ZanaLyrander

I don’t think I’d want this. Revelations seemed great in theory (having access to every unit, a “happy ending”, etc.) but in a story like this, it would result in a significantly looser character focus, without the time needed to really flesh out all of the characters, and would feel rushed and less emotionally impactful. A happy ending where Claude, Dimitri, and Edelgard work together sounds nice, but I don’t think they could handle it well, and it would push the supporting cast into the background by necessity in order to properly characterize the three Lords and provide payoff for their stories.

I really like the magic system in Three Houses. The whole certain number of casts of each spell per battle thing is actually really good design that makes a lot more sense to me than the magic tomes of previous FE games (a sword that breaks after 20-30 swings is stupid enough already, but how do you run out of book? Just read it again, what do you tear out the page after reading it?) However, I had an idea inspired by the magic tomes of previous games, as well as the crest items of New Game+: a set of magic tomes, one for each spell, that when in a character’s inventory, give that character access to that spell. You’d only have one tome per spell, so you’d have to ration them among your army, and they take up an inventory slot (perhaps you might also be limited to only one tome per character), but I just thought it would be a really neat way to add a certain amount of flexibility to various characters’ spell lists, and get some use out of the less common spells. I doubt we’ll get this, but it’d be a fairly easy and useful DLC item set that would add a little more freedom and customization to the magic system.

I honestly blame the over abundance of flying and cavalry units on the map design. The maps in TH are huge, and often littered with terrain that slows your movement to a crawl or damages grounded units. With maps like that, it’s almost foolish to not have tons of flying units. Tighter map design that’s not quite so punishing for ground based units would have done a lot to keep infantry from feeling useless. Doing more with Brawling, the only infantry exclusive weapon, would have also helped, maybe not making it basically unusable for female units, and maybe giving it a relic or two, or at least greater weapon variety. The potential was there for infantry to stand a chance alongside cavalry and flyers, but other aspects of the design continued to get in the way. It’s a shame really. Honestly, while many people are clamoring for the return of the Malig Knight so we have a flying magic user, or the Kinshi Knight so we have a flying bow specialist, I fear that doing so would basically banish non-flying units to the bench forever.

Ironically, I found that one of the flaws you mentioned (fliers being OP) proved to be the solution for the other (characters getting screwed over by lousy speed). Wyvern Lords are OP in so many ways, but fixing low speed characters is a noteworthy one: Wyvern Lords have a minimum speed of 20, and provide 4 extra speed while in the class, for a total minimum speed of 24. For a lot of really slow characters like Raphael, or Hilda, 24 speed is *plenty*. Not to mention Wyvern lord has good speed growth, so they’ll only get faster from then on. It’s an investment, raising flying high enough to change to a Wyvern Lord takes time, but if you’ve got a character who is speed-screwed, turning them into a flyer could salvage them. Of course that exacerbates your earlier complaint about flyers being OP, but with so much terrain on the maps that damages grounded units or slows their movement to a crawl, flyers were always going to be OP, there was really no avoiding it. I’m hoping in later games they don’t make the terrain quite so hostile, so flying units don’t feel quite so necessary.

Yeah, I agree, it didn’t bother me back in, for example, Sacred Stones or other early Fire Emblem games that there were no female Berserkers or male Pegasus Knights. When characters are locked into a certain class, dividing the classes up along gender lines is far less noticeable or bothersome. It’s only in games like this where everyone *supposedly* can become any class they want that it starts to annoy me. I also wonder about the in universe explanation... like, these classes are gated off by tests in the monastery, right? So what, is it just written on the syllabus that boys/girls aren’t allowed to take that test? Who set that policy, Rhea? Seems unlikely... and I feel like some of the more outspoken students would have something to say about that... In some sense I have the same problem with it as I have with the 10-12 character limit in battle, it’s extremely detrimental to immersion, because the only reason that can explain those kind of mechanics is “because this is a video game”. They don’t even bother to try and explain it. The Brawling being male-only thing particularly pisses me off because it turns the intro cutscene into a dirty lie: in the very first cutscene in the game, we witness Seros disarm Nemesis and then beat the crap out of him with her bare hands, which we all know now is completely impossible in game because female characters in Three Houses can never learn Unarmed Combat. Catherine and Rhea both instruct Byleth in Brawling, even though female characters effectively don’t have access to Brawling. It feels like one of those “the story team and the mechanics team weren’t in communication” things that throws me out of a lot of games.

