Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

@Buizel interesting, and thanks for the tip! I haven't seen alot of stipulations like that in engage as of yet, and I finished chapter 9 last night. I recall a decent amount of those kinds of objectives in 3H and awakening, but I might be mistaken. Or maybe it was mario + rabbids 🤔. Now I can't remember lol. In those instances, ready your cavaliers and Pegasus knights for those I guess!

@JaxonH Awesome poster. Where'd you find that?

@Ralizah
Thanks! I really like it too. Here's where I bought from. I got poster material, not the cloth.

Three Houses Poster eBay

I also ordered this:

Three Houses 3D Shadow Box Etsy

While I have been going on about how easy the game is on Normal, that's probably somewhat of a disingenuous statement if I'm being honest. I'm not sure I've been able to finish a clean mission in my entire play through, but it's not mattered as I'm playing on casual. There are a bunch of missions in this game where I did clear fairly easily in just a couple of turns, however, had I been playing on Classic with the full intention of keeping everyone alive, I actually have no idea how I'd actually ever get through those missions. The AI is absolutely brutal when it comes to pouncing on any mistakes you may make.

@JaxonH Tbh a lot of my difficulty with Chapter 11 was me being stupid and not taking the objective seriously enough. That said, there are a couple of reasons to make Chapter 11 significantly more difficult than those than precede it so do watch out.

@Pizzamorg I've never played on Casual myself - I always go for Classic for the more "authentic" experience and I can almost guarantee that they feel vastly different. The latter is as much about keeping everyone alive as it is completing the mission, although I'm sure there are some who are okay losing units along the way (and I imagine this is the "intended" experience). In practice for me it's about reversing time if I get surprisingly one-shot or ganged up on or, in particularly challenging maps, essentially save-scumming every turn to see what sticks.

I do wonder how I'd go back to older games with this approach tbh. I remember having to start whole maps again in Awakening whenever someone died, which isn't fun tbh. I kinda wish they had a mode that was more in-line with Valkyria Chronicles - you can lose units in that game, but only if you fail to revive them within a set time window after they've been knocked out.

This is mostly why I play on Casual, as I figured if I was playing on Classic I'd be save scumming or the equivalent of that via the rewind. I recognise and appreciate the fear of losing a unit may add to someone's experience, but for me it'd just cause frustration and slow me down.

I get frustrated when I play these games. I should probably switch to casual. I use the rewind stone when I lose characters, and especially when one of my guys misses a 90% and gets critted to death in retaliation.
I've reached the difficulty spike around chapter 10-13, and although my Louis (and newly armoured Boucheron) are fairly sturdy, none of my other characters can really support them (least of all Alear), and in Chapter 13, Louis came pretty close to falling to some axe fighters.
I'm struggling with just one healer - Framme, and sometimes she's on punching duty, but I'm approaching the point where I can promote Celine, and she'll be able to take up a healing rod too.
Hopefully, with a few skirmishes, I'll be able to balance my army a bit more - I've had a look at my equipment, and optimised the inventories of some of my lower levelled characters, so hopefully, they'll be able to get involved a bit more.
I can't say I'm utilising the Emblems very well.

Somehow, despite being early in the game, despite having access to mid-chapter saves, despite having turn rewinds, despite having super-powered fusion forms... my characters keep dying, lol. The difficulty feels just right on Hard mode, IMO, which is one of the areas where this represents a gigantic improvement over Three Houses, which was always either too easy (even on Hard) or WAY too hard (on Maddening). I've resolved to only use the rewind stones for unlucky RNG rolls, or if someone kicks the bucket right near the end of a chapter at a boss or something. Restarting isn't as frustrating in this entry, since the game makes it a simple thing to restart the battle via the menu.

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about these super-powered forms where you fuse with your Stand to become more powerful for a couple of turns, but I actually don't mind it. Kinda reminds me of the CO powers in Advance Wars where you really need to be tactical with how you pop them.

My tactic for pretty much each map( depending on the distance of the enemy), is immediately end my turn as soon as battle starts. Then I allow the enemy to advance towards the unit so I can close the gap much easier, and then engage all my big guns and put them on the front lines. So Alear, Louis, Vander, and now Diamante. It works fairly well.

@Ralizah
I lost Alear before I had the time stone and had to redo a battle. It really wasn't that bad, like you say. Still, the rewinds are even easier. Btw, I lost characters on every map from chapter 2 - 6. But after that I stopped losing units. Maybe I started adapting my strategies, or I leveled up enough, or a combination of both.

@NintendoByNature
I've had to so that once or twice because rushing the enemy would've landed me in hot water. Usually when I do though I'll ensure the unit drawing the aggro has chain guard applied to them.

@edhe
Keep at it. Sounds like you understand what you need to do and are taking steps to do it, like inventory management and leveling. If you do switch to Casual though, don't feel bad about it. Use whatever setting helps you have the most fun. But I do think it's rewarding to overcome those difficult challenges if you persist.

@JaxonH
Thanks for the encouragement. I feel like a scrub when the game beats me, and when I have a sloppy mission, I feel determined to play the next one better. The problem with a character like Louis, however, is he's becoming a crutch, and subsequent skirmishes seem to be scaling with him.

One thing I wanted to ask everyone - what's your stance on early promoting? It feels good to level a character to 20 before changing their class, but now that I'm thinking about it, a character can, upon reaching max level in their advanced class, use a second seal, and effectively "prestige", and start again from level 1, while keeping their stat gains.
In Awakening, there was a benefit to levelling before reclassing, because you learned various skills along the way (In Fates, I believe if you reclassed to a higher level than a skill was learned, you'd gain it anyway). In Engage, the non-personal skills are tied to the Emblems. With this in mind, would early promotion be recommended?

