Earlier this week, Pokemon Go players had their first encounter with Team Rocket. The villainous trainers would invade certain PokeStops and challenge players to battle using their Shadow Pokemon, but just as suddenly as they appeared, Team Rocket seemed to vanish from the game. The evil team is now back again in Pokemon Go in even greater numbers, and there’s a new Special Research questline to go along with them.
Just as before, you can encounter a Team Rocket grunt at certain PokeStops. You can tell which locations have been taken over by the team by their appearance. On the overworld map, the PokeStop cube will appear darker and will twitch erratically, and when you approach it, you’ll notice the stop is colored black rather than blue. Spin the Photo Disc at one of these PokeStops and the Rocket grunt will reveal themselves and challenge you to a Pokemon battle.
Rocket grunts come with Shadow Pokemon, which have red eyes and are surrounded by a dark aura. If you defeat the Rocket grunt in battle, they’ll leave their Shadow Pokemon behind, giving you an opportunity to capture it. Once you’ve rescued the monster, you’ll have the option to “purify” it by spending Candy and Stardust.
Not only will purification return the Shadow Pokemon’s appearance to normal, it’ll also increase its stats. Purified Pokemon will require less Stardust and Candy to power up, as well, giving you another incentive to purify them. You can read more about the process in our Pokemon Go Shadow Pokemon guide.
To coincide with Team Rocket’s invasion of Pokemon Go, a new Special Research questline dubbed A Troubling Situation is now live. When you boot up the game, Professor Willow will mention the recent Rocket sightings and assign your first few tasks.
There’s a lot more happening in Pokemon Go. As part of a One Piece crossover event, Pikachu wearing straw hats are appearing in the wild until July 29. The game’s current Legendary, Armored Mewtwo, will also be leaving on July 31, and shortly after that, Niantic will host the next Pokemon Go Community Day. That takes place on Saturday, August 3, and the featured Pokemon this time will be Ralts.
Before its resurgence in popularity on the 3DS handhelds, there was a time where the Fire Emblem series once lived on home consoles. Twelve years after Radiant Dawn on Wii, Fire Emblem: Three Houses
has finally returned to the living room on the Switch, and it’s better than ever. With a vast and open base hub to explore, new ways to turn the tide of battle with your chosen band of colorful characters, and a story that’s as brutal as the choices you’ll have to make on the battlefield, Three Houses is everything I’ve ever wanted in a turn-based strategy game. Its grand adventure is filled with drama and intrigue across whichever of the titular three houses you choose to join, and each brings its own unique perspective. Following just one of these paths from humble beginnings to a full-blown war for dominance took me over 70 hours, and left me hungry for more.
Battles take full advantage of the relatively powerful Switch (as opposed to the 3DS) to create some impressive looking maps. With new battalions that you can equip to enhance and support your units, armies actually start to look like armies as the map zooms right into the fight to show the opposing forces slam into each other. The music dynamically shifts when moving into combat from its upbeat rhythm to heighten the percussion — raising the tension in the process — before soaring back over the battlefield. I was amazed to find you can even zoom in when inspecting the map to glide along the terrain and see the armies assembled, taking in some extraordinary sights that you’d normally only get glimpses of in combat. You’re even able to select and command units by having them run around the field while zoomed in instead of just picking a map point to move to — though it’s a lot harder to get a sense of the battle from this angle.
Fans of the series may notice that the traditional “weapon triangle” of swords beat axes beat lances beat swords has been all but abandoned in Three Houses. Instead, there’s a bigger emphasis on choosing the right weapon for the right person — depending on their skill level and the stats of the weapon itself (swords still have the best overall accuracy, while axes unleash the most raw power, and lances are balanced in the middle). Training up units unlocks many custom moves to make them more effective against armored or cavalry units, and those with high enough proficiency can even unlock “breaker” skills to give them advantages against a certain weapon type which brings back that weapon superiority feel. Because of this, I hardly noticed the weapon triangle’s exclusion.
I was especially surprised to see several combat arts lifted from the Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game, of all places, and the inclusion of strategic unit repositioning abilities was a most welcome one, allowing me to swap, shove, or quickly relocate my more vulnerable units out of danger. Having equippable battalions of troops that could bolster an individual character’s stats meant new strategies too, including the ability to stun attackers in place – and beware, the enemy can use that trick on you if you get complacent in simply forming a wall of tough units. That made me rethink my defensive strategies.
Permanent character death is still present if you so choose, and the thought of losing your best units feels as terrifying as ever…
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Permanent character death is still present if you so choose, and the thought of losing your best units feels as terrifying as ever, until you realize how many options are available to you. Being able to rewind time a bit (which made its debut in the last 3DS game) alleviates many of those fears, and seeing which units your enemies plan to attack can save you a lot of grief as long as you’re paying attention. I appreciate that if you challenge yourself to keep going after a beloved character falls, there are many opportunities to try and recruit faculty or students from other houses to join your ranks — or even ask another student to tag along for a single mission.
Study Halls
Unlike those that came before it, Three Houses provides a welcome respite from battle after battle by introducing the Garreg Mach Monastery, a huge explorable fortress that’s home to both a church housing the dominant religion of the land, and an officer’s academy for the three nations that make up the continent of Fodlan. Students are divided into houses representing these nations, and you’ll choose one of the houses to teach and lead into battle. Imagine Harry Potter’s Hogwarts except teenagers come to learn how to do battle instead of magic and Dumbledore is also the archbishop of a powerful militarized church who routinely orders teachers to lead students to war against bandits and blasphemers.
The houses of the Black Eagles, Blue Lions, and Golden Deer are unique in more ways than one. Each boasts a lively cast of endearing characters that instantly drew me in, and their individual skills, flaws, and personalities offer an incredible amount of possibilities. Even though your initial house choice is only skin deep, each one gives you so much to work with and discover along the way. What really excited me was just how fleshed out each character was beyond the face value of their personality archetype — and how interconnected and important their own stories were to the world at large.
Ingrid from the Blue Lions house idealizes knighthood due to her late fiance (who was the brother of another student), but his recent tragic death caused her to be deeply mistrustful of the people she believes to be responsible (which includes yet another classmate). The young leaders themselves — Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude — are equally full of promise in both their abilities and backgrounds, and leave enough of an air of mystery to leave you wholly unprepared for where their stories lead when war engulfs the land after a five-year time jump.
