Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Give Me Orders Daddy

Maybe. Japanese banking is just generally pretty archaic. I don't think I could use a Japanese card on any western site, I'd have to find the Japanese equivalent to CDKeys.

Also, I actually want the physical copy, if possible.

Get Andy to send you one of his

masofdas wrote:

I wait to hear Athrun do the game on hard with permadeath on in a few months.  

...I'm playing on Hard/Classic, you could ask me.

I'm finding the difficulty to be spot on. I can't be rash with my units and I've had a couple of dicey moments, but the turn rewind mechanic is a godsend for what I'd class as "cheap moments" like reinforcements suddenly spawning in right next to a squishy unit like a mage or a unit pulling off a 2% critical hit chance or what have you. I can't imagine playing it on Normal - it feels like it'd be way too easy, but hey, that's why difficulty modes exist in some games.

As for the game itself - I'm actually really surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. I picked the Blue Lions - I was going to go for the Black Eagles but after the game gave me an opportunity to meet all the students, I found myself interested to know more about the Blue Lions. I'm glad I chose them too as based on what I've observed the Black Eagles seem to be most geared towards the crowd of FE fans that prefer the life sim/dating stuff that pervaded its way into the series. And that's seconded by the game's player stats being overwhelmingly dominated by the Black Eagles... and the tea party minigame also dominated by the girls from that house.

But there's been next to none of that with the Blue Lions and hence I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with FE:TH so far. It's a monster of a game in regards to run time - I'm about 23 hours in and I don't even feel like I've hit the half way point yet - but it's settled into a nice rhythm with its calendar system. I've enjoyed doing a tour of the monastery after each main mission, picking up side quests and getting some world building through dialogue with the students and staff. It reminds me somewhat of doing a tour of the Normandy after missions in the Mass Effect games, in a way.

In regards to combat, the maps feel stronger than in Echoes and I'm glad they stripped back some of the systems brought in during Awakening and Fates. I never want to mess about with that pair-up system ever again. I'm a bit concerned that they've stripped it back too far as I do miss the weapon triangle. Ah well. The combat has created some great organic moments on the battlefield so far - stuff like Rolf becoming a bad-ass - which I've really enjoyed. Felix from the Blue Lions is all about being a lone wolf who excels in combat, so his personal skill is tied to not having a battalion accompanying him. It's meant that I've been able to send him off to a little corner of the battlefield by himself and he'll dodge everyone and he'll end up hitting enemies four times in a row if necessary with the Gauntlets weapon type. He's outclassing Byleth and Dimitri. Absolute monster.

Honestly, if this keeps the momentum going, this will safely be my GOTY. And I'm stunned I'm writing that sentence after how wary I was about this pre-release.

Yeah I found the game to easy till the last few chapters, that next go I'm thinking hard/casual but then after that I might want to get the other two routes over and done with.

I'm surprised how popular Black Eagles have been as the other houses surely have plenty of Waifu or Husbando to wine and dine.

I do hope Nintendo release more stats as I like to seen how many got my ending, then things like who married who and what not

masofdas wrote:

I'm surprised how popular Black Eagles have been as the houses surely have plenty of Waifu or Husbando to wine and dine.

They were featured really heavily in the marketing to the point where people were theorising that Edelgard was going to turn up in Smash.

I've also heard...

Spoiler:

Still, that's only made the contrarian in me even happier with my choice of house.

JayMoyles wrote:

In regards to combat, the maps feel stronger than in Echoes

That was literally one of Echoes biggest issues (the story going to hell in a handbasket in the final act was the other. I really liked Celica until then. . . ). So if that's been dramatically improved then that's a good sign for me.

masofdas wrote:

I wait to hear Athrun do the game on hard with permadeath on in a few months. 

Anyway I can safely say that I won't be joining House EdgeEagles. The general public always have the worst taste in waifu's. *tips fedora*

I'm playing through the game on Normal/Classic at the moment. I think it's a little easy so far but we'll see how it goes. I've only Divine pulsed once - and that wasn't to save anyone but to save me a bunch of time because I forgot to hand over some chest keys I think I'm only going to pulse if I get one shot by an insanely unlikely crit (which is a bit unfair as I hit two consecutive 2% crits yesterday but hey ho the ai has no feels).

It's a bit of a shame that you can't graduate from Normal/Classic to Hard/Classic during a campaign (you can the other way around), but I guess that's to stop people from cheesing the infinite grind battles you can do on Normal.

I'm playing as the Leicester Alliance chaps. I think they had the blandest looking students, but the most interesting leader. I have recruited 2 Reds and 1 Blue to my House, in addition to picking up 3 houseless characters because why not (I'm only really using one of them so I can have a wyvern rider).

