Ice Flag: Six Schools

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a tactical role-playing game co-developed by Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo, and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch in 2019. It's the seventeenth installment in the Fire Emblem series overall, and the tenth to be released in the West. It's also the first home console entry in the series since 2007's Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

Plot
Byleth and Jeralt rescue three young nobles, Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude from bandits, greatly impressing them. During the attack, Byleth is saved by the mysterious Sothis, who remains within them. Jeralt and Byleth are summoned to Garreg Mach Monastery, the home of the Church of Seiros, Fódlan's dominant religion. Jeralt reluctantly rejoins the Church's military arm, the Knights of Seiros, while Byleth is made a professor of the monastery's Officers Academy. Jeralt privately warns Byleth not to trust the Church's archbishop, Rhea. Byleth is then given the choice of leading one of the academy's three houses: the Black Eagles, the Blue Lions, or the Golden Deer, each populated by students from the Empire, Kingdom, and Alliance respectively. Byleth assumes their duties as teacher for their chosen house, training their students and leading them in battles on behalf of the Knights of Seiros. Byleth and their students discover frightening hints on the nature of Relics and Crests, such as a Relic thief transforming into a monster. Various conspiracies meddle with the monastery and plot against the Church: masked warriors called the Flame Emperor and the Death Knight, the Western branch of the Church, and a hostile cult known as "those who slither in the dark". Byleth thwarts an attempt to steal a powerful Hero's Relic, the Sword of the Creator. Unexpectedly, the Sword activates when Byleth holds it, and Rhea allows them to keep it.

