*This replay is probably my 13th run of Three Houses. The first four runs were doing all four story routes with the fifth being a replay of Azure Moon while the next 7 runs were long stretches of support grinding (two due to accidentally forgetting the ring). In celebration of Three Houses’s fifth anniversary, I replayed it through Verdant Wind while trying and failing to do an ironman run.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (FE:TH) is a game that gave me the most amount of different feelings. And I don’t mean by how emotional I got, but by how I felt about the game for the last five years. From proclaiming it to being my favorite, to falling down in ranks, to outright not wanting to replay due to its different game structure, FE:TH is probably the most polarizing game I played as there are aspects I really like and other aspects I think ultimately drag the game down to being one of my least favorite Fire Emblem games (even if I still like it in the end).
For context, Three Houses was the sixteenth mainline Fire Emblem game and the first mainline game returning back to consoles after Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn on the Wii. Tease as a 2018 release, Three Houses was pushed back to the summer of 2019 to give it more time to be polished. Instead of only Intelligent Systems, Koei Tecmo (of Dynasty Warriors fame) co-developed the game since I.S. wanted help in releasing a new game on the Switch and they had already worked with them before on Fire Emblem: Warriors (2017). Interestingly, Koei Tecmo did most of the heavy lifting since I.S. only left a minimal team of designers, music composers, and programmer advisors.
From the get-go, Three Houses was always going to be an intriguing game. Like Fire Emblem: Fates, it has multiple branching routes that result in different outcomes. Though, unlike Fates, it was all contained in one game cartridge (excluding the Fates Special Edition). Inspired by small ideas traced back from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, the game explores a tale of students studying at a military academy where students befriend others, the passage of time passes, and those same students reunite with their friends either as new allies or enemies in a war. Thus, was the setting of Garreg Mach Monastery and the Calendar system was formed. Combined with Fire Emblem’s usual gameplay style, the small bits of music revealed, the premise, and character designs, Three Houses was always a game that would be seen by many.
Like Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates, the game will ask the player for their difficulty, mode settings, and avatar look. There is the option of Normal, Hard, and Maddening difficulty with the options of Classic or Casual modes. Though, since I’m still too much of a Fire Emblem scrub, I usually play all runs on Hard - Classic (except when I did my support grind which I did Normal-Casual). Unlike Awakening or Fates, the Avatar options are limited to only choosing which gender they are and their name (with Byleth being their canon name).
After your introduction to the world of Fodlan, meeting with the three House Leaders (Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude), and becoming a professor in the Officer’s Academy at Garreg Mach, the gameplay loop is established at the start of Chapter 2. Gameplay is divided into two different sections: the tactical turn-based gameplay and the sections of Garreg Mach.
The tactical turn-based gameplay is still the same as the rest of the series, though there are several aspects that are modified or are new in Three Houses. First, unlike Fates or Echoes: Shadow of Valentia, weapon durability returns though to compensate there is a blacksmith system where you can still forge stronger weapons or repair any weapon at the cost of providing materials and gold. Second is the battalion system. Each unit can equip a battalion of generic units where they can get minor stat upgrades or downgrades and can learn a specific skill tied to a specific battalion through Gambits. Only two types exist. Attack types which can cause debuffs to enemies and support types where a battalion can help allies in non-combative ways like healing buffs, or movement buffs. Keep in mind that most battalions can only be equipped if the unit’s authority level is equal to it and only flying units can work with flying battalions. A battalion can get level gains (which rank up to five) where the equipped unit’s stats and abilities can be much stronger. Third, is the charm stat which just affects a unit’s capabilities with working with a battalion. Fourth, is the Crest attributes in units. Similar to Genealogy’s Holy Blood attributes, some specific characters carry a Crest and can grant them abilities such as raising might or nullifying counterattacks. Fifth, is the return of the rewind feature from Shadows of Valentia. Changed from Mila’s Turnwheel into Divine Pulse, the player can rewind their actions during battle. Unlike if Alm or Celica died and resulted in a game over, one of the main house leaders, Byleth, or an important unit dying or a failure in an objection doesn’t immediately result in a game over since the game allows the player to immediately use a Divine Pulse. Sixth, combat arts were tweaked a bit differently. Unlike in Shadow of Valentia where a unit uses up their health points to perform an art, a unit instead uses weapon durability to initiate arts. To learn arts, a character needs to level up their proficiencies in order to gain them. Seventh, is dismounting. Last seen in Thracia 776, dismounting simply has mounted units dismount which slightly changes their stats. Unlike in Thracia 776 where you needed to dismount during indoor maps, units can freely dismount indoors or outdoors. Finally, all units have the option to class into any type of class. Ranked from Beginner to Intermediate to Advanced to Master classes (with the additional Special classes from the DLC), a unit must level up their proficiencies and get to a specific level in order to class/reclass themselves. Overall, the gameplay is still the same with pretty neat features that do give it its Three Houses fare.
