Intelligent Systems has partnered with Koei Tecmo to give birth to a delivery that finds a perfect balance between the systems it proposes and, above all, manages to give the player great freedom to explore them as he wishes. Join us throughout this analysis to find out how Fire Emblem: Three Houses manages to take great advantage of this and many other of its virtues.
The first steps we will take in Fire Emblem: Three Houses are especially relevant since they will vary the path we follow throughout our adventure. Thus, and starting with those choices that have to do with the purely mechanical, Intelligent Systems plants two of them on the table that will modify the difficulty of the trip: one that will have to do with choosing between a normal and a more demanding mode, and another in which to decide if we want to play with the classic twist that the units that die in the fighting disappear completely or, on the other hand, withdraw exclusively temporarily. However, Fire Emblem: Three Houses keeps a third choice to present it to us before we finish the first hour of play. One that will honor the subtitle that receives this delivery, since we must choose which of the three houses that cohabit in your world we want to support.
And, although we have very little context when deciding which faction to stay with (we are hardly presented to the leader of each one with a couple of sentences about his person and his past), the truth is that this election will have a transcendence special not so much because the way of playing with each one changes (since the units we will control will be different), but because of the idea that the story that will be told to us will also be different. And we are not talking about the same plot told from a different perspective, but that the events that occur depending on which faction we have joined will be unique to each one, although all will have a first common part. All this showing a high rejugability factor that makes Fire Emblem: Three Houses something that unfolds as a much more ambitious delivery and shows a horizon full of plots to discover.
The first bars of Fire Emblem: Three Houses will put us in the shoes of a protagonist (or one, depending on which we have chosen) who will accompany his father to visit the monastery of Garreg Mach, which serves as the base of operations for an order of gentlemen that keeps the peace in the kingdom. Our mission will be to become a teacher in one of the three houses we have chosen to support, although it is true that the adventure will have several events that we will not reveal here and whose script becomes like another of the project's strengths.
Before going on to talk about other elements that are part of the solid set proposed by Intelligent Systems, we will start talking about those sections in which the confrontations take place, since they have been and are again one of the central axes of the franchise. Thus, those who are more lost or do not know the saga should know that the rules of their fighting are based on two words: tactics and turns. In this way, the clashes will take place on maps divided by squares through which we can move our units. And, having to do with this, it must be said that the magic of Fire Emblem: Three Houses not only lies in the way in which each action is triggered in the clashes, but in the terrain in which they develop since each map It offers a unique challenge in strategic terms.
This, in particular, is due to the idea that those responsible for the game have taken care to provide each scenario with a series of elements that force the player to exercise their ability to adapt. Elements that range from having to manage the movement of the units through a burning terrain that harms each turn until we have to separate our group by boxes that teleport us to another place on the map, to name a few examples.
Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo have managed to find the key in getting the new installment of the franchise to face new challenges and, at the same time, leave intact the molds that were already established in the past. Its sequence of teaching, socializing with students, fighting and repeating is one that never loses interest because the characters we will meet in the game have a great charisma and, above all, because their combat mechanics continue to show that we are facing one of the biggest banners of the tactical RPG genre.
In the end, we are facing a proposal that offers hundreds of hours of careful content in all aspects. One of the few chosen that focuses part of its efforts on generating genuine emotions in the player without this being its main objective. Something that can be seen thanks to that pride it feels to see your students improve and, at the same time, to that sadness that appears when thinking about the great warrior that could have become that other pupil who fell in the battle for our fault. Intelligent Systems has created a delivery that results in one of those changes that benefit the industry and its players: the Fire Emblem saga may not be one that was made for everyone ... but this may change with Fire Emblem: Three Houses
