This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

Where to start with this one? Well as a background I am late to the Fire Emblem party. I jumped into the series at Awakening and never went back to play the older titles. I dabbled in Fates but it never caught me quite like Awakening. Despite this, Three Houses was a must buy for me, because it was a game both me and my wife could take turns enjoying. She loved the romance and character aspect, and I am a turn based nut. We both each have our own switches, so for the first few days the game would just hop from one Switch to the other until our batteries were drained.

For those that have never played or heard of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you play as a teacher at a religious school that sits in the middle of three different empires. Students from each empire all attend the school where they presumably learn all the important things in life like; Math, Science, Stabbing dudes, history, fashioning arrows, horticulture... you know the basics. Each house has a leading teacher who essentially guides them in helping them grow as people, yadda yadda. You, as the player get to pick which group of students you want to teach and learn more about, but this also serves as which group of characters you want to take into battle. Depending on what house you pick sets you down that story path, as you learn about the world you find yourself in.

Most of the game is divided into two distinct sections. There are the school sessions and then the battle sections. Battles themselves play out like a turn based strategy game where you move units individually and use their actions to either attack, move, cast magic, etc. Your goal is almost always to defeat the "boss" of the area which is usually located at the end of a large map that will see you dispense even larger groups of enemies. What Fire Emblem leans on in combat are both the relationships of your teammates as well as the knowledge that your characters can die in combat removing them from the game permanently. Without diving too deep into the weeds here, each character in the game can build relationships with a handful of other characters in the game. Have them fight near each other, share meals, or attend events together and their relationship grows. The better their relationship the more they will help each other in battle. In some instances it is just some stat boosts, but other instances have characters teaming up for attacks or for defensive purposes that negate some enemy attacks. These relationships can be extremely useful and almost certainly needed as the game progresses and gets harder in combat. Gone are the days of marrying off each couple during mid-game, as instead there are just some implications of brewing relationships as people level up their friendship meter. The only character you have control over whom they romance is your main character. Sure you can pair other people up, watch their relationship grow, and maybe at the end of the game a scene will tell of what they did or did not do together.

Battles can get brutal quickly. In nearly every battle, you are outnumbered and out gunned and will need to actually strategize in order to win some levels. By strategize I mean, learning attack ranges of not only your crew but your enemies and adjusting characters accordingly. Nothing is more demoralizing then thinking your healer or archer is far enough back only to see an enemy come swooping in and dealing massive damage to them. While this can sometimes be a tense and fun fighting experience, it can also devolve into taking tiny steps just to be out of attack zone, until you have your whole team ready to charge. There were many battles, where I was moving less than half my movement range per turn, so that I could continually get the jump on the enemies with the right fighters. Was I being smart? Yes, but it also sometimes makes fights a little boring.

The other side of the coin is that this is a game with Permadeath, which means that characters that die in battle, really die and don't get to come back in the next level. Now, this is a difficulty slider that can be adjusted if you can't bear the thought of losing a friend, but I would encourage you to play with it on, since the draw here is about consequences for your actions. Should you foolish charge ahead or not plan your attacks and moves strategically the enemy will have no problem picking you apart in later stages. In most levels the game only ends if you are defeated, and could potentially carry on if every one of your students are killed but you. I never got to that point, so I can't tell you if by doing so you enter a no-win state, but regardless it is something that COULD happen.

Permadeath matters in this game, because the whole crux of the game is building relationships with the characters that exist. Unlike other games that might have permadeath with nameless soldiers, where maybe you might feel sadness with the loss of abilities you enjoyed using, in FE, you will not only miss using a character but hearing their story, voice, and seeing how they interact with their fellow students. It is the driving force to see that these kids, who are your students, get to accomplish their goals in their world.

