Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Give Me Orders Daddy

Muss wrote:

This also has the side-effect of making the plot seem a bit contrived to fit the limited map selection, rather than something more organic. Hopefully this isn't the case with the other routes and I just played through things in an unfortunate order.

My Hubert seems averse to any magic level ups (so I recruited Lysithia) but he's still holding his own.

And then I'll save the last route for the lunatic difficulty.

That's an interesting first point you've raised because I didn't feel that the plot felt contrived in the least for the BL route as it was my first exposure to those maps. It felt natural that the group would need to travel to those locations. One thing I will say though...

Post Timeskip Mild Spoiler:

I recruited Lysithia for my BE run too as I'd heard Hubert was an underwhelming mage but I've clearly been blessed with my Hubert - he's had a magic stat gain on every level up with a good chunk of speed too, so he's doubling nearly everybody and dealing ridiculous damage to boot. It's a shame he's a bit of a prick, but considering Dorothea has been underwhelming on the battlefield and Lysithia hasn't wowed me either, he'll have to stick around in my roster.

Has Lunatic difficulty been confirmed? I'd probably hold off on my last route for that to come out too, if so.

Pretty sure lunatic mode is coming, it's a matter of when not if. I imagine it'll drop shortly before they confirm whatever the first DLC is to keep people hyped -although I've also heard December batted around so who knows? There's a fully playable lunatic mode in the game (if you hack it, which hell no, but obviously people have).

Maybe contrived wasn't quite the right term but I think one of the major storytelling problems with Three Houses is that you're told, not shown, everything. So when you play another house's perspective, you don't really know fact from fiction. It also doesn't help that whenever you explore, you're typically only really being told a given character's reaction to the main mission whenever you speak to people at the monastery.

To mitigate this, it would have been amazing if post time-skip, you only explored the monastery when it made sense for your roster to be there, otherwise exploring war camps or local villages etc before that month's mission. Yes, this would have taken a lot of effort, but it's about the only way of fitting in a "showing" rather than "telling" vis-a-vis world building/storytelling within the crusty old Fire Emblem formula of rigid support levels and didactic narration. And I think that's particularly important in a FE game that has divergent plots with opposing viewpoints. I struggle to draw conclusions about the state of the world when I can't see any of it.

Varied exploration would have also alleviated the other problem with the game's narrative:

is a minor spoiler about post-time skip narrative structure:

My Hubert got his shit together after I made him a Dark Mage and he's pretty consistently been levelling magic. His impressive defensive stats make him the most forgiving mage I've used (except the tweener Lorenz who I shoved down the mage route on Golder Deer). Caspar needed a lot of baby sitting, but he's a wreckingball wyvern lord now, and Ferdinand has been incredible too. The only disappointment has been Dorothea, who was pretty consistently growing badly, so she became my Dancer.

I was cautiously optimistic Bernadetta wouldn't be a bad character after some of the Golden Deer characters went from bad to great. Unfortunately I think Bern is by far the worst character in the game. To me it feels like her mental health is just a punchline, not cool. I always find it uncomfortable when students tell you what an amazing professor you are when Byleth is basically an emotionless mute, but I actually find the Byleth-Bern A support creepy

Spoiler:

I saw people throwing slander at My Man Lorenz on the last page and I won't stand for it! Lorenz is an upstanding noble, take him to choir practice and you shall see his full worth!

I doubt I'll bother with Hubert when I play Eagles. Lysithea's just too good. Only up to The Battle of the Eagle and Lion and she literally feels like an endgame unit waltzing through a field of scrubs. Why chance other mages and pray they get good levelups when Lysithea gets them by default and is adorable to boot?

Conversely I doubt I'll bother using Dorothea in that route. I poached her from the other class and she's been a massive disappointment. Her supports are great with her absolutely savage takedowns, but my god her levelups have been garbage. I swear she hasn't gotten more than two stats a level, and most of the time in crap stats, since I recruited her. Might be time to bench her and focus on Marianne (who is almost as powerful as Lysithea right now).

General thoughts so far: liking the game. The map design isn't as good as Conquest, but it's still satisfying as heck. The story meanwhile is, so far at least, leagues ahead of the 3DS games. It's been nice going in relatively blind too, the new enemy type took me for a surprise when it appeared. The AI has been pleasantly aggressive as well, preventing the usual "bait'n'kill" strategy from being viable all the time.

