9 Video Games Everyone Played Wrong

5. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I know we’re toeing a line here in telling you how to play your games and that sometimes you should seriously consider making them harder on yourself but if you’re playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses, turn permadeath on.

Turn it on, just turn it on. The mode with permadeath is called classic mode. That means it’s how the game is supposed to be played, it’s a staple of the franchise. Don’t be a baby, turn it on.

Now, I can say this without seeming like a total strategy game fan elitist because the game isn’t ruthless with its permadeath mechanic. You’ll still be able to restart maps if you totally screw up, you can use the Divine Pulse mechanic which lets you redo turns a set number of times in battle if you do something silly and get somebody killed, and most importantly you can still pick your difficulty level while having permadeath turned on. Permadeath was mandatory in the franchise until the release of New Mystery of the Emblem for the DS in 2010 and there’s a good reason for it.

The story of Three Houses is fantastic and you’ll form interesting relationships with your colleagues and students so it’s important to have real stakes in battle.

There’s enough buffer mechanics that you should be fine not losing anybody if you really don’t want to. Unless you think a fight at the very beginning is just a practice fight so you think nothing of it when you lose Dorothea, and then you think extra nothing of it when you see her back at the monastery and its only several hours later when you're headed to your next skirmish and you realise you can’t include her so she must have been critically injured in that first fight, and you won't be able to use her for the rest of your 100 hour playthrough but you’re not going to play that 5 hours all over again.

That may or may not be based on personal experience.