Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

Yo wtf!!!

Wyvern Riding has motion controls?!!!

I paused during it and it showed "X - switch to motion controls"!!!!!!

edit
And the gyro is really good! I just broke my high score first try using them!!!

@Ralizah
See above!!! ^^^^^

Gamechanger!!!

@JaxonH Sure enough. They should probably make the option a little more obvious somehow.

I didn't get a new high score (normal is easy enough with a stick that I've already mastered it), but I'm willing to bet it helps out a lot on higher difficulties.

I am getting pretty close to the end of the story now and have been bored for a while, so I've been messing around with using Leif to force characters out of the predetermined progression paths they are on to more out there class choices and while it rarely ever works, this experimentation is some of the most fun I've had in Engage.

I've got Protag-Chan running around as a Wolf Knight. If there is a downside to this class, I don't see it. Well other than the goofy wolf model, every character I've had as a Wolf Knight is a WMD and the protag being one is no different. As a lot of missions also require Protag to survive, even on Casual, I tend to pair her with Sigurd for a hit and run style carpet bombing on the enemy before we race off to safety. Very satisfying.

I am running Diamant as a General. This is honestly kinda whatever, but the black and red armour looks really cool and it is good to have an unbreakable armoured Unit in your Roster, and this way I could finally bench Louis who kinda sucked for me.

I have Yunaka as a Berserker. This feels like it isn't working, but I dunno if it is just because she was a Wolf Knight before, the solo map clearing class of ultimate destruction that this just feels like a massive downgrade by comparison but oh well.

I got Panette as a thief. Pretty much any knife based class paired with Lynn seems really strong in my experience, so this has been a success mostly I think for that reason. And also for the thigh high socks and booty shorts Panette gets as this class.

I am also running Fagado as a warrior, I was kinda worried this would be a downgrade as what is better than jumping off a camel, doing 360 hangtime criting enemies out of the sky? Well the answer is this class, where Fagado adopts some kind of weird shirt that only covers like one quarter of his body, displaying a surprisingly shredded physique for someone who parties so hard all the time. Plus as this is a backup class, I actually find he has far more general use as a Warrior, than he did as a Cupido running around the edge taking down flying Units.

@Pizzamorg Not only did Three Houses allow you to focus on a smaller roster of characters at once, the entire gameplay loop was character-driven, focusing on getting to better know your students and develop their unique abilities. In particular:

• One of the first things you do in the game is speak to all the house leaders to get a description of the students in their houses.
• Every character had something important to say about the events of each chapter, and many were meaningfully impacted by the events in the story.
• "Lost items" added character development by reinforcing characters' interests.
• Proficiency and classes were largely directed by what you, as their teacher, helped them focus on.
• Each character had their own strengths and weaknesses, often including budding talents.
• Social activities in the monastary have a direct benefit on battle performance or the ability to level up proficiency stats.

I realise I'm probably overselling some of these (they were by no means all done perfectly). But my point is that Three Houses was very much a character-driven game in which the characters happened to be your battle units. In Engage, it feels more like these are primarily a bunch of battle units who also happen to occasionally say things to each other.

@Buizel I agree with that assessment, and it also lines up with the more socially-focused gameplay loop of TH, where you're connecting with these people every day. Engage feels very classically Nintendo in the sense that nobody is particularly interested in the inner lives of these characters, and they exist primarily to facilitate interesting gameplay. Support convos are primarily there for comedic effect as well.

In a weird way, Three Houses v Engage feels very reminiscent of the Persona v SMT split.

Funny you say that, I was jokingly going to call Engage "Three Houses without the heart" a week or two ago, but I thought it would needlessly ruffle some feathers Dx (from both FE and SMT fans...)

Again, I want to point out that I am enjoying Engage. But it's definitely lacking in a few of the things I loved about TH.

@Buizel lol

Never understood the outcry over that review. People were always going to compare SMT to P5, and it clearly wasn't intended maliciously.

Yeah, I didn't expect Engage to top Three Houses for me, because the narrative elements are more important for me than they are for some people. I can't imagine skipping cutscenes, even when it's some nonsensical support convo where a character exclusively talks about pickles. If I wanted PURE tactical gameplay and nothing else, I'd just wait for Advance Wars.

WIth that said, I also happen to really like the gameplay, so, if that was up to snuff, I just needed the story to not be a total dumpster fire ala Fates: Conquest, and I think it achieved that.

The only thing that properly disappoints me are the skirmishes. Like, I just tried one, and it put me at the bottom of the map and bombarded me with 20+ powerful pegasus knights on all sides. How is that fair or interesting? It's the Mario Maker approach to difficulty. Engage doesn't have a good mechanism for leveling up underleveled units or grinding support between characters, and that's disappointing.

The characters in this are... I think they're meant to be simple. Sort of like how Raphael was in Three Houses.

@Ralizah Yeah TBH I'm enjoying the game a lot more after just accepting it for what it is, even if that means skimming over a lot of the dialogue and ignoring a lot of the somniel. The story is better than I initially expected, which I'm fine with. I've already expressed my feelings on those brutal skirmishes... But yeah, the core gameplay makes up for a lot of this IMO, it's just too good.

