Game Flow: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a tactical strategy roleplaying game in which the player takes control of a professor in charge of teaching a group of students at an officer’s academy. The game departs from many of the features of other games in the Fire Emblem series, and it adds many new elements. It is a fairly new game, so I will do my best to avoid saying anything resembling a spoiler.

Challenge and Skill. Three Houses presents several different challenges for players to overcome. The most obvious is combat, which gradually becomes more difficult as the game progresses, with more numerous and more powerful foes appearing with each chapter. The game also allows the player to choose between Normal and Hard mode from the start, as well as between Casual and Classic mode. Hard and Classic mode make the game more difficult, but these options are only available from the start, so if a player finds that the level of challenge is too high or low for their level of skill, they must start a new game to change these settings. Additionally, in Normal mode it is extremely simple to make the combat parts of the game mostly trivial, because there is unlimited access to experience points to make the player’s units far more powerful than enemies. And as mentioned above, if a player finds themselves in this situation and becomes bored of the low challenge, they would need to start a new game to increase the challenge again. A solution to this problem would be a dynamic difficulty setting that adjusts based on how much the player has trained their units. This would allow for the game to still challenge those who trained a lot while not completely punishing those who skipped opportunities to do so.

The other main challenge the game presents is time management with free days. On free days, the player has the option to do one of several activities. Typically, there are pros and cons of each option for any given week, so it is up to the player to decide which is best. If the Explore or Battle options are selected, there are yet more choices that must be made. While exploring the monastery, the player has a limited pool of activities they can perform on a given day, and when going to battle, there is a limited amount of battles that can be done per day. The challenge of managing this time remains relatively constant throughout the game. While more options open up later in the game for Explore and Battle, the player also obtains a larger pool of time to spend on those options. The limitations of this time are mostly trivialized in Normal mode, since the player can do an unlimited number of battles when selected the Battle option, eliminating the need to plan things like which units to train. Overall, Fire Emblem: Three Houses does present some challenge and opportunity to express skill, but it does not have a very good range of levels of challenge, meaning that many players will find it either too easy or too difficult.

Goals. Three Houses does a fairly good job of providing the player with clear goals to work towards. In combat, the objective of the battle is provided from the start, letting the player know whether they need to defeat a certain enemy, defeat all enemies, defend a certain point, etc. During exploration of the monastery, quest objectives are listed onscreen, and the player can check active quests at any time from the menu. These are enough for the player to know what their current main objectives are.

Other goals in the game involve unit progression. If the player wants to make a certain unit into a certain class, the game lists what skills are required in order to do so. This tells the player what they should be focusing on for that unit during classroom lessons and battles. Similarly, if the player wants to recruit a student, the game lists which attributes or skills that student wants the player to have in order to be recruited. However, unlike making a unit into a certain class, the requirements for recruiting a student do not list exact values for the attributes or skills that the player needs. Adding those values would allow for the setting of more proximal goals. The same change would also benefit the support system, since there is no way to know how much progress has been made from one support level to the next between two units.  For the most part in this game, goals are clear, but are often not proximal.

Feedback. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a multifaceted game, and as such, there are a lot of instances where immediate feedback is necessary. Beginning with combat, the game provides the player with a large amount of feedback. Player and enemy units’ stats are clearly laid out for the player to evaluate before initiating a fight. The combat forecast also shows how much damage both sides stand to receive, as well as the likelihood of an attack missing or landing a critical hit. Two things that are not listed anywhere are the likelihood of a Crest triggering and the likelihood of a follow-up attack being made by an attack adjutant, which sometimes would change the outcome of a fight. Other than that, combat is very good about providing immediate feedback. It is clear when an attack connects or misses, and it is very clear when a critical hit is triggered. After a fight, the game shows exactly which skills gained experience points, as well as the experience point total of the unit. When a unit levels up, the game lists which stats increased. During a battle but outside of a fight, the game allows the player to see the attack range of each enemy, as well as which unity they will target on their next turn with the current state of the map. Additionally, if an enemy unit is carrying an item that the player will obtain upon defeating it, a symbol appears on that enemy, and the item is green in their inventory. The game does a pretty good job of providing the player with all the information they need to make the right decisions during battle.

Another facet of Three Houses is the support system. Many units can build support between one another, and all units can build support between themselves and the player’s unit. The player can check which units can support each other from the menu, as well as check their current level. A visual and audio effect also is triggered when the player performs an action that increases the support between two units, either in or out of battle. One thing that could use better feedback is conversations in which certain dialogue options can result in making support progress. Some dialogue options will increase or decrease the support between the player’s unit and another, but it is never clear when a certain dialogue decision could have such results. If the selected option does have support implications, it is clear to the player, but it is not clear whether an option that was not selected would have had such implications.

There are numerous other little things that the game does well or poorly with regard to feedback. One of these is during the fishing mini game. When the player times it correctly, a sound effect plays and the word EXCELLENT flashes on the screen, while timing it poorly produces a quieter sound effect and a less flashy GOOD. Another is during gardening, where the player can plant multiple types of seeds and use multiple types of cultivation methods to grow plants. The game does not provide very clear feedback regarding what exactly the player can expect to receive from certain combinations of seeds or the exact effectiveness of certain cultivation methods. With regard to shopping, the game does not tell the player how many of a certain item they already possess when buying it. Finally, the player often receives “renown” as a reward for completing quests or battles, but the game does not explain what it does until long after the player starts receiving it. Overall, Three Houses gives good, immediate feedback with regard to most parts of combat and many of the other parts of the game, but could use some improvements here and there.

Conclusion. Fire Emblem: Three Houses offers a much different Fire Emblem experience than previous games in the series. However, much like recent entries, Three Houses is limited in its ability to appropriately challenge players. There are fixed difficulty settings that cannot be changed during a game, and the limited amount of time for training units in Hard mode means that the player might reach a point of having units that are simply too weak to progress. More dynamic difficulty settings could go a long way in solving this problem. Goals in the game are mostly clear, but listing specific requirements for recruiting students and increasing support levels would be beneficial. Feedback during combat is nearly perfect, with the exceptions of Crest trigger rates and follow-up attack rates. Outside of combat the game gives good feedback on many things, but poor or no feedback on some others. Overall, it might seem like Three Houses is not particularly well-suited to promote flow, and that is probably correct. However, flow is not the only measure of a good game, and Fire Emblem is popular for its characters and story in addition to its gameplay. This blog is not designed to review these attributes of games, but I can say that I personally enjoy many of the characters in Three Houses. However, with regard to flow, the game has many places that need improvement.