DISCLAIMER: I compare this game favourably to Fates a number of times throughout this review. Since Fates is the controversial entry/ dead horse of the franchise, I want to say ahead that I enjoy its gameplay, so please don’t think I utterly despise it.

My Fire Emblem “credentials”: I’ve played every English entry in the franchise minus Shadow Dragon but including Binding Blade. If not playing the Jugdral or Marth games invalidates my opinion for you, I’m sorry but at least I told you now and not after you finished reading this! As for Three Houses, I’ve played it four times, twice as male and twice as female Byleth and have clocked in over 300 hours.

(EDIT: My spoiler-filled thoughts are now available here!)

Introduction

As every English teacher will tell you, analogies are incredibly useful, so let me start with two Zelda comparisons. Remember how angry everyone got when Breath of the Wild was delayed not once but twice, then when the game was finally shown off at E3 people lost their minds at how much detail was in it? I myself distinctly remember seeing how fire could spread in that game and thinking “the two year delay makes perfect sense now!”

Analogy two, also about BotW: do you also remember how it felt like the polar opposite of Skyward Sword, almost as though Nintendo were apologising for it? And how Skyward Sword was critically acclaimed but controversial among the fandom?

…I think you can see where I’m going with this. I was constantly blown away by the attention to detail in this game – something I’ll discuss further later – and an awful lot of the game’s features felt so opposite to Fates that I have to assume it was all intentional. I’ll discuss this…right now, actually.

Narrative

I know I should focus on the gameplay in a game review, but I like stories and this has quite a big one, so I’ll start here.

The World

We all joked when the game was revealed that its continent having a name already put it above Fates and Fateslandia, but the worldbuilding goes much, much deeper than that. Not only are the capital cities of each territory named, but several smaller locations are named as well, as well as individual forts, random regions and landmarks – and they’re all important! Especially in the second half of the game, where certain locations are and the routes between them becomes quite significant to the plot, even moreso than in entries past (as far as I’m aware from my experience with them). Even each month’s name gets explained!

The backstory is also fleshed out. One of the first places you can explore in the overworld is a library, but even the characters will refer to past events or current political climates in the continent across the main and side stories and it’s clear that all the major events in Fodlan’s history have been thought out and had at least a rough outline laid out for them when building the story. Just hearing characters mention event A or event B and how it affected them felt amazing and really made the world and its lore feel alive, as cliche as that phrase may be. I won’t state any specific examples of course, but know that anyone who likes worldbuilding will be in for a treat. I can’t think of any past Fire Emblem with nearly as much attention to detail put into it and with how much material they’ve given themselves to work with I wouldn’t be surprised if Intelligent Systems set the upcoming DLC in one of the past events mentioned in the game. But getting back on topic…

The Story

If you watched any of the trailers for this game you know that you get to pick one of three sets of students to teach and these constitute the three routes of the game. Where Fates gave you three completely different games based on your choices, Three Houses does something much subtler and (at least in my opinion) more interesting.

Again, I won’t spoil anything, but know that the game can be divided into two main “acts”. Act 1 is identical gameplay-wise between the three routes, but Intelligent Systems added replay value by changing the context of what you do in them instead of what you actually do. They do this both by adding wholly unique scenes with your respective house leader (Edelgard, Claude, Dimitri) between chapters and by having characters respond to different parts of the events that take place. An early game example:

While Edelgard is quick to point out that the problems occurring are due to society’s reliance on Crests, Claude is more interested in figuring out what Crests (and the associated special weapons) are.

As I said, this changes the feel of the chapters as, even though you’re mechanically doing the same thing across each route, you and the characters get different things out of it and thus the story curves in different directions.

“Act 2” is where the three routes really diverge. While there are some maps shared between them, the stories are completely different and many of the recurring maps have different objectives or start you in different positions, so they feel fresh regardless.

