Topic: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Tbh what got me excited for Three Houses was Shadows of Valentia. The more serious and less focus on anime and waifu pandering got me excited/hopeful that Intelligent Systems were leaving behind the mess from Fates and moving back to being a bit more grounded and less trope ridden.

While some of it still there on first glance, it’s more bearable and I’m hopeful that’ll be enjoyable. I generally like RtSs

Famitsu Score

9 / 9 / 10 / 9

Hype intensifies!

And, I know they're kind of all over the place, but that's still the highest FE score they've given (Shadows of Valentia also got 37/40). Its encouraging. 9 more days.

Even though Famitsu is notorious for scoring generously, that is a dandy review score. The North American uber-edition sold out in a heartbeat on Amazon when the preorder went live earlier this year. I hope it quietly becomes available again shortly after launch, it looks so nice. But I won't be disappointed if it doesn't.

I didn't even pick up on that at the time, but you're right. It was a much more serious game!

Seeing some hands on reports saying the first part is upwards of 20 hours. WOO I am set until December!

I got 100 hours out of Awakening in a single playthrough. 100 hours in Fates Birthright also, and another 60 in Conquest before I stopped playing.

I have no doubt I’ll hit 100 hours on a single playthrough here.

I got pretty far into Conquest Hard mode and then I got Odin married to Nyx I think, because they’re both mages. At that point I dropped the game. A lot of Dating sim esque games have this problem where you just romance a character and that’s sort of it. In Conquest you got another fanservice character and nothing of real note came from it so the appeal just dies off I suppose

@-Green-
I never saw that as the focal point, which has always been the incredible strategy gameplay. And supports were often just friendly conversations until A and S rank, which even then wasn't between all characters. So that was a very, very small aspect of the greater game for me.

If I married a character, it was simply because they finally reached that support level so, why not. But it was never a goal, a focus, or what drove me to play the game, any more than a one night stand drove me to play Dragon Age Inquisition. It was just one more little thing to add to the experience.

Of course some enjoyed min maxing children stats, but that's something else entirely. Still, even with Awakening and Fates, I dont think it was ever meant to be a dating sim. They were meant to be strategy games that simply had an extended support system which has been a staple of the series, to add to the experience. Which I'd say sets it apart from other games, because it's just there as an aside, an "oh and late game you can optionally do this too" mechanic.

Granted, story is also a big part of the recipe for what makes FE great, and Fates stumbled in that regard, which kept me less interested in playing than Awakening. But the gameplay was immaculate, and I think that's what saved the game for a lot of people.

Yeah, I didn't really bother too much with the 'dating' parts of those, @JaxonH .... I won't be doing much of it in this game, either

That's weird. My opinion was basically the exact opposite. I think it looks great when they zoom into the character-level, but bad in top-down mode.

Also, I had no idea you can just control the characters like this. Very cool:

@Dezzy Same. I can't comprehend thinking that the more detailed, FE Warriors-esque ground view looks subpar while praising the very plain, sparse-looking zoomed out view.

Fire Emblem Three Houses

That’s overhead. Compare to ground level and it’s like... wow. The screenshot directly above was taken from the same video as the one below, moments before each other. The overhead above has such beautiful lighting reflecting off the water, it even shows cloud shadows moving across the ground that fade in darker and lighter, just like in real life how it looks when clouds pass overhead. The ground level leaves a lot to be desired in comparison, and that’s because things will naturally lose detail the more you zoom in. That’s just like, I’m pretty sure that’s just a scientific fact. I don’t have a problem with how the game looks at ground level, but I just don’t think it looks as good as overhead, which is just so much more crisp and clean and with sharper textures, without all the lack of detail blown up on a magnifying glass.

And then you compare to past games, which really highlights how good the overhead view looks. You may have to zoom in on your screen to compare the pictures at the same size, but that just drives home the point that the further something is zoomed out the better it tends to look.

Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn

Fire Emblem Path of Radiance

Fire Emblem Awakening

I’ve played a lot of FE games, and the overhead view just looks so good in comparison. I can’t comprehend how textures and models could look better zoomed in than zoomed out. Up close the textures look as bad as the Warriors games, but zoomed out everything just looks crisp and gorgeous. “Sparse” is the last word that comes to mind looking at the overhead view. That’s actually the word I think of looking at the ground level view. The ground details are so sparse. Overhead everything is so rich with detail.

^ goes to dig out 3ds... I really need to finish Revelations.

Ground view looks great to me. Lots of detail (a lot of aliasing, too, but understandable given the hardware) in the character models. Environments look good, too. Top down view... I dunno. I kind of preferred the more chibi character models of the handheld games in this view. The water effects look nice, sure, but you don't get nearly the same level of detail in the ground environments.

Also, given the more realistic ground view presentation, it bugs me that the characters are sort of realistic looking in top down view, but are still scaled to look as large as the buildings they're next to.

Of course, this is nothing new. The character animations always looked better than when you were scrolling around on the map, and the ground view in this game continues that trend.

@JaxonH

Well it's not texture quality that primarily informs my graphical preferences. Like I think the original Windwaker still looks great to this day. It's all about style. (framerate and resolution matter too though)
The top-down stuff just looks very bland to me. It doesn't look any more advanced than the Wii game really. I preferred the top-down view on the 3DS games because I think those 2D sprites looked good on that background.
Whereas the ground shots look better to me because you have more interesting camera angles and I think the cell-shaded characters look really good on that background.

I think Windwaker looks great too. It’s not texture detail that wins by default. It’s just how good it looks aesthetically in comparison. Which, Windwaker looks great, because there aren’t any bad looking textures. But with the ground level there are bad looking textures, which just happen to not look bad from a farther out view. I’m perfectly OK with less detailed textures, but comparatively speaking one is more blurry and less detailed with more jaggies than the other. I actually think the ground level looks pretty cool, tbh, but it does look more PS3-grade whereas the map view looks more like a PS4-grade to me. Maybe others disagree but, that’s how I perceive it.

Of course everyone is free to their own preferences, but... I do think it’s a stretch to say it looks the same as Radiant Dawn, when there are objectively higher-quality models, higher quality textures, better lighting, better shadows, more intricate details, etc. As for sprites, I think they also look good, but I don’t think they look better. I like them both, and up until now I think it might’ve been a tossup which one I prefer more, comparing to Radiant Dawn or Path of Radiance.. But with this new entry I don’t think the sprites really can compare anymore. They fit for a lower power handheld, but I definitely wouldn’t want that in a more graphically intense game like Three Houses.

The dating stuff really took me out of Awakening. It never seemed quite natural for characters to pair up, barring certain story-related relationships. The children were such a focus of the story and marketing of the game but I just wasn't into their characters. A lot of them felt like goofy caricatures. I missed the RD/PoR Info conversations that really developed the core characters and made them feel fully fleshed out. Those games have a more serious tone overall too.

The whole everyone can date everyone thing from Fates and Awakening took a toll on the Support writing. A lot of it became repetitive or downright stupid for the sake of shipping/romance. Since they have to make it so anyone can fall in love with each other.

I really can’t wait to start playing. The previews have been glowing and it seems they fixed most of my complaints from Fates.

Yea, it seems awesome - can't wait! Only consistent complaint I'm seeing so far is that it has a slow start. I actually like slow starts in games as long as it's still gameplay and not just a half hour of cutscenes.