Fire Emblem: Three Houses

[Nester the Lark]

New info from Famitsu. (I'll cut and paste it into the post later.)

CHARACTERS

Protagonist

(default: M ベレト Byleth, F ベレス Bylese?) You originally worked as a mercenary but your talents got noticed so you become a professor at the elite Officer's Academy. Your mom already passed away so you live with your dad who was leader of the Knights of Seiros and now leads a mercenary band. As a professor, you must choose one of three houses to lead its students. Each house has many different students to meet and train, each with their own personalities and skills.

Geralt

A legendary being who is also said to be the strongest knight in history. Was summoned to Garreg Mach Monastery together with the protagonist, which makes him return to the Knights once again.

Sothis

A mysterious girl who looks young but speaks in an old manner. She saves the protag at the fateful night. She normally doesn't show herself up and she speaks with telepathy into your head, so no one except you notice her. She also lost the memory of her true self.

Edelgard

Princess of the Adrestian Empire who has been promised the position of the next empress. A talented woman who has a cold & noble atmosphere. Adrestian Empire has the longest history. Many people here are more skilled in magic than weapons.

Dimitri

An eloquent youth who has good manners & embodied chivalry, but he somehow holds a shadow. Perhaps because the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus is known for its knights, many of the students here are good at using spears.

Claude

A friendly youth whose smile fits him well. Although he doesn't seem like thinking of things too deeply, he has a sharp insight. Compared to the other classes, Golden Deer has more commoner students. Many of them are also good at using bows.

GAMEPLAY

FE3H is confirmed to have a time rewind system, made possible by Sothis' ability to turn back time. The system is similar to FE Echoes where you can rewind per movement but the amount of usage allowed is also limited.​
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Terrain effects: Other than determining movement costs and evasion rates, some spots may have gimmicks such as healing HP or even warp a character to another spot. When the game is just booted, there will be choices for Normal/Hard difficulty and Casual/Classic mode.​
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Class Change now uses a Qualification Exam system: Character needs to spend Exam Passes and the chance of passing improves with correct skill ranks. Once the class has been unlocked, the character can freely change back anytime. Level won't go back to Lv1 either.​

Ranked skills​

剣術 Sword Skill​
槍術 Spear Skill​
斧術 Axe Skill​
弓術 Bow Skill​
理学 Physics (Black & Dark magic)​
信仰 Faith (White magic)​
飛行 Flying (Flier classes)​
重装 Heavy Armor (Armored classes)​
馬術 Horseriding (Cavalry classes)​

Each char has good & bad ranks​
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Characters in FE3H start in Commoner or Noble class depending on their origins, but these starting classes are same stat-wise: Can just use some magic with no other highlights.​
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The first class upgrades after Lv5:​
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Myrmidon (Sword)​
Soldier (Spear)​
Warrior (Axe & Bow)​
Monk (Magic)​

I was leaning towards choosing the Golden Deer because Claude's a bow-user, but now that I know the Golden Deer have a lot of bow-users, they definitely sound like my House.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's a detailed description of the gameplay from USGamer.

So, if it wasn't already obvious, there's a big emphasis on the non-combat portions of the game. (Although, there's apparently an option to skip them and go straight to battle?)

The battles are much more traditional Fire Emblem, although no weapons triangle (which not all games have anyway).

[nocturnal YL]

My reaction is that this is not the Fire Emblem I know. This is a Fire Emblem-themed SRPG that plays kind of like Fire Emblem, but it doesn't feel like Fire Emblem.

I don't like the removal of the weapon triangle. The best triangle I've seen is the one from Radiant Dawn. Yeah, mage-to-mage combat is very rare, but it's weird to see it not present in the newer games.

I'm not sure what to feel about turning the countries against each other, although it's very much expected. I'll have to wait and see how will it actually turn out. Radiant Dawn have them fight each other, but none of the named characters are considered dead if defeated as an enemy. Fates forces you to witness your allies die no matter which route do you take. Personally, I like the former approach better, but I can also see how it doesn't feel like war for the same reason. But I just want to play Fire Emblem like it's the first Pokémon. Gotta catch 'em all.

I feel that the trust of INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS and KOEI TECMO Games built in me over the last few years is being put to test. But I remain cautiously optimistic. I once thought I wouldn't like Awakening either, but it's now my favourite modern main series FE. Maybe this will impress me after it's out.

Also, now that I've seen the leaders grow up, I think I'll pick Dimitri.

[Nester the Lark]

I guess I have somewhat mixed feelings about it, too. I understand that it has to evolve and try new things (I feel like stagnation is why Advance Wars died out), but it does feel like it's losing some of the appeal of the previous games.

At the same time, I do kind of appreciate that it feels rather ambitious.

But who knows, this could just be some one-off experiment, depending on how it's received by fans.

