The Fire Emblem Review-athon Part 1: Azure Moon

Ladies and gents, welcome to the first in a trilogy of Fire Emblem: Three Houses blog posts! As the release of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes fast approaches, I wanted to take time to reflect on the good, the bad, and a humble hope for the next game. As such, expect MAJOR SPOILERS and subjective perspectives ahead!

My first route played was Azure Moon, so I figured we’d start there. Next week, we’ll move on to Verdant Wind (and Silver Snow) before closing out with Crimson Flower the week after.

Without further ado, let’s begin!

But First, a Quick Word About the Game as a Whole

Overall, I would describe Fire Emblem: Three Houses as "greater than the sum of its parts.” On its own, the story can be considered fairly plain or par for the Fire Emblem course. However, it’s the variety of little details within Fódlan’s deep lore that make it feel so full and alive, despite the fact that you’ll be spending the majority of your time at a single monastery.

The source of this success comes not only from all the ways the player gets to explore Fódlan’s history and tumultuous political climate, but also the amazing cast of characters you get to form bonds with. Some offer a look into the happenings and culture of Fódlan (and its neighbors), while others provide expansive insight and/or criticisms of crests, nobility, and other facets of the continent’s quirky social structure. Through fun interactions and generally well-written support conversations, you get to watch as every one of these unique characters bring their own little piece of Fódlan to Garreg Mach.

Your investment into these sorts of things will likely determine whether how much mileage you’ll get out of the overall Three Houses (at least from a story perspective). Luckily, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself getting immersed in no time.

(Oh yeah! The gameplay’s fun, too. Should probably mention that…)

Ok, now to actually talk about Azure Moon!

Well, that was easy… (Source)

The Plot (and Lord)

I hopped on the Blue Lions bus the moment there was a bus to hop onto for two simple reasons: I like the color blue, and I like griffins, which the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus just so happened to have as part of its flag. As scammed as I felt by the fact that there wasn’t a single griffin or griffin rider in sight (or griffon, as per Fire Emblem Awakening), the entire Azure Moon experience more than made up for this egregious oversight.

Everything I said before about Three Houses’s overall story is front and center on Dimitri’s route as the story takes a much more character-focused direction. If the trailers didn’t tip you off, the game makes it clear in the prologue that the pretty boy prince is bottling up some dark things. The first “White Clouds” half of the game is figuring out why as you watch the chivalrous façade slowly chip away before shattering completely at the revelation that the Flame Emperor—who he is led to believe was complicit in the Tragedy of Duscur that left his family and close friend slaughtered—was none other than his fellow classmate and step-sister, Edelgard. One timeskip and class reunion later, the actual Azure Moon part of the game explores Dimitri at his lowest point as the player protagonist and the prince’s friends and classmates do what they can to bring him back from the brink. In the game’s final chapters, Dimitri manages to pull himself together get as close to reconciliation with Edelgard as he can, followed by a battle for the fate of Fódlan between a monster-turned-leader and a leader-turned-monster.

Perhaps it’s simply a symptom of it being my first-played route, but Azure Moon’s narrative is my favorite of the bunch, and as of this writing, Dimitri stands as my personal favorite lord in the whole franchise. Whether I was waiting to see his “boar” face show itself, watching it woefully dominate him as he tortured prisoners of war and pleaded with the dead, or feeling joy and relief as he finally found a king’s resolve, Dimitri’s road to redemption, while fairly predictable, was an enjoyable rollercoaster all the same.

Another thing the story does particularly well (compared to other routes) is making you feel like a part of your faction. While the Empire is expanding and the Alliance is at risk of civil war but otherwise intact, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus is arguably in the worst state, having been couped in half by Imperial/Agarthan infiltration and weathervanes while Faerghus loyalists are on their last legs. The game goes out of its way to emphasize that the Kingdom territories are suffering while Dimitri blindly pursues vengeance, which makes it all the more fulfilling when you finally reclaim the capital and reunite the Kingdom to kick off Dimitri’s return to righteousness.

The Cast

What Azure Moon accomplishes as a narrative would be nothing extraordinary, however, if not for how it manages to involve the Blue Lions students so effectively in the plot.

