The Biggest Missed Opportunity of Fire Emblem Engage
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Fire Emblem Engage was a celebration of Fire Emblem history, with beloved characters returning as Emblems or Rings and... not a whole lot more. And that is a huge missed opportunity, courtest of Engage's great evil Sombron. How could we fix this? That's the question I'm asking myself today, as I'm gonna try to turn Fire Emblem Engage's Final Boss from one of most disappointing into the best of all time!
Footage courtesy of:
Red Panda Games
#fireemblem #fireemblemengage #fireemblemthreehouses - เกม
There is actually some form of logic behind the Dark Emblem carriers and their classes: Most of them are designed to be weak to their respective emblems, either through the weapon triangle or by the weaknesses they would have if not for the Dark Emblem effect giving them effectiveness anyway:
- Shadow Dragon: Berserker; broken by Marth’s swords.
- War Father: General; vulnerable to Celica’s magic.
- Dark God: Hero with axes; broken by Sigurd’s lances and swords, respectively.
- Dark Bishop: Bow knight with lances; Leif’s kit has 1-2 range on 2 weapons and only switches to his Killer Axe when the enemy uses a lance, and the enemy has to switch between ranges on separate weapons.
- Demon Dragon: Warrior; broken by Roy’s swords except his Lancereaver, and Roy has 1-2 range through the Binding Blade to counter their bow.
- Dark Druid: Griffon knight with axes; weak to Lyn’s bows and broken by the Mani Katti.
- Mad King: Halberdier; broken by Ike’s axes.
- Judgment: Great knight; vulnerable to Micaiah’s magic, and weak to Thani.
- Despair: Wyvern knight with axes; broken by her swords and weak to Parthia.
- King of Liberation: Sage; broken by Byleth’s brawling, and Byleth has 1-2 range through the Sword of the Creator.
The only ones that don’t work as directly are the Demon King (Paladin with swords) and the Mad Dragon (Mage Knight with swords), but the former can be justified with Eirika’s Rapier, while the latter can be justified with Dreadful Aura allowing the Corrin user to remain in range when attacking them.
That said, I would have loved the idea of either the Dark Emblem carriers referencing either the final bosses themselves or people associated with them:
- Shadow Dragon: Halberdier {Has Brionac} (Based on Hardin) [Alternatives: Paladin for Camus]
- War Father: Paladin (Lance) (Based on Rudolf/Berkut) [Alternatives: Royal Knight with Flame Lance to reference Kriemhild]
- Dark God: Mage Knight (Sword) {Has Bolganone and Silver Sword} (Based on Arvis)
- Dark Bishop: Martial Master {Has Freeze staff} (Based on Raydrik/Veld) (Bit of a stretch, but Raydrik used staves and Veld's Petrify is more focused on inflicting status, to say nothing of staves being broken in Thracia 776)
- Demon Dragon: Hero (Lance) {Has Levin Sword} (Based on Zephiel)
- Dark Druid: Sage (Based on Nergal) [Alternatives: High Priest for Nergal]
- Demon King: High Priest (Based on Lyon) [Alternatives: Sage for Lyon]
- Mad King: Wyvern Knight (Sword, Axe) (Based on Ashnard) [Alternatives: General (Sword) for Black Knight]
- Judgment: General (Sword) (Based on Black Knight) [Alternatives: High Priest for Sephiran]
- Despair: Griffon Knight (Sword) {Has Levin Sword} (Based on both Morgans) [Alternatives: Sage for Male Morgan and Validar, Wyvern Knight for Female Morgan and Grima, High Priest for Robin due to mixed weaponry with infantry]
- Mad Dragon: Warrior (Based on Garon and Takumi) [Alternatives: Berserker for Garon, Sniper for Takumi, Great Knight (Lance, Axe) for Gunter]
- King of Liberation: Wolf Knight (Sword) (Loosely based on Shez) [Alternatives: Swordmaster for Nemesis/Rhea/Shez, Hero (Axe) for Nemesis, Sage/High Priest for Thales]
I did my best to ensure that (1) none of them shared classes or used any exclusive classes, (2) at least one of each weapon type. Particularly easy for swords, lances and tomes, difficult for axes, bows and daggers (Bow and dagger bosses are rare, let alone final bosses), and problematic for tome users in general (Only 3 classes).
