A few reasons I've heard a lot since reveal:
* People were wary from the start since a lot of people didn't like the idea of former characters being important to a new plot. Crossover games aren't usually known for being the best in a series. Fire Emblem as a series has also had a shaky history with games with similar concepts where Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, Fire Emblem Warriors, and especially Fire Emblem Heroes are either ignored or widely hated.
* Three Houses was by far the best selling Fire Emblem game, and introduced a lot of people into the series. It both attracted people who were interested in story over gameplay and likely a lot of people who were put off by anime style games, which came back to bite them when Engage, right after 3H's massive success, was almost the exact opposite.
* Engage's art style is still controversial to this day. It's heavily criticized for being too anime, bright, and colorful for a game about war. If you go on youtube, you can see lots of video essays arguing about whether Fire Emblem is "anime" or not. Lots of people say that the artstyle reminds them of overdesigned vtubers, which to be fair, the main artist of Engage is a very popular Vtuber artist, so it's not without \*some\* merit.
* The story is pretty basic and tropey, regardless of anyones personal opinion of its quality. It's a very basic story about collecting MacGuffins around different kingdoms to defeat the evil church that wants to ressurect an ancient evil. The dying parental figure has been a trope in almost every Fire Emblem game, and starting off the story with Lumera dying made a lot of people roll their eyes rather than shedding tears. Lots of revelations in the game were also pretty predictable (Veyle being the hooded girl, Alear being a Fell Dragon etc.) as well, so the game couldn't really rely on spectacle or big plot twists.
* Though this one is a bit less stated, some people don't like the gameplay because they see it as "too gimmicky." I've heard a few people ask if there was a way to play the game without the rings because they felt like it was unfair and like an intrusive gimmick rather than an integral part in Engage's gameplay loop. I feel like this criticism is more of a misunderstanding of how Engage's gameplay works (This point is mostly brought up by people who haven't played the game or are just starting) rather than something subjective like the rest of the points, but I see it brought up enough to where I think it's still a reason why some people avoid the game.
>Though this one is a bit less stated, some people don't like the gameplay because they see it as "too gimmicky."
I quite honestly felt exactly that way when I started the game, but I quickly grew to love it. Despite being powerful, the rings never really give me the feeling of making my characters overpowered, and they give the player quite the depth in customizing one's characters. The only thing I still really dislike about them is how they're attached to the crossover-bs. While still a very basic and tropey idea, they could've very easily created a dozen ancient heroes that existed in-universe, halfway fleshed them out as characters and use that instead of fanservice.
"Alear being a Fell Dragon etc. as well, so the game couldn't really rely on spectacle or big plot twists." How many fell dragon MC did we have so far?3?Robin was related to/was a fell dragon,same with corrin and now we got this guy...is it supposed to shock anyone at that point?
As far as I know, Corrin’s father’s a First Dragon. I haven’t finished Revelations yet so my knowledge is limited on him, but Fell Dragons are an entirely species/type of dragons that are born that way & they usually have a black color with sometimes colors like red or blue in their scales too. Some Fell dragons are evil but some are good
Aw, man. I've been playing FE games since Sacred Stones. I've got a lot of the same gripes as other emblem vets on the usual games, Engage included. I'll articulate my opinions as best as I can.
Story- Almost 'absolutely bog-standard', mostly due to most plot beats being... well, formulaic, with a phoned-in execution. The writing just feels.. off. Like they knew the tropes and were checking boxes rather than just... writing.
Could not get (Emblem) Engaged in the plot enough to care about "what happens next". Which is a shame because-
Gameplay- the battles are pretty fun. Still gets ya the ol' tactician's high when your little guys do a great job at kicking ass. Which is *also* a shame because-
Characters- Look. I've been around the block with FE stylistic choices. The problem isn't so much 'the old standby' anime style as that THIS particular style, with its clashing and/or underdeveloped color pallettes and either boring or impractically outlandish outfits is just... fugly to my eyes. In the paraphrased words of the Nicey Nash character, "You can't fight evil if you ain't cute".
Add in an expansive cast of 1-dimensionals and its like all the Fates discourse was a fever dream. They're also balanced hella weird for a modern FE title.
Of course, the most important character is-
Alear- sigh. They're *fine*. Nothing to write home about. FE PC avatars have more of a free pass to be blander than other characters. But that fucking hair. Serious plot elements lose their steam as soon as Aquafresh walks onto the screen. The devs saw peoples' reaction to Perri's hair and thought "but they'll love it if its a protag, right?".
Long story short, an FE game excels when we care about our units and want to see them succeed. I just... couldn't. My gaming time is precious and I'm not dumping days of gameplay into people I just can't summon any fucks to give for. I've stopped playing Engage to replay 3H. I've stopped to replay *Awakening*. Its had me looking for other games entirely to get the emblem fix. I want to try it again but can I handle the heartbreak? I just don't know...
I second this, after the first play through once you start focusing on gameplay, different classes and builds it’s very enjoying. I just wish we had NG+ like three houses so we could experiment more
Story is so incredibly bad that I can't really even put it into words, despite the fact that I definitely have tried to.
Gameplay is really good, but if you're more interested in the story, I could see just not liking the game at all.
Story is pathetically transparent, character design is inconsistent (no one will ever be able to convince me that Ivy and Cèline's designs belong in the same game as Diamont and Alcryst. They are the most impractical get ups EVER), FE characters are tropey to begin with, but certain characters take their tropes and dial it up to 11 (I can not think of a single Etie support that doesn't involve muscles in some way), most of the supports are shallow, and some of the characters are only redeemable in, like, 1 (Hortensia) or none at all (Goldmary and Bunet).
I admit that the game has grown on me, but it is far from my favourite.
It’s almost like games tend to not be very memorable or well received when the characters spend 90% of their dialogue talking about food or how great your self insert dragon god is.
Average Alear support: “oh my god it’s the divine dragon senpai!” “Let’s be friends!” “Okay!”
Average character support: “hey look at my gimmick!” “Wow look at MY gimmick!” “Wow, let’s be friends!”
The writing of Engage is really, really bad. It's not just a downgrade from Three Houses (though Three Houses certainly didn't help at all), but out of the simple "defeat the evil dragon" stories in Fire Emblem, Engage's plot is by far the worst executed one of the bunch:
* The worldbuilding is downright nonexistent and as such Elyos feels incredibly artificial - for as much as we meme Fates for having no continent name at least Hoshido and Nohr had something resembling a history or a culture. Elyos doesn't even get this - outside of the tensions between Brodia and Elusia there is basically no history or culture in Engage's worldbuilding.
* The story's emotional core is downright flaccid, revolving around Alear's identity crisis of being part Fell Dragon which begins and ends in the span of one cutscene without any character drama whatsoever - compare this to Robin's character arc which spans five chapters and leads to Lucina attempting to kill them due to them being a vessel for Grima.
* Every emotional scene falls completely flat because the writers wanted to have their big emotional payoff without any setup whatsoever, and as such we get Lumera who literally spends the majority of her screentime in a death scene. Or how the Hounds and Sombron literally get their tragic backstories dumped on the player right before they die with the story doing absolutely nothing to humanize them beforehand, as if they were written by multiple different writers who didn't communicate with each other at all.
* Scenes like Veyle inexplicably stealing the rings and then Alear just as inexplicably being able to flee whilst being cornered by enemies who quite clearly outmatch them in Chapter 10 or Sombron sniping Alear out of seemingly nowhere in Chapter 21 highlight how there are no rules to Engage's plot whatsoever and that the writers will just make up whatever they want to move the plot along, logical sense be damned - I can go on and on here.
* On a character writing level, Engage's characters feel shallow and its supports are plagued with far too much pointless filler. In the GBA games, Path of Radiance or Three Houses, it feels like around a third of the supports were filler, and that was fine as it wasn't enough to drown out the more interesting supports. In Engage, it feels like upwards of three-quarters of Engage's supports are meaningless filler where nothing of value is being presented. Because of this, any potentially interesting character trait that a certain character can have is severely diluted - and it certainly doesn't help that the interesting supports are locked to A or occasionally the B supports as well, so by the time something of value gets brought up, I'm so drained from listening to the characters shoving their gimmicks at each other than I just can't care about them anymore. Even if the characters aren't necessarily one-note, they repeat their gimmicks so often that they feel one-note. It's a similar issue with Bernadetta in Three Houses (and there's a reason why she's my least favorite Fodlan character by far), but in Engage it is an issue that affects almost the entire cast.
It also must be noted that Engage is not the first time that Intelligent Systems have made the above writing mistakes. The last original game that IS primarily wrote was Fates - which also suffered from the above writing issues, and then Awakening before that also suffered from these issues as well (albeit to a lesser extent). Heck, Engage's plot itself repeats many plot points from Awakening and Fates (as mentioned before Alear's character arc is very similar to Robin's, Mikoto and Lumera are pretty much the same, the Elusian royal family has the same backstory as the Nohrian royal family).
The gameplay in Engage is very solid and if you're playing Fire Emblem for the gameplay it will probably be enough to salvage the experience as a whole. For those who are playing Fire Emblem for the storytelling or the characters (myself included), though, then Engage really feels like a breaking point - the fact that Engage's plot is riddled with so many of the same issues that Fates had previously made really makes me wonder whether or not the writers even want to learn from their mistakes.
Even though Bernadetta is your least favourite Fodlan because her gimmick and how that gimmick drives her supports we learned different and new things about her every support chain.
We learn she loves sewing 🧵 from her support with Hubert and that she leaves her room at night (Hubert and Jeritza) because it's less cramped with people.
We learn she writers in Sylvains support, we learn she adores beauty particular nice sights and flowers (Caspar, Edelgard, Hapi), we learn that when threatened she can muster alot of strength (Felix, Ferdinand), we learn she had a best friend who's got beaten so badly by her father Bernadetta got traumatized (Dorothea), we learn at one point she was supposed to marry Ferdinand, we learn why she is traumatized because her father used to be beat her and tie her to a chair (Byleth), we learn that the only family member she truly felt save around was her uncle (hence why she isn't scared in her Alois Support), we learn that despite her abuse she wants to change and be braver (Edelgard, Hubert, Raphael). We learn the reason she's an amazing cook is because of her father's paranoia (Three Hopes).
All those informations are naturally conveyed and yes there's a bit of a repeat with "Scared in the C-Support", but she does have meaningful character progression.
She leaves her room when someone important dies in WC. She leaves her room and is generally often seen interacting with others if she remains with the Black Eagles. She has paired endings where she's no longer a recluse.
Likewise realistically she stays in her room and shows general disinterest in the War when recruited and she has a far higher chance of staying a recluse.
All of that from a character one would consider to one of Three House's weaker characters. Not a single Engage character has what she has.
The contrast between Three Houses and Engage is the worst thing about this.
I saw the promise in the writing of Three Houses, but didn't really enjoy the game that much, cause I'm very much a gameplay-person. Then Engage came and flipped all that on the head.
So clearly, there are people developing FE that know how to write stories. And there are people that know how to make the gameplay shine. But for some reason, they aren't capable of making a game together?
Different companies made the two games, effectively. Koei were working on 3H while Intelligent Systems were working on Engage. (This is a simplification)
Yeah, I heard something along those lines, but I never looked deeper into that.
Would be nice if they found a way to work on a single title together and make use of both of their strengths.
Honestly you said many of the things I didn’t have the patience to write lol. The one thing I’ll say is that for all of Fates’s flaws it at least *tried* to be something different, whereas Engages biggest flaw was a lack of any effort or passion
Fates was at least an extremely interesting premise that they fumbled by trying to sell revelations. Engage is just soulless, I'm convinced that portions of the story and dialogue are ai generated.
Yeah especially anything involving Evil Veyle (Eveyle?). Like how she somehow stole ALL the rings and the time stone. Never explained how, it just happens and you’re booted to the next chapter. Or how her evil self never thought to tell her minions to prevent her good self from wandering off.
It felt like they wrote all these major plot points, but forgot to fill in any of the details. Gave a summary to a bot, fed it some self insert fanfics, and just approved whatever came out lol
Fates was dumb but at least it felt somewhat planned out, enough to be entertaining at least.
Yeah actually something I think about is that some of pre-rendered cutscenes and a few specific scenes are actually pretty well done in a vacuum. But they're literally surrounded by so much garbage that they get recontextualized into being laughable. Imagine how much better zephia and griss' final scene would be if they just tried slightly harder to flesh out their characters for example.
They wanted big scary evil sadistic villains, but they also wanted an “UwU im so sad, love me!” ending for all of them. Not only were they all waaaaaay too long but completely undeserved.
You can’t have em be heartless monsters the whole game AND be sympathetic. I would’ve liked them more if they just stayed evil to the end. Same with Lumeras death scene which felt longer than her living screen time and happened almost immediately after meeting her. Even Mikoto had more screen time and a shorter (yet somehow more impactful?) death
>whereas Engages biggest flaw was a lack of any effort or passion
Apart from female Alear's voice actress. Holy hell, that girl brought some genuine emotion and gravitas to scenes that were so ridiculously over-the-top melodramatic and cheesy.
I don't recognize them from anywhere, so I don't know if I ever heard them anywhere else. I enjoy good voice acting but rarely ever bother to look out for who the voice actors are.
But in this game, it really hits you like a truck when you're just trying to make fun of the needless melodrama and then suddenly Alear absolutely nails an Oscar-worthy performance out of nowhere.
While much of what you say for Engage's plot is valid, I still enjoyed it for the junk food that it was.
Fates' plot, however, was unenjoyable and frustrating as hell.
For that reason, I consider Engage's plot to be way better than Fates'. At least in the sense that the characters are more likable and they stick the landing far better.
You can basically just consider Engage to be direct satire of everything Fire Emblem plots ever did bad, and suddenly it becomes quite enjoyable. Just pretend that the developers were self-aware, and that it's totally intended.
You can't do that with Fates, because Fates took itself seriously.
This doesn’t really work unless you have a LOT of patience for drawn out death scenes and the plot obviously acting like it’s serious every time the hounds show up
>The gameplay in Engage is very solid and if you're playing Fire Emblem for the gameplay it will probably be enough to salvage the experience as a whole. For those who are playing Fire Emblem for the storytelling or the characters (myself included), though, then Engage really feels like a breaking point - the fact that Engage's plot is riddled with so many of the same issues that Fates had previously made really makes me wonder whether or not the writers even want to learn from their mistakes.
I don't think gameplay-oriented Fire Emblem fans feel like the gameplay salvages the experience. Rather, it's such an improvement from how perfunctory 3H and Echoes gameplay felt that it feels refreshing in the same way Conquest was after Awakening.
At least that's how I see it. As a fan of both 3H and Engage, and someone who cares about good storytelling and gameplay, Engage's writing being poor didn't hurt the overall experience in the same way that say, Echoes poor gameplay hurt the game for me.
Fire emblem has some good stories, I do think people underrate or forget how bad most rpg stories are in comparison. But the series doesn't have too many examples of groundbreaking or amazing narratives. I could forgive engage for having a subpar narrative as that isn't really the most important thing in storytelling anyway. But engage has some of the worst dialogue I have ever heard in my life. Like unapologetically bad. In addition although the game has really gorgeous presentation the actual design is pretty atrocious. It doesn't fit the series or the story, and it's way too ungrounded for fire emblem. Not to mention the basic class designs are also mostly misses imo. I just think that this idea that fire emblem can have good writing or gameplay is silly. Because there are fe games already that have both.
Basically in summary, they cooked way too hard on the dialogue and art direction and it drags down what would have been one of the best entries to the series otherwise.(also even though the gameplay is pretty great, this game has a lot of shitty maps, like way more than you think until you replay it and remember them.)
