Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

Can't tell if I am hype for this or not.

A lot of the footage released so far looks excellent, Three Houses on paper was very much my jam and I feel like these sorts of games are well suited to handheld play. However, I thought Three Houses was just way too long.

Like I know for some value proposition is all about how much game you get, but I was like 40 hours into one path and just so bored by that point I gave up. I dunno how anyone plays three paths, or even more than three making different choices, there was not enough meat to the title to sustain me all of those hours.

I also thought the difficulty in Three Houses was really uneven and while I would have appreciated the social elements in moderation, I felt like the game overwhelmed me uttterly unrelentingly throughout with this stuff to the point where it just put me off.

I can only hope this is a shorter title, with heavier emphasis on the core systems and combat, and a generally more even curve, so the first half doesn't feel like a brutal slog before you crest and end up so OP there is no challenge whatsoever.

That new gameplay looks great. It seems like they're taking the presentation a lot more seriously this time around. Not sure if this is a day one buy for me yet, but I'm keeping my eye on it for sure.

It looks fantastic! There's something about it that looks much more polished than Three Houses is.

@ElRoberico
It's definitely the best looking Fire Emblem game to date. No offense against Three Houses- I love that game to death, and honestly thought it looked pretty good when on the actual maps, but this is a notable leap forward. Not just with respect to visual fidelity, but also art style. It's so bold, colorful and extremly pretty.

The gameplay also most closely resembles Fates gameplay, which is a very good thing. We hit peak FE gameplay with Fates. If only they hadn't hired that one writer it would probably have been the undisputable best in series. But that writer borked it, then they did a remake, then they let Koei Tecmo take the reigns.

This is the first Fire Emblem since Fates where we go back to the core team for a new game without that anime writer. I fully expect the best gameplay in the series, and as long as the story and characters are on par with Awakening, I'd be shocked if this doesn't pan out to be the best Fire Emblem overall.

Fire Emblem Engage so far looks great - Alears design grew on me pretty quickly but I've always been a fan of games with vibrant colours so this is right up my alley.
Most complaints about the artstyle have been made since Awakening and tbh, they currently say that Engage should look more like Awakening/Fates which is pretty ironic. (Shadows of Valentia had the best artsyle so far imho)
I love the critical animation we've seen so far. The tome crit animation looks amazing with the ancient scrolls/text appearing when chanting, Vanders crit animation is a reference to Fire Emblem Warriors and Fredericks combos. It's also good to see Fist weapons return although I feel like they don't belong in this game. I would love to see the magic triangle return but it probably won't happen.
I've only got a few gripes about the game so far.
One being the story and how it's going to work out - it's going to be pretty cliché I reckon...
Second is the weird battlemap movement. Why do they stutter when they turn? Last I remember we had that in no other FE game ever.
And third being DLC - I can already see a "Legacy" pack with older characters as Emblems as well as a "Fodlan, Tellius, Jugdral, Ylisse" collection and so on...

@Neph
Crits do look good. Also attack animations in general. I love how fast they dodge back into position after an attack. It looks slick.

Cliche is fine by me, as long as it's not actually bad. As for the movement, it seems to be more natural. In one trailer the movement was fairly fast and fluid on horseback turning a corner, while in another the character on foot paused and turned. Not sure why, but it doesn't really make much difference to me either way.

I hope we get DLC characters. The game seems designed around 12 specific heroes- one from each unique title of the past. So I'm not expecting more than that. But it's a perfect opportunity to leverage DLC to bring back more characters. Though usually they do a meaty expansion with more maps, so they could always just integrate different characters into that storyline.

@JaxonH Yup, the fast-paced combat reminds me of Echoes which is my favourite FE game to date so I'm pumped for that one.
Oh, I'm also excited about DLC and some characters that might be getting an Emblem (Hector, please ) but we don't really have a wide selection of units in the base game so I'm hoping we also get some variety there - we only have 1 axe unit (B!Ike), one lance unit (Sigurd, which should usually have his Tyrfing) and 1 bow unit (L!Lucina) while others like Takumi, Hector/Camilla, Hinoka/Ephraim/Finn could be used instead. The rest are Magic/Sword units and Corrin with her Dragonstone which might indicate that we can Alear can transform into a dragon later-on in the game or we get a Manakete.

My favorite lord is an emblem already but I won’t say no to them tossing as many as they can cram into the game. I do sorta want a return of the 3ds games level of dlc (just not the cost. I spent over 100 catching up dlc I hadn’t purchased yet and I already had a lot) just maps upon maps. As it is great for replay/extension of the game.

I sorta want a port/remake of the 3ds games but i suppose the gcn/wii games should come first as they are trapped on their systems and out of print. I’m happy to hear positive reactions to the animations ( I am avoiding everything until launch…I shouldn’t even be in this thread lol) though. Between this and story of seasons my January is packed.

