Why Fire Emblem: Three Houses is my game of the year
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/20994073/fire-emblem-three-houses-tactical-waifu-simulator-game-of-the-year
Reported today in The Verge.
Why Fire Emblem: Three Houses is my game of the year
There is no multiplayer in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but it certainly lends itself to being social. I have a running text thread with two friends about the game, and I have a couple more I message. Nicole and Christina send me Three Houses tweets and memes. Sarah chronicles her playthrough on the game's toughest difficulty setting, "maddening," which is proving appropriately named. Andrew has advice about "min/maxing" characters, though I haven't had the heart to tell him I have no idea what that means. Basically, I've been talking about Fire Emblem for the better part of the year.
Three Houses is a rare feat in that it's a legacy franchise that seems to have satisfied the longtime players and also welcomed a new audience to the series. (I'm somewhere in between, having played one and a half of the Fire Emblem games on 3DS.) How developers Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo pulled that off has mostly to do with making an excellent game with an overwhelming number of entry points. Maybe you like an RPG with a sophisticated leveling system to fiddle with. Maybe you like a near-perfect loop of tense tactical combat and relaxed moseying between battles. Or maybe you just like the Hogwarts vibes of Three Houses' high school drama.
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It helps that, generally, the writing across the game is consistently strong, often weird, and even funny. The sweeping fantasy plot is serviceable in broad strokes, but it's the many hours of dialogue here that do most of the work. Throughout the game, you'll have support conversations with your classmates, and they'll talk to each other. The whole thing feels rich and lively; each student has their own motives and anxieties and petty feud