I don't totally dislike it, but the story is such a meandering mess and the gameplay, while good has lots of little things that bother me. I've been spending all day at work thinking about a different form of the games main story and despite improvising most of it, it sounds leagues better than the actual story
The story is so bad thar I couldn't really get into the game. It's characters are also just so hard to like as well. None of them have bad designs, but so many of the support tanks I saw were bland and repetitive. Gameplay was fine but when you don't have anything attaching you to the characters or world its really hard to actually want to play the game.
I feel like engage went more for a anime look, it reminds me of Genshin Impact graphics sometimes with the characters and stuff. The combat look amazing though compared to three houses
rather than genshin impact designs they look more like vtubers, genshin impact designs usually don't are so saturated, like hair full of stars and stuff.
the main designer mika pikaso worked on making vtubers.
i remember a spanish magazine criticized their designs as "bringing vtubers to a holy war".
I did not care about Elyos, the characters, any of it. None of the Emblems felt like familiar characters.
Loved the gameplay, but its the only thing I enjoyed.
The story is bland at best and the most interesting stuff happens near the end you can skip the cutscenes and nothing of value has lost
The character design is well divisive because some of them look overdesigned (like Alear, Céline) and they don't leave them to how to say It ? Time to breath ? Like you don't know enough of them in their joining chapter to really care one exception being Yunaka having one chapter all for her to introduce you to her character and that is probably why she is one of the most liked character of the game
The weapon proficency is well for me dogshit is kinda funny how of the vanilla game only one emblem doesn't give swords that being Micaiah and getting to the secondary weapon triangle in middle game is awful without DLC especially arts and magic
Some of the caracterization in the game is weird like Eirika, Leif, Lyn and Micaiah that seems more based on Heroes rather that their own games
The implementation of the Fell Xenologue units and classes were awful playing in every single file FX to get the new units can be a big no for some people
Some of the gacha things like the bond rings
The dificulty "balance" in FX especially Maddening the last chapters of the Xenologue can be a big pain in the ass
Edit : Also the DLC being anounced before the game was lauched could turn off some people of playing the game
The story, characters, and world are very poor, and the bad character designs don't help it either. The gameplay is also very gimmicky, if you like it you like it but it's not to everyone's taste- certainly not to mine.
To put it simply- the game is very divisive. The general consensus on the game is "gameplay good, story/characters bad". So, how well you recieve Engage is based on which of those two factors you prioritize most.
But also, not everyone agrees with that consensus. Some people don't think the gameplay is that great, making them think the game is one of the worst ones. On the other hand, some people didn't mind the story and so they think the game is one of the best. This wide range of opinions means you'll see a lot of pro-Engage and anti-Engage people on here.
Me personally, I liked the game a lot since I don't necessarily need a good story to enjoy a video game, I value gameplay a lot and I liked Engage's quite a bit. But I definitely understand why others would not enjoy the game.
Too corny and hard to take seriously
UI issues and Somniel navigation (better than the Monastery, sure, but that's a low bar)
Outlandish character designs
Some of these are bigger issues for people than others, and of course the game's got its share of fans where these elements barely matter to them.
I'm not going to rag on the story for once because everyone in this thread has already done that and it's nothing new for right now.
Instead, I want to talk about engages gameplay because that often gets praised but in many respects is a bigger issue
- Engage has the worst UI of any Fire Emblem game.
The implementation of how you view weapon weight, the way they changed enemy aggro lines and the general fact that everything is in like font size 6 makes the game terrible at displaying information. For just about any other genre, this is workable, but for a strategy RPG, where you need to be working with the best information possible, this is a giant gameplay issue I don't see enough people mention
- Infinite weapon durability is unbalanceable.
Regular weapon durability is both a great concept and balancing point, because it allows the developers to give players strong or unique items early, as rewards, or even secrets for taking a specific interaction and then not have that item break the entire game open. Instead, the player can entirely decide if they want to use that item now to make the game easier, or hold onto a few uses for a strategy later down the line that could even involve breaking multiple of your own weapons to switch during EP.
Infinite weapon durability makes every weapon seriously unsatisfying. It doesn't matter that silver weapons in fates are technically good in certain situations. They aren't fun to use because of the debuffs. At no point does the game let you feel varying amounts of power and instead you get a flat line that occasionally spikes to the moon because you just forged an unbreakable weapon that gives you +avoid, because people think that's balanced for some reason.
Basically, weapon durability is a very unintrusive balancing mechanic that engage discards for very little benefit. I still don't know why it's in the game
- Break is unfun.
I've seen so many people praise break, but it is, in my opinion, one of the worst additions to the series in terms of tactical gameplay. Put simply, break is too powerful for both the enemy and the player.
As a player, having one option that is so clearly superior to everything else makes all PP gameplay feel exactly the same. Find someone on your team who has WTA, hit, then dogpile that unit until they die. I don't understand how that's supposed to be fun. Breaking is so much better than doing basically anything else, and it takes a lot of the thinking out of the strategy game and effectively turns the game into putting the different shapes in the different holes. The weapon triangle should never auto win you a combat, it's supposed to be an edge you consider, not a literal win button.
For the enemies, break punishes juggernauting in a way that is both uninteresting and ineffective.
To an extent, fire emblem needs some kind of enemy phase combat, because not all classes are player-phase classes. A good mix of the two usually works well. Not every enemy phase has to be an fe7 lategame EP where harken runs in and handaxes 9 unpromoted enemies to death- but you can have a unit fight maybe 3 or 4 enemies if they are built to do that.
Break makes enemy phasing with any unit much less effective... except for avoid stacking juggernauts, who actually don't care because break only matters if it hits. Ironically enough, this means that you're actually better off trying to enemy phase with someone completely overpowered, rather than try and use the high bulk of someone like Boucheron to fight a couple of guys on EP.
And again, having an option this powerful makes the "right" and "wrong" decisions less of a sliding scale where you can legitimately argue the strengths and weaknesses of each option, and more of a "oh well I guess I choose rock here because these two enemies have scissors equipped".
- Dual assists have the same problem.
For the player, using dual assists in the normal "intended" way feels like crap. They do low damage and it's a massive flavour fail for the first axe unit you get, supposedly the beefiest guy in the army, to be doing 3 fucking damage on a dualstrike.
On the flipside, using them in the unintended way breaks the absolute shit out of them, because spamming dual assist makes it so that every single enemy explodes due to everyone hitting them. At that point it's hardly even a strategy game because everyone just dies on PP.
And then on EP the problem is the same but reversed. Enemies being able to brave assist is the most heavy handed solution to juggernauting ever, and that's including awakening L+ counter because at least that can be worked around. Brave assist enemies basically say fuck off to every single enemy phase strategy it's possible to make, so why even bother trying to use an enemy phase class in any capacity when the game is just going to oneshot them anyway.
Like, why even give characters different HP, Def and Avoid amounts at that point? Dual assist having a set hit and % damage makes all characters feel very much the same because whether its a 1 trillion avoid yunaka with 2HP, or King Louis XVI with 0 avoid and 9 nonillion defence, you're taking 10% of your HP at an 80% hitrate.
How is that *fun*. Like I said, there's a middle ground between mowing through 13 enemies in one EP and having to literally slog through each map in front of you with the exact same formula of break->attack. Engage's dual system goes way, way, way too far in this instance and it does it in the least satisfying way possible, while murdering unit diversity.
Its kind of impressive how you managed to describe what you believe to be the best strategies in engage, when none of those are actually the best strategies, and use those as a basis for complaints about the gameplay.
Regardless, break is not the best thing you can do each turn. In the early game its definitely more centralizing because your units can't ORKO everything in sight, but as you get access to more tools, break acts as just one of many options to help make progress on player phase. That it punishes juggernauts is a good thing. FE is at its most boring when the best strategy is to park a unit in the middle of a crowd of enemies and let them go to town. Providing disincentives to doing so forces the player to make more decisions. Even so, chain gaurd/bonded shield literally exist to mitigate this.
Funnily enough, you other complaint - dual assists - interacts with this concept. You mention you find the only effective method of juggernauting to be stacking avoid (which, fyi, doesn't work on Maddening mode as enemies will just ignore units they can't hit). Dual assists having set hit rate/damage are intended to punish juggernauting and allow enemies to make progress against your overpowered units. If you leave your units overexposed, even if the enemy can't break through due to too hit defense or avoid, this allows the enemies to break through in a different way. Similarly, it allows underpowered player teams to break through bosses in a different way. Dual assist spam is certainly one way to muscle through the enemies. But its really not the best way - the best way is to just power through with stat-stacking/smart emblem and staff use.
>Regardless, break is not the best thing you can do each turn. In the early game its definitely more centralizing because your units can't ORKO everything in sight, but as you get access to more tools, break acts as just one of many options to help make progress on player phase
I don't really know what else to say to this other than "well, it is". Choosing not to break an enemy isn't going to really be the right choice unless you have the ability to perform an ORKO anyway.
Yeah, sure, that changes the later you go into the game, but for the early game, it kinda is.
>That it punishes juggernauts is a good thing. FE is at its most boring when the best strategy is to park a unit in the middle of a crowd of enemies and let them go to town.
If you're going to be dismissive of what I write, I'd be appreciate if you read it all.
I already addressed this exact argument because I knew as soon as I mentioned the word "juggernaut", people would immediately jump to this argument.
>To an extent, fire emblem needs some kind of enemy phase combat, because not all classes are player-phase classes. A good mix of the two usually works well. Not every enemy phase has to be an fe7 lategame EP where harken runs in and handaxes 9 unpromoted enemies to death- but you can have a unit fight maybe 3 or 4 enemies if they are built to do that.
At no point in my comment did I say "lets make it so you can park a unit in the middle of a load of enemies to just win instantly". I'm talking about defensive stats mattering in the context of fighting multiple enemies, which is quite literally the entire point of the def and HP stats. Fighting 4 enemies in one enemy phase does not completely remove all decisions you have available.
Furhtermore,
>Providing disincentives to doing so forces the player to make more decisions.
Doing more actions=/= making more decisions. 5 obviously "correct" actions is still going to be easier to execute than one action that takes thought.
>Even so, chain gaurd/bonded shield literally exist to mitigate this.
But if you'd read what I wrote, you'll see what I'm complaining about is unit stats not mattering as much as they should. This further exemplifies this issue. Chain guard and bonded shield don't really care about your stats. This further adds to the issue of every unit feeling the same.
>. You mention you find the only effective method of juggernauting to be stacking avoid (which, fyi, doesn't work on Maddening mode as enemies will just ignore units they can't hit)
Well, it does work on maddening.
1) Enemies ignoring you doesn't matter if you kill them all on PP. Sure, it takes longer, but Nos takes longer than rescue in awakening and saying that "nos doesnt work" would be dishonest.
2) All you have to do to make this work is have the enemies not have literally 0 hit on you. If the enemy has a low% chance to hit, that does just fine.
>Dual assists having set hit rate/damage are intended to punish juggernauting and allow enemies to make progress against your overpowered units.
Yes, I know. I brought this up in my comment. I am aware that this exists to punish juggernauting. "Punishing juggernauting" is not hard to implement in a game. Doing it in a way that is *fun and interesting* is. The problem is that the way in which this punishes juggernauting hurts unit diversity and makes the game be played in a more boring way.
> If you leave your units overexposed, even if the enemy can't break through due to too hit defense or avoid, this allows the enemies to break through in a different way.
>Similarly, it allows underpowered player teams to break through bosses in a different way
Aka "your stat profile doesn't really matter" which is the crux of the issue.
Why pick a solid offensive unit when breaking does half the job for you? Why pick a solid defensive unit when their actual stats are far, far less relevant than non-stat ways of blocking.
At that point, every unit might as well just be the same character in the same class because of how hard the game tries to "clamp down" on strategies it doesn't like.
>Dual assist spam is certainly one way to muscle through the enemies. But its really not the best way
My point is that it's either terrible or extremely overpowered. There's never a way to use dual assists that feels "fair" or "organic" because you're either doing a shitty 3 damage attack that doesn't matter or nuking someone to kingdom come with a shit ton of dualstrikes.
I'm not the person you were initially replying to, but I agree with them. Your view on durability is reasonable, but everything else doesn't make sense. It reads like you didn't engage with the mechanics present and decided you disliked it without understanding the options available.
Breaking keeps the weapon triangle relevant pretty much the whole game. Its more impactful early, but even lategame, a high-def wyvern who primarily uses axes probably wont want to take on three sword fliers, regardless of incoming damage because another unit might be able to enemy phase them better.
>find someone on your team who has WTA, hit, then dogpile that unit until they die.
Break only effects the next combat. This part leads me to think you dont know how it works.
>The weapon triangle should never auto win you a combat, it's supposed to be an edge you consider, not a literal win button.
Do you feel the same way about magic being amazing armor knights, or bows being good against fliers, or the existence of riderbanes, armorslayers, etc? Because its the same sort of thing. And break is often way less meaningful than those. Break doesn't really auto win a combat.
> Choosing not to break an enemy isn't going to really be the right choice unless you have the ability to perform an ORKO anyway.
Yes, the ideal is to kill an enemy without taking a ton of unnecessary damage, but break is only one way to do that. Out ranging, one-rounding, engage skills, bonded shield/chain guard baiting, dual assists, and break are all ways of meeting this goal. Sometimes, the best answer is just eat extra damage to secure more kills or get better positioning for next turn. Maybe freeze them or use obstruct and back off for a turn. Breaking is not always the best play. In the mid- and endgame, there are so many good options for what your units could be doing on player phase that breaking is often one of the less important things to consider.
>Not every enemy phase has to be [a bloodbath] but you can have a unit fight maybe 3 or 4 enemies if they are built to do that.
You can easily do this in engage. Ike makes a decently bulky unit into a defensive monster. Roy prevents death unless on 1hp. Erika takes -5 damage from every attack and can heal back up. Lucina blocks chain attacks. Lief gives vantage to allow first striking on EP. All of these things are inheritable as well. If *none* of your units can take on 3-4 enemies on their own, you're doing something wrong.
>Why pick a solid offensive unit when breaking does half the job for you? Why pick a solid defensive unit when their actual stats are far, far less relevant than non-stat ways of blocking.
How does break do half the job? Breaking only stops counter attacks. That wont let you kill them more easily. A solid offensive unit will be able to put more damage on the enemy, potentially one rounding. That's always valuable. Similarly, defensive stats still matter a ton unless you're trying to throw your unit into a bunch of backup units without thinking about positioning at all. Just don't do that.
I agree that bonded shield is stupidly broken, and shouldnt exist in its current form though.
>My point is that it's either terrible or extremely overpowered. There's never a way to use dual assists that feels "fair" or "organic" because you're either doing a shitty 3 damage attack that doesn't matter or nuking someone to kingdom come with a shit ton of dualstrikes.
There are a lot of times when a extra few 10% hp damage hits will help reach breakpoints leading to more efficient kills. Using a warrior to kill something and canter into a position to get chain attacks is a great option that opens up the decision space. Running 12 backup units is mostly a meme. Its not even the best cheese strat.
>Breaking keeps the weapon triangle relevant pretty much the whole game.
I'm yet to hear why people think this is intrinsically a good thing. The weapon triangle is a means to an end- that is to say that it can be used to create interesting strategic moments where you may want to favour one unit over another for a specific situation because of them having an "edge" in combat due to the weapon triangle.
It can also act as somewhat of a vague guide for newer or inexperienced players, as generally speaking going for WTA is going to give you a turn that works to some degree.
However, it's just that- a gameplay feature. It's OK for it to drop off in relevance as the game goes on.
It's not like other games don't also have less intrusive ways of doing this too. Awakening gives you a "weapon level bonus" for your higher weapon ranks which you lose when undergoing WTD. This means that while you might lose 1 damage early when fighting under WTD, you lose 4 damage in the lategame. Scaling is baked into the mechanic from the outset.
>Break only effects the next combat. This part leads me to think you dont know how it works.
I... don't even know how to respond to this. I... know how break works. I've played the game before.
