SimplyUnknown

Back when the game was first getting promoted and even for a bit afterwards, there were claims of 'Persona Emblem' flying around. Not all of these were malicious in intent, but there were many comparisons between this game and the later Persona games. However, now that the game has been out for a bit and we have more information, I feel that Three Houses is much more similar to the more traditional Shin Megami Tensei series and other spin-offs rather than Persona. Specifically during a Black Eagles Playthrough, where the story appears to play out similarly to a Law vs Chaos route split. Ok, just a warning for down below; I will be spoiling some of the story and routes for Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne and the original Devil Survivor. If for some reason you don't want to be spoiled on these games, feel free to leave or watch a playthrough on youtube and come back. Also, I'd like to point out that most of what I know about either Black Eagles path comes from reading spoilers and other posts on this forum; I haven't played them myself yet. So if I get any details wrong or potentially misunderstand things, feel free to correct me. For those of you unfamiliar with the Shin Megami Tensei series, the series is relatively famous for having multiple endings that align with certain beliefs. There is a Lawful option, which on average usually sides with God and the angels and is focused on creating a world relatively obedient to God's will. There's a Chaos option which usually involves siding with demons/Lucifer and raging war on God and his angels. And then there is the Neutral option, which may involve siding with humanity or some other entity. It tends to vary. Now, not all the games have this exact system in mind, but there's usually some similar one that allows you to make choices that determine what ending you'll get. First, let's talk about Devil Survivor. In this game, you and two of your friends are trapped in a lockdown because demons are roaming about killing everyone trapped in with you. Your goal is just to survive until the lockdown is over, but eventually you learn that the only way to do this is to destroy a demonic throne known as Babel to become the King of Bel, which you can do because you are the reincarnation of Abel from the bible. ...Yeah, this series gets weird sometimes. Anyways, two of the major routes that you can take are the Law and the Chaos paths. The Law path is represented by a girl around your age named Amane, and the Chaos path figure is your cousin, Naoya. Amane wants you to become the King of Bel and use your power to bring order to the world. There will be no crime, there will be peace, it's all a lovely thing that God will let us have because he doesn't want us to 'lose our autonomy'. Yeah...that would be great except that God's the one who made the lockdown happen in the first place, his angels have been trying to kill you for days now, and the obeying God portion tends to have a bit of a Knight Templar vibe to it where either you obey or you die. Sounds a bit like Rhea, doesn't it? Now Naoya has his own issues. He's actually the reincarnation of Cain. You know, the one who killed his brother Abel, who you happen to be a reincarnation of? Naoya created the items which let you control demons so that you can survive the lockdown, as well as arranged for the lockdown to be created in the first place. He does this because he blames God for what happened to him, saying that God arranged for him to kill Abel so that he could have the first murderer/martyr in history. Also, he cursed Cain to be constantly reincarnated until he repents for his sins, which he won't because he blames God for it in the first place. But if you become King of Bel, then you can lead the demons in a war to kill God himself. In a way, he is similar to Edelgard because his past has caused him to loathe the current religious establishment and seek to destroy it. In the original release, both these endings are sorta bittersweet. But the rerelease titled Overclocked provided extra endings for these routes, with Chaos getting two versions. In the Law path, you use your powers for good and remind the angels that obeying God doesn't have to include mass murder while you get the choice to either consider humanity as another enemy or rally them to your side in the Chaos endings. This sort of reflects Edelgard's path in that if you chose to side with her, you bring other allies and help restrain her more negative impulses, allowing her to rally Fodlan behind her. Without you, she falls to a darker path much like the second Chaos ending where the church and your allies stand against her and help bring her down. But Devil Survivor is another spin-off, so let's look at a main SMT title, Nocturne. In this world, the apocalypse happens in the first ten minutes, you're turned into a demon, and you have to run around while trying to figure out which reason to support when the world eventually gets remade. The Law and Chaos reps for this game are Hikawa and Chiaki, respectively. Hikawa wants to create a world where there is no real passion and thus no emotion. Everyone will be logical and the world will be at peace because there is no emotion to drive people to cruelty. During the game, he doesn't really do much unless he has been attacked first, which is nice enough. Except there's that tiny thing where he's the one who caused the apocalypse in the first place because he thought the world was too freaking noisy. Like Rhea, he starts out as a powerful leader and figurehead who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals, even though he is often hypocritical in his actions. Chiaki, on the other hand, is a friend of yours who is changed by trying to survive this world of demons and destruction as a mere human. She becomes obsessed with strength and wants to create a world where the strong devours the weak. She proves this by slaughtering a race known as the Manikins who have been helping you on your journey so that she can create this world. Like Edelgard, Chiaki is broken by a world that has mainly attacked and attempted to use her, and develops a sense of ruthlessness as a result in order to accomplish what she feels needs to be done. In the end, I feel that Three Houses is closer to SMT than Persona. It offers more similarities with paths and Edelgard and Rhea are pretty close examples of Chaos and Law reps, especially on the Black Eagles path. But this is only my opinion on the matter. What do you guys think?

