"Fire Emblem: Three Houses" Review

Available for: Nintendo Switch

Reviewed for: Nintendo Switch

"You're curious to see how The Right Trigger is doing. Go for a visit?"
>Yes
*scene begins on a still jpeg of an apartment door stretched out far too much to be a believable part of the scenery. You walk up and make a vague knocking motion with your wrists. There is no answer. Screen fades to black and it's implied that you entered my apartment. Screen fades back in on a still jpeg of the inside of my apartment, preferably with my dog in it, once again stretched out far too much to be a believable background (especially given how massive this effect makes my dog look)*
>Hello?
*camera cuts to me with messed up hair and bags under my eyes. I'm obviously surprised to see you*
RT: Oh...reader! How...how are you?
>*cross arms*
RT: Right...I guess you're wondering why it's been so long since I've reviewed anything...
>*continue crossing arms*
RT:...and why it took so doggoned long to get my review of Judgment out, considering I played it months ago..
>*nod*
RT: Wa-wait! I can explain! I've been very busy lately
>*notice Fire Emblem: Three Houses playing on my TV*
RT: B-but I'm serious! Fire Emblem: Three Houses takes a lot of time to play! You can't get all the story in just one playthrough!
>How long can it possibly take to get all the story?
RT: Well..I just finished my third playthrough at a total of 150 or so hours, and even then there's still content to be discovered.
>It takes all that time to get the full picture? I'm not sure that's a game worth playing...
RT: Just wait!
>Yes?
RT: Let me prove it to you! I'll tell you exactly why Fire Emblem: Three Houses is worth it!
>If I must...
RT: Great! You won't regret it, reader! Now sit back, open your textbooks, and allow me to explain to you what makes Fire Emblem: Three Houses good enough to spend such an obscene amount of time with!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses puts you in the shoes of a player-named, mostly-mute (though it probably would've been easier to have him be totally mute after the first actor got in trouble for assaulting his girlfriend) anime protagonist of either the generic male or generic female variety, but whatever. At the start of the game, your protagonist (who I'll be referring to by my preferred JRPG character name, "Ikisoyo," from now on) is a mercenary working alongside his father, Jeralt. One evening, three young adults named Claude, Dimitri, and Edelgard approach your camp claiming to be pursued by bandits, so Ikisoyo temporarily joins forces with them to resolve the threat. After a brief tutorial level, Ikisoyo and Jeralt learn that these three characters are in fact students of the warfare-teaching Officer's Academy run by Garreg Mach Monastery, the central hub for the forces of the Church of Seiros (this world's female Jesus figure). Futhermore, each of these characters is the head of one of the three "houses" in this academy (think of it like the houses in Harry Potter). Claude is next in line to lead a small, independent alliance of nobles, and he runs the "Golden Deer" house. Dimitri is the crown prince of a church-run kingdom, and he runs the "Blue Lion" house. Finally, Edelgard is the soon-to-be Empress of the Empire that once ruled over the entire country, and she leads the "Black Eagle" house. My earlier Harry Potter analogy is hardly unique: every reviewer who touches this property makes the comparison. The Officer's Academy is pretty much Hogwarts for the art of warfare, and each house is determined by a person's area of origin rather than by a sorting hat. Folks from the empire go into the Black Eagle house, folks from the holy kingdom go into the Blue Lion house, and folks from that noble alliance go into the Golden Deer house. Make sense? Anywho, after displaying combat prowess on the battlefield, Ikisoyo and Jeralt accompany the house leads back to the monastery, where it is revealed that Jeralt had served before Ikisoyo's birth. Upon arrival at the monastery, the Archbishop of the church of Seiros (and grade-A certified MILF), Rhea, offers Ikisoyo a teaching position at the academy. From there, Ikisoyo chooses one of the titular three houses, and he goes on to instruct each student in his chosen house in the art of warfare. But not all is as it seems. Beyond the walls of the monastery, forces of darkness conspire to threaten the safety of the land. Does Ikisoyo have what it takes to lead his students to victory? Who is Ikisoyo anyway, and what connection does he have to Rhea that makes him fit for teaching so quickly? Who is the million year-old Loli living inside of Ikisoyo, and why are they connected? Who exactly pulls the strings of these conspiring forces of darkness? You'll have to see for yourself. For you see, each house contains at most a third of the overall story picture in its playtime. Not only that, but the overall story point, direction in the second half of the game, the final area, and the final boss are entirely different for each house! That means that it takes at least 35-40 hours to get at most a third of what it takes to understand everything and everyone's motivations. That's how dense and intricate the story here is, people. And depending on which house you start with, you may end up with more questions than answers after finishing your first playthrough. Without giving any spoilers, I'll say this: Start with the Golden Deer, then the Blue Lions, then finish with the Black Eagles. That, in my opinion, gets you the best drip feed of the story; you'll have questions for a lot of the runtime, but you'll get answers at a satisfying rate that keeps your curiosity high without being frustrating. So the plot boasts a lot of content...but all that I've just said is just the plot. In addition to any one playthrough only containing about 1/3 of the plot details, any one playthrough also contains a fraction of the character development and interpersonal relationship content.