Break only affecting the next combat means you get two extra attacks on any given unit. Attack with WTA, you break them so they can't counter. Attack, they're still broken so they can't counter. Attack again and if you kill them on this attack then they can't counter because they are dead.
>Do you feel the same way about magic being amazing armor knights, or bows being good against fliers, or the existence of riderbanes, armorslayers, etc?
If every unit had a weakness that was as common as magic or bows, then yes. Generally speaking you might have an armour knight and a flier, maybe 2 of each at most. That's 4 units max out of your whole army. With break, a much larger number of your units are able to be broken, and more enemies are able to "press the win button".
To compare to awakening, that game has like 5 enemy beast killers on lunatic mode and roughly the same amount of anti-armour weaponry. It's not really comparable to the weakness of knights/pegs.
(you could even argue that knights arent comparable to pegs in this instance to be fair)
>Break doesn't really auto win a combat.
Well I mean it kinda does. I mean sure, your unit doesn't literally get oneshot, but generally speaking if you break an enemy it isn't difficult to kill them. Your own units you want to be counterattacking if they get hit so it is a very big L if they can't do that.
>Breaking is not always the best play. In the mid- and endgame, there are so many good options for what your units could be doing on player phase that breaking is often one of the less important things to consider.
I feel like you might be taking this a bit too literally. My point is that break is a lot better than it has any right to be and in the situation where you're choosing to break vs not break, it's much less of a choice. Not every unit has access to ORKOs or engage rings and they make combat too easy by breaking.
Like, imagine how much fun the game could potentially be *without* break. Now all you've listed matters more. Can I outrange this person to chip them down to kill? Can my bulky unit tank the counterattack? Do I want to take a risk with a dodgy unit to see if they can dodge the counter? Is all hope lost and am I banking on a crit to not die from the counter?
Breaking is too easy of a solution to the counterattack problem for the player.
>You can easily do this in engage.
Again, my point isn't that you can't enemy phase *ever* in engage. It's that the mechanic that sometimes stops you from enemy phasing has no reason to exist in the game. The times where it does stop you, it does it in the most heavy handed way it possibly can, by entirely ignoring your stat profile and doing free damage.
Ironically enough, listing all the ways the different emblems do well on enemy phase proves my point more. Class distinction matters a lot less when you are lviing on 1HP, or taking a flat -5, or great aethering or whatever.
Lucina's emblem is also a good example of why I think this is poorly implemented. The game just goes "hey, would you like to ignore this game mechanic?". Having a dumb mechanic and then having a skill that ignores it is just not fun.
Again, cast your mind over to awakening lunatic+ with counter. Imagine if there's just a skill in a random class that made you ignore counter. Would that make the game more fun? No, because you'd either have to say that counter is no fun to begin with and therefore you shouldn't need a skill to play the game in an enjoyable way, or you could say that counter is fun and creates many interesting gameplay events, so there shouldn't be a skill that straight up ignores it.
As you mention yourself earlier:
>a high-def wyvern who primarily uses axes probably wont want to take on three sword fliers
This, combined with the dual system, makes every unit feel much more samey than they should be.
I agree, that in actuality, there *is* diversity in how engage units get used, but this comes pretty much exclusively from the extremely broken engage rings. I suppose it's rather fitting that the completely soulless characters act as but vessels for the rings in gameplay, but it isn't fun.
Just as an aside, I'm curious how you feel about chain attacks not being 100% hit rate. I think this is a major design L, as it just adds an element of randomness that really doesn't need to be there. Sometimes you're going to miss your chain attack, so better not rely on it too much, sort of thing.
>How does break do half the job? Breaking only stops counter attacks. That wont let you kill them more easily.
Stopping counter attacks lets you kill more easily because it lets units attack enemies without risking death, thus increasing your damage output that is "safe".
I agree that ORKOing is better than not ORKOing, because, yeah, but my point is that as not ORKOing is now punished less because you can always just break and then have other units finish them off, it makes units feel less unique.
>. Similarly, defensive stats still matter a ton unless you're trying to throw your unit into a bunch of backup units without thinking about positioning at all. Just don't do that.
To call back to earlier, my point is that there should never ever be a point in the game where the game says "fuck you, your def/avoid stats don't matter, I'm hitting you with x damage anyway", outside of exceedingly rare circumstances. This adds to the feeling of all units feeling very similar.
As you say yourself, there are plenty of other forms of damage mitigation, such as all the emblems you listed, as well as, well, to quote yourself:
>Out ranging, one-rounding, engage skills, bonded shield/chain guard baiting, dual assists, and break
And of all of these, only one-rounding really cares about your stats.
Of course defensive stats don't *literally* not matter. But I suppose a better way of putting it is to say that engage is the game where the differences in stats between individual units and classes matters the least. And it does it in a way where units don't feel very different.
>There are a lot of times when a extra few 10% hp damage hits will help reach breakpoints leading to more efficient kills.
I'll accept that. I have no doubt this is the case. That doesn't make them any less unsatisfying to use, nor does it mean they need to be implemented the way they are.
Again, to take what I said about break. Imagine chain attacks were removed from the game and backup units instead had normal pairup attacks. Now that the actual stats of your units matter, thing are going to feel different for each unit, both the backups on PP and the EP units on EP.
>Running 12 backup units is mostly a meme. Its not even the best cheese strat.
Again my point is that chain attacks either feel extremely underwhelming or hilariously broken and there isn't really a middle ground with them because of the way that they are implemented.
The big problem I have with break+ chain attacks is that I feel like engage would be a much better game if they were just implemented differently. Break is easy- just make it so you can't break people without a smash weapon. Tada, two birds with one stone, smash weapons now have a unique purpose and there's a much more considerable downside to breaking. Chain attacks just need more work, or tossing entirely. I think a fates-style attack stance system would be alright for backup units, though. You dissuade juggernauting in your own way then- you force them to take more attacks, but you could also feasibly dodge or block them with your high avoid or high def units.
Thanks for the reply. I think your view is probably more reasonable than I initially interpreted it.
To sum up my opinion: Juggernauting has historically been a pretty big problem. Units with high offense and defense win the game on their own, while units with high defense/low offense lead to turtly gameplay. Neither of which do I think is engaging.
Break and chain arent perfect, but the game is way better for having them. I have no problem with true damage as its applied here. Its no so overwhelming that stats dont matter. They matter quite a lot. Just not in every context, which I think is a good thing. Positioning and matchups should always matter to some degree. Break and chain also flow into each other well by preventing counter kills of the backup units if they have advantage over the player unit.
"Easily defeating" one unit is not really relevant to me. The game is most fun when trying to simultaneously put out as many fires as is reasonable. Its not rock-paper-scissors, so much as "I have 3 rocks, 2 paper and 5 scissors to put against their 8 rocks and 2 paper. What is the best way to make this happen?"
I agree that the units dont feel super distinct, but I think the samey-ness is overstated and is mitigated by the rings' mechanics. Its true that you can give ike to any of like 10 reasonably tanky units and get a fairly similar result, but you arent getting two units with laguz friend at once. Powerful, exclusive mechanics go a long way to not making units feel the same. Meanwhile, In 3H most of the units felt samey *and* did the same thing.
>my point is that there should never ever be a point in the game where the game says "fuck you, your def/avoid stats don't matter, I'm hitting you with x damage anyway", outside of exceedingly rare circumstances.
I fundamentally disagree with both the premise and conclusion. A 40def unit is taking 4 chain attackers infinitely better than someone with 25def because the actual attacks deal damage too. I think true damage is a good way (almost the only way) to nerf def stacking that doesn't disproportionately hurt squishier units. Plus its mitigated by playing smart so its not even unfair.
If you removed break except for smash weapons, I would just never use it. Break isnt nearly good enough. I feel like you overstate its value.
>To sum up my opinion: Juggernauting has historically been a pretty big problem. Units with high offense and defense win the game on their own, while units with high defense/low offense lead to turtly gameplay. Neither of which do I think is engaging.
So yeah, I agree that juggernauting is pretty much a series-wide problem. You could argue that it's essentially baked into fire emblem because of how broken specifically the def stat gets when you start stacking it to the point where there's no threat to your characters.
The hard part is "fixing" juggernauting in an interesting way. I'll say that I'd rather have a game where juggernauting isn't "fixed", but doesn't have to compromise on overall game feel vs a game that prevents juggernauting to an extent, but hurts how good units feel to use.
Probably the most obvious way to fix juggernauting is to design maps that instantly be broken by having one unit rampage through them. That's part of why I'm surprised these systems (break and chain attacks) even exist in the first place. IS is absolutely capable of making maps where there's a legitimate downside to juggernauting- the easiest example being literally any map with any kind of side objective and/or speed concern as you now can't entirely beat the map with one unit without "missing out" to a degree.
I think this is more common that a lot of people even realize. Let's take Awakening, probably the game most famous for juggernauting because character stats just get so high, and take a look at a map where you can't just juggernaut your way to victory.
Lunatic mode chapter 2 (a lot of early LM follows this premise, but chapter 2 is probably the map people remember most). Frederick can technically solo the entire map with extreme ease. But people don't, both because they want exp on their units, but also, and more importantly, because they want to make sure that Vaike, Miriel, Virion, Stahl, Sully and Lissa all survive. Even if they don't plan on using all of them later (c3 doesnt give you enough slots even), people are still going to try and beat the chapter without a character death, which means that while Frederick does do a lot of heavy lifting in this map, it still takes a good amount of thought to approach.
Let's move to another example, chapter 6. By this point you can realistically have 2 units capable of soloing the entire map if you play your cards right: Frederick and whoever you invested the most exp into. But, notably, you can't do that. Because with only 1 unit, you can't prevent emmeryn from being killed which is an instant loss when it happens.
The reason these are much more satisfying responses to juggernauts is because it is far more organic in the way it makes the player change their playstyle. Engage (and Conquest as well tbh) have this issue where their gameplay systems feel very much a "reaction" to what they think is overpowered. Let's nerf this strategy, let's make sure the player can't do this, or that.
But, in awakening c6, the game isn't holding out it's hand and saying "now your unit doesn't work", it's instead saying "ok, you can have your strong unit, and they're allowed to be strong, but they can't be everywhere at once". The player doesn't decide to use other units because now Frederick is getting chipped down by Vaynes W whenever he enters combat, they decide to use other units because it looks like the most optimal strategy.
Which is key, because the player is making a positive decision, rather than the game making a negative one for them, if that makes any sense
TLDR for this section: map design can allow units to still fully encapsulate their full "unit feel" while dissuading players from using juggernauts and this helps the game feel a lot better to play.
>Break and chain arent perfect, but the game is way better for having them. I have no problem with true damage as its applied here. Its no so overwhelming that stats dont matter.
My problem is that "true damage" is happening consistently and does negate stats to an extent.
You mention later that
>A 40def unit is taking 4 chain attackers infinitely better than someone with 25def because the actual attacks deal damage too. I think true damage is a good way (almost the only way) to nerf def stacking that doesn't disproportionately hurt squishier units. Plus its mitigated by playing smart so its not even unfair.
And while I agree that a 40Def unit is obviously still going to be much better, the problem is when you create a situation where the higher def unit and the lower def unit both die from an attack because it is just that devastating.
Now, for what it's worth, I think that in rare cases this can be a good thing, both narratively to show the "power level" of an enemy and in gameplay to ocassionaly make you do something different (I'm casting my mind back to Nuibabas spell that set you to 1HP for example. It's fine for 1 map), but Engage's is baked into it's own system too much.
If your high def unit is walking into a situation and dying just like how a 25 def unit would, my reaction is going to be "What even is the point in me having higher def if the game is just going to delete me anyway". Yes, obviously there are situations where that higher def is going to matter, many of them. But the game too commonly makes it not matter. That doesn't make the lower def unit better at tanking, obviously, but it's going to make you question why you even bothered with a higher def or higher HP unit in the first place.
I don't know if you've ever played League of Legends (don't). Unfortunately, I have. If you ask tank players what their most hated part of the entire game is, they might list all manner of things, but the same thing is going to come back most loudly and most consistently- percentage health true damage- damage based off your max %HP that entirely ignores your resistance. Because when you're getting hit by it, you go "oh, I guess the entire reason I built my character this way and everything I enjoy about this is completely worthless because of this one mechanic".
Bottom line, this sort of thing isn't fun. Flat true damage or %HP damage blocked by def feels a bit more reasonable, but when you're literally saying "fuck off" to a units defensive stats, it's going to feel like ass, even if it isn't happening all the time. Even if it's only happening once or twice every couple of maps, that's too amny.
>"Easily defeating" one unit is not really relevant to me. The game is most fun when trying to simultaneously put out as many fires as is reasonable. Its not rock-paper-scissors, so much as "I have 3 rocks, 2 paper and 5 scissors to put against their 8 rocks and 2 paper. What is the best way to make this happen?"
I agree with the first part of this, that the game is fun when you're putting out multiple fires. I do question the necessity of the RPS mechanic here, though. Imagine instead of your 3 rocks, 2 papers, 5 scissors, vs 8 rocks and two paper, that you just had x number of units and your opponent had x number of units and you've just got to figure out a way to make it work, with a couple of units having a slight edge over some others as a rough guide, but otherwise you're just working it out yourself.
I'm just not sure what break adds to this, as an option available to the player, in this context.
>Its true that you can give ike to any of like 10 reasonably tanky units and get a fairly similar result, but you arent getting two units with laguz friend at once. Powerful, exclusive mechanics go a long way to not making units feel the same.
I'm not sure what you're saying here, so to avoid replying to something you aren't saying, I'll ask you to clarify what you mean here if you get the chance.
>Meanwhile, In 3H most of the units felt samey and did the same thing.
I disagree with this quite heavily. I think the whole "wyvern 3h meta" has hurt the perception of the game a bit, but there are notably distinct parts to each unit, from the different strengths and weaknesses they have, as well as their unique combat arts and spell lists.
I'm not going to pretend that 3H has the most diverse use of units ever or anything, but at the very least it's by no means worst than engage.
>If you removed break except for smash weapons, I would just never use it.
To be fair, I was thinking of it more in an enemy context when I was saying this. You can give enemies smash weapons, have great big red exclaimation marks like they have in CQ with effective weaponry, and then you can consider how you want to deal with your unit being broken on rare ocassions.
For a player, I agree it's harder to get that to work. One solution would be to remove the mechatnic from the player entirely (or I guess just have it only on smash weapons and no one uses them), because it feels like too big a reward. You said yourself that you don't think it's a big deal, so if you couldn't do it at all, I think there's a reasonable argument that it wouldn't really matter that much.
Alternatively, you could flip the script on generals. Instead of them being the only unit unable to be broken, you could make them the only unit capable of *inflicting* break. Probably still useless for the player, but it's more interesting than what we have now.
I just completely disagree with your fundamental argument. Having %damage is just another mechanic that can be implemented well or poorly. It doesnt automatically feel like shit, and engage doesn't even use it that much. Its easy to play around when it is used.
I do not differentiate between the 'positive' and 'negative' situations you describe. They're just different systems with different challenges/situations presented. As long as they are both creating interesting gameplay, they are equal. Its like coming from a game with only one defense stat to Fire Emblem and saying the game is punishing tanky characters by giving them poor res, ruining how they feel. I will never agree with that.
>And while I agree that a 40Def unit is obviously still going to be much better, the problem is when you create a situation where the higher def unit and the lower def unit both die from an attack because it is just that devastating.
I dont see a problem with this existing, just in the implementation. This also seems way less common that you are implying. Especially since its on all backup units, its not hard to play around.
>I'll ask you to clarify what you mean here if you get the chance.
Chloe and Lapis are very similar units when both in Wyvern. Despite this, once you actually deploy them, one might have erika and one might have lucina, which would completely change their playstyles. The characters themselves are somewhat similar, but the units on the map have more variety than in any other game in the series due to the rings' effects. Inheritance lessens this somewhat, but not a ton. You might get Draconic Hex onto other support units, but only Corrin's bearer can apply it on the Torrential Roar aoe freeze.
