Congratulations on running the gauntlet and actually pulling it off! I really admire how much you put into this.

You know what else is monumental? This review series. Seriously, way to stick to an idea. "In totality, some frustrations here and there do not outweigh the incredible amount of great experiences that I had in playing this game." This may be the best summary of Three Houses I've yet heard. Yes, it suffers from a scope beyond its means in all kinds of ways, but what the game does deliver just *begs* to be explored and expanded upon. And in a strange way, the incompleteness gives everyone a chance to fulfill that desire in their own way. On a more personal note, I can retroactively say that this game was a *significant* coping mechanism for me during my self-isolation in the US during the height of the pandemic. In a time where human interaction was largely secluded to faces on screens, Three Houses provided a fleshed-out world with vivid characters, a deep labyrinth of gameplay mechanics (obscured as it may sometimes be), and an online community of people who wanted to talk about it in some form or another. It helped re-ignite my desire to tell stories and share my creations with the world. It spurred me to join communities. To be less of an island. I doubt I was alone in that.

I definitely agree that Azure Moon feels like the most complete story of the three. Sadly I think it's the one that suffers the most in hindsight because it doesn't do anything to deal with TWSITD

Silver Snow was actually the first path written, that the designers focused on as the primary bwrsion of the story: Verdant Wind is the afterthought.

It's beyond impressive to see how much effort, time, writing, recording and editing this entire journey must've took. I was shocked to see so much care put into this series. I understand very well the discouraging feeling of your first video in a new series not doing so hot, certainly not to your extent of course. But I think the beauty of KZfaq is that what you plant and forget about may someday grow and bloom when you least expect it to. Trust me when I say the Fire Emblem Retrospective is a treasure that you've blessed the FE Community with, and I'm sure that from now until the end of time, countless will stumble upon any one of your episodes and smile upon discovering amazing series to binge watch. It's truly impressive; there are channels with 7-8 figures of subs who don't put even 10% of the effort that you do. Regardless of what direction you take next, you're growing your brand as one of the best game historian/documentarian channels I've ever seen. So keep going!

It’s amazing to think that you’ve finally reached this game after starting this series retrospective 3 years ago. Even just listening to the opening notes of “The Edge of Dawn” at the start of this video was a bit surreal considering the number of games you had to cover along the way. On another note, Ferdinand von Aegir was my favorite character in the entire game. Rest in peace, Billy Kametz.

From the initial trailers I didn’t like Dimitri very much. Then seeing his time skip design and playing Azure Moon he became my favorite of the three lords.

This review series has actually inspired me to marathon through every Fire Emblem game as well (skipping FE1 because I hate lack of weapon info too much). I love this franchise so much, and your work was one of the things that first got me into it. I think it was your video on Sacred Stones that convinced me to give Fire Emblem Fates a shot. It's been a wild ride, thanks for everything!

