#probably the only route which creeped me out during the playthrough

[knockknockitsnickels]

Day 5, Drowned Grey! One of the coolest princesses' by design & locale imo, it's a shame her route is so short & linear

[furry-emblem]

You know what, after talking about how biases and stuff mess with 3H discourse, I'm going to go over my biases and personal experiences with each major faction leader because I feel like it. I don’t really want people arguing with me on these, but I would like to hear other people describing their experiences with these characters because that’s always interesting to read about. I'm listing the characters in order of how much I liked them.

Byleth

Also known as erotica, keyboard smash, Sothis, another keyboard smash, BoobBoob, and Boobama. I really dislike them. I’ve never been particularly fond of silent or self-insert protagonists. At best, they signal to me that the game isn’t going to bother with its story or character writing (and that’s fine when that’s the case), while at worst, it’s the writers taking the most important character in the story and then throwing their hands up and saying “we don’t need to write this one.” Byleth feels like the ladder and it’s to the detriment of pretty much everyone around them. Like, even considering that silent protagonists are supposed to be characters that the player projects onto, Byleth doesn’t do a good job at this because there’s enough canonical descriptions of them that you can’t really roleplay, but there’s so little going on that they don’t stand on their own two feet. So it’s like having a piece of cardboard dictate the fate of the country. They also primarily function as a wall for characters to exposition dump their backstories onto, which isn’t very interesting to watch. Like, 3H would have been better off without Byleth in it. 0/10.

Rhea

I just haven't had the chance to see a lot of her stuff, so I think I'm missing some of the stuff that makes people like her (and I'd prefer to not have that spoiled for me). Haven't seen her supports or the Church Route, but she just hasn't left me with a good impression. I don't like how possessive she gets of Byleth. Like, it creeps me out a little. I'm also a bit disappointed that you never get to play as her. I want the pope to bitch slap people (except not my people). I remember her being an antagonist in CF felt kind of forced to me when I first played because her reactions felt a bit silly. The problem wasn't whether they were justified or not, the problem was lack of context given and the fact that she was saying stuff like "You will BURN in the PITS OF HELL" while standing perfectly still and making this face >:(. And I just couldn't take that seriously for whatever reason because it felt cheesy and I didn't really understand what was going on. It also soured any endearment Rhea showed towards Byleth to me on future routes because her actions in CF gave me the impression of her being obsessive and controlling of Byleth. Like, she acted entitled to their loyalty, expected them to be something they never asked for, and flipped the fuck out when they rejected. It reminded me a lot of some abuse I've gone through and it made me dislike the character. Now that I have more context on the character, I get why she reacted so suddenly and violently because CF kinda threw all of her triggers at her. It feels like she dug her grave in that route, but she dug it in a way that resembles a Greek Tragedy more than anything else. My second route was Claude's route, which thoroughly disappointed me in terms of its writing. When Rhea was exposition dumping her backstory, I was like "I'm boooored," so that really didn't help my opinion of the character. I also don't really like how she gets damsels in three out of four routes. I still don't actively like the character very much because she left a really sour taste in my mouth, but I understand that I'm missing information and that there are reasons to like her. I'm open to learning more about her, but she just really rubs me the wrong way.

Yuri

I never finished Cindered Shadows and I have no real opinion on Yuri. I thought he was a girl when I first saw him and I think he's fun to play as in gameplay, so I guess there's that. I don't really see myself replaying Cindered Shadows if I even finish it because it lacks a lot of the major things I liked from 3H.

Seteth

Does he even get to count? Like, he's not in charge and Rhea should've probably been the leader of Silver Snow. Haven't played that route yet. I like Seteth. He's got good dad energy and also he's my wife (specifically in Verdent Wind). He's got good vibes. Also, if you kill Flayn in Crimson Flower, his English voice acting when he's like "Flayn Noooo" gets to me. I still really like Seteth. A solid 8/10 for me.

