Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

Since the DLC seems to be coming fast and furious, I wonder if we're going to get the full DLC before Zelda.

I finished the DLC maps. Hector and Soren's maps were very fun. Meanwhile Camilla's map was really obnoxious such that I cheesed it by rushing the boss using my overpowered Ivy.

@Grumblevolcano
Why didn't you like Camilla's map? I recognize it as one of my favorite Fates maps

The DLC reveal for Fire Emblem Engage was super awesome and hype. Regarding emblems, if a Laguz (a race where characters turn into animals from Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, different to Beorc) character were to be an emblem, who would you choose?

Hmm does the dialogue change if you start the map bonded to a ring the bracelet emblems know? Also they gotta stop leading in with the “yandere about to snap” walk for Camilla. Like if you don’t know what scene it mimics you are fine but I got “you’re in danger, girl” chills when I saw that.

Edit: Fight dialogue changes if you have the ring emblem they know. Tested with Ike and Soren. I think the after dialogue changes as well as Ike and Soren spoke to each other after the fight. So that means I need to go find Kamui now.

I reiterate my judgment that this is the prettiest game on Switch. A lot of that is due to the use of pre-rendered elements, like the (frankly next level) cinematics, but even the actual gameplay just looks super clean, on or off the TV. And the backdrops are often frequently stunning as well.

But it's the perfect tactical combat that really seals. And the challenging but not overwhelming difficulty curves. And the frequently pretty cool maps.

The story is also... pretty decent at this point? Typical Fire Emblem, but its flair for the dramatic during cutscenes really helps sell what's happening.

I've owned this for two weeks and I'm already 63 hours in. Send help.

I haven't played much lately, but I've passed chapter 20. My squad is a little more capable of handling whatever the game throws at me, although I feel Alfred, and to some extent, Chloé are becoming liabilities. To give them their dues, Alfred can tank a hit (and he seems to have an innate ability to dodge, because he cheated death on three consecutive attacks), and Chloé is a mobile healer (tempered by her low magic attribute).
My main damage dealers are Clanne (mage on a horse), and Etie, who's currently paired with Lyn. Her previous BLD deficit is offset by her speed (which is boosted with Speedtaker every time she gets a kill), and Alacrity is quite a handy skill for keeping her from taking unnecessary damage.

I've drafted in Ivy and Diamant, but while Ivy is able to take pot shots on some enemies, and stay alive, Diamant might be beyond salvaging without grinding.

Chapter 20 was a bother though. (Spoilers for the gimmick of the level ahead)
Fog of war - my favourite(!), and a boss that can teleport in, one shot almost any single character in my squad (crucially, Alear), then teleport away without me being able to retaliate. It was really frustrating, because the boss emerges from set, but seemingly random points, behind the fog. Once you force him to use a crystal, however, he fights conventionally, but I wasn't able to do that before clearing the whole map, and forcing him to his final spot.
Thankfully, beating the level provided a much needed cash injection.

@JaxonH I'm not sure if you're aware, but a third player joined out Relay. Unfortunately, that's where it ended, because they let my Alear fall in battle. It did look tricky though.

I think this is going to be the first game I'll trade in because I doubt I'll ever touch it again if I drop it now...

8h or so in and it just isn't fun to me, you straight-up can't do the skirmishes because enemies are 4-6 levels above my characters, the story f***ing sucks, I dislike 80% of the roster as characters and while the story chapters aren't as stupid as skirmishes they constantly restrict you in who you can take with you because it feels like every chapter throws 3 new characters at you - who are usually bland and/or one-note as can get - when I just want to concentrate on leveling who I have right now.
It both feels like the game wants you to grind and at the same punish you for even thinking about it.

I may try one more time to get anything substantial done in another session but at this point I'll probably just switch to something else and never return to Engage, which is why I consider selling the s*** in the first place. It'd just annoy me to see the case every time I grab a game off my shelf.

