Fire Emblem: Three Houses Ranking: A
Ever since I played Blazing Blade, back in ~2003 or so, I’ve loved the Fire Emblem series. SRPGs are my favorite genre of video game and Fire Emblem tops every other SRPG I’ve played, mostly because of how it treats its characters. Unlike, say, Final Fantasy Tactics, where most of your army consists of generic units, each Fire Emblem game has a cast of named characters with personalities and backstories. Many of these characters have relationships with each other. Siblings. Childhood friends. Former enemies. Spouses. It’s easy to get attached to characters in these games as you get to know them and deploy them in battle. It’s one of the reasons the classic perma-death mechanic in the series works so well – losing a unit isn’t like losing Tank #5 in Advance Wars or losing that one black mage I made 3 chapters ago in Final Fantasy Tactics. Losing a unit means a character I watched develop and listened to speak about his hopes and dreams just died because I made a tactical error. Or, more commonly, because the enemy got incredibly lucky with the RNG.
Three Houses takes this to a completely new level. The protagonist, Byleth, is a professor at a military/religious academy. The characters are students in this school. They interact with each other as classmates, which is already an interesting level of character interaction. Most of these students come from noble families as well, meaning their parents were involved in all sorts of politics. I listened to one guy who had to deal with the fact that his dad killed his classmate’s dad. One character, an incredibly hot tomboy who has a running gag of all her female classmates trying to get her to try makeup (much to her dismay), constantly has to deal with her father trying to arrange a marriage for her to bolster her family’s fortunes while struggling with her own hopes and dreams for her future. This particular character actually had a fiancé at one point whom she actually did love – but he died protecting the prince of her country. That prince is one of her classmates. That fiancé’s brother is one of her classmates. The game explores the ramifications of all these three characters in detail.
And the protagonist? She’s someone the students look up to as their professor. They ask her for advice on their futures – she’s not just there to teach them military tactics or how to fight, but also to teach them how to grow up to become adults that will inherit the world around them. Over time, Byleth forms bonds with all of them. And the player, as Byleth, sees all of this unfold as the school year progresses. It’s…well, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to the point that a savvy player – someone who has played a Fire Emblem game before – will go through the initial chapters feeling a growing sense of heartbreak because Fire Emblem games are all about war, and these teenagers whom you’re guiding and watching grow up will inevitably later find themselves knee-deep in death and conflict.
Three Houses isn’t just ambitious in character development. As the professor in this school, Byleth can go around gardening and fishing and having meals with people. They managed to enhance the RP part of SRPG without sacrificing the S part (mostly, this just makes the game way longer – but that’s not a complaint).
So I’ve just gushed about this game. But you notice you’re reading this as a review. Not a shrine. I gave this game an A, which is an admittedly great score, but not a shrine. Blazing Blade got a shrine. Awakening got a shrine. This game did not. Why?
Well, one reason is the stupidly tiny text size. Kotaku actually wrote an entire article about how bad it is, so it’s not just me with my poor eyesight and lack of a TV (meaning I played this game in handheld mode). But that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem, ironically, comes also from character development. I know I have a blanket spoiler warning on this entire section of my site, but I’m putting up another one here just in case. Also, fair warning – I’m about to go on a rant.
Background: you begin the game choosing to join one of three houses, each led by an heir to one of the three major nations on the continent. I chose the Black Eagles, which is the red house (because that totally makes sense, right?), led by Edelgard, who will one day become Empress of the Adrestian Empire. Her actual title would be “Emperor,” but I instinctively refer to her as Empress because she’s female. That’s what a female emperor is called. An empress. And no, this isn’t a sexist comment – if she were male and tried to call herself (himself) an empress, I’d insist on calling her (him) an emperor. Definitions, guys. They’re important.
…Anyway. The first 10 months at the academy see several villains appear, all operating in the shadows pursuing some hidden agenda. The first battle of the game consists of a bandit group trying to kill Edelgard and the heirs of the other 2 houses and ends with Byleth saving Edelgard’s life when the bandit leader almost kills her with an axe. Afterwards, you learn some masked guy known as the Flame Emperor had hired these bandits to kill the three heirs – again, pursuing some sort of shady goal. You see the Flame Emperor again allied with these purple…demon…guy…things who use dark magic and have their own agenda.
I’ll jump to the end first and then explain. In the 11th month, Byleth finds herself in the Holy Tomb, the most sacred room in the continent’s religion (remember, the academy is also a religious academy – it’s because the academy is run by the Church). Edelgard marches in with a cadre of imperial troops, reveals that she is the Flame Emperor, and commands her troops to sack the tomb and kill anyone who stands in their way, including Byleth and the other students (in other words, Edelgard’s classmates). Oh, and by the way, her second-in-command in this sequence is this cartoonishly ax-crazy slasher guy.
This plot twist is infuriatingly stupid. Edelgard is acting completely out-of-character in this scene, ostensibly because the writers wanted this reveal to have maximum shock factor, which unfortunately makes it seem like it came completely out of left field. Imagine if, in the middle of the MCU, Captain America reveals that he is actually Thanos and he’s been working to destroy Earth since World War II. Shocking? Yeah. Sensical? HELL TO THE NO.
Let’s look at this from a character development perspective. One of the main themes of the game is how Byleth forms bonds with her students, especially with the house leaders. Edelgard says, several times, that she feels comfortable around Byleth and can reveal more about herself than if she were speaking to literally anyone else. Even given her imperial family status, Edelgard has nothing but respect and admiration for Byleth, calling her “my teacher.” But no, she marches in and tells her troops to kill her. Even if you assume that Edelgard was putting up a front with her classmates, one of the themes in the game is that she doesn’t do that around Byleth. And, in fact, if you end up continuing with Edelgard’s path (more on this later), you find that no, Edelgard was actually being sincere in her interactions with everyone, which means her “KEEL THEM ALL” entrance reads not like a surprise reveal but more like a fanfiction writer who hates Edelgard and wants to make her as cartoonishly evil as possible.
Let’s look at this from Edelgard’s perspective. Her brilliant plan at the beginning of the game now turns out to be to hire level 1 bandits to attack the village she and her classmates are staying in. I know the bandits are weak because fighting them is supposed to be the tutorial level, but in-universe this still makes no sense. When the students leave the academy for any reason, they’re escorted by seasoned Church knights. Edelgard couldn’t possibly have expected bandits to make any sort of headway. We later learn that “the Flame Emperor” actually has a private army – the “Flame Emperor Soldiers,” so why didn’t Edelgard just send them instead of random bandits? Oh, and in case you forgot, the leader of the bandits almost kills Edelgard in the attack, meaning Edelgard’s first brilliant plan almost backfired in the saddest and most hilarious way possible.
