Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a tactical strategy roleplaying game where the player controls a military academy professor tasked with grooming her young students into ardent commanders on the battlefield. The premise is problematic (though it makes for riveting gameplay), but developer Intelligent Systems gets away with it for one simple reason: it knows this is all terrible. It understands the forces it is playing with - politics and hatred, spun into a real, bloody multi-national war - and it does not shirk from making it feel as awful as it truly is.

(Spoilers for the game’s endings ahead.)

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