Each house contains 8 students, and as your class fights together, "support" bonds between the students grow. As the bonds between students grow, their relationship dynamic changes, you learn more about both parties, and the story arc between them progresses. There are 4 levels of support: C, B, A, and S (which is only attainable between you and certain students, not between two students), with each level representing a new level of closeness or acceptance. Some student pairs can only achieve a maximum support level of B, while others can make it to A, but to get to A, you have to nurture that relationship for more than half of the runtime. But here's the thing: this system isn't limited to classmates. That's right, each of your students can progress in support with any student from any other class. It's significantly harder, given that you can only have 1 student outside your class on the battlefield at a time (we'll get to that), but it's there. That means that every student of yours has about 23 different relationship arcs that can be explored. Oh, my bad, did I say 23? I meant 32. You see, this system also isn't limited to students. Each student can form support bonds with staff members at the monastery as well. So, including you, that's 33 different relationship arcs written for every character in this game. That's a lot of character content, and it only scratches the surface. Earlier I alluded to having students outside your class on the battlefield, and this is in reference to "Mission Assistance." Every month, you can ask a student from a different class to join you on the battlefield for your monthly mission and all battles you partake in before the mission date. During this time, they won't gain any experience, but their bond with you and your class will grow. Eventually, when this student likes you enough, you can recruit them into your class. I personally didn't do this until my last playthrough, but when I recruited a character in that last playthrough, she ended up getting entirely different dialogue from when I was the professor of her house. I can't say for sure if every character gains different dialogue upon recruitment, but if they do, then that should further prove my point that there's a truckload of character content to be discovered in this game! The same can be said of certain faculty members. Faculty members are significantly easier to recruit, and unlike the students, I actually ended up recruiting faculty for two of my playthroughs. I recruited one particular faculty member in both of these playthroughs, and she ended up having different dialogue each time as well. Depending on the bonds you allow to blossom between students and faculty, the pre-credits "what ever became of them after all that?" segments can go a number of different ways; some surprising, some predictable, and some unbelievably sweet, but you never know unless you actively work to foster support between your troops. Now I've talked at length about the bonds between students and faculty, but what about you? Well, this may come as a surprise, given that this game is essentially about teaching child soldiers, but there is a romance aspect. The game does something that makes this concept not-at-all problematic in the end, but I won't say what. Essentially, any character that has an "S" rank available to be achieved can, in the end, become your love interest. The available options change based on whether you play as a man or a woman, and at least as far as the man protagonist goes, there are heterosexual and homosexual options...and if there are homosexual options for the man, let's be honest, there'll be ones for the woman. All this is to say that there'll likely be something for everyone. Now, the theme of this section has pretty much been the abundance of character content, so you're likely expecting that choosing a love interest provides yet even more content. That's...somewhat true, but not to the same extent. You see, an "S" rank doesn't mean you're an item, it just means that the foundation of trust and admiration has been laid (no pun intended) down and something could potentially come of it. You'll likely end up achieving every S rank possible within your class anyway, so nothing really changes based on that alone. The romantic subplot does add more content, but it essentially amounts to (at max) 2 new scenes. One takes place around the midpoint of the story and the character that is chosen for it is almost entirely random based off who you've progressed the furthest with, the other takes place when you specifically choose the character you want to dedicate to, and it happens shortly before the credits roll, and it amounts to a love confession and a cute drawing of the character. So, there aren't any entirely different arcs or anything that come out of this romance mechanic, but it's still a worthwhile pursuit in that depending on who you choose, the events in the pre-credits "what happened next?" segments can change...and at least in my experience, the confession scenes are pretty cute. Beyond the romantic side, you, like any other character, can also achieve "A" bonds with your students, but that's no different from what we've already discussed.
Now, everything I've touched on so far is all well and good, but 150 hours is a long time. Even the greatest game stories with the greatest game characters can't hold up for that long with just story and characters. In order to make experiencing all that story worth it, a game needs to have a solid gameplay loop that can actually remain engaging for a long time. Thankfully, Fire Emblem: Three Houses has just that! When I say gameplay, however, I'm actually referring to three different sides of the gameplay loop: Combat, Instruction, and Free Time. And because I love this game so much and have so much to say about it, I'm going to be dedicating a full paragraph to each one, just so you fully get the gameplay picture!

