Hey everyone, have a wonderful Christmas! I hope you enjoyed this video essay on Three Houses! It's a topic I've meant to tackle for a long time - I wrote the script for this like months ago and I'm glad it's finally here to show you all. As I said at the start, I love Three Houses to death, I finished another special playthrough of it a couple of days ago, but this is a topic I definitely felt like was worth discussing. Let me know what you think below!
Persona 5 Royal i think handles the Story/Gameplay integration the best - All bonds and story progression improves abilities of Joker and your team mates. It's just great i think
The biggest things to me as a designer and writer myself ARE the small things. My largest issue is that Catherine cannot learn Thunder despite her crest being linked to rain in Lysithea's supports and having a weapon named Thunderbrand.
Through the second playthrough I actually thought about some of the contradictions you mentioned. But in the very first playthrough, there was just this one thing I actually found silly: "What? I have a penalty of not getting a hole months xp and monastary-things to do if I safe Flayn as fast as possible?" O.o But with no game being perfect, there are everywhere things which "could have been done better". I think it's still one of the best games I played. :3
One thing that dissapointed me in the Golden Deer route was the dissonance between Claude's personality and tricks with the gameplay. Almost all of the chapters were a kill boss chapter, but with how Claude portrayed himself in the story, I would have liked if there were more interesting clear objectives or starting positions.
Agreed. Not to mention that every chapter with a "scheme" is easily solved another way on the other routes. Like in AM, when they don't need to sneak into Fort Merceus by wearing disguises, which is Claude's supposedly sneaky plan to enter the fort. Or in SS, where they also don't have the same sneaky reason
@@l.n.3372 Pretty much. Claude overall is given only 2 unique schemes in his route while everything else is either already done by him in other paths (Chapter 16) or is done by someone else (Chapter 14, Fort Merceus and Enbarr by Seteth, Gilbert and/or Byleth).
The problem is that for all we are told, repeatedly and with great emphasis, that Claude is a schemer, we're never actually shown him scheming anything worthwhile
@@FieryMeltman Even in context some of these lines sound wrong. I understand the meaning and context behind the lines, but they still look silly even if you do understand them.
This game was definitely too ambitious for it's own sake. 4 different routes, every single line is voiced, any character can become almost any class. They wanted to make it fire emblem ultimate, but didn't have the time nor budget. Even then, what has come out of that ambition is still a really good game with faults that people are able to forgive
Yeah, even with all the delays it received, Three Houses genuinely needed another 6 or so months in development. I still really appreciate the ambition, however, where a lot of other franchises are shooting for far less.
Also, I think it is important to point out how people from Intelligent Systems said that without Koei Tecmo, they couldn’t have made this game. It makes me wonder, well what is Intelligent Systems going to do for the next Fire Emblem game? Will they always have Koei Tecmo help them now? Who knows...but you made some definite great points. I absolutely love this game. Dimitri’s character arc REALLY touched the shit out of me. He’s become one of my fave characters ever, but I can definitely recognize the faults that Three Houses has.
@@tomasgarcia7499 my biggest issue with the story is slither.... they drag down the story I bought 3H for the 3 houses and the eventual war... not this dumb cult of wizards it bogs down the story and that’s why azure moon objectively is the best cuz it’s a self contained narrative that’s the least flawed and doesn’t worry bout shit like slither
With the financial success of this game as well as now having experience making a game of this caliber, the next FE game ought to be a genuine masterpiece. Probably coming a few years from now based off the breaks between previous entries.
I think the reason there's no Fog of War on Gronder Field is because of how badly it meshes with powerful enemy units. Imagine if Felix or Hubert just ambushed you from the fog and oneshotted one of your units.
For real I actually do think this was play tested and scrapped when it was decided that it wasnt fun. Which is really saying something about how bad it must have been considering they kept fog of war for the Catherine/Ashe paralogue and Marianne's.
@@SlitheringStevePhilips Not on a big map with tons of units. Sure, you can divine pulse a bunch of times, but then you end up running out of uses... halfway through depending on how bad it went. I'm obviously assuming somewhat blind play because knowing enemy placement (through chapter guides or replays) removes some of the fog of war difficulty already.
It would’ve been fine if the game didn’t go out of its way to complain about how bad the fog was. An easy way to get Dimitri to attack Claude would be for Dimitri to just assume that The alliance had something to do with his family’s death, and then boom. It’s so easy. I remember feeling pretty disappointed that the reason that whole battle took place was just because it happened in the last route. 3H’s post time skip is my least favorite part of it because of all the reused maps. I much prefer the maps that were “custom made” so to speak for the routes , like CF’s map where you kill Dimitri.
I’m actually still pretty mad about characters without crests being able to use relics, and only facing a measly 10hp penalty. I took the game seriously when it told me the relics were dangerous, and left each of them to collect dust in the convoy. Turning player units into demonic beasts would be waste because players would just reset, but I think they should’ve at least boosted the damage penalty and let it kill units. I should at least feel like I’m risking the lives of my crestless units when I ask them to use the relics.
Yeah they should have locked relics to those with crests IMO. Or else have those without crests unable to use relics entirely. Maybe a FE4 example where the weapons are locked to those with the holy blood, but in 3H even minor crests can wield the relic too unlike in FE4
@@luminousxii It's not a non issue. It's a huge gap between gameplay and story integration. The game constantly tells you how dangerous the relics are. But in reality all they do is 10 recoil damage if you lack a crest. That's pretty pathetic. Especially when in most games, holy weapons and the like are locked to specific units (like in FE4) to prevent non holy blood units from even touching the relics.
@@l.n.3372 if they're dangerous why would you even attempt to give those weapons to those units? Especially when they offer nothing that other weapons do minus the damage?
@@luminousxii What are you talking about? Game play wise they aren't dangerous. 10 recoil is practically nothing. Especially when there are many builds that use vantage/battalion vantage and recoil damage is a good way to get into vantage range for units without crests.
Divine pulse is confusing because I doesn’t have to mentioned at all. Turn wheel is just a quality of life feature and the fact that the game attempts to integrate it into the story is baffling. It be like explaining how Byleth can see enemy ranges or why everyone can only move on a grid. The calendar issue is also strange because Sacred Stones (sorta) solved this problem like 8 games ago. Sections like the castle siege from chapters 7 and 8, to the Phantom Ship and harbor in chapters 11 and 12 are continuous and don’t let you go to the over world between chapters because it would destroy the pace of the story. This isn’t saying that FE8 is perfect in this regard, but it’s a more elegant solution than almost everything neatly mapping to the end of each month.
I still remember when they had Robin unnecessarily in universe justify being able to see the combat forecast and enemy inventories 13 games into the series.
You're right but ngl I did think it was fun how in awakening they had that line in the chapter 1 where Robin explained they could see enemy ranges and stats. Idk, I appreciate the effort, it's just that time travel is tough to write into stories that aren't solely focused on it.
I actually like the explaination that Mark and Robin, the player characters, can see enemy stats and the map because they're tacticians. For me that is a trait ever, tactician in the universe of FE has. But that's only my imagination that fills the gap. The diffrence is that these abilities don't get in the way of the story. Mark is actually completly optional. Like Mekkah said, the way they introduced the timewheel was perfect and just like you said it doesn't need to be explained within the story.
@@domicraft6341 I just think it's stupid how divine pulse is never mentioned in the story again. They could have totally used that in the story to save Dimitri in Golden Deer. Maybe not make him playable, but let him live for gods Sake! The only lord who has a chance to never die is Claude. And there are so many other characters, like Edelgards retainers and generals in Crimson Flower! And Judith! Make them playable! Divine pulse coud have been such a great tool to use in the story. Like giving the player the option to go on normally or use divine pulse to save certain characters. And i totally agree, that the monastery should have been replaced by a menu more similar to PoR and RD. At least that way, it would have been less dragging to finish the game.
1:51 I don't think Hilda's a good example of this. She purposefully undersells herself so she doesn't raise people's expectations. The dissonance between how she describes herself and how powerful she actually is as a unit was done on purpose. I fully agree with the rest of the video, though.
Unfortunately I think Lorenz is probably the worst example of this. He's a Gloucester and meant to be special and from a strong family with influence. But as a unit his growths are so average jack of all trades. To the point where he's likely the worst mage in the game, since his spell list is average and he has barely any good utility spells. And as a cavalier, he doesn't bring much to the table either beyond frozen Lance, which is good but not worth keeping him much over other potential paladin.
@@l.n.3372 Lorenz is never described as a capable mage or a powerful unit. He simply hails from a noble family. That doesn't mean he's supposed to be strong. The instances Mekkah talks about are when the game says one thing, but shows something contradictory to it in the gameplay. In that regard, I see no problems with Lorenz.
@@FieryMeltman Lorenz always describes himself as this amazing person with unrivaled potential and talent. I love him a lot for his growth. But yeah it's a huge dissonance: he starts out as the most arrogant self centered person with a hugely inflated sense of self worth. And part of that is because of his crest bearing influential family. So you would expect him to be a great unit. But nearly every other student is better than him in every role. That's totally a huge example of how story build up wasn't reflected in game play.
@@l.n.3372 He describes himself that way because he's a prideful person. It's not a problem with the game or with the writing. It was done that way on purpose.
I also love it when supports continue from pre timeskip into post timeskip and characters go: "about the other day..." Or when outside the battle they are so sad they have to fight, but in their battle quotes they literally go: "haha killing is fun :3". But that is an overall Fire Emblem problem.
Spoilers: Path of Radiance supports did it well regarding time-issue/story-related discrepancies; you unlock the A-support between Jill and Mist by completing Serenes Forest (if the prerequisite chapter count has been met, it should be perfectly timed if you put them together every map since their join time) and the dialogue within it mention Reyson and Leanne singing in the conclusion of Serenes Forest chapter parts, and Jill and Haar A-support will mention the death of Jill's Father in the hand of the Greil Mercs. Plenty of instances mention key events in the support dialogues like Tormod and Reyson. There's actually a lot more things that coincides mechanics in that game, like support dialogue to base convos. Path of Radiance support system gauge the gap between the support dialogue and story progress, that it's usually the right time in the right place. Not everything is perfect, the first support unlocked in PoR is Ike and Oscar...which talks about food after finishing the chapter where Greil dies... but that's a writing problem, not a game design flaw.
Annette and Mercedies having a really minor fight and basically not talking to each other for five years... Limiting the A-rank supports to post-timeskip was an interesting choice, but some of them clearly were not written with that in mind.
Honestly, Awakening and Fates was better with that latter part than in 3 Houses. Most of the time, the characters from those games express an exhaustion from combat, not so much an adherence to killing itself. Sure the kill lines might still be a bit too cheery in those games, but I can understand soldiers uttering lines of confidence and pride in their work more than I cam believe Claude being cocky when he decapitates someone when he expresses his distaste for senseless violence over and over again.
@@greygale yeah that always irked me. Annie and mercie’s argument was completely trivial. Something else could’ve worked much better as to why they hadn’t seen each other the whole timeskip
@@greygale The weird thing is that some supports do have proper restrictions. You can't do the Ashe/Catherine B-support without doing their paralogue, Rhea's supports requires meeting deadlines by a specific points, then you have all of Dimitri's supports post-TS only being accessible after he pulls himself together, with most of them addressing exactly the messed up shit he was up to.
Three Houses is ripe with moments that just scream, “we needed more time to refine this,” so it’s absolutely no surprise the internal consistency is out of whack. This is especially the case when they tackled a writing trope that even the most accomplished of writers struggle to write logically: time travel.
@@raikkel9516 I think that's too-wishful thinking. Aside from the notion that no game is perfect, yadda yadda yadda, even if Three Houses was delayed for 6 more months, I don't think it would have become the perfect vision of what it was trying to be. Because it already was delayed a couple of times. It already had the "6 more months in the oven" treatment, and despite all that, the finished project was what we got. I think it was too overly ambitious with the scope of features it tried to include, and even regardless of internally inconsistent stuff like what Mekkah talks about here, there's still big flaws with the game that are tied to the core of its identity, like they map variety, stat inflation problems, inequal value of monastary activities, etc etc. I think we should just be happy with the game we have right now in reality, rather than pursue hypotheticals that will never exist. Because it despite being absolutely riddled with flaws, Three Houses is still an amazing game that pulls of some stuff REALLY well, and the problems with the game ultimately don't take away its highs and successes.
@@LoudWaffle oh absolutely, three houses is def my game of the year for 2019, and used to be my favorite game on switch (xenoblade de is actually perfect), so I enjoy the finished product a lot. And you're right, but some of those problems I don't think are that big of a deal, hence why I said 'near' perfect.
Honestly the problem with Divine Pulse is that they had it be in the story itself, as opposed to a game mechanic like the FE1 Switch release. Remove the story connection and it would’ve fixed all issues regarding it. Also writing time travel is easy, just rip off Steins Gate.
"You must swear to never let anyone else wield this lance." "Okay." "Hey, Sylvain, can I use Swift Strikes with that thing?" "Sure, Seteth, go right ahead." They should've given you a better reason to use the relic weapons with the corresponding crests. No one gives two shits about Ruined Sky. If they made other crests take the 10 damage and the non-crest users absolutely incompatible, that would make sense. It would be cool (but broken) if they made it so the weapons have infinite uses when used by the proper crest holder. That integration with the story would almost make sense since these weapons have been passed down for generations by the corresponding crest holder. It's not like some random Steel Lance has lasted through Fodlan's history.
One idea could maybe be halving the Mt of the relic when used by the inappropriate crest? For example, Lance of Ruin swift strikes is absolutely broken with that 22 mt, but at 11 mt, it's comparable to a Steel Lance+. It's still usable and definitely an option for if you're in a bind, but you'd get more bang for your buck by having it glued to the character with the correct crest.
The only balancing issue here in infinite use, altho its crest is never stated, is Aymr. If Edelgard is the compatible user, giving it infinite uses means infinite Raging Storm. Like Awakening Galeforce but somehow even more broken. Granted, its' artwork shows it to have the crest of the Beast, but that just means you could recruit Marianne and have her use it instead for infinite Raging Storm.
Eh I rather them not be breakable. Maybe on hard setting they can but they are some mystic powerful weapons. And we get 20 uses that become a HUGe pain to repair. I mean Chrom having his sword unbreakable in Awakening made him one of my favorite characters to use.
Summed it up perfectly. Went into Blue Lions for my first route, only for pretty much everything during the first half to be glossed over, it left me feeling so empty, we didn’t even get to see Rhea again, pretty much no answers for any of the bigger questions. Eventually I went and did some of the other routes but each also have their own similar problems.
The pre-timeskip section clashes super hard with the post-timeskip story. The academy arc sets up so many interesting plot points that are either outright ignored (Azure Moon) or poorly glossed over (VW), it feels like it's trying to set up every route while never properly setting up any of them AM was my first route and I was extremely disappointed with its story because it only answered one of MANY questions the pre-timeskip section left me with, only one of which was even answered, that being Dimitri's backstory
One of my biggest problems with the story elements of 3H is how they handled Sothis. Had something cool going on pre-timeskip but when post-timeskip hits she's just thrown away. I S-supported Sothis and she just comes back like "sup loser how's it going". After the support I questioned the purpose of getting rid of her post-timeskip.
3H may be my favorite game, but no these are problems that definitely exist. *Especially the Flayn month*, who thought structuring it that way was a good idea lol
I think the Death Knight would have been so much cooler if he DID die- and return anyway. He is called the Death Knight, he's meant to be this invincible revenant that hunts byleth. Imagine if the dialogue referenced him actually dying, and us confirming his corpse, only for him to return later. At first we just assume it's someone different, after all Jeritza is also gone, but then we kill him again and under the mask is yet again Jeritza, and then again it's Jeritza. Mercedes would have had an interesting thing of "but... He died like a decade ago??" And as for why they kill Kronya for failing but not leaving the death Knight dead, tie it too the crests. And then they could have also kept giving him back for CF too, and it would be super interesting to control an un-killable unit, and they could have had an interesting "if Mercedes is with you he can be recruited when you face the slithers and he rejoins them" thing going on.
This is a really interesting idea that I haven't seen before. It even has some existing basis via (spoilers) the Agarthan tech used to revive Nemesis and the 10 elites. What if the Death Knight was the first of potentially a plethora of revivable enemies? What if the Slithers brought back freaking Edelgard and Dimitri to fight you in the final battle? A series of encounters with such a Death Knight would put those in context, though some objectives might have to be adjusted to make sure his death is guaranteed once or twice.
Y'know, I was thinking of this exact idea for the next "nemesis" villain in FE. A villain who always revives after death could be a really neat idea, and there's a lot of ways they could go with that. Are they going to be weak, but grow more powerful (& vile) until the heroes find a way to cut their immortality? Will they be an apathetic veteran who's completely bored, but eventually finds a place in life after many battles with the protag? There's many ways they could go with it, and IS definitely showed with 3H that they're not afraid to step out of the norm for FE.
Pretty big oversight I noticed recently is that in Part 1, right before the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, they make a big deal of how Gareg Mach doesn't connect directly to the Empire, and how they thusly have to cross the Myrddin from the Alliance side to get to Gronder Field. Cue the first mission in Crimson Flower, in which the line of travel is shown going directly through the mountain range between Gareg Mach and the Empire to attack Myrddin from the Empire side.
"Crests lead to discrimination and division HOWEVER, Anybody can use the relics with little to no issue, oh and take these items that gives anybody a crest they want! Oh don't worry about the backstories that had your students suffer and their family die to have multiple crests."
@@haveagoodday7021 those items are ng+ because it’s implied to be the fruits of hannemen’s future research into creating tools which replicate crest abilities to even the playing field between those with and without crests. They don’t cause sickness since they are purely external, unlike the relatively more crude slither experiments.
@@yellowtheyellow Never got that impression... They're NG+ because they're non-canon and just exist for the sake of giving players ways to do fun gameplay-only things.
17:12 Echoes definitely makes better use of the Turnwheel mechanic. Based on how it is presented, it's not about rewinding time. It's preventing a possible future seen in a vision (like Alm seeing the gravestones and Celica seeing Alm's death by Rudolph). Also, I love the fact that they cannot use the Turnwheel to undo their own deaths. Makes sense you can get a glimpse of the future when one of your allies fights, hence you can warn them about danger. But if you yourself are rushing unto battle and meet an unfortunate fate... well, there's no one to warn you about your own unfortunate demise. Then we have Divine Pulse... implemented... into the story... horribly.
Yeah I always felt like Byleth death should have been immediate game over that you cannot use divine pulse to change. Like with Echoes. Because as you said, if Byleth died then he cannot rewind time. But on the other hand, it's a huge quality of life improvement. You have to weigh QoL vs keeping gameplay that makes sense with the story. And for many people, QoL would win out so they don't have to replay chapters unnecessarily on maddening mode, as an example
@@l.n.3372 agreed. Hence, if you add such a QoL improvement, either flesh it out well in the story, or make it 100% artificial so it doesn't clash with the lore (like weapon triangle, which even NPCs acknowledge, but it doesn't just straight up clash with story-gameplay interaction).
@@lorddragonskin3603 Yeah I agree. But with divine pulse, I think the main issue is simply fictional time travel issues, which aren't exclusive to this game. Like, people always say that Byleth should have prevented more deaths etc with divine pulse in mind. But having time travel is such a huge fictional writing issue that I wish it was NOT time travel but simply explained differently. Just call it an intuition or something idk.
Okay, hear me out: I think time skip would improve massively if they just didn't return to the monestary. If post-time-skip just used a base system like Radiant Dawn, this game would asscend
On my first playthrough, I never swapped Holy Relics around, strictly BECAUSE the story made such a point out of it. Then my surprise when later I heard about how they really work...I was actually kinda disappointed.
