Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

@Ryu_Niiyama
Ya he was. I didn't like Donnel as a character that much though. He was funny, with a cast iron pot on his head with a wooden handle sticking out like the bill of a baseball cap, but he just didn't resonate with me.

I really like Jean though.

Okay, I decided to just restart and switch from hard/classic to hard/casual and just the fact that I don't have to worry about keeping all the losers (and Yunaka and Lapis) alive in the game already made me like it more.
I roughly knew what to expect from the first chapters as well and I read up on what I was doing wrong with the skirmishes - which is leveling only one team of characters, apparently the skirmishes scale off your strongest one, which is horsedoo - and I think the gameplay loop finally clicked.

The story and characters are still utter ass, of course, but I'm starting to have fun with everything that doesn't require any of those DUMB idiots opening their mouths.
Was trying to watch supports I didn't know yet but I legitimately can't. It's painful how one dimensional and idiotic 90% of the dialog in these early chapters is. Bless US for giving us a skip option.
I also realized that the one-note, gimmicky characters don't even have UNIQUE gimmicks in the first place. There's, like, four who constantly talk about tea, several who treat life like a novel, some even combine them. About half of them seem to want to lick the sweat off Alear's face. I'm seriously curious if this train wreck is the result of bad localization or if the original script was as bad.

I also still don't like how you have maybe 5 characters with all around solid designs and then have the rest be either bland as can get (like the axe guy who joins with Saturday-Morning-Dimitri, for example) or overdesigned to hell and back. I still think Pikazo's art in general is great. She definitely knows what she's doing as far as the actual "craft" goes. But when every other character in a roster is LOUD AF it's not particularly unique anymore after the sixth Vtuber-reject and it hurts the roster more than it makes it stand on its own because there also doesn't seem to be any real sense of coherent, overarching theme to the costumes, not even within one of the kingdom's characters besides Firene(?)

People can bemoan Three Houses' class outfits all they want, and I will say I agree that the generic costumes in that game are pretty disappointing, but the characters' actual designs are not only almost all great, they all manage to look like people who come from roughly the same place with a few, INTENTIONAL, exceptions like Petra who's from an entirely different region than everyone else or the ashen wolves who do whatever the heck they want to in the first place. That kind of stuff makes a cast feel coherent and it makes the differences between everyone actually stand out more and memorable to me.

And I will say that all of the fire emblem characters I've seen when I still played Heroes on the side follow that kind of design mentality, as far as I can tell anyway. You still got the "clones" who follow different archetypes FE uses since its inception but even then I can only really call the Cain and Abel "types" a little bit same-y in the different games.

Ahm...yeah. That turned into a small rant about why I don't vibe with the cast at all in Engage lol
But I think I may be able to enjoy the gameplay side more this second go around. Glad I decided to try something slightly different.

And if I can give y'all one tip, given you don't already know about it anyway, if you wanna grind levels for weak characters, do the skirmishes or trainings and just let everyone kick the bucket once you get close to beating one to carry over exp on a retry. It's a bit save scummy in a sense, but I think it helps me, personally, staying engaged so far, because I know I can level up everyone without fear of new recruits immediately throwing themselves off a cliff in terms of utility.

LMAO.

So much this. The characters aren't just bad because they are so flat and one dimensional, they are bad because they are also so ***** lazy with it. There are like 4 dudes who all talk about exercise and abs, and like the examples you used above. If you are going to make everyone a one note piece of cardboard, at least give everyone a different note.

Had a go at one of the Tempest Trials you get at post game for something to do during that Half Time show, they are absurdly difficult to the point of being basically unplayable, I don't understand? I tried it at the difficulty level they recommended first and my Units basically could do no damage, so I reloaded and turned it down as low as I could and still get XP and rewards. My Units could do damage now, but they all basically get one shot and there are literally like 50 enemy Units, so it just impossible.

I wonder when Wave 4 is going to drop.

Supposedly it's 6 chapters long, which is about what Fates and Three Houses extra campaigns were. I wonder if it'll have extra paralogs too.

@JaxonH Given Wave 2 came less than a month after launch, I'd guess Wave 3 is in March and Wave 4 is in June. I also think Xenoblade 3 Wave 4 will come in June.

Made it up to chapter 20 last night. Instead of doing all 5 or so skirmishes/trainings on a map at any given time, I'm trying to only do 1 or 2 each game session so I can advance the story much quicker. I was spending a little too much time on the side battles, so now I'm pretty much focusing solely on paralogs and main missions.

@NintendoByNature
Ya that's a LOT

I rarely do skirmishes. The paralogs alone are hard to keep up with, much less the DLC on top of it.

I’m all over the skirmishes. My primary money maker and how I grind my units. Especially now that I have Mercy.