And when I say the stories are different, I really do mean it. While there are some details in common between the different routes, it really is quite interesting to see just how they diverge narratively, thematically (some stories are more emotional while others feel more “epic”) and mechanically. This also means that different things are revealed in different paths, but unlike Fates you don’t have to buy the alternate routes separately and the stories are interesting enough that you’ll want to replay this anyway. At least I think so!

Most impressive of all though is how this story makes conflict feel…well, feel like conflict. Part of this is that the characters have strategy meetings and military tactics throughout the story (again, while my knowledge may be limited, having such things discussed to this extent is a first out of the games I’ve played), but it’s mostly down to the stark change in tone as each route progresses. Seeing characters who used to joke around and enjoy being students become morose or serious or withdrawn really gets to you. Having to fight people you know or relate to also feels horrible – I went out of my way to recruit absolutely everyone in my second playthrough onward and I still felt pressured! Oh yeah, the moral ambiguity Fates was supposed to have? Three Houses has you covered and then some. I hope you like feeling terrible about your life choices!

I realise staying as vague as possible makes this section quite short for something meant to be story-centric, but let me pad it out with a small detail I noticed: events are consistent between different routes. Specifically, the same timeline of events occurs throughout every route, but the story changes based on how Byleth and the people with him/ her react to it.

Compare this to Fates, where choosing a path completely changed where certain characters appear later on (e.g. Shura) or what they did, and I really appreciated the adherence to continuity here. It makes the story feel more believable if Byleth’s actions realistically ripple out into the world at large instead of the extreme-butterfly effect from Fates…and also helps when you’re playing through your second or third route, as your prior knowledge is still applicable when piecing together events that occur off-screen for your current route!

Unlike me however, Three Houses isn’t afraid to trim the fat when writing stories. The different routes have a different number of maps, but this just means they tell their stories in different amounts of time and I respect them for staying true to their narratives instead of trying to shrink or stretch them out to achieve uniformity. Again, it helps that all the routes are on the same cartridge this time ’round.

The Characters

I understand discussing the cast of anything is even more subjective than a plot, but Fire Emblem is all about its cast so I thought it worth at least a mention.

First let me mention my personal experience with Fire Emblem casts so you can know if you’ll get anything out of this little tangent: until now, Sacred Stones had my favourite overall cast while Fates had my least, and I suspect this is because SS’ cast was relatively small, so each character had more attention put into building them up. This is the approach Three Houses took: each of the three Houses has nine students, with the staff and a few affiliates of the Monastery rounding out the cast. Having a cast half the size of Fates means each individual gets far more fleshed out, and because the number of supports has also been pared back (more on this later) each conversation between characters is also more informative about them than the swathe of them we got over in Fateslandia. While there are two or three I’m not the biggest fan of, I like everyone else here – which is the exact opposite of my experience with Fates!

Some of the side characters even get chances to shine in the main story too! As someone who assumed that only the main Lords would have any personal stakes in the central plot, I was pleasantly surprised to see characters I expected were just there to make up the numbers chip in, or have certain plot points directly impact them. This goes hand in hand with the incredible worldbuilding I mentioned earlier: if someone starts messing around in a character’s hometown, of course they’ll be vocal about it – whether they’re a side character or not!

This extends to the villains too (something else I think Sacred Stones nailed). Your direct antagonist changes depending on your route, but all of them have understandable motivations and make you feel terrible for having to defeat them. Even the villains who come across as moustache-twirling puppy-kickers come off as sympathetic once you learn more about them (though admittedly this is also one of the things only revealed in certain routes).

Finally, if you’re like me you’ve probably noticed that female Lords don’t really get much love in past entries. I’m happy to say that isn’t the case here – all three Lords stay relevant regardless of route. Even when they’re not onscreen, you still know that they’re active somewhere else or are otherwise having an impact on the story and it feels great!

