{"id":69276,"date":"2019-08-13T03:09:16","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T10:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/game-review-nintendos-fire-emblem-three-houses-is-well-made-but-way-too-easy-for-experienced-players\/"},"modified":"2019-08-13T03:09:16","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T10:09:16","slug":"game-review-nintendos-fire-emblem-three-houses-is-well-made-but-way-too-easy-for-experienced-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/game-review-nintendos-fire-emblem-three-houses-is-well-made-but-way-too-easy-for-experienced-players\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Review: Nintendo\u2019s \u2018Fire Emblem: Three Houses\u2019 is well made, but way too easy for experienced players"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Fire Emblem: Three Houses Screenshots)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don\u2019t dislike Fire Emblem: Three Houses<\/em>, but I don\u2019t feel challenged by it \u2014 and that\u2019s weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Since 1990, the Fire Emblem <\/em>series has been putting out notoriously difficult turn-based strategy games as Nintendo exclusives, though they only began being officially released outside Japan in 2003. The games are meant to replicate the feel of grid-based tactical combat in a tabletop fantasy RPG, with a focus on individual characters as your units rather than armies or battalions.<\/p>\n

Made as a collaboration between Intelligent Systems and the third-party studio Koei Tecmo, Three Houses<\/em> for the Nintendo Switch is the biggest Fire Emblem <\/em>yet, with better graphics, a broader scope, and an initially lighter tone than most of what came before it. In a series of dark, low-fantasy war dramas, the first 20 hours of Three Houses <\/em>are a high school comedy with fight scenes. (If a lot of Japanese fantasy games are Tolkien by way of Gary Gygax, Fire Emblem <\/em>is Joe Abercrombie<\/a>.) It\u2019s bright, colorful, absorbing, and, to my surprise, shockingly <\/em>easy.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve never played a Fire Emblem <\/em>game before, or if you\u2019ve been avoiding the series due to its hardcore reputation, then Three Houses <\/em>might be perfect for you. In fact, I wonder if the game was made as a casual-friendly introduction to a potential new audience on the Switch.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a veteran of past games in the series, however, or even of turn-based strategy games in general, don\u2019t play Three Houses <\/em>on anything but Hard difficulty, in Classic Mode. Otherwise, you\u2019ll sleepwalk through it.<\/p>\n

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What got Fire Emblem <\/em>its reputation is that, unlike most of its competitors, it features permanent death. If one of your characters is defeated in battle, they\u2019re gone for good. Even a small mistake \u2014 overextending your lines, leaving a soft target unprotected at the end of your turn, not checking the map before you deploy \u2014 can cost you a valuable asset for the rest of the game.<\/p>\n

For the last few releases, however, Fire Emblem<\/em>\u2019s primary creator, the Japanese studio Intelligent Systems, has gradually scaled back the series\u2019s trademark challenge. 2005\u2019s Path of Radiance <\/em>for the GameCube introduced adjustable combat difficulty, and starting with 2010\u2019s New Mystery of the Emblem<\/em>, permanent death became an option (\u201cClassic Mode\u201d), rather than an unchangeable default setting.<\/p>\n

The latter move was controversial both among fans and the development staff, but it\u2019s also marked the start of a commercial upswing for the series, with 2012\u2019s Awakening<\/em> enjoying the highest sales of any Fire Emblem <\/em>to date. When Three Houses <\/em>was announced back in January 2017, it quickly became one of the most anticipated releases for the Switch, especially since it would mark the first time a Fire Emblem <\/em>game appeared on a home console since 2007\u2019s Radiant Dawn<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Initial sales of Fire<\/em> Emblem<\/em> are promising, with the game topping U.K. charts two weeks in a row<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Three Houses<\/em> is set on the continent of F\u00f3dlan, in and around the monastery of Garreg Mach, which serves as a military academy for primarily noble-born students. The current class at Garreg Mach is split into three houses, each one led by the heir to one of the three nations that share F\u00f3dlan.<\/p>\n

Your point-of-view character in Three Houses <\/em>is a young mercenary, named Byleth by default, and whose gender is up to you. One day, you encounter and rescue the three houses\u2019 head students from a (suspiciously well-coordinated) bandit attack.<\/p>\n