Later on, “the Flame Emperor” and allies kidnap Flayn, who has special blood and is related to the higher-uppers in the Church. Their goal is to take some of her blood. Okay. They kidnap her at the beginning of the month and that entire month has everyone searching for Flayn. Byleth and her students find Flayn in some secret underground chamber surrounded by Flame Emperor Soldiers and that’s the final battle of that chapter. After the battle, “the Flame Emperor” appears, tells Byleth “we shall meet again,” and disappears. Now since Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, this means that she kidnapped Flayn and kept her underground for an entire month, which is dumb because the longer Flayn is missing, the higher the chance someone’s going to find her and jeopardize Edelgard’s secret operation. It doesn’t take an entire month to take someone’s blood. Moreover, this also means Edelgard puts on her Flame Emperor disguise and enters the underground chamber in the middle of a high-alert school searching for Flayn (a high-alert school searching for Flayn that just found her, no less), just to banter with Byleth for a few seconds?
Still later on, Byleth and her class go investigate a village, where people have turned into murder zombies. After eliminating the culprit, “the Flame Emperor” appears and speaks to Byleth for a few seconds about possibly joining forces before promptly disappearing. So again, this means Edelgard takes part in the mission, sneaks off after the mission, puts on her Flame Emperor disguise, returns to the village, and banters with Byleth for a few seconds only to leave quickly afterward. What the complete hell was the purpose of this? Wouldn’t pulling this stunt be a gigantic risk for Edelgard and her secret identity? Note that Edelgard isn’t actually trying to recruit Byleth in this scene, since Byleth can respond no, in which case she says she isn’t surprised; or Byleth can say yes, in which case she says she can tell Byleth is lying. The conversation is completely pointless.
Finally, Edelgard’s attack on the Holy Tomb itself. At this point, she’s seen first-hand how capable Byleth is. Byleth has led her and her classmates to at least 10 military victories by this point. How does she figure attacking Byleth head-on is going to succeed? The point of all this is that by making Edelgard the Flame Emperor, the writers have essentially told us that Edelgard is a complete moron – which is in itself out-of-character because, well, she’s not. She excels in the academy. Her backstory reveals that she understands and is fully prepared to take on the burden of leading her Empire. This girl isn’t stupid.
After the battle in the Holy Tomb, where Byleth and her students kill all of Edelgard’s soldiers and corner Edelgard herself, the Archbishop Rhea commands Byleth to kill Edelgard. The player can agree, in which case Edelgard escapes and the game enters the Silver Snow route, where you fight against Edelgard and the Empire. Or, the player can refuse, in which case they immediately join Edelgard, the game enters the Crimson Flower route, and Rhea is the villain.
Let me back up a little again. This religion the continent adheres to worships a goddess and, long story short, this goddess is named Sothis, and Byleth first meets Sothis at the very beginning of the game because Sothis lives within Byleth’s mind for reasons that become clear much later. In the chapter before the one with Edelgard’s reveal, Sothis merges with Byleth, meaning Byleth becomes the goddess. She actually changes appearance and I joked that she “went Super Saiyan” because she gets a power upgrade and her hair and eye color change.
Rhea knows this. She knows what happened to Byleth, i.e. that Byleth is now the goddess. She knows this for many different reasons. If you decide to side with Rhea, she tells Byleth that she wants to relinquish control of the church to her because Byleth is literally the deity the church worships. It’d be like if God appeared to the Pope – of course the Pope would relinquish command of the church to God.
So right away, Rhea commanding Byleth to kill Edelgard is out-of-character. The Archbishop of the church wants to give orders to her deity? Moreover, if you refuse, Rhea gets mega-angry, transforms into a dragon, and tries to kill Byleth. Rhea tries to kill the deity she and her entire church worships.
To drive the point home even more, we learn later that Rhea is Sothis’s daughter. Sothis actually died 1000+ years ago and Rhea kept trying to resurrect her by implanting Sothis’s Crest into infant children in the hopes that Sothis’s consciousness would awaken and take over that child as her vessel. This is why Sothis lives in Byleth’s mind, as Byleth is Rhea’s latest attempt. So when Sothis merges with Byleth, Rhea has succeeded – she now has her mother back. AND SHE TRIES TO KILL HER WHEN SHE DISAGREES WITH RHEA’S COMMAND. I get that Rhea becomes frighteningly vengeful when she gets angry, but this? This is lunacy. This makes no sense on so many different levels.
Oh, and as a side note? After Sothis’s death 1000+ years before the events of the game, Rhea destroys Sothis’s enemies and founds the Church that worships Sothis. Was she serving as Archbishop this entire time? Nobody on the continent thought it strange that the Archbishop of their Church has been alive and hasn’t changed appearance for roughly a millennium? In fact, when I first saw Rhea, my first reaction was “oh she looks like that lady from the opening cutscene” – the cutscene depicting the final battle 1000+ years ago.
Anyway, back to the Edelgard reveal scene. Let’s talk about Byleth herself. Byleth has just witnessed one of her students betray her and try to kill her and her students. The sensical choices in response are (1) kill Edelgard or (2) ask Edelgard what in the complete hell she was thinking before deciding whether to kill Edelgard. Immediately joining Edelgard is completely nonsensical, but like I said before, that’s what happens if you refuse Rhea’s command. I want to make this clear. Refusing to kill Edelgard, to the game, doesn’t mean “I want to hear an explanation before I decide what to do.” Refusing to kill Edelgard instead means “I’m going to throw my lot, immediately and unequivocally, in with this girl who just tried to kill me and my students without first asking for any clarification from anyone.”
I wanted to side with Edelgard in part because she’s the main Lord of the Black Eagles and therefore the main character in the route I’d chosen up to that point. But siding with her just felt…nonsensical to me when I looked at it from the perspective of my in-game character at that moment. The writers failed so hard at making characters act in-character that they somehow managed to make me, the player, feel out-of-character when making my choice in real life. Un. Fucking. Believable.
To make things worse, there is actually another excellent reason to side with Edelgard. See, Edelgard hates the aristocratic society in the world they live in. Remember all that noble family political intrigue I mentioned? It’s worse in this game’s universe compared to real life, even, because noble families are noble because of their bloodlines and, in-game, their bloodlines contain Crests, which give the person enhanced powers. Nobles arrange marriages and have children just to try to claim a person with a Crest as part of their families. Children born without a Crest get exiled or ignored or killed. And this is the tame stuff. Edelgard wants to tear this society down and form a meritocracy. Her goals are admirable, especially from the perspective of a modern-day person in real life. Real-world society has moved away from the aristocratic, feudal-era bloodline caste system and embraced, at least conceptually, the idea that people should rise based on hard work and skill rather than on birthright.