But a continental war of this scale doesn’t just happen overnight. Instead, you’ll spend the first half of Three Houses’ epic 70-hour campaign acclimating to life at the monastery through teaching students, wandering the grounds, and undertaking missions for the church. Where instructing students is concerned, Three Houses could have easily fallen into the pitfall of monotony. Instead, the entire process of building up your students’ abilities and combat arts is quick and efficient, and can even be automated if you so choose. Training becomes a very satisfying way to alter the makeup of your army and adapt to new confrontations. For instance, when my land-heavy army had to fight along the water, being able to plan ahead and reclass several units into wyvern and pegasus riders made me feel like a tactical mastermind. If you don’t feel like spending time setting specific goals for your team or nurturing budding talents, letting Three Houses automate the process still ensures your units will follow their own class goals and be ready to fight.
the entire process of building up your students’ abilities and combat arts is quick and efficient, and can even be automated if you so choose.
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Three Houses moves the story along on a month-to-month basis, and with a week’s worth of decision making done at a time (which concludes in a few short moments), the bulk of your time is spent on free days at the end of the week, and the story mission battle that caps off each month. You’re smartly given multiple options on how to spend each day off — which lets each of us focus on what we want out of Three Houses. The “Explore” option lets you walk around the impressively sized monastery in a fully 3D environment — a series first. It’s practically bursting at the seams with students and faculty wandering the grounds, so it’s no surprise that I encountered a few areas of minor slowdown when trying to sprint through crowded areas. Fast-traveling gets around that annoyance, of course.
There’s so much to see and do that it becomes almost overwhelming, and thankfully the additional areas and activities are gradually rolled out over the course of the year you spend teaching. Despite my lust for battle, I was excited to come back each new month to find new opportunities, like going to the monastery pond for a fishing minigame and then cooking up the fish into stat-boosts for my team, or entering students in tournaments and watching them endure a tough gauntlet of fights to win prizes. Certain activities limit how much you can do in a session, adding an additional element of strategy as you plan out how to spend your finite time. Even hosting tea parties to raise your bonds with a character requires some strategy — as you’ll need to keep your partner interested by picking from a list of conversation topics that reward you for paying attention to what that character’s likes and dislikes are.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses Screenshots
The amount of choice and freedom of how to spend free days is impressive, and there are pros and cons for every option. If you stick with only one option on your days off, you may find your character and team slipping in certain areas. By exploring the monastery, I was able to chat with students to unlock support conversations and raise motivations, as well as getting faculty training for my own character. But training up skill levels is nothing without a character’s own experience, and by taking on auxiliary missions I was able to line my pockets and increase unit levels and stats so they could hit harder using the skills they learned from my teaching. Even resting on a day off ensures that students have an increased amount of motivation to raise their skills during the next week’s lessons, which can heavily impact how much they can learn from a week’s session. I found myself changing up my plans from month to month to better prioritize whatever I felt was lacking, and never once felt like I made a wrong turn to where I was unable to continue. If I had chosen to neglect my time at the monastery, I’d likely miss out on some interesting conversations, whereas if I passed over all the side quest battles, I might have missed out some rare loot. Not only does this Fire Emblem have choices that appeal to everyone, it does so in a way that never gets in the way of a continually rewarding sense of progress.
Heroes of Academia
Bonding with your characters and learning more about them via support conversations has become increasingly popular in Fire Emblem games over the years, and to say Three Houses pulls out all the stops to serve that ever-growing demand doesn’t do it justice. The writers and voice actors have done an impeccable job of making each character’s quirks, hopes, and fears seem believable — and having a chance to pick some dialogue options (some answers can even further increase your bond) is a nice touch that made me feel more involved instead of just a bystander.
It also shows admirable restraint: Three Houses has dialed back on concepts like every character being able to become romantically involved with any other character, and the resulting conversations are better and more focused for it. I especially loved seeing the more hostile character interactions, as having units that worked well together in battle but not in the monastery made these relationships feel more nuanced and human. Certain conversations are only available once the war is underway in part two, giving actual weight to the idea that years have passed since the last heartfelt talk.
My only real complaint comes not from the conversations themselves, but the settings they happen in. Instead of putting both characters in a legitimate 3D room for their scenes, they are placed in front of a still image backdrop that’s been warped to create the illusion of a 3D environment, and the results range from distracting to disastrous due to the low resolution of the background. Still, I’m thankful there’s at least a healthy dose of character animations happening to distract from what’s going on behind them.
While the monastery is loaded with an impressive amount of side activities, Fire Emblem is still, at its heart, a turn-based strategy game — if they’re not your cup of tea (sometimes quite literally) you’re able to skip right to the main story mission of the month and automate everything else. I don’t entirely recommend doing so (the amount of story content and activity rewards in exploring the monastery at least once a month should absolutely not be missed), and yet it’s a testament to how much work has gone into making every choice viable in Three Houses. You might be making things harder on yourself by hitting that automation button, but you’ll still find your team adequately skilled and ready to fight at the end of each month.
The amount of story content and activity rewards in exploring the monastery at least once a month should absolutely not be missed.
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As for the missions themselves, I was really hoping to see more varied main objectives besides the usual “defeat the enemy commander” or “rout the opposing army.” Thankfully, many missions include some interesting side objectives — like racing to the aid of trapped allies or cutting off the escape route of thieves — that rewards you for taking on more risks in a heated battle. While Three Houses provides an assortment of enemies to go up against, the three-way battles between the titular groups are easily some of the standout missions of the bunch, and depict the chaos of battle alarmingly well. One such mission (which you can see an excerpt of in the video below) against the other teams found me trying to avoid antagonizing Claude’s matured group of Golden Deer students to the west while moving the bulk of my units up to hit Edelgard’s Black Eagles forces in the east. Without warning, Claude revealed a horde of mounted reinforcements to my side and behind me before all of them charged straight towards my own character — leaving me just a single turn to find a way to reform my ranks before getting flanked. These particular battles required constant rethinking of strategies to emerge unscathed, not to mention having to kill many characters I once regarded as friends at the monastery.
