Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

Now that I have finished it: Its one of the best Fire emblems I played so far (I started with Awakening) and definitely better then Three houses (I know, I am in the minority). The game is much more challenging and has more stages too. For example, both games took me around 80 hours, but in Three houses lots of that time is spend on grinding, while in Engage I only did skirmishes once or twice. The rest is all chapters and paralogues, as far as the battling goes. I also love the colorful and very polished graphics. I know the anime style is not to everybody's taste (some very weird clothes), but Fire emblem has never been this polished.

The game also explains things better (though I probably never will understand everything), they brought the weapon triangle back, chain-attacks, your characters all have a certain purpose instead of turning them all into mages, breaking mechanics are a good new feature. I didn't use the emblem rings often, but they are useful sometimes (like goddess dance, instruct or dragon vein).

Though I have to admit I am never a fan of school-settings, so that's also why I prefer engage.

Three houses has a more serious look, while Engage is over the top anime (and man, does it get talky and melodramatic in the last bunch of chapters). The story does get more interesting then you initially expect, but as I said pretty melodramatic. The bonding-dialogues probably aren't that deep, but they are still funny and show the different characteristics of the characters pretty well.

Definitely gonna buy the dlc for the extra story. I will save that for the future as a nice last morsel, just as with the Three houses dlc (I also play that in the future).

Something Fire Emblem fans may appreciate...

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes OST and Fire Emblem Three Houses OST just arrived from Play-Asia. Since I already had Fire Emblem Warriors OST, as well as Awakening, Fates, Echoes, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, I felt these were a must since I like the soundtrack to these games most out of the entire series.

Just started this and the first thing that’s jumped out at me is how difficult it is, at least compared to Three Houses. Is it just me?

@Leon_Kennedy nope it’s not just you. I jumped from three houses straight to Engage myself. Every route I did in Houses was Hard/Classic. Did the same thing for my first run on Engage and I got absolutely obliterated. Two of my characters, one being Framme was dead by chapter 13 and the skirmishes/paralogues got so damn hard at a certian point it was absolutely brutal. 15 griffin knights surrounding you by the start of turn 2. It was far too much to handle. Made it to chapter 16 on hard on my second run and by that point, I had to switch it back to normal. Three houses has a much different difficulty scale.

@TheBigBlue Yeah I’ve played a couple of fire emblems and loads of similar games and I’m struggling, died in both the missions after the tutorial. I think I am on hard/classic as well so might need to tone it down

The bizarro world approach of Fell Xenologue is hilarious. Amusingly enough, I feel like it's going to make several of the characters far more palatable. No more endless gabbing about tea, songs about meat, insane rants about loving pain, or Alcryst's endless self-deprecation.

@Leon_Kennedy Also played on Hard/Classic. I think the difficulty balances out well as the game goes on and you gain access to new characters and emblems. Normal is a little too easy, from what I hear.

Definitely better than in Three Houses, where even Hard mode was too easy, and then Maddening was ridiculously difficult.

@Ralizah hard mode up to around chapter 11 wasn’t a hassle. Using emblems to grind exp is quite easy with Marth’s Mercurius and Micaiah’s Great Sacrifice for example. Using those on the likes of Anna and Jean to boost levels. But when everything gets taken in chapter 11, and you have only two emblems with no prior bond support, things get much trickier. I couldn’t make it that far myself past Chapter 11. I bowed out during my first blind playthrough in Chapter 13 cause my characters kept dying en masse. Got farther in my second Hard run, but I eventually switch to Normal before the start of Chapter 16.

@TheBigBlue Funny. My biggest struggles were in the game's first five chapters. There's still some challenge to be had after that (especially immediately after ch. 11), but I found it easier to keep everyone alive after that.

I'm actually considering doing another run at some point on Lunatic difficulty, which I hear is much more approachable in this game than in Three Houses.

SP grinding in this game is really tough. The new scroll items help, but not that much. Some measly abilities like DEF +2 are locked behind a 2000 sp wall. It’s quite a pain just to get the better abilities like mentorship and vantage+++.