I only bothered with skirmishes when I was specifically grinding to train up an underleveled character. I maintain they're poorly designed and unnecessarily difficult compared to story maps and paralogues, though.

It seems like the skirmishes on the dlc island are lower than the main island. But I could be wrong.

Whohoo got all the countries paid off!

@JaxonH what chapter are you at? Starting around chapter 19, all main chapters and paralogs have gotten to be a nuisance in terms of difficulty spike.

And now for some very odd reason, Alvear is getting torched on the Battlefield, and he's many levels over the enemies. I honestly don't understand. He's been leveled up, better weapons that are engraved and refined, just odd.

He's actually died twice over the last few sessions and I've had to use rewind, which I never use. Thankfully I've been doing the skirmishes or I'd really be struggling.

Anybody know how to harvest onion and cabbage? I don’t think any of my animals produce it.

So I finally finished this last night.

I know I've had my complaints — and to be honest, many of them still hold true — but I really loved this game in the end. The tactical gameplay is just so solid and, while the story is still kinda lame, the characters and setting did grow on me after a while. Also am I the only one who gets really emotional whenever the epilogue (i.e. telling us what the characters did with the rest of their lives) plays?

This has made me want to play other games in the series, or even other TRPGs for that matter. I imagine this game was a great joy for people with more experience with the series. I'm tempted to try Fates next, although I am a little concerned about going back to a game without the rewind feature.

@Buizel
As a long time fan, this game really hit my nostalgia with all the characters from the series. But it'd still excellent in its own right.

I recommend Awakening and Fates. Even if Fates doesn't have rewind, just play on Hard Casual or Normal Classic. It's so good. All 3 paths are worth playing but, Conquest is the one that stands out. It's the only other game with maps and strategy on the level of Engage.

@NintendoByNature
Chapter 17. Alear isn't an unstoppable force of nature like the main avatars typically are in other FE games. They're good, but they're not OP, so they can and will die if you don't plan strategically. This game is extremely well balanced so that anyone can die in a single turn. Even Louis, if faced with mages or a group of backup units, can get toasted before you realize it.

@JaxonH funnily enough, I was pretty much good with him until ch 19. I could literally put him front and center and let him do his thing, barely getting so much as a scratch on him. From there, work on the rest of my crew so they could level up with the side enemies. I'm sure I'll be fine, just found it odd considering I've had zero issues until recently.

@JaxonH Awakening was my introduction to the series, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I do remember getting a little fed up of restarting chapters to save my units.

I've only ever played a Chapter or two of Fates so maybe I should give that one a chance. I hear it's similar to Engage in that the story's a mixed bag, but the gameplay is solid.

Crikey that was satisying... just now finished my Hard mode run clocking in 96 hours (!) and thats after switching from a normal mode run clocking 24 hours (!!).

This is most certainly not an 81% quality game. I'd at the very least put it in the low 90's thanks to the most outrageous joyously broken combat system leaps and bounds more satisfying then any other FE title i've played (which is most of them).
Daring to go for (and puling off imo) a vastly different but captivating artstyle and finally, being able to pack several emotional punches throughout the campaign all absolutely reversed my initial pensiveness and dismay at the changes .
Surpringly so on that last point. My initial sigh at the overly-cutesy and seemingly paper-thin characters later gave way to a genuine feeling of peril for the cast after a fair few hairy moments.

As epic a story as Three Houses was, I found keeping track of each characters family history and maintaining motivation and empathy became frankly tiring after about 150 hours. Engage on the other hand keeps it simple but still manages to shock, delight and instil hype in the player.

81% pffft... I refuse to believe a large chunk of reviewers saw the story through to a point where they'd begin emotionally investing in the characters, let alone be able to buy the fantastic 2 to 3000 SP Emblem bond skills.

I guess after all this rambling, thats my point... review scores are not gospel and reviewers are humans like you and I with an admittedly difficult job to do. One persons desire and motivation to pour 100 hours into a game might be torture for the next person for which it simply dosnt "click" but still needs to produce a review score.

If something genuinely piques your interest then give it a go. Concentrate on the positive aspects and reviews and dive in with an open mind.

... on classic mode... with Yunaka reclassed to wolf rider... obviously.

Did Nintendo ever announce they'd restock old FE amiibo or something? I found (and immediately ordered) both Alm's and Celica's for RRP while I was randomly trying to find the BotW Zelda one and I remember those being WAY more expensive for a while since they're fairly old at this point.

Chapter 24 down. What a nice twist and turn there. I'm more than likely going to do a couple skirmishes tomorrow and chapter 25. I read there are 26 chapters, so I should be able to finish the game in the next couple of days barring any issues.