Played through the first few chapters and have a decent idea of the game, at least early on
They definitely “dumbed down” the main story to appeal to a broader audience. It’s typical JRPG fare, at least early in the game. Not necessarily “bad”, but it’s not the same type of narrative as 3Hs nor seemingly nearly as dark. Kinda generic so far but we’ll see where it goes, it’s still super early
Visually this game is shytting on 3H in every way. Animations, UI, graphics, performance, and color pallet, are all objectively better
Gotta give them their props here for sure. Music is great as usual too. The overall presentation value for this game is A+ for me.
You can tell they wanted to make this more gameplay oriented. You get into the action pretty quick and you can see there’s a ton of depth with the character builds & engage mechanics. There’s not as much downtime between fights so the overall gameplay loop is “quicker” than 3Hs. I’m playing on hard and even early on it’s more difficult than hard on 3H, which felt more like a “normal” mode while normal was easy. Gameplay is very good even early on, I’m excited to see how my late-game army will turn out
Dialog and supports are similar like awakening & fates. The support system is still there but there doesn’t seem to be dialog choices like that
Basically if you want a great looking fire emblem game with strong gameplay and deep unit building (combat-wise), this game definitely delivers. If you want Three Houses 2 and a ton of social stuff, this ain’t it. This feels more like a modern version of Awakening and Fates than a Three Houses sequel for sure.