Topic: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Ok, got in about half an hour last night. I am sold, I went in as blind as I could and I'm glad that I did. I am really enjoying the academy portion, in part because it feels like a calculated hostage move by Rhea-sama. (I already don't trust the church) which already makes the game feel like there is an insidious pall looming over my time there. I love the academy mechanics; it feels more natural than the My Castle segments and the interactions feel more meaningful. I feel like I am going to care about all of these characters (even the ones that aren't my students) when before I cared about my A list team and ignored the bench-warmers. There is a nice mix of personalities on display and I feel more invested in the world, something I haven't felt since the Tellius games. Awakening and Fates helped me care about the characters but their war and world felt like such a backdrop, for me it became a personal story rather than a war from the perspective of a small elite team. I never needed that to enjoy FE as I play it for the strategy mainly but it works even better when the world that these people are dying for is worth something to the player. I felt like Fates was trying to do that but they didn't bake it long enough in some places and too long in others. (And I didn't dislike the story for fates, I just wasn't blown away by it).

Cant wait to see how this goes.

I'm really loving this game so far!

That doesn't look bad to me.

Can I just say the opening cinematic is an absolute stunner. Love the art direction and animation.

Spent 4 hours or so with the game today. Classic - Hard with The Golden Deer. I already like the cast and the exploration aspect. The voice acting and music is really good too. I have to agree the graphical quality is kind of inconsistent though.

I started laughing when I first met Linhardt. The way he introduced himself was perfect. "Linhardt, goodbye." I kind of want to recruit him now. I'm also interested in recruiting Mercedes and Annette. I don't want to end up getting just one of them since they're friends and I don't want them separated. I also noticed that lot of my characters can have supports with them so it would go well in that regard as well.

I really like the friendship system too. I usually know the answer that would raise the friendship between me and the other character but I like to answer the way I would normally.

Have to share couple of fun/weird thoughts though. It's funny how the second month starts with a "at the end of the month you'll fight bandits". I guess no one cares if they roam around for a month while we train. Also, does the female professor act differently based on your gender or is she always as flirty?

Damn, sorry you've had such a rough time tracking them down! I've always been kind of anal about hoarding my games, and very few have been sold or lost, and the ones that have stick out in my mind and still bother me, lol. But the Tellius games are ones I just got lucky on. I think they came out in that in-between phase when Nintendo had finally brought FE to the west but they hadn't exploded in popularity the way they did with Awakening. I agree that we need a Tellius collection badly. Although, those games could use some quality of life updates, especially RD, so I wonder if Nintendo knows that and that could be holding them back — they want to put more resources into a more robust remake, instead of just a re-release. But I'm just speculating.

So how hard is hard mode? I usually play FE games on hard mode with permanent death, cos I'm insane.

It's at least harder than normal mode

So I picked this up this afternoon. I haven't had a chance to start it up yet. But I was wondering, how many save files can I have? Is it still limited to the one? Or can you do 3 since there are 3 different houses?

@scybydo there’s about 6 I think

I can’t help but go and talk to every single person with a new speech bubble when exploring the monestary. It’s a huge time sink, but I love it. Went to the library and read every single book, all the lore of the Empire, Kingdom and Alliance, all the noble houses... I can’t get enough.

Has anyone gotten amiibos to work yet? It didn't even try to scan when I tried it out, which was disappointing.

Also wondering how long it takes to level up supports. I quit playing about five hours in, when I got to the first real battle of the game (fighting some bandits, or something; it has been test and mock battles up to this point), but none of my characters have any supports available yet, despite how much I've engaged in social stuff with them so far.

Do I really only get twelve months of the school life segment of the game before the timeskip? Because, now that I've been introduced to almost everything, it feels like those are going to go in a flash. It's not like a Persona game where you manually play through every day of the week.

The map and text have such tiny writing and icons. It's fine in handheld mode, where I have the system close to my face, but it's difficult to comfortably play this on the couch while still being able to read everything that's on-screen.

@JaxonH Yeah, I plan on talking to everyone every time I explore, and have done just that so far. I REALLY like those segments.

@Ralizah Mine work. Granted I don't have my FE ones with me. Just my Zelda set. But you scan and exit the scanning screen and there are items in the gazebo courtyard to pick up.

@Ryu_Niiyama Thanks. I need to try again later. Hope my right joycon ain't broken.

