It's basically Echoes 2.0, which is still surprising to me that they would base their first Switch installment on the worst 3DS Fire Emblem in terms of both sales and quality. Then again these are the same people who do Paper Mario lul. This is was evident since the Treehouse footage but I wanted to give them the ultimate benefit of the doubt and wait until I played it myself. Well what do you know, the game didn't magically change when I put it in my Switch. :L

No weapon triangle, the *Range Meta*, units overall tankier, all return from Echoes. Combined with the new stuff like Punching and class customization a.k.a. everybody gets a bow and/or magic, this game hardly qualifies as a strategy game, unless you believe walking up to any given enemy with any given unit and killing them without retaliation is strategy.

Thankfully the annoying stuff from Echoes like forced grinding and Cantors don't return, but instead there's the monastery, which as feared bloats the time spent between missions significantly compared to past entries. At first I didn't mind too much, I really like that unlike prior games your characters say new things as you progress through the story, but the activitys have gotten tiresome.

Despite all this, I do enjoy the game overall. This was also true with Echoes but even moreso than that game. The way I see it I play this game more as a powertrip rather than to test my mettle. However, between the gameplay being less thoughtful and the time it takes to get to the gameplay being pretty long, I fear much like Echoes I wont bother with another playthrough. The main reason I'd want to is for the story and characters but eh there's always Youtube.

So yeah, I had just remembered I made a thread previously voicing my concerns about the game so thought I should make a follow-up... cause I was right, booyah! ...oh wait, that's bad. :(

I liked it. Felt the ending was a bit anticlimactic, but I enjoyed it and felt it was certainly above Echoes. However, I still think Awakening and Fates are better. 

I took the Black Eagle route...

... with that said, I don't really feel the need or urge to play the other two routes since neither house really struck any chords with me... Well, maybe I'll try the Golden Deer path at some point because I do like Claude. But I couldn't give two shits about Dimitri or the Blue Lions. 

Whenever I do go back to Three Houses, I'll just load up a New Game+ file and go the Black Eagle route again and hopefully recruit more students from the other houses into my own.

As a massive fan of Fire Emblem 1 and Fire Emblem 2, which I played on the DS with it's backwards compatibility, as well as Path Of Radiance on the Gamecube, that sounds disappointing. I was a huge fan of FF Tactics as well, and the next game in that series I played, FF Tactics Advance 2, was nowhere near as good as the original. Way too easy. Actual strategy was not really necessary. I scorched through a fairly boring experience, and haven't really returned to the sub-genre outside of a brief flirtation with Disgaea 3.

It's getting good reviews though, so ????? Your write up is the first one I've read.

Oops I should probably mention I'm playing Golden Deer Hard/Classic on Ch.17 currently.

Cool we're of the same mind when comparing it to the 3DS games. I was planning on Blue Lions for my second playthrough but after seeing what happens yeah Black Eagles sounds way more interesting.

You know reviewers aren't good at video games trololol. The game on a whole is ok if you just want to experience a story with good characters and mindlessly kill stuff, but if you're looking to actually use strategy I can't recomend it.

Not sure what your first sentence is supposed to mean.

Echoes? The only good FE story wise on 3ds?

Might be my favorite in the series. I really like the Monastery way more than I expected. It gives you a more interesting way to interact with your units. More importantly for me, it allows you to interact with units that you may not want to use in battle. In previous games, unless you actually use them in your party you would never get to know them. And since some units are redundant that wound up not happening.

As for walking up to enemies and killing them without retaliation, either Gold Deer path is much easier than Black Eagles, or I'm doing something wrong. Even my tankier characters are pretty vulnerable and are likely to get killed if I leave them in the range of more than one enemy. If anything my units feel a lot weaker than Awakening or Fates where my bulkier units could just draw enemy fire without concern.

Random story. I wanted to see more about how item weight effects your characters. I typed in "Fire Emblem Three Houses Weight" and one of google's suggestions was "Fire Emblem Weight gain fanfic". What the fuck kind of shit are people into?

One thing I should mention about the two Black Eagle routes is that one of them is hidden and this is how you unlock it... (Not sure if this is really a spoiler, but better safe than sorry.)

I'm all about the gameplay!

How far are you in the game? I liked the monastery at first too but time I've started to see it short comings. I still like that the characters say new stuff with the story. but I just end up doing the same 2-3 interactions and hearing the same dialogue over n over. I'm not saying they should cut the monastery, I just wish it evolved more.

I don't think game mechanics would change drastically between paths so it's surely the same for Black Eagles. Between overall higher base HP compared to offensive stats, HP+5 skill every unit has easy access to, Shields and Battalions, every unit can tank hits. The Range Meta I.E. Bows and Magic that can eventually reach up to 5 range means you can reach enemies from outside their attack range and avoid taking a counterattack. Finally you have immediate access to innate double attacking via gauntlets, which can nuke everything except armor and potentially kill the enemy before they can counter.

So I set myself up for disappointment by... expecting a strategy game to require strategy? What should I have expected?