One of the biggest issues I have from a visual standpoint is that all of your engaged units look nearly identical. If I have half of my army engaged for a big brawl, finding a particular character that I want to move can be a game of Where's Waldo.
There are a few things you mentioned that I think I can give a little further insight on as someone who did a lot of math with Engage recently. Specifically, the stuff about defining unit viablility by investment. To sum it up: It's not about how much investment a unit needs, but which kind of investment it is, and how many people are competing for it. It's also of note that the early stat-specialists like Lapis for Speed, Louis for Defense or Citrinne for Magic generally work best if you fully commit to that stat instead of reclassing to "fill the gap" in growths. If your unit can hit necessary benchmarks in a stat on their own, fixing the other relevant stats is childsplay, the game provides all the tools you need. Warrior Lapis is an all around great combat unit when using Lyn/Speed+5 to hit doubling thresholds, while Swordmaster Lapis naturally hits the necessary speed benchmarks and can instead use Roy to patch up the Strength gap, either freeing up Lyn for someone who better benefits from engaging her or saving the 2000 SP from the Speed inherit to invest in other skills. In the end though: No matter what you do, you can bring any unit into endgame and will find a use for them. My last run featured General Jade with the Hurricane Axe and Micaiah Staff Utility. Warped allies further ahead and demolished wyvern reinforcements in the process.
There's also the question of if DLC is available. I did a run recently with a Martial Master Jade (Tiki) and a Halberdier Goldmary (Hector) who were both absolute stars, but neither of those classes would have worked if I didn't have or was choosing not to use DLC emblems. Ike simply does not give the same defensive boost as Hector, and Jade wouldn't have even had the opportunity to get that class until it was too late, nevermind that no other emblem gives the same mix of bulk and support utility.
@@GLORPDORP yeah that's one thing that does bother me a little wich is the dlc, not the usual problem of the dlc not being worth it but it locking too much cool things behind it, like some of the most unique skills in the game are from the dlc, the proficiencies is also an issue, I recently did a run were I made panette a sage because I felt like it and that was only possible because I had access to soren, maybe they could've given you a new game + feature were you could buy all the weapon proficiencies on subsequent playthroughs, maybe make them a bit expensive so that getting them from the emblems doesn't become obsolete
yes yes yes, im only seriously coming at engage now after bouncing off it midgame not long after it came out (was just approaching the game all wrong), and i _really like_ how heavily the game leans into the fact that which units get what resources is actually a teambuilding question and always has been; it's maybe the most overt FE game in re asking what you want to take away from other units in the service of which units you want to build. i think it might be a little too generous in terms of what it offers you to correct earlier errors with its suite of fantastic later joins but I can't exactly object to the game having a design mandate of avoiding softlock, i'm just a little mean lol but yeah engage imo is really not a game of unit customization so much as it's a game of team customization
Honestly you know you've got something special in an SRPG where action economy is less about who can kill the fastest and more about who's doing something interesting
@@agromchung to be honest that's probably why I've stuck with engage for 5 runs now, there's just a lot of fun builds you can do that aren't just kill effectively
Honestly I love this game. Even if the story doesn't stick the landing well, the gameplay, visuals, and music brings me back. While the character designs are maybe not 100% my taste, I also love the bright colors used, and I feel like the brightness is why I'm so keen on returning to the game. Everything feels alive.
Man I can't believe its seriously been a year since engage came out. I still remember excitedly downloading it but not being able to play it right away since I had to go to work. While I wouldn't call it my favorite fe I do think its a really solid entry in the series
@@ectasy358 then 50% of the game is then wrong and it is not a solid entry then. A fire emblem is more then just the combat or else it would be same if i played a call of duty game
@@larsstavenuiter424 First, I can’t play Call of Duty with my trash hand-eye coordination lol You should use a game in the same genre of playstyle if you’re going to make this point next time or else it won’t make sense (for example Advance Wars, Pikmin, Mario+Rabbids, etc.) I do agree that story is important, but I’m having fun (and haven’t touched 3h) so I’m satisfied with the nice combat and ui
@@larsstavenuiter424I actually consider gameplay more important than story with Fe games. If a game has a good story but bad gameplay (ex. Fe4 and Fe3H) then I can get the same experience watching the cutscenes on TH-cam without the bad gameplay. However, with good gameplay bad story I can just skip the cutscenes and have fun still playing the actual game. And even with this I still consider FeEngage to have a better story than the likes of Fe3H so to each their own honestly
Speaking on the DLC I think echoes did it best (outside of it being overpriced) I’d love to see overclasses return as well as a side story like Cindered Shadows. Although it should just be one bundle for all the DLC content and not split it up like echoes did
I also dislike the constant reinforcements in Engage’s late game, but after a while I figured that they spam so many reinforcements because you’ll need a way to build engage meter. The final map for both the main story and DLC story are what gave me that idea, because if you disengage and only have the one boss remaining then it limits whether or not you can engage again. At least that’s how I made sense of it in defense of the game.
Saaamme! I played Engage on hard/classic which wasn't really hard (it felt like normal mode most of the time) other then two exceptions. Chapter 17...and the final boss map. The reinforcements and RNG were so terrible it completely ruined the last bit of enjoyment I had with the game. For perspective, Kegetsu (in my run) had max bond with Erika while also having the max avoid inherit (I believe it was 30%) so that I could make him dodge pretty much everything. On the last map, Kegetsu got hit by two 35% and then died to a 20% hit, all consecutive by the way. I learned after this that if the game knows it can kill one of your units, it does not matter how much you try to prevent it, they will kill you. I lost most of my units on that final map because the reinforcements were so nonstop and aggressive, but the RNG really killed any enjoyment I had left with this game. Kegetsu dying really got to me because he should not have died like that under any circumstances...
That actually makes a lot of sense. Personally I feel like they should've just had more engage fill tile thingamajigs near the boss or make the reinforcements weaker, but I can slightly respect the idea.
Engage cant be my favorite or most played game, but I honestly cannot rate it anything other than peak for its gameplay. Its just so fun to play and try things and I never feel trapped into using certian people every time unlike other games where certian units are just clearly like....Camilla, Seth or Sigurd.
Honestly, love this game. My only and main issue is the lack of a new game+. This game was perfect for it, but for some reason they never added it. I would love to see a FE with a Luminous Arc-like NG+ where it gives you access to all your characters from the beginning, even if it doesn't make sense story-wise; it would be so much fun and I just love Veiru so much but she joins late-game 😢
About the part you mentioned about wanting units to feel a little more different to each other. How would you feel if characters could only access classes with a weapon they had a proficiency in. So for example Lapis could only go into Sword classes and Yunaka could only go into Dagger classes. It would have to be balanced a bit more so that the Sword/Lance/Axe proficient characters can't just get into every almost single class like how the Mage Knight has a Sword/Lance/Axe variant so the following ones would be limited to only using the following: Hero - Sword / Axe Bow Knight - Bow / Sword General - Lance / Axe Great Knight - Lance / Axe Paladin - Sword / Lance Wolf Knight - Dagger / Axe Mage Knight - Tome / Sword Griffin Knight - Lance / Staff Wyvern Knight - Lance / Axe This still allows the characters with the three default weapons to have more general classes and some other characters to be the only ones who can fulfill a specialized niche such as Sage or Sniper. Personally While I believe this does give units a bit more unit identity now that they are tied to their weapon I still believe the balance for the first three weapons class access to be a bit lopsided even with the restrictions, so I'd think the 4 weapon types would need another class like: Dark Flier - A Tomes Grappler - A Arts Adventurer - A Bows / C Staves Assassin - S Daggers / B Swords (+ Thief is now changed to be a base class that promotes into Assassin) Though even with this I think I still prefer the open reclassing Engage currently provides since if you want to stick to their canonish classes you can without the game forcing you to which takes away from people who want to do other stuff like Warrior Clanne, Mage Knight Anna or Levin Swordmaster Ivy, but I can still see where people are coming from where that takes away from more unit specific feel.
Great video, a lot of stuff to think about. I especially agree about Chain Attacks. I often found trying to set them up more trouble than it was worth. I think Chain Attacks are a lot more dangerous when done by the enemy. Unless you have a unit set up with Pair Up from Corrin's Emblem Ring.
Ngl I had lots of fun turning 3/4 of my units into heroes and having so many brave assists that the attacking character sometimes didn't even get their own attack off lol
10:00 in chapter 25's defense, it is pretty much the true endgame of Engage. The actual last map of Engage is more of a victory lap than an attempt at challenging the player.
@@pandabanaan9208 You aren't imagining the potential enough. It's not about any individual ship or the canonical viability of them. It's about the memes, Jack.
@@johnlynch1353 good is a subjective term. When asking what it means to make a unit "good" you need to ask why you're making that unit good to begin with. If you want to play the game as fast as possible then yeah, forget about Bunet... And also most of the units in the game. The trouble with countering a suggestion with it's not "good" is that the barrier for what can beat the game is so low that you need to make up such qualifications as an arbitrary speed of play in order to even call a unit good or bad. Essentially calling a strategy good or bad is meaningless when we're not speaking on the same definition of good or bad.
@@theghostcreator776 I should explain I was not using good in terms of speed. I was referring to it in terms of ease-of-use and reliability. It takes a while to set up all for a pay off that will be fun when it goes off it’s still not even guaranteed to work. there is a reason I did not say it was bad as I don’t think it really is that bad. I just believe that while it can be fun. It takes a while to get going and even once it does it is unreliable at best. It is like getting Luna crits on armors it’s a fun build when it works but even when not worrying about speed their is probably a more broadly useful and consistent build you could have made with those resources.
I thought snipers were bad at first too because the S rank weapons both you get way too late and the S rank bow is not very good. But if you see snipers as the ultimate crit class and place a high dex growth unit on it, then they are really strong, plus you can use claude's S rank ring on it for the +1 range and that is really, really good and it will always guarantee the sniper crit passive. And have doubling avoid tile bonus is surprisingly really useful. Snipers are also insanely accurate for fliers unlike warriors. Thieves are kinda of bad in Engage since they have less dex than snipers, so less crit, and they do not have the crit passive of snipers, and killer daggers are all 1 range while killer bow is 2 range or 3 range with claude's ring. Do not use lyn on sniper though, you want lyn on a character strength growth of 40% or higher so that astral storm can one shot targets, especially an annoying mage. Radiant bow on sniper Anna will one shot every flier on maddening.
The bulk of the cast looking like pulls from a gacha idol game is one thing, but the plot quality really isn't something I can get myself to overlook. Any game taking such a significant time investment just can't hold my attention. As a JRPG fan I'm no stranger to characters looking silly, but competent storytelling is one of the reasons I fell in love with the franchise as a kid on the GBA.
Just finished a Martial Master Alear /w Dual Support & Avoid +30 (Byleth) absolutely busted. Next run, I want to try Alear on Enchanter. My point is, trying different builds on every run hopefully holds me off until we get the Genealogy and Thracia remakes
I think gameplay wise Engage was really fun especially the Emblem customization even if it feels like too much of it runs through that mechanic, it’s so sick to have the FE lords be Jojo stands and play a major role for every persons’ development in the army both narratively and mechanically Only criticism I have is the story is very FE generic which usually isn’t a complaint except when it’s closer to a Fates narrative where the main character feels like the center of the universe instead of a complimentary piece of the story Still a great game 👏
i still dont know how i feel about just how drastically this game changed through updates and dlc. when in the context of everyone's first playthrough - when there was no well, no dlc, no silver weapon free updates, and lots of learning about just exactly how the all the mechanics worked and what was good and what wasn't - all of this led to a completely different experience compared to when you play the game now. i truly enjoyed this game when i first played it, but now all of this added stuff makes it a completely different experience and i'm not quite sure it was ever planned out thoroughly. pre well the game had a strict sp system, one that punished you for experimenting but also was somewhat rewarding. maybe it could've been better, but the well just flips it on its head and essentially makes sp unlimited resource, which im not sure was the correct 'solution'. the dlc in general does not feel fun to utilize after the initial novelty because it completely trivializes what is essentially the entire early and mid game. you also can't even turn off the rewards upon new playthroughs even as an option. the fell xenolouge, while having some interesting ideas, admittingly was not good, and leaves you wondering just who exactly it was made for. All of my disconnect with the added in content, while combined with some of my issues with just the base game (somniel, rather boring map design, same feeling units, etc) sort of leaves me more lukewarm on this game the longer time goes on. i think i have it somewhere in the middle of my fe tierlist.
