Board 8 > Fire Emblem: Three Houses Review Zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

LapisLazuli posted...

Unless you absolutely have to do some reason, I've found there's very little reason to explore more than once a month.

What do you consider the best option?
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Exploring multiple times a month is how I already have a C Professor Level in Chapter 4.
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Generally you get 3 or 4 free times a month, and I always do the one explore and 2 or 3 battles.

Early in you can maybe play a little looser, but now on chapter 8 there's basically always going to be more available battle quests than you have time for, plus for the past 2 months there have been 2 paralogue chapters each requiring you to spend a free time on battle.
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Hmmmm, so what do I have to do to give a Pegasus Knight the ability to use white magic?
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Man, Hubert's a fucking snake but hell if I'm not digging him more and more with every single conversation he has. I usually HATE this type of character.
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I generally explore twice a month, sometimes even a third time. You can grind up your professor level a lot that way until you get an extra activity point for battles, which lets you do two paralogues/side quest battles in one day, which is awesome. Rest is useless when you can either eat meals or just give your students gifts to max their motivation anyway, and seminars don't seem to give much of a reward. Plus this way you can get Byleth some tutoring from the other professors, which might be necessary depending on what classes you want him/her to be.

LapisLazuli posted...

Hmmmm, so what do I have to do to give a Pegasus Knight the ability to use white magic?

Pretty sure there aren't any flying magic classes, sadly. Shame that the game supposedly inspired a lot by FE4 didn't bring back FE4's staff using Falcon Knights.
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Ooof, shame that starting B rank is faith is going to go to waste for little miss green hair.
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Panthera posted...

Pretty sure there aren't any flying magic classes, sadly. Shame that the game supposedly inspired a lot by FE4 didn't bring back FE4's staff using Falcon Knights.

Fates had them too, which is why I started training Marianne in Flying when I saw she excelled at it. Glad I thought to double check this early on. I guess she'll be a Holy Knight now, since she also likes Riding.

That poor girl, though. She's so depressed. There must be some kind of abuse or trauma coming from her adoptive father or something.

That's okay though, she can still kill things with that Magic stat.
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Why is Byleth a silent protagonist? Why did they go backwards and take away customization?
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It's a real shame the Flame Emperor twist is so obvious, unless it's a bait and switch. Certainly interested in seeing it play out.
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LapisLazuli posted...

Hmmmm, so what do I have to do to give a Pegasus Knight the ability to use white magic?

I was really disappointed by this, too. Got into battle and was really confused when Marianne couldn't heal.

Panthera posted...

You can grind up your professor level a lot that way until you get an extra activity point for battles, which lets you do two paralogues/side quest battles in one day, which is awesome.

I had no idea that was possible... guess I'll start exploring more
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Black Eagles Chapter 6 spoilers

Flame Emperor pops up in the mission I can't use Edelgard in, eh? Not exactly making their identity a stumper here.
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Shadow Dino posted...

Black Eagles Chapter 6 spoilers

Flame Emperor pops up in the mission I can't use Edelgard in, eh? Not exactly making their identity a stumper here.

I haven't looked into this, but my guess is that there's probably a major twist on all 3 routes that is made obvious depending on which house you're with. Obviously there would be no implication of the identity at all if you were playing Golden Deer or Blue Lions
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Impressions so far:

I'm in Chapter 6 I believe and I'm having a lot of fun, though the game is far from perfect. First the negatives.

-The game feels quite unpolished in a lot of places. It's hard to pinpoint where as it's just a feeling I get from time to time while playing and I probably feel it during many of the following negatives.
--Support cutscenes have minimal performances outside of two characters standing next to each other despite them being engaged in an activity together.
--Graphically everything when exploring is just okay.
--The monastery design is also just okay or maybe even a little disappointing.
--I also wish it felt like more of a hub to launch into activities rather than an additional activity itself that you select from a hub menu.
--Most annoyingly is that Byleth is an awful silent protagonist. I'm not the biggest fan of silent MCs to begin with, but most of the time I have no issues dealing with it. However, Byleth shows absolutely zero emotion and carries a constant stone face. His (I'm playing male) responses in conversations are largely uninteresting and I can never tell if they are sarcastic or not or have any kind of assumed inflection, but given how emotionless he's been I should just assume he's incapable of sarcasm and feelings as a whole. The writing and presence of Byleth has been my least favorite part so far and it's not close.

