Topic: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

It's so hard reading this thread since I'm trying to avoid reading (and posting) spoilers, but I am really loving this game. 50 hours in according the Switch clock but 47 according the game clock, playing Black Eagles, fem Byleth. I'm pretty sure I'm about to finish Part One, it definitely feels like there is about to be a cataclysmic reveal. Already had that first tragedy 😥.

I'm playing on Easy, and the tactical challenge isn't great. I don't feel like I'm grossly overpowered, but it could definitely use a little more challenge. I have used the Divine Pulse a few times, and so far have only let Caspar die. Everyone else is just too precious to me. I'm trying to woo Dorothea and I'm damned if I'm going to let my Best Beloved (and my only Dancer) die mid-story.

I plan to play through the BE story like this, savoring the story and maybe letting a few people die but mostly using the Pulses judiciously, exploring everything I can, then do a Golden Deer campaign on Hard.

I'm really impressed with the game so far. It may be a little too heavy on the monastery end, but there are definitely enough battles to be fought, and the characters are great. I even enjoy the tea parties and am doing them as often as I can. Some of the character (and voice work) are a little annoying, but I've found surprising depths in even the ones that I thought were totally one-note at first.

My only real complaint so far is that Bernie's helpless little coward schtick is getting a bit tiresome. Like, girl, you're a Level 25 archery BEAST. You routinely one-shot enemies, evade almost all attacks and slaughter foes with your counterattacks. Why you gotta act like you're still that scared little girl I met on the first day at school? But I still love her.

If you have not had the class promotion theme stuck in your head and find yourself humming it during random times in the day you have not been playing enough !

Thanks for all your responses about game length. It looks like beating it before Astral Chain seems pretty much impossible without rushing through so I've decided to wait until I've beaten Astral Chain and in the meantime clear up unfinished games in the meantime like NSMBU Deluxe, Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition and the Crash trilogy.

It's so annoying there's 4 paths and only 3 save slots.

@jump
???

There’s at least 5 save slots. 6 with autosave.

@JasmineDragon
I'm playing on the difficult above normal (forget name), and it's still not very challenging. I think I read a review somewhere that felt the same way. Will definitely need to play on the highest difficulty for my second run.

@rallydefault Yeah, actually I think I'm on Normal. I couldn't remember if it went Easy/Normal/Hard or just Easy/Hard. I'll have to look tonight when I go back to it.

@JasmineDragon @rallydefault
I’m warning you now. I felt the exact same way at first. EXACT same way. In fact you can even go back and see my posts talking about it. But I’m now on chapter 18, and I’m SO glad I didn’t choose Hard Mode. There’s no possible way I could’ve done this on hard. The game gets REALLY hard for the second half. It ramps up, so it’s not really until the last five or six chapters that you’re stressing your limits, but I noticed the difficulty jump immediately after the second half. But this last quarter of the game... OH MY GOSH. I’m managing, but only due to rewinds. Death knight was SO hard last map. I didn’t think it was possible to beat the map at first. Everyone who attacked him would die, or be close to death, waiting to get killed on the enemy’s turn, not just from the death night but from divine beasts closing in on me from two different directions, with my units split apart so 5 across the map and 5 to fight the Death Knight. EVEN BYLETH was an instant KO from the Death Knight. I had to try different combinations using RNG to land a hit (he was on a tile granting Avoid and all kinds of other benefits, so my hit rate was like 20-30% for practically everything). When I finally managed to land a hit with Caspar, I was left with just 6 HP, all just to do 12 damage on a 56 HP health bar. I must’ve used six rewinds finally not getting critted and actually landing a crit myself. And even then, Flayn almost died on the other side of the map, and the only reason she didn’t is because I got lucky and they missed the second attack despite having 85% chance. On top of that I would’ve died from SPOILER but was lucky enough to first put somebody with 36 resistance in range, had it been anyone else that would’ve been a KO. And I almost lost Seteth to 2 mages, who took him down within 5 HP of his life.

And the map before this was also a very, very close call as well, though not quite to this extreme. I don’t even want to know what these next 4-5 maps are going to be like.

