It’s been a whole year since Intelligent System’s most celebrated title in the company’s history released. Fire Emblem: Three Houses blew fans and critics away with the outstanding quality and charming characters it presented, becoming the best-selling Fire Emblem game ever. Since then, Intelligent Systems released the Cindered Shadows DLC and the great Paper Mario: The Origami King, so it’s safe to expect they’re working on the next Fire Emblem game to keep hungry fans satisfied.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses took the series in a slightly different direction. While previous Fire Emblem games toyed with the idea of alternate routes, the formula didn’t work nearly as well until Three Houses, offering three different paths to start the game that greatly affects the story and characters players interact with. Coupling that with the new classroom and social simulation features, and the series has taken a turn for the best.
While Fire Emblem: Three Houses is arguably the best game in the series, it doesn’t do everything perfectly. Older fans of the series will criticize the difficulty (unless played on Maddening mode), along with some of the pacing issues found in the second half of the game. It doesn’t help that all three routes are essentially identical for the first half of the game, making going through the story a little less exciting the second time around.
What Fire Emblem: Three Houses Did Right
Right off the bat, Fire Emblem Three Houses exceeded expectations with excellent character design and some of the best combat animations the series has ever seen. Each character has such in-depth personalities that even the one-trope characters become fully fleshed out once the player deepens their relationship with them. It’s no surprise that the Fire Emblem online community is obsessed with the character’s voice actors, and has an endless supply of comics and fan art surrounding just about every Three Houses student.
Storylines in Fire Emblem tend to be pretty basic, but Three Houses adds a solid number of unexpected twists to spice things up. Still, the character development completely outshines everything about the overarching plot. While each student performs best with certain classes, the ability to turn characters into any class and wield any weapon in the game is very welcome — especially on subsequent playthroughs. The removal of the weapon triangle was surprisingly well-implemented, and the skills and combat arts are a welcome addition that deepens the combat. The Divine Pulse feature that allows players to turn back time in battle is a welcome feature for those who are not looking for a serious challenge.
What Fire Emblem: Three Houses Could Improve On
The Monastery sections of Fire Emblem: Three Houses are where most of the social simulation takes place. A free-roam area where players can teach students, go fishing, and have tea parties with the cast is engaging and novel for the first half of the game, but the repetitiveness and lack of variety in the second half really bring the experience down. On that note, there are a few pacing issues found throughout the second half of the game, where certain routes seem to skip major story beats completely. This can leave players who decide to only play one route confused on how things play out.
The level design in Three Houses is a little bland as well. Previous Fire Emblem games had far more variety in environmental factors, along with more win conditions than “clear out every enemy.” Only having one fog of war map, and neglecting previous victory conditions like holding a fort down for several turns, makes each battle in Three Houses feel very similar. It doesn’t help that several maps are repeated for the optional side missions.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses simultaneously has some of the nicest looking animations on the Switch, along with some of the ugliest pre-rendered backgrounds for cutscenes seen in any game ever. Luckily, Three Houses' excellent gameplay and story make those issues more of a nitpick than a real problem, and Intelligent Systems has proved that they can keep pumping out quality content and DLC. Visual quality aside, Fire Emblem: Three Houses did so many things right, it’s hard to imagine a sequel wouldn’t be able to sur the game in every aspect.
