Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

@Ralizah
Touche 😀

I actually think it works with simple, classic stories like what Engage and Awakening use because it's kind of the identity of the series, just like Zelda and it's recurring story themes. Whereas with a story that different and specific, I don't think it would work trying to recycle and reinvent.

They would be a good fit for Holy War, except that story is already written so, there wouldn't be much for them to do. I imagine Holy War will simply be done akin to Shadows of Valentia, building on what's already there.

As for difficulty, I found Three Houses Normal fairly comfy, until the Black Knight chapter which I died on. It was then I thought, "I can't even imagine how hard this would be on Hard Mode" and it scared me off of Hard once again. Maybe it wouldn't seem as hard now as I feel I'm improving.

I played Conquest on Hard Casual, I believe? I know I was too scared to depart from my Casual safety net at the time, but because of that safety net, wasn't afraid to up the ante a bit with Hard, especially after beating Birthright on Normal Casual without issue, which boosted my confidence.

@JaxonH noted on KT, i may just have to check the game out. As for engage, I just did a few skirmishes before chapter 8 and I'm off to bed. I'm all geared up for the next chapter with upgrades, items, training etc. I may just up the difficulty and Try classic, but we'll see 😉.
@grumblevolcano good to know!

Honestly, so far (16 Chapters in), I wouldn't say Engage and Three Houses have dramatically different stories. Engage is just a paper thin, surface telling, of the kind of story Three Houses went for. You have got this awakened deity amnesiac protagonist who holds the key to some grand power, a big bad dragon baddie with an intrinsic link to the protag, a series of kingdoms with specific traits to set them apart who are all either at war, or have some kind of uneasy alliance and you have a McGuffin driving the motivations of everyone. Three Houses just provided depth and dimension to all of that, whereas Engage is just a shounen anime where colourful characters fight the baddies because it is the right thing to do or whatever.

Oh man, I love the representation Rosado provides, but oh boy I dunno whether the forces of evil are bigots or what, but every time I put him in my team I swear every enemy unit on the map guns for him and I can't keep him up to save my life.

@Pizzamorg
This boy confuses me sexually and I like both genders, that's not a bad thing I love him XD
and here I was being confused with Grusha in Scarvi...
I always make sure I have Framme there to protecc him/Ivy/Merrin those three are my MVP's right now.

Haha, as the same, I welcome that Rosado confusion.

I recently swapped Framme over to a Martial Arts Master or whatever the advance class was, after having her as a High Priest for ages, because you get that new Unit who starts as a High Priest and having two seemed unnecessary. Framme is way more useful in this class I have found.

Maybe it is just because I have been ignorant to it through my whole playthrough (I got Jean from that paralogue, but he fell behind really quickly and any attempt to try and drag him up has been hopeless), but hand to hand units are really useful.

Framme is great for setting up breaks for other units with bad matchups, or guarding fragile units with chain guard, she also seems to have really high I dunno what stat it is, avoid, dex and dodge must all do different things, but I have no idea what, but either way, she dodges stuff like it is the matrix and those hand to hand parry animations? Eugh, so clean. I have her paired with a ring I won't spoil, but it makes her even more versatile as a support/healing unit, while amplifying her One Punch Man status.

Gotta be honest, I haven't made much use of Merrin or Ivy. On the first mission you get Merrin, they ended up in no man's land across the map but effectively cleaned house. It was kinda insane to watch as units were rushing (her? Him?), and they would just dodge everything and take them down. One of the standout performances from any Unit I've had. However, I'd already invested in Yunaka as a Wolf Knight at that point and didn't see the value in two of them (especially as that other Unit you get who starts as a thief has been really useful for me as well).

In terms of Ivy, I tend to try and take lower level units into Skirmishes in the vague hope I might get lucky and level some up, and then tend to take my strongest units into story missions just in case I have any tricky objectives. I have a bunch of Units like Ivy which sorta sit in the middle between my highest and lowest, so they never end up in my rotation - one of the many issues with the huge roster size, but I guess this is also my fault for playing on casual, rather than playing on classic and letting fate declutter some of my roster. But as I am on casual, I assume naturally over time she may end up falling down far enough that I'll try and drag her through some skirmishes.

Or if I get a ring I feel will pair with her, she could get back in that way. I have rotated a bunch of Units I dropped fairly early on back into rotation because the synergy or flexibility an Emblem pairing affords them, it hasn't always worked out (actually I think it failed on almost every attempt lol), but both Diamant and Etie at least who were basically dropped, have now got new life as dominant members of my roster because of the Emblem pairings I gave them and I am in the process of redragging Boucheron through the mud with me as well, although I hear his best class is Berserker and I already have and adore Panette who starts as a Berserker, so maybe my efforts on Bo are wasted.