Heck I never even knew other people could use the relics until this video as i tought they were handled the same way as any other character exclusive weapon in the series because of the story...
The first time I played the game, with blue lions, I was very confused when Claude gave me Failnaught... Why would he give me something that I can't use? Then I realized characters could equip it and use it...
I'ma be honest with you, when I saw that the crests were so weak in reality, part of me was thinking that it was actually *integration* rather than segregation of story and gameplay, and that the gameplay was showing us that the crests were weak and the church was lying about how important they were. This could even tie with Edelgard somehow - the crests that define people's lives are actually worthless junk, isn't this outrageous? But nah lol they are that important they just forgot to tell the gameplay team.
You're not the only one to bring this up and I've thought about it, but the contradictions about how relics interact with crests in the script itself I think show that it just wasn't very well thought out.
This would be a valid thing, if not for 2 things: A) The crest thing is just a guise for Edelgard to conquer the nation. B) Name the units you think are the best in the game. Then look how many of them have crests. Just because it is not spelled out like holy blood, does not mean they don't have an impact.
@@thestylemage2092 The point is that most, if not all, top tier characters aren't top tier becuase they have a crest. Other than Raging Storm and Atrocity, crest-exclusive combat arts don't compare to the more versatile arts such as Hunter's Volley, Swift Strikes or Vengeance. The only crest that can be considered good in a gameplay sense is Fraldarius, just because it's the only one with a decent proc rate, coupled with Felix's good speed.
@@thestylemage2092 You are only right on one of these things. There are explicit examples in every route of the game for why the Crest System is bad, why it needs to be gotten rid of, and why the Church won't tolerate its dismantling unless forced. That the crest system is never addressed or changed is one of the biggest flaws of Azure Moon. In Verdant Wind, Rhea flat out tells you it was a lie put in place to control the families of the Ten Elites. In Silver Snow, Flayn will tell you she doesn't understand why people would rise against the church, despite the fact that she and Seteth literally killed people who worshipped them in their paralogue. Linhardt will also tell you that war was inevitable anyway. In Azure Moon, every blue lion has a backstory related to how the crest system fucked them or their families. The Crest thing is not "Just a guise" for Edelgard to invade people. It's an integral part of the story of each route and character in the game. In White Clouds, Rhea explicitly tells you to keep quiet about Miklan turning into a monster so to "Not cause the people to lose faith in the nobility". If you have Sylvain in your House, you can refuse to give her the Lance back. If you do, she flips her shit the same way she does when you side with Edelgard in a Black Eagles playthrough. Diplomacy was never an option in this game. Never. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot and didn't pay attention to any of the Church affiliated routes.
Ehh. the problem is that in the story crests actually do seem to give you insane super powers. Look at dimitri, He's many times stronger than raphael and cant handle fragile objects due to his overwhelming strength given to him by his crest.
Breath of the wild and Team Fortress 2 are 2 of my favorite games, and they have all sorts of flaws. Breath of the Wild has problems with story-gameplay integration (How the fuck did the best archer of all time get defeated by one of the easiest bosses in the game) and with the gameplay in general (The game is buggy even after years worth of updates {granted the bugs/exploits actually raise the skill ceiling instead of hindering the player, but still} and many mechanics such as the rain climbing are super annoying) Team Fortress 2 is a good multiplayer game from back when games were designed to be fun and fair, and many of the weapon sidegrades are super fun to use (The frontier justice rewards you with guaranteed crits for getting kills with your sentry, but hinders you when you don't have crits, and the brass beast absolutely shreds everything but makes you extremely vulnerable to snipers and spies) but the ones that aren't balanced aren't fun to use/play against (The dead ringer effectively negates anything that the enemy team does to kill you and the stock fire axe is underwhelming compared to the utility of the powerjack or the damage of the third degree)
Divine pulse in game: Multiple uses from the start, and during a side-mission cutscene Sothis confirms that one can unlock further uses of the ability. Also can rewind a battle 99 turns back all the way to the very beginning, which is at least a few minutes of time rewound (unless fights happen in Dragonball time lol) Divine pulse in story: "Oh no my father's dead, I only have *one shot* to rewind 10 seconds at best! I can't possibly go back in time to warn Jeralt or strike down Monica because Sothis wagged her finger and said I can't fight fate."
Idk, I honestly thought Jeralts death was very good. Byleth rewound time, tried to stop Monika, but had their weapon blocked by a threat they hadn't met or seen before who effortlessly deflected the sword of the creator. Did you guys really want a montage of Byleth failing 10 times?
i will admit i was a bit annoyed at that "fate" part, especially since one FE game had its central theme being about defying fate. what happened to that?
@@marsrover6194 It would have certainly shown desperation, but also it would kinda add another plot hole with the fact that clearly Byleth is rewinding time, and yet the villains just aren't killing them.
It would've been cool if Hubert's def/res decreased every subsequent time you see him as an enemy in non CF routes to signify hes getting physically weaker from constantly being injured in battle, instead of seemingly making a full recovery each time he comes back in a month or 2. DK is indefensible though, he just feels like a joke past the second encounter for someone so hyped up by the story.
It's such a blessing for the fanbase to have a game like this. Almost everyone who's played it can point out some major flaws in either its concept or execution, but at the end of the day we seem to collectively enjoy that it's a great game.
It's truly incredible just how good this game is, considering how underbaked it is. I adore this game, but it's very flawed, and I find it incredible how enjoyable the game still is despite those flaws.
I’ve talked about crests vs holy blood before, and I argued that the games execute the two very, very differently. Genealogy hardly talks about Holy Blood in society and really only discusses it as it pertains to battle prowess, and it does not disappoint. Most of the Holy Weapons are busted and some units are almost solely good because of the fact that they have the Holy Weapon/get it early. Holy Weapons also grant significant boosts to certain stats totalling +30. Lastly, having Holy Blood affects growth rates dramatically in certain stats. All in all, Holy Blood truly does greatly impact combat. The same is simply not true for Crests. While the Heroes Relics are certainly powerful, the difference between them and regular weapons in 3H pales in comparison to Holy Weapons and regular weapons in Genealogy. Some Relics are certainly great weapons like the Thunderbrand and others do have potent combat arts like Aymr and Areadhbar. The effects of actually having a crest are so heralded that simply being born with one is seen as a light to shine on a fallen noble house. The amount that having/not having crests seem to affect life for characters like Sylvain, Ingrid, Edelgard, Caspar belies the little power they, in reality, bestow. And lastly, the skills granted by crests are so inconsequential as Mekkah mentioned. Not only are the actual effects typically not very potent, they activate so rarely that they aren’t reliable in any way. Tldr: Crests/Relics are greatly influence society in 3H, but they aren’t very potent in combat or on the indivdual; whereas, Holy Blood/Weapons are actually very powerful and greatly influence the individual’s stats though the sociatel effects aren’t discussed in FE4
Great explanation for the difference! I really like how you presented it! Yeah it's totally true that both did really well by a certain aspect but kinda ignored the other. 3H wrote it's story based on the flaws of the crest system, but the weapons themselves overall are not story breaking. FE4 had quite literal game breaking holy weapons but the impact of holy blood is almost never touched upon beyond with Loptyr blood. 3H definitely could have made their relics more impressive to connect with the story (like how Sylvain family wields the Lance of Ruin to protect the northern border). And Genealogy could have explained a bit more in terms of how having holy blood or lacking it impacts the average characters
This ignores that most of the characters we have in the game, so the characters that make it to the Officers Academy are actually crest bearers, and while there is certainly a bias in society in favor of them, most of the characters that make it there are still among the strongest of their region. Also, characters with crests are most of the time better than the ones without. They often have better growths than comparable units or access to rare spells (especially faith) and arts. The only characters who learn Excalibur are people with crests, same for Seraphim, Aura, Rescue, Abraxas, Fortify. The only people to learn magic weapon arts (other than hexblade) are people with crests and the people with slither background. Just cause it is not spelled out for you and the relics are not stupidly designed like in FE4 does not mean, there is not a clear advantage to the crests.
@@thestylemage2092 Dude. What's with the passive aggressive. OP was explaining how 3H shows exactly how having a crest is tied to story. Which is exactly what you're saying: they're given unfair advantages based on society norms and traditional ways. That's part of the flaws with the existing system, which OP said wasn't explained in FE4 by contrast.
@@l.n.3372 My point was that they don't just have a societal advantage for nothing. Crest people are usually more talented or stronger than people without.
So on the subject of ch6, another possible solution - though this would arguably destroy pacing - would be to let you play out the rest of the month even if you save Flayn on the first week.
Alternatively, if you dawdle on the month that Flayn gets kidnapped, there should be serious story and gameplay consequences for that, such as not being able to recruit Flayn out of spite or because of immense blood loss making her unfit for battle (or even death, though that may be too much for Seteth and the players to handle) and/or having a future boss be empowered by Flayn's extra blood (Crest of Cethaleen)
@@bronzeblade776 Those are interesting ideas, but they're not meaningful disadvantages. Flayn's crest in gameplay is pretty bad and Flayn's not a very good unit.
@@bronzeblade776 it could be a “Flayn almost dies but again” scenario where she just falls asleep and Seteth has to leave the monastery to find a place for her to rest for a couple decades or something. Also, for the weapon exp you could’ve gained from tutoring, they could just have all of your units gain the normal amount of weekly wexp multiplied by four. For all the gardening you’d miss, they could just give you some good stat boosters instead. Maybe they could have Flayn’s bases and growths be dependent on when you saved her.
Didn't Manuela explain how healing magic works in game? This is like the one game that actually bothered to explain why people can't just be healed after story wounds
I think a “Gameplay vs Story” series could sprout from this and do super well. I know you’d love to tell us about Thracia 🙂 Maybe you could look at other games too...? I personally think Path of Radiance does a super good job with it too.
@@arman_llc624 Zephiel appears a few times in the middle of chapters, like when he defeats Cecilia. Bosses change for story reasons but also literally change in the gameplay in the middle of the chapter. I’ve always thought that was cool.
Romitalia I mean I allways viewed as a cutscene but I guess it can be viewed differently. Boss’s changing, I wouldn’t call that a story integration, it happens in many other games as well and isn’t a big change to the gameplay. I guess The term story integration hasn’t been well defined so it depends. I was thinking more in the lines of the manster arc of fe 5. Where you’re literally starved of recources, can’t use your previous units, can’t acess the convoy, and the maps are built in a way that resembles a prison or running away from a castle
The team definitely threw a lot of ideas into the game to varying degrees of success. I imagine it spread them thin, but the overall package was pretty good. I hope the next game will be more refined on these ideas to integrate them more into the whole experience.
The point you made for Catherine’s AI not fighting Lonato applies to Dedue too but in an oddly different way. In the chapters in the Church and Golden Deer routes where you fight Edelgard in Enbarr, Dedue comes onto the map to kill Edelgard for Dimitri’s vengeance. Unlike Catherine, he will fight Edelgard, but if a strike will kill her, it will instead reduce her HP to 1. Pretty lame.
I feel like some of the characters were kinda lying or not telling everything and the developers were needing to cut stuff. I agree with a lot of the points of the video, even so I could add more details.
I think the reason why there's a timeskip is because they kinda compared the monastery to the academy mentioned in FE4, and the three lords to sigurd, quan, and eldigan very early after reveal. Thing is, the timeskip works in FE4 because of the story, not as much in 3H
I think the time skip does work in 3H but for a different reason. It works for Dimitri, for example, because there's a huge change in his character over 5 years. Less so with Claude, where he barely seems that different despite 5 years passing. So the time skip has a greater effect on AM but not VW, for example. Edelgard meanwhile can benefit from the time skip because she's been leading her war effort, which undoubtedly changes a person: she's not the same student you once knew either. But again, it's a case by case basis, since it doesn't really matter as much for VW in particular whether 5 years passed or not.
@@nathankeel6667 I do as well tbh. Only thing it needed was an extra chapter with Shamballa. Plus a scene where Rhea explains to Byleth and Dimitri about the Fodlan history. And then it's pretty much gold.
@@l.n.3372 To be fair with Edelgards timeskip there is the whole "oh no, my professor is missing, better make the nationwide war I started pause until I find him/her".
Retreating bosses have never been a problem for me personally... I see it more like when you manage to "miss" a gigantic robot in XCOM. You don't actually miss, but your character is starring down the barrel of a killer robot, and instead of hitting it's weak spots, they lose their nerve and just hit the tough parts of the armor, doing zero damage to it, which in practical terms is no different from missing entirely. In Fire Emblem, and many other JRPGs for that matter, i interpret it as a character knowing exactly how strong they are, and how strong their opponents are, so you don't actually "kill" them during encounters, but manage to push them to a point where they need to retreat. Even Nathan Drakes health is explained in a similar way, where enemies don't actually hit him and drain his health, but it's an indication of his "luck", and when that runs out, he gets a bullet to the chest and dies... Only the final bullet or grenade actually does damage. When a returning Fire Emblem boss finally dies, it's usually when they have no desire or the ability to retreat anymore, which is how i interpret Huberst many escapes, as he initially still has a war and Edelgard to consider, but when the walls are closing in and you finally kill him, it's because he had no desire to run, as you were pretty much on the Empires doorstep, and he could do nothing but make a last stand, buying Edelgard time to prepare. He does make it clear that he would gladly lay down his life for her when needed...
My understanding on the crests is if you have the right quest: You're good. if you have any crest: Weapon does not work, but you do not get a punishment. If you are good enough at using the weapon, you can fight. If you do not have a crest: you are screwed. I feel as if the issue here would be solved if the weapons were just weaponlocked to crest-weaponusers and the bonusses for having the correct crest were higher compared to their base-stats. To have the 10 HP penalty instead of the weaponlock really makes little sense.
Imo they should have been A/S rank weapons, but people with the right crest get to use them regardless. Crest based holy weapons should have been the same. I personally would prefer something similar to the way Falchion/Royal Sword work in their stories, so crest weapons become unusable if you don't have the crests (through weight or damage). This would of course change the Miklan fight, but the main enemy there is the beastform anyway.
I wouldn't like that. Those relics are so good you're essentially banishing anyone without a crest to the bench. Whilst that works for story it's terrible for gameplay. I'd like make them A/S rank and removing the crest requirements altogether. I don't see the need for such OP weapons so early in the game and so freely available. Oh, and I'd make them unrepairable - these are meant to legendary weapons and a generic blacksmith can just fix them up? At least make it so they can only be repaired a few times. FE6 handled their super weapons well - you got them relatively early but spaced out and with limited uses. You could use them to beat tough enemies if you were struggling but you only have 20 uses so you'd best be wise
I get why they didn't attempt to have Byleth use divine pulse to save Rodrigue only to fail again since they had already established that divine pulse doesn't always work. It would be pretty boring that whenevever there's an event that could be avoided with time travel powers (but has to happen for the story to advance) to see Byleth try and fail again. But I agree that there should be a better solution that to just ignore it from that point.
See, this is a case where Sothis being gone post timeskip is a problem. She could intervene and say something about turning the hands of time being of no use in this situation, or ask Byleth why they didn't turn back time and understand that it was because of what happened with Jeralt. It not being addressed is what feels so jarring.
The calender System could've been fixed by making it so that a chapter has multiple story relevant missions (more the further you progress in the game). Instead of the end of a month or week, make one mission at the beginning of a month or in the Middle of Week two and then you can use the rest of the month as free time. Because, just like in the story, nothing relevant happens here. So you're free to do whatever you want. And sometimes (in part 2 specifically) you shouldn't even be able to do things in the monastery. Instead of marching your way to Enbarr while also fishing points at the same time - you should be able to train with your units or be able to run around a camp where your party rests over the weekend. To give the player a bit more interest to plan they could build it up like this: -First two weeks: Preparations for the march to whatever region. Monastery is explorable, training missions, etc. and sidequests are fully available. -Third week: Your units are on the way to the mission that's going to happen. Monastery isn't available but you can still do the training with your units at the end of the week. You're also able to explore a camp where you're still able to do certain things like eating with your students or fishing (if the camp is convienently near a sea). Maybe introduce completly new activities and options for students to train like hunting (to get food and in the end a special eating event with the students who/you're went hunting with. Or bathing at a near sea or beach. Exploring the area to find more things to do in that camp. Maybe hiking. All giving certain points for specific areas (Hunting could give extra points in Archery and Authority while hiking greatly increases your Armory). Certain sidequests could still be available depending on the region you're in. Things like the church, the garden or the tea tine would be unavailable though. At a certain day, a certain story event could occur, like an enemy ambush or a monster attack. -Fourth week: Last preparations for the mission with very limited options in the camp and then the option to start the mission. This would give you the feel to be on a journey with your students. The feel of doing a mission. I would also think about making every day somewhat playable with certain things that can only be done at certain times. Maybe golden deers have more free time on thursdays while Linhardt is always sleeping somewhere else depending on the day. Maybe at certain days, Anna is in town and sells special items. Things like eating with students could only be done on the weekend and growing plants takes four weeks instead of just "waiting for the next month/timeskip). The way Three Houses is now is like a "Persona-Wannabe" being very restricted.
One thing that makes Genealogy my favorite game in the series is how important the time skip actually is to the story and the gameplay. It not only introduces a new setting, but an entirely new cast of characters. Seliph's journey wouldn't feel as important if it took place only a year after Arvis took power. Seeing how much the continent changed in 15 years made it seem all the more dire of a situation.
It would be pretty nice if, during the three-way battle at Grondor, the game actually had the other two forces begin the game engaged with each other, and removed any identifying UI elements showing you which side is which. If you're Dimitri, for instance, the other two sides will both be marked as "unknown soldier" and will all be colored red, instead of what we have now. This should have applied to the students, too. If you fight Raphael or whatever, have them take the appearance of generic enemy units. Then, only when you kill them do they recognize who you are and say their final speeches. That will represent this "chaotic warfare" much better, and even make the deaths more impactful.
Spoilers; Radiant Dawn is my favorite Fire Emblem game, but it is definitely not absolved of this faults either, but they are relatively innocuous enough to not get irritating and it do makes sense to a degree. In the Rivals Collide chapter where the Dawn Brigade Army and the Greil Mercs decoy, Ike says he won't hold back and that Sothe be prepared to not see Micaiah ever again between their talk conversation once Ike is in proximity of Sothe, however, it is fair to say that Ike has no blood lust or any strong grievances against them that him not holding back just means taking them out of the equation, even further proof when Tibarn holds Sothe on top of the valley and dropped, he was then later caught by Janaff. Not all skirmishes ends in bloodshed, actually, that's true for important figures in an army, they are better used as leverage (You are no use to me dead talk). Illyana has a conversation with Micaiah and Jill that they shouldn't talk during a battle since it's weird, recruiting Jill and Zihark will yield similar talks that they can't stand the current injustice that they are doing. Then defeating Black Knight in Rivals Collide is him retreating, but then again, I think Ike and co kind of realizes that their fight needs to be between them, a proper duel (even though you can physic Ike during their duel *cough* and I've never tried rescuing him, hopefully I don't get softlocked). Another instance of this is during Distortions and The Price, the desert map and the DB boulder map. In Distortions, defeating Lekain will just make him sniff some of that warp powder and fuck off, and in The Price, Kieran and Sigrun are amongst Sanaki's guards during that and Jill has a talk convo with Kieran. Again, it just might as well be conflated into the same thing as mentioned before, and it's just a one time thing than recurring so much that it wears itself out. During The Heart of Crimea, this one in particular is quite a nice change to an "important" character that's "in the map", Valtome will be seen outside the grid map, but he is not targetable and he will leave after certain number of enemies are defeated. Footnote; I love it when there's a lot of going on in a chapter that progress the story in lightning pace without being too much. From Pain, Awakening is a great example of events happening mid-chapter since the story is reaching the climax of the war's leaking malevolence since every single army are fighting in one map; Greil Mercs, Tibarn's Hawk Army, Skrimir's Beast Army, and the Senate/Daein army causing the Medallion to go haywire, making the climactic eschaton to happen within the gameplay, not only in a cutscene.
