Fire Emblem: Three Housesis the most recent mainlineFire Emblemgame, the 16th installment that was released in 2019 exclusively on the Nintendo Switch by intelligent systems and Koei Tecmo.
RELATED:Fire Emblem: The Best Character Designs In Golden Deers, Ranked
A tactical role-playing franchise, the firstFire Emblemgame, calledShadow Dragon and the Blade of Lightwas released in 1990, with the most recent being a 2022 spin-off Musou, 1 vs 1000 type game,Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, taking place in the same universe asFire Emblem: Three Houses. With so many installments, new features get added and removed in the games.Fire Emblem: Three Housescertainly had its fair share of great features that fans expect to be inFire Emblem: Engage.However, from those features there are some that should clearly be left out.
8Monastery
The Garreg Mach Monastery ofFire Emblem: Three Housesacts as the main base between battles for the player. Repeatedly, the player is forced to go through the Monastery to complete missions, unlock new features, and build up weapon skills or Support with students.
While for the first few times, the Monastery can be interesting to explore and run around in, the more the game goes on, exploring the Monastery can become more of a chore. This is especially true for the people who replay the game. This feature needs to be removed from future games.
7Gender Locked Classes
Gender-locked classes is a strict rule amongstFire Emblemgames, the only real exception being Fire Emblem Fates. Three Houses takes this rule to the extreme by gender locking a large number of classes, more than in previous installments.
Previous games mainly gender-locked Pegasus knights for women, as canonically, Pegasus are known to dislike men and refuse to let them ride. In Three Houses, this is a big disadvantage to some characters, for example, male magic-based units, or axe and Brawling-based female units.
6Simplistic Map Designs
Map designs inFire Emblem: Three Housesare quite lacking in comparison to other installments in the franchise. The maps aren’t that detailed and, after single gameplay, they’ve already been fully explored, with a few exceptions, such as final boss maps.
RELATED:Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes - Best Units For Blue Lions (Azure Gleam Route)This makes the terrain boring and less challenging in some aspects. Some of the best and most creative maps the franchise had to offer were inFire Emblem Fates: Conquest, which were an array of creative and challenging maps. A similar concept in Three Houses would’ve been ideal. Fans hope for the next installment to pose more of a challenge in this department.
5Split Routes
While this is a controversial take, the route split was not all that well handled inThree Houses. Indeed, the main issue resides in the first part of the game, White Clouds. This part is almost identical, no matter the route the player is on, making replays a drag and uninteresting.
As such, the first part becomes a drag and is practically the same, without any diversity. It is also highly focused on Blue Lions students, which does not make as much sense on other routes. Another issue with the route split is the lack of map diversity. All routes have the same maps, thus, the gameplay gets repetitive. Adding to that, Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes are practically identical. To make the nextFire Emblemgame better, fans hope for this to be addressed or, better yet, dropped altogether.
4Weird Difficulty Settings
In Three Houses, there are three difficulty settings – Normal, Hard, and Maddening. It is up to the player to pick to make the experience as enjoyable as possible. However, once fans look at the difference between each difficulty, it’s not all that well balanced.
Normal and Hard have little difference between them and the game experience doesn’t change much, providing little challenge even to newbies. However, Maddening is a whole different beast and it’s incredibly hard to transition from Hard to Maddening. This setting certainly needs to be dropped or changed.
3Lack Of Weapon Triangle
The Weapon Triangle inFire Emblemis a classic feature in nearly every game, except forThree Houses. While there are certain skills that act similarly, like Blade, Axe, or Sword Breaker, they can be equipped by any class if mastered. This causes a lack of unit diversity on the battlefield.
RELATED:Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes - Best Spears (& Where To Find Them)
As such, the player doesn’t need to deploy or use different types of weapons and take advantage of their unique skills. Curiously, this feature was added back inFire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which is a spin-off ofFire Emblem: Three Houses. InFire Emblem: Engage, it has made a comeback.
2Simplistic Main Character
Byelth, the main characterofFire Emblem: Three Houses, is a very simple and bland character. On top of all that,Byleth isn’t very customizable, like in previous games.
In newer Fire Emblem games likeFire Emblem: FatesandFire Emblem: Awakening, the main character, despite being of little interest, still has a lot of personalization options, such as appearance, voice, size, and even budding talent and weaknesses. This makes using them more fun. Sadly, none of this is a possibility with Byleth, where the only option is choosing the gender and the name. Next-generationFire Emblemgames should certainly change this, but the trend seems to be continuing with Alear.
1Assigning Assistant
Assistant Assignment is a new feature inThree Housesthat takes inspiration from the Pair Up feature in older installments. Previously, the Pair Up feature helped a lot with movement and power, and even allowed the player to Pair Up and disband freely.
Strangely,Fire Emblem: Three Houseslimits this by only letting the player assign an assistant to up to three characters, provided the Professor Level is high enough, before the battle starts. What’s more, they come with limited usefulness and, thus, take away the immense game asset that is to pair up and allow support development between characters throughout the game. This feature definitely needs to change inFire Emblem: Engage.
MORE:Fire Emblem: 9 Features From Three Houses That Should Be In The Next Instalment
