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jasperlion · 5 years

Text

Nonspoiler review for 3H:

Positives:

-> The story does change depending on which House you pick and while the first few chapters will only feature minor differences, a lot of them will play a key role in the future or will clear up events that happen on other routes and shed some light on the events before the game.

-> Further interaction with the characters will help flesh them out in ways that expand old mechanics like the 'Headquarters' mechanic in SoV and conversation mechanic in Tellius games. There's a lot of little things here and there that also help shed some light on the characters, their habits, their likes and dislikes, further expanding on them than other games did before.

-> You can interact with characters of the Houses you did not pick up to a point, and this makes them all both endearing and plays into what the game attempts to do for it's latter half. It also gives you additional context and lore. They also react to ingame events.

-> There's a lot to do and read about the world in which the game takes place, a lot of flavor text that gives you a bigger idea of what it's like.

-> There's a lot of architectural diversity and attention to the three countries the game focuses on, structures in each will look similar and share roots with real world counterparts, also differing from each other in that sense as well. It makes the world feel rich and varied rather than uniform.

-> There's also canonical artstyles from the world this takes place in in both their flags and other ingame 'sections', like the murals/frescos in Valentia or the flags in Tellius, and it's always neat in my book to see more of a fictional culture, especially its art.

-> A lot of lore!

-> Enough care went into the setup that even if the paths diverge the narrative feels cohesive enough.

-> A lot of old and new mechanics to the series add to the quality of life of the game, especially in combat, and it’s pretty innovative and ambitious with how you can build your group.

-> Supports are a real treat and the voiceacting just adds even more to it. A lot of them tend to delve into a character and their ‘typical’ traits as well as the root of it, which tends to make sense and makes the characters feel more human.

-> Diversity. Has its drawbacks, though. The monkey paw curled hard.

-> To do with the above: Some mlm and wlw content can be found in the game. It’s not perfect and I have my nitpicks, though, so be warned.

-> All three lords on the cover are varied and have their own individual motives, making them all feel fresh and welcome.

Negatives:

-> The lore is paced in a way that’s hard to follow if you don’t know a lot of the names of the characters and their families, and how it’s chunked out makes it feel like a bunch of nonsense. You might feel very, very lost on the first playthrough, especially lore you find in textdumps.

-> The chapters are all fairly long and a slog to get through. While what you can do helps expand on the world and characters, a lot of this becomes rote and repetitive to do, and even at times overwhelming as more stuff becomes available. Even then, it manages to somehow feel stale.

-> Some of the choices in locale and army movement don’t feel like they make sense and should have been overhauled and changed. Not much can be elaborated upon because of spoilers, but on the latter half it generally feels like the movements of your group are strange. It makes sense if you know.

-> The plot on Lions and Deer feels rushed towards the end, or like the pacing has suddenly changed. It’s even more prominent in Lions due to the sudden and underdeveloped change in atmosphere as you approach the endgame, which makes it feel disjointed and your missions out of place with everything else. THIS IS BOTHERING ME A LOT.

-> Speaking of plot, there’s a blatant giant plothole near this turning point as you approach the Blue Lions endgame, and it’s been bothering me since.

-> Some events are made to draw your eye but don’t have a relevance beyond this chapter. This is particularly notorious in Lions and Deer, as they use the same ‘tiny twist’ that isn’t followed upon at the start of the latter half of the game. For those in the know: mission in satan’s asshole.

-> On some routes it feels as if you don’t pick certain class trees for your motley crew, you’re fucked.

-> A lot of the microaggressions and racism found in the game feel like they’re never properly addressed or dealt with, and at times feel like they’re just there to make the characters its towards and the player feel like ass. As you have no way to protest against it, it feels empty that it should even be present to begin with. I know they’re trying to show there’s a problem, but its presentation and lack of resolution are my issue with it.

-> A character who has trouble speaking the language of the country you’re in doesn’t seem to have a cohesive way to speak/stumble that makes sense, it feels like a bunch of traits from different esl speakers were dumped on there without consideration to linguistics and how different languages with different structures will affect how an esl speaker sometimes stumbles or code-switches while speaking. I know it’s likely not notable among the monolinguals, but as a multilingual... be advised. It is apparently an issue with the english translation, however, as the character only speaks in a paused manner as if thinking through what they’re about to say before speaking in Japanese. This is a more respectful interpretation.

-> I am sad that i got bait and switched on something :( I don’t want to say more than that, though.

-> A White Man Is Angry And Violent And In Power And It Terrified Me For Various Reasons, Fellow POC (And Maybe White Women/NB Folk) Will Understand.

-> The final battle in GD, and a lot of the route battles in general after a certain point, don’t feel like they mesh with the general message of the route, making the finale feel a little less... thematically tied with it, I guess? Eagles and Lions avoids this, though, as both have a lot to do with the themes of their respective routes.

-> Grinding felt like a chore (I was support grinding, the level grind is fairly simple, but some might need to grind for money and supports... and overlevel as a result). It’s less possible to grind on higher difficulties too, but I think it’s fairly valid. I did have to grind a lot on Blue Lions for this reason, but it was my own mistakes I was paying for as well as my completionist nature, so this point is, uuuh... depends on the person and how they play.

-> Tying to the above, the maps felt less novel the more I had to go through em to grind and hhhhhh

-> It’s uncomfortable how the characters in the game keep drawing comparison to the slaughter of a whole people to that of just the royal family and guards as if they have the same gotdamn weight. The people who got slaughtered are all POC.

-> Another group of POC are often made out to be barbaric/etc and it makes me uncomfortable lol. You could argue the same for another group, too.

-> This one character is meant to be uncomfortable and overzealous and I think it’s cool but it makes something in me shudder in horror. I recognize it’s a Me problem.

-> There’s this white savior thing x2 and I want to dead. I’ve lost all means to say this eloquently. It makes a lot of things very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.

-> I should stop with the wholeass thing with the racism but it bothers me a lot that a black kid aged 18 looks like they’re 22 in their artwork because it feeds to the all too common stereotype and oh my god I love the character but why would they do that to them...............

Final judgement: 5/10, I’m never going to -censored spoiler-

Thoughts:

It’s not a terrible game, and while I did harp about a lot of stuff, it’s pretty good in it’s setup ad most of its development. In some parts, it fell short, but it is overall an ambitious project that did what it set out to do and would have definitely felt a lot more enjoyable if I didn’t feel pressured to finish ASAP so people didn’t spoil the experience for me (and, spoilers, they did anyway :) ). I feel I might be a little too harsh on it because of how negative my experience was around this game and how hard it was for me to pick up and replay it to see everything, so please take this with a gigantic spoon of salt.

#[ wulf speaks ]#[ tbd ]

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