You take the role of the resident mute hero Byleth, male or female, a mercenary of few emotions that fights alongside his father. As luck would have it, he comes across the three future leaders of the divided country they live in. One thing leads to another and Byleth ends up becoming the professor of one of the three houses, and what follows is a story of warfare and political intrigue. If there's one complaint to be made it's that you are forced to pick your route pretty early in the game, before you get to know any of the characters that make up each house. As for me, I picked the Blue Lions and I was enamored with seeing how Nintendo played with their Heroic Lord tropes, and watching him turn into the psycho the trailer showed us. Afterwards I read TVTropes to get details on the characters I didn't get to interact with as well as the story revealed in the other three routes. Let me tell you, the story and characters are fantastic, the game does a fantastic job of portraying grey vs gray vs a pretty light shade of grey morality, while you can argue that one of the three Lords is much less morally ambiguous than the other two, I found myself surprised at playing a Nintendo game that had these many morally questionable characters. That said, whichever side of the battle you pick will eventually get redeemed, probably thanks to Byleth's influence on the Lord. On another note, the game is quite effective at making you get attached to the entire cast of characters, making it all the more tragic when you have to face them in battle, maybe even murdering them, after the timeskip. Regardless of whichever route you pick, the story is tragic and there's no "good ending" route, so steel yourself for the ride. On another note, most routes are 22 chapters long(For whichever reason the Black Eagles route is only 18) and it should take you about 40 hours on your first playthrough, probably less if you picked the Eagles. Since a single playthrough won't give you the whole picture, it's highly recommended that you play the other routes or read about them, because the plot can be quite interesting.
But you shouldn't skip those days. As for me, I'd usually set out to battle on two days, and explore the academy on the other two, alternating between them. Exploring the Academy lets you spend a set amount of time by partaking in activities(such as eating with a few of your allies, or joining together for choir singing). Talking with characters or giving them gifts won't reduce your activity time, but will let you increase Byleth's affinity with said characters. Byleth isn't the only character that can increase his affinity with the other character, which is why Choir and Dinner lets you pick two characters, so that you can raise affinity between those pairs as well. Raising affinity between characters is important because it'll unlock support conversations between them, giving the player more information about their personalities and motivations, as well as giving small stat boosts to the paired characters. Pretty much every character in a house has support conversations with each other, but if you play your cards right you can actually recruit characters from the other houses into your own, at least before the timeskip. And believe it or not, while they won't appear in the story cutscenes, they get unique support conversations with characters outside their house as well as unique dialogue during the timeskip to justify why they are with you and not their original house. Pretty neat!
As for free battles, they are simple battles you can play in order to grind for levels or money. Every now and then, provided the right characters have joined your house, you'll be able to play 'Paralogue' missions, which are free battles that come with a few story tidbits pertaining a few specific characters. Usually they have some great rewards, so it's best you do them. Heck, a character in the Blue Lions route can die if you don't clear his Paralogue Mission before you hit the time limit. Usually you've got plenty of months before the paralogue mission goes away, so don't fret too much if you find yourself swamped with other priorities on a given month. That said, there's a limit to how many times you can fight Free Battles on your day off, although Normal Mode usually has a few maps that don't consume activity points, in case you really need to grind some levels. But you shouldn't. I played in Normal, with the Casual setting on, since I'm not a fan of having characters die permanently, and I didn't have much trouble with the game. Byleth just tanked(Or rather, avoided) everything and anything that came his way and pretty much killed any unit in a single turn.
Battling is pretty simple, you pick any 12 or so units to form a team, and then take turns with the enemy to move your characters around and do battle. Characters don't take turns, rather, it's between you and the CPU, so you can move your characters in any order and do everything you can during yours. Each turn you can move every unit once, and only once, unless you have a Dancer, a special class that can only be unlocked through a special event that can dance to give a unit another turn. Unlike other strategy RPGs you don't get to move after attacking, which means that if you attack with a unit, without moving, its turn ends just like that, so positioning is a bit more strict and important. Seems that after Breath of the Wild Nintendo took a liking to Weapon durability, so every attack will reduce your weapons' durability by one, and special moves will consume more durability, as opposed to mana. Broken weapons can still be used, but they'll deal negligible damage, luckily every character can carry a bunch of items, so just carry multiple weapons with each character and you'll be good to go. On another note, visiting the Marketplace, which can be done at pretty much any time, lets you fix your weapons or buy new ones. Considering the items used to repair weapons can also be used to upgrade weapons you just might find more value into buying new weapons altogether.
Class progression is done through skills, skills are passive traits, such as "Bow", "Horse Riding", "Heavy Armor" and characters raise these stats by studying during the week(You set goals, which translate to either one or two stats you want them to train) and/or by giving them personal lessons at the start of the week and, lastly, by fighting. For instance, if a character class has them riding a horse, every time they attack an enemy they will get points on the proficiency skill of the weapon they used and Horseriding. As characters increase in levels and train their skills they'll get the chance to take a certification and change classes. Classes are divided into tiers(Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Master) and every tier but Beginner also require using a Seal to attempt. And yes, characters may fail the exam, but you can save before taking the exam and try again another week(The result of the exam is set before the week starts, so no save scumming!).
9.5 out of 10
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