Dmitri

I wasn't following Three Houses advertising at all, so I didn't know anything about anyone going in. I was originally just going to skip him entirely because he looked boring and had shitty hair. So I did his route last. Partially out if curiosity for the character, partially because I might as well do every major route since I'd already done Claude and Edelgard, partially to get to know some of the Blue Lions, and partially because some of Edelgard's backstory is only revealed in this route and I was curious about that. Dmitri's route definitely has the best writing out of any of the routes. I really like how personal the route is and how much it focuses on how one specific event impacted all of the characters in it. There are some big problems I have with the route and Dmitri, like how the game uses psychosis to represent Dmitri being murdery and how him changing his mind felt more like Byleth's decision than his own due to their conversation being pretty bad. But overall, he has the best writing. I'd strongly recommend playing through his route if you haven't just because the writing's rather good there. The reason why he's ranked below Claude and Edelgard, however, is pretty simple: I just don't vibe with him. Like, the hero archetype bores the hell out of me, even when it is subverted like it is here. I also just didn't relate to the character on really any level while I did with Claude and Edelgard. The amount of Edelgard slander in his name also annoys me, but I don't think it really impacts how much I like Dmitri. He's a well written character that I just don't vibe with. I also remember his death in Verdant Wind and being like “wtf was that??” Like, the writers killed him offscreen.. twice. In the same route.

Claude 

I really enjoyed Claude as a character. He left a good first impression on me and I almost picked him for my first playthrough because he’s hot and sassy. Two good traits for any character. I ended up picking Edelgard, though, and he left a good impression on me during CF. I like that he held the alliance together and had a contingency plan for if he lost that battle. When I played his route, I ended up going Hard Mode NG+ Casual and I stuck everyone on a dragon. I did find it funny that throughout the school phase, Claude learns bow stuff repeatedly, then in one of the last months, he went up to me and was like “hey, can you start teaching me in axe and flying?” Which he had nothing in either. Then timeskip happens and he comes waltzing in on a dragon. Claude is where all the good memes in the fandom go. That said, I really disliked his route because Claude felt like an afterthought in it (because he literally was). I don’t like that I got out of the route and it felt like I didn’t know as much more about the character going out than I did going in. Some of that is because I didn’t see a ton of his supports, which is where pretty much all of the character work is. I like how Claude is open minded and actively tries to seek out the truth. So, overall, I found his route a bit disappoint but I still really like him because he’s a fun character.

Edelgard

I fucking love Edelgard. She was my first pick and therefore the character that introduced me to the game, and by extension, the series of Fire Emblem. I picked her because she’s pretty, she looked ready to fistfight god from the word go, and she seemed like the mascot of the game so I figured the writers might put a bit extra effort into her route (they didn’t, rip). My very first playthrough was actually a Normal/Classic run, but I had to abandon the run because literally everyone died four hours into the save (I swapped to Normal/Casual). Edelgard ended up carrying me through my first playthrough. I stuck her on a dragon and she killed literally everyone and everything. In my most recent playthrough of the game, I did CF and made her an archer mage dancer for the memes and that was also a ton of fun to play with. Her gameplay feel had a role in me liking her (like, Dmitri is also very powerful, but it was my third playthrough and I knew what I was doing better by then, so him being just as OP as Edelgard didn’t really influence my opinion on him as much as it did her). 

Besides the gameplay, Edelgard’s probably the major character that I relate to the most. Every character on this list (except maybe Byleth or Yuri, I know literally nothing about Yuri tho) has experience with trauma and is coping with it in some way. Edelgard copes by villainizing herself and shutting off her emotions, but despite that, she’s still a low-empathy person who’s still very compassionate person who cares about others and is trying to do the right thing. She also generally tries to express some amount of compassion to her enemies, even if it’s little more than saying “it sucks that Dmitri had to die.” She’s not as open-minded or as truth-seeking as Claude is, but she still tries to keep herself open to other viewpoints and will readily accept any she deems as valid at a moment’s notice. I just really like that about her because I share a lot of those traits in common with her. I also like the idea of her being someone who’s willing to do evil things to bring good to the world. That’s not something you normally get in a protagonist and I think that’s a cool idea. 

I still found her route to be very awkward, especially with no context. Like, I missed the line where Edelgard’s like “yeah, btw, I’m the Flame Emperor,” so I was just wondering what happened there. It’s an anticlimactic way to end the main plot of the first half of the game. I also didn’t really get Rhea’s angle at all. So the route just felt a lot like “I guess I’m doing this now??” In other routes, I found her deaths to be very hard hitting. The death in Verdant Wind only really got me because I really liked Edelgard and she was my original student and I could feel how much she wanted to make her future a reality and how her failing meant all of those sacrifices she made and the evils she’d done would now all be for nothing. I get that impression with Azure Moon’s ending too. 

