I feel like a lot of the story is supposed to, in a way, reflect how real-life conflicts are often only seen from one side. You only get to see as much as you need to make you want to defeat the other sideーbut when you play FROM the other side(s), you get to see that there's also reasons to support that side and attack the others. But, of course, you don't really get a deep dive into any of the other sides you're not playing, so information is withheld. After going through all the routes, it is very clear there is a lot of plot and lots of lore hidden beneath the surface.
You're quickly becoming one of my favorite RUclipsrs! You cover such a wide range of topics. Culture, fiction, metal, art, and now a Fire Emblem analysis?? Keep it up brother
Yea the branching paths in this game is my biggest gripe. Going back to Tactics Ogre theres 3 paths, chaos, law, and nuetral. Each path has different story beats and exclusive content but each one is a complete story. You understand whats going, the motivations of the antagonists, the lore of Valerian Isles, and how everything ties into the world at large. The only major changes are maps, story perspective, and exclusive characters, basically mostly game play changes. In Three houses it feels like they had one or two coherent paths but decided to add more in a rush (look no further then Edlegards path being incomplete), so they were like this route needs some more lore so lets pluck this information from one route and transplant it. Unfortunately as a result every path feels half baked.
I think that's the point: the lack of information on all sides. I played all 4 paths and did enjoy them all so I might be biased, but I think seeing all sides the way you do when you play all routes lets you understand that none of them is truly right or wrong, they just fight based on the limited information they have. SPOILERS for Black Eagles and Golden Deer I guess: imo, you only truly understand *where* Edelgard's views were wrong once you see Claude investigate the truth behind and the Church and the History of Fódlan. I ended up replaying BE (on maddening with the Ashen Wolved) after I finished playing all the other routes (the order I played was Church>BE>BL>GD) and there's a conversation between Edelgard and Byleth where she basically says "this is the truth that only I have access to, and this is why I did what I did", and I knew that "truth" was a lie that, while she was the only one who knew because it was passed down to her, the information was wrong and the actual truth was completely hidden. I do get your point and in general do agree with it, but I disagree it's one of the weakest FE stories, I think it's one of the strongest. There are things you can only experience because of the way the game is structured.
"There are things you can only experience because of the way the game is structured." that is exactly why 3H's story is weak: it forces you to follow its rules in order to get a wider view on the story, but neither side is actually very impactful
Furthermore, you don’t get a second or third or fourth group to side with in real life and see how each history plays out. There may be different sides to every story irl, but there’s only one history, one chronology of consequential events. Meanwhile Three Houses basically says “what if you could see every side of history but be powerless to use your complete knowledge of it?” which is completely unrepresentative of anything in real life AND unsatisfying as fuck.
The reason that the plot reveals kept being put off is because Rhea likes to hoard information. If you has played any other route you would not had that problem. Hell, if you had played Golden Deer you could see Claude yell at Rhea for withholding info.
If you ever come back. I'd say do Blue Lions next, especially if you're strapped for time. That one is a much more personal and contained story. That story is more grounded in the present day and covers the conflict of Dimitri and Edelgard, their backgrounds, and the royal families. It has a much more pronounced beginning, middle, and resolution since those two are center focus. Just as a contained story being told, Blue Lions is strong but, as a result, it ends up feeling like the most insignificant path to take because of its attention to character and emotion. You get nothing of the world history in Blue lion. Can't win it all. Golden Deer is the path that sits you down and gives you the proper lecture on the Dark slither crew plus more world building. "They were this clan.....they had beef with the dragons because of this......then Nemisis got involved.....Then after the fact Seiros made the church for....ect." Yeah, pretty much every path is designed to fill in the blanks left by the other paths and vice versa. I'm working through the church path now (Didn't mind the spoilers by the way) and I went into it expecting it to patch up the last little bits of the Golden Deer holes. I would expect then that Edelgard's path dives all the way in to the Dark Slither Crew to fill in more Golden Deer and Church holes.