Three Houses was my first Fire Emblem game and I finished my third and final run yesterday. I absolutely loved it. I came from the Persona series, so running around in the monastery and spending time with the students and other characters was right up my alley.I didn't get tired of it even once throughout the 200 hours I invested into this game. My favorite route was Verdant Wind. I believe the reason my impression of this route was so different from yours is that it was my first play-through. I chose the house whose lord I was most interested in. So my impression wasn't "clone", it was "Claude". I didn't even know there was a church route at first. My sister told me and quickly finished that remark with: "It's basically a copy of the Golden Deer route with slightly more information on Byleth you can just watch on KZfaq to find out." I have no intention of playing Silver Snow, because the little bit of information I am missing from that route, can be pieced together from Rhea's C support and one of Alois's supports with either Byleth or Leonie (I can't remember who). Rhea mentions she saved Jeralt's life and Alois states he had received a blood transfusion that lengthened his life-span, making him over 100 years old before he passed away. It doesn't take a detective to piece this together. I also played the DLC on top of that. Claude remained my favorite lord until the very end and so did the route VW. I played in the order VW -> CF -> AM and that's also the order of which routes I liked the best, though the difference of how much I like each of them is absolutely minimal, I loved them all. Crimson Flower was certainly the most interesting route, simply because it's the most different, but with VW's knowledge, the misinformation Edelgard acted on did have me frustrated at times (not in an annoyed, but in a painful, sad way). I felt bad about being the "bad guy" in the first half of the second part, but it did get much better over time. I came to really enjoy this game's moral ambiguity. No side is completely good or bad. I personally think playing two routes is the absolute minimum for this game and one of them should be Crimson Flower. For the sake of lore, I would probably recommend Verdant Wind over Azure Moon, simply because you don't get any information from Rhea in the latter, but really I believe it's best to play all three. I don't deem Silver Snow necessary. Side notes: Funnily enough, I never noticed the crooked background images in the support conversations, which might partially be because I often listened to them whilst doing other things, like brushing my teeth, as opposed to actually looking at the screen. When I did look at the screen, my focus was on the characters, so I wasn't attentive enough to notice. One thing I find crazy about this game is how EVERYTHING is voiced. Each and every line is being spoken, even if it's just a random NPC in the monastery. The budget for this game must have been huge.

Engage made me curious about the origins of FE and soon I found myself watching this whole series over the course of 2 weeks. I hope I’m not the only one who will be brought to this playlist this way, because you truly made a masterpiece.

So fun fact about crimson flower since you didn’t mention it in the story section. Seteth and Flayn can be spared by taking out Seteth first and letting Flayn do her thing. They end up going back into hiding afterward. Doesn’t change the story at all similar to Claude’s sparing but it’s a thing. Edit: I was wrong here. You can spare them but you just need to have blurry engage one of them and they will both flee.

Three houses got me into Fire Emblem, I'm now a massive fan of the series and can't wait for the next one. I really hope they learn from the mistakes they made with three houses.

3 Houses was my first Fire Emblem game, and after putting hundreds of hours into the game, I went on my own journey to play every mainline FE game. I went the opposite way and went backwards, but I was able to complete my journey earlier this year. I found this series last year, and every time I finished a mainline game, I would hop onto your video of the game I played to get your opinions on the game. The retrospectives added to my Fire Emblem journey and I am forever grateful for that. Feels so satisfying coming to the “end” of your retrospective series, but when the next mainline game comes, I’m hoping we’ll get a retrospective video from you.

Well worth the wait! I am so glad you decided to keep going after the early disappointment in growth and return. I cannot express enough how much I appreciate all of the work, blood, sweat and tears that obviously went into this entire series. I am super excited to hear you are planning to create separate uploads for the stories of the games, too. I feel like I will definitely get alot of use out of those. :) Thank you for all you have done over these last 3 years, and I hope you continue to enjoy future releases in the series for years to come!

Damn that ending got me, it felt so great to find this channel and series about a year or two ago that covered all these amazing games. Thank you for all the great content and I can't wait to see what you'll do next!!!!

One thing i like to add while watching it, Silver Snow was the first developed path of Three Houses by Intelligent Systems while Verdant Wind and the others were made after by Koei Tecmo

I can’t imagine the sheer adrenaline fuelled pay off that verdant wind’s final battle on maddening would be.

Honestly feels like an end of an era. Thanks for making these massive videos. I’m excited to see what direction the channel takes over time especially as you reach the end of the spin offs.

Congrats for finally getting to review Three Houses! Sacred Stones was my first FE game, and while I have a soft spot for that game + Awakening and Conquest, Three Houses is by far my favorite and most replayed game of the four. Also, something interesting about CF trivia wise is that, even though you and a good chunck of the fanbase consider the route unfinished, the post-launch DLC waves doubled down on the fact that TWSITD is defeated after the main story (being Jeritza's S-rank support the biggest offender), almost as if the devs were trying to tell the fanbase: "Yes, Edelgard's route is a complete experience. No, we're not adding more chapters to it so stop asking!".