The Garreg Mach sections is Three Houses’s second half that makes up at least a good 60% of an average player’s run time. The days of Garreg Mach are shown through the in-game calendar which affects the activities the player can do. On most Mondays, Byleth can teach their students through lessons. Only on most Sundays does Byleth get the chance to have a free day with the options to “Explore”, “Fight”, “Seminar”, and “Rest”. Sometimes, Garreg Mach hosts events while also celebrating character’s birthdays. Both of these usually result in the unit's bonds with each other and Byleth to grow.
Lessons are an important gameplay segment to ensure your units can effectively grow. Byleth can instruct any of their students in growing their specific skills. The skill levels in question include sword, lance, axe, bow, gauntlet, reason (normal/dark magic), faith (light/support magic), authority, heavy armor, riding, and flying proficiencies. Each unit has specific skill strengths or weaknesses, though that shouldn’t stop the player from experimenting. Sometimes, a student has a budding talent at another skill type or at their weakest skill, and they will learn new skills or combat arts upon reaching three stars of those skills. To even instruct, the player must have enough tutoring points (which ties to Professor Level) and the chosen unit must be motivated (from 25% to 100%). However, if you rather not manually instruct your units, auto-instruct is always there to help. Once tutoring, the player must ensure they establish a unit’s goals as they help gain more skill experience of that specific skill type that was chosen as a goal. All units can suggest a specific goal, though the player doesn’t need to accept all of them. Finally, you can assign two units on group tasks that can help them grow their heavy armor, riding, or flying proficiency, earn you crafting/repair materials and gold, and increase the pair’s support.
In “Explore”, Byleth will explore Garreg Mach Monastery as the game’s hubworld. They can talk to the students, staff, and knights as they respond to the ongoing chapter’s events, do some sidequests that net small rewards, and spend activity points are various facilities (with a few facilities being free to be reused). However, the activity points are limited and can be increased by Professor Level. Some of these includes fishing (which is free), gardening (which can net ingredients and stat boosts), Choir Practice (which boosts faith and authority proficiency and boost supports with a chosen pair and Byleth), sharing a meal (which boost support with a chosen pair and Byleth and raises the pair’s motivation depending on their affinity with the dish), training ground (where specific types of tournaments are held and the net gain being a new weapon and gold), the Sauna (DLC facility where it simple increases a chosen unit and Byleth’s support), Online Liasons (which can only be used if having an Switch Online subscription which can net you items shared online), and Faculty Training (where Byleth can be instructed by specific characters in skills the player wishes them to develop which results in an increase support between Byleth and their chosen instructor). There is also a small area known as Abyss (unlocked by buying the Three Houses’ Expansion Pass and clearing Cindered Shadows Chapter 1) underneath Garreg Mach where you can check unit performance ratings and finding thrown-out weapons in the Scrap Heap. As you can tell, most of these facilities help the player increase support points between units.