Most of my appreciation for the character does come from her support conversations. I like how her chain with Bernie has her trying to learn how to not scare her off. Her interactions with Dorothea in their support chain are kind of sad because Dorothea is trying to show her admiration and love for Edelgard in a way that makes sense to her but then Edelgard’s low view of herself causes her to reject the offer. I really liked her Manuela support too (haven’t seen Hanneman’s but I’ve heard that it’s good). I like how with Manuela, Edelgard learns why people are religious and she that being religious doesn’t make you weak. I like her Linhart support where he calls her out for trying to dictate his life and she responds by trying to overhaul some of her own systems and assumptions about him, which leads to her giving him a role to the empire that also properly accommodates for his needs. I like how with Ferdinand’s supports, he has to learn to let go of their rivalry, but once that does happen, Edelgard takes into account his ideas and roles with them. I think it’s funny that she and Hubert flirt with each other by sending each other credible death threats. Edelgard just has a lot of very good supports. Don’t get me wrong, Claude and Dmitri also have supports that are good (I thought Claude’s support chain with Petra was cute and I really like Dmitri’s support chain with Flayn), but Edelgard’s supports go a long way to paint her as someone who is flawed but still really admirable.

Edelgard is definitely one of my favorite fictional characters, and I’d love to see more characters like her in the future.

[evajellion]

2020 vidya ranking: #2 Fire Emblem Three Houses

The first game I played starting in 2020, and the first Fire Emblem game I also ever played. It was released a year before, but hey-- this list is based off of what I played, not what came out this year.

And if the placement was not obvious enough, it left an impression.

Lemme make a confession-- I only tried this game out after Byleth was revealed in Smash Ultimate. I had no interest in the game prior, especially since the english VA for male Byleth was a complete creep. Thankfully, he did get replaced later on, but I still had no interest trying the game.

When Byleth got revealed for Smash, a wave of anger flooded the internet. I wasn’t exactly too impressed either, and honestly… Sakurai’s attempt at trying to show off Fire Emblem this late into the franchise’s life… was not a good way to sell people on this game. Sorry Sakurai, you’re a great guy! Just not a good advertiser, and obviously a majority were less willing to try FE after that.

So what made me change my mind? Well, it was none other than Alpharad’s video, who was happy about Byleth being in because he said Three Houses was great, but admitted it was poor execution. Byleth wasn’t a bad character, it was just the unfortunate burden to carry right after Corrin and Chrom. Apparently this character was even planned to be in Ultimate sooner, but was pushed back due to 3H being delayed.

From there, I watched a video of Alpharad actually playing the game, and… I liked what I saw! So good job, Alpha, you did a better job at selling Fire Emblem to me than Nintendo did, evidently he should be given royalties for it.

I bought the game about a month before my birthday, just a bit before Byleth’s DLC would even come out, and just before COVID struck. I had no idea what I was getting into-- I was nervous actually, because I didn’t know if I would like the gameplay, even if Alpha made the game look pretty enjoyable.

So there are three houses (but in actuality, there are four routes plus one more if you wanna burn $30), your silent, mercenary protagonist is tasked with becoming a teacher for one of said houses. Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer. I already knew what was going to happen in Black Eagles (haha no I didn’t), so I went the Blue Lions route, because I figured Dimitri would be the generic one to start off with, that and I liked the students there.

About ten hours into the game, I realized how dead wrong I was to make the assumptions I did, because the Blue Lions route tore my goddamn heart out.

When was the last time I actually cried over a video game of all things? I think it was The Legend of Dragoon, that game kept tugging me like a fiddle to the point where I was at tears.

I made the mistake of not recruiting anyone because I was nervous. It was a mistake that I came to regret during the half-way point. Felix kept being rude to Dimitri for some reason, and I figured he was blowing it out of proportion until I got to that point. I wanted to protect just about every goddamn character in my first playthrough! 

I ended up venting to my friends who had zero interest in the game about it, which I’m sure was annoying as all hell, but that’s how much this game ended up making me feel. Dimitri is probably one of my favorite Fire Emblem characters ever (followed up by Seteth and Marianne), and the worst part is I don’t wanna say why for people who hadn’t played this game.

Can I mention the soundtrack for this game too? No, really, the composers knew how to make this game’s OST emotional. It’s an absolute crime that God Shattering Star wasn’t in Smash Ultimate, and I don’t care if it was for spoiler reasons.

