r/FireEmblemThreeHouses

4 years after I said I would beat all 3 routes of Three Hopes; I finally did it. In preparation for Fortune's Weave next month, I decided to finish what I started and actually fully complete the game and acquire all the achievements. After beating Azure Gleam a few weeks back, I set my sights on Golden Wildfire. All I knew before diving in myself was that it was rather controversial with its portrayal of Claude and that his actions made no sense. Now that I have experienced it myself, what were my thoughts?

Positives first, the supports were really charming seeing all the Golden Deer interact with one another. While the story progression follows the structure of Scarlet Blaze, in which you don't temporarily part ways with units like Azure Gleam, it did make for a tighter knit group. I also played through the route on Maddening Mode since there's an achievement for clearing 50 missions. If I thought the jump from Normal to Hard was jarring, then Hard to Maddening was like getting smacked in the face with how hard these enemies hit for. Thankfully, this route had a saving grace that made me able to persevere until the end: Holst Sigiswald Goneril. Holst might just be my favorite unit to play as thanks to his personal skill and with how many enemies he can attack at once. I also want to mention Claude and his Barbarossa class where you shoot fireballs to break the stun gauge; it's so satisfying to pull off. I'd say my favorite paralogues were Hilda, Holst, and Balthus, Hilda and Marianne, and Claude.

Going more into the story, Part 1 is all about fighting off the Empire before they conquer the capitol and attempting to invade their land before having to stop Shahid. This did feel a bit similar to Azure Gleam, of course, but then Part 2 turns it on its head. Now, we're with the Empire fighting the Kingdom and Church to take out Rhea. This honestly is just preferences, but I appreciated having to fight different factions in Golden Wildfire rather than it being the Empire 90% of the time in Azure Gleam. I just think it allows for more visual and enemy variety to keep the repetitive gameplay more interesting. Which, yeah, by the end of this playthrough, I was already feeling drained. These games are fun, yes, but they should not be played for hours and hours at a time.

If I had any negatives to say, I guess Claude can be a bit bone-headed with his schemes, like sacrificing Randolph so that the Federation could take out Catherine, leading to his 12-year-old sister to buy a bunch of soldiers and mercenaries with the sole purpose of killing him. There's also the whole crux of Part 2 being Claude wanting to kill Rhea to end the war; that's something a lot of people didn't like since it felt so out of character for Claude. Personally, I didn't mind it too much, though it does seem like a huge leap in logic to make and essentially forces Dimitri into a no-win scenario. Aside from that, I would say I had a better time with this route compared to Azure Gleam, but Scarlet Blaze still wins out in overall consistency.

So, with all the routes done, that means I've accomplished my goal, right? Right? Except no, not even close. As I made it further into this game; I realized just how naive I was four years ago thinking I could get all 450 achievements. If you want to fully 100% this game, then you're playing through each route not once, but TWICE! As of writing this, I have 409 achievements. 3 of them are tied to getting the last Hero's Relic on Azure Gleam's 'Into the Chasm' chapter where you recruit Byleth; I did not do that on my playthrough. Also, while not tied to achievements, there's the alternate version of Scarlet Blaze Chapter 14 where you go against Claude. The main obstacle, however, is the War Map section where you need to visit Anna and complete extra quests that randomly pop up, and you need 100 of the latter while I currently have only 59! Am I still going to do all of these, maybe. Will it destroy my sanity, probably. At least I'll have the Vanguard Whistle to blitz through to the main chapter missions and clear the route much faster.

Let’s say Byleth doesn’t have their same charisma, and one student from each of their original house defects, whether you like it or not. Who would you personally pick? It keeps the sympathetic tragedy of the game intact, even when you go for a full recruit in each house.

For BL, I feel like either Ashe or Mercedes have good cases to defect. Ashe has a pretty good reason to go with or against Edelgard, given the circumstances of his adoptive father’s death. Mercedes, who’s suffered against crests so much, and has living family with the Black Eagles, has a good chance of siding with Edelgard. It’s also good story-wise for drama, since Ashe and Mercedes are such kind people. There has to be something horrible that happened to push them to betray their house.

I don’t know enough about the three other routes, so feel free to discuss!

Edit: I wanted to point out, it doesn’t necessarily have to be in character. After all, the game’s story wasn’t written with a traitor in mind. But if you had to adjust the story/characters and pick a traitor, who would you pick?

The retainers would never do betray their leaders, but in this hypothetical, I feel like it’d be fun if one of them turned from their own cause.

I never properly started 3h until recently but ive seen stuff about it for years and years and genuinely never saw this character named Monica. Im playing blue lions on chapter 3 and I just came across this red hair girl when I was looking something else up and I genuinely thought it was some fan thing because ive seen like every other character in this game except her. I dont know why but I just wanted to share this

I'm working on a little project comparing the four routes to one another and I was wondering if there are any characters that you always fight regardless of route.

Any house leaders are obviously out of the question and pre-timeskip bosses aren't really route dependent either.

Is there someone like that?