Note: this review in general will be spoiler free.
Welcome, welcome to a new year at Hogwarts, but before we begin our banquet I’d like to-oh wait, wrong franchise. Let’s try that again.
Welcome to Fire Emblem Teacher Simulator 2019, also known as Three Houses, the topic of today’s review, with review code graciously provided by Nintendo themselves. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, come, class is about to begin.
On the continent of Fodlan lies a trio of nations: the Adrestian Empire, the Kingdom of Faerghus and the Leicester Alliance, all the products of an ancient war which spurred the birth of these individual territories. As a result of the war, the central peacekeeping entity is the Church of Seiros, an organization which had significant involvement in the conflict, and a cornerstone of the plot in the present day.
You take on the role of a new lord known as Byleth, a mercenary roped into becoming a teacher after rescuing the main lord trio; Edelgard from the Empire, Dimitri of the Kingdom and Claude of the Alliance. From there on, Byleth picks a faction to teach for, and it soon becomes clear that the peace supposedly established is a frail one as antagonistic figures begin conspiring from the shadows for their own ends, revealing a minefield of secrets that blow up one after the other.
The route I picked for my first playthrough was the Black Eagles, just for posterity, but I figure it’s fairly safe to judge the other paths as having a similar level of quality. On a fundamental level, the plot is strong in terms of engagement, the opposite of which was a frequent criticism of Fates, the previous non-remake FE title. Most of the characters are plenty interesting on their own and there’s more than a few points of intrigue that don’t immediately tip their hand. Even some of the main plot twists are relatively surprising without feeling like last minute hat tricks. Mind you, I’m not here to deliver a profound writeup of the story’s themes, how they play off each other in the different routes, and other aspects, because firstly, I’ve only played one route out of three, technically four, and two, thirty hours is roughly how long it took me to finish it the first time doing the bare minimum. I ain’t got time to do the other routes just for a plot analysis.
But yes; the story is quite competent, nothing immediately stands out as being questionably written, and it really makes you think at times, an effect enhanced by the different routes available.
Three Houses is a combination of two things: the usual tactical RPG elements common to the series, for one, and a touch of simulation elements. Seeing as the former is the shorter aspect to talk about, let’s go for it first.
The fundamental tactical RPG aspects have stayed largely the same for the series’ Switch debut; mainline Switch debut, that is. Battles all involve controlling a set number of units on a large map with a particular objective for victory, be it killing a commander unit, routing the enemy entirely, reaching a destination with an allied unit, among others. Units are all divided into different classes, from melee based sword, lance and gauntlet users, to ranged magic and archery users, to mounted cavalry and flier units and the odd special units such as dancers. Weaponry has a set number of uses before breaking and needing to be repaired, and magic, whether defensive or offensive, has limited uses that recharge at the end of every battle. All standard fare, and nothing you haven’t seen already in more recent Fire Emblem titles. The more significant changes to battle revolve around new additions as well as retooled old ones. Let’s start with the first mechanic brought back from Shadows of Valentia: legitimized save scumming.
In Shadows of Valentia, there was an item called Mila’s Turnwheel. In a nutshell, it allowed you to rewind turns and correct mid battle mistakes, at no expense apart from limited uses. The Turnwheel’s most significant downside is that it can’t be used to avoid any Game Over scenarios, forcing you to reset a battle from the beginning. With that explained, let’s move on to Three Houses’ version of it: Divine Pulse.
Functionally, Divine Pulse works the same. Pressing ZL brings up the Divine Pulse UI, allowing you to rewind to any moment in any turn at the drop of a hat, and it works on the same stipulation of limited charges. A huge upside compared to Mila’s Turnwheel is the ability to dodge Game Over scenarios with this if you have at least one Divine Pulse charge remaining, making it a more lenient mechanic by comparison. You get a few uses at the beginning of the game, but making certain upgrades and progressing in the story lets you push that number to above ten. It makes for a safe experience in general when the rewind button can be used frequently; and it becomes near essential during the endgame where levels get fairly challenging.
Combat Arts are another mechanic brought back from Shadows of Valentia. As your units level up in their respective area of combat, magic excluded, they’ll gain access to different Arts that can be used in a dueling scenario. The general gist of Combat Arts is that they make an attack significantly stronger with an equivalent tradeoff; in Valentia, the tradeoff was a set amount of HP. In Three Houses, the tradeoff is instead changed to deteriorating weapons faster with each use, though the core element of risk vs reward is still present regardless of the change. A Combat Art can mean the difference between life and potential death when the damage difference between a regular attack and an Art is in single digits. Furthermore, some Arts can flip matchups on their head entirely. For instance, a swordsman without an Armorslayer might struggle to damage an armored unit, but the Hexblade Combat Art makes it so that damage is calculated based on Resistance and not Defense, making for an easier fight in the process.
Another significant addition to battling is brigades, encompassing a mechanic known as Gambits. In the shops, there is a merchant that handles hiring of brigades, which you equip on a character after purchasing their services. After being equipped, they act as an additional action that can be selected in a turn, offering different effects like widespread healing or high damage attacks with a secondary status effect like reduced movement. If any two units with brigades are in close proximity and a gambit is triggered, a Gambit Bonus is applied and the effect grows stronger as a result, rewarding experimentation.
