After so long I FINALLY DID IT!! I’d been wanting to complete this game at least once for so long but I never fully made it to the end. 

You may wonder why it took so long… I got the game when it released in 2019 and chose the golden deer route on normal difficulty. I got to chapter 17 but stopped as my units became much stronger than the enemies and I just got bored from what I can remember. I also was undergoing chemotherapy at the time, so could have been a combination of a lot of things for not finishing that run. 

I had come back to the game twice since then and I never like to start my file from where I left since I won’t remember anything about the story or my strategy for my army, so I started new files. (One black eagles route hard, and one golden deer maddening). Never finished either again sadly. 

At college I’d gotten back into my hobby of gaming and I wanted to give three houses another a try since it’s widely regarded as the best modern fire emblem and I had remembered not loving it all too much. But I do get it now because this might be my new favorite fire emblem game. 

My run this time was Blue Lions on maddening. The things I remember not liking before were the graphics, not enough challenge, and the monastery. I came around to the graphics this time, setting units to the outfit i liked the best helped a lot during battle animations and i really love the artstyle and cutscenes. It was just an adjustment from the sprites in awakening and fates as I really loved those. 

I do not enjoy the monastery much if at all still. For me it makes the game take much longer than it should as it’s not fun to repeat the same tedious tasks over and over. I skipped it a couple months, but it definitely made my run more challenging. 

I will say I thought the gameplay was great on maddening though. I felt like every move counted and gambits/battalions felt much more important than they ever did when i played on normal. At the end of the game Dimitri was my highest leveled unit at 49 since I did use battalion wrath/vantage combo. I would not have been able to beat the last few chapters without that as the rest of my team was underleved (30-40 range). I recruited Lysithea as she was always my favorite from my other runs and she was definitely runner up for MVP. 

I also felt I appreciated the writing and character development a lot more than when I played golden deer route for the first time. By the end of the game I felt connected to each of the characters in my army and felt that as a motivator to not let them die. Mercedes and Annette’s friendship has to be my favorite dynamic out of the bunch. I also married lysithea (I’m a gay man but still wouldn’t have it any other way) and teared up seeing that byleth helped rid her of her crests and she could live. There are so many details put into this game I feel I must play all the routes and learn them all. 

I’m glad I could play the game again and see what the hype is about. I will likely buy the dlc to unlock the new characters and classes to help spice up the gameplay when I play the other routes. If anyone made it this far and has advice on what route to do next/how to cut back on filler and the monastery stuff I would greatly appreciate it!! I’m thinking of doing black eagles because I want to see edelgards motivations from her side. 

I hope all my writing made sense.. I just wanted to put all my thoughts on this game together while they were fresh. If you took the time to read this all thank you!


After 6 years and 300 hours, I beat fire emblem three houses (game review/thoughts)