Fire Emblem: Three Houses

The 2019 Nintendo Switch entry where professor Byleth leads one of three houses at Garreg Mach Monastery.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a 2019 tactical role-playing game for the Nintendo Switch, developed by Intelligent Systems together with Koei Tecmo's Kou Shibusawa and published by Nintendo. It is the sixteenth entry in the Fire Emblem series and the first for home consoles since Radiant Dawn in 2007.

The game is set on the continent of Fódlan, where three ruling powers are at peace and meet at Garreg Mach Monastery, home to a church and an officer's school. The player is Byleth, a former mercenary who becomes the academy's newest professor and must choose a house to lead.

Quick Facts

Developer

Intelligent Systems; Kou Shibusawa

Publisher

Nintendo

Director

Toshiyuki Kusakihara, Genki Yokota

Producer

Masahiro Higuchi, Hitoshi Yamagami

Designer

Naoko Horie

Programmer

Satoshi Ubutaka, Atsushi Ota

Artist

Chinatsu Kurahana, Mao Yamanaka

Writer

Yuki Ikeno
Ryohei Hayashi
Mari Okamoto

Facts from the source article.

Background

The turn-based tactical battles of earlier games remain, but Three Houses adds social simulation and time management. Between battles the player spends calendar days teaching classes, fishing, planting seeds and building Support relationships with students, who can be recruited from other houses. Five years into the story a time skip locks the player to the house they chose.

New to the series are Battalions, hired troops that buff a unit and perform Gambits, and the Divine Pulse ability that rewinds a set number of turn actions. Combat Arts replace the older Weapon Triangle, and weapons degrade with use.

Intelligent Systems found production difficult and credited Koei Tecmo for the game's timely release. The school system and the time skip drew on Genealogy of the Holy War, and Chinatsu Kurahana was the main character designer. Three Houses won Best Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2019 and, with 4.12 million copies sold by December 2022, is the best-selling game in the franchise.