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

[Yana]

I know the Playground had a fairly thriving Fire Emblem fandom around the time Awakening was released 6 years ago. Well, the highly anticipated Switch version of the turn-based JRPG series is getting a worldwide release this Friday, July 26th, and I was hoping to see what my fellow Playgrounders make of it. The game in question, the titular Fire Emblem: Three Houses, focuses on the story of a mercenary-turned-professor named Byleth and the relationships that they forge with the up and coming leaders of the three nations that make up the continent of Fodlan. To the best of my knowledge (I've been trying to keep myself fairly innocent of spoilers), this looks like a mashup of traditional FE turn-based gameplay, mixed with a school otome where you interact with the characters in monastery before your next campaign.

So lets see who can be the best Tactician in Fodlan! Will you choose the Adrestian Empire, championed by Edelgard's Black Eagles, the Holy Kingdom of Faergus, led by Dimitri's Blue Lions, or the Leicester Alliance, domain of Claude's Golden Deer? The path is yours, your's to climb.

[tonberrian]

It's sitting on my Switch right now. Pre-downloaded. It taunts me.

[Rodin]

It's sitting on my Switch right now. Pre-downloaded. It taunts me.

Same. It looks quite different from any other Fire Emblem I've played, and I'm pretty excited by it. I like that we're apparently getting three equally viable choices of faction to choose from, rather than "good family vs. evil family" and "easy mode vs. hard mode". I felt compelled in Fates to pick Conquest based on the difficulty I wanted, but the characters I liked were mostly on the Birthright side (by virtue of not being puppy-kickingly evil). Framing things as "three morally grey nations going to war" strikes me as a much better premise.

I am rather disappointed that we don't get to customize how Byleth looks though. It was one of the features I really liked out of both Awakening and Fates. I'm guessing that this is because there will be full anime cutscenes in which Byleth takes a direct part, and if that's the case I can understand why. I'm also really curious to see how the lack of a weapons triangle will work in practice. Hopefully the weapons will still be distinct enough to matter.

What Houses are people eyeing? I'm somewhat drawn to the Golden Deer myself.

[Maryring]

Oi. Nohr has some of the best and goodest characters, or are you forgetting Arthur, Effie and Forrest? And Elise is the best royal. Kindness, idealism, and unlike Sakura she has an actual spine. It's just a pity that the Nohr campaign itself enforces so much puppy-kicking.

As for Three Houses, I couldn't wait, so I grabbed Fire Emblem Warriors instead. I've been avoiding most of the information, as I'm hoping to go in blind, so I haven't given much thought to any of the houses. But I'm *really* looking forward to it all.

[LaZodiac]

I am hyper as hell for Fremblem House, and I'm trying to avoid as many spoilers as I can.

All I know is that Ed is default a bandit-lord so I'm going with Queen Axe-haver.

[Resileaf]

This looks to be the darkest Fire Emblem game yet.

I just hope it won't be so grimdark as to just make you feel awful no matter what happens.

[Yana]

It'll have to work hard to outdo Geneology of the Holy War in that regard.

[Resileaf]

From the spoilers I've seen, they're certainly trying.

[Zevox]

Very much looking forward to it. In fact, I've got all of next week off work, so I'll likely be playing quite a bit of it then.

I've been avoiding spoilers, so I was just going off what little the couple of major trailers showed us, but I have been leaning towards making my first play through go with Golden Deer. Mainly because I think it'd be interesting to see how they handle the one nation of this bunch which isn't a traditional monarchy, but some kind of oligarchy. But then I recently decided to peek at a little information about how the support system and romances work this time, since that had become such a big thing in the last couple of games, and now I'm a bit less sure.

Spoiler: Very minor, mostly mechanical spoilers on those topics.

Show

So, I should say that I am quite happy to see that this no longer works like in Awakening and Fates, but more like past games. No marrying in the middle of the game and having kids that join you anymore, just unique endings with whoever you S-rank. That's good. Both because that would be so badly out of place given the whole premise of this game, and because honestly Fates handled the children part of the equation very poorly with the whole "Deeprealms" explanation, so I came away from that not wanting them to keep shoehorning that mechanic in if it didn't make sense just because it was popular in Awakening. So it's good to see that they're willing to drop it.

