Hey y’all, it’s been a minute since I’ve done a post, so let’s change that!
I recently got a Nintendo Switch, and I’ve been kind of hurriedly playing all the games at once on it just to catch up to where everyone else is right now. One of the games I decided to throw down on was Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a game I saw everyone – all my friends, every games critic ever, assorted Internet personalities – absolutely fawn over. I thought, “hey, this seems like an essential experience; might as well try it!”
Readers might remember that I’m not 100 percent the best at strategy games. I don’t play many of them, and those I do play need to be kind of limited otherwise I’m just… bad at them. But after about five hours in Fire Emblem, I think I’m doing just fine? I hope?
The game revolves around your character, a young mercenary who saves three late-teen-early-adult-aged children of Fódlan’s nobility, students at the nearby Garreg Mach Monastery Officer’s Academy, from death-by-bandit. As you do. You’re quickly drafted into becoming a professor at the school (and also an agent of the church, which is also the de facto military police for the whole continent) and you’re assigned to teach one of three student houses: the Black Eagles, of the Adrestian Empire; the Blue Lions of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus; and the Golden Deer of the Leicester Alliance.
This game is rich with different systems: recruitment systems; education systems; romancing; weapons and armor management; and of course, the light military strategy system at the core of the gameplay. During each month you’re responsible for managing your time. How much time you spend with the numerous student characters, both in your house and in the other rival houses, not to mention what you do with your lecture time and preparation for the monthly Big Kid Mission, will determine how your house moves forward and grows through the year.
It’s pretty fun, but I have to admit that I’ve only lightly scratched the surface of what it has to offer. Just in glimpsing the Wikipedia page to help me remember some of the names in this game, I’ve seen about 1/16th of the story. Will I love it? Will I hate it? Time will only tell. In the meantime, the two battles I’ve participated in have been the perfect mix of fun and challenging. Hopefully, that feeling only grows.
PS. I went with Golden Deer.
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