WE FINALLY GOT IT SHANE BRAINED IS THE MAN

Thanks for the long format. I love sleeping to them, and are very entertaining when I'm not sleepy. Much love ❤

Watching this makes me wanna go back and replay it for the fourth time but damn there is so much fluff in between battles.

Amazing series that had me a bit emotional there at the end. The little story about the history of the retrospective itself at the end was also lovely and shoutout to the FE community was lovely. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for everything you have coming next and best of luck 😊

Thank you so much for this series! I ended up watching it in order, and I’m now inspired both to replay all the past games I’ve loved and to play the ones I’ve missed along the way

this retrospective series is how i discovered this channel and binged all of them up to Fates (Echoes and this video weren't out yet) when i got covid last year and absolutely love the work you've done, very excited to see what comes next

I've been with you on this journey since the very beginning of this retrospective (and even before that from the Warriors only days). I'm so happy to see you finish the journey through this beautiful series. So much respect for your work in this series, and I look forward to any future content you make!

Thanks for making this great series of videos. I think I've seen your thracia video like 5 times now, and it was seriously the thing that finally pushed me into playing it. Now it's my favorite in the series and I've got 2 fe friends into it! Excited to see what you've got cooking in the future!

thank you so much for this series, it was a really massive treat to watch through these over the last 2 years!

I'm so excited to watch this later today! I've gotta say this is one of the best review series I've seen in a long time. I love the dedication and I'm so glad that you stuck through with it. You did a bang up job my dude, seriously :)

Congrats on completing this masterpiece of a series. I've been following you since the orignal hyrule warriors days and its been awesome seeing your journey. Looking forward to where you go next

This was a great journey. Infact I had marathoned it a couple 2 weeks ago before you finished it with these last 2 videos. It was a surprise to me but I'm glad to have been able to recap this whole journey right as you wrapped it up.

This is genuinely one of my favorite series on youtube, cingratulations on finishing it!

Wow this was an awesome series Shane. I really really enjoyed all the videos in this series, and I am so impressed by the dedication and love that you have put into all this. Please please don't stop doing what you're doing cause you're great at what you do!

Congrats on finally making it to Three Houses! It was a great series and I'm looking forward to the remaining videos, as well as whatever series of retrospectives you decide to do next!

Just got through the whole video, now I've seen the whole Fire Emblem retrospective series from you, and it's been a great ride. I'll be sticking around for whatever comes next.

I'm so glad this is here! I've marathoned this series in anticipation of this, and I've really appreciated how well you carried your previous experiences into each review while also allowing each game to show its own merits. The amount of effort that's gone into this series is amazing, bravo!

I’m so glad this series exists. Thanks for your hard work

Playing three houses was what brought me to these videos and got me to replay a good chunk of the previous entires. Thanks for the last 2 years of this series and congrats on getting here!

Thank you so much for this series! Every single video has been great, and it's very refreshing to hear the thoughts of someone who has played through the series in a way few people have in the West. I'm excited to see where your content goes next. Stay awesome, Shane!

Massive props for this series. It's an impressive feat, and I'm glad to have another addition to the Fire Emblem family!

Hey Shane, I dont know if you'll end up seeing this or not but, I just want to thank you for this amazing journey, while I had a few pushes here and there from other people, I can say that overall, you're the one who got me interested in this wonderful series.

I haven't started going through the Retrospective yet, but I have a reason to now that it's done. Great work on sticking to it after all these years. I can't imagine how hard this project must have been, but you made it. Even if it wasn't a career victory, I hope it feels like a personal one.

This was one of the best KZfaq series I have ever had the joy of experiencing. they time and energy and passion you put into the FE games is truly admirable, and I feel both sad and happy to see you come to Three Houses as I've been anticipating it for so long but also dreading the end of your retrospective videos on the series. I can't wait to see your Engage retrospective. Keep up the good work. Side note, you beat the majority of the FE games and also completed all Three Houses routes before I even finished 3 of the routes. Congrats, you pulled me back into the Three Houses rabbit hole with this one.