Wow I’ve never thought about any of this! I think High Priest would work best for Rhea, Martial Master for Nemesis, and Thief or Wolf Knight for Shez. Other units who came before would probably use Swordmaster before Shez haha
Micaiah’s is probably the coolest with Thani being so effective against it
That dragon isn't big. Grima is absolutely humongous as a final boss. He's so big, his back is the battleground.
Calling Grima "humongous" is still an understatement, I'm pretty sure Grima is as big as a small island.
@@xacmashe3852 Still bigger than this so called Fell Dragon.
*Big as Ten Tails*
I definitely think it would’ve been cool if the dark emblems looked unique, and I know the game was delayed, but that doesn’t mean they had the budget to make unique and more interesting models for them (and using old sprites and models would’ve looked weird and probably been called lazy, so there’s not much winning unless you just make all new models 😭 for characters that show up for 1 map no less, unless you added them are bosses to the paralogues instead of the emblems themselves)
I also think what the other user said about the corrupted wielding the Dark Emblems (because the villains aren’t the corrupted, they’re the cloaked phantoms aside the corrupted) had classes more specific to the classes of the villain’s, but I still think it’s pretty cool
I love the idea of directional attacks from Sombron though, that would’ve been sick
Currently playing my second playthrough on maddening and finalizing my opinion on the game, this has been very helpful as both food for thought and a way to structure my own thoughts and experiences. I usually praise the gameplay aspect of Engage, but never had the time to put the finger on why I disliked the final boss battle
One thing I would add: I like the general idea behind disengage, however it doesnt work well in practice. Sure, its predictable, but that fact also makes the fight even more of a slog because you are encouraged to save engages for after he used it, leading to a more defensive and slow playstyle before he does. And the narrative purpose of telling us how weak we are without emblems was used twice alredy in Chapter 11 and Chapter 21, both of which did a way better job of conveying the message. Especially since both of those intend (and succeed) to doom us into hopelessness, which gradually turns into hope and courage as we collect more and more emblems and claim them for us. Its hitting rock bottom, but continuing to press on and making it happen. That feeling is absent with Disengage, ist just an inconvenience
That’s definitely a good point on Disengage. I like the implication Sombron can do it from a lore perspective, but I hadn’t even considered it is indeed effectively the same as what happens in prior Chapters
There is an Engage mod that buff dark emblem's user and maybe Sombrom in the final chapter and the just look at the skills is just comparable to FEH's ones
Could you please share the name of the mod? I'm curious and want to look into it myself.
Nice video. I love the points that could made the final boss fight in Engage even better but there's one thing in the story that will make Sombrom a little more likeable & a lot more threatening: have a better villain motivation. I say this bc "being evil just to go home and have his reunion" just doesn't sit well with me & Sombrom could gone for the typical villain tactic of destroying/conquering the world or killing all humans.
it’s so much more about engage than the final boss that needs fixing but thank god someone is taking initiative
Fixing your video: don't do it.
There's an edit someone made that has the original final boss music playing when fighting the respective Dark Emblems, and it just makes me wish that was in the actual game.
That would’ve been a very nice touch, yeah! Even just a short rearrangement of Sombron’s theme to match the Dark Emblem would’ve worked
It's kinda funny because for the most part I actually think Engage improved bosses in the series, but yeah this wasn't it.
The minimum thing they could've done for the dark emblems is making them the same moddels as their classes in their original games
Like for example having ashtar as a wyvern or loptis a sage
I think you forgot to mention the infinite reinforcements being a major deterrent in sticking around to face all the dark emblems. That's the big issue for me.
Definitely true
Absolutely fantastic and I couldn't agree more 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
I wish the Dark Emblems would have given unique weapons or tomes to the corrupted synced with them, like Nemesis giving the Dark Creator Sword or dragon stones for draconic emblems.
finally a fair criticism of engage.
"Finally"? Hasn't this game been fairly criticized for over a year now?
I like fell xenologue approach whete the boss follows you around and you need to defeat his goons as you go pr otherwise the boss gets stronger
Ah yes, this failure game that still involves Alear my drop dead gorgeous Fell Dragon wife.