But narratively speaking, the writers don’t make this clear. Edelgard sort of hints at her views and her goals to Byleth before this, but never explains her complete goal and plan. Remember, Edelgard looks up to, trusts, and admires Byleth. Edelgard wouldn’t reveal this to her classmates, but she would do so with Byleth. If Edelgard had explained all of this in full, I wouldn’t have been surprised and the story could have developed where Edelgard tries to enact social reforms when she ascends the throne and the other nations oppose her because (1) they fear the massive social upheaval and unrest her reforms would invoke and/or (2) the nobles don’t want to relinquish their power. The conflict would have emerged naturally and Byleth would find herself choosing Edelgard because of her ideals rather than what actually happens in-game, which is Byleth choosing Edelgard for no rational reason whatsoever.
To go a bit further, let’s discuss those Crests and bloodlines I mentioned. In the backstory of the game, these 10 guys known as the Ten Elites empowered themselves with Crests through blood transfusions. Their descendants, from inheriting that blood, pass down these Crests. Most of the noble families have Crests tracing back to these 10 guys.
The Ten Elites were villains. They empowered themselves with their Crests by killing an entire village of Sothis’s descendants and stealing the blood of the victims (their leader, in fact, was who killed Sothis in the first place). When Rhea defeated them ~1000 years ago, she killed them but allowed their descendants to live; furthermore, she lies in Church doctrine that the Ten Elites were actually heroes. I’m not entirely sure why she did this – it seems, again, out-of-character. Rhea would absolutely despise the Ten Elites and anyone descendant from them because they bear the blood of her massacred brethren. She would see it as a defilement. Remember I said Rhea gets frighteningly vengeful? I can see her ordering her army to hunt down anyone with a Crest and kill them in cold blood. I guess she wanted to bring peace to the continent and thought that writing this fake history would help people heal so they wouldn’t keep fighting one another, but that seems way too rational for this vengeful woman.
Regardless, Rhea’s essential glorification of people with Crests directly resulted in this aristocratic society I discussed. So if Edelgard wants to tear it down, Rhea would actually have reason to oppose her. If it’s, as I hypothesized, that Rhea believes this society to be the best hope for peace, Rhea would oppose Edelgard because she would believe that Edelgard’s actions would throw the continent into complete chaos, regardless of how justified the end goal may be. And, in fact, that’s exactly what happens in the game when Edelgard starts the war.
Based on what I’ve written thus far, the conflict between Edelgard and Rhea has ample narrative basis and the writers could have explored these concepts in detail to develop the war naturally. Instead, as I discussed above, both Edelgard and Rhea act completely out-of-character to establish conflict between them as quickly as possible and the resulting war just seems like it’s shoehorned in.
I want to make one last comment about this Flame Emperor reveal. We’re going to look at it from a narrative perspective. When you write fiction, mystery is good. It makes the audience want to know what happens next – what the answers to these mysteries are. The Flame Emperor’s identity and the events of the first 10 chapters develop this mystery. But the game also gives the player embarrassingly and insultingly obvious hints as to who the Flame Emperor is. Whenever the Flame Emperor appears, the game makes it a point to emphasize that Edelgard isn’t also present. Remember the mission to rescue Flayn? You can’t deploy Edelgard in that mission, which is very, very glaring for an FE veteran because Edelgard is the Lord of the Black Eagles route and, in all FE games, the Lord character must be deployed in every battle. It’s required. So when the game specifically makes her unavailable, that’s an obviously meaningful sign. There’s also right after the village mission, where “the Flame Emperor” appears to talk to Byleth for a few seconds, and Hubert makes it a point to rush in asking where Edelgard is. Edelgard also speaks to Byleth about the Flame Emperor in very sympathetic terms. Finally, Edelgard tells Byleth she has the Crest of Flames, and she’s going to be Empress…it’s just…when you write fiction and develop a mystery but then basically tell the audience the answer to that mystery right away, you’re screwing up your own narrative.
I think I’ve exhausted this topic for now. I will add that I spent an inordinately long time trying to come up with some head-canon explanation for all of this bullshit…which isn’t entirely surprising, come to think of it, since I tend to do that a lot – you can probably find examples all throughout my site. I guess I just never felt this strongly about it. Anyway, I’ll write it out here if only to make myself feel better.
When Edelgard decides to attack the Holy Tomb, she knew full well that Byleth and her classmates would prevail. So, she gathered her most evil underlings to sack the tomb. Politically, anyone aligned with these guys – evil, sadistic, power-hungry – would believe that the new Empress were siding with and supporting them. After all, she hand-picked these guys for such an important mission. Moreover, the troops she brought in would be all too happy to sack the Holy Tomb. Once Byleth inevitably kills them all, Edelgard would have eliminated some of her most dangerous ticking time-bombs.
Edelgard’s plan succeeds and she finds herself cornered by Byleth and Rhea. She prepares to retreat using Hubert’s magical teleportation ability that, true to FE tradition, only comes up in cutscenes. Rhea commands Byleth to kill Edelgard and Byleth looks into her student’s eyes and remembers Edelgard’s words to her before – about how she hates Crests and the aristocratic society and about how she has steeled herself to fight against this social order at all costs. Byleth recalls Edelgard’s past, about how she believed she could only rely on herself to forge her path because everyone around her in her childhood was either unable to help her or was actively hurting her. Byleth realizes that Edelgard intends to continue this path alone, despite the bonds she has formed with her classmates and Byleth herself. That was the reason Edelgard gave such a harsh command to her soldiers to kill everyone. She was prepared to cut ties because she felt she needed to. No, Byleth thinks. You don’t need to do this alone.
She lowers her sword and tries to open dialogue, but Rhea has none of it and immediately declares her intention to murder everyone. So Hubert teleports everyone out of there using the magical teleportation ability that only appears in cutscenes. Byleth explaining her thoughts and Edelgard’s intentions to all 20 of the former students of the Academy under her house makes them understand why they just witnessed Edelgard ostensibly commanding ax-crazy men to slaughter them all. Yes, I said “all 20.” I recruited EVERYBODY. I also did this on my first playthrough, meaning no New Game Plus bonuses, meaning it took a very long time. But I have no regrets.
