niracler

Basic Information#

Summary#

This game has been written about many times by various people, with all kinds of introductions, reviews, and strategies, and they all write much better than I do; I have listed a few at the end of my article. As for this article, as a non-professional gamer, I will focus more on my personal experiences with this game.

I didn't expect to write this article now that I am almost done with engage. However, this game carries so many memories for me, and I feel like there are endless topics and thoughts to share. (It's not because this article is easy to write that I'm here writing it to boost my KPI.)

About My Gameplay Experience#

I bought my switch with my first paycheck in May 2020. The first pair of Nintendo vouchers I used were for Animal Crossing and Breath of the Wild, and the second pair was for Three Houses and Super Smash Bros. In terms of playtime, Three Houses and Animal Crossing are still the two games with the longest playtime on my switch (around 150 hours).

I personally really enjoy tactical RPGs, which might have awakened when I played Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Cao Cao's Story as a child; I completed it several times. (I later realized that both games are from Koei.) Actually, Three Houses is my second tactical RPG; please forgive me, I only learned about the Fire Emblem IP after buying the switch, and it’s actually the older ancestor of the Warriors series. After playing Three Houses, I truly fell in love with the Fire Emblem series; I feel like I will buy and play as many installments as they release. Of course, other games, like Triangle Strategy, have great stories, but I don't have a particular fondness for the characters in them. Perhaps because I fell in love with Fire Emblem, I just don't enjoy other tactical RPGs as much.

The game has a total of 4 endings, to have a complete worldview, multiple playthroughs are necessary. My completion status is approximately 1+0.9+0.6+0.7, which equals about 3.2 playthroughs, covering 3 routes from 3 factions; I haven't played the Church route. The 0.6 and 0.7 are both from the Blue Lions route. The reason for playing the incomplete Blue Lions twice is that my switch account was banned due to a black card incident, leaving me with only a 70% progress on a classic save file for the Blue Lions route. My progress in Animal Crossing almost got lost in that incident too.

Three Houses has a mechanism where completing the game on the highest difficulty without inheritance grants a special golden cover. I still haven't obtained it because I got stuck later in the game; even if I wanted to avoid dying, it was still somewhat possible to hit a wall. Now, a single battle might take five to six hours, with countless retries, and I also missed out on playing the DLC chapters, which is really... (If it weren't so punishing, I would have given it a 10 long ago. Conversely, if engage had a better story, I could also give it a 10.)

Because I haven't obtained the golden cover, I decided that for future non-action games where I can choose the difficulty, I will always select the highest difficulty. This year's Fire Emblem engage has taken 115 hours and I still haven't completed it, mainly because the opening is on the highest difficulty.🤣

(That golden cover I couldn't obtain)

Character Design is Great, Each One Leaves a Strong Impression#

I genuinely like every student (and teacher) in Three Houses. Here, I will briefly list my top 5 favorite characters. This section mainly references “Fire Emblem: Three Houses Character Guide - Zhihu” and adds a bit of personal description; their writing is excellent.

05 Homebody - Bernadetta#

Many people see Bernadetta as a source of joy because her voice is just too funny. Whether in support or during battles, she often lets out ghostly screams at inappropriate times. In a panic, she takes down enemies before they even get close.

However, the shadows of her childhood will accompany Bernadetta for life; in most of her endings, she ultimately chooses to be a recluse. While this is a tragedy, as long as she is happy and her partner can accept and accommodate her, it can still be considered a happy ending for her.

She has a deep paranoia ("Bernadetta is going to be killed ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah"), and then the enemy gets sniped...

04 Sword Saint - Felix#

Felix's life revolves around the sword in his hand. His only goal is to become strong enough that he doesn't have to watch his friends die, strong enough that no one will sacrifice their life for him; as long as he is strong, he won't die and won't cause others pain because of his death.

He only practices swordsmanship every day, and he can get every girl to A support, right? He is indeed too cool and is the strongest sword character in the game. " Punching🥊 might be even stronger?"

03 Dual A in Strength and Speed - Hilda#

Always acting cute towards others, she greets the teacher by saying, "Someone as weak as me wouldn't be useful on the battlefield~", loves to slack off, and is only 154cm tall. However, she has a growth rate of 45 in strength and 50 in speed, and can learn the game's most powerful axe technique, "Axe of the Gods." Once she ascends, wielding an axe is no problem at all.

She is a super fierce character specializing in heavy armor with an axe, and she is the most memorable Wyvern character in this game. The mobility of Wyverns is too strong; " Go get a kill, then fly back to a safe place," that’s the daily life of a Wyvern rider...

02 MVP on Hard Difficulty - Ingrid#

Although she looks gentle, Ingrid has a tomboyish personality with a strong sense of justice, and she is very principled in her actions. This has allowed her to bond with a group of male friends from a young age. Her personality has a "steel straight woman" aspect, making her one of the few women who cannot be flirted with even by Dorothea. She cannot develop a deeper relationship with the other two female characters in her class.

She specializes in swordsmanship, lance, horsemanship, and flying, all related to knights or Pegasus knights. Her traits as a female knight also imply that she holds herself to the knight's code.

