SPOILER WARNING: This blog speaks at a very high level about mid-to-late game happenings in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It's stuff that has been covered in other reviews and marketing materials, but I want to mention there are mild spoilers here just in case.

About two-thirds of my way through Fire Emblem: Three Houses, as I walked through the emptier-than-they-used-to-be halls of Garreg Mach Monastery, my mind filled with memories. I passed by Bernadetta’s room, and hoped she was happily eating cake somewhere. I walked into the blue lions’ old classroom, and wondered if Dedue was still happy serving as Dimitri’s retainer, or if Sylvain had ever changed his skirt-chasing ways. I fondly remembered chatting with Ashe, Caspar, Annette, and many other former students of the monastery (but not Hubert, dude has an attitude problem). I reminisced about holidays, events, and how bright the future seemed with so many bright students working and thriving together.

Little did I know, I would soon have to kill them all.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a case study on the inevitability of war and human conflict. It follows the citizens of Fodlan, a politically charged continent that is split into the titular three houses: black eagles, blue lions, and golden deer (the latter of which was my chosen house). Each house contains numerous students, and when combined with the other members of the monastery, as well as the many characters throughout Fodlan and its history, there are a lot of people to get to know in Three Houses. And what the game does so well, and so much better than previous Fire Emblem games I’ve played (which is all the ones officially released in the West), is make Fodlan truly feel like a living place full of diverse people with wildly differing beliefs and dreams; a realistic environment that breeds unfortunate but unavoidable conflict. Three Houses creates this environment in numerous ways. First, the characters are simply much more fleshed out than before; gone are the days where most of them are defined by a single, one-dimensional trait. Everyone I encountered in Three Houses has at least one substantial story arc past their initial quirk. And many of them turn out to have complicated thoughts and/or motives that intersect with other characters in fascinating ways. One small example among dozens: Lorenz began the game with the belief that nobles and commoners come from different worlds and cannot truly be friends (much less romantic partners), and he didn’t always treat commoners with proper respect as a result. But Dorothea, a commoner herself, pushed him to question what he had originally accepted as self-evident. By the end they were indeed friends, and Lorenz had a new perspective. I was genuinely surprised more than once at the depths of these characters, and consistently delighted to see them all interact in meaningful ways.

Second, you are exposed to Fodlan’s extensive history and geopolitical structure more than the comparable locations of previous games. Right from the start, you can peruse the monastery’s library to learn about a wide array of historical topics: the forming of the Church of Seiros, which is the continent’s central guiding religion (and borderline oligarchy); the conflicts that led to the formation of the titular three houses; an ancient, bloody war between Seiros and a bandit named Nemesis; Fodlan’s various noble houses and their leaders; how certain individuals are born with crests that enable them to wield powerful relics (which ties into Foldan’s power structure); and on and on. More importantly, all of these topics and then some are further expounded upon throughout the course of the game. They are revealed naturally through your interactions with other characters, and just how many details you are exposed to varies wildly depending on which house you choose to join, and which characters you choose to spend your time with. This isn’t a game that delivers every bit of information to you by its end, regardless of context. It understands that the world is a big, complicated place, and that no one person will see every angle of it. As such, every character is shaped drastically by what knowledge and experiences they are exposed to, and that importantly includes you. There are secrets, struggles, and relationships I never encountered in my playthrough, and that’s OK. It made the ones I did encounter feel more real, just as everyone’s limited experiences in our world shape them in very real ways. You experience a lot in a single playthrough of Three Houses, yet it is still but a single view of life in Fodlan.