If you want better answers to the story that doesn’t involve playing other routes to understand what’s going on I’d recommend playing the golden deer route. They do a better job of actually answering questions that are police mainly because the main Lord Claude dedicate a lot of his character arc twin, covering the secrets of fodlend
11:30 well, in Fate/Stay Night each path is a different timeline with major events changing, and even entire characters appearing or not depending on which path you go
I wanted to note one thing here, and it's that the support conversations, at least the ones with the player and the other characters, do have an effect on the game. It's not noticeable for you, I'd say, because you played through the church route. The church route is by far the one route that everyone agrees is the worse route to take for plot. I've completely finished all the routes, and any other path gives WAY more to all aspects of the story, in both narrative and plot.
And I'd also add, to get on my original point, that in the other routes, the support conversations determine whether or not some characters live or die, which then changes the story based on whether or not that that character is around. Blue lions is the best example of this, because a conversation between the player and a certain character, which I won't spoil, determines whether or not you get a mission after you talk to them that then determines their fate. So if say to try the other routes before giving a final judgement on the story as a whole, since you did pick the weakest of the 4 routes in a sense.
The unfinished story was my main criticism for 3H too. It seems like Blue Lions was the main/original story and they ended up splitting the whole game into four different paths, but they also split all of the narrative focus. The result was four stories that all felt half baked and none of them could stand on their own. And with the first half of the game being the same for all, the replay value is TEDIOUS and not a good experience. On a side note, with your expertise in music, I'm curious what you thought of the OST for 3H.
Unfortunately, after having played through the Crimson Flower path and Blue Lion path (in Golden Deer now), that sense of unanswered questions and story being much weaker compared to the support conversations really doesn't go away. For all the worldbuilding and the addictive nature of earning Support convos goes, I was left feeling pretty disappointed in the plot both times around because both the story routes, at least to me, never really felt like there was any real closure, especially for the characters whose pasts have clearly been affected by the actions of some players in the story, and to find there's no resolution for some of them by each route's end was a bit deflating for someone like me who's invested so much effort towards getting to know each and every one of them. Here's hoping both the Golden Deer routes and Church routes resolve that feeling, but as you said David, Three Houses was already a huge enough game that demanded a lot of my attention, and Animal Crossing's already here, plus some more to come, there're simply other games I'd like to explore more as well. Despite all that, can't argue you get a lot of bang for your buck with this game though.
Its different enough in each route to justify playing through them all....Blue lions is hands down the best route, especially for a 1st run. I say that because that story could be self-contained and still make more sense then the other 3.
I personally really loved that game and what you said about the story is what I found excellent, it makes you think about the consequences of different choices and you can see it from different perspectives. As you say the characters are really likeable and to be able to really understand the world you have to interact with all of them. I guessed the point about Flayn and Byleth should be related to them as well. I took the Black Eagles path and sided with Edelgard, unfortunately I didn't save my playthrough before making the choice.
I really think the reason you didn’t enjoy the story of Three Houses is bc you played the church route/Silver Snow. It’s a nice route, but it’s not nearly as satisfying a first route as Blue Lions or especially Golden Deer. GD gives you WAY more lore about the world, church, and Agarthans. While BL gives you a much more rich plot following Dimitri’s side of the story while basically completely ignoring the Agarthans and focusing more on his mental state and a bit more revelations relating to the Tragedy of Duscur. Especially if you get the DLC and recruit Hapi
This game is on my list to get for the Switch. Have you played Octopath Traveler, Dave? I'm torn between the two at the moment. I love the Fire Emblem series, but I'm also in the mood for an old-fashioned JRPG, so I could go for either.
I liked Octopath Traveler but I never finished it. It gets bogged down some ways in when you essentially have to travel around recruiting all eight people before you are high enough level to do part 2 of anyone's story. Aesthetics are top-notch - absolutely loved them, as well as the music. Turned on Japanese voices because I didn't care for the English ones. A slight change in systems (like some sort of scaling to let you focus on one story) would have made the game much better, but I can still recommend it as a sale game if you have to have that old-school JRPG feel. There is a demo for it if I remember correctly that will let you continue from where you left off if you buy the game, so I recommend downloading it and seeing for yourself. Fire Emblem is superior IMO.