No, Cyril states when you recruit him that he won't technically be part of the class. It's similar with Alois, Catherine, and Shamir in that you can teach them but they aren't part of the class and thus can't be used as dancers. Though they're also the judges for the contest, so maybe not the best example.

Agree with this. Though I think it does help that I'm using the dlc outfit for F!Byleth; I do feel the green clashes a bit with her normal outfit.

Honestly, I think she's this: Edelgard is a tragic figure because you can see just how her past has changed her and how it has affected her outlook. The entire uprising could have gone very differently if she had focused on making allies within the school rather than outside it, but only Hubert really knew what was going on and the other members of her house are stunned by her actions. She's determined to do what she believes is right, even if history will condemn her, which actually is mirrored in Dimitri's actions. I'm on the Blue Lion's path and maybe that is affecting things, but even on this path you get the feeling that Edelgard's fate isn't entirely of her own making. She's a fascinating character and an interesting villain, and I'm curious to how she'll be on a Black Eagles playthrough.

Felix and Dedue's B support is time-locked as well. Which sucks because I really want to see the end of that one.

I can't exactly remember honestly. I played that chapter over a week ago and the dialogue didn't stick. I'm not even sure if Lonato responded to be honest. Also, I just remembered that Sylvain has a special convo with his brother where he talks about having to clean up Miklan's mess?

I got one between Lorenz and the boss during his paralogue, and Ashe and Lonato during that whole fiasco. There were a few more, but I can't remember off the top of my head except quite a few involved Byleth, which was more of a one-sided convo.

That's nothing; I once picked up a lost item from Seteth's office and handed it to him since he was literally 2 feet away. I'm not sure what makes it sillier, the fact that I did this or the fact that Seteth was honestly grateful that I picked up the quill that had fallen on the floor and handed it to him.

Flayn for me. She was really excited to do it and had the highest Charm stat out of any unit I had recruited so far. She's been really helpful as well, so I'm happy with my pick. Also, she went up against Hilda and Caspar for the contest, which I found completely hilarious.

Agreed. I'm hoping he becomes playable in DLC. Or we at least give him a name. I'm thinking he'll have Durward somewhere in his name; it means 'gatekeeper'. But for now, I'll call him Ward.

You can get one on Manuela and Hanneman's paralogue. It unlocked for me around chapter 8. It's dropped by one of the enemies there.

I agree with you on most of these points, especially the one about Felix. I came into this game worried about how they were going to handle him and he's exceeded all of my expectations. I think the support that really drove me to like him was his C-Support with Dedue because god, the intensity! I started out thinking Felix was in the wrong and had completely changed my opinion by the time the support was done. That's some pretty impressive work from both the writers and the voice actors. Ashe and Annette have also endeared themselves to me through their supports. Dedue has also surprised me with how much I like him; his loyalty and history with Dimitri is very interesting and I like how he acts almost like a father figure to some of the younger members of the class. Cyril is pretty funny too; so young and such a workaholic. I'm honestly really enjoying myself and I'm looking forward to unlocking new supports!

The ancient Romans had indoor plumbing and a functioning sewer system. There's no reason that the monastery doesn't have one as well. Rhea, being the pope, has her own private bathroom. Primary reason to be head of the local religion.

