Fire Emblem Three Houses: Reach for my hand, I'll soar away.

[Zevox]

So, going to repost this, since I had edited it into my previous post but it may have been missed due to how long after the initial post I did that plus the page skip:

Edit: So, about to do the Caspar/Mercedes paralogue, and a thought occurred to me that I want to get down before I do it.

Spoiler: A guess about the Death Knight's identity.

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If he's not actually Jeritza, I think he's most likely Caspar's father. Explains why Caspar is connected to the paralogue, and Caspar's father has been set up as having a reputation for being a very strong warrior in some supports, plus he's known to be an ally of Edelgard's in the war (as opposed to Bernadetta and Ferdinand's fathers, who were the two major nobles who she put under house arrest since they wouldn't support her). All seems to fit.

Spoiler: Edit 2 - After doing the Paralogue...

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So, wrong guess, mostly - I think he is supposed to be Jeritza, though it's not entirely clear. But his secret is that he's actually Mercedes' hitherto-unmentioned brother? Uh, that's a less impressive reveal than my guess above, I have to say. Though I don't know, maybe if I'd seen more of Mercedes' supports he'd have been mentioned somewhere and it wouldn't be quite so out of left field, but as-is Caspar summed up my reaction right at the start of the paralogue: "You have a brother?" (Also, Caspar was involved in this paralogue why? He and Mercedes don't even have a support, and he didn't do anything special...)

Also, what the hell does he mean by "my soul departed long ago?" Is that supposed to be metaphorical, or literal? In either case, it kind of needs more explaining than it was given - particularly since he is indicated to be primarily in Edelgard's employ, not the Slitherers' (since the Flame Emperor gave her uncle permission to use him in an early cutscene). And his attitude there doesn't seem to square with Manuela saying on the Black Eagle path that when she spoke with the Death Knight after joining Edelgard he offered her a sincere, heartfelt apology for injuring her. Just... all very weird and feels quite incomplete.

Also, today I did Marianne's paralogue!

Spoiler

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Well now, that does explain some things about her for sure, although it seems left a little ambiguous whether she ever actually suffered from the curse she thought she had, or if it was just a matter of believing in it enough causing her to want to keep away from anyone she might hurt if it were true. Cool stuff, not much to say about it.

I wonder if I missed some rewards from the map, since I didn't scour it so thoroughly due to the boss coming after me after I started attacking the weaker beasts in the forest, but eh, should be fine. Not sure what to do with the legendary sword there - it's a magic weapon and only needs E rank to use, so I guess I could give it to Marianne, but it's also range 1, which she does not like at all. I could use New Game+ stuff to get the Crest Stone for it and hand it to Lorenz, but that's a lot of inventory space for something that's not too different from the Levin Sword+ he's already packing (and in terms of range is just worse than it).

Yeah it sucks that, for male Byleth, the only actual romance partner that is gay is Linhardt. Not that he's not a perfectly good and wonderful guy, but they shoulda made Felix and like, Claude an answer as well.

Yeah, that is a pity, for sure. Especially with the fake-out S ranks on Gilbert and Alois that are just really close friendships (hell, Alois even tells you outside of his supports that he's married, so...). And Claude in particular definitely feels like he should have been an option there too for some reason. I don't know, partially for the symmetry with Edelgard being one of the bi girls, partially just because of his pretty boy looks, I guess.

On the story stuff, one non-spoiler thing I'll say is that ALL the paths could have benefited from the game not giving you a choice and instead weaving them together to form a greater narrative. Playing the different paths has been like fitting a jigsaw puzzle together, and as I complete each path I understand elements of all the others that I simply did not get. From character motivations, to lore, to the very underpinning of story themes and the plot itself. All of it would have been improved if they gave it to you in ONE story, instead of this weird alternate-universe situation where Byleth's loyalties decide the plot.

Eh, I don't know, I don't see how you could make this into just one story. I could maybe see universalizing part 1, such that no matter which house you choose to lead you get all of the important moments with each house leader to establish what they're about, then making the real branching point happen at the time skip, where you decide

Spoiler

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whether to side with Edelgard, Dmitri and the Kingdom, Claude and the Alliance, or to side with Rhea and the Church regardless of what any of the nations do.

That could certainly help with the issue that most of the story is locked in due to a decision you make at the start of the game when you barely know the first thing about the characters and really know nothing about the plot. But I think you definitely want that element of being able to see how the story varies depending on whose side you take, the game is getting a good amount of mileage out of it.

The most frustrating thing is that it makes it impossible to even discuss the plot. If two people are at the same level of completion of the game, but one has completed Blue Lions and the other Golden Deer, there's no way to even hold a conversation without massive spoilers.

Agreed, that is a very annoying side-effect of it, unfortunately.

I would have been happier to have more unique maps, especially the paralogues. You can make arguments for having key locations (and thus the same map) show up repeatedly on different routes. The paralogues being on generic "let's fight bandits" maps has no excuse. The same city map gets re-used for multiple different Paralogues within different parts of the Kingdom. One map is supposedly outside of Fodlan entirely, while also somehow being near the monastery. I got spoiled on one of the Golden Deer maps by seeing it in an Auxiliary mission before going there, and there's another main story mission map you can see as a paralogue well before you get there which actually spoils the map's gimmick.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about with at least one of those, and agreed, they definitely shouldn't have been using late-game maps for part 1 paralogues.

I can't imagine playing the game as some sort of 40-chapter epic that would be required to hit all the story elements together.

Sure you can, we already had one after all: Radiant Dawn. 42 Chapters split up across four parts, three different armies that all come together for the final part.

Argh, my one month Switch Online membership ran out early. Now I have to decide if the online features here are worth it.

We'll see how much more my bro has in his membership. Maybe we'll get a family plan...

I definitely wouldn't be paying for the online membership for the sake of this game, personally. I have anyway it because there's no way I'm going without being able to play Smash Brothers online, but Fire Emblem's online elements are so minor there's no way I'd pay for them if I didn't already have it like that.

Speaking of Smash though, this game has been such a big success for the franchise that I'm now very curious how it'll impact Smash Brothers in the future. Doubt we'll see anything in Ultimate unless maybe they do a second round of DLC, since the first five appear to be all third-party guests, but I could see a major overhaul happening in the next game. Three Houses is actually stunningly popular enough that I could see them throwing out most of the current Fire Emblem characters in Smash to put in the four leads from it - would certainly shut up people who complained about all the Fire Emblem characters in Smash being swordsmen, that's for sure.