Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

@JaxonH To be fair, it's just the one skirmish I've ultimately had to give up on because it was too challenging. I've managed to beat the others after a bit of trouble. But generally I am finding them more challenging than the main story which, outside of chapter 11, I've really had no trouble with.

It's just bizarre really.

Really, if the skirmishes are causing me so much more trouble than the main story I should just give up on the most difficult ones anyway. My goal is to finish the main story, after all.

I think the issue is the design intent of the skirmishes makes almost no sense at all.

Even if it was calculating just on Alear's level or putting most of the weight onto Alear's level this is just inherently stupid and goes against the purpose of the Skirmishes in the first place Naturally through the course of the story Alear is probably always going to be one of, if not your highest, level character. And since like 90 percent of the purpose of skirmishes is grinding, this means it is always going to put the missions out of reach for the Units who actually need it.

The skirmishes should be scaled off of your weakest Units, not your strongest. Or it should just do what Midnight Suns did, and provide am ever raising floor for levels, so Units can only fall behind a couple of levels from whoever is highest and will level up even while on the bench when other Units get stronger.

For people doing runs where they accept the fate of dead Units, I dunno what you'd even do here. You'd have to do so much pre-planning to make sure no Unit falls behind, because if you lost a couple of strong Units late into the game and had only the fallen behind Units, there is seemingly no way to recover from that and so that whole run would just be lost I guess?

@Pizzamorg While I agree with the general sentiment I think scaling to the weakest unit wouldn't work. People aren't necessarily leveling their whole team so you might end up with skirmishes that are under levelled. Moreover the loss of your weakest units would punish you further by...making the skirmishes more difficult.

Honestly I think the simplest and most effective thing would just be to scale them to be in line with the main story. That should ensure that they're roughly the difficulty you need them to be at any point in the game.

I think people would though, if it scaled to the weakest Unit. As then they would take out their Strongest who would see no benefit and rotate in their weakest for maximum benefit, meaning their squad will always be rotating and keeping their levels fairly close. This is what I tried to do with the system as it is, but there are a bunch of Units now that are so far behind, there is just no salvaging them.

But yes, your other idea or the Midnight Suns approach is a more elegant solution all around.

Considering I couldn't really find info on this searching myself I assume I know the answer but did they actually say what their 30€/$ dlc pass will include beyond the costumes(?) in the day 1 batch?

I have zero interest in that stuff as it is but I'm just kind of confused why they manage to do that for every other Nintendo published game but not this one. If I wanted to be overly pessimistic I'd assume they want people to shell out cash now because they know the full thing won't end up being worth it.

@Dom_31
Nobody knows aside from the data mined emblem bracelets.

But judging by Three Houses excellent expansion, I'm quite confident Engage's story expansion will likewise be well worth it to any fan.

But if you don't wanna buy it now, just wait til it's out.

@Buizel
Paralogues have fixed leveling, and there are some 15 or so throughout the game, which should be plenty. So you kinda do have that. Notwithstanding the fact I haven't had issues with skirmishes and even you only struggled with one. But rest assured, paralogs are fixed level.

Speaking of the DLC, is it free with the online sub like Mario Kart and Splatoon 2 or do you actually have to buy it?

@jump
It is not included with NSO+ but maybe that could change in the future (I doubt it but, you never know). As I understand it, only the big 20+ mil evergreen expansions are being used for NSO+. Stuff like Fire Emblem or Xenoblade are not included.

@JaxonH Cheers.

That's a shame but fine. I was hoping they'd bundle all future DLC with the subscription as a way to bump up it's value when they first announced it and this was just the first game with DLC I actually want.

@jump
Would have been nice. Though my OCD-tendancies lead me to buy anyways, since I like ownership where the content can't be revoked. But those more frugal than I would certainly appreciate it. They probably feel games selling under 5m aren't mainstream enough.

But imo, making the expansion free would incentivise more sales of the base game to the masses. And there's a loooot of Switch gamers who haven't played Xenoblade or Fire Emblem. That would be a smart tactic to lure in sales.

Wow, that bond ring exploit is super useful! It's obviously a little tedious to do normally, but it'll be a useful way to grind while I'm watching shows at night.

@Ralizah
What's that? I take it you roll a bunch of rings and then reset if you don't like the results?

@JaxonH Basically. The rank of a given ring seems to be positionally set across all bond rings. So, if you roll for ten rings at a time, and rings 2 and 5 are S rank on one bond ring, the same seems to be true across all of them. So you can reset the game, go back to your save, and buy the rings one at a time until you get the ones you were looking for (in this case, the second and fifth rings), saving a bunch of points in the process. And if you don't get any S ranks, entering a paralogue or new chapter and quitting out of it through the battle prep menu seems to reset the order.

I feel like this video could really help some people here with their survivability learning optimal attack order.

@Ralizah
Oh nice.

The more I play this game, the less the simple plot, thin characterizations, abundant humor, and cartoonish art-style bother me.

This might sound weird, but Fire Emblem Engage feels EXACTLY like the sort of game I'd expect if I only played stuff like Mario/Zelda/Pikmin/etc. and heard that Nintendo was making a fantasy-themed SRPG. In terms of Intelligent Systems' output, it immediately feels more akin to their other series, like Paper Mario, Warioware, Advance Wars, etc.

This is even more the case given how polished and visually pleasing the game is.