The story is detailed but disappointing, more of an excuse for the characters to do things than anything else. Edelgard gained nothing from attending school, and her plans would have worked better if she didn't attend; heck, her plans would have gotten her killed by her own pawns if Byleth weren't involved, since she decided to hide her identity from all but her closest goons. From what I heard, IS wrote the Church route first (making Byleth Edelgard's house leader by default and having you split from her because she's a betrayer), and handed the game itself off to the Fire Emblem Warriors team becauss they couldn't code the Batallions on their own. The game was finished early, but the playtesters were affronted by none of the main characters getting a happy ending, so the Warriors team added the other three routes as feature creep. They overestimated how much time they had, so they took a finished small game and turned it into a half-baked large game. That being said, Azure Moon is the most-coherent plotline beyond the plot holes in the Academy Phase, in that it's just Byleth dragging Dmitri through the tried-and-tested Marth storyline and working him out of his psychotic break.
I hadn't heard of some that. I knew they used the warriors engine for at least parts of the game. Having gone back since this video my criticism holds. Good world, good gameplay, even good characters, but the plot isn't quite coherent in any single playthrough. Still enjoyed it a lot.
@@DVSPress I'm glad to hear that! Certain spoilers kinda bugged me, and then Engage came out, so I'm more of a sponge of what others have said than an expert on the game. I'll get through the monastery grind someday; usually I like massive hubs like that in games.
Three Houses is a lesson to me on how worldbuilding can brilliantly support a plot but it CANNOT stand on its own if the plot isn’t good. And the plot of Three Houses is frankly a mess. Azure Moon, the route that fittingly has the least worldbuilding, also has the best plot, and feels satisfying in spite of the lack of worldbuilding. And it may not be my place to say this but it disappoints me how high of a pedestal the fanbase holds this game on because of its worldbuilding and (very manufactured) “greyness” that they ignore how poor the plot is while still calling it one of the best FE stories. In my opinion, it’s not even close to being the best, and the fanbase’s priority of love of worldbuilding has deeply damaged FE series discourse
Having played other routes since I recorded this I consider my criticism even more valid. Every route is a narrative mess after the time skip. Most rush and leave out critical details that explain motivation as well as how the world itself works. I think the worst was actually the Edelgard route (least amount of story or resolution). Still generally enjoyable and definitely better executed than the new game.
@@DVSPress The Edelgard rpure 8s my favourite because for once I don't have to listen to some nonsense about "good motivation, but wrong methods" nonsense many stories peddle
I was fairly disappointed with fire emblem, engage stories just another Fire, Emblem Fates, but only had one route, and it has a similar story to Armored Core Verdict day. I hope the next fire emblem game would take cues from three houses but except it’s gonna be a lot darker. I want the next fire emblem game to be like the movie Dune. And here’s the the synopsis Melange, an unknown substance that could dramatically advance human society. In the past, this substance caused a major catastrophe on Bashtar that engulfed the surrounding star systems, and eventually its very existence was lost. Decades later, the Melange reaction was confirmed again on Bashtar. In search of the unknown substance that should have been lost, various speculations begin to swirl. Various parties are getting involved; The government, corporations, cultists, and unknown mercenaries... The protagonist is one of them. And I also expressed that if they make a new fire emblem would look like it needs to appeal both Europeans and Americans because fire emblem of particular is an notably inspired by Isekai anime it’s important that well using that as a base wide appeal, particularly for western audiences is a central concern interestingly, I thought of an idea that the concept of using science fantasy featured in Xenoblade chronicles in the fire emblem series because of the synopsis.