The story of Three Houses is expertly woven into the world it builds up: one that’s full of political intrigue, deception, and even religious dogma. While part one largely focuses on the mysteries surrounding your own character and their connection to the world and the Church of Seiros, it also sets the groundwork for the transformations of the young leaders set to rule their respective realms. In my first playthrough, I ended up choosing the Blue Lions and aiding the young prince, Dimitri, and I’m extremely glad I did. The way Three Houses reveals darker aspects of Dimitri’s past culminates in a satisfying way, and watching his character arc unfold through the second act was incredibly engaging, down to the way his shouts when performing critical moves reflected his changing personality. I loved how much attention was focused on the relationships between the opposing leaders, Dimitri and Edelgard, in the route I chose, though I did feel like Claude got the short end of the stick in terms of screen time — at least in the Blue Lions path.
Even though your days as a teacher are over in the second part of the story, fate has you returning to the monastery regardless of your chosen path to use as a base of operations during the war, and the lack of new activities for your second year at the monastery felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to keep exploration fresh by the end. That said, seeing my students return all grown up was an especially great moment, as was learning how each of them had to adapt during an age of conflict. Three Houses rarely shys away from the grim realities of war — as many of the opponents you’ll have to face were once students themselves, and the ramifications of fighting former friends is not lost upon your team. An especially somber moment came after a tough battle where one of my units — who I had convinced to join my house five years prior — quietly reflected on how we had just killed her former friend.
It’s safe to say that any expectations I had about how the story progressed through the war were deftly subverted multiple times. While Three Houses has a definite conclusion to the events of the war that dominates part two, it never truly reveals its full hand in a single playthrough. Seeing so many plotlines left unresolved surprised me, even though I found fulfillment in the 20+ story missions I’d completed. But it wasn’t until I started again in New Game+ and joined the Black Eagles that I truly realized how much more complementary story content the other two houses had to offer. I’m still only a little over halfway into my run with the Black Eagles, and I’m already amazed at how much a change in leadership has altered the course of the story. Unlike the routes of Fire Emblem Fates that were two sides of the same coin (and the “can’t we all just get along” extra route), each road taken by the different leaders in Three Houses feels incredibly driven and motivated. These paths may retread some familiar ground in their missions, but the new context and understanding of character motivations, as well as new surprises in some of the maps that are reused make each of the four(!) total routes worth investing in.
Whereas cheap headsets, which I’ve primarily defined with a $40-$80 price range, in the past would force you to make sacrifices, they now allow you to enjoy features like wireless connectivity, and/or 7.1 surround sound. Make no mistake that there are a lot of bad eggs still out there, but we’ve sorted them out to ensure you get a list of only the best budget gaming headsets.
After months of testing and too many hours in Super Mario Maker 2, we’ve picked out the top cheap gaming headsets based on overall sound quality, comfort, and features for the money. Read on to find the right budget gaming headset for you.
TL; DR – These are the Best Budget Gaming Headsets:
The HyperX Cloud Stinger (read our review) delivers impressive and immersive audio for both PC and console gaming, and it proves to be more than capable with music playback on an iOS or Android phone. It’s a versatile performer, although the boom mic is not detachable, so you might elicit some stares walking down the street rocking out to your tunes.
Strengthening our recommendation is the fact that the Cloud Stinger also happens to be the most comfortable of the budget headsets we’ve reviewed. It’s neither too heavy nor too light, so it feels sturdy without becoming uncomfortable during long gaming sessions. And the oval, synthetic leather ear cups offer a great fit and feel. Furthermore, it’s impressively on the lower price bracket of the budget headset spectrum.
Corsair launched its very first ultra-cheap gaming headset, the HS35 (read our review), recently and it’s extremely good, especially for its $35 price. It’s only a stereo headset, so there’s no fancy surround sound, but you can’t really ask for more from this extremely low price point.
It fully cross-platform though, so you can use it on PC, consoles, and even your phone/tablet. Its large 50mm drivers deliver an expansive soundstage. Its flexible boom mic also delivers great sound quality and it’s Discord Certified too. That all said, the audio balance of the HS35 is only so-so due and the bass can be a little too heavy for my taste. There’s some give and take, but you won’t find a cheaper quality gaming headset than this.
The Corsair HS70 (read our review) was one of the first cheap wireless gaming headsets and it continues to stand out today. This very affordable $70 wireless gaming headset pumps out 7.1 surround sound through a large pair of 50mm drivers, which all adds up to great spatial awareness.
Both the headband and ear cups are made of an incredibly plush memory foam material, so you won’t find many gaming headsets more comfortable than the Corsair HS70. If you want to go wireless and stay on budget, this is the best option for you.
The Plugable HS53 (read our review) is ever so slightly more affordable than most of the budget gaming headsets on this list—with a price hovering around $45—but it has some niceties we wouldn’t expect from a peripheral this cheap. For one thing, the frame connecting the memory foam ear cups is made of brushed metal. It also has a retractable boom mic, which is always handier than the detachable ones.
In terms of audio quality, Plugable went with slightly larger 53mm drivers that offer punchy, extremely bass-forward audio. This set of cans also features a “True 2.0 Stereo” mode, which pushes directional game audio to a surprisingly convincing level.
Turtle Beach is well known for producing quality and affordable gaming headsets, and the Recon 70 (read our review) is a great choice if you want something that can connect to anything. Whether its a Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PS4, or gaming PC, this set of cans will work with it and, more importantly, you’ll get great audio too.
The Turtle Beach Recon 70 presents dynamic game music and clear dialog. What’s more, all the sound effects you’ll hear coming out of these ear cups is crisp and powerful, exactly what you’d expect from any good gaming headset.
With the PDP LVL50 (read our review), we’ve come to another affordable wireless gaming headset option. It’s a stand out $80 headset that’ll work with the Xbox One, PS4, and PC thanks to its dedicated wireless dongle that makes setup easy.
This pair of cans push out some seriously loud audio, to the point that we had to keep the volume nob at 50% most of the time. There’s no fancy surround sound here, but positional audio was still pretty good even with just stereo. The only thing holding back this wireless gaming headset is its all plastic and sometimes creaky build quality.