I do think the well was an inelegant solution to the problem of "not enough SP to get the fun expensive skills" I would have preferred them add a means of acquiring SP that was less random, or tied to a New Game+ feature.
For the piece about the Emblem characters feeling tacked on, while I more or less agree, I do actually think of that in a more positive way. I personally had been really worried that this game was going to ride its plot and characterization almost entirely on the previous games' lords at the expense of making this game's cast insignificant, and I think that the way they implemented the rings as having some bits and pieces of conversation/characterization while still being largely in the background to the new characters was a good, if perhaps not perfect, balance to strike. On an related(?) note, one thing I liked about this game was it gave me a chance to reevaluate some of the lords that I didn't really like by giving me a glimpse of their character that was somewhat independent of their game. For a low-hanging fruit example, I'm not exactly a big fan of Corrin in Fates, but I really like Corrin's Engage incarnation.
I agree. I've always said that of the Emblems, only Marth and Sigurd have anything vaguely resembling a story role, and Marth's is just "being a mouthpiece for Emblems as a concept" while Sigurd is only relevant around Chapter 3. They do not overshadow the main cast at all. I was like that with Byleth lol. I really like Emblem Byleth despite never caring much for them back in 3H. Being able to actually talk means we actually get to see them act like a teacher, and their gameplay role with rallies and dancing aids that.
I’ve always felt like Corrin is a great character who was trapped in a plot that didn’t let them show off their strengths (though I do like the drama of Conquest despite the times it gets messy).
@@emblemblade9245 Corrin's a decent concept in isolation, the issue is Fates' storytelling forcing them into a "can do no wrong" player-proxy rather than letting their flaws serve the plot. (It's why I like the moment in Engage where Alear distrusts Veyle's good half despite us players knowing she's really innocent. Alear in-universe has no reason to believe her.)
Its interesting you say customization is high and that units felt same-y, cuz my experience is that everyone felt different which made a lot of them either good or terrible. and customization just didnt exist cuz there wasnt really enough resources to do so. i COULD farm the auxiliary battles and somniel stuff to alleviate that, but Engage was just really easy that I didn't want to farm those and have my characters be even stronger level wise cuz then the game would be even easier and boring. but then that meant i basically missed out on a feature of the game. you do mention the DLC stuff tho which i didnt bother wasting money on so maybe thats why the perspectives are the way they are.
honestly not much has changed besides me liking some of the characters more than i did in my first playthrough mainly celine and citrine grew on me a lot but that's about it really for me the stroy is bad, the characters are great, the gameplay is good, i hate that we don't have paired endings, i like the class system and the engage mechanic is really fun i love having a super move.
Byleth dragon dance/instruct is really strong, you can pull off alear as a pure support unit with byleth the whole game and move byleth over to veyle when you get her later. With DLC, lyn is really good for Rafal, both to get him doubling consistently and he has high strength for astral storm, has long range astral storm, and creates a 5th clone can be surprisingly useful.
Wolf Knight Lapis, Micaiah engraved silver dagger, with Lucina Ring (bonded shield is banned) makes for the ultimate avoid tank and chain attacks with daggers will apply poison stacks as well. This will help your army deal even more damage.
The prologue will always be incredible to play through. They give you enough rings to experiment with while the maps have a good amount of space and trees or castles to hide with. I hate the level curve system where enemies grow as you do. It makes grinding honestly worthless and I just raised everyone aside the mc to beat the dlc early to get those rings. Dlc siblings and units like zelestia and co. I like them and glad we could get them early but wish it was automatic to every story like 3 houses where you only need to beat it once to get those units. That's a massive negative. Story I don't care for much. It has good ideas that could have worked if used better. Class system wise. Hate how the lords get the special classes or at least the Luna sol etc skills. That was a negative. Healer being a fighter is meh. Felicia is probably the best early healer being an evo class to start and daggers to lower enemy stats is broken. Make a magic healer Fe games. Overall. I had a good enough time playing this game
They just need to give healers a str stat. The formula for arts damage is pretty dumb too in engage. The average of str and magic - def means you do no damage.
Also hate how skirmishes enemies would just b-line towards your units making it difficult to defend yourself without cheesy strategies. Which is why I tried to training skirmishes in the castle areas which units aren’t killed. The dlc maps fair a little better since the enemy levels in the dlc areas are random, giving your weaker units a chance to catch up. But I feel like that’s a band aid for this games skirmish encounters.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 yeah I usually have to turtle my team or carry a Levin sword on top of armor breaker as engage cheats with how high the def is from the armor enemies. Yeah the game should have let us choose a standard or upgrading system instead. Hope they don't continue this or the game will just be less fun to replay.
Good video, I think something that explains why the gap between weak units and strong units in this game is minimized relative to the previous games is because Engage was practically made with favoritism in mind, seen in stuff like boosts being low commitment. Case in point: Clanne can end up being about as good as Pandreo on his join chapter if you gave him an emblem and some engrave/forge, decisions that don’t carry the same strain on resources as something like perma booster items or high tier weapons in games with durability. As you put it, most of the important combat and support tools are tied up in emblems. And even if your Clanne doesn’t work out because he got Mag cursed, you can just move his investments over to whoever is doing his role better, no loss. It’s weird how as the series pivots towards expecting you to reset/pulse if a unit dies, Engage ended up with many Ironman friendly systems and unit join scenarios.
I think it says a lot about the type of game this is when the video is 25 minutes long and less than 2 minutes of it are spent talking about the story and presentation.
This is mostly because this is a gameplay focused channel. I don't like the story, but if I had spent time on the presentation, it would have been mostly positive.
Just finished my 4th playthrough of the game, going from a (really) early Run of it (Basically no DLC, no Heroes Stuff, no Well), a Hard Run, Hard Run while trying to set everyone to Level 20/20 (a BIG mistake in terms of time) , and the most recent one, Hard Run with early promotion. And yeah, easily top 3 for me. Just behind Radiant Dawn and Genealogy. And the Soundtrack... Oh my God the Soundtrack. It kinda cheats since a good portion of music are remixes for past games, HOWEVER, the OG tracks are 100/10 (Bloom in the Breeze has been living the entire year inside my head pls help me)
I like you videos! Can you make a video about all the best builds after 1 year of playthroughs? I understand vantage + wrath build or bonded shield support but i still have problems with my team composition in the late game.
I love this game but they were strict with sp pre well and messing around with emblems and builds felt like too much of a commitment. I think tying a resource to leveling up emblems, having very few skirmishes (maddening) and the lack of availability of the emblem rings took the fun out of messing around and experimenting with builds imo. Love your channel!
i agree with the gist of what you were saying, the Well update was a huge nerf to Backup attacks. Just not necessary when you can make any unit one-round 99% of things. I really appreciate that every playthrough can be vastly different than the one before if you're creative enough. My only real critique with the game is lack of New Game+ or even just a support log, I think whacky emblem combinations would be even more incentivized if you knew the conversation would be saved after the playthrough (like Citrinne/Ike or Boucheron/Celica), and of course dlc characters being locked out if you don't play through the Xenologue every playthrough is just terrible.
Never mind repeated playthroughs, I skipped the cutscenes on the first playthrough. Unbearable levels of cringe. I also hated all the mini games and running around at the home base. The maps were pretty good though.
For sure, hub work takes way too damn long. I swear to god I am in menus more then I am playing the game. There are so many mini games in Engage that offer nothing to your units. The weavern riding mini game and the fortune teller game serve no purpose other than maybe giving you bond fragments for one of them. I think adding these was really a waste of time...then someone in the comments will say B-BUT THE HOT SPRINGS WAS A WASTE OF TIME IN FATES AND WE LOVED THE HOT SPRINGS! WE EXCEPTED IT! WE LIKED IT ENOUGH! Idk, if it serves no purpose I don't think it should be in the game at all. Besides, if I can't go into the hot spring as female Corrin to look at hot anime men. I think the purpose of the hot springs failed in my eyes.
only the second last map has infinite reinforcements (technically last map has too) third last map is a turn limit fourth last map doesn't have infinite reinforcements
I'd argue it is mostly player phased focus due to most of your skills needing to be used on player phase. Bonded Shield is one of the exceptions that you have to specifically spec for.
@@lunamaster123 i like doing player phase because then it is like playing a puzzle in each scenario which is more fun than something like set up bonded shield and press the skip button because you know you will win since it is impossible to lose with bonded shield this is why i ban bonded shield use from my runs
Yeah Backup was one of those things people really hyped up early on that I always thought was "not THAT good". I was really wrong about Lucina though, I thought that ring was terrible (to be fair Bond Shield failed the 80% roll like 4x in a row at first so I didn't know what the ability even did for a while)
I agree with basically everything here, so I'll just mention the two points where I disagree a bit. First one is pretty simple: I really like the story. Not much else to add there, but I think it does a lot for my enjoyment of the game overall. The second point is Alear being a dragon unit, specifically having the Corrin ring. Using that combo on my second playthrough has been absolutely incredible, and I think only using the fire vein is more about your personal playstyle than anything. I've personally used multiple different ones, and being able to do so every single turn has given me so much flexibility in my strategies. Otherwise love the video, like I do most of them :)
yeah like i wasnt sold at first with how heavily the game uses multiple health bars but it's grown on me a lot enemy phasing in engage is neat because i feel like what the game is telling you there is that yeah you do wanna be aggressive playerphase but you usually dont want to neglect the enemy phase entirely-- they're really punishing if you don't manage them well! warp skips _are_ a valid answer there but lbr you're not intended (or even able? not sure of the math there) to do that every map
Very curious to hear your thoughts on why Timerra is meh; her reputation with certain other players is incredibly high. Speaking personally, I have always loved the Soldier archetype so I make sure to use it just for that.
Only thing that killed me is not being able to take weapons from your completed play through to a new game plus hate waiting for end game gear to use for limited content and it’s over I feel like it adds a level of replay ability at least for me.
Engage was my first FE game so the gameplay is what I’m comparing everything to. I’m nearly done with my first three houses playthrough after getting sucked into the series. Engage feel better in a lot of little things to me, like auto equipping being good and keeping vulenary and such in account. I also have to love that you can S rank same sex characters, because I needed to get with Boucheron, my giant axe wielding dumbass with a heart of gold.
As far as Dragon bonuses are concerned, I do still like Veyle with Celica for the 3 range Echo and Warp Ragnarok. Not as good on Alear but still was fun to mess with early on to trigger lots of chain attacks from a safe distance.
I remember pretty much nothing of engage and I’ve played the game twice. I played just the edelgard route of TH once and i still remember most of the storybeats,characters and some of the maps
@@raphaelsorel6907 i gave the game a whole *Second playthrough* after asking a friend how to have a better esperience or finding new appreciation for it. How am i being close minded? If the game didn’t stick in my mind- that’s that… never said it doesn’t have redeaming qualities; i bought it. played it twice. Discussed with a friend that found the game enjoable… but NOW I barely remember the game. The fact still stands and i didnt write anything making fun of people who love engage or whatever so whats your deal?
@@raphaelsorel6907 you are just assuming things. Quite *close minded* of you 🧐 WELL- now we should *both* get some “grass touching” time, wouldn’t you agree? Have a nice and productive day 🤝
I enjoyed it well enough. Working on my 4th playthrough. But I don’t really care about it or feel much attachment to it? Neither do most people, from what I can see.
Engage reignighted my interest in the series. I will not defend much of the story, but i was so hooked mechanically by the series after Awakening so thoroughly underwhelmed me that i dropped the franchise for the better part of a decade. I hope that the FE teams continue in the direction they took engage ,because as a strategy rpg it's really compelling
Something i especially like-- the game finely curates and executes based on what you have access to, and the game as a result feels smooth going from start to finish. The devs were very confident about knowing how playthroughs are likely to go, and the game reflects that by being able to allow the average player to bend the rules without completely invalidating the game.
I see Engage as the Thor Ragnarok of Fire Emblem; Really fun cast, bold and dynamic characters and action, and a story that doesn't need to take itself too seriously. Just a really fun divergence from the rest of the their respective franchises
@@skeletonwar4445 That its cutscenes are hours upon hours of characters crying over one another, raging at each other, wallowing in the events of the story or their own melodramatic backstories and so forth regardless of if the emotions were build up to and earned or not, that the developers claimed they, "hope players cry along with the characters" and expect their players to be invested enough to have an emotional response to said hours of melodrama in the Ask the Developer interview with Nintendo, etc
@@skeletonwar4445 It means that the game is, firstly, taking itself seriously at all, which is antithetical to what the original commenter stated. If we then consider that the majority of players failed to attach themselves to the story, world or characters and in fact were commonly belligerent and sarcastic toward the emotional beats at which they were meant to be "crying with the characters", then in my mind it goes to follow that the game's melodrama is unearned and therefore "too serious" for what content it is providing the average player.
