For the last few days, I have been playing the new Fire Emblem game. It’s my first time playing a game in the series, so in this blog, I would like to give a brief explanation and share my thoughts on the game.
The general concept of the Fire Emblem games is that you complete the story by clearing stages. Each stage contains a map and many enemies. To defeat these enemies, you use different units with skills determined by their class and unique passive abilities. This means no matter how hard you try, each unit will be different in some way. Another feature that made the Fire Emblem some what unique is the addition of permanent death of units. The meaning of this is when a unit HP hits zero, that unit is gone forever and you’re unable to recover without restarting the stage, reloading, or in the more recent games, using a limited skill to go several moves back. As a first time player, I was unaware of this and now one of my units is gone forever.
Besides the permanent death, the most unique feature for me, is the amount of customization you can put into your units. I don’t know how it worked in pervious games in the series, but in Fire Emblem Three Houses, you can switch classes very easily. For example, if you really wanted to, it’s possible to turn an axe wielding warrior into an arcane mage. Of course, the characters still retain their personality due to story elements. Still, fun to play around with the different classes, plus, it’s always good to have some variety in your army. I also find it amazing how the game forces you to use all your units, or at least rotate through them. As you may have guessed, with the permeant death feature in place, levelling can be some what risky for my units. To level properly, you need to be within five levels of the enemy. If your level is too high you won’t get enough experience, too low and you’ll be instantly killed. Remember, once units are gone, they are gone. In the end, you are forced to use all units periodically or risk them falling behind. I don’t know if this was an intended feature or not, but it gives me a chance to try out all the units.
As for the story itself, I’m finding it quite enjoyable right now. As the name implies, there are three houses or factions. The names of these faction aren’t too important to this blog, so I won’t be mention them. I also don’t want to spoil any of the major plot characters in these houses, which why I’ve been avoiding names so far. However, what is important to mention is that all of these factions have clashing ideologies and values. This will be important latter on, that is because the game is split into two parts. The first part, which I’m currently in, is the school phase. In this phase you act as a teacher, guide students (levelling units) in the skills they want to learn and leading one of the factions. Think of it like Harry Potter where you have have the different houses. The second phase, is the war phase. At some point in the story, which I haven’t reached yet, there will be a five year time skip. After which a war will ensue between all three factions. This is where the house you picked comes into play. There are four endings in the game, three of them depending on the faction picked. The last path is a neutral path, which only happens if you decide not complete a certain quest (Spoilers which I don’t even know).
So far, I have really enjoyed the game. Right now, the story is slowly but surely ramping up. I’m willing to guess the time skip is about to happen any second now. As for the war phase, I’m looking forward to seeing what ramifications my actions in the first stage have on the story.