The Logitech G231 (read our review) is another excellent gaming headset with a low price-tag, making it excruciatingly close to our favorites. Its mesh ear covers are comfortable, the metal headband is flexible and resilient, and the drivers deliver thumping sound with excellent clarity.
The flip-up mic works really well too, making it a highly-functional set with only very minor flaws. Probably our favorite feature is the removable and washable ear cups, but the inline control module is also perfectly placed and these puppies can get loud.
The Sades SA902 (read our review) can’t match the headsets listed above, but it’s also half their price. If you’re looking for an ultra-budget headset with respectable build quality that’s going to get the job done, this is a solid option.
Not only do you get virtual 7.1 surround sound, but they’re comfortable and have some crazy software too. It’s not the best for listening to music but is fine for games, and for the price can’t be beaten. Just adjust your expectations accordingly.
What to look for in a Budget Gaming Headset
We’ve picked out the cream of the crop when it comes to budget gaming headsets, but you can still run into a lot of bad apples. Here we’ll tell you about a few things you should expect from this market of cheap gaming headsets including build and sound quality.
Of the budget gaming headsets we’ve tested, we found that build quality can run the gamut between flimsy and cheap to super sturdy to the point of being almost too heavy. Of course, you’ll also get better build quality as you move up the price scale—less molded plastic and more metal. If you can check out these gaming headsets in store, be sure to not just put them on but give them a decent stretch (without snapping them in half!) and see if it creaks at all.
Although you will find scratchy fabric ear cups on some models, you’ll also encounter smooth synthetic leather and soft fabric, too. When it comes to leather vs fabric, it all comes down to your preference, but know that leather offers more sound isolation while fabrics are more breathable. Also be on the lookout for memory-foam padding as it offers the cushiest, most comfortable fit against your head.
Sound quality can be impressive across the board, though the tendency we found across the category was to favor low frequencies instead of highs or mids. You’ll get cleaner highs and better separation between mid and low frequencies in the midrange gaming headsets or higher class peripherals.
More Expert Tech Roundups
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Kevin Lee is IGN’s Hardware and Roundups Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam
is gearing up to make a ton of improvements to Pro Clubs, including increased customization for Virtual Pros, better broadcast presentation, new match types, more kits, and much more.Pro Clubs allow FIFA players to create a Virtual Pro player and play a specific position online with real teammates. FIFA 20 is all about making that experience more immersive and giving players more options to personalize their star.
FIFA 20 implements a new Avatar system that will replace player creation across the entire game, and will allow players to utilize an improved 4 quadrant axis morphing tool to truly customize each detail of each created player.
Looks aren’t all, as players can now choose to play as LF/RF, LM/RM, RWB/LWB positions. These and all other positions will take advantage of the revitalized progression system which will allow you to improve your Pro from his base overall rating of 80.
Choosing between different positions, heights, and weights will now have a greater impact on how a Virtual Pro moves and feels as those choices will influence the Pro’s physical attributes.
Stamina has also become more of a risk vs. reward system, as investing in stamina and pace will come at the cost of other attributes.
The presentation in Pro Clubs is also getting improvements, hopefully adding to the immersion when in a match. Broadcast features such as replay transition wipes, an on-screen watermark, club banners and a new Pro Clubs logo have been added. Club banners will match the clubs’s primary and secondary colors and its name will be featured in the stands.
Augmented Reality overlays have been added to match intros, half time, and goal scores and broadcast colors will now distinguish between Friendly, Cup, and League matches.
Goal celebrations are also being altered, as the camera will now not simply zoom in on the goal scorer, but will stay zoomed out so the entire team can coordinate and act out custom celebrations with teammates.
FIFA 20’s Pro Club mode players will be able to participate in two new match types – House Rules Cups and Practice Match.
House Cup Rules brings the popular mode from FIFA’s Kick-Off mode to Pro Clubs and the House Rule Cups will rotate a match type each and every day.
Practice Match will allow Clubs to practice individually or as a team against AI opponents. There will be a wealth of options, including setting difficulty level, tactics, overall ratings of AI opponents, and more.
Bugs and issues are also being addressed, and the ‘Any’ Stamina Bug, CB in wall, GK Set Piece, and Club Trophy Celebration issues have been resolved.
Lastly, FIFA 20 will feature 25 new customizable kits and over 150 crests to choose from and a Pre-Match Kit Select has been added to all Pro Club matches, all in an effort to avoid Kit Clashing.
First up, the company is adding greater customization options within the mode, replacing the old player creation system with a new universal avatar system across all of FIFA 20. This, the company says, will “bring new ways to design your Virtual Pro’s visual characteristics.”
Beyond aesthetics, EA says it’s restoring the LF/RF, LM/RM, and LWB/RWB positions for Pro Clubs players and increasing the impact player weight and height has on “how your virtual pro moves and feels, with these choices affecting all of your pro’s physical attributes.”
The developer continues: “Stamina has also been reviewed, and we’ve tuned the values to create a risk vs. reward system–if you invest in stamina and pace, you will sacrifice other attributes for your pro. All players will start their Pro Clubs experience at an 80 overall rating. From here, progression is earned through drop in, league, and cup matches, with the remainder coming through player traits, which have also been revamped. We’ve introduced over 30 additional traits for FIFA 20 that, if paired together with specialty traits, will allow you to take customization to the next level. They offer increased benefits to your pro, but at an increased cost and a potential effect on other attributes.”
The match experience has also been improved, EA says, particularly from a visual standpoint. Replay transitions, on-screen watermarks, AR overlays, unique broadcast colors depending on match type, a new Pro Clubs logo, and club banners are all in FIFA 20, with the latter being dictated by your team’s colors and name.
Match types themselves have been updated, meanwhile, with the old cups format being replaced by house rules cups, which takes the house rules variants–survival, headers and volleys, and so on–from last year’s Kick Off revamp and introduces them to Pro Clubs. The active match type will rotate daily, with a schedule displayed in-game.
Practice matches are the final big new feature coming to FIFA 20’s version of Pro Clubs. These allow “clubs to practice individually or as a team against varied AI difficulties, from beginner to legendary,” with more settings, such as opposition tactics and overall ratings, also customizable.
