Fire Emblem Engage
- Thread starter Gecklund
- Start date
I tried to see if there was already a thread (I think I remember @MMC doing a bunch of individual game threads after a Switch direct or maybe it was E3) but for whatever reason searching for threads isn't working for me.
Anyway I'm quite enjoying it too. It's definitely another strong entry in the series.
From a visual standpoint, it's the best Fire Emblem has ever been between vibrant colors, well crafted map designs (even if the textures can still be a bit rough), excellent combat animations that feature unique parry animations instead of enemies just missing their swing or their magic/arrow shot, and lastly while this isn't a new feature, the map seamlessly integrates into the battle animation (to explain you have a 3d rendered top down map in one phase but for combat, the battle environment matches your location on the map. So if you're on a staircase you'll fight on the staircase and see other map features in the distance. And Intelligent Systems proves this by letting you explore the map in third person after every battle).
The "hub world" stuff from Three Houses is there but you're not locked into having to start there and follow a calendar of scheduled training and tasks. You can still do just about everything you could do at the Academy in Three Houses at Engage's Somniel but it really is entirely optional. If you want the benefit of grinding out minor buffs, you can. If you want to put your head down and just focus on battling you can. The only time you'd conceivably have to return to the hub world is to maintain your emblem rings and the bond levels with the units you put them on or if the story required it (only happened a couple times from what I remember). The only thing visually that I'm not fond of is the character designs and it mostly comes down to the design scheme for the eyes. I don't know what it is but the eyes look so similar and cartoony that it takes away from the individuality of the characters. I thought Three Houses had a great cast of unique looking characters.
As to difficulty, I'm playing on the easiest difficulty for my first play through but it does seem less brain dead than Three Houses on normal. I do like that through my 15 of 26 chapters, there's only been one with the damage sponge "monsters" from Three Houses. But I'm a little wary of calling it truly harder. My example is that I've gone way overboard on fighting in every optional skirmish between chapters which, the more you do, the harder they get to the point that they become harder than the story chapters and your troops are so overtuned that the story chapters are just child's play.
But what this amounts to with the scaling difficulty on skirmishes is higher level enemies with higher stats and skills, and there's a huge swath of them. And they don't advance on you as you get closer like in other fire emblem games. Typically, from turn one, the whole map of enemies will advance at your group all at once which leads to limited opportunity to craft your own offensive and instead you need to figure out the best positioning for a full on defensive where you fight more through countering and strategically picking off the right attackers. I don't know how much I like that but at least even on the easiest difficulty I'm being asked to really think about how I position my troops and how I counterattack. Mileage may vary depending on the player but I do intend to play through on hard and maybe again on maddening if I don't lose interest.
Where SJSharks72 and I differ is that I don't really like the story or the character writing. The story itself is fine but it really is too much of a generic fire emblem story with the one unique element being the impact of the emblem rings, mcguffins carrying the spirit of past legendary fire emblem characters which can imbue the wearer with their power. I think it may well just be a case that Three Houses spoiled us with a fairly deep and at times complex narrative with political intrigue, sociopolitical considerations, and some interesting stuff based around a world under Theocratic rule. And this is all supplemented by deep character writing amongst a large but diverse cast. No one character is like any of the others. And the more you dig into their supports the more you peel back how life in Fodlan is more grim than it seems and how the crests and the Church of Seiros have negative impacts on many. It really adds to how it's no real surprise that the continent broke out into war and that if Edelgard hadn't started the war, it would have happened eventually regardless.
There's nothing like that here. Three Houses wasn't some masterpiece in storywriting as it had its flaws but I appreciated being immersed in a deeper narrative. Outside of a twist in the first third of this game, the story of Engage is relatively simple and a little too familiar to past Fire Emblem games. And the characters still have more focus on background and personality than some other past games but a lot of backstory and character growth and development is slashed or rushed. I haven't gotten to the last third of the game yet but it seems these characters are and will be more or less the same people at the end as they were at the start.