Byleth

Fire Emblem has a…storied relationship, shall we say, with avatars, so I thought I’d give my two cents on this topic too. With the caveat that I dislike/ am indifferent to Corrin but like Robin (which has likely alienated half the people who didn’t already leave after the opening disclaimers), let me say that I really like Byleth. I’ll talk more about them later, but for now let me answer the big question when it comes to FE Avatars: does everyone pander to Byleth?

I don’t really think so. While it is odd that they’re such a good teacher from day one and Byleth is popular with students and faculty alike, I think the latter is fully justified. The main story, Supports and Paralogues alike all show that Byleth cares for their students and is always trying to help them and teaching is a gameplay mechanic – unless you’re trying for a challenge run where you kill off all your students, of course you’ll be doing your best to teach them! Even if you skip a classroom session, Byleth doesn’t refuse to teach anyone – Byleth just teaches them automatically.

Also, there are only two ways to recruit students from other Houses: excel in the subjects they value or raise your support level with them. In other words: you win people over by teaching them well or befriending them. Of course they’d think highly of you after that! Some Paralogues/ Supports also imply that Byleth teaches for other Houses too (possibly returning the favour for the other teachers’ Seminars?), so it makes sense that students would respect you even without being directly under your supervision.

In other words, Byleth is Baeleth. Or maybe I just wanted to make that pun. Probably a bit of both. Not gonna apologise though; Bael is another demon described in The Lesser Key of Solomon, just like Byleth. There’s a fun fact for ya!

So yeah: while Byleth is oddly multi-talented, I think the praise they get from their students is fully justified. I’m aware that this is subjective though and you may disagree with me. After all, I like Robin.

Studio Khara

People were dreading Studio Khara’s involvement after the choppy cutscenes they made for Echoes but I’m happy to say that, either because they were given more time/ money or a stronger system to work on, they redeemed themselves and then some. Their cutscenes look wonderful and flow smoothly, with the one or two times the framerate drops feeling more artistic than anything negative. While f!Byleth’s larger eyes look a bit off in one particular cutscene, I’m very happy with what they produced and would be happy to see them return for future installments.

Gameplay

Finally, the game review part of the game review!

The game is divided into two sections: battle and the Monastery, which acts as a hub world for you to wander around in between story missions:

Battle

Going back to BotW again, it feels Fire Emblem was also subject to the “rebuild from the ground up” philosophy Nintendo’s other franchises got with the launch of the Switch and as a result Three Houses’ mechanics feel like a “greatest hits” of features from old games (dismounting, Canto) on top of new features (like Battalions) and reimagined features. Even one of the new mechanics, Crests, seems inspired by the Holy Blood from Jugdral!

For example, Pair Up is completely gone, with the closest analog being the Adjutant System: you can only have a set number of Adjutants across your entire party and they can only perform one of three roles (Attack, Guard, Heal) determined by their class. Their effectiveness with these abilities also depends with their Support Rank with the character they’re paired with, so the result is a much more nuanced system and not just a case of “pair ALL the units!” I’m happy to say that Combat Arts from Echoes made it in too and now consume weapon durability instead of health (which makes sense if you think about it: if you’re hitting someone with a sword harder than normal, the sword is going to take more damage than you will).

Now that we’re back on consoles again, the maps are also much larger (without being the vast expanses of nothing from Echoes) with more terrain types and interesting designs, while Three Houses also comes with new QoL features like aggro lines from enemies to the ally they’ll hit on their next turn along with preliminary damage calculations. This is such a simple thing to add and slots into existing gameplay so well, I keep forgetting it isn’t in FEH when I go back to play that game!

And while I doubt this will see much use outside of challenge runs, the game introduces a new zoomed-in view that puts you in a life-size version of the map with realistically sized characters, buildings and more. The amount of detail they put into these maps and character models is insane! I passed by a stall in one of the outdoor maps, and was shocked to see that the stall even had rugs and vases for sale inside it. I was pretty blown away that they included something so small and I sincerely hope they keep this feature in future entries.