RD is my personal favorite as well, and there are some cute integrations that you didn't mention. In 3-P, Ranulf is talking about the GMs being a guerilla force, and the opportunity to make use of the ballista does a good job of showing that in-game. A likely unintentional story-gameplay integration is that the laguz AI in that chapter make some dumb decisions. That could be a strong presentation of how laguz are strong in battle but bad at strategy. Generally, the maps of Part 3 represent the goal they discussed in the story. 3-1 and 3-3 come to mind. 2-3 reinforces leaving enemies alive through BEXP after explicitly stating that Elincia didn't want the battle to be a bloodbath. Realistically, BEXP in general does a great job of reinforcing the goal that the characters mention in the story. This could be a chicken or egg moment where the story mention is meant to be a gameplay hint, but it's hard to say for sure.
@@ametaslave7314 2-3 would be similar to the chapter in Path of Radiance's Solo, and there's a lot more that I could have said like Mist not attacking Jill and vice versa, and again, as you mentioned that Ike and company is a Guerilla force, so it's nice that the objective in Rivers Crossing is burning the crates, you can just not kill anyone with that with an unequipped and full healing consumables inventory Haar and just fly around or someone with pass. There's also the time in Rivals Collide that Ranulf would mention the Daien forces being unprepared, not having fire tomes against the beast army. You would think Micaiah would make them have prepared something, unless it's a separate force they are talking about, seeing as they actually have thunder tomes for Haar. Whether intentional or not, can't tell. I've always loved that the Greil Mercenaries battles are not one of life or death situation, rather racing the objectives at hand, like beating Skrimir to the arrive point, getting Ike and Ranulf to arrive, burning the crates and etc that feels rewarding to play fast. They are a notably in-lore a strong guerilla strike force that attacks army lines that aren't necessarily strong, and in contrast is the inexperienced Dawn Brigade who are just a small coup'. And yes, BEXP as a reward just eases up how tackling story and chapter more precisely, but they can also do giving items if certain amount of enemy/ally unit survives, like older FE games did.
If you can unlock professor level A+ during chapter two of a New Game Plus, you can easily motivate your students at the beginning of each month then do up to like 6 or so auxiliaries/paralogues a month, maybe 9 depending on the month and how many students you have. I don’t really care that those battles aren’t definitively within the framework of the main story, and I don’t feel like other aspects of New Game Plus tempt me to do a “broken” playthrough.
Happy to see you mention Claude in the three-way battle and how it makes no sense why he's fighting Dmitri. I remember that feeling really forced when I got to that part.
Hate everything about the school, but my OCD won't let me skip. I also hate meeting everyone at the beginning. You don't get to be surprised by mid-late game good units like Harken, Haar, Pent, and Duessel in chapters were they tear stuff up. Everyone is ready almost immediately.
Tbh having late game OP pre promotes was to replace early dead units you didn't reset for. 3H kinda changes that aspect completely because you can recruit students late (to get them to have better stats and weapon proficiency). But your in house units are pretty vital and that's why it's hard to iron man the game
@@whichDude Yeah I get it, it's definitely fun. And as I said, late game recruited students are kinda the equivalent. I sometimes recruit Petra, Leonie and Catherine later just to beef up their stats. If you get them in chapter 12, they'll be level 23 with great stats and A/B/B+ weapon ranks. That's about where you get Saleh in Sacred Stones: around chapter 12 with good stats and weapon ranks.
@@whichDude Not really, you have to choose who you want to recruit, especially on your first play through, as you do not have time to level all the skills you need to recruit everyone. Building up good relationships with as many as possible allows for time skip recruitment, which is your "surprise" units, most notably GD students. The same goes for fellow teachers. On second+ playthroughs you can pretty much recruit who you like, but first playthrough you have to choose.
@@Miss_ESL Your typically going to use your house units, and maybe 4 other units at most. You can casually recruit 3 before the ball unless you chose story restricted units like Ferdinand and Leone. And adults barely have any grind to recruit them compared to students, so you could easily add Catherine and Shamir to the early game squad with the other 3. Game gives you everything extremely early. But enough with recruitment problems. That's just a personal annoyance. Almost all my negative feelings for the game is dam near everything about the monastery. Annoying calender, wondering up to people to say hey and increase happiness, units advancement is tied to a happiness and learning system, tea party, you know anything other then battle preps and the actual battle.
16:50 Byleth’s lack of using Divine Pulse is a big plot hole, but this is the one instance where it makes perfect sense. If Byleth uses DP, Dimitri sees that an orphan of war is trying to kill him, and grows even more cold hearted. Worse, he could see Byleth protecting him as a sign of Divine Approval, that he is right and has Sothis’ blessing. For Dimitri to be reformed, Rodrigue has to die. Byleth probably knows this, so just not showing the darker path Dimitri could take saves time.
Hmm, not sure about that one. It seems a bit too risky to plan, and a lot colder than Byleth is treated as being to let two people die to maybe make a one feel better. My take is simpler: Byleth isn't there when it happens, and doesn't notice Rodriguez is dead until after the time limit of divine pulse is expired. There is supposed tk be a limit to how far back you can rewind after all (even if that too is a dissonance, since you can rewind right up to the start of a battle despite only getting a few seconds in cutscene)
i think fleche trying to kill him was enough of a shock. she introduced herself by stating that she wanted to get revenge for someone she cared about, and that resonated with dimitri. for a long time, he knew they had similar motives, and at the very least was willing to have her on the team because of the similarities. she was basically a reflection of him, and learning her revenge was aimed at him would force him to look deeper into his actions. i think the realization that he creates more people like him would be enough to trigger his redemption arc, and make him end the cycle of revenge
You know, the timeskip would probably work better if it happened when Byleth gets sent into the void instead of some time after that by falling off a cliff. Would require a couple tiny rewrites, but not that much really. The balance is a different thing to worry about.
I love these scripted videos since they're always so well made. The part where I have the biggest gripe with three houses' lack of story/gameplay integration is in the missions themselves. I just hate how you do the same missions in every route for part 1. These missions are done for the sake of training the students, so it would make sense that the each class would get missions based on the students and yet Rhea assigns the mission to Byleth's class no matter what. There's also the fact that everyone praises Byleth for being the greatest teacher ever despite the fact that (s)he never speaks and has never taught anyone before.
I think Byleth being praised that she/he teaches well make sense. I'm playing GD route right now, and they don't start singing praises for you until the first mock battle, which make sense. Even still i can agree thats a bit early. Then they mentioned in supports, but didn't felt like pandering because i actually teach them a lot in game. Actually make sense why they're praising Byleth. So while there's pandering for the Byleth , is way better than Fates where Corrin existing was praise worth for the characters, you have to put some effort to gets those praises because you need supports points to unlock them.. and those can take a while in start.
"I just hate how you do the same missions in every route for part 1." Because there is no such thing as repetitive grind in any of the other FE titles...
Well I wouldn’t think your last point to be that big of a deal. Byleth talks plenty and it makes no sense why they’re silent during all the supports. I really hate the whole blank slate protagonist trope. It clearly doesn’t fit with byleth’s character like at all
@@rhettmitchell But you make Byleth's dialogue choices during supports and that has an effect on your relationships within the game? But I do agree a voiced option would have been nice.
Random but they need to pick a side with Byleth. Either make a character that is boring but is super customizable or a concrete character that is interesting to follow. Byleth doesn't feel like us nor do they feel like an actual character.
This outlines majority of my problems with the story of 3h, Gronder might be one of the worst maps story wise, and crests are such a minor thing in a game all about them. the crazy thing is, it is only a small problem in this game, at least for me, and I am pretty optimistic about the next game being even better.
You say crests are not a big thing, but if you were to list your picks for the 10 best characters in the game (objectively, not I fed X every stat booster, and then X was the best), how many of them have crests? When does the first character appear without a crest? I agree on Gronder field though (still one of my favorite maps gameplay-wise).
@@thestylemage2092 majority of the best would have crests, but that has nothing to do with the crest itself, crests are not useful for the actual crest effect, I would argue that the only good crests in the game are seiros, flames, fraldarius, and indech. Not a single character is made good by their crest, the crest helps more with negating the damage penalty than the actual crest benefit itself, which if these crests are so powerful, why are they mostly so negligible? I did list a few decent crests, but the only ones that are somewhat reliable are flames and fradarius, but if the characters with crests did not have them, they would still be fine, Ferdinand and Sylvian are not made good because of crests, but instead swift strikes. I think it’s stupid how crests are supposed to be this big thing, yet so many characters have them and make next to no use out of them
@@minecraftmekan1 And now think how the crests might impact that? Like I am sure Dimitri's crest (that is meant to give the bearer a lot of strength) is unrelated to his 60% growth lol. It is called good integration, because instead of making the mechanic itself ridiculous like holy blood (leaving units without at massive disadvantages) they just made most crest bearers better than other units.
@@thestylemage2092 fair point, but it still doesn’t feel like the crests are as prominent as they should be at some points. Sure maybe dimitri has that crazy good strength growth, but the game does not deliberately tell us that is because of his crest. If the game told us that they affect how characters grow, then sure it might be a better system, but crests blend together and even though they are supposed to be “special” a lot of the students have them and make little to no use out of them. If the game told us crests made characters stronger, it would redeem it quite a bit in my mind
@@minecraftmekan1 It... literally does though. It does tell you that Dimitri is super strong because of his crest. Practically all of his supports have a line where he mentions his crest giving him super human strength that he can't control to the point of accidents. Holy Blood had specific mechanics for what stat boosts different bloodlines give because of the genealogy system, crests the stat boosts are just baked into the unit and the game expects you to make the logical conclusion that Lysithea's godly magic growth and overwhelmingly good spell list are because of her double crests.
I love three houses but one major gripe for me was mass recruitment. Better to say, the ability to recruit almost every student/faculty member to your team. After awhile I would think the other instructors or even the institute itself would say "Stop, there is no more room in your classes, and other areas of the monastery are lacking in attendance" I think there should have been a recruitment cap; so that whomever you invest into, seems more personal. Rather then just a checklist of who is missing. Would give more impact post timeskip knowing you HAVE to fight people you knew but didn't recruit.
Whilebyou are mostly correct on crests and relics having contradictions, Sword of the Creator could not be used by anyone besides Byleth due to the crest stone (which I assume is like a power source) being inside of Byleth. And thus commentimgnon it not working does not contradict relics in general working without crests.
You probably already know this, but I didn't see it mentioned in the video. One of my favorite moments of good story gameplay integration is the Final Act 1 chapters of Silver Snow and onwards. Edelgard and Hubert have switched side officially, so any blind players will suddenly have a roster missing of 2 of their highly skilled units. The absence of these heavily invested units definitely makes Edelgard's defection have more of a gut punch to players, scrambling to fill in the void left behind.
Another example of dissonance is found in supports. For example, Dorothea and Ferdinand's last support when they make amends and become friends/lovers, she says that she had wanted to believe he was really a good person ever since he made her treats in their prior support. As far as I know, their final support can only occur post timeskip, meaning that in the five years since he baked for her, she couldn't find it in herself to talk to him and make amends for what she thought was him spurning her when they were kids, it had to wait until professor Byleth came back to them to turn the tides of war.
@rhettmitchell Except the Black Eagle class stayed together unlike other houses in Crimson Flowers, in other routes where they're recruited it makes sense but in CF doesn't.
Dimitri can apparently break swords while 5 years old thanks to his crest. Super strength seems really beneficial and something that warrants at least some credit
@@absoul112 Possible counterpoint- Their Crest _effect_ might not make them better, but what if- in universe- their Crests are the reason for their more better growths? For example, Dimitri has the best Strength growth in the game at a whopping 60! For context, of ALL the characters that get a 50/55 rate on Strength, Raphael (with 50) is the ONLY one that doesn't have a Crest... which, like, only makes sense considering who we're talking about. In fact, almost every unit with a 60+ growth rate in any stat has a Crest. With the exceptions being characters that are shown to be super hard workers (Such as Petra and Leonie in Speed, or Dedue and Raph in HP) The biggest exception, and I'm not really sure why, is Manuela who also has a 60 in Speed. Edit: While she might be unplayable, it's also worth noting that Sothis has by FAR some of the best growths in the game. With a 60 in Res. 65 in Magic and Luck, and a massive *70* in Charm. For reference, only Raph with his HP, and Yuri with his Speed reach a growth of 65.
@@absoul112 Yeah and Dimitri's Crest that gives him enormous strength is totally unrelated to his 60% str growth. Same with Lysithea and her 2 crests for her magic lol.
yeah i think the special abilities and skills of the characters are the best feature that ties story and characterizations with the gameplay of said character. my favourite is still Dimitri, the story tells you that he's stupídly strong and breaks weapons easly, and the gameplay gives you the highest strenght growth in the game and a crest wich burns the durability of the weapons when using combat arts. I also think "blood of the eagle and the lion" is the stupidest chapter in the game from a story perspective
Agreed on Dimitri. Players get frustrated when his crest breaks weapons. But that's 100% good gameplay and story integration given his support with Mercedes. And his strength growth also shows this aspect too
Regarding the war phase ‘why not fight them now?’ problem, I also originally thought that when I heard it. However, I kinda just accepted it and came up with the reason that they needed to prepare and gather resources to fight. The only other reason I could think of is raising moral amongst the army by doing activities with them as the professor before the battle at the end of the month
I think the time between battles post time skip is more preparing for battle, sorta like you do in-game, because of surprise. War is as much a planned series of events as it is a chaotic one.
Irl battles are quite uncommon and armies spend a lot of time waiting for the right occasion to wage a battle. For all it's artificiality, 3H is still more plausible than having 25 skirmishes and battles whitin a year.
I do appreciate the passage of time in the story between battles as well, that's realistic- it's just how the battles always happen at the end of the month that raises my eyebrows. Seems convenient that everyone fighting is following the same schedule lol
This sort of thing was exactly why I enjoyed Thracia so much. It's unfairly difficult in its design - whether intentional or not, this does an amazing job of portraying Leif's struggle to liberate Thracia. Your resources are often limited, and purely using your strength is bound to put you in a bad position.
heck you can even argue this for the dawn brigade too, it's honestly why i like their maps for the most part, also i can tell you that the difficulty of thracia is quite intentional (not only because they integrated it into the story but also because they sold strategy guides with the game)
Blood if the eagle and the lion should be a chapter where there is occasional fog, with the objective defeat the empire. During the clear weather, the alliance/kingdom will be allies, and during the fog, act as a third army.
23:04 Unless it's different on maddening, I call BS on this since the first time I played that chapter Catherine suicided onto Lonato and got crit killed by him.
Blue Lions route be like: "Remember that missions where we saved Rhea, because we couldn't shut up about how worried we were and we wanted to find her? .....No? Well, me neither" Seriously, this felt so weird. They talked about this so much and it felt so important, I really thought we would rescue her eventually. But now all happens offscreen and she got this quick mention in the after story.
Azure Moon is really detached from the rest of the game from a story standpoint. The overall plot of Azure Moon has very little to do with the societal issues presented in other routes, the plot itself is basically the Dimitri-Edelgard Drama Hour, and no real solutions to any of the problems present in Fodlan are ever found. In fact, Dimitri himself (in chapter 5) is openly in favor of the continuation of the Crest System. The only lord in the game. Even in Silver Snow, things change. But not Azure Moon.
late reply, but it could have been a reality. seiros has unused lines that imply she was supposed to be playable at some point (my theory is that after you rescue rhea in VW/SS, she assumes her seiros identity and fights alongside you)
Glad I could look over the script draft and double-glad that it became this fine video! May it endure as well as Fodlan seeds planted just before the timeskip.
This is great, it reflects some of my flaws with the game. But hear me out. Chapter 17 from Crimson flower mixes gameplay with story in an almost perfect way that I have only seen in Awakening chapter 10, the one with mustafa. Chapter 17 is one of the only, along with probably chapter 12, that feel like an actual war. My only issue with this chapter is the music choice, which is just The Long Road, but whatever, indomitable will starts playing as soon as you face Dimitri so... I actually sometimes made the battle much harder by sacrificing Constance (used only in that battle) to bolting Dimitri just so indomitable will play sooner. But the way kigdom soldiers are willing to turn themselves into monsters for that cause... Dedue's sacrifice... Sylvain dialogue with ingrid and Felix, Anette's dialogue with Mercie and most of all Dimitri's with Felix... That chapter has a flawless approach implementing story to the gameplay. Only flaw is that the battle doesn't end as soon as dimitri and Seiros fall, but whatever, I guess even that makes sense
I think trying to make cutscenes for everything instead of doing what echoes did with silhouettes was too ambitious. Watching people stand around with a few different movements or facial expressions gets old pretty fast. And any attacks in supports were just awful. Screen turns black, insert a slash or two, everyone just seemed very static
Dude, I’m still upset about the backgrounds in the cutscenes. Like, I’m not frothing at the mouth over it, but come on! They have modeled areas for where most of these supports take place already, there’s basically no reason for them to use textures as bgs; which don’t even look good either, because they have creases in the middle for some reason. I genuinely think the supports that have characters pretend to sit are the worst, they just look way too goofy.
Deeeefinitely my personal biggest example was the Manuela bleeding out for an entire month in jeritza’s room lmao. Everything else I could ignore (minus maybe death knight and Hubert) but gosh the thought of byleth knowing exactly where to look for Manuela and flayn and choosing to go to a seminar or go fishing instead is so funny
Thank you for putting this in a succinct video. I've been arguing a lot of these points myself elsewhere on the internet, so it's glad to see someone else arriving to similar conclusions. Often when I was talking about this people seemed like they thought I was crazy or that failures in gameplay-story integration should just be handwaved, dismissing my arguments entirely.
