Fire Emblem: Three Houses first impressions!

In just two days (at the time of writing), we will be getting a new Fire Emblem game for the Nintendo Switch, titled Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I've always had a soft spot for the series, and I've been playing through Fire Emblem: Echoes in preparation for this game. But one would think I would've mentioned Three Houses sooner, considering how much I adore the rest of the franchise.

So we're talking about the game before it releases. Which is always a good idea, just to see how well the post ages. But anyway, for the uninformed, Fire Emblem is a series of strategy-role playing games dating back to the early 90's that has enjoyed a resurgence in publicity thanks to, amongst other things, a surprisingly successful mobile app spin-off known as Fire Emblem: Heroes. But alas, Fire Emblem has also recently become the Star Wars of video games. Even though both franchises are huge, especially nowadays, the fandoms for each series can't agree on ANYTHING. Part of the problem stems from the fact that whichever installment you check out first will forever alter your expectations for what every other installment should be like, with few exceptions. For example, as someone who started with the Prequel trilogy, I will be the first to admit that it has plenty of flaws and issues, but the prequels are still an enjoyable experience. Personally, my favorite Star Wars film is Star Wars: Rogue One, because no matter how nitpicky I get I cannot bring myself to dislike that film, and I personally feel that Rogue One is the best Disney-Era Star Wars film. And almost the same thing happened with Fire Emblem. My first game was Fire Emblem: Awakening, but I will admit that game has plenty of issues (Pair-Up was comically overpowered, the story kind of falls apart in the final act, the fact that Tharja exists, etc.), but it's still worth playing if you haven't because the things Awakening did well (deliver a cast of lovable characters, an AMAZING soundtrack, the ability to min/max every single party member to your heart's content, and the first two acts more than making up for a lackluster finale) made it a worthwhile experience. 

But the real reason I make the comparison to Star Wars is because of one simple thing. There was an entry in both franchises' lineup that forever split the fandoms of both in half. For Star Wars, it was Last Jedi, with some praising it for it's subversive nature and great setpieces, with others hating it due to some very FORCE-d plot conveniences and beloved icons like Luke Skywalker acting extremely out of character just for the plot to make sense. I enjoyed the film myself, but on repeated viewings the flaws became more and more glaring, and if I was to re-rate the film on my scale that I do at the end of every review, I would lower it's 8/10 rating to a 5/10. I don't hate the film, for all you Last Jedi fans out there, I just think it's average. Like it doesn't do anything particularly offensive, and the actors do their best given what they have to work with, but the story writing drags the experience down for me. But Fire Emblem's "Last Jedi" entry is Fire Emblem Fates, which some praised for it's excellent gameplay, presentation, and soundtrack but lambasted for it's bad story writing and characters behaving in bizarre and unrealistic ways (given what we know about those characters) just so that the plot makes sense. It's literally the exact same issue. The only difference is that Last Jedi is a film and Fates is a video game.

But what about Fire Emblem: Three Houses? First of all, part of me wishes the English title of the game was "Three Kingdoms" instead of "Three Houses". I just think it fits better with what we know of the story for this game, and it also sounds cooler. But then again, calling it "Three Kingdoms" might attract some unwanted attention from Koei Tecmo, who built an entire franchise of beat-em-up games around a simple video game adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a very old Chinese novel about the consequences of warfare. So I guess it makes sense why they went with "Three Houses" instead. That said, the Japanese title of the game (Fire Emblem: Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon) is a quote from a poem about nature and while poem quotes are not marketable in the West in the slightest, it still would've been a cooler sounding title had they just translated the Japanese title But hey, the title could have been worse. It could have been like every JRPG ever and just be a bunch of random words thrown together in a vain attempt to make a catchy title. At least the title here makes sense.

On a more serious note, the game looks great. I can already tell the story will be better than Fates, and that's for one simple reason. They went out of their way to specify the name of the continent, and kept up a steady flow of background lore and worldbuilding. Seriously, the game isn't even out yet and we've already learned more or less how the world of this game operates, between the three political superpowers, a mysterious religion called the Church of Seiros making sure the three main countries don't tear each other apart, an equally mysterious set of magic Crests that grant their owners special abilities, and more. One of Fates' biggest problems was it's world existed inside of a vacuum. The main plot was about two kingdoms at war with each other, and the protagonist being a child of two worlds and had to choose which kingdom to support, but not only was Fates the only game to not give the continent as a whole a name (something the previous games did), but the only forms of civilization we see were the two warring kingdoms (and some very small unaligned villages), making the world seem smaller and more detached. Now, they don't need to go full Lord of the Rings on us and have every town, city, man and child have a rich, detailed history, but they do need to step up their worldbuilding game in order to make the world feel more alive. Oh, and there is going to be a five-year Time Skip halfway through the adventure, and what's impressive is how each and every party member will get redesigns once the Time Skip happens to show how the characters have aged. This isn't a spoiler, by the way, since they showed the Time Skip off in a trailer, and discussed it in full detail during an official demo presentation. Apparently the entire first act of the game is spent preparing for the Time Skip, which is when the game will take you off the leash and really begin opening up to the player.

