#fe16 playthrough

[silent-partner-412]

Twitter is arguing over the replayability of Three Houses over other games, and as per usual it’s a lot of people yelling back and forth at each other when I’m fairly sure the difference in how you perceive how replayable it is is more thanks to taste and perspective than any actual concrete “replay value”.

Here’s my perspective at least: Three Houses is replayable but only by technicality, and not in the same way the rest of the series is. Personally, I’d say it’s not particularly replayable at all, at least by my own definition. When I first played the game, I played it three times in a row: Azure Moon first, then Crimson Flower, then Verdant Wind. I played these routes in quick succession, and even though I felt compelled to return to the game because I was enjoying it, I still found my first playthrough to be easily my favorite (this was for a number of reasons but I think a large part of it was because the fatigue of this game’s repetition hadn’t set in yet). Though the game compelled me enough to pursue a repeat playthrough, it didn’t do enough to make me enjoy returning to the game as much the second and third time around compared to the first because of how much content was the same.

That said, the argument then becomes “well if you replay a game with one route then you’ll repeat all the same content anyway” but I think this is fundamentally flawed because I find there to be a huge difference between completing a game with one path and replaying that same one path to replaying a game with multiple, slightly different paths for the sake of seeing the relatively small differences. There are tons of games I enjoy even more on repeat playthroughs, where I notice new aspects of the story or get to try new things in the gameplay (the first Xenoblade Chronicles comes to mind as a game Ive played probably four or five times to completion and loved it every time, and I imagine I will feel this way about many other Fire Emblem games that are more traditionally structured). Meanwhile, seeing the same content in a game like Three Houses doesn’t feel exciting or interesting in the same way on repeat playthroughs because that’s not why I was replaying the game. I wanted more story content that I didn’t get on the first route I chose (because the story is fundamentally incomplete if you only do one route), but in order to get to it I had to sit through a long section of the game that was basically the same but I couldn’t skip it because “what if there are small differences I miss???”

To me, this is why I don’t consider Three Houses replayable. Of course, your mileage may vary; if you really really love the core gameplay of Three Houses and can stomach the repetition then you probably find it to be very replayable, and you’ve probably played it a lot. But to this day I still haven’t returned to 3H except for a quick seven chapter attempt of Silver Snow just to check it out after getting more into the series as a whole this fall. I don’t want to say I’ll never play the game again because I really did enjoy it, but it’s not a game like Radiant Dawn or Fates: Conquest or hell even Genealogy Of The Holy War which are all games I’m itching to replay as I type this, and if I ever play 3H again it will only be one route (probably Azure Moon for the story) because I cannot imagine playing that game multiple times in a row ever again.

[asteralley]

to deal with the fact that classes start tomorrow I'm posting some official yuri art

[randomnameless]

Checking Constance's Supreme support :

Constance asks Supreme Leader to help her restore her house, as soon as their C support :

It's a small thing regarding my house. I thought Your Highness might bend some slight effort toward seeing it restored from nothing.

Supreme Leader replies that given the present circumstances, she can't do a lot :

I had a feeling that was it. I wish I could help, but you must understand my present circumstances...

(even if we know that, by that time, she already was the one who appointed Emile in Hrym!)

So while Constance tries to impress her with her magic tricks like rainbow tea, Supreme Leader's support goes on more important territory :

Note the "I would like to talk with you about" that replaced the "I want to know".

It's more explicit in the jp version, but apparently, Supreme Leader tells Constance that she can expect more than "being an ally and a friend and getting along with magical research" if she... reveals her secret about House Nuvelle.

Otherwise, there's nothing she can do as the Imperial Princess?

The "if you expect more, you need to be prepared" really sounds like one of Fraud's lines : they will use their influence/help the other party... only if said other party reveals some piece of intel they'd like to know.

The explicit confirmation happens in the B convo :

I am ready to enlighten you regarding the secret that House Nuvelle has kept for generations.

The cat's out of the bag :

You have my gratitude. You will be rewarded for taking such a drastic measure.

Constance will receive, supposedly, Supreme Leader's help to restore House Nuvelle, not because they are friends and all, but only because she accepted to reveal the secret about Noa's crest.