Congratulations on finishing the Retrospectives! It's been a great ride! And props to you for sticking through with it to the end! I still have to do runs for the Azure Mon and Verdant Wind routes since I want to try and complete everything.

Thank you for the ride, it was lots of fun to watch every episode and share comments with others regarding your content It would be cool to see a tier list of your favorite games in the series while explaining why

you did it! other have tried but you are the first on youtube to do all the fire emblem Retrospective in all the games in the core series it was a fun ride and i cant wait to see what comes next! remember to grab all the 3ds DLC before the e shop closes next year

Thanks for all your hard work making these. I'm a few years late finding them, but it's been great going through all your FE videos over the past month

God I just came back to watch this series a second time and it’s made me feel so good. This is such a comfort series to even run in the background. I can’t praise you enough for all the work you put into this.

You have been one of the most impressive KZfaqrs I’ve seen in a while. Huge congratulations to you for choosing a goal and sticking with it! I love your analysis and your videos have been a fresh take on my favorite series!

Hey, thank you for this series. I, like many others, started this series with Awakening when I was only 11 years old. I didn’t understand how literally any of the mechanics worked but the heart put into the game kept my interest in the series as I’ve played through several over the past 9 years (9 years holy fuck). I deeply appreciate this retrospective series as it’s a fresh perspective from many other fire emblem fans out there. I’m glad this series has had such an impact on you as well and I’m excited to see what you do in the future. After a break bc jesus christ a lot went into this

I have watched every one of these videos and I can do nothing but applaud the conclusion of this saga. Thank you for your analysis and views on this series I love so much. Know that every time I saw a new episode I made sure that I set aside the time to listen to the full thing.

It’s incredible how efficient you were in making this video, I really appreciate the time and effort it must have taken and look forward to what you’ve got in store

This series was so awesome to watch! So happy you stuck with it :)

I remember seeing the first episode of this series and being so hyped since I pove fire emblem and i love your content. Its been a long time coming. 2+ years of quality content. Thank you for all the hard work Shane

Over the last couple of weeks I have watched all of these videos. These are some of my favourite videos on all of KZfaq. Thank you so much for your dedication Shane.

Man... what a journey indeed. You started this series while I was still working on my bachelor's degree, and just a few months ago I finally graduated, and this retrospective has been there for most of it. I was always checking back on your channel to see if the next parts were up yet. I really appreciate you working on this series and giving FE, a series very near and dear to my heart, a chance. it was great hearing your thoughts. Looking forward to seeing what you cook up in the future.

Honestly your reviews and synopses of the Fire Emblem series have been a treat. Regardless of what you do next I'm certain it'll be a joy to watch as well. Good luck on your future videos.

What a journey. This was certainly a blast to watch unfold. Started watching when the Thracia review came out as I saw it in my reccomended, and stuck with it ever since. the journey since has been wild and I'm glad you stuck to this. I wish you luck on your next endavours my friend, see you with what you have to offer next, however long that may be. Honestly through this series and discovering your channel, I began to pick up and get better at warriors games (DW8XLCE in particular is a game I have dedicated many hours to), so you will always be remembered for both this and my warriors love, and on behalf of your audience, thank you.

thanks for the excellent serie of videos! i’m afraid berwick saga will need and deserve its own full blown video, you’ll understand when you play it. can’t wait for it!

This was the series of videos that got me into the fire emblem series. The passion you put into these videos got me to try my first fire emblem game. I discovered these videos around the time of the 30th anniversary release of shadow dragon and the blade of light on switch and because of your videos I bought it and played through it several times.

I was watching this video cause it got recommended on my page, and I swore I had heard your voice before but this was a new video so I was like meh I’m imagining it, but then in the end when you talked about how you made those guides I WAS SHOCKED. I used to watch those guides and use them for my playthroughs of the Nintendo warriors games! It was such a lovely surprise to see your channel again, and I am very excited to watch through all your other FE retrospectives. Thank you for doing this for us. It must’ve taken so much of your time, and I hope to maybe one day hear your thoughts on three hopes too.