Combat in Fire Emblem is and has always been a turn-based affair, but if you're a veteran player, you'll likely notice a major difference in this title. I've personally only played Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones on the Game Boy Advance waaaay back in the day, but even I was able to notice the key change to combat. Whereas prior titles utilized a rock/paper/scissors-style system involving lances, swords, and axes, Three Houses goes for a more straightforward turn-based system. No one weapon type gives you an advantage over an enemy wielding a different kind of weapon, so victory relies not on positioning your troops based on what they use, but on training your troops well and formulating different strategies. There are still bits of logic at your disposal (i.e. magic works better on heavily-armored enemies than normal weapons do and bows work well on flying enemies), but you're actually going to have to think to survive here. Thankfully, Three Houses gives you plenty of resources with which to come up with a plan. The entire battlefield can be scanned at any point, and individual enemies can be zoomed in on to see what weapons or magic they have, what their skill levels are, etc. Likewise, the "battle forecast" is still going strong since the game boy days. This essentially means that when you go to attack an enemy, a little window pops up showing a forecast of the attack. In any attack (whether it's during your phase or the enemy phase), both parties involved will strike at least once unless one party falls. So, you could easily get killed by attacking during your own phase if you're too careless. That's what the battle forecast is for. It shows how many times you and your foe will attack in the turn, what the damage, hit chance, and critical hit chance for both parties will be, and how much HP you both will be left with assuming every hit lands and no critical hits are scored. This means that the forecast is merely an assumption (either party could score a critical hit and kill the other when they should've only knocked off 1/3 of the health, or no hits could land and the turn could be wasted), but it gives you what you need to make a tactical decision. Furthermore, during your turn you can see which of your units any individual enemy will strike (assuming they're in range) by watching the curved red lines hovering above the battlefield. In many battles, unexpected things will happen (enemy reinforcements appearing out of nowhere, for example), but for the units that are currently on the battlefield, you can get an accurate grasp of how the enemy phase will go based on where you put your units. A possible use case: You have an enemy that is nearly dead, so you decide to move your low-HP archer to an adjacent space on the battlefield to finish them off. However, when you park on that space and are prompted to choose whether to attack, use an item, or wait, you notice a red line has suddenly appeared and is pointing at your archer. This means that if you take this course of action, once the enemy turn begins, someone is going to attack your archer. So you move the cursor to follow the line and land on the targeting enemy. When you hover over the enemy, you see that your archer is indeed the target, and you get a mini-battle forecast that shows that this enemy will prevail. So if you follow through with your current strategy, you'll take out the enemy you had in mind, but you'll lose your archer to another one. With that in mind, your strategy might change completely: It could be that you let this particular enemy live for now because the battle forecast from the previous turn shows that when they next attack, you'll come out on top. Or it could be that sacrificing the archer is necessary because if you don't, the enemy you're trying to take out will take out your tank. There are countless ways that a battle can go, and Three Houses gives you what you need to make informed decisions without giving you all the answers.