I know it didn't came through the script and/or the playthroughs of FE16, but I'm more and more wondering if Fraud and Supreme Leader having similar methods - at least here - and sort of similar goals (I mean, for the ones involving the CoS and the evil lizard lady) wasn't something the devs banked on in FE16, which led them to write Nopes' Fraud the way he is written, but without his epiphany from the timeskip.

Something like, with Billy, Fraud stops being a bootleg copy of Supreme Leader and """grows""", but before, they're two peas in a pod - which is something Nopes highlights.

The JP version confirms that House Nuvelle isn't a, uh, very close-knit family, they marry people who aren't from their circle, but the "not bring Nuvelle's blood into other families" to me means that the children born of any union is a member of House Nuvelle, to make sure the Noa line wouldn't be spread out.

Granted, Supreme Leader already knew the secret of the House was tied to the crest of Noa, maybe it was something Uncle told her and she wanted confirmation? Or it was something shared in the Imperial Family?

Interesting... I always had the inkling that the six noble houses were eager to see House Nuvelle fall.

And yet, per Constance and Nopes!Lorenz's words, it was Ionius who ended the House, not any of the Six Great Houses...

Also, why would they want to get rid of House Nuvelle if it had little to no influence in Adrestia, nor allies?

Is the Crest of Noa so important - bar Chalice shenanigans - that it'd make other Houses upset? IDK.

but if the nuvelles are nabatean hybrids through Noa herself, it'd make more sense for Uncle or even Ionius to get rid of them

oh well, another thing left to the 10k years of lore.

[friedfriedchicken]

HI ABOUT UR ASK GAME I think u know about fire emblem but honestly not sure who’d you be an expert on 😭😭😭😭 SORRY IF THIS COMES OFF AS RUDE I would like to hear about ur expertise 🧐

AHUAAAGAGGAHAHGGGAAAAAA

THAT'S NOT AT ALL RUDE- LITERALLY ANY RESPONSE TO ASK GAME STUFF MAKES ME SO GIDDY THANK YOU

Okay- expertise time- I got into FE right before quarantine started so I was literally given all the time in the world in my early highschool era so I absorbed Fire Emblem up into my bloodstream and I blame that series for how I write and do world-building now. My homebrew D&D campaign (which will probably never see the light of day 😔) and my Transformers fan continuity were both heavily inspired by Fire Emblem, especially FE16 since it was my first game in the series.

Massive Fire Emblem: Three Houses spoilers below

Actual expertise time whoops: After sitting through my sibling's playthrough of FE16 I realized that I am very mentally ill for the Church of Seiros, specifically the Nabateans. I've tried digging into every nook and cranny to find information on them. I have a bad habit of becoming hyper-focused on stuff at the unholy hours of night and I've once gotten super emotional for the Four Saints during one of those moments. I was studying the Goddess mural that was used in a lot of promotional material and in the background of things and got teary-eyed while examining the dragons in the background. I'm not sure if you're an FE fan too but two of the dragons on the mural had designs that replicated the designs of the Wind Caller and the Immovable, dragons highly implied to be Saint Macuil and Saint Indech respeectively. The only difference being that the dragon that looked like The Immovable had wings in the mural unlike in the game where The Immovable has no visible wings. There are also two other dragons in the far back that seem to represent Saint Cichol and Saint Cethleann. In the game itself, Seteth (Saint Cichol's current alias) and Flayn (Saint Cethleann) state that they can't transform into dragons anymore whereas Saint Seiros (Lady Rhea) does transform at multiple points. I've asked other theorists and looked around for anything about the dragons in FE16 and how their whole thing works but I've come up empty. In earlier Fire Emblem games there are more dragon people who work somewhat differently yet still similarly to the dragon people of FE16 which is a point that helped inspire me to write my fanfic Kindled Flame. After playing other Fire Emblem games then returning back to the one that started my insanity I've been having fun little "woah this is similar to this" brain moments. Also I'm so sorry this response is humongous QwQ I looked at the clock and felt myself melt a little- it's getting into those unholy hours where I become extremely hyper lol

[gascon-en-exil]

In your opionion is there things that Engage did better than 3 Houses or things they did worse than 3 Houses ? if that is the case, which one and why ?