As with interacting with the characters themselves, you can give them gifts, return a lost item to them, invite them to tea parties, and invite them as temporary assistants in missions. Keep in mind that on classic, letting the assistant character be defeated in battles results in being unable to do any of the aforementioned things anymore. I learned that the hard way when I lost Sylvain from a Miklan crit, Hilda from the Miklan beast hit, and Felix from a Death Knight crit. Finally, you can also recruit other students from the other students though you would need to have Byleth have a specific number to a stat and a specific level skill requirement. It helps that gaining support conversations with those other students helps lower the requirements. This is pretty useful in an ironman run since (with very few exceptions) the player doesn’t gain anymore units after Chapter 12.
In “Fight”, Byleth can take their class in skirmish battles for the purpose to grind supports, levels, and class proficiency. Sometimes, the battles may be quest-related while half of the time some are gaiden chapters that are led by specific units. These gaiden maps usually end with a new battalion and sometimes a new weapon and items (like Heroes’ Relics or Regalia items). At the end of each month, the player is required to undertake a story mission to progress the game.
As for “Seminar”, it works similarly to Faculty Training in which Byleth is instructed by another staff of the Church of Seiros in developing skills though the difference is they and several specific students can develop those skills and gain motivation at the cost of not getting any support points.
As for “Rest”, it's only situational useful in restoring five uses of Byleth’s Sword of Creator and helps raise motivation to all of Byleth’s students. Based on percentages of use, barely anyone uses it that much.
All of these systems within the Garreg Mach sections may seem alot, but it's pretty simple in execution and players will get used to it quickly.
Now for the setting. Like all other Fire Emblem games, Three Houses takes place in a new continent with its own lore and continuity. Taking place in the continent of Fodlan, the continent is split up into three different nations (eerily similar to the Three Kingdoms era in China since Koei Tecmo worked with that time frame in their Dynasty Warriors series). The Adrestian Empire of southern Fodlan is the largest and the oldest of the nations (to the point of the ingame year being called Adrestian Years) ruled by an imperial family blessed by Saint Seiros’s blood. The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus of northern Fodlan is ruled by a royal family that formerly split from Adrestia and gained the “Holy” title due to the Church of Seiros endorsing them as a nation. Finally, the Leicester Alliance of eastern Fodlan is ruled by a council of lords with a duke leading them. All three nations have the Church of Seiros as their primary religion with Garreg Mach being their headquarters. Crest is the norm and those who have one are guaranteed positions of power. Next to Fodlan are some foreign nations like Almyra, Duscar, Brigid, Albinea, Morfis, Sreng, and Dagda. Though with the exception of the first three, the rest are irrelevant to Three House’s story. The lore of Fodlan is deep as you learn alot of the inner workings between the nation’s problems, the Church’s influence, the Crest system, and past events that influence how Fodlan and its inhabitants are at the start of Three Houses. Many of the lore can be found within the library and through conversations within exploring Garreg Mach or in support conversations. Overall, worldbuilding is a massive step up from FE: Fate’s lackluster worldbuilding.
Now for the characters and narrative. In terms of characters and their characterization, this is some of the strongest cast of characters I have seen in the series. All of the House Leaders and their accompanying classmates of the Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer were all likable and memorable in the copious amount of (mostly well-written) support conversations I seen. The staff of the Church of Seiros were all good as well, even if half get less focus than they should. The Ashen Wolves (our residential DLCs units) were all excellent and fit well with the establishment of Fodlan’s lore. Of the playable characters (excluding Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude since I liked all of them), my absolute favorites would be “I AM FERDINAND VON AEGIR”, Dorothea, Petra, Linhardt, Felix (my GOATed brother), Ashe, Annette, Mercedes, Ingrid, Marianne (my GOAT), Lysithea, Raphael, Lorenz, Yuri, Constance, Hapi, Seteth, Manuela, Alois, and Shamir (also GOATed). I didn’t really care for Cyril (due to not being a nothing character and the lack of screentime), Gilbert (more for his action of abandoning his own wife and daughter rather than his character), and Anna (a DLC unit that is absolutely garbage due to having the useless Crest of Ernest and having no support bonuses to anyone). I’m also really indifferent to Byleth since while I like the idea of their character background and development of their story, the decision to make them completely silent (except for battle quotes) was pretty baffling due to how every line in the game is voiced and it makes it hard to connect with them as a character. It doesn’t help that Three Hopes (the Warriors spin-off set in Fodlan) did prove that their character would’ve definitely worked and be more well-received if they were voiced in the first place.