Pre-skip though, cakewalk. I found chapters 6-12 to lack to difficulty they should have. It’s like they extended the grace period before ramping up the difficulty. Make no mistake though, after that it does ramp up. Of course I’m not the best person at the game and I know there are others who laugh at Hard Mode. I’m not one of those people though. I thought I was gonna do a Hard Mode run for my next playthrough... but I don’t think that’s a wise choice now that I see just how much the game ramps up.

@JaxonH
This is only my first playthrough, but from the characters you're mentioning, I think we made some very different choices in the storyline. That's such an awesome part of this game!

I have had a couple tough fights since the time skip, but nothing a couple rewinds didn't fix. Strangely enough, one of those green paralogue missions was the hardest fight I had so far. It was one where you're fighting that Nader guy and he has hordes of infinitely spawning wyvern riders and tons of archers and mounted archers and giant birds. It was weird because the game presents it to you as a "defend this point" kind of mission, but the only way to end it is to fight forward through everything and take out Nader on the entire other side of the map.

I'm on hard and classic mode. I'm on mission 16 right now. But yea, I agree, I can definitely feel the battles getting tougher, just not anything that has truly truly challenged me yet. I'm looking forward to seeing how tough it gets at the very end and for bumping up difficulty on the next run.

@rallydefault
I think it was Chapter 17/18 where I noticed the final plunge into brutal territory. I think you’re right on the cusp.

Hard mode... wow. I’m doing Normal Classic, and I’m really feeling grateful I made that decision now 😁 If nothing else just because I can retreat and keep my XP if I do run into a map I can’t beat near the end. I’m struggling to keep my levels up, particularly because the game didn’t give me the option to go back to the monastery for this month (for story reasons). So I’m having to make due.

I guess it depends on your levels too. I’m about 2-4 levels under the recommended level so, that may have something to do with it. But then again, at this point in the game a lot of the Master Classes aren’t getting much for their level ups. So 4 levels may not make that much of a difference anyways.

@JaxonH I believe you. I read when you first posted about the difficulty spike. I'm actually looking forward to that jump. I do like the challenge. Traditionally I can get through Fire Emblem games, but not without some resets and a few losses. I'd rather have that than a tactical game I can just breeze through (looking at you, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance!)

Idk. On Hard Golden Deer, it got easier and easier until the final map where then I had to be a bit more careful if I didn't want to kamikaze any units. This game is pretty easy, even on Hard and only really gets some bit of challenge at the final hours.

I think the core reason behind that is because recent Fire Emblems are more RPG than strategy. Awakening also had this problem where your avatar became such a god, you could send them in solo, tank anything, and still make it out alive, even with minimal grind. It doesn't work that well on Lunatic, but Normal/Hard? Perfectly doable.

I'm having that same thing pop up in Three Houses, except across multiple units. I even have one unit (Lysithea) who's stronger than my Byleth, which is insanity, although to be fair she also has pitiful physical defense.

The next time I replay a route (after I finish the rest), I'll go for meme builds like Great Knight Marianne, Dancer Raphael, Brawling Ignatz, etc. Definitely something I'll want to keep an eye out for lol.

Hopefully Lunatic is fun hard though. Would be awesome if it's that perfect difficulty sweet spot, since even Hard loses its challenge a few chapters after the timeskip.

Joe Zieja is LPing this game.

It says using a combat art does not allow for follow up attacks. What does this mean? The enemy can’t follow up with an attack after this or does it concern your own attacks?

Also, “attack when an ally is nearby” what is nearby? If I attack an enemy whose is above me and above him is my ally does that still count as nearby [linked attack] even though he is 2 spaces separated from me?

Just beat a pivotal chapter in the story. But there are still 2 chapters left. At least I’m back at the monestary now. The last battle was 2 in a row.

@Spanjard
1 It refers to your own attacks. You cannot follow up with an extra attack when using a combat art.
2 Nearby means “any allies whose attack range encompasses the same enemy).