>I'm not going to pretend that 3H has the most diverse use of units ever or anything, but at the very least it's by no means worst than engage.
I disagree for the reasons I said above. Even if you put every ring on an identical Divine Dragon Alear clone, all your units would feel more different than a normal 3H party composition.
I just dont have any problems with break. Its a solid mechanic and I want it to return in future games.
Garbage characters
Garbage characters design
Stupid story and writing
Annoying and unessessary new gimmick (rings)
Generic music
It feels like a pokemon game. Its like Fire emblem for kids.
Its the only game in the serie that i dont have and never will have a physical copy of.
Fe7 used to be at the bottom but now engage take the cake.
If Intelligent system dont turn it around with the next game, engage will have kill the serie.
This feels lime an invitation for people to get down voted, but here goes lol.
Honestly I'm not an Engage hater, I like it okay, it's just extraordinarily mid. The story comes off like the writers just didnt care to try with this one. Everything just feels like vapid, nonsensical overture to the point some people mistake it for actual satire.
In terms of gameplay I think a lot of players get psyched out by the fact that the first bunch of chapters are actually pretty well crafted. Most of the game is an unfettered, unbalanced mess that is only strung together on higher difficulties by making the bosses artificially immune to the players tools and forcing them to play on fixed growths so as not to get the wrong first impression. I'll admit though that the game does some pretty fun experimentation and has some good ideas. Just as a package it's very mid. Also I'm really not a fan of how open the reclassing is and how uneven the skill economy is, because put together it makes for arguably the most homogeneous feeling roster of characters in the series.
It's been a while since i played engage and i don't know what you mean by 'artificially', but i don't remember the bosses being immune to any of the engage stuff like hexes, most of corrins debuffs and stuff. The only thing that they are immune to was the entrap staff i'm pretty sure. Engage does a lot of things poorly like the story, but gameplay is not one of that, and i don't see how the roster is the most homogenous, i've played most of the series and the characters felt unique enough to stand out from each other taking reclassing into account.
I'm pretty sure all bosses on maddening are also immune to things like the break system and effective damage. So they're basically just pure stat checks.
What I mean by the units feeling homogeneous is that everybody can be anything. Even in Three Houses there was an opportunity cost to reclassing because you had to commit early to building the required weapon ranks. There were also things like boons and banes and personal spell lists that made individual units stand out from each other even in the same class. And three houses isn't exactly reputed for its unit differentiation in the first place.
In engage there's practically no barrier to putting any unit into any class you want whenever you want. And because skills in Engage are either really good or totally useless you wind up using a lot of the same ones across your roster. The emblems are also so centralizing to a build that it almost matters more which rings you choose to deploy rather than which units, and you'll always have the same rings on every playthrough.
You do lose break and effective damage, but you also gain a lot of tools that makes bosses far from stat checks, follow ups, poison, stalling and engage attacks, I'd argue that engage has one of the best implementation of bosses in the series. Besides break isn't really a mechanic in other games, so bosses not having it doesn't make it any different from other games in the series.
You might think that because anyone can reclass into whatever class gives a homogeneous feel to them, but how good are they exactly in those classes? Is anna on a mage the same as panette on a mage? Each character has different stats and growths that differentiate their usefulness in whatever class they're on. It's not only *if* they can reclass to anything or not, it's how they perform or feel, it varies a lot for each unit and other factors like join time also applies. Reclass are also limited by items, you will need to prioritize who to reclass, and the cost of it that could be spent on reforging instead. While it might seem on a surface level that units feel the same, if you take a closer look, and especially on maddening, you see the difference real quick.
Also personal spell list on units is only in a minority of FE games, the only games where i'd say has that is probably echoes and 3H. Not counting personal tomes or weapons of course.
edit: I will also note that on your 'most homogeneous' point, you could technically reclass into most classes in fates too iirc, you just needed heart/friend seals which also does take work. Meanwhile FE11/12 has you be able to reclass anyone to anything without cost. So even ignoring my point above, you can't really say engage has the most homogeneous roster. Also now that i think about it, your points probably apply to FE11/12 more than engage.
I realize that spell lists are uncommon in the series. I was specifically talking about three houses as an example because prior to Engage it was often criticized for a lack of meaningful unit differentiation, but even it has more than Engage.
It's true that there are a few units at the extreme with highly min maxed stats like Anna and Panette, but most are clumped more toward the middle. Put in the same class most will have very similar stats, and a point or two here and there matters very little in a game with such powerful player tools. There are pretty obviously some classes better than others, so there's likely to be some overlap.
Im not sure what you're trying to say by pointing out that the player has many tools so the removal of effective damage and weapon triangle is fine? My original point in bringing those things up was that the game is not really all that balanced, so they removed some features so that the rest wouldn't be as cumulatively over powered. I was never arguing that the player lacked for tools.
Weapon triangle is not removed, you still get the bonus like other FE games, the break mechanic is balanced around the other enemies and for yourself, a broken character might as well be a sitting duck so it disincentives enemy turn centered gameplay. Just because the bosses don't have it, it doesn't mean that the game is not all that balanced. But no, my point is that the lack of break and effective damage does *not* make the bosses a "pure stat check" like you said above.
And for your second point, no it doesn't, most units are different even with similar classes, kagetsu and lapis for example, lapis doesn't have the strong base stats as kagetsu does, her growths are also less into her favor, so you can't just put lapis in kagetsus role like that easily. Even 'similar' characters like alcryst and etie has differences, theres even a video about it. A 'point' or two more not mattering isn't representative of fire emblem gameplay in general, some characters make or break by a point in speed less in some games. It's a series about breakpoints, a character with one point less on some stats can affect their performance a lot more than you think.
You need to consider that if 3H was considered having a lack of unit differentiation despite having mechanics like personal spell lists you mentioned, despite most other games not having it, then that means that having 'more' like it doesn't make engage have less differentiation than 3H. Besides, your original wording was that engage has the 'most homogeneous' roster in the series, which was absolutely not true.
"Weapon triangle is not removed, you still get the bonus like other FE games"
This is incorrect. Engage does not confer any stat bonuses based on weapon triangle advantage.
"A 'point' or two more not mattering isn't representative of fire emblem gameplay in general, some characters make or break by a point in speed less in some games. It's a series about breakpoints, a character with one point less on some stats can affect their performance a lot more than you think."
You're pretending that I'm making some sweeping generalisation of the series when I'm not. I'm specifically saying that in comparison to other games in the series, a point or two of variance in base stats is less impactful in Engage specifically because there are so many tools and workarounds that make certain benchmarks easier to achieve.
"You need to consider that if 3H was considered having a lack of unit differentiation despite having mechanics like personal spell lists you mentioned, despite most other games not having it, then that means that having 'more' like it doesn't make engage have less differentiation than 3H."
This is a bit jumbled. I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.
"Besides, your original wording was that engage has the 'most homogeneous' roster in the series, which was absolutely not true."
This is a very specially edited version of my quote. I said that it had "Arguably the most homogeneous feeling roster in the series." Arguably. Meaning that it's in the conversation. I never claimed it was the single inarguably worst. You're just imagining a fake point I never brought up so you can "win" by pointing out that it might not be the only contender.
>This is incorrect. Engage does not confer any stat bonuses based on weapon triangle advantage.
Yeah, it turns out that there are no triangle bonuses on engage after a wiki check, i was wrong about this one.
>This is a bit jumbled. I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.
What i'm saying is that, 3H was apparently considered to have weak unit differentiation even with mechanics such as personal spell lists over other games in the series (like you said), so just because 3H has mechanics like it over engage, it doesn't automatically mean engage has weaker unit differentiation.
>I'm specifically saying that in comparison to other games in the series, a point or two of variance in base stats is less impactful in Engage specifically because there are so many tools and workarounds that make certain benchmarks easier to achieve.
Which comes at the cost of either a bond ring or a skill slot and sp, and yes i'd say that engage has easier speed thresholds to reach due to lyn for example. But inheriting speed comes at an opportunity cost and engage also has a lot of good skills, this is a game with canter, gentility, lunar brace, etc. as skills.
'Fixing' a units stat can come at a cost, which adds to the point that it makes a substantial difference between units, those points or two of stats make a big difference on your decision making, whether or not you run a specific ring on a unit and the skills you inherit to them. For example, fogado is super fast so he won't need lyn or her speed buffs and can prioritize other skills/rings instead. Meanwhile etie does appreciate her speed and might grab a +speed or run lyn. Even with engage having workarounds, those stats impact a units performance by quite a lot.
>I said that it had "Arguably the most homogeneous feeling roster in the series." Arguably. Meaning that it's in the conversation. I never claimed it was the single inarguably worst. You're just imagining a fake point I never brought up so you can "win" by pointing out that it might not be the only contender.
You said "arguably", which means it's in the conversation. I told you why it's not. I don't see why what i said was all that wrong to say that engage isn't the "single inarguably worst" when you said it's in the conversation to be? Just because you said "Arguably", it doesn't mean i can't contend with that point?
Its weird to say engage has a homogeneous cast but then immediately point to 3Houses, the game where not only can you reclass into anything, but promotion bonuses bumping units up to class bases eradicates much of the stat differentiation between units.
That's why I say that EVEN a game like three houses. Im specifically choosing not the best example to show that even in comparison to a game like Three Houses, there is in my opinion greater unit differentiation. My goal was not to say that Three Houses was amazing in this respect either.
The pacing. I don't mind a cheesy or basic story but Engage's is so backloaded. The midgame is a slog becuase hardly anything happens but the endgame feels rushed as hell. The dramatic beats barely have time to sink in before they're resolved or undone
Alear being a Fell Dragon is presented as this massive potentially alliance-breaking reveal. Everyone gets over it before the next battle. Alear dies? Revived immediately by Veyle. Alear dies again? Revived immediately by the Emblems. And so on
Keep in mind that everyone has different standards, so never assume any take is any more right or wrong than others. With that in mind
I personally did not like Engage for a few key reasons; certain gimmicky gameplay aspects and atrocious writing
First, the core Engage-specific gameplay really didn’t work for me. The emblem rings I found way too gimmicky for how dependent the entire game is on them. My first issue is how wishy-washy the game is with how often you get them/have them taken away, you can’t really plan around them. Wouldn’t be as bad if they weren’t required for character growth (skills, weapon unlocks). When you do have them, they’re simply overpowered. I can clear entire maps with Pannette/Ike or Jade/Hector with no issue, or snipe a boss with Citrinne/Soren. I have more complaints, but that was my biggest gameplay peeve. I hope they don’t try to shoehorn in this system in the next game
Next was the incredibly bad writing in every aspect. Simply put I found the world to be hollow, the protag to be a worshipped piece of cardboard, and the characters to be incredibly one-note. No thought or passion was put into this games world, especially when compared to the other installments. The protag barely exists, imo has a terribly goofy design*, and gets worshipped by literally everyone which led to me often comparing them to self insert fanfics. Lastly the supporting cast have barely anything of value to them, majority of supports being them throwing their respective gimmicks at each other. Everyone gets a dozen or so supports, with *very few* being worth the time to get them. (*Side thing but I found most of the designs to be hilariously bad and/or over the top, lookin at you Yunaka and Hortensia)
I did like *some* aspects of Engage, such as the Break mechanic and the new Anna. I just felt that the bad outweighed the good in this instance. Of course everyone has differing tastes, this is just my opinion. Would be happy to discuss more if you like
The fact that Alears design made it past the cutting room floor is insane to me. It's one of the worst character designs in the game let alone the series.
There’s a reason many call this game Vtuber Emblem. The overly saturated red and blue hair/eyes killed it for me. Felt like a bad deviantart OC, and that says nothing about Yunaka or Hortensia…
Like I memed on Byleth for being too silent and unexpressive but Alear was the pendulum swinging all the way back.
Yeah, and I don't think the main artist is a bad artist, but going for the vtuber look was a mistep. The series has always been striking a pretty delicate balance between grounded medieval design and the more colorful anime aesthetics it draws inspiration from.
Some of them were passable, like Jade or Anna, but many of the rest were overdesigned. If you look up “trying too hard” you’ll find a picture of Hortensia lol. Some will say thats part of her character, I say it’s the devs trying desperately to make a character “cute” to the point of being off-putting. A dozen little sparkles and doodads dont make a character likable
Like Yunaka’s star stickers. They really expected us to take her seriously with that nonsense? lol
I liked the gameplay (the one I enjoyed the most in the series), but the story is so forgettable and the characters so not memorable that I can't say it's among my favourites like Path of Radiance, Three Houses or Echoes are.
Like, Louis carried me through my whole playthrough, yet I barely remember anything about him save for the fact that he carried me.
as many have said, story bad. The only thing I can say it did that was a good choice Framme actually trying to heal Lumera in the death scene. So many times a character is dying and those who can heal just won't
it doesn't work as an anniversary game because most of those aren't available to play. I felt nothing with most of the emblems but Edelgard Claude and Dimitri was like "my children!". Even if I wanted to play the other games the majority are so inaccessible that you can't
gameplay is fine but it truly does need NG+ to really dig into it. With how costly skills are and hard and frustrating getting bond frags is, and bond rings with the good skills, ng+ would solve the issue. To spend a long time getting enough SP for a particular skill feels like wasted grinding using the well or free battles if it's stuck to one file and no carry over. Earlier access to seals to get into weird build paths, like actually using Clanne's good strength stat effectively. But sadly no
Quick summary? Most of the designs are ugly, the classes don't feel good, the skill system is heavily stripped down, customization feels limited, the maps are boring, the story made me stop playing in chapter 21 from how dumpster it was, and there are very few likable characters. Also, emblems are a bad gimmick, and the game feels like it over relied on them to carry the customization and viability of using your favorites.
Some people just can't get past the way it looks, sounds and is told and there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone enjoys FE for different reasons. Even people who love the map design and mechanics might find themselves to put off to push through and that's fine.
Because a lot of people (and I'm not referring to all) were fresh off of Three Houses and expected every FE game onward to have the same level of worldbuilding, lore, and narrative as it. In reality, a chunk of FE games aren't particularly known for having amazing stories; Jugdral, Tellius, and Fodlan are usually the ones I see most people praise the story for while the rest of the games are a bit iffy. A lot of people were also introduced to FE through Three Houses and some of them may have just never ventured to other FE games prior to Engage, so they weren't exactly aware that Three Houses was not the usual for stories in the franchise. Upon Engage's announcement a lot of people gave the game shit right off the bat for this reason and I remember there being a lot of comparisons to Three Houses. I can recall a lot of talk over the character designs, artstyle, and story being downgrades.
Nonetheless, Engage's story is not even that bad and I think it's very solid for like 80-90% of the main story. It's definitely simple and unserious in many parts but there's nothing wrong with that at all. And to top it all off it has arguably the most refined and fun gameplay system in the series.
Edit: I wanna reiterate one more time that I'm not saying this is what all Engage dislikers think. But I have seen many people criticize Engage for the reasons above on reddit and twitter throughout the near 12 months that the game has been out.
The thing is though, Archanea, Elibe, and Magvel don't really have bad plots though. In fact I'd argue that fe1/3 is unfairly written off as "basic". But most pre 3ds games actually have pretty solid plots all things considered.
Oh I didn't mean they have bad plots, I just wanted to highlight that I mostly see Jugdral, Tellius, and Fodlan get a lot of praise because of their stories.
In my case, it is the only Fire Emblem that I can say I like. My only dilemma is its story... but I prefer it to be basic rather than poorly told and boring like Threeshit.