I could do a whole video myself on this but Gronder field 2.0's story scenario makes more sense than its given credit for, particularly in Azure Moon more so than Golden Deer surprisingly. The problem is that the lore/political rationale for Claude's actions here do exist and make sense but the writers probably assumed that this would go over our heads or we'd forget his circumstances by then and decided to also concoct the quick and lame fog/chaos excuse instead of having a lot of exposition here. Basically wanting to have it both ways just in case, which I think was a mistake over just clarifying what I'm about to say. Anyway, it's made clear in beginning of time skip that the Alliance lords are not in agreement about their alignments, some want to side with the winning side (Empire) and others dont. Claude in response puts up a front to the rest of Fodlan of the Alliance as a collective agreeing to be neutral (in reality this isnt the case at all) to prevent a civil war. He cannot unilaterally, let alone spontaneously on a battlefield, decide that the Alliance will now oppose the Empire exclusively without risking a very likely civil war. Edelgard isnt privy to the full scope of these political circumstances (thus the whole point of Claude's "unified front"), so she still assumes it's a possibility that theyll join forces with Faerghus. In Golden Deer, Claude has direct access to Byleth and their new church leadership clout as leverage to get the Alliance lords' favor when he decides to oppose the Empire. He doesnt have that luxury in Azure Moon and can only help Byleth out implicitly, from under the table so to speak. Regrettably his battle dialogue at face value does make it seem like hes being a dope fighting Byleth when he really doesnt want to, but in truth it's that he CANT play favorites here for political reasons. He is paying a price here for an actual smart thing hes already been doing, preventing civil war and making everyone believe Leicester is in agreement about being neutra in the war, keeping that up is his only stake here. The better question that doesnt have as clear an answer is why his army even goes to Gronder in the first place. My first guess is just to make the cool scenario from the trailer happen but it also isnt unreasonable that he has to go to maintain Leicester sovereignty from two massive armies that have both already encroached on Leicester soil before from wilding out near its border. Dimitri is just crazy I guess. That's his excuse in Golden Deer's version of this scenario and there isnt much more to it. Which is why I say its the weaker variation contrary to popular opinion. Anyway rest of the video is cool, gj
While an interesting idea, I don’t think that’s what they were going for at all. In Verdant Wind, there is no explanation first off, the Alliance has openly sided against the Empire but the fight keeps going even if you kill Edelgard before Dimitri. In Azure Moon, The Alliance and The Kingdom are openly attempting to negotiate with one another, until the Kingdom diplomats randomly turn up dead. What I think they were trying to go for (but didn’t fully follow through with) was that Flèche killed the diplomats, framed the Alliance, and made Dimitri attack Claude. That was really convoluted however so they just went back to the fog plan. All of this to me just makes the whole thing look like trailer bait
@@jeremytewari3346 like I said before, the reason the Alliance explicitly sides against the Empire in VW and not in AM is because they have Byleth and therefore the church as an asset to pressure the Alliance lords into complying. Theres a scene where Nader and Claude explain this to you. And I already conceded that Dimitri just being crazy and therefore an enemy is dumb in this route's version of the chapter. As for the diplomats being killed in AM I legit forgot about this, and upon remembering i do agree the implication is that Fleche killed them and this soured trust with the Alliance. Why Dimitri and co would first assume the Alliance killed them and not the Empire is beyond me, but it's still a better excuse than fog that isnt on the map.
Ludonarrative dissonance is the proper term for the concept of gameplay and story not correlating or contrasting eachother. It's opposite would be ludonarrative harmony. I'd suggest using these terms if you want to make more essay-esque videos on subjects like this.
@@Miguelxcool Ludonarrative dissonance is a term from game design, meaning discordant interplay between gameplay and story. It's quite literally something you learn about in year 1.
I honestly agree with a large part of this video and it sheds a lot more light on the flaws of 3h but the one thing i don't think should ever be used for 3h is the ambitious argument. It may seem like the game was going for a larger scope and scale than what we ended up getting but with koei on board it was clear that wasn't going to be the case, instead it turned into throwing whatever stuck on the wall and hoped it stuck and then when it came off the wall they didn't bother trying to fix it (a large amount of that has to do with koei using the warriors engine for everything and adding in that zoom-in feature) not only did that effect the map design of the game hence why they all look flat and are reused constantly but it had to effect presentation and story as that zoom-in feature cut into so much development time (even with the two delays it's clear that they focused on pretty much this one feature alone)
I think the most problematic thing about using Space Time Rewind after Jeralt is killed is that Byleth only tries once. First situation; Jeralt gets stabbed. Redo! Second situation; Byleth tries to stop Jeralt from getting stabbed, but Evil Guy was apparently waiting around anticipating this. See, now that you know about him, you can redo again, and stab Evil Guy and Knife Girl and you're good to go. Or like, shout, "Hey, Jeralt, that girl's gonna stab you!" Or rewind further back because you have omniscience of the whole situation. It was very cool when they basically set Jeralt up to get killed, and Byleth was like "Divine Pulse" in the cutscene, but I feel like they let us down. Cutscene should have been more Groundhog Day inspired, coming up with all kinds of clever reasons why Jeralt still dies.
I will say, I think the Gronder Field nitpick is perhaps a bit overblown. They do mention thick fog, but also mention waiting until the fog clears to even advance onto the field. So I would say the story handles the issue of it not being a Fog of War map easily enough. I think it's mostly used as a device to explain confusion as to the initial army movements, and why some of the forces end up showing up late and out of position.
I believe the term has been co-opted by "gameplay story integration" because the latter is intuitively understood by the average person. I had to think for a second to remember that "ludo" is the root for "play". Or you can blame TVTropes. That works too.
For Divine Pulse, I'd like to take what you said one step further: Byleth has access to the ability, but Sothis remains the one actually controlling it until they merge. After they merge, Byleth can technically control it himself, but doesn't know how since it requires an emotional trigger to occur. Maybe not perfect, but I think that plus Byleth being emotionally stunted makes for a decent in-universe reason he can't rewind time whenever he wants. - As for crests/relics, I think if they tweaked things a bit, it wouldn't be as jarring. Maybe deal 20-30 damage to a non-crest unit, lowered stats for non-matching crest unit, and boosted stats + combat art for matching crest units.
I don’t believe the heroes' relics have a contradiction except the students not transforming into beasts when dying to the negative side effect. Both times we see someone using them, that shouldn’t, it takes a while for them to transform. The sword of the creator is different because it doesn’t have a stone and it loses its abilities but using it as a regular sword shouldn’t be a problem. Claude says that you can’t use a relic safely without the right crest but there is a high chance that this is more or less guesswork on his part, or maybe he simply believes there to be an unknown non lethal side effect. It seems fair to gameplay that the relic can be used by people with the wrong crest without negative effects, and that people without crests won’t transform the second they touch them. A great video and very interesting. I do enjoy the format and idea. Keep up the good work and great content.
I actually remember when remodelling Crimson Flower, I made a HBD-equivelant, the difference being that it is easier + Edelgard and Byleth are forced to drive off a sneak attack from the Alliance until reinforcements (the other Black Eagles + Jeritza) arrive.
I agree that Gronder mentioning fog and not including it was a mistake, they either should have had it, or not had that line. But I do disagree with the conflict's writing being stupid. Dimitri and Edelgard's conflict is obvious, and Edelgard wanting to take out Claude also makes sense given her motivations. The conflict between Dimitri and Claude seems to be the biggest problem you and other people who don't like the writing of this chapter have with it. Dimitri explicitly orders his forces to attack both the Alliance and the Empire indiscriminantly, which makes sense given how unhinged he is at this point. Is it a logical decision? No, but it's in character, so the Alliance characters fighting back against you in Azure Moon makes sense, Dimitri is in charge and ordered all your units to take out the Alliance. As for Claude's response, he states at the start he does notice that Dimitri seems to have no interest in working together. In Verdant Wind Dimitri is blatantly the aggressor, so people don't seem to have a problem with how things play out, the Alliance fights back. In Azure Moon, narratively the Kingdom is still the agressor, so Claude fights back. Dimitri still orders this, but I think the problem people have is that while the characters are following his orders, the player themselves may not want to or may not be. So they then don't understand why the Alliance is fighting back, thinking the Alliance is attacking them when the opposite is true. I think the chapter has some problems, but I can't think of much else they could have done with Azure Moon to portray it given the nature of player unit control. I strongly disagree on your point with the crests and relics. The crests themselves don't do much, but if anything that just strengthens the game's point that Fodlan's cultural obsession with crests is completely arbitrary and unnecessary. The crests definitely take inspiration from Holy Blood but that doesn't make them the same thing. Genealogy's script makes it clear that Holy Blood is special, and gives any who have it great power. 3 Houses in contrast, has the crests as a device and demonstration for Fodlan's social problems. In Fodlan the people are obsessed with having descendents with crests, keeping crest users in power, etc. The crests themselves not doing much is meant to support how ridiculous Fodlan's culture surrounding them is. The relics meanwhile are very strong weapons, not game-breaking, but their in-game power supports the weight the story gives them. The only thing I think would improve the gameplay-story integration with them would be to raise the damage penalties with relics on crestless characters.
Those with crests may not be as special, however they still have an upper hand compared to those that don't. With that belief alone, those with crests having better privileges and sometimes more responsibilities is somewhat inevitable. It is a social problem, but the plot tends to state that it's the fault of the crests. Where in reality, it's not. Just have to replace the idea of crests with talents that are passed on via blood, and the issue of the entire basis of the reasons for the war is flawed.
@@mcihay246 That's not the point I was making, my point was that the lack of gameplay significance with the crests serves to strengthen the narrative's point that Fodlan's cultural obsession with them is pointless. So their lack of effect isn't a case of ganeplay-story seperation.
@@nachohangover5104 Why is it pointless? Dimitri breaks a sword while 5 years old because of his crest, he litteraly has superhuman strength thanks to his crest, that seem very useful and worth analyzing. Marriane can talk to animals, that seems like it could gave some uses. Catherine being able to call storms with her crest (though this is more ambiguous) seems like it would have some uses. Sylvain says that his family holds of waves of bandits mostly due to the power of the Lance of Ruin, yet it isn't that impresdive gameplay wise. I get it's for the sake of gameplay, but the crests and relics should be way more powerful.accordi g to the story (the sword of the creator is supposedly able to cut a mountainin half)
@@mcihay246 I mean having talents that are passed in by blood is still a problem. The whole point of 3H’s conflict (which I think it doesn’t do a good job of exploring) is that you are given meaning and appreciation solely if you won the genetic lottery. Fodlan society is based upon very real eugenics and in that sense, yeah Crests are pretty awful.
Actually about Claude, the story just didn’t know what to do with him at all, even in AM Gronder he will attack Dimitri even if you attempt to completely avoid the Golden Deer. Also it makes very little sense for Claude to go to Gronder in VW, why endanger your troops in such a risky battle when you can let Edelgard and Dimitri weaken each other and then you go in for the kill?
The time skip also stifles the supports; in Hilda and Raphael's B support, she says she'll help him make a necklace for his sister. In the A support, she says she finally got it done and gives it to him. The problem is, the A support is locked to Part 2 while B can be gotten in Part 1. That, or it's a stab at Hilda being lazy and it took her 5 years to make a necklace. But that has little to do with the gameplay. It's just a story issue.
27:44 To be fair the ones that talk about a specific crest are most of the time about the unique strengths (aka weapon arts) of the relics, especially the Linhardt one. But then again, those weapons arts are not that interesting. Honestly, relics should have been high-rank weapons with crest bearers being able to use them at base, similar to Excalibur for Merric and Aura for Lindt. Also, the penalty for crest bearers should have been bigger. That could have been just more recoil damage or what I would have preferred: the Royal Sword/Falchion solution (either make the weapon weigh a ton or remove its damage). I have a second thing in mind for crests, however, that ended up being very long, so I will make a second comment.
Warning for spoilers!!! As for the impact of the crests, they already have kind of an effect, with characters with crests being noticeably stronger either in terms of growths (and sometimes bases) or Arts/Spells. The best examples here are of course Dimitri's strength, or both Edelgard and Lysithea gaining magic power from their 2 crests. However, most characters who have among the higher growths are crest bearers (especially if you look at growth totals, though that puts stats like skill equal to strength, or res equal to speed). Of course, there are exceptions here and while there is a difference between similar characters, it is by no means gigantic. A different example would be how the only characters who learn the swift strikes weapon art (one of the best lance arts) are characters with crests (2 even having the same). Other Arts like this include Soul Blade, Frozen Lance (with the exception of Hubert, who only learns it as a talent and has the Slither background), Windsweep. The budding talent list is also dominated by crest bearers (only 4 without). This is probably because of DLC characters and the higher amount of crest bearers in the game. However, where this becomes most apparent is if you look at faith spell lists. Almost no character without a crest learns more than 1 unique spell (not Heal/Nosferatu), the only exceptions being Ignatz (Physic and Ward), Leonie (Physic, Restore), and Manuela (Ward, Silence, Warp), while almost all characters with a crest learn at least 2, the exceptions being Hilda (Recover), Rhea (Recover), Seteth (Recover), and Jeritza (Restore). For most of them, there actually is a decent explanation (though it has been a while since I played the game, so I might misremember stuff or confuse fan canon, if so please correct me): -Ignatz is the character I know least about, mostly because I don't like him a lot, but I remember that he had a very strong faith in the goddess, which would be a plausible explanation -Leonie is a good example of how hard training can make up for not having a crest, the same could be applied to her studies of faith, should her teacher expect it of her. -Manuela has a very strong faith (she even tries to restore the church under Edelgard's control), also she happens to be the nurse, giving her a lot of training. She has also been at the monastery for a long time, a very holy ground. -Hilda is the opposite of Leonie, her not learning more makes sense in that regard (she could probably unlock another spell, but that would be too much trouble) -Rhea is weird, I can think of 2 reasons, one within the story and another technical. Within the context of the story is of course her knowledge of the goddess being dead, and her trauma in general. On the other hand, it might just be that since she is never playable, they just gave her the standard (which seems to be Recover if you look at the list). -Seteth again has the trauma of the Red Canyon, as well as the death of his wife. In addition, he has also lost the ability to transform into a dragon. -Jeritza again has 2 plausible reasons. A story-based one about his time among the slithers or the fact that he is the free DLC character and they forgot lol.
@@thestylemage2092 that’s interesting but I’m really really not sure how much of this makes sense. Leonie and Cyril are the only ones to get point blank volley, dedue gets vengeance. Leonie is like the best archer in the game, has pretty damn good overall stats, and one of the best defense growths. Petra and Leonie were 2 of the characters tied for the highest speed growth in the game until Yuri came along
radiant dawn really does gameplay story integration well in my opinion burning the supplies, how part 3 is structured, literally killing the laguz with micaiah in 3-6 right after you just had a great moment with them, even the simple using the battle sequences to show the two characters fighting and their dodges. seeing zelgius activate his skills against ranulf hurts and it's awesome
speaking of crests, i with using a crest weapon that doesn't match yours should at least somewhat nerf it, like byleth's, but you either shouldn't be able to equip one if you are crestless, or take all of your health but one and the next turn hits you. for the crests being somewhat useless, i actually like that. it helps to strengthen edelgard's point imo, but i can also understand why someone who doesn't understand it overvaluing it
I don't think it's a problem that Hubert retreats all the time, because he's really just there as Edelgard's tactician. He's not built up as a threat to the protagonists physically, he's there to command the rest of the army and it makes plenty of sense that he'd leave once the situation gets dire. Maybe his final battle needed to do something else to convey a sense of it being his last stand, but all he really needed to do was say a few lines about how this would be the last one and that'd do it. It's definitely a bigger issue with the Death Knight, though. He's supposed to be a constant physical threat, similar to the Black Knight, but by the time you've defeated him once he no longer feels like a credible threat in the story, and something needed to be done there. I think to make him work they needed to do something to raise the stakes each time. For example, maybe he just uses normal weapons for his first few fights, then he gets the Scythe of Sariel in a cutscene and uses it against you, then for the final battle he's unmasked and portrayed more tragically. Doing this would give your encounters context, rather than making him a literal faceless goon that you repeatedly bully into submission.
The Catherine and lonato thing, while i agree it causes a gameplay story clash, at least makes sense from a gameplay standpoint as it ensures that the player can get the exp from the boss. yes I understand that exp stealing isn't that big an issue (though I'm not sure how much that pitfall applies to three houses) but i imagine most new players would be pretty pissed off that they lost such a big ammount of exp to an NPC.
It's kinda strange that I love Fire Emblem to death and it's really up there as one of my top franchises ever but I have at least one major gripe with each of the FEs that I've played and there aren't any FE games I can hold up the THE Fire Emblem game
Hey everyone, have a wonderful Christmas!
I hope you enjoyed this video essay on Three Houses! It's a topic I've meant to tackle for a long time - I wrote the script for this like months ago and I'm glad it's finally here to show you all. As I said at the start, I love Three Houses to death, I finished another special playthrough of it a couple of days ago, but this is a topic I definitely felt like was worth discussing. Let me know what you think below!
Persona 5 Royal i think handles the Story/Gameplay integration the best - All bonds and story progression improves abilities of Joker and your team mates. It's just great i think
New intro is slick. Love it.
@@genuineangusbeef8697 The only thing it's missing is him singing his name
The biggest things to me as a designer and writer myself ARE the small things. My largest issue is that Catherine cannot learn Thunder despite her crest being linked to rain in Lysithea's supports and having a weapon named Thunderbrand.
Through the second playthrough I actually thought about some of the contradictions you mentioned. But in the very first playthrough, there was just this one thing I actually found silly: "What? I have a penalty of not getting a hole months xp and monastary-things to do if I safe Flayn as fast as possible?" O.o
But with no game being perfect, there are everywhere things which "could have been done better". I think it's still one of the best games I played. :3
Manuela was really in jeritzas room bleeding from a stab wound and unconscious for a whole month
its okay she had heal spell
Oh god that’s true
That's just comedy
☠️☠️☠️
Your profile picture just sells this comment so much 😂.
One thing that dissapointed me in the Golden Deer route was the dissonance between Claude's personality and tricks with the gameplay. Almost all of the chapters were a kill boss chapter, but with how Claude portrayed himself in the story, I would have liked if there were more interesting clear objectives or starting positions.
Agreed. Not to mention that every chapter with a "scheme" is easily solved another way on the other routes. Like in AM, when they don't need to sneak into Fort Merceus by wearing disguises, which is Claude's supposedly sneaky plan to enter the fort. Or in SS, where they also don't have the same sneaky reason
@@l.n.3372 Pretty much. Claude overall is given only 2 unique schemes in his route while everything else is either already done by him in other paths (Chapter 16) or is done by someone else (Chapter 14, Fort Merceus and Enbarr by Seteth, Gilbert and/or Byleth).
@@moltz4866
Yuri in Cindered Shadows was kinda everything I was hoping to get from Claude in the main game.
The problem is that for all we are told, repeatedly and with great emphasis, that Claude is a schemer, we're never actually shown him scheming anything worthwhile
Or something akin to dragonveins where Claude could influence the map in some way to give advantages to your army.
"People die when they are killed." - Mekkah 2020
I heard him say that and thought: "Shirou Emiya, the man with the silliest written lines in the history of anime."
@@ashenleaf2089 just because you are correct doesn't mean you are right
I guess he just used the meme but didnt watch the anime
@@ashenleaf2089 They're only silly when taken out of context.
@@FieryMeltman Even in context some of these lines sound wrong. I understand the meaning and context behind the lines, but they still look silly even if you do understand them.
This game was definitely too ambitious for it's own sake.
4 different routes, every single line is voiced, any character can become almost any class.
They wanted to make it fire emblem ultimate, but didn't have the time nor budget.
Even then, what has come out of that ambition is still a really good game with faults that people are able to forgive
Yeah, even with all the delays it received, Three Houses genuinely needed another 6 or so months in development. I still really appreciate the ambition, however, where a lot of other franchises are shooting for far less.
Also, I think it is important to point out how people from Intelligent Systems said that without Koei Tecmo, they couldn’t have made this game. It makes me wonder, well what is Intelligent Systems going to do for the next Fire Emblem game? Will they always have Koei Tecmo help them now? Who knows...but you made some definite great points. I absolutely love this game. Dimitri’s character arc REALLY touched the shit out of me. He’s become one of my fave characters ever, but I can definitely recognize the faults that Three Houses has.
@@tomasgarcia7499 my biggest issue with the story is slither.... they drag down the story I bought 3H for the 3 houses and the eventual war... not this dumb cult of wizards it bogs down the story and that’s why azure moon objectively is the best cuz it’s a self contained narrative that’s the least flawed and doesn’t worry bout shit like slither
@@tomasgarcia7499 yeah honestly. And a lot of the writers for the game are actually from Koei Tecmo
With the financial success of this game as well as now having experience making a game of this caliber, the next FE game ought to be a genuine masterpiece. Probably coming a few years from now based off the breaks between previous entries.
I think the reason there's no Fog of War on Gronder Field is because of how badly it meshes with powerful enemy units. Imagine if Felix or Hubert just ambushed you from the fog and oneshotted one of your units.