Fell Xenologue drops tomorrow, right? For some reason I thought it was today and was wondering why there was no download available.

@TheBigBlue
There's definitely a varying degree of value per skill based on price. Some are really expensive for what you get, while others are extremely cheap for what you get. I find part of the fun is analyzing which skills are the best bang-for-buck and prioritizing those.

It's out now.

It's very difficult. I like that. Because the Fell Xenologue has no permadeath, I was worried that would ruin the game balance. But no. They tuned the expansion around the fact there's no permadeath, making it harder to account for the fact units can die.

It's the ol' "Maddening Casual" approach. Not how I usually play, but... that's why I like it. It allows for completely different strategy than just "nobody can die, rewind if someone dies".

Just finished the DLC. Somebody at IS needs therapy. I really need them to step away from the incest plots.

@Ryu_Niiyama I've not played it yet, I'm finishing off Mario + Rabbids 2 before starting Fire Emblem but it is strange just how much incest has become mainstream in the last few years. I blame Back to the Future and Star Wars for starting it!

@Ryu_Niiyama Yikes. Haven't played the DLC and probably won't, but that's been a problem with Fire Emblem for a while now.

@Ryu_Niiyama the tradition of avoiding FE DLC continues! Seriously though, wth.

The first few FE dlcs were more fanservicy with swimsuits, bringing back older characters (Marth can’t catch a break these days) and a new storyline usually. I was originally just not going to buy the Engage dlc because the dlc rings are absolutely overpowered and would suck the experience and desperation feel out of Chapter 11 and such. But this is a whole new level of unreal

I will say if you are in it for the battles the DLC has some fun ideas (except the last battle. Somebody tell that designer they aren’t funny).

I’ve just got around to playing this and it’s probably the most fun I’ve had in the series for awhile. Less waifu anime silliness, more tough as fudge battles. One thing that is really annoying me though is the skirmishes are on such a high level, I wanted to use them to level up my less used characters. It’s a really odd decision to have them be on higher levels than the story mode.

Yeah, it just seems to be one of those things with the game that once you've benched a character they're never getting back off it again because you need everything you've got to keep your core team relevant.

Also, most of the late game characters are so good that you're probably going to want to carry a few passengers in the knowledge that they'll ultimately get benched too.

Same here. By the time this had released, I had virtually lost interest in the Fire Emblem series. The Warriors games do very little for me, and Three Houses was a massive disappointment (fantastic production values, but there was so much emphasis on the fluff at the school/monastery that it barely resembled a Fire Emblem game). I'll most likely revisit Three Houses at some point, and I enjoyed what I had played of it, but evidently not enough to hold my attention past the first few hours or so.

I bought Engage on sale just under a month ago and I've already clocked in 90+ hours. Utterly hooked. This is more or less everything that I wanted out of a new Fire Emblem, which plays a hell of a lot like Awakening/Fates that got me into the series in the first place. I almost wish that we had gotten a more simplified Solmniel as it was a bit tedious "doing the rounds" in between every bloody battle at first (and I'm such a grinder), but I eventually found my way around it, and it's not quite so annoying anymore.

I didn't mind the silly romance elements of past entries. I'm just the tiniest bit disappointed that it's (sort of) gone, but the fact that all units can merge with any of the returning Emblems more than makes up for the lack of child units.

But ultimately, it's all about the battles.

I've been grinding so much (it was just so damn fun) that when I would return to the normal stages (I'm up to Chapter 22 or so at the moment), most of my units were only getting 1-2 EXP per battle.

I've been trying to play in a balanced way so that pretty much everybody is viable in combat, and I tend to phase out the OP units so that the weaker ones get a chance to shine.

It's kind of ruined the fun of playing through the campaign, but again, there's consolation in the fact that my OP units won't be quite so against the randomly generated skirmishes later on.

Finished chapter 15 just now. I really like this game. It would probably be even better, if had played the rest of the series. It might be time for me to call the Fire Emblem series a must have.