Going back to Three Houses - Post-Engage rebound

[Taho]

Hi all,

 

After finishing Engage, I started a second run to play with different characters. But around chapter 17, I realised I'd lost interest. In the meantime, Three Houses was growing again on my mind, so I closed Engage, opened up Three Houses and started a new hard/classic Noble & Commoner run (no reclassing) with the Golden Deer this time (I've already made a Crimson flower Noble & Commoner run a while ago).

I kind of knew it, but this made me realise how superior Three Houses is to Engage. I've finished the game 7 times already (every route in Hard/Classic, 2 Maddening runs and 1 Noble & Commoner run), and I keep getting drawn back to it, because the world building and characters, the subtlety of the story and the writing are just so much stronger than in Engage, where I cringed so often and felt so relieved in my second playthrough when I could just skip all the character interaction and story content.

So I was wondering, did that happen to anyone else? Did Engage make you fall in love with Three Houses all over again? And if it did, what kind of run are you experimenting with?

[ciphertul]

Sadly, just amplified what I disliked in 3 Houses. Engage is the edge due to the far better graphics and animations. Engage missed a lot of things I wanted but it had more the 3 Houses.

[Etrurian emperor]

I don't think I'll be returning to Three Houses anytime soon. The different routes are just too similar for me to justify returning to it for a long time.

Though Engage definitely made me think all the more highly of the aspects Three Houses was really good at.

[TheChoZenOne]

Quite the opposite for me. Three Houses is my baby and I love it to the death (In my top 3 fave FE) but....

 Engage, with so much more satisfying animations/graphics, and far better gameplay imo. And having some of my favorite cast/supports. I do not miss Three Houses after playing it for 1000+ hours. The story/lore/world/cast is what it has going for it and I already MORE than experienced it multiple times so there's no reason for me personally to go back to it anytime soon. Engage is the funnest I had playing FE ever. I'm already ready to go into my 3rd run and still not fatigued, unlike Three Houses that had fatigue in the 2nd or 3rd run already and that had multiple routes to enjoy.

 

Regardless, that's just MY personal thoughts. I am glad you can enjoy Three Houses still. It is one of the best FE imo so happy to hear it still aged well 🙂

[Dark Holy Elf]

I actually did a replay with 3H simultaneously playing to Engage. I definitely prefer 3H by quite a bit, but that's mostly for non-gameplay reasons, 3H just has far better setting/characters/supports/music/plot.

I think Engage has better battles although I don't think it's a strictly superior gameplay experience, either. The 3H class system makes the game almost infinitely replayable, as does the choice of three houses and the options opened up by recruiting. I've played 3H seventeen times now (I think, at least? Might be off by one) and I can't imagine Engage will ever hit those numbers.

That said I did still enjoy Engage a lot and look forward to replaying it.

[Florete]

Not exactly. I really can't see myself ever going back to Three Houses, especially after Engage. If anything it's my experience with Three Houses and all its flaws that made me like Engage more.

[Barren]

I’ve beaten this game 8 times. 4x on normal casual mode for each route respectively and then 4x on maddening classic.

Honestly, I didn’t look back after finally beating all 4 routes on maddening since I played it to death. Maybe I’ll revisit it one day but not anytime soon for me.

[Azz]

I don't necessarily think Engage made me appreciate TH more tbh. While I do overall prefer TH (I have nearly 1000 hours sunk in and is the only FE where I went out of my way to 100% the Support Log (which in retrospect, TH has it the easiest out of any game by far) and I'm still actively trying to create a 100% NG+ file), I do think Engage is a nice return to form for FE and I think sets a nice precedent for future FEs. TH was fun for the one game however, on a whole, the gameplay of TH is lacking imo. Engage is much more intuitive and engaging (lol) gameplay wise and feels more rewarding when faced with difficult challenges, even on Maddening which actually increases in difficulty quite well over time rather than being the agitating slogfest that is TH Maddening. Overall, as a gameplay experience Engage is much better imo and TH is overall lacking in the actually strategy section of the game. Also the visuals. TH is hella ugly and the colour pallete is boring af. Engage is a nice refreshing breath of fresh air.

