3Hs front loads it's difficulty. You start the game with basically no tools to deal with bloated enemy stat balls, but then you do get the tools to trivialize it all. Engage starts moderately difficult, but will escalate it up at a pace comparable to the growth of your characters and the tools at your disposal. Engage also has more side objectives with things like villages and chests you can choose to go for that would also add difficulty to the map.
Yeah I agree with this. I feel three houses is probably more difficult in the early chapters, but the endgame is far easier especially if you use the grinding options available. Engage on the other hand has a far more difficult mid and endgame
Yeah it's really only the first, like, 5-6 chapters that are legitimately super hard, but your units start scaling up quickly if you know what you're doing and the next few chapters become a breeze. There's a huge difficulty spike after the timeskip, but by then you'll have really busted units with a ton of tools to easily match this spike.
The think that made 3H so friendly for me, even at maddening, was the availability of reposition, and reposition + canto. I could almost always have perfect mobility and out maneuver myself out of any situation.
Overall I agree. However, I think Engage is easier in the beginning than Three Houses. I also think engage is balanced better. Reinforcements in 3 houses just blindside you to force you to use divine pulse. Engage reinforcements often give you time to respond... and wonder if you can beat the map in the next few turns before being completely overwhelmed 🤣
Lol yeah engage throwing reinforcements at you that you can see coming in the next turn or 2 and the existential dread that comes with that 😳 but then you engage everyone together and barely get through it with the power of friendship
Trying to read all the dialogue in engage is the real maddening difficulty although the actually gameplay feels much better this time around with better map design, weapon triangle, balanced difficulty curve, etc
@@johnzin6447meh it was pretty ok to me. It was cheesy cliched and kinda stupid but pretty easy to digest I thought of the story as for all ages. Pretty colors cool effects and watnot with a big baddy at the end.
@@constabrielbell4523 yeah I feel the same way. It wasn't like super bad or super good, it was just ok imo 💥 there are some parts of the story that I really liked and others that were really cheesy and awkwardly delivered that made me kinda laugh. So I mean it's not bad but it's nothing to write home about either in my opinion
Engage starts off okay like most fire emblems, but quickly spikes in difficulty around ch. 11. Skirmishes also spike a lot depending on average party level, which will give the enemy silver weapons at around lv 18-20 on hard (yes I said silver, that's how quickly the enemy gets powerful weapons to beat you over the head with). Beware of grinding your team before getting unlimited access to seals after ch. 17 because it was painful to keep track of the average level without a guide on the prepromote's hidden levels. Early promoting also makes it a pain to keep track if you didn't remember when you promoted them at.
I have 400 hours on 3 houses and at around 300 hours on engage and I think Engage is much harder but, Engage is much better to replay due to no monastery and a lot more fun with tools you are given at separate points in the game especially if do some restrictions on some tools like Miciah or Lucina ring. I think combat arts and gambits like stride really broke 3 houses for me especially being able to quad easily with some characters like Seteth or stopping groups of enemies or negating damage and Monastery made the times between gameplay feel worse on replays but story made it worth it imo. I think 3 houses is easier but story + dumb builds can make it more fun for some where engage doesn't have much reason to replay due to no route splits unless really like the gameplay that much and want to try out new things. I think they are both good games but good for different reasons.
Three houses seemed harder to me but i think its mostly because Engage gives you more options to do crazy things where in 3H its basically just timing gambits and using the Monastery right
My units seem to snowball alot faster in engage so even if there are more enemies i feel like i get away with so much BS that would never work in 3H...like Flying Lucina bond shield..
I agree. The chapters with very few emblem rings tend to be the hardest whereas it gets easier when you have more emblem but also know how/when to use them. I'm near the end of my 2nd maddening run and I started (first run blind) from only saving engage for the boss to constant spamming engage (2nd run) to level up my bond level and fully utilizing the emblem engage. A run with Engage or even emblem rings would be interesting to see. Also 3H and their BS reinforcements
3Hs maddening is harder at the beginning but you very quickly get to the point where you can 1-2 round most enemies. From that point on the game only gets easier as you get more units with canto and more ways to one round via combat arts. Meanwhile in Engage I feel like the enemies get progressively stronger compared to your units.
I just finished my first maddening playthrough of this game, but I did use DLC (because I didn't allow myself to use them on my Hard playthrough, and I wanted to see what they are like). With DLC, I think this game's maddening is a little bit easier than 3H maddening. This is likely just a personal thing, but I think the strategies that are effective here are more intuitive to how I personally solve problems. I also just prefer this game in general by a long shot. Thanks for listening to my rant.