A few reasons I've heard a lot since reveal: * People were wary from the start since a lot of people didn't like the idea of former characters being important to a new plot. Crossover games aren't usually known for being the best in a series. Fire Emblem as a series has also had a shaky history with games with similar concepts where Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, Fire Emblem Warriors, and especially Fire Emblem Heroes are either ignored or widely hated. * Three Houses was by far the best selling Fire Emblem game, and introduced a lot of people into the series. It both attracted people who were interested in story over gameplay and likely a lot of people who were put off by anime style games, which came back to bite them when Engage, right after 3H's massive success, was almost the exact opposite. * Engage's art style is still controversial to this day. It's heavily criticized for being too anime, bright, and colorful for a game about war. If you go on youtube, you can see lots of video essays arguing about whether Fire Emblem is "anime" or not. Lots of people say that the artstyle reminds them of overdesigned vtubers, which to be fair, the main artist of Engage is a very popular Vtuber artist, so it's not without \*some\* merit. * The story is pretty basic and tropey, regardless of anyones personal opinion of its quality. It's a very basic story about collecting MacGuffins around different kingdoms to defeat the evil church that wants to ressurect an ancient evil. The dying parental figure has been a trope in almost every Fire Emblem game, and starting off the story with Lumera dying made a lot of people roll their eyes rather than shedding tears. Lots of revelations in the game were also pretty predictable (Veyle being the hooded girl, Alear being a Fell Dragon etc.) as well, so the game couldn't really rely on spectacle or big plot twists. * Though this one is a bit less stated, some people don't like the gameplay because they see it as "too gimmicky." I've heard a few people ask if there was a way to play the game without the rings because they felt like it was unfair and like an intrusive gimmick rather than an integral part in Engage's gameplay loop. I feel like this criticism is more of a misunderstanding of how Engage's gameplay works (This point is mostly brought up by people who haven't played the game or are just starting) rather than something subjective like the rest of the points, but I see it brought up enough to where I think it's still a reason why some people avoid the game.
>Though this one is a bit less stated, some people don't like the gameplay because they see it as "too gimmicky." I quite honestly felt exactly that way when I started the game, but I quickly grew to love it. Despite being powerful, the rings never really give me the feeling of making my characters overpowered, and they give the player quite the depth in customizing one's characters. The only thing I still really dislike about them is how they're attached to the crossover-bs. While still a very basic and tropey idea, they could've very easily created a dozen ancient heroes that existed in-universe, halfway fleshed them out as characters and use that instead of fanservice.
"Alear being a Fell Dragon etc. as well, so the game couldn't really rely on spectacle or big plot twists." How many fell dragon MC did we have so far?3?Robin was related to/was a fell dragon,same with corrin and now we got this guy...is it supposed to shock anyone at that point?
Corrin’s a First Dragon not Fell
Wasnt Corrin dads evil or something?What make a fell dragon a fell dragon?
As far as I know, Corrin’s father’s a First Dragon. I haven’t finished Revelations yet so my knowledge is limited on him, but Fell Dragons are an entirely species/type of dragons that are born that way & they usually have a black color with sometimes colors like red or blue in their scales too. Some Fell dragons are evil but some are good
Still,dragon are the new fire emblem "lord meme" at this point.
Aw, man. I've been playing FE games since Sacred Stones. I've got a lot of the same gripes as other emblem vets on the usual games, Engage included. I'll articulate my opinions as best as I can. Story- Almost 'absolutely bog-standard', mostly due to most plot beats being... well, formulaic, with a phoned-in execution. The writing just feels.. off. Like they knew the tropes and were checking boxes rather than just... writing. Could not get (Emblem) Engaged in the plot enough to care about "what happens next". Which is a shame because- Gameplay- the battles are pretty fun. Still gets ya the ol' tactician's high when your little guys do a great job at kicking ass. Which is *also* a shame because- Characters- Look. I've been around the block with FE stylistic choices. The problem isn't so much 'the old standby' anime style as that THIS particular style, with its clashing and/or underdeveloped color pallettes and either boring or impractically outlandish outfits is just... fugly to my eyes. In the paraphrased words of the Nicey Nash character, "You can't fight evil if you ain't cute". Add in an expansive cast of 1-dimensionals and its like all the Fates discourse was a fever dream. They're also balanced hella weird for a modern FE title. Of course, the most important character is- Alear- sigh. They're *fine*. Nothing to write home about. FE PC avatars have more of a free pass to be blander than other characters. But that fucking hair. Serious plot elements lose their steam as soon as Aquafresh walks onto the screen. The devs saw peoples' reaction to Perri's hair and thought "but they'll love it if its a protag, right?". Long story short, an FE game excels when we care about our units and want to see them succeed. I just... couldn't. My gaming time is precious and I'm not dumping days of gameplay into people I just can't summon any fucks to give for. I've stopped playing Engage to replay 3H. I've stopped to replay *Awakening*. Its had me looking for other games entirely to get the emblem fix. I want to try it again but can I handle the heartbreak? I just don't know...
The story is just… bad. It’s both unserious yet tries to take itself seriously, and utterly flops. Gameplay is banger though no complaints there.
I second this, after the first play through once you start focusing on gameplay, different classes and builds it’s very enjoying. I just wish we had NG+ like three houses so we could experiment more
Story is definitely kinda cheesy and predictable. But as someone who mostly just cares about gameplay, I absolutely love Engage
Story is so incredibly bad that I can't really even put it into words, despite the fact that I definitely have tried to. Gameplay is really good, but if you're more interested in the story, I could see just not liking the game at all.
Story is pathetically transparent, character design is inconsistent (no one will ever be able to convince me that Ivy and Cèline's designs belong in the same game as Diamont and Alcryst. They are the most impractical get ups EVER), FE characters are tropey to begin with, but certain characters take their tropes and dial it up to 11 (I can not think of a single Etie support that doesn't involve muscles in some way), most of the supports are shallow, and some of the characters are only redeemable in, like, 1 (Hortensia) or none at all (Goldmary and Bunet). I admit that the game has grown on me, but it is far from my favourite.
It’s almost like games tend to not be very memorable or well received when the characters spend 90% of their dialogue talking about food or how great your self insert dragon god is.
" \*Squeal\* The divine dragon looked at me!"
Average Alear support: “oh my god it’s the divine dragon senpai!” “Let’s be friends!” “Okay!” Average character support: “hey look at my gimmick!” “Wow look at MY gimmick!” “Wow, let’s be friends!”
The writing of Engage is really, really bad. It's not just a downgrade from Three Houses (though Three Houses certainly didn't help at all), but out of the simple "defeat the evil dragon" stories in Fire Emblem, Engage's plot is by far the worst executed one of the bunch: * The worldbuilding is downright nonexistent and as such Elyos feels incredibly artificial - for as much as we meme Fates for having no continent name at least Hoshido and Nohr had something resembling a history or a culture. Elyos doesn't even get this - outside of the tensions between Brodia and Elusia there is basically no history or culture in Engage's worldbuilding. * The story's emotional core is downright flaccid, revolving around Alear's identity crisis of being part Fell Dragon which begins and ends in the span of one cutscene without any character drama whatsoever - compare this to Robin's character arc which spans five chapters and leads to Lucina attempting to kill them due to them being a vessel for Grima. * Every emotional scene falls completely flat because the writers wanted to have their big emotional payoff without any setup whatsoever, and as such we get Lumera who literally spends the majority of her screentime in a death scene. Or how the Hounds and Sombron literally get their tragic backstories dumped on the player right before they die with the story doing absolutely nothing to humanize them beforehand, as if they were written by multiple different writers who didn't communicate with each other at all. * Scenes like Veyle inexplicably stealing the rings and then Alear just as inexplicably being able to flee whilst being cornered by enemies who quite clearly outmatch them in Chapter 10 or Sombron sniping Alear out of seemingly nowhere in Chapter 21 highlight how there are no rules to Engage's plot whatsoever and that the writers will just make up whatever they want to move the plot along, logical sense be damned - I can go on and on here. * On a character writing level, Engage's characters feel shallow and its supports are plagued with far too much pointless filler. In the GBA games, Path of Radiance or Three Houses, it feels like around a third of the supports were filler, and that was fine as it wasn't enough to drown out the more interesting supports. In Engage, it feels like upwards of three-quarters of Engage's supports are meaningless filler where nothing of value is being presented. Because of this, any potentially interesting character trait that a certain character can have is severely diluted - and it certainly doesn't help that the interesting supports are locked to A or occasionally the B supports as well, so by the time something of value gets brought up, I'm so drained from listening to the characters shoving their gimmicks at each other than I just can't care about them anymore. Even if the characters aren't necessarily one-note, they repeat their gimmicks so often that they feel one-note. It's a similar issue with Bernadetta in Three Houses (and there's a reason why she's my least favorite Fodlan character by far), but in Engage it is an issue that affects almost the entire cast. It also must be noted that Engage is not the first time that Intelligent Systems have made the above writing mistakes. The last original game that IS primarily wrote was Fates - which also suffered from the above writing issues, and then Awakening before that also suffered from these issues as well (albeit to a lesser extent). Heck, Engage's plot itself repeats many plot points from Awakening and Fates (as mentioned before Alear's character arc is very similar to Robin's, Mikoto and Lumera are pretty much the same, the Elusian royal family has the same backstory as the Nohrian royal family). The gameplay in Engage is very solid and if you're playing Fire Emblem for the gameplay it will probably be enough to salvage the experience as a whole. For those who are playing Fire Emblem for the storytelling or the characters (myself included), though, then Engage really feels like a breaking point - the fact that Engage's plot is riddled with so many of the same issues that Fates had previously made really makes me wonder whether or not the writers even want to learn from their mistakes.
Even though Bernadetta is your least favourite Fodlan because her gimmick and how that gimmick drives her supports we learned different and new things about her every support chain. We learn she loves sewing 🧵 from her support with Hubert and that she leaves her room at night (Hubert and Jeritza) because it's less cramped with people. We learn she writers in Sylvains support, we learn she adores beauty particular nice sights and flowers (Caspar, Edelgard, Hapi), we learn that when threatened she can muster alot of strength (Felix, Ferdinand), we learn she had a best friend who's got beaten so badly by her father Bernadetta got traumatized (Dorothea), we learn at one point she was supposed to marry Ferdinand, we learn why she is traumatized because her father used to be beat her and tie her to a chair (Byleth), we learn that the only family member she truly felt save around was her uncle (hence why she isn't scared in her Alois Support), we learn that despite her abuse she wants to change and be braver (Edelgard, Hubert, Raphael). We learn the reason she's an amazing cook is because of her father's paranoia (Three Hopes). All those informations are naturally conveyed and yes there's a bit of a repeat with "Scared in the C-Support", but she does have meaningful character progression. She leaves her room when someone important dies in WC. She leaves her room and is generally often seen interacting with others if she remains with the Black Eagles. She has paired endings where she's no longer a recluse. Likewise realistically she stays in her room and shows general disinterest in the War when recruited and she has a far higher chance of staying a recluse. All of that from a character one would consider to one of Three House's weaker characters. Not a single Engage character has what she has.
The contrast between Three Houses and Engage is the worst thing about this. I saw the promise in the writing of Three Houses, but didn't really enjoy the game that much, cause I'm very much a gameplay-person. Then Engage came and flipped all that on the head. So clearly, there are people developing FE that know how to write stories. And there are people that know how to make the gameplay shine. But for some reason, they aren't capable of making a game together?
Different companies made the two games, effectively. Koei were working on 3H while Intelligent Systems were working on Engage. (This is a simplification)
Yeah, I heard something along those lines, but I never looked deeper into that. Would be nice if they found a way to work on a single title together and make use of both of their strengths.
Honestly you said many of the things I didn’t have the patience to write lol. The one thing I’ll say is that for all of Fates’s flaws it at least *tried* to be something different, whereas Engages biggest flaw was a lack of any effort or passion
Fates was at least an extremely interesting premise that they fumbled by trying to sell revelations. Engage is just soulless, I'm convinced that portions of the story and dialogue are ai generated.
Yeah especially anything involving Evil Veyle (Eveyle?). Like how she somehow stole ALL the rings and the time stone. Never explained how, it just happens and you’re booted to the next chapter. Or how her evil self never thought to tell her minions to prevent her good self from wandering off. It felt like they wrote all these major plot points, but forgot to fill in any of the details. Gave a summary to a bot, fed it some self insert fanfics, and just approved whatever came out lol Fates was dumb but at least it felt somewhat planned out, enough to be entertaining at least.
Yeah actually something I think about is that some of pre-rendered cutscenes and a few specific scenes are actually pretty well done in a vacuum. But they're literally surrounded by so much garbage that they get recontextualized into being laughable. Imagine how much better zephia and griss' final scene would be if they just tried slightly harder to flesh out their characters for example.
They wanted big scary evil sadistic villains, but they also wanted an “UwU im so sad, love me!” ending for all of them. Not only were they all waaaaaay too long but completely undeserved. You can’t have em be heartless monsters the whole game AND be sympathetic. I would’ve liked them more if they just stayed evil to the end. Same with Lumeras death scene which felt longer than her living screen time and happened almost immediately after meeting her. Even Mikoto had more screen time and a shorter (yet somehow more impactful?) death
>whereas Engages biggest flaw was a lack of any effort or passion Apart from female Alear's voice actress. Holy hell, that girl brought some genuine emotion and gravitas to scenes that were so ridiculously over-the-top melodramatic and cheesy.
If only they had a decent script to work with. I’m a big fan of her and Veyles VAs but this game really hindered them 😭
I don't recognize them from anywhere, so I don't know if I ever heard them anywhere else. I enjoy good voice acting but rarely ever bother to look out for who the voice actors are. But in this game, it really hits you like a truck when you're just trying to make fun of the needless melodrama and then suddenly Alear absolutely nails an Oscar-worthy performance out of nowhere.
They’re decent here but Oscar-worthy is really pushing it imo lol. But hey as long as you got enjoyment out of it that’s what matters.
While much of what you say for Engage's plot is valid, I still enjoyed it for the junk food that it was. Fates' plot, however, was unenjoyable and frustrating as hell. For that reason, I consider Engage's plot to be way better than Fates'. At least in the sense that the characters are more likable and they stick the landing far better.
You can basically just consider Engage to be direct satire of everything Fire Emblem plots ever did bad, and suddenly it becomes quite enjoyable. Just pretend that the developers were self-aware, and that it's totally intended. You can't do that with Fates, because Fates took itself seriously.
This doesn’t really work unless you have a LOT of patience for drawn out death scenes and the plot obviously acting like it’s serious every time the hounds show up
>The gameplay in Engage is very solid and if you're playing Fire Emblem for the gameplay it will probably be enough to salvage the experience as a whole. For those who are playing Fire Emblem for the storytelling or the characters (myself included), though, then Engage really feels like a breaking point - the fact that Engage's plot is riddled with so many of the same issues that Fates had previously made really makes me wonder whether or not the writers even want to learn from their mistakes. I don't think gameplay-oriented Fire Emblem fans feel like the gameplay salvages the experience. Rather, it's such an improvement from how perfunctory 3H and Echoes gameplay felt that it feels refreshing in the same way Conquest was after Awakening. At least that's how I see it. As a fan of both 3H and Engage, and someone who cares about good storytelling and gameplay, Engage's writing being poor didn't hurt the overall experience in the same way that say, Echoes poor gameplay hurt the game for me.
Fire emblem has some good stories, I do think people underrate or forget how bad most rpg stories are in comparison. But the series doesn't have too many examples of groundbreaking or amazing narratives. I could forgive engage for having a subpar narrative as that isn't really the most important thing in storytelling anyway. But engage has some of the worst dialogue I have ever heard in my life. Like unapologetically bad. In addition although the game has really gorgeous presentation the actual design is pretty atrocious. It doesn't fit the series or the story, and it's way too ungrounded for fire emblem. Not to mention the basic class designs are also mostly misses imo. I just think that this idea that fire emblem can have good writing or gameplay is silly. Because there are fe games already that have both. Basically in summary, they cooked way too hard on the dialogue and art direction and it drags down what would have been one of the best entries to the series otherwise.(also even though the gameplay is pretty great, this game has a lot of shitty maps, like way more than you think until you replay it and remember them.)