@@skeletonwar4445 I don't believe that. That is your ad homonym attack on me in order to avoid understanding someone else's perspective. There is of course a difference between "taking yourself seriously," whether that is earned amongst audiences or not, and a "serious story". I simply believe Engage is the former. Whimsical, lighthearted stories that expect the audience to have an emotional response as extreme as crying, as the directors suggest in their interview, necessarily have moments where they must "take themselves seriously," must make a tone or set of rules or scenario, that would provoke such a response. That does not mean it becomes a serious story. Just because Engage failed to emotionally provoke its audience, does not mean it didn't try. We seem to quantify "seriousness" differently. I would love to hear your definition if you were interested in continuing this discussion. Anytime someone tries to get that goofy ahh mic drop moment on that "good night" "good evening" shi at the end of their TH-cam comment like they're getting up and leaving a room and not just words on a screen having conversation about a video game on the internet is really telling though so maybe I'm optimistic for thinking that was going to happen lmao
Laura did such a good job with Alear, I used to be obsessed with Genshin (especially when Engage came out) so my genuine reaction was “Wait wait wait, Female Alear’e VA is BARBARA?!”
@@raphaelsorel6907 is my opinion so offensive to you that you have to resort to personal attacks rather than engaging in an actual argument? Suggesting that my opinion must be influenced by being hurt is dismissive. Instead, why not address my core points of story writing and art style?
@@cajunxn17 Ironically, I wouldn’t recommend Engaging with “Engageheads” they will defend it with no arguments at all. It’s best to just leave them be.
I played with dlc 1st time whole game once. Just finished last night after got in April/24 I was disappointed you didn't get the new game plus just left end on repeat. Was used to 3H. Bond and support caps needed more effort for me faster. Didn't use the base as efficiently before chapt 16. Lol didn't even know why I should get woken up until I got turned into an emblem 13.
I didn’t buy it initially despite wanting to get into fire emblem because of the character designs and one note anime type characterisations, but after embracing that I’ve been playing it the last two months and I love it, the animations, the depth to the gameplay and the customisability of the units are all amazing and tbh most of the cringe stuff is in the early game and the Somniel and Firene supports
I'm getting to the tail end of my first playthrough, and the gameplay is fun... so long as you have emblem rings. The descision to take half of them away for a not insignificant portion of the game feels thoroughly boneheaded, and makes the game's price-gouging in terms of dlc all the more egregious. Aside from that, I like a lot of the characters too, and I really am pleased with the presentation. Feels like IS has cracked HD development after a rocky performance in three houses.
@@skeletonwar4445Not the first time, as much as it's a meme, Kaga did it first. I won't spoil Thracia but Leif does some very rash things and there are relevant story and gameplay consequences.
That's funny, due to Marth being taken away for so long. I pretty much benched his ass when I got him back. Mostly because I didn't need him anymore when Lucina and Erika does everything he does and sometimes better in many aspects. I remember getting to the final map and I was like "Oh yeah, Marth's in the game." Way to undersell your own mascot Intelligent Systems. He IS on the front of the box you know! (Probably should have replaced his face with Ike's instead at this point.)
Love the game, beautifully crafted gameplay, story, characters, all of it is amazing imo Of course there are some trip ups but as with all games, that is to be expected and used as detailing what room there is for improvement. Its also the game that finally got me to step away from the larger Fire Emblem community for the most part due to the sheer vitriol spewed about the game, which has vastly improved my mental health.
I think the only _major_ weakness to this game's story and characters is the paralogues, specifically the ones to increase Emblems' max bond ranks. Most of the dialogue in them falls flat because Alear acts like they're getting major insights from the Emblems' life lessons… but most of them are lessons Alear doesn't actually _need_ because they've learned that already in other parts of the story, or already demonstrated competence in that area in supports. That said, several of the Emblem paralogues _do_ still land quite solidly, and the rest of the game is amazing. Especially like, most of the supports? And also the early game's story scenes being a collection of chekhov's guns and foreshadowing of varying degrees of subtlety to set up endgame makes the story land even _better_ on a repeat playthrough if you pay attention the second time despite it being a replay of a game with only one route. I haven't played as male Alear but female Alear's voice acting is consistently amazing for the entire game.
Probably the correct move, the way some people talk about wichever entry they've decided to despise is some of the most toxic fandom behavior you'll see, turns out the meme about fire emblem fans hating fire emblem the most is more accurate then it seems though it varies from person to person
I'd play Engage more on its presentarion and in-map gameplay alone, but the game has become stale for me after picking it up again after not touching it since DLC 2 came out. It doesn't really matter what actual units I use because I can't help but find myself leaning towards the same strategies anyway because not doing so just feels so unoptimal, mainly Vantage Wrath, Qi Bond Shield, etc. And with how Engage structures things, any unit can fulfill any role and the differences boil down to meger base stat differences. Idk. For as open as Engage is, it feels shallow to play, especially to replay, imo.
Regarding gameplay, I feel like one thing that really missed the mark was the personal skills for each character. Some are very impactful, like Hortensia's, Alear's, and Alcryst's, but others are weirdly lacking or nearly useless, such as Etie's, all of the "When using Wait, gain +X to a stat.", and plenty of other skills. I feel like they really should have given a bit more power budget to the personal skills so that each unit could really feel like they're unique and even if you have two Sages for example, you can have one that maybe has something like Soren's Anima Focus as a skill, while another gets +1 range with weapons that have at least 2 range if their build exceeds their weapon weight by a certain value, something like that.
Personally while I think this game had a lot of problems, it is still a decent Fire Emblem Game. I recently went back and started playing through Fates again because I happen to find my old 3ds and while I enjoy engage, I think Awakening an Fates did some stuff better. A big thing for me in terms of enjoying a Fire Emblem Game is the story and characters and just does the game feel good to play. Engage made everyone be able to do everything and it's just like well whats the point of recuriting all these characters then? It was a similar problem I had with 3 houses. If everyone can do everything then whats the point of using these characters. Where with Awakening and Fates (Even if Fates story is really bad) I have to make a actual choice of what characters to use! Getting only your core classes and some extra classes (and DLC classes) makes it so each character actually feels like they matter to the army more, making the gameplay more enjoyable. So I don't think Engage is the worst of the worst, but it just lost a lot of what I enjoy in Fire Emblem, Granted there are characters I got super attached to and I do really like them, but with everyone being able to do everything it was basically just use whoever and get the job done.
I wish I was someone who liked engage because it has a lot I like from my favorite games, three houses and fates, but it feels to me like it took the parts of the games I like and don't like and made the parts I didn't like really noticeable. Unit identity is a really big thing I like from three houses, because things like crests, combat arts/spell lists, and boons/banes mean that even units with similar stats can be different in interesting ways and can be made interesting, which in engage I feel isn't really a thing, diamant will almost always be inferior to kagetsu, and the one unique thing he has (sol) isn't as useful as more high-investment strats that they both have access to.
In fire emblem descendants Alear(female), Vander, Framme, Clanne, Alfred, Celine, Etie, Louis, Chloe, Diamant, Alcryst, Lapis, Citrinne, Ivy, Hortensia, Zelkov, Kagetsu, Rosado, Goldmary, Timerra, Fogado, Merrin, Bunet, Pandreo, Seadall, Veyle and Mauvier appears to have been pulled after the start of Retreat but before the sentinels to The Fell & the Divine
I think of Engage kind of like Fates in that, it's a game that has good gameplay but terrible writing. The main issue is that the dichotomy between the two was extremely apparent in Fate which made it stick out even more and thus stayed in the mind and you had hints in the game that the story could have been so much more but there were rewrites in the way (which was later on confirmed). Meanwhile Engage just ..... did not. The gameplay is fun but imo I don't think it creates quite the same contrast that highlights both like Fate did, and the game also doesn't encourage repeat playthroughs either. That is how you end up with two games that zhare some big traits (the game that had to follow the biggest game of the series so far and thus had a lot of heavy lifting to do to make the new fans stick and focused more on gameplay with a very lackluster story) but one ends up being pretty well engrained in the community whilst the other is very much ..... forgotten after it's arrival, seriously, I never see anyone even mention that game anymore (one of my friend outright banned any mentions of it in the group chat with how much he disliked it, that might play a role though) Sorry for all of that, I just wanted to share my observation on the similarities between these games and how their differences led to such different outcomes
@@raphaelsorel6907 Well no, I actually don't This is legit the first time I even saw it even *mentioned* in like 9 months. I deadass even forgot it existed
For Alear I went Male all my campaigns but I feel Alear could have other skills and the same for the Royals Veyle in their unique classes. Also for Alear I feel he should have been like Cecil Harvey of Final Fantasy 4 th-cam.com/video/2YdrZxdQvH0/w-d-xo.html with another promotion So Divine Dragon and Fell Dragon think the Emblem of the Sacred Night and Day The Divine Dragon Class Alear Sword, Fist and Staff proficiencies Brave Assist of the Hero class, Diffuse Healer of the Martial Master and Self Healing High Priest skills The Fell Dragon class Sword, Tomes and Daggers. Chaos Style of the Mage Knight, Spell Harmony of the Sage and Hobble of the Wolf Knight classes skills With 2 personal Skills for him in those classes His Divinely Inspiring and Nel's Protective Skill but for All units for both him and his Party for the Divine Dragon class. For the Fell Dragon class Veyles and Rafals personal skills What do you think?
Its hard for me to actually enjoy the gameplay when the game is so throughly trying to convince me that the characters and world building are good and make sense. Everytime i select a unit to move them on the map, it just reminds me how much I dislike them for every bland bit of dialogue ive heard them say or because they like watching people sleep
@@skeletonwar4445 Yes it is a me problem. I said "I" and "me" almost exclusively in my comment. I personally cannot enjoy the gameplay because it's tied to the story and characters so inherently that it's hard to just brush it aside
@@thomasquesada7248 I do appreciate that, but I was moreso using it as an example of how the characters put me off from the game in general. Thank you though
I'm on the tale end of my third playthrough right now and couldn't agree more. The early and mid-game are an absolute joy to play, but the late game can be a bit of a slog at some points.
I still prefer Fates and Three Houses, but Engage is definitely the most 'fun' FE game I've played. It's one of those games where you don't think about it too hard and enjoy the gameplay, and for that I can say that it was a great time.
Engage surprised me, both in the good and bad. On the good, I liked the story... See, if we see it as the tale of Veyle and Alear, then it is a very heartfelt tale and I stuck to it. Gotta say I grew quick to like these two characters. Now, if we think of the story spanning a whole continent and a conflict beyond time and space... Then yeah, it sucks specially at world building. For the bad, the combat and build building, I found both lacking and shallow, specially compared to CQ which is what it's often compared to. In that regard, Engage is to Fates what a shadow is to a painting.
I loved engage but i wouldn't call its story amazing. It had fun characters, amazing animations, it was well paced, and the side stuff at the hub was mostly optional unlike three houses that burries you in it. I especially liked the pacing changes because every time i tried to do a run of three houses I felt totally burnt out of it before the halfway point.
Engage is probably my favorite of the modern fire emblem games (awakening onwards), and it's story I don't think is any worse then the other modern games although I am someone who thinks 3h story itself is very overrated (if I had to rank the best and worst, fates is the worst and echoes is the best) and there are games before awakening that Iike more story wise. Gameplay wise it's really good, I've only ever played on maddening and it's probably the most balanced hardest difficulty, at the very least it didn't feel like a slog like the other modern games (except echoes it's not as hard as the other modern games) Character wise they aren't the best or worst but there are quite a few I like, timerra, merrin, panette, fogado, pandreo, citrinne, lapis, veyle are the ones I like the most. Dlc is something that I haven't really done past when it first released because the extra emblem rings do kind of mess with the games power progression and makes the section when you lose your rings not as great in my opinion. I also don't like doing the xenolog story or the actual story itself and the characters and classes it gives you I've never used because it's so late in the game when I'm able to actually do it and what I said about this game's maddening being balanced could be thrown in the garbage with this xenolog
hard agree with the Three Houses story being overrated. just because it was a lot less simple than Engage's story doesn't mean it's better in every aspect. there's so much either ignored or not explained properly in Fódlan that it feels like a mural with entire chunks of it missing, with barely any thread left to explain what could've been there before, like Duscur or Those Who Slither. Three Houses is my fave game of all time, with 1,770 hours of playtime and at least 80 hours in all four routes. it felt like they bit off way more than they could chew for each and every single one of these routes. Azure Moon specifically helped me with a lot of very personal issues and is the sole reason that number is over a thousand, since so much of my time was spent replaying it over and over, finishing its story in a week for a year on end. it's definitely my most preferred on the four, but god, much of it feels held together by prayers. especially Rodrigue's death. the cinematic still they used feels like it fits Fhirdiad more than it does Gronder Field. it's a very big turning point for Dimitri and the route as a whole, yet it feels handled really poorly because of the mismatched locations that I've always skipped that scene. i could go on, but i'll just leave it here.
