look at the monastery phase as a sidequest, that might help.

I like challenges best when its the game that poses them, and I do everything in my power to get through them. It feels more satisfying to conquer a difficult game than taking pity on an easy one. I do enjoy training bad units and benching good ones in most FEs, which I suppose could be considered a handicap, but in this game, everyone's broken, so it doesn't work so well.

That being said... You make a good point that, embarrassingly enough, I hadn't thought of. It's worth considering for a future run. Thanks.

...Though a full no monastery run would be simply unfeasible. It would deprive me of Hanneman, you see. Playing Three Houses without the best Three Houses character would just be depressing. I must go to the monastery, if only just to get him. I hope you can forgive me.

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I've been pretty silent about Three Houses over the past year mostly because of my apprehension toward the change in direction for the gameplay. The heavy emphasis on the monastery activities wasn't holding my attention very well, the combat is just as good as it has always been and I was enjoying the story and characters way more than Awakening and Fates, but micromanaging my free days every month was a slog. Truth be told it was so grading for me that I only finished my first play through recently. That's right, while the lot of you finished all 4 routes within the first 3 months of the game's release, I took my sweet time and played 1 route sporadically over the course of a year.

But despite all my grievances I can confidently say Three Houses, or at least Azure Moon in particular, is up there as one of my favorite Fire Emblem games. The story and characters are some of my favorites in the series, I grew to enjoy each member of the Blue Lions immensely and when I finally reached the time skip the story's twists and turns had dug their claws into me deep and refused to let go. The closer I got to the story's ending the more I would play the game until eventually I was blitzkrieging my way through the final few chapters because my investment in the fate of these characters was just that high. As my fondness for the characters grew I also learned to better appreciate the monastery activities because it gave me more time to interact with the characters and customize their skills and abilities in ways other Fire Emblem games only dabbled with before, now the gates are flung wide open and it's pretty darn cool.

This has to be one of the biggest 180 turnarounds I've ever hand on my opinions for a video game.

Edited by TheGoodHoms
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9 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

The layout is very bad and Byleth's completely inablity to so much as drop down from a minor height is annoying, so you have to use fast-travel to move anywhere,

If I understand your issues with "have to use fast-travel to move anywhere" correctly, you can teleport to a location that you visited before. For example, once you visited the dormitory area during the first monastery exploration day, you can directly teleport to it via the mini-map.

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5 minutes ago, DriftingWaterBottle said:

If I understand your issues with "have to use fast-travel to move anywhere" correctly, you can teleport to a location that you visited before. For example, once you visited the dormitory area during the first monastery exploration day, you can directly teleport to it via the mini-map.

Yeah I just found that out today but if your small kinda fort-y area needs a fast travel option to be bearable, that's how unfun the thing is and you should have honestly scrapped it, it's so unfun that I'd rather be able to fast travel directly onto people because it's just such a lifeless area. 

Not even interacting with people is fun because like I said, it's ruined by the frankly completely unfinished design of it, forcing me to lie to a character because you forgot to include a "Oh sorry, I didn't see the person you were looking for." when I talk to someone is frankly one of the largest dumb decisions I've ever seen in a game.

 

Edited by Samz707
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18 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Of course, I don't mind.

Thank you for explaining, I feel like I have a better grasp on your standpoint now.

20 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

That being said... You make a good point that, embarrassingly enough, I hadn't thought of. It's worth considering for a future run. Thanks.

...Though a full no monastery run would be simply unfeasible. It would deprive me of Hanneman, you see. Playing Three Houses without the best Three Houses character would just be depressing. I must go to the monastery, if only just to get him. I hope you can forgive me.

Cool, I'd love to hear what you think of playing the game this way.

And no worries, I also cheated a little. I picked up Balthus since I didn't have his supports yet. =P

 

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My opinion of Three Houses Went from hell yeah, new FE to skip this, skip that to it´s whatever. My first path was whatever Edelgards route is called and upon recruiting Lysithea in Claudes final moments I basically warp skipped all chapters till Rhea. The other routes consisted of renown buying everything and recruiting the BE students because I wasn´t going to deal with another bunch of scrubs.

I have yet to manage and find the patience to go through Maddening after multiple attempts, where the solution to the problem – perhaps due to my inability to find such a thing – was to DP repeatedly and just hope that any one hit would land. At the same time, the prospect of having to go through the monastery and/or the weekend activities in order to have the necessary resources or just plain get your units up to speed just sap my motivation to play away.

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Well, I still love it. And because of the DLC characters, I love it more.

 

But I also acknowledge that the calendar system creates a "grind them now while you can" atmosphere with auxiliary battles that needs to never happen again. The place of side battles is to do them as needed if you're struggling with the main content. There should never be a pressure to do them now in the moment, even when the game is not currently challenging enough to grind otherwise.