Gameplay is as refined as it gets here. Sure, you sometimes have an annoying system with the larger monsters, but of all the FE games this one is probably the best for beginners. This game also handles your same-sex relations better than Fates did, thank god. Sure, it’s not perfect like Story of Seasons, but I’ll take it!

My only criticisms are that some of the routes… feel unpolished. This is because, the game wasn’t exactly finished, which is a bit obvious since the graphic quality doesn’t match other Switch titles. Apparently, the writers were having trouble during the Golden Deer and Black Eagles routes. There was also this character known as the Death Knight, who I adore, but it took until an update for the developers to remember he was in the game at all and make him a playable character. (thankfully, that was also the last route I needed to do)

Why is the game unfinished? Well, it had already gone through delays, I imagine Nintendo wanted it out by summer time because any later is the season where they wanna shill Pokémon or something. But this is a situation similar to The Wind Waker where even though a lot of stuff went unfinished, the game is a fantastic gem.

I’ve rambled far enough. If you somehow haven’t gotten this game yet, I highly recommend it, play through it blind so you can really get the story experience… juuuust be wary of the price tag. See if you can get a good deal on it.

And yet, there’s one game that I liked more than this. One I would personally say, should have been a part of GOTY in 2019.

[jokesonme25]

A Small Town’s Mysterious Summer Vacation - A review of WORLD END SYNDROME

I just recently finished a game (or visual novel if you want to be pedantic) called World End Syndrome. I’m going to ramble about it now.

For some context, World End Syndrome is a visual novel that was published by Arc System Works in the May of last year. I’d classify the genre as a Mystery/Romance with some light horror elements. It tells the story of its 17 year main protagonist (named by the player) as he moves to a small town called Mihate in the summer, where every 100 years undead beings called Yomibito appear. After joining a Mystery/Tribal Studies club he then lives out his summer vacation, haunted by the memories of his tragic past. That’s just the backstory though as most of your time spent in Mihate will actually be spent in what I’d best describe as a Dating Sim with the actual mystery/horror being saved for the various endings and two specific routes.

Yeah, I know. It’s a dating sim and that can be a bit of a turn off, but hear me out!

First off, I’ll just get the gameplay out of the way. It’s a visual novel so the “gameplay” is non-existent. The closest thing to gameplay would be picking who to spend time with and occasionally choosing dialogue options. Like I said though, it’s a visual novel so somewhat nothing gameplay is just part of the experience. With that out of the way though, there is still a general “gameplay” loop that you end up following in WES. You start your day off, pick a location on the game’s map, and you then spend time with whoever it is happens to be there. Rinse and repeat until you reach an ending. This is where the problems start to creep up however. (With some exceptions) You simply have no way of knowing where everyone is during these sections on your first go of each in-game day. The game will keep track of everywhere you’ve been and who was there even if you reload your save or start a new file, which will allow you to effectively save-scum your way to victory but doing that gets tedious FAST. Another decent idea would be to look up a guide, but the game is relatively obscure so there are very few guides to use online. (I used this one: https://knoef.info/trophy-guides/ps4-guides/world-end-syndrome/)

The game is split into 5 (technically 6) routes, one for each of the main girls (Maimi Kusunose, Saya Kamishiro, Hanako Yamada, Yukino Otonashi, and Miu Amana) and one true ending. You can spend time with whoever you want, but you will need to spend most of your time with just one of the girls in order to get anything but the game’s worst ending. Do things right though, and you’ll get one of the girls’ endings which (usually) involves them falling for the MC. I DID mention that this was a dating sim, didn’t I? Whatever, once you get all 5 girls’ endings, you unlock the true ending which can just be triggered by going back to title screen and starting a new save.

This however is where my biggest complaint with WES pops up. One thing the game COMPLETELY neglects to tell you is that doing the character’s routes out of order can potentially soft-lock your file by locking you out of the other routes, forcing you to have to wipe the game’s save data completely. In particular, in my first run I did Hanako’s route first but when I restarted the game, I couldn’t get the other girl’s events to trigger until I reinstalled the game. It can be frustrating, but its avoidable by just doing them in this order: Saya, Maimi, Hanako, Yukino, and then Miu.