That’s fair, sorry if I misunderstood (tone is impossible to convey in text, it’s very possible I interpreted that as far more condescending than you intended it). I will admit you have a point in that being bothered or unfazed by this sort of mechanic is fairly binary and fairly subjective: either you’re going to be bothered by it or you won’t, and that’s largely dependent on your personality, so I doubt either of us could really convince the other that we’re right. My attitude towards weapon durability has always been that it’s a foolish wager, because when implemented well, it adds little to a game, and when implemented poorly it can ruin an otherwise good game, but again, that’s fairly subjective. For what it’s worth, Three Houses implements the mechanic better than most. Having a repair mechanic at all puts it head and shoulders above how it’s implemented in games like Breath of the Wild or some older Fire Emblem games. It’s presence in Three Houses was a minor annoyance at most that only made me sad because from my perspective it was a step backwards given that more recent FE games had done away with it. Again, sorry for the overreaction. ❤️

There’s really no need to talk down to people and act so pedantic, especially if all your saying is “I could explain why you’re wrong but I won’t because reasons.” I’ve played plenty of turn based strategy RPGs, many of which were quite focused on resource management, and were quite successful without needing a weapon degradation mechanic. Don’t act like this is some necessary feature for a game to feel strategic. If you like the mechanic fine, just say that. If you’d rather not have the discussion, that’s also fine. Your little “this is beneath me and not worth my time and I doubt you’d understand anyway” act kinda just makes you seem like a jerk, no offense. Either stick to your guns or let the conversation drop, that kind of pseudo-intellectual “you clearly don’t care about my wisdom” approach to discussion is really immature. I respect your opinion on the matter, have the decency to extend the same courtesy. If you’d rather just agree to disagree, that’s fine.

I’ll be honest, if they just made the repair materials accessible and available for purchase, even if it wasn’t until somewhat late in the game and they were very expensive, I wouldn’t have a problem with weapon durability. Having to maintain your weapons occasionally feels like needless busy work and doesn’t really add much to the game, but it doesn’t take away much either. But being unable to repair your best weapons freely even with more money than you know what to do with is frustrating and suffers from the same problem as weapon durability in previous games. For all the flaws Fates had, the lack of weapon durability was a true blessing, so I’m just sad to see them bringing the mechanic back. It always bugged me that the game gives you fantastic weapons then punishes you for actually using them. It’s also just immersion-breaking: a sword that breaks after 20 swings doesn’t seem particularly “legendary” to me, unless the legend is about a really lousy blacksmith.

