Genre: Strategy RPG
Developer: Intelligent Designs
Publisher: Nintendo

One of the coolest things about Creative Assembly's "Total War" series is that the player can watch a battle unfolding from bird's eye view one moment, then zoomed down to follow each individual arrow's flight path the next. This new "Fire Emblem" manages to capture the same essence, and as the most powerful hardware this series has ever run on, the Switch really helps bring the universe to life. The hub area where much of the game takes place has some beautiful choices in colors and tasteful pre-baked lighting effects, although the texture resolution is not particularly high in places.

Try to name a big-publisher video game today which doesn't use boring, generic-sounding orchestral fare... yes, it's difficult, and "Three Houses" falls victim to this fad as well. Which is a bummer since compositionally, this reviewer actually managed to remember some of the melodies while not actively playing, which is a feat scarcely any modern games can claim. Nearly every line in this release is voice-acted, and some of it-- particularly David Lodge as "Jeralt" and Veronica Taylor as "Manuela" (who also happens to be the long-time voice of "Ash" from the Pokemon anime incidentally)-- is quite good.

If games are trending easier and easier today, then look no further than "Three Houses" for supporting evidence. Not only is the game balanced so that any grinding leaves the player radically over-levelled, but the action can be re-wound several times per battle to any point in the chess-like move list! What's more, the game shows the player-- via giant red arcs-- what the AI is going to do on its next turn! So feel free to leave those weak mage characters sitting right out in the open: no red arc, no problem! The game is almost absurdly non-challenging, nearly like Nintendo's most recent "plays itself" "Kirby" release.

The best way to sum up this latest "Fire Emblem" is that it's essentially a Japanese visual novel-dating sim, with a light strategy RPG wallpaper over the top. As a percentage of time spent, probably 75% of the playing involves listening to melodramatic dialog between the game's admittedly well-designed cast, or wandering about the same castle-like hub area over and over between missions. The game's director bragged in an interview about how they "kept adding in more and more stuff!" What this game needed was the cutting room, not more content! Despite its myriad flaws, the core mechanics in "Three Houses" are still enjoyable, and the "Persona"-like school setting has its charm-- for awhile, anyway.