Overall tho, I still prefer TH. The music is much better (Engage is lacking imo, the only standout is Solm's music), the setting is more interesting and I haven't really latched on to any of the characters (even Rosado who I loved the idea of pre-release). This could change on subsequent playthroughs which I am currently waiting for the final DLC to come out before I hop into a new playthrough, however as of now TH>Engage tho I do think I'd rank Engage decently high up in my FE Rankings.

[Taho]

5 hours ago, TheChoZenOne said:

Regardless, that's just MY personal thoughts. I am glad you can enjoy Three Houses still. It is one of the best FE imo so happy to hear it still aged well 🙂

Of course, agreed, 100%. My opening post was also just an opinion, and nothing else (reading through it again, I'm not sure it came out that way... apologies if I offended anyone 😇).

I'm glad people are enjoying Engage: the better press this game gets, the better chances we have of getting more awesome fire emblem games in the future. I enjoyed my playthrough of Engage because of the gameplay (I don't really care about graphics and animation to be honest, although I understand if some people rate it high in their list of priorities), but I guess gameplay alone doesn't justify multiple playthroughs if I don't enjoy the story, world and characters.

[Jotari]

Honestly, even if we take gameplay out of the equation entirely, I think Engage has the superior story. Or, probably the best way to phrase it, of the two it has the more competent story.

[Use the Falchion]

Not really? I love Engage and Three Houses for different reasons, but I play both for similar reasons - characters and interactions (shipping included). The biggest thing holding me back from playing Three Houses is the 400+ hours I've spent playing it over the past 3.5 years. I'd love to do a new playthrough and romance Rhea or Manuela, or romance Shamir/Marianne/Constance all over again, but I've played the game so many times that I just get bored and burnt out very quickly. The same is true for Awakening and Revelation. 

In terms of retrospective, playing the latest game in the FE franchise usually lets me appreciate the previous one and what it achieved or at least tried to achieve. It helps me see that the franchise is always standing on the shoulders of previous entries, and that's something to be appreciated. Not every series does so, and the ones that do don't always do it well. 

[Taho]

4 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

In terms of retrospective, playing the latest game in the FE franchise usually lets me appreciate the previous one and what it achieved or at least tried to achieve. It helps me see that the franchise is always standing on the shoulders of previous entries, and that's something to be appreciated. Not every series does so, and the ones that do don't always do it well. 

That's very true. 

 

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

Honestly, even if we take gameplay out of the equation entirely, I think Engage has the superior story. Or, probably the best way to phrase it, of the two it has the more competent story.

You think so? I'd love to hear your arguments on this, because I found Engage's story to be lacklustre at best, and downright terrible at times (the pinky promise comes to mind as a particularly cringy moment, but several others had me rolling my eyes). It is linear and extremely basic. And I don't think that "It's just as good as the story of FE1 or FE 3" is a particularly valid argument; we should rather consider Engage's story as it stands, on its own two feet, in terms of storytelling and complexity, and that is where I consider it, in my opinion, vastly inferior to TH's story, which is more nuanced, more subtle and less manichean, with lots of different layers and subplots at work that you can keep digging into long after you've finished the game.

[Florete]

18 minutes ago, Taho said:

You think so? I'd love to hear your arguments on this, because I found Engage's story to be lacklustre at best, and downright terrible at times (the pinky promise comes to mind as a particularly cringy moment, but several others had me rolling my eyes). It is linear and extremely basic. And I don't think that "It's just as good as the story of FE1 or FE 3" is a particularly valid argument; we should rather consider Engage's story as it stands, on its own two feet, in terms of storytelling and complexity, and that is where I consider it, in my opinion, vastly inferior to TH's story, which is more nuanced, more subtle and less manichean, with lots of different layers and subplots at work that you can keep digging into long after you've finished the game.

I'm not Jotari, but I do feel similar in this regard. On the surface, Three Houses does appear to have the better story, but I ultimately enjoyed Engage's more (not saying Engage's was great, though). Three Houses had such crazy pacing and presentation issues that I was never able to get very invested, and it really felt like it bit off more than it could chew (a lot of those subplots aren't payed off well, if at all). Engage's story, while overall pretty bland, never takes itself too seriously and achieves what it sets out to do competently enough. For me, that's what it would mean to say that Engage has the more competent story.