I just had a question that someone here might know the answer to. Do the skirmishes on the world map scale with the main characters level?
I was doing a fair few to level up a some lower level characters and they are showing as level 13 battles whereas the main questline is only at like 8 or 9.
If it scales with the protag, I probably shouldn't include them in these fights or it would be harder for the lower level characters to stay alive as I keep going.

Oh is that what is happening? Skirmishes have been basically useless for me through my whole playthrough as they are always a truly massive leap ahead of whatever the current story mission level was and the AI seems to absolutely smell blood in the water when it comes to low level units and will defy all logic to beeline and take them down straight away.

I run the protag in every mission, I'm not sure if you can even take them out, I've never tried, so if it is scaling off of them, it might make sense as to why there is such a discrepancy between the level requirements. If that is the case though, I think that design is really poor and I can't work out why they would design it in that way.

@alpacatears
I think they scale, but I've heard a lot of ppl say the skirmishes are several levels ahead of where they are. I haven't had issues- I can usually take on enemies up to 5 levels above. Try one and see how it goes. I don't think removing Alear will change anything but, who knows

@JaxonH Hard/Classic Conquest is still one of the most challenging gaming experiences I've enjoyed to date. Trying to keep people alive during certain chapters (Vietnam flashbacks to Ch. 10) took a year off my life somewhere, I'm almost convinced. I have no idea how people do Lunatic runs of that game on Classic.

@Ralizah
Is that the chapter in the cave with caltrops and activated traps?

I remember struggling with that one.

@JaxonH It's the chapter where you're defending specific spaces in an expansive fort from an enemy invasion for a number of turns. It wouldn't be too horrible if it was a simple Rout the Enemy map, but since your goal is to prevent enemies from reaching a certain point on the map, you're constantly having to put your units in danger to keep them from reaching the goal.

Maps like that were hell on classic/hard prior to the introduction of the Divine Pulse mechanic, lol.

@Ralizah
Oh I bet. Rewinds have been a game changer, in the literal sense.

It's so nice going back to correct your mistakes without wasting half an hour redoing the exact same moves just to get back to that same point you were at. Rewinds are basically same as a reset, but with QoL of auto-performing all your same moves up to that point to save the tedium.

10 rewinds may sound like a lot, but I'm consistently using 5 of them on early game maps. If you burn through them all, that's truly the loss scenario.

I’m going to try not to use divine pulse 2.0. I fine tune my actions enough as is.

@JaxonH normal classic. I don’t up the difficulty unless I replay (except 3H cuz I like my blood pressure where it is thank you. Will probably do my final silver snow run on the hardest setting though).

It’s so much worse because Mitsuishi-sama is my favorite VA.

I love Fire Emblem Engage so much.

Sooooo so so so much 😀

@JaxonH Did not expect to see that name referenced in Engage, did not see that coming at all.

I don't think I could put the things I'd do for Pokemon Conquest 2 here without being banned.

I really love Engage right now. It's exactly what I need to really get through the day to be honest.

@Ralizah Chapter 10 was MENTAL

Without going into any specific spoilers, one interesting thing about Engage's story for me is despite it's external candy coating and general shounen trappings, it is a story remarkably defined by failure, rather than success through the power of friendship or whatever. In fact, I'd argue the vast majority of the story based goals per chapter (not the mission goal itself), you fail at almost every time, and it usually costs many people their lives. The story doesn't ever really do anything with this, or at least hasn't so far at least, so really all it does is create a tonal disconnect, but I still appreciate it all the same.

Can we agree Alear is the best player character since the Tellius games?

Ar first I thought Alear looked strange, but now I think they not only look normal, but their design is awesome (playing female, male didn't resonate with me as much, and voice acting isn't as good). They're extremely relatable which is a huge change from the Byleths, Robins and Corrins.

Idk. They've really grown on me in a way I wasn't expecting. Not saying they're my favorite protagonist in the series, but I do think they're one of the better ones we've had in a long time. Just being voiced and not being a blank slate is probably a big part of that, but alsonth3 fact they show weakness and character growth as they step into a leadership role.

On the topic of hardest things experienced with FE, I've found that nothing has compared to Radiant Dawn Part 3 Chapter 13. Out of all the stuff localized the only ones I haven't played are Fates Conquest, Fates Revelation (only played the Birthright path for Fates and didn't like it enough to justify playing the other 2 routes) and NES FE1 (stopped after a few chapters, it hadn't aged well like most NES games and made me appreciate the remake more).