Speaking of map mechanics, the DLC maps have pretty fun map mechanics, either increasing movement of you/enemies by a ton, opening up new routes as the turn count goes up, and reducing massively safe spaces on the map.
I agree mostly. I do think three houses is slightly harder to do without losing a single unit. There are 3 chapters in three houses where I got surprised during my first maddening run. The first one was "Tower of Black Winds" this was the chapter with the first corrupted beast at the end. If you walked to close to the wall the entire army of that map went after you which is basically game over when that happens. But once you know that you just don't do that and its very doable. The other part that is difficult there is the reinforcement on the upper right that acts on the same turn but that was just spending a reroll and this time was prepared. The other map I had difficulty with was the second encounter with the black knight. I ended up having to sacrifice a unit as there was no way I could deal enough damage otherwise to kill him off. The second maddening run I did more planning however and managed to do it without sacrificing anyone. But still its kind of brutal the first time around. The last one is the first chapter post timeskip where you start with only a single unit. If you know what to do it becomes easy however but I remember being intimidated the first time around. Apart from that three houses is far easier to break. Especially endgame flyers in this game are far more OP then in engage, with stance+ their avoid goes through the roof and you can just have enemies crash into them. The few times to do get killed by bad luck with RNG you just do a reroll and do things slightly different and done. My main take is that three houses has worse AI, the same tactic of baiting some units, kill them of rinse repeat virtually always work. Warp abuse is even more OP in this game than in three houses but I never used it with the exception of that one paraloque because I really don't know how to get eagis shield otherwise :p In engage AI forces me to play more aggresively and the enemy far more often advances towards you without you baiting them. This far more often result in getting pressured. Also the maps on engage are more diverse requiring different strategies in my experience. Gameplaywise I am having far more fun with engage.
Engage is the most balanced Fire Emblem by far and has the most and best gameplay improvements. Definitely the best game by far and going to be my game of the year! This is the hardest Fire Emblem for sure, though Fates Conquest could be harder, but without rewind Conquest could feel harder because it was more annoying and with rewind Engage does not feel annoying to play so lessens the feeling of difficulty. So Engage is probably the harder game still while also being the most fun.
Game of the year? I like engage but the last game of the year was Elden ring. You really think engage compares to a game like Elden ring? If Starfield comes out this year I think that game could make a case (if it’s everything that has been promised- Bethesda has had a bad track record in that department with FO 76). If you only play switch, what about Zelda Tears of a Kingdom?
@Aviating Gamer That Zelda game probably goin to win. Sony ain't got nothing too crazy coming out this year except for Spider man but Engage will be snubbed
@@lionelbulgin1739 engage is a good game. But it is not a game of the year caliber game. I think it’s awesome you and others are enjoying it so much you think it’s at that level, but it is not anywhere near that level of game. I’ll ask you the same question I asked the OP: do you think this game compares to Elden Ring? Because that’s the game that won GOY last year. By compare I mean do you consider both games to have a similar level of story and character depth, graphical fidelity, combat, replayibility, etc?
Im watching someone doing their first ever Fire Emblem game with Engage. He started off on Maddening. He is able to clear and farm every single map he’s ever done. The maps take awhile sometimes but that’s usually on prologues where they get reinforcements constantly.
Engage is definetely harder, heck, I played Blue Lions in Maddening, and I still found Engage's Hard mode less forgiving. There's also the fact that Engage seems to have an answer to almost any cheese strat, not everything, but the most "obvious" strats seem to be covered in some way or form.
For me Engage was way easier. I went Church route in my maddening run though so might be why i think it was much harder not having a lord to hide behind.
3 houses early game is harder since you have no Gambits, and no durable units, wheras Engage has Vander, Alfred, and Louis. But 3 Houses eventually gets trivial thanks to Dancing Stride and Warp sending a unit to the boss. I’m about to enter chapter 10 on Engage, and so far I found early game easier since units don’t get one rounded, but lack of movement forces me to be careful who I send where. I have yet to see any means of skipping. One thing I’ve liked so far is that the AI seems smarter in this game. Enemies won’t walk into dodge tanks ( I have yet to find out whether they walk into Vantage Wrath) Sometimes I’ve expected multiple enemies to focus down one of my units in their range since that was how 3 houses tended to go but sometimes a completely different unit often gets attacked (and broken). Enemies also start moving before you reach their attack range so regrouping before advancing is sometimes not possible. So far, every boss in Engage has been agro while many 3 houses bosses were stationary
After watching your videos, I noticed how you traded weapons to switch the equipped weapon. You always trade one weapon to the other inventory and than switch it back, that isn't necessary you know. You can just select the equipped weapon in the trade and trade it with the weapon from the same inventory that you want to be equipped.