Monastery/ Non-Battle Elements

This half of the gameplay has also been rebuilt and also geared around the school aesthetic. For example, Class Changes are now exams that characters need to “study” for – either through Byleth teaching them or by practicing with the weapons/ movement types they need to change classes. To facilitate the extra effort however, once you unlock a class for a character they can change to and from it freely, which is useful as each comes with unique perks and even exclusive Skills in some cases. This means Master Classes aren’t always the end goal anymore; sometimes it’s useful to unlock one of them just to get some of its perks, then switch back to a lower class for its exclusive abilities. Because you can freely switch between them at will, levels are no longer reset when changing (if anything I think the level cap has been removed altogether: my characters passed Level 50 in one run, which is telling since every other game caps units at Level 20 or 40) too, to maximise experimentation. This makes Class Changing trickier to perform, but also much more rewarding and also more interesting, so I love it!

Supports

Supports are not at all what you’d expect from past entries and I adore the new style. I mentioned before that Supports were pared back and thus more informative about the characters, but that’s selling the changes short.

This time around, I think Intelligent Systems asked themselves “Does this pair of characters really need three conversations?” as now characters can have from 2 to 4 instead. Don’t think this is laziness on their part though: each Support chain feels like a complete story…and some stories are better when they’re longer or shorter than the average!

For example, Bernadetta and Dorothea’s Support only has two parts (C and B) while Bernadetta and Felix’s Support has four (C, B, A, A+). Which particular Rank is split up in the case of four-part Supports also varies on the Support: I likened Supports to small stories this time around, and the split happens when one particular story beat needs a bit of time to set in for the characters (for example, they have a falling out and need to calm down, or one gives the other advice that they need to mull over), which I think is more realistic. I greatly appreciate this attention to detail!

As I said, I like this new take and that Supports now play out like side stories, even more so than in the GBA games. Now that we no longer have “two sprites talking to each other” the conversations can be much more dynamic, with characters moving around and emoting, even talking to NPCs in between (Anna even shows up in a handful!) These now feel much more like Social Links/ Confidants from the Persona series and for that I am grateful (also yes, I’m just as surprised as you are that it took me this long to mention Persona). The result is more involving conversations that are more engaging and also open to visual story telling and gags, so the characters wind up feeling richer and show more of themselves as a result. I love it!!

(As an aside, Paralogues also got this treatment: each character has one associated with them (that they may or may not share with another). This means each Paralogue is also a small story or character vignette about them that ends with us learning more about them instead of generic “Kill bandits for money!” missions.)

The lost items/ gifts mechanic also promotes watching as many of these as possible as, while you get a brief summary of their likes and dislikes in the roster page, most of a character’s hobbies and favourite things are usually only revealed through Supports and Paralogues (this is most likely what the game means when it tells you to get to know people before trying to return things to them). While forgetting a specific item can be annoying, ultimately this is so rewarding! (You can also “cheat” with the lost items if you can remember where everyone stands in the Monastery each month: they usually drop their items when moving to their new spot in the next.)

NOTE: While S Ranks and children are gone, paired endings are still in for people who can get to A/ A+ with each other. I used to think characters were paired off with the first (surviving) person they got to Rank A with, but my most recent run makes me think how much you use those characters also plays a role (i.e. Character X is more likely to end up with Character Y if Y did more than Z by the time the credits roll, assuming X got to Rank A with both of them). Byleth still has S Supports though. I was caught off-guard by how they’re implemented but I absolutely love how they show up now. I won’t say anymore, but look forward to them!