The other half of Three Houses’ core gameplay is the simulation aspects. The basic gist is that the game’s progression is tied to an in-game calendar where each month has several free days offering you the freedom to do whatever you want before being forced into the main mission at the end of the month. Your options here are resting, seminars, battling and exploring.
Resting raises motivation of students and recharges your personal weapon, the Creator Sword. We’ll talk about the former aspect more in a bit, but it’s basically a quick way to spend the free day you get. Not much to elaborate on here.
Seminars are extra class sessions that basically serve as an added batch of experience for weapon skills, and it varies depending on who’s presenting the seminar. Likewise, the attendees are determined based on their core weaponry. If a unit needs some quick experience to go up a rank by the end of the week, this is the option to choose. Generally a lesser option if the online statistics are anything to go by.
The third option is battling. Battles on free days are where you’ll find extra missions for certain quests accepted during free roaming, level grinding, material gathering and the occasional paralogue if you’ve gained access to it. The grinding aspect is more relevant in Casual mode since there are battle maps that do not expend battle points, shown at the top of the screen, and can be repeated as needed for experience until one is satisfied. It’s also worth noting that paralogues in particular are affected greatly by the calendar system; unlike previous games where paralogues are always freely accessible regardless of progression, you can lose the chance to take a paralogue in 3H due to story altering events if you put it off for too long. It’s another element to micromanage as the story progresses.
And finally, likely the most common option, is free roaming the hub area. If you engage in exploration, a wealth of activities open up for you to try out, with a wide range of benefits. Fetch quests reward you with materials and gold for your usual needs, gardening gives you stat boosting items when you start planting rarer seeds, fishing nets you game to sell for a relative profit in bulk or cook at the dining hall, said dining hall lets you cook temporary stat boost items, there’s a tournament area where you can win items and gold if your unit is good enough at fighting, there’s a lot to do, though you are limited by Activity Points, shown at the top of the screen. It can all seem overwhelming at first, but you have three free days a month to spread out your activities based on individual needs. You’re not railroaded into any particular choice for your day off, so there’s a lot of freedom in that area.
One common theme for most of these activities is student bond. Supports are obviously back in this game, but they’re handled much more like Echoes than Fates or Awakening. The only character to whom an actual S support is available is Byleth, and even that’s strictly an endgame affair with no gameplay importance. Everyone else gets up to A, sometimes even B depending on the pair. Between you and everyone else, support points are earned by engaging in any of the aforementioned activities that involve another student, be it cooking/dining, fetch quests, faculty training, giving gifts or returning lost items. The standard option of attacking with units in close proximity during regular battles is always an option too. In any case, free roaming gives you more and easier options for student bond by comparison. And since there’s no S supports for everybody, supports between every other unit are relegated to the combat bonuses and specific paired endings when you finish the game.
The final out of combat aspect to talk about are the weekly class lessons. Three times a month, there’s a class session where you instruct your units to advance their stats faster. How much you can advance them is based on their motivation bar, which you can raise with the activities previously mentioned during student bonding, effectively making bonding with your students an integral way to advance them towards a desired class faster and is thus something else to pay attention to as part of the overall micromanagement.
As you can probably see by now, Three Houses has a lot to take in with regards to the gameplay. But these are elements that you’ll get accustomed to very quickly; I certainly got the hang of it without even knowing that some of these were borrowed from Shadows of Valentia, a game which I never played. And if you’re already familiar with that one, then it’s even better.
A confession regarding the visuals: pre-release, I thought that Three Houses’ visuals looked pretty bad. Looking back, I can freely admit that I was wrong on that front, and admittedly, looking solely at image stills and early trailers wasn’t the best indicator of quality. Three Houses has the same kind of good visuals seen in the other Fire Emblem title on the Switch, that being Fire Emblem Warriors, in part due to both games sharing a developer in Koei Tecmo.
The music is an interesting topic in Three Houses as well. Compared to the previous recent entries, Three Houses seems to have two different approaches to music. Pre-time skip, the music is overall more subdued, but late into the post time-skip missions there’s some interesting composition choices which fit thematically with what the level is but are an unusual deviation for Fire Emblem as a whole. And to clarify, this is not me saying the music is bad or unmemorable; it’s just an unexpected direction for the score to take; describing some of these in detail would unfortunately involve some heavy spoilers, though.
On one final note, I don’t usually talk about voice work and dialogue in reviews, but an exception is worth making here. Much like Shadows of Valentia, Three Houses is fully voiced, Byleth notwithstanding (at least during dialogue heavy moments). Given that the narrative is very character-driven regardless of the route you end up on, it’s important that the narrative succeeds in making most of the cast engrossing, regardless of their affiliation or role. And as far as I’m concerned it definitely succeeds. It overall feels much more organic compared to Awakening and Fates, especially in terms of the writing, and the reduced emphasis on supports means that they only go as far as they need to, which justifies the varying length of support chains between characters. It’s a welcome change that benefits the writing and voice work in a notable way.
I’ll admit: Three Houses was not on my radar for the longest time. But after seeing it in action for myself, I can easily opine that it’s perhaps the best Fire Emblem title in recent memory, adding new mechanics and changing up old ones for the better, bringing a strong showing for the series’ first mainline Switch title, which makes Three Houses a very easy recommendation for a game you can sink hundreds of hours into. If this is indicative of the direction the series will go in from here, then it’s a very bright future indeed.