My experience has been almost the opposite. I'm enjoying Engage's hardest difficulty way more and I feel like I'm way better at Engage. I guess it has something to do with rarely using the "best units", broken mechanics and warp strats.
I'm loving maddening so far for engage. I just finished Timerras intro chapter and played somewhat defensively and felt like I had 1-2 turns to reposition/heal with staves because of the onslaught of waves. Map mechanics add so much depth IE darkness punishing positions
15:35 Yeah, that's me minus 3H Maddening (no time). I always look up guides because I'm not intelligent enough to figure things out myself. Subpar IQ really is a curse.
This is a fascinating take to me, I have never found any part of engage maddening difficult (apart from emblem paralogues - but returning to a few of them after beating chapter 19 felt pretty easy. I previously completed the ike and lucina maps much earlier (as soon as they were available) - and have since beaten sigurd and Lyn maps) I do play at (I think) a reasonable pace, beating most maps in ~3-9 turns - I did both Ike's paralogue and chapter 19 in 6 turns each. To preface my experience with engage I don't do any additional grinding/full clear every enemy (if I can beat a map that turn, I won't usually take additional turns), and I haven't done any skirmishes. It just feels like to me that the stat disparity basically doesn't exist in engage compared to 3h (early game). Mid/late game is ofc pretty easy in 3h as you stride warp 1 turn most maps and grow stat boosters, cook bullheads etc. But in my opinion early game is where all the most important difficulty lies since your available tools are much more limited - so in my opinion we should weight the early game difficulty much higher Engage gives you one of the best lures in the franchise right at the beginning of the game (chain guard) and since the stat disparities aren't bad you can usually dogpile the group of lured units (the unit that hit you is probably low health after taking your counter attack/s from the chain guard) and then progress through the map - Deidre bond ring makes this very reliable to do each turn As you mentioned engage also gives you 10 rewinds as soon as the mechanic becomes available which means most of the time you will be able to brute force any "tough" parts On top of that engage will keep throwing really competent units at you as you go along that'll probably outclass your old roster - so a lot of the time death is meaningless in the early game. I feel like units aren't very distinguished in what they can provide (pretty much everyone is at least good if you give them Wyvern and/or canter) - units feel very replaceable Forged steel weapons are very accessible and very strong in engage Engage doesn't throw many fast units in the early/mid gamme (the few extremely frail 30 speed wolf knights being the exception) - nothing like the 50 speed assassins of 3h Sure 3h has many broken repeatable tools (warp is much more powerful in 3h) but in engage I haven't felt like I've needed anything to get by, I've been coasting on the backs of my wyvern spam, engage also has access to the broken dance, goddess dance, dance combo and gives you access to it pretty early I haven't played engage endgame yet so I'll reserve some judgement, but the difficulty has felt a lot more casual, way less intense than the early 3h chapters (I have been really enjoying engage I just don't have as much time to give to it as I'd like)
I think the thing that gets me from my experience in 3H is the fact that there wasn't too much i had to worry about outside the initial stat disparity, which yes is rough but managable with art usage and proper spacing. The early stages of madding up to getting everyone into a basic class at level 5-10 was the hardest but once I got past that I felt as though 3H maddening had dropped off a cliff challenge wise. I think it was around chapter 6 or 7 that you just have so many skirmishes and resources to use by then to bridge the gap that i felt less like I was playing maddening and more a slower hard mode run because things were slightly tankier or dodged more. By the time ch 8 3H maddening had come around, I was basically bum rushing the enemies with front line tanks because they weren't dying to anything and 1 shotting stuff with Byleth and other units pretty reliably, and it never really let up from that. So far engage has currently punished me hard on being both too passive in some maps and too agressive in others, and generally forced me into positions where i've had to actually retreat my entire army and reroute units around the map to get them into better spots where they are more needed. The very early ch bosses (5 comes to mind) are, while not hard to defeat, forced me into having to come up with a perfectly executed plan to avoid losing a unit in classic because I didn't want to risk giving them a single chance to get their own turn, as they would double or outright one of my units. At least in terms of thinking about things, Engage definitely has made me put way more thought into it's runs than 3H ever did. There's also the AI, which I think is a lot more improved compared to 3H. It's still cheesable, but I recall putting tanks in front of my units in 3h and the enemy just running into them and attacking them for 0 damage, and ignore the mage even if they were in range. Engage seems to have dropped that entirely. They'll put units that do no damage right next to your armored unit and try to restrict their movement while other units go after your supports, or in the case i found once, place units next to you without hitting because they are backups and will chain attack you down. That might just be my luck but i've also had them go out of their way to weaken units just enough for the boss unit to come in and kill them, and then open the way for the weaker units as a result. In general, I guess you could say engage has made me way more cautious and respect the enemies units and tools, something I didn't really do much after the first 6 chapters in 3H. And it's for that reason that I have to actually plan my turn (and potentially back up due to a single bad move at times) that I do consider engage harder. I haven't hit the midgame in my run though, as im doing a blind maddening run but that's been my thoughts so far.