Now in Fire Emblem as a series, one recurring theme is the “dragon that can shapeshift into human form” plot element. Much of the time, dragons tend to have a feral and berserk nature that, for the most part, they can keep under control, especially in human form. Nowi from Awakening is a prime example – she specifically goes to remote, secluded areas and transforms into her dragon form so she can indulge her destructive tendencies without endangering anyone. Many of the draconic villains in the series are dragons that, for one reason or another, do not keep that part under control. I’m going to assume Rhea, after more than a millennium of life full of grief, was beginning to lose herself to her feral draconic nature, which is why she instinctively attacks her mother and deity. It’s…honestly still a stretch, but it makes more sense than what we’re told in-game.
…I still have no explanation for Edelgard’s inane actions as the Flame Emperor, though. GODDAMNIT EDELGARD I THOUGHT I TAUGHT YOU BETTER THAN THIS. EXTRA HOMEWORK FOR YOU.
And yes, I did choose the Crimson Flower route. Tearing down the aristocracy is something I thought was very important to the game. In fact, I would argue it’s one of the main themes of the game, since multiple characters discuss how the nobility caste system is fucked up. Hell, even Sylvain, the hyper-horny womanizer character, has some somber dialogue about how, as a Crest-bearer, he will probably never actually find a girl who loves him for him and not for his Crest. I think the only characters staunchly opposed to this idea are Ferdinand and Lorenz, and my head-canon says they spend the rest of their lives living together in a castle somewhere and they spend their days trying to out-noble one another. They don’t care about anyone else and nobody cares about them. Oh, and they also have gay sex, probably. So there.
…What? I shipped Edelgard and Byleth, so we need some gender/orientation equality in here.
I guess I should talk about the rest of the game, since everything I’ve ranted about thus far is the end of Part I, and there’s a Part II that diverges drastically based on the house you choose. Black Eagles go into Silver Snow or Crimson Flower, as I mentioned. The Blue Lions (Dimitri’s route) go to Azure Moon and the Golden Deer (Claude’s route) go to Verdant Wind. One thing about this that I both like and dislike is that the characters themselves are drastically different based on route. Dimitri is an example – in his route, he goes full-on ax-crazy at the end of Part I. He gets over it, and by extension his traumatic past, if Byleth is there to guide him. If not, he doesn’t. And dies. Violently. Rhea herself is drastically more evil in Crimson Flower compared to all other routes (and I mean drastically). Honestly, I found this theme very well done – the idea that the triumphant Lord at the end isn’t just triumphant because he/she has a great military tactician and fighter at his/her side, but also because that tactician and fighter is also a strong personal guide who literally changes the Lord into a better person. The reason I have reservations on it is more personal – as an engineer, I’m quite wary of designing something that will elicit drastically different experiences amongst its users, since that’s inherently difficult to design well. It’s hard to say a product has a good or bad design if 30% of its users think it’s the best design ever, 30% think it’s the most terrible design ever, and the rest of the 40% use it in completely different ways.
Moving on, Crimson Flower is the shortest of the 4 Part II routes and generally speaking, I don’t have a problem with short games. But in this case, I do. See, this game has 2 categories of villain: the grey-area, route-specific ones like Edelgard or Rhea; and those purple demon guy things I mentioned before. Those guys are called Agarthans, and Hubert refers to them as “those who slither in the dark.” They’re evil. Full stop. They directly caused Edelgard’s and Dimitri’s traumatic backstories. They were the ones who masterminded Sothis’s death at the beginning of the entire game’s backstory. They’ve entrenched themselves everywhere in the game’s various governments, especially the Empire, where they had enough power that they were able to kidnap the Emperor’s children and perform Crest experiments on them. Of the 10 or so imperial children, only Edelgard survived, and this is why she hates Crests. It’s also why she hates the Church – for glorifying Crests and creating/upholding a society where Crests have enough influence to enable the Agarthans to do this kind of stuff.
Edelgard pretends to be allied with the Agarthans because they have so much influence in the Empire, but she makes it abundantly clear that the moment she has the chance, she’s going to wipe them out. In the ending to Crimson Flower, she does exactly that.
…In the ending. The fight against and eradication of the Agarthans, the main and unequivocal villains of the game, happen in a few sentences in the ending off-camera. Why couldn’t Crimson Flower have more missions dedicated to fighting and destroying these guys – you know, to bring the length up to the rest of the routes? Did the developers run out of time and leave Crimson Flower unfinished or something?
I’ve heard people argue that after you kill Rhea in the final mission of Crimson Flower, Byleth loses the power of Sothis (for reasons that are never explained), meaning she wouldn’t be able to use the Sword of the Creator or Divine Pulse for any missions afterward. Umm, who cares? Do you know how many times I used the Sword of the Creator in my playthrough? Once. I used it as the finishing blow on Rhea because I thought it was fitting. I used Aymr as the finishing blow on Dimitri for the same reason. That’s literally all the times I used any of the Relics in the game.
As for Divine Pulse, it’s a time-rewind mechanic that makes the game way easier. Bad RNG? Rewind time and do something else. Made a mistake? Rewind time and don’t make that mistake. It’s a very new mechanic in the series. I and many others got through the old games that didn’t have this, and most of those were more difficult compared to Three Houses even if not taking Divine Pulse into account. Removing it for a few missions at the end of Crimson Flower would just make those missions more high-pressure – call Crimson Flower the “hard mode route” in the game and call it a day.
Also, since when do these developers care about asymmetry in the routes? To drive the point home, a player going into the Black Eagles route blind is going to put above-average resources into building up Edelgard, especially a blind player who has experience with the series. Edelgard’s the main Lord of the route, and the main Lord of FE games must be deployed in every map and cannot die, or you get an automatic game over. It’s in your best interest to put effort into making sure the Lord character is one of the strongest in your army. If the game ends up going into the Silver Snow route, you lose Edelgard and, by extension, all the time and resources you spent building her up, because she becomes the antagonist. That’s a much bigger loss than a weapon I only used once or a non-essential quality-of-life mechanic.
Now you do get missions to destroy the Agarthans…in Claude’s route. This is baffling because Claude has the least to do with the Agarthans. They feature prominently in every other main character’s backstory, but Claude is the one who gets to deal with them? What the hell were these writers on?
Anyway, I’m done ranting about Three Houses. It’s definitely the most ambitious Fire Emblem game I’ve ever played, and it does some things really well, but it also does many things horribly. Compared to Blazing Blade, a somewhat dated classic; or Awakening, the game that rescued the franchise from obscurity, this game falls far, far short.