Those are two different questions, and ones that people have been bandying about online for months now. I thought for about five minutes about turning this into a video prompt, but there's already plenty exactly like this on YouTube - plus I'm currently working on way too much as it is.

What FE16 does better than FE17:

In general, character work - I say in general because there are characters I like in Engage and characters I very much don't in Houses, but the more substantive supports and other side interactions in the latter help the cast stand out more. They're also broken up more, so it's easier to focus on the groups you enjoy.

Non-Avatar queerness - So much lovely subtext, so many paired endings. I've done multiple videos centering around them, even. I said in a video a few months back that I dislike how so many of Engage's non-Avatar supports end with bland affirmations of friendship, which in combination with the lack of endings really kills the potential of pairings like Fogado/Bunet and Timerra/Merrin. Dimidue though? When their A support pivots around the word "friend" you just know that it's a euphemism, and that they'll be calling each other that mid-coitus that evening. Throw in around a dozen other pairings who've gotten big based on subtext and you've got a bunch to choose from.

Cozy life sim elements - The Somniel may be more streamlined and its loading screens slightly less agonizing, but the monastery better nails the feel of a persistent hub area - even if its coziness kind of undercuts the tone of the game's second half. This isn't something I'm really into, but I know a lot of fans get into stuff like gardening and fishing and tea time, and the calendar system and (weird) time progression does make Houses feel more like a life sim in contrast to the Somniel and its randomized character loadouts. Also, Engage has way more to grind for if you want to see everything, which is annoying. This is in contrast to...

100% Completion - It may be something only I care about, but Houses goes above and beyond any other mainline FE if you're a completionist. Of course there's the support logs and event gallery and such (features Engage doesn't even manage correctly), but there's also the in-game journal which provides a ludicrous but still doable 100% target in the form of watching a whole bunch of bars fill up very slowly over dozens of playthroughs. This requires so many spreadsheets to keep organized - love it!

What FE17 does better than FE16:

Story originality - Yes, really. Houses's story is three variations on the series standard plot, plus one other option - side with the conqueror -that Fates came up with first. Engage is the least politically-interested game in the series, and it barely even teases at a mundane war between nations before it's back to fighting zombies and collecting rings. Original doesn't necessarily mean good, but at least Engage knows exactly what kind of story it's trying to tell and what it can feasibly expect to do.

Tangible, linear worldbuilding - Engage isn't as ambitious, but it's more successful thanks to more traditional FE worldbuilding tools like talking to NPCs around the world as opposed to gathering them all in hub. The single story also helps keeps everything orderly and easy to understand, rather than going for an unreliable narrator + mystery box approach across multiple routes and half-assing the execution.

The Avatar - No contest here. Alear is an actual character with an identifiable arc, and while it's not the most compelling thing in the world it's leagues ahead of anything Byleth can claim. Byleth is a blank vessel for the player (and also Sothis for a while, lending them some facsimile of a character in the form of her reactions) with a ludicrously contrived backstory to justify why they are the way they are; Alear has fears and development and a backstory that's coherent even if it relies on a fair amount of cliché. Also, even in localization Alear as a god complex fantasy is undeniable, whereas Houses bends over backwards to act like a main source of its appeal isn't teacher-student sex. Speaking of -

Avatar queerness - Again, no contest - not that I especially care. Byleth's same-sex S rank options are limited, while Alear can give their not!engagement ring to every character regardless of gender, a huge step up in open-ended self-insert romance that gets mostly overlooked because they can also give the ring to preteens.

Understanding of FE's camp appeal - The above only underlines how much better Engage can be when it comes to the campy and the tasteless. From the ridiculous outfits to the Emblem stuff being compared to Saturday morning cartoons or Power Rangers or such to Zephia/Zelestia to the AU dragon incest wank nonsense, Engage wears its silliness on its sleeve. Houses doesn't totally lack that element, with stuff like the Proper Conduct Tournament and Manuela's...everything, basically, but like the teacher-student fetish it's hidden beneath this veneer of respectability that begins to grate after a while. Most of that is probably just overcorrection for the poor response to that sort of content in Fates, but it obviously didn't stick...not even for Fódlan content in Heroes. Look at the new duo Cathmir, and tell me these characters still aren't being sold on sex appeal aimed primarily at straight men.

