Topic: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

@KilloWertz Edelgard is a great character, but she has the worst route in terms of how satisfying the storytelling is, IMO. Which is a shame, since Black Eagles has the best dramatic potential of any of the routes in the game.

Don't get me wrong: it's still a good time. All the routes in this game are worth playing (not sure about the DLC one, though, since I never got it).

Out of interest, are you more of a docked or handheld player when it comes to your Switch?

@Ryu_Niiyama At least the romance stuff was basically non-existent until the very end of a route. Otherwise, supports just felt like they were developing character interactions, which I liked. It's interesting how the only FE game where my avatar has been an actual character with their own defined personality to date has been Three Hopes. Joycon Hair in Engage seems like another blank slate protagonist, unfortunately.

Yeah, I don't mind not being able to date all the guys. Not everyone is bi. I just wish there was parity. I feel like lesbians had a few good options in terms of endgame character romances, whereas the same wasn't true for gay dudes. Still better than the approach Fates took, where same sex options were limited to, respectively, a yandere and a sadist.

It'll be interesting to see how they approach the romance angle in Engage.

@Pizzamorg Difficulty balancing was one of my biggest issues with Three Houses. The best solution I found was to play on Hard mode and then keep my characters a bit underleveled, which helped a lot in the second half of the game. I quickly discovered a Maddening playthrough wasn't happening, though. It's almost comical how extreme the difficulty of Three Houses was on that setting.

Social stuff probably won't be as prominent in Engage as it was in Three Houses, but it bothers me how poorly integrated it looks in comparison. The structure of Three Houses makes the social gameplay fit so well with the SRPG aspects. And it's so fleshed out that the game ends up feeling much more like an RPG than a tactics game. In Engage, it just looks like you have some magical resort in the sky, which I feel won't fit great with a fantasy setting with any sort of gravity to it. Whereas the post-timeskip Monastery, while a bit empty and boring at that point, did a great job of communicating how much was lost when Edelgard declares war on the church and plunges the entire region into chaos.

I'll play this new one at some point and probably enjoy it, but I really, really hope the next game is a return to a darker, more grounded fantasy setting. Three Houses felt like the perfect mixture of the increased social elements of the newer games with the drama of the older ones, and now Engage just looks like a repeat of Fates in some respects.

@Ralizah

Seriously though, I can't really criticize you too much as I've only played roughly 5 hours of the game. I will say that if I was playing the game regularly like I originally planned many months ago, I would still stick with the Black Flags as that was my route of choice before I bought the game.

I was a docked player, and would still be if I was using my Switch regularly like originally intended, but now I'm a handheld player. Handheld as in using the kickstand and a Pro controller as I don't like the joy-cons. I got tired of flip flopping the HDMI cable between it and my Series X.

Got the game as a Christmas present, and will be playing it, first fire emblem game lets gooo!

Enjoy! What House did you pick?

Can you adjust difficulty on the fly in Three Houses? Because I find the front end of the game not especially hard, necessarily, but when you are using generic equipment and base classes it is certainly much harder than it becomes. Maybe I should play the front end on normal and then the back end on hard if they let me?

But yeah, I will agree, that in Three Houses the monastery has a clear place within the wider game and is woven into the story etc, I wonder how they’ll do that with Engage, or whether they’ll even bother. But like I say, I just wanted to do battles, I’m not interested in making friends by going fishing and then cooking them dinner and I didn’t like that it felt like I was somehow gimping myself by not doing this stuff. If they take a more Normandy approach (Mass Effect) where you return to your base just to hang out with characters, and learn more about them, but it doesn’t affect their progression and you aren’t limited to one or two interactions each trip, then I’ll probably enjoy it a lot more.

@Pizzamorg It was called crow house a believe, I loved the characters there, tbh it was a tight battle between the, or lion, I loved the characters there too! I only got to the part with the mock battle, and got told of my first mission. Quick question, I know these games have perma death but that even goes for the students? There’s only so many in my class, or do they just get injured, and the other units get killed?

To soften the blow of the permadeath, you do gain Divine Pulse - the ability to rewind time during battles - so it's possible to undo the actions that led to a character's death. This has a limited number of uses though, so you can't just cheese your way through battles with it.

There's also a casual mode where you only lose a character for the remainder of the battle and regain them afterwards.

Between those options, it's much easier to get your entire character roster through to the final battle and that's just as well as you'll be investing a lot more time into training them than previous games in the series.

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Ah, so the lords being the house leaders and you, don’t die, but the other students do, that sucks, I know I picked the mode lol, but I don’t think I could stand see some of them die, I love the whole squad!

@Matt_Barber so as long as I play the game smart I can keep everyone alive, so if I stock up on items and train em right everything should be good.

Like heck I’m letting any of them die, if someone dies and I’m out of rewinds in so starting over, there too important to leave dead.

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Thanks for the tips! I couldn’t imagine letting them die.

Yeah I believe even if you play on casual mode, you can make choices outside of battles which get people killed.

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Only the important units, aka, my students.

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika oh the knights right? Idk I’m not that far into the game yet, I just learned what battalions do. Btw do you equip those before or during the battle? Ima try not to get to attached, I learned that the hard way in xcom, which is another game I need to try and beat someday, Sigh

Oh btw why is the text so small on this game lmao

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika OoooH, Alright! Thanks!

Felix arguably works better without a battalion in the early game, although the bonuses improve later on to the extent that even he will want one.

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Oh do those fights do something? Is it free exp?

Ok call me and noob,, because I am, I have no idea who any of my students skills are, I’m gonna check them tho.

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika oh yeah I forgot about riding, I kinda want to train someone with it, is it good? Also are bow and arrows good because with everyone on my team the my bow gets wrecked more often then not, my axe and swordies do all the good work!

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Ah, thank you so much! I’m starting to get it know, that purple hair woman is one of my favorites and she is so squishy, I find me needing to be vary careful.

I also gotta figure out what all the stats mean and do. Again thank you so much, it’s so helpful!

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika I think I want to build up dexterity and speed, thank you so much! And trust me, she too precious to die! I will never! She’s my favorite!

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Really! I forgot they had a dlc, is it a prequel?

@Snatcher Eh, it mostly gets you a couple of new units, classes and supports and it takes place during the first half of the story, you select it separately from the main menu rather than loading one of your saves.

The side story isn't that great to be honest. It's just seven missions long, without any branching paths, and a few of the maps are recycled too. It's not like Fates where you were getting full sized games.

You get extra characters, classes, and side missions that you'll probably get a lot of use out of if you're intending to play the game through all four paths though, and that's where the value was for me.

Oh, and there are a bunch of cosmetics too if you're into that stuff.