On the subject of storytelling, let's talk about the main characters! Or at least what we know of them. First up, Byleth (pictured above), the main protagonist, or rather, the game's Point of View character, since as far as we can tell, the story isn't really about Byleth. He's just along for the ride, and I like that he isn't the star of the show, so to speak. Anyway, the story behind Byleth is that he (or she, should you choose to play as a female) is a wandering mercenary hired by the Church of Seiros to work at a military academy as a professor, teaching the next generation of potential warriors how to survive deadly situations and secure victory on the battlefield. First off, I like how his default expression is just a perpetual state of what is either stoicism at best, or boredom and tiredness at worst. Secondly, I like his design. He's got a black knight motif going on, and black knights are some of my favorite fantasy archetypes, so I approve of Byleth's design. Or at least, the male version of Byleth.

Byleth is somewhat customizable, and I have a few gripes about Female!Byleth's design. Namely, what is up with her leggings? They have some kind of crazy flower pattern on it, and by itself it might've looked neat, but it clashes with the rest of the outfit a bit too much. I personally think the leggings would look better if they toned down the patterning or even removed the patterns and made the leggings solid black. I've seen some folks gripe about Female!Byleth's eyes being too big, but I don't really mind, and frankly the only thing that actively bothers me about Female!Byleth's design are her leggings. Like the rest of the design is fine, and from the waist up it looks just as good as the male counterpart. But the moment you see those crazy flower-pattern leggings, it's just... Why? It just doesn't look good. At all. Just be glad that Byleth's outfit for both genders changes depending on his/her class, so hopefully there's a class with a nicer looking outfit.

But now let's talk about Edelgard, the up-and-coming empress with an attitude, as well as one of the three REAL protagonists. She's proven to be quite the fan-favorite, from her classy design to being implied to be the most morally ambiguous Fire Emblem protagonist yet. She's an empress, which are typically associated with villainy, and her bio frequently mentions her unyielding ambition, and how she will stop at nothing until she gets what she wants, which are pretty villainous qualities. But she's a playable character and basically serves as the game's mascot, since out of the main heroes she appears most frequently in promotional material, so they can't just make her COMPLETELY evil. And that might be really interesting. The Fire Emblem series has used moral ambiguity as a major plot device for it's heroes and villains in the past but hasn't really done so recently, so it'd be nice to see how they handle it here. Assuming of course she even is morally ambiguous at all. Who knows?she might actually be a total sweetheart who wouldn't hurt a fly. But the fact she insults the other two kingdoms right in front of their respective leaders even BEFORE things inevitably go wrong and the aforementioned bio make me believe we may see a Fire Emblem protagonist with a dark side for once. Oh, and her weapon of choice is a battle-axe, which means she's the first female Fire Emblem protagonist to use such a weapon (Eirika and Lucina use swords, Micaiah uses magic spells). 

Next protagonist we gotta talk about is Dimitri. First off, he gets bonus points from me, because his weapon of choice is a spear, and I'm a sucker for spears. Don't ask why I love spears, there's just something weirdly elegant about long wooden staves with spiky bits at the end. But on a more serious note, Dimitri is described as honorable and polite, and is the living embodiment of chivalry and just generally a nice guy. That doesn't mean he doesn't have some skeletons in his closet, as his bio mentions he carries a dark burden on his shoulders, and his post-Time Skip design has him wearing an eye-patch and having his hair grow long, greasy, and unkempt, and his whole attitude switches from "chivalrous nice guy" to "Vengeful Sociopath". I really want to know just what on Earth happened to this guy to cause such a dramatic change in not just appearance but even personality and morals. That, or his "KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!!!" line was (somehow) taken out-of-context and he's still a nice guy even after the Timeskip. Not sure how it would be out-of-context but the possibility is still there. Or maybe he put on an eyepatch and grew his hair out because it looked cool. Either way, Dimitri has by far the coolest design post-Time Skip, even if it's a little on the edgy side.