Handling of characters of color - Not something I discuss often, but it has to be said. Solm is as developed of any of the other main four nations of Elyos, with just about as much of a role in the story and a presence in gameplay (i.e. you spend around half a dozen chapters there). There are still some oddities, like how the royals and NPCs are all dark-skinned but the retainer characters aren't, but compared to the various periphery nations of Fódlan it's a real standout and actually feels like a part of the world. Sreng is a plot device in Hopes, and even less than that in Houses. Duscur, Brigid, and Dagda basically only exist in relation to Dedue, Petra, and Shamir respectively. Even Almyra, from which we get two playable characters including one of the lords, barely appears at all, and most of Claude's Almyran heritage is left out of his writing because he spends the whole game disguising his identity.

Standard gameplay - I play on Normal and freely abuse time rewinding so my opinion here isn't going to be held in any regard, but go check out anywhere Engage is being discussed online and you'll see tons of tier lists and comparisons of builds and chapters and Emblems and whatever else. You know, the things that people ordinarily talk about when it comes to FE, and not -

Less enabling of toxic fandom elements - The inbuilt faction drama in a faux-serious war story, the continued growth of the anti phenomenon first seen when Fates was current, and a years-long global pandemic fostered endless division and conflict that persists to this day. It somehow even continues a year after the release of Hopes, now in the form of bashing Engage because it didn't sell as much (while still talking about its gameplay way more than I could ever bother, go figure) and IS is being more conservative with its Heroes appearances. There's still pointless nonsense to argue about here - like the aforementioned incest wank - but there's far less of it in a linear story that doesn't encourage players to latch as hard onto their favorites.

Non-100% replay value - Related to the gameplay, if you're not going for all the supports/bonds/achievements there's much more variety you can pull out of repeat playthroughs of Engage via the standard ways to mix up your runs in FE: using different characters, allocating resources differently, limiting yourself in certain ways etc. Houses's gameplay is so freeform and has such clear best options that for replays you're relying on the story...and there's exactly four stories. Worse, White Clouds is almost the same regardless of house, and there's a bunch of crossover content among the Part II routes as well, even Crimson Flower, which leads to it all feeling quite repetitive even if the narratives technically go to different places.

Nostalgic throwbacks - Not only the Emblems, but also the many legacy paralogues. These were a fun element of Awakening and Fates's DLC, and it's nice to see them brought back here with a bunch of callbacks for fans of those older games. Houses has...its batch of DLC classes all coming from Awakening, and the Archanean regalia appearing as random drops. Oh, and probably the least notable playable version of Anna ever.

Absurdly cute mascot factor - Could have talked about this under the camp factor, but some players get really into how adorable Sommie is. It's a fount of memes and goofy videos if nothing else. Is IS taking notes from Pokémon?

And yet I still prefer FE16 overall, because it better caters to my specific interests (gay stuff that doesn't involve Avatars, spreadsheets). The years of fandom toxicity are unfortunate, but I've grown accustomed to laughing at it when it amuses me and ignoring it when it doesn't.

[fire-emblem-birthdays]

Today, the 30th of April (Great Tree Moon), is the anniversary of the Rivalry of the Houses mission in FE16! Since it's also Ferdinand's birthday, a non-Black Eagles Byleth will ruin his birthday every playthrough by winning the mock battle. Sorry Ferdie.

[katofvalentia]

I realized I don't have a pinned post for this sideblog. Anyway...

Hello good people! My name is Kat! To me, Fire Emblem is an illness that has been plaguing me since 2013. This small sideblog is dedicated to my ups and downs with this long running franchise, be it through rambles or whatever art I cook up. Below is a mini report on my current status with each of the games!