But there are a lot of positive that outweigh the negatives:
++Combat has been a joy. The amount of information it supplies is a breath of fresh air compared to what I remember from the Lyn/Eliwood/Hector FE I played. I'm sure many of these advances had been made in games prior to this, but that's my last experience to go on. I haven't been fucked by any RNG yet either.
++In a similar vein, Divine Pulse is awesome as well. I like how you can go as far back as you want/need.
++Casual mode is a very welcome addition for someone like me. If/when I do a second playthrough, I'll probably switch to classic but having the option for my first Fire Emblem in a long time takes a lot of pressure off.
++Battallions go a far way in making things feel more like a battle rather than a skirmish and I'm sure that will be more noticeable as the scale of battle becomes larger. Plus the gameplay mechanic of it has been fun to apply to characters.
++The story has intrigued me. I really like how they give the player the idea that not everything is what it seems at the monastery from the very beginning. I don't know who to trust and who to be wary of. Hopefully the students adopt this feeling sooner rather than later.
++Having a tangible influence over my units' growth is great. I really wanted to become invested in my party and this goes a long way into making that happen.
++No restricting weapon triangle was a great idea.
++Just having the ability to wander and talk to people in and having stories unfold off a grid battlefield and outside of static cutscenes is deeply satisfying.

Three Houses has me dreaming of a game that takes these elements a step further and really fleshing out the explore and unit development portion of the game. While I wouldn't expect Fire Emblem to step too far into that direction as they wouldn't to alienate what is probably a large portion of their fanbase that want just the battle and class started, perhaps this will inspire a new IP or direction for a different game.

I'm sure I missed and points but I'm writing this on my phone in the bathroom at work during the slow part of the morning. Now I'm going to ignore most posts in this topic to avoid soft spoilers that get offered up as people get deeper into the game because I'm annoyingly hyper sensitive to spoilers. Thank you for taking the time to read the thoughts of someone not deeply invested in Fire Emblem who has little previous experience with the series.
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Is anyone aware of any information regarding exactly what stats/skill ranks are needed to recruit other houses' characters? I know it changes with support levels but I'm wondering if anyone's run across hard numbers and if they vary by character or are the same across the board.
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Oh fuck...I gotta PICK who's gonna be able to learn Dancer?
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Waluigi1 posted...

Why is Byleth a silent protagonist? Why did they go backwards and take away customization?

after literally every line coming out of corrin's mouth being cringey and hard to read, I would say this is going forward.

Also, Byleth isn't an avatar, the silent unemoting character is who he actually is
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ZaziGuado posted...

Impressions so far:

I agree with most of this. Byleth is awful, and some of the support conversations have really bad contextual backgrounds.

The voice acting has largely been great, but the chapter intros are really bland. The attempts at world building are nice but they're so generic and read with so little emotion that it's just one more thing I'd like to skip.
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Yeah, Byleth is easily my biggest complaint with the game so far. But it's easy to overlook, because I'm digging pretty much everything else. I'm having a hard time putting it down, which is a big problem for me because I really need to be practicing for EVO lmao.

Peace___Frog posted...

The voice acting has largely been great, but the chapter intros are really bland. The attempts at world building are nice but they're so generic and read with so little emotion that it's just one more thing I'd like to skip.

I agree that the chapter intros are really generic, but I love love love the art style that they use so I always look forward to them.
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My biggest complaint with the game is how damn easy it is so far

I barely have to pay attention at all even on hard mode. I've never once felt in danger up to chapter 7 where I am.

I really hope the higher difficulties remedy this.

MawiIe posted...

Waluigi1 posted...

Why is Byleth a silent protagonist? Why did they go backwards and take away customization?

after literally every line coming out of corrin's mouth being cringey and hard to read, I would say this is going forward.

Also, Byleth isn't an avatar, the silent unemoting character is who he actually is

But he's a teacher? <_<
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NBIceman posted...

Is anyone aware of any information regarding exactly what stats/skill ranks are needed to recruit other houses' characters? I know it changes with support levels but I'm wondering if anyone's run across hard numbers and if they vary by character or are the same across the board.

If anyone else is curious about this, I finally managed to track down some reasonable approximations. Seems like the rough nuts-and-bolts are:

No support level: B+ skill, 20 stat
C-support: C+ skill, 16 stat
B-support: D+ skill, 12 stat

And apparently with a B-support, students might just come to you and ask to join of their own volition even if you don't meet the requirements.
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Why have they not let me interact with Hilda for 3 months in a row??
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Assuming you're not Golden Deer, she's the Hubert/Dedue of that house. Generally off-limits.
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mcflubbin posted...