The second aspect of Three Houses' gameplay to discuss is instruction. As I said in the paragraph about the story, you're a teacher, so a big part of this game is doing your job. At the start of each week, you decide what instruction you're going to provide to your students, and what you're essentially doing in these segments is raising skill levels. Every unit (students, faculty, enemies, you, etc) has "grades" from E-S+ in each of the following skills: Sword, Lance, Axe, Bow, Brawl, Reason, Faith, Authority, Heavy Armor, Riding, and Flying. Most of these skills are increased by fighting on the battlefield, but the progress is minimal, so the purpose of instruction is to raise a student's grades where it matters most. There are a couple different avenues to consider here: 1-on-1 instruction, goals, and group tasks. At the start of any instruction period, you have a certain amount of "activity points" based on your professor level, and the number of activity points you have directly correlates to the number of students you can provide one-on-one instruction to. In a 1-on-1 instruction period, you have 1-4 sessions depending on the motivation of the student (which we'll touch on more in the free time paragraph), and you use each session you have available to gain extra progress toward the next grade in whatever skills you choose. In addition to simply giving a student extra progress, this also further deepens your bond with them. But even at the highest professor level you won't have enough activity points for all the students in a given week, and sometimes not enough students will be motivated enough to use all your activity points anyway, so for those cases, you also have the ability to set "goals" for each student. You can select one or two skills for each student to focus on, and at the end of the week, they will organically make a little progress in these skills. Finally, there's group tasks. You select two students to participate in one of three activities: Stable Duty (which increases the riding skill), Weeding (which increases the heavy armor skill...somehow), or Air Patrol (which increases the flying skill). These three skills are basically impossible to increase on the battlefield is a unit isn't already a riding, heavy armor, or flying class, so group tasks offer a way to increase these hard-to-train skills while also increasing bonds between the students involved. But what's all this in service of? Well, as students achieve higher grades in certain skills, they do more damage with the weapon/magic type in question or are able to move greater distances on land or in the sky, etc. However, the main focus on these grades is passing the certification exams that become available at levels 5, 10, 20, and 30. Every unit in this game has a "class" (i.e. monk, warrior, archer), and at each of the aforementioned levels, students have the ability to take exams to be certified as a more advanced class (a monk could become a priest, an archer could become a sniper, etc). But in order to pass these exams, students are encouraged to have certain grades in certain skills. These aren't hard limits, students with a B+ in a skill that the exam looks for an A in can still take the exam, but the closer they are to the required grades, the more likely they are to pass. The grade requirements are spaced out just enough to make it so that you have to really focus in order to meet them, so it's clear this was heavily QAd. However, the final tier of classes, the "master" classes, don't become viewable until you reach professor level C, so for a majority of the game, you don't know what you're going to need to aim for in the end. And when the final classes are revealed, I'd bet money that everyone who plays this won't have seen the requirements coming. Suddenly, when this last tier becomes viewable, entirely different skills need to be emphasized if you want your students to achieve their true potential. To give one example, in my first playthrough, I had a Sniper unit (advanced archer), and the master tier next step was a Bow Knight. I'd been focusing on exclusively the bow for this unit, but in order to become a Bow Knight, this unit needed to not only have an A in Bow, but an A in Riding and a C in lance. For all but one of my students, these final tier classes were going to require a lot of work. So, I ended up opening the notes app on my phone and going through each student one by one. For each student, I noted which class was the best fit and what grades we'd need to work on achieving. Soon, I was planning out how to spend my free time and saying, "ok, you two will be on stable duty every other week, and you already have a high flying grade, so you and her will be on air patrol in the other weeks," and other things like that. Then, suddenly, it hit me! Fire Emblem, you sly dog! You made me put together a lesson plan! That right there is great game design! Without telling you to do anything, the game organically causes you to truly act like a teacher, putting together specific plans for how you're going to improve each of your students! Amazingly, this effect isn't lessened on subsequent playthroughs, despite the fact that you now know what the final tiers are going to require! Rather, in second or third playthroughs, you just end up doing your lesson plan early, charting a student's full path of progression!