Shout-out to the Lorenz paralogue defence map with the scary Pegasus Knights and rough AI. Oh yeah, pegasus knights, they're actually good now. Too bad I haven't levelled anybody in flying rank, Hilda would probably make for a good one given how she's grown.

I've made a terrible mistake.

I'm just past the time skip and now realising that to stick with my own morals, I should have gone a different way. For the time being, I'll play the role the game seems to expect me to, but I'm already excited about my second playthrough . . .

Anyway, this is well up there as GOTY for me right now.

Yeah I went the wrong way too, going to go the right way on my next play through probably early next year as like the tag says, Too many games, not enough time

Thought it was only Black Eagles you could go another way, whilst the other two houses the game has set out the path.

I'm talking about the Black eagles, I'm still a bit miffed with myself for going the wrong way, though it didn't end up that bad with my Wifu of this series

Sure (which way did you go?), I was thinking more about Drunka as he went for the Golden Lions.

I stuck with the church

I went the wrong way by choosing the Golden Deer and now not having the option to go the way I'd prefer.

Guess you didn't want to side with the church (I guess Golden Lions do)?

Athrun888 wrote:

I saw people throwing slander at My Man Lorenz on the last page and I won't stand for it!  Lorenz is an upstanding noble, take him to choir practice and you shall see his full worth!

I hate his attitude towards any commoner in the game - his supports with Dorothea and Mercedes have totally turned me off his character and he's permanently benched now.

I've reached the timeskip in my Black Eagles run and I've made a save so I don't need to replay the Academy part again for the other option in the BE route. That Academy part was beginning to drag on a second playthrough, so I'll definitely need a good bit of time before jumping in for my Golden Deer run.

Why are you disappointed with your choice, Drunka? Feel free to pop it in a spoiler box, if you'd like.

Lorenz grew on me with time. He slowly lessens in his sense of superiority, and he is just a perfect arsehole all the time. I love to hate him,I guess. He's always the one I stick at the front if I just want someone to swallow attacks while I ready other party members.

JayMoyles wrote:

Why are you disappointed with your choice, Drunka? Feel free to pop it in a spoiler box, if you'd like.

Spoiler:

chapter 10 spoils:

I'm noticing a trend with the map design.  All the really good ones are paralogues.  Sothis' had a great one with a bunch of black beasts where just as I thought I was going to be able to take my time it drove the screws in even harder (that one's going to be hell on Lunatic, Black Beasts in general are going to be extremely scary with even higher stats), and now I've got a defence chapter with a kill commander req that leads me to suspect I'm going to have to send a squad out into enemy territory to win.  

Only bad one I've played was the Seteth/Flayn beach one. Because f*** sand reducing movement for all non-mage and non-flyer units, and f*** that gimmick hard. Gave me PTSD flashbacks to Celica part 2's maps that one did. At least it wasn't toxic swamp with mages spawning a bunch of crap every turn...

Also minor gripe, but Byleth's a good example of why silent protagonists can be a bad thing.  So much mystery around their origins, and constant remarks of a change in personality by Jeralt, and literally none of that is conveyed because Byleth is a literal blank slate with no personality or character.  A good chunk of potential drama is lost because, well, Byleth isn't a character.

Still if that's the price to avoid another Corrin then so be it.

So I just finished Claude's route which means I've done all of them now. Hard for me to pick a favourite one. Aside from the heavy re-use of maps and scenarios for most of them (especially Part 1 which is almost all the same), there is something a bit distinctive going on in each one.

I was delighted by Dmitri's character arc. With Claude I liked his personality and the more unique feel of the Golden Deer. Have to say though, I wasn't too invested in his goals compared to the others.

Guess I'm pretty much done with the game for the time being. Just have a few support conversations I want to catch up on, and then I wait for the story DLC which I'll probably get.

Overall I like this game. In a lot of ways it seems very ambitious. You can tell it's a bit rushed but it's still impressive what they achieved. It has a compelling world with some interesting politics going on and does a good job of making sides morally grey - much better than I expected, anyway, after Fates. It's great that they've voiced pretty much every line and characters/their art look great (for the most part).