All of this bears out in the school sections of the game. When not in battle, you are running around the school accomplishing all of your day off activities before the next pending battle. During this time you can talk to all of the students at the school, buy or upgrade weapons, go Fishing, cook food, attend choir practice, do side quests, etc. All of this is in service to further your relationship with the characters and the world. Get enough relationship points and you are treated to a conversation or mini cutscene showing your evolving friendship, or the friendship of two students. During these day off sessions is where most of the story plays out, sure there are big events and story missions that are battle focused, but in terms of your playtime it is easily a 70-30 split between school and battle. During this time, you can also attempt to lure over students from other houses into your house. It usually isn't easy and requires giving them lots of gifts, talking to them every chance you get, and/or spec-ing your teacher in a direction they prefer, but it is possible. At the end of your school week, you hold a seminar where you can level up their skills in a variety of fields to make you students as customizable as you want.

Where I have to give the most credit to FE is its customization in terms of your students. Each student has their preferences of what weapon or job they seem best fit for, but you can very quickly change their curriculum to have them focus on any number of different skills and work them towards what you think is best. Have someone who clearly started the game off as an archer and want them to be a mage instead? you can do that. Want to the take biggest baddest dude and convert them to a healer? You can. Its not always easy, because there are classes and trainings for each character that cause them to grow slower, but if you want to put the time into it, you can truly make anyone into nearly any job. Of course all of these feeds right back into that Permadeath, if you spend 30-40 hours trying to comb a character into your dream role, only to have them die.. you will be devastated.

I think FE: Three houses is a great game, but it is far from perfect. This is a long game, and easily one of the longest games I have played. If you are playing for the first time through and trying to get the most out of it you will be pouring in hours upon hours running around the same school day after day, making sure you talk to everyone and get the most out of the day. Each day where there isn't an event makes it a school day, and all of the characters are in different locations and have unique things to say, so if you are trying to absorb yourself in the world, it is a lot of down time. In fact it gets to be too much downtime, you are constantly in the same area, trying to see if there are new items on the ground, new conversations to have, making sure you utilize your activity points that day, it is a lot to manage and after 40+ hours of managing that time, it gets to be too much.

The larger your party (whether or not you recruit form other classes) the more people you need to manage. Do they have upgraded weapons? Who can they build a relationship with? Do I need to adjust their training? Is it time for them to switch jobs? It is minutia that I normally love, and at the start of the game, was something I was deeply into. I had notebook pages full of what each character was studying, who they could friend, etc. However, maintaining that stuff religiously drained on the game as it went along. Now perhaps I played the game and was too involved, and I should just let things play out and not worry about it, but you can't give me all of these systems and tell me not to play with them.

Fire Emblem builds itself so that it can and should be replayed. You can pick different houses, friendship different people, and find different endings, however I feel that the length and investment discourage that. Sure by beating the game, you can start again by importing some things from your previous game, such as leveled up skills and jobs from your students, but if I wanted to start the game over again, I would want to choose a house full of kids I didn't get to see the story of, not use the same house that I already leveled up. Now, I'll be honest, I haven't tried firing it up again. It seems too daunting to do so, and even though there is DLC that adds more characters with unique stories to the game, I can't see a world where I want to sign up for another playthrough again, especially when you know most of the spoilers. I have heard each subsequent playthrough is shorter, but even if it carves my 80 hour playthrough down to 40 or 30 hours, that still seems like a crazy time investment to see the same story again. I had this problem with Awakening too, where the first time through when you play one of these games is the canon for the story. This is who I liked and wanted to romance/friend, this is the house I was most interested in, to pick another house or romance partner feels like I am going back to my second choice and seeing how life would be different. I know there is a contingency of FE players who have gotten every ending, have played as every house, and have leveled up every character to max, but I don't think that adventure is for me.

All in all, Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a really great game, with a good story that I didn't want to spoil here. However, it felt like the game was overtly padded when it didn't need to be and was actively wasting my time when I just wanted to see it through to the end. Maybe in another 5-10 years I will have forgotten enough about it, that I will want to play as a different house or finally experience the DLC, but thinking of it now, I'm still burned out and I finished it months ago.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No, this won't quite do

Where does it rank: I have placed Fire Emblem as the 13th greatest game of all time. It sits below NBA2k18 (yes, I know its below a sports game) and above Yakuza 2 Kiwami.

Up Next: Flower (PS3)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for Listening.