Learn about the titular three houses, gameplay updates, and more.
During today’s Direct, Nintendo revealed that Fire Emblem: Three Houses will launch on Switch on July 26, later than the Spring release window that had previously been announced.
Nintendo also showed off a large amount of story and gameplay details for Three Houses, which puts you in the role of a teacher at a neutral officer’s academy seated in the center of three kingdoms. You pick one of three houses to teach for within the academy, each representing one of the countries surrounding it, and grow and foster your units as students before taking them out on missions in the field.
As with other Fire Emblem games, units will grow relationships with each other and can be specialized through training – Three Houses just does so in the context of a university setting as opposed to an all out war. You’ll be able to give units exams to teach them magic, learn skills like horseback riding, or to train them into specific roles.
That said, bringing your students out on missions will pit them against very real adversaries as you fight bandits or try to keep the peace between nations. During combat, you’ll still be able to see units as individuals on the grid map, but each one will actually be leading a larger battalion of troops when the camera zooms in for attacks, a departure from the solo fighting of previous games.
This is the most we’ve seen since a short trailer for Fire Emblem: Three Houses Back at E3. Be sure to follow IGN for the rest of our coverage from today’s Nintendo Direct.
Tom Marks is IGN’s PC Editor. Find him on Twitter @TomRMarks.
