As you’ve probably heard relentlessly for the past few weeks, Fire Emblem: Three Houses is one of the best games available on the Nintendo Switch. The depth of content, replayability options, charming writing and so much more make it a fantastic title. However, it surely isn’t without its problems.
Every video game has at least a few changes it could make here and there to improve in some ways. Nobody and no game is perfect, after all. Today, we’re going to be looking at ten changes that could be made to Fire Emblem: Three Houses to improve the game.
10 More Varied Animations
If we have to watch Bernadetta pump her arms one more time… look, there are just far too many re-used and shared animations in this game. For a few examples, Bernadetta and many other characters pump their arms twice to indicate… just about anything?
Bernadetta does it any time she's excited and sometimes when she’s stressed. There’s also the fact that just about every female character leans forward and tilts their head slightly when sharing a meal with them. Between shared animations and the lack of animations in general, models feel either stiff or just lazy at many points.
9 Support Conversations Background
Take a second and look at the background of any support conversation and you’ll immediately notice the sheer lack of… pixels at all. Why the background images for these conversations had to be so low in quality is really up for debate, but with only two other models on screen at any given time, there is absolutely no excuse for it.
There’s no reason for such a low-quality background, so hopefully, this gets fixed through a patch sometime in the near future.
8 Difficulty Options
Even for newer players, classic mode and hard difficulty really don’t make Three Houses too punishing. With the introduction of the Divine Pulse mechanic, pretty much any character loss can be negated and fixed.
This makes the game just a bit too easy for most. However, dataminers have discovered that both lunatic mode and an even higher difficulty will be coming as updates in the near future. Hopefully, this will be one of the free updates and not one we have to pay for. Let's not count on it, though.
7 Vocal Protagonist
“I’m sorry,” you hear Corrin saying from your 3DS relentlessly, even though it isn’t even powered on. Yeah, Corrin talked a bit too much, and wasn’t the best-written character overall. That doesn't mean that Byleth needs to be completely silent, though.
Having the player be 100% silent through every single cutscene can be a bit jarring, especially during huge plot points that you would think would make your protagonist at least a little bit emotional. They don't have to constantly be talking, but a little input here and there would be nice. I mean, if you're going to make them completely silent, at least give us some sort of facial expression, please?
6 Customization Options
Actually, Let's just keep ragging on Byleth for a second here. That hair is a disaster, and the clothes could use some sprucing up too.
Corrin being fully customizable in Fire Emblem: Fates was really fun, and allowed you to add your own special touch to the main character. Getting the option to at least choose clothing options for Byleth would be a nice upgrade for the game. It seems like this option may come around in DLC, though.
5 Romance Options
Calling Fire Emblem: Three Houses a step up in LGBT representation for Nintendo wouldn’t be wrong… but wouldn’t necessarily be right either. For female Byleth, there are five romance options of the same sex, with only three for men. This is a small step up from Fates, which had one option for each sex depending on the version you were playing.
However, a few of these options for each sex are actually completely platonic relationships, leaving men with only one actually romanceable option for the same sex. The kicker is that it’s Linhardt. That hair? Bye. In all seriousness, while progress has been made, this is absolutely unacceptable in 2019. Hopefully, the next installment will see increased LGBT options for players to romance.
4 More Monastery Options
Once you gain more activity points to spend throughout the monastery on your days off, it becomes quickly apparent that there really isn’t much to do in the monastery. You will usually find yourself repeating the same activity day in and day out, as there really aren’t enough options to do something different every day.
Come on, open up that sauna and let us use it. The entire building is modeled.
3 Graphical Boost
While certainly not a huge issue, the graphics of this game really just aren’t that great. While the game looks fine overall, if you look at any object with an objective eye, nothing looks too sharp at all.
The aforementioned support backgrounds are only part of the issue. While this doesn’t really impact the game in any meaningful way, it still could be remedied to spruce up the game a bit.
2 Character Importance In The Story
An issue with the Fire Emblem series overall is that characters that aren’t completely central to the plot are never included in story segments in any meaningful way. Usually, the only way that students are included in the plot is all of them standing in a big circle together, talking to you at the same time.
They’re almost never integrated into cutscenes --or into the story in any way-- outside of that big circle, which is a shame. It takes away from the plot being as believable as it could be, as your students are almost never a big part of the action.
1 More Involved Quests
The quests given in the monastery are laughably easy. 90% of them boil down to you finding a random item that is clearly marked on your map. The other 10% is talking to a random student… who is clearly marked on your map.
There is absolutely no challenge to any of these quests, and as such, there’s never a rewarding feeling when you complete them. Give us a little difficulty at least.