On the other hand though, I looked at what the options were for same-sex romances, which I'm generally most interested in seeing, and was surprised to see that they're almost all in Black Eagle. There's just one option in Blue Lion (female only), and Golden Deer gets nothing. There are sort of two house-neutral options for each sex, but apparently the two males don't actually become romantic, they're just platonic relationships that reach S rank for some reason, and the female ones... well, just knowing the bare-bones basics of who those two characters are since I'm not looking into story or character spoilers, both seem iffy at best to me. I do know I've seen mention of there being a mechanic that lets you recruit some characters from other houses into the one you join, but since I don't want to risk spoilers I don't know how easy or hard it is, who is an option for it, if it's easy to miss, etc, so I don't know if I want to rely on that. So yeah, feels like if I want to see gay relationships in the game, I have to pick one of the others, probably Black Eagle. So we'll see.

[Rodin]

Very much looking forward to it. In fact, I've got all of next week off work, so I'll likely be playing quite a bit of it then.

I've been avoiding spoilers, so I was just going off what little the couple of major trailers showed us, but I have been leaning towards making my first play through go with Golden Deer. Mainly because I think it'd be interesting to see how they handle the one nation of this bunch which isn't a traditional monarchy, but some kind of oligarchy. But then I recently decided to peek at a little information about how the support system and romances work this time, since that had become such a big thing in the last couple of games, and now I'm a bit less sure.

Spoiler: Very minor, mostly mechanical spoilers on those topics.

Show

So, I should say that I am quite happy to see that this no longer works like in Awakening and Fates, but more like past games. No marrying in the middle of the game and having kids that join you anymore, just unique endings with whoever you S-rank. That's good. Both because that would be so badly out of place given the whole premise of this game, and because honestly Fates handled the children part of the equation very poorly with the whole "Deeprealms" explanation, so I came away from that not wanting them to keep shoehorning that mechanic in if it didn't make sense just because it was popular in Awakening. So it's good to see that they're willing to drop it.

On the other hand though, I looked at what the options were for same-sex romances, which I'm generally most interested in seeing, and was surprised to see that they're almost all in Black Eagle. There's just one option in Blue Lion (female only), and Golden Deer gets nothing. There are sort of two house-neutral options for each sex, but apparently the two males don't actually become romantic, they're just platonic relationships that reach S rank for some reason, and the female ones... well, just knowing the bare-bones basics of who those two characters are since I'm not looking into story or character spoilers, both seem iffy at best to me. I do know I've seen mention of there being a mechanic that lets you recruit some characters from other houses into the one you join, but since I don't want to risk spoilers I don't know how easy or hard it is, who is an option for it, if it's easy to miss, etc, so I don't know if I want to rely on that. So yeah, feels like if I want to see gay relationships in the game, I have to pick one of the others, probably Black Eagle. So we'll see.

Spoiler: Romance, no additional spoilers

Show

I eyed that as well. I'm very glad that they aren't doing child characters - it made sense for Awakening and was wildly out of place in Fates. With the academy system it looks like they're going for a smaller number of characters that you get to know more in-depth, which is fantastic.

The same-sex romance is something I've also been looking at for a while, as I typically like to play female characters but don't have that much interest in romancing a male character. The choices being so limited was rather off-putting, so much so that I'm breaking my usual rule and playing a male Byleth for the first playthrough to keep my options open. I made the mistake of female Corrin in Fates and getting stuck with Rhajat. I think I wound up actually romancing one of the guys instead of discount-Tharja.

[LaZodiac]

Hey so here's a fun thought.

How about not have the protagonist date their ****ing students? Please?

I'm not going to look up the supports and stuff till I play the game obviously, unless it's shown in an obvious menu like in Echoes, but if my only LGBTA rep is me having to date a student I'm going to die. I will intentionally never S Rank my main character if it means marrying someone I literally was a teacher for. That's skeevy as hell to me.

[Kantaki]

Hey so here's a fun thought.

How about not have the protagonist date their ****ing students? Please?

I'm not going to look up the supports and stuff till I play the game obviously, unless it's shown in an obvious menu like in Echoes, but if my only LGBTA rep is me having to date a student I'm going to die. I will intentionally never S Rank my main character if it means marrying someone I literally was a teacher for. That's skeevy as hell to me.

To be fair, the MC seems to be about the same age as their students.
Which raises the question why they are a teacher...*
So, still off, but not as bad as it could be?
Depends on when the romance happens I guess.

*No, seriously. Hiring a mercenary group to send a teacher for your fancy military academy makes sense- at least they'll be neutral.
Letting them send someone who could be a student agewise not so much.
Unless the protagonist is some kind of genius- and even then -I don't see that working.

[Rodin]

Hey so here's a fun thought.