As for the side cast, they were alright, though like the Church members, barely get any screentime to really make an impact to the players. Judith was awesome (though wished she actually playable), Rodrigue is an interesting character that represents Faerghus chivalry at its best and worst, and Randolph, Fleche, and Ladislava were way too cool to have good designs only for the game not to give them us as playable units.
The antagonists are a different discussion. Due to Three House’s branching routes and gray morality, some characters are going to be seen as villains due to the perspective of your chosen route while the same can be said for the opposite. In terms of antagonists, Edelgard was a great foil to Dimitri, Claude, and Rhea in Azure Moon, Verdant Wind, and Silver Snow while Rhea (and Dimitri to a lesser extent) was a good foil to Edelgard in Crimson Flower. However, there are some stinker antagonists that I want to point out.
The Death Knight (or Jobber Knight as I would like to call him) is a cheap poor man’s version of the Black Knight from the Tellius duology. Both have this aura of mystery with both cool designs and cool weapons. However, unlike Black Knight’s usage in the story and his build-up rivalry with Ike, Jobber Knight looks pretty bad in comparison because he is hyped up to be this great reaper of death only to look weak when actually encountering him with his only motivation of him wanting to kill and wishing he can die by someone stronger than him. His first appearance in Chapter 4 and second appearance in Chapter 6 was threatening, but after that his threatening aura disappears as he became sidelined in the second half of White Clouds and disappears for most of the post timeskip. Even then, his earlier appearances can be trivialized by a trained Lysithea learning Dark Spikes (a spell that is super effective to Jobber Knight’s horse). Discounting Cindered Shadows and taking into account Verdant Wind, you fight and probably win against Jobber Knight at least SIX times. The only time I ever respected Jobber Knight was when I got him as the recruitable Jeritza in Crimson Flower and even then he barely does jack. His supports with Mercedes and Bernadetta made me at most tolerate his existence, though it was admittingly fun to beat enemies up with him.
Hubert (or Jobbert as I liked to call him) can also fall in this category of being a jobber. He’s only a vassal serving under Edelgard and a former playable unit, so I wasn’t expecting much from him. However, the number of times we fought him in Azure Moon where he simply retreated made him a jobber to me. Otherwise, he is going to die for every route except for Crimson Flower.
Next, we got the Agarthans whom Jobbert and the Church of Seiros dubbed as Those Who Slither in the Dark (TWitSD) (whom I dubbed Those Who Job in the Dark) and they are easily the weakest villains and probably the worst thing in Three Houses’s narrative. They have the awesome lore of formerly humans who saw Sothis ascend to them, and tried to overthrow her before Sothis destroyed them. They then hid themselves underground - forming a city later called Shambhala. They manipulate events that cause the Tragedy of the Red Canyon, the War of Heroes, the Faerghus Rebellion, the Crescent Moon War, the death of Duke Osvald von Reigan (Claude’s uncle), the Hyrm Rebellion, the Insurrection of Seven, and the Tragedy of Duscar all just to destabilize Fodlan and try to crush the faith of the Church of Seiros through disorder. They are also directly responsible for Edelgard’s (and Lysithea’s) transformation which formed the backbone of her motivations which led to the events of Three Houses. They also have the ability to snatch people’s bodies (as seen with Arundel, Cornelia, Tomas, and Monica) and have essentially nukes through the Javelins of Light. All of that lore and scheming only for the Agarthans to look like a complete circus show when the story actually happens. They do nothing for the most part and when they do, they are cartoonishly goofy and their plans usually fall apart (as seen with Solon’s plan in Chapter 10 and Thalas’s plan in post time-skip). They are also pretty idiotic as the Agarthans (really just Thalas) make some pretty dumb decisions that made no sense like not using the Javelin of Light to kill are three leaders of Fodlan during the Battle of Gronder earlier instead of blowing up Fort Merceus or blowing up Arianrhod just to flex their technology to Edelgard in Crimson Flower. Both of these events led to their city being ousted by Jobbert which led to their downfall. They make Edelgard look worse and stupider for allying herself with them and they actively take away any gray morality that the game built up well since the game makes it clear they are the true enemies of Fodlan. The only W they get is knocking out Byleth for five years and even then, that doesn't end up working since they still get washed in all of the routes.