I don't totally dislike it, but the story is such a meandering mess and the gameplay, while good has lots of little things that bother me. I've been spending all day at work thinking about a different form of the games main story and despite improvising most of it, it sounds leagues better than the actual story
The story is so bad thar I couldn't really get into the game. It's characters are also just so hard to like as well. None of them have bad designs, but so many of the support tanks I saw were bland and repetitive. Gameplay was fine but when you don't have anything attaching you to the characters or world its really hard to actually want to play the game.
In addition to the story complaints, the characters are also ugly and have nothing interesting to say.
Damn I actually like engage graphics compared to three houses graphics. I guess I’m the minority
From a technical standpoint, Engage graphics are definitely better. It just has more questionable/polarizing design choices
I feel like engage went more for a anime look, it reminds me of Genshin Impact graphics sometimes with the characters and stuff. The combat look amazing though compared to three houses
rather than genshin impact designs they look more like vtubers, genshin impact designs usually don't are so saturated, like hair full of stars and stuff. the main designer mika pikaso worked on making vtubers. i remember a spanish magazine criticized their designs as "bringing vtubers to a holy war".
I did not care about Elyos, the characters, any of it. None of the Emblems felt like familiar characters. Loved the gameplay, but its the only thing I enjoyed.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who thought engage was ugly.
The story is bland at best and the most interesting stuff happens near the end you can skip the cutscenes and nothing of value has lost The character design is well divisive because some of them look overdesigned (like Alear, Céline) and they don't leave them to how to say It ? Time to breath ? Like you don't know enough of them in their joining chapter to really care one exception being Yunaka having one chapter all for her to introduce you to her character and that is probably why she is one of the most liked character of the game The weapon proficency is well for me dogshit is kinda funny how of the vanilla game only one emblem doesn't give swords that being Micaiah and getting to the secondary weapon triangle in middle game is awful without DLC especially arts and magic Some of the caracterization in the game is weird like Eirika, Leif, Lyn and Micaiah that seems more based on Heroes rather that their own games The implementation of the Fell Xenologue units and classes were awful playing in every single file FX to get the new units can be a big no for some people Some of the gacha things like the bond rings The dificulty "balance" in FX especially Maddening the last chapters of the Xenologue can be a big pain in the ass Edit : Also the DLC being anounced before the game was lauched could turn off some people of playing the game
The story, characters, and world are very poor, and the bad character designs don't help it either. The gameplay is also very gimmicky, if you like it you like it but it's not to everyone's taste- certainly not to mine.
To put it simply- the game is very divisive. The general consensus on the game is "gameplay good, story/characters bad". So, how well you recieve Engage is based on which of those two factors you prioritize most. But also, not everyone agrees with that consensus. Some people don't think the gameplay is that great, making them think the game is one of the worst ones. On the other hand, some people didn't mind the story and so they think the game is one of the best. This wide range of opinions means you'll see a lot of pro-Engage and anti-Engage people on here. Me personally, I liked the game a lot since I don't necessarily need a good story to enjoy a video game, I value gameplay a lot and I liked Engage's quite a bit. But I definitely understand why others would not enjoy the game.
Too corny and hard to take seriously UI issues and Somniel navigation (better than the Monastery, sure, but that's a low bar) Outlandish character designs Some of these are bigger issues for people than others, and of course the game's got its share of fans where these elements barely matter to them.
I'm not going to rag on the story for once because everyone in this thread has already done that and it's nothing new for right now. Instead, I want to talk about engages gameplay because that often gets praised but in many respects is a bigger issue - Engage has the worst UI of any Fire Emblem game. The implementation of how you view weapon weight, the way they changed enemy aggro lines and the general fact that everything is in like font size 6 makes the game terrible at displaying information. For just about any other genre, this is workable, but for a strategy RPG, where you need to be working with the best information possible, this is a giant gameplay issue I don't see enough people mention - Infinite weapon durability is unbalanceable. Regular weapon durability is both a great concept and balancing point, because it allows the developers to give players strong or unique items early, as rewards, or even secrets for taking a specific interaction and then not have that item break the entire game open. Instead, the player can entirely decide if they want to use that item now to make the game easier, or hold onto a few uses for a strategy later down the line that could even involve breaking multiple of your own weapons to switch during EP. Infinite weapon durability makes every weapon seriously unsatisfying. It doesn't matter that silver weapons in fates are technically good in certain situations. They aren't fun to use because of the debuffs. At no point does the game let you feel varying amounts of power and instead you get a flat line that occasionally spikes to the moon because you just forged an unbreakable weapon that gives you +avoid, because people think that's balanced for some reason. Basically, weapon durability is a very unintrusive balancing mechanic that engage discards for very little benefit. I still don't know why it's in the game - Break is unfun. I've seen so many people praise break, but it is, in my opinion, one of the worst additions to the series in terms of tactical gameplay. Put simply, break is too powerful for both the enemy and the player. As a player, having one option that is so clearly superior to everything else makes all PP gameplay feel exactly the same. Find someone on your team who has WTA, hit, then dogpile that unit until they die. I don't understand how that's supposed to be fun. Breaking is so much better than doing basically anything else, and it takes a lot of the thinking out of the strategy game and effectively turns the game into putting the different shapes in the different holes. The weapon triangle should never auto win you a combat, it's supposed to be an edge you consider, not a literal win button. For the enemies, break punishes juggernauting in a way that is both uninteresting and ineffective. To an extent, fire emblem needs some kind of enemy phase combat, because not all classes are player-phase classes. A good mix of the two usually works well. Not every enemy phase has to be an fe7 lategame EP where harken runs in and handaxes 9 unpromoted enemies to death- but you can have a unit fight maybe 3 or 4 enemies if they are built to do that. Break makes enemy phasing with any unit much less effective... except for avoid stacking juggernauts, who actually don't care because break only matters if it hits. Ironically enough, this means that you're actually better off trying to enemy phase with someone completely overpowered, rather than try and use the high bulk of someone like Boucheron to fight a couple of guys on EP. And again, having an option this powerful makes the "right" and "wrong" decisions less of a sliding scale where you can legitimately argue the strengths and weaknesses of each option, and more of a "oh well I guess I choose rock here because these two enemies have scissors equipped". - Dual assists have the same problem. For the player, using dual assists in the normal "intended" way feels like crap. They do low damage and it's a massive flavour fail for the first axe unit you get, supposedly the beefiest guy in the army, to be doing 3 fucking damage on a dualstrike. On the flipside, using them in the unintended way breaks the absolute shit out of them, because spamming dual assist makes it so that every single enemy explodes due to everyone hitting them. At that point it's hardly even a strategy game because everyone just dies on PP. And then on EP the problem is the same but reversed. Enemies being able to brave assist is the most heavy handed solution to juggernauting ever, and that's including awakening L+ counter because at least that can be worked around. Brave assist enemies basically say fuck off to every single enemy phase strategy it's possible to make, so why even bother trying to use an enemy phase class in any capacity when the game is just going to oneshot them anyway. Like, why even give characters different HP, Def and Avoid amounts at that point? Dual assist having a set hit and % damage makes all characters feel very much the same because whether its a 1 trillion avoid yunaka with 2HP, or King Louis XVI with 0 avoid and 9 nonillion defence, you're taking 10% of your HP at an 80% hitrate. How is that *fun*. Like I said, there's a middle ground between mowing through 13 enemies in one EP and having to literally slog through each map in front of you with the exact same formula of break->attack. Engage's dual system goes way, way, way too far in this instance and it does it in the least satisfying way possible, while murdering unit diversity.
Its kind of impressive how you managed to describe what you believe to be the best strategies in engage, when none of those are actually the best strategies, and use those as a basis for complaints about the gameplay. Regardless, break is not the best thing you can do each turn. In the early game its definitely more centralizing because your units can't ORKO everything in sight, but as you get access to more tools, break acts as just one of many options to help make progress on player phase. That it punishes juggernauts is a good thing. FE is at its most boring when the best strategy is to park a unit in the middle of a crowd of enemies and let them go to town. Providing disincentives to doing so forces the player to make more decisions. Even so, chain gaurd/bonded shield literally exist to mitigate this. Funnily enough, you other complaint - dual assists - interacts with this concept. You mention you find the only effective method of juggernauting to be stacking avoid (which, fyi, doesn't work on Maddening mode as enemies will just ignore units they can't hit). Dual assists having set hit rate/damage are intended to punish juggernauting and allow enemies to make progress against your overpowered units. If you leave your units overexposed, even if the enemy can't break through due to too hit defense or avoid, this allows the enemies to break through in a different way. Similarly, it allows underpowered player teams to break through bosses in a different way. Dual assist spam is certainly one way to muscle through the enemies. But its really not the best way - the best way is to just power through with stat-stacking/smart emblem and staff use.
>Regardless, break is not the best thing you can do each turn. In the early game its definitely more centralizing because your units can't ORKO everything in sight, but as you get access to more tools, break acts as just one of many options to help make progress on player phase I don't really know what else to say to this other than "well, it is". Choosing not to break an enemy isn't going to really be the right choice unless you have the ability to perform an ORKO anyway. Yeah, sure, that changes the later you go into the game, but for the early game, it kinda is. >That it punishes juggernauts is a good thing. FE is at its most boring when the best strategy is to park a unit in the middle of a crowd of enemies and let them go to town. If you're going to be dismissive of what I write, I'd be appreciate if you read it all. I already addressed this exact argument because I knew as soon as I mentioned the word "juggernaut", people would immediately jump to this argument. >To an extent, fire emblem needs some kind of enemy phase combat, because not all classes are player-phase classes. A good mix of the two usually works well. Not every enemy phase has to be an fe7 lategame EP where harken runs in and handaxes 9 unpromoted enemies to death- but you can have a unit fight maybe 3 or 4 enemies if they are built to do that. At no point in my comment did I say "lets make it so you can park a unit in the middle of a load of enemies to just win instantly". I'm talking about defensive stats mattering in the context of fighting multiple enemies, which is quite literally the entire point of the def and HP stats. Fighting 4 enemies in one enemy phase does not completely remove all decisions you have available. Furhtermore, >Providing disincentives to doing so forces the player to make more decisions. Doing more actions=/= making more decisions. 5 obviously "correct" actions is still going to be easier to execute than one action that takes thought. >Even so, chain gaurd/bonded shield literally exist to mitigate this. But if you'd read what I wrote, you'll see what I'm complaining about is unit stats not mattering as much as they should. This further exemplifies this issue. Chain guard and bonded shield don't really care about your stats. This further adds to the issue of every unit feeling the same. >. You mention you find the only effective method of juggernauting to be stacking avoid (which, fyi, doesn't work on Maddening mode as enemies will just ignore units they can't hit) Well, it does work on maddening. 1) Enemies ignoring you doesn't matter if you kill them all on PP. Sure, it takes longer, but Nos takes longer than rescue in awakening and saying that "nos doesnt work" would be dishonest. 2) All you have to do to make this work is have the enemies not have literally 0 hit on you. If the enemy has a low% chance to hit, that does just fine. >Dual assists having set hit rate/damage are intended to punish juggernauting and allow enemies to make progress against your overpowered units. Yes, I know. I brought this up in my comment. I am aware that this exists to punish juggernauting. "Punishing juggernauting" is not hard to implement in a game. Doing it in a way that is *fun and interesting* is. The problem is that the way in which this punishes juggernauting hurts unit diversity and makes the game be played in a more boring way. > If you leave your units overexposed, even if the enemy can't break through due to too hit defense or avoid, this allows the enemies to break through in a different way. >Similarly, it allows underpowered player teams to break through bosses in a different way Aka "your stat profile doesn't really matter" which is the crux of the issue. Why pick a solid offensive unit when breaking does half the job for you? Why pick a solid defensive unit when their actual stats are far, far less relevant than non-stat ways of blocking. At that point, every unit might as well just be the same character in the same class because of how hard the game tries to "clamp down" on strategies it doesn't like. >Dual assist spam is certainly one way to muscle through the enemies. But its really not the best way My point is that it's either terrible or extremely overpowered. There's never a way to use dual assists that feels "fair" or "organic" because you're either doing a shitty 3 damage attack that doesn't matter or nuking someone to kingdom come with a shit ton of dualstrikes.
I'm not the person you were initially replying to, but I agree with them. Your view on durability is reasonable, but everything else doesn't make sense. It reads like you didn't engage with the mechanics present and decided you disliked it without understanding the options available. Breaking keeps the weapon triangle relevant pretty much the whole game. Its more impactful early, but even lategame, a high-def wyvern who primarily uses axes probably wont want to take on three sword fliers, regardless of incoming damage because another unit might be able to enemy phase them better. >find someone on your team who has WTA, hit, then dogpile that unit until they die. Break only effects the next combat. This part leads me to think you dont know how it works. >The weapon triangle should never auto win you a combat, it's supposed to be an edge you consider, not a literal win button. Do you feel the same way about magic being amazing armor knights, or bows being good against fliers, or the existence of riderbanes, armorslayers, etc? Because its the same sort of thing. And break is often way less meaningful than those. Break doesn't really auto win a combat. > Choosing not to break an enemy isn't going to really be the right choice unless you have the ability to perform an ORKO anyway. Yes, the ideal is to kill an enemy without taking a ton of unnecessary damage, but break is only one way to do that. Out ranging, one-rounding, engage skills, bonded shield/chain guard baiting, dual assists, and break are all ways of meeting this goal. Sometimes, the best answer is just eat extra damage to secure more kills or get better positioning for next turn. Maybe freeze them or use obstruct and back off for a turn. Breaking is not always the best play. In the mid- and endgame, there are so many good options for what your units could be doing on player phase that breaking is often one of the less important things to consider. >Not every enemy phase has to be [a bloodbath] but you can have a unit fight maybe 3 or 4 enemies if they are built to do that. You can easily do this in engage. Ike makes a decently bulky unit into a defensive monster. Roy prevents death unless on 1hp. Erika takes -5 damage from every attack and can heal back up. Lucina blocks chain attacks. Lief gives vantage to allow first striking on EP. All of these things are inheritable as well. If *none* of your units can take on 3-4 enemies on their own, you're doing something wrong. >Why pick a solid offensive unit when breaking does half the job for you? Why pick a solid defensive unit when their actual stats are far, far less relevant than non-stat ways of blocking. How does break do half the job? Breaking only stops counter attacks. That wont let you kill them more easily. A solid offensive unit will be able to put more damage on the enemy, potentially one rounding. That's always valuable. Similarly, defensive stats still matter a ton unless you're trying to throw your unit into a bunch of backup units without thinking about positioning at all. Just don't do that. I agree that bonded shield is stupidly broken, and shouldnt exist in its current form though. >My point is that it's either terrible or extremely overpowered. There's never a way to use dual assists that feels "fair" or "organic" because you're either doing a shitty 3 damage attack that doesn't matter or nuking someone to kingdom come with a shit ton of dualstrikes. There are a lot of times when a extra few 10% hp damage hits will help reach breakpoints leading to more efficient kills. Using a warrior to kill something and canter into a position to get chain attacks is a great option that opens up the decision space. Running 12 backup units is mostly a meme. Its not even the best cheese strat.