Just got my physical Collector Edition(s). The art book is HUUUGE (so is the Collector Box). Love the steelcase also. So gorgeous. A perfect edition to my Switch steelcase Collection: Fire Emblem, Xenoblade 2, Tales of Vesperia, Bayonetta 2 (x2, one to display Bayonetta 1 on front and one to display Bayonetta 2 on back), Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Mario Maker 2, Smash Bros... I just need that EU exclusive Mario Kart 8 Deluxe steelbook and the EU exclusive Zelda Link’s Awakening one, and the new EU exclusive Pokémon one. Got Astral Chain locked in at least. And Daemon X Machina.

@Ralizah
Yup, tried every single FE Amiibo that exists. Got all the music tracks unlocked, as well as items.

Btw a nifty trick if text is too small... turn on the zoom feature in Switch settings so that double tapping HOME zooms in regardless of what you’re doing. Works in game perfectly. I had to do it when I was in handheld mode in the bathroom earlier today, so I could read the text. It’s a really great system feature.

Btw, I saw Fire Emblem dropping on Amazon to #2, then to #3, then to #4.

And while it’s still had a phenomenal launch, I began to think that maybe it’s not going to do quite as well as I had thought at first?

But then I saw the digital copy was all the way up to #14. Which is unusually high for a digital copy of a Switch game, particularly an SRPG. So I looked at the original listing and then I realized why it had been dropping... it sold out lol. It seems to be getting restocked in half a week but apparently people don’t want to wait and are buying the digital version instead.

That was such a great realization. I want this game to do well, I want it to stay at the forefront of Nintendo‘s budget priorities, I want them to be able to get out two if not three releases this generation, and I just want more people to realize what a great series it is so that it stays healthy. That said, popularity comes at a cost, and the dumbing down we’ve experienced as a result is the excessive turnwheel. But that’s small potatoes.

And I’m happy to report the difficulty doesn’t seem any easier than prior games to me. I’ve never been particularly great at the series, although I was amazing at chess growing up, but I just happened to play enough of them that I got reasonably good at it. But yeah, it doesn’t really feel any easier to me so far. I know it’s early in the game still but, just comparing a pound for pound with Awakening, it seems the same. Of course, the turn wheel will most definitely tip the scales in favor of being easier regardless

@JaxonH Yeah, I figured out that my Roy amiibo apparently doesn't work.

That zoom feature sounds cool. I'll have to try that out tomorrow.

Also unlocked a gob of support convos after that story battle!

Edit: Oh, and I like the limited time rewind feature a lot. It makes classic much less tedious by eliminating the need to reset because of a bad roll of the RNG dice, but you also don't get to play as if your characters were disposable.

@JaxonH Glad to hear it's doing well. As I said previously, I'd gladly buy a double pack of Ike's games but I hope Intelligent Systems has time to make games other than Fire Emblem too. I know it's been selling well ever since Awakening and they want to make the most out of it but I just really want a new Advance Wars game. Or maybe a new series like they had on 3DS with Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. and Pullblox. Oh, and Switch needs a WarioWare game too... They seem to have big enough team to work on multiple games at once though so maybe there's nothing to worry about.

@Ralizah
I like the turnwheel too, I just wish they had slashed the number of uses in half. Start with 1, eventually go to 2. When they let you make up to 4 mistakes in a single map it just feels... excessive.

I’m almost to the first real battle. Got one more mock battle to go, which I’m starting now.

What to do about choosing classes and skills? I felt overwhelmed with that. Figured out one person I want to become a knight (Edelgard I suppose), one person a cavalier (Ferdinand) and one person a Pegasus Knight (Petra). Just figuring that out was hard enough. And that may change later on when new people are recruited... I almost feel like I want to auto instruct for now. Idk. I love it but it just feels a little much right now when I have no idea who these people are going to be or turn into.

@Late
Ya 3DS got multiple games, I’m sure we will too.

@Ralizah Amiibos worked for me, I've scanned about 6 with no problem. For what it's worth, I scanned them on the pro controller rather than a joycon, maybe it's better for that.

@JaxonH It's really up to you, they're not going to turn into anything without your guidance. There are obviously tendencies they have that you can see in their stats. If someone has really low magic then you probably shouldn't go for a magic class, if someone has really low strength and speed, they're going to be pretty terrible at combat so should probably either be benched or made into a healer. Also bear in mind that mounted units have the huge advantage of high movement (and in the case of flying units, ignoring terrain movement penalties) so you should probably aim for everyone to end up mounted on something by the end, going through whatever path will get them the skills they want.

To be honest, and I say this as someone playing on Normal myself, it really doesn't matter what you do on Normal. It's easy mode, Hard mode is Normal, Lunatic will be the actual Hard mode and where it starts matter about making really good builds for your characters. By the way, I found out you can lower difficulty at any time but not raise it. IIRC you were saying you'd heard you could change difficulty whenever but I told you I couldn't change it in my game. That's why.