But it's easy to overlook, because I'm digging pretty much everything else. I'm having a hard time putting it down

Oh for sure. There's a lot of petty things i dislike (let us pet the cats you cowards) but overall it's been great. I played it for over 20 hours over the course of 2 days.

NBIceman posted...

NBIceman posted...

Is anyone aware of any information regarding exactly what stats/skill ranks are needed to recruit other houses' characters? I know it changes with support levels but I'm wondering if anyone's run across hard numbers and if they vary by character or are the same across the board.

If anyone else is curious about this, I finally managed to track down some reasonable approximations. Seems like the rough nuts-and-bolts are:

No support level: B+ skill, 20 stat
C-support: C+ skill, 16 stat
B-support: D+ skill, 12 stat

And apparently with a B-support, students might just come to you and ask to join of their own volition even if you don't meet the requirements.

Oh... and here I haven't been focusing on supports as much as I've been on stats.

I'm pretty content using just the characters in the golden deer and the ones not from other houses, like Shamir and Cyril. I'm playing on casual mode though so it's not like I'm needing to replenish dead units...
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Luis_Sera89 posted...

Assuming you're not Golden Deer, she's the Hubert/Dedue of that house. Generally off-limits.

But she's lost so much shit I have to return!
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...

Hilda's a weird case. Reports are all over the place in regards with how to recruit Hilda. At first it seemed it was only the Blue Lions that could recruit her, but it seems they simply can recruit her sooner and for the Black Eagles she may only opt to join you in the weeks leading up to the skip. Or possibly it's only M!Byleth that can recruit her, as I haven't seen any reports of a F!Byleth successfully recruiting her.
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I'm playing Male Byleth and can't interact with her at all.

She is definitely not the one I would have expected from Golden Deer to be the unrecruitable one.

Waluigi1 posted...

But he's a teacher? <_<

yeah man thats the plot and why everyone acknowledges it's super weird that he was made a teacher.
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So I guess this game being good isn't a reflection of Intelligent Systems doing a good job. The game was primarily developed by Koei Tecmo (specifically the team behind the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games), with only minimal help from IS. The credits show that only 17 IS employees worked on the game.

https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-devs-on-the-games-origins-working-with-koei-tecmo-japanese-title-expansion-pass-more/2/
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So far my biggest complaints:

Monastery sucks, it's kinda cool that you can level up supports a lot quicker in this game compared to others, but just from battling alone I have most units up to max pre-timeskip support. Finding lost items was kind of cool at first but there are just too many characters with too many personality traits I don't care about. There is kind of a "TitS" feel to the environment but since the characters are already fleshed out enough through the rest of the game, their NPC conversations are usually not something I'm interested in. It's also way to big, and not interesting to explore.

I didn't realize how easy it would be to become overpowered in the game, levels go up way too fast, and mastering classes goes pretty slow, so by the time you've mastered a class, you probably won't get any stat boosts from a promotion. (So I guess the best strategy is promote, then return to your old class)

Now I'm at the point where I skip most monthly activities except paralogues and training very specific stats for students toward their end goal, and I like that pace a lot better, I think I'll enjoy the second playthrough more knowing how much I can safely skip.

Despite all that, I'm enjoying the game a lot. I like all the characters, to the point where it's legit hard to pick units for a battle because they're all so great.
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mnkboy907 posted...

So I guess this game being good isn't a reflection of Intelligent Systems doing a good job. The game was primarily developed by Koei Tecmo (specifically the team behind the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games), with only minimal help from IS. The credits show that only 17 IS employees worked on the game.

https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-devs-on-the-games-origins-working-with-koei-tecmo-japanese-title-expansion-pass-more/2/

Can we please keep the same team for future FE games then
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MawiIe posted...

(So I guess the best strategy is promote, then return to your old class)

Yeah definitely promote as soon as possible for any free stat boosts you may have waiting for you.

But yeah I kinda hate how slow class mastery is compared to how fast you level up. I was able to master Commoner/Noble around level 6-7 for most, so that was fine, but from 5 to 10 there's barely a dent made in the Novice classes by the time Intermediaries unlock.

And then I just went and repaired all four statues enough to get a flat 20% exp boost, lol.
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mnkboy907 posted...

