Fire Emblem: Three Houses

[Leon]

No, that would most likely stay after the timeskip, you still keep the monastery as your base during the war.

[Nester the Lark]

The expansion pass is going to cost US$24.99, and will include four waves of DLC, plus alternate costumes for male and female Byleth available day one.

That's a little bit pricey for me, so I'm gonna hold off until I see more of what's included and decide whether or not it's worth it.

[nocturnal YL]

Japanese overview trailer:


The DLC is either all or nothing, so I don't have to worry about whether to buy some but not all of it.

2500 yen is affordable in my book. Maybe I'm getting used to KOEI TECMO's exorbitant prices for other games' DLC.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's a rundown of the DLC according to Nintendo Life:

Wave 1: Officers Academy outfits for female and male Byleth available Day 1 (July 26th)
Wave 2: Additional Auxiliary battle maps, helpful in-game support items, and more will be released by 10/31/2019
Wave 3: Additional quests and costumes will be released by 12/31/2019; plus, another free update
Wave 4: Discover new story content, with additional playable characters, locations and more will be released by 4/30/2020; plus, another free update

Sounds like a similar release pattern to Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I'm still gonna wait and see how much I enjoy the core game first.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's an interview with Three Houses' director, Toshiyuki Kusakihara. It mainly discuses Koei Tecmo's involvement and influence from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but he also mentions that he doesn't know why Awakening was so popular, particulary outside Japan.

It's not in this interview, but I also saw somewhere recenly that a single playthrough of Three Houses could take about 80 hours (not skipping cutscenes), and all three routes could take upwards of 200 hours. This has me a little concerned, knowing that I tend to get burned out on Fire Emblem after a while (although I'm usually ready to come back after a break). With other big games, like Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade Chronicles 2, there are so many different things to do that if I get tired of one thing, I can always do something else, so I don't get burned out easily. With Three Houses, I'm wondering if the school/base portions between battles will be enough to break up the gameplay to keep me interested for the long term.

[Leon]

Take that with a grain of salt, game devs often overstate the length of their games. I remember Aonuma doing that too on the press circuit for Twilight Princess.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's another interview from Perfectly Nintendo that's much more detailed.

Here are the online features:

Rankings: the game allows you to see which choices the other players made during the game, such as choices related to teaching for example. That way, you can see which choices were the most popular, in case you’re really lost and don’t know what to do;

Exchange students: you can send one of your students to other players as an exchange student. You can give them a gift to deliver to the other player. As for exchange students you end up with in your game, you can add them as support units, though it seems there’s restrictions about their use in battle;

Lost Souls: in battles, there’s cases known as “Lost Souls”, which are places where many other players struggled. If you managed to survive on those cases, you will get some bonuses.

Yokota also says that the weapons triangle is still present, but "not nearly as prevalent."

Jul 5, 2019 16:37:21 GMT -5 Leon said:

Take that with a grain of salt, game devs often overstate the length of their games. I remember Aonuma doing that too on the press circuit for Twilight Princess.

Yeah, IIRC, he said something like 50-100 hours? He wasn't wrong, although my playtime was much closer to 50 than 100. I think it would take longer for someone who's not very good at it, and frankly, I don't consider myself the best Fire Emblem player.

[nocturnal YL]

I'm going to guess that 200 hours means the same thing as when I said I spent 400 hours on some of my favourite games. Lots of grinding, staring at the game sifting through the item menus reading the descriptions without actually progressing, and so on. It can all add up without me noticing.

The presence of the weapon triangle is most welcome, although I still want to see it back in a traditional sense. Not a huge fan to see the game learn from FE Echoes of all things.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's another interview, this time at RPG Site, and it's really interesting because it goes way beyond talking about just Three Houses.

At one point, they mention the cancelled Wii Fire Emblem that was supposed to be a dramatic overhaul of the series. I've never heard much about it other than it might have been some combination of a traditional RPG and a real-time strategy game, or maybe something like Battalion Wars. They don't go into any details about it here, but it's interesting that it was brought up.