Thank you for such a thorough and passionate series on this wonderful game series. It has been wonderful discovering your channel and watching you complete each game without the bias of what's already came after. I look forward to other content you produce. Outstanding work!

Something I appreciate on a meta level is that if you don't recruit literally everyone, a lot of the stronger units in the enemy army in Act 2 is your former students and colleagues. For example, my lady Byleth never recruited Sylvain, and when I faced him again, he told me that he regretted that ne never got a chance to flirt with me, and now he was going to have to kill me instead. I didn't care for him because I thought being a flirt was all he was, but this single interaction made me realize that all of the students grew up to become better people. But the tragedy of destiny meant that their virtues stood in my way. While heartbreaking, it's a unique reward - and punishment - for focusing on a small and likely initial roster (I like Supports, and large casts intimidate me). Seeing your old friends go out in a blaze of glory, even against you.

What a fantastic series of analysis' and what an achievement. Every video so enjoyable, thank you very much! Rest, you've earned it

Woo! One of my most anticipated KZfaq videos of all time!

This was amazing. This whole series was amazing. I love it so much. It's the series that convinced me to give FE7 another try after my disastrous first run. Thank you so much for making this, I can't wait to see everything else

I was so surprised when I saw this, I thought it would take wayy longer for it to release. I'm super happy that it's out, but also sad cuz it will be the last video of a mainline game in a while

I just spent the last three days listening to your Retrospective series at work and I'm so glad that I did. Fire Emblem is my most favorite series and these videos are so perfect 😭 Thank you so much for doing these videos.

Congrats on making it! It's been fun to watch this series grow over the last few years. I'll be interested to see your thoughts on the Kaga series when you get there. Great work!

I found your channel because 3 Houses was my first Fire Emblem game I played and wanted to learn more about the series as a whole. Thank you for the retrospectives it was a good ride.

Ty so much for all fire emblem series video, i love it.

ive not been this happy in a long while. this is awesome!

Thank you so much for this series it has been a blast to watch this over these 4 years. I am excited for what is to come especially the Kaga games but personally I would really love to see a video ranking all 16 main entries to conmemorate finishing all the main games. (also the story synopsis would be great I wanted to show a friend who isn’t interested in the series a synopsis for Geneology of the Holy War and there weren’t any I found satisfying so I was planning on using the synopsis from your review to show the story to my friend so having it as a video by itself would be great for situations like this one)

What a ride. Thank you for these.

I immensely respect that you played every single game in this series, keep up the good work, looking forward to Engage's review.

Thank you for these amazing videos!

Thank you, thank you, thank you sooo sooo sooooo much for this! The videos you made mean so much to me as a fan of Fire Emblem. I have watched all of the retrospectives and it brings so much good memories. The effort and hard work you put into each one of them, I appreciate it so much and I’m pretty sure so does the Fire Emblem community 🙌🏼 I am looking forward to what more you can bring on this channel.

as someone who started following this series since gaiden, it feels sort of surreal seeing you get to this. mad respect for seeing the idea all the way through

Oof that intro. What a journey. Thank you so much for such a fantastic series

This is hands down some of the best content on KZfaq

Thank you for this amazing series!

So exciting that you got to Three Houses right as Three Hopes came out. What a great fit for you!

Really excited for your Three Hopes coverage! I've loved it and I hope you love it too.

Congratulations on making it through the whole FE franchise for your retrospective Shane! This must’ve taken crazy amounts of time and dedication to complete. I solute you for all your efforts and look forward to hearing your thoughts on the FE spin-offs and FE adjacent titles, especially Tokyo Mirage Sessions. While I wouldn’t count TMS among my favorite games, I had a lot of fun with its gameplay, story, and music and find that it’s often unfairly maligned by people who judge it simply based on its bizarre premise. Love it or hate it, I am sure your retrospective on the game will be fun to watch. Keep up the great work!