So I guess this game being good isn't a reflection of Intelligent Systems doing a good job. The game was primarily developed by Koei Tecmo (specifically the team behind the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games), with only minimal help from IS. The credits show that only 17 IS employees worked on the game.

https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-devs-on-the-games-origins-working-with-koei-tecmo-japanese-title-expansion-pass-more/2/

How very interesting... so what is the rest of IS up to I wonder?
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mnkboy907 posted...

So I guess this game being good isn't a reflection of Intelligent Systems doing a good job. The game was primarily developed by Koei Tecmo (specifically the team behind the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games), with only minimal help from IS. The credits show that only 17 IS employees worked on the game.

https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-devs-on-the-games-origins-working-with-koei-tecmo-japanese-title-expansion-pass-more/2/

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
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My mind is actually kind of blown on that Koei info. Amazing to think something like the FE Warriors collab led to this. Even more amazing that they'd let outsiders take on such a huge entry - and even more so that it turned out so well! Just super cool all around.

Flip side of that of course is that it's hard to say the series has truly evolved when IS had so little to do with this entry... here's hoping they take a shitload of notes from this game!
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Waluigi1 posted...

How very interesting... so what is the rest of IS up to I wonder?

Genealogy Remake next year
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IS being held hostage with FE Heroes.

Or lets hope theyve been busy with a Thousand-Year Door remaster.
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mnkboy907 posted...

The game was primarily developed by Koei Tecmo (specifically the team behind the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games)

This and the comparisons to FE4 make me wayyyyy more interested. If they made the yellow house green this would've been way more obvious.

That said, the IS members who worked on the game were mostly designers and it was still directed by IS directors. So IS was definitely responsible for a lot of it since game design tends to be very top-down (esp in Japan AAA). But it seems like they leaned into Koei's expertise for a lot of the elements.
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Not sure what designers actually means in this context. The article made it sound like they were talking about art/character design?
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Not sure what designers actually means in this context. The article made it sound like they were talking about art/character design?

I'm not sure how large Koei is or how much crossover between titles there is, but I did get strong Dynasty Warriors vibes from quite a few characters, so I could believe this. Playing Golden Deer, Lorenz and Raphael both seem on the surface-level to have that DW one-note flair.
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No, I mean the article says IS art designers worked on the game.
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Felix successfully poached.

I guess Caspar's B support is gated until post-skip, so got to raise that Gauntlet rank up.

I was maybe gonna stop after these two, but then after what I said to LTM about cross house supports, I decided to look and Sylvain/Mercedes support with 5/4 Golden Deer. With that many it just makes sense to recruit them for that purpose.

Also achieved C+ just in time to tackle the two battle quests Chapter 5 is throwing at me.

edit: oops Mercedes is only 3, same as Ferdinand and Ingrid.
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What's the best way to get professor level XP? Is there somewhere that shows the amount of experience everything gets you?
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When exploring each month, sometimes those blue item gathering points will be "guidebooks" that give you like 200-300 exp. Sharing meals is worth 200 exp, so doing that a bunch of times really helps. Gardening gives exp when you harvest (and doesn't take up time). It's why exploring 2-3 times a month is actually pretty beneficial.

Answering your students' questions correctly when they approach you during your lessons gives a HUGE boost too. The last question I got gave me 1000 exp.
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yeah I'm annoyed at how long it took me to realize Gardening wasn't costing time augh
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I really wish I'd focused more on the things i didn't focus on... thinking I'll do lions for ng+ and save the eagles for last
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ZaziGuado posted...

--Most annoyingly is that Byleth is an awful silent protagonist. I'm not the biggest fan of silent MCs to begin with, but most of the time I have no issues dealing with it. However, Byleth shows absolutely zero emotion and carries a constant stone face. His (I'm playing male) responses in conversations are largely uninteresting and I can never tell if they are sarcastic or not or have any kind of assumed inflection, but given how emotionless he's been I should just assume he's incapable of sarcasm and feelings as a whole. The writing and presence of Byleth has been my least favorite part so far and it's not close.

(tho I actually really like Byleth, but I'm also a very nonemotive person IRL soooo I do project myself onto her... and most silent protags. I'm getting a lot of humour from everyone else interacting with this blank weirdo [see image] and I really don't mind her lacking personality when there's the rest of the entertaining crewse)
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Just got to the timeskip!

so glad I didn't spoil the looks of everyone prior. Bernadetta actually looks good! I might switch wives to her
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