@Ryu_Niiyama
I would love love love an HD remaster/remake of Awakening on Switch. But at the same time, Engage looks like a successor to Awakening (in style and gameplay) and it's a brand new game. So that's even better. Also, I suppose I would rather have remakes of older games given I can still play my 3DS. We're supposed to be getting a remake of Genealogy of the Holy War next. Which is cool. But I'm also curious how they'll handle the insanely large maps. Will they shrink them down, or give us more movement, or just make turns go faster, or leave it the same? Who knows.

I hope they continue the Echoes line of remakes and hit everything right up the line. The first game has been remade 3 times, essentially, so I get skipping that one. Next was Gaiden, and we got that remake with Shadows of Valentia. Next is Mystery of the Emblem, but that's a remake of the first game so skip. Next is Genealogy of the Holy War, the one that's supposedly in development. If they keep going in order, we'd then get Thracia 776 and then Binding Blade, at which point all the unique stories would be translated to English on one platform or another.

Which is cool, but also kinda sucks because I'd really like to see Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn remastered/remade. We could be waiting a looooong time for those

@JaxonH I feel the 2D ones need to be remade the most and to my knowledge the west is still missing binding blade. Plus with the series seeing new life it would be good to show 3ds newbies what came before. It’s petty, but I sorta hope once heroes goes offline (whenever that is) that team gets put on remake duty. I’m at the point that I kinda want a few FE per system (which is greedy I know, but while the tide is high I’m surfing). Remake, new, spinoff, remake…

The franchise is getting so much love especially in the past decade that I just want that to continue. I do want another FE warriors (ensemble cast and not spin off) though. FE Warriors was my longshot fantasy could never happen game so I would do a lot for a sequel.

@Ryu_Niiyama
Did you play Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes? That game was excellent. Best Warriors title I've ever played, bar none.

By focusing on just Three Houses they were able to adopt that storyline in a what if scenario which was much more compelling than the usual stuff they come up with for mash ups. That, coupled with the integration of side activities from Three Houses and commanding multiple units on the maps, freely switching between them made the game so much more engaging than other Warriors titles I'd played.

Persona 5 Strikers is also good, but not as good as Three Hopes, imo. Same for Age of Calamity. Zelda just never had a story or characters as compelling as Fire Emblem.

Would love to see a Xenoblade Warriors some day.

@JaxonH just the demo. I own the game but a) haven’t finished 3houses b) free time? What is that? I loved AoC though. Such a great game.

I am so, so elated that I managed to luck into $5 to pre-order the Divine Edition at Gamestop! Now my worries about missing out on it are gone!

As for upcoming remakes, I think it would be amazing if Geanology and Thracia were combined into one one game. Add Echos as part of the title and make Fire Emblem Echos its own subseries that can serve as remakes of the non-Western released and/or 2D games. I would hope that Nintendo wants to preserve the series, especially since its audience has exploded since Awakening.

Fire Emblem is getting the red carpet treatment from Nintendo alongside Xenoblade, and I'm there for it.

Their investment is paying off. Fire Emblem went from never even breaking 1 million sold, to cracking 2 million with Awakening, to approaching nearly 3 million with Fates, and now Three Houses is just 200k away from topping 4 million units. That's unprecedented growth.

Xenoblade too. Went from Chronicles on Wii doing 1 million, with a minor setback of XCX doing 750k and XC 3DS doing 450k, but then XC2 topping 2 million, and XC3 looks poised to crack 3 million, as it's drastically outperforming the last entry.

Ya love ta see it.

Nintendo has 3 tiers of franchises. They have their 10+ million sellers which are in a league of their own. They have their 3-10 million sellers, and they have their 0-3 million sellers. This generation has seen both Fire Emblem and Xenoblade move up to a tier 2 franchise. And that's not as common as you'd think. We've seen it a lot with Switch though. Kirby also moved up to a tier 2 franchise this generation.

@JaxonH I think they may skip all the way to Binding Blade, if you look at Japan NSO there's no sign of Gaiden on the NES app which is likely because of the 3DS remake meanwhile the SNES app does have Genealogy of the Holy War. It doesn't have Thracia 776 yet but given how they spread out Mystery of the Emblem and Genealogy of the Holy War I'd guess it would be present in the next batch of SNES games.

@Grumblevolcano
Well, we know Genealogy of the Holy War is the next remake. The same person who leaked Engage said they were also working on Genealogy of the Holy War.

So that's basically locked in. The question is, what comes after? We'll be in the Switch 2 era by that point. But I'm pretty sure the remakes will keep coming.

@DarthNocturnal That's the dream, man.

Collector Edition back up on Amazon US

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFCS1Y59?

So I recently got the Byleth amiibo, and since Nintendo has been really great about rereleasing amiibo lately, what are the chances that they reprint almost all the other Fire Emblem amiibo?

@ElRoberico
Idk. They only seem to reprint ones that still see higher demand.

It's possible, but I wouldn't count on it. At least for certain ones. Like the Fire Emblem Warriors Tiki and Chrom, the Shadows of Valentia Celica and Alm, maybe they reprint Marth from the Smash line? Hard to say.