Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Nintendo Switch - Out Now

Speaking of gambits. Stride is the best gambit in the game. Gives +5 move to all units in its range. Give it to your healer and use it on turn 1 to sweep the map.

I think I'm on Chapter 16-17 now.

Just did the mission where you take back the bridge. Lorenz didn't have a bowl haircut anymore. Had to kill him though, the strawberry floater.

I really like what this game is doing in terms of the overall plot and the weight it has. It feels like everything has gone to hell. Characters have interesting back stories as well. Some of these guys are really memorable (Dorothea, Bernie).

In comparison, I can't remember anything about the characters in Fire Emblem Fates.

Squinty wrote:I think I'm on Chapter 16-17 now.

Just did the mission where you take back the bridge. Lorenz didn't have a bowl haircut anymore. Had to kill him though, the strawberry floater.

how could you?!

oh well

shy guy 64 wrote:

Squinty wrote:I think I'm on Chapter 16-17 now.

Just did the mission where you take back the bridge. Lorenz didn't have a bowl haircut anymore. Had to kill him though, the strawberry floater.

how could you?!

oh well

He's a dick. Should not have sided with Edelgard (I'm still in strawberry float YOU EDELGARD mode).

Squinty wrote:

shy guy 64 wrote:

Squinty wrote:I think I'm on Chapter 16-17 now.

Just did the mission where you take back the bridge. Lorenz didn't have a bowl haircut anymore. Had to kill him though, the strawberry floater.

how could you?!

oh well

He's a dick. Should not have sided with Edelgard (I'm still in strawberry float YOU EDELGARD mode).

maybe in your story line hes a lovely young mine in others

Chapter 20 now.

Kinda saddened about the war being over so quickly. Felt the story would've been better being a bit more personal than 'supernatural badguys behind it....gods and gooseberry fool'. I'll have to see if it does the next part well.

Just finished my Blue Lions playthrough. I liked Dimitri's character arc, and preferred the way the story rounded off compared to the Black Eagles playthrough. I think you'd like it more as well Squinty. It's a bit different.

Was playing as female Byleth this time around and chose to pair off with Mercedes at the end. Was pleasantly surprised to see that it was straight-up marriage and not dressed up in any way. So that's nice. Looking it up, there are a few options for female Byleth while male Byleth's options are way more limited in this regard. And Fates has like two or three same-sex pairings but that's across all the games.

Am curious about the Golden Deer route but probably going to take a break before playing it. Blue Lions was good but, apart from the focus on different characters, it was overall still very similar. Need to cleanse my palate.

Kriken wrote:Just finished my Blue Lions playthrough. I liked Dimitri's character arc, and preferred the way the story rounded off compared to the Black Eagles playthrough. I think you'd like it more as well Squinty. It's a bit different.

Was playing as female Byleth this time around and chose to pair off with Mercedes at the end. Was pleasantly surprised to see that it was straight-up marriage and not dressed up in any way. So that's nice. Looking it up, there are a few options for female Byleth while male Byleth's options are way more limited in this regard. And Fates has like two or three same-sex pairings but that's across all the games.

Am curious about the Golden Deer route but probably going to take a break before playing it. Blue Lions was good but, apart from the focus on different characters, it was overall still very similar. Need to cleanse my palate.

well you could always ask someone whos played golden deer what happens

I mean yeah, obviously. If I really wanted to know what happens without playing the game I'd just read up on it somewhere. I do fancy playing this again though.

Kriken wrote:I mean yeah, obviously. If I really wanted to know what happens without playing the game I'd just read up on it somewhere. I do fancy playing this again though.

well thats what i did, i found dimitri's story but couldnt find eldgard's hence why i asked someone a while back, ill probably give it another go myself at some point

Finally got round to buying this, went with the Golden Deer.

Any pro tips for the battles? I spent the entire mock battle just waiting in the bushes for the AI to come to me, worked well but took ages.

Pancake wrote:Finally got round to buying this, went with the Golden Deer.

Any pro tips for the battles? I spent the entire mock battle just waiting in the bushes for the AI to come to me, worked well but took ages.

Making use of terrain is the best thing you can do really.

When I move my units across the map, I basically put them into a wedge formation, direct attack units who can tank damage at the front, indirects (mages, arrows) behind them.

Hoping to get this completed at the weekend. Haven't had the time to play it since Saturday.

Pancake wrote:Finally got round to buying this, went with the Golden Deer.

Any pro tips for the battles? I spent the entire mock battle just waiting in the bushes for the AI to come to me, worked well but took ages.

take advantage of every chance to boost you units stats, i also did golden deer and they can be pretty powerful

Pancake wrote:Finally got round to buying this, went with the Golden Deer.

Any pro tips for the battles? I spent the entire mock battle just waiting in the bushes for the AI to come to me, worked well but took ages.