[Nester the Lark]

Here is the Treehouse Live segment for Three Houses. I think I have a better idea of how all the parts of the game work together now.

[nocturnal YL]

Yay, mounted units can move after attacking! I miss that in the portable games.

Bows now have a range of 2-3. I'd prefer 2-only to not mess with what I already know, although Marksmen in RD have an innate range+1, so it's nothing new.

The battle portion looks promising, from what's seen here thus far.

[nocturnal YL]

More gameplay footage from various news outlets:






This game seems to take inspirations from a lot of the older games, especially Echoes. Characters speak when being selected, there's full voice acting, and you can rewind the battle.

Stealing seems to act more like they do in Thracia 776, except that weapons can't be stolen?

It also looks like riders can dismount now. It has been missing for 25 years since Mystery of the Emblem (SFC), not counting the watered down version in Holy War that's for Seliph only.

The animations still feel somewhat unfinished, with some unusual transitions between states for the King of Beasts' death (battle) and rotation (map) animations.

[Nester the Lark]

I feel better about this game after seeing plenty of actual gameplay, which, for some reason, has been a little scarce until now. Granted, Fire Emblem isn't the most exciting game to watch, but I can't really get a feel for what the game is like just from looking at cutscenes.

I'll probably play on classic mode, but set to easy difficulty. It would feel weird to play a Fire Emblem game without permanent death.

And I'm still house Claude.

Jun 13, 2019 9:19:04 GMT -5 nocturnal YL said:

It also looks like riders can dismount now. It has been missing for 25 years since Mystery of the Emblem (SFC), not counting the watered down version in Holy War that's for Seliph only.

According to Fire Emblem Wiki, it was also in Thracia 776.

[nocturnal YL]

I'll likely pick Hard Classic. I can go back to Normal later if I want to.

I think Echoes may have encouraged them to go for a bolder direction. The fact it comes right after Echoes makes it feel like IS wants to break away from the past traditions and mechanics. Incidentally, it also makes FE Heroes feel closer to a traditional FE than Three Houses.

I said before that I wanted the new Fire Emblem could learn more from Echoes in the sense that it should get full voice acting, a more modern UI, good music and all that. I didn't expect it'd also pick up gameplay quirks from Echoes. (Also, they didn't have Hidari back for illustrations. Too bad.)

I didn't mention this before, but one thing I'm curious about is the numerical values of the parameters. We know that they don't use the traditional 100-exp counter for experience, and levels don't seem to reset upon promotion. The stat parameters seem to remain low (up to early-20s), but it may be because they're all in mid-tier classes (previously 1st-tier, like Archer and Mage). I want to know because IS has a tendency to completely break game balance out of an inability to handle high numbers properly.

Jun 13, 2019 10:42:17 GMT -5 Nester the Lark said:

According to Fire Emblem Wiki, it was also in Thracia 776.

I completely forgot about that. I avoided horseback units like the plague when I played it back then for this reason, but it's also why I didn't remember this mechanism existed.

[Leon]

Dismounting really was rubbish back then. Who thought it was a good idea to restrict lances on indoor maps to Knights and Generals only?

[Nester the Lark]

Jun 13, 2019 11:37:22 GMT -5 nocturnal YL said:

(Also, they didn't have Hidari back for illustrations. Too bad.)

Shadows of Valentia did have a good art style. I admit the art for Three Houses isn't the most appealing to me, but I don't have strong feelings about it. Still, I hope they go with something different next time.

Anyway, it wasn't mentioned during Treehouse Live, but it seems Three Houses will have amiibo support in some way. I'm guessing nothing big, because if the game was getting its own amiibo, I'd think they would've mentioned it.

I don't have any Fire Emblem amiibo, so unless I can scan in Link and Zelda, this doesn't really matter for me.

[Nester the Lark]

It hasn't been officially announced yet, but according to a Japanese download card, there will be DLC. It will include "new missions, paralogues[??], and costumes."

Also, there will be some kind of online functionality.

[nocturnal YL]

Pretty standard Fire Emblem stuff at this point. The last few games all had DLC maps, and the crossovers all had costumes.

The 12 GB size is also in line with what I expect. I guess KOEI TECMO's tendency to make everything gigantic didn't affect this game.

[Leon]

I would bet a good chunk is taken up by cutscenes and voice acting.

[Nester the Lark]

According to Nintendo Everything, the online functionality is occasionally seeing "transfer students" in the courtyard of the academy. Basically, they're characters that represent other players around the world, and you can buy and sell items with them. A Nintendo Switch Online subscription is required.

This seems very reminiscent of the kinds of things we'd see with the old Spot Pass feature on Wii U. I imagine it's probably not super useful.

I wonder if it only works with random people, or if something special happens if friends show up in your courtyard. Also, does this feature go away in the second part of the game?