I think it's really funny that when engage came out suddenly everyone starts looking fondly at three houses when previously everyone was calling out the problems with the plot, hel I feel like even fates is looked at more favorably at the moment then engage wich is pretty crazy
Well I'm someone who thinks Engage's gameplay is overrated, and I have yet to see a single person actually critique the map design. To me it's nothing special compared to other FE's when I soloed 3/4 of the main chapters and all of the paralogues on Hard Classic.
@@skeletonwar4445 When people have said several times outright that it's not possible to do this, I do get to prove them wrong. Heck, multiple TH-camrs now have done Maddening solos. Also as long as people are trying to push the "3H is cheeses by just spamming Wyvern Lords" false argument, I'll push Alear solos are the best way to beat Engage too. Not a single person has convinced me this map design is "oh sooooo good to me, daddy please" better than past games, not because I disagree with them, but because they're just not doing it, at all. Meanwhile I've seen Fates and even some 3 Houses maps get properly critiqued on certain channels. If someone has done it for Engage, I haven't seen it yet. "Better than 3H" is not a good criteria, let alone a valid one. If you can point me in the direction of a good example, I'll wait.
Honestly, the dlc killed it for me. Why, oh why, is there no new game plus? Why can't I have access to the dlc characters on a subsequent play through without having to do it all again? Why can't skill allocations and my collection of non-emblem rings carry over? WHY DO I HAVE TO DO ALL THE DLC EMBLEM MAPS AGAIN EVERY SINGLE TIME!? Also, the endgame sucks! Infinite reinforcements on some maps make it impossible for you to think about taking your time. After a time, you no longer get relevant exp or sp from defeating them. I completed engage and did put around 90 hours into it, but I couldn't face another play through. It sits just below the middle of the fire emblems for me.
I will never play this game again. It was such a letdown despite how fun I found the gameplay. Everything surrounding it is just too obnoxious and poorly done it makes me smash my head against the wall in disbelief; how the did it come to this.
The niche is just that his early game is quite good. His performance is actually pretty similar to Celine, with whichever one that doesn't get Celica struggling a lot more. Sadly the whole starting at level 1 thing and no free Celica in chapter 4 hurts him long term
@@actuallizard He's the only practical way to kill the Chapter 3 boss on Maddening (since the Rapier won't help there), which imo is enough of a niche. Last time I played Clanne's level ups just went crazy and he outpaced Celine, which usually doesn't happen. I expected him to fall off later but he didn't.
Engage is a great game but IMO it scales pretty horribly into higher difficulties At least it isnt unplayable garbage like Lunatic+ but it does feel like you have to plan 15 steps ahead to succeed before you even start a chapter
I’m glad to see all the criticism this game got and know people really still do hold devs to task to be the best they can be, but at this point like most people I’m about ready to pack up and move on to the next installation, or maybe just to a new franchise depending on where IS takes FE and whether or not they act on the response to this game. Even the discourse about Engage got boring after a year……
I think the contrast between communities is funny, you have sonic and pokemon fans who have to hope the next game is good/innovative and then fire emblem fans who can see engage the same as sonic forces despite it being a solid game at minimum
@@pandabanaan9208 lol I guess that's one way of looking at it, but Pokemon and sonic are certainly lows bars to set, if an FE is even comparable to that and especially their work ethic and intentions, Pokemon in particular, something needs to change and immediately. A concerning amount of people did not think Engage was "solid at minimum" either haha
@@EXchoco but if you do compare them you also won't see anyone saying sword and shield or sonic forces are good, even then three houses wasn't exactly agreed upon either with many people thinking the monastery heavily ruined the experience, personally I don't think fire emblem has ever been a perfect franchise with many games having some kind of problem wich causes a chunk of the fanbase to not like it, someone could not like genealogy for the large maps, not like blazing blade or fates for the story, not like radiant dawn for it's structure, not like path of radiance for the giant enemy phases, not like binding blade for bad hitrates, not like three houses for the monastery, not like thracia for some of its goofy gimmicks, not like fe1 and gaiden for the slow animations, and that's not even mentioning recurring problems like desert maps and fog of war maps wich always suck, personally I think fire emblem is a lot like inazuma eleven, inazuma eleven is far from a perfect show but it has a unique charm wich is why people like it just like how fire emblem is far from a perfect game franchise yet people still like it for various reasons, your favorite fire emblem game probably also has some potholes, badly designed maps and a couple characters you just don't care for yet you overlook those problems there because you find other things to enjoy
@@pandabanaan9208 The difference is the scale at which Engage is disliked, which as you seem to agree, is very large. Three houses, which you have brought up as an example, was received overwhelmingly positively inside and out of the community. That doesn't have to mean no one disliked it, and no one liked Engage. I don't see myself as speaking to what game is objectively better, because I don't believe that it's possible to quantify that, but rather speaking to an observable reception to the games and how that represents what people want.
@@EXchoco you know another comparison I can make is with the current final season of inazuma eleven, orion is by far not the lowest the franchise has sunken yet it is by far the most hated, while engage definitely had a lot of problems much of the hatred just seems to come from new game bad, also three houses had many people critiquing it for its shortcomings, if you think the community agreed it was a great game you are dellusional, the hatred for fates has died down over the years to were now engage is more hated then fates wich kinda shows that there is a pattern, this also goes for inazuma eleven were the original 3 seasons are held up as perfect(they aren't) then go came along and people hated that for not being the original but when the reboot happened suddenly go was good actually, the thing is communities often just follow the most popular opinion without thinking further, sonic and the black knight has gotten more appreciation over time because once people got over sonic with sword is stupid they found the story is actually pretty good, then the classic games have a lot of issues yet many people ignore them because of the general thought of classic games good, same thing can go for any game franchise really, if a game has a reputation wether good or bad many people will try to follow the popular narrative
too many resources, no new game plus no replay value. 300hours to grind and unlock almost everything. no new game + with so many resources was a huge omisison. in there houses I have 900+ hours because I could start over with some perks and make fun builds. also the ring niche is too much. it makes the characters and abilities obsolete. it is good looking though.
Wdym by "so many resources?" I agree with everything else, but this game really doesn't have a whole lot of them. You're scammed out of gold if you donate, the Tempest Trials even on higher difficulties award you almost NOTHING, and it took a 30 minute update to slightly improve how tedious the garbage mobile game skill system is.
@AkameGaKillfan777 hmmm resources was the wrong word. stuff to complete. you got money to collect, SP, the shards for the weapons, bond points for emblems ans allies. I mean with a NG+ you could at least enjoy the game after you finished a little bit better.
While there’s definitely some shaky things about this entry like the story and the looking threat and end boss baddie being so lame, the DLC is probably my biggest complaint- its implementation, and overall bad gamefeel of the chapters are glaring errors. Its not a FUN side story either like the Ashen Wolves. Anyway, it does so many things right or better than previous entries. The animations are incredible for a 3D FE game. Three Houses had some good animations but they were so SLOW and stuttered compared to how fast and fluid Engage is. Engage doesnt have better music than 3H (imo) but has a very solid soundtrack, ESPECIALLY the sandstorm tracks. Engage makes all classes particularly viable again, especially with help from bond rings and inherited skills. I made Louis one of the fastest characters in the game with speed skills and Lyn. Wyverns are good, but a lot of other classes have their chance to shine in some way or another, including with engraved weapons. Making your sword unit near unkillable because they simply dodge everything is fantastic. Every unit can be fixed up no matter how bad their growths are. Its so refreshing. Even three houses couldnt always do that, and it was so close. All in all, an extremely solid game once you learn the new systems in place, and figuring it out isnt too hard anyway.
I mean let's not kid ourselves when it comes to final bosses many of them are pretty lame, there are some cool ones like edelgard, rhea, ashnard and ashera, and maybe also idunn and duma, but many of them boil down to the group of generic evil dragons, this is mainly a result of their implementation, they tend to just be the big bad evil guy who gives you a cool final battle(most of the time) and sometimes aren't even the main villain of the game who you had a long time fight build up to, in that aspect sombron is fine, he's pretty easy but I do like the attempt to try and make the final boss more interesting then a stat inflated enemy, arguably the xenologue final boss tries to improve on this but well xenologue be xenologue
I wish there was less homebase activities, I feel like the story and dialogue would have been much better if the extra time and resources had been dedicated to the writing.
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One of the biggest issues I have from a visual standpoint is that all of your engaged units look nearly identical. If I have half of my army engaged for a big brawl, finding a particular character that I want to move can be a game of Where's Waldo.
There are a few things you mentioned that I think I can give a little further insight on as someone who did a lot of math with Engage recently. Specifically, the stuff about defining unit viablility by investment.
To sum it up: It's not about how much investment a unit needs, but which kind of investment it is, and how many people are competing for it. It's also of note that the early stat-specialists like Lapis for Speed, Louis for Defense or Citrinne for Magic generally work best if you fully commit to that stat instead of reclassing to "fill the gap" in growths. If your unit can hit necessary benchmarks in a stat on their own, fixing the other relevant stats is childsplay, the game provides all the tools you need. Warrior Lapis is an all around great combat unit when using Lyn/Speed+5 to hit doubling thresholds, while Swordmaster Lapis naturally hits the necessary speed benchmarks and can instead use Roy to patch up the Strength gap, either freeing up Lyn for someone who better benefits from engaging her or saving the 2000 SP from the Speed inherit to invest in other skills.
In the end though: No matter what you do, you can bring any unit into endgame and will find a use for them. My last run featured General Jade with the Hurricane Axe and Micaiah Staff Utility. Warped allies further ahead and demolished wyvern reinforcements in the process.
There's also the question of if DLC is available. I did a run recently with a Martial Master Jade (Tiki) and a Halberdier Goldmary (Hector) who were both absolute stars, but neither of those classes would have worked if I didn't have or was choosing not to use DLC emblems. Ike simply does not give the same defensive boost as Hector, and Jade wouldn't have even had the opportunity to get that class until it was too late, nevermind that no other emblem gives the same mix of bulk and support utility.
@@GLORPDORP yeah that's one thing that does bother me a little wich is the dlc, not the usual problem of the dlc not being worth it but it locking too much cool things behind it, like some of the most unique skills in the game are from the dlc, the proficiencies is also an issue, I recently did a run were I made panette a sage because I felt like it and that was only possible because I had access to soren, maybe they could've given you a new game + feature were you could buy all the weapon proficiencies on subsequent playthroughs, maybe make them a bit expensive so that getting them from the emblems doesn't become obsolete
yes yes yes, im only seriously coming at engage now after bouncing off it midgame not long after it came out (was just approaching the game all wrong), and i _really like_ how heavily the game leans into the fact that which units get what resources is actually a teambuilding question and always has been; it's maybe the most overt FE game in re asking what you want to take away from other units in the service of which units you want to build. i think it might be a little too generous in terms of what it offers you to correct earlier errors with its suite of fantastic later joins but I can't exactly object to the game having a design mandate of avoiding softlock, i'm just a little mean lol
but yeah engage imo is really not a game of unit customization so much as it's a game of team customization
Honestly you know you've got something special in an SRPG where action economy is less about who can kill the fastest and more about who's doing something interesting
@@agromchung to be honest that's probably why I've stuck with engage for 5 runs now, there's just a lot of fun builds you can do that aren't just kill effectively
Honestly I love this game. Even if the story doesn't stick the landing well, the gameplay, visuals, and music brings me back. While the character designs are maybe not 100% my taste, I also love the bright colors used, and I feel like the brightness is why I'm so keen on returning to the game. Everything feels alive.
Laura Stahl is such a great voice actress. I'm happy to hear her get some love for the performance she did with Alear.