However, I hate how much of the aforementioned stuff you have to repeat to get the whole story. For Fates' faults (and extra cost), when you picked a different path it was completely different at least*. The monastery stuff in particular will start to drag - if you're doing a repeat playthrough I'd really recommend New Game Plus+ so exp/class point and in particular weapon skill bonuses are retained to make it easier to get your units to the classes you want. The exp bonus isn't that necessary but will help cut down on the grind.

The only non-linear Fire Emblem that's really won my heart is Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, which in a lot of ways seemed more like a standard RPG with FE elements. Its own thing and very polished. But Three Houses has been pretty good too and I daresay it's taken up much more of my time... Eagerly awaiting the next game.

*That said I haven't played much of Birthright or Revelations and nor do I really plan to lol

Yess actual difficulty!  SO tempted to drop my current hard Golden Deer run and give Lunatic a try with a different house.  

But Maddening?  Really?   It's LUNATIC DAMMIT!  Ruddy Treehouse changing things for the heck of it again.  Awakening?  Lunatic.  Fates?  Lunatic.  Heroes?  Lunatic.  Three Houses?  Maddening.  Pick the odd one out!

Yes, yes I am getting anal about this extremely minor and arguably irrelevant change from one word to a almost-synonym.  I'm a traditionalist about my franchises!  

As for Birthrout and Revelation, Birthright was indeed basically a different game (only 5 reused maps, and all of them used gimmicks like dragon veins to completely change how they played).  Revelation though is 50-50 new (very veeeeery badly designed) maps and old maps with their gimmicks neutered juuuuuust enough to make playing them a chore.  And of course one mustn't forget to mention the story that was so bad it made Conquests look Shakespearean in comparison.  

I mean when talking about lazy reuse of assets and Revelation one only needs to say this.  Every character (and I do mean every character) is recruited with stats five+ levels below their bases.  They literally just ripped them from the other two games and stuck them in Revelation, resulting in characters frequently joining you at level 12 with the base stats they had at level 5 in the other games.  Not even exp grinding could make poor Arthur usable. . .

Athrun888 wrote:

Only bad one I've played was the Seteth/Flayn beach one.  Because f*** sand reducing movement for all non-mage and non-flyer units, and f*** that gimmick hard.  Gave me PTSD flashbacks to Celica part 2's maps that one did.  At least it wasn't toxic swamp with mages spawning a bunch of crap every turn...  .

Oh god, don't remind of that swamp map from Echoes... no thank you!

Kriken wrote:

I was delighted by Dmitri's character arc.

*That said I haven't played much of Birthright or Revelations and nor do I really plan to lol

Dimitri's character arc is the most enthralled I've been in a character's journey in a video game in years. Brilliant stuff.

Also, don't bother with those two you mentioned.

"We shall have our revenge.  They should be made to suffer!"

Ooookaaaay, I'm just going to back away slowly Dimitri. . .

Seriously though now I'm actually really tempted to go into Lunatic with the Blue Lions.  I thought he was going to be the boring honourable knightly type that bores me to sleep, but if that line is anything to go by. . .  Well, lets just say I can see why people have said Blue Lions is the most interesting route.  Consider my expectations subverted!  

But no, no.  I've committed to my man Claude and shall see things through there first. I think I must be nearing the route split now anyway, things seem to be coming to ahead so surely it can't be far off.

chapter 11 spoilers:

Oh, btw Pegasus Knight Hilda? Broken as f*** like I hoped. Literally only reclassed her and she could honestly have solo'd the last map with the exception of the spellcasters. That's some Ryoma tier OPness right there.

Meh. I never cared much for Edelgard anyway.

Spoiler:

I really like this game.

masofdas wrote:

I very much enjoyed my time with my house and the moment I would say this is my GOTY but I was a tad disappointed with the end of the game.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Muss wrote:

and the tea minigame is super creepy

Crumpy Andy wrote:

There’s nothing creepy about a tea mini game where if you say what the character wants to hear you get to stare at them up close at the end. Nothing creepy at all...

JayMoyles wrote:

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.

. . . Right.
We should have a proper talk about this, and particularly throwing the word "creepy" around like that.