Amazing! Thanks for this

would love a 13 hour long compilation of the whole series, would be the most comprehensive single fire emblem video!

i came into this channel because a friend recommended your Genealogy video to me. I was playing thru the now release FE engage and had never played any game before FE6, and I was curious what those games were like. I'd seen screenshots and some game footage plenty of times but never had the patience to go back and play any of them. having watched most of your videos on this series it put this series in a whole new light for me, I reflected on parts of older games that I thought were good or bad and reaffirmed or changed my thinking on them because It's been actual years since i'd played the GBA ones. I played Awakening and Fates to death; I played the radiant games a few times, but I barely remembered them. I usually play a fire emblem game at least 2 times before moving on, and its fulfilling for me to do that. I have mad respect for your commitment to playing all these games in order from the first one. I hope you are enjoying engage!

Kaga saga should definitely be next, they make the most sense

This has been a long time coming, and I can’t say that I wasn’t excited to see your thoughts on Three Houses ever since I first heard of your retrospective project nearly two years ago! I’m so glad that you continued to create this passion project, despite the little success you saw early on. Fire Emblem holds a special place in my heart, and now so does this Retrospective, which gave me a completely new outlook and perspective on each game that I adore- a perspective that I never could’ve had myself, since, like many others, I first started with Awakening. Seeing how you interpreted the evolution of the series with each subsequent game was absolutely enthralling, and it was just as exciting watching the evolution of this channel with each following video. I’m proud to say that I’m a fan. Ah, I hope my feelings came across okay, I just really adore the effort you put into this series, and I’m excitedly waiting to see where you go next. Until next time, I hope everything goes well moving forward!

God damn I loved this journey. Thank you!

I don't think any other retrospective on the Fire Emblem series will top this one.

I’m surprised this came out so quickly, it was fun seeing each new video and see how playing a blind series by release affects someone’s view, it was truly amazing seeing your dedication to this project. Also some fun facts after seeing you talk on some of the topics mentioned: The master classes actually WERE originally gonna be called combined classes. I’m not sure why the change but I believe it was mentioned in an art book. On the topic of routes like SS vs VW and CF’s short run. If I remember right from interviews, Silver Snow was the first route created and the “hardest” due to less unit slots. All the other routes kinda branches off it, and CF actually was kinda an afterthought, hence it’s shorter run and lack of cutscenes. And apparently the White Clouds thing and repeat runs, apparently in one of the last interviews it was revealed the Devs really expected players to only do one run or something along those lines. Which is super odd.

Saw your FE4 retrospective, binged the first 3 retrospectives then watched your other releases, thanks for the vids

Great retrospective! Thank you.

I found your channel at a very unfortunate time. When I watched the fates retrospective, the first of your videos I watched, the echoes video had been out for a few days. In just under a week I have watched all of the retrospective videos. Some of them twice. Thank you for your hard work. It inspires me to do something similar. I'll see you in the next video.

Awesome video as always. I like Three Houses and it characters.

This was great to watch, even if I only watched the games I played myself personally, it's very cool to see such a perspective that I'd never be able to get myself. And I hope to see whatever your do next, as Engage rounds the corner, regardless if you cover it or not. Hope when ya read this, your having the best of times, and have a great time doing whatever you are doing.

Congrats on finish the series and also for this great video. I have to see it on chunks but it's really tought.

Verdant wind is by far my favorite of the 3 routes I played

Fun facts: 1. On the Blue Lions route, there's a character paralogue focusing on Dedue. Whether or not you do this determines Dedue's fate for the war phase. If you do choose to do this before the War Phase, then Dedue will join you on a later chapter. It's as the Duscran said before departing "We never forget our grudges, no do we forget to repay our debts." 2. On the Garreg Mach map in the Crimson Flower route, you can spare Seteth and Flayn and they will live as nomads once again. 3. Being whatever class you want is unique, yet when it comes to Byleth, while male Byleth can have Darting Blow, Female Byleth does not gain any Dark Mage or Dark Bishop skills.