Three Houses III [MAJOR Spoilers][Blue Lions]

[alaterdate]

Finished the Blue Lions route.

Maps

The maps were boring and easy. I know I was playing on Normal, but goodness. After the timeskip I wouldn't say they got exponentially harder, just more annoying. Throwing 500 units in my way and telling me to kill the commander doesn't make the map harder. Especially when the commander was a mage and I'd just send Ingrid flying up there to smite them. I beat one of the maps with two giant beasts in my way in 5 turns.

The characters: Ah we have to flick the levers and get rid of these traps & beasts or we'll lose!
Me: Watch this. * sends Ingrid across the map *

Hubert: You'll never make it over here after I call reinforcements!
Me: I'm aboutta end this man's whole career 😎 * sends Ingrid across the map *

There were WAY too many uses of Divine Pulse available to me. Though I never used it more than one or two times at most. In the end none of my Blue Lions units died, but Hanneman did die in the last map because I was so annoyed by the time he did that I did not feel like using Divine Pulse to bring him back and kept going. I've since beaten that map with only Blue Lions + Dorothea without any casualties (had to do it again to see the S Supports for other girls lol).

I like the challenge of Fire Emblem of trying to complete a map with all of my units still alive, but Divine Pulse trivializes that for me because it doesn't force you all the way to the start of the map. I know I could just not use it, but its there. I know it's there, I remember about it now.

Anyway my first run I like to keep all my units alive, but in subsequent ones I like to see who dies. So next Blue Lions run we'll see.

Definitely, definitely should have played on hard!

Here be spoilers!

Story

Please see the following chart: 📈📉

Part I was boring until around chapter 6. I'm gonna say Rumors of a Reaper (CH6) was the chapter where the story first started catching my attention because of the absence of my house leader during that fight. Then the interest kept ramping up towards the time skip/Part II.
As for Part II the latter half was boring and the end abrupt and unsatisfying.

Now, this is just the Blue Lions route in which I think the biggest problem it has is that it answers no questions (okay ONE question is answered sorta). It raises MORE questions in fact. New people come in on the last map and I have no idea who the hell they are (who the fuck is Myson???). The end is so abrupt imo. I wouldn't have believed the last chapter was ACTUALLY the last chapter if the game hadn't asked me who I wanted to S Support (which btw I couldn't choose & will get into that).

3 Reasons I got bored during the last half of Part 2 and felt it was overall unsatisfying: Dimitri's redemption arc, Byleth, Mysteries (of the Emblem)

Dimitri's Redemption arc follows two formulas for starting a redemption arc: 1. The character is confronted with the reality of what they've been doing and 2. someone enters their life to influence them towards being better. Except it doesn't follow through. Dimitri is initially triggered to redeem himself by being confronted with the death of someone he cares for that happened because he was going around killing people all nilly-willy and not caring about the danger he was putting his comrades in. But he never really mentions all that again (as far as I remember). Dimitri pins most of his redemption on Byleth's influence, but Byleth actually does nothing. They never have a worthwhile conversation because BYLETH DOESN'T FUCKING TALK. The speed in which Dimitri goes from feral rat king to good guy is breakneck. He never ever slips up again either. If he had gone back to the kind of forced demeanor he had in the school phase it would have been better, but instead he goes straight to good guy of the year^TM. He never gets angry again even once and it was kind of disappointing. Not that good guy of the year characters are boring by default (look at how much Chrom is loved), but Dimitri's interest factor severely plummets for me when he loses that need to push down his anger. I might have enjoyed the symmetry of his descent and ascent if the guiding force had been anything other than Byleth because ↓

Byleth has no fucking personality. Sothis was the part of Byleth that made him even remotely interesting and then they fused and he was left to be a quiet little puppet. They had mentioned before that Byleth was always emotionally stunted (and probably BECAUSE he had Sothis tied to him) which I thought was interesting a slight bit. However, to keep telling me he has such an influence on other characters without that actually being the case I am seeing with my own eyes is just bad. His responses are five words at most! Why didn't they give him a damn personality? Why is he even in this game when he just stands off to the side 99% of the time? He makes no decisions in the story. He's so boring and only a stand in for the player to S Support someone. Which by the way I couldn't decide on who to S Support because I felt that Byleth was such a non-person that he would ruin the life of whoever he married. Ingrid is better off with Dimitri, Mercedes with Sylvain, Annette with Ashe, and Dorothea with Felix than they are with Byleth. Those couples actually have some damn chemistry! I ended up picking Sothis because if I had to pick someone it might as well be the dragon lady in his head (could have picked no one and might have if Sothis wasn't an option lol).

Lastly, why introduce this new (to me) faction in the very last map. It severely undermined the satisfaction of stopping Edelgard. I then knew she wasn't the real big bad and so killing her was unsatisfactory. The everything is fine ending doesn't sit well because I didn't even find out anything nor stop the real enemy. I get that the other routes will explain the entire mystery, but teasing at these things in the very last map undermined the entire ending. It was like "ok we beat Edelgard, and?" Also not seeing Rhea again was kind of weird. (I wish I didn't fuck up her supports and get locked out because I did want to marry her and I might have been able to in this route lol.)

I feel like I'm being too critical, but Dimitri was the reason I bought this game so his story was a major factor in my enjoyment and I didn't enjoy the latter half of it. I'm REALLY curious about his arc in other routes though (there's hope that I get the angst I crave). Really wish Byleth wasn't so boring though and basically a proxy so I can see an illustration of a cute girl at the end, bah.

Overall, I love the Blue Lions. The characters were interesting, fun, cute, and badass on the battlefield. I had fun on this route and I'm definitely curious about the other routes. Especially the Black Eagles. Essentially, since I've only done one route, I haven't finished the game lol.