I really dislike that we are so desensitized to violence in films and media that we don't see anything creepy about young men living out fantasies of killing lots of people, but the idea of someone wanting to experience, through their media, some imitation of romance or human bonding is creepy?

I'll admit that it isn't always handled well. As I mentioned in my review over in the Games I've Finished thread, I think the indirectness in this game makes it a little more natural than it was in Awakening, the last game of which I played any real amount.

Is it a little sad and weird to imagine a lonely person sitting and getting a bit too excited about staring at Hilda's cleavage or Seteth's exquisite chinstrap beard? Maybe, but no more so than someone watching a porno, or Titanic, or reading a romance novel, or ripping into crowds of German boys with a machine gun who are fighting for a country that told them this was the only way to secure their future.

On the other hand, getting to know characters, their interests, their likes and dislikes, then having a nice cup of tea with them and talking to them and becoming their friend so you care about them as the adventure goes on? I like it. I like feeling like characters have a life between battling baddies. I feel the same whenever we get a comicbook issue where the X-Men just get to hang out at a wedding, or a scene in Game of Thrones where Jon Stark can actually smile and laugh with Dolorous Edd between terrible things happening. It makes them real and helps me care.

And if you wanna get a bit more attached to them, or enjoy it more sexually? More power to you. You don't wanna engage with it at all? No worries. Just eat meals with your units and hammer the A button.

I also like the writing just fine. It ain't perfect but I laughed here and there, I enjoyed the characters and their interactions, and I wanted to learn their backstories and why they were the way they were.

Muss wrote:

Maybe contrived wasn't quite the right term but I think one of the major storytelling problems with Three Houses is that you're told, not shown, everything. So when you play another house's perspective, you don't really know fact from fiction. It also doesn't help that whenever you explore, you're typically only really being told a given character's reaction to the main mission whenever you speak to people at the monastery.

To mitigate this, it would have been amazing if post time-skip, you only explored the monastery when it made sense for your roster to be there, otherwise exploring war camps or local villages etc before that month's mission. Yes, this would have taken a lot of effort, but it's about the only way of fitting in a "showing" rather than "telling" vis-a-vis world building/storytelling within the crusty old Fire Emblem formula of rigid support levels and didactic narration. And I think that's particularly important in a FE game that has divergent plots with opposing viewpoints. I struggle to draw conclusions about the state of the world when I can't see any of it.

This is all very fair, but at the same time I can understand why it wasn't really something they could achieve. In the end, it sounds like you need to be some ways in to your second or even third playthrough for it to bother you, so if a game takes upwards of 100 hours to get repetitive that's pretty good going, right?

Quote :

I was cautiously optimistic Bernadetta wouldn't be a bad character after some of the Golden Deer characters went from bad to great. Unfortunately I think Bern is by far the worst character in the game. To me it feels like her mental health is just a punchline, not cool. I always find it uncomfortable when students tell you what an amazing professor you are when Byleth is basically an emotionless mute, but I actually find the Byleth-Bern A support creepy

Spoiler:

I will say this: Shen is someone who has suffered from crippling social anxiety, a lot of it brought on from having gone through some rough stuff, and Bernie's story really resonated with her. Different strokes for different folks.

Kriken wrote:

With Claude I liked his personality and the more unique feel of the Golden Deer. Have to say though, I wasn't too invested in his goals compared to the others.

Claude's a big fucking remoaner. Fodlan is better off without the EU!

Quote :

Overall I like this game. In a lot of ways it seems very ambitious. You can tell it's a bit rushed but it's still impressive what they achieved. It has a compelling world with some interesting politics going on and does a good job of making sides morally grey - much better than I expected, anyway, after Fates. It's great that they've voiced pretty much every line and characters/their art look great (for the most part).

I definitely agree. I was genuinely interested in the politics, history and mythology of this world, and it all made sense and fed into character motivations and events, better even than in a lot of fantasy novels and stuff that I've experienced.

Quote :

However, I hate how much of the aforementioned stuff you have to repeat to get the whole story. For Fates' faults (and extra cost), when you picked a different path it was completely different at least*. The monastery stuff in particular will start to drag

My solution for this is just that I'm gonna wait a while before I do any other playthroughs, until our next game drought or I have an action game and want something slow on the side or whatever.

