Fan Gushing Fire Emblem Three Houses Part 2 - The Gameplay

So, there's a lot I'd love to say about the plot and characters, because there is A TON beneath the surface, and it's really surprising how much depth this game's world building, characterization and story has but I can't gush about any of that stuff without spoiling the plot. So for now I'd like to talk about the positive aspects of the gameplay behind Three Houses. 

To be blunt, I have a lot of criticisms about the gameplay of Three Houses, but for now I'd like to focus solely on the positive aspects that I enjoyed. I promise in a future blog post that I'll talk about the flaws of this game. For now, let's fan gush.



Weapon Ranks: One of the coolest changes that Three Houses made was to make weapon ranks a much more prominent part of the game. Weapon ranks in past Fire Emblem games were always...there. They didn't play much of a role in the strategy of the game outside of figuring out who gets a Training Scroll.

 In Three Houses, weapon ranks are front and center to how you level your units up and even promote. If you want your character to promote to a certain class you have to get the appropriate weapon ranks. Not to mention the fact that there are skills tied to weapon ranks too. What this does is force the weapon ranks to be part of the player's planning when they're trying to figure out which character becomes which class. It's a fantastic change to an often ignored mechanic of the game and it succeeds for the most part.



The Garreg Mach Monastery: One of the most pleasant surprises that this game had to offer was how well it handled the home base system. This is easily one of those mechanics that could have pissed off veterans like me, but it works really well in the long run. 

This is a fantastic home base system. In fact, I actually like Three Houses home base system the best out of all the home bases that you get in the series. The Garreg Mach Monastery serves several purposes that winds up making it so much fun:

# 1: It Makes the World More Immersive: The Garreg Mach Monastery doesn't merely feel like a base, it feels like an actual school where people live. It feels like a place that someone would call home. This is part of the reason why we all invest hundreds of hours into this game. There's tons to do and lots of amazing interactions. Part of the immersive process comes from another advantage that the Monastery presents: It lets the characters actually react to the events of the story. 



One criticism that I've seen of past Fire Emblem games is that a character will die and nobody will respond to it. Some of the past Fire Emblem games had major technological limitations that served as the reason why, but this excuse becomes less justified with each new installment. Three Houses finally does away with that and lets the characters react and respond to what's happening in game. This helps them feel like they're real people. It also ensures that the events of the game leave an actual impact on the player. 

# 2: It Makes Planning and Preparation Fun: One of the main ingredients behind the success of Three Houses comes from the fact that this game capitalizes on a key component of RPGs that a lot of players enjoy: Customization. A lot of people love making their characters into any class that they want, have any skill set that they want, and have any assortment of powerful weapons and classes that they want. Three Houses puts this aspect of gaming front and center. Not only does it do that, but it does something else: It makes that planning and preparation extremely fun to do.

 

For most RPGs, the beginning parts of the game feel like they're a means to an end. The beginning is where you put in your hard work, which will eventually pay off in the later parts of the game. The middle and end of the game usually are more fun because those are the parts of the game where you get to see all your hard work pay off.

Three Houses by contrast flips that dynamic. In this game, the training, planning and preparation are usually the most fun aspects of the game. Why? Because so much of this game revolves around it, and is fun to do. Everything in this game feels like a mini-game that requires effort on the part of the player. Want to make your character a Wyvern Rider? Well you better invest in that axe and flying rank. Want to recruit that character into your House? Better build up that support rank. It may sound monotonous on paper, but the end result is that you get complete control over every little detail in your army. The end result is that you get to make more choices and you have more tools at your disposal to make your strategy a reality. 



# 3: Support Ranks & Recruitment: The best example of the positive effects of Three Houses emphasis on planning and preparation is in its supports (and recruitment). There are a lot of ways to build up support ranks in Three Houses, and the fact that you can build up support ranks as much as you can helps to make them all the more satisfying because each support rank is the result of your hard work paying off. It also helps that Three Houses has top tier support conversations too so that makes you want to put in effort just to see this wonderful cast interact with each other. 

Recruitment also works like this. One of the biggest positive changes that Three Houses made was to change how recruitment works. Instead of having one person talk to an enemy unit on a battlefield, you can now recruit characters by simply having a B rank support conversation with them. This change to how recruitment works means that bringing characters to your house feels far more deliberate and methodical. Instead of treating characters like Pokemon where you "gotta catch em all" you instead get to pick and choose which characters you want to have in your army. Because recruiting takes more time and effort to complete, you get the feeling that you should do some research to figure out which character you want to invest the time and effort into recruiting. The point here is pretty simple: Recruiting somehow feels more tactical and deliberate than just picking up another character off the battlefield. 



There's more I could say, but this post is getting longer than I expected. Let me know if there's something you want me to address in the next post about gameplay.