Male Alear is pretty great too. I probably would've disliked Alear if it weren't for how voice acting endeared me to the character.
Man I can't believe its seriously been a year since engage came out. I still remember excitedly downloading it but not being able to play it right away since I had to go to work. While I wouldn't call it my favorite fe I do think its a really solid entry in the series
solid entry? with this story? and statue characters you play with?
@@larsstavenuiter424 not really the story, but the combat is pretty fun lol
@@ectasy358 then 50% of the game is then wrong and it is not a solid entry then. A fire emblem is more then just the combat or else it would be same if i played a call of duty game
@@larsstavenuiter424 First, I can’t play Call of Duty with my trash hand-eye coordination lol
You should use a game in the same genre of playstyle if you’re going to make this point next time or else it won’t make sense (for example Advance Wars, Pikmin, Mario+Rabbids, etc.)
I do agree that story is important, but I’m having fun (and haven’t touched 3h) so I’m satisfied with the nice combat and ui
@@larsstavenuiter424I actually consider gameplay more important than story with Fe games. If a game has a good story but bad gameplay (ex. Fe4 and Fe3H) then I can get the same experience watching the cutscenes on TH-cam without the bad gameplay. However, with good gameplay bad story I can just skip the cutscenes and have fun still playing the actual game. And even with this I still consider FeEngage to have a better story than the likes of Fe3H so to each their own honestly
holding A to accelerate animations helps a lot
Speaking on the DLC I think echoes did it best (outside of it being overpriced) I’d love to see overclasses return as well as a side story like Cindered Shadows. Although it should just be one bundle for all the DLC content and not split it up like echoes did
Perhaps the most interesting thing about FE tier lists is how differently they weigh certain factors depending on the game.
I still get jumpscaerd by the opening theme song
I also dislike the constant reinforcements in Engage’s late game, but after a while I figured that they spam so many reinforcements because you’ll need a way to build engage meter. The final map for both the main story and DLC story are what gave me that idea, because if you disengage and only have the one boss remaining then it limits whether or not you can engage again.
At least that’s how I made sense of it in defense of the game.
Saaamme! I played Engage on hard/classic which wasn't really hard (it felt like normal mode most of the time) other then two exceptions. Chapter 17...and the final boss map. The reinforcements and RNG were so terrible it completely ruined the last bit of enjoyment I had with the game. For perspective, Kegetsu (in my run) had max bond with Erika while also having the max avoid inherit (I believe it was 30%) so that I could make him dodge pretty much everything. On the last map, Kegetsu got hit by two 35% and then died to a 20% hit, all consecutive by the way. I learned after this that if the game knows it can kill one of your units, it does not matter how much you try to prevent it, they will kill you. I lost most of my units on that final map because the reinforcements were so nonstop and aggressive, but the RNG really killed any enjoyment I had left with this game. Kegetsu dying really got to me because he should not have died like that under any circumstances...
That actually makes a lot of sense. Personally I feel like they should've just had more engage fill tile thingamajigs near the boss or make the reinforcements weaker, but I can slightly respect the idea.
Engage cant be my favorite or most played game, but I honestly cannot rate it anything other than peak for its gameplay. Its just so fun to play and try things and I never feel trapped into using certian people every time unlike other games where certian units are just clearly like....Camilla, Seth or Sigurd.
I agree with most of what you said, but I do love this pastel little fever dream of a game.
Honestly, love this game. My only and main issue is the lack of a new game+. This game was perfect for it, but for some reason they never added it.
I would love to see a FE with a Luminous Arc-like NG+ where it gives you access to all your characters from the beginning, even if it doesn't make sense story-wise; it would be so much fun and I just love Veiru so much but she joins late-game 😢
About the part you mentioned about wanting units to feel a little more different to each other. How would you feel if characters could only access classes with a weapon they had a proficiency in.
So for example Lapis could only go into Sword classes and Yunaka could only go into Dagger classes.
It would have to be balanced a bit more so that the Sword/Lance/Axe proficient characters can't just get into every almost single class like how the Mage Knight has a Sword/Lance/Axe variant so the following ones would be limited to only using the following:
Hero - Sword / Axe
Bow Knight - Bow / Sword
General - Lance / Axe
Great Knight - Lance / Axe
Paladin - Sword / Lance
Wolf Knight - Dagger / Axe
Mage Knight - Tome / Sword
Griffin Knight - Lance / Staff
Wyvern Knight - Lance / Axe
This still allows the characters with the three default weapons to have more general classes and some other characters to be the only ones who can fulfill a specialized niche such as Sage or Sniper.
Personally While I believe this does give units a bit more unit identity now that they are tied to their weapon I still believe the balance for the first three weapons class access to be a bit lopsided even with the restrictions, so I'd think the 4 weapon types would need another class like:
Dark Flier - A Tomes
Grappler - A Arts
Adventurer - A Bows / C Staves
Assassin - S Daggers / B Swords (+ Thief is now changed to be a base class that promotes into Assassin)
Though even with this I think I still prefer the open reclassing Engage currently provides since if you want to stick to their canonish classes you can without the game forcing you to which takes away from people who want to do other stuff like Warrior Clanne, Mage Knight Anna or Levin Swordmaster Ivy, but I can still see where people are coming from where that takes away from more unit specific feel.
Engage is the only game where I enjoy doing the battle preps and would play all day instead of one chapter per day like usual
It’s just that good
Jamming out to battle preps every time
Engage was definitely one of the Fire Emblem games of all time
I agree, in all time, engage was one of the fire emblem games. Kinda hard to argue that.
Fire Emblem engage made me disengage, truly a game that was once made
It’s definitely was a game, yeah, definitely
Great video, a lot of stuff to think about. I especially agree about Chain Attacks. I often found trying to set them up more trouble than it was worth. I think Chain Attacks are a lot more dangerous when done by the enemy. Unless you have a unit set up with Pair Up from Corrin's Emblem Ring.
Ngl I had lots of fun turning 3/4 of my units into heroes and having so many brave assists that the attacking character sometimes didn't even get their own attack off lol
@@ceruleanvoice3538 that does sound like it would be pretty funny to watch.
10:00 in chapter 25's defense, it is pretty much the true endgame of Engage. The actual last map of Engage is more of a victory lap than an attempt at challenging the player.
Man, I still think Emblem to Emblem conversations would be really funny.
Imagine Roy calling Lyn mom, and Lyn being absolutely bewildered.
wasn't ninian the person most likely to be his mom though
@@pandabanaan9208 You aren't imagining the potential enough.
It's not about any individual ship or the canonical viability of them.
It's about the memes, Jack.
@@happygol-lucky5938 I'm pretty sure there are more ships that are a bigger meme then lyn and eliwood
Leif telling Sigurd his action allowed Manfroy to ruin everything for everyone basically writes itself...
@@mpnuorva
"Hey dad, you're a dumbass."
"There is no unit in Engage we can't make good"
Meanwhile, Bunet:
Giving Bunet wyvern and speed largely let's his better qualities shine
Favorite Food +´Goddess Statues makes him viable enough to experiment
@@MakoShiruba i’d say that’s more fun than good.
@@johnlynch1353 good is a subjective term. When asking what it means to make a unit "good" you need to ask why you're making that unit good to begin with. If you want to play the game as fast as possible then yeah, forget about Bunet... And also most of the units in the game. The trouble with countering a suggestion with it's not "good" is that the barrier for what can beat the game is so low that you need to make up such qualifications as an arbitrary speed of play in order to even call a unit good or bad.
Essentially calling a strategy good or bad is meaningless when we're not speaking on the same definition of good or bad.
@@theghostcreator776 I should explain I was not using good in terms of speed. I was referring to it in terms of ease-of-use and reliability. It takes a while to set up all for a pay off that will be fun when it goes off it’s still not even guaranteed to work. there is a reason I did not say it was bad as I don’t think it really is that bad. I just believe that while it can be fun. It takes a while to get going and even once it does it is unreliable at best. It is like getting Luna crits on armors it’s a fun build when it works but even when not worrying about speed their is probably a more broadly useful and consistent build you could have made with those resources.
I thought snipers were bad at first too because the S rank weapons both you get way too late and the S rank bow is not very good.
But if you see snipers as the ultimate crit class and place a high dex growth unit on it, then they are really strong, plus you can use claude's S rank ring on it for the +1 range and that is really, really good and it will always guarantee the sniper crit passive.
And have doubling avoid tile bonus is surprisingly really useful.
Snipers are also insanely accurate for fliers unlike warriors.
Thieves are kinda of bad in Engage since they have less dex than snipers, so less crit, and they do not have the crit passive of snipers, and killer daggers are all 1 range while killer bow is 2 range or 3 range with claude's ring.
Do not use lyn on sniper though, you want lyn on a character strength growth of 40% or higher so that astral storm can one shot targets, especially an annoying mage. Radiant bow on sniper Anna will one shot every flier on maddening.
The bulk of the cast looking like pulls from a gacha idol game is one thing, but the plot quality really isn't something I can get myself to overlook. Any game taking such a significant time investment just can't hold my attention. As a JRPG fan I'm no stranger to characters looking silly, but competent storytelling is one of the reasons I fell in love with the franchise as a kid on the GBA.
The storytelling isn’t that bad. If you display such a broad perspective, you’re hurting yourself.
Just finished a Martial Master Alear /w Dual Support & Avoid +30 (Byleth) absolutely busted. Next run, I want to try Alear on Enchanter. My point is, trying different builds on every run hopefully holds me off until we get the Genealogy and Thracia remakes
Female Alear, Framme, Anna, Lapis, Louis, Celine, Veyle, Rafal, Nel, Madeline, Citrinne, Etie, Vander, Merrin, etc. have great visual designs personally.
I think gameplay wise Engage was really fun especially the Emblem customization even if it feels like too much of it runs through that mechanic, it’s so sick to have the FE lords be Jojo stands and play a major role for every persons’ development in the army both narratively and mechanically
Only criticism I have is the story is very FE generic which usually isn’t a complaint except when it’s closer to a Fates narrative where the main character feels like the center of the universe instead of a complimentary piece of the story
Still a great game 👏
i still dont know how i feel about just how drastically this game changed through updates and dlc. when in the context of everyone's first playthrough - when there was no well, no dlc, no silver weapon free updates, and lots of learning about just exactly how the all the mechanics worked and what was good and what wasn't - all of this led to a completely different experience compared to when you play the game now. i truly enjoyed this game when i first played it, but now all of this added stuff makes it a completely different experience and i'm not quite sure it was ever planned out thoroughly. pre well the game had a strict sp system, one that punished you for experimenting but also was somewhat rewarding. maybe it could've been better, but the well just flips it on its head and essentially makes sp unlimited resource, which im not sure was the correct 'solution'. the dlc in general does not feel fun to utilize after the initial novelty because it completely trivializes what is essentially the entire early and mid game. you also can't even turn off the rewards upon new playthroughs even as an option. the fell xenolouge, while having some interesting ideas, admittingly was not good, and leaves you wondering just who exactly it was made for.
All of my disconnect with the added in content, while combined with some of my issues with just the base game (somniel, rather boring map design, same feeling units, etc) sort of leaves me more lukewarm on this game the longer time goes on. i think i have it somewhere in the middle of my fe tierlist.
I do think the well was an inelegant solution to the problem of "not enough SP to get the fun expensive skills"
I would have preferred them add a means of acquiring SP that was less random, or tied to a New Game+ feature.
For the piece about the Emblem characters feeling tacked on, while I more or less agree, I do actually think of that in a more positive way. I personally had been really worried that this game was going to ride its plot and characterization almost entirely on the previous games' lords at the expense of making this game's cast insignificant, and I think that the way they implemented the rings as having some bits and pieces of conversation/characterization while still being largely in the background to the new characters was a good, if perhaps not perfect, balance to strike.
On an related(?) note, one thing I liked about this game was it gave me a chance to reevaluate some of the lords that I didn't really like by giving me a glimpse of their character that was somewhat independent of their game. For a low-hanging fruit example, I'm not exactly a big fan of Corrin in Fates, but I really like Corrin's Engage incarnation.
I agree. I've always said that of the Emblems, only Marth and Sigurd have anything vaguely resembling a story role, and Marth's is just "being a mouthpiece for Emblems as a concept" while Sigurd is only relevant around Chapter 3. They do not overshadow the main cast at all.
