For the best magic/school life sim, you need to head back to Nintendo Switch

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Going from being a working class kid to an adult in a dubiously-paid industry trying to exist in a cost of living crisis, it’s surprising that one of the most compelling fantasies I’ve ever experienced in gaming took place in the cold, echoey halls of an Etonian-inspired boarding school. But that’s the thing about fiction, isn’t it? Lives and value systems very far removed from your own have the power to captivate you – to take you somewhere else and give you a holiday from the aspects of your own life that may be unfulfilling, disappointing, or exhausting.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses does just that. To be incredibly reductive, the game is a fantasy role-playing title in which you become the teacher of a gaggle of fantasy Etonians who you need to train in the art of war for the in-world equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition. You are the icon of an imperial religious institution, and you are put in direct control of a bunch of spoiled kids with royal blood from three rival nations. The stakes are high, and you can cut the tension in the air with a knife from the second it all kicks off.

The opening hours of the game sees all the kids mix: you, teacher, are in charge of making sure they all get along. You feel like, maybe, you could be the vassal of peace – a good example and shining beacon for these kids that seem fated to kill each other. It’s a boarding school slice-of-life, gilded with some dubious hope, and set against the grim (and very real) backdrop of a world torn apart by war.

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