The final gameplay aspect to touch on is free time, and it's arguably the densest aspect, so buckle up. This being a game based off of school scheduling (and being a game developed in Japan, where they only have 1 day off a week), every Sunday you have "free time," and you determine how to spend it, much like in the excellent Persona 5, except with just one day. On any free day, you have a couple of options available to you: Exploring, Seminars, Battles, and Resting. I'm actually going to go out of order here and start with Seminars, as Exploring has the most to it. If you choose to spend the day arranging a seminar, then what you do is select a faculty member who will give a lecture on topics they're good at. Depending on the topics, certain students of yours will choose to attend, and all students who attend a seminar gain progress in the skill topics as well as a bit of motivation to be used in the next instruction period. To be honest, I only chose seminars a couple of times when students really needed that extra push of skill experience, but they do come in handy in those scenarios. If you choose to rest, that's the quickest option to get you to the next instruction period, but it also provides the least benefit. Resting gives a little bit of motivation to all your students (and there's another benefit later on that I won't spoil), but that's mainly a last ditch effort to get motivation when you don't want to spend the time to explore the monastery. Battles are exactly what they sound like. If you find you're under the suggested level for the next mission, you'll use battles to level up your students, and the amount of battles you can partake in is directly related to the number of "Battle activity points" that you have, which increases to a maximum of 3 points depending on your professor level. Oh, but you know how I was going on about the sheer magnitude of story content in this game? Well, there are battles that start appearing as the game progresses called "Paralogue" battles, and these contain even more story. These paralogue battles contain story details that I suppose the devs thought were good to sate curiosity, but not necessary for the point of the plot. What this means is that these battles often provide even more insight into characters as well as additional story beats that a lesser game would force into the main plot for padding. For instance, in my first playthrough, there was a student in my house who had severely low self-esteem, and at one point in the story there were rumors going around that she might be in league with the bad guys. Nowhere in the main plot does this get explained, but in a paralogue battle centered around her, I learned the origin of her low self-esteem and why people might think she had a tendency towards evil. To give another example, after about the halfway point when things drastically change, I wondered what became of two particular characters. That question wasn't answered in my first playthrough, but in my second time around, I went into a paralogue battle completely unrelated to them and ended up learning that they were now working for the enemy. So battles not only work as a leveling mechanism, they also serve to bring you even more details about the story and characters! Finally, there's exploring the monastery. In this mode, you basically get to free roam and partake in various activities once again depending on how many activity points you have. Some activities require activity points, others don't, so there's a lot you can accomplish in an exploring session. Gah, where to even begin here...I guess the place to start would be side quests. Every month there will be side quests that are only accessible in exploration mode. These side quests are always the easiest things in the world (most of the time they just amount to "find the glowing spot on the map and pick up this item and bring it to me), but in spite of that, they're still worth doing. Side quests offer renown, which can eventually be spent on experience upgrades (for instance, making it so that the bow skill raises twice as fast), and many side quests also open up new activities within the monastery! You're always gaining something from these unprecedentedly simple quests! Side quests don't require activity points to take on, which is good, because there can be as many as 10 in a given day.
I think the next thing to talk about in the exploration mode would be other activities that don't require activity points. The most obvious one is just going around and talking to students, giving them gifts, and returning lost items. Sure, there's no practical benefit to just talking to them, but you can get their perspective on upcoming missions and things like that. Gift giving is more straightforward than most gift systems in that any character will accept any gift, but gifts that they would like make them happier and raise their motivation more. Similarly, there are many, many items that can be picked up around the monastery. Each one of these lost items contains a clue as to which student it might belong to. These clues are often more vague than they need to be, but when you find the correct student and return the item to them, it helps deepen your bond and raises their motivation. Then there are activities that yield food rewards that can be used for meal sharing or prep (which we'll get to in a second). These activities are fishing and gardening. JRPGs and fishing minigames go together like Japanese schoolgirls and unrealistic attitude and body type expectations foisted on the rest of