Originally posted in September/2019 in cafecomgeeks.com.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the sixteenth entry in the Fire Emblem franchise. This tells the story of Byleth, or the pale demon, as he is known among the mercenaries who live together. The game is a tactical strategy JRPG and allows for deep combat between armies, as well as character development like no other.
Byleth had a dark birth that was hidden by his father, Jeralt, his only companion and great friend. In an ambush to a village in Fódlan, the continent where the game takes place, our protagonists meet Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude, representatives of the three big houses of the place: Black Eagles, Blue Lions and Golden Deer, respectively.
For helping them, you and your father are directed to Jeralt’s former workplace — the Garreg Mach monastery, where the three leaders study to be the future leaders of their lands, each with their own ambitions.
Garreg Mach is led by Rhea, the archbishop of the Church of Seiros. Upon receiving the team, Rhea perceives an impactful presence in Byleth and decides to invite him to be a teacher in one of the classes of the elite school present in the monastery: a decision that is solely up to the player, after meeting all the only characters in the monastery, houses and the whole environment present there.
Once you make your decision, you and your father start working for the church both as a teacher and on mercenary missions. You, in addition to carrying out combats trademarked by the franchise, are responsible for teaching classes and tutoring your students individually, so that they have their individual skills used to the maximum.
The teacher-student relationship here, known to the public comically as the “Harry Potter game”, is one of the most incredible things about this game. Exploration of the Monastery allows you to develop deep relationships of friendship (and even love), which intensifies the interactions between your characters at the time of combat, allowing combos that are more than essential to achieve your goals.
The interactions you have with the characters, not only unlock scenes that deepen the level of the relationship, but also opens the way for third parties to interact with their students, and they with themselves. This allows each one to be unique and all to grow together.
In addition to the rich tutoring and friendship system, the protagonist can form friendships with students from other houses based on common interests (or skills in common). By training Byleth with the various professors and staff at the academy, you can also grow and, by drawing the curiosity of students from other houses, you can even recruit them to your house, which goes beyond harming the other house, benefiting yours.
In addition to these training activities, Garreg Mach offers you secondary missions, activities such as gardening, Gregorian chant, anonymous advice, cooking, sharing meals, drinking tea and FISHING (the latter, like any self-respecting role-playing game). In addition to a wide variety of members and unique students with a large dialogue tree that is made available naturally throughout history, we also have a market that grows close to the monastery.
The Garreg Mach market is more than useful and welcome to the player’s needs. In it we have the purchase and sale of consumable goods, as well as gifts that can be used to cunningly convince certain characters, weapons and armor that can, in addition to being bought and sold, improved and repaired and troop tents that can be summoned and renewed for your army.
Three Houses does an excellent job with its turn-based strategy. As previously mentioned, you are allowed to make combos between characters who are from several different classes, each with their own specific abilities and weaknesses.
In addition to combos, the game also allows you to specify armies to follow specific members of your team. This adds an extra dimension to your skills: either to benefit your team or harm the enemy, and may even affect the map.
The battlefield is quite varied and each type of area has different factors that can benefit or harm you. In addition, buildings can be destroyed to make way or flown over depending on your character’s class.
Enemies are also not to be underestimated. The variety of armies, soldiers, wizards and even giant monsters can devastate you with a single wrong move, leading your teammates to their deaths (which can be permanent depending on the game mode).
Fortunately, there is a goddess inside your head that gives you the incredible power to go back in time in a few turns. This ability is limited and can help you recover lost friends, as well as save your own skin. This power is extremely well balanced, so it’s not something that takes the fun out of losses (until I understood how it worked, I lost two students myself).
The first half goes around the mystery of Byleth’s origin and how it connects with what is happening in Fódlan. This mystery, together with the development of characters, holds the player motivating him to play more and more and explore every aspect that the game offers.
After a while, intrigue occurs and our protagonist is unable to act. This divides the story once again, but this time putting the entire pantheon of Three Houses into contention. Colleagues from other classes have seen your enemies and you must deal with this in one way or another, depending on your route.
It is impressive how the route division was built and monumentally expands the gameplay of this game, which will have up to four waves of expansion in the future.
Finally, two very important points in this game should be highlighted: the graphics and the soundtrack, accompanied by the sound design.
The graphics of Three Houses are intriguing. During combat, the player is immersed in the animations, which was not the case in previous titles in the franchise. The world to be explored is also exciting and beautiful, but the interactions between characters leave a little to be desired.
In non-pre-rendered cutscenes, the characters speak in a room whose background is a 360º image, whose border is hideous. Despite this, the animations of the characters are well done, which enhances their personalities … which would be perfect if the graphic optimization was not poor, leaving a serious serration outside these cutscenes.
On the other hand, the dubbing of this game is out of this world. In addition to being extremely vivid and having presence in all the dialogues of the game (which are not few), it gives an even greater charm to the characters.
The game is also narrated by Byleth’s father, Jeralt, and at the beginning of each month he tells almost like a fairy tale about the seasons, parallel to what happened at the time in Fódlan.
Having said all that, the soundtrack for this game deserves a 10 out of 10. With a theme sung by Edelgard, Edge of Dawn is one of the best video game songs ever made.
In addition, the ambient and combat songs are extremely varied and compatible with the moment, varying between unlikely genres that thrill the player even after the credits go down.
Pros:
- Rich and challenging combat;
- Development of charismatic characters;
- Mystery of history;
- Extra-curricular activities;
- Very interesting world;
- Complex and extensive history;
- Extremely varied routes.
Cons:
- Graphic bugs in dialogs.
Score: ☕️☕️☕️☕️☕️ (out of 5)
Platforms:
- Nintendo Switch (platform reviewed)
Its multiple and charismatic characters consumes the player, as well as Byleth’s sad and epic story. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is my current game of the year and perhaps the most complex JRPG I’ve ever had the chance to play.