You don't need to be quite so careful. The 'bushes'/forest tiles are good for the avoidance and defence boost, but your units can generally take a hit or two and be fine - you'll have at least a couple magic-inclined units that learn Heal early on (early Faith skill), and normally you can avoid attracting so many enemy units at once. You'll have a fair few vulneraries too. When you're moving a unit there are arcing lines which show you how many units can hit you and where they're coming from.

Can't remember if it's mentioned in the tutorial (probably is), but pressing ZR shows the entire enemy army attack range. Pretty useful.

Squinty has the right idea. Also placing units next to each other in a line to limit the sides they can be attacked from by direct attackers, where applicable.

shy guy 64 wrote:
take advantage of every chance to boost you units stats, i also did golden deer and they can be pretty powerful

How do I do that? In the monastery phases?

Kriken wrote:You don't need to be quite so careful. The 'bushes'/forest tiles are good for the avoidance and defence boost, but your units can generally take a hit or two and be fine - you'll have at least a couple magic-inclined units that learn Heal early on (early Faith skill), and normally you can avoid attracting so many enemy units at once. You'll have a fair few vulneraries too. When you're moving a unit there are arcing lines which show you how many units can hit you and where they're coming from.

Can't remember if it's mentioned in the tutorial (probably is), but pressing ZR shows the entire enemy army attack range. Pretty useful.

Squinty has the right idea. Also placing units next to each other in a line to limit the sides they can be attacked from by direct attackers, where applicable.

Did not know about ZR, hasn't come up on the tutorial yet but that does sounds useful. I'm right in thinking that getting the first strike in is still best? Or does the counter-attack mechanism balance that? Sorry for the noob questions, first Fire Emblem.

Squinty wrote:
Making use of terrain is the best thing you can do really.

When I move my units across the map, I basically put them into a wedge formation, direct attack units who can tank damage at the front, indirects (mages, arrows) behind them.

Hoping to get this completed at the weekend. Haven't had the time to play it since Saturday.

Great, I sort of assumed keeping units together with ranged behind would work best but probably a bit over cautious about my front line units.

Thanks all!

Pancake wrote:

shy guy 64 wrote:
take advantage of every chance to boost you units stats, i also did golden deer and they can be pretty powerful

How do I do that? In the monastery phases?

Unit stats (strength, magic, luck etc) go up when each character levels up. They level up after earning exp points in battle which they get when they do damage, take damage or kill an enemy. There isn't really a way to boost this. Just make sure everyone gets a decent amount of kills and you're good.

Weapon stats (bow, sword, etc) can be upped during lectures and tick up every week automatically (they also improve slightly when the relevant weapon/magic is used in battle).

Stuff at the monastery is almost entirely focused around building Support levels.

Generally I wouldn't worry about the battles. If there's one problem I have with the game is that it's far too easy; besides one or two side quests I haven't had a single issue and I'm playing on Hard/Classic.

Make good use of the aggro indicator lines. By using them properly you will never get caught out by an enemy move. Since learning how useful they are i never once had to use the "more confusing" shoulder button toggle to see all enemy's movement range.

Picked this up again yesterday for the first time in a couple of weeks. I had almost forgotten how much fun it is to play. With Astral Chain (hopefully) arriving today i'm going to have to make sure not to let Three Houses drop out of the circulation altogether.

Pancake wrote:

shy guy 64 wrote:
take advantage of every chance to boost you units stats, i also did golden deer and they can be pretty powerful

How do I do that? In the monastery phases?

during battle when they level, when they do something that requires that stat. at the monastery when you tech classes youll have the option to instruct manually where you can pick anyone and give a boost to any stat, which of course is limited by both how motivated the student is and how high your professor level is, which is one of the main point of the monastery parts.

Pancake wrote:Did not know about ZR, hasn't come up on the tutorial yet but that does sounds useful. I'm right in thinking that getting the first strike in is still best? Or does the counter-attack mechanism balance that? Sorry for the noob questions, first Fire Emblem.

Depends. If you don't kill the unit outright, it'll get an opportunity to attack you again during the enemy phase on top of its counterattack (as long as it has the right weapon), as well as other units within range.

Sometimes it's better to just wait and let other attacking or healing units catch up to back you up. And sometimes you want to place units as bait to draw away enemy units from a crowd individually, which your army can then gang up on.

Combat arts are really good - even some of the early ones as they increase attack power, hit rate and crit. Useful for taking out enemies in fewer rounds to limit counterattacks. They wear down weapon durability a bit more but iron weapons are cheap and remain somewhat relevant for most of the game since they're light, cheap and still put out decent damage in the right hands.

Gambits too as enemies can't counterattack them and the low hit rates can be boosted by using gambits near other units with battalions. I'd give every unit a battalion unless they have an ability which boosts them for not having one. (Also they affect unit stats, so be mindful of that when assigning them).