I have barely played it (someday, I swear!) but it at least began with a tutorial battle, I remember that much.
It did, but that took all of 5 minutes. The next hour plus, is just going around the school meeting students and doing little tasks. I kind of hate it, but everyone loves the game, so obviously I need to stick with it. I am just hoping there is some action soon.
I think the big thing with this one is the Persona-esque personal interactions. I haven’t played previous FE games, but my understanding is that most or all of them didn’t have that stuff and were far more battle-centric; maybe you’d be better off with those.
There’s definitely a bunch of not-battles, especially in the beginning. The non-battle stuff is a signifcant slice of the game though, so if you hate it, the rest probably isn’t going to save it for you. The best feature of the game is the push-and-pull between the school segments and the combat segments, because it gives it a pleasant on-off rhythm, and lets you use the downtime to address goals for the combat sections.
Three Houses isn’t really representative of the FE series in general. There are some options if you want a more traditional entry, including the recent Langrisser re-release, and Vestaria Saga, which was designed by one of the original Fire Emblem designers. Or maybe even Wargroove, which is more of a Fantasy take on Advance Wars.
It’s possible you’ll like it more once the handholding part of the game ends and it opens up, but running around the monastery talking to students and teachers is still a significant part of the game even after that. Honestly, you’ll probably spend even more time in the monastery after that as more training options and other activities become available. Like @CLWheeljack said, the mix between doing a 1-2-hour battle then doing 1-2-hour monastery stuff is a fundamental part of the game design and I found it kept the game from getting stale.
I started liking the monastery stuff more once the systems were introduced and each month I had specific goals that I was working toward. It still wore out its welcome by the end of the game, but for a good chunk of the middle, it worked as a pleasant enough palate cleanser between battles. The battles are the main selling point, though.
You can always skip all the monastery stuff (there is a button prompt on the bottom left, I think). You will miss a lot of story and character beats and may not change the learning goals of your students or add to their supports between months, but they still improve their skills etc. Or you could just do seminars and battles.
I finally decided that waiting for this to go on sale was kinda futile. I wanted something strategy based to play while sitting on my sofa. I have tons of those in the PC including Old World and Shadow Empire which are great. So I went on and bought it with the money I’d put on my account for the Summer Sale. Holy cow, has this thing sucked me in. I’ve played it consistently for the last few days and love it. The breakup of routine between the battles and the social stuff feel perfect and as others have mentioned keeps things from getting stale. I do t think I could handle constant battles. I’ve even gotten over my FOMO for the most part and am just plowing thru and keeping with my decisions for the most part. Already excited to go back and play with a different house and see how that goes. I joined the Golden Stags for my first playthru and am mostly digging my team…mostly. I’m not sure they’re as archer based as the brief guide I read indicated but I’m still happy with them. Think I’m 4 or five months in and shits getting real. Can’t believe I put off getting this for so long.
Hmm… That reminds me I have put of buying this since I got my Switch Lite last year for the same reason. Keep waiting for a sale; but I may break as well. Love this series.
Nintendo deserves your extra $10 on this one. :)
I have some questions that I haven’t been able to find the answers to online. Possibly because I’m not digging too hard so as not to get into spoiler territory.
I’m about 1/2 thru the school year I think (Month 1, day 18). I’ve been pretty much following the online percentages for choosing what to do on any given Free Day. Only once was it really close between Exploring and Fighting. I have 7 things I can do on a given day of Exploring and this month. I’ve recruited around a half a dozen students/teachers/others, some useful some kinda meh.
Do I need to keep my entire group leveled up or should I focus on my main characters I use most often?
What levels should I be at and/or does it really matter? My main is around level 27 and a few others are in their mid 20s. But I also have some in their low teens due to non-use mostly. I just don’t want to get into the back half of the game and be vastly underpowered by screwing up the leveling in the early part. Or overpowered either really.
Do I want to keep adding characters if possible? I assume there is no reason to not recruit as many as possible other than time and spreading the leveling of so many characters too thin.
If you are on the base difficulty (which I assume is Normal but it’s been a while!), it shouldn’t really matter. Normal here is much easier than Normal in previous FE games, and exp is plentiful enough that you can keep two full teams leveled enough to use. Skill/proficiency growth is actually the more time-limited factor, though more for getting in some specific classes if you don’t plan from early on than for any actually usability concerns. Correct that there is no reason not to recruit as many characters as you comfortably can.
I would assume that on the harder difficulty that they added later on, the optimal play would be to focus on a core group with relatively few back-ups for situational use, or if a bad run of level ups ruins a character, or something similar.
