-There must be something very wrong with the world, for it to make children into killers.

That quote epitomizes what we’re dealing with in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a game that encourages you to spend hours and hours with dozens upon dozens of memorable, unique and legitimately likeable characters before ultimately deciding whether or not they should die and by whose hand.

This is a game that showcases the depravity of war and asks what makes justice just; grapples with the repercussions of death and loss; and struggles with letting go and moving on, all told through cutesy characters with iridescent hair.

In the most recent iteration of the tactics RPG, you assume the role of a professor at an officer’s academy located within a monastery, and are tasked with training the best and brightest of a generation of young nobles who will soon lead the land of Fódlan. And, as luck would have it, the heirs and future leaders from its three main geographic regions are students there this year.

The player is asked, pretty early on actually, to choose which of the three houses at the academy that you will lead, the Black Eagles, Blue Lions or Golden Deer. To not only teach your students, but to mold them into the fine young men and women they need to be in order to usher in an era of peace and prosperity for the land.

But things change.

And it’s about the time that you plunge your sword deeply into the chest of a young, pink-haired girl – a student at the academy – that the game finally reveals itself for what it is and asks the central question it demands to have answered: what sins have we committed for this world to make children into killers?

(This doesn’t really happen. You just kind of move your player icon onto her player icon. It’s not graphic at all. But imaginations are important, you know?)

The game has an overarching narrative that deals with mysterious plots, godlike entities and political intrigue, but those all take a backseat to the staggering amount of dialogue and character development that sculpts this well-over 60-hour journey. And that’s kind of on the low-end for playtime.

Every single character is voice-acted, and voice-acted well, with impressive ranges that make up for the lack of visual variety in their animations. In classic Fire Emblem fashion, it conducts its exposition and storytelling mostly through barely-moving characters and instead relies on its writing and character development to keep the player interested.

Somehow, miraculously, that works. And it’s to be commended, since it makes each character believable. Voices are cast well and generally match the visuals of who is speaking.

But early on, many of those characters seem one-dimensional and paper-thin. And that’s because they are. Oh, the big guy who always talks about eating and bulking up his muscles is really into eating and bulking up his muscles. That’s boring. Oh, the sad girl who is really into religion sure is into religion, huh?

Each character is stubbornly set in their ways and doesn’t change, until they inevitably do. That’s called character development, and it’s earned for each and every single voice you hear during your time in the game. As it turns out, big-eater-muscley guy has a lot of emotional baggage. As it turns out, there’s a reason why sad girl is really into religion and it’s probably not why you think.

But these characters don’t let down their defenses based on external triggers by simply progressing through the main plot. Instead, you’ve got to chase them down and find them and talk with them. And you’ve got to do that as often as you possibly can. That’s because they’ve got new things to tell you about. Legitimately interesting things that you learn as you get to know them.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is remarkably precise in humanizing its characters and getting you to empathize with them. They have realistic issues that, while they are set in a medieval world, are relatable here in the modern one. Some of these kids are shackled by past regrets and failures. They are haunted, though not literally, by the dead. Instead of living for themselves, several of them are atoning for their apparent sins of not protecting those they lost, practically self-flagellating themselves with ropes of guilt.

And you have been alongside them for every step of the way. More than just a teacher, you’re a confidant. A peer, and not a professor. You’ve been showing them, either by actually training with them or just by example, how not to just be a successful leader and officer, but how to face their demons, achieve their goals and be strong and good people.

(We’re entering some spoilery territory here. Turn back if you don’t want a brief look at what makes a few particular characters tick.)

Take, for example, a character named Dedue. He is a stoic young man with an incredibly small vocabulary and not much to say. He lives only to serve as a vassal to the young man who saved his life, Dimitri, leader of the Blue Lions and the future king of Faerghus. He’s short with his words, but polite. He simply doesn’t care to say much of anything to anyone.

But as the game progresses, you learn about his native land of Duscur, how the people there were apparently involved in a coup that led to the death of Dimitri’s royal family and how Dedue lives in the shadows of those who died. He has nothing to live for – Duscur is a wasteland and its inhabitants are vilified – they’re kingslayers, after all – and his family was slaughtered in retaliation.