I've relegated one of my home grown yellows, Ignatz, to the bench as he's just not grown very well. Pinching Petra from the red house covered his role nicely though. I nabbed Ingrid from the blues as I enjoy having at least one flying unit. I'd be interested to know how Jay is going about Ingrid's Advanced class because I don't think there's a Pegasus knight advanced class unit. I also picked up Dorothea from the reds because I liked her passive. I tend towards Roman formations in Fire Emblem, highly organised and tight, so having a character who can passively heal tanks seemed good at the time, but now I think it's kind of whatever. Useful for escorting people over damaging terrain though.


If I play it a second time it'll be on Hard/Classic but I'm fine with what I've got so far. I am really enjoying things at the moment though so a second playthrough is very possible.

I can have up to two characters gain experience from being reserves in battles at the moment. I kind of wish all units would gain some exp as it'd be nice to feel more comfortable in a bench unit stepping up if one of the big dogs bites the bullet, but maybe I just have way more units than I "should" at this point as a C+ ranked professor.

Petra ended up being one of my best units, excellent Assassin.

Dorothea was a good sort of all round mage for me, my character did end up with her.

Dorothea was a devastating machine on my run. Loved her! Petra was also a mad assassin turned swordmaster.

I finished my Black Eagles run yesterday. Normal was definitely too easy, I’ve decided to play NG+ for my hard/classic Leicester playthrough, very excited to see the differences.

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What choice did you make?

I was also thinking Golden Deer next as Blue Lions look and sound boring.

Same as you masyboi

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Muss wrote:

I'd be interested to know how Jay is going about Ingrid's Advanced class because I don't think there's a Pegasus knight advanced class unit.

Yeah, I'm somewhat fucked for advanced classes for a few of my characters. Ingrid is becoming a cavalier in a vain bid to try and rush her riding skills high enough to be a Paladin.

masofdas wrote:

I was also thinking Golden Deer next as Blue Lions look and sound boring.

I wouldn't say that's fair on the Blue Lions at all - they're a very interesting bunch and from where I'm at in the story, Dimitri's character is going places fast. I'm very intrigued in what they're building to with him.

Still, I'm going to play as them last or second to last at least.

@Andy weren't you disappointed with how it ended?

masofdas wrote:

Dorothea was a good sort of all round mage for me, my character did end up with her.

Crumpy Andy wrote:

Dorothea was a devastating machine on my run. Loved her! Petra was also a mad assassin turned swordmaster.

[quote="JayMoyles"]I'm somewhat fucked for advanced classes for a few of my characters.

masofdas wrote:

Dimitri's character is going places fast.

YOU ARE ALL SICK DIRTY PERVERT FUCKS.

FUCKING THINKING ABOUT SEXING THESE DRAWINGS OF SCHOOLGIRLS

Oi, don't tar me with the same brush as the House for the Horny Boys with Andy and Mas over there.

I've hit the halfway point - I think, at least - of the game and I've got some thoughts! I'll try and keep the Blue Lions route specific spoilers to a minimum, although the stuff I'll be talking about is probably clear to everybody if you've beaten the game.

Spoilers through to Part 2, Chapter 14/15:

Drunkalilly wrote:

Maybe. Japanese banking is just generally pretty archaic. I don't think I could use a Japanese card on any western site, I'd have to find the Japanese equivalent to CDKeys.

Also, I actually want the physical copy, if possible.

That's the bonus of having my Japanese 3ds if I want to put any credit on the e shop I do it on that as it doesn't seem to care where I'm from, of course my days will be numbered now when I can do that which will suck as I do like getting the odd Japanese version of some games.

I finished my Golden Deers playthorugh last night. I've got some thoughts that I want to turn into a Gintendo article at some point about the series' continued disrespect for it's characters for the sake of the creepy stuff.

But fortunately while the creepy tea stuff is in the game, and while all the characters end up warming to your character if you just stand next to them in battle long enough, even if you pick all the wrong dialogue options,

Big spoiler about the main character's background:

, it's still the best game I've played all year.

I've been disappointed with the difficulty on normal mode, but I'm really looking forward to doing a hard/classic NG+ Blue Lions playthrough. The tutoring aspects of the game and the loose class system works really well. I think there are a few two many maps without any bonus objectives - the most we get are the occsional theives to hunt down or protect X allies, there's no reach a town before the bandits burn it etc. But I think there's enough variety there for the base game.

I'm also really pleased that there's a lot of time-saving introduced for NG+ playthroughs. I do think that the game takes a bit too long, towards the end of the game I stopped bothering with pre-mission battles because I just wanted to power on home, and I do think the final couple of fights were a bit meh in

Major ending spoiler:

. Garreg Mach is an area worth exploring, and I like to talk to everyone, but I was getting a little burnt out by the end.

I was also really pleased with how some of my characters turned out. I was worried my Raphael was cursed as he was only getting crappy level ups at the start, but he turned into an absolute unit. 4x attacks, 30% crit rate, over 70 HP. I built Leonie into a Great Knight. She'd be better off as a Bow Knight, but she was laughing off every attack that wasn't magic.

My crowning tactical moment was a mission that involved keeping an ally alive. I'd fucked it because I couldn't do enough damage to the boss and he was going to one shot the ally next turn. But then I had my theif steal his shield and boom, killed him. That was much cooler than using a Divine Pulse...