Great, thanks for the quick reply. I think my team is doing ok on the skill front. Got most with at least one A or B skill and some with two. I think I chose the normal level and have only had a few problems with the battles, usually with selecting and moving the wrong character which screws up my tactics and/or leaves them in a kill zone. Experience does seem to come pretty easily in the battles so that’s good.
So I am getting a Switch for Christmas, and this game was on sale for $35. Which, being a strategy gamer first and foremost, I picked it up.
So there are 3 houses, and 300 posts. What would people suggest for house to play, which has the most satisfying story? And given I may only ever play through once (I have fairly limited gaming time) is there significant mechanical differences?
And difficulty? I saw some posts saying things about this being tuned easy. For an old hand strategy gamer, and one generally very good at tactical games, what would you suggest?
There are people far more qualified in this thread than I who will probably chime in but here is 2c…
I don’t know which story is best… I’d pick the House that matches the troop type you favour (Black Eagles - magic, Golden Deer - archery, Blue Lions - knight/cavalry), and which character personalities you like interacting with most. The Houses all have a different character to them and from memory you do get to speak to them all before choosing. It’s like Black Eagles are imperious, Golden Deer scrappy commoners, and Blue Lions are all honour and chivalry.
I don’t think there are mechanical differences, but after the first part of the game the story is different depending on your house, so the battles you fight are different too. It’s not the same sequence of battles with different houses.
I think Black Eagles are the only House you can access the ‘4th’ story path from though.
Difficuty, I liked it easier but most people suggested playing on Hard/Casual. I think it was recommneded as a good balance, not too easy but still satisfying progression. Even that may be too easy for you so there are at least two other difficulty levels above hard I think.
Yeah I don’t necessarily want ‘punishing’ but difficult enough I need to engage with the mechanics. What’s the fun of tactical depth of mashing attack achieves the same results!
So I did see a link to a Kotaku article here about the houses. Seems the Black Eagles and Yellow Stags are more technical, focusing on ranged and magic. That seems up my speed.
Great so now it comes down to who you like more, Edelgard or Claude! ;)
I’ve (almost) done two playthroughs (Golden Deer and Black Eagles Blue Lions [edit: mistyped the house name of my second playthrough; it was late when I wrote this.]) and neither story is good enough to where I think that should be what sways you. Instead, it probably makes most sense to choose the house based on which of the three main characters you like best. You are not forced to select a house until after you get a mission at the Monastery which requires you to interact with each of the three—though there is an dialogue choice after the first battle which asks you which house you like best, but this doesn’t change anything—so you have some time to figure it out.
Also, you can recruit (almost) any character from other houses and you can develop the characters as you want (which classes they advance to and so on), so I wouldn’t worry too much about which houses feature which unit types. Granted, some characters are inherently better at some things than others, but all the houses are balanced enough to have at least one unit of each ‘type’ by default.
I think hard/casual is a good way to go difficulty wise. Even then, it is not especially difficult, at least as far as the main story goes. Each mission has a recommended level and I suggest not exceeding that (I’d argue it’s better to be a level or two below, but maybe not immediately). Some claim it is not Fire Emblem without permadeath, but this one is significantly more character focused than any other I’ve played so losing a character permanently here would make some later interactions and missions pretty weird and/or generic feeling.
Playing on hard makes the game really shine way more, because there are a lot of abilities that thoroughly change the game that enemies only have on hard. Imagine my surprise after playing through the game on normal when suddenly on Hard enemy rogues just passed through my tanks and every archer makes your characters bleed. It never occured to me to play with permadeath off, but it would have made it a saner experience - I spend about four hours on the very last mission, exhausted all my rewinds and still lost three units. and that was the fourth try. YMMV.
My answer to which is the best story may sound like a cop out, but it’s all of them combined. Not that this is high literature or anything, but I really enjoyed seeing the conflict from the different sides, Rashomon-style. It’s remarkable how relatable they made all the assholes from the other houses as soon as they are on your team and you hear their support conversations. These are where the game shines, really: Having Lorenz and Ferdinand bond over their love of tea is the best.
Also, I wouldn’t level more than 15 of your guys, especially without permadeath, and recruiting from other houses not only gives you more people to talk to in the explore sections and potentially new side missions, but also stops them from showing up on the enemy side in later missions, and some of them can be quite hairy to deal with (looking at you, Petra).
Oh, and I know that the intro groups the houses into knights/archers/magic, but I really found every side quite balanced. Every side has good mages and strong frontliners, so I wouldn’t really worry about that part, especially because you can recalls all the units.