Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Give Me Orders Daddy

Glad to hear that exp-grinding is apparently completely pointless for Maddening difficulty. During my hard/classic playthrough it seemed that when I did paralogues and the occasional side battle (to use up the rest of my activity points) I'd be over-levelled, but also that I couldn't skip all of them or I'd be under-levelled. Would like to be able to not think about that and treat the game like a linear Fire Emblem for the most part. So yeah will need to check it out at some point.

Athrun888 wrote:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Athrun888 wrote:

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.

Yeesh, not sure if I fancy that from the sounds of things. Sounds a bit too brutal for my tastes. I'll likely still check it out if nothing else and like Kriken said, skipping the side battles will be a relief.

Sometimes the RNG just wants you dead.  Second map into time-skip Deers (monastery defence), and I swear Pegasus Knights were created just to spite me.  

Earlier in the turn this went down I had a pegasus knight dead-to-rights with Cyril positioned to land a kill-blow with 73% accuracy.  He, of course, misses setting the tone of what was to be the turn from hell.  I use turnwheel and smash the Pegasus Knight with 100% accuracy instead, a waste of resources, but what does the turnwheel exist for if not to be used eh?  

Then the rest of the turn happened.  I literally burned all my timewheel uses to kill the other pegasus knight in the center of the map.  I was halfway through the map, prepping to give Alois and Shamir some much needed kills.  All goes well as Alois kills a mage and Leonie kills the enemy archer on the artillery, and I set the stage for a fairly nice chain that ends with Flayn netting a kill if she would just land an 86% attack!

So of course she misses.  TIMEWHEEL TIME!

Next I decide to reset the RNG with a different chain, this time I decide to use Leonie to soften the enemy then kill them with Shamir.  80% hit for the killshot.  Guess what happens.

TIMEWHEEL TIME!

Round three!  I swear I'm now in the Fire Emblem version of Steins;Gate.  Fate just keeps keeping this bastard alive!  Right, this time I decide to gambit the bastard and leave them for a turn to completely avoid the RNG issue.  75% accuracy.  Enemy stand activates again, and so I do mine as well!  TURN.  WHEEL.  TIIIIIIIIIIME!

Round four.  Yes, this is my fourth attempt at killing the bastard Pegasus Knight!  This time I decide screw it, Lionie can have the kill, I'll find other things to feed to Flayn Alois and Shamir.  But first it needs to be softened up for Lionie!  Alois comes in with the 73% and misses.  But no fear, I accounted for the enemy stand!  Shamir swoops in and takes out almost half their health!  And so the killshot is set, Lionie . . . lands the 93% and ends my pain!

Oh, oh, but PLOT TWIST!  Alois is now positioned to get decimated by a cav and a second pegasus knight!  YAMERO PEGASUS KNIGHT!  

Like I said, fate conspired against me!  But this time, this time I win!  I send in my nuke Marianne who from five tiles away blizzards it, Lionie kills it, and Alois...  Is in range of an enemy mage six levels stronger than him. . . Aha!  But Flayn has rescue!  I.  WIN.  

Plot twist: I literally lose the map two turns later when the area got carpet-bombed after a 60% gambit missed and both Shamir and Lionie got stuck in range of two pegasus knights capable of one-rounding each of them with 75+% accuracy per hit and I didn't have a single use of the turnwheel to save me.

Like I said, what is strategy COMPARED TO LUCK? A miserable pile of nothing. This is clearly what I get for pulling six LR's in dokkan battle within a handful of multi's. I knew that luck came from somewhere, but Three Houses of all things?

Ooft, that's brutal. I had a couple of nasty misses during my BL playthrough, but it was nothing that rewinding and using a combat art didn't fix. I'd have torn my hair out if I'd had the luck you experienced there!

The retry went by extremely easy too, so definitely the RNG being a bastard on that first run.

Mariane's paralogue done. Pretty meh relic since Byleth and Catherine have my sword needs covered. Fun map though, getting caught off-guard by the reinforcements (and subsequently taking them out in one turn through extremely tight use of gambits to save Flayn from assured death) was cool.

I spent the whole game babysitting Flayn for the battles in which I bothered to use her. Quite apt, considering the story paints her as someone you need to protect rather than a capable fighter.

KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!

A more meta pre-battle declaration about the way to play the game has never been spoken. Good to finally get some context to the meme.

Battle at Gronder Field spoilers:

Turn 2: I maths fail and Flayne dies from a ballista-shot.

"Okay, I'll just change a few things and have her drink a concoction to get back to full and survive since there's no possible way the enemy can one-shot her."

