I quit the game at chapter 2 or 3 because it was so fucking hard on Normal. And this was after playing 7 and 8 on hard. It's been 11 years and I still haven't gone back to it.

I'm 20 hours in now, Petra and Dorothea are both great, glad I went with Black Eagles. I like Marianne too, but haven't specced into the necessary stats to recruit her and I'm already eight months in so I don't know if I'll have time to now.. Bummer.

OC 88 is a brilliant score. same as SMM2.

I only finished the first few chapters, but so far my impression is very positive. Characters and music seem good, the world-building seems interesting (just from the text entries) and I actually don't mind the english voice acting so far. Still need to see how the story plays out, but this could end up an all-time favorite.

Only minor annoyance is that I wish the game gave me more time to get to know the characters before making me choose a house. Feel like I just got a text dump of bios and some quick conversations before I had to choose. I joined Blue Lions, as it seemed like the team make-up fit my playstyle best, although that apparently doesn't matter too much in the long-run from what I've heard. If the story is good enough I'll try the other houses on future playthroughs.

Romance has always been a part of Fire Emblem, and so I'm sure it's here to stay. It's just a question to what magnitude. I thought the 3DS titles went too extreme with the "anyone can screw anyone" mechanic, and I'd much prefer either a select few canon ships like the early games and RD, or having a select few well written romance options like the GBA titles had. Hector/Lyn is probably the best written romance the series has had so far in my opinion...the million different options in Awakening/Fates didn't really come close to that in terms of depth.

Agree with the bolded for the most part. The baby dimension in Fates was so freaking stupid and was clearly just a half-assed way to incorporate a gameplay feature into the story with no regard for how it was incorporated. Like you said, I'd rather not have it altogether then have a contrived reason for including it. 

Personally, I don't hate the idea of kids, but if they hurt the overall story, I'd rather the mechanic was gone for good. If they can think of a good reason though, like an in-game time skip or something, then I'm more than a little interested to see how it works.

I liked Awakening overall, but I had some issues with it - as I did feel kind of tricked in my first playthrough playing it with the expectations I had from previous games in the franchise - my initial reaction was very negative for Awakening:

1. The story was clearly a lot more nebulous than previous games. Strategy RPGs tend to tell some of the best semi-linear stories (linear, but with the player able to effect the details fairly significantly based on who lives/dies, what decisions the player makes, who the player recruits). Awakening seemed to throw the sort of grand narrative other strategy RPGs (most notably Fire Emblem Blazing Sword, Ogre Battle 64, and Final Fantasy Tactics) have. Even some of the weaker stories, like Shadow Dragon seemed to have stronger stories than Awakening.

2. Characters were MUCH harder to get. In older Fire Emblem games on a standard level you could add 1-5 characters on a single map throughout the game, so losing a couple here and there wasn’t devastating. In Awakening, if you lose characters it seems to ruin the game. They designed the game with this casual mode, and then rather than using casual mode as a tack-on for noobs they made traditional mode as kind of a “see we haven’t forgotten about our fans, now here’s a really shitty mockery of the sort of game you want to play.” - And Birthright was very similar in Fates, and even Conquests was not really up to par (or close to it). Essentially, in Awakening, you had to do one hard level in order to get one character, so playing traditionally it wasn’t worth getting the kids at all because you'd have to expend sometimes 2-3 characters to get one and NOT advance the story. What did Awakening do to fix the small trickle of ACTUAL characters? Add in a bunch of nulls who have no participation with the plot.

3. WAAAY too much grinding. Fire Emblem used to be one of those RPGs designed not to force in grinding. It was very refreshing where you could get a game with a lot of difficulty to do perfectly, but able to finish it with few problems. But Awakening mandates it, and throws in random encounters and repeatable levels you really shouldn’t ignore.

4. Relationships - seem rather empty for the most part. In older games there was a lot more uniqueness among the relationship text than Awakening. They seemed a lot more special. At best, the relationship text in Awakening was for a large part only a gimmick to lead to having children.

I think Awakening is a good game if you play on casual: it is a shitty game if you don’t. Casual is REALLY easy, but not playing casual is super annoying.
Older Fire Emblem games are significantly better with the writing.
While balance can be hit and miss on older Fire Emblems, the non-casual mode of Awakening is the worst balanced FE game I ever played.

Awakening does not have a grand and epic feeling narrative, it is more like a B-RPG story built up of substandard sub-plots in the same universe. Basically, with strategy games: strong linear stories or strong emergent storytelling (basically pick up the elements and form your own narrative: ala Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Dwarf Fortress, Crusader Kings): Awakening does neither well. It’s literally a series of weakly connected scenarios.



I found Awakening was most fun as a pretty open ended army/dream team builder using casual mode. For that I found the game a lot of fun on my second playthrough after the first one which was perhaps the most miserable experience I had playing an FE game. But I built an armada of flyers with extraordinary strength, and I had a lot of fun doing that.

In short, FE:Awakening is a good game, but it is a very different sort of game than the old Fire Emblems, and experiences players should resist the temptation to play the mode advertised to be designed for a traditional experience: don’t play it it’s a trap! Older FE games are strategy adventures at their core with RPG mechanics being on the outside, while Awakening is more like an RPG core with strategy elements on the outside layer.


Anyway, how is three houses? Is it more like the epic adventure of FE traditional, or is it more like “casual” (Casual mode isn’t actually casual) RPG that is Awakening?

And before anyone whines about Awakening being better and the only way for the series to move forward: I’m not trying to argue otherwise. I am fine with the old Fire Emblems being ported or remade: I have plenty of material to replay and satisfy. I am more interested in seeing what kind of other experiences they can do with the license.

7 hours in and loving it. Excellent title. Hopefully the pacing stays interesting.

I'm 30 hours in and have spent so much time doing random stuff I'm not at the timeskip yet. This has already easily made my top FE of all time, and is into my top 5 games ever at the moment. Words can't express how fantastic Three Houses is.

My local EB Games store had about half as many pre-orders for FE as all of COMG did. Still rather amazing how the west took to this series all of a sudden.

I'm in the same boat, I feel that reviews that said they beat the game in 40-60 hours on first play through is not going to be my experience at all.  I just got passed the fishing tournament monastery side event (not plot relevant) and I'm at about 30 hours in.