If this is what FE fans want from FE, I can only imagine Echoes and Three Houses were complete outliers because I think I just dislike this kind of game design. Guess I'm picking up Advance Wars after all, if I want to play another strategy game on the switch. The first game was no Days of Ruin but I liked it well enough to tickle my nostalgia a bit.

@Dom_31 Echoes was a fairly faithful remake of an older entry, and Three Houses was primarily Koei-Tecmo's baby and had almost entirely different staff working on it. Engage is very much in line with Fates and Awakening, which were the previous brand new entries designed by Intelligent Systems.

Thankfully for you, the next release in the series is heavily rumored to be a remake of Genealogy of the Holy War, which should be right up your alley if you liked Echoes/Three Houses.

Nice to see more appreciation for Days of Ruin, btw. Probably the single best tactics game IS ever made.

@Ralizah Echoes, TH and now this are the only ones I played besides dropping the GBA one after Lyn's part (if the first couple chapters were all she got to herself, I wouldn't know, nor do I care all that much) so I guess my impressions of the series were kind of skewed in a sense then.

I just feel like I must be missing something about Engage in particular, rn I try (or tried, I guess) playing it how I did the other two I actually enjoyed and it doesn't seem to work out very well. My enjoyment of engage took a final nosedive after chapter 10 in particular, I think most of you may know what part of that annoyed me the most. Just felt like a slap in the face after actually trying to balance stuff between what I wanted my main squad to become.

I'll try get an hour or two of TH in these days just to compare it to engage, maybe it might give me an idea on how I could try to enjoy the latter more. I am already making use of the different tools the game gives you (except for the gimmicky training s***, screw that nonsense)

Also, is it just me or does the Somniel stuff feel infinitely more tedious than the monastery activities even though Gareg Mach has, like, thrice as many things that are honestly just chores? Maybe it's because I still have characters I actually give a damn about for those while Engage has...Yunaka and Etie, I guess.

@Dom_31 I do 95% of stuff around the Somniel between every battle, but I stopped bothering with training fairly early on. A temporary and small increase to HP or Dex isn't worth playing a minigame. That's what tonics are for.

Otherwise, the main thing that feels like a chore is running around talking to everyone during the after-battle sections for the bond points. And fishing at the Somniel, I guess, but I keep doing it because it's a good source of bond points as well. Ore pickups/lunch/the arena/assigning units to complete tasks all feel fine. I'm half and half on the wyvern riding, although I stopped doing it as much once it stopped constantly rewarding me free elixers for getting SSS scores.

The Somniel isn't as interesting as the Monastery at its peak, but its more condensed design feels better than the Monastery during the second half of Three Houses, IMO. The social stuff in Three Houses is better structured in the first half, and calls more attention to its vastly better character writing.

While it forced me to re-work my strategies up to that point, I actually really liked the post-Ch. 10 twist. And the gameplay in general, really, aside from the crappy skirmishes (even if they weren't overleveled compared to where your characters are, they seem to take the Mario Maker approach to difficulty by just overwhelming you with fast-moving enemies, which is so fun). For me, tactics games are more interesting when you're forced to adapt to and work within specific limitations, and Engage feels like it's designed to constantly keep the player on their feet with its mechanics, map layouts, etc. Whereas, as much as I loved them for their music, stories, and character writing, Echoes and Three Houses were subpar in that department. 90% of Echoes battles happen in open areas, and Three Houses' doesn't really demand a lot of thought from the player when it comes to tactical thinking or even build variety. Both of those games lacking a traditional weapon triangle also hurt them, IMO. Engage feels like a return to a tighter and more satisfying style of game design.

The presentation is also pretty phenomenal across the board. It's such a good looking game. Echoes had amazing character portraits, but, being on the 3DS, the 3D models were sort of ugly, and Three Houses was just an unattractive game overall.

