We’ve finally reached the end of this Fire Emblem: Three Houses let’s play, and while the final map isn’t as bad as some of the paralogues ended up being, it’s still shockingly terrible. I hate having to deal with unclear movement ranges, tons of damage tiles, something that deals guaranteed damage to characters regardless of whether an attack hits or not (this began in Fire Emblem Fates and remains the worst thing to happen to the series), skills that allow enemies to do more damage when they initiate the attack (which accomplishes nothing but keeping information from you that’s required to keep your more fragile units alive during an enemy turn), and unexpected flying reinforcements that can reach you in two turns and wipe out your weakest characters. Fire Emblem: Three Houses can be good when it feels like it. The game just chooses not to be at the end.

We reach Fhirdiad and meet with Lord Arundel, who’s arrived to witness the birth of the Empire’s dominance over the continent. Unbelievably, despite my expectations that he’ll join the battle and try to seize power for himself, the struggle against him is described in the epilogue rather than being something that you participate in. I imagine that he’s more of a factor in other paths. Later on, Edelgard reveals that, like Rhea, Byleth shares a bloodline with the goddess (likely on his mother’s side). That doesn’t really explain anything. I’m getting a distinct “play other routes for a better explanation” vibe from all of this. Siding with the church over Edelgard might produce more satisfying and complete answers.

Catherine and Cyril—who I was certain I had killed, but apparently not—are hanging out with Rhea-Seiros when Edelgard shows up to the city and gives them the opportunity to surrender. Instead, Rhea orders Catherine to burn down the city, sacrificing the innocent people who live there to make things harder on us. She only protests the order for a few seconds before relenting. This route doesn’t reflect well on Catherine.

There’s no base this time around, which I kind of suspected would be the case based on something Edelgard said. Fire Emblem: Three Houses‘s final chapter on this route goes immediately into its story combat. Now, the first time I attempted this map, I moved two groups of units separately, realized that it would be a mistake, and then had everyone attack up the center path together. Petra took the left-middle side, Annette killed Gilbert (her father, which is the only reason I brought her), and everything was going perfectly. That is, until I realized that every encounter Petra had with certain armored enemies reduced her health by something like 9-10 points. She’s a dodge tank who stays alive by avoiding damage, and when flying reinforcements shows up, all it took was a light tap to kill her. This is exactly why these types of skills have driven me crazy since Fates; guaranteed damage makes dodge tanks 100% unviable, and having entire approaches nullified by gimmicky skills is the death of fun.

It wasn’t a skill, though. In fact, even going back and reproducing it, I still have no idea what causes this to occur. It always happens after she defeats Ashe, who we failed to recruit, but the only status effect he can inflict is one that reduces a character’s movement range. No one’s weapons are poisoned, nor do their skills explain this. Petra is damaged after every attack she initiates or is the recipient of, even when standing on a heal tile (so it’s not environmental damage), so this is either a bug or some vague mechanic that’s never been used or explained.

My second attempt is in the video above, and it isn’t without incident. I don’t bother using Annette to finish off Gilbert because keeping her alive with all of the flying reinforcements is a pain. I also get incredibly unlucky with hit chances and don’t have the opportunity to distract a monster—who becomes more powerful every time Rhea in her Immaculate One form roars between turns—away from Leonie, so I have to rewind to undo that. At 1:24:25 (yes, this map takes forever), I scroll through some of Lysithea’s attacks on the Immaculate One to determine which one is fast enough to allow her to avoid being doubled and survive that turn. Her Luna spell gives the Immaculate One a 43% chance of attacking once and doing 30 damage, so I equipped it, thinking that she’d be able to do some damage with a counterattack and then move out of range during the next turn. However, at 1:25:32, you can see that the Immaculate One has a 63% chance of doing 36 damage. Lysithea is killed in one hit.

Why is this a thing? I mean, who looked at a feature that changes the hit chance and damage values away from what you can easily determine they are and thought, “yeah, making it harder to plan adequately adds more than it takes away!” No one has said or thought that, ever. It’s stupid. A human being designed Fire Emblem: Three Houses this way. The decision was made. This is something someone fought for. It boggles the mind. That’s not the only stupidity during this map, with the stage being filled with hazards that damage characters every turn and greatly limit the movement range of mounted units, but it’s what ended up bothering me the most. Everything else can be worked around in one way or another.

I deleted the video of my failed attempt because it was absurdly long and I recorded a better attempt (minus forgetting to outfit Petra with a Relic and restore everyone’s battalions), but I still have screenshots of it, including the dialogue that occurs when Annette faces him:

Gilbert: “Annette. I knew this day would come.”
Annette: “Yes… And so did I, Father. Be warned that I will push you aside, even if I must use force to do it.”
Gilbert: “I understand. Goddess…this is surely a chastisement from you.”

His death quote is addressed to his “Majesty” and not Annette, so it appears that this dialogue is the only thing you get. Still, I liked it enough to feel glad that I recruited Annette. I thought that doing so would make it easier to recruit Gilbert, but patricide is a good result, too.

The above video plays when you end the map by defeating the Immaculate One (I left it in the combat video above, but it’s hard to find things in a video that’s over an hour and a half long), and it’s another animated cutscene like the ones you see early in the game. Byleth and Edelgard team up and finish off Rhea in her Immaculate One form, at which point the goddess part of Byleth dies for some reason. He appears to die for a moment from the shock and Edelgard is sad, but then his normal human heart starts beating, his hair turns back to its normal blue color, and she’s happy that he’s alive. It’s kind of sappy, but I like it. I hope that other paths explain why beating Rhea causes a change in Byleth.

Also, I’m super curious about what happens if you choose to spend your life with Sothis since she’s presumably erased in this path.

Edelgard successfully unites the continent and, true to her word, abolishes the concept of nobility and the importance of Crests (which may or may not exist anymore—it’s not clear if they disappeared with Rhea’s death like Byleth’s weird magical heart did). Then there’s an awkward scene with Leonie where Byleth blurts out of a profession of love and proposes to her. It’s a really uncomfortable scene. Still, their epilogue has them setting out and working as mercenaries. Part of what drew me to Leonie was that she had the personality of Mia from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn while also coming off like a young Titania from those same games, and having Byleth and Leonie run a mercenary company suggests that this was deliberate. And on the subject of epilogues, Fire Emblem: Three Houses has top-tier epilogues. The slow text crawl can be sped up, for one thing, and there are multiple non-romantic “pair” epilogues that make all of that time raising support levels worth it.

The romance-everywhere approach of Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates caused their epilogues to be weak (and sometimes even contradictory given the mad libs approach they had to take), so it’s nice to see this aspect of the game handled so well. This is a top-tier epilogue.

You’re given the opportunity to create a save for New Game + mode. This apparently allows you to retain your renown and battalions while also being able to use renown to unlock support levels, professor levels, combat arts, and abilities from your first playthrough. That could be interesting to play around with, though the cost of unlocking this stuff is probably prohibitive to avoid giving you too much of an advantage.

And that’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The Crimson Flower route, at least. It took me somewhere in the 60-75 hour range to finish (there were a few occasions where I let the game idle or restarted a long battle, so neither the in-game time or Switch-tracked time is fully accurate), though turning off combat animations and skipping through dialogue rather than letting it play out automatically would have resulted in a significantly shorter play time. And knowing what to prioritize at each point in the game could also speed up a playthrough by cutting out the amount of time spent wandering around accomplishing nothing. Either way, not too shabby considering that this game costs the same as the Link’s Awakening remake.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Let’s Play – Chapter 18: To the End of a Dream first appeared on Killa Penguin