But now it's time to talk about my favorite character (so far), Claude. Funny story about Claude. Back when the reveal trailer dropped a year ago I thought that Claude was a woman because of his softer facial features and hairstyle. Then I heard his English voice and yes, Claude is indeed a dude. So... Whoops. But I still adore this guy. He's a happy-go-lucky trickster hero who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty to secure victory. Additionally, if the Time Skip trailer is of any indication, he also preaches about the power of FRIENDSHIP. Also, the upside-down Claude meme is hilarious. But anyway, his weapon of choice is the bow, and the only medieval weapon I love more than spears, are bows (also, no other protagonist in the series uses a bow as their primary weapon, so yay, series first!). Which when combined with his charisma and laid-back attitude makes him really interesting to me.

But why am I talking about the main protagonists now? Simple! The main selling point of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that the game has multiple story campaigns, depending on which of the titular Three Houses you choose to teach at the beginning of the game. Basically, you know how Severus Snape is Headmaster of the Slytherin House from Harry Potter while Minerva McGonagall is Headmaster of Gryffindor House? The Three Houses are just as the analogy implies, school houses. And Byleth becomes Headmaster of whichever house you choose. Now the real question is, can you dock points if the students wander the campus during curfew? Can you reward points to your students when they do impressive stuff? Are points even kept track of? But I swear, if I can dock points from a student's House for breaking the rules, or reward points when the students do something amazing, Three Houses automatically becomes my personal Game of the Year.

So take your pick! Your choices are future empress with an attitude who may or may not be evil, nice guy prince who may or may not go insane once the Time Skip hits, and playful and goofy archer. There's a whole lot more to it than that, obviously, because the three school houses also represent the three countries that rule the continent of Fodlan. So by teaching a certain house, you're also pledging your loyalty to one specific country. For example, Edelgarde's house, the Black Eagles, hails from the Empire of Adrestria, which appears to have a strict class system, considering that almost every student in this house is of noble descent. Dimitri's house is the Blue Lions, which represent the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, which take chivalry and honor VERY seriously compared to the other countries. And finally we have the Leicester (pronounced "Lester") Alliance. Also known as Claude's homeland. Which makes it the best one. In all seriousness, the Leicester Alliance is formed of a mix of commoners and noblemen (and noblewomen), and they serve no king nor emperor. Instead the country is ruled by a band of mostly independent families (Claude is the grandson of one of these families, by the way), that band together in times of need. 

But the most important thing to consider when choosing which campaign to do, is the party members. Because each house comes with a completely different set of characters for you to use in battle. The team pictured above is Dimitri's team, the Blue Lions. "But wait!" the veteran players cry. "That's only eight characters! That's way too small for the average Fire Emblem game!" and to that I say... Yes. you are right. You can remedy the problem yourself, however, because certain students from opposing will straight up leave their own house and join yours if you meet certain criteria. I'm not too sure how I feel about that design choice. On the one hand, from a gameplay perspective it's great, and it lets you flesh out your team and try all sorts of crazy combinations. But I don't know, the fact that the students can just change house right in the middle of a school year bothers me from a story perspective. Now I would imagine that Intelligent Systems would put a restriction on what you can get away with when recruiting students from other houses. Like imagine if Byleth could recruit every student from every house in one playthrough. That would be broken on so many levels. Unless they made it so students from opposing houses are class-locked or otherwise are nowhere near as customizable as the students you start with. Oh, and Battalions exist.

 Battalions are large groups of generic, nameless soldiers that can be hired in between missions to accompany Byleth or any of his/her students into battle, raising their stats and even granting some unique abilities. So if you want to count Battalions as party members, that means that Three Houses technically allows for the largest party in the series, since you're controlling an army of dozens, possibly hundreds, of soldiers at once. I really like the idea of Battalions, by the way. Like even if they didn't have a gameplay mechanic attached to them, just the fact that you have an actual army and during combat animations you can see your generic soldiers and the enemies' soldiers fighting each other in the background is amazing. Like all of the Fire Emblem games implied you were leading a large army and that the named party members were just the elite squad within that army, but now it's shown in full force.

But which House am I rolling with? All of them. I'm 100% completing this game, and there's not a thing you can do to stop me. But for a first playthrough? It's tough, I really like the Blue Lions and I really want to know what on Earth happens to Dimitri post-Time Skip. But Claude is so charming and the Golden Deer cast seems to be the most versatile of the bunch. And then there's the fact that Black Eagles apparently specializes in magic, and magic in Fire Emblem is consistently fun to use. It was fun in Awakening, it was fun in Echoes, and it will probably be fun here. But at the same time I kind of don't want to go with Black Eagles for a first run, simply because that's the most popular house at the moment in addition to the one with the most screen-time in promotional material, so I kind of want to go with the other two houses to give them a day in the spotlight.