The final few additions and tweaks amount to more kits and crests–with the added ability for team captains to choose kits in order to prevent clashes–and bug fixes, which you can see below via EA.
‘Any’ stamina bug: Stamina drained faster for the player controlling the ‘Any’ position
CB in wall: The game now places taller forwards and midfielders in the wall to defend against Free Kicks
GK set piece: Having a GK as captain will no longer affect game stability when your team has a set piece to take
Club trophy celebration: Clubs can now watch the full Cup Celebration when you win
“I don’t know.” I’m on the phone with Toshiyuki Kusakihara, one of the directors of Fire Emblem: Three Houses,Shadows of Valentina, and an art director on many others. And that’s what he tells me through a translator when I ask what he thinks is the reason the series has suddenly skyrocketed in Western success over the last decade. It’s a pretty amusing answer. “I actually don’t know why it’s been so accepted by so many people all over the world.”
Nintendo’s turn-based strategy RPG franchise has been popular with Japanese audiences ever since its inception in 1990, but outside of Japan, few had ever heard about it until two anime swordsmen named Marth and Roy made an appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Following Melee’s release in 2001, a number of Fire Emblem games made their way to the West on GameCube, DS, and Wii. But it wasn’t until 2013, when Awakening released on the 3DS, that Fire Emblem actually exploded in international popularity, an occurrence that reportedly saved the series from imminent cancellation.
Lucina and Chrom, Fire Emblem Awakening (2013) for Nintendo 3DS
Maybe it was just the rapidly growing install base of the 3DS; the handheld was beginning to really hit its stride after a poor launch, and the new 3DS XL had recently gone on sale. Maybe it was a renewed interest in tactical strategy games; Firaxis’ excellent reboot of XCOM, Enemy Unknown, had also been a recent and popular release. But Kusakihara genuinely couldn’t point to anything remotely definitive. “We don’t have the confidence to say: ‘Oh! As long as we keep doing this thing, then the game will be popular!’ There’s nothing like that.”
Since Awakening, the development team at Intelligent Systems has pulled Fire Emblem in a couple of interesting new directions. First was the ambitious Fates for 3DS, a title that was divided into three separate products. Then came Shadows of Valentina, a remake of the second-ever Fire Emblem game from 1992, which stood out for its notable tweaks to the strategy combat mechanics and featured third-person dungeon exploration, of all things. There was Fire Emblem Heroes, which refashioned the tactical battles to suit a surprisingly good bite-sized mobile game with an all-star cast. Now, Three Houses has been released for the Switch, and its narrative flow revolves around a yearly calendar schedule, coupled with a military academy where your protagonist is a professor and your class of students are your troops.
“We don’t have the confidence to say: ‘Oh! As long as we keep doing this thing, then the game will be popular!’ There’s nothing like that.”
When Three Houses was officially revealed, I (and I assume many others) saw the academy component and instantly made the connection to another Japanese RPG which saw an enormous spike in popularity–the Shin Megami Tensei spin-off, Persona. Persona games always revolve around students in high school across the course of a year, so naturally, I assumed that the Fire Emblem development team looked at Persona’s incredible success and attempted to tap into that formula. Of course, like the foolish Westerner I am, I was wrong.
“‘Genealogy Of The Holy War‘ was what we directly drew inspiration from,” Kusakihara stated. “This was a game for the Super Famicom that released in 1996, and it’s the fourth in the Fire Emblem series.” It was never released in English, though a fan translation exists. “In this game, you have an Officer’s Academy where there are best friends who really develop their relationships there, and the story was centered around them. So [Three Houses] was kind of an attempt to create that kind of setting in more detail.”
Fire Emblem: Geneology of the Holy War (1996) for Super Famicom
Building beautifully aspirational lifelong relationships through an extravagantly romanticized depiction of high school life is a huge component of Three Houses. Across the course of a campaign, you’ll spend a couple of dozen hours with any number of students at the academy, sharing meals, training and fighting alongside them, getting to know each other through laughter, loss, and love. Later on, as Fire Emblem games typically unfold, you’ll go to war, and how the game’s bloody conflicts unfold and affect everyone might just change how once close friends see one another. Across the course of development, a number of different methods to help articulate this experience were explored, but the team’s natural conclusion just so happened to resemble the popular Shin Megami Tensei spin-off. “We had a lot of talks about how we could distinguish the passage of time at the monastery. If you have one year, we really want the player to feel each of those days passing and make them valuable to the player,” Kusakihara explained.
“We didn’t have a calendar at the very beginning of development. We did a lot of builds where we were trying to make systems that worked but it just wasn’t fun. So we added that and the element of activity points.” In Three Houses, a set amount of activity points, tied to your Professor Level, restricts how much one-on-one tutelage you can give students, as well as how many extracurricular activities you can perform on your days off. “[Activity points] would really focus the player on what they should do every day, whether that’s exploring or going on missions, etc.”
When Sunday rolls around in Three Houses and you don’t need to spend your day teaching your students, there are a number of valuable things you can choose to do, but you won’t have enough time to do them all. You can get your own one-on-one training sessions from fellow professors to improve your own skills, you can set off to the battlefield and fight sorties to complete side missions, you can fish, you can garden, you can sleep in and do nothing, but most importantly: You can hang out with your students and cultivate those personal relationships. Having a close-knit camaraderie in your class will provide a significant advantage on the battlefield, of course, but off the battlefield, these social links can blossom into deep friendships and sometimes the suggestion of romance, providing a wealth of insight to the backstories of the characters. Between the three different classes of students, the professors, and other academy staff, Three Houses has 35 characters with storylines that tie the majority of them together.
Professor Manuela teaches a class in Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)
Kusakihara breaks down the production of the social simulation: “There were three scenario writers from Koei Tecmo that helped out with a lot of the writing, and as you know the game is fully voiced. So we definitely had a lot of content to work on. The work took over three months and there was at least five times as much content as there was in Echoes [Shadows of Valentina] for the Japanese version.”
The involvement of Koei Tecmo (responsible for another enduring tactical strategy series, Romance Of The Three Kingdoms) in the development of Three Houses was already a known factor, but what was surprising to me is just how much of the legwork the studio was responsible for, especially because Fire Emblem is so closely associated with Intelligent Systems. Kusakihara: “With the composition of the team, I stood in as a director representing Intelligent Systems, and then we had Mr. Takeru Kanazaki working as a sound director. We had a few members helping with programming and also sound, but many members of the development team were from Koei Tecmo, so they really did a lot of the work.”