My approach to SMTV was similar. It didn't quite give me the same satisfaction as Persona 5...but I enjoyed it nonetheless and personally tried not to compare the two much at all.

Some thoughts about this game

I've been playing Engage about 20 hours and so far I like it a lot better than Three Houses. The only annoying thing has been the loading screens when you go to the arena or ring chamber in Somniel.

Some reviewers have complained that there is not enough backstory for the Emblems. I think that's dumb. The Emblems are more like weapons than actual people in this game. It's still nice they can talk a bit and we do get some brief nods of their history too.

The support and other conversations with the actual cast are just as good as ever. I think the people claiming the writing is worse this time around are in some kind of collective psychosis caused by some early previews. It's on par with stuff like Awakening. I've played almost every entry. Sure, there are more goofy moments this time around, but yeah, watch out! There's fun ahead, let's take another road.

There's one thing that hasn't been mentioned too often. It's nice to see the characters actually doing stuff in the hub, like swimming or reading a book, than just standing on one place. As for the main character, he/ she is voiced this time around thank god. Byleth was so awkward as a mute person.

I understand why they made the main story and setting such a cliched straightworward thing. This game is clearly celebrating the history of the series. If we had some super complex political thriller going on, it wouldn't quite fit in with the emblems and stuff. Granted, I haven't completed the game yet but even with this simple story there have been some dramatic moments already. The best cutscene so far was better than anything in Three Houses. It's not Xenoblade 3 level but good entertainment.

The gameplay and graphics are series best By Far. It's not simply the artstyle, some of the map designs are grand. It's a thing when you get to walk on them all 3d after clearing the mission. The character art is not all cutesy anime either, there are more realistic faces in the form of bandits and villagers- just like it was in the earlier games.

This is the first game I've ever played with meaningful achievements. It's possible to get bond fragments by claiming them from the bulleting board.

All this makes me think this game is slightly underrated. Maybe I'll update this when I've completed the game.

Just lost my first ever skirmish that I was using to level up Anna.

So I intentionally let all characters die, kept EXP and tried again, this time with revised tactics, and guess what? Dominated.

It really is all about the tactics. This one was in the desert with quicksand, with enemies rushing from all sides. Once you learn how to properly leverage Louis with Lyn doubles, use Reposition to flip doubles to other side as needed, and use Ivy with Byleth to dance 4 characters to act again, it's so much easier.

One downside is, Anna leveled up 6 times, but still hasn't gained a single point in Defense or Resistance. Her Luck is through the roof, but man... I need defense desperately. As soon as I get to Lv 10 I'm reclassing to High Priest for the growths.

Getting the to keep the exp is great; I do a few suicide runs to help level my lower characters, although I have almost all maxed on base so just trying to get 1500SP per person for Starsphere so I can move on and start playing the story again. Loving the money train though. I do need to switch Anna to High Priest soon but I wanna max out her strength gains as warrior first and then flip her to max out luck. At that point every kill she nets should be a money shot. I still wish the Somniel was easier to traverse similar to the monastery and I still don't care about the characters (sadly) but otherwise I am having a blast. Goal is to max out donations for for Firene and Brodia before I move on (with the amount of money Anna makes me its not that hard of an ask now). Once I do that I'll level a few more weapons and then keep going. Also going to see if I can make a sizeable dent in my golden deer run on 3H. Since Engage's story is missing for me I've decided to add CF to my runs so technically I have 3 more playthroughs to go.

Ended up getting the copy of a friend who's already fed up with the game (lol, think she played through the story, at least)

So far... It's not great. I'm very early into the story and rn it just feels off. Like, it's not as mind numbingly awful as... Certain people will say. But it's not great so far. That's not what struck me as weird tho. It's the voice direction and the way dialogs are written (by the localization team, I assume)

Some of the conversations don't feel like actual people talking to each other. You can tell they let the VAs read their lines separately at some points and it's awkward and kind of off-putting. I haven't touched many supports yet because I started with the first Framme/Alear one and now I'm scared of how the others will go. It seems like those things are what annoy people the most and I can definitely see why someone wouldn't like at least that one scene whatsoever. I need to get into the right mood to "binge" supports, even for characters I genuinely liked in the older games, but I will definitely try to get as many as I can throughout the game and judge them for myself tho. Curious how some of the early characters will act.

Emblems are better than I expected, as far as gameplay mechanics go. It looked tacky and OP in what little I watched of trailers but it doesn't really seem to break stuff. Not super into everyone floating and turning into TMS characters tho (I really like TMS, for the record, but I thought the base designs in Engage were already over designed and...yeah, the engage forms get wild. Really like Chloe's and Celine's tho. Celine straight up looks better in that Form, tbh, I hate the DUMB dress)

Alear, so far, is a wet towel. A dumb one at that. But I do appreciate her outright going for the kill in battles. That's already better than what the bubbly, moe art direction sorta implied/had me expect.