@@Kalanin399 very thought out and in depth reply, thanks for your perspective I'm at chapter 22 maddening and haven't felt challenged by the game at any point so far - but I always do the strength training for alear and eat for +2 speed I also don't use armoured units which probably made things a lot easier for me haha Warp is a lot weaker than in 3h, but rescue is probably just as strong if not stronger (due to rescue bots in 3h probably having pretty low mag until you are able to warp skip every chapter anyway) but both are still very strong in engage And I just can't get past the fact that we have 10 rewinds in engage - I can't even imagine losing any map with that in tow Idk I just haven't ever found myself in a situation where I couldn't deal with the combat in front of me
I think people are still fresh from their first engage run and thus are not fully equipped with the knowledge of the game yet thus making it way harder. I'm close to finishing my 2nd maddening run and it the game seems much easier now (still hard though) simply because I did many things wrong in my first run (blind and also on maddening). I had 4-5 units that can reliably do damage and relied heavily on chain attacks for damage. Last map took me 6hours (1 try) because I had dug myself into such a deep hole. Almost the entire game I barely used any engage energy refills because I was being conservative and because I did not know what's coming next so I only engaged when I'm at the boss or when in a pickle. On my second run I'm actively spamming engage because I know I don't have to save all my engage for the boss and engage in general is just so powerful. I also picked more good units this time and invested less in bad units (still trying out some other characters because I like them). I think after a few more runs under the belt more people will have a different opinion. Engage definitely had better gameplay and i think rewards you much more for tactical thinking than 3H, much more variability and differentiation to make it fun and exciting to experiment. That said, I've not broken 3H like you did. I tend to play each 3H run with a certain theme and challenge in mind and i've only touched IW gambit a few times, never used the dancer battalion or the shield one you mentioned. I've mainly used battalions as stat sticks and damage via gambits. On engage first run early game I feel like if i have to play perfectly to beat the boss but on my second run I had more leeway since I knew the game much better then. I feel like there are only a handful of chapters/paralogues that are truly difficult when you know the game well whereas 3H has more bs chapters and bs reinforcements. Then again I might be a bad 3H player but better in Engage.
Also I would like to add that I've limited myself to 1 rewind per map for my 2nd run and it's not that bad albeit that I still have to reset many times 😆
Over 12 hours some days? If you're not careful, pockets of fluid may start to build up on the thumb side of your palms. That happened to me last year when I played too much Halo, but I got unlucky and it leaked into my wrist. I couldn't lift weights, pick up heavy objects, push things, or stretch with my right hand for about a month or two until it went away.
12:30 completely agree, the fucking reinforcement spam in engage especially toward the mid to endgame (paralogues included) is egregious as hell and it soured my experience with maddening, frankly. I actually prefer 3H ambush reinforcements to the stupid shit that happens in engage, fucking 10+ reinforcements every turn, in a game where the player has much weaker power in enemy phase. Ambush spawns are bad, yes, but usually I could handle 2-3 ambush reinforcements with rewind and slight repositioning, and enemy phasing felt more reliable in 3h.
I had a good time with it but I built my team with good mobility and high damage just because those were the types of classes I wanted to use so I could just push forward and ignore the reinforcements
I think Three house's world building is better than it's story, the main plot is fine but the world building and lore is the best since the Tellius games. Engage has better overall gameplay though.
i did beat 3 houses without any problem losing some units here and there but nothing else, in engage i had to restart the game more than once and every other map i get stuck
You'll see, i actually like that the beggining its hard but not that hard, but some later maps will have you sweating for sure. In 3h the first maps are extremely hard but once you have a solid strategy for them they are easy, late game 3h however its very easy. In engage it progresively gets harder and harder.