“…there was at least five times as much content as there was in Echoes.”
“I provided the world settings and the character settings and some of the systems and scenarios from the game, and we would hand this over to Koei Tecmo and then discuss further detail and develop from there.” It’s a curious revelation, if only because it invites speculation about what kind of projects the rest of Intelligent Systems might working on. It’s also interesting that Koei Tecmo, responsible for the Dynasty Warriors action series (as well as the spin-off Fire Emblem Warriors), was also heavily responsible in another Nintendo title that released a week prior to Three Houses–Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3.
Among the fresh new faces to contribute significant work to Three Houses was illustrator Chinatsu Kurahana, who served as the game’s new lead character designer. Kurahana’s previous work most notably includes designing characters for the popular Japanese romantic visual novel series, Uta no Prince-sama, a game revolving around a teenage girl’s budding relationships with a group of aspiring male pop idols.
Dating idols isn’t really that much of a far cry from the social aspect of Fire Emblem, and with the new direction of the series, Kurahana was an easy choice. “A lot of this game takes place at the Officer’s Academy and there are a lot of nobles there. So we want to kind of depict a glamorous, aristocratic society,” Kusakihara told me. “Kurahana, who we had already been in talks with, seemed like she would be a good fit, and she definitely had a big impact of the hairstyles of the characters.”
“We also wanted a bit of a refresh because we were putting this game out on the Nintendo Switch, which is a new platform and, well, we wanted a new image for the game.” Hairstyles aren’t the only huge makeover for the series, naturally. One of the biggest mechanical restylings in Three Houses is the removal of Fire Emblem’s Weapon Triangle, the rock-scissors-paper system that has been the core foundation of combat in every entry since, well, Genealogy of the Holy War.
That’s a pretty funny, serendipitous coincidence–the new Fire Emblem game, which returns to a relatively minor idea found in Genealogy of the Holy War, also completely discards that entry’s most influential and longest-lasting legacy. The reasons Kusakihara gives me are pretty understandable: “We think that the weapon triangle is somewhat of a stylized system, it isn’t really realistic,” he said. “If you have a situation where a novice axe user takes down an advanced lance user, well, that makes sense? Probably not. So, we wanted to make something that comes across as more realistic to warfare and have players develop their weapons skills individually.”
Caspar punches a monk in Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)
It also came down to the series’ continuing focus on its personalities, especially given Three Houses’ setting of an academy where teenage students are only just coming into their own. “We wanted to center on developing the skills for these characters, and also give them a lot more freedom in terms of how they develop. So we’re really creating a weapon system that is less restrictive than our previous games.”
That’s not to say that picking the right unit or weapon for a battle isn’t an important matter in Three Houses. There are still situations where one approach might give you a massive advantage, like using arrows against flying units. And, if one of your units becomes increasingly proficient in a certain type of weapon type or discipline, you might unlock an option to equip them with passive or active combat abilities that help give them the upper hand against other certain weapons types or disciplines–an advanced swordsman might have an “Axebreaker” ability, for example, which will increase both their avoidance and chance to hit against that weapon.
“…the weapon triangle is somewhat of a stylized system, it isn’t really realistic.”
But the new system of having the freedom to mold your combat units into whatever you like also creates some interesting social-level predicaments that might in turn ask you to rethink the long-term strategy for your troupe. During my first campaign, for example, I had Dorothea in my class. She excels in black magic and swordplay, her lifelong ambitions are to be a badass warlock, and she hates the idea of learning faith-based healing magic–it’s for weenies, after all, and she even harbors an innate learning disadvantage towards it.
Toshiyuki Kusakihara
But, if you’re dedicated enough, by spending a large amount of your class time to some serious one-on-one tutelage on Faith, Dorothea has the capacity to eventually uncover hidden potential. She’ll get early access to an ability that even advanced Bishops would covet, and eventually turn that learning disadvantage into a buff. There’s some contentious subtext in this example, but regardless, the system allows you to foster unique narratives for your class–it was a tough decision to give one of my favorite students (and my most effective magic user) a hard time in class for a couple of months instead of honing her strengths even further. But it was worth it.
Kusakihara doesn’t play favorites, though. Toward the end of the conversation, I tried to get the developers on the call to dish dirt on the team’s most hated students (mine’s Lorentz, he sucks). Everyone laughs: “As the director of the game, It’s almost like, you know, I am the teacher because I helped to create them. So I have to say that I love all the students.” Genki Yokota, the other director for Three Houses, representing Nintendo, was the only one who threw me a bone: “You’re supposed to be helping out the students, so it’s hard to say that I hate any of them. But outside of the students, I can say that I really like the character Shamir.” I like Shamir too, so this was a good answer.
It’s pretty common to hear stories about developers responding to audience feedback and using that data to shape future projects. Kusakihara left me with the impression that his team is on the other side of that coin. They don’t know why their game has attracted the fanbase it has in the west, so they’re just going to just keep doing what they’ve done since Awakening. Changing the structure. Reinventing foundational mechanics. Welcoming the talents of new teams and artists. “When we develop the game, we just strive to make it something beyond what people can imagine,” he said. “That might help in making it popular.”
Fire Emblem: Three Houses asks a lot of you. Every piece, from battle to friendships to training your units, must be managed both individually and as part of a whole. It can be intimidating, but when it all clicks together, it really clicks. Mastering the art of thoughtful lesson planning as a professor improves your performance on the battlefield, where success relies on calculated teamwork and deft execution. Cultivating relationships during battle in turn draws you closer to each of the characters, who you then want to invest even more time into in the classroom. Every piece feeds into the next in a rewarding, engrossing loop where you get lost in the whole experience, not just in the minutiae.