That I might still like Three Houses more really speaks to how much the writing, music, characters, and more fully evolved gameplay structure spoke to me. BTW if Engage's occasionally stupid writing bothers you, avoid Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest like the plague. It had possibly the worst writing I've seen in a major release to date. I actually sold my Special Edition cartridge out of pure frustration with the narrative elements of that game.

Anyway, if you're not feeling the game, you're not feeling it. You're at least halfway through at this point. Why try to force yourself to enjoy something that's clearly not resonating with you?

@Ralizah I do think I want to give it another go tbh, but you're right. If it doesn't end up suddenly just...clicking, I should move on.

Just thought I could use this to sort of tide me over until some other stuff I'm looking forward to is released. It's usually pretty nice to have a longer game/RPG to fall back on in between all the shorter games I tend to play. Maybe I'll get Live A Live, finally.

Edit: oh, right... Is chapter 12 or whatever I stopped at earlier actually about halfway through that wreck of a story? With...one major story beat so far? lol

been awhile since I played a Fire Emblem game since i last played Fire Emblem Echoes and Awakening for my Nintendo 3DS

Im going shopping at the walmart store downtown today which Im getting either Fire Emblem Three Houses or Engage or try to get both

@Dom_31 I do want to second the tedium of the Somniel vs Garreg Mach.

The dining is particularly annoying as unlike three houses which tells you upfront who likes what and what you have the ingredients to make you have to select the people you will dine with first and hope the assigned chef can still cook something they like which artificially limits who you can bond with and is still hit or miss even if you have the ingredients and the chef is an expert. Often leading to wasted ingredients/time.

I hate the tempest battles (i just auto battle them now ) but need orbs to buff the weapons of the emblems. The strength training and fishing are too time consuming for what you get and not a fan of having to scan amiibo every 24 hours. In 3H after the initial scans the game keeps churning drops for you and I much prefer that to the current setup. Also the wake up animations are useless/borderline creepy (I didn’t care for the Fates version either except at least when you got married it was mostly just your spouse).

I do like Engage now but it can be irritating. Sometimes I feel like no one that worked on Engage played 3H because sometimes I don’t get why they made the changes they did yet it feels like the 3H team lifted and refined items from my castle in fates. I’m still enjoying the game but I am mostly grinding for cash (have two countries maxed out and only on Chapter 14 in the story) but if I could swap systems I would. The new recreational add ons help but I just button mash them which is not something I usually do. That being said the pros outweigh the cons for me but I doubt I will replay this one for a long while after I beat it. Which is partly why I am dragging my feet to wait until the DLC is done.

@Dom_31 If you look back through this thread, you'll see that I've complained about literally everything you describe here, from the story/characters, to the brutal skirmishes, to the pointless Somniel activities. Yet I'm now at Chapter 23 and I've learned to enjoy the game.

My suggestions are:

1. Just don't bothered with the skirmishes. Something's up here and they're just terribly balanced. You'll have a much better time just going through the story and, if you need some levels, going for the "Training" at the various castles (you can lose units here without consequence) when they pop up.

2. Minimise what you do at the Somniel. Don't bother with Wyvern Riding, the exercises, Sommie, or any of the extraneous stuff like that. Few a few dogs in your farmyard and leave it at that. Your focus on the Somniel should be shopping, supports/bonds, training and the ring chamber.

3. The story gets better as the game goes on. The characters? Eh, they have their charm. But neither reach Three Houses level unfortunately.

I just use the skirmishes to max my un killable units (Alear, Anna, both thieves and kagetsu) and to farm gold (I may switch her back to high priest but Anna is maxed out as a mage knight). Training/story is for everyone else (still hard as I have to keep units from dying) and I throw my OP team at the tempest trials.

If you think the skirmishes are frustrating, oh boy, wait until you get to the last third or so of the Story missions. The final final boss actually wasn't that difficult, but my word, almost any mission where you take down a Hound finally for good is frustration island.