Speaking of which, I barely used them but I'm glad we have the option of them.

And holy shit, the replay value of this game is absolutely off the charts.

Muss wrote:

But fortunately while the creepy tea stuff is in the game, and while all the characters end up warming to your character if you just stand next to them in battle long enough, even if you pick all the wrong dialogue options,

Genuinely interested, how does all the creepy stuff not put you off the game? I watched a good few hours of someone streaming this & all the weeb shit just made me want to poke my eyeballs out, I get being attached to characters because you end up decking them out how you like etc but the writing is just so mind-numbingly bad.

I'm curious what Muss has to say as sure the tea mini-game is creepy but I didn't find anything else to be like that.

It might just because of playing games with a more anime flair for years in numerous genres, that I don't see it.

Totally fair question. I'm a big story guy, and when a game promises an epic story and character development and it tells its tale over the course of 40-80 hours, it really grinds my gears when games compromise on their artistic vision for the sake of fan service.

It's Lysithia [the youngest student in the game] who I really want to talk about. Because

Major character spoiler:

In terms of the creepy tea stuff. I think ultimately I'm someone who can separate art from artist, or in this case - the bits I really enjoy about the game from the creepy. For the most part, the freaky tea stuff is entirely skip-able and won't massively impact upon your ability to recruit units from other houses - or to increase your friendship with units in your house. And in terms of the disrespect for its characters, its only really the opposite sex interactions with the protagonist that are outright bad and that's because:

Major spoiler:

But the support conversations between units in modern Fire Emblem games have always been pretty crap all told. I actually think most of them in this game are decent, and one of the characters' convos, Lorenz, deals a lot with class prejudice and sets out a lot of world building pretty well. In general they're not bad. And the where there is the not so subtle hint of romance between students, it doesn't actually feel all that forced.

I think the other major factor is that I like tactics/strategy games, and I like permadeath. I'm a big fan of X-Com, but other than that there aren't many big budget titles that cover the genre like a Fire Emblem game. There are plenty of Indie PC games, but it's still an itch that all too often goes unscrathced. So it's easier for me to stick with Fire Emblem, but still call out the shitty bits of the game, because there just isn't much choice.

Ahh I think I get it now.

It seems like the series could be improved if it leaned more on the dialogue systems you see in games like Witcher 3 or Fallout, I've only played the former out of those two but Geralt despite being such a well written character that has all this background the choices the game throws at you makes him your own & that's just one example. Anyhow, like I've said elsewhere I'm still interested in trying the FE series otherwise I wouldn't have posted in here but I just don't see it being with three houses.

The_Jaster wrote:

Muss wrote:

But fortunately while the creepy tea stuff is in the game, and while all the characters end up warming to your character if you just stand next to them in battle long enough, even if you pick all the wrong dialogue options,

Genuinely interested, how does all the creepy stuff not put you off the game? I watched a good few hours of someone streaming this & all the weeb shit just made me want to poke my eyeballs out, I get being attached to characters because you end up decking them out how you like etc but the writing is just so mind-numbingly bad.    

The creepy stuff is easily avoidable and like Muss mentioned, there's far better ways to build up support points with your units than the admittedly creepy tea party minigame. I'm almost certain that was pitched as a follow-up to the insanely creepy Pokémon style petting thing that Japan got for Fates.

As for the dialogue, I was feeling that way at first as when you first meet the supporting cast in the game, they all seemed so superficial and one-note which was a problem that really ruined my time with Fates. I was concerned about where they were headed with this one but in truth, the writing really has come through. Most of the characters seem to have layers to them beyond "I like food" or "I am lazy" which really was about the depth of past Fire Emblem characters.

I think the core premise of the Three Houses themselves is really well executed - I genuinely feel attached to my house and I know it's going to be really sad not getting to spend time with those characters and potentially having to battle against them in subsequent playthroughs. I did not feel any sort of attachment in Fates to the two warring nations - in fact, in some instances I was genuinely glad to be given an opportunity to take down some of those brain-melting and awful caricatures.

From where I'm at in the game, I do reckon this might be the best Fire Emblem has ever been in regards to how it merges the battling and levelling up with the social aspects. I do miss the old style of bonding across an ongoing conflict and growing attached to your units on the battlefield, but I've accepted that the old style of FE is dead and buried and ain't coming back. But, I'm glad they realised that leaning too heavily into the waifuism shite was turning a lot of people away and reached a reasonably healthy middle ground of sorts.

Still, the game still draws from anime tropes in a major way so it genuinely might not be the series for you. Let's hope they rerelease Path of Radiance - I think you'd like that one, Jas.

I got Lysithia in the post time jump and I didn't know any of that.

I guess choices on who you level up social link can change things depending on how you play, if you will see that or not.

Do have to agree with Jay even with what you said Muss, it's still better then I'm lazy or something more generic.

Also, I should play my Path of Radiance.