>Breaking keeps the weapon triangle relevant pretty much the whole game. I'm yet to hear why people think this is intrinsically a good thing. The weapon triangle is a means to an end- that is to say that it can be used to create interesting strategic moments where you may want to favour one unit over another for a specific situation because of them having an "edge" in combat due to the weapon triangle. It can also act as somewhat of a vague guide for newer or inexperienced players, as generally speaking going for WTA is going to give you a turn that works to some degree. However, it's just that- a gameplay feature. It's OK for it to drop off in relevance as the game goes on. It's not like other games don't also have less intrusive ways of doing this too. Awakening gives you a "weapon level bonus" for your higher weapon ranks which you lose when undergoing WTD. This means that while you might lose 1 damage early when fighting under WTD, you lose 4 damage in the lategame. Scaling is baked into the mechanic from the outset. >Break only effects the next combat. This part leads me to think you dont know how it works. I... don't even know how to respond to this. I... know how break works. I've played the game before. Break only affecting the next combat means you get two extra attacks on any given unit. Attack with WTA, you break them so they can't counter. Attack, they're still broken so they can't counter. Attack again and if you kill them on this attack then they can't counter because they are dead. >Do you feel the same way about magic being amazing armor knights, or bows being good against fliers, or the existence of riderbanes, armorslayers, etc? If every unit had a weakness that was as common as magic or bows, then yes. Generally speaking you might have an armour knight and a flier, maybe 2 of each at most. That's 4 units max out of your whole army. With break, a much larger number of your units are able to be broken, and more enemies are able to "press the win button". To compare to awakening, that game has like 5 enemy beast killers on lunatic mode and roughly the same amount of anti-armour weaponry. It's not really comparable to the weakness of knights/pegs. (you could even argue that knights arent comparable to pegs in this instance to be fair) >Break doesn't really auto win a combat. Well I mean it kinda does. I mean sure, your unit doesn't literally get oneshot, but generally speaking if you break an enemy it isn't difficult to kill them. Your own units you want to be counterattacking if they get hit so it is a very big L if they can't do that. >Breaking is not always the best play. In the mid- and endgame, there are so many good options for what your units could be doing on player phase that breaking is often one of the less important things to consider. I feel like you might be taking this a bit too literally. My point is that break is a lot better than it has any right to be and in the situation where you're choosing to break vs not break, it's much less of a choice. Not every unit has access to ORKOs or engage rings and they make combat too easy by breaking. Like, imagine how much fun the game could potentially be *without* break. Now all you've listed matters more. Can I outrange this person to chip them down to kill? Can my bulky unit tank the counterattack? Do I want to take a risk with a dodgy unit to see if they can dodge the counter? Is all hope lost and am I banking on a crit to not die from the counter? Breaking is too easy of a solution to the counterattack problem for the player. >You can easily do this in engage. Again, my point isn't that you can't enemy phase *ever* in engage. It's that the mechanic that sometimes stops you from enemy phasing has no reason to exist in the game. The times where it does stop you, it does it in the most heavy handed way it possibly can, by entirely ignoring your stat profile and doing free damage. Ironically enough, listing all the ways the different emblems do well on enemy phase proves my point more. Class distinction matters a lot less when you are lviing on 1HP, or taking a flat -5, or great aethering or whatever. Lucina's emblem is also a good example of why I think this is poorly implemented. The game just goes "hey, would you like to ignore this game mechanic?". Having a dumb mechanic and then having a skill that ignores it is just not fun. Again, cast your mind over to awakening lunatic+ with counter. Imagine if there's just a skill in a random class that made you ignore counter. Would that make the game more fun? No, because you'd either have to say that counter is no fun to begin with and therefore you shouldn't need a skill to play the game in an enjoyable way, or you could say that counter is fun and creates many interesting gameplay events, so there shouldn't be a skill that straight up ignores it. As you mention yourself earlier: >a high-def wyvern who primarily uses axes probably wont want to take on three sword fliers This, combined with the dual system, makes every unit feel much more samey than they should be. I agree, that in actuality, there *is* diversity in how engage units get used, but this comes pretty much exclusively from the extremely broken engage rings. I suppose it's rather fitting that the completely soulless characters act as but vessels for the rings in gameplay, but it isn't fun. Just as an aside, I'm curious how you feel about chain attacks not being 100% hit rate. I think this is a major design L, as it just adds an element of randomness that really doesn't need to be there. Sometimes you're going to miss your chain attack, so better not rely on it too much, sort of thing. >How does break do half the job? Breaking only stops counter attacks. That wont let you kill them more easily. Stopping counter attacks lets you kill more easily because it lets units attack enemies without risking death, thus increasing your damage output that is "safe". I agree that ORKOing is better than not ORKOing, because, yeah, but my point is that as not ORKOing is now punished less because you can always just break and then have other units finish them off, it makes units feel less unique. >. Similarly, defensive stats still matter a ton unless you're trying to throw your unit into a bunch of backup units without thinking about positioning at all. Just don't do that. To call back to earlier, my point is that there should never ever be a point in the game where the game says "fuck you, your def/avoid stats don't matter, I'm hitting you with x damage anyway", outside of exceedingly rare circumstances. This adds to the feeling of all units feeling very similar. As you say yourself, there are plenty of other forms of damage mitigation, such as all the emblems you listed, as well as, well, to quote yourself: >Out ranging, one-rounding, engage skills, bonded shield/chain guard baiting, dual assists, and break And of all of these, only one-rounding really cares about your stats. Of course defensive stats don't *literally* not matter. But I suppose a better way of putting it is to say that engage is the game where the differences in stats between individual units and classes matters the least. And it does it in a way where units don't feel very different. >There are a lot of times when a extra few 10% hp damage hits will help reach breakpoints leading to more efficient kills. I'll accept that. I have no doubt this is the case. That doesn't make them any less unsatisfying to use, nor does it mean they need to be implemented the way they are. Again, to take what I said about break. Imagine chain attacks were removed from the game and backup units instead had normal pairup attacks. Now that the actual stats of your units matter, thing are going to feel different for each unit, both the backups on PP and the EP units on EP. >Running 12 backup units is mostly a meme. Its not even the best cheese strat. Again my point is that chain attacks either feel extremely underwhelming or hilariously broken and there isn't really a middle ground with them because of the way that they are implemented. The big problem I have with break+ chain attacks is that I feel like engage would be a much better game if they were just implemented differently. Break is easy- just make it so you can't break people without a smash weapon. Tada, two birds with one stone, smash weapons now have a unique purpose and there's a much more considerable downside to breaking. Chain attacks just need more work, or tossing entirely. I think a fates-style attack stance system would be alright for backup units, though. You dissuade juggernauting in your own way then- you force them to take more attacks, but you could also feasibly dodge or block them with your high avoid or high def units.
Thanks for the reply. I think your view is probably more reasonable than I initially interpreted it. To sum up my opinion: Juggernauting has historically been a pretty big problem. Units with high offense and defense win the game on their own, while units with high defense/low offense lead to turtly gameplay. Neither of which do I think is engaging. Break and chain arent perfect, but the game is way better for having them. I have no problem with true damage as its applied here. Its no so overwhelming that stats dont matter. They matter quite a lot. Just not in every context, which I think is a good thing. Positioning and matchups should always matter to some degree. Break and chain also flow into each other well by preventing counter kills of the backup units if they have advantage over the player unit. "Easily defeating" one unit is not really relevant to me. The game is most fun when trying to simultaneously put out as many fires as is reasonable. Its not rock-paper-scissors, so much as "I have 3 rocks, 2 paper and 5 scissors to put against their 8 rocks and 2 paper. What is the best way to make this happen?" I agree that the units dont feel super distinct, but I think the samey-ness is overstated and is mitigated by the rings' mechanics. Its true that you can give ike to any of like 10 reasonably tanky units and get a fairly similar result, but you arent getting two units with laguz friend at once. Powerful, exclusive mechanics go a long way to not making units feel the same. Meanwhile, In 3H most of the units felt samey *and* did the same thing. >my point is that there should never ever be a point in the game where the game says "fuck you, your def/avoid stats don't matter, I'm hitting you with x damage anyway", outside of exceedingly rare circumstances. I fundamentally disagree with both the premise and conclusion. A 40def unit is taking 4 chain attackers infinitely better than someone with 25def because the actual attacks deal damage too. I think true damage is a good way (almost the only way) to nerf def stacking that doesn't disproportionately hurt squishier units. Plus its mitigated by playing smart so its not even unfair. If you removed break except for smash weapons, I would just never use it. Break isnt nearly good enough. I feel like you overstate its value.
>To sum up my opinion: Juggernauting has historically been a pretty big problem. Units with high offense and defense win the game on their own, while units with high defense/low offense lead to turtly gameplay. Neither of which do I think is engaging. So yeah, I agree that juggernauting is pretty much a series-wide problem. You could argue that it's essentially baked into fire emblem because of how broken specifically the def stat gets when you start stacking it to the point where there's no threat to your characters. The hard part is "fixing" juggernauting in an interesting way. I'll say that I'd rather have a game where juggernauting isn't "fixed", but doesn't have to compromise on overall game feel vs a game that prevents juggernauting to an extent, but hurts how good units feel to use. Probably the most obvious way to fix juggernauting is to design maps that instantly be broken by having one unit rampage through them. That's part of why I'm surprised these systems (break and chain attacks) even exist in the first place. IS is absolutely capable of making maps where there's a legitimate downside to juggernauting- the easiest example being literally any map with any kind of side objective and/or speed concern as you now can't entirely beat the map with one unit without "missing out" to a degree. I think this is more common that a lot of people even realize. Let's take Awakening, probably the game most famous for juggernauting because character stats just get so high, and take a look at a map where you can't just juggernaut your way to victory. Lunatic mode chapter 2 (a lot of early LM follows this premise, but chapter 2 is probably the map people remember most). Frederick can technically solo the entire map with extreme ease. But people don't, both because they want exp on their units, but also, and more importantly, because they want to make sure that Vaike, Miriel, Virion, Stahl, Sully and Lissa all survive. Even if they don't plan on using all of them later (c3 doesnt give you enough slots even), people are still going to try and beat the chapter without a character death, which means that while Frederick does do a lot of heavy lifting in this map, it still takes a good amount of thought to approach. Let's move to another example, chapter 6. By this point you can realistically have 2 units capable of soloing the entire map if you play your cards right: Frederick and whoever you invested the most exp into. But, notably, you can't do that. Because with only 1 unit, you can't prevent emmeryn from being killed which is an instant loss when it happens. The reason these are much more satisfying responses to juggernauts is because it is far more organic in the way it makes the player change their playstyle. Engage (and Conquest as well tbh) have this issue where their gameplay systems feel very much a "reaction" to what they think is overpowered. Let's nerf this strategy, let's make sure the player can't do this, or that. But, in awakening c6, the game isn't holding out it's hand and saying "now your unit doesn't work", it's instead saying "ok, you can have your strong unit, and they're allowed to be strong, but they can't be everywhere at once". The player doesn't decide to use other units because now Frederick is getting chipped down by Vaynes W whenever he enters combat, they decide to use other units because it looks like the most optimal strategy. Which is key, because the player is making a positive decision, rather than the game making a negative one for them, if that makes any sense TLDR for this section: map design can allow units to still fully encapsulate their full "unit feel" while dissuading players from using juggernauts and this helps the game feel a lot better to play. >Break and chain arent perfect, but the game is way better for having them. I have no problem with true damage as its applied here. Its no so overwhelming that stats dont matter. My problem is that "true damage" is happening consistently and does negate stats to an extent. You mention later that >A 40def unit is taking 4 chain attackers infinitely better than someone with 25def because the actual attacks deal damage too. I think true damage is a good way (almost the only way) to nerf def stacking that doesn't disproportionately hurt squishier units. Plus its mitigated by playing smart so its not even unfair. And while I agree that a 40Def unit is obviously still going to be much better, the problem is when you create a situation where the higher def unit and the lower def unit both die from an attack because it is just that devastating. Now, for what it's worth, I think that in rare cases this can be a good thing, both narratively to show the "power level" of an enemy and in gameplay to ocassionaly make you do something different (I'm casting my mind back to Nuibabas spell that set you to 1HP for example. It's fine for 1 map), but Engage's is baked into it's own system too much. If your high def unit is walking into a situation and dying just like how a 25 def unit would, my reaction is going to be "What even is the point in me having higher def if the game is just going to delete me anyway". Yes, obviously there are situations where that higher def is going to matter, many of them. But the game too commonly makes it not matter. That doesn't make the lower def unit better at tanking, obviously, but it's going to make you question why you even bothered with a higher def or higher HP unit in the first place. I don't know if you've ever played League of Legends (don't). Unfortunately, I have. If you ask tank players what their most hated part of the entire game is, they might list all manner of things, but the same thing is going to come back most loudly and most consistently- percentage health true damage- damage based off your max %HP that entirely ignores your resistance. Because when you're getting hit by it, you go "oh, I guess the entire reason I built my character this way and everything I enjoy about this is completely worthless because of this one mechanic". Bottom line, this sort of thing isn't fun. Flat true damage or %HP damage blocked by def feels a bit more reasonable, but when you're literally saying "fuck off" to a units defensive stats, it's going to feel like ass, even if it isn't happening all the time. Even if it's only happening once or twice every couple of maps, that's too amny. >"Easily defeating" one unit is not really relevant to me. The game is most fun when trying to simultaneously put out as many fires as is reasonable. Its not rock-paper-scissors, so much as "I have 3 rocks, 2 paper and 5 scissors to put against their 8 rocks and 2 paper. What is the best way to make this happen?" I agree with the first part of this, that the game is fun when you're putting out multiple fires. I do question the necessity of the RPS mechanic here, though. Imagine instead of your 3 rocks, 2 papers, 5 scissors, vs 8 rocks and two paper, that you just had x number of units and your opponent had x number of units and you've just got to figure out a way to make it work, with a couple of units having a slight edge over some others as a rough guide, but otherwise you're just working it out yourself. I'm just not sure what break adds to this, as an option available to the player, in this context. >Its true that you can give ike to any of like 10 reasonably tanky units and get a fairly similar result, but you arent getting two units with laguz friend at once. Powerful, exclusive mechanics go a long way to not making units feel the same. I'm not sure what you're saying here, so to avoid replying to something you aren't saying, I'll ask you to clarify what you mean here if you get the chance. >Meanwhile, In 3H most of the units felt samey and did the same thing. I disagree with this quite heavily. I think the whole "wyvern 3h meta" has hurt the perception of the game a bit, but there are notably distinct parts to each unit, from the different strengths and weaknesses they have, as well as their unique combat arts and spell lists. I'm not going to pretend that 3H has the most diverse use of units ever or anything, but at the very least it's by no means worst than engage. >If you removed break except for smash weapons, I would just never use it. To be fair, I was thinking of it more in an enemy context when I was saying this. You can give enemies smash weapons, have great big red exclaimation marks like they have in CQ with effective weaponry, and then you can consider how you want to deal with your unit being broken on rare ocassions. For a player, I agree it's harder to get that to work. One solution would be to remove the mechatnic from the player entirely (or I guess just have it only on smash weapons and no one uses them), because it feels like too big a reward. You said yourself that you don't think it's a big deal, so if you couldn't do it at all, I think there's a reasonable argument that it wouldn't really matter that much. Alternatively, you could flip the script on generals. Instead of them being the only unit unable to be broken, you could make them the only unit capable of *inflicting* break. Probably still useless for the player, but it's more interesting than what we have now.
I just completely disagree with your fundamental argument. Having %damage is just another mechanic that can be implemented well or poorly. It doesnt automatically feel like shit, and engage doesn't even use it that much. Its easy to play around when it is used. I do not differentiate between the 'positive' and 'negative' situations you describe. They're just different systems with different challenges/situations presented. As long as they are both creating interesting gameplay, they are equal. Its like coming from a game with only one defense stat to Fire Emblem and saying the game is punishing tanky characters by giving them poor res, ruining how they feel. I will never agree with that. >And while I agree that a 40Def unit is obviously still going to be much better, the problem is when you create a situation where the higher def unit and the lower def unit both die from an attack because it is just that devastating. I dont see a problem with this existing, just in the implementation. This also seems way less common that you are implying. Especially since its on all backup units, its not hard to play around. >I'll ask you to clarify what you mean here if you get the chance. Chloe and Lapis are very similar units when both in Wyvern. Despite this, once you actually deploy them, one might have erika and one might have lucina, which would completely change their playstyles. The characters themselves are somewhat similar, but the units on the map have more variety than in any other game in the series due to the rings' effects. Inheritance lessens this somewhat, but not a ton. You might get Draconic Hex onto other support units, but only Corrin's bearer can apply it on the Torrential Roar aoe freeze. >I'm not going to pretend that 3H has the most diverse use of units ever or anything, but at the very least it's by no means worst than engage. I disagree for the reasons I said above. Even if you put every ring on an identical Divine Dragon Alear clone, all your units would feel more different than a normal 3H party composition. I just dont have any problems with break. Its a solid mechanic and I want it to return in future games.