The Hounds and associates usually have some kind of mechanic which either rolls back your progress, or outwardly blocks it, or just has some kind of mechanic where you need to sacrifice a turn to counter something a boss is doing twenty miles away in the corner of the map or you pay dearly for it. The whole time as the well the game is spawning seemingly endless waves of Units until you eventually take the boss down, and those units can spawn directly behind you.

Like I say, I dunno how you beat this game on Classic, or at least I dunno how you do it, keep everyone alive and don't end up so frustrated you snap your Switch in half. I found the only way to overcome the cheap, lazy, difficulty design of this game was to basically use 90% of my Units as meat and throw them into the grinder, hoping at least one Unit could make it out the other side at the cost of sacrificing about ten other Units, and hope the one Unit that makes it through would be enough to take out the boss (who all have that lazy design where you need to clear their health bar two or three times).

Some props to them trying to make non cavalry Units more useful, but I still found the mounted/flying Units the most valuable in the end as the boss was always placed about forty miles away from you in the corner.

I don't even inherently dislike the idea of large maps, and the movement element to the game, but I want to feel like I am slowly taking control of a map, inch by inch gaining ground from the enemy, something you just can't really do in the final third of the game.

And you could say hey, but this is what separates us men from you, the boy. You are just brute forcing it, you aren't truly learning and mastering the game. I, a man, will overcome all challenges with my advance tactics and strategy.

And like... sure, I guess? But firstly, this ain't school, I value progression more than learning, but go off. But also when the game is spawning endless waves of units behind me, while the boss is constantly pushing me backwards, or hitting me from 80 miles away, what advance tactics and strategy am I meant to use here?

I could spend hours carefully positioning my Units and working my way up a map, and then have the boss activate their mechanic and reset my progress to the start in one turn, and by that point I'm probably boxed in and overwhelmed by all the Units spawning in behind me. Sounds so fun, man.

@Ralizah
Ya, I've also found the story to be perfectly serviceable. Will it win narrative awards? Certainly not. But it's enjoyable enough to the extent it drives the immaculate gameplay forward.

And I'll say it again, Engage is the pinnacle of strategy. Up until now, Fates was the best in the series for strategy gameplay, but Engage just hits the right balance. The sub-class perks are really the secret sauce. And the excellent map design and more varied objectives.

I hit 65 hrs already, I'm on Chapter 17 I believe (but am talking a break to go do DLC paralogs). This is the first FE game where I feel I have the confidence to attempt a Maddening rub. The fixes growths, excellent difficulty balance, and DLC bracelets which can give a boost to help take the edge off the difficulty, all combine to be enough to tempt me. I won't do it immediately, but eventually.

How tough does it get around chapter 19? I hear the difficulty hits another ramp up. I'm thirsty for it. Nothing satisfies this craving like a hard wall to be overcome through wit and cunning.

edit:
Taking a look at Hector, Soren and Camilla's skills, seems they're decent but not overly powerful and broken. Best one imo is when Engaged with Camilla, Unit gains 2 movement and can cross terrain as if flying. Calvary gains bonus +2 mov, Flying gains bonus +1 mov.

just got back from shopping at the walmart store earlier today.

ended up getting just Fire Emblem Engage. was tempted to get the Evil Dead game since its on sale for 19 bucks but i can wait til next month anyway

@JaxonH It's fairly simple and easily digestible, like a Disney or Legend of Zelda story. It works fine for what the game is going for.

I had to attempt Ch. 19 a couple of times, but once I realized my mistake, it went fairly smoothly. It's also way easier if you bring a warp staff along. Another later chapter features a boss that likes to attack you from the darkness, which can be dangerous if you don't protect your squishy units well. A few of the paralogues are pretty challenging as well (looking at you, Leif and Ike). Never gets too crazy, though. Nothing on the level of my Hard/Classic playthrough of Conquest, certainly.

Maddening seems ripe for an iron man run, considering all of the expendable units you're given. I might try that at some point, with my goal being to just beat the game.