Edited by Fabulously Olivier
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My only opinion that drastically shifted after replays was the monastery, which went from "I like it a ton" to "ugh it's time to explore I guess" (It says a lot that I enjoy CF because it ends just when the monastery begins to overstay its welcome). In a similar note, I honestly expected my opinion of Edelgard to change by the time I jumped into the other non-CF routes, but that never ended up happening so...

 

As a whole, Three Houses for me is the very definition of enjoyable jank. The difficulty is horribly balanced (which IS/KT seemingly figured how to do it only by the time Cindered Shadows happened), some routes & their stories clearly had more time in the oven than others and some blatantly had content missing at launch *cough*Jeritza*cough*, class balance is whack, TWSITD feel hilariously underused despite their relevance lore-wise plus a ton more stuff everyone already mentioned, but I still can't help but like the cast, it's music, the sheer amount of customization and how much it rewards planning ahead, plus even some particular maps every now and then and the sheer bonkers stuff you can pull off with all the tools the game provides.

 

I do think IS should stay away from doing multiple routes for a while though. 3Hs was clearly ambitious as hell and it's not hard to see the game barely managed to scratch the surface of what they intended to achieve.

Edited by Moltz23
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Well Three Houses is tied with Shadows of Valentia as my favourite Fire Emblem ever. I didn't expect that to happen when i first saw trailers which was basically "So it's Fire Emblem meets Hogwarts?"  I think (to date) I have over 600 hours played in this game. and I keep wondering if it's time to go back to Fodlan and do things differently.  It's not perfect - just like no fire emblem game is perfect, but i enjoy it very much. 

They've developed a cast that is very nuanced and human. None of them are perfect. they all have their faults - none of their faults are washed away and it's not "Oh and we're perfect happily ever after." There are deep seeded reasons why everyone is the way they are - some more heartbreaking than others - and I enjoy the growth of discovering them.. Also some of the realizations when you don't recruit some of the students is heart breaking. for example, I never recruited Linhardt and Ferdinand on my first playthrough - and someone I barely even interacted with, the way they died was like. ughh. and then Dorothea's "They were our friends, professor." just cut you to the quick in ways you don't begin to realise. Unlike other FE, where you are up against bad guys, trying to stop other bad guys - these are people you know. It might even be your best friend - but you are both doing what you think is right. It isn't for some seat/quest for power (maybe), or for money or anything like that. 

The reveal of the Flame Emperor still shocked the spit out of me the first time I discovered it (Golden Deer Route) trying to solve the riddle of what Claude was was intriguing, going through the rollercoaster of Dimitri's descent into madness was taxing (emotionally), and  - well for me personally playing as Edelgard made me feel dirty because i 100 percent thought (and will always think) she's wrong. and I feel the game never really hides from any of the dirty. No one excuses Dimitri's behaviour. They understand it, they want to help him through it - but they never handwave it away. People question if Edelgard is doing is right - but they have to commit to it and hope that she is. People call out Claude a lot of the time. No one is ever painted innocent as the freshly driven snow and it makes you think. 

I personally feel if the game had a bit more time (ie: a year). I think a lot of the extra stuff  would have been included in the main game. and a lot more fleshed out. (ie: Cindered Shadows i think would have been included, a bit more of Those who Slither in the dark, and so on and so forth.(and you have this feeling like if this was Zelda - it would have had the time it needed because goodness knows if a Zelda game has ever been released on time).

Fódlan is a world that I am actually sad that we'll never return to. I don't think we'll ever get a sequel because the game might have to canonize a route. they could do a prequel -i suppose. but i'm not sure. So if this is supposed to be it, - quite frankly, it was a fantastic stop in my opinion, even with the flaws. 

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My option has hardly changed, because I failed to ever defy force of habit and open up to this game. When Cindered Shadows was revealed to be not worth buying, I never got to my Silver Snow run, which would've been only/mostly only Church members run because I had used everyone else on my three prior plays. After that, I just kinda forgot about playing 3H, despite visiting this site nearly every day.

My thoughts on 3H then are very narrow opinions, I can't let myself hop on the bandwagon of criticism, because it'd be of stuff I never witnessed. And my thoughts on the SRPG gameplay, the only thing I can truly comment on, are constrained by always doing a free battle or paralogue every week to waste that time and never interacting with teaching and the monastery, both of which have a direct effect on the SRPG side of things. I never as much as sent a birthday present.

What I can say, is that Three Houses is a Fire Emblem game, and because the SRPG gameplay endures well enough for me, I will continue to buy FEs out of treasured tradition. Do I regret getting it? I can't seriously answer that.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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