I feel like a lot of the story is supposed to, in a way, reflect how real-life conflicts are often only seen from one side. You only get to see as much as you need to make you want to defeat the other sideーbut when you play FROM the other side(s), you get to see that there's also reasons to support that side and attack the others. But, of course, you don't really get a deep dive into any of the other sides you're not playing, so information is withheld. After going through all the routes, it is very clear there is a lot of plot and lots of lore hidden beneath the surface.
You're quickly becoming one of my favorite RUclipsrs! You cover such a wide range of topics. Culture, fiction, metal, art, and now a Fire Emblem analysis?? Keep it up brother
Yea the branching paths in this game is my biggest gripe. Going back to Tactics Ogre theres 3 paths, chaos, law, and nuetral. Each path has different story beats and exclusive content but each one is a complete story. You understand whats going, the motivations of the antagonists, the lore of Valerian Isles, and how everything ties into the world at large. The only major changes are maps, story perspective, and exclusive characters, basically mostly game play changes. In Three houses it feels like they had one or two coherent paths but decided to add more in a rush (look no further then Edlegards path being incomplete), so they were like this route needs some more lore so lets pluck this information from one route and transplant it. Unfortunately as a result every path feels half baked.
I think that's the point: the lack of information on all sides. I played all 4 paths and did enjoy them all so I might be biased, but I think seeing all sides the way you do when you play all routes lets you understand that none of them is truly right or wrong, they just fight based on the limited information they have.
SPOILERS for Black Eagles and Golden Deer I guess: imo, you only truly understand *where* Edelgard's views were wrong once you see Claude investigate the truth behind and the Church and the History of Fódlan. I ended up replaying BE (on maddening with the Ashen Wolved) after I finished playing all the other routes (the order I played was Church>BE>BL>GD) and there's a conversation between Edelgard and Byleth where she basically says "this is the truth that only I have access to, and this is why I did what I did", and I knew that "truth" was a lie that, while she was the only one who knew because it was passed down to her, the information was wrong and the actual truth was completely hidden.
I do get your point and in general do agree with it, but I disagree it's one of the weakest FE stories, I think it's one of the strongest. There are things you can only experience because of the way the game is structured.
"There are things you can only experience because of the way the game is structured."
that is exactly why 3H's story is weak: it forces you to follow its rules in order to get a wider view on the story, but neither side is actually very impactful
Furthermore, you don’t get a second or third or fourth group to side with in real life and see how each history plays out. There may be different sides to every story irl, but there’s only one history, one chronology of consequential events.
Meanwhile Three Houses basically says “what if you could see every side of history but be powerless to use your complete knowledge of it?” which is completely unrepresentative of anything in real life AND unsatisfying as fuck.
The reason that the plot reveals kept being put off is because Rhea likes to hoard information. If you has played any other route you would not had that problem. Hell, if you had played Golden Deer you could see Claude yell at Rhea for withholding info.
If you ever come back. I'd say do Blue Lions next, especially if you're strapped for time. That one is a much more personal and contained story. That story is more grounded in the present day and covers the conflict of Dimitri and Edelgard, their backgrounds, and the royal families. It has a much more pronounced beginning, middle, and resolution since those two are center focus. Just as a contained story being told, Blue Lions is strong but, as a result, it ends up feeling like the most insignificant path to take because of its attention to character and emotion. You get nothing of the world history in Blue lion. Can't win it all.
Golden Deer is the path that sits you down and gives you the proper lecture on the Dark slither crew plus more world building. "They were this clan.....they had beef with the dragons because of this......then Nemisis got involved.....Then after the fact Seiros made the church for....ect." Yeah, pretty much every path is designed to fill in the blanks left by the other paths and vice versa. I'm working through the church path now (Didn't mind the spoilers by the way) and I went into it expecting it to patch up the last little bits of the Golden Deer holes.
I would expect then that Edelgard's path dives all the way in to the Dark Slither Crew to fill in more Golden Deer and Church holes.
The golden dear, I was awesome my very first play through, and I felt satisfied with the answers to my questions by the end of it
I have the utmost love for this game.