Very upright and gentle. She can be considered the most angelic character (Unfortunately, there is no corruption storyline).

The gameplay on the highest difficulty emphasizes mutual one-shot kills; under this difficulty, gameplay devolves to avoiding T being the strongest T. Ingrid is the most suitable character for the Pegasus in the game; the Pegasus has a skill that grants a 30% evasion bonus when not attacking, combined with her already high evasion. Basically, every battle relies heavily on her, ambushing and countering wave after wave of enemies. " Throw her into the enemy's bushes, end the turn, and in the next turn, the enemy is all low health."

01 Glass Cannon - Lysithea#

If a person's death date is foretold, what actions would that person take? Despair, confusion, anxiety, fear, squandering the remaining money to enjoy the rest of their life? Approaching the end of life is a common human reaction.
But Lysithea chooses to study hard, sacrificing her youth for her family!
She is the youngest student in the entire academy, but she bears the heaviest burdens. To allow her parents and the people in her territory to live a normal life within her limited lifespan, she stokes the life fire that could extinguish at any moment and continues to work hard in her studies.

It is precisely because she took on her family's burdens too early that she tends to rush things, and her thoughts are extremely sensitive. Even in ordinary conversations with others, she often misunderstands that they see her as a child or look down on her efforts because of her talent. In areas where she is not skilled, to show her strength, she often finds herself in a dilemma and does not proactively rely on others.

I chose the Golden Deer for my first playthrough mainly for Lysithea (and Hilda), not because she is the strongest mage in the game. She is so cute, and I have to admit I have a weakness for white-haired characters...

After obtaining the exclusive staff later, I could basically take down any enemy character at will. I could even teleport a powerful character to the backline and skip class. (But you can't escape like this on hard difficulty.) " From a hundred miles away, take down the enemy general."

Etc.#

I just realized that I am a post-game power player; these characters seem to be the ones I used the most on the battlefield besides the class leader. Yes, a major feature of this game is that characters with higher attractiveness tend to be stronger.

The following section is still to be updated, aiming to complete it within a week.

The Story is Quite Good#

Choosing the Golden Deer with the upside-down man Claude for my first playthrough was truly an excellent experience. (He is called the upside-down man because he appears upside down on the cover of the game.)

(Bro, why is it only you who pulls my hand when we dance? And I'm playing as a male character this time...)

(Is this called a back-to-back hug?)

Regarding the discussion of justice, in hindsight, which side should I stand on? Is it a good thing for a story to have an absolutely evil boss?

In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the protagonist, as a teacher, watches the growth of the students bit by bit. However, while being in that trend, I also didn’t realize what position I was in until I slowly became aware of it while playing engage; it turns out Byleth is the leader of that era.

One part that left a deep impression on me is: the situation caused by the empire starting a war takes a sharp turn, and then suddenly we arrive at the story five years after the war.

You want to save everyone, but you can't save everyone; that kind of pain is quite something.

And the legendary weapon, Biskarnu.

Digging for Characters & Pairing CP#

Marriage and character pairing are something I, as a CP person, enjoy watching the most. In fact, I think the game lacks gameplay because too much money is spent on these aspects.

If I don't dig up more characters, in five years, these people will just be chopped up by me...

Everyone is a CP enthusiast; at the end of the game, you can see the subsequent stories of the paired students, which is still very interesting. In fact, many characters feel like the official is also pushing some CPs.

Playboy & Steel Straight Woman, childhood friends finally become a couple (Yay)

Issues - Lack of Gameplay#

Actually, I hadn't seriously played a game for a long time before this one. To be honest, I used to think Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Cao Cao's Story had great gameplay, especially with the mage characters having various types and classes. However, in Fire Emblem, the mage characters can only do point kills -> stronger point kills -> even stronger point kills. It's really...

It almost turned into a character cultivation game, filled with finding lost items and returning them, but the lost items have such personal characteristics that...

This game easily shrinks down to everyone boxing or everyone flying, which has become a meme in engage...

The later engage has very good gameplay, but the story has been heavily criticized. I think the replayability of engage is definitely better; engage is fun while playing, but you forget everything after finishing. In contrast, Three Houses becomes more and more punishing over time, but by then, you have already fallen in love with your students.

Postscript#

I might be the type of person who has a lot of psychological activity, so I often end up writing a bunch of various nonsense.

References#

• "Fire Emblem: Three Houses" Highest Difficulty Experience Report | Patricium
• “Fire Emblem Engage” VS “Three Houses”: Why I Still Prefer the Latter | GCORE
• “Fire Emblem: Three Houses”: A Milestone Worthy of Its Name
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Moegirl Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia Where Everything Can Be Cute
• 【No Spoilers】Newcomer Guide to Fire Emblem: Three Houses Multi-Playthrough Insights & Suggestions (Character Marriage, Route Choices, Digging Characters, etc.) - Zhihu: This is my game entry tutorial.
• “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” Character Guide - Zhihu: This character guide is excellently written; my character images come from here. Because it is so well written, I ended up writing what I wanted to say, to the point where I didn't know what else to say.
• “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” All Students CP - Bilibili: Bilibili CP head, so much fun.