Games played: 18 out of 22

❎️Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light (FE1) - haven't played, no plans to play through it at the moment, did read its manga adaptations

❎️Fire Emblem Gaiden (FE2) - haven't played, no plans to play through it at the moment, did read its manga adaptation

❎️Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (FE3) - haven't played, planning to do so at some point in the future

✅️Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (FE4) - played it and enjoyed it! read its various manga adaptations and novels

❎️BS Fire Emblem - have not played it, nor can I play it, have looked into its translated script

✅️Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (FE5)- played it and enjoyed it! read its novel adaptation

✅️Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (FE6) - played it and i thought it was ok, read its spin off manga "Hasha no Tsurugi"

✅️Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (FE7) - played it and enjoyed it! have not read its novel adaptation, read a lot of fanfictions though

✅️Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (FE8) - played it and enjoyed it! have not read its novel adaptation

✅️Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (FE9)- played it and enjoyed it!

✅️Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (FE10)- played it and enjoyed it!

✅️Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (FE11) - played it, it was ok, have not read its adaptations

✅️Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light & Shadow (FE12) - played it, it was ok

✅️Fire Emblem Awakening (FE13) - my introduction to the series, played it multiple times and enjoyed it! experienced its various supplementary media and fan content

✅️Fire Emblem Fates (FE14) - played through Conquest multiple times, only seen playthroughs of Birthright and Revelation. overall I can say I liked it. experienced its various supplementary media and fan content

✅️Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE - played through the original as well as its rerelease and enjoyed it.

✅️Fire Emblem Heroes - played it for almost 2 years before dropping it for reasons, still keeping up with banners for the art as all as popularity polls and general story beats

✅️Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (FE15) - my favorite entry, played it multiple times and loved it every single time! experienced its various supplementary media and fan content

✅️Fire Emblem Warriors - have played it purely for certain characters and interactions, probably the most OK musou spin off there is

✅️Fire Emblem Three Houses (FE16) - played through all of its routes and enjoyed it! experienced its various supplementary media

✅️Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes - played through Golden Wildfire only, did watch playthroughs of the other two routes

✅️Fire Emblem Engage (FE17) - played it and enjoyed it, still experiencing its manga adaptation

[darkflierliesel]

does she approve of byleth’s honesty or of byleth being ill? well, that’s her sexy little secret

[pioneer-over-c]

Byleth outfit swaps 'cause

[ghost-pocky]

Nothing to report!

[i-like-eyes]

Watching a playthrough of one while playing two other Fire Emblem games at the same time was a bad idea

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Joe Zieja on stream playing Three Hopes voice: the only good dad

don’t take this seriously in a way that harasses joe even indirectly where he may never see it or im going to put the bottom of the aegis shield through your head

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

It's almost fascinating to me to finally see so many people doubting the localization that I've been doubting for years (at this point, a decade). I used to see people get so defensive of localization and "how much work goes into it". Frankly I don't care how much "work" goes into it if they're gonna change the script anyway, and the localizers clearly didn't care how much work the writers put into making the original script in the first place.

Now here we are, with people saying the same things I've been saying for years about localization (with regard to this franchise specifically. Not all localization gets to this extent).

From what I understood of FE14's changes at least, most were made because of cultural differences (like Marks/Marx being changed to Xander iirc). I haven't looked all that deeply into it, but at least from what I did see, most were reasonable changes (including the Soleil support disaster).

FE13 was my first side eye though of the localization, and the beginning of my distrust at the localizations' ability to keep FE4/5 any bit in tact with their canon selves (mainly in Heroes once that game came out, but also in any future ports or remakes... which to this day I still don't trust them with. I'm perfectly content with FE4 being available on NSO in JP only).

Specifically, the Henry stuff struck me as odd, as if they were trying to ignore the fact that this game has war to begin with, so it's not a happy go lucky franchise. It was as if they thought it was "too much" for western audiences... and then we got shit like FE16, and yeah. Apparently it was.

As for FE10 though, I can forgive those changes because they're not extreme and also, they're not propping up characters to be something they're not. They didn't change entire meanings. Ike wasn't invading other lands or being an aggressor, touted as being a savior all the while. No idea why they removed the entire extended script, but that's less changes made and more just... nobody knows why they did that. There were also just some genuine accidents/mistakes in the translation process from what I understood and not intentional changes (this is true of FE9 as well).

