3/5 ★ – celestialmecha's review of Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

On one hand, there's so much I love about this game! I think the way that different story threads that at first seem unrelated actually tie together is really masterful. The way the game metes out details and reveals is also incredibly smart -- there's meaningful variation depending on which route you pick, but it's possible to potentially work out the game's larger lore reveals on your own well ahead of time based on your inter-timeline knowledge. The game, however, is gruelingly slow. One route can take upwards of 50 hours, and there are effectively 3.5 of them. To make matters worse, there's almost no route-specific variation in the first 60% of each playthrough. Genuinely, though, I don't think the Golden Deer route should be in the game. The existence of an unambiguously morally-superlative 'comparatively democratic underdog' group amongst the game's fascist/autocratic conflict cheapens there even being a choice. Plus -- it's a route that gives you all the plot-critical Secret Knowledge you would have only otherwise gotten on the 'fourth' route. I think taking the FE:Fates approach of having two main campaigns and then a secret third campaign would have been significantly better for the game's writing.