Three Houses casts you as a mercenary who, while out on a mission with their father, runs into a group of teens under attack. After a brief introduction and battle tutorial–which you shouldn’t need, since you’re apparently already an established mercenary, but we’ll go with it–you learn that they are students at Garreg Mach monastery. Each of them leads one of the school’s three houses: Black Eagles, Blue Lions, or Golden Deer. At the behest of the church’s archbishop, who definitely gives off nefarious vibes but is also a gentle mom figure, you end up becoming a professor and must choose which of the houses to lead. There is a lot of mystery to the setup, with consistent hints that something is not quite right, and it’s easy to get absorbed in trying to figure out what the archbishop and various other shady figures are up to.
Your main role as professor is to instruct your students in matters of combat and prepare them for story battles at the end of each month. Battles in Three Houses feature the same turn-based, tactical combat at the heart of the series, albeit with some changes. The classic weapon triangle is downplayed quite a bit in favor of Combat Arts, which have been altered somewhat from their introduction in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Combat Arts are attacks tied to a weapon type and can boost a unit’s attack power at the expense of weapon durability; some are effective against specific enemy types, like armored units. You can also unlock skills outside of Combat Arts that grant you better stats with certain weapons, like a heftier boost for using an axe against a lance user, similar to the old weapon triangle. It’s the same complexity the series is known for but less abstracted, making it a bit easier to strategize without sacrificing depth.
One of the big combat additions is battalions, mini armies you can equip that provide various benefits to a unit during battle. They also give you a new type of attack called a Gambit, which varies based on the type of battalion–magic-focused, brute force, and so on–and stuns the enemies it hits. Gambits are limited-use and can be incredibly powerful against the right enemies. You can increase a Gambit’s effectiveness even further if one or more of your other units are within attack range of the target, a tried-and-true Fire Emblem concept that applies to all kinds of attacks. There’s also an anime-style splash screen as you attack that shows each character involved in the Gambit looking fierce, which adds a nice bit of drama.
How much you use Combat Arts and Gambits depends on what difficulty you’re on. On Normal difficulty, well-trained units will likely be able to dispatch most enemies in one or two hits without the help of Combat Arts or Gambits. On Hard, however, enemies hit harder and withstand your attacks better. You have to think much more carefully about unit placement, the best time to use a Gambit and take advantage of its stun effect, and how many Combat Arts you can fire off before your weapon breaks. This is where things get exciting; after a few turns of cautious setup, you (hopefully) get to knock out tons of enemies as your plans fall into place.
Some of the early-game and optional battle maps are open spaces that don’t require you to think too hard, especially on Normal. But the story battles throughout feature a variety of map layouts–from pirate ships to what appears to be a lava-filled cavern–that challenge you to consider where your units need to be, both in the next turn and several turns down the line. Many of them have different routes, enemies coming at you from multiple angles, optional treasure to chase, and other quirks that require you to split your party up or change their equipped classes to suit the situation. Thieves, for instance, can open chests and doors without a key, while flying units don’t take damage from ground that’s on fire.
The depth of strategy in these elements really shines on Hard difficulty, but especially so when coupled with Divine Pulse, another limited-use ability. Divine Pulse allows you to rewind time in order to redo all or part of the battle, usually if one of your units dies. Rewinding with Divine Pulse shows just how important unit placement and attack choice can be, as even a slight change can make or break the encounter. It’s also just a nice quality-of-life feature if you play on Classic mode, in which units who die in battle are lost forever and can’t fight or train anymore. You might still soft reset from time to time, but it’s great to be able to rectify a mistake right away and get a shot of instant gratification for a job well re-done.
Battling, of course, is only one part of life at the monastery. The backbone of Three Houses is the monthly school calendar, and if you like organizing things, planning ahead, or school in general, this can be the most engrossing part. On Sundays, you have free time you can spend in one of four ways: exploring the monastery, participating in side battles, holding a seminar to improve your students’ skills, or simply taking the day off. Mondays are for instruction, which consists of selecting students from a list and choosing a few of their skills to boost. The rest of the week goes by automatically, with a sprite of the professor running along the calendar and stopping occasionally for random events or story cutscenes. It sounds a bit hands-off, but there’s a lot to think about as it is, and the week-by-week rather than day-by-day structure keeps things moving and ensures you never have to wait too long to progress in any area.
The predictable structure of each month–and the fact that you can see the full month’s schedule with events listed ahead of time–gives you the foundation to make effective plans. All that time management can definitely be overwhelming, at least at first. You have to keep tabs on your students’ skills and study goals, your own skills, everyone’s inventory, and various other meters and menus while planning for the lessons and battles to come. But you’re treated to a near-constant stream of positive reinforcement as those meters fill up week by week and your students improve their skills. You’re always moving toward the next thing: the next level up, the next skill you need to develop, the next month and what may unfold.
To complement this, your activities when exploring the monastery (as well as how many battles you can participate in, if you choose to battle on your day off) are limited by activity points. You get more as your “professor level” increases, which means you have to balance activities that boost your professor level with ones that help your students grow. Activity points also ensure that the month continues at a healthy pace, preventing you from lingering on any one Sunday for too long. Seminars and rest days just eat up the whole day without consideration for activity points, which can break up the more involved weeks and provide their own benefits.
How you choose to spend your time also comes down to how motivated your students are to learn. Each of your students has a motivation gauge that’s drained when you instruct them, and they can’t be instructed again until you interact with them and get their motivation back up. You can do this most effectively when exploring the monastery–where you get to talk to different characters, give them gifts, and share bonding time with them–whereas battle only rarely increases motivation levels. While you can skip a lot of the school life bits and even automate instruction, you won’t get the best results. You’re directly at a disadvantage in combat if you don’t make time for your students, which is by design.
Like all recent Fire Emblem games, keeping you invested in your units and their relationships is the glue that binds the whole experience together. It’s incredibly effective in Three Houses, where your direct involvement in nearly all aspects of a unit’s growth trajectory gives you a special stake in their success. After spending time and effort to help a character achieve their full potential, you’re not just satisfied when they win a fight–you’re proud. And the more you invest in someone–both emotionally and through months of lesson plans and instruction–the more cautious you’ll be about putting them in harm’s way, and the more you’ll work to come up with a solid battle strategy.
