Fire Emblem: Three Houses (26th July 2019)

[Hero-of-Time]

I love your Era rants, @Nicktendo.  

[Nicktendo]

I loved it when it was first broke away from GAF, it was a great place with a wonderful community. It's current iteration is WAY worse than GAF ever was. Era has slowly descended into absolute madness and, sadly, has taken a lot of good people down with them. I can't even watch GameXplain anymore because they've gone hard in on the Era style politics. Having an opinion there is simply not an option, you either agree with Lord Era or you will be hit with a perma ban. Forums are supposed to be for discussion and sharing opinions, yet there isn't any of that anymore - it's just one big circle jerk of people contributing aforementioned one-liners. It adds absolutely nothing of value to gaming and, with a lot of the media on their side, is hell bent on influencing the developers to conform to their politics. It's honestly disgusting. You know what I do when a game doesn't appeal to me? I don't buy it. I don't demand the developers CHANGE EVERYTHING SO I LIKE IT AGAIN. As I said, generation entitlement.

Still, it provides a good number of laughs every now and then, ban reasons in particular are a favourite of mine, so at least it has that going for it. I give it a year before the whole site implodes. Champagne is already on ice. 

[Hero-of-Time]

13 minutes ago, Nicktendo said:

I loved it when it was first broke away from GAF, it was a great place with a wonderful community. It's current iteration is WAY worse than GAF ever was. Era has slowly descended into absolute madness and, sadly, has taken a lot of good people down with them. I can't even watch GameXplain anymore because they've gone hard in on the Era style politics. Having an opinion there is simply not an option, you either agree with Lord Era or you will be hit with a perma ban. Forums are supposed to be for discussion and sharing opinions, yet there isn't any of that anymore - it's just one big circle jerk of people contributing aforementioned one-liners. It adds absolutely nothing of value to gaming and, with a lot of the media on their side, is hell bent on influencing the developers to conform to their politics. It's honestly disgusting. You know what I do when a game doesn't appeal to me? I don't buy it. I don't demand the developers CHANGE EVERYTHING SO I LIKE IT AGAIN. As I said, generation entitlement.

 

Era has got quite the reputation on other gaming sites I visit. Basically, outside of Era a lot of people just see the place as a bunch of social justice warriors who are trying to push their beliefs and agendas on to other people. I think this observation is spot on.

Back to Fire Emblem, I ended up cancelling my limited edition order from Shopto last night. I figured i'm getting my Fire Emblem fix from Echoes at the moment and i'll just play the waiting game to see just how much Persona/Hogwarts stuff is actually in the game before making a purchase. It didn't make sense to get a special edition for a game that i'm not really excited for at this present time. Plus, I'm in a retro gaming mood at the moment and that £70 could be spent on some retro gaming goodness.

*head back to ebay*  

[Ronnie]

Wow, you've both summed up Era perfectly @Nicktendo and @Hero-of-Time

I tend to just laugh at the place these days, every third topic on there is some social agenda pushing nonsense about how the hair colour of this black protagonist is "problematic" or "this game only has male/female gender options 'and that's not ok'"

"Yikes".

[Nicktendo]

10 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

 

Back to Fire Emblem, I ended up cancelling my limited edition order from Shopto last night. I figured i'm getting my Fire Emblem fix from Echoes at the moment and i'll just play the waiting game to see just how much Persona/Hogwarts stuff is actually in the game before making a purchase. It didn't make sense to get a special edition for a game that i'm not really excited for at this present time. Plus, I'm in a retro gaming mood at the moment and that £70 could be spent on some retro gaming goodness.

*head back to ebay*  

I was considering the special edition, but I can’t find it for under £90 here. Doesn’t include the season pass either, so I think I’ll skip it. 

Looking forward to this game though. I’m terrible at Fire Emblem, but I love the characters and the music in all the games I’ve played so far so I’m hoping this is on the same level. I’ve been reading that one story campaign takes about 80 hours to finish... something to sink my teeth into over the winter I suppose.

[Ronnie]

1 minute ago, Nicktendo said:

I’ve been reading that one story campaign takes about 80 hours to finish... something to sink my teeth into over the winter I suppose.

