Three Horse Thoughts

Three Houses Thoughts

This game has been a brainworm trapped in my head for the entire playthrough. So many strange design choices that I still don't understand. Any way of organizing them would be folly so I guess I'll just go with an elaborated list of pluses, minuses, and neutrals.

+ Beeg Monsters: I really liked the way monsters were handled. I liked the extra rewards from breaking all their shields and the importance of positioning around them. Also, they're the one place where I liked the use of Combat Arts.
+ Support Convos: Probably the best writing in the game, very much a step up from Fates/Awakening. I don't really think they're that much of a step up from things like PoR, but a return to form is still a plus.
+ The concept of the world: I like the attempt to have more political actors and a more nuanced handling of these sorts of things. However, despite the very interesting concepts, it wasn't really used well in the moment-to-moment plot of the game.
+ Fist weapons: Maybe they were a little too strong, but I think they make a good addition to the game overall with the built in 'brave' attribute, but only when initiating.
+ Magic charges: I liked these, not much more to say really.
+ Explicit Passives from Weapon Skills: I also liked these, an incentive to specialized without being broken
+ Nerfing Forging: Yes, please
+ Part 2's Redesigns / Tone Changes: Part 2 started to feel like a tradition FE again. Characters were generally more mature looking and less gimmick designs, there were actual stakes, you finally get world maps of the campaign. I think it's a darn shame it feels so rushed.

= Smaller Cast: Kind of mixed on this. You'd think it'd make more characters storyline relevant, but it really didn't. On the other hand, it's silly to give you 50 characters when you can only field like 12. I do miss join-time being a factor to judge characters from earlier FEs though. It was always fun to get a late game character and slotting them into your party because they seemed neat.
= Support Gains (tea party, gifts, birthdays, etc): I guess these are mostly fine, I don't really care about them but they didn't annoy me.
= Map Design: Mixed bag here, too. Some of the maps were quite good, especially in part 2. However, objective variety was sorely lacking as well as the constant reuse of maps. Most map design was still pretty middling 'boring' rout missions.

- The main theme remixes: I actually like the main theme of the game. However, there's no excuse for it to be a leitmotif in *ALMOST EVERY SONG IN THE GAME*, this was so obnoxious.
- Class balance: Magic was super OP all game, especially with the amount of range increasers and the lack of enemy resistance overall. There was 0 point to ever use a heavy armor unit (though this is common in FE). They nerfed mounted units but *didn't* nerf fliers. Some very questionable decisions all around here. Optimal setup for any team is half magic users, half fliers.
- Professor Level: Don't make me fish to be optimal. What were they thinking with this? They needed to either have more activities give out professor XP, have you passively gain levels over time, or preferably scrap it entirely.
- Exam System: I think a lot of things in this game encourage save scummy behavior, and this is one of the worst offenders. They should probably have some sort of system that prevents it from being all or none, like maybe you have a stat penalty if you don't meet the requirements or something. Ultimately, I don't think this added any value other than causing me frustration
- Monestary Wandering: This feels like Persona pandering. Everything here could have been in menus. Wandering around took up a lot of time, felt tedious, and the lost items mechanic I absolutely hated. I basically hated everything about this. It could have been menu driven or just not been there. FE9 and 10 did this much better with much less.
- Skills via Instruction: Ideally, this means your students might grow in new and unexpected ways. In reality, there's almost no reason to branch out of their established strengths. I would have preferred a branching path promotion tree like FE8 rather than this. I feel like turning Amelia into a general was more exciting than anything I did in FE3H. It's also so frustrating to get a 'normal' unit into an Armored, Mounted, or Flying promotion tree, since there's no way to earn these skills in battle until you already become one.
- Faculty Training: Why in the world did they allow you to get "Great" outcomes from these? It takes the save scummy element from the exam system and ramps it up to 11, since each one is in front of a long loading time (since they happen in the monestary). It's already frustrating enough to get so few mastery points from each session.
- Routes: I think this does better than Fates, but its still pretty bad. The common route is way too long and *practical identical* for each house, to the point where I dread ever playing through it a second time. I've already recruited most of the students from every house, so the variety in the common route would also be very low. Now, that wouldn't be so bad if the game was designed such that you get a complete experience from a single route. Instead, having completed Crimson Echoes, I have half a story on my hands. It doesn't give any information on the goals of Rhea, Those Who Slither, Dimitri's motivations, why you have a crest in your heart, any of that. So the conclusion felt very incomplete, since I have no information to go off of on whether I made the world better or worse by supporting Edelgard.
- Pacing: The common route is way too slow. The post-timeskip routes are way too fast. This game is pacing whiplash. The very beginning of the game is way too fast, you need to be introduced to your place in the world - who Jeralt is, how the world works, why the monestary is important. FE9 had a perfect introduction with the Greil Mercenary chapters. This game tries to copy that, only it immediately jumps past it. And then you do almost nothing for 10 chapters. And then a thing happens for 1 chapter. And then after the timeskip we're rushing at a breakneck pace where you complete entire wars in *2 chapters*. This really needs to be reconsidered as a whole. Compounding this problem, between the classroom, the monestary wandering, and random battles you only get to do 1 chapter of story for every like 2-4 hours of gameplay. Yikes.
- Plotting: This ties into the problem with routes, but the plot for the game feels strange and disjointed. No one's motives are really elaborated on since they're probably part of some other route. Characters swing wildly. It sets up intra-kingdom politics that simply do not come up in Part 2 at all.
There's the bones of a good story here, but it doesn't coalesce into anything.
- Gambits: These are frustrating when used against you, tedious to manage, and are completely unnecessary. I don't like them at all, and especially don't like a whole new stat dedicated to them. I think they were included to make the scope feel more "epic", but I don't think they succeed in that effort, I barely even noticed them in combat scenes.