Finally: paired endings aren’t male-centric anymore! Instead there seem to be a fixed number of characters who are given priority in their endings, with the partners being supportive of them. However, the partners still get a paragraph detailing how exactly they give that support on top of what they get up to in their own right AND all of this can change based on which ending you get as well. It’s amazing! And paired endings aren’t exclusively romantic either! It’s great to see a mix of friendships and marriages between characters in the ending, another feature I didn’t realise just how much I missed from the older games 😀

Sound

In my eyes, something Fire Emblem has in common with Sonic the Hedgehog is that, whether the games are good or not, if they were made by the original developer the soundtrack is going to be amazing. This game is no different. After finishing my fourth run I took some time to listen to some tracks on the in-game music player and loved every second of it. Not only is this soundtrack amazing, it also includes genres you wouldn’t expect from Fire Emblem, but this genre mismatch only highlights the points of the story in which they appear and I love this meta-storytelling. There’s one track in particular near the end of one or more routes that stunned me for a second. I remember thinking to myself “What the heck is this doing in a Fire Emblem game? …and why do I love it?” I’m sure those who’ve played the route(s) in question know exactly which track I’m referring to (and hopefully they agree!)

The voice acting is also excellent. While I admit the direction’s not quite as good as Echoes’, I still loved the cast and they still brought their characters to life brilliantly – in fact there are some I fell in love with simply because their voices were so perfect! I’d love to list all the actors I adored but that would be practically the entire cast, so I’ll just say again that I loved pretty much everyone and they all did amazing jobs in bringing their characters to life. Thank you all so much!

As for the Echoes’ comparison, that game had a smaller cast and less voice acting as a result, so it makes sense that that game’s director was able to go over lines with the actors to nail delivery 100% of the time. Of course that would be harder with a larger cast and scope, so I’m not going to let a phew odd sentences get in the way of loving the director and actors at work here 🙂

As an aside, I thought how Byleth’s voice actors approached them was intriguing. Byleth starts off as a stoic figure and a lot of their lines are spoken calmly while others are more cheerful or strained. But what’s interesting is that both VAs put their emotions into different lines.

While both have the same dialogue, lines male Byleth says with a straight face female Byleth will emote for and vice versa – this meant it felt a little jarring to play as f!Byleth at first, but once I figured what was going on I thought it was a nice insight into their approaches to the character. After all, they both portray the same spectrum of emotions – just in different places – so both Byleths end up with the same emotional range. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but I thought it was neat! Also, congrats on getting a deep voice (Jeannine Tirado) for f!Byleth! Maybe I’m just jaded by anime, but I appreciated her having a voice that matched her personality and not just something that sounded “cute”.

Finally, I have to praise the main theme, “The Edge of Dawn”. Not only is it a beautiful song at face value, the lyrics take on a whole new meaning once you’ve played the game and I love how rich it becomes as a result and that this meaning was captured in both languages. Kudos to the singers and writers in both languages for pulling this off! I’m serious; pretty much every single line becomes more significant once you know what’s going to happen in the narrative and it hurts. What makes it more impressive is that the lyrics make sense from more than one perspective – something you’ll enjoy figuring out for yourself, I’m sure 🙂

Attention to Detail

I couldn’t figure out a way to segue into this, so I’ll just commit to dropping it in the middle of my review instead. I’ve already mentioned some examples of attention to detail – in the worldbuilding and map design for example, but this game is truly oozing with evidence that the makers put a lot of care into crafting it.

For example, characters’ dialogues change depending on which route you’re on when you talk to them in the Monastery at equivalent points in the game. While there are some lines reused between routes, there’s a ton of dialogue only used in one specific route. Even when you think a character would be justified in repeating something they said in another playthrough, they surprise you by saying something new about the current situation instead or mixing new and old dialogue together to fit the changes your current route brought to a similar situation.

And this even extends to the dialogue in Supports and Paralogues! For example, in Lorenz’s Paralogue he has an extra line if he’s transferred out of the Golden Deer by the point you start it, while some Supports are modified quite a bit depending on whether you view them in the first or second half of the game, which in some cases completely changes the context of the conversations taking place! Heck, some Supports and Paralogues are even changed depending on what other Supports and Paralogues you’ve gotten before them! Intelligent Systems had no reason to add such intricacies but they did anyway and I am so thankful to them for going the extra mile and then some.