Another complaint I have is this game absolutely inundates you with new playable characters so fast. It's not weird in a Fire Emblem game to have characters that ride the bench and never see the battlefield as it might encourage replays to try them out. My problem is that Three Houses found a way to make even extra characters story relevant by featuring them in cutscenes and dialogue and made it easy to build their supports at the Academy to learn more about them. At this point in the game I have more than a handful of characters I know nothing about that are just JPEGs in my character roster or characters I run past in the Somniel. In Three Houses you have the first half of the game where you spend time with pretty much the whole cast of characters and get to know/recruit them before the story mostly limits you to the characters in your chosen house and the ones you managed to recruit to your house. And that gave the player agency and control of their interaction with the characters. Here, outside a couple recruitable characters, new units are just shoved into your roster and if they start out weaker than your current units, they are effectively forgotten unless you go to the effort of playing them in optional content to build supports with other characters. It's not a huge deal but it puts an impediment on exploring your characters to build more backstory into the wider narrative.
All that said, I'm enjoying it a great deal. The main focus the developers put on the game was the gameplay and presentation and that is what (mostly) excels. As I said, I probably let Three Houses spoil me with respect to story and character writing and they didn't try as hard this time around.
I'd give it a solid 8/10 thus far.
Last note, I don't recommend getting the DLC if you plan on multiple plagthroughs. The Tiki and Edelgard/Dimitri/Claude rings have skills that boost stat and xp growth and the two characters I put them on are already more or less unstoppable death machines (and I haven't even spoiled what the rings actually do, the Tiki one is beyond overpowered). But then again that's partially my fault for overdoing it on the optional battles. But, the DLC rings are basically a cheat code. I'd save them for a hard or maddening run to reduce the difficulty on those a bit.
Anyway I'm quite enjoying it too. It's definitely another strong entry in the series.
From a visual standpoint, it's the best Fire Emblem has ever been between vibrant colors, well crafted map designs (even if the textures can still be a bit rough), excellent combat animations that feature unique parry animations instead of enemies just missing their swing or their magic/arrow shot, and lastly while this isn't a new feature, the map seamlessly integrates into the battle animation (to explain you have a 3d rendered top down map in one phase but for combat, the battle environment matches your location on the map. So if you're on a staircase you'll fight on the staircase and see other map features in the distance. And Intelligent Systems proves this by letting you explore the map in third person after every battle).
The "hub world" stuff from Three Houses is there but you're not locked into having to start there and follow a calendar of scheduled training and tasks. You can still do just about everything you could do at the Academy in Three Houses at Engage's Somniel but it really is entirely optional. If you want the benefit of grinding out minor buffs, you can. If you want to put your head down and just focus on battling you can. The only time you'd conceivably have to return to the hub world is to maintain your emblem rings and the bond levels with the units you put them on or if the story required it (only happened a couple times from what I remember). The only thing visually that I'm not fond of is the character designs and it mostly comes down to the design scheme for the eyes. I don't know what it is but the eyes look so similar and cartoony that it takes away from the individuality of the characters. I thought Three Houses had a great cast of unique looking characters.
As to difficulty, I'm playing on the easiest difficulty for my first play through but it does seem less brain dead than Three Houses on normal. I do like that through my 15 of 26 chapters, there's only been one with the damage sponge "monsters" from Three Houses. But I'm a little wary of calling it truly harder. My example is that I've gone way overboard on fighting in every optional skirmish between chapters which, the more you do, the harder they get to the point that they become harder than the story chapters and your troops are so overtuned that the story chapters are just child's play.
But what this amounts to with the scaling difficulty on skirmishes is higher level enemies with higher stats and skills, and there's a huge swath of them. And they don't advance on you as you get closer like in other fire emblem games. Typically, from turn one, the whole map of enemies will advance at your group all at once which leads to limited opportunity to craft your own offensive and instead you need to figure out the best positioning for a full on defensive where you fight more through countering and strategically picking off the right attackers. I don't know how much I like that but at least even on the easiest difficulty I'm being asked to really think about how I position my troops and how I counterattack. Mileage may vary depending on the player but I do intend to play through on hard and maybe again on maddening if I don't lose interest.