Like, I laughed at multiple parts of Engage's story, some of which I don't think we were actually meant to laugh, but that is still more joy than I ever got from TH's story, which had me in a constant state of waiting for it to get good until...it ended.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Florete said:

I'm not Jotari, but I do feel similar in this regard. On the surface, Three Houses does appear to have the better story, but I ultimately enjoyed Engage's more (not saying Engage's was great, though). Three Houses had such crazy pacing and presentation issues that I was never able to get very invested, and it really felt like it bit off more than it could chew (a lot of those subplots aren't payed off well, if at all). Engage's story, while overall pretty bland, never takes itself too seriously and achieves what it sets out to do competently enough. For me, that's what it would mean to say that Engage has the more competent story.

Like, I laughed at multiple parts of Engage's story, some of which I don't think we were actually meant to laugh, but that is still more joy than I ever got from TH's story, which had me in a constant state of waiting for it to get good until...it ended.

Yeah, that sums up pretty much how I feel. It's less that Engage is a masterpiece and more that it just a more complete and functioning experience. Three Houses is certainly more ambitious and definitely tries to be a lot more nuanced and subtle, but in massive areas of it I think it just plain fails to really deliver it's themes in a coherent, consistent or particularly deep way. Waiting until it gets good until it just ends is a very apt way of putting it.

[Armagon]

I think Engage's gameplay is like, monumentally good enough that it just makes it harder for me to go back to previous games in the series. Like i still love the 3DS games, i still love the GBA games, Radiant Dawn was my favorite game in the series before Engage (when will SF let me change that). But it's like Metroid Dread. It's just too good. 

In Three Houses' case in particular, i like the game but the game is great.......the first time. Any subsequent playthrough really shows it's cracks.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I personally feel Engage offers almost nothing of value in terms of story. The story of the Hounds borders on self-contradictory, most of the other main story beats are just... dull. excepting all the parts I'm laughing at obvious plot holes or cringing at badly-written dialog. Sombron has to be one of the most boring villains of all time, I felt nothing when fighting him. Calling it "complete and functioning" is pretty strange praise to me. It's not even that I disagree, just so what? Might just be a matter of looking for different things in stories. I'd much rather have a story try some big things and fail at some of 'em.

 

[lenticular]

I definitely like Three Houses a lot more than I like Engage. I played through Engage once, started a second run, but then tailed off midway through due to lack of motivation. Whereas I've lost count of how many times I played through Three Houses. Seven? Something like that. Certainly a lot more than one-and-a-half. The things that Three Houses does well generally landed for me and matched up with what I enjoy, whereas Engage is much more out of line with my own personal tastes and preferences.

But with all that said: I am glad that Engage is the way that it is and not just a copy of Three Houses. One thing that Fire Emblem is generally good at is providing enough variation between its entries that it doesn't feel like playing the same game over and over with just a fresh coat of paint. There are no shortage of game series that have settled on a general formula and then churned out an endless stream of that formula, and they all end up growing stagnant and losing their appeal. I would much rather a series that is constantly changing things up and trying new things (even when those new things aren't always to my taste) than one that doesn't ever innovate.

In terms of other FE games that Engage has made me want to replay, it's actually put me in the mood to replay Radiant Dawn more than anything else, weirdly. They're very different games overall, but the general vibe of "all your early game units are outclassed by those you pick up mid- and late-game" was just close enough to make me nostalgic. Not sure what sort of run I'll end up doing if I do pick it back up, though.

[TheChoZenOne]

3 hours ago, Armagon said:

I think Engage's gameplay is like, monumentally good enough that it just makes it harder for me to go back to previous games in the series. Like i still love the 3DS games, i still love the GBA games, Radiant Dawn was my favorite game in the series before Engage (when will SF let me change that). But it's like Metroid Dread. It's just too good. 

In Three Houses' case in particular, i like the game but the game is great.......the first time. Any subsequent playthrough really shows it's cracks.

Aye, awesome to see the Metroid Dread comparison. I basically compare them the same way. They are both just TOO good 😎 (but yeah Three Houses the first time was definitely the best experience) while I would argue Engage is even BETTER the 2nd or 3rd time 🙂

[Sidereal Wraith]

As someone who hasn’t beaten 3H but has beaten every other game in the series (including Engage) I am looking forward to playing the game. It’ll be nice to play 3H and actually get a story with characters I can get invested in, instead of being bored senseless for 50 hours straight at best or being horrified to my very core at worst.