For real I actually do think this was play tested and scrapped when it was decided that it wasnt fun. Which is really saying something about how bad it must have been considering they kept fog of war for the Catherine/Ashe paralogue and Marianne's.
I mean it’d be fine because divine pulse basically removes the difficulty out of fog of war
@@SlitheringStevePhilips Not on a big map with tons of units. Sure, you can divine pulse a bunch of times, but then you end up running out of uses... halfway through depending on how bad it went. I'm obviously assuming somewhat blind play because knowing enemy placement (through chapter guides or replays) removes some of the fog of war difficulty already.
Fog of War would work if the enemies faced the same issue you do. Intelligent Systems pulled this off in AW:DoR back in 2008
It would’ve been fine if the game didn’t go out of its way to complain about how bad the fog was. An easy way to get Dimitri to attack Claude would be for Dimitri to just assume that The alliance had something to do with his family’s death, and then boom. It’s so easy. I remember feeling pretty disappointed that the reason that whole battle took place was just because it happened in the last route. 3H’s post time skip is my least favorite part of it because of all the reused maps. I much prefer the maps that were “custom made” so to speak for the routes , like CF’s map where you kill Dimitri.
I’m actually still pretty mad about characters without crests being able to use relics, and only facing a measly 10hp penalty. I took the game seriously when it told me the relics were dangerous, and left each of them to collect dust in the convoy.
Turning player units into demonic beasts would be waste because players would just reset, but I think they should’ve at least boosted the damage penalty and let it kill units. I should at least feel like I’m risking the lives of my crestless units when I ask them to use the relics.
Yeah they should have locked relics to those with crests IMO. Or else have those without crests unable to use relics entirely. Maybe a FE4 example where the weapons are locked to those with the holy blood, but in 3H even minor crests can wield the relic too unlike in FE4
I never felt the need to give those units relic weapons, why yall did is beyond me. This is a non issue imo
@@luminousxii
It's not a non issue. It's a huge gap between gameplay and story integration. The game constantly tells you how dangerous the relics are. But in reality all they do is 10 recoil damage if you lack a crest. That's pretty pathetic. Especially when in most games, holy weapons and the like are locked to specific units (like in FE4) to prevent non holy blood units from even touching the relics.
@@l.n.3372 if they're dangerous why would you even attempt to give those weapons to those units? Especially when they offer nothing that other weapons do minus the damage?
@@luminousxii
What are you talking about? Game play wise they aren't dangerous. 10 recoil is practically nothing. Especially when there are many builds that use vantage/battalion vantage and recoil damage is a good way to get into vantage range for units without crests.
Divine pulse is confusing because I doesn’t have to mentioned at all. Turn wheel is just a quality of life feature and the fact that the game attempts to integrate it into the story is baffling. It be like explaining how Byleth can see enemy ranges or why everyone can only move on a grid.
The calendar issue is also strange because Sacred Stones (sorta) solved this problem like 8 games ago. Sections like the castle siege from chapters 7 and 8, to the Phantom Ship and harbor in chapters 11 and 12 are continuous and don’t let you go to the over world between chapters because it would destroy the pace of the story. This isn’t saying that FE8 is perfect in this regard, but it’s a more elegant solution than almost everything neatly mapping to the end of each month.
I still remember when they had Robin unnecessarily in universe justify being able to see the combat forecast and enemy inventories 13 games into the series.
You're right but ngl I did think it was fun how in awakening they had that line in the chapter 1 where Robin explained they could see enemy ranges and stats. Idk, I appreciate the effort, it's just that time travel is tough to write into stories that aren't solely focused on it.
Eirika's in trouble! We need to go to the desert and rescue her!... no let's do a few monster battles first to grind Knoll
I actually like the explaination that Mark and Robin, the player characters, can see enemy stats and the map because they're tacticians. For me that is a trait ever, tactician in the universe of FE has. But that's only my imagination that fills the gap. The diffrence is that these abilities don't get in the way of the story. Mark is actually completly optional. Like Mekkah said, the way they introduced the timewheel was perfect and just like you said it doesn't need to be explained within the story.
@@domicraft6341 I just think it's stupid how divine pulse is never mentioned in the story again. They could have totally used that in the story to save Dimitri in Golden Deer. Maybe not make him playable, but let him live for gods Sake! The only lord who has a chance to never die is Claude. And there are so many other characters, like Edelgards retainers and generals in Crimson Flower! And Judith! Make them playable! Divine pulse coud have been such a great tool to use in the story. Like giving the player the option to go on normally or use divine pulse to save certain characters. And i totally agree, that the monastery should have been replaced by a menu more similar to PoR and RD. At least that way, it would have been less dragging to finish the game.
1:51 I don't think Hilda's a good example of this. She purposefully undersells herself so she doesn't raise people's expectations. The dissonance between how she describes herself and how powerful she actually is as a unit was done on purpose. I fully agree with the rest of the video, though.
Unfortunately I think Lorenz is probably the worst example of this. He's a Gloucester and meant to be special and from a strong family with influence. But as a unit his growths are so average jack of all trades. To the point where he's likely the worst mage in the game, since his spell list is average and he has barely any good utility spells. And as a cavalier, he doesn't bring much to the table either beyond frozen Lance, which is good but not worth keeping him much over other potential paladin.
@@l.n.3372 Lorenz is never described as a capable mage or a powerful unit. He simply hails from a noble family. That doesn't mean he's supposed to be strong. The instances Mekkah talks about are when the game says one thing, but shows something contradictory to it in the gameplay. In that regard, I see no problems with Lorenz.
@@FieryMeltman
Lorenz always describes himself as this amazing person with unrivaled potential and talent. I love him a lot for his growth. But yeah it's a huge dissonance: he starts out as the most arrogant self centered person with a hugely inflated sense of self worth. And part of that is because of his crest bearing influential family. So you would expect him to be a great unit. But nearly every other student is better than him in every role. That's totally a huge example of how story build up wasn't reflected in game play.
@@l.n.3372 Nah thinking yourself as great and being actually great are two completely different things.
@@l.n.3372 He describes himself that way because he's a prideful person. It's not a problem with the game or with the writing. It was done that way on purpose.
I also love it when supports continue from pre timeskip into post timeskip and characters go: "about the other day..."
Or when outside the battle they are so sad they have to fight, but in their battle quotes they literally go: "haha killing is fun :3". But that is an overall Fire Emblem problem.
Spoilers:
Path of Radiance supports did it well regarding time-issue/story-related discrepancies; you unlock the A-support between Jill and Mist by completing Serenes Forest (if the prerequisite chapter count has been met, it should be perfectly timed if you put them together every map since their join time) and the dialogue within it mention Reyson and Leanne singing in the conclusion of Serenes Forest chapter parts, and Jill and Haar A-support will mention the death of Jill's Father in the hand of the Greil Mercs. Plenty of instances mention key events in the support dialogues like Tormod and Reyson.
There's actually a lot more things that coincides mechanics in that game, like support dialogue to base convos.
Path of Radiance support system gauge the gap between the support dialogue and story progress, that it's usually the right time in the right place. Not everything is perfect, the first support unlocked in PoR is Ike and Oscar...which talks about food after finishing the chapter where Greil dies... but that's a writing problem, not a game design flaw.
Annette and Mercedies having a really minor fight and basically not talking to each other for five years... Limiting the A-rank supports to post-timeskip was an interesting choice, but some of them clearly were not written with that in mind.
Honestly, Awakening and Fates was better with that latter part than in 3 Houses. Most of the time, the characters from those games express an exhaustion from combat, not so much an adherence to killing itself.
Sure the kill lines might still be a bit too cheery in those games, but I can understand soldiers uttering lines of confidence and pride in their work more than I cam believe Claude being cocky when he decapitates someone when he expresses his distaste for senseless violence over and over again.
@@greygale yeah that always irked me. Annie and mercie’s argument was completely trivial. Something else could’ve worked much better as to why they hadn’t seen each other the whole timeskip
@@greygale The weird thing is that some supports do have proper restrictions. You can't do the Ashe/Catherine B-support without doing their paralogue, Rhea's supports requires meeting deadlines by a specific points, then you have all of Dimitri's supports post-TS only being accessible after he pulls himself together, with most of them addressing exactly the messed up shit he was up to.
Three Houses is ripe with moments that just scream, “we needed more time to refine this,” so it’s absolutely no surprise the internal consistency is out of whack. This is especially the case when they tackled a writing trope that even the most accomplished of writers struggle to write logically: time travel.
If three houses had an extra like, 6 months in the oven, I genuinely think this game would be near perfect.
@@raikkel9516 I think that's too-wishful thinking. Aside from the notion that no game is perfect, yadda yadda yadda, even if Three Houses was delayed for 6 more months, I don't think it would have become the perfect vision of what it was trying to be. Because it already was delayed a couple of times. It already had the "6 more months in the oven" treatment, and despite all that, the finished project was what we got. I think it was too overly ambitious with the scope of features it tried to include, and even regardless of internally inconsistent stuff like what Mekkah talks about here, there's still big flaws with the game that are tied to the core of its identity, like they map variety, stat inflation problems, inequal value of monastary activities, etc etc.
I think we should just be happy with the game we have right now in reality, rather than pursue hypotheticals that will never exist. Because it despite being absolutely riddled with flaws, Three Houses is still an amazing game that pulls of some stuff REALLY well, and the problems with the game ultimately don't take away its highs and successes.
@@LoudWaffle oh absolutely, three houses is def my game of the year for 2019, and used to be my favorite game on switch (xenoblade de is actually perfect), so I enjoy the finished product a lot. And you're right, but some of those problems I don't think are that big of a deal, hence why I said 'near' perfect.
I laughed at your profile picture, then went to my profile, and found out I have 10 subs
Honestly the problem with Divine Pulse is that they had it be in the story itself, as opposed to a game mechanic like the FE1 Switch release. Remove the story connection and it would’ve fixed all issues regarding it.
Also writing time travel is easy, just rip off Steins Gate.
"You must swear to never let anyone else wield this lance."
"Okay."
"Hey, Sylvain, can I use Swift Strikes with that thing?"
"Sure, Seteth, go right ahead."
They should've given you a better reason to use the relic weapons with the corresponding crests. No one gives two shits about Ruined Sky. If they made other crests take the 10 damage and the non-crest users absolutely incompatible, that would make sense. It would be cool (but broken) if they made it so the weapons have infinite uses when used by the proper crest holder. That integration with the story would almost make sense since these weapons have been passed down for generations by the corresponding crest holder. It's not like some random Steel Lance has lasted through Fodlan's history.
One idea could maybe be halving the Mt of the relic when used by the inappropriate crest? For example, Lance of Ruin swift strikes is absolutely broken with that 22 mt, but at 11 mt, it's comparable to a Steel Lance+. It's still usable and definitely an option for if you're in a bind, but you'd get more bang for your buck by having it glued to the character with the correct crest.
To be fair Seteh is maybe the worst example here, but your point is correct.
The only balancing issue here in infinite use, altho its crest is never stated, is Aymr. If Edelgard is the compatible user, giving it infinite uses means infinite Raging Storm. Like Awakening Galeforce but somehow even more broken. Granted, its' artwork shows it to have the crest of the Beast, but that just means you could recruit Marianne and have her use it instead for infinite Raging Storm.
Eh I rather them not be breakable. Maybe on hard setting they can but they are some mystic powerful weapons.
And we get 20 uses that become a HUGe pain to repair.
I mean Chrom having his sword unbreakable in Awakening made him one of my favorite characters to use.
@@MugenCannon97 wait Aymr isn’t compatible with the crest of the beast is it? I’ve never heard that
3 houses sets up a lot of interesting story elements that genuinely hooked me, but then almost nothing paid off. Fun game doe
3H would be improved with Lowen in it
@@Dubz0r13 >:(
Summed it up perfectly. Went into Blue Lions for my first route, only for pretty much everything during the first half to be glossed over, it left me feeling so empty, we didn’t even get to see Rhea again, pretty much no answers for any of the bigger questions. Eventually I went and did some of the other routes but each also have their own similar problems.
The pre-timeskip section clashes super hard with the post-timeskip story. The academy arc sets up so many interesting plot points that are either outright ignored (Azure Moon) or poorly glossed over (VW), it feels like it's trying to set up every route while never properly setting up any of them
AM was my first route and I was extremely disappointed with its story because it only answered one of MANY questions the pre-timeskip section left me with, only one of which was even answered, that being Dimitri's backstory
One of my biggest problems with the story elements of 3H is how they handled Sothis. Had something cool going on pre-timeskip but when post-timeskip hits she's just thrown away.
I S-supported Sothis and she just comes back like "sup loser how's it going". After the support I questioned the purpose of getting rid of her post-timeskip.
3H may be my favorite game, but no these are problems that definitely exist. *Especially the Flayn month*, who thought structuring it that way was a good idea lol
Or the infamous Leonie B-support.
@@joshuagabrielcatindig7607 she’s mourning
Stolen comment but yeah. Manuela is bleeding from a stab wound and is unconscious for an entire month.
@@mistake1197 The characters say that she has gone missing since the first days, so, yeah, she was unconscius for a whole month...
On my birthday month no less, rude😔
I think the Death Knight would have been so much cooler if he DID die- and return anyway.
He is called the Death Knight, he's meant to be this invincible revenant that hunts byleth.
Imagine if the dialogue referenced him actually dying, and us confirming his corpse, only for him to return later. At first we just assume it's someone different, after all Jeritza is also gone, but then we kill him again and under the mask is yet again Jeritza, and then again it's Jeritza.
Mercedes would have had an interesting thing of "but... He died like a decade ago??"
And as for why they kill Kronya for failing but not leaving the death Knight dead, tie it too the crests.
And then they could have also kept giving him back for CF too, and it would be super interesting to control an un-killable unit, and they could have had an interesting "if Mercedes is with you he can be recruited when you face the slithers and he rejoins them" thing going on.
This is a really interesting idea that I haven't seen before. It even has some existing basis via
(spoilers)
the Agarthan tech used to revive Nemesis and the 10 elites. What if the Death Knight was the first of potentially a plethora of revivable enemies? What if the Slithers brought back freaking Edelgard and Dimitri to fight you in the final battle? A series of encounters with such a Death Knight would put those in context, though some objectives might have to be adjusted to make sure his death is guaranteed once or twice.
Y'know, I was thinking of this exact idea for the next "nemesis" villain in FE. A villain who always revives after death could be a really neat idea, and there's a lot of ways they could go with that. Are they going to be weak, but grow more powerful (& vile) until the heroes find a way to cut their immortality? Will they be an apathetic veteran who's completely bored, but eventually finds a place in life after many battles with the protag? There's many ways they could go with it, and IS definitely showed with 3H that they're not afraid to step out of the norm for FE.
I've been defeated, and I CAN fall here!
That Death Knight reminds me of the Lord of the Nazgul from LOTR, I like it.
Pretty big oversight I noticed recently is that in Part 1, right before the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, they make a big deal of how Gareg Mach doesn't connect directly to the Empire, and how they thusly have to cross the Myrddin from the Alliance side to get to Gronder Field.
Cue the first mission in Crimson Flower, in which the line of travel is shown going directly through the mountain range between Gareg Mach and the Empire to attack Myrddin from the Empire side.
Welp
To be fair then the map would be similar to how it is in the other 3 routes but yeah
So I wasn't overreacting when I didn't want my Crest-less students to wield Relics?
"Crests lead to discrimination and division
HOWEVER,
Anybody can use the relics with little to no issue, oh and take these items that gives anybody a crest they want! Oh don't worry about the backstories that had your students suffer and their family die to have multiple crests."
@@haveagoodday7021 those items are ng+ because it’s implied to be the fruits of hannemen’s future research into creating tools which replicate crest abilities to even the playing field between those with and without crests. They don’t cause sickness since they are purely external, unlike the relatively more crude slither experiments.
@@yellowtheyellow Never got that impression... They're NG+ because they're non-canon and just exist for the sake of giving players ways to do fun gameplay-only things.
@@LoudWaffle Either way I don’t think ng+ only content should count against a game’s story/gameplay cohesion
@@yellowtheyellow Yeah that's true, I agree with you on that point.
"Your crests really matter" - Three Houses
17:12 Echoes definitely makes better use of the Turnwheel mechanic.
Based on how it is presented, it's not about rewinding time. It's preventing a possible future seen in a vision (like Alm seeing the gravestones and Celica seeing Alm's death by Rudolph).
Also, I love the fact that they cannot use the Turnwheel to undo their own deaths. Makes sense you can get a glimpse of the future when one of your allies fights, hence you can warn them about danger. But if you yourself are rushing unto battle and meet an unfortunate fate... well, there's no one to warn you about your own unfortunate demise.
Then we have Divine Pulse... implemented... into the story... horribly.
Yeah I always felt like Byleth death should have been immediate game over that you cannot use divine pulse to change. Like with Echoes. Because as you said, if Byleth died then he cannot rewind time.
But on the other hand, it's a huge quality of life improvement. You have to weigh QoL vs keeping gameplay that makes sense with the story. And for many people, QoL would win out so they don't have to replay chapters unnecessarily on maddening mode, as an example
@@l.n.3372 agreed.
Hence, if you add such a QoL improvement, either flesh it out well in the story, or make it 100% artificial so it doesn't clash with the lore (like weapon triangle, which even NPCs acknowledge, but it doesn't just straight up clash with story-gameplay interaction).
@@lorddragonskin3603
Yeah I agree. But with divine pulse, I think the main issue is simply fictional time travel issues, which aren't exclusive to this game. Like, people always say that Byleth should have prevented more deaths etc with divine pulse in mind. But having time travel is such a huge fictional writing issue that I wish it was NOT time travel but simply explained differently. Just call it an intuition or something idk.
@@l.n.3372 Considering its Sothis’s power, not Byleth, it can kinda be justified that it can activate after their death.
Okay, hear me out:
I think time skip would improve massively if they just didn't return to the monestary. If post-time-skip just used a base system like Radiant Dawn, this game would asscend
Or havediferent bases during the story. Sometimes you return to monastery, sometimes you have more limited base and some no base at all.
You don't like that they just return to the ruined monastery, do a cutscene and then it's good as new?
I thought they were going to that but nope 😐
This game does it once, in Black Eagles. Then again, once
@@benjiiiiiiiii well it was never completely destroyed or anything
“Is it the Dawn Brigade?”
“No it’s just the Death Knight.”
On my first playthrough, I never swapped Holy Relics around, strictly BECAUSE the story made such a point out of it.
Then my surprise when later I heard about how they really work...I was actually kinda disappointed.
It was like they forgot to code that for gameplay and tried to convince players by writing it into the story
Heck I never even knew other people could use the relics until this video as i tought they were handled the same way as any other character exclusive weapon in the series because of the story...
The first time I played the game, with blue lions, I was very confused when Claude gave me Failnaught... Why would he give me something that I can't use? Then I realized characters could equip it and use it...
That’s what I thought too 💀💀💀
I'ma be honest with you, when I saw that the crests were so weak in reality, part of me was thinking that it was actually *integration* rather than segregation of story and gameplay, and that the gameplay was showing us that the crests were weak and the church was lying about how important they were. This could even tie with Edelgard somehow - the crests that define people's lives are actually worthless junk, isn't this outrageous?
But nah lol they are that important they just forgot to tell the gameplay team.
You're not the only one to bring this up and I've thought about it, but the contradictions about how relics interact with crests in the script itself I think show that it just wasn't very well thought out.
This would be a valid thing, if not for 2 things:
A) The crest thing is just a guise for Edelgard to conquer the nation.
B) Name the units you think are the best in the game. Then look how many of them have crests. Just because it is not spelled out like holy blood, does not mean they don't have an impact.