How about not have the protagonist date their ****ing students? Please?

I'm not going to look up the supports and stuff till I play the game obviously, unless it's shown in an obvious menu like in Echoes, but if my only LGBTA rep is me having to date a student I'm going to die. I will intentionally never S Rank my main character if it means marrying someone I literally was a teacher for. That's skeevy as hell to me.

Spoiler: Minor spoiler about dating students

Show

You don't date your students. There is a small timeskip (of a few years, I believe) when "war were declared" and it's only post-timeskip that romance becomes possible. In other words, you aren't dating a child, you are dating someone who is an adult, who has been a soldier for several years since you were their teacher.

Given what Zevox said earlier about some of the romance options being available regardless of house, I suspect that some of the options are your fellow teachers.

If you were their teacher at the time, I'd agree that it's skeevy. The way they've done it doesn't bother me. I suppose it's always possible I'll change my mind on that when the game comes out, but on paper it seems fine.

[LaZodiac]

Spoiler: Minor spoiler about dating students

Show

You don't date your students. There is a small timeskip (of a few years, I believe) when "war were declared" and it's only post-timeskip that romance becomes possible. In other words, you aren't dating a child, you are dating someone who is an adult, who has been a soldier for several years since you were their teacher.

Given what Zevox said earlier about some of the romance options being available regardless of house, I suspect that some of the options are your fellow teachers.

If you were their teacher at the time, I'd agree that it's skeevy. The way they've done it doesn't bother me. I suppose it's always possible I'll change my mind on that when the game comes out, but on paper it seems fine.

Spoiler

Show

I'm assuming the fight school is around highschool-college level, so does that mean our character is around the same ages as their students? They're gonna have to deal with that because truth be told, it's still kinda skeevy.

My teachers will always be my teachers. I would not and could not think of them as any other thing but that.

[Zevox]

Spoiler: Romance, no additional spoilers

Show

I eyed that as well. I'm very glad that they aren't doing child characters - it made sense for Awakening and was wildly out of place in Fates. With the academy system it looks like they're going for a smaller number of characters that you get to know more in-depth, which is fantastic.

The same-sex romance is something I've also been looking at for a while, as I typically like to play female characters but don't have that much interest in romancing a male character. The choices being so limited was rather off-putting, so much so that I'm breaking my usual rule and playing a male Byleth for the first playthrough to keep my options open. I made the mistake of female Corrin in Fates and getting stuck with Rhajat. I think I wound up actually romancing one of the guys instead of discount-Tharja.

[Realizes nothing he wrote here has to do with anything remotely spoilery for Three Houses, removes spoiler tags.]
Same on that first.

And you didn't miss much with Rhajat, let me tell you. I made the mistake of doing the full S rank with her as female Corrin, hoping she'd get better as you got to know her better, the way Tharja did. She did not. She is Tharja minus the redeeming qualities. Yeah, I regretted that.

That's one thing I think we can at least be confident of now, is that Three Houses is almost certainly better as far as gay relationships go than Fates. Tharja sucked, and I never actually did the male Corrin x Niles romance since I didn't like Niles as a character either. The best LGB character in the game was Soleil, and she wasn't allowed to actually have a non-straight relationship, just to flirt with other girls in a few scenes and talk about being into girls in some of her supports. So yeah, low bar there, and just by sheer quantity Three Houses practically has to pass it... right?

Hey so here's a fun thought.

How about not have the protagonist date their ****ing students? Please?

I'm not going to look up the supports and stuff till I play the game obviously, unless it's shown in an obvious menu like in Echoes, but if my only LGBTA rep is me having to date a student I'm going to die. I will intentionally never S Rank my main character if it means marrying someone I literally was a teacher for. That's skeevy as hell to me.

If the whole game were the school portion portion, I'd completely agree with you. But...

Spoiler: More very minor spoilers, mostly about supports.

Show

As Rodin mentioned there's a timeskip that happens at some point (I'm not sure exactly when or how long it is, though the implication from trailers and what else I've seen online is that it's a number of years), after which everyone is an adult and you're no longer working as a teacher, and none of the relationships turn romantic until after that point. Combine that with Byleth seeming to be not much older than the students to begin with, as Kantaki pointed out (if the students are in their mid teens I'd say Byleth appears to be early 20s, though with anime-esque art it can be hard to tell), and I'm much more open to it than I otherwise would be. It could still be handled badly, that's entirely possible, but I won't write it off completely like I otherwise was going to.