Considering you’re a teacher, it’s good rather than disappointing that there’s almost no romance to speak of. Some students are flirty, but mainly, you’re fostering camaraderie rather than playing matchmaker or romancing them yourself. As you unlock new support levels with different characters–both by interacting with them at the monastery and by using teamwork in battles–you get cutscenes that flesh them out more. Some are charming, lighthearted conversations between two friends, while many of them give you insight into more serious matters–a father forcing his daughter into marriage, discrimination within the monastery, the dark reason behind someone’s lofty ambitions. For the most part, each support conversation is just a piece of who a character is, and as you slowly build support levels over time, you begin to uncover the full picture of each person. As a result, learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.
Every NPC is fully voiced in both English and Japanese, which brings a lot of life to the brief support conversations. Disappointingly, though, the professor is silent. They do have a voice–they’ll occasionally say a line when leveling up or improving a skill–but in cutscenes and when talking to students and faculty, they just nod or shake their head flatly. There are brief dialogue options during conversations, but where they could give way to a full, subtitled sentence or two from the professor, you’re just left with the other character’s reaction. Characters do, however, refer to the professor’s personality and how they come across throughout the game, which is odd considering they mostly nod at things. This puts distance between you and the characters you’re bonding with, and it’s a missed opportunity in a game where the protagonist has an otherwise set look, personality, and backstory.
It’s not hard to like a lot of the characters, though. They draw you in with anime archetypes–the ladies’ man, the bratty prince, the clumsy but well-meaning girl–and surprise you with much more nuance under the surface. Some of the funniest scenes early on involve Bernadetta, a shut-in with extreme reactions to normal social situations, but her inner life is a lot darker and more complicated than those early conversations let on. You might discover a character you thought was a jerk is actually one of your favorites or slowly stop using a less-than-favorite character in battle. You also have the option of having tea with someone, during which you have to choose conversation topics according to what you know about them, dating sim-style. Knowing what topics they’ll like is actually a lot harder than it sounds, and successfully talking to a favorite character–even if the tea setup can be a little awkward in practice–is a small victory.
Each house’s campaign feels distinct but not so different that one seems way better than the other. Every house has a mix of personalities and skills, and they all have their own advantages and disadvantages. Students from different houses can form friendships with each other, too, and you can eventually recruit students from other houses to join yours. Rather than being repetitive, on a second playthrough, recruiting gives you access to different relationship combinations; you can see a different side to a character through a different set of support conversations. And while the overall setup of the game is largely the same across the three houses, each has its own web of B plots, and the second half of the game will look very different depending on who you’re with and the choices you’ve made.
The first half concerns the church, its secrets, and the fact that the professor knows very little about their own identity. As the basic loop of each month pulls you forward, so too does the promise of learning the truth about something, whether it’s why the archbishop wanted you to be a teacher in the first place or who a suspicious masked individual is. These threads remain pretty open, though, at least after one and a quarter playthroughs. You get different details in each route, and so far it’s been a long process to piece everything together.
Learning more about each of the characters and their place in the monastery is as much a reward for progress as the level bars that tick forever upward as you go.
After a five-year time skip, you enter the “war phase” of the game. While the structure of the game is the same–you even instruct your units, since you still need to train for battle–the focus shifts to the house-specific stories. They involve a lot of hard decisions, with old friends becoming enemies, people you wish you didn’t have to kill, and students who’ve changed either in spite or because of your guidance. Late-game battles are especially challenging, with higher stakes and multi-lane layouts that require a lot of forethought. Success in these battles is incredibly rewarding, as you’re seeing dozens of hours of investment in your students reach a crescendo, but they’re bittersweet in context.
When all was said and done, all I could think about was starting another playthrough. I was curious about the mysteries left unsolved, of course, but I also hoped to undo my mistakes. There were characters I didn’t talk to enough, students I didn’t recruit, and far more effective ways to train my units. A second playthrough treads familiar ground in the beginning, but after learning and growing so much in the first, it feels fresh, too. That speaks to Three Houses’ mechanical complexity and depth as well as the connections it fosters with its characters–and whether you’re managing inventories or battlefields, it’s the kind of game that’s hard to put down, even when it’s over.
Darksiders Genesis is a top-down action-RPG that’s set to release for PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, and Stadia sometime in 2019. It’s a prequel to the original Darksiders series, and it focuses on Strife, the gunslinging fourth (and final) Horseman of the Apocalypse. You’ll also be able to take control of War, and play through the game in two-player co-op mode.
If you’re interested in preordering Darksiders Genesis, you’ll probably want to know what comes in each edition of the game. We have all the information below.
If you’re sitting in front of your computer on a piece of plastic patio furniture or a milk crate, I highly recommend taking advantage of one of these deals on a new gaming chair.
Why a gaming chair and not just a regular office chair? Aside from the fact dedicated gaming chairs generally (but not always) have more adjustment options than a vanilla office chair, gaming chairs look like they’re from outer space. If you’re streaming, it sends a clear signal to your viewers: “I am playing games at a level requiring a special chair.”
Homall Gaming Chair Deal
This is one of two great gaming chair deals right now. The Homall racing style gaming chair can be yours for under a hundred bucks, includes not one but TWO pillows, and claims its wheels have been tested “by 10000 miles rolling.” I don’t know how they could test that, but I’m no chair scientist. I leave that up to the professionals.
The classic PlayStation game Monster Rancher is coming back this year, according to publisher Koei Tecmo. The Japanese company tweeted an announcement of the rerelease (via Gematsu). It also opened a teaser site under its Japanese name, Monster Farm.
The phrasing implies that this will be a digital-only release, and no release plans have been announced outside Japan.
Monster Rancher first released in 1997, and shares some similarities with Pokemon in that you collect monsters to battle each other. However, Monster Rancher puts much more emphasis on monster husbandry your creatures, as you selectively breed and then raise your creatures to make stronger and stronger iterations of them. One twist was that you could load data to generate a monster from any CD you might have laying around, but that aspect probably won’t be present in this digital version.
In GameSpot’s original review, Jeff Gerstmann said the game is one of those few per year that “defy classification” and could be a sleeper hit.
“Monster Rancher isn’t for everyone,” Gerstmann wrote. “If you’ve got a large collection of CDs, and the patience to sift through them, trying to find a worthy beast, then run out and buy MR right this second. If you like a little more action in your gaming, then you might want to skip Monster Rancher.”