Why It Deserves To Become A Professor

 * 1) Weapon durability, a staple of the series that was missing in the previous installments, makes a return here and is implemented much better. Instead of instantly losing a weapon that has no uses, you can keep using it, at the cost of lower damage and accuracy. Like in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, you can visit a blacksmith to repair your weapons, in exchange for materials that can be found.
 * 2) Most improvements to the combat that were done in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia return in this game:
 * 3) The setting, although looks ugly and unappealing, is completely new to the series, and it's very fitting for the story. It takes place after the events from all of the previous games.
 * 4) Unimaginably endearing, well-written, and memorable characters. There are also many new activities to attend with them in order to bond with them and flesh them out, compared to the previous games.
 * 5) The gameplay has been updated to include time management mechanics similar to the Persona and Devil Survivor series. The game is also much less linear than previous installments. Also, the gameplay core is virtually the same as its predecessors, with a series of enhancements, which gives you surprisingly good gameplay.
 * 6) The cinematics are surprisingly good, beautiful, and incredible, especially in the prologue where Rhea attacks her nemesis, they are so impressive that they look like a 8-hour anime movie, and also the anime-style animated and art-style is absolutely beautiful and very nice.
 * 7) On weekdays, you can choose who between your students you want to tutor during classes or assign to a task, which will increase their weapon level, movement type and support level. Sometimes, students will ask you questions, and if you answer correctly, your support level with them will increase.
 * 8) Each of your students has a Skill Goal that determines his or her stat growth and which class is more suitable for him or her. You can modify their Skill Goal at any time, determining which stats have a higher growth.
 * 9) The promotion system is greatly improved from previous games: every ten levels, the character will be able to take the Certification exam to obtain access to a new class of different strength, depending from the character's level (for example, a character can take the Intermediate exam at level 10, and the Advanced exam at level 20).
 * 10) There is tons of replay value due to how great the game is.
 * 11) On free days, you can choose whether you want to visit the academy and receive side-quests from other people, head to battle (which is required to complete some quests, including Paralogues), have one of your students hold a seminar (which increases skill level and motivation of those who attend), have some of your units take the certification exam to promote, or rest (which replenishes a certain number of uses for the Sword of the Creator and increases your students' motivation).
 * 12) A huge number of side-quests and side activities to do. Paralogues and side battles return, and have been improved from previous installments. Paralogues also have side stories of their own and focus on several characters, fleshing out their personality even more.
 * 13) In the cathedral, there are four statues. By earning Renown, you can restore these statues, which earns several bonuses such as extra Divine Pulse charges, improved stat growth, extra experience points earned, or improved skill growth.
 * 14) You can change the voice acting to either Japanese or English.
 * 15) Movement types are introduced, and are required for an optimal use of some classes. The three movement types (Heavy Armor, Flying and Riding) also have their own skill level, unlike previous installments.
 * 16) Support conversations return from previous installments, and do a great job at fleshing out the personality of the characters. Unlike previous games, during scenes, certain responses will be appreciated by a character, increasing his support points with the main character, however several characters may dislike some responses, lowering their support points.
 * 17) There are four (with an additional fifth as DLC) different routes, each of which with its own ending.
 * 18) Your army isn't restricted to your house's students, and you can recruit virtually every person in the academy during the first half of the game, excluding the house leaders and their retainers (Hubert for the Black Eagles, Dedue for the Blue Lions and Hilda (though you can recruit her if you chose the Blue Lions house) for the Golden Deer).
 * 19) Gambits are introduced, allowing the player to recruit Battalions and call them in battle to use powerful attacks that deal heavy damage and negative effects on the target. The higher a unit's Authority skill level, the stronger the Battalions they are able to recruit.
 * 20) The Crest mechanic allows for several special abilities to activate for people who have a Crest in battle.
 * 21) Incredibly deep and beautiful story that isn't afraid to be dark when it needs to be.
 * 22) The new difficulty, Maddening, is challenging and tougher due to enemies receiving more health and dealing more damage compare to Hard and Normal difficulty.
 * 23) Lots of extra content through either patches or DLC.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Part 1 has been deemed repetitive by some players, as it's the same for every route with minor changes and the development of the story doesn't change. The problem continues in the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes which are both very similar aside from different final bosses and main ideas.
 * 2) The game has rather linear map objectives, usually only being a rout or kill boss map.
 * 3) Edelgard's route is much shorter than the others and only has one animated cutscene. It's possible it was rushed or they ran out of budget.
 * 4) The developers chose quantity over quality and they cut corners like when they recycled maps. To be fair, this happens when the recycled maps are in the same location, but this doesn't mean that they have to be the exact same map layout.
 * 5) The story, while incredibly deep and beautiful, The game's story has a problem with too much telling and not enough showing, and even count plot holes:
 * 6) There are some battles that are very frustrating.
 * 7) You can't view a student's personality and tastes if he or she isn't a member of your house, which can be problematic while giving gifts, returning lost items or during teatime conversations.
 * 8) Due to how today's Koei Tecmo games' standard reigns, the graphics in this game are rather ugly and terrible to look at, especially for 2019 and even Nintendo Switch standards, as many areas of the game suffer from poor presentation, indecent textures that makes some areas look dirty or discolored, dull colors, and horrendous light shading that makes the game a puke to look at than a set of late-era PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 game, which is disgraceful and unacceptable since if you compare it with other Switch games at that time like Astral Chain and Luigi's Mansion 3 and they look graphically amazing.
 * 9) The requirements to recruit certain characters can be quite frustrating to access. For an example, Hilda is only recruitable after a route split in the Black Eagles house for only one chapter, and while the game does tell you that supports lower requirements, it doesn't tell you how much.
 * 10) Some enemy bosses have skill sets that the player cannot gain access to. During the second battle of Garreg Mach in the Crimson Flower route, Shamir has both Bowrange+1 and Bowrange+2, the latter of which is exclusive to the Bow Knight class, despite Shamir being of the Sniper class.
 * 11) Maddening mode has reintroduced same turn reinforcements, which is often accused of being fake difficulty.

Tips

 * To unlock the Black Eagles route, the player is required to complete chapter 11 and then speak to Edelgard after achieving her C-rank Support. Doing so will trigger an event that will alter the main story, making her and Hubert unavailable for the rest of the month. After defeating the thieves in he Holy Tomb, the player will obtain the choice to side with Edelgard, beginning the Crimson Flower route, or to stick with the Church, beginning the Silver Snow route instead.
 * Most Paralogues require recruiting a specific character to unlock them:
 * After finishing the game and saving clear game data, the player will earn a high amount of Renown points that can be used to unlock bonuses in a New Game Plus. It's wise to save any Renown earned in NG+ to unlock the bonuses, as the Four Saints' statues retain their completion in any playthrough after the first one, and their bonuses will likely pale in comparison to the ones granted by finishing the game and carrying stuff over.

Trivia

 * According to many developers, the game was heavily influenced by Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, the fourth game in the series.
 * The 2022 strategy RPG Project Triangle Strategy developed by Square Enix shares many similarities with this game.
 * Chris Niosi was the original voice actor of the male Byleth in the English version of the game. However, after he admitted he abused his colleagues, family and partners, he was replaced by Zach Aguilar. This replacement was made in an update on September 10, 2019.
 * Spawned some memes such as "Greetings, Professor! Nothing to report.", "KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM", "I’ve been defeated, but I can’t fall here. I must retreat!“, Seteth says, "Crests are to blame...", and "Is this some kind of twisted joke?"