And what makes this more amazing? This game is fully voiced. With the exception of quest givers (who say a generic “Can you help me?” while a textbox with the actual description pops up), every last word is voiced. To think that not only did each voice actor have to record lines for a game of this length, but variations of those lines that would only be heard by a subset of the playerbase boggles the mind and I have the utmost respect for both the English and Japanese casts and their directors for pulling this off. It’s incredible stuff, especially with a game this big and detailed getting a worldwide release!

There are also some prompts that only show-up in very specific circumstances. To decribe them would require too many spoilers so to end with one spoiler-tastic example of attention to detail that serves no greater purpose other than to really sell a character (and is all the more precious for it):

Adult!Dimitri has two sets of in-battle voicelines (for being healed, getting crits, etc.) for before and after Rodrigue hits the hard reboot button on his (original?) personality. Considering the result is two sets of voicelines for two small parts of the game where everyone else gets one, but the result is a far richer character due to how he influences the gameplay and vice versa…it’s amazing!

Also, there’s a sprite for someone else wearing Ignatz’s glasses in their Support together. It only happens once in side content not everyone is going to see…and there’s still a separate image for it. How wonderful!

And to those of you wondering: the Japanese title (Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon) is captured thematically too. It’s really quite clever how this theme is implemented in the characters and story and again something you should definitely look out when you can!

Nitpicks

I think it’s clear by this point that I love this game, but it’s only fair that I also mention some of its missteps. As with all things, I’m sure these will affect you differently than they did me – maybe even not at all!

Class Changing Exams

Don’t get me wrong: I love the how its implemented here…but I think it’s a bit too strict. The Beginner Classes are lenient in that they let you excel in just one of the associated weapon types to promote into them (for example the Mage asks for either Reason OR Faith experience) but this is the only tier that does it: every other class requires excellence in all of the relevant stats. Since the examination uses your percentage of completion towards these requirements, you don’t have to get a perfect 100% pass-rate to pass them, but a bit more leeway would have been appreciated.

Oh, but I should clarify that you aren’t then locked into the skills you used to pass an exam. For example; my third Byleth studied the Sword, Lance and Flying to become a Falcon Knight but spent most of her time with a bow in hand and dealt with groups of enemies by jumping off her pegasus and punching them ’til they stopped moving.

Gender and Magic Locked Classes

If there’s one thing I loved about Fates, it was that every Class was accessible to everyone. It’s unfortunate that this feature was axed for Three Houses as I would have loved male Pegasus Knights or female Brawlers (with more concealing outfits, of course). Given Fates also added “equivalent classes” to ensure gender-equality (like Maids and Butlers) I’m sad they didn’t also do the same here.

Magic is quite useful in how it’s handled here, but only specific classes can use it – meaning magic users are severely restricted in the number of classes they can be. I assume the developers thought magic would be too powerful if made available to everyone (since the “durability” of spells replenishes between fights) but…I just wish there was some sort of compromise so that everyone could use magic. Maybe the durability of spells would be reduced for non-mage Classes?

Byleth

I know I had another heading called “Byleth” where I praised them, so rest assured that I still like them. However, I’m upset that they’re a silent protagonist. When Byleth was added to Forging Bonds in FEH I was surprised that she seemed to have a problem expressing emotions and hoped to find out more about him/ her in Three Houses (and that maybe they wouldn’t be silent after all).

Instead the game takes the Persona route when characterising him/ her. Despite not speaking, Byleth has a defined personality you can’t change despite having dialogue options – sometimes you only have one option of what to say! Through this, and from the examples mentioned earlier, you can tell just what sort of person Byleth (and I personally find the idea of a stoic mercenary warming up to and becoming a big sibling/ friend/ confidant to their students all kinds of heartwarming).