Upon returning them to the monastery, you learn that your father, Jeralt, the leader of your mercenary troop, never told you about his history with Garreg Mach\u2019s leaders. Due to his connections, you\u2019re unexpectedly offered a position on the monastery\u2019s faculty, as an advisor and commander to one of the three houses.<\/p>\n

From there, Three Houses <\/em>goes on a slow boil. At the start of the game, you pick one of the three titular houses to take under your wing. From there, you can develop your team of students gradually over the course of an in-game year, taking them on training exercises, sending them into combat, building their skills, and determining what character classes they\u2019ll take. On your days off, you can explore Garreg Mach at your leisure, to play fishing minigames, attend lectures from the other professors, carry out quick fetch quests, and get to know the NPCs that populate the monastery.<\/p>\n

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One of the strengths of Fire Emblem <\/em>has traditionally been its strong character work, and that\u2019s where Three Houses <\/em>gets most of its impact. You can gradually build relationships, or \u201cSupports,\u201d among your students and allies, by having them work, fight, and hang out together. Supports give slight combat advantages, but also provide extra missions and optional conversations, which do a lot to flesh each one out. Even the most one-note characters on the roster (he\u2019s a notorious flirt! she\u2019s painfully introverted! he loves to eat!) eventually get some depth as you get to know them.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a weird appeal in grinding Support points between your characters, as it turns the downtime sections of Three Houses <\/em>into a matchmaking simulator. There\u2019s an insane amount of fully-voiced dialogue packed into the game, even between characters that would never ordinarily interact, and there are a lot of worldbuilding details, character beats, laughs, and touching moments locked behind Support conversations. If you get two characters to high Support with one another, you may open up new endings after the game where they build lives together, as friends, partners, or spouses. You can pursue an even higher level of Support between Byleth and a number of characters, which can eventually develop into a post-game romance.<\/p>\n

Your choice of house also determines how the last half of the game plays out, which follows the abrupt outbreak of a war between the nations of F\u00f3dlan. (That\u2019s a slight spoiler, but frankly, if you can watch Three Houses\u2019s <\/em>introduction movie and not <\/em>see a war coming, you\u2019re just getting your hopes up.) At this point, Three Houses<\/em> turns into a more traditional Fire Emblem<\/em> game, as your students become the core of an army of hardened soldiers, thrust into the middle of a war they\u2019d rather not be fighting, with friends on the other side. The story changes a lot between houses, and there\u2019s a fourth \u201csecret\u201d campaign hidden behind a major choice, so you haven\u2019t seen all Three Houses <\/em>has to offer unless you play through it more than once.<\/p>\n

As a sort of bingeable, interactive animated miniseries, then, Three Houses <\/em>is great. You could get a few seasons and a movie out of Garreg Mach; its neurotic, complicated student body; and the mysteries that surround both it and Byleth.<\/p>\n

As a strategy game, though, Three Houses <\/em>is often dull.<\/p>\n

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In the first half, you\u2019re meant to be taking it easy on your 15- to 20-year-old students, which means the game takes it easy on you. Your early battles are against friendly soldiers in training exercises, poorly-equipped groups of bandits, and an occasional exhibition match against your fellow students. There are a few surprises, but most of the fights in the game\u2019s first half are cakewalks. All you have to do to win is show up.<\/p>\n

This comes down to how Three Houses<\/em> features the same combat system that\u2019s been a fixture of the Fire Emblem <\/em>series for almost three decades, but has made several mechanical changes over time that end up trivializing the action. For example, Three Houses, <\/em>like 2017\u2019s Echoes, <\/em>doesn\u2019t have the rock-paper-scissors Weapon Triangle<\/a> mechanic that\u2019s been in most of the other games. You no longer have to worry about your troops suddenly getting vaporized by enemies exploiting their weak spots, which takes a lot of the random danger out of battles.<\/p>\n

Three Houses <\/em>also offers multiple methods to improve your units before you ever send them into a fight; this isn\u2019t a first for the series, but it\u2019s more elaborate and effective here than in anything before it. You can train your character\u2019s weapon skills to unlock advanced techniques, put the students in charge of NPC battalions to give them special attacks and passive stat bonuses, and cook meals to give your team buffs that will last through every battle in that in-game month. Money is thrown at you by the truckload, so your crew can always be equipped with the best available equipment, and there\u2019s at least one character in every house who quickly becomes a killing machine. By the time you hit the 10-hour mark, it\u2019s rare to encounter enemies that you don\u2019t have significantly outgunned.<\/p>\n

