Three Houses I [No Spoilers]

[alaterdate]

Right from the gate I was enjoying Three Houses immensely. The characters are great and it's pretty chill. I was overwhelmed at first by all the new features, but soon got the hang of it. For starters, I love that the game said "choose your form" when choosing the avatar. I wonder if that's translation or localization. I've already put like 10 hours into this game in two days, according to the in-game timer. In real life, probably add 5 to that for my awful soft resetting habit lmao. Not only do I have to soft reset if a unit dies (which thankfully they have not been 99% of the time), but now that there's all these dialogue choices I soft reset for those too! Resetting to see all the dialogue trees is my worst video game habit and I've had it since Dragon Age Origins (which has a LOT of options!). I also keep forgetting about "Mila's turnwheel" (or whatever it's called in this game) too, that lets you go back however many turns you like. I spent like THREE HOURS on a SINGLE map because I forgot about the time mechanic and soft reset all the way back to the beginning of the map multiples times. Then I beat it without doing the second optional objective, but I was SO CLOSE, so I started it all over again. I can't believe I did that 😂😅😭😂

I went with the Blue Lions, of course. And I love everyone in the class! The characterization is so good. Some supports are better than others, as always, but the ones that are good are really good. The voice acting is amazing, especially Dimitri's.
The only other characters I really like are in the Black Eagle house and I'm working on recruiting three of them. I have gotten one so far. I don't want to recruit too many. I'm doing really well with the Blue Lions I don't really need any other units for the school phase, but I want to have them anyway lol. I don't think they'll even be around for the war phase, but that's just my guess.

So far the maps have been lackluster (even the one I spent too many hours on). It's great that they're smaller than in Fates and Awakening though. And they've brought back a lot of mechanics I've loved in other fire emblem games like Fog of War, Dismount, Canto. So good. I wonder if the maps will pick up later though. Conquest had such unique map designs; some of them were really enjoyably difficult. I'm not having any trouble in battle so far besides doing the crazy stuff you don't have to do. I wonder if I should have picked Hard-Classic instead of Normal-Classic, but I'd hate to just get completely destroyed in the middle of the game lol. Maybe it's because I've done a couple of auxiliary maps?

As for the story... I'm mostly going with the flow. Everything is pretty much a mystery right now. So, I've got all kinds of crazy ideas in my head. I don't trust anyone at that school lmao. Not a single one.

Tangentially, the avatar is a way too blank of a slate. Which is kind of annoying. I definitely wanted them to take a step back compared to Corrin, but Byleth is just way too silent. I really thought that the lack of customization was because Byleth was gonna be their own character (but not the Lord), but nope. Byleth is lacking any personality altogether! Imo Robin was perfect. Just the right amount of being their own character and an avatar (and a supporter not the main character). (Fire Emblem has this je ne sais quoi thing with the player not being a character. Ya feel?) Corrin had too much of a personality to be an avatar and Byleth is the complete opposite, without the fun of customization to boot. Idk! It's good that he's not taking over the narrative, but bad because he's boring. Let him talk lol. Or else let me pick his features. I even renamed my avatar Alaric, but I keep accidentally calling him Byleth in my own head! Smh. I never call my unit in Awakening or Fates by the default name to myself. Anyway, thank goodness Sothis is basically his brain/thinks for him. She's at least interesting.

I've been seeing some talk on the subreddit and it seems that they really cut down on the S-Support = Marriage thing. Thank god. It was fine in Awakening, but I really wanted them to move away from that. Then we got Fates that unfortunately tripled that aspect. Now I think only the avatar can S-Support and it's not always romance-y.

What it's lacking in map design (as of the point in the game I'm currently at) it's making up for greatly with characters and other mechanics so far. The story is... going... but I am excited to see what happens so that's great!

Comments

[alaterdate]

I think some S-supports don't end in marriage. Or maybe it's just the old guy ones like Alois for M!Byleth. That's the big thing I've been hearing about.

That is a good use for the auto-battle option, I don't think I've ever used that feature.

I think the fact that Byleth is barely voiced is what's making them seem so lacking. They could at least voice the dialogue you choose, especially when there is only one option sometimes (what's up with that, weird).

Yes! Sylvain/Mercedes is nice! I also like Sylvain/Annette, but too bad they only go up to B support.
Since I'm playing as a male character I was thinking "okay, who's gonna be a good wife for Dimitri since I can't marry him" but then I found out only Byleth can get an S-support lol. He doesn't seem to have good chemistry with any of the girls so far. Guess he'll be forever alone in this playthrough 😔
Imagine if this game had the crazy amount of S-supports that Fates had for everyone. It'd take FOREVER to get them.