It's funny you mention not wanting to play games without dual audio. I've been that way for a long time now. Generally I do prefer playing games in English, and especially if I can generally trust the localization not to mess with things intentionally (like Tales games for example. I have very few I prefer blatantly in JP, like Graces, and that's mostly a voice acting/voice direction problem for me. But Legendia? Hard English (especially because Shiloh Strong exists and his voicing of Moses had me over the moon. He was my first real, genuine "wow, English voice acting is actually getting amazing" back in the wee days of voice over in the west not being taken too seriously). Abyss and Vesperia I'm pretty equal on, but I prefer English since it's my native language and thus easier to get through in said native language).

I can't say anything for FE15 in comparison to either its original script or FE2 because I haven't played FE15 nor watched a playthrough of it and have no interest in doing so.

Seeing other people (you in this case!) mentioning that they don't want a game not offering the JP script because of the localization changes absolutely sends me because I am so glad other people are recognizing this issue and not uwuing over "how much work goes into localization". Y'all mean how much work goes into altering the script to fit the localizers specific preferences, yeah??? Yeah???

I used to get so much flak for this lol; especially in the Jugdral department. I don't care if people prefer playing their games in their native language or if they want to listen to the amazing voice acting, and that was never my issue. It was always that I don't trust the localization and don't trust that they change things in good faith in FE (FE14 was the exception for the most part at least). FE16 came out and well... literally everything I'd be talking about from day 1 was proven correct lol.

Considering that the English translation prettied up Caspar's endings for Flower (changing "often out of control to "sometimes reckless" and removing the text confirmed Caspar's career involves invading other countries), while vilifying his non-CF ending (saying he had victims), yeah. Same with turning Rhea restoring the Church to her rehabilitating it. There's definitely reason to side-eye the changes made by the translation team.

TBH,

(bcs i didn't enjoy FE14)

FE16 and Nopes (and all Fodlan content) seriously made me reconsider my stance on the localisation.

After FE Tellius I knew (I mean after FE10) that changes/omissions existed but never thought they were deliberately made to push one character by destroying others, the general feeling was the same at the end of the game (we are supposed to worship Ike, the localisation played it up to 11, but FE10 does it on its own).

Now, FE16 ?

I was pleasantly surprised with FE15's voice acting so I thought the dark eras of lolcalisation were behind us...

But then Rhage popped up.

And with Rhage, I started to notice all little tweaks here and there made in the localised (some at least) scripts, that added end up with the result that "maybe Supreme Leader isn't that bad" that is pretty different from the JP/og version.

When FE10's loc said "Ike is the most awesome dude ever" instead of the jp FE10 saying "Ike is the most awesome dude", the Fodlan lolcalisation tries to give a different meaning to the solution/story given by the game!

As you pointed out, Caspar doesn't invade countries and is "sometimes" reckless, instead of being "out of control while invading the rest of the known world", his non uwu endings are worsened, Rhea was swapped by Rhage, the church needs to be "rehabilited" instead of "restored"...

I don't want to be overly critical and dissect everything when I'm playing a game, I'm playing first and foremost to enjoy myself but when I listen to Leigh's voiced lines and see this :

or this :

even if you're not thinking about localisation too much, you can see there is an issue in voice direction, which leads to discovering issues in script localisation and then... you start to ask "why", and come up with sad answers.

So, because Fodlan verse really disappointed me lolcalisation wise, even if I made exceptions earlier for FE14 and FE15, I can't be assed to trust the lolcalisation at all, so if a game has audio but no dual audio, it will be a hard pass.

Even if a kind soul, like the ones who made the FE Datamine site, compile and upload the script with the different audios to compare, it's a big no-no.

I know jp audio will not solve everything (especially if i still don't understand the jp script lol) but at least when the localised script tries to sell me the apple that is orange in the original script is akshually purple I'd have some clues about something being wrong.

More power to you if you like purple apples, but if I was supposed to get an orange apple, I would like to get this orange apple (or maybe red or yellow if needed), and not another product.

[milfishing]

byleth was going to draw herself, but the shock of seeing the page never left edelgard

[fourspiceblend]

Guys.

Make Flayn a war cleric.

You won't regret it, seriously.

[okiankeno]

warmaster ignatz