Admittedly, I could’ve just been doing things wrong and there might be a way to do the rest of the game’s routes without wiping your save data, but my second playthrough (where I did things in the above listed order and used a guide) went perfectly so that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve been selling the game kinda short though, so onto the parts of it that I actually liked: the graphics and the narrative.

One thing you’ll notice right off the bat, this game is GORGEOUS. The character designs have a very distinct anime style that I absolutely adore, they can look a little off at times (in particular, Rei Nikaido’s right arm almost looks like it’s bending the wrong way, and the character’s mouths tend to do the Sonic thing where the entire mouth is only on one side of their face when viewed from a side profile) but in general they look REALLY good. The game’s backgrounds also have a hand-painted style that compliments the game’s otherworldly atmosphere excellently.

I’ll just put it here since I didn’t know where else to put it, but I should mention that the game’s music is… Ok, I guess. It isn’t anything to write home about, but it serves the mood and atmosphere decently enough.

Now onto the narrative.

For one thing, the actual mystery that serves as a backdrop for the game’s plot is a decent one. An astute player could potentially put the proper pieces together before a lot of the actual reveals, and someone who isn’t paying as much attention as them could be in for some interesting surprises. However the way its presented is fairly linear with the game not really giving the player any way to solve the mystery themselves and just kind of spoon-feeding it to you as you do the various girls’ routes. I’d rank the game as a 6.5/10 in the mystery department.

If you’re looking for horror though (as some of the game’s marketing and its prologue might lead you to believe) skip this game. Ultimately the game’s “horror” just amounts to the fact that there’s undead creatures involved and (MILD SPOILERS) that there’s a murderer on the loose. (END OF SPOILERS) Over all, a lot of the game’s creepier bits only come from the game’s atmosphere and its prologue/endings (minus the true ending). This is especially prevalent in that once the mystery itself starts to be unraveled (MILD SPOILERS I GUESS BUT NOT ACTUALLY) a majority of the creepier parts of the narrative are justified and given incredibly non-creepy explanations. (END OF THE NOT ACTUAL SPOILERS)

However, like I said at the start the mystery surrounding the town of Mihate, the Yomibito, and the horrors there in are simply a backdrop for a good majority of the game, with the main focus being put onto the game’s characters and in particular their (for the most part) romances with the main character. In the romance department I’d rate it at a 6/10. Most of the girls’ routes have a few very sweet moments and are over-all engaging, but a couple of them (in my opinion) fall flat. In particular Maimi and Saya. For one thing, Maimi is the MC’s distant cousin which I can see being a bit of a turn off for a few people. The romance itself was also just not that compelling, even discounting the whole cousins thing. Saya’s fared slightly better, but I found the family drama surrounding her far more compelling than any romance with her could’ve fared. They also felt the need to point out that she’s specifically only 15 which put basically any fan-service including her into the “gross” pile for me.

Oh yeah, I guess I should probably mention the fan-service. This being a dating sim and all, there is a decent amount of glamour shots of the game’s various girls in skimpy clothing (swimsuits 95% of the time since it takes place over a summer vacation) or in compromising situations and suggestive poses. There’s no nudity or anything explicitly sexual, but it’s worth mentioning because of the fact that the game’s cast is mostly made up of teenagers, so that could easily creep a good number of people out.

With that in mind I’d still say the actual story being told here is a good one. The characters are engaging (albeit with only as much depth as a decent JRPG or your average Shonen battle anime), their dynamic is entertaining, and like I said before the mystery being unraveled is at least a decent one. The game also devotes a good chunk of it’s time to world building, allowing Mihate Town to feel just a little bit more fleshed out than you’d think. The message the game ends on (that no matter how much hardship you might endure, life is still worth living) is also incredibly sweet. I also like that despite its name and all of its talk of “the world’s end” the story is actually relatively small scale with no worlds actually being in explicit danger or anything like that. It’s just a small town’s somewhat mysterious summer vacation. (Then again, there WAS a rather blatant sequel hook in the true ending and the sequel, named World End Phenomenon, was just recently announced so that small scale could inevitably change once that comes out, but I digress) I’d rank the narrative over all (rather than just the pieces of it) a solid 7/10.

If you enjoy Visual Novels, and don’t mind the slight horror elements or the fact that it’s going to spend most its 20-30 hour run-time on high-school romance, I’d give World End Syndrome at least a look. It’s available on the PS4, and the Switch.