Where SJSharks72 and I differ is that I don't really like the story or the character writing. The story itself is fine but it really is too much of a generic fire emblem story with the one unique element being the impact of the emblem rings, mcguffins carrying the spirit of past legendary fire emblem characters which can imbue the wearer with their power. I think it may well just be a case that Three Houses spoiled us with a fairly deep and at times complex narrative with political intrigue, sociopolitical considerations, and some interesting stuff based around a world under Theocratic rule. And this is all supplemented by deep character writing amongst a large but diverse cast. No one character is like any of the others. And the more you dig into their supports the more you peel back how life in Fodlan is more grim than it seems and how the crests and the Church of Seiros have negative impacts on many. It really adds to how it's no real surprise that the continent broke out into war and that if Edelgard hadn't started the war, it would have happened eventually regardless.
There's nothing like that here. Three Houses wasn't some masterpiece in storywriting as it had its flaws but I appreciated being immersed in a deeper narrative. Outside of a twist in the first third of this game, the story of Engage is relatively simple and a little too familiar to past Fire Emblem games. And the characters still have more focus on background and personality than some other past games but a lot of backstory and character growth and development is slashed or rushed. I haven't gotten to the last third of the game yet but it seems these characters are and will be more or less the same people at the end as they were at the start.
Another complaint I have is this game absolutely inundates you with new playable characters so fast. It's not weird in a Fire Emblem game to have characters that ride the bench and never see the battlefield as it might encourage replays to try them out. My problem is that Three Houses found a way to make even extra characters story relevant by featuring them in cutscenes and dialogue and made it easy to build their supports at the Academy to learn more about them. At this point in the game I have more than a handful of characters I know nothing about that are just JPEGs in my character roster or characters I run past in the Somniel. In Three Houses you have the first half of the game where you spend time with pretty much the whole cast of characters and get to know/recruit them before the story mostly limits you to the characters in your chosen house and the ones you managed to recruit to your house. And that gave the player agency and control of their interaction with the characters. Here, outside a couple recruitable characters, new units are just shoved into your roster and if they start out weaker than your current units, they are effectively forgotten unless you go to the effort of playing them in optional content to build supports with other characters. It's not a huge deal but it puts an impediment on exploring your characters to build more backstory into the wider narrative.
All that said, I'm enjoying it a great deal. The main focus the developers put on the game was the gameplay and presentation and that is what (mostly) excels. As I said, I probably let Three Houses spoil me with respect to story and character writing and they didn't try as hard this time around.
I'd give it a solid 8/10 thus far.
Last note, I don't recommend getting the DLC if you plan on multiple plagthroughs. The Tiki and Edelgard/Dimitri/Claude rings have skills that boost stat and xp growth and the two characters I put them on are already more or less unstoppable death machines (and I haven't even spoiled what the rings actually do, the Tiki one is beyond overpowered). But then again that's partially my fault for overdoing it on the optional battles. But, the DLC rings are basically a cheat code. I'd save them for a hard or maddening run to reduce the difficulty on those a bit.
How much have you been playing Yunaka? First of all when she was introduced I was so sure she was one of the villains but that turned out to be wrong. I only have a good sense of a few of the characters that are stronger than the others (Alear, Diamant, Alfred, Ivy, Kagetsu in particular, and only one isn't a lord) but with Chloe and Jean I put the DLC rings on them so I can't judge them fairly. Yunaka (and Kagetsu) is the only one I didn't give any special treatment to other than refining her weapon to silver. She is an absolute beast and can one shot everything except for armored units and almost never gets hit. Kagetsu is similar with his Wo Dao but he came later in the story. But back to Yunaka, I had a skirmish on the bridge where there's an avoid/heal tile so for shits and giggles I had her be my only unit for the battle (plus Jean to teleport her to the tile and retreat out of battle range) against 35 second tier units and she smashed the whole army without taking damage once. It was pretty wild. Highly recommend trying it if you've been playing her.
Gecklund
Registered User
I actually haven’t been using her. I’m huge on units that are ranged so like I have Celine, Etie, Ivy, and a wolf knight that I forgot the name of in my starters. I probably should use Yunaka and I was for a while but I needed more front line people so right now I have Alear, Diamont, Alfred, Tomorra and Chloe as my go to front liners. Diamont is a freaking beast. I have an assumption you get another really good character down the line that i don’t want to spoil for you if you haven’t gotten there yet so I’m saving a spot for them. I use Franne as a healer. The last few spots kind of rotate. I might train up Yunaka a bit.