Another thing - either Micaiah or Celica had a skill that allows a unit to wield a staff regardless of their class. Presumably, it's inheritable. My other question would be - is there an emblem skill that allows unrestricted use of other weapons? I'd love a bow general!

@edhe
I'm promoting as early as possible for the reasons you mentioned.

I know Leif allows learning proficiencies in like 6 different weapons. When engaged with Leif I think you get to use Axes, Swords and Lances, but only when engaged. Put him with a bow user like Alcryst and that's 4 weapons to use while engaged.

There may be special classes with multiple weapons, I just haven't checked.

@Reyren
Thanks!

And ya. The era of restarting battles after an unlucky crit or bad move, is thankfully over. That was a huge turnoff to players, so the rewind mechanic is a great way to persuade players to choose Classic without fear of it being brutally austere. Of course, in Hard/Maddening you are limited to 10 rewinds per map, but you can still save mid battle. So I'd recommend doing that every few turns just in case.

Way I see it is, if you restarted, you'd just repeat all your same moves again to get back to where you were. The rewinds simply save you the time of that repetition. If playing Hard Mode and you run out of rewinds, that's a good indicator the overall strategy was insufficient- it wasn't just 1 or 2 wrong moves, but the entire strategic approach needs to be reassessed, in which case restarting is the best option anyways.

I have found that such modern QoL features pamper me to the extent going back and playing older titles before Shadows of Valentia (the first game to implement rewinds) is much more stressful. At least Heroes of Light and Shadow/Awakening/Fates have a Casual mode if desired.

Ok, the devs recommend listening to the wake up animations with headphones. I thought surround sound was a fine substitute, but after listening with some Sennheiser 800S, they're not the same. They're just not.

Typically games and movies sound better in general with surround vs headphones, but for those animations specifically, they're designed in such a way that the audio pans from left, right and center with headphones, and is made to sound father away and up close.

I strongly recommend grabbing a good pair of headphones for the wake up animations. It really does add to the experience. I can't say how good they'll be with cheap headphones or earbuds, but with the Sennheiser 800S and a Creative DAC/AMP combo, it's really good.

@JaxonH Sorry. What's a wake up animation?

This is a good strategy/tips video.

One of the things I learned from it was the ReWarp Bomb technique.

Pair Michaia with a mage and give them a ReWarp staff (or Warp staff). Normally, ReWarp staff just warps the user, and Warp staff just warps one adjacent unit, but, syncing with Michaia extends range of staves. Meaning Heal staves turn into physics, and more importantly, ReWarp/Warp staves will work on all 4 adjacent tiles around the user.

Meaning.

You can ReWarp/Warp up to four units, which can be exploited to send a small assassin team behind enemy lines, perhaps to take out their aggravating healer, or to get at a boss without fighting your way through their retainers.

This is a game changer.

Also, this guy just beat Engage on Maddening and has some thoughts to share on the game and it's balance of difficulty. Spoiler: he says it's one of the best FE games ever made and fixes all the issues with previous games' difficulty.

Idk if I have the gall to try Maddening. But if I survive Hard Classic, maybe I'll consider it.

@Ralizah
If you go to your room in the Somniel and select "Sleep" next to the bed, time will pass and you'll receive an adorable Wake Animation from one of your units. There are 6 distinct Wake Animations from each character: C1, C2, B1, B2 and A1, A2.

They're pretty short but, I find them very charming and endearing. And with 6 different wake up animations spanning 3 dozen characters in the game, that's over 200 Wake Up animations to see in total. Even if it's just 20-30 seconds each, that's an additional 1-2 hours of dialog in the game to see, which can serve as flavor for the various characters.

Localization is not good. Again. I’m trying not to switch to Japanese text because that will slow my play time to a crawl (I hear better than I speak better than I read/write in Japanese and am reverse in English) but it’s starting to annoy me.

I’m really trying to find a way to grind for money. I can’t keep everyone adequately equipped. 3H taught me to value the entire roster instead of benching but this game plays like a sequel to the 3DS FE games so I feel like we are back to having a go to squad. And keeping Anna alive long enough to become useful is frustrating.

@JaxonH Interesting. Is there any value in sleeping, or is it purely a cosmetic thing?

I'll have to try it at least once with headphones. Only have cheap-ish ones, but I've never had an issue with the sound quality to date.

@Ryu_Niiyama LOL It really is back into the 3DS era, isn't it? Questionable localization work, censorship controversies, and the newest game continues to split the online fanbase. Almost makes me nostalgic for Fates, in a way.

@Ralizah It changes time of day, which affects fish in the pond. They're just cute animations though.

Btw I have no issues with localization. They revised some suggestive dialog with a child. Like... good? I'm ok with that. As long as they're not blurring cleavage like TMS, I'm happy.

@Ryu_Niiyama
Yes, you're not meant to level them all up. It's designed like older entries where new units are optional replacements for fallen units. Pick your faves and roll out. You can keep them all leveled- there's infinite skirmishes to do so. But with 3 dozen characters in the game, you're gonna have your work cut out for you.

I benched Anna as her stats were awful and EXP gain was slow. If I want supports I'll just eat meals with her. As for all my other units, I've managed to keep all of them within 2 levels of each other, and only did 1 divine paralog and 2 skirmishes thus far. It may prove more difficult as more characters join the roster, but so far so good.

edit
It also just occurred to me that because there are so many characters in the game (similar to Awakening, for example) and by extension so many supports, it actually encourages multiple playthroughs using different units each time. You could play the game 3 times with 3 separate groups of 12 for maps. Granted, you may need a little overlap until some characters join, but immediately swap out for them when they do.

Given there's only 1 route this time, that's actually good for repeat playthroughs feeling fresh.