The things Byleth does and how they emote (especially f!Byleth thanks to her larger eyes) is evidence enough of this and the students and other staff mention this too, but I wish Byleth would speak for him/ herself from time to time to really drive it home. I wish they were like Geralt from the Witcher games, I guess: both of them have clearly defined personalities that you can add flavour to (but not change) via dialogue options, but Byleth lacks the satisfaction you get from hearing Geralt speaking his mind aloud.

Admittedly, I know the silent protagonist has been around for a long time and has its fans, so I don’t know how many people would agree with this (as much as I also like Persona, this is a pet peeve I have with its protagonists too). I also think it maks sense for Byleth to be quiet – they are a stoic mercenary after all – I just wish they spoke at least a little (like how Joker speaks the odd sentence in Persona 5’s cutscenes). Still love ’em though! And I’m also glad Byleth gets some funny lines in despite being mostly mute – if anything they’re even funnier because they come from the quiet one!

Information Revealed In Each Route

I want to clarify that I like how each route reveals different things about the world, but this also means the odd reveal in one route slips between the cracks of another. In-universe this makes sense (as many questions as you may have, once you’ve gone through enough stress you just want to take what you can get and go home), but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who only played one route feels a bit off as a result. Speaking of things revealed in only some routes though…

DON’T WATCH THE END CREDITS

If there’s any real complaint I have, it’s this: the game uses the same end credits for every route…which includes the cast list. If you’ve seen any of the press releases for the game, you’ll know there’s more than one villain operating under an alias and not all of them are outed in every route. Given I started this note by mentioning the cast list I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Thankfully, the route I played first heavily implied a particular reveal enough that seeing them in the credits wasn’t as big a spoiler as say, a friend saying “Oh, the weather’s lovely today! Also SNAPE KILLS HARRY!” or anything, but it was still a bizarre and annoying oversight. Speaking of oversights though:

Imperfect Attention To Detail

I stand by what I said before that the attention to detail – it’s incredible and worth a glowing recommendation all of its own. That’s why I feel guilty in saying that such ridiculous care makes the few times they do cut corners stick out all the more. Two spoiler-free examples would be:

The Class animations (e.g. for the Sniper, War Master etc.) seem geared towards the characters who are canonically that class (e.g. Shamir for the Sniper). While the animations are perfectly in-character for them, they feel a bit odd on people who don’t have the same personality as those bases. I’m not saying each character should have a unique set of animations for each class though! But since the developers put in a different set of animations for people in the Monastery depending on their gender and whether or not they were shy/ confident in themselves, I was surprised that they didn’t at least add some variation to the “defeated an enemy” animation for each class.

There’s a recurring boss who shows up in some chapters of the game. When you attack them, they will tell you that they said they’d leave you alone if you left them alone but now you’ve gone and done it…but the character only gives that warning once, while you can hear this line whenever you fight them.

There’s one particular cutscene that makes a bit more sense in one of the routes it appears in than others. It still works for them all though!

As I said though, the game already has enough love put into it that I don’t care that some things slipped between the cracks, nor do I have any inclination to hate the game or demand that they fix these things. I just wanted to mention these for you to form an opinion on for yourselves.

Only Five Save Slots

I’m glad we have this much considering we’ve only had 3 for the past five entries, but I think five saves was too few for Three Houses. It was plenty for Radiant Dawn since you only “had” to play it once for the story and again if you wanted the true ending (which still required you to play the same game again), but Three Houses has three distinct routes to choose from the start: assuming you want to keep a save per route so you can rewatch the epilogues on top of the cleared game save to start NG+s off of, that’s already four saves accounted for. Fates at least added three save slots per route, so I wish we’d gotten some extra saves for this game too. As someone who wants to keep hold of the epilogue of each of his playthroughs, I can’t play the game anymore because all five of my slots are taken up now!