@Ralizah Honestly, I feel like this game is probably the best introduction for those who haven't played the series before, or tactics rpgs in general. If you go into it knowing that it doesn't have a super deep plot, and more thin characters, it's still a pretty solid game overall. It's my third attempt at getting into this series (would've played more of Three Houses, but the game was hard for me to get into, due to how complicated it was for a first time player), and so far I'm enjoying it far more due to how simple the gameplay is to get behind.

I think the characters and the story etc would have been more acceptable as they are if the game wasn't so damn long. I'm at like the 45ish hour mark and I think I still have four or five chapters still to go? And this is someone who is basically skipping the Somniel and those battle walk around things and everything as much as one can, too. Why are modern games so bloated? I've felt like I was done with this for ages and if still keeps going.

@Ralizah
I think labeling plot and characters as thin only makes sense in the context of a comparison to Three Houses. It's definitely lighter than that, but compared to say, Awakening, there's far more story cutscenes and character dialog, enough that I'm wrapped up in the story wondering what's going to happen. Whereas Paper Mario and Advance Wars, Pikmin... that's on another level entirely. Like, this game has more story and better characters than 9 out of 10 games Nintendo releases, it's just that, compared to Three Houses its less. If Three Houses never existed nobody would likely bat an eye. In fact it probably would be praised for having a better story and characters than the 3DS era games.

All that said, remember this was designed as an celebratory game of the series. It's clear not only from the leak but the fact all games are represented in it, which is something you do as a one-off. It's kinda like if Nintendo released a new Zelda Four Swords, and people started criticizing it for not being like Breath of the Wild. That's just not what it's trying to be. Better to enjoy Four Swords for the kind of experience it offers, and BotW for the kind it offers.

Which is why I don't suspect this is the "new direction" of the series (though I'd be perfectly ok with that if it was, since it's not really a new direction at all but the old direction), I think it's a special release celebrating the series and you can't really build a game like Three Houses around a concept like that. But the 3DS structure fits it like a glove, so it makes sense that's why they designed it the way they did.

I do think future FE will follow this format to an extent, but with entirely new characters- this will be the only game with an all star cast. And without the Emblems, they'll put more of a focus back on story again, since I imagine integrating them into Engage took quite a bit of work.

@VoidofLight
Thats why Awakening garnered so many new fans. It was (relatively speaking) easy to jump into without being overbearing. I had never played a turn based game in my life save an hour of FFX on Vita, and had decided I didn't get the appeal. And yet I managed to get sucked in by Awakening. Engage feels like Awakening 2.0 but as a celebratory game with a who's who all-star cast spanning the series back 3 decades.

@JaxonH I wasn't actually criticizing it, wishing it was something it wasn't, and I certainly don't think this is indicative of what future games in the series will be like. I was simply observing that, narratively and tonally, it feels more like Nintendo's all-ages offerings than previous games in the series I've played. Even Awakening/Fates.

Maybe that impression will change as I get deeper into the game, but, so far, it feels more like a Legend of Zelda or Paper Mario plot where the story sequences exist mainly as charming connective tissue between different gameplay sections, and story progression is built around collecting objects that take the cast around the world.

Even the support conversations feel less meaningful than comparable skits often did in Awakening/Fates, because there's not really a strong sense of identity underlying much of this cast.

I don't think you can point to the inclusion of Emblems for the lack of a substantive plot, either. Maybe they become more integral to the game as it gets deeper in, but, so far, they're being used largely as interchangeable plot devices. You could easily have a plot focus and include that element if you developed it a bit, fleshed out the personalities of the Emblems, etc. They could have made something with this concept that was more along the lines of most previous entries in terms of tone, but instead opted for the approach that would allow a simplistic adventure-style narrative.

@Pizzamorg I feel like it's less that modern games are bloated, and more that older games, often due to memory limitations, tended to be underdeveloped in a number of ways. A game like Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade would be decently longer if it was remade today, even if it didn't really add much to the story, just because the experience would be more fleshed out than was possible for games on the GBA.

@VoidofLight I think it depends on what your expectations are going in (the strong focus on social interactions in Three Houses seems to have done a lot to expand interest in the series, which is reflected in its strong sales numbers), but, in general, it does feel a lot like this entry is going for more mainstream appeal. Which is a bit ironic, since Three Houses' mechanics and build options felt much more streamlined to me.

So after hours of struggling with the skirmishes (and mostly getting nowhere), I decided to return to the main story and...the difference is night and day. The main story missions are an absolute joke compared to the skirmishes --- it honestly feels like I'm playing on a completely different difficulty setting. I was, somewhat counterintuitively, even able to level up a few lower-level units as they finally managed to do decent damage and take a hit or two. I've looked elsewhere and apparently this is a reasonably common problem for people...I wonder if it's enough of a problem for them to patch it in the future, or whether it's just a bizarre design choice that they're happy to keep in the game. Either way, I think I'm avoiding skirmishes in the mean time for my own sanity.

@Ralizah I'm starting to appreciate the story and characters for what they are, despite my criticism earlier. Everything is a little more one-note compared to Three Houses, but I'd be lying if I said it doesn't all have it's own charm, and as JaxonH mentioned, it's a bit more fitting for a "celebratory" title to keep things a bit more simple.

I think I agree with @Pizzamorg about things being bloated though. This game seems to have so much fluff, particularly in the exploration sections. I find myself enjoying the game a lot more when I just ignore it. And now with the skirmishes kicking my ass compared to a relatively laid back main story, I wonder why I'm not just making a beeline through the main story.