But on the subject of characters, I really like the character designs for most of the cast. The only one I genuinely dislike is Hubert, one of the Black Eagles party members (pictured above, to the far right). He looks a little bit too much like a male version of Tharja, and his bio describes his personality as being loyal to Edelgard almost to a fault (to the point that "Things that irritate Edelgard" is among his list of dislikes), which brings back bad memories of Tharja's obsession with Robin. But hey, Hubert seems to be a more subdued version of Tharja, personality wise, so maybe he will be at least tolerable. But there is one supporting character I have to mention...

Thank goodness for Japanese captions, now I have no idea
what he's saying!

Lorenz. This man has become an internet sensation the moment he was revealed. Why? His ridiculous hairstyle and snobbish mannerisms make for great meme fuel. While I personally am not the biggest fan of his design at the moment, we have seen his post-Time Skip design in a screenshot and it's a massive improvement. Don't get me wrong, he still looks like a dopey nerd trying too hard to be a casanova. But at least his hair doesn't look like a helmet anymore. So that's a plus.

Anyways, the gameplay looks good, the Battalion mechanic might be interesting to experiment with, and the min-maxing potential of this game is frankly absurd. Like, almost any party member can become almost any class, and every student has a unique passive ability that turns a major aspect of their personality into a game mechanic. Like Linhardt, the lazy super-genius from the Black Eagles, has a passive skill called Doze Off, which lets him heal 10% of his health if he doesn't move or attack. Stoic Samurai dude Felix has Solitary Wolf, which let's him automatically add an additional five hit points worth of damage to every attack, but only if he's by himself. Perpetually shy girl Bernadetta has Anxiety, which gives her a large boost to her Attack stat if her health falls below a certain threshold. Yes, she gets so scared for her life she somehow becomes a more dangerous fighter. These are just some examples I can think of off the top of my head.

You can train your students to become any class, but keep in mind
some characters have better synergy with certain roles than
others.

Oh, and side note. I like how weapon durability is being handled this time around. In older games, using a weapon too many times caused it to break, destroying it forever and forcing the player to find a replacement. In Echoes and Fates, weapons had infinite durability but were balanced by having unique properties. In the case of Echoes, each weapon had a set of Combat Arts, extra fancy special attacks that drained the user's health when used, and I loved Combat Arts a lot in that game, since it added a layer of complexity to battle and I just like using fancy special attacks in general. In Fates, each tier of weapon (Bronze, Steel, Silver, etc.) would modify the owners' stats, raising and lowering accordingly. That system had the side effect of making Silver-tier weapons not really worth using because the stat penalties they inflicted on yourself would often outweigh the boosts you got from those weapons, which resulted in an awkward situation where Steel-tier and even Bronze-tier weapons had more viability than Silver-tier weapons, despite the fact that Silver weapons are supposed to be the best weapons available (not including personal weapons, such as Xander's greatsword or Takumi's bow, both of which are intentionally designed to be ludicrously powerful). But in Three Houses, durability is back, but when a weapon's durability runs out it isn't destroyed and can still be used, but it's stats drop like a brick. Because if you are using a broken weapon, you're basically beating the enemy over the head with a wooden stick rather than slicing them to ribbons with a fancy sword. Anyway, there's a smithy on the academy grounds you can go to buy new weapons or repair ones you already have.

And it's a good thing you can repair weapons between battles because guess what, cupcakes? Byleth's personal weapon, the Sword of the Creator, has limited durability. Now I personally feel like personal weapons shouldn't have durability, since it makes them too impractical to use. But thanks to how the new durability system works, it makes it so you can use personal weapons whenever you so desire without worrying that you've wasted one of its uses on a common thug. Also I really like the design of the Sword of the Creator. It looks really cool.

The game also has a time management system, similar to X-COM
or Persona.

But overall, I'm excited for Three Houses and it's currently my most anticipated game of 2019. Yes, I'm more hyped for a Fire Emblem game than a Pokemon game (sorry Sword & Shield fans). What has this world come to? I mean, yeah Astral Chain and Daemon Ex Machina look cool, but there isn't enough info on those games for me to talk about. But anyway, are you excited for this game? Did you know what Fire Emblem even was prior to reading this post? If you plan on picking this game up which campaign are you doing first? Let me know with a comment or something.