Gender-locked Support Viewer

You can view Support Conversations as in other games, but you can also view cutscenes (both animated and in-engine). While you can toggle between genders for the latter and between different routes for the former, you can only view Support conversations for the gender of Byleth you unlocked them for. While I understand this limitations for S Supports for straight characters, I don’t understand why this is restricted for everything else – after all, the route makes much more of a difference on the dialogue than Byleth’s gender ever does!

No postgame

I know this is hardly the first Fire Emblem to lack a postgame, but because the game is built around a calendar there’s unfortunately no opportunity to flaunt your endgame gear and stats. Since the recent entries (minus Fates: Conquest) all had a playable postgame, I admit I was surprised by the lack of one here. It wouldn’t have made sense narratively or mechanically, but a freeroam option where you could run wild after the credits roll would have been nice. You can regain your weapon ranks in NG+ by spending currency for them, but it’s just not the same as Lording it over some random bandits in your free time…(no pun intended.)

The Amiibo Gazebo

I left this until last because amiibos spark quite the heated discussions in all of Nintendo gaming, not just Fire Emblem. I hate them, but what I hate even more is that there’s no way to remove the amiibo gazebo. To bring up Zelda once more, in that game you could at least disable the amiibo prompts so you never had to see them: I wish there was a similar option to swap the gazebo for a regular one so you didn’t get your immersion broken whenever you had to talk to someone in the area.

Again, I understand that a lot of people love collecting amiibo, so I want to clarify that this is just my own take on the subject. And hey, if you’re having fun with them in your own game, more power to you!

Closing Thoughts

I don’t need to say it, do I? But yes, I absolutely loved this game. I started writing this review as soon as I finished my fourth run (which was five hours ago now…) in the hopes that it’d all be fresh in my head, but I accept that this may also mean I’m in the honeymoon period right now. While I thus also accept that this game’s story and overall cast may slip in my eyes slightly as a result over time (currently they’re tied with Sacred Stones as my favourite in each of those categories) I don’t think I’ll change my mind on this being mechanically the best in the series (at least of the games I’ve played). I love this game to bits and it’s definitely my GOTY for 2019, no questions asked, and you owe it to yourselves to try it out if you haven’t already.

As someone who refused to buy DLC for Fire Emblems before this one, I’ve had to pull myself away from buying the Season Pass after each playthrough – and even now a part of me wants to get it just to thank Nintendo and Intelligent Systems for an amazing experience. Crazy, huh?

Whether I crack now or not, I’m definitely keeping my eye out for the DLC (and hoping an update adds more save slots) in 2020 so I can play this again. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself: I’m still missing two tracks from my music player (tied to different “emotions” for Support conversations, I’m assuming) so I definitely have to play Three Houses again at some point!

Edit: The two tracks are unlocked by rewatching certain scenes in Japanese: the second is gotten by watching the credits in both English and Japanese while the former is gotten by rewatching a certain scene in both languages. Both unlock vocal tracks and the lyrics you hear change based on which language your game is currently set to (i.e. you hear the English version if you’re currently set to English). It’s a weird decision to lock these two tracks like this, so I hope this helps anyone curious about them! Oh, and the first scene you need to watch?

It’s “Rhea and Sothis”, the cutscene featuring Rhea that plays after the ball.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I still fully intend to replay this game someday 😛

For now though…I’m getting a shave. In my Fire Emblem fervour I wound up looking either like a generic old school action hero or a hobo and I really don’t want to find out which.

While I do that though; what did you think of Fire Emblem: Three Heroes? I’d love to hear your thoughts! This is my first review of this scale so I’d love to hear some feedback too! And heck, if you want just cause to hang me at dawn for whatever reason, feel free to ask me about my builds or waifus/ husbandos anything else to see if you can’t trick me into saying something incriminating, I look forward to it! Redditors, I look forward to talking to you back over there, while readers from SerenesForest can check out the associated thread here 🙂

(I’m still voting for Eirika for CYL4.)