Plus there are possible same-sex romantic pairings between the students themselves not involving Byleth at all, and again almost all of those are concentrated in Black Eagle, with just one in Blue Lion, from what I've read.

Spoiler: Minor spoiler about dating students

Show

Given what Zevox said earlier about some of the romance options being available regardless of house, I suspect that some of the options are your fellow teachers.

No, actually. They are...

Spoiler: Support/Romance spoilers

Show

The two male options that are basically fake-outs (S supports that for some reason end up totally platonic anyway) are Knights, not teachers (at least as far as I'm aware, the basic profiles I've seen of them don't refer to them as teachers). The two female options are the mystery girl you see visions of, and the Archbishop of the church. Hence my hesitation on both of them - mystery girl looks very, very young, and the other woman is almost certainly much older than you and is a major religious authority figure. I don't know, maybe madame Archbishop will actually be well-handled and not come across weird, but by default, I am even iffier about both of those options than about the student ones.

[Rodin]

No, actually. They are...

Spoiler: Support/Romance spoilers

Show

The two male options that are basically fake-outs (S supports that for some reason end up totally platonic anyway) are Knights, not teachers (at least as far as I'm aware, the basic profiles I've seen of them don't refer to them as teachers). The two female options are the mystery girl you see visions of, and the Archbishop of the church. Hence my hesitation on both of them - mystery girl looks very, very young, and the other woman is almost certainly much older than you and is a major religious authority figure. I don't know, maybe madame Archbishop will actually be well-handled and not come across weird, but by default, I am even iffier about both of those options than about the student ones.

That does sound pretty dodgy.

Then again, I can never tell what I will find uncomfortable with these games. Nowi turned out to be one of my favorite characters in Awakening and I had to have it explained to me why people were uncomfortable. Along comes Fates and I want to tell Elise to go back to middle school.

The thing I hope the most is that we don't have any extremely restricted Supports like Sumia. She pretty much always wound up married to Chrom since he has similarly limited supports and I didn't want to block off another support pairing I hadn't seen yet. This made Cynthia pretty boring since she pretty much always had the same parents (and hence a similar stat line and class choices).

[Zevox]

That does sound pretty dodgy.

Then again, I can never tell what I will find uncomfortable with these games. Nowi turned out to be one of my favorite characters in Awakening and I had to have it explained to me why people were uncomfortable. Along comes Fates and I want to tell Elise to go back to middle school.

I agree about Elise. Nowi, eh, I was okay with her as a character, but never allowed anyone but Ricken to marry her. He was the only male character young enough for me to be okay with him marrying either Nowi or Lissa in that game.

Also,

Spoiler: Minor spoiler: character ages in Three Houses

Show

I should add that I've now found out that most of the Three Houses characters' ages are known, and oddly enough miss Archbishop is only 28. So, weird, not sure how she became supreme leader of a religion at that age, but at least it means she's not massively older than Byleth. For additional context, most of the students are in their late teens, the average being 17 or 18, the youngest being a couple of 15 year olds, and the oldest being one that is 22 (next oldest are a couple of 19 year olds). The two Knights I mentioned are actually the ones that are much older, at 44 and 55, which just makes their supports that much more baffling. Byleth and the mystery girl's ages are unknowns, though I'd wager that 20s is a safe bet for Byleth. No guesses on mystery girl, she could be a spirit that's thousands of years old for all we know.

The thing I hope the most is that we don't have any extremely restricted Supports like Sumia. She pretty much always wound up married to Chrom since he has similarly limited supports and I didn't want to block off another support pairing I hadn't seen yet. This made Cynthia pretty boring since she pretty much always had the same parents (and hence a similar stat line and class choices).

Eh, I don't recall her feeling that restricted, but I did only play through Awakening twice, and she was my first choice to marry Chrom on my first time through.

[Kantaki]

Spoiler: Minor spoiler: character ages in Three Houses

Show

No guesses on mystery girl, she could be a spirit that's thousands of years old for all we know.

Spoiler

Show

The way she's presented in the trailer definitely makes me think she's been around a long time.

The first time I saw her I thought she would be another dragon, like Tiki or Nowi.

So her being something where human standards don't quite apply- creep factor aside* -seems quite likely.

*Seriously, with Nowi it's bad enough that her daughter comes off as more viable.

[Rising Phoenix]

I am picking up my collector's edition tomorrow.

I've spoiled myself a fair bit, but this has only made me more excited about the game as a whole.

Also I approve of the very limited fan service this time around- thank goodness we don't have a Camilla.

