Let me tell about something I like to call the “Fire Emblem Paradox”. Back in 2014 I purchased a little game called Fire Emblem Awakening on an obscure console called the Nintendo 3DS. Now, having had no exposure to strategy RPGs before, I found the gameplay to be pretty novel. After taking out some bandits with this group of ragtag weaponeers and leveling up my party members for the first time, I knew there was something here for me! It was a brand new series for me to enjoy and appreciate, to explore and possibly even place alongside some of my favorite RPGs like Pokémon and Paper Mario.

And then I found out I was playing the game wrong.

If you don’t know, I’ll keep the explanation brief—basically, you’ve got two modes: Classic and Casual. In Classic mode, your units die off permanently when they fall in battle, like a Nuzlocke run in Pokémon. In Casual, they come back in the next chapter. I was playing Casual, as newcomers to the series are wont to do, but I soon learned that this was very wrong! I should have been playing on Classic, of course, the only true way to play this hardcore tactical experience.

So I played Classic and got my butt handed to me almost immediately. After flailing in place for hours on a single mission, I gave up and went back to Casual mode. And yeah, I enjoyed the rest of the game, but there was always that nagging feeling that I wasn’t doing it the right way. That I was taking the easy way out. That I was compromising not only the difficulty of the game, but also the themes of grim warfare and permanence that otherwise permeate the adventure. But was it truly wrong to do this when I was just a wee newbie?

I can’t say for sure. But I will say that I still haven’t beaten Awakening on Classic mode. And to this day I feel like I’ve never truly conquered the game. Although I enjoyed it more on Casual, the long-term satisfaction was significantly lower—and in a game like this, sometimes that enduring sense of fulfillment is more important than quickly slashing through dumb AI units, endorphins rushing as the EXP bar fills up and your units get stronger with minimal effort. At the end of the day, what’s the point if there was no challenge?

I bring all of this up because today I’m reviewing Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a game which I’ve decided to take a little more seriously. Some people are asserting that this is by FAR the best Fire Emblem game of all time. I can’t verify that with my very limited history with the series, but I will say that it is far and away an improvement over Awakening, which was already damn good. And for the first time, I don’t feel like an idiot while playing a Fire Emblem game.

Maybe it’s the new Divine Pulse feature, which allows you to rewind time and undo a really stupid decision without having to soft reset the game. Maybe it’s all the bonuses gained from doing Monastery missions and Seminars. Maybe the game is just plain easier. Whatever it is, I was able to complete this game very easily on Classic mode—to the point where I forgot Casual was even an option.

Take it from an absolute simpleton like me: you do not need to resort to Casual mode for this Fire Emblem game. It truly doesn’t matter if you’re a series veteran who imported the NES games or a complete outsider who thought Roy was a Zelda character. Just play on Classic—you can handle it.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a really fun strategy RPG game. I probably don’t need to sing its praises very much because it’s getting enough of that everywhere else right now, but I cannot overemphasize that this game is compelling. Sometimes even in a dangerous way—in a “too busy playing to eat meals” way. Keep that in mind if you’re on the fence about whether or not you’ll have the time to play it, because if you have to wonder, then you probably won’t.

The game is basically divided into two halves: battling and not-battling. If you’ve played any strategy RPG before then you’ll know what to expect from the former, but the latter is a lot more scattershot as you’ll find yourself exploring a big school campus, completing quests for strangers, cooking food, singing in a choir, holding Seminars, and a whole lot more. All of these things funnel back into your skills during battle. You know that satisfaction you get when your Pokémon levels up? Well, in Three Houses, it’s like that times a hundred—every character (and there are many) has not only the regular EXP bar, but also ones for all of their individual skills, current class, and relationships. There’s also an EXP bar for your Professor Level, which I assume is akin to something like tenure in the real world. At first it’s slightly daunting, but you come to grips with it pretty soon once you realize what you want to do with each of your students. It’s all just a part of that feedback loop that makes RPGs in general so compelling—fill up the EXP bar so you can win more fights, win more fights to fill up the EXP bar. Treehouses takes that basic principle and expands it to an obnoxiously addicting level.

The story is a mixed bag, I’ll admit. I played the Golden Deer route, and I couldn’t help but feel like the story itself kind of fell apart in the second half of the game, right where things should have gotten interesting. It’s a shame because I really loved Claude and all of the other students in his class, but their role in the overall story just felt a little half-baked and underwhelming. I’m not going to spoil anything here for my fellow Golden Deer players, but from what I’ve heard, the other three routes (yes, three) have a lot more going for them as far as compelling character motivations and themes go. The side characters can range from great to unbearable, and I find them to be at their best when they aren’t leaning into anime tropes full-force. With a cast of dozens of playable students and professors, you’re guaranteed to find a few that you really like. I’m looking forward to playing some of the other routes and getting to know some of these other kids who sadly didn’t make the cut into Golden Deer, the coolest class on campus.

Graphics are fine. Why is everyone complaining about the graphics? They look about as good as any other Switch game that doesn’t have Mario in it. Yeah, you’ll notice a few rough edges here and there, especially if you zoom in on certain areas of the monastery—but the character models look great, and those are what you’ll mainly be looking at. At a time when everyone is shoveling manure on Pokémon Sword & Shield for having underwhelming graphics, it seems fair to levy the same criticisms as its fellow RPG colleague…but Fire Emblem isn’t exactly the highest grossing media franchise of all time, so the standards aren’t quite the same here. Three Houses even has some beautifully animated 2D cutscenes during particularly pivotal story moments. I personally never took issue with the visuals in Three Houses, but if you did, that’s perfectly understandable, as it probably just means you have a keener eye for that sort of thing.

The best thing about this game might just be the sheer amount of content that you might not even get the chance to see in a normal playthrough. Every pair of characters—and I do mean every one—has a series of support conversations that you will only see if you go out of your way to ensure those two characters interact often. Characters who aren’t even in the same class have their own supports, meaning you have to go to pretty great lengths just to see one of these combinations. Did you know Hilda can learn a lesson in discipline from Ferdinand? I didn’t either, but apparently it’s possible if you recruit them both into the same class. And the cherry on top is that all of these extraneous, obscure support conversations are fully voiced. It’s a testament to how this game dares to do more than what is expected of it. More games should follow suit.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a game that I didn’t think I would enjoy as much as I did. Yeah, I enjoy me a strategy RPG every once in a while, and I knew this installment would be decent at worst…but what I could not have seen coming was the addiction it brought me. For a solid week and a half, this game was my entire life; hours would evaporate in the time it took me to do my weekly monastery duties, to say nothing of battles. If you’ve never played a Fire Emblem game or even a strategy RPG at all, this is a great place to start—just don’t chicken out and play the boneless version like I did all those years ago.

Fire Emblem: Three Horses is a BUY from me!