the world by anime, so it should come as no surprise that one exists in Three Houses. Unlike most fishing minigames, however, this one is harmless and simple. You choose a bait, wait for a fish, then partake in possibly the easiest rhythm minigame ever conceived. You can do this as much as you want if you have the bait for it, and doing this steadily raises your professor level, yielding more activity points in the future. The gardening doesn't have a minigame, but it's no less beneficial. You can pick up seeds around the monastery or recieve them as rewards for side quests, then you bring them to the greenhouse overseer and have up to five seeds planted. Then, you choose a way to cultivate the crops with more expensive options potentially yielding a better harvest, and the next time you explore the monastery you'll reap the rewards. It's not exactly pulse-pounding action, but it takes all of 5 seconds and can yield food for meals, items that increase stats, and flowers to be given as gifts. Finally, there's the advice box. You'll go up to the monastery counselor and read a couple of notes asking for advice. These notes come with a silhouette of the person who wrote it, and you have to choose the response you think that person will be satisfied by. If you choose correctly, your bond with that person increases a little bit.
Next, there are the activities that use activity points. Firstly, there's "faculty training." You see, you can't instruct yourself, so if you want to make progress in any of your skills outside of the battlefield, you'll need to seek out a faculty member who excels in the skill you want to work on and train with them. In addition to getting a better grade in one of your skills, this will deepen you bond with the faculty member in question. Then there are combat tournaments. Every month there's a different type of tournament (one month it might be swords, the next axes), and you can enter one of your students into these tournaments for the chance to win certification exam seals or advanced weaponry (as well as a little spending money). Thirdly, there's choir practice. You go up to the choir director and choose two students to sing with. By doing this, the bonds amongst the three of you grow and everyone involved gains a little bit of faith experience. Fourthly, there's meal preparation, which can only be done once a day. In this activity, you pick a student to cook with, and both your bond with them and their motivation increase. Fifthly, there's the activity you're probably going to do the most: meal sharing. You pick an item from the menu (which you need to have the ingredients for, oddly enough), see which of your students likes that item, and you share a meal with two of them. This raises their motivation to the max and increases the bond between the three of you. This can be done as many times as you want in a day as long as you have the activity points for it, and it's by far the best way to quickly raise motivation and increase bonds in one fell swoop. So there you have it! All the possible point-requiring activities in the game. They're all good and none of them are remotely creepy in the slighte....oh....I forgot about the tea parties. Yes, there's one last activity to touch upon. You can invite one of your students or a faculty member to tea. Kind of questionable in the case of your students, but ultimately harmless, right? Well...the whole thing is just....awkward. When you take a student to tea, you're suddenly in first person mode as they look directly into your eyes. Then, a total of three times, you choose an incredibly vague topic of conversation that you think they might like. The goal is to choose the correct topic each time, and that's sometimes easier said than done, but if you get all three topic right, your student will bring up a topic themselves, and you then have to choose the correct response, which is even more often easier said than done. Like, really, she says "I didn't quite know what to make of you when we first met," and my response options are "nod," "commend," and "blush"? What am I supposed to choose there? Nod? "Yes, I agree that you didn't know what to make of me." Commend? "Holy hell, that's awesome that you didn't know what to make of me?" Blush? "C-Catherine-Senpai...d-don't say such things...b-baka!" But if you manage to get that right, then you've achieved "perfect teatime." And your reward is an "observe" mode. If that made your spine tingle a little bit, you're not alone. I tried it, and I firmly believe that the camera just goes straight for the boobs and there's nothing you can do about it. For real, though, the major benefit of teatime is that it helps raise your bond substantially...but it just doesn't sit right with me. It didn't take away from my experience, but just be warned that this is a thing.
Now, before I move on to the technical side of things, there is one negative that I need to touch on in regards to free time. In between the halfway point and the 3/4 point of the plot, you'll likely have maximized all your bonds and gotten everybody to their master classes, and once this happens, the pacing slows to a crawl. Suddenly, there's really no point to the free time anymore except for the odd bit of leveling or occasional paralogue battle. There's not even much point to maxing out motivation anymore at that point, as upping skill grades isn't really in the service of any grander goal anymore. So as fun and varied as free time can be, there does come a point when it becomes a bit of flab on an otherwise great experience.

