Fire Emblem: Three Houses / Fire Emblem: Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon - A series of analyses

 The following is a series on Fire Emblem: Three Houses that analyzes the story elements, characters and theming. For reference, here are the links to each one:

Intro/Basic review, White Clouds (Common Part 1), Cindered Shadows (Ashen Wolves DLC Route - Part 1.5), Crimson Flower (Black Eagles/Eagle House Part 2, Adrestia route), Silver Snow (Black Eagles/Eagle House Part 2, Church route), Azure Moon (Blue Lions/Lion House Part 2), Verdant Wind (Golden Deer/Deer House Part 2) Non-house leader characters (Eagle, Deer, Lion, Church) Music analysis (very surface level)

On a whim this year, I decided to try to get into a few more JRPG games. I have been chipping away at Dragon Quest XI for a while now, but the longer the game goes, the more obvious it is that I am nowhere near the end. I enjoy the game’s story, but there is only so much passive running around and battle watching I can tolerate in a single session.

This has always been the bane of the JRPG genre. The gameplay is, by its nature, less active than other genres. An adventure game requires you to control the movements and attacks in real-time, while turn-based RPGs are more focused on picking your attack and then watching the result of your decision. With that degree of separation in the gameplay, my enjoyment hinges mostly on the story.

This means that the stories of JRPGs tend to stick with me more than any other game genre. Since the storyline is the main reason I got into the game and kept following it, I get VERY invested.

All of this endless prattle has brought me to the game I want to talk about today: Fire Emblem Three Houses.

I had never even heard of the Fire Emblem series until I started playing Smash Bros and realized the sheer number of FE characters that were in it. So when a friend of mine recommended the newest entry for the Nintendo Switch, I figured it was worth a try.

Needless to say, I’m glad I did.

Three Houses is the 13th unique entry to the series and it’s done enough to get me interested in the other games. That said, though, I have a lot of thoughts on FE3H that need to be expressed before I’m ready to close the book on it.

This will likely be a six-part blog. The game is split into two halves: an academy half and a war half. The academy half is common in all situations, and the only differences based on your choice of house is the dialogue and what characters/elements get focus.

The war half has entirely different storylines based on your house selection. There are three different house routes, and one of those routes splits in two, creating a fourth storyline. As such, I’ll be doing a blog for the common storyline, as well as one for each war storyline.

All that, however, will follow the basic gameplay review I conduct here.

So for those that have never heard of tactical RPGs (i.e. you’re me from earlier this year), you and your enemy have armies with a set number of people (units) you can send forth in battle. You get a turn where you can move up to all of your units to new locations on the battlefield. If you get within range of an opponent, you may engage them in 1-on-1 battle. Once you’ve moved all the units that you want, the turn ends and your opponent moves.

Effectively, it’s like chess if the board was 10 times as large and you could move all your pieces in one turn.

There are three difficulties and two modes: Classic and Casual. Casual resets your team after each battle, while in Classic, anyone who dies is permanently removed from the game. Basically, think like you’re playing a gauntlet of chess opponents, and every piece you lose is lost for the next game.

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Honestly, I recommend Casual mode for your first few playthroughs. The story in this game has a lot of twists and turns, and people need to survive for that to reveal itself. Play the story out in casual mode first, then switch to Classic if you want the challenge.

Those who are playing Classic in this game and are worried about losing too many people do have a tool that most FE games don’t give them: the Divine Pulse. This is a tool of the character Sothis. Basically, you rewind the battlefield to any earlier point and try your strategy over again. You won’t have much use of it early on, but it becomes a big deal toward the end.

If you’re in Casual mode, you’ll probably only use it on a couple occasions, since you’d have to be routed to need it. But Classic mode people will become VERY familiar with it by the end.

Outside of battle, there is an academy (exploration) stage of the game where you talk with all the characters, do quests and engage in bonding activities to increase the support level with all your students. 

This is where I should probably mention the military academy setting of the game. The Church of Seiros has a military academy where Byleth (the player character) ends up working as a professor. You are named the homeroom teacher (head of household) for one of the three houses.

This group will serve as the backbone of your battle experience. You can also recruit other students to your house during the academy stage by increasing your abilities in the skills they want to learn. I would recommend recruiting 6-7 people because your maximum professor level will allow you to use up to 12 people in battle, plus three in a supporting role. As such, the 8-9 you are given in Part 1 will not fill all the roles.

Those who are familiar with the series will know there’s a dancer class, and it is present, but it only can be won in a specific competition and you can only give the role to one person. I’d recommend someone who has decent sword or black magic skills, and it should be someone you don’t mind taking out of an offensive role. This is where recruiting is important because it lets you fill the black mage/swordsperson role with someone else.

Your students increase in proficiency through battle, but most immediately through personal tutoring sessions, weekly lessons and seminars. It’s up to you to determine which roles get increased and when. Speaking as someone who loved NFL Head Coach, a fan of manager modes in MLB games, and an actual teacher, this was a deeply engaging experience. And every support level I earned with the house members felt like a real achievement. 

The voice acting was excellent in this game, as every sequence was fully animated and voiced. The roles were chosen well, and they really got into the story.

My main gripe seems to be that some of the translation was slipshod. It undermined some of the main themes of the game, and the director of the voice actors ended up directing scenes in a way I felt were unfitting because of said mistranslatons.

That said, it doesn’t undermine the story to the point that I couldn’t figure out the main points, but it was frustrating nonetheless when I found translated versions of the Japanese text and realized a lot of the quirky storytelling botches I had were actually not in the Japanese version; they were there solely due to a slapdash effort on the translation team. I'll bring up some of the more egregious examples as they arise.

I feel like that explanation as to why the translation tripped up is a reasonably one because the game was running against the time limit a good bit. It got delayed and certain ideas that may have gotten fleshed out never materialized. Still, the core story is still a complete one, and the only things really lost in the shuffle were a playable character or two, a number of supports, a split path that would have only lasted for a few battles anyway, and a possible epilogue that I personally would have wanted, but I don’t think was ever planned anyway (more on that later).

Overall, as far as games go, this one feels extremely complete. It joins Breath of the Wild in terms of games where I’ve put more in than 100 hours of play time. (I mean, ALL my playthroughs of Link to the Past and Link Between Worlds may add up there too but…)

I highly recommend the game in terms of enjoyable gameplay. It’s the most involved I’ve felt with a JRPG from a gameplay perspective ever.

That said, I stand by my thought that story is what makes or breaks a JRPG, and this one is a doozy. I will be touching upon all the possible routes over the next few blogs, specifically their thematic elements and my stance on their overall quality. Each one will be pretty exhaustive in terms of plot details so if you prefer to go in blind, this is the only entry you should read until you've started to beat routes of the game.

But honestly, I think you’ll find the story far more interesting if you know how each route frames itself, so I would say to let me spoil the tar out of this story!

If you would like to hear my character analysis, I'll save my thoughts on each character for their house's war phase route. I want White Clouds to stay at least vaguely streamlined since it already has to cover the events of every house, so the characters will be split into their houses of origin. That said, I will raise things from their alternate routes in the same description. For example, the Church of Seiros figures will be mentioned in the Silver Snow route, and I'll also touch on what they do in the alternate routes at that time as well.

Whether you read this as a prospective buyer, or a fan who has already finished the game, I hope you enjoy this journey.