Turn 2 Redux: Enemy crits Flayne for a one-shot kill.

"Oh goodie.  This again.  Fine, I'll redo the entire turn and reset the RNG."

Two Redux Two Turns: Enemy crits Flayne again

*SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH*

My patience for this crap turned out to be zero since I have pretty damn low tolerance when sick, so I almost rage-quit here (I never rage quit in games). Warp-Lysithea shenanigans saved the day, and I ended the day offing the Death Knight at last (golden deer chapter 19). I'll deal with Hubert tomorrow.

Warp is busted in this game. I one-turned some of the paralogue maps with Warp shenanigans.

Stride's even more broken.  I can't believe it took me almost my entire playthrough to use that gambit, been cheesing every map besides the last one since I found it.  Warp + Stride + enemy commander clear condition = done in three turns.  

Anyhow me and the boys just got back from raiding Area 17.  #fearthedeer

Seriously though I kind of wish TWSITD weren't as cartoonishly evil as they are.  

Spoiler:

One chapter to go...

I didn't actually bother with Stride - I preferred the attack based gambits for the most part - but I think that's one that'll be a must to run on a few units if you're going for a Lunatic run.

Who knew wisdom teeth aches would be what finally motivated me to finish this!  One hour later and Nemesis is dead.  What a scary as f*** boss that was, took barely any damage, doubled damn near everybody for 40+ (as in 40 per hit), and of course moved as soon as you attacked him.  Ancient relics were the only things worth a crap, thankfully Claude is straight busted so him and Hilda sealed the deal.  

So, with one route down I obviously have thoughts on the game.  I'll break them down into sections to save peoples eyesight.  

The Good

-Freedom in classes.  Every charater has their specialities, but the freedom to reclass them into whatever you want leads to some fantastic meme-tier s***.  Definitely adds some replayability to the game beyond the four routes (and arguably makes the shared sections less tedious to as well).

-Story presentation.  The animated cutscenes were excellent, the war phase pre-chapter narration with the map showing the forces relevant to the next battle helped set the tone, and being able to get each students thoughts every chapter about events helped them feel relevant in ways that other FE's often struggled with due to having to account for perma-death.  

-The mother-effing SOUNDTRACK. Seriously just listen to this eargasm material. God-Shattering Star is definitely going to be a contender for my top ten final boss themes from here on out.

The Meh

-Map design.  After Conquest and Birthright the maps in Three Houses are a noticeable downgrade in quality.   Enemies seemed to often be randomly splattered around the map haphazardly (even Birthright showed thought in how the enemies were set up in almost all its maps), and the maps themselves frequently featured no gimmicks to change the dynamic of combat.  Given all the ridiculous tools the game gives the player it would've been nice to see maps actively test the players ability to use those tools well (Conquest did so frequently).  

-Monastery sections.  I know I just basically praised them for allowed side-characters time to shine, but at the same time they absolutely begin to drag by the last third of the game.  The fact you're forced to do monastery two to three times every single chapter if you're trying to maximise your characters creates a real drag (I flat out skipped it the last two chapters because I'd had enough, but that won't be an option on Maddening)

The Bad (strap yourselves in people)

-Those Who Slither in the Dark.  In a game that did such a great job maintaining moral complexity in its main characters (all of whom can be antagonists depending on which House you choose to play) TWSITD are a massive letdown.  They're cartoonishly evil to such an absurd degree (we're talking ACTUAL crimes against humanity evil here) that not only are they themselves lame (I barely even cared about killing Kronya for example) they also weaken the complexity of a certain other major antagonist that is allied to them (won't name them due to spoilers, but I'm sure y'all know who I mean).  

Worse still when we finally do get lore dropped on us about who they are and what they're doing (that's Golden Deer route point for those who haven't played it.) along with certain other major backstory for a major character they end up becoming even more cartoonishly evil (harvesting organs for experiments.   YAY!)  Is there some massive reveal that could explain and attempt to justify why they would do these crimes?  I won't say why because of spoilers, but this rant should already answer that question through its very existence.  

-Divine Pulse.  Look, I love the concept of this mechanic.  Being able to undo bulls*** rng rolls and not have to restart a map when you get a character killed is a great addition.  But it's simply far too powerful (select any point in the battle to reset to at whim) AND too plentiful (over a dozen uses every map is absurd).  Oh, and the fact you literally cannot get a game over is also pretty silly.  If you get Byleth killed you should get some sort of actual punishment.  

