Ushi No Tane - Harvest Moon

*SPOILERS* , I suppose.

I finally finished Golden Deer route. About 85 hours and that's with recruiting just a couple people. Honestly don't know if I have it in me to do another route (Black Eagle). And of course there's two ending routes in that house ...

I like the changes in story from the time-skip. A lot more world lore and story told, which is good. Not real crazy about the GD ending and liked the BL ending better, though Dimitri was such a jerk in Chapter Two. But overall, considering you basically need to play this game four times (well three and a half times), it's just too long.

First off I think Chapter One is way too long considering you must pick your house at the beginning. Every play-through has to go through Chapter One and there isn't enough difference it seems between houses chosen to make it worth it. Chapter Two is fine, but the idea of spending another 40+ hours in Chapter One makes my head hurt just thinking about it. But I do want to see the Black Eagle route.

Again I maxed out everyone's support and I did actually get ONE pairing at the end, Ignatz and Lysithea, though she dies so not much of a happy ending I suppose. I chose Shamir since, as I said before the students in this game just have so many issues. I must assume Rhea died, since last I heard was that she may not make it and she's not mentioned in the endings. Sad that Flayn went back to sleep. That poor girl is never going to grow up.

I suppose for the last BE route I'll recruit everyone I can. I'll save and split Chapter two to see the last two endings. It's going to be a long long long run.

As far as the DLC. Dang still on the fence about them. Just nothing there that says it would really add to the game story that much. Heck if they just had a beach DLC in Brigid or something this wouldn't even be a question . But I watched some vids of what's added and well it's not all that. Again I have no idea how someone gets enough renown points to lock in pairings with the gypsy. I couldn't even unlock any of the statues completely and grinded the game into the ground, no way I'd have 10,000 extra points to spend on making a pairing. Something's just got to be broken in my game or I'm missing something completely.

Well at this point I'm just going to look into 'how' I can get the DLC (buying things through my Switch just doesn't seem that secure) and debate this for a while. Need a break anyway.

Your renown will increase a ton the more side quests and extra maps you do. Its a grind, but you'll be swimming in it in no time. It's wasn't until my 5th playthrough that my well finally ran dry. It's not something the game is just going to give you, but you can accumulate a lot of it if need be.

On some of your character comments (spoilers):

Spoiler:

- Lysithea will survive if you get a paired ending with someone who is close to crestology. Hanneman or Linhardt, for example, but there are more. They're also not always romantic.

- Flayn will stay awake in most of her paired endings, but because of what she is, she most likely wouldn't 'grow up' hardly for several thousand years. Century hopping would probs become a norm for her regardless.

- Rhea is more or less the same depending on the route. It's either marry her, it mentions she steps down, or she disappears (dead or maybe 'sleeping').

Anyways, the Black Eagle routes are very divisive in the fandom. One is basically Golden Deer 2.0 after a certain point while the other is shorter with new(ish) maps. The endings are different from the other routes regardless, but the journey to them may bring more fatigue ontop of what you're already feeling.

Imo, do it just to finish it, and then never play the game again. I loved the game, I love Fire Emblem, and Three Houses was a big part of my life last year, but the game is full of inconveniences and the a lot of the charm is lost once you get the whole picture. It's GREAT the first time around, but the thought of ever going back to it makes me tiredly roll my eyes.

I hope the next entry in the series goes back to basics or is a remake from the SNES era.

Well I will start up the next game playing the female character since I haven't tried that yet, though not sure that would really change much.

Being my final run I will grind like crazy, so this is going to be a very long run even prior to the split. But I feel it will be my last run on the game as there does seem to be some features in the game that I guess just didn't work out exactly like they thought it would and replaying again would just be painful. Still like the game though.

I do have the Rune Factory 4 remake waiting, so I am very anxious to get into that game.

^Basically, make sure you talk to Edelgard every chapter before the timeskip and you won't miss it.

FREAK! I just realized what Game+ is. I thought it was just 'Ultra Hard Mode'. I started this, my third play-through as Game+ and realized I got all these renown points to spend on all kinds of stuff. I just bumped my Professor level to A+, which I hope means I never have to fish again ... cause man I hate that mini-game.