@@thestylemage2092 The point is that most, if not all, top tier characters aren't top tier becuase they have a crest. Other than Raging Storm and Atrocity, crest-exclusive combat arts don't compare to the more versatile arts such as Hunter's Volley, Swift Strikes or Vengeance. The only crest that can be considered good in a gameplay sense is Fraldarius, just because it's the only one with a decent proc rate, coupled with Felix's good speed.
@@thestylemage2092 You are only right on one of these things. There are explicit examples in every route of the game for why the Crest System is bad, why it needs to be gotten rid of, and why the Church won't tolerate its dismantling unless forced. That the crest system is never addressed or changed is one of the biggest flaws of Azure Moon.
In Verdant Wind, Rhea flat out tells you it was a lie put in place to control the families of the Ten Elites. In Silver Snow, Flayn will tell you she doesn't understand why people would rise against the church, despite the fact that she and Seteth literally killed people who worshipped them in their paralogue. Linhardt will also tell you that war was inevitable anyway. In Azure Moon, every blue lion has a backstory related to how the crest system fucked them or their families.
The Crest thing is not "Just a guise" for Edelgard to invade people. It's an integral part of the story of each route and character in the game. In White Clouds, Rhea explicitly tells you to keep quiet about Miklan turning into a monster so to "Not cause the people to lose faith in the nobility". If you have Sylvain in your House, you can refuse to give her the Lance back. If you do, she flips her shit the same way she does when you side with Edelgard in a Black Eagles playthrough.
Diplomacy was never an option in this game. Never. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot and didn't pay attention to any of the Church affiliated routes.
Ehh. the problem is that in the story crests actually do seem to give you insane super powers. Look at dimitri, He's many times stronger than raphael and cant handle fragile objects due to his overwhelming strength given to him by his crest.
I love FE3H. It's probably my favorite Fire Emblem game. At the same time, I completely agree with the video.
Loving a game is not negate their flaws.
Breath of the wild and Team Fortress 2 are 2 of my favorite games, and they have all sorts of flaws.
Breath of the Wild has problems with story-gameplay integration (How the fuck did the best archer of all time get defeated by one of the easiest bosses in the game) and with the gameplay in general (The game is buggy even after years worth of updates {granted the bugs/exploits actually raise the skill ceiling instead of hindering the player, but still} and many mechanics such as the rain climbing are super annoying)
Team Fortress 2 is a good multiplayer game from back when games were designed to be fun and fair, and many of the weapon sidegrades are super fun to use (The frontier justice rewards you with guaranteed crits for getting kills with your sentry, but hinders you when you don't have crits, and the brass beast absolutely shreds everything but makes you extremely vulnerable to snipers and spies) but the ones that aren't balanced aren't fun to use/play against (The dead ringer effectively negates anything that the enemy team does to kill you and the stock fire axe is underwhelming compared to the utility of the powerjack or the damage of the third degree)
Divine pulse in game: Multiple uses from the start, and during a side-mission cutscene Sothis confirms that one can unlock further uses of the ability. Also can rewind a battle 99 turns back all the way to the very beginning, which is at least a few minutes of time rewound (unless fights happen in Dragonball time lol)
Divine pulse in story: "Oh no my father's dead, I only have *one shot* to rewind 10 seconds at best! I can't possibly go back in time to warn Jeralt or strike down Monica because Sothis wagged her finger and said I can't fight fate."
This. Lmao. I was like "bitch, byleth, you got like 10 divine pulses for a battle lmao, try different strategies or something else".
Idk, I honestly thought Jeralts death was very good. Byleth rewound time, tried to stop Monika, but had their weapon blocked by a threat they hadn't met or seen before who effortlessly deflected the sword of the creator.
Did you guys really want a montage of Byleth failing 10 times?
i will admit i was a bit annoyed at that "fate" part, especially since one FE game had its central theme being about defying fate. what happened to that?
@@DDCDV010 yes I would love to see byleth try and fail to save his father again and again until he can’t anymore
@@marsrover6194 It would have certainly shown desperation, but also it would kinda add another plot hole with the fact that clearly Byleth is rewinding time, and yet the villains just aren't killing them.
It would've been cool if Hubert's def/res decreased every subsequent time you see him as an enemy in non CF routes to signify hes getting physically weaker from constantly being injured in battle, instead of seemingly making a full recovery each time he comes back in a month or 2.
DK is indefensible though, he just feels like a joke past the second encounter for someone so hyped up by the story.
It's such a blessing for the fanbase to have a game like this. Almost everyone who's played it can point out some major flaws in either its concept or execution, but at the end of the day we seem to collectively enjoy that it's a great game.
Unless you settled on the Tellius games and think every other FE is just plain bad. Like Jelloapocalypse and his friends. Such bad takes, smh.
@@xacmashe3852 when did he say that?
@@happydude449 During his FE:PoR streams on Twitch.
It's truly incredible just how good this game is, considering how underbaked it is. I adore this game, but it's very flawed, and I find it incredible how enjoyable the game still is despite those flaws.
@@kirin1230 you are demented, it's a mediocre game
I’ve talked about crests vs holy blood before, and I argued that the games execute the two very, very differently. Genealogy hardly talks about Holy Blood in society and really only discusses it as it pertains to battle prowess, and it does not disappoint. Most of the Holy Weapons are busted and some units are almost solely good because of the fact that they have the Holy Weapon/get it early. Holy Weapons also grant significant boosts to certain stats totalling +30. Lastly, having Holy Blood affects growth rates dramatically in certain stats. All in all, Holy Blood truly does greatly impact combat. The same is simply not true for Crests. While the Heroes Relics are certainly powerful, the difference between them and regular weapons in 3H pales in comparison to Holy Weapons and regular weapons in Genealogy. Some Relics are certainly great weapons like the Thunderbrand and others do have potent combat arts like Aymr and Areadhbar. The effects of actually having a crest are so heralded that simply being born with one is seen as a light to shine on a fallen noble house. The amount that having/not having crests seem to affect life for characters like Sylvain, Ingrid, Edelgard, Caspar belies the little power they, in reality, bestow. And lastly, the skills granted by crests are so inconsequential as Mekkah mentioned. Not only are the actual effects typically not very potent, they activate so rarely that they aren’t reliable in any way.
Tldr: Crests/Relics are greatly influence society in 3H, but they aren’t very potent in combat or on the indivdual; whereas, Holy Blood/Weapons are actually very powerful and greatly influence the individual’s stats though the sociatel effects aren’t discussed in FE4
Great explanation for the difference! I really like how you presented it!
Yeah it's totally true that both did really well by a certain aspect but kinda ignored the other. 3H wrote it's story based on the flaws of the crest system, but the weapons themselves overall are not story breaking. FE4 had quite literal game breaking holy weapons but the impact of holy blood is almost never touched upon beyond with Loptyr blood. 3H definitely could have made their relics more impressive to connect with the story (like how Sylvain family wields the Lance of Ruin to protect the northern border). And Genealogy could have explained a bit more in terms of how having holy blood or lacking it impacts the average characters
This ignores that most of the characters we have in the game, so the characters that make it to the Officers Academy are actually crest bearers, and while there is certainly a bias in society in favor of them, most of the characters that make it there are still among the strongest of their region. Also, characters with crests are most of the time better than the ones without. They often have better growths than comparable units or access to rare spells (especially faith) and arts. The only characters who learn Excalibur are people with crests, same for Seraphim, Aura, Rescue, Abraxas, Fortify. The only people to learn magic weapon arts (other than hexblade) are people with crests and the people with slither background.
Just cause it is not spelled out for you and the relics are not stupidly designed like in FE4 does not mean, there is not a clear advantage to the crests.
@@thestylemage2092
Dude. What's with the passive aggressive. OP was explaining how 3H shows exactly how having a crest is tied to story. Which is exactly what you're saying: they're given unfair advantages based on society norms and traditional ways. That's part of the flaws with the existing system, which OP said wasn't explained in FE4 by contrast.
The Sword of the Creator is supposed to be able to cut a mountain in hald, where's my combat art to do that?
@@l.n.3372 My point was that they don't just have a societal advantage for nothing. Crest people are usually more talented or stronger than people without.
So on the subject of ch6, another possible solution - though this would arguably destroy pacing - would be to let you play out the rest of the month even if you save Flayn on the first week.
Alternatively, if you dawdle on the month that Flayn gets kidnapped, there should be serious story and gameplay consequences for that, such as not being able to recruit Flayn out of spite or because of immense blood loss making her unfit for battle (or even death, though that may be too much for Seteth and the players to handle) and/or having a future boss be empowered by Flayn's extra blood (Crest of Cethaleen)
@@bronzeblade776 Those are interesting ideas, but they're not meaningful disadvantages. Flayn's crest in gameplay is pretty bad and Flayn's not a very good unit.
@@bronzeblade776 it could be a “Flayn almost dies but again” scenario where she just falls asleep and Seteth has to leave the monastery to find a place for her to rest for a couple decades or something. Also, for the weapon exp you could’ve gained from tutoring, they could just have all of your units gain the normal amount of weekly wexp multiplied by four. For all the gardening you’d miss, they could just give you some good stat boosters instead. Maybe they could have Flayn’s bases and growths be dependent on when you saved her.
@@MetalGearRaxis
She's not the best but she's an easy dancer for free if your units are lacking charm for whatever reason.
Or if you save her early you get a bonus chapter at the end of the month
Gameplay vs Story in a Nutshell:
- *healing magic isn’t canon*
My dimitri literally takes no damage from big fireball spell but need to be protected from a small stab from fleche lmao
Edit: typo
@@klauserji At least Rodrigue dying in 1 hit fits the Felix Paralogue
Didn't Manuela explain how healing magic works in game? This is like the one game that actually bothered to explain why people can't just be healed after story wounds
@@KantaCrowe i do remember she explains the difference between magical healing and scientific healing, but i cannot remember the details
@@Underworlder5 Healing magic just speeds up your recovery pretty much. Wounds close faster and things like that.
I think a “Gameplay vs Story” series could sprout from this and do super well. I know you’d love to tell us about Thracia 🙂 Maybe you could look at other games too...? I personally think Path of Radiance does a super good job with it too.
Agiruda fe 4 aswell, especially chapter 5, where you actually get to see the stories unfold rather then be told by it by some old as s guy
FE6 is good with this too, I like seeing the story unfold as you’re playing the map.
Romitalia I mean I can’t remember any major instances where the story is integrated to the gameplay in fe6
@@arman_llc624 Zephiel appears a few times in the middle of chapters, like when he defeats Cecilia. Bosses change for story reasons but also literally change in the gameplay in the middle of the chapter. I’ve always thought that was cool.
Romitalia I mean I allways viewed as a cutscene but I guess it can be viewed differently. Boss’s changing, I wouldn’t call that a story integration, it happens in many other games as well and isn’t a big change to the gameplay. I guess The term story integration hasn’t been well defined so it depends. I was thinking more in the lines of the manster arc of fe 5. Where you’re literally starved of recources, can’t use your previous units, can’t acess the convoy, and the maps are built in a way that resembles a prison or running away from a castle
I actually HAVE gotten Catherine to attack Lonato once, but I have no idea how I did it. (She can't kill him, for the record, only bring him to 1 hp.)
I'm going to guess you used repositional skills, haha. That's one thing I have not tried.
@@Mekkkah No, I didn't do anything special, she just ran up and actually fought him X'D
@@MetalGearRaxis she can attack him if you use stride it has happened to me
The team definitely threw a lot of ideas into the game to varying degrees of success. I imagine it spread them thin, but the overall package was pretty good. I hope the next game will be more refined on these ideas to integrate them more into the whole experience.
The point you made for Catherine’s AI not fighting Lonato applies to Dedue too but in an oddly different way. In the chapters in the Church and Golden Deer routes where you fight Edelgard in Enbarr, Dedue comes onto the map to kill Edelgard for Dimitri’s vengeance. Unlike Catherine, he will fight Edelgard, but if a strike will kill her, it will instead reduce her HP to 1. Pretty lame.
Yeah, that's the case for all NPC vs boss fights. Jeralt can't kill Kostas either, for instance.
I feel like some of the characters were kinda lying or not telling everything and the developers were needing to cut stuff. I agree with a lot of the points of the video, even so I could add more details.
I think the reason why there's a timeskip is because they kinda compared the monastery to the academy mentioned in FE4, and the three lords to sigurd, quan, and eldigan very early after reveal.
Thing is, the timeskip works in FE4 because of the story, not as much in 3H
I think the time skip does work in 3H but for a different reason. It works for Dimitri, for example, because there's a huge change in his character over 5 years. Less so with Claude, where he barely seems that different despite 5 years passing. So the time skip has a greater effect on AM but not VW, for example. Edelgard meanwhile can benefit from the time skip because she's been leading her war effort, which undoubtedly changes a person: she's not the same student you once knew either. But again, it's a case by case basis, since it doesn't really matter as much for VW in particular whether 5 years passed or not.
This is why i belive azure moon is the cannon rout it has its problems but things tend to make the most since
@@nathankeel6667
I do as well tbh. Only thing it needed was an extra chapter with Shamballa. Plus a scene where Rhea explains to Byleth and Dimitri about the Fodlan history. And then it's pretty much gold.
And then when the fe 4 remake comes along people will think it's based on Three Houses.
@@l.n.3372 To be fair with Edelgards timeskip there is the whole "oh no, my professor is missing, better make the nationwide war I started pause until I find him/her".
Retreating bosses have never been a problem for me personally...
I see it more like when you manage to "miss" a gigantic robot in XCOM. You don't actually miss, but your character is starring down the barrel of a killer robot, and instead of hitting it's weak spots, they lose their nerve and just hit the tough parts of the armor, doing zero damage to it, which in practical terms is no different from missing entirely. In Fire Emblem, and many other JRPGs for that matter, i interpret it as a character knowing exactly how strong they are, and how strong their opponents are, so you don't actually "kill" them during encounters, but manage to push them to a point where they need to retreat.
Even Nathan Drakes health is explained in a similar way, where enemies don't actually hit him and drain his health, but it's an indication of his "luck", and when that runs out, he gets a bullet to the chest and dies... Only the final bullet or grenade actually does damage.
When a returning Fire Emblem boss finally dies, it's usually when they have no desire or the ability to retreat anymore, which is how i interpret Huberst many escapes, as he initially still has a war and Edelgard to consider, but when the walls are closing in and you finally kill him, it's because he had no desire to run, as you were pretty much on the Empires doorstep, and he could do nothing but make a last stand, buying Edelgard time to prepare. He does make it clear that he would gladly lay down his life for her when needed...
Radiant Dawn also has this. Soldiers and Armor Knights block missed attacks with their shields.
My understanding on the crests is
if you have the right quest: You're good.
if you have any crest: Weapon does not work, but you do not get a punishment. If you are good enough at using the weapon, you can fight.
If you do not have a crest: you are screwed.
I feel as if the issue here would be solved if the weapons were just weaponlocked to crest-weaponusers and the bonusses for having the correct crest were higher compared to their base-stats. To have the 10 HP penalty instead of the weaponlock really makes little sense.
Imo they should have been A/S rank weapons, but people with the right crest get to use them regardless. Crest based holy weapons should have been the same. I personally would prefer something similar to the way Falchion/Royal Sword work in their stories, so crest weapons become unusable if you don't have the crests (through weight or damage). This would of course change the Miklan fight, but the main enemy there is the beastform anyway.
I wouldn't like that. Those relics are so good you're essentially banishing anyone without a crest to the bench. Whilst that works for story it's terrible for gameplay.
I'd like make them A/S rank and removing the crest requirements altogether. I don't see the need for such OP weapons so early in the game and so freely available. Oh, and I'd make them unrepairable - these are meant to legendary weapons and a generic blacksmith can just fix them up? At least make it so they can only be repaired a few times.
FE6 handled their super weapons well - you got them relatively early but spaced out and with limited uses. You could use them to beat tough enemies if you were struggling but you only have 20 uses so you'd best be wise
I get why they didn't attempt to have Byleth use divine pulse to save Rodrigue only to fail again since they had already established that divine pulse doesn't always work. It would be pretty boring that whenevever there's an event that could be avoided with time travel powers (but has to happen for the story to advance) to see Byleth try and fail again. But I agree that there should be a better solution that to just ignore it from that point.
See, this is a case where Sothis being gone post timeskip is a problem. She could intervene and say something about turning the hands of time being of no use in this situation, or ask Byleth why they didn't turn back time and understand that it was because of what happened with Jeralt. It not being addressed is what feels so jarring.
Cyan is based. His editing is on point
6:55 Burn the calendar system!!! I don't ever want to see that again.
Burn the entire monastery imo
I heard there was people who thought that it was stolen from Persona
5
@@Fermin-hw5pd well the developers have said they love Persona
@@rhettmitchell but that doesn´t means they stole it xd
The calender System could've been fixed by making it so that a chapter has multiple story relevant missions (more the further you progress in the game). Instead of the end of a month or week, make one mission at the beginning of a month or in the Middle of Week two and then you can use the rest of the month as free time. Because, just like in the story, nothing relevant happens here. So you're free to do whatever you want. And sometimes (in part 2 specifically) you shouldn't even be able to do things in the monastery. Instead of marching your way to Enbarr while also fishing points at the same time - you should be able to train with your units or be able to run around a camp where your party rests over the weekend. To give the player a bit more interest to plan they could build it up like this:
-First two weeks: Preparations for the march to whatever region. Monastery is explorable, training missions, etc. and sidequests are fully available.
-Third week: Your units are on the way to the mission that's going to happen. Monastery isn't available but you can still do the training with your units at the end of the week. You're also able to explore a camp where you're still able to do certain things like eating with your students or fishing (if the camp is convienently near a sea). Maybe introduce completly new activities and options for students to train like hunting (to get food and in the end a special eating event with the students who/you're went hunting with. Or bathing at a near sea or beach. Exploring the area to find more things to do in that camp. Maybe hiking. All giving certain points for specific areas (Hunting could give extra points in Archery and Authority while hiking greatly increases your Armory). Certain sidequests could still be available depending on the region you're in. Things like the church, the garden or the tea tine would be unavailable though. At a certain day, a certain story event could occur, like an enemy ambush or a monster attack.
-Fourth week: Last preparations for the mission with very limited options in the camp and then the option to start the mission.
This would give you the feel to be on a journey with your students. The feel of doing a mission. I would also think about making every day somewhat playable with certain things that can only be done at certain times. Maybe golden deers have more free time on thursdays while Linhardt is always sleeping somewhere else depending on the day. Maybe at certain days, Anna is in town and sells special items. Things like eating with students could only be done on the weekend and growing plants takes four weeks instead of just "waiting for the next month/timeskip).
The way Three Houses is now is like a "Persona-Wannabe" being very restricted.
I really really love these ideas
One thing that makes Genealogy my favorite game in the series is how important the time skip actually is to the story and the gameplay. It not only introduces a new setting, but an entirely new cast of characters. Seliph's journey wouldn't feel as important if it took place only a year after Arvis took power. Seeing how much the continent changed in 15 years made it seem all the more dire of a situation.
Too bad genealogy has aged like cheese and is a tedious mess
Idea for Gronder: have an NPC wearing your colors attack the third army, provoking them into attacking you.
yeah this is the kind of fuckery I could totally buy the empire pulling specifically to make it a three way battle
false flag. far more believable than "uhh... is that guy in yellow an imperial soldier?"
It would be pretty nice if, during the three-way battle at Grondor, the game actually had the other two forces begin the game engaged with each other, and removed any identifying UI elements showing you which side is which. If you're Dimitri, for instance, the other two sides will both be marked as "unknown soldier" and will all be colored red, instead of what we have now.
