Topic: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

@Quarth How did you like the Blue Eagles? I honestly don't like Dimitri at all. It's no secret that I'm a big Edelgard fan and paticularly ship female Byleth and Edelgard, and I also rather like Claude.

On the other hand, in both my Black Eagles and Golden Deer runs, I've recruited several Blue Eagle characters. In particular I really like Ingrid. I always make her my Valkaryie, my unstoppable Falcon knight!

@komodo182 Yeah, that's why I'm pausing. Feels like it will become too repetitive in the long run.

@Heavyarms55 As I understand, Edelgard's story is the most interesting, so I think I will go with that one in my next playthrough.

I can understand why people don't like Dimitri, but I thought his character underwent some interesting changes and I can somewhat sympathize with his motivations and actions. But I like some of the other characters more. Ingrid is badass and was one of my best fighters, made her a Falcon Knight. I like Felix, great fighter and strangely enough a voice of reason when Dimitri went mad. Annette is my second favorite after the recruited Bernadetta, made her a powerful mage and also male Byleth's wife. I also like Ashe, he was great as an archer, I believe he was a Sniper at the end. And while Mercedes was kinda bland, I had great use of her as a healer on the battlefield. The rest of the Blue Lions cast I didn't care that much about.

I didn't recruit that many. Here are the ones I got to my team:
Bernadetta
Dorothea
Ignatz
Seteth
Alois
Catherine
Gilbert
Shamir
Flayn
Hanneman
Manuela
Cyril

I wanted Petra in my team, but sadly never got the chance.

@Quarth Bernadetta is an absolute gem! I really love her! Such a tragic story and she overcomes it very well! I am glad I played through a route with her before they toned down her story. While I can understand that it made some people uncomfortable, personally I felt it made the story all the better. Bad things like that happen and it makes overcoming them all the more gratifying and joyous! I really liked Mercedes' interactions with Sylvain. I felt like she really helped him and it exemplified Mercedes' compassion and caring nature.

Almost by accident I got Ashe and Felix in my Golden Deer run. I made Ashe into a thief but he just felt like a weaker less interesting Petra. Felix on the other hand lives up to his battle loving attitude and shocked me with how strong he is.

Petra is awesome. I really like her interactions with basically everyone. But especially with Dorothea and Hubert. There's a lot of fans who pair her with Dorothea even though she can't swing that way in game. I honestly find it pretty entertaining. In my BE run I paired her with Hubert and it was real nice.

@Heavyarms55 My next playthrough I will go with The Black Eagles, so that I could have Petra from the start. She seems really interesting.

Hubert is a weird character, but I guess he becomes more nuanced in the BE storyline.

@Snaplocket Spoilers, man, spoilers!

@Snaplocket agreed

It's nice to see the fish will finally serve a purpose now.

Question for everyone: it's not uncommon for me to fight a few battles in these games and then find that I'm suddenly overloaded with 30 minutes or so of support conversations. I don't mind listening to them, but I'd prefer to space them out a bit between battles. If I don't listen to a support conversation between characters right away and gain the higher support level, will I still gain support points between them when using them together? I don't want support points to go to waste because I have a backlog of support conversations, basically.

@Ralizah
Excellent question. I'm interested in the answer, as well. I would hope the points continue to accrue, but technically you don't get the support level-up message until after the dialogues so... maybe not?

@Snaplocket I love Three Houses, but the game is significantly visually unpolished and, unless you're playing on Maddening difficulty, it's the easiest game in the series. I can understand how it could underwhelm someone.

@Ralizah And fairly repetitive. I had to stop playing (even though I wanted to do all the pathways) just because I didn't want to do the early chapters again.

I've gotten to part 1 chapter 9 and the main issues I've found so far were too slow pace very early on (the pace feels better when you only need to explore the monastery once a month) and the framerate in the monastery is very rough.

@komodo182
I LOVE this game and have like 70 hours in it or something, but I agree with the repetitive-ness. But... I mean, reasonably, how can they avoid that for a strategy rpg? I've been playing this genre since FF Tactics on PS1 decades ago, and the trick with strategy rpg is to make sure your menus/maps/battle options/enemy ai and variety/etc. are varied and have satisfying gameplay loops that keep you coming back for more. It's not like an action game where you can throw in a couple vehicle levels or something to switch up gameplay. I don't know. I'm wish you, but I think they did pretty much as solid a job as they could perfecting the gameplay loop.

@rallydefault Talk to me when your like 145 hours in haha. They could make it so you could fast track through the first like 10 chapters in each pathway if you want. I'm on my 4th path.

@rallydefault oops. Turns out I'm 175 hours in.

@komodo182
I will, don't worry. But don't you see what I'm saying? Go back to any strategy rpg, especially the early ones. Some of those first ones like Tactics didn't even have overworlds or bases like Three Houses, Disgaea 5, even SOCOM, but we happily put 100s of hours into those early games.

That's what I'm saying. The fundamentals of this game are solid, incredibly solid. We're going to get burned out on certain missions, sure, and those are gonna probably be the early ones, but that's like...always the case with games like these. I'm just trying to keep our judgments in check.

(And not to get too meta... but isn't that kind of the case with any linear game? You have to replay the first stages any time you boot up a new file. As long as the gameplay loop is satisfying, though, it remains fun. I can replay the Deku Tree in Ocarina hundreds of times, but since Link is so much fun to control, I don't hate it.)

@rallydefault Its fine if the gameplay loop is satisfying. But on my 4th playthrough I just couldn't take doing it anymore. Especially with the base. I feel the base made it worse for me.

I did enjoy FE3H, but overall its not my favorite fire emblem game. I've spent more time in awakening, path of radiance and radiant dawn (doing the same thing basically), but was less annoyed with the repetitiveness.

@komodo182
Gotcha. I get sick of going back to the monastery, too. It's a little much with all the conversations and stuff. I think they nailed the gameplay feel though (as much as a menu-based game can "feel" lol); I don't mind playing the first missions over and over again. Then again, I've always loved the beginnings of RPGs before things get too complicated.

@rallydefault The monastery just seems like busy work to me so the game is "longer". The actual rpg elements of the game I enjoy. Obviously, I liked the game since I spent over 175 hours in it so far.

Yep I agree

With certifications, is the percentage given really the chance of passing or is it actually that everything under 100% is a guaranteed fail?