Ever since I played Blazing Blade, back in ~2003 or so, I’ve loved the Fire Emblem series. SRPGs are my favorite genre of video game and Fire Emblem tops every other SRPG I’ve played, mostly because of how it treats its characters. Unlike, say, Final Fantasy Tactics, where most of your army consists of generic units, each Fire Emblem game has a cast of named characters with personalities and backstories. Many of these characters have relationships with each other. Siblings. Childhood friends. Former enemies. Spouses. It’s easy to get attached to characters in these games as you get to know them and deploy them in battle. It’s one of the reasons the classic perma-death mechanic in the series works so well – losing a unit isn’t like losing Tank #5 in Advance Wars or losing that one black mage I made 3 chapters ago in Final Fantasy Tactics. Losing a unit means a character I watched develop and listened to speak about his hopes and dreams just died because I made a tactical error. Or, more commonly, because the enemy got incredibly lucky with the RNG.
Three Houses takes this to a completely new level. The protagonist, Byleth, is a professor at a military/religious academy. The characters are students in this school. They interact with each other as classmates, which is already an interesting level of character interaction. Most of these students come from noble families as well, meaning their parents were involved in all sorts of politics. I listened to one guy who had to deal with the fact that his dad killed his classmate’s dad. One character, an incredibly hot tomboy who has a running gag of all her female classmates trying to get her to try makeup (much to her dismay), constantly has to deal with her father trying to arrange a marriage for her to bolster her family’s fortunes while struggling with her own hopes and dreams for her future. This particular character actually had a fiancé at one point whom she actually did love – but he died protecting the prince of her country. That prince is one of her classmates. That fiancé’s brother is one of her classmates. The game explores the ramifications of all these three characters in detail.
And the protagonist? She’s someone the students look up to as their professor. They ask her for advice on their futures – she’s not just there to teach them military tactics or how to fight, but also to teach them how to grow up to become adults that will inherit the world around them. Over time, Byleth forms bonds with all of them. And the player, as Byleth, sees all of this unfold as the school year progresses. It’s…well, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to the point that a savvy player – someone who has played a Fire Emblem game before – will go through the initial chapters feeling a growing sense of heartbreak because Fire Emblem games are all about war, and these teenagers whom you’re guiding and watching grow up will inevitably later find themselves knee-deep in death and conflict.
Three Houses isn’t just ambitious in character development. As the professor in this school, Byleth can go around gardening and fishing and having meals with people. They managed to enhance the RP part of SRPG without sacrificing the S part (mostly, this just makes the game way longer – but that’s not a complaint).
So I’ve just gushed about this game. But you notice you’re reading this as a review. Not a shrine. I gave this game an A, which is an admittedly great score, but not a shrine. Blazing Blade got a shrine. Awakening got a shrine. This game did not. Why?
Well, one reason is the stupidly tiny text size. Kotaku actually wrote an entire article about how bad it is, so it’s not just me with my poor eyesight and lack of a TV (meaning I played this game in handheld mode). But that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem, ironically, comes also from character development. I know I have a blanket spoiler warning on this entire section of my site, but I’m putting up another one here just in case. Also, fair warning – I’m about to go on a rant.
Background: you begin the game choosing to join one of three houses, each led by an heir to one of the three major nations on the continent. I chose the Black Eagles, which is the red house (because that totally makes sense, right?), led by Edelgard, who will one day become Empress of the Adrestian Empire. Her actual title would be “Emperor,” but I instinctively refer to her as Empress because she’s female. That’s what a female emperor is called. An empress. And no, this isn’t a sexist comment – if she were male and tried to call herself (himself) an empress, I’d insist on calling her (him) an emperor. Definitions, guys. They’re important.
…Anyway. The first 10 months at the academy see several villains appear, all operating in the shadows pursuing some hidden agenda. The first battle of the game consists of a bandit group trying to kill Edelgard and the heirs of the other 2 houses and ends with Byleth saving Edelgard’s life when the bandit leader almost kills her with an axe. Afterwards, you learn some masked guy known as the Flame Emperor had hired these bandits to kill the three heirs – again, pursuing some sort of shady goal. You see the Flame Emperor again allied with these purple…demon…guy…things who use dark magic and have their own agenda.
I’ll jump to the end first and then explain. In the 11th month, Byleth finds herself in the Holy Tomb, the most sacred room in the continent’s religion (remember, the academy is also a religious academy – it’s because the academy is run by the Church). Edelgard marches in with a cadre of imperial troops, reveals that she is the Flame Emperor, and commands her troops to sack the tomb and kill anyone who stands in their way, including Byleth and the other students (in other words, Edelgard’s classmates). Oh, and by the way, her second-in-command in this sequence is this cartoonishly ax-crazy slasher guy.
This plot twist is infuriatingly stupid. Edelgard is acting completely out-of-character in this scene, ostensibly because the writers wanted this reveal to have maximum shock factor, which unfortunately makes it seem like it came completely out of left field. Imagine if, in the middle of the MCU, Captain America reveals that he is actually Thanos and he’s been working to destroy Earth since World War II. Shocking? Yeah. Sensical? HELL TO THE NO.
Let’s look at this from a character development perspective. One of the main themes of the game is how Byleth forms bonds with her students, especially with the house leaders. Edelgard says, several times, that she feels comfortable around Byleth and can reveal more about herself than if she were speaking to literally anyone else. Even given her imperial family status, Edelgard has nothing but respect and admiration for Byleth, calling her “my teacher.” But no, she marches in and tells her troops to kill her. Even if you assume that Edelgard was putting up a front with her classmates, one of the themes in the game is that she doesn’t do that around Byleth. And, in fact, if you end up continuing with Edelgard’s path (more on this later), you find that no, Edelgard was actually being sincere in her interactions with everyone, which means her “KEEL THEM ALL” entrance reads not like a surprise reveal but more like a fanfiction writer who hates Edelgard and wants to make her as cartoonishly evil as possible.
Let’s look at this from Edelgard’s perspective. Her brilliant plan at the beginning of the game now turns out to be to hire level 1 bandits to attack the village she and her classmates are staying in. I know the bandits are weak because fighting them is supposed to be the tutorial level, but in-universe this still makes no sense. When the students leave the academy for any reason, they’re escorted by seasoned Church knights. Edelgard couldn’t possibly have expected bandits to make any sort of headway. We later learn that “the Flame Emperor” actually has a private army – the “Flame Emperor Soldiers,” so why didn’t Edelgard just send them instead of random bandits? Oh, and in case you forgot, the leader of the bandits almost kills Edelgard in the attack, meaning Edelgard’s first brilliant plan almost backfired in the saddest and most hilarious way possible.