One last antagonist is Nemesis and the Ten Elites. They are literally nothing characters since they are undead zombies and came out completely out of nowhere (with a poor excuse of Shambhala’s destruction opening their capsules). It doesn’t help that Shambhala is both destroyed in Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, yet they only show up in the latter. It makes me wonder if they were supposed to do more since their revival was never foreshadowed nor properly built up. Only good thing they provide is the amazingly composed God-Shattering Star.
Now for the narrative. As mentioned, Three Houses have multiple branching routes thus there are different endings. The point of where the split begins is literally after the first exploration of Garreg Mach in Chapter 1, where Byleth chooses to teach the Black Eagles, the Blue Lions, and the Golden Deer. The first half is known as White Clouds where Byleth spends a year teaching their students at Garreg Mach and through missions all while dealing with the machinations of unrest in Fodlan through the Flame Emperor and the Agarthans. After that, Edelgard is ousted as the Flame Emperor before she declares war on the Church and thus the Kingdom and Alliance. Thus begins the second half of the game where five years have passed. Depending on which house you pick early, and one faithful decision in Black Eagles route, the outcome of the war is decided. Siding against Edelgard (through Azure Moon, Verdant Wind, and Silver Snow) ultimately led to the Empire’s downfall, the jobbing of the Agarthans, and Fodlan united as one nation under the Kingdom (AM) or as the newly formed United Kingdom of Fodlan (VW/SS). Siding with Edelgard leads to the Church’s defeat, the defeats of the Alliance and the Kingdom, and the eventual jobbing of the Agarthans (with the last happening offscreen).
At first glimpse, the narrative is pretty enjoyable as I really do like the dynamics each House has with each other (though Blue Lions does have the strongest chemistry due to half of the class already knowing each other) and the stories are told pretty well. However, as I have beaten the game many more times and thought more about the outcome of some peculiar story beats, the narrative started to have cracks showing to the point I became more critical of the story’s execution.
The first problem begins with choosing one of the Three Houses. Since you get this option so early on without really knowing any of the students beforehand, the route lock is there for the rest of the game without the player really getting a chance to either agree or disagree with their actions. This really applies to the Black Eagles route since Edelgard’s actions are the most radical and controversial. The whole choosing difficult choices thing kind of falls apart since the only choices that do matter are choosing one of the Three Houses and siding for or against Edelgard (exclusive to Black Eagles).
The second problem is White Clouds as a section. The story told in White Clouds is fine for what it does and there are highlights like the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, Chapter 10, and Dimitri’s reaction to the Flame Emperor’s reveal. However, the story beats and maps are the exact same for all routes. By the time I got to Golden Deer on my fourth run, I was getting sick and tired of clearing White Clouds. Looking at it closer, White Clouds fits in seamlessly with Blue Lions, though not as well with Black Eagles and Golden Deer. While it probably would’ve cost more delays and development time, I wished White Clouds wasn’t the exact same for all routes and would’ve changed some missions to be more unique for BE or GD.
