Written: Wednesday. December 1, 2021.
Believe it or not, I'm starting a new season of the journal because of getting frustrated from playing Fire Emblem Three Houses. I was originally supposed to buy this game once I got paid for my Axie scholar duties, but since one of my cousins decided to lend me three of his switch games (including Three Houses), I got to play the game earlier, and didn't have to buy it.
At first, it was like God gave me exactly what I was asking for. But a few days in on playing Three Houses, and I gotta say that it's turning out to be that I don't like playing these kinds of games. It's a turn-based strategy game, and I've had my fair share of that video game genre, but it seems like it just isn't really natural for me to be good at playing these kinds of games.
I like Advance Wars, which is similar to Fire Emblem, and also FF Tactics Advance. But even as I play Advance Wars, it just doesn't feel like I'm having fun playing it. It generally just feels like I'm doing a task rather than playing a game and enjoying my time. These types of games really require a lot of brain power and focus, and attention to information and/or detail. In Fire Emblem, there's more to it, especially in Three Houses. I've only ever really played the GBA Fire Emblem games, and even in those, I've never once beaten the game to completion. I'm barely in the middle of the events of Three Houses, and I already lost a student in the class that I picked.
I chose Classic Mode—which meant that if a member of my team dies, they die for real—because that was how the older games were. And I really wanted to start writing a journal series again, because I need to let out some steam about my frustrations with this game right now.
I'm torn between wanting to push through with the game despite having one of my students die so early on in the story, and restarting the game entirely and choosing Casual Mode just to get the frustration aspect of the game out of the way for my experience. But doing the latter would mean that I'm taking the easy route. It would mean that I'm not truly living up to the game; to the type of genre of video game Fire Emblem Three Houses is.
But then again, why should I care if I can't handle playing this game in Classic Mode? If Classic Mode is making the game less fun for me, then picking Casual Mode should be the right move to make, is it not? But then again, I could make better decisions when teaching the students of the class I picked to help them get stronger in fights and whatnot. All I honestly want to get out of this game is to experience the story, and the death of one of my students in the game didn't even affect the story in any way. The student is still around in the campus, but is no longer available as a unit. The other students don't even say anything about it, either! It's like the student just doesn't exist anymore. Like I'm the only one who sees them now.
I'm obviously gonna restart the game, and play it on Casual Mode. I don't need to prove anything. I don't need to get riled up because I couldn't manage to be good at playing a type of game that I don't naturally vibe with.
Honestly, every time I try playing a turn based strategy game, it's like I'm forcing myself to like it. Eventually, I get frustrated with it, and I turn it down for games like Zelda, Mario, or Metroid.
This leads me to my next topic. Action-Adventure Games.
Zelda, Mario, and Metroid, are three video game franchises that heavily focus on Action-Adventure. Zelda is a Top-Down/3D Adventure game that has good world building and fantasy elements to it. Metroid is a 2D Platformer, Non-Linear play-through, that has good Sci-Fi aspects to it. And Mario is set in a Fairy Tale World, and you do the most Action-Oriented movements with his character as you venture off into the many worlds he goes to. These are the types of games that I really like, because it just feels more like I'm actually playing a video game, and not some simulation of a Battle or something. These games give me more adrenaline. It makes my heart beat faster, it also frustrates me, but in a good way cause I know that I'll get better at it by training harder and making better hand-gestures on the controller.
In games such as Fire Emblem Three Houses, I just don't get to feel that same vibe. I spend time reading more dialogue and exposition rather than actually getting to play a mission. The School Campus is a mess, and the Map is so irritating. I don't like how it's more about having to make your units interact with one another to gain better stats or support or whatever. The older Fire Emblem games, sure, they had some of that, but it wasn't the main focus. The main focus of the older games was the actual Tactical Strategy, not Dating-Simulation.
And since they were aiming for something like that, they could've at least NOT make the characters looks so robotic in their facial expressions. And there's no real diversity when it comes to character design. Everyone has the same face-structure. The only thing different about each character is what color their hair is, or their body type, or their clothes. But if you just look at these characters' heads, you'd have a hard time differentiating them from one another. Claude is the ONLY one who isn't pale-skinned in this game! Or at least, that's what I can recall. There aren't Black people in this game, no Indian looking people, no Latina looking people, no nothing. It's literally a White-wash Cast, and sure, you can say it was an artistic choice, but damn, it just feels so unnatural.
These things that I've said are probably gonna change once I've finished the game, but for now, these are the things that frustrate me about this game.
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