Kusakihara also confirms that you know all your characters from the beginning, so I guess we don't meet new ones as we go along like in other FE games. That's a little disappointing since it is fun to recruit new characters along the way. At the same time, I admit I do tend to stick with characters I've been using since near the beginning of the game. The characters that show up later seem intended to be replacements for characters who have died, but if you keep all your characters alive, then there's less incentive to use the new ones.

Then they bring up Western RPGs, and Kusakihara talks about how he's a fan of them.

RPG Site: Do you feel like the Japanese RPG scene has sort of benefited from some of the ideas and successes in the Western RPG space? It feels like a lot of Japanese developers are looking at large-scale Western RPG successes and getting ideas and confidence from that, too.

Kusakihara: Personally, I think we should play Western RPGs to learn from them. Today we've talked a lot about Japanese RPGs, but personally, I'm a huge fan of Western RPGs going back a very long time. When I was younger, I played Might and Magic, Ultima 6... and more recently Skyrim and so on. So I've played Western RPGs for a long, long time.

For example, inside Echoes, you can eat a lot of food, right? If there wasn't Ultima before that, we wouldn't have had this kind of feature! [laughs]

And then they end with this:

RPG Site: One last thing... are you aware of the sort of immense fan fever, the demand, for Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE to come to Switch?

Yokota: Ahhh. [laughs] Well, thank you for the comment - I will go to Atlus, and perhaps we can talk about that!

[Nester the Lark]

The full North American site is now online. Still doesn't seem to be fully complete, but I guess they'll fill it out as we get closer to release.

Although, the real reason I'm posting this is to mention something off-topic...

Jul 5, 2019 21:14:17 GMT -5 Nester the Lark said:

Yeah, IIRC, he said something like 50-100 hours? He wasn't wrong, although my playtime was much closer to 50 than 100. I think it would take longer for someone who's not very good at it, and frankly, I don't consider myself the best Fire Emblem player.

OK, I knew someone who wasn't experienced with Zelda would take longer to beat Twilight Princess, but apparently it took someone's grandmother 755 hours!!! I haven't even spent that much time on Breath of the Wild across two playthroughs and a bunch of just messing around!

Do check out the text messages, though. They're adorable.

I say she should take on the Link's Awakening remake next.

[Leon]

Don't mess with Seiros.

[Nester the Lark]

So, seeing the divide in FE fans between those who prefer the older games, with the emphasis more on strategy and political stories, and those who like the newer games, with an emphasis on social aspects and more casual gameplay, I started thinking about what it is that I find appealing about the games, and I realized something.

I think what is most fun for me is building up a team of characters over the course of the game. Starting out with a few weak units, and eventually having a large, strong group that can take on just about anything by the end is very satisfying. But I think that's also why I tend to get burned out before I reach the end, even with shorter games like Sacred Stones. By the time I get to the last few chapters, most of the character building is done, and all that's left is to just go through the motions and beat the game. The "fun" part for me is over, and it feels like I've already finished the game, so I lose interest.

What will this mean for Three Houses? I'm not sure; it's so different from the other FE games I've played. Especially since it sounds like most of the characters will be with you from the beginning. Perhaps the extensive character customization will keep me interested. Maybe I'll be more invested in the story. Or maybe just playing a new, big FE will be enough. I don't know.

I'm pretty excited for it anyway, though.

[Nester the Lark]

Just one more week until Three Houses is out.

In the mean time, check out part of this speedrun of Fire Emblem Fates from SGDQ in which two of the commentators on the couch voice act a marriage proposal:

[Nester the Lark]

I remember this camera perspective being shown in an early trailer, but I thought it had been removed from the final game. Cool that it's still there, even if it isn't necessarily useful.

[Nester the Lark]

Happy Three Houses Day!