As it stands Divine Pulse removes all punishment of failure from the game.  A good mechanic that is too unrefined right now.  Limit its uses, limit where you can reset turns to, and have actual game overs if Byleth dies and you've got a damn good system here, but as it stands it removed most tension from playing the game.  In fact I arguably played stupider than I would have because any mistake made could simply be rewound.

General Thoughts

I liked the game.  Don't get my detailed complaints wrong, it's a solid 8/10.  Fun, reasonably well constructed, and mostly not boring.  It managed to avoid the pitfalls Echoes fell into by avoiding using stupid enemy and map gimmicks that served not to pose a challenge but rather bore the player to death.  Out of the FE games I've (not as many as Id like, such is the world we live in) it sits around third place (behind Conquest and Blazing Blade) when averaging out its good and bad aspects.

I can't comment on your story thoughts as I've not played the Golden Deer route, but I'm still a big fan of Divine Pulse. It requires a fair bit of restraint to use effectively, I'd say. You're absolutely right in mentioning that the number of uses the game gives you is a bit much and it can be much too simple to brute force your way through tricky scenarios, but I still think it's a great feature to have. Not having to play the entirety of a map again because of a random crit or positioning a unit in a dangerous area by accident is a godsend.

A mechanic like divine pulse is welcome to mitigate some incredible bad luck you might have, mis-inputs or the occasional absent-minded misplacement. Also to help counter BS ambush spawns - spawns that occur during enemy phase so they act immediately, which aren't hinted at well.

To be fair, I don't recall any such spawns in Hard mode, but there was a paralogue where I placed a unit at a certain point which triggered immediate enemy spawns. I had already moved most of my other units so I had some extremely dead units - at least, I would have if it wasn't for divine pulse. (To be clear on ambush spawns - I think they are good if used well)

That said, I don't personally like divine pulse making up for questionable design like that and, at least for Three Houses hard mode or easier, divine pulses are indeed way too plentiful. From what I've heard though, the amount you get seems about right for Maddening mode.

It's a somewhat difficult mechanic to balance I suppose, especially in a Fire Emblem where you can grind a bit (which makes balancing hard in general). I felt it was pretty good in Shadows of Valentia where you got a similar number of spins but the dungeons could get really long.

There's also the mid-point saves mechanic in the DS games, which offered you 2 or 3 save points per level, accessed at evenly distributed tiles. I might have liked this feature more but I'm not sure which is better.


On another topic, I've been replaying a few other Fire Emblem games recently, as well as playing FE1 on the NES and FE New Mystery of the Emblem on the DS for the first time. Made me realise how much I missed some old features they had. Unfortunately I can't say that for Awakening which I've come to not really like once again, but hey at least the cutscenes in it are nice.

-More conservative use of support conversations: fewer possible but more well-considered interactions. Been playing Sacred Stones again and finding the supports are more interesting from just looking at the support menu - the intrigue over why certain supports were chosen in the first place. Three Houses has a mix of really good supports but also a lot of bad or a lot of mind-numbingly boring ones. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh but it doesn't help that so many are thrown at you - it gets exhausting.

Unfortunately, I don't think they'll dial down supports much in newer games outside of remakes. I do agree though that it's nice how side characters have more relevance in Three Houses, from all the dialogue you can get from them in the monasteries, paralogues, etc.

-Not having the supply/convoy stuck to the main character: on top of making main/avatar characters broken from their base properties, letting them have access to the whole convoy of supplies is a little ridiculous. That's potentially over 200 items they have access to at any point, and that goes for any unit adjacent to them. I've been playing FE6 and while it is missing some nice quality of life changes that even FE7 has, it's also nice how Roy doesn't have access to an infinite bag of items.

Instead the convoy takes the form of a unit which takes up a deployment slot and you need to defend it if you want to keep on using it.

-Aum staff and a ditto unit: these are more just fun things I'd like to see in the series again. The aum staff is in the original games and lets you resurrect a dead unit. But just one. It'd be especially cool in a no-reset run. And by ditto unit, I mean one that can transform into any one of your other units for a few turns. They are kind of broken but some thought still needs to be put into their use and I guess they are an exp sink so you don't want to rely on them too much.

Kriken wrote:

-More conservative use of support conversations: fewer possible but more well-considered interactions. Been playing Sacred Stones again and finding the supports are more interesting from just looking at the support menu - the intrigue over why certain supports were chosen in the first place. Three Houses has a mix of really good supports but also a lot of bad or a lot of mind-numbingly boring ones. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh but it doesn't help that so many are thrown at you - it gets exhausting.