If you want better answers to the story that doesn’t involve playing other routes to understand what’s going on I’d recommend playing the golden deer route. They do a better job of actually answering questions that are police mainly because the main Lord Claude dedicate a lot of his character arc twin, covering the secrets of fodlend
11:30 well, in Fate/Stay Night each path is a different timeline with major events changing, and even entire characters appearing or not depending on which path you go
I wanted to note one thing here, and it's that the support conversations, at least the ones with the player and the other characters, do have an effect on the game. It's not noticeable for you, I'd say, because you played through the church route. The church route is by far the one route that everyone agrees is the worse route to take for plot. I've completely finished all the routes, and any other path gives WAY more to all aspects of the story, in both narrative and plot.
And I'd also add, to get on my original point, that in the other routes, the support conversations determine whether or not some characters live or die, which then changes the story based on whether or not that that character is around. Blue lions is the best example of this, because a conversation between the player and a certain character, which I won't spoil, determines whether or not you get a mission after you talk to them that then determines their fate. So if say to try the other routes before giving a final judgement on the story as a whole, since you did pick the weakest of the 4 routes in a sense.
The unfinished story was my main criticism for 3H too. It seems like Blue Lions was the main/original story and they ended up splitting the whole game into four different paths, but they also split all of the narrative focus. The result was four stories that all felt half baked and none of them could stand on their own. And with the first half of the game being the same for all, the replay value is TEDIOUS and not a good experience. On a side note, with your expertise in music, I'm curious what you thought of the OST for 3H.
Unfortunately, after having played through the Crimson Flower path and Blue Lion path (in Golden Deer now), that sense of unanswered questions and story being much weaker compared to the support conversations really doesn't go away. For all the worldbuilding and the addictive nature of earning Support convos goes, I was left feeling pretty disappointed in the plot both times around because both the story routes, at least to me, never really felt like there was any real closure, especially for the characters whose pasts have clearly been affected by the actions of some players in the story, and to find there's no resolution for some of them by each route's end was a bit deflating for someone like me who's invested so much effort towards getting to know each and every one of them.
Here's hoping both the Golden Deer routes and Church routes resolve that feeling, but as you said David, Three Houses was already a huge enough game that demanded a lot of my attention, and Animal Crossing's already here, plus some more to come, there're simply other games I'd like to explore more as well.
Despite all that, can't argue you get a lot of bang for your buck with this game though.
Its different enough in each route to justify playing through them all....Blue lions is hands down the best route, especially for a 1st run. I say that because that story could be self-contained and still make more sense then the other 3.
I personally really loved that game and what you said about the story is what I found excellent, it makes you think about the consequences of different choices and you can see it from different perspectives. As you say the characters are really likeable and to be able to really understand the world you have to interact with all of them. I guessed the point about Flayn and Byleth should be related to them as well. I took the Black Eagles path and sided with Edelgard, unfortunately I didn't save my playthrough before making the choice.
getting your new book now
I really think the reason you didn’t enjoy the story of Three Houses is bc you played the church route/Silver Snow. It’s a nice route, but it’s not nearly as satisfying a first route as Blue Lions or especially Golden Deer. GD gives you WAY more lore about the world, church, and Agarthans. While BL gives you a much more rich plot following Dimitri’s side of the story while basically completely ignoring the Agarthans and focusing more on his mental state and a bit more revelations relating to the Tragedy of Duscur. Especially if you get the DLC and recruit Hapi
This game is on my list to get for the Switch. Have you played Octopath Traveler, Dave? I'm torn between the two at the moment. I love the Fire Emblem series, but I'm also in the mood for an old-fashioned JRPG, so I could go for either.
I liked Octopath Traveler but I never finished it. It gets bogged down some ways in when you essentially have to travel around recruiting all eight people before you are high enough level to do part 2 of anyone's story. Aesthetics are top-notch - absolutely loved them, as well as the music. Turned on Japanese voices because I didn't care for the English ones.
