Notes on my First Playthrough of Fire Emblem Three Houses

• Are we the baddies? Guys I think I chose the bad guy path first.
• It was around when the death knight reappeared, but now on my side. It’s cool, we’re friends, Edlegard said, as if that helped.
• The “game” are the battles. Older fire emblem games would just move you from battle to battle, with story beats happening in dialogue. Here, you have a calendar, with a big battle at the end of each month. During the month, there are several optional activities.
• You cannot do all of them. This is the first thing you learn about being a teacher. You never have enough time or energy to help everyone.
• So there’s a chance that fire emblem may not be your week, your month, or even your year.
• The time jump left me cold. I felt like I didn’t know these characters anymore and that all of the characters that I had come to know were gone
• I found the back half a little weary. I think that’s the game design though. It doesn’t want you to enjoy this war. It wants you to wish to return to the school portion of the game. It’s like designed nostalgia to something that’s appropriate to the characters but just happened a few hours ago to you.
• It is designed, though, because you’re meant to return to the peace portion of the game when you start over and (probably) pick a different house to play through.
• Three Houses has several game loops. The battles/school loop. The before/after time loop which you’re designed to repeat four times.
• Game of the year? Maybe.
• What’s that song that plays in the first set of battles? That’s dope
• CBAS friendship connection levels is interesting. Would it be more interesting if it went backwards with neglect? Once you put in the work, you stay great friends forever.
• The ending is pretty brief. But it’s probably not if you consider the ending is your ending. There’s a lot of choices in this game and the ending reflects those choices. Add them all up.
• You only get three save slots (check that), which does seem a bit mean for a game with such different in-game choices. What if you choose poorly?
• I can’t wait to play the other routes. I could see myself keeping this game for years, playing a scenario once every fall.

---

---

---

---