Topic: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

@Dezzy No I don't agree with that at all. I love both Pokemon and Fire Emblem and don't think that, just because they don't meet the BotW/Xenoblade standard that they shouldn't have done what they did. Both games have provided millions of people with dozens or hundreds of hours of entertainment and that's what games are made to do.

I wont have a problem with it unless the release a new game in the future that doesn't improve on what they have already done. Pokemon at least has already shown progress in that the DLC is slated to be entirely "wild area style" apparently. Both FE3H and Pokemon, limited though they may be compared to other games, show massive improvements over their predecessors. I know there are plenty of haters who just refuse to agree with this idea for Pokemon, but I've had that discussion a thousand times already and they haven't dissuaded me.

Both Xenoblade and BotW are exceptional games at the top of the mountain, but there is room for games in the middle too.

@Heavyarms55

Well I don't think either of them DOES show improvements, that's the problem. Both are essentially 3DS games that are just being rendered at higher resolution.

And yeah I'm fine with them having games of lower budgets, like AA instead of AAA. I just don't think it should be some of their most popular series. Pokemon especially, given that it's pretty much the best-selling series in the world, has no excuse for not being the most graphically advanced.

@Dezzy Well I strongly disagree, but I don't want to turn this thread into the same conversation that's happened about 39,296 times on this site already. So I'm just gonna stop.

The best solution to some of the dodgy map graphics is to just play the game in handheld mode. It's far less noticeable. It's also a type of game I can easily play while on my exercise bike, so that's what I'm gonna do from now on.

Three Houses isn't the prettiest game ever made, but between the enormous scale of the game (especially when you consider the four different story routes), the fact that virtually all of the dialogue in this game is fully-voiced (despite there being a ton of dialogue), the gorgeous OST, and the much more fleshed out character interactions, I think it's pretty clear they went all out with this entry otherwise. It's nothing like the 3DS games.

Pokemon Sw/Sh... eh.

@Ralizah

I think you're shortchanging the 3DS games a bit. All 3 of them had amazing soundtracks. Oh and Echoes was fully voiced.

This does seem to be a slightly larger game overall though, I'll give them that!

Do we actually know what the upcoming DLC contains? Like how many new missions/maps?
I really hope the explorable new area is connected up to the monastery so you can access it in-game. I noticed there's a character near your bedroom who talks about the underground. I assume he was put there to foreshadow this DLC.

@Ralizah It is a huge game, but holy is it repetitive. I normally replay fire emblem games several times, but I couldn't even do all the paths in this game. I did 3 out of 4 so far, but I get so bored with the school stuff. Tried to start the yellow path this week, but didn't get very far since I just want to play fie emblem, not the sims.

@komodo182 It was a given that people who wanted the series to stick with the 'cutscene - battle - cutscene - battle' formula weren't going to be happy with the 3D exploration and drastically fleshed out social mechanics of TH, but I think it's a fantastic change. Probably the second biggest change I've seen an established Nintendo franchise go through after Breath of the Wild.

I'll admit it loses the snappiness, but it also feels like a full on JRPG now.

Well to be fair, the last 2 3DS games both departed from that formula too!

They still haven't done the formula I'd ideally like to see. That would be the world map like in the 3DS games, combined with explorable areas that unlock along the way. So if you get to a new village on the map, you can then explore it. And those villages would have missions and puzzles associated with them.

The last 2 games have annoyingly got close to this formula but not quite how I'd like it. Echoes had the explorable locations that unlock at certain points on the map, but they were only dungeons and not towns. Whereas Three Houses it's just the 1 set location, which means you don't really get that joy of exploration of finding a new location spontaneously.

@Ralizah It was fine once, but doing the same "school" stuff each playthrough gets a bit boring. I'm very happy that a fe game made it to the console again, but I just found it a slow paced game overall. I would have rathered one playthrough, bouncing back and forth between the different sides. It felt like someone giving a 20 minute presentation with only 10 minutes of awesome material, so they just kept repeating themselves, just in a slightly different way.

@Dezzy Awakening was most definitely an evolution of the formula. One so drastic it saved the series, in fact.

Fates was a mess and had an identity problem. It's clear the devs wanted to explore new ideas, but were hesitant to stray too far from what made Awakening such a breakout hit. The best thing about it, imo, is that the messy approach to having multiple versions of the same game could be considered a dry run for TH's much more organic approach to a splintered narrative.

@komodo182 That's fair. It's absolutely a slower-paced game, and I imagine that doing multiple runs in short succession would lead to some tedium. Primarily early on, when the game is basically the same between routes (apart from a few moderately different plot beats and changed dialogue in the monastery).

@Dezzy I love 3 Houses....but I feel like the second half of the game would have benefitted from a explorable location change or DRASTICALLY different Monastery after the timeskip.

@Heavyarms55 I think a lot of your criticism of the graphics could prob get tossed at Koei Tecmo, who did the lion's share of the dev of this game for Intelligent Systems.

Which path unlocks the full version of The Edge of Dawn? The short version is present in Music Library before the game is started but I heard the full version for the first time via Smash so I figured the full version was exclusive to one or more of the paths I haven't played (currently only done Golden Deer).

I checked the UK trailer for the Cindered Shadows DLC and it showed release date of February 13th so as the US trailer shows February 12th you're looking at a situation where it comes out around February 13th 1am UK time/February 12th 8pm eastern time/February 12th 5pm pacific time, etc.

Figured I mention this so you're not wondering where the DLC is during the day on the 12th.

Instead of just 1 big explorable areas, I would've massively preferred like 3 or 4 smaller towns that your party moves between throughout the story. That would've been great.

@Dezzy It would have been less repetitive

I do think the monastery should have been drastically altered after the timeskip. It's sort of a ghost town.

Does anyone know anything about the upcoming DLC? All the trailer really said was a new hub area and 4 new characters.

Is it supposed to be an entirely new house for the main campaign? Or is it just a series of new missions that goes alongside the main campaign?

@Dezzy Side story available from the main menu separate from your main save files (kind of like Torna). Apparently once you complete it you can recruit the 4 characters in your main save files.