Apparently this is starting to get some magazine articles about it. There are a couple of spoilers for certain supports in the one I found so I'll be putting the link in spoiler tags for safety. I think this article hit some of the major points that people are talking about, and hopefully other articles like this will help get Nintendo's attention.

I love how the support conversations are working, at least the ones I've seen. I picked the Blue Lions for my first playthrough and have gotten a bunch of C supports and I love the subtle world-building that goes into them and how they build the characters. Ashe has turned out to have the most adorable supports while the one between Felix and Dedue was so well written and so uncomfortable to read through in the best way possible. The voice acting in this game is amazing as well, and I'm just having so much fun playing. Also, spoilers below for some of BL's supports, but I need to gush.

Wow, this is all really impressive. Thanks for laying it all out in such an easily accessible manner. It's interesting to see the way that supports have changed since the games began. Looking at this, Awakening really changed the game in multiple ways. First was the whole everyone is able to S-support with anyone of the opposite gender unless they were Avatar-sexual/Chrom/Sumia. Then there was the whole removing the 5-support limit, which I personally think was a bigger deal in the FE community. Not only did it make battles different since you could potentially rely on an A to S support boost at all times, but it allowed for more connections between the army, for better or for worse. Taken as a whole, Three Houses does appear to be returning more to its pre-Awakening roots, with more limited support conversations and a lack of S-supports unless you happen to be Byleth. But without the 5-support limit to hold people back from certain support chains, I wonder which pairings will end up being more popular and which endings people may try to avoid. Either way, it'll be interesting to see how this will affect supports in future games.

In theory, the DLC should be available for purchase if only because IS wouldn't want to deny themselves the money for people who pre-ordered a copy without the DLC bundle or are buying it after the release date. I think it'll be likely available for purchase within the game or as a separate release when they come out on the planned release dates. But I have no proof of this; I'm basing it on previous FE releases.

Bonus for this run: Your Byleth must be named Joshua and you need to use the DLC that gives Male Byleth the hat.

I preordered the game, but even if I hadn't I wouldn't go to an early/midnight release to buy one. Partially because I still have work on Friday and this means I can come home to find my copy waiting for me and can freely spend a large portion of my weekend playing. Also, I'm a baby who likes sleep too much.

Then I guess Hilda is my Golden Deer dancer then. Unless one of the other members proves to be a better option.

I think that Raphael has a great design for a male dancer. It looks almost African tribal, if that makes any sense. And the colors of gold and white are great to look at. As for who I want to use as Dancers, I'm honestly not sure. Most of the FE games I've played have allowed for the option to reclass Dancers and I usually used them because it was easier to level them up that way. The only times I didn't were with the Herons of the Tellius games. And even then I didn't use them too often because I was so afraid of getting them killed. So I am pretty likely going to do playthroughs without the dancer class. If I had to make a choice though...Dorothea or Petra for the Black Eagles, Felix or Annette for the Blue Lions, and Byleth or Hilda for the Golden Deer. I'll have to start playing before I make any final decisions. Looking forward to seeing everyone's designs as dancers though!

I'm a little confused about the multiple A support part personally. In earlier games, there used to be just one person you could A support with for characters, beginning with the Binding Blade, I believe. Even with the Tellius series, characters could only A support with one other character. Though they were also limited to only 5 total supports so that was definitely a factor. I'm really interested in how this will impact the various endings, or if there's an option to select which ending gets priority for certain characters. I'm also interested in how certain endings will be affected on different paths if you recruit someone. Will someone like Ferdinand's ending be different if he's recruited to the Blue Lions or Golden Deer instead of starting a Black Eagle's playthrough? And will those endings also be affected by supports? I am hoping for different marriage endings because that's been a part of the series for a while. It also makes new playthroughs different since the endings change instead of being confined to one specific ending for everyone; especially if one ending for a character is sad or depressing. @Siskan: The idea of a potential sequel is interesting, but I'm not sure how likely that will be considering there will be at least three paths to work off of. It feels like a lot of extra work and data to bring in, unless the sequel takes place in the far off future, with potential descendants. That might be an interesting take.