Daggers are range/melee hybrid. They're like mages with the functional trade off being applying a poison effect rather than bonus damage to armored units. Which isn't that great a trade off, but it's offset by "covert" units having really high avoid stats so when they're on avoid locations they're practically unhittable. An Yunaka just has great damage growths it seems.
I spoiled myself on all the characters so I know who's coming. I'm assuming you're talking about Mauvier.
And yeah Diamant is a tank god. I gave him Dracoshields and energy drops plus I have him with the Ike ring so he is just a monster.
I also gave Jean the tiki ring to boost his growths, think I told you already but he's now a mage/heal god who can defeat just about any enemy on his own but when he engages he turns into a dragon that can hit multiple enemies with his breath attack. He's the first unit I've second sealed. I could conceivably make him better than the toughest boss the game could throw at me with the Tiki skill for growths. Almost wish I threw that ring on Alear for lore purposes and make her the unstoppable Divine Dragon she's supposed to be.
I spoiled myself on all the characters so I know who's coming. I'm assuming you're talking about Mauvier.
And yeah Diamant is a tank god. I gave him Dracoshields and energy drops plus I have him with the Ike ring so he is just a monster.
I also gave Jean the tiki ring to boost his growths, think I told you already but he's now a mage/heal god who can defeat just about any enemy on his own but when he engages he turns into a dragon that can hit multiple enemies with his breath attack. He's the first unit I've second sealed. I could conceivably make him better than the toughest boss the game could throw at me with the Tiki skill for growths. Almost wish I threw that ring on Alear for lore purposes and make her the unstoppable Divine Dragon she's supposed to be.
Gecklund
Registered User
Still 15. I can't help myself but do the skirmishes and I still have a couple paralogues to unlock max bond on some rings. I'm right behind you though. I kind of want to make this save file one where my units are ridiculously overtuned to make a difficult wifi battle defense. Just for fun. Probably gonna have to do all this over again on my hard and maddening runs since min-maxing will be more important.
BTW idk if you know this but this is just my own observation
The Lyn ring is way better on Alcryst than Ivy. He was already shaping up to be good but now he's an unquestionably beast infantry archer. I put Byleth on Ivy cause I guess he gives the best buffs to mages. Speaking of, hilarious to finally be able to hear Byleth speak.
Gecklund
Registered User
I just finished chapter 20. I realized the skirmishes scale with level but not the chapters so I stopped doing the skirmishes and have just been doing paralogues and chapters.
They're definitely getting tougher. My best units get by no problem but Ivy is exposed to archers even when engaged, ditto Chloe, Alear gets absolutely mobbed as she always seems to draw attack priority and I have to heal her pretty regularly, anyone not as far along as the rest like Fogado I need to be really careful when attacking cause they can get downed after two attacks. Thankfully, Alfred who started pretty weak is turning out to be pretty tanky so he's good for countering with a killing lance. I stopped using his sister pretty much once
She had the Celica ring taken before she was pretty good for timely teleport kills.
Kagetsu is shaping up to be a little worse than Yunaka at dodging since I almost lost him in a skirmish once but he can usually hold his own against multiple enemies.
Like I said, I think I'm only doing it because you can set a wifi battle defense with your units in the Somniel tower and I want to have a challenging squad. But I think at this point I'm gonna cut through the next chapter like a hot knife through butter. But I'm not too worried cause those same chapters will challenge me on higher difficulties.
TheDoldrums
Registered User
I adored Three Houses but its the only FE game I've played. This one seems more like classic FE, dropping a lot of the social stuff that I liked from 3H. I don't know if I'll like the combat enough to sustain interest and that seems to be the overwhelming focus of the game.
Are Byleth, Roy or Lucina in the game? I mostly play FE characters in Smash so maybe it would be cool if they were summoned (I know Marth is there)
Are Byleth, Roy or Lucina in the game? I mostly play FE characters in Smash so maybe it would be cool if they were summoned (I know Marth is there)
Gecklund
Registered User
Yes all three are in there!