I was like that with Byleth lol. I really like Emblem Byleth despite never caring much for them back in 3H. Being able to actually talk means we actually get to see them act like a teacher, and their gameplay role with rallies and dancing aids that.
I’ve always felt like Corrin is a great character who was trapped in a plot that didn’t let them show off their strengths (though I do like the drama of Conquest despite the times it gets messy).
@@emblemblade9245 Corrin's a decent concept in isolation, the issue is Fates' storytelling forcing them into a "can do no wrong" player-proxy rather than letting their flaws serve the plot. (It's why I like the moment in Engage where Alear distrusts Veyle's good half despite us players knowing she's really innocent. Alear in-universe has no reason to believe her.)
Its interesting you say customization is high and that units felt same-y, cuz my experience is that everyone felt different which made a lot of them either good or terrible. and customization just didnt exist cuz there wasnt really enough resources to do so. i COULD farm the auxiliary battles and somniel stuff to alleviate that, but Engage was just really easy that I didn't want to farm those and have my characters be even stronger level wise cuz then the game would be even easier and boring. but then that meant i basically missed out on a feature of the game. you do mention the DLC stuff tho which i didnt bother wasting money on so maybe thats why the perspectives are the way they are.
honestly not much has changed besides me liking some of the characters more than i did in my first playthrough mainly celine and citrine grew on me a lot but that's about it really for me the stroy is bad, the characters are great, the gameplay is good, i hate that we don't have paired endings, i like the class system and the engage mechanic is really fun i love having a super move.
Byleth dragon dance/instruct is really strong, you can pull off alear as a pure support unit with byleth the whole game and move byleth over to veyle when you get her later.
With DLC, lyn is really good for Rafal, both to get him doubling consistently and he has high strength for astral storm, has long range astral storm, and creates a 5th clone can be surprisingly useful.
Oh good lord it’s been a year time is fleeting and my life is spiraling
Hahaha existential crisis are fun :D
Wolf Knight Lapis, Micaiah engraved silver dagger, with Lucina Ring (bonded shield is banned) makes for the ultimate avoid tank and chain attacks with daggers will apply poison stacks as well. This will help your army deal even more damage.
The prologue will always be incredible to play through. They give you enough rings to experiment with while the maps have a good amount of space and trees or castles to hide with.
I hate the level curve system where enemies grow as you do. It makes grinding honestly worthless and I just raised everyone aside the mc to beat the dlc early to get those rings.
Dlc siblings and units like zelestia and co. I like them and glad we could get them early but wish it was automatic to every story like 3 houses where you only need to beat it once to get those units. That's a massive negative.
Story I don't care for much. It has good ideas that could have worked if used better.
Class system wise. Hate how the lords get the special classes or at least the Luna sol etc skills. That was a negative.
Healer being a fighter is meh. Felicia is probably the best early healer being an evo class to start and daggers to lower enemy stats is broken. Make a magic healer Fe games.
Overall. I had a good enough time playing this game
They just need to give healers a str stat. The formula for arts damage is pretty dumb too in engage. The average of str and magic - def means you do no damage.
Also hate how skirmishes enemies would just b-line towards your units making it difficult to defend yourself without cheesy strategies. Which is why I tried to training skirmishes in the castle areas which units aren’t killed.
The dlc maps fair a little better since the enemy levels in the dlc areas are random, giving your weaker units a chance to catch up. But I feel like that’s a band aid for this games skirmish encounters.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 yeah I usually have to turtle my team or carry a Levin sword on top of armor breaker as engage cheats with how high the def is from the armor enemies.
Yeah the game should have let us choose a standard or upgrading system instead. Hope they don't continue this or the game will just be less fun to replay.
Good video, I think something that explains why the gap between weak units and strong units in this game is minimized relative to the previous games is because Engage was practically made with favoritism in mind, seen in stuff like boosts being low commitment. Case in point: Clanne can end up being about as good as Pandreo on his join chapter if you gave him an emblem and some engrave/forge, decisions that don’t carry the same strain on resources as something like perma booster items or high tier weapons in games with durability. As you put it, most of the important combat and support tools are tied up in emblems.
And even if your Clanne doesn’t work out because he got Mag cursed, you can just move his investments over to whoever is doing his role better, no loss. It’s weird how as the series pivots towards expecting you to reset/pulse if a unit dies, Engage ended up with many Ironman friendly systems and unit join scenarios.
my summary is good class balance outside of rings, i liked break, story was ass, and dlc was handled awfully.
I think it says a lot about the type of game this is when the video is 25 minutes long and less than 2 minutes of it are spent talking about the story and presentation.
This is mostly because this is a gameplay focused channel. I don't like the story, but if I had spent time on the presentation, it would have been mostly positive.
Just finished my 4th playthrough of the game, going from a (really) early Run of it (Basically no DLC, no Heroes Stuff, no Well), a Hard Run, Hard Run while trying to set everyone to Level 20/20 (a BIG mistake in terms of time) , and the most recent one, Hard Run with early promotion.
And yeah, easily top 3 for me. Just behind Radiant Dawn and Genealogy.
And the Soundtrack... Oh my God the Soundtrack. It kinda cheats since a good portion of music are remixes for past games, HOWEVER, the OG tracks are 100/10 (Bloom in the Breeze has been living the entire year inside my head pls help me)
I like both the base Emblem Engage and the Full song ^^
20/20 is a bad idea in this game just based on how the leveling system works.
I like you videos! Can you make a video about all the best builds after 1 year of playthroughs? I understand vantage + wrath build or bonded shield support but i still have problems with my team composition in the late game.
I love this game but they were strict with sp pre well and messing around with emblems and builds felt like too much of a commitment. I think tying a resource to leveling up emblems, having very few skirmishes (maddening) and the lack of availability of the emblem rings took the fun out of messing around and experimenting with builds imo. Love your channel!
Excellent video as always!!
i agree with the gist of what you were saying, the Well update was a huge nerf to Backup attacks. Just not necessary when you can make any unit one-round 99% of things. I really appreciate that every playthrough can be vastly different than the one before if you're creative enough. My only real critique with the game is lack of New Game+ or even just a support log, I think whacky emblem combinations would be even more incentivized if you knew the conversation would be saved after the playthrough (like Citrinne/Ike or Boucheron/Celica), and of course dlc characters being locked out if you don't play through the Xenologue every playthrough is just terrible.
Never mind repeated playthroughs, I skipped the cutscenes on the first playthrough. Unbearable levels of cringe.
I also hated all the mini games and running around at the home base. The maps were pretty good though.
For sure, hub work takes way too damn long. I swear to god I am in menus more then I am playing the game. There are so many mini games in Engage that offer nothing to your units. The weavern riding mini game and the fortune teller game serve no purpose other than maybe giving you bond fragments for one of them. I think adding these was really a waste of time...then someone in the comments will say B-BUT THE HOT SPRINGS WAS A WASTE OF TIME IN FATES AND WE LOVED THE HOT SPRINGS! WE EXCEPTED IT! WE LIKED IT ENOUGH!
Idk, if it serves no purpose I don't think it should be in the game at all. Besides, if I can't go into the hot spring as female Corrin to look at hot anime men. I think the purpose of the hot springs failed in my eyes.
only the second last map has infinite reinforcements (technically last map has too)
third last map is a turn limit
fourth last map doesn't have infinite reinforcements
Actually the reinforcements on Chapter 25 stop at turn 20, at least on Hard. I've heard on Maddening it's 30.
@@AkameGaKillfan777 yup. I wasnt fast enough and thereforeI had to fight every singlw reinforcement with the hope, they would stop haha
The world is not ready for my lapis build
engage is neither player nor enemy phased focus
bonded shield specifically is just an enemy phase strategy
I'd argue it is mostly player phased focus due to most of your skills needing to be used on player phase. Bonded Shield is one of the exceptions that you have to specifically spec for.
@@lunamaster123 i like doing player phase because then it is like playing a puzzle in each scenario which is more fun than something like set up bonded shield and press the skip button because you know you will win since it is impossible to lose with bonded shield
this is why i ban bonded shield use from my runs
Yeah Backup was one of those things people really hyped up early on that I always thought was "not THAT good". I was really wrong about Lucina though, I thought that ring was terrible (to be fair Bond Shield failed the 80% roll like 4x in a row at first so I didn't know what the ability even did for a while)
I agree with basically everything here, so I'll just mention the two points where I disagree a bit.
First one is pretty simple: I really like the story. Not much else to add there, but I think it does a lot for my enjoyment of the game overall. The second point is Alear being a dragon unit, specifically having the Corrin ring. Using that combo on my second playthrough has been absolutely incredible, and I think only using the fire vein is more about your personal playstyle than anything. I've personally used multiple different ones, and being able to do so every single turn has given me so much flexibility in my strategies.
Otherwise love the video, like I do most of them :)
Corrin alear is really good, it carried my base game ironman. Having fog, fire, and the break immune one all helped at different points.
yeah like i wasnt sold at first with how heavily the game uses multiple health bars but it's grown on me a lot
enemy phasing in engage is neat because i feel like what the game is telling you there is that yeah you do wanna be aggressive playerphase but you usually dont want to neglect the enemy phase entirely-- they're really punishing if you don't manage them well! warp skips _are_ a valid answer there but lbr you're not intended (or even able? not sure of the math there) to do that every map
Very curious to hear your thoughts on why Timerra is meh; her reputation with certain other players is incredibly high. Speaking personally, I have always loved the Soldier archetype so I make sure to use it just for that.
Only thing that killed me is not being able to take weapons from your completed play through to a new game plus hate waiting for end game gear to use for limited content and it’s over I feel like it adds a level of replay ability at least for me.
Hell yea engage video!
Engage was my first FE game so the gameplay is what I’m comparing everything to. I’m nearly done with my first three houses playthrough after getting sucked into the series. Engage feel better in a lot of little things to me, like auto equipping being good and keeping vulenary and such in account. I also have to love that you can S rank same sex characters, because I needed to get with Boucheron, my giant axe wielding dumbass with a heart of gold.
Dont be gay
As far as Dragon bonuses are concerned, I do still like Veyle with Celica for the 3 range Echo and Warp Ragnarok. Not as good on Alear but still was fun to mess with early on to trigger lots of chain attacks from a safe distance.
I think Engage is a very fun FE game to play, hard to believe it’s already been a year since it came out.
I remember pretty much nothing of engage and I’ve played the game twice. I played just the edelgard route of TH once and i still remember most of the storybeats,characters and some of the maps
That’s because you’re not giving it a deserving. You’re being close minded and it shows.
@@raphaelsorel6907 i gave the game a whole *Second playthrough* after asking a friend how to have a better esperience or finding new appreciation for it. How am i being close minded? If the game didn’t stick in my mind- that’s that… never said it doesn’t have redeaming qualities; i bought it. played it twice. Discussed with a friend that found the game enjoable… but NOW I barely remember the game. The fact still stands and i didnt write anything making fun of people who love engage or whatever so whats your deal?
@@TiziOssidiano It’s because you’re acting like the game isn’t good.
You know that not true.
@@raphaelsorel6907 you are just assuming things. Quite *close minded* of you 🧐 WELL- now we should *both* get some “grass touching” time, wouldn’t you agree? Have a nice and productive day 🤝
@@TiziOssidiano Nah, you should get more invested in the supports and bond conversations. That stuff is pretty darn deep and you know it.
Nobody is going to believe me when I tell them an actual lizard is amazing at playing Fire Emblem...
But I'll try my best.
Great video! Subbed
I enjoyed it well enough. Working on my 4th playthrough. But I don’t really care about it or feel much attachment to it? Neither do most people, from what I can see.
Fire Emblem Engage is still a 10/10 game and best in the series!
Absolute masterpiece!
Engage reignighted my interest in the series. I will not defend much of the story, but i was so hooked mechanically by the series after Awakening so thoroughly underwhelmed me that i dropped the franchise for the better part of a decade. I hope that the FE teams continue in the direction they took engage ,because as a strategy rpg it's really compelling
Something i especially like-- the game finely curates and executes based on what you have access to, and the game as a result feels smooth going from start to finish. The devs were very confident about knowing how playthroughs are likely to go, and the game reflects that by being able to allow the average player to bend the rules without completely invalidating the game.
Such as?