This should have applied to the students, too. If you fight Raphael or whatever, have them take the appearance of generic enemy units. Then, only when you kill them do they recognize who you are and say their final speeches. That will represent this "chaotic warfare" much better, and even make the deaths more impactful.
Spoilers;
Radiant Dawn is my favorite Fire Emblem game, but it is definitely not absolved of this faults either, but they are relatively innocuous enough to not get irritating and it do makes sense to a degree.
In the Rivals Collide chapter where the Dawn Brigade Army and the Greil Mercs decoy, Ike says he won't hold back and that Sothe be prepared to not see Micaiah ever again between their talk conversation once Ike is in proximity of Sothe, however, it is fair to say that Ike has no blood lust or any strong grievances against them that him not holding back just means taking them out of the equation, even further proof when Tibarn holds Sothe on top of the valley and dropped, he was then later caught by Janaff. Not all skirmishes ends in bloodshed, actually, that's true for important figures in an army, they are better used as leverage (You are no use to me dead talk). Illyana has a conversation with Micaiah and Jill that they shouldn't talk during a battle since it's weird, recruiting Jill and Zihark will yield similar talks that they can't stand the current injustice that they are doing.
Then defeating Black Knight in Rivals Collide is him retreating, but then again, I think Ike and co kind of realizes that their fight needs to be between them, a proper duel (even though you can physic Ike during their duel *cough* and I've never tried rescuing him, hopefully I don't get softlocked).
Another instance of this is during Distortions and The Price, the desert map and the DB boulder map. In Distortions, defeating Lekain will just make him sniff some of that warp powder and fuck off, and in The Price, Kieran and Sigrun are amongst Sanaki's guards during that and Jill has a talk convo with Kieran. Again, it just might as well be conflated into the same thing as mentioned before, and it's just a one time thing than recurring so much that it wears itself out.
During The Heart of Crimea, this one in particular is quite a nice change to an "important" character that's "in the map", Valtome will be seen outside the grid map, but he is not targetable and he will leave after certain number of enemies are defeated.
Footnote; I love it when there's a lot of going on in a chapter that progress the story in lightning pace without being too much. From Pain, Awakening is a great example of events happening mid-chapter since the story is reaching the climax of the war's leaking malevolence since every single army are fighting in one map; Greil Mercs, Tibarn's Hawk Army, Skrimir's Beast Army, and the Senate/Daein army causing the Medallion to go haywire, making the climactic eschaton to happen within the gameplay, not only in a cutscene.
RD is my personal favorite as well, and there are some cute integrations that you didn't mention.
In 3-P, Ranulf is talking about the GMs being a guerilla force, and the opportunity to make use of the ballista does a good job of showing that in-game. A likely unintentional story-gameplay integration is that the laguz AI in that chapter make some dumb decisions. That could be a strong presentation of how laguz are strong in battle but bad at strategy.
Generally, the maps of Part 3 represent the goal they discussed in the story. 3-1 and 3-3 come to mind.
2-3 reinforces leaving enemies alive through BEXP after explicitly stating that Elincia didn't want the battle to be a bloodbath. Realistically, BEXP in general does a great job of reinforcing the goal that the characters mention in the story. This could be a chicken or egg moment where the story mention is meant to be a gameplay hint, but it's hard to say for sure.
@@ametaslave7314 2-3 would be similar to the chapter in Path of Radiance's Solo, and there's a lot more that I could have said like Mist not attacking Jill and vice versa, and again, as you mentioned that Ike and company is a Guerilla force, so it's nice that the objective in Rivers Crossing is burning the crates, you can just not kill anyone with that with an unequipped and full healing consumables inventory Haar and just fly around or someone with pass.
There's also the time in Rivals Collide that Ranulf would mention the Daien forces being unprepared, not having fire tomes against the beast army. You would think Micaiah would make them have prepared something, unless it's a separate force they are talking about, seeing as they actually have thunder tomes for Haar. Whether intentional or not, can't tell.
I've always loved that the Greil Mercenaries battles are not one of life or death situation, rather racing the objectives at hand, like beating Skrimir to the arrive point, getting Ike and Ranulf to arrive, burning the crates and etc that feels rewarding to play fast. They are a notably in-lore a strong guerilla strike force that attacks army lines that aren't necessarily strong, and in contrast is the inexperienced Dawn Brigade who are just a small coup'.
And yes, BEXP as a reward just eases up how tackling story and chapter more precisely, but they can also do giving items if certain amount of enemy/ally unit survives, like older FE games did.
The thing with 3H is that you spend a lot of time doing anything other than playing maps, which is why I come back to play the old games constantly.
True
If you can unlock professor level A+ during chapter two of a New Game Plus, you can easily motivate your students at the beginning of each month then do up to like 6 or so auxiliaries/paralogues a month, maybe 9 depending on the month and how many students you have. I don’t really care that those battles aren’t definitively within the framework of the main story, and I don’t feel like other aspects of New Game Plus tempt me to do a “broken” playthrough.
I ngl I was expecting bismix because of so many retreats
Merry Christmas and happy holidays y'all !!!
You too buddy
U too
Happy to see you mention Claude in the three-way battle and how it makes no sense why he's fighting Dmitri. I remember that feeling really forced when I got to that part.
Hate everything about the school, but my OCD won't let me skip. I also hate meeting everyone at the beginning. You don't get to be surprised by mid-late game good units like Harken, Haar, Pent, and Duessel in chapters were they tear stuff up. Everyone is ready almost immediately.
Tbh having late game OP pre promotes was to replace early dead units you didn't reset for. 3H kinda changes that aspect completely because you can recruit students late (to get them to have better stats and weapon proficiency). But your in house units are pretty vital and that's why it's hard to iron man the game
@@l.n.3372 I understand that, but it's just fun to recruit someone every now and then. 3H just dumps almost all of them at your feet at the beginning.
@@whichDude
Yeah I get it, it's definitely fun. And as I said, late game recruited students are kinda the equivalent. I sometimes recruit Petra, Leonie and Catherine later just to beef up their stats. If you get them in chapter 12, they'll be level 23 with great stats and A/B/B+ weapon ranks. That's about where you get Saleh in Sacred Stones: around chapter 12 with good stats and weapon ranks.
@@whichDude Not really, you have to choose who you want to recruit, especially on your first play through, as you do not have time to level all the skills you need to recruit everyone. Building up good relationships with as many as possible allows for time skip recruitment, which is your "surprise" units, most notably GD students. The same goes for fellow teachers.
On second+ playthroughs you can pretty much recruit who you like, but first playthrough you have to choose.
@@Miss_ESL Your typically going to use your house units, and maybe 4 other units at most. You can casually recruit 3 before the ball unless you chose story restricted units like Ferdinand and Leone. And adults barely have any grind to recruit them compared to students, so you could easily add Catherine and Shamir to the early game squad with the other 3. Game gives you everything extremely early.
But enough with recruitment problems. That's just a personal annoyance. Almost all my negative feelings for the game is dam near everything about the monastery. Annoying calender, wondering up to people to say hey and increase happiness, units advancement is tied to a happiness and learning system, tea party, you know anything other then battle preps and the actual battle.
16:50 Byleth’s lack of using Divine Pulse is a big plot hole, but this is the one instance where it makes perfect sense. If Byleth uses DP, Dimitri sees that an orphan of war is trying to kill him, and grows even more cold hearted. Worse, he could see Byleth protecting him as a sign of Divine Approval, that he is right and has Sothis’ blessing. For Dimitri to be reformed, Rodrigue has to die. Byleth probably knows this, so just not showing the darker path Dimitri could take saves time.
Hmm, not sure about that one. It seems a bit too risky to plan, and a lot colder than Byleth is treated as being to let two people die to maybe make a one feel better.
My take is simpler: Byleth isn't there when it happens, and doesn't notice Rodriguez is dead until after the time limit of divine pulse is expired. There is supposed tk be a limit to how far back you can rewind after all (even if that too is a dissonance, since you can rewind right up to the start of a battle despite only getting a few seconds in cutscene)
i think fleche trying to kill him was enough of a shock. she introduced herself by stating that she wanted to get revenge for someone she cared about, and that resonated with dimitri. for a long time, he knew they had similar motives, and at the very least was willing to have her on the team because of the similarities. she was basically a reflection of him, and learning her revenge was aimed at him would force him to look deeper into his actions. i think the realization that he creates more people like him would be enough to trigger his redemption arc, and make him end the cycle of revenge
You know, the timeskip would probably work better if it happened when Byleth gets sent into the void instead of some time after that by falling off a cliff.
Would require a couple tiny rewrites, but not that much really. The balance is a different thing to worry about.
That would be an interesting story beat. If the story just went on without byleth until the timeskip or if they just started the timeskip then I guess
I love these scripted videos since they're always so well made. The part where I have the biggest gripe with three houses' lack of story/gameplay integration is in the missions themselves. I just hate how you do the same missions in every route for part 1. These missions are done for the sake of training the students, so it would make sense that the each class would get missions based on the students and yet Rhea assigns the mission to Byleth's class no matter what. There's also the fact that everyone praises Byleth for being the greatest teacher ever despite the fact that (s)he never speaks and has never taught anyone before.
I think Byleth being praised that she/he teaches well make sense.
I'm playing GD route right now, and they don't start singing praises for you until the first mock battle, which make sense.
Even still i can agree thats a bit early.
Then they mentioned in supports, but didn't felt like pandering because i actually teach them a lot in game. Actually make sense why they're praising Byleth. So while there's pandering for the Byleth , is way better than Fates where Corrin existing was praise worth for the characters, you have to put some effort to gets those praises because you need supports points to unlock them.. and those can take a while in start.
"I just hate how you do the same missions in every route for part 1." Because there is no such thing as repetitive grind in any of the other FE titles...
Well I wouldn’t think your last point to be that big of a deal. Byleth talks plenty and it makes no sense why they’re silent during all the supports. I really hate the whole blank slate protagonist trope. It clearly doesn’t fit with byleth’s character like at all
@@rhettmitchell But you make Byleth's dialogue choices during supports and that has an effect on your relationships within the game?
But I do agree a voiced option would have been nice.
Random but they need to pick a side with Byleth. Either make a character that is boring but is super customizable or a concrete character that is interesting to follow.
Byleth doesn't feel like us nor do they feel like an actual character.
This outlines majority of my problems with the story of 3h, Gronder might be one of the worst maps story wise, and crests are such a minor thing in a game all about them. the crazy thing is, it is only a small problem in this game, at least for me, and I am pretty optimistic about the next game being even better.
You say crests are not a big thing, but if you were to list your picks for the 10 best characters in the game (objectively, not I fed X every stat booster, and then X was the best), how many of them have crests? When does the first character appear without a crest?
I agree on Gronder field though (still one of my favorite maps gameplay-wise).
@@thestylemage2092 majority of the best would have crests, but that has nothing to do with the crest itself, crests are not useful for the actual crest effect, I would argue that the only good crests in the game are seiros, flames, fraldarius, and indech. Not a single character is made good by their crest, the crest helps more with negating the damage penalty than the actual crest benefit itself, which if these crests are so powerful, why are they mostly so negligible? I did list a few decent crests, but the only ones that are somewhat reliable are flames and fradarius, but if the characters with crests did not have them, they would still be fine, Ferdinand and Sylvian are not made good because of crests, but instead swift strikes. I think it’s stupid how crests are supposed to be this big thing, yet so many characters have them and make next to no use out of them
@@minecraftmekan1 And now think how the crests might impact that? Like I am sure Dimitri's crest (that is meant to give the bearer a lot of strength) is unrelated to his 60% growth lol.
It is called good integration, because instead of making the mechanic itself ridiculous like holy blood (leaving units without at massive disadvantages) they just made most crest bearers better than other units.
@@thestylemage2092 fair point, but it still doesn’t feel like the crests are as prominent as they should be at some points. Sure maybe dimitri has that crazy good strength growth, but the game does not deliberately tell us that is because of his crest. If the game told us that they affect how characters grow, then sure it might be a better system, but crests blend together and even though they are supposed to be “special” a lot of the students have them and make little to no use out of them. If the game told us crests made characters stronger, it would redeem it quite a bit in my mind
@@minecraftmekan1 It... literally does though. It does tell you that Dimitri is super strong because of his crest. Practically all of his supports have a line where he mentions his crest giving him super human strength that he can't control to the point of accidents.
Holy Blood had specific mechanics for what stat boosts different bloodlines give because of the genealogy system, crests the stat boosts are just baked into the unit and the game expects you to make the logical conclusion that Lysithea's godly magic growth and overwhelmingly good spell list are because of her double crests.
I love three houses but one major gripe for me was mass recruitment. Better to say, the ability to recruit almost every student/faculty member to your team. After awhile I would think the other instructors or even the institute itself would say "Stop, there is no more room in your classes, and other areas of the monastery are lacking in attendance" I think there should have been a recruitment cap; so that whomever you invest into, seems more personal. Rather then just a checklist of who is missing. Would give more impact post timeskip knowing you HAVE to fight people you knew but didn't recruit.
Whilebyou are mostly correct on crests and relics having contradictions, Sword of the Creator could not be used by anyone besides Byleth due to the crest stone (which I assume is like a power source) being inside of Byleth. And thus commentimgnon it not working does not contradict relics in general working without crests.
You probably already know this, but I didn't see it mentioned in the video. One of my favorite moments of good story gameplay integration is the Final Act 1 chapters of Silver Snow and onwards. Edelgard and Hubert have switched side officially, so any blind players will suddenly have a roster missing of 2 of their highly skilled units. The absence of these heavily invested units definitely makes Edelgard's defection have more of a gut punch to players, scrambling to fill in the void left behind.
Another example of dissonance is found in supports. For example, Dorothea and Ferdinand's last support when they make amends and become friends/lovers, she says that she had wanted to believe he was really a good person ever since he made her treats in their prior support. As far as I know, their final support can only occur post timeskip, meaning that in the five years since he baked for her, she couldn't find it in herself to talk to him and make amends for what she thought was him spurning her when they were kids, it had to wait until professor Byleth came back to them to turn the tides of war.
Well that’s explained just by them not seeing each other the whole 5 years
@rhettmitchell Except the Black Eagle class stayed together unlike other houses in Crimson Flowers, in other routes where they're recruited it makes sense but in CF doesn't.
I always thought the crests were underwhelming intentionally. It goes well with the idea that crest shouldn’t be obsessed over.
Dimitri can apparently break swords while 5 years old thanks to his crest. Super strength seems really beneficial and something that warrants at least some credit
Are they really though? Who are the best characters in the game and how many of them bear crests.
@@thestylemage2092 How often is their crest a reason for them to be considered one of the best in the game?
@@absoul112 Possible counterpoint- Their Crest _effect_ might not make them better, but what if- in universe- their Crests are the reason for their more better growths?
For example, Dimitri has the best Strength growth in the game at a whopping 60! For context, of ALL the characters that get a 50/55 rate on Strength, Raphael (with 50) is the ONLY one that doesn't have a Crest... which, like, only makes sense considering who we're talking about.
In fact, almost every unit with a 60+ growth rate in any stat has a Crest. With the exceptions being characters that are shown to be super hard workers (Such as Petra and Leonie in Speed, or Dedue and Raph in HP)
The biggest exception, and I'm not really sure why, is Manuela who also has a 60 in Speed.
Edit: While she might be unplayable, it's also worth noting that Sothis has by FAR some of the best growths in the game. With a 60 in Res. 65 in Magic and Luck, and a massive *70* in Charm. For reference, only Raph with his HP, and Yuri with his Speed reach a growth of 65.
@@absoul112 Yeah and Dimitri's Crest that gives him enormous strength is totally unrelated to his 60% str growth. Same with Lysithea and her 2 crests for her magic lol.
yeah i think the special abilities and skills of the characters are the best feature that ties story and characterizations with the gameplay of said character. my favourite is still Dimitri, the story tells you that he's stupídly strong and breaks weapons easly, and the gameplay gives you the highest strenght growth in the game and a crest wich burns the durability of the weapons when using combat arts. I also think "blood of the eagle and the lion" is the stupidest chapter in the game from a story perspective
Agreed on Dimitri. Players get frustrated when his crest breaks weapons. But that's 100% good gameplay and story integration given his support with Mercedes. And his strength growth also shows this aspect too
Regarding the war phase ‘why not fight them now?’ problem, I also originally thought that when I heard it.
However, I kinda just accepted it and came up with the reason that they needed to prepare and gather resources to fight. The only other reason I could think of is raising moral amongst the army by doing activities with them as the professor before the battle at the end of the month
I think the time between battles post time skip is more preparing for battle, sorta like you do in-game, because of surprise. War is as much a planned series of events as it is a chaotic one.
Irl battles are quite uncommon and armies spend a lot of time waiting for the right occasion to wage a battle. For all it's artificiality, 3H is still more plausible than having 25 skirmishes and battles whitin a year.
I do appreciate the passage of time in the story between battles as well, that's realistic- it's just how the battles always happen at the end of the month that raises my eyebrows. Seems convenient that everyone fighting is following the same schedule lol
This sort of thing was exactly why I enjoyed Thracia so much. It's unfairly difficult in its design - whether intentional or not, this does an amazing job of portraying Leif's struggle to liberate Thracia. Your resources are often limited, and purely using your strength is bound to put you in a bad position.
heck you can even argue this for the dawn brigade too, it's honestly why i like their maps for the most part, also i can tell you that the difficulty of thracia is quite intentional (not only because they integrated it into the story but also because they sold strategy guides with the game)
Blood if the eagle and the lion should be a chapter where there is occasional fog, with the objective defeat the empire. During the clear weather, the alliance/kingdom will be allies, and during the fog, act as a third army.
23:04 Unless it's different on maddening, I call BS on this since the first time I played that chapter Catherine suicided onto Lonato and got crit killed by him.
Blue Lions route be like: "Remember that missions where we saved Rhea, because we couldn't shut up about how worried we were and we wanted to find her? .....No? Well, me neither"
Seriously, this felt so weird. They talked about this so much and it felt so important, I really thought we would rescue her eventually. But now all happens offscreen and she got this quick mention in the after story.
Azure Moon is really detached from the rest of the game from a story standpoint. The overall plot of Azure Moon has very little to do with the societal issues presented in other routes, the plot itself is basically the Dimitri-Edelgard Drama Hour, and no real solutions to any of the problems present in Fodlan are ever found. In fact, Dimitri himself (in chapter 5) is openly in favor of the continuation of the Crest System. The only lord in the game. Even in Silver Snow, things change. But not Azure Moon.
Imagine if Rhea was playable in game, and you could just give her the Lance of Ruin.
late reply, but it could have been a reality. seiros has unused lines that imply she was supposed to be playable at some point (my theory is that after you rescue rhea in VW/SS, she assumes her seiros identity and fights alongside you)
Glad I could look over the script draft and double-glad that it became this fine video! May it endure as well as Fodlan seeds planted just before the timeskip.
This is great, it reflects some of my flaws with the game. But hear me out.
Chapter 17 from Crimson flower mixes gameplay with story in an almost perfect way that I have only seen in Awakening chapter 10, the one with mustafa. Chapter 17 is one of the only, along with probably chapter 12, that feel like an actual war. My only issue with this chapter is the music choice, which is just The Long Road, but whatever, indomitable will starts playing as soon as you face Dimitri so... I actually sometimes made the battle much harder by sacrificing Constance (used only in that battle) to bolting Dimitri just so indomitable will play sooner.