A slight change in systems (like some sort of scaling to let you focus on one story) would have made the game much better, but I can still recommend it as a sale game if you have to have that old-school JRPG feel. There is a demo for it if I remember correctly that will let you continue from where you left off if you buy the game, so I recommend downloading it and seeing for yourself.
Fire Emblem is superior IMO.
You should watch Chase Kip's video on Three Houses Lore Explained.
The story is detailed but disappointing, more of an excuse for the characters to do things than anything else. Edelgard gained nothing from attending school, and her plans would have worked better if she didn't attend; heck, her plans would have gotten her killed by her own pawns if Byleth weren't involved, since she decided to hide her identity from all but her closest goons.
From what I heard, IS wrote the Church route first (making Byleth Edelgard's house leader by default and having you split from her because she's a betrayer), and handed the game itself off to the Fire Emblem Warriors team becauss they couldn't code the Batallions on their own. The game was finished early, but the playtesters were affronted by none of the main characters getting a happy ending, so the Warriors team added the other three routes as feature creep. They overestimated how much time they had, so they took a finished small game and turned it into a half-baked large game.
That being said, Azure Moon is the most-coherent plotline beyond the plot holes in the Academy Phase, in that it's just Byleth dragging Dmitri through the tried-and-tested Marth storyline and working him out of his psychotic break.
I hadn't heard of some that. I knew they used the warriors engine for at least parts of the game.
Having gone back since this video my criticism holds. Good world, good gameplay, even good characters, but the plot isn't quite coherent in any single playthrough. Still enjoyed it a lot.
@@DVSPress I'm glad to hear that! Certain spoilers kinda bugged me, and then Engage came out, so I'm more of a sponge of what others have said than an expert on the game. I'll get through the monastery grind someday; usually I like massive hubs like that in games.
Three Houses is a lesson to me on how worldbuilding can brilliantly support a plot but it CANNOT stand on its own if the plot isn’t good. And the plot of Three Houses is frankly a mess. Azure Moon, the route that fittingly has the least worldbuilding, also has the best plot, and feels satisfying in spite of the lack of worldbuilding.
And it may not be my place to say this but it disappoints me how high of a pedestal the fanbase holds this game on because of its worldbuilding and (very manufactured) “greyness” that they ignore how poor the plot is while still calling it one of the best FE stories. In my opinion, it’s not even close to being the best, and the fanbase’s priority of love of worldbuilding has deeply damaged FE series discourse
Rip. You played the route with the worst story
Having played other routes since I recorded this I consider my criticism even more valid.
Every route is a narrative mess after the time skip. Most rush and leave out critical details that explain motivation as well as how the world itself works. I think the worst was actually the Edelgard route (least amount of story or resolution). Still generally enjoyable and definitely better executed than the new game.
@@DVSPress The Edelgard rpure 8s my favourite because for once I don't have to listen to some nonsense about "good motivation, but wrong methods" nonsense many stories peddle
I was fairly disappointed with fire emblem, engage stories just another Fire, Emblem Fates, but only had one route, and it has a similar story to Armored Core Verdict day. I hope the next fire emblem game would take cues from three houses but except it’s gonna be a lot darker. I want the next fire emblem game to be like the movie Dune. And here’s the the synopsis Melange, an unknown substance that could dramatically advance human society. In the past, this substance caused a major catastrophe on Bashtar that engulfed the
surrounding star systems, and eventually its very existence was lost. Decades later, the Melange reaction was confirmed again on Bashtar. In search of the
unknown substance that should have been lost, various speculations begin to swirl. Various parties are getting involved; The government, corporations, cultists, and unknown
mercenaries... The protagonist is one of them. And I also expressed that if they make a new fire emblem would look like it needs to appeal both Europeans and Americans because fire emblem of particular is an notably inspired by Isekai anime it’s important that well using that as a base wide appeal, particularly for western audiences is a central concern interestingly, I thought of an idea that the concept of using science fantasy featured in Xenoblade chronicles in the fire emblem series because of the synopsis.