Though, there are some moments within Part 1 that irks me. The first big one is “Monica” killing Jeralt. “Monica” literally ousted the existence of the Agarthans and thus the Church became aware of their existence. “Monica” made that kill for no reason other than to spite Byleth and probably would’ve gotten away doing more schemes if she never ousted herself in the first place. The second is the reveal of the Flame Emperor being Edelgard. While amazingly revealed in Blue Lions, it is unceremoniously revealed in BE and GD and the characters don’t give out that shock in expression as they should’ve. Third (and only exclusive to siding with Edelgard) is the lame way they showed the transition of the time skip since Crimson Flower was rushed and they didn’t bother to give the ending of Chapter 12 an animated cutscene like the other routes.
The post-time skip is also an issue I take with. SS, AM, and VW literally have nearly the exact same story beats with the difference being AM having Dimitri’s character arc and focuses more on his rivalry with Edelgard while SS and VW are literally the same except for the main leads and the final bosses. Crimson Flower is probably the most unique one since the story concept is interesting but the execution is kind of mixed since it's pretty short and the story ends at Rhea’s defeat before the Agarthans’s defeat. Overall in quality, Azure Moon is probably the best written due to Dimitri’s arc and redemption (with my problem being Rodrigue’s death and Dimitri’s turn-heel redemption being way too quick) while Silver Snow and Verdant Wind were let-downs in uniqueness, and Crimson Flower was just rushed.
Overall, of the executions of the story, I only really enjoyed Azure Moon and Crimson Flower the most and even then, they still have some pitfalls that weaken their quality. I still do like the stories, but I feel like they didn’t reach their full potential and are a product of Three Houses’s rushed development. Also doesn’t help that the developers assumed everyone was going to play only one route, which made these problems really apparent since they didn’t account for players just going to play the other routes regardless of their original intentions.
To continue on my criticism, is the gameplay loop. In my first few runs, I enjoyed the experience. Though as I replayed more and gained more experience from other Fire Emblem games, I slowly came to dislike this loop overtime.
To start, Garreg Mach at first was really big as it was such a strange place to set up a military academy on. Combine that with the amount of character interactions, and it was fun to explore it for the first few runs. Over time, at the second half of my fourth run when I chose Golden Deer, I came to realize that I was getting really burned from exploring Garreg Mach and would rather be playing the battle maps.
Even then, the battle maps aren't really that interesting. The common consensus is that Three Houses’s map design is extremely bland and I agree since there is barely any unique obstacles or side adjectives that the player has to deal with. Doesn’t help that all the routes reuse alot of map designs and thus the gameplay loop did burn me out since I kept playing these boring maps many times. While more a theory, I blame the boring map design on the zoom-in feature.
The zoom-in feature is extremely impractical. While cool to zoom in on the map and move your characters from this point of view, it is a lot slower and makes it hard to pay attention to enemy ranges. Thank goodness they didn’t bring the feature back in the next game since it really has no practicality and the zoom-in in the fights already done that job well.
Another criticism is the presentation of Three Houses. The 3-D character models, the character portraits, the in-engine cutscenes (ex. Byleth saving Edelgard / Catherine’s attack), and the animated cutscenes (despite the slow frames) were well presented. However, 90% of the cutscenes and support conversations are shown in these dialogue scenes where the 3-D models are shown, but they are in front of a really ugly 2-D/3-D hybrid of location backgrounds. It really makes Three Houses look visually unappealing, especially in comparison to other Switch games that came that year.