Things to keep: Battalions - as plenty of people have indicated, Battalions and Gambits should be tweaked and rebalanced in places, but I’m not worried because that’s almost a given between games. And as a concept I love the Battalions, they add a sense of scale to battles and make it feel less like a whole war was singlehandedly won by like a dozen people. Magic - The whole “spells per battle” system of limiting mages is actually pretty ingenious, and I like it a lot. Honestly, I’d be in favor of handling Combat Arts the same way, a certain number of uses per battle. No Weapon Restrictions - Being able to use any weapon with any class is a fantastic idea that I want to see more of. Brawling - A neat weapon type that gives infantry units an actual purpose, shame they didn’t do more with it. New Game Plus - Yes, a thousand times *yes*, more NG+ modes in future games. Feeling like every playthrough is not just fun in it’s own right, but an investment for your next run is incredibly satisfying and gives the game tremendous replay value. Things to fix/remove: Weapon Durability - I had thought we were finally free of this cursed mechanic, but now it’s back. While the ability to repair your weapons solved a lot of my problems with this mechanic, making it so that repairs require resources that are incredibly rare for the better weapons completely defeated the point of allowing repairs in the first place, and still led to the classic “oh boy, the best weapon in the game, better never use it” problem that made me hate weapon durability in older games. I understand limiting the player’s resources, but the weapon durability mechanic always leads to a massive, paralyzing “but I might need it later” syndrome that really reduces enjoyment of the game. Gender Segregated Classes - I’m not about to go into the gender politics of this decision, that’s a discussion for someone else, but locking classes to specific genders is just frustrating game design. In many cases it doesn’t even make sense: the Brawler, Grappler, and War Master classes being male only basically restricts an entire weapon type to males, *despite the fact that two out of the three people who can train your main character in Brawling are female*. There’s really no benefit to restricting certain classes to certain genders. Terrain - I know there are a lot of reasons why Wyvern Lords are OP in this game, but you know what would have made them less OP? If almost every map in the game didn’t have tons of terrain that slows your movement to a crawl. With maps like these, you’d be a fool *not* to make as many flying units as you possibly can. Desert maps are particularly bad for this, but I feel like every single map has spots where any unit that can’t fly is gonna *really* wish they could. Adjutants/General Unit Deployment - The Adjutant system is fine, but doesn’t really do much besides provide ways to level up inactive characters, and you are allowed so few adjutants that even that does little to soften the blow that comes from aggressively small unit deployment restrictions. It makes parts of the story feel really immersion-breaking: when the cast is standing around worry about the huge army they know they’re about to face, and how hopelessly outnumbered they’ll be, I can’t help but think “well maybe if more than 10-12 of you would actually show up to battle we wouldn’t feel so outnumbered...” It’s not like the maps are small and would feel cluttered if you allowed us to deploy more troops... they don’t even bother to try and justify the small army in game. “You’ve got like 20-30 characters and you’re only allowed to bring 10 because we say so.” All told, Three Houses remains one of my favorite Fire Emblem games to date. It’s got flaws, like all of them do, but I’d say it more than breaks even, and is overall a great game.

Something interesting I observed that I didn’t know could happen. So, I’m playing as the Golden Deer, and pretty late in Part 1, I recruited Ashe. I never ended up using him because I recruited him so late and my team was pretty much fixed at that point (I know Ashe is really good, I just didn’t have room for him in my team). What caught me off guard was that after the time skip, I encountered him as an enemy on one of the story missions. Since I never used him, I didn’t even realize that he wasn’t in my army until that point, so it was quite a surprise, because I didn’t realize that could happen. I knew some units couldn’t be recruited depending on what house you chose, and some could leave your army depending on choices you made like Flayn, but I didn’t realize some could leave without ceremony like that. Do you need a certain support level with them to stay? Other characters I never use stuck around, so I’m curious what determines whether they leave or not.

So, it’s no secret that Bow Knights are fantastic in Three Houses: Canto, Bowfaire, Bowrange +2... they’re pretty clearly the obvious choice for archers in the late game. ...or so I thought. Then I looked at their stat growths and noticed that compared to a Sniper, they’re absolute garbage. So what we’re left with is a class that is fantastic, but punishes you for using it, and could cripple your units in the long run if you stay in that class for too long. Seriously, am I missing something? Bow Knight has some of the worst stat growths in the game, it’s downright tragic. They’re so good in terms of abilities and movement, but you can’t use them much or you’ll end up with weak units. I guess the solution is to reclass back to Sniper or Paladin while doing random battles on free days and only switch back to Bow Knight for the main story missions? Seems unsatisfying and weird given how good the growth rates are for other master classes, but whatever... just seems like a strange design choice.