I see Engage as the Thor Ragnarok of Fire Emblem; Really fun cast, bold and dynamic characters and action, and a story that doesn't need to take itself too seriously. Just a really fun divergence from the rest of the their respective franchises
@skeletonwar4445 No, see I'd he compared it to Love and Thunder, then it'd be an insult
A story that doesn't need to take itself too seriously but does anyway to its own detriment
@@skeletonwar4445 That its cutscenes are hours upon hours of characters crying over one another, raging at each other, wallowing in the events of the story or their own melodramatic backstories and so forth regardless of if the emotions were build up to and earned or not, that the developers claimed they, "hope players cry along with the characters" and expect their players to be invested enough to have an emotional response to said hours of melodrama in the Ask the Developer interview with Nintendo, etc
@@skeletonwar4445 It means that the game is, firstly, taking itself seriously at all, which is antithetical to what the original commenter stated. If we then consider that the majority of players failed to attach themselves to the story, world or characters and in fact were commonly belligerent and sarcastic toward the emotional beats at which they were meant to be "crying with the characters", then in my mind it goes to follow that the game's melodrama is unearned and therefore "too serious" for what content it is providing the average player.
@@skeletonwar4445 I don't believe that. That is your ad homonym attack on me in order to avoid understanding someone else's perspective. There is of course a difference between "taking yourself seriously," whether that is earned amongst audiences or not, and a "serious story". I simply believe Engage is the former. Whimsical, lighthearted stories that expect the audience to have an emotional response as extreme as crying, as the directors suggest in their interview, necessarily have moments where they must "take themselves seriously," must make a tone or set of rules or scenario, that would provoke such a response. That does not mean it becomes a serious story. Just because Engage failed to emotionally provoke its audience, does not mean it didn't try.
We seem to quantify "seriousness" differently. I would love to hear your definition if you were interested in continuing this discussion. Anytime someone tries to get that goofy ahh mic drop moment on that "good night" "good evening" shi at the end of their TH-cam comment like they're getting up and leaving a room and not just words on a screen having conversation about a video game on the internet is really telling though so maybe I'm optimistic for thinking that was going to happen lmao
Laura did such a good job with Alear, I used to be obsessed with Genshin (especially when Engage came out) so my genuine reaction was “Wait wait wait, Female Alear’e VA is BARBARA?!”
It's sad how quickly Engage fell off and has mostly been forgotten about
I’m glad it fell off. Hopefully they won’t take the story writing and art style in this direction again.
@@cajunxn17 Who hurt you and why?
@@raphaelsorel6907 is my opinion so offensive to you that you have to resort to personal attacks rather than engaging in an actual argument? Suggesting that my opinion must be influenced by being hurt is dismissive. Instead, why not address my core points of story writing and art style?
@@cajunxn17Says the guy who’s glad “it fell off.” You come off as pretty pompous if anything.
@@cajunxn17 Ironically, I wouldn’t recommend Engaging with “Engageheads” they will defend it with no arguments at all. It’s best to just leave them be.
I played with dlc 1st time whole game once.
Just finished last night after got in April/24
I was disappointed you didn't get the new game plus just left end on repeat. Was used to 3H.
Bond and support caps needed more effort for me faster. Didn't use the base as efficiently before chapt 16. Lol didn't even know why I should get woken up until I got turned into an emblem 13.
Glad you enjoyed Engaged so much. It's probably my least favorite Fire Emblem I've played.
have you played revelations?
@@bobowon5450 The game with better mechanics 95% of the time, better music, voice acting, and replay value than Engage? Yes I have.
@@AkameGaKillfan777You can’t be this subtle.
Story is pretty blah, but man is the gameplay fun and I love the art style
I didn’t buy it initially despite wanting to get into fire emblem because of the character designs and one note anime type characterisations, but after embracing that I’ve been playing it the last two months and I love it, the animations, the depth to the gameplay and the customisability of the units are all amazing and tbh most of the cringe stuff is in the early game and the Somniel and Firene supports
I'm getting to the tail end of my first playthrough, and the gameplay is fun... so long as you have emblem rings. The descision to take half of them away for a not insignificant portion of the game feels thoroughly boneheaded, and makes the game's price-gouging in terms of dlc all the more egregious. Aside from that, I like a lot of the characters too, and I really am pleased with the presentation. Feels like IS has cracked HD development after a rocky performance in three houses.
@@skeletonwar4445Not the first time, as much as it's a meme, Kaga did it first. I won't spoil Thracia but Leif does some very rash things and there are relevant story and gameplay consequences.
That's funny, due to Marth being taken away for so long. I pretty much benched his ass when I got him back. Mostly because I didn't need him anymore when Lucina and Erika does everything he does and sometimes better in many aspects. I remember getting to the final map and I was like "Oh yeah, Marth's in the game." Way to undersell your own mascot Intelligent Systems. He IS on the front of the box you know! (Probably should have replaced his face with Ike's instead at this point.)
At this time last year, I was excited for Engages DLC to come out. I changed my mind about that.
Yes the story of engage is not very good BUT I’ve never laughed as much with an fe games as i did in the prologue
For anyone curious, it runs pretty much perfectly on Steam Deck now!
nice
to bad its a pain in the ass to get the stuff to emulate it.
Love the game, beautifully crafted gameplay, story, characters, all of it is amazing imo
Of course there are some trip ups but as with all games, that is to be expected and used as detailing what room there is for improvement.
Its also the game that finally got me to step away from the larger Fire Emblem community for the most part due to the sheer vitriol spewed about the game, which has vastly improved my mental health.
I think the only _major_ weakness to this game's story and characters is the paralogues, specifically the ones to increase Emblems' max bond ranks. Most of the dialogue in them falls flat because Alear acts like they're getting major insights from the Emblems' life lessons… but most of them are lessons Alear doesn't actually _need_ because they've learned that already in other parts of the story, or already demonstrated competence in that area in supports.
That said, several of the Emblem paralogues _do_ still land quite solidly, and the rest of the game is amazing. Especially like, most of the supports? And also the early game's story scenes being a collection of chekhov's guns and foreshadowing of varying degrees of subtlety to set up endgame makes the story land even _better_ on a repeat playthrough if you pay attention the second time despite it being a replay of a game with only one route. I haven't played as male Alear but female Alear's voice acting is consistently amazing for the entire game.
Probably the correct move, the way some people talk about wichever entry they've decided to despise is some of the most toxic fandom behavior you'll see, turns out the meme about fire emblem fans hating fire emblem the most is more accurate then it seems though it varies from person to person
I'd play Engage more on its presentarion and in-map gameplay alone, but the game has become stale for me after picking it up again after not touching it since DLC 2 came out. It doesn't really matter what actual units I use because I can't help but find myself leaning towards the same strategies anyway because not doing so just feels so unoptimal, mainly Vantage Wrath, Qi Bond Shield, etc. And with how Engage structures things, any unit can fulfill any role and the differences boil down to meger base stat differences.
Idk. For as open as Engage is, it feels shallow to play, especially to replay, imo.
I play engage as I play conquest, I skip the dialogue and enjoy half the game
Regarding gameplay, I feel like one thing that really missed the mark was the personal skills for each character. Some are very impactful, like Hortensia's, Alear's, and Alcryst's, but others are weirdly lacking or nearly useless, such as Etie's, all of the "When using Wait, gain +X to a stat.", and plenty of other skills. I feel like they really should have given a bit more power budget to the personal skills so that each unit could really feel like they're unique and even if you have two Sages for example, you can have one that maybe has something like Soren's Anima Focus as a skill, while another gets +1 range with weapons that have at least 2 range if their build exceeds their weapon weight by a certain value, something like that.
Personally while I think this game had a lot of problems, it is still a decent Fire Emblem Game. I recently went back and started playing through Fates again because I happen to find my old 3ds and while I enjoy engage, I think Awakening an Fates did some stuff better. A big thing for me in terms of enjoying a Fire Emblem Game is the story and characters and just does the game feel good to play. Engage made everyone be able to do everything and it's just like well whats the point of recuriting all these characters then? It was a similar problem I had with 3 houses. If everyone can do everything then whats the point of using these characters. Where with Awakening and Fates (Even if Fates story is really bad) I have to make a actual choice of what characters to use! Getting only your core classes and some extra classes (and DLC classes) makes it so each character actually feels like they matter to the army more, making the gameplay more enjoyable.
So I don't think Engage is the worst of the worst, but it just lost a lot of what I enjoy in Fire Emblem, Granted there are characters I got super attached to and I do really like them, but with everyone being able to do everything it was basically just use whoever and get the job done.
i dont like how stat growth and engages work except for that i like the game
I wish I was someone who liked engage because it has a lot I like from my favorite games, three houses and fates, but it feels to me like it took the parts of the games I like and don't like and made the parts I didn't like really noticeable. Unit identity is a really big thing I like from three houses, because things like crests, combat arts/spell lists, and boons/banes mean that even units with similar stats can be different in interesting ways and can be made interesting, which in engage I feel isn't really a thing, diamant will almost always be inferior to kagetsu, and the one unique thing he has (sol) isn't as useful as more high-investment strats that they both have access to.
In fire emblem descendants Alear(female), Vander, Framme, Clanne, Alfred, Celine, Etie, Louis, Chloe, Diamant, Alcryst, Lapis, Citrinne, Ivy, Hortensia, Zelkov, Kagetsu, Rosado, Goldmary, Timerra, Fogado, Merrin, Bunet, Pandreo, Seadall, Veyle and Mauvier appears to have been pulled after the start of Retreat but before the sentinels to The Fell & the Divine
I think of Engage kind of like Fates in that, it's a game that has good gameplay but terrible writing. The main issue is that the dichotomy between the two was extremely apparent in Fate which made it stick out even more and thus stayed in the mind and you had hints in the game that the story could have been so much more but there were rewrites in the way (which was later on confirmed). Meanwhile Engage just ..... did not. The gameplay is fun but imo I don't think it creates quite the same contrast that highlights both like Fate did, and the game also doesn't encourage repeat playthroughs either. That is how you end up with two games that zhare some big traits (the game that had to follow the biggest game of the series so far and thus had a lot of heavy lifting to do to make the new fans stick and focused more on gameplay with a very lackluster story) but one ends up being pretty well engrained in the community whilst the other is very much ..... forgotten after it's arrival, seriously, I never see anyone even mention that game anymore (one of my friend outright banned any mentions of it in the group chat with how much he disliked it, that might play a role though)
Sorry for all of that, I just wanted to share my observation on the similarities between these games and how their differences led to such different outcomes
Nah, this game is far more memorable than you are giving it credit for and you know it.
@@raphaelsorel6907 Well no, I actually don't
This is legit the first time I even saw it even *mentioned* in like 9 months. I deadass even forgot it existed
@@sephikong8323 Because you’re not giving it the chance it deserves.
@@raphaelsorel6907 I gave it plenty of chances, Sephikong is right, it's literally barely talked about.
@@nickcalderon2637 No, you’re just being delusional.
For Alear I went Male all my campaigns but I feel Alear could have other skills and the same for the Royals Veyle in their unique classes.
Also for Alear I feel he should have been like Cecil Harvey of Final Fantasy 4 th-cam.com/video/2YdrZxdQvH0/w-d-xo.html with another promotion So Divine Dragon and Fell Dragon think the Emblem of the Sacred Night and Day
The Divine Dragon Class Alear Sword, Fist and Staff proficiencies Brave Assist of the Hero class, Diffuse Healer of the Martial Master and Self Healing High Priest skills
The Fell Dragon class Sword, Tomes and Daggers. Chaos Style of the Mage Knight, Spell Harmony of the Sage and Hobble of the Wolf Knight classes skills
With 2 personal Skills for him in those classes His Divinely Inspiring and Nel's Protective Skill but for All units for both him and his Party for the Divine Dragon class. For the Fell Dragon class Veyles and Rafals personal skills
What do you think?
Its hard for me to actually enjoy the gameplay when the game is so throughly trying to convince me that the characters and world building are good and make sense.
Everytime i select a unit to move them on the map, it just reminds me how much I dislike them for every bland bit of dialogue ive heard them say or because they like watching people sleep
Im pretty sure you can disable select voices if you search the options
@@skeletonwar4445 Yes it is a me problem. I said "I" and "me" almost exclusively in my comment.
I personally cannot enjoy the gameplay because it's tied to the story and characters so inherently that it's hard to just brush it aside
@@thomasquesada7248 I do appreciate that, but I was moreso using it as an example of how the characters put me off from the game in general. Thank you though
Man I feel you. I can't enjoy Engages gameplay because of how much I don't care about the characters.
L
I'm on the tale end of my third playthrough right now and couldn't agree more. The early and mid-game are an absolute joy to play, but the late game can be a bit of a slog at some points.