I think part 1 of the game is generally better paced and constructed than part 2. Especially near the start it begins building itself very well and I was actively gripped and interested. A lot of mysteries are brought up and you begin to become invested in the characters. It wasn’t until the cliche Fire Emblem villains started showing up that I think the writing began dipping in quality.

It lost a lot of its luster to care about these cliche plainly evil characters, but while the game somewhat recovers with the ending of part 1, imo part 2 is just awkwardly paced. Comes off kind of rigid and a tad forced. The way that each path only addresses certain plot lines and mysteries is also a big let down. While it’s done this way to encourage multiple playthroughs, it also makes the path feel incomplete and rushed.

Seemed fine to me. There’s nothing wrong with having enemies that are bad. The vast majority of games have plainly bad enemies. You don’t care about them because you’re not supposed to care about them. You’re supposed to care about the characters fighting them. I didn’t care about the enemies in Persona, or Dragon Age, or Dragon Quest, or Xenoblade, or practically any other game. The difference with this game is that you also have enemies in a grey area in addition to enemies that are plainly bad. It’s the best of both worlds. As opposed to previous FE games where it was only bad enemies and nothing else.

I LOVE how each path addresses different aspects of the plot. That’s what makes this game so brilliant. It adds replay value and an incentive to want to play other paths, aside from just a different team dynamic and story path. It’s a mystery that only fully unravels if you complete the game. Yet each path gives enough closure for those who only want to do a single playthrough. It truly is brilliant.

Anyways, I’m bulking up all my weapons for the final two chapters. No sense holding back now. It’s the final stretch and I want to go in fully prepared. Devil Axe+ Mt 21? Yes, please. Cursed Aisha Sword Crit +50? Don’t mind if I do 😁 Time to make Raphael a Great Knight to take advantage of my snazzy new shield that protects against armor piercing attacks. It’s the whole reason I recruited him in the first place. I love my Great Knights.

As much as I love the game and setting, I do have to agree that the story suffers from poor pacing in the second half. In particular, I feel like in the black eagles path where you side with the church, no-one really stops to consider what Edelgard's motives are, and she died before anything can truly be explained. Also, although the monsters were fairly well-established in the story, Rhea's last-minute transformation and battle seemed off and a bit out-of-nowhere. Actually, my main criticism is that essentially the last three battles are all with quite different enemies - it's a bit of a rush!.

I get that it's to encourage multiple playthroughs, and I guess that is one thing that's very interesting about this game. Beyond main story I think this game does an excellent job of world-building through it's characters and their interactions through support conversations. I'm now half-way through a second playthrough and I'm starting to notice that there's quite a bit of foreshadowing in these. A lot of dialogue in the game has purpose and helps to form the greater narrative.

@Buizel
Her motives are clear from the onset. She doesn’t believe in the church, and wants to eliminate it from Fodland, as well as the hierarchal society based on crests. And she’s willing to go to the extreme to achieve that goal. That discussion was had immediately after the time skip. Everyone agrees that despite liking her as a person, she must be stopped..

Can’t speak to the rest because I still have those last two battles. But I do know that Edie’s motives were made clear, and the rest decided they needed to take a stand against her.

The issue with these plainly evil villains is that they’re the driving force behind basically everything that has happened in the plot up to this point. They orchestrated nearly everything that happened yet despite that they are just completely evil. They’re not goons or generic enemies encountered in the game. They’re the antagonists consistently throughout each path, yet they’re also completely awful character and personality wise. In a narrative that tries to paint this morally gray conflict, they stand out like a sore thumb. Edelgard also suffers from this somewhat in that the game tries to paint her out to be gray but her actions and mentality make her closer to being evil and crazy.

You don’t need to care about the villains in the sense of feeling empathy for them. You care by being invested and interested in their mentalities and actions. But they’re more or less just completely evil without any intrigue behind it. So they’re just boring.

Edit:
Also it’s cool to have different paths but the way they’re executed means you’ll have to consistently replay what is essentially the same part 1 just to get part 2. The problem though is mainly that each path is left incomplete to facilitate this.