It's precisely that reason why I'm not getting it. If it was a 20-30 hour campaign, absolutely but I know I'll never finish it. Same reason I didn't play AC: Odyssey, just too big. I know people like huge epic games full of content but unless you're a huge fan of the genre it also turns a lot of people off I think.

[Nicktendo]

4 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

It's precisely that reason why I'm not getting it. If it was a 20-30 hour campaign, absolutely but I know I'll never finish it. Same reason I didn't play AC: Odyssey, just too big. I know people like huge epic games full of content but unless you're a huge fan of the genre it also turns a lot of people off I think.

I can understand that, I'm also not a huge fan of this trend, but BOTW proved to me that a massively long game is sometimes a good thing, I really got lost in that game and was in no rush to finish it. I got Xenoblade 2 back in 2017 and gave up after about 10 hours. I restarted it a couple of weeks ago and I've just passed the 50-hour mark and am having an absolute blast. There's a place for these types of games, for sure, but yeah, I generally prefer something sub 30 hours. I know it's gonna take me a couple of years to beat Fire Emblem, but if the story is enticing enough, I'll do it eventually.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Nicktendo

[Ike]

Time to blame the crests!

Shopto shipped it in a bubble mailer, but it seems to have survived.

[Sméagol]

"Unfortunately", I think I'll get the game on Tuesday. I ordered from Amazon.FR, and I don't think they'll actually ship before releasedate (so I'll get it on the releasedate).

I guess that means more Mario Maker for the weekend.. And perhaps Wolfenstein.

Edit: A damn shame about that USK logo though.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Sméagol

[Ike]

5 minutes ago, Sméagol said:

Edit: A damn shame about that USK logo though.

The game box doesn't have any logos so it's not so bad.

[S.C.G]

4 minutes ago, Sméagol said:

Edit: A damn shame about that USK logo though.

True but with these Special Edition Nintendo Switch releases, at least from Nintendo, all of the actual game boxart on the case doesn't seem to have the USK logo or even the age rating.

So there should be cleaner boxart on the actual game at least, though I kind of wish that the boxart from the main game was similar to the outer box of the limited edition.

[Tim B]

No Fire Emblem yet, and when I log into my ShopTo account it says the following: "Your Order has been shipped on 2019-07-25." Very annoying if it doesn't arrive today when other people have received theirs.

 

[Tim B]

In other news, it's reviewing fantastically well. IGN has given it a 9.5 

 

I wonder if the massive scores, such as this one, make it a GOTY contender?

Edited July 25, 2019 by Tim B

[Ronnie]

2 hours ago, S.C.G said:

True but with these Special Edition Nintendo Switch releases, at least from Nintendo, all of the actual game boxart on the case doesn't seem to have the USK logo or even the age rating.

Is this different from the Wii U era? I remember being annoyed Special Editions would come with the giant USK logo on the game box itself

 

5 minutes ago, Tim B said:

I wonder if the massive scores, such as this one, make it a GOTY contender?

Any game that gets a 9 or over on IGN is automaticaly in their conversation for the GOTY shortlist. That said, I can't see a game like this ever winning.

Also it's at 87 on Metacritic, so IGN liked it more than most.

Edited July 25, 2019 by Ronnie

[Tim B]

17 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Any game that gets a 9 or over on IGN is automaticaly in their conversation for the GOTY shortlist. That said, I can't see a game like this ever winning.

I guess in terms of Nintendo games there are still Astral Chain, Zelda: Link's Awakening, Luigi's Mansion 3 *and* Pokémon: Sword and Shield which could potentially also be in the conversation.

[Hero-of-Time]

19 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Is this different from the Wii U era? I remember being annoyed Special Editions would come with the giant USK logo on the game box itself

Yeah, they changed it when the Switch released. No more giant rating logos. 

27 minutes ago, Tim B said:

I wonder if the massive scores, such as this one, make it a GOTY contender?

In terms of a GOTY when only speaking about the Switch, I imagine it will be in a few conversations but when all the other consoles are mixed into the equation I don't think it will be up there.

I'm still pegging Resident Evil 2 Remake to sweep a lot of GOTY awards at the end of the year. Death Stranding could be a cheeky bet as well, depending on how it turns out of course.

