7 Fire Emblem: Three Houses Replay Ideas to Make Garreg Mach Feel Brand New

Mixing it up, Fodlan-style

Whether you’ve already put hundreds of hours into Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave or you’re waiting until later to pick up a copy, it’s always a good time to revisit Three Houses. Intelligent Systems’ 2019 installment of the strategy RPG series takes place in the same universe as Fortune’s Weave, and there are even a couple of characters who appear in both games.

While the latest Fire Emblem game lets you complete the storylines for all four main characters in a single playthrough, with Three Houses, you’re locked in with one hero all the way through. Whether you’ve experienced Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude’s stories before, or this is your first time playing Three Houses, these self-imposed variations can make the experience even more memorable and challenging.

7 No new friends

For this playthrough, you’ll have to dance with the girl (or guy) that brought you. For instance, if you choose the Black Eagles as your house, your roster must only consist of characters from Edelgard’s class, namely Bernadetta, Caspar, Dorothe, Ferdinand, Hubert, Linhardt, and Petra. You can use the other professors who join as part of the story in Act One, but no recruiting students from other classes this time around. You’ll have less flexibility later on, but it’ll save you time making new friends in the halls of Garreg Mach.

6 All new friends

Alternatively, consider taking the complete opposite approach: recruit everyone you possibly can from every other house, and ditch the seven friends who got you there as soon as you can manage it. This will be far easier to pull off on a New Game Plus run, where you’ll be able to spend Renown to upgrade your Professor Rank, boost Byleth’s skill levels, and unlock supports right off the bat.

5 Maddening mode

Unlike previous Fire Emblem games, Three Houses allows you to experience its toughest difficulty level right from the start, without ever completing a playthrough on normal. Be warned: Maddening is not for the faint of heart. Every turn, every square on the grid matters, and enemies hit extremely hard. Battles will take longer and feel far more punishing. You’ll want to think through your class choices well in advance and learn more about what your characters’ stats mean. Also, you’ll learn to love wooden weapons, because you’ll be using a lot of Combat Arts and they’re much cheaper to replace.

4 Fortune’s Weave lorehound route

There might be three houses, but there are actually four routes through this game. The “church route,” also known as Silver Snow, is a variant of the Crimson Flower route where you betray Edelgard at the end of Chapter 11 of Act One and shift your allegiance to the Church of Seiros. I understand why this might not be many people’s first choice, because it’s effectively the narc route, and there are quite a few similarities to Claude’s Verdant Wind storyline. That said, you’ll learn a lot more about Seteth, Flynn, Rhea, and Sothis in this path, and there are direct connections to the Nabatean and Argarthan lore that’s a central feature of Dietrich’s route in Fortune’s Weave.

3 No boys allowed / No girls allowed

If you include the Cindered Shadows DLC characters, there are roughly 40 possible recruits in Three Houses, and they’re split equally between men and women. That means it’s entirely possible to run an entirely gender-segregated squad for much of the game. A fun element of the challenge here is that you’ll miss out on some of the gender-specific classes depending on which one you pick. The ladies have exclusive access to Pegasus Knight, Falcon Knight, Gremory, and Dark Flier, while the gents get the Fighter, Brawler, Grappler, War Master, Dark Mage, and Dark Bishop classes.

Get Polygon’s Wishlister newsletter

A weekly cheat sheet to what you’ll eventually love to play. No buying, no commitment — just saving for later.

Free. Unsubscribe anytime.

2 Oops! All gingers

Fire Emblem loves a flame-haired hero, and so do we. There aren’t quite enough carrot-topped characters to field a full squad in Three Houses, but there sure are a lot of them, especially if you include the DLC additions. They include:

• Ferdinand
• Sylvain
• Annette
• Leonie
• Gilbert
• Hapi
• Anna
• Hilda (maybe)
• Petra (sorta)

Round out the rest of your roster with a bunch of candy-haired randos like Bernadetta, Lindhart, Marianne, and Caspar, and you’ve got a pretty impressive army purely based on interesting hair color.

1 Hold me closer, beefy dancer

Getting access to the Dancer class, which has a unique ability that allows you to grant a second action to an allied unit during the same turn, isn’t guaranteed in Three Houses. In order to get it, you must win the White Heron Cup dance competition during Chapter Nine of Act One. To become the belle of Garreg Mach’s ball, you’ll need a character with at least 13 points in the Charm stat. You can get +5 for the stat by attending a lesson during free time, but the rest is up to you, whether it’s through Tea Time or stat-boosting items.

There are some obvious candidates, like Dorothea and Marianne, who make excellent Dancers. But why not mix things up a little and pick someone who really, really doesn’t make sense in the role, like surly Hubert, stoic Dedue, shy Bernadetta, or meat enthusiast Raphael? Not only will you giggle every time you see them in that slinky outfit, it just might inspire you to build against type elsewhere on your team, too.