We've now arrived at the technical side of things. This is a game with a fairly standard anime art style, so character models are about what you'd expect. They manage to make each character look distinct, which is impressive, even if literally every character shares the same set of animations (a fact that becomes harrowing when a large, hardened male warrior is sipping tea as daintily as an overly kind little religious girl). That being said, you may recall me joking about jpegs in the introductory paragraph? That's because the background artwork in cutscenes is awful. It is GOD-awful. It's obvious that the developers placed the character models in an enclosed space, then took a flat jpeg and made it stretch in a cylindrical fashion. As a result, chairs are human sized, beds are as long as a room, and rooms have odd sudden creases in them. It never took away from my experience, in fact, it was always a good laugh, but it's worth noting just how awful the background art consistently is. In addition, there tends to be a little bit of a slow down when you're running through the monastery. But again...I don't really care in this case. It could be that I did care at one point, but my recent dive into Control has retroactively removed any complaints I've ever had about slowdown in any other game, but nobody will ever know for sure. Other than that, the game boasts a solid soundtrack the transitions seamlessly between two version of battle tracks in combat, I never noticed any texture pop-in or animation glitches, and the game never crashed for me. It's not the strongest technical package ever, but in spite of its legitimate flaws, the game itself is good enough to make up for them.

*scene fades back in to my apartment*
>"I see..."
RT: So...does that explain why Fire Emblem: Three Houses is worth playing?
>*nod*
RT: Great! I'm so glad you understand! If you aren't a fan of turn-based combat, or if you need your gameplay pace to be a little bit on the faster side, this obviously isn't going to be the game for you. But Fire Emblem: Three Houses is many things to me: The single finest Fire Emblem game I've played (though I've only played one other one), the single finest Nintendo Switch game I've ever played, and one of the finest turn-based strategy games I've ever played. The bang for your buck here is unprecedented, and despite having spent 150 hours on this game, I feel like I could easily come back again for another round! The combat has all the moment-to-moment tension a strategy game needs, the instruction aspect organically worms its way into your psyche in a way that just works, the characters are all well-developed both by themselves and through their interactions with others, what's not to love? Sure, the tea party minigame is a little creepy and the background art in cutscenes is laughable, but really the only major drawback I feel with this game is in the flabbiness of the free time after the halfway point! So, dear reader, if you own a Nintendo Switch and aren't averse to turn-based combat, you simply owe it to yourself to play Fire Emblem: Three Houses!
>"That's all well and good, but..."
RT: ....but?
>"You called the archbishop a 'MILF,' in the story paragraph. That won't stand."
RT: Ohhhh boy...
*scene fades out*

"You and The Right Trigger have achieved support level A. Their motivation is maxed out!"

Let us review:
Free time becomes a hassle in second half - 0.5

The final score for Fire Emblem: Three Houses is...





9.5/10 - Absolutely Outstanding
Excellent work,  Koei Tecmo Games, excellent work!