If you’re a Nintendo fan and have been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ll need to know that Fire Emblem Three Houses got a ton of coverage at E3 2019, and has since, been receiving favorable reviews from gaming sites since then. Within the past 24 hours, the English web site has gone up for the game, and many powerful game reviews have shared their dozen+ hour long gameplay feelings with the web. Their videos are of varying lengths and their sites can bring you all over the web, but fortunately, I’m here to consolidate what’s been released so far, to make your lives a bit easier as fans like me, who don’t have the game yet, but crave more knowledge.

Please note, all information listed below, will be my interpretations of each reviewer’s review, and any words used will not reflect my opinions of what is seen. Please excuse any confusing grammar.

GameXplain brings in a point of view from a Black Eagle’s perspective, sharing right off the bat that there’s plenty of thought that needs to go into picking what feels comfortable for you to play with between the three houses, from personality to gameplay feel. They express how things start off a tad slow, more implying that it’s different from a traditional Fire Emblem game that throws battles at you left and right. Additionally, the mock-weapon triangle system through skills that simulate a triangle feels good. The biggest change feels with Magic, in that you no longer buy tomes, and more or less learn new spells or enhancements to older spells to keep them relevant as the game goes on.

The character supports feels pretty good; better than expected, but one thing about the characters is that the “extra character” that you can recruit from a different house, there’s two ways to go about it. One method lets you borrow a character that brings their story but not gain exp, which is still good if you need the help, and the other method allows you to outright recruit another unit as long as you follow a certain path for criteria, like focusing teaching a certain weapon type.

Adjutants make things feel pretty nice, as it lets players keep using their units in different ways. You can sort of bypass the teaching element of the game with “Auto-Teach”, which lets the game progress much faster, but you’ll be missing out on a story that has a lot more mystery and intrigue than you would have expected, coming from previous Fire Emblem games. They’ve put a lot into the worldbuilding and the game really goes all out with presentation. Between the game having 100% of its dialogue voiced, and library covering character and world information easily available at all times, and the constantly awe-inspiring music, the first impression of slowness and has been blown away by overall great quality.

Sadly, no, you cannot pet the dog.

Gaming Boulevard showcases Three Houses’ quality when playing specifically in hand-held mode.

It’s hard to convey by simply grabbing a screenshot of a camcorder’s perspective of the game like this, but the quality does look pretty up to snuff, with elements like menu options, text, maps and character profiles displaying nicely and with enough room for reading.

Additionally, the voice acting sticks around in the handheld view just the same, which is something that Wii U users might have seen bigger discrepancies with (by that, I mean in overall quality of visuals and audio).

GameSpot simply highlights the first battle with no commentary. It’s a good display to see coverage of this without any overlaying commentary, as it lets the quality of the sound effects, music and voice acting really show how good they are.

Kotaku provides their take on monastery life in a video, as well as battles in another video, and a huge review that can be read here. Because theirs is in writing as well as video form, I won’t go into too much detail, but I will share that their feelings towards the gameplay, character development and overall busy-ness of the game are to be highly regarded. With an opener like Fire Emblem: Three Houses perfectly balances tactics-based combat with an anime high school simulator. I’m fifteen hours in, and I can already tell it is going to break my heart, there’s a lot to swallow, but it’s a good read, and I’d strongly suggest reading Gita’s review of the game, as it not only compliments the game, but also, compares it to the past 3DS-era Fire Emblems to showcase differences.

Game Informer speeds through a quick string of gameplay with a more Let’s Play reaction-style feel rather than a more dedicated explanation and historical comparison review. It showcases some interesting things like the mini-map’s alerts on whom you can speak with and fast-travel.

Gayming Magazine offers perhaps the most out-of-the-box review, immediately highlighting how the game includes flirtatious interactions with pretty much the entire supporting cast, regardless of your Byleth’s gender.

It’s nowhere near the Fates style of skinship and interaction, and of course, without a massive timeskip or Deeprealms to supply instantly adolescent children, it doesn’t try to be. Instead, the game just opens up a lot of doors for character development, in respects to their personalities as well as their orientation.

If you have perspectives to offer, or know of other reviews, feel free to link them in the comments. Stay tuned for more news as it drops!

Coverage cites from GameXplain, Gaming Boulevard, GameSpot, Gayming Magazine, Game Informer and Kotaku.