Three Houses doesn’t shy away from complicated and worldly topics either, very real ones that lead to conflicts including racism, the inequality of class, or the church’s abuse of knowledge and power. And unlike most video games, it presents actual conversations around these topics where the characters involved have things to say and actions to take. They have firmly rooted beliefs formed through their life experiences and the powerful cultural dynamics in play. As the game goes on, and various characters have their beliefs and trust challenged, they decide to act, which naturally causes conflict. The detail in its characters and world make it impossible to avoid the parallels to our actual, real world history, and that’s precisely why these conflicts feel wholly believable. Three Houses is not about black and white “good guys vs. bad guys,” in the way that some Fire Emblem games have (somewhat cartoonishly) been. Rather, Three Houses operates in perpetual gray, showing how people from different walks of life clash in very much the same ways they always have. The (usually strong) writing helps a lot here, which consistently caught me off guard in the way it develops intrigue and reveals poignant information. It’s a game that knows what it’s doing, and likes to constantly remind you as much in clever ways. One of my favorite examples: everyone’s starting class is mechanically identical, but is called either “Noble” or “Commoner” depending on their social standing. It’s subtle, but it absolutely means something.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Three Houses’ new structure does wonders for its narrative trappings. Fire Emblem has always provided great tactical battles, and has always had endearing characters (and sometimes interesting plots too). Yet I never became invested in the narrative like I did here. This is a long game, but that length feels necessary to flesh out a world as complex as this: spending time every month roaming the monastery gives the narrative breathing room to develop. I got to know the characters better as they reacted to every mission. The plot could slowly but steadily build in a way that neither too rushed nor too lingering. How you choose to spend your limited time each month imparts a real weight on the actions you do take. It also allowed for the feeling that time was passing, which in subtle but important ways made me feel like I was part of this world. I became more invested mechanically too, in the way I could manually instruct students and guide their growth in the game’s many skills and classes. Three Houses is much more divergent and hands on than any previous Fire Emblem game, and over time that created a real sense of pride in the students I had recruited and trained. Rather than everyone being hardened veterans at the start, who follow predetermined upgrade paths, we spent months honing our skills and improving. I watched these students grow, both on and off the battlefield, and the effect was powerful. Three Houses took a big risk by adding so much time spent outside of the series’ famous tactical battles (which are still great by the way). But the result is one of my favorite hubs in any game I’ve played; within the large, complex, and sometimes frighteningly overwhelming land of Fodlan, Garreg Mach Monastery came to feel like home to me. I cherish my time there greatly, and thinking back to the early hours of my game is now almost nostalgic.

That nostalgia is perhaps Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ greatest gift and its most wrenching curse, as well as its most profound artistic achievement. As I walked through the halls of Garreg Mach Monastery one last time, and think of all those happy early memories, I can’t escape the sad memories that follow; its halls now entomb stolen time more than anything. The edge of dawn only brought pain and sorrow, as the memories of war and bloodshed tainted the peace we once had. But the lesson is that it always does, and among the characters and history of Fodlan, it finally felt all too real.

Good write up. And yeah, I agree Three Houses does a much better job presenting and developing it's conflict than any other Fire Emblem I've played. Their stories always lose me by the end, because they tend to veer too heavily into its fantasy tropes with little to grasp onto to keep it engaging. I remember liking Awakening's story at first, but by the end you're fighting this big world ending dragon and I just couldn't care less. Even the parts of Three Houses story that does lean into fantasy still feels like its rooted in its own characters and central conflicts, so even if you end up fighting a big dragon it represents something more real.

And I definitely appreciate it's attempt to develop every side of the conflict and give them legitimate and believable motivations for their actions, without firmly trying to paint any of them as the good guy or bad guy. (Barring perhaps one secondary faction which is hard to view any other way than the obvious one.) It mostly comes down to who's side you're viewing the conflict from, and the players own interpretation and beliefs. Other FE's have made the bad guys so comically evil that there is never a question that every action you take is good and just, but that's not a very believable take on war.

Three Houses is definitely one of the only times I've been genuinely invested in a Fire Emblem story, or it's characters, beyond just thinking about how so and so's support conversations are cute and funny or whatever.

I played through the Black Eagle route and there was a map towards the latter half of that campaign where.. I went through an enormously convoluted and dumb process of progressing through the map because I didn't wanna take the route through the center because there was somebody there I didn't wanna fight. It was a lot of wasted experience, time, and near deaths.

It didn't even work.

@zeik: Thanks! I've always liked a lot of individuals characters in Fire Emblem games (even in their usual shallowness), but have generally found the overarching stories to be silly, especially Awakening's, haha. Three Houses certainly has its big fantasy moments, but it does such a better job at being more grounded most of the time like you say. And I think that's exactly the main reason why this one has clicked with me more than most.

@efesell:I *think* I know what chapter you're talking about, from talking to people who played other routes. Perhaps my biggest bummer with this game is that a couple of the "A plot" moments and missions like that don't make a ton of sense. They got so close with so much of it, and produce that investment in its story and characters like you say, that those few moments that don't click stick out a bit.

@efesell: I can tell you, as someone who went straight for the throat on that mission. The developers knew I was a bad person, and punished me for it. There straight up is a trap set if you head for the center. XD

Or well, there was for me. I didn't play as Black Eagles.

@efesell: I know the exact mission you're talking about and I did the exact same thing! Used Caspar as an unarmed shield while I got my guys all the way around the map to avoid killing them only for the game to laugh in my face and say "No take-backs."