Later on, “the Flame Emperor” and allies kidnap Flayn, who has special blood and is related to the higher-uppers in the Church. Their goal is to take some of her blood. Okay. They kidnap her at the beginning of the month and that entire month has everyone searching for Flayn. Byleth and her students find Flayn in some secret underground chamber surrounded by Flame Emperor Soldiers and that’s the final battle of that chapter. After the battle, “the Flame Emperor” appears, tells Byleth “we shall meet again,” and disappears. Now since Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, this means that she kidnapped Flayn and kept her underground for an entire month, which is dumb because the longer Flayn is missing, the higher the chance someone’s going to find her and jeopardize Edelgard’s secret operation. It doesn’t take an entire month to take someone’s blood. Moreover, this also means Edelgard puts on her Flame Emperor disguise and enters the underground chamber in the middle of a high-alert school searching for Flayn (a high-alert school searching for Flayn that just found her, no less), just to banter with Byleth for a few seconds?
Still later on, Byleth and her class go investigate a village, where people have turned into murder zombies. After eliminating the culprit, “the Flame Emperor” appears and speaks to Byleth for a few seconds about possibly joining forces before promptly disappearing. So again, this means Edelgard takes part in the mission, sneaks off after the mission, puts on her Flame Emperor disguise, returns to the village, and banters with Byleth for a few seconds only to leave quickly afterward. What the complete hell was the purpose of this? Wouldn’t pulling this stunt be a gigantic risk for Edelgard and her secret identity? Note that Edelgard isn’t actually trying to recruit Byleth in this scene, since Byleth can respond no, in which case she says she isn’t surprised; or Byleth can say yes, in which case she says she can tell Byleth is lying. The conversation is completely pointless.
Finally, Edelgard’s attack on the Holy Tomb itself. At this point, she’s seen first-hand how capable Byleth is. Byleth has led her and her classmates to at least 10 military victories by this point. How does she figure attacking Byleth head-on is going to succeed? The point of all this is that by making Edelgard the Flame Emperor, the writers have essentially told us that Edelgard is a complete moron – which is in itself out-of-character because, well, she’s not. She excels in the academy. Her backstory reveals that she understands and is fully prepared to take on the burden of leading her Empire. This girl isn’t stupid.
After the battle in the Holy Tomb, where Byleth and her students kill all of Edelgard’s soldiers and corner Edelgard herself, the Archbishop Rhea commands Byleth to kill Edelgard. The player can agree, in which case Edelgard escapes and the game enters the Silver Snow route, where you fight against Edelgard and the Empire. Or, the player can refuse, in which case they immediately join Edelgard, the game enters the Crimson Flower route, and Rhea is the villain.
Let me back up a little again. This religion the continent adheres to worships a goddess and, long story short, this goddess is named Sothis, and Byleth first meets Sothis at the very beginning of the game because Sothis lives within Byleth’s mind for reasons that become clear much later. In the chapter before the one with Edelgard’s reveal, Sothis merges with Byleth, meaning Byleth becomes the goddess. She actually changes appearance and I joked that she “went Super Saiyan” because she gets a power upgrade and her hair and eye color change.
Rhea knows this. She knows what happened to Byleth, i.e. that Byleth is now the goddess. She knows this for many different reasons. If you decide to side with Rhea, she tells Byleth that she wants to relinquish control of the church to her because Byleth is literally the deity the church worships. It’d be like if God appeared to the Pope – of course the Pope would relinquish command of the church to God.
So right away, Rhea commanding Byleth to kill Edelgard is out-of-character. The Archbishop of the church wants to give orders to her deity? Moreover, if you refuse, Rhea gets mega-angry, transforms into a dragon, and tries to kill Byleth. Rhea tries to kill the deity she and her entire church worships.
To drive the point home even more, we learn later that Rhea is Sothis’s daughter. Sothis actually died 1000+ years ago and Rhea kept trying to resurrect her by implanting Sothis’s Crest into infant children in the hopes that Sothis’s consciousness would awaken and take over that child as her vessel. This is why Sothis lives in Byleth’s mind, as Byleth is Rhea’s latest attempt. So when Sothis merges with Byleth, Rhea has succeeded – she now has her mother back. AND SHE TRIES TO KILL HER WHEN SHE DISAGREES WITH RHEA’S COMMAND. I get that Rhea becomes frighteningly vengeful when she gets angry, but this? This is lunacy. This makes no sense on so many different levels.
Oh, and as a side note? After Sothis’s death 1000+ years before the events of the game, Rhea destroys Sothis’s enemies and founds the Church that worships Sothis. Was she serving as Archbishop this entire time? Nobody on the continent thought it strange that the Archbishop of their Church has been alive and hasn’t changed appearance for roughly a millennium? In fact, when I first saw Rhea, my first reaction was “oh she looks like that lady from the opening cutscene” – the cutscene depicting the final battle 1000+ years ago.
Anyway, back to the Edelgard reveal scene. Let’s talk about Byleth herself. Byleth has just witnessed one of her students betray her and try to kill her and her students. The sensical choices in response are (1) kill Edelgard or (2) ask Edelgard what in the complete hell she was thinking before deciding whether to kill Edelgard. Immediately joining Edelgard is completely nonsensical, but like I said before, that’s what happens if you refuse Rhea’s command. I want to make this clear. Refusing to kill Edelgard, to the game, doesn’t mean “I want to hear an explanation before I decide what to do.” Refusing to kill Edelgard instead means “I’m going to throw my lot, immediately and unequivocally, in with this girl who just tried to kill me and my students without first asking for any clarification from anyone.”
I wanted to side with Edelgard in part because she’s the main Lord of the Black Eagles and therefore the main character in the route I’d chosen up to that point. But siding with her just felt…nonsensical to me when I looked at it from the perspective of my in-game character at that moment. The writers failed so hard at making characters act in-character that they somehow managed to make me, the player, feel out-of-character when making my choice in real life. Un. Fucking. Believable.
To make things worse, there is actually another excellent reason to side with Edelgard. See, Edelgard hates the aristocratic society in the world they live in. Remember all that noble family political intrigue I mentioned? It’s worse in this game’s universe compared to real life, even, because noble families are noble because of their bloodlines and, in-game, their bloodlines contain Crests, which give the person enhanced powers. Nobles arrange marriages and have children just to try to claim a person with a Crest as part of their families. Children born without a Crest get exiled or ignored or killed. And this is the tame stuff. Edelgard wants to tear this society down and form a meritocracy. Her goals are admirable, especially from the perspective of a modern-day person in real life. Real-world society has moved away from the aristocratic, feudal-era bloodline caste system and embraced, at least conceptually, the idea that people should rise based on hard work and skill rather than on birthright.