I think FE:TH does a better job with offering tons of supports than Fates - I can't remember any worthwhile support conversations from that game and it definitely felt like that part of the game suffered from the urge to have every character interact with each other.

The supports are better than in Fates yeah, but having better supports/writing than Fates or Awakening is a pretty low bar to clear.

And I guess it makes more sense in Three Houses considering they school together and see each other pretty much daily. Having supports with each other character in the same class is fine I suppose.

The supports in TH have worldbuilding.  Actual honest-to-Seiros worldbuilding!  I thought that was extinct in modern media!  That alone makes them a win in my book.  

Anyhow started my second playthrough.  Figured after the loredump near the end of Golden Deer about the folks behind a certain fascist emperor it was time to get her story.  

I'll make no apologies about NG+ing Crimson Flower to death though.  I don't like Edelgard from what I saw of her in Golden Deer and what I know about the allies she chooses.  So maximum-overkill.  Lysithea back to nuking everything (almost one-shot the Death Knight lol.  I know that's the point of T-Spikes, but it's still absolutely hilarious that a level 5 can hit him for 34+ damage in one hit), and Leonie will be replacing Hilda as the Pegasus Rider of doom for the squad (Bernie will take up archer duties to replace her).  And, of course, reclassing for op skill combos.  

Speaking of archers this has to be the only time in fire emblem that I actually miss having four archers on the team.  Such a busted class. Gilgamesh would be proud.

"tHe CrEsTs ArE tO bLaMe FoR mAnKiNd bEiNg S***"

Please don't be going where I think you're going Edelgard.  Please.  

Not even up to the timeskip and I'm already getting the distinct feeling this route is going to make me want to throw my switch at a wall.  

Fitting that Edelgard is getting stat-screwed while Bernie and Leonie have gotten 4 almost-perfect levelups. The game is trying to tell me to go church!

I made a save at the divergence point in the Black Eagles route. I don't think there's a huge incentive to replay the first part of that route twice!

God yeah. Replaying the first part of the game for any route is the worst part of it.

I'm planning to wait until all the DLC has dropped so my Golden Deer route is sprinkled with new stuff as it was a struggle going from Blue Lions right to Black Eagles.

Speaking of, has anyone checked out the new DLC stuff? I heard there was a new character or something, which is neat!

Dontcha love it when you use the divine pulse to rewind bad RNG, and you get even worse RNG as a result?

"Oh crap, Lysithea got split off from the main forces and is about to be rushed down by enemy fliers and cavelry, I'll have her hide in the forest where the archer needs to land a 45% hit, the pegasus needs to land a 60%, and the cavelry needs to land a 30% to kill!"

One dead Lysithea later... "Alright, fine, I'll hide her behind Leonie and Petra, both of whom need to be hit by a 45%, a 30%, and a 35% to die!"

One dead Leonie later...

"Oookay, fine, third time completely replaying this turn, getting a teensy bit bored of it now.  Fine.  I'll let the pegasus knight attack Lysithea but put her out of the way of everyone else, and lure them in with Petra in the forest where the best shots they have are all 35% and lower.  Surely THAT will bode better!"

Meanwhile in the turn Byleth gets hit by a 15% hit he dodged the last three times, as does Edelgard...

One dead Petra later...

F*** this shit, I'm out.  Okay, which gatcha haul is causing this dumpsterfire of luck this time?  Last time it was LR Cell and LR Gohan, so who now?  Gilgamesh and Ishtar from FGO?  Or perhaps my 4 Rose Goku's in Legends?  Or is this some sort of twisted downpayment for a good haul next year?  Why is this happening!?  Like how!?  What are the odds of two 15%'s, two 30%'s, and a 35% all hitting in succession!?  All I need is on damned miss to be able to wipe them out on the counterattack, why is dodge-tanking not working with these odds!?  

AAAARGH! I think I might just get Xenoblade 2 and say to hell with this run for the time being.

Anyone pick up the expansion? I like the look of the new house and when I had this on my OG Switch even though I'll be ranking Three Houses highly in my Switch Top 10, I didn't want to automatically jump back in with Golden Deer as even though be changes still be rather similar to the 40hrs I just played as Black Eagles.

Now what 6+ months have past and I'm really liking Echoes on 3DS, that the expansion is tempting me. Just I'd have to rebuy the game which is £40 and could go towards TMS then the £24 pass on top but all that content would be new to me like having Anna.

I've still multiple campaigns to play so I won't indulge in any new content until I'm done with the old stuff. I like that its there, though.

Not too fussed about the dlc personally. Could see myself picking it up if I get the itch to do another playthrough one day though.