My last big criticism is the difficulty. It is a bit over the place since Three Houses can be really easy or really annoyingly hard. Normal is pretty and Hard is overall managable. Though, two things trivialized the lower difficulties: Time Pulse and Wyvern Lords. Byleth can earn at most ten rewinds which makes permadeath feel as an afterthought. Second is that due to the nature of everyone can be anything, the metagame of Three Houses is making everyone a Wyvern Lord since they can fly and have enough bulk to trivialize a lot of the enemies. As for Maddening, it is way too hard early on before it starts to become slightly manageable. However, you can potentially get soft-locked in Chasing Daybreak (the first time skip map exclusive to SS, AM, and VW) if you had terrible levels and bad builds. It makes Maddening mode fall into the unfairness of Path of Radiance’s Maniac difficulty though is nowhere near as bad as Awakening’s Lunatic and Lunatic+ Modes or New Mystery’s Revere Lunatic difficulty. It helps that New Game+ can make getting skills and classes in the early game much easier thus the player does have the tools to plan out their Maddening runs. Though, since I do not have the time to do these types of challenges anymore, I still have yet to even do Maddening and I don’t plan to. Besides, the reward for beating Maddening sucks so the satisfaction is getting bragging rights.
Back to the positives, the one thing I can praise Three Houses is the amazing voice acting. Of all the JRPGs I played throughout the years, I generally think this is some of the best English dubbing I have seen in gaming. Every character has a great voice and I could tell the VAs were really enjoying the experience. Special shoutouts go to Chris Hackney as Dimitri as he probably gave the best performance in the game which does elevate Dimitri both as a character and in his arc. Some of my favorite performances include Tara Platt (Edelgard), Joe Zieja (Claude), Cassandra Lee Morris (Sothis), Cherami Leigh (Rhea), Veronica Talyor (Manuela), Allegra Clark (Dorothea and Shamir), (R.I.P.) Billy Kametz (Ferdinand), Janice Kawaye (Lysithea), Faye Mata (Petra), Xanthe Huynh (Marianne), Brittany Cox (Ingrid), Mark Whitten (Seteth), and Kirsten Day (Constance). As for the original JP dub, I never really heard it thus I have no right to comment on it. It’s thanks to these great performances that I did stick around with Three Houses with many more runs which culminated in me getting all the support conversations.
Finally, my favorite thing about Three Houses is easily the music. Fire Emblem music (especially since Awakening) has always been banging and Three Houses continues the trend of the series having unexpecting bangers. Some of my favorites includes the Three Houses main theme, the Edge of Dawn - Seasons of Warfare (both EN and JP), Fodlan Winds (Rain), Blue Skies and a Battle (Rain), Tearing Through Heaven (Rain), Roar of Dominion (Rain), Chasing Daybreak (Rain and Thunder), Between Heaven and Earth (Rain and Thunder), The Long Road (Rain), God-Shattering Star (Rain), (my Beloved) A Funeral of Flowers (Rain), (the GOAT) The Apex of the World (Rain and Thunder), Shambhala - Area 17 Redux (Rain), The Verge of Death (Rain), Paths that Will Never Cross (Rain), Indomitable Will (Rain and Thunder), Guardian of Starlight, The Leader’s Path (Edelgard’s theme), The King of Lions (Dimitri’s theme), Golden Deer and Crescent Moon (Claude’s theme), As Swift as Wind, As Fierce of Fire, the Edge of Dawn (ending theme), Corridor of the Tempest (Rain), Shackled Wolves (Rain), and At What Cost? (Rain). Overall, yet another strong line of battle map themes and character themes.
In a nutshell, I liked the characters, soundtrack, worldbuilding, and the gameplay of the battles and Garreg Mach is functional and simple to understand. However, the ugly presentation, difficulty balancing, bland map design, reused story beats through the entirety of White Clouds and three out of the four time skip routes, Crimson Flower’s rushed execution, the Agarthans and their performance in the story, and the repetitiveness of the gameplay loop when replaying any of the routes ultimately made me feel critical to Three Houses as a final product. While I do like Three Houses, it is one of my least favorite games in the series due to the gameplay not being as fun as the other games and I was personally let down by the execution of the routes and the map design. Despite this, the support conversations made me come back to the game a lot which is the reason why I played it 13 times. While not my favorite FE game, I still recommend Three Houses as it is a pretty unique experience that I don’t think any other game can really replicate and the strong cast of characters and music is what carries the experience. After five years of contemplating my feelings about the game, I ranked this game a solidified 3.5/5.