But narratively speaking, the writers don’t make this clear. Edelgard sort of hints at her views and her goals to Byleth before this, but never explains her complete goal and plan. Remember, Edelgard looks up to, trusts, and admires Byleth. Edelgard wouldn’t reveal this to her classmates, but she would do so with Byleth. If Edelgard had explained all of this in full, I wouldn’t have been surprised and the story could have developed where Edelgard tries to enact social reforms when she ascends the throne and the other nations oppose her because (1) they fear the massive social upheaval and unrest her reforms would invoke and/or (2) the nobles don’t want to relinquish their power. The conflict would have emerged naturally and Byleth would find herself choosing Edelgard because of her ideals rather than what actually happens in-game, which is Byleth choosing Edelgard for no rational reason whatsoever.
To go a bit further, let’s discuss those Crests and bloodlines I mentioned. In the backstory of the game, these 10 guys known as the Ten Elites empowered themselves with Crests through blood transfusions. Their descendants, from inheriting that blood, pass down these Crests. Most of the noble families have Crests tracing back to these 10 guys.
The Ten Elites were villains. They empowered themselves with their Crests by killing an entire village of Sothis’s descendants and stealing the blood of the victims (their leader, in fact, was who killed Sothis in the first place). When Rhea defeated them ~1000 years ago, she killed them but allowed their descendants to live; furthermore, she lies in Church doctrine that the Ten Elites were actually heroes. I’m not entirely sure why she did this – it seems, again, out-of-character. Rhea would absolutely despise the Ten Elites and anyone descendant from them because they bear the blood of her massacred brethren. She would see it as a defilement. Remember I said Rhea gets frighteningly vengeful? I can see her ordering her army to hunt down anyone with a Crest and kill them in cold blood. I guess she wanted to bring peace to the continent and thought that writing this fake history would help people heal so they wouldn’t keep fighting one another, but that seems way too rational for this vengeful woman.
Regardless, Rhea’s essential glorification of people with Crests directly resulted in this aristocratic society I discussed. So if Edelgard wants to tear it down, Rhea would actually have reason to oppose her. If it’s, as I hypothesized, that Rhea believes this society to be the best hope for peace, Rhea would oppose Edelgard because she would believe that Edelgard’s actions would throw the continent into complete chaos, regardless of how justified the end goal may be. And, in fact, that’s exactly what happens in the game when Edelgard starts the war.
Based on what I’ve written thus far, the conflict between Edelgard and Rhea has ample narrative basis and the writers could have explored these concepts in detail to develop the war naturally. Instead, as I discussed above, both Edelgard and Rhea act completely out-of-character to establish conflict between them as quickly as possible and the resulting war just seems like it’s shoehorned in.
I want to make one last comment about this Flame Emperor reveal. We’re going to look at it from a narrative perspective. When you write fiction, mystery is good. It makes the audience want to know what happens next – what the answers to these mysteries are. The Flame Emperor’s identity and the events of the first 10 chapters develop this mystery. But the game also gives the player embarrassingly and insultingly obvious hints as to who the Flame Emperor is. Whenever the Flame Emperor appears, the game makes it a point to emphasize that Edelgard isn’t also present. Remember the mission to rescue Flayn? You can’t deploy Edelgard in that mission, which is very, very glaring for an FE veteran because Edelgard is the Lord of the Black Eagles route and, in all FE games, the Lord character must be deployed in every battle. It’s required. So when the game specifically makes her unavailable, that’s an obviously meaningful sign. There’s also right after the village mission, where “the Flame Emperor” appears to talk to Byleth for a few seconds, and Hubert makes it a point to rush in asking where Edelgard is. Edelgard also speaks to Byleth about the Flame Emperor in very sympathetic terms. Finally, Edelgard tells Byleth she has the Crest of Flames, and she’s going to be Empress…it’s just…when you write fiction and develop a mystery but then basically tell the audience the answer to that mystery right away, you’re screwing up your own narrative.
I think I’ve exhausted this topic for now. I will add that I spent an inordinately long time trying to come up with some head-canon explanation for all of this bullshit…which isn’t entirely surprising, come to think of it, since I tend to do that a lot – you can probably find examples all throughout my site. I guess I just never felt this strongly about it. Anyway, I’ll write it out here if only to make myself feel better.
When Edelgard decides to attack the Holy Tomb, she knew full well that Byleth and her classmates would prevail. So, she gathered her most evil underlings to sack the tomb. Politically, anyone aligned with these guys – evil, sadistic, power-hungry – would believe that the new Empress were siding with and supporting them. After all, she hand-picked these guys for such an important mission. Moreover, the troops she brought in would be all too happy to sack the Holy Tomb. Once Byleth inevitably kills them all, Edelgard would have eliminated some of her most dangerous ticking time-bombs.
Edelgard’s plan succeeds and she finds herself cornered by Byleth and Rhea. She prepares to retreat using Hubert’s magical teleportation ability that, true to FE tradition, only comes up in cutscenes. Rhea commands Byleth to kill Edelgard and Byleth looks into her student’s eyes and remembers Edelgard’s words to her before – about how she hates Crests and the aristocratic society and about how she has steeled herself to fight against this social order at all costs. Byleth recalls Edelgard’s past, about how she believed she could only rely on herself to forge her path because everyone around her in her childhood was either unable to help her or was actively hurting her. Byleth realizes that Edelgard intends to continue this path alone, despite the bonds she has formed with her classmates and Byleth herself. That was the reason Edelgard gave such a harsh command to her soldiers to kill everyone. She was prepared to cut ties because she felt she needed to. No, Byleth thinks. You don’t need to do this alone.
She lowers her sword and tries to open dialogue, but Rhea has none of it and immediately declares her intention to murder everyone. So Hubert teleports everyone out of there using the magical teleportation ability that only appears in cutscenes. Byleth explaining her thoughts and Edelgard’s intentions to all 20 of the former students of the Academy under her house makes them understand why they just witnessed Edelgard ostensibly commanding ax-crazy men to slaughter them all. Yes, I said “all 20.” I recruited EVERYBODY. I also did this on my first playthrough, meaning no New Game Plus bonuses, meaning it took a very long time. But I have no regrets.
