Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

Wow, the previews for this game are looking excellent. Basically some elements from Three Houses, with more similarities to Echoes and Fates than before. The keyword I've seen throughout all of these previews has been "streamlined".

It'll be amazing. Intelligent systems is one of my favorites, so no doubt this will be great.

Sounds like the stat growth (teaching) from Three Houses has been nerfed. Which I know some people wanted but I shall miss it. You can train some serious war machines if you pay attention to the teaching aspect of the game (as well as gardening to farm stat boosters). Still excited but I will miss that more direct control. As we all know leveling up in FE games is a roll of the dice.

DF confirming the gigantic technical upgrade this represents over Three Houses. Also cool to see how much faster load times are in this one.

@Ralizah I am really happy the load times are practically halved in this game. It's so cool to see how much IS has improved tech-wise, even just in the past few years.

This is such a relief to me. Three Houses, while still plenty enjoyable, is an overwhelming mess of convoluted and obtuse systems, very few of them have proper tutorials and even ones that do, their actual purpose or worth often isn’t clear even if you take the time to have a Google dive. I’d rather have 10 percent of the systems, but the game provide me a clear understanding of what they do and how to properly use them.

The tech stuff I’ve seen in previews is interesting, too. Three Houses runs weirdly bad during the Monastery and can chug outside of it, it has that weird jagged, low detail visual style (especially in handheld) and it feels like a bunch of concessions were made all over the place. From the very limited maps, and very limited zoom in spots during the maps (there’ll be like two or three locations you will see when zoomed in, regardless of what is around your character at the time) to the almost visual novel like presentation.

Honestly as I am writing this, was Three Houses pushed out before it was ready?

Agreed. I'm glad to see that they've simplified things to make them easier to understand.

I think it was, yes. It's one of the more visually rough Nintendo games out there in my opinion, and I really do feel like the game launched before it could get polished up.

I am working on the another 3 houses playthrough and find it hilarious that I didn't notice any of the issues DF complained about. Not to say their complaints aren't valid but I'm glad none of that will impact me.

https://www.polygon.com/23539224/fire-emblem-engage-preview-i...

The Polygon preview likes the gameplay and map variety a lot, but one consistent thing I'm noticing is that previewers don't really have much in the way of praise for the game's original cast, which is a shame considering how strong the characters in Three Houses were.

On the upside, I'm glad that the weapon triangle is back.

@Ryu_Niiyama Well, the DF crew is looking for problems, although even I noticed how... kind of ugly the game was at the time. Just didn't really care, tbh, considering how high quality the rest of the experience was.

@Ralizah I am a little disappointed in the lack of memorable characters. Three Houses constantly made me want to gain support from people to learn new things about them. It's not a huge deal, as combat should always be the main focus, but it will be missed.

@StarPoint It's a bigger deal for me. Advance Wars will always be my preferred series when it comes to pure gameplay and tactical design. The strength of Fire Emblem is the way it combines tactics with interesting character stories and sweeping fantasy narratives.

I learned that the hard way when I played Fates: Conquest. In terms of map design and tactical balancing, it's one of the best entries in the series, but the writing was so insultingly bad that I actually sold my limited edition cartridge after finishing it, lol.

With that said, I don't expect Engage to come close to being as bad as Fates was in that respect, so when I do play it, I'll probably enjoy it well enough.

@Ralizah the writing of Fates really is the low point of the whole series since Awakening, isn't it? By the time I was close to finishing Birthright, I was so done with the whole game that I just kinda watched the end on YouTube, and even then, it wasn't worth it.

@ElRoberico It really is. Birthright was... fine. Mediocre. Diet Awakening. Didn't set my heart on fire, but also didn't offend my sensibilities. Conquest on the other hand... by the time I was done with that, I was ready to move on from Fates permanently. I ended up never actually playing Revelation, although a friend of mine tells me the writing is somehow even dumber in this route, and the map gimmicks were apparently awful.

@Ralizah YIKES about Revelation. Part of me wants to pick it up because it's going to go away forever, but part of me doesn't want to ever play Fates again.

It is interesting, because I personally do not enjoy the social elements of Three Houses (or at least how they were implemented), but my understanding is TH was one of the most successful and profitable games in the franchise’s history. Because of that, it seems almost bizarre (but also welcome’d) they’ve taken a sharp left turn here seemingly, leaning far more into the things I do love about TH.

@Pizzamorg Not one of. The most, by a decent margin.

Could be they want to vary up the entries a bit and also cater to fans of more traditional Fire Emblem gameplay.

Could be that the whole "Persona, but medieval" thing was an experiment.

At least they're confident enough in the property to try different things now. Fates felt very much like they were terrified of losing the audience that came in with Awakening.

Preview from Skill Up: https://twitter.com/WellPlayed_AU/status/1611294030457098242

Unsurprisingly, this game looks amazing on an OLED Switch.

I hadn't noticed this before, but you seem to be able to control a character directly now when moving them, instead of just controlling a cursor. Sort of like the new Mario + Rabbids.

"For me though, Three Houses made me care deeply about each and every battle because I cared about the fate of my students and the house I was representing. Story, characters, social sim and combat were all sympatico with one another. That balance doesn’t exist here..."

That's about what I expected, given what others have said.

Well, at least this'll give the crowd that cried about there being too much downtime in Three Houses something to be happy about.

I am honestly impressed at how good the game looks, both in the context of recent releases like Pokemon Scarlet but also even in the context of Three Houses. Colour alone makes it a big step up, but everything just looks crisper and cleaner here.

In terms of the game, the idea that the focus is the battles, and everything else serves the battles, a lot of previews are talking about it as a bad thing, but it sounds good to me. The more lukewarm the previews the more they are selling me on the game.

That said, you do need some downtime. I always thought they held back games like this, but then I played Gears Tactics which is basically just missions and gearing and basically nothing else, and God did that get tedious and repetitive after a while.

I would like to see them have another go at the Three Houses formula, but I’d just want them to do it better. More BioWare and less Atlus. Make it more intuitive to experience, and don’t make it possible for players to easily miss things that they then can’t experience without loading an earlier save or starting all over again.

@Ralizah While I appreciated the social elements of TH, I really don't mind them scaling things back a bit and focusing more on the core combat elements. I understand a lot of people enjoyed the social mechanics, and I had fun with them as well. However, I will say that I think they got a little too repetitive for me after a while. While the majority of characters were great, I think the process of growing bonds with people didn't really change or improve after a few hours into the game.

If Engage could have straight-up improved the social elements and made them more varied, that would probably be the ideal situation. But I also don't mind them scaling back these mechanics if it means the experience is a bit tighter overall and highlights combat as the main importance. Obviously, this remains to be fully seen until the game launches and we see how it plays out for ourselves, though.