Yeah, I don't find the tea 'minigame' creepy really, just a bit awkward. The nod/sigh/commend/laugh/disagree prompt for the last thing they say is just...what. Generally mess that bit up and don't feel like the options really correspond to what they say at all. But I also normally get lucky in picking their favourite tea, so I'll get a perfect teatime anyway.

When you get a close-up of them and get prompts to 'joke' or 'chat' or whatever I guess it's just to simulate more intimate conversation. They tend to divulge some random new fact about them as well. It makes more sense and is a lot better than Japanese Fates' petting minigame where you're actually just touching their face and whatever part of them for some reason.

You also don't really need to go into 'stare mode' at all. You get a lot of support points from a Perfect Teatime which you get from doing all the prompts correctly (with some leeway given if you poured them tea they liked), as well as an extra point of charm for both of you - which increases battalion might and makes recruiting some characters easier.

So I think it is worth doing the minigame, and find it fairly satisfying when I can get most of the answers right because of stuff I learned about the character through supports.

Drunkalilly wrote:

I really like this game.

masofdas wrote:

I very much enjoyed my time with my house and the moment I would say this is my GOTY but I was a tad disappointed with the end of the game.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

My only issue with it was the reward was getting right up in their face & staring at them as if they’re posing for you for having a good conversation. I liked the actual conversational mechanic, but you’re not Tarzan seeing another human for the first time, that bit ain’t handled well

Sent from Topic'it App

Yeah, it's weird but it isn't hurting anyone and these are some brilliantly designed and animated characters. It didn't do much for me, but I don't begrudge anyone who did get a kick out of it. For me, the reward is the deepened friendship- be that an in-game stat or entirely in my head.

Drunkalilly wrote:

And if you wanna get a bit more attached to them, or enjoy it more sexually? More power to you. You don't wanna engage with it at all? No worries. Just eat meals with your units and hammer the A button.

I still stand behind my use of the word "creepy" in regards to the pre-timeskip tea scenes. The game wants you to have a "perfect teatime" as that gives you the biggest boost to support and makes it easier to recruit members of other classes. That's all fine and well, but the scenes afterwards are a bit skin-crawling in the context of the school scenes. Some of the characters you have tea with are 15 or 16 and like Andy mentioned, the game uses some super questionable camera angles after you achieve a "perfect teatime". It felt almost pervasive having Byleth stare at these characters. Not a fan. And I wouldn't be surprised if early in development the game had some form of that awful petting minigame that Fates had. That unused Sauna building is suspect as hell.

Still, you're right in saying that it's easily skipped which is exactly what I did once I had my first perfect teatime session.

Anyone dipped their toes into the new difficulty mode? I've heard that it's brutally tough, which has me somewhat unsure if I want to try out whenever I return to FE:TH!

What is this "tea time" that everyone keeps referring to? I've never dealt with such a mode. If it ain't throwing flowers at people, eating, or battling I ain't got time for such nonsense in my strategy rpg.

Time skip finally arrived (yes, I'm a slow gamer nowadays. Blame my status as gatcha king. Gotta keep on top of all the rotating content in them there mobage games!), and hooboy I thought my class was basically set to cruise through the game. Nope. Turns out everyone being level 22-27 put them in range of getting smacked around badly by pairs of grunts.

Spoiler:

JayMoyles wrote:

Anyone dipped their toes into the new difficulty mode? I've heard that it's brutally tough, which has me somewhat unsure if I want to try out whenever I return to FE:TH!

The early maps seemed pretty rough from the LP I watched of them.  Enemies stats getting buffed completely changes the dynamic (everyone gets doubled and hit hard for instance...), and there are absolutely no safe plays to make for the mock battle so the barrier for entry is pretty high.  Enemies also seemed to be more aggressive in pursuing the player, adding another layer of screws to drive in.  

Oh, and the exp gains got nerfed to about 25% of what they are on hard and normal modes, making exp grinding maps completely pointless.  

Doesn't strike me as a masochist mode like Awakening's Lunatic was, but it's definitely scaled to give a player a thorough and rough test of their skill  with the game.