I don’t know if I’d say they completely got rid of the social aspect. I really don’t think it’s anywhere near as much as the critics are making it out to be but you know internet and overreactions. There’s still the support conversations. This game also offers a lot of customization in terms of unit’s classes and the rings that you didn’t get as much in Three Houses.
robertmac43
Forever 43!
- Mar 31, 2015
- 23,423
- 15,543
Been waiting to get this one and start playing. Work's been kicking me in the but recently so hopefully over the weekend i'll boot it up!
They didn't get rid of it but it is pretty heavily scaled back. I'm guessing part of it is each of the emblem characters has four sets of short conversations with every playable character so it's a lot more dialogue to spread around but it's at the sacrifice of deeper character writing.
Gecklund
Registered User
So I finished the game. That ending is anti-climatic as hell. Maybe it will be better on a harder difficulty but man it was so easy. I was able to finish the final boss in one turn. It also doesn't seem to have any sort of postgame. Haven't started a new game just yet so maybe I'm missing something.
I really f***ed myself over on my run with all the skirmish battles. Most of my units are overtuned but Yunaka, Diamant, Jean, Chloe, Kagetsu, and Alcryst are gods of death and destruction even in the higher level skirmishes while Ivy, Alear, and Alfred have become really hard to kill but don't always one shot high level enemies. At this point I've made everyone too strong that I cut through a story chapter like it's baby difficulty, and I keep going back to skirmishes cause it's the only thing that challenges me at this point. It's a crap cycle I put myself in that's put me off so bad I actually started playing Animal Crossing again cause I accidentally lost my save file when I transferred from an OG Switch to an OLED model.
I think I'll just rip through the rest of the story and make a hard playthrough my legit run. They should have capped the number of skirmishes you could do between chapters for idiots like me.
Gecklund
Registered User
The story itself is good actually but wow the combat was not difficult by the end. Alear for me was so good that I could literally just put him in front and let everyone come attack him and they'd be gone. I wonder if turning up the difficulty will make much of a difference or if we can do the same skirmish method of overleveling units.
The rub is if you get bad stat rolls/growths in hard or you just don't balance the experience properly because of how your battles unfold, you kind of...i don't want to say have to go to skirmishes to balance things out but idk I found myself needing to do skirmishes to keep up at hard difficulty in Three Houses otherwise attacking the beasts is like hitting them with a pool noodle.
@SJSharks72 have you played since the update? The game's performance has tanked for me. Like I defended Pokemon S/V's performance issues as still playable but this is something else. Battle or engage animations start with a 5-10 black screen or just the environment without the units as it waits to load them in and when I scroll around a map the game stutters super hard. Like I can't imagine this is a hardware issue since my OLED is like three weeks old, but I haven't tested other games yet. Makes me not want to play though.
Gecklund
Registered User
I haven’t yet. I haven’t found the motivation to pick it back up. That ending really left a bad taste in my mouth. Normally the final bosses give some sort of difficulty. This one might have been the easiest final boss in any video games I’ve played.
I figured I might as well at least play the DLC I paid for and cut my way to the ending but the experience is so ugly
Gecklund
Registered User
I have finally picked this back up. I started a new game on hard but then I realized that I have no desire in thinking that hard in what I enjoy as an almost mindless activity. I got to whatever chapter you unlock the Divine Paralogues to get the Tiki emblem. So I just started another new game on normal.
Playing back through, this game had so much more potential than it turned into.
Yeah. I think it comes down to allocation of resources being capped and I think a lot of the investment in emblem voice lines and animations took away from everything else. It's still a decent Fire Emblem but to me I'd rather go back to Three Houses for the Switch. Though I'm excited for the GBA fire emblem
Gecklund
Registered User
The GBA fire emblem games were really good! I played three: the one with Roy, the one with Eirika/Ephraim, and the one with Lyn/Hector/Eliwood.
The one with Roy was by far the hardest for me. The one with the twins was the easiest but has the most replayability. The one with the three lords was my favorite though. The longest story and probably the most compelling for me.
So Blazing Blade, binding blade and sacred stones. All good games. The one with Roy is definitely more challenging. Probably because it was never actually released in the states.
Hard is quite difficult, but I think you need to play on hard to get the most out of the game. It pushes you to your limit strategically but it's really rewarding when your strategy comes together and requires you to use the emblem powers optimally.