But the way kigdom soldiers are willing to turn themselves into monsters for that cause... Dedue's sacrifice... Sylvain dialogue with ingrid and Felix, Anette's dialogue with Mercie and most of all Dimitri's with Felix... That chapter has a flawless approach implementing story to the gameplay. Only flaw is that the battle doesn't end as soon as dimitri and Seiros fall, but whatever, I guess even that makes sense
I think trying to make cutscenes for everything instead of doing what echoes did with silhouettes was too ambitious. Watching people stand around with a few different movements or facial expressions gets old pretty fast. And any attacks in supports were just awful. Screen turns black, insert a slash or two, everyone just seemed very static
Dude, I’m still upset about the backgrounds in the cutscenes. Like, I’m not frothing at the mouth over it, but come on! They have modeled areas for where most of these supports take place already, there’s basically no reason for them to use textures as bgs; which don’t even look good either, because they have creases in the middle for some reason.
I genuinely think the supports that have characters pretend to sit are the worst, they just look way too goofy.
Deeeefinitely my personal biggest example was the Manuela bleeding out for an entire month in jeritza’s room lmao. Everything else I could ignore (minus maybe death knight and Hubert) but gosh the thought of byleth knowing exactly where to look for Manuela and flayn and choosing to go to a seminar or go fishing instead is so funny
Thank you for putting this in a succinct video. I've been arguing a lot of these points myself elsewhere on the internet, so it's glad to see someone else arriving to similar conclusions. Often when I was talking about this people seemed like they thought I was crazy or that failures in gameplay-story integration should just be handwaved, dismissing my arguments entirely.
I could do a whole video myself on this but Gronder field 2.0's story scenario makes more sense than its given credit for, particularly in Azure Moon more so than Golden Deer surprisingly.
The problem is that the lore/political rationale for Claude's actions here do exist and make sense but the writers probably assumed that this would go over our heads or we'd forget his circumstances by then and decided to also concoct the quick and lame fog/chaos excuse instead of having a lot of exposition here. Basically wanting to have it both ways just in case, which I think was a mistake over just clarifying what I'm about to say.
Anyway, it's made clear in beginning of time skip that the Alliance lords are not in agreement about their alignments, some want to side with the winning side (Empire) and others dont. Claude in response puts up a front to the rest of Fodlan of the Alliance as a collective agreeing to be neutral (in reality this isnt the case at all) to prevent a civil war. He cannot unilaterally, let alone spontaneously on a battlefield, decide that the Alliance will now oppose the Empire exclusively without risking a very likely civil war. Edelgard isnt privy to the full scope of these political circumstances (thus the whole point of Claude's "unified front"), so she still assumes it's a possibility that theyll join forces with Faerghus.
In Golden Deer, Claude has direct access to Byleth and their new church leadership clout as leverage to get the Alliance lords' favor when he decides to oppose the Empire.
He doesnt have that luxury in Azure Moon and can only help Byleth out implicitly, from under the table so to speak. Regrettably his battle dialogue at face value does make it seem like hes being a dope fighting Byleth when he really doesnt want to, but in truth it's that he CANT play favorites here for political reasons. He is paying a price here for an actual smart thing hes already been doing, preventing civil war and making everyone believe Leicester is in agreement about being neutra in the war, keeping that up is his only stake here.
The better question that doesnt have as clear an answer is why his army even goes to Gronder in the first place. My first guess is just to make the cool scenario from the trailer happen but it also isnt unreasonable that he has to go to maintain Leicester sovereignty from two massive armies that have both already encroached on Leicester soil before from wilding out near its border.
Dimitri is just crazy I guess. That's his excuse in Golden Deer's version of this scenario and there isnt much more to it. Which is why I say its the weaker variation contrary to popular opinion.
Anyway rest of the video is cool, gj
While an interesting idea, I don’t think that’s what they were going for at all. In Verdant Wind, there is no explanation first off, the Alliance has openly sided against the Empire but the fight keeps going even if you kill Edelgard before Dimitri. In Azure Moon, The Alliance and The Kingdom are openly attempting to negotiate with one another, until the Kingdom diplomats randomly turn up dead. What I think they were trying to go for (but didn’t fully follow through with) was that Flèche killed the diplomats, framed the Alliance, and made Dimitri attack Claude. That was really convoluted however so they just went back to the fog plan. All of this to me just makes the whole thing look like trailer bait
@@jeremytewari3346 like I said before, the reason the Alliance explicitly sides against the Empire in VW and not in AM is because they have Byleth and therefore the church as an asset to pressure the Alliance lords into complying. Theres a scene where Nader and Claude explain this to you. And I already conceded that Dimitri just being crazy and therefore an enemy is dumb in this route's version of the chapter.
As for the diplomats being killed in AM I legit forgot about this, and upon remembering i do agree the implication is that Fleche killed them and this soured trust with the Alliance. Why Dimitri and co would first assume the Alliance killed them and not the Empire is beyond me, but it's still a better excuse than fog that isnt on the map.
Ludonarrative dissonance is the proper term for the concept of gameplay and story not correlating or contrasting eachother. It's opposite would be ludonarrative harmony. I'd suggest using these terms if you want to make more essay-esque videos on subjects like this.
Me, when playing a game:
No, the ludonarritive dissonance!
ludonarritive?
@@rewrose2838 I think he's referencing a Spanish TH-camr. It's called DayoScript and the ludonarrative dissonance is a meme of his channel
@@Miguelxcool Ludonarrative dissonance is a term from game design, meaning discordant interplay between gameplay and story. It's quite literally something you learn about in year 1.
@@yojasmagic I know what it is, just that I thought that the first comment was making a joke so I explained it
@@Miguelxcool Ah, my bad. Sarcasm / wit are hard to get over the internet sometimes :P
All the fe4 villain who have been defeated but could not fall here:
Chagall, Blume, Ishtar, the 3 sorceress sisters, Arion, Hilda, Ishtar or Julius.
They all die in the end so it’s cool
@@clammmin3098 Well except Arion if you have Altena speak to him in the final map
Imo the relics should act like a rusted weapon for people without a crest and then like the sword of the creator for anyone with the wrong crest
I honestly agree with a large part of this video and it sheds a lot more light on the flaws of 3h but the one thing i don't think should ever be used for 3h is the ambitious argument. It may seem like the game was going for a larger scope and scale than what we ended up getting but with koei on board it was clear that wasn't going to be the case, instead it turned into throwing whatever stuck on the wall and hoped it stuck and then when it came off the wall they didn't bother trying to fix it (a large amount of that has to do with koei using the warriors engine for everything and adding in that zoom-in feature) not only did that effect the map design of the game hence why they all look flat and are reused constantly but it had to effect presentation and story as that zoom-in feature cut into so much development time (even with the two delays it's clear that they focused on pretty much this one feature alone)
"People die when they are killed"
~Emiya Mekkah Shirou, 2020
I think the most problematic thing about using Space Time Rewind after Jeralt is killed is that Byleth only tries once.
First situation; Jeralt gets stabbed. Redo!
Second situation; Byleth tries to stop Jeralt from getting stabbed, but Evil Guy was apparently waiting around anticipating this. See, now that you know about him, you can redo again, and stab Evil Guy and Knife Girl and you're good to go. Or like, shout, "Hey, Jeralt, that girl's gonna stab you!" Or rewind further back because you have omniscience of the whole situation.
It was very cool when they basically set Jeralt up to get killed, and Byleth was like "Divine Pulse" in the cutscene, but I feel like they let us down. Cutscene should have been more Groundhog Day inspired, coming up with all kinds of clever reasons why Jeralt still dies.
CyanYoh's editing is really good! Looks great while not being distracting.
You know the story-gameplay integration has problems when you need to make headcanons just to form a coherent understanding of the lore.
I will say, I think the Gronder Field nitpick is perhaps a bit overblown. They do mention thick fog, but also mention waiting until the fog clears to even advance onto the field. So I would say the story handles the issue of it not being a Fog of War map easily enough. I think it's mostly used as a device to explain confusion as to the initial army movements, and why some of the forces end up showing up late and out of position.
Did we leave the term “ludonarrative dissonance” in the bin with all of the bad takes by people who didn’t really get what it meant?
I believe the term has been co-opted by "gameplay story integration" because the latter is intuitively understood by the average person. I had to think for a second to remember that "ludo" is the root for "play".
Or you can blame TVTropes. That works too.
Same with "realism" vs. "verisimilitude".
@@vandal_lbtm yeah I would’ve had no clue what was going on if he used that term lmao
For Divine Pulse, I'd like to take what you said one step further: Byleth has access to the ability, but Sothis remains the one actually controlling it until they merge. After they merge, Byleth can technically control it himself, but doesn't know how since it requires an emotional trigger to occur. Maybe not perfect, but I think that plus Byleth being emotionally stunted makes for a decent in-universe reason he can't rewind time whenever he wants.
-
As for crests/relics, I think if they tweaked things a bit, it wouldn't be as jarring. Maybe deal 20-30 damage to a non-crest unit, lowered stats for non-matching crest unit, and boosted stats + combat art for matching crest units.
I don’t believe the heroes' relics have a contradiction except the students not transforming into beasts when dying to the negative side effect. Both times we see someone using them, that shouldn’t, it takes a while for them to transform. The sword of the creator is different because it doesn’t have a stone and it loses its abilities but using it as a regular sword shouldn’t be a problem. Claude says that you can’t use a relic safely without the right crest but there is a high chance that this is more or less guesswork on his part, or maybe he simply believes there to be an unknown non lethal side effect. It seems fair to gameplay that the relic can be used by people with the wrong crest without negative effects, and that people without crests won’t transform the second they touch them.
A great video and very interesting. I do enjoy the format and idea. Keep up the good work and great content.
I actually remember when remodelling Crimson Flower, I made a HBD-equivelant, the difference being that it is easier + Edelgard and Byleth are forced to drive off a sneak attack from the Alliance until reinforcements (the other Black Eagles + Jeritza) arrive.
I agree that Gronder mentioning fog and not including it was a mistake, they either should have had it, or not had that line. But I do disagree with the conflict's writing being stupid. Dimitri and Edelgard's conflict is obvious, and Edelgard wanting to take out Claude also makes sense given her motivations. The conflict between Dimitri and Claude seems to be the biggest problem you and other people who don't like the writing of this chapter have with it. Dimitri explicitly orders his forces to attack both the Alliance and the Empire indiscriminantly, which makes sense given how unhinged he is at this point. Is it a logical decision? No, but it's in character, so the Alliance characters fighting back against you in Azure Moon makes sense, Dimitri is in charge and ordered all your units to take out the Alliance. As for Claude's response, he states at the start he does notice that Dimitri seems to have no interest in working together. In Verdant Wind Dimitri is blatantly the aggressor, so people don't seem to have a problem with how things play out, the Alliance fights back. In Azure Moon, narratively the Kingdom is still the agressor, so Claude fights back. Dimitri still orders this, but I think the problem people have is that while the characters are following his orders, the player themselves may not want to or may not be. So they then don't understand why the Alliance is fighting back, thinking the Alliance is attacking them when the opposite is true. I think the chapter has some problems, but I can't think of much else they could have done with Azure Moon to portray it given the nature of player unit control.
I strongly disagree on your point with the crests and relics. The crests themselves don't do much, but if anything that just strengthens the game's point that Fodlan's cultural obsession with crests is completely arbitrary and unnecessary. The crests definitely take inspiration from Holy Blood but that doesn't make them the same thing. Genealogy's script makes it clear that Holy Blood is special, and gives any who have it great power. 3 Houses in contrast, has the crests as a device and demonstration for Fodlan's social problems. In Fodlan the people are obsessed with having descendents with crests, keeping crest users in power, etc. The crests themselves not doing much is meant to support how ridiculous Fodlan's culture surrounding them is. The relics meanwhile are very strong weapons, not game-breaking, but their in-game power supports the weight the story gives them. The only thing I think would improve the gameplay-story integration with them would be to raise the damage penalties with relics on crestless characters.
Those with crests may not be as special, however they still have an upper hand compared to those that don't.
With that belief alone, those with crests having better privileges and sometimes more responsibilities is somewhat inevitable.
It is a social problem, but the plot tends to state that it's the fault of the crests. Where in reality, it's not.
Just have to replace the idea of crests with talents that are passed on via blood, and the issue of the entire basis of the reasons for the war is flawed.
@@mcihay246 That's not the point I was making, my point was that the lack of gameplay significance with the crests serves to strengthen the narrative's point that Fodlan's cultural obsession with them is pointless. So their lack of effect isn't a case of ganeplay-story seperation.
@@nachohangover5104 Why is it pointless? Dimitri breaks a sword while 5 years old because of his crest, he litteraly has superhuman strength thanks to his crest, that seem very useful and worth analyzing. Marriane can talk to animals, that seems like it could gave some uses. Catherine being able to call storms with her crest (though this is more ambiguous) seems like it would have some uses. Sylvain says that his family holds of waves of bandits mostly due to the power of the Lance of Ruin, yet it isn't that impresdive gameplay wise. I get it's for the sake of gameplay, but the crests and relics should be way more powerful.accordi g to the story (the sword of the creator is supposedly able to cut a mountainin half)
@@mcihay246 I mean having talents that are passed in by blood is still a problem. The whole point of 3H’s conflict (which I think it doesn’t do a good job of exploring) is that you are given meaning and appreciation solely if you won the genetic lottery. Fodlan society is based upon very real eugenics and in that sense, yeah Crests are pretty awful.
Actually about Claude, the story just didn’t know what to do with him at all, even in AM Gronder he will attack Dimitri even if you attempt to completely avoid the Golden Deer. Also it makes very little sense for Claude to go to Gronder in VW, why endanger your troops in such a risky battle when you can let Edelgard and Dimitri weaken each other and then you go in for the kill?
The time skip also stifles the supports; in Hilda and Raphael's B support, she says she'll help him make a necklace for his sister. In the A support, she says she finally got it done and gives it to him. The problem is, the A support is locked to Part 2 while B can be gotten in Part 1.
That, or it's a stab at Hilda being lazy and it took her 5 years to make a necklace.
But that has little to do with the gameplay. It's just a story issue.
27:44 To be fair the ones that talk about a specific crest are most of the time about the unique strengths (aka weapon arts) of the relics, especially the Linhardt one. But then again, those weapons arts are not that interesting.
Honestly, relics should have been high-rank weapons with crest bearers being able to use them at base, similar to Excalibur for Merric and Aura for Lindt. Also, the penalty for crest bearers should have been bigger. That could have been just more recoil damage or what I would have preferred: the Royal Sword/Falchion solution (either make the weapon weigh a ton or remove its damage).
I have a second thing in mind for crests, however, that ended up being very long, so I will make a second comment.
Warning for spoilers!!!
As for the impact of the crests, they already have kind of an effect, with characters with crests being noticeably stronger either in terms of growths (and sometimes bases) or Arts/Spells.
The best examples here are of course Dimitri's strength, or both Edelgard and Lysithea gaining magic power from their 2 crests. However, most characters who have among the higher growths are crest bearers (especially if you look at growth totals, though that puts stats like skill equal to strength, or res equal to speed). Of course, there are exceptions here and while there is a difference between similar characters, it is by no means gigantic.
A different example would be how the only characters who learn the swift strikes weapon art (one of the best lance arts) are characters with crests (2 even having the same). Other Arts like this include Soul Blade, Frozen Lance (with the exception of Hubert, who only learns it as a talent and has the Slither background), Windsweep.
The budding talent list is also dominated by crest bearers (only 4 without). This is probably because of DLC characters and the higher amount of crest bearers in the game.
However, where this becomes most apparent is if you look at faith spell lists.
Almost no character without a crest learns more than 1 unique spell (not Heal/Nosferatu), the only exceptions being Ignatz (Physic and Ward), Leonie (Physic, Restore), and Manuela (Ward, Silence, Warp), while almost all characters with a crest learn at least 2, the exceptions being Hilda (Recover), Rhea (Recover), Seteth (Recover), and Jeritza (Restore).
For most of them, there actually is a decent explanation (though it has been a while since I played the game, so I might misremember stuff or confuse fan canon, if so please correct me):
-Ignatz is the character I know least about, mostly because I don't like him a lot, but I remember that he had a very strong faith in the goddess, which would be a plausible explanation
-Leonie is a good example of how hard training can make up for not having a crest, the same could be applied to her studies of faith, should her teacher expect it of her.
-Manuela has a very strong faith (she even tries to restore the church under Edelgard's control), also she happens to be the nurse, giving her a lot of training. She has also been at the monastery for a long time, a very holy ground.
-Hilda is the opposite of Leonie, her not learning more makes sense in that regard (she could probably unlock another spell, but that would be too much trouble)
-Rhea is weird, I can think of 2 reasons, one within the story and another technical. Within the context of the story is of course her knowledge of the goddess being dead, and her trauma in general. On the other hand, it might just be that since she is never playable, they just gave her the standard (which seems to be Recover if you look at the list).
-Seteth again has the trauma of the Red Canyon, as well as the death of his wife. In addition, he has also lost the ability to transform into a dragon.
-Jeritza again has 2 plausible reasons. A story-based one about his time among the slithers or the fact that he is the free DLC character and they forgot lol.
@@thestylemage2092 that’s interesting but I’m really really not sure how much of this makes sense. Leonie and Cyril are the only ones to get point blank volley, dedue gets vengeance. Leonie is like the best archer in the game, has pretty damn good overall stats, and one of the best defense growths. Petra and Leonie were 2 of the characters tied for the highest speed growth in the game until Yuri came along
radiant dawn really does gameplay story integration well in my opinion
burning the supplies, how part 3 is structured, literally killing the laguz with micaiah in 3-6 right after you just had a great moment with them, even the simple using the battle sequences to show the two characters fighting and their dodges. seeing zelgius activate his skills against ranulf hurts and it's awesome
speaking of crests, i with using a crest weapon that doesn't match yours should at least somewhat nerf it, like byleth's, but you either shouldn't be able to equip one if you are crestless, or take all of your health but one and the next turn hits you. for the crests being somewhat useless, i actually like that. it helps to strengthen edelgard's point imo, but i can also understand why someone who doesn't understand it overvaluing it
I don't think it's a problem that Hubert retreats all the time, because he's really just there as Edelgard's tactician. He's not built up as a threat to the protagonists physically, he's there to command the rest of the army and it makes plenty of sense that he'd leave once the situation gets dire. Maybe his final battle needed to do something else to convey a sense of it being his last stand, but all he really needed to do was say a few lines about how this would be the last one and that'd do it.
It's definitely a bigger issue with the Death Knight, though. He's supposed to be a constant physical threat, similar to the Black Knight, but by the time you've defeated him once he no longer feels like a credible threat in the story, and something needed to be done there. I think to make him work they needed to do something to raise the stakes each time. For example, maybe he just uses normal weapons for his first few fights, then he gets the Scythe of Sariel in a cutscene and uses it against you, then for the final battle he's unmasked and portrayed more tragically. Doing this would give your encounters context, rather than making him a literal faceless goon that you repeatedly bully into submission.
The Catherine and lonato thing, while i agree it causes a gameplay story clash, at least makes sense from a gameplay standpoint as it ensures that the player can get the exp from the boss. yes I understand that exp stealing isn't that big an issue (though I'm not sure how much that pitfall applies to three houses) but i imagine most new players would be pretty pissed off that they lost such a big ammount of exp to an NPC.
All I know is thank god they didn't put FoW on Grondor
Ahem, Dimitri thinks alliance killed a messenger in a gruesome way, so they think the alliance is against them. just thought i would let you know.
It's kinda strange that I love Fire Emblem to death and it's really up there as one of my top franchises ever but I have at least one major gripe with each of the FEs that I've played and there aren't any FE games I can hold up the THE Fire Emblem game
My husband and I love making jokes that Death knight is the same “skull knight” in Berserk. 🤣