Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)

This is my least favorite Fire Emblem. I think I reached the point where what I like in the series and what the series will be in the future are separating, which is a bit sad. I like the more linear and streamlined entries, but the newer games are slow burning time sinks. I don't need 3 separate stories. Im pretty sure I can beat FE7 three times faster than I can beat one route of three houses. To be fair to Three Houses, I'm judging it for how I want it to be rather than for what it actually is.
I played 3 routes and don't plan on playing the 4th yet.

Story
The story is actually kind of a mess. Of the 3 routes I played, 2 of them felt incomplete. And rather than 3 parts of one story, they really just act as 3 independent stories.

I don't think the writing is without merit. The game does an excellent job making the part 1 and part 2 feel distinct in tone. Other games in the series typically have a war is bad message, but no Fire Emblem game before this one really had that message resonate as strongly. I think because the potential of your enemies being former classmates rather than faceless enemies, a force of nature, or an obviously evil organization, along with interacting with the characters and seeing the effect the events of the story is taking on them makes the message carry more weight.

Supports
I went from hating these characters for being anime-tropes, to really becoming attached to them after 150+ hours. Not sure if it's because I just spent so much time with them or if it's because I got to know them more, it's probably a bit of both. Some of them are pretty bad, but there are some that are genuinely touching. I like how they're experimenting a bit with how supports work. Instead of having all supports have 3 tiers, they can range from 2-4 tiers. It's a neat way to show that some characters have the potential to become more intimate than others. I did find that for anyone outside of Byleth, the A support was effectively the S support. It is kinda awkward seeing characters profess their love for multiple people during a single playthrough. I still haven't figured out how the paired endings work when characters have multiple A ranks though.

Gameplay
More so than any other game in the series, the combat and the exploration really clash with each other. The exploration really takes away from the battles, which is what I want to do. Exploring became a thing I really didn't want to do anymore, but I felt like I should. It is pretty neat with the gift giving because it makes you learn more about the characters in order to give them the right items. Outside of that, I found myself wanting to the battles.

I love the addition of the dragon pulse, but I hate that the game is designed around it. It honestly feels like the game is as cheap as possible and it justifies the cheapness because you can rewind time. A ton of paralogues and story maps will change the rules in the middle of the map just to screw with you. Thought you beat the boss? Nope, it's going to transform into a monster. Thought you could make progress on the map? Nope, we will light everything on fire, move the enemies right into the middle of your party, and have the boss move even though the danger radius shows that the boss wouldn't move. You're stuck in our terrain? We will spawn flying reinforcements while you can't get away. It honestly felt unfair a lot of the time.

Character progression is the most freeform I've experienced in the series. It's nice being able to use any weapon you want in any class, but it takes a lot more time and mental energy to develop each character. Losing your character feels like a much bigger loss because of all the resources it takes to develop them. It isn't just EXP anymore.

I think the best gameplay change is that magic is refreshed after every map. In other games, I wouldn't even use better staves/tomes because I was worried they'd break, but since I don't have to worry about that in this game I was free to use fortify, physic, warp, rescue to my heart's content.

I want to complain about NG+. I'm glad it exists, but I wish it did more. I would've liked to have been able to carry over convoy items and reclass into any of my previous classes. I get that they didn't want you to become too OP, but it just felt like a waste not being able to carry over the things I worked hard for. Instead, you're limited to carrying over supports and skills, but only if you have enough renown to carry it over.

Map Design
These are the worst maps in the series. Every map is made to be the most tedious thing to traverse. 95% of the maps have forest, sand, or stairs/slopes that are a pain in the butt to get through. I'm going to replay the Tellius games. If I'm still up for more Fire Emblem, I plan on getting Engage and hoping I enjoy it more.

Edit: Forgot to mention how the writing handles nobility. In most Fire Emblem games, there's a mix of commoners and nobility, but it's generally not really important to the story because everyone gets along perfectly to fight for a common cause. In this game, the distinction between nobility and commoner is incredibly important to the writing. It forms the basis of how the characters see themselves, each other, and the structure of the world. Just thought it was interesting how they explored it in this game.

Also wanted to bring up one of the most unbelievable things. How does Byleth go 20 straight years of living without ever hearing of the Church of Seiros? It's mentioned how weird Byleth is, but the more I think about how this world works, the weirder Byleth is as a character.

Nine months later, released probably the last big feature update for my Three Houses mod! Delving into the game's systems and trying to figure out how to implement my ideas has been a super fun and educational way to keep "playing" one of my all-time favorites, but I think I'm pretty excited at this point to call it done and move on lol.