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Once your priests have access to the Warp spell and you get a battalion with Stride, the game might as well roll the closing credits. At that point, you can throw Byleth all the way across a map on your first turn to assassinate the enemy\u2019s commander, which will wrap up a lot of story missions on the spot.<\/p>\n

If disaster strikes, you have an ability called Divine Vision that allows you to rewind the events of a battle as far back as you like so you can try something else. It starts with three uses per fight, with no additional cost, and can go up to five. You don\u2019t have to use Divine Vision, of course, but its presence feels like an already easy game came with permanent training wheels.<\/p>\n

(At time of writing, the Lunatic difficulty DLC has not been released for Three Houses<\/em>, which may address some of this. It\u2019s entirely possible that these issues \u2013 that there are a dozen different combat advantages you can stack on top of one another, in a game where you don\u2019t need any of them \u2013 will be remedied by playing on Lunatic.)<\/p>\n

To be fair, the action does perk up in Three Houses<\/em>\u2019 second half, once F\u00f3dlan goes to war. Enemies get individually stronger and show up in larger groups, with access to some of the advanced unit types. Pegasus riders in particular are vicious <\/em>in this Fire Emblem<\/em>, and have a knack for suddenly destroying all your back-row support characters.<\/p>\n

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Those enemies, however, are still rock stupid, which leads me to another issue. Your opponents in Three Houses <\/em>don\u2019t react in opposition to your squad, but instead, are set up as if they\u2019re a series of obstacles. Most hostile characters won\u2019t act at all unless you\u2019ve got a unit in their movement range, at which point they\u2019ll make an immediate suicide charge at their first available target, aiming to cause as much damage as possible before you take them out. Even glass cannons like archers and mages will throw themselves into an obvious no-win situation if it means getting a single attack off before they die.<\/p>\n

Most of the actual tactical challenge in Three Houses <\/em>ends up coming from how the maps are designed. A few fights have siege weapons, which allow an enemy to whittle down your characters from downrange, or fortified tiles that turn a single unit into a brick wall. You\u2019ll often start at a terrain disadvantage, be forced to assault an entrenched position through narrow choke points, or have to deal with reinforcements that are scripted to appear behind your lines.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all very simplistic, which wasn\u2019t a real problem before now. In earlier Fire Emblem <\/em>games, when you have few opportunities to improve your characters outside of combat and limited ability to recover from your losses, the enemy AI doesn\u2019t have to be clever to be dangerous. In Three Houses<\/em>, however, the AI doesn\u2019t have the intelligence or<\/em> the firepower to really threaten you.<\/p>\n

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To be clear, despite this laundry list of complaints, Three Houses is not<\/em> a<\/em> bad game<\/em>. It\u2019s well-made, sharply imagined, and deftly written, with a lot of replay value and player customization. Newcomers will find a lot to like here, and Three Houses <\/em>is a good gateway into the series or the genre. At least one character will likely become an instant favorite, and while the game\u2019s plot skews closer to pure fantasy escapism than Fire Emblem <\/em>usually does, it still tells a smarter, more complex story than most of its competitors. I already know several people for whom the game\u2019s lack of challenge is a value add<\/em>, because they\u2019re far more invested in the characters and storytelling than the tactical combat.<\/p>\n

However, Three Houses <\/em>also suffers from serious balance issues, which serve to highlight problems that, in retrospect, the Fire Emblem <\/em>series has been grappling with for a while. For years, it\u2019s been moving away from its roots as a brutally unforgiving tabletop simulator, in order to evolve in a more casual-friendly direction, and Three Houses <\/em>marks a breaking point thereof. It\u2019s badly in need of a systems overhaul if it intends to stay relevant as a strategy franchise, rather than as a vestigial strategy-RPG clinging to the edges of a 60-hour visual novel.<\/p>\n

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(Fire Emblem: Three Houses Screenshots) I don\u2019t dislike Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but I don\u2019t feel challenged by it \u2014 and that\u2019s weird. Since 1990, the Fire Emblem series has been putting out notoriously difficult turn-based strategy games as Nintendo exclusives, though they only began being officially released outside Japan in 2003. The games are… Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":69277,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games-media","category-gaming"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t