Now in Fire Emblem as a series, one recurring theme is the “dragon that can shapeshift into human form” plot element. Much of the time, dragons tend to have a feral and berserk nature that, for the most part, they can keep under control, especially in human form. Nowi from Awakening is a prime example – she specifically goes to remote, secluded areas and transforms into her dragon form so she can indulge her destructive tendencies without endangering anyone. Many of the draconic villains in the series are dragons that, for one reason or another, do not keep that part under control. I’m going to assume Rhea, after more than a millennium of life full of grief, was beginning to lose herself to her feral draconic nature, which is why she instinctively attacks her mother and deity. It’s…honestly still a stretch, but it makes more sense than what we’re told in-game.
…I still have no explanation for Edelgard’s inane actions as the Flame Emperor, though. GODDAMNIT EDELGARD I THOUGHT I TAUGHT YOU BETTER THAN THIS. EXTRA HOMEWORK FOR YOU.
And yes, I did choose the Crimson Flower route. Tearing down the aristocracy is something I thought was very important to the game. In fact, I would argue it’s one of the main themes of the game, since multiple characters discuss how the nobility caste system is fucked up. Hell, even Sylvain, the hyper-horny womanizer character, has some somber dialogue about how, as a Crest-bearer, he will probably never actually find a girl who loves him for him and not for his Crest. I think the only characters staunchly opposed to this idea are Ferdinand and Lorenz, and my head-canon says they spend the rest of their lives living together in a castle somewhere and they spend their days trying to out-noble one another. They don’t care about anyone else and nobody cares about them. Oh, and they also have gay sex, probably. So there.
…What? I shipped Edelgard and Byleth, so we need some gender/orientation equality in here.
I guess I should talk about the rest of the game, since everything I’ve ranted about thus far is the end of Part I, and there’s a Part II that diverges drastically based on the house you choose. Black Eagles go into Silver Snow or Crimson Flower, as I mentioned. The Blue Lions (Dimitri’s route) go to Azure Moon and the Golden Deer (Claude’s route) go to Verdant Wind. One thing about this that I both like and dislike is that the characters themselves are drastically different based on route. Dimitri is an example – in his route, he goes full-on ax-crazy at the end of Part I. He gets over it, and by extension his traumatic past, if Byleth is there to guide him. If not, he doesn’t. And dies. Violently. Rhea herself is drastically more evil in Crimson Flower compared to all other routes (and I mean drastically). Honestly, I found this theme very well done – the idea that the triumphant Lord at the end isn’t just triumphant because he/she has a great military tactician and fighter at his/her side, but also because that tactician and fighter is also a strong personal guide who literally changes the Lord into a better person. The reason I have reservations on it is more personal – as an engineer, I’m quite wary of designing something that will elicit drastically different experiences amongst its users, since that’s inherently difficult to design well. It’s hard to say a product has a good or bad design if 30% of its users think it’s the best design ever, 30% think it’s the most terrible design ever, and the rest of the 40% use it in completely different ways.
Moving on, Crimson Flower is the shortest of the 4 Part II routes and generally speaking, I don’t have a problem with short games. But in this case, I do. See, this game has 2 categories of villain: the grey-area, route-specific ones like Edelgard or Rhea; and those purple demon guy things I mentioned before. Those guys are called Agarthans, and Hubert refers to them as “those who slither in the dark.” They’re evil. Full stop. They directly caused Edelgard’s and Dimitri’s traumatic backstories. They were the ones who masterminded Sothis’s death at the beginning of the entire game’s backstory. They’ve entrenched themselves everywhere in the game’s various governments, especially the Empire, where they had enough power that they were able to kidnap the Emperor’s children and perform Crest experiments on them. Of the 10 or so imperial children, only Edelgard survived, and this is why she hates Crests. It’s also why she hates the Church – for glorifying Crests and creating/upholding a society where Crests have enough influence to enable the Agarthans to do this kind of stuff.
Edelgard pretends to be allied with the Agarthans because they have so much influence in the Empire, but she makes it abundantly clear that the moment she has the chance, she’s going to wipe them out. In the ending to Crimson Flower, she does exactly that.
…In the ending. The fight against and eradication of the Agarthans, the main and unequivocal villains of the game, happen in a few sentences in the ending off-camera. Why couldn’t Crimson Flower have more missions dedicated to fighting and destroying these guys – you know, to bring the length up to the rest of the routes? Did the developers run out of time and leave Crimson Flower unfinished or something?
I’ve heard people argue that after you kill Rhea in the final mission of Crimson Flower, Byleth loses the power of Sothis (for reasons that are never explained), meaning she wouldn’t be able to use the Sword of the Creator or Divine Pulse for any missions afterward. Umm, who cares? Do you know how many times I used the Sword of the Creator in my playthrough? Once. I used it as the finishing blow on Rhea because I thought it was fitting. I used Aymr as the finishing blow on Dimitri for the same reason. That’s literally all the times I used any of the Relics in the game.
As for Divine Pulse, it’s a time-rewind mechanic that makes the game way easier. Bad RNG? Rewind time and do something else. Made a mistake? Rewind time and don’t make that mistake. It’s a very new mechanic in the series. I and many others got through the old games that didn’t have this, and most of those were more difficult compared to Three Houses even if not taking Divine Pulse into account. Removing it for a few missions at the end of Crimson Flower would just make those missions more high-pressure – call Crimson Flower the “hard mode route” in the game and call it a day.
Also, since when do these developers care about asymmetry in the routes? To drive the point home, a player going into the Black Eagles route blind is going to put above-average resources into building up Edelgard, especially a blind player who has experience with the series. Edelgard’s the main Lord of the route, and the main Lord of FE games must be deployed in every map and cannot die, or you get an automatic game over. It’s in your best interest to put effort into making sure the Lord character is one of the strongest in your army. If the game ends up going into the Silver Snow route, you lose Edelgard and, by extension, all the time and resources you spent building her up, because she becomes the antagonist. That’s a much bigger loss than a weapon I only used once or a non-essential quality-of-life mechanic.
Now you do get missions to destroy the Agarthans…in Claude’s route. This is baffling because Claude has the least to do with the Agarthans. They feature prominently in every other main character’s backstory, but Claude is the one who gets to deal with them? What the hell were these writers on?
Anyway, I’m done ranting about Three Houses. It’s definitely the most ambitious Fire Emblem game I’ve ever played, and it does some things really well, but it also does many things horribly. Compared to Blazing Blade, a somewhat dated classic; or Awakening, the game that rescued the franchise from obscurity, this game falls far, far short.