[Taho]

On 3/26/2023 at 6:33 PM, lenticular said:

I definitely like Three Houses a lot more than I like Engage. I played through Engage once, started a second run, but then tailed off midway through due to lack of motivation. Whereas I've lost count of how many times I played through Three Houses. Seven? Something like that. Certainly a lot more than one-and-a-half. The things that Three Houses does well generally landed for me and matched up with what I enjoy, whereas Engage is much more out of line with my own personal tastes and preferences.

But with all that said: I am glad that Engage is the way that it is and not just a copy of Three Houses. One thing that Fire Emblem is generally good at is providing enough variation between its entries that it doesn't feel like playing the same game over and over with just a fresh coat of paint. There are no shortage of game series that have settled on a general formula and then churned out an endless stream of that formula, and they all end up growing stagnant and losing their appeal. I would much rather a series that is constantly changing things up and trying new things (even when those new things aren't always to my taste) than one that doesn't ever innovate.

In terms of other FE games that Engage has made me want to replay, it's actually put me in the mood to replay Radiant Dawn more than anything else, weirdly. They're very different games overall, but the general vibe of "all your early game units are outclassed by those you pick up mid- and late-game" was just close enough to make me nostalgic. Not sure what sort of run I'll end up doing if I do pick it back up, though.

You're my evil twin, then! (or maybe I'm your evil twin... 🙄 whatever works for you 🤩)

[Sayyyaka]

Still playing 3H Maddening and Three Hopes, and I'll keep playing them until the next game that catches my eye.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Got a switch to play TH, was disappointed.

Played Engage was mildly entertained. Haven´t really felt the itch to play something like FE since Engage tho, which has me modestly concerned.

If it wasn´t for games like Divinity, Hades, Slay the Spire I´d still be pretty mad at myself for getting a switch. Lesson learned.

[iridium137]

I keep going back to Fates.

Three Houses feels like an exercise in raw tedium. There are four routes, and there's a lot of repetition and re-used maps in those routes, including having to do part 1 at least three times. Difficulty-wise, it's not well-balanced. Hard is too easy, while maddening goes way overboard on inflating enemy stats (especially bulk), which makes battles a huge slog and not fun. The monestary is also very time-consuming (and I won't elaborate on it as it has already been talked out countless times).

Engage's gameplay is great in the first 11 maps or so. On maddening, the difficulty is challenging but still feels fair and balanced. It feels like a carefully fine-tuned and hand-crafted experience, especially with fixed growths. But at some point (around the point when paralogues open up), that all goes out the window. Nearly every middle and endgame map seems to be reinforcement spam (with Ike's paralogue and chapter 25 being some of the most egregious), which gets tiring very quickly, especially with the sheer bulk on enemies. Stat inflation also starts to kick in (although it's nowhere near as bad as Three Houses). And while the Somniel is okay at first, at some point, the sheer number of minigames, said minigames getting higher difficulty, alongside arena, cooking, ring polishing, etc start feeling even more tedious than the monestary. The characters and setting also feel... dull and empty. At least Three Houses's story and characters kept me invested for a while (even if it's not all that great either). But Engage... it's only been two months and I already no longer feel engaged (no pun intended) at all.

Fates gameplay is among the best in the series. Its use of enemy skills provides a unique kind of challenge (that's different from inflating enemy stats, which often leads to unfun gameplay). In fact, stat inflation in Fates (aside from Rev) is some of the lowest in the series. Class and character balance, while not perfect, is some of the best. And unique mechanics such as attack/guard stance and each weapon having some special effect, leads to a game that's more deep and nuanced than most others in the series. And while the story is bad, it's so over-the-top obviously and comically bad that it ended up working to its advantage- because I quickly stopped taking it seriously.

[vikingsfan92]

The personal winner for me is actually three hopes from the story perspective of what I want to go back to from Engage. I haven't beaten engage but I personally like the houses cast more. One thing regardless of recruiting the class splits did was actually let you bond with the charcters more where as with Engage and other older games it is just a ton of new people one after another. 

As for why I am saying hopes over houses it mainly comes down to the golden deer not being done dirty by SS. The more time goes by the more I feel like SS was an idea that they needed to move on from to give all routes needed love and feel less samey.  VW and CF were hurt the most but I also think AM could have been better without SS existing.

Edited April 7, 2023 by vikingsfan92