[Ronnie]

Luigi will finally get his time in the spotlight when Geoff Keighley gives LM3 the GOTY, just you watch...

maybe...

[Hero-of-Time]

23 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Luigi will finally get his time in the spotlight when Geoff Keighley gives LM3 the GOTY, just you watch...

maybe...

To be fair it does look REALLY good. 

[Tim B]

10 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

To be fair it does look REALLY good. 

Yep and people who have played it have said it's amazing, so let's see.

[Ike]

I've played roughly 4 hours and 40 minutes, so here's some early impressions.

I'm only just about to play the 4th map, so that may be good or bad depending on how you prefer your Fire Emblem games. 

There's a lot of dialog, but I like the cast. The voice acting has been great so far. If you like customisation, there's a lot of customisation open to you. Weapon rank, class rank, enthusiasm gauges, teacher levels. it likes like you can make anyone into pretty much any class with any weapon type if you try hard enough.

Combat wise it's very similar to Echoes in the way you have combat arts, expect instead of HP, it uses up weapon durability. If you allow the online features you can get weapons and items from other players who have died on that map.

[Hero-of-Time]

Thanks for the impressions, @Ike. I do like the sound of the online feature. Is that limited to people on your friends list or is it just random players? Also, which house did you pick? Actually that question goes to anyone else who has bought and is playing the game. If I do end up picking the game up my choice was going to be The Black Eagles. I read that they were mage based, which has always been my go to class in the FE games, so it made sense that I would have picked them.

I watched the Easy Allies review last night and there does seem things in the game that do appeal to me. They also pointed out that there is amiibo support in the game which is something I appreciate. There seems to be less and less support in games these days for Nintendo's little toys, so it's nice to see it's inclusion in this. I'm gonna hunt down some more impressions today to try and get more of a feel if this is for me or not. Not that i'll be starting it straight away anyway as I want to finish Echoes off first.

 

[Ike]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Thanks for the impressions, @Ike. I do like the sound of the online feature. Is that limited to people on your friends list or is it just random players? Also, which house did you pick? Actually that question goes to anyone else who has bought and is playing the game. If I do end up picking the game up my choice was going to be The Black Eagles. I read that they were mage based, which has always been my go to class in the FE games, so it made sense that I would have picked them.

I watched the Easy Allies review last night and there does seem things in the game that do appeal to me. They also pointed out that there is amiibo support in the game which is something I appreciate. There seems to be less and less support in games these days for Nintendo's little toys, so it's nice to see it's inclusion in this. I'm gonna hunt down some more impressions today to try and get more of a feel if this is for me or not. Not that i'll be starting it straight away anyway as I want to finish Echoes off first.

 

Randoms, thought it doesn't show usernames or anything. There's two types, it shows where people have died and spots where a lot of people have died. You can kinda use them to your advantage to know here the dangerous parts of the maps are. The game also shows you the most commonly deployed units, the top 3 spots are dominated by the house leaders of course.

I unlocked the Amiibo support but haven't tried it.

I went with Black Eagles which has 2 magic users but they're not particulary strong yet. They were useful against against an enemy that gets boost defense if they end their turn with the wait command. Maybe the get strong once they actually change into the proper classes.

[Glen-i]

Nintendo have confirmed that the voice actor for Male Byleth will be replaced in Fire Emblem: Three Houses via an upcoming patch.

This happened in Fire Emblem Heroes as well, but it's good to see Nintendo reacting so quickly.

[Glen-i]

So I've done three of these missions now and I have a question.

Why does half of this game suddenly consist of Football Manager?

[Grazza]

I've been playing this since yesterday, after deciding to buy it despite not knowing a great deal about it.

 

The good news is that it has that perfect visual style they've been going with in recent years, a pleasing tone and interesting characters.  Plus, it's Fire Emblem, so the battles are at least inherently good.

 

The troubling side of this game is that there is just so much to do, and much of it given to you very early on.  It's hard to know whether to spend your spare time exploring, battling or attending seminars.  Once you've chosen, your activity points deplete and you can't shake the sense you've made the wrong decision.  It's as though Nintendo has completely abandoned any attempt to ease players in gently.

 

It's a fine game in many ways, but those who were sceptical of the changes were right to be wary.