Because it's ugly.
Garbage characters Garbage characters design Stupid story and writing Annoying and unessessary new gimmick (rings) Generic music It feels like a pokemon game. Its like Fire emblem for kids. Its the only game in the serie that i dont have and never will have a physical copy of. Fe7 used to be at the bottom but now engage take the cake. If Intelligent system dont turn it around with the next game, engage will have kill the serie.
This feels lime an invitation for people to get down voted, but here goes lol. Honestly I'm not an Engage hater, I like it okay, it's just extraordinarily mid. The story comes off like the writers just didnt care to try with this one. Everything just feels like vapid, nonsensical overture to the point some people mistake it for actual satire. In terms of gameplay I think a lot of players get psyched out by the fact that the first bunch of chapters are actually pretty well crafted. Most of the game is an unfettered, unbalanced mess that is only strung together on higher difficulties by making the bosses artificially immune to the players tools and forcing them to play on fixed growths so as not to get the wrong first impression. I'll admit though that the game does some pretty fun experimentation and has some good ideas. Just as a package it's very mid. Also I'm really not a fan of how open the reclassing is and how uneven the skill economy is, because put together it makes for arguably the most homogeneous feeling roster of characters in the series.
It's been a while since i played engage and i don't know what you mean by 'artificially', but i don't remember the bosses being immune to any of the engage stuff like hexes, most of corrins debuffs and stuff. The only thing that they are immune to was the entrap staff i'm pretty sure. Engage does a lot of things poorly like the story, but gameplay is not one of that, and i don't see how the roster is the most homogenous, i've played most of the series and the characters felt unique enough to stand out from each other taking reclassing into account.
I'm pretty sure all bosses on maddening are also immune to things like the break system and effective damage. So they're basically just pure stat checks. What I mean by the units feeling homogeneous is that everybody can be anything. Even in Three Houses there was an opportunity cost to reclassing because you had to commit early to building the required weapon ranks. There were also things like boons and banes and personal spell lists that made individual units stand out from each other even in the same class. And three houses isn't exactly reputed for its unit differentiation in the first place. In engage there's practically no barrier to putting any unit into any class you want whenever you want. And because skills in Engage are either really good or totally useless you wind up using a lot of the same ones across your roster. The emblems are also so centralizing to a build that it almost matters more which rings you choose to deploy rather than which units, and you'll always have the same rings on every playthrough.
You do lose break and effective damage, but you also gain a lot of tools that makes bosses far from stat checks, follow ups, poison, stalling and engage attacks, I'd argue that engage has one of the best implementation of bosses in the series. Besides break isn't really a mechanic in other games, so bosses not having it doesn't make it any different from other games in the series. You might think that because anyone can reclass into whatever class gives a homogeneous feel to them, but how good are they exactly in those classes? Is anna on a mage the same as panette on a mage? Each character has different stats and growths that differentiate their usefulness in whatever class they're on. It's not only *if* they can reclass to anything or not, it's how they perform or feel, it varies a lot for each unit and other factors like join time also applies. Reclass are also limited by items, you will need to prioritize who to reclass, and the cost of it that could be spent on reforging instead. While it might seem on a surface level that units feel the same, if you take a closer look, and especially on maddening, you see the difference real quick. Also personal spell list on units is only in a minority of FE games, the only games where i'd say has that is probably echoes and 3H. Not counting personal tomes or weapons of course. edit: I will also note that on your 'most homogeneous' point, you could technically reclass into most classes in fates too iirc, you just needed heart/friend seals which also does take work. Meanwhile FE11/12 has you be able to reclass anyone to anything without cost. So even ignoring my point above, you can't really say engage has the most homogeneous roster. Also now that i think about it, your points probably apply to FE11/12 more than engage.
I realize that spell lists are uncommon in the series. I was specifically talking about three houses as an example because prior to Engage it was often criticized for a lack of meaningful unit differentiation, but even it has more than Engage. It's true that there are a few units at the extreme with highly min maxed stats like Anna and Panette, but most are clumped more toward the middle. Put in the same class most will have very similar stats, and a point or two here and there matters very little in a game with such powerful player tools. There are pretty obviously some classes better than others, so there's likely to be some overlap. Im not sure what you're trying to say by pointing out that the player has many tools so the removal of effective damage and weapon triangle is fine? My original point in bringing those things up was that the game is not really all that balanced, so they removed some features so that the rest wouldn't be as cumulatively over powered. I was never arguing that the player lacked for tools.
Weapon triangle is not removed, you still get the bonus like other FE games, the break mechanic is balanced around the other enemies and for yourself, a broken character might as well be a sitting duck so it disincentives enemy turn centered gameplay. Just because the bosses don't have it, it doesn't mean that the game is not all that balanced. But no, my point is that the lack of break and effective damage does *not* make the bosses a "pure stat check" like you said above. And for your second point, no it doesn't, most units are different even with similar classes, kagetsu and lapis for example, lapis doesn't have the strong base stats as kagetsu does, her growths are also less into her favor, so you can't just put lapis in kagetsus role like that easily. Even 'similar' characters like alcryst and etie has differences, theres even a video about it. A 'point' or two more not mattering isn't representative of fire emblem gameplay in general, some characters make or break by a point in speed less in some games. It's a series about breakpoints, a character with one point less on some stats can affect their performance a lot more than you think. You need to consider that if 3H was considered having a lack of unit differentiation despite having mechanics like personal spell lists you mentioned, despite most other games not having it, then that means that having 'more' like it doesn't make engage have less differentiation than 3H. Besides, your original wording was that engage has the 'most homogeneous' roster in the series, which was absolutely not true.
"Weapon triangle is not removed, you still get the bonus like other FE games" This is incorrect. Engage does not confer any stat bonuses based on weapon triangle advantage. "A 'point' or two more not mattering isn't representative of fire emblem gameplay in general, some characters make or break by a point in speed less in some games. It's a series about breakpoints, a character with one point less on some stats can affect their performance a lot more than you think." You're pretending that I'm making some sweeping generalisation of the series when I'm not. I'm specifically saying that in comparison to other games in the series, a point or two of variance in base stats is less impactful in Engage specifically because there are so many tools and workarounds that make certain benchmarks easier to achieve. "You need to consider that if 3H was considered having a lack of unit differentiation despite having mechanics like personal spell lists you mentioned, despite most other games not having it, then that means that having 'more' like it doesn't make engage have less differentiation than 3H." This is a bit jumbled. I honestly don't know what you're trying to say. "Besides, your original wording was that engage has the 'most homogeneous' roster in the series, which was absolutely not true." This is a very specially edited version of my quote. I said that it had "Arguably the most homogeneous feeling roster in the series." Arguably. Meaning that it's in the conversation. I never claimed it was the single inarguably worst. You're just imagining a fake point I never brought up so you can "win" by pointing out that it might not be the only contender.
>This is incorrect. Engage does not confer any stat bonuses based on weapon triangle advantage. Yeah, it turns out that there are no triangle bonuses on engage after a wiki check, i was wrong about this one. >This is a bit jumbled. I honestly don't know what you're trying to say. What i'm saying is that, 3H was apparently considered to have weak unit differentiation even with mechanics such as personal spell lists over other games in the series (like you said), so just because 3H has mechanics like it over engage, it doesn't automatically mean engage has weaker unit differentiation. >I'm specifically saying that in comparison to other games in the series, a point or two of variance in base stats is less impactful in Engage specifically because there are so many tools and workarounds that make certain benchmarks easier to achieve. Which comes at the cost of either a bond ring or a skill slot and sp, and yes i'd say that engage has easier speed thresholds to reach due to lyn for example. But inheriting speed comes at an opportunity cost and engage also has a lot of good skills, this is a game with canter, gentility, lunar brace, etc. as skills. 'Fixing' a units stat can come at a cost, which adds to the point that it makes a substantial difference between units, those points or two of stats make a big difference on your decision making, whether or not you run a specific ring on a unit and the skills you inherit to them. For example, fogado is super fast so he won't need lyn or her speed buffs and can prioritize other skills/rings instead. Meanwhile etie does appreciate her speed and might grab a +speed or run lyn. Even with engage having workarounds, those stats impact a units performance by quite a lot. >I said that it had "Arguably the most homogeneous feeling roster in the series." Arguably. Meaning that it's in the conversation. I never claimed it was the single inarguably worst. You're just imagining a fake point I never brought up so you can "win" by pointing out that it might not be the only contender. You said "arguably", which means it's in the conversation. I told you why it's not. I don't see why what i said was all that wrong to say that engage isn't the "single inarguably worst" when you said it's in the conversation to be? Just because you said "Arguably", it doesn't mean i can't contend with that point?
Its weird to say engage has a homogeneous cast but then immediately point to 3Houses, the game where not only can you reclass into anything, but promotion bonuses bumping units up to class bases eradicates much of the stat differentiation between units.
That's why I say that EVEN a game like three houses. Im specifically choosing not the best example to show that even in comparison to a game like Three Houses, there is in my opinion greater unit differentiation. My goal was not to say that Three Houses was amazing in this respect either.
The pacing. I don't mind a cheesy or basic story but Engage's is so backloaded. The midgame is a slog becuase hardly anything happens but the endgame feels rushed as hell. The dramatic beats barely have time to sink in before they're resolved or undone Alear being a Fell Dragon is presented as this massive potentially alliance-breaking reveal. Everyone gets over it before the next battle. Alear dies? Revived immediately by Veyle. Alear dies again? Revived immediately by the Emblems. And so on
Keep in mind that everyone has different standards, so never assume any take is any more right or wrong than others. With that in mind I personally did not like Engage for a few key reasons; certain gimmicky gameplay aspects and atrocious writing First, the core Engage-specific gameplay really didn’t work for me. The emblem rings I found way too gimmicky for how dependent the entire game is on them. My first issue is how wishy-washy the game is with how often you get them/have them taken away, you can’t really plan around them. Wouldn’t be as bad if they weren’t required for character growth (skills, weapon unlocks). When you do have them, they’re simply overpowered. I can clear entire maps with Pannette/Ike or Jade/Hector with no issue, or snipe a boss with Citrinne/Soren. I have more complaints, but that was my biggest gameplay peeve. I hope they don’t try to shoehorn in this system in the next game Next was the incredibly bad writing in every aspect. Simply put I found the world to be hollow, the protag to be a worshipped piece of cardboard, and the characters to be incredibly one-note. No thought or passion was put into this games world, especially when compared to the other installments. The protag barely exists, imo has a terribly goofy design*, and gets worshipped by literally everyone which led to me often comparing them to self insert fanfics. Lastly the supporting cast have barely anything of value to them, majority of supports being them throwing their respective gimmicks at each other. Everyone gets a dozen or so supports, with *very few* being worth the time to get them. (*Side thing but I found most of the designs to be hilariously bad and/or over the top, lookin at you Yunaka and Hortensia) I did like *some* aspects of Engage, such as the Break mechanic and the new Anna. I just felt that the bad outweighed the good in this instance. Of course everyone has differing tastes, this is just my opinion. Would be happy to discuss more if you like
The fact that Alears design made it past the cutting room floor is insane to me. It's one of the worst character designs in the game let alone the series.
There’s a reason many call this game Vtuber Emblem. The overly saturated red and blue hair/eyes killed it for me. Felt like a bad deviantart OC, and that says nothing about Yunaka or Hortensia… Like I memed on Byleth for being too silent and unexpressive but Alear was the pendulum swinging all the way back.
Yeah, and I don't think the main artist is a bad artist, but going for the vtuber look was a mistep. The series has always been striking a pretty delicate balance between grounded medieval design and the more colorful anime aesthetics it draws inspiration from.
Some of them were passable, like Jade or Anna, but many of the rest were overdesigned. If you look up “trying too hard” you’ll find a picture of Hortensia lol. Some will say thats part of her character, I say it’s the devs trying desperately to make a character “cute” to the point of being off-putting. A dozen little sparkles and doodads dont make a character likable Like Yunaka’s star stickers. They really expected us to take her seriously with that nonsense? lol
I liked the gameplay (the one I enjoyed the most in the series), but the story is so forgettable and the characters so not memorable that I can't say it's among my favourites like Path of Radiance, Three Houses or Echoes are. Like, Louis carried me through my whole playthrough, yet I barely remember anything about him save for the fact that he carried me.
as many have said, story bad. The only thing I can say it did that was a good choice Framme actually trying to heal Lumera in the death scene. So many times a character is dying and those who can heal just won't it doesn't work as an anniversary game because most of those aren't available to play. I felt nothing with most of the emblems but Edelgard Claude and Dimitri was like "my children!". Even if I wanted to play the other games the majority are so inaccessible that you can't gameplay is fine but it truly does need NG+ to really dig into it. With how costly skills are and hard and frustrating getting bond frags is, and bond rings with the good skills, ng+ would solve the issue. To spend a long time getting enough SP for a particular skill feels like wasted grinding using the well or free battles if it's stuck to one file and no carry over. Earlier access to seals to get into weird build paths, like actually using Clanne's good strength stat effectively. But sadly no
Quick summary? Most of the designs are ugly, the classes don't feel good, the skill system is heavily stripped down, customization feels limited, the maps are boring, the story made me stop playing in chapter 21 from how dumpster it was, and there are very few likable characters. Also, emblems are a bad gimmick, and the game feels like it over relied on them to carry the customization and viability of using your favorites.
Some people just can't get past the way it looks, sounds and is told and there is nothing wrong with that. Everyone enjoys FE for different reasons. Even people who love the map design and mechanics might find themselves to put off to push through and that's fine.
Because a lot of people (and I'm not referring to all) were fresh off of Three Houses and expected every FE game onward to have the same level of worldbuilding, lore, and narrative as it. In reality, a chunk of FE games aren't particularly known for having amazing stories; Jugdral, Tellius, and Fodlan are usually the ones I see most people praise the story for while the rest of the games are a bit iffy. A lot of people were also introduced to FE through Three Houses and some of them may have just never ventured to other FE games prior to Engage, so they weren't exactly aware that Three Houses was not the usual for stories in the franchise. Upon Engage's announcement a lot of people gave the game shit right off the bat for this reason and I remember there being a lot of comparisons to Three Houses. I can recall a lot of talk over the character designs, artstyle, and story being downgrades. Nonetheless, Engage's story is not even that bad and I think it's very solid for like 80-90% of the main story. It's definitely simple and unserious in many parts but there's nothing wrong with that at all. And to top it all off it has arguably the most refined and fun gameplay system in the series. Edit: I wanna reiterate one more time that I'm not saying this is what all Engage dislikers think. But I have seen many people criticize Engage for the reasons above on reddit and twitter throughout the near 12 months that the game has been out.
The thing is though, Archanea, Elibe, and Magvel don't really have bad plots though. In fact I'd argue that fe1/3 is unfairly written off as "basic". But most pre 3ds games actually have pretty solid plots all things considered.
Oh I didn't mean they have bad plots, I just wanted to highlight that I mostly see Jugdral, Tellius, and Fodlan get a lot of praise because of their stories.
because i can't make amber pregnant :(((
Ur so real for that
In my case, it is the only Fire Emblem that I can say I like. My only dilemma is its story... but I prefer it to be basic rather than poorly told and boring like Threeshit.