[Yana]

I vehemently agree with you re: Camilla. She soured me on Fates.

[Zevox]

I vehemently agree with you re: Camilla. She soured me on Fates.

I didn't dislike her that much, but she definitely needed to learn how to say things without making them sound like an innuendo, no doubt there. Didn't know enough about Three Houses' characters to know there wasn't anyone like her in it, but I'm happy to hear that's the case.

[Razade]

This will be my first entry into the series, so I'm not really looking forward to anything in particular. Game comes in Friday but I won't get to enjoy it until late as I work all day. Just wanted an RPG on the switch honestly and I've heard good things about Fire Emblem...but not great things about the translations of the last few games. So hopefully that won't be a problem for this one.

[Rising Phoenix]

I didn't dislike her that much, but she definitely needed to learn how to say things without making them sound like an innuendo, no doubt there. Didn't know enough about Three Houses' characters to know there wasn't anyone like her in it, but I'm happy to hear that's the case.

Her design, her behaviour, everything was designed to appease to a certain fandom. She is a badly presented character (though her backstory did have loads and loads of potential which was never mentioned in game).

Tharja on the other hand is fan servicy, but she's rather well written and as such I can tolerate her a lot more than Camilla.

EDIT: The game is out and the reviews are stellar.

[Anteros]

I don't really see the point in trying to force modern morality onto a medieval setting, so I couldn't care less about any of that. I can see where it's kinda slimy...but I simply don't care if my characters in an ancient fantasy setting share my exact moral compass. Especially when it doesn't seem like a huge deal anyway. Consenting adults can do what they want.

My bigger issue is that lately Fire Emblem is more concerned with making itself into a bad dating simulator game than a good strategy one. That's a hard pass for me.

[tonberrian]

Fire Emblem has been a dating simulator since it reached the States. I don't mind it so much.

Also: Black Eagles for lyfe! Post your house of choice for your first playthrough!

[Zevox]

I don't really see the point in trying to force modern morality onto a medieval setting, so I couldn't care less about any of that. I can see where it's kinda slimy...but I simply don't care if my characters in an ancient fantasy setting share my exact moral compass. Especially when it doesn't seem like a huge deal anyway. Consenting adults can do what they want.

My bigger issue is that lately Fire Emblem is more concerned with making itself into a bad dating simulator game than a good strategy one. That's a hard pass for me.

It's not even close to a dating simulator, it's the same support system the series has always* had, just with the "S" rank added, at which point the relationship explicitly results in marriage earlier than waiting for the paired ending. And even that's less prominent in Three Houses than in Awakening or Fates.

Spoiler: Support info.

Show

S supports only exist for the player character, while everyone else is back to waiting for the paired endings to see how those relationships turn out. Probably because with the child recruitment mechanic removed there's less importance to it.

*Well, for at least as long as it's been getting brought to the US, anyway, and minus Radiant Dawn and Dark Dragon. Not sure exactly when it was first added to the series, but it's been around for at minimum more than half of its lifetime.

[tonberrian]

It seems supports were first added in Binding Blade, Roy's game.

[deuterio12]

Mystery of the Emblem and Thracia 776 both had bonds support.
Genealogy of the Holy War had marriage mechanics.

The very first game could be said to be a dating simulator in that you needed to keep Caeda alive for her to marry Marth at the end since she wasn't a plot-critical unit.

[Anteros]

I don't care that there's a support system. That seems to add an interesting dynamic. What bothers me is that most of the gameplay seen so far seems to revolve around running a school talking to anime girls in an effort to get them to like you. Comparing it to the support system of early entries to the series is disingenuous. The existence of a support system is fine. Being forced to play a bare bones dating simulator in between combats is not. Or rather, it's fine. But it's not what appeals to me at all.

[Razade]

I don't care that there's a support system. That seems to add an interesting dynamic. What bothers me is that most of the gameplay seen so far seems to revolve around running a school talking to anime girls in an effort to get them to like you. Comparing it to the support system of early entries to the series is disingenuous. The existence of a support system is fine. Being forced to play a bare bones dating simulator in between combats is not. Or rather, it's fine. But it's not what appeals to me at all.

People who have played the series for a long while seem to indicate that this isn't a fair assessment of the game. Having never played and only knowing the memes from the game, I don't even get the feel that it's Doki Doki Panic or anything like that, but with fighting. All the bonds seem to be like any other RPG where you need to spend time with your teammates. Is Mass Effect a dating sim? You literally take some characters out on dates.