Engage is peak Fire Emblem, one of the best games in the series
No, wrong, boooo
@@darrinEH It’s you who’s wrong.
I still prefer Fates and Three Houses, but Engage is definitely the most 'fun' FE game I've played. It's one of those games where you don't think about it too hard and enjoy the gameplay, and for that I can say that it was a great time.
Engage surprised me, both in the good and bad.
On the good, I liked the story... See, if we see it as the tale of Veyle and Alear, then it is a very heartfelt tale and I stuck to it. Gotta say I grew quick to like these two characters. Now, if we think of the story spanning a whole continent and a conflict beyond time and space... Then yeah, it sucks specially at world building.
For the bad, the combat and build building, I found both lacking and shallow, specially compared to CQ which is what it's often compared to. In that regard, Engage is to Fates what a shadow is to a painting.
It doesn't even do the tale of Alear and Veyle good either though.
12:54 lyn emblem only give +15 speed tho 5 from max lv emblem and 10 from speedtaker
I loved engage but i wouldn't call its story amazing. It had fun characters, amazing animations, it was well paced, and the side stuff at the hub was mostly optional unlike three houses that burries you in it. I especially liked the pacing changes because every time i tried to do a run of three houses I felt totally burnt out of it before the halfway point.
I just could never get over the character design. I hope they remake Radiant Dawn/PoR
It’s not that over the top. Relax.
The design’s pretty bad man lol
@@nx47 Not at all, there are a bunch of good designs. You’re generalizing and exacerbating.
@@raphaelsorel6907 when the mc sucks it’s pretty hard to notice the good designs more than the bad ones
@@DeathByAnvil Nah, you’re just trying to exaggerate. It’s really not that over the top. Stop whining.
Engage is probably my favorite of the modern fire emblem games (awakening onwards), and it's story I don't think is any worse then the other modern games although I am someone who thinks 3h story itself is very overrated (if I had to rank the best and worst, fates is the worst and echoes is the best) and there are games before awakening that Iike more story wise.
Gameplay wise it's really good, I've only ever played on maddening and it's probably the most balanced hardest difficulty, at the very least it didn't feel like a slog like the other modern games (except echoes it's not as hard as the other modern games)
Character wise they aren't the best or worst but there are quite a few I like, timerra, merrin, panette, fogado, pandreo, citrinne, lapis, veyle are the ones I like the most.
Dlc is something that I haven't really done past when it first released because the extra emblem rings do kind of mess with the games power progression and makes the section when you lose your rings not as great in my opinion. I also don't like doing the xenolog story or the actual story itself and the characters and classes it gives you I've never used because it's so late in the game when I'm able to actually do it and what I said about this game's maddening being balanced could be thrown in the garbage with this xenolog
hard agree with the Three Houses story being overrated. just because it was a lot less simple than Engage's story doesn't mean it's better in every aspect. there's so much either ignored or not explained properly in Fódlan that it feels like a mural with entire chunks of it missing, with barely any thread left to explain what could've been there before, like Duscur or Those Who Slither.
Three Houses is my fave game of all time, with 1,770 hours of playtime and at least 80 hours in all four routes. it felt like they bit off way more than they could chew for each and every single one of these routes.
Azure Moon specifically helped me with a lot of very personal issues and is the sole reason that number is over a thousand, since so much of my time was spent replaying it over and over, finishing its story in a week for a year on end. it's definitely my most preferred on the four, but god, much of it feels held together by prayers. especially Rodrigue's death. the cinematic still they used feels like it fits Fhirdiad more than it does Gronder Field. it's a very big turning point for Dimitri and the route as a whole, yet it feels handled really poorly because of the mismatched locations that I've always skipped that scene. i could go on, but i'll just leave it here.
I think it's really funny that when engage came out suddenly everyone starts looking fondly at three houses when previously everyone was calling out the problems with the plot, hel I feel like even fates is looked at more favorably at the moment then engage wich is pretty crazy
@@pandabanaan9208 I'm pretty certain it was the opposite, going by everything I've seen on the Internet.
Well I'm someone who thinks Engage's gameplay is overrated, and I have yet to see a single person actually critique the map design. To me it's nothing special compared to other FE's when I soloed 3/4 of the main chapters and all of the paralogues on Hard Classic.
@@skeletonwar4445 When people have said several times outright that it's not possible to do this, I do get to prove them wrong. Heck, multiple TH-camrs now have done Maddening solos. Also as long as people are trying to push the "3H is cheeses by just spamming Wyvern Lords" false argument, I'll push Alear solos are the best way to beat Engage too.
Not a single person has convinced me this map design is "oh sooooo good to me, daddy please" better than past games, not because I disagree with them, but because they're just not doing it, at all.
Meanwhile I've seen Fates and even some 3 Houses maps get properly critiqued on certain channels. If someone has done it for Engage, I haven't seen it yet. "Better than 3H" is not a good criteria, let alone a valid one.
If you can point me in the direction of a good example, I'll wait.
Honestly, the dlc killed it for me. Why, oh why, is there no new game plus? Why can't I have access to the dlc characters on a subsequent play through without having to do it all again? Why can't skill allocations and my collection of non-emblem rings carry over? WHY DO I HAVE TO DO ALL THE DLC EMBLEM MAPS AGAIN EVERY SINGLE TIME!? Also, the endgame sucks! Infinite reinforcements on some maps make it impossible for you to think about taking your time. After a time, you no longer get relevant exp or sp from defeating them. I completed engage and did put around 90 hours into it, but I couldn't face another play through. It sits just below the middle of the fire emblems for me.
I will never play this game again. It was such a letdown despite how fun I found the gameplay. Everything surrounding it is just too obnoxious and poorly done it makes me smash my head against the wall in disbelief; how the did it come to this.
18:35 I am curious to know why Clanne moved up to "has a niche I like".
The niche is just that his early game is quite good. His performance is actually pretty similar to Celine, with whichever one that doesn't get Celica struggling a lot more. Sadly the whole starting at level 1 thing and no free Celica in chapter 4 hurts him long term
@@actuallizard He's the only practical way to kill the Chapter 3 boss on Maddening (since the Rapier won't help there), which imo is enough of a niche.
Last time I played Clanne's level ups just went crazy and he outpaced Celine, which usually doesn't happen. I expected him to fall off later but he didn't.
Im yet to beat this game 😔
I feel like theoretically i should love it but i returned to my save file a month ago and i just cant get through it.
Engage is a great game but IMO it scales pretty horribly into higher difficulties
At least it isnt unplayable garbage like Lunatic+ but it does feel like you have to plan 15 steps ahead to succeed before you even start a chapter
I’m glad to see all the criticism this game got and know people really still do hold devs to task to be the best they can be, but at this point like most people I’m about ready to pack up and move on to the next installation, or maybe just to a new franchise depending on where IS takes FE and whether or not they act on the response to this game. Even the discourse about Engage got boring after a year……
I think the contrast between communities is funny, you have sonic and pokemon fans who have to hope the next game is good/innovative and then fire emblem fans who can see engage the same as sonic forces despite it being a solid game at minimum
@@pandabanaan9208 lol I guess that's one way of looking at it, but Pokemon and sonic are certainly lows bars to set, if an FE is even comparable to that and especially their work ethic and intentions, Pokemon in particular, something needs to change and immediately. A concerning amount of people did not think Engage was "solid at minimum" either haha
@@EXchoco but if you do compare them you also won't see anyone saying sword and shield or sonic forces are good, even then three houses wasn't exactly agreed upon either with many people thinking the monastery heavily ruined the experience, personally I don't think fire emblem has ever been a perfect franchise with many games having some kind of problem wich causes a chunk of the fanbase to not like it, someone could not like genealogy for the large maps, not like blazing blade or fates for the story, not like radiant dawn for it's structure, not like path of radiance for the giant enemy phases, not like binding blade for bad hitrates, not like three houses for the monastery, not like thracia for some of its goofy gimmicks, not like fe1 and gaiden for the slow animations, and that's not even mentioning recurring problems like desert maps and fog of war maps wich always suck, personally I think fire emblem is a lot like inazuma eleven, inazuma eleven is far from a perfect show but it has a unique charm wich is why people like it just like how fire emblem is far from a perfect game franchise yet people still like it for various reasons, your favorite fire emblem game probably also has some potholes, badly designed maps and a couple characters you just don't care for yet you overlook those problems there because you find other things to enjoy
@@pandabanaan9208 The difference is the scale at which Engage is disliked, which as you seem to agree, is very large. Three houses, which you have brought up as an example, was received overwhelmingly positively inside and out of the community. That doesn't have to mean no one disliked it, and no one liked Engage. I don't see myself as speaking to what game is objectively better, because I don't believe that it's possible to quantify that, but rather speaking to an observable reception to the games and how that represents what people want.
@@EXchoco you know another comparison I can make is with the current final season of inazuma eleven, orion is by far not the lowest the franchise has sunken yet it is by far the most hated, while engage definitely had a lot of problems much of the hatred just seems to come from new game bad, also three houses had many people critiquing it for its shortcomings, if you think the community agreed it was a great game you are dellusional, the hatred for fates has died down over the years to were now engage is more hated then fates wich kinda shows that there is a pattern, this also goes for inazuma eleven were the original 3 seasons are held up as perfect(they aren't) then go came along and people hated that for not being the original but when the reboot happened suddenly go was good actually, the thing is communities often just follow the most popular opinion without thinking further, sonic and the black knight has gotten more appreciation over time because once people got over sonic with sword is stupid they found the story is actually pretty good, then the classic games have a lot of issues yet many people ignore them because of the general thought of classic games good, same thing can go for any game franchise really, if a game has a reputation wether good or bad many people will try to follow the popular narrative
too many resources, no new game plus no replay value. 300hours to grind and unlock almost everything. no new game + with so many resources was a huge omisison. in there houses I have 900+ hours because I could start over with some perks and make fun builds.
also the ring niche is too much. it makes the characters and abilities obsolete. it is good looking though.
Wdym by "so many resources?" I agree with everything else, but this game really doesn't have a whole lot of them. You're scammed out of gold if you donate, the Tempest Trials even on higher difficulties award you almost NOTHING, and it took a 30 minute update to slightly improve how tedious the garbage mobile game skill system is.
@AkameGaKillfan777 hmmm resources was the wrong word. stuff to complete. you got money to collect, SP, the shards for the weapons, bond points for emblems ans allies. I mean with a NG+ you could at least enjoy the game after you finished a little bit better.
I think you focus too much on experimenting with builds.
@@raphaelsorel6907literally the only reason to replay the game more than once rather than playing on a harder difficulty you shill
@@DeathByAnvil Nah, there are more reasons to play this game. You’re just far too ignorant to understand.
While there’s definitely some shaky things about this entry like the story and the looking threat and end boss baddie being so lame, the DLC is probably my biggest complaint- its implementation, and overall bad gamefeel of the chapters are glaring errors. Its not a FUN side story either like the Ashen Wolves.
Anyway, it does so many things right or better than previous entries. The animations are incredible for a 3D FE game. Three Houses had some good animations but they were so SLOW and stuttered compared to how fast and fluid Engage is. Engage doesnt have better music than 3H (imo) but has a very solid soundtrack, ESPECIALLY the sandstorm tracks. Engage makes all classes particularly viable again, especially with help from bond rings and inherited skills. I made Louis one of the fastest characters in the game with speed skills and Lyn. Wyverns are good, but a lot of other classes have their chance to shine in some way or another, including with engraved weapons. Making your sword unit near unkillable because they simply dodge everything is fantastic. Every unit can be fixed up no matter how bad their growths are. Its so refreshing. Even three houses couldnt always do that, and it was so close.
All in all, an extremely solid game once you learn the new systems in place, and figuring it out isnt too hard anyway.
I mean let's not kid ourselves when it comes to final bosses many of them are pretty lame, there are some cool ones like edelgard, rhea, ashnard and ashera, and maybe also idunn and duma, but many of them boil down to the group of generic evil dragons, this is mainly a result of their implementation, they tend to just be the big bad evil guy who gives you a cool final battle(most of the time) and sometimes aren't even the main villain of the game who you had a long time fight build up to, in that aspect sombron is fine, he's pretty easy but I do like the attempt to try and make the final boss more interesting then a stat inflated enemy, arguably the xenologue final boss tries to improve on this but well xenologue be xenologue
I wish there was less homebase activities, I feel like the story and dialogue would have been much better if the extra time and resources had been dedicated to the writing.