There's not much else I can say rn, but I will say that I do not like the somnial, mechanically. It seems like if you wanna get whatever lies around in that area whenever you go there it's gonna waste your time and it's overly twisty and convoluted to get around in with all the intertwining, tinya** paths all over the thing. Makes me think of the Ancient Forest in MHW which makes me want to vomit whenever I think about how utterly idiotic the level design for that one is. Off topic as hell but I hope they don't let the person who are responsible for that stupid forest EVER touch another monster hunter area... 🙃

Also, still not on board for Engage's character designer. Her art is awesome, it looks great. But the designs are either hella OTT or almost on the brink of super bland with very little in between in Engage. What I've seen so far - and I did look at characters I probably won't see for another ten chapters/battles or so - already leaves me cold for the most part. The characters from, I think, Brodia look generally alright, I like Chloe and the twins but beyond that I'm hard pressed to say which ones I actually like. I hope some of the personalities will win me over.

...i think that ended up being sort of all over the place, thought I'd share my very early impressions like everyone else tho.

(I don't really have an opinion on map design yet, they're early FE maps, alright lol)

It is weird @Buizel @Ralizah as I know I have said a lot of negative stuff about Engage in this thread, but I actually dunno whether I really like it any less than Three Houses. I loved Three Houses RPG systems, its customisation, the characters and its combat, but I could have happily done without the Monastery and all that entailed, and while I liked the richness of the characters, I actually didn't like the story that much (and especially having almost four different versions of the same story you would have to replay the game to experience, how on Earth did that get signed off) and thought the general pacing of that game kinda sucked.

So while I would say Engage is probably worse in a lot of ways, if I had to pick one of them up, I'd probably pick Engage even still. I guess not that it really matters, but it looks nicer and runs better. But more meaningfully the combat is more fun, even if the customisation and RPG wrappings around it are weaker. While I would have liked to have some meaningful off the battlefield activities, I guess at least I can just skip the Somniel, rather than feeling like I was gimping myself in Three Houses whenever I didn't engage with the Monastery, despite how tedious I found that stuff.

Like I am probably going to have a better time with Three Houses overall, but I know I gotta wade through a lot of stuff I don't enjoy to get to the parts I really do enjoy, whereas with Engage I can just play for an hour, do a battle, do really minimal admin and be ready to jump straight into my next Mission or whatever whenever I want to play again.

Struggling to get into Engage. The storytelling and characters are cringeworthy to the point of detracting from the game. Too anime for me perhaps. The 3rd person after-battle sparkly gold spot collectathons are a bizarre choice, and I've stopped even talking to anyone in those sequences as no one ever has anything worth listening to. The Somniel is also pretty dull and there are some frustrating gameplay decisions like unskippable character intros in the arena training. I agree that the combat is better than Three Houses but I am also finding that pretty rote and I don't think there's enough of a hook to keep me going in this one unfortunately. Bummer.

Okay, one thing about the UI in this game continues to bother me...and it's that half the time, I can't tell who my units are on the map.

Is it just me? Is this something I'll just get used to as I become more familiar with the characters, or is there some UI feature that I'm missing? It seems strange that the developers decided to include little icons denoting the emblems attached to each unit, with no clear indication of who the unit actually is outside of their currently equipped weapon and their type (covert/backup/etc.). Three Houses was very helpful by showing you a icon of the character's face so there was never such confusion.

Yeah, I really enjoy that about this title as well, even if I personally prefer Three Houses.

I really hope the remaining DLC emblems go outside of Shadow Dragon, Awakening, Fates and Three Houses.

@Buizel maybe zoom in a bit more? I was having issues playing/telling characters until I thickened the gridlines and zoomed in some.

Trying out Anna as a high priest. I was nervous because I was so reliant on her axe swinging but she punches pretty hard and that works for me! The luck growths are paying off literally.

I need to stop doing skirmishes and focus on the main story. The last 3 sessions have been all skirmishes and paralogues lol. I think I'm 24ish hrs in and only at chapter 14? Crazy talk!

Just beat Chapter 15. Game is so freaking good, it's all I think about from the moment I wake up, all day at work... it's just like my first experience with Awakening.

I realize now what I was missing- challenge. This game does Hard Classic so gosh dang well, I feel like a crack addict who's gotta get his strategy fix.

I fear it's gonna ruin my Blue Houses playthrough though. After experiencing proper maps and strategic depth, I'm not sure anything but a Maddening Engage run or Fates Conquest/Revelation will scratch this itch now. Just sucks Fates doesn't have rewinds, which makes it much harder to deal with. Maybe... maybe it's time to do an Ironman run in Fates. There's certainly enough characters to do so, and there's a special staff that revives the last fallen unit you can get (though it only has 2 uses). And it's not the end of the world to restart if needed.

Got another 2 S-rank rings (though neither have skills). And beat Lucina's paralog. Time to knock out Lyn's and the other few I've unlocked.

@Grumblevolcano We already know what they are

@Ryu_Niiyama
Got my Anna up to Level 20, but didn't have a Master Seal so she's still in her base class, and still only has 7 Def. But on Ch 15 I made at least 2k from her. As long as she has Tiki I don't have to worry about her dying. Gave her Mentorship and Lineage to boost XP.

Hopefully the item shop will restock Master Seals after that chapter so I can get her some frickin defense.