But Dedue opens up if you work with him. And not just with you, the professor, but with just about every single character in the game. He starts speaking more and using increasingly varied words and phrases. Maybe he doesn’t get poetic, but his curt demeanor eases. He says that he looks up to certain characters because they embody everything he wants to become. He says that the flowers growing in the greenhouse are native to Duscur and that, if you’d like, he’ll show you them in person one day.

He even smiles when he says that. It’s something he says he’s been working on, that smile of his. Other characters have been helping him with that, too, he says.

Through the course of the game, you get to see Dedue cope with his insecurities and fears with other characters who also have their own issues that they’re working through. And not just with other students in their own houses. Some students intermingle and develop relationships, regardless of which House they claim.  

Which makes it all the more difficult when bad things happen and war breaks out. In an effort to secure the realm, the professor joins and leads the charge at the front of whatever House you chose just an hour into the game. No longer your students that you were asked to shape into instruments of peace, your former charges are now wartime leaders vying for control of the land.

In the 50 or so hours that’ve taken place since you made that selection, you’ve been fighting knaves and rogues and all sorts of other bad guys, in between getting to know your students. Shortly after you made that choice, you then participated in a mock battle conducted between the three houses near the start of the game. You’ve not squared off with them since. You’ve all been allies.

But now, you meet them again on a real battlefield. In a fight with consequence. During a war.

Ambushed from behind, a former student, a young girl with pink hair and a comically-large battle-axe, rushes to attack your flank. In my scenario, the professor, on my orders, ran back to intercept her. But I like to think the professor would have done that anyway. Wouldn’t the professor, wouldn’t I, rather take responsibility for what’s about to happen? I could order Dedue to intercept, but shouldn’t her fate be the professor’s responsibility? My responsibility?

Upon driving my sword into her chest (not really, just a boring sword-slash cutscene you’ve seen a hundred times by this point. Imaginations, remember?) time slowed down – a clear indication in this game that she’s not coming back. While you can play without permadeath for your own units (you coward), the deaths of your enemies are final.

And hers was. Hilda Valentin Goneril breathed her last on a battlefield at age 23.

I didn’t want it to happen though. I didn’t want to kill her. Although she was an enemy now, she wasn’t always. We’d sipped tea together. Before this, she was a happy, cheerful student who didn’t want to do much of anything. A spoiled noble brat living a life of contentment. This pink-haired girl, no – she had a name. Hilda was happy to while her time away making friends and slacking off at the officer’s academy.

You know, one of those characters you met while teaching at the officer’s academy suggested that war was just organized murder.

Is it?

With her slumped over your sword, is it not?

Each and every character experiences their ups and downs and comes to terms with various realizations over the course of the game, provided they survive, with mostly all of them involving death in some way or another, whether visiting it upon their enemies, seeking revenge for the fallen or finally breaking free from the chains of the dead and the past.

And the best part is that you can only choose one House at a time. While I traveled with the Blue Lions during the course of my first playthrough, others may have chosen the Golden Deer or Black Eagles and experienced their stories. And there is just as much dialogue involved with them as with the Blue Lions. There’s even more stories to learn about from even more characters, who are all genuinely likable, each with their own ambitions and dreams, fears and what-ifs.

But, to experience those, you would almost certainly have to do battle against your former comrades in a new, separate playthrough. And if you raised the standard of the Black Eagles or Golden Deer into battle against the Blue Lions, could you take the possibility of driving your sword into Felix’s chest if he ambushed you where Hilda once had? After everything you’ve learned about him? After all the time you shared with him in the training hall?

Would you remember, as he laid dying, how he hated chivalry? How he said it glorified death and was “grotesque” to him? How you helped him come to terms with his own ghosts? You’d be sending him to be with his brother, the one you learned had died earlier in the game. Would you feel a tinge of guilt as you recall how deeply upset Felix got while discussing his insecurities with you? Because his father said his brother “died like a true knight,” – something that stuck with Felix and drove him toward greatness. Something that shaped his entire being.

Has Felix “died like a true knight” at your hands?

Or is this something better fit for another unit at your command, while you keep slaying the generic warriors and brigands who pester travelers on the mountain passes?

No. You take that mantle on, right? You’re their professor, after all. The one shaping the future of these kids.

But how did we get here? And what happened for things to get so bad?

There must be something very wrong with the world, for it to make children into killers.