Dimitri, Ingrid, Felix, and Dedue’s characters are directly tied to the Tragedy of Duscur, having lost someone—or everyone—in what the game frames as a critical event in the history of Fódlan/Faerghus. Annette is affected indirectly as a result of her father, Gilbert (originally Gustave) abandoning her family out of shame for his failures. Sylvain and Ashe’s families are directly involved in missions during the White Clouds portion of the game which, while feeling a bit like cheating in this regard, gives them significant narrative agency at those points. Even Mercedes’s connection to the Death Knight plays into the plot to a minor extent—specifically if you completed her paralogue that sheds light on their relationship.

With their own perspectives on loss, trauma, and overcoming them, every character feels like they earnestly belong in this story, and no part of said story—not even the White Clouds chapters that happen on every route— felt out of place. The cutscene just before the final battle begins encapsulates this so well as the characters get a chance to remember those they lost along the way while hyping themselves up for the culmination of twenty-once chapters worth of hard-fought battles.

Honorable mentions go to the non-playable cast as well. While his presence as an ally is relatively brief, Rodrigue was a fun supporting character and representative of the state of the Kingdom. Arundel was also an excellent antagonist, and while his more slithery traits aren’t explored much in this route, you get a chance to grasp that he’s a sinister character with a hand in everything that’s gone wrong up to this point. Even Edelgard herself is amazingly characterized in this route as a sympathetic antagonist.

Marvelous Story, Mediocre Ending

Azure Moon gets the journey right, but once you hit the conclusion, you might be left wanting more, and not in a “this is so great I want an extra serving!” sort of way.

Of all the stories, Azure Moon is the least focused on unraveling the deeper mysteries and questions left open by the sudden ending of White Clouds. The player character, while vital as an ally to Dimitri, never really gets any of their personal mysteries addressed, as evidence by the fact that I’ve barely even talked about them yet. On top of that, if you blinked and missed the obvious connection between Thales and Lord Arundel, then you’d probably be wondering what happened to that guy and those who slither in the dark. Rather than giving at least a proper cutscene or two resolving these things, we go from Edelgard’s death to the game saying Fódlan united under the Kingdom, giving the player their waifu/husbando for beating the game, and then jumping right into character endings and credits.

Let’s just say I’m glad I played Verdant Wind as my next route to scratch those itches because as much as I love praising Azure Moon, it does a much better job being and resolving Dimitri’s story than it does the player character and Rhea’s.

Conclusion

Azure Moon is great as a down-to-earth redemption arc with a pleasant pinch of political intrigue. It’s narrative being more contemporary in scale helps to highlight its characters, and although it doesn’t answer every question you might have, there’s nothing that continuing to play the game’s other routes doesn’t solve.

As my first and favorite route, I sometimes wonder if Azure Moon is what influenced the way I go about loving Three Houses, or if it’s simply a matter of Azure Moon hitting all my storytelling sweet spots. Either way, for me, Azure Moon is the embodiment of everything I love about Three Houses, flaws and all.

A Three Hopes Hope

All things considered, I wouldn’t change a thing about Azure Moon…which makes trying to figure out what I want from its Three Hopes counterpart, Azure Gleam, rather difficult. After all, it’s not like there’s anything I particularly NEED from it that Azure Moon didn’t already do.

While I originally only had raw speculation to go off of, the Three Hopes page on Nintendo’s Website has since been updated to include brief synopses of each route. As per Azure Gleam’s description, we’re likely going to be exploring Cornelia’s coup attempt, and potentially even thwarting it.

Furthermore, it looks like Three Hopes is going to present a significantly more stable Dimitri than usual, his mannerisms more in line with his depiction in Crimson Flower as king of Faerghus than the fugitive wretch he becomes in Azure Moon, Verdant Wind, and Silver Snow (he’s even called “Your Majesty” by Dedue, instead of just “Your Highness”). I wonder just how much of his vengeful side we’re going to see compared to Three Houses, or if we may even be able to help him overcome it before it consumes him.

With all that said, I don’t want Three Hopes to sacrifice what helped make Fódlanso so compelling for people like myself. Since we have the original Three Houses, I’m not too worried about Three Hopes going down a more different or perhaps even disagreeable direction with it’s plot, but I would ask that they not forget what made the original stories great and carry the spirit of those things into this new release.

Thus, my first Three Hopes hope is that they keep the heart and soul of what made the original Three Houses great, rather than trample over it.

…And that’s all I have to say about Azure Moon. Tune in next week for the Review-athon blog covering Verdant Wind!