Recommendation on what to play next

Hi All,

So after 42 very fun hours I just finished Three Houses, it was my first Fire Emblem and I enjoyed it but I know nothing about the rest of the series and I would like to play another one. Can someone recommend another game in the series to play and also recommend a starting difficulty, as I found the normal difficulty of Three Houses very very easy.

I have also thought about playing through the game with another house but the first part is just too long to do again, maybe next year.

Thanks in advance.

Congrats on finishing the game; I've still got a long way to go!

If you've never played any other FE games, I'd recommend Awakening on 3DS. It was a really good introduction to the series and had a pretty bonkers storyline. It suffers from the same easy 'Normal' difficulty as Three Houses so I'd recommend knocking it up a level or even go for 'Lunatic'. If I remember, you could also get some grindy, training maps as DLC if you wanted to power level.

If you can find it, I'd also recommend the first GBA game. I think it was just called Fire Emblem.

I think before you play another FE you need to ask yourself would you of enjoyed 3 houses if you just did the story battles back to back, with no sidequests, no monastery, and basically without voice acting. Thats what every other FE basically is, FE3H is a massive departure from the series with a large persona style emphasis.

If you are fine with that Awakening is probably a good bet, though the difficulty is quite variable, with most people finding Hard in FE3H probably easier then normal in most older FE titles.

@silversaint: All of the 3DS games have more than just battles to them, though it should still be stressed that they all have way more focus on battles than Three Houses. Also, Fates does let you run around your camp but it doesn't look great and it serves almost no purpose. Shadows Of Valentia has you running around dungeons and running into encounters, JRPG style.

Awakening is still the best of the 3DS lot in my opinion. Fates's story is terribly executed and most of its characters are boring as hell. Shadows of Valentia is pretty cool but, being a remake of a very old FE game, it doesn't have many support conversations and its battles are perhaps a little less complex (though not really less fun).

Honestly, you can't go wrong with any of them, but I'd rank them 1) Awakening, 2) Shadows of Valentia, and 3) Fates.

All three of the 3DS games are more difficult than the piss easy Three Houses, so don't worry about that - but I would recommend starting on Hard if you're really looking for challenge.

As a final note, Fates is actually split into three games - Birthright, Conquest, and a DLC final chapter. I only played Birthright, which is a a lot like Awakening in that you can travel around a world map and grind to your heart's content. Conquest is, from my understanding, more like older FE games where it's only story battles and if a character falls behind, they probably won't be catching up. Also its maps tend to be more cruel than most.

I liked Awakening a lot, but I honestly found it even easier than Three Houses (especially end game when skills like Galeforce are just completely broken), at least on normal/hard. It does however come with two higher difficulties, but I felt like Lunatic actually skewed too far in the other direction.

Still, I'd probably say it's best game to transition from Three Houses into the rest of the series.

Before going further, be warned that Three Houses represents a pretty significant departure from the rest of the FE series in its introduction of Persona-style 'free time' mechanics in the monastery and teaching your students. Almost all of the earlier games are pretty much back-to-back battles, though support conversations are still present for fleshing out character relationships.

With all that being said, Awakening is probably the most similar to Three Houses in difficulty and tone, and if you do end up playing that then I'd recommend the Hard difficulty in that game which should provide you with more of a challenge than Three Houses' Normal difficulty, and if you find it too hard the game also allows you to offset the difficulty by grinding and abusing skills.

Alternatively, if you have the capability to play it I'd also recommend Path of Radiance for the Gamecube. If playing this as your 2nd ever FE game, then I'd play it on the Normal difficulty which would be a step up from Three Houses Normal but shouldn't be too difficult as this is overall a fairly easy game on Normal. More importantly though, this would be a good game to play as a springboard to the rest of the series because it'll let you get acquainted with balancing Exp. distribution between your units, which is a pretty important consideration across the series, while having the safety net of the Bonus exp. system in this game which will help compensate for whatever mistakes you make.

Awakening is fantastic! Three Houses is still very different in a lot of ways, but you can see where the transition sort of began with that game.

Worth playing if you have a 3DS. I was thinking about going back to it once I beat Three Houses.

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, I have a 3DS handy so I will try Awakening.

The lack of Persona style gameplay doesn't bother me that much, that type of content in Three Houses was light anyway and I mostly bypassed it as I got closer to the end of the game. The combat is the real draw for me as I never really played this type of tactics before. If I stick with it I might pick up my Gamecube at Christmas when I go back to my parent's house and try some of the older titles.

The Gamecube Fire Emblem game (Path of Radiance) will run you like $150 used, just so you know.