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[Jumpin]

RolStoppable said:

Jumpin said:
I guess I should rephrase my question.
1. Is the game fun to play with zero save-scumming (going back to earlier points when the result of an action is undesirable) and perma-death on?
2. Does the game have a lot of grindy/chore-like tasks required to build characters? Or is straight-up strategic action + story all the way through? (with characters growing in stats along the way)

1. You are about the only person I know who pushes onwards when a unit dies whereas everyone else starts the battle over again. As for your question, no. Three Houses has one of the smallest casts in the series (29-31 characters depending on the path you take) and the recruitment process has a lot of requirements that aren't easy to meet on the initial playthrough, so chances are that you'll have access to 20 or fewer units, leaving not much room for error. New game+ helps to recruit people easier.

2. Building characters can be sped up by skipping the thorough exploration of the monastery each month and only doing the most important things via fast travel within the monastery. It's also possible to skip right to the end of each month in which case the game automatically assigns skill EXP to the two skills that are currently selected for each character. The risk of skipping is that it gets harder to recruit new characters. Overall, Three Houses has easily the most non-battle time of any game in the series.

Jumpin said:

Oh shit!

So many different opinions, who do I listen to?

Any Blazing Blade fans want to speak to this game? And I mean the sorts that REALLY hated Awakening (I'm not one of you, I liked Awakening, but I am very very sympathetic toward your opinions).

Regarding story and characters, you are getting a strong package. But as mentioned above, there's also quite a lot of baggage attached to enjoy the game to its fullest. I wouldn't mind if the free-roaming in the monastery had been replaced by menu-based actions, such as base conversations in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn where only characters who have something to say between chapters get some spotlight, as opposed to the monastery where most characters just give some short and usually unimportant commentary when you talk to them.

I don't think you'd like this game. Then again, you are totally weird.

Then I will just play the game without permadeath. I enjoyed Awakening when I realized it wasn't really a strategy game, but more of an RPG with strategy elements.

I'd say that I'm one of the few on the forum that avoids save scumming because I'm one of the few, here, that was a fan of the series before Fire Emblem Awakening. Save-scumming was heavily frowned upon, not just by the traditional Fire Emblem community, but by the developers: who designed the game in such a way that it would punish you harshly for attempting it. I don't think newer FE fans would be able to handle the older games.

Awakening and later games are more RPG in their mechanics and less about strategy, while the earlier ones are more about strategy and less about RPG. The big difference is there's no room to rest in the classic games, you push forward through the story and battles, no extra grinding. Awakening and post-Awakening are a lot of "do a map" "now do some side maps" "do these battles on repeat to grind up some characters" "now continue on with the story on the next map" and you lurch forward. I don't dislike the new games, I actually like them, but they are different, and I found trying to play classic mode is kind of a trap, because Awakening (at least) certainly was not balanced for it.

I'm not weird, just old. Old enough to have played the original games long before Awakening. That's how they were designed to be played.

Last edited by Jumpin - on 07 August 2019