Three houses starts off hard in the beginning because every single unit has that annoying pass ability and the AI would just b line it to your ranged units
I much prefer Engage's reinforcements because they don't attack on the turn they spawn. It makes me think, "Showtime" instead of "Rewind Time" I have been having so much more fun with the gameplay of Engage, even if I still prefer 3 Houses for its storytelling. As a strategy game I would recommend Engage 400 times more. Just finished the Solm castle map where you have to fight 3 Hounds at the same time and wow, it was crazy. Despite how impossible it looked I was barely able to clutch it out and I didn't even have to use the turn wheel. Almost every Engage map is a fight to the finish where you are given the exact tools you need to win, in contrast the only time I've ever felt this in 3 Houses was during the BL and SS final maps. 3 Houses feels like it was designed around someone who had an entire team of ground units with damage AOE battalions, while engage is a lot more intentional and accounts for every single tool you do or could have. Maddening classic blind for both games btw.
Idk, I feel like the engage emblens provide quite a nasty boost to the units that it trivailizes alot of maps. If you use Seadall as a Dancer and have another support unit with Byleth.. its super easy to cheese alot of maps and enemies. Given, I am only halfway through my first maddening run, and hard mode wasnt necessarily insanely difficult. I just remember Blue Lions run even with New Game+ and using all the auxilary battles I could and playing that final chapter 4/5 times and pulling ny hair out when I hit Turn 100 and lost 🤣🤣🤣
From someone who suck at TRPG, I do find Three Houses way more difficult than Engage. I feel like Three House difficulty was pretty unfair/bullshit like with ambush reinforcement which doesnt exist in engage thankfully (It would had been hellish if they existed in engage ngl) and the game difficulty spike being all over the place. Like TH prologue in my opinion is a threat if you aint careful and chapter 1-2 is ridiculous, compared to Engage where I mostly found most early-mid game chapters to be Hard 2.0, I mostly got trouble at the endgame chapters but Engage difficulty spike feel more fair and I feel like the game do give you the tools to succeed. But maybe its just me and Im bad at managing weapons durability or dont understand Three Houses mechanics.
It feels like when people talk about the best way to beat 3H Maddening it usually involves skipping the levels or cheesing the game with some skill exploit. That says to me, alongside my experience playing it the normal way, that it is not a good difficulty mode.
It's odd... I restarted at least 6 times in 3H (3 maddening runs + 1 hard), and in two maddening runs in Engage I only restarted once in the main game (and another one in Tiki's paralogue in my second run using DLC)... And I use a lot the "Mila's Turnwheel" in engage just to correct player phase RNG because it's so abundant... I think both games are pretty easy, but i believe is more about the difficulty curve of these games being different than one being harder than the other, but because early game 3H is worse, it's harder for me...
@@elaphar I think of a reason why my restart counter was so high that I tended to get to like 4 uses of the turn wheel Id just restart thinking that I just needed to look at it from the beginning again
The thing about Engage's maddening is that it actively punishes you if you train full deployment. And rewards you with low deployment. you can literally solo the game with Alear on Maddening, as several people have already done already. Because his speed is so high, with the correct setup, every enemy will have 0 hit on him, and you can just walk past everything without any enemy phase threat.
@@jackmanleblanc2518 I'd argue it's a lot harder to setup in other games. in 3H, it's extremely difficult to get enemies to have 0% hit rate on Byleth, he'll need an excessive amount of setup to achieve and RNG can screw you over hard without the existence of fixed growths. Alear will always be powerful in maddening fixed, because well... it's fixed. In awakening, it's near impossible to solo in Lunatic+ because lunatic+ is fucked. Too many enemies have counter+ which will make you kill yourself. Echoes is just easy period, I autobattle that game. Would also argue fates, it's fair enough to say through most of the game to solo, but towards the end, particularly in Conquest and Revelations, enemies have a shit load of debuffs, I did a lot of solo challenges in fates, and it's always difficult towards the end. Even with all maxed cap stats, the debuffs just ruins your day if you get debuffed and swarmed at the same time.
Three Houses is very difficult at the beginning and becomes very easy after, like Awakening. You have to do like 5-6 very hard maps and then it's a nobrainer. Engage has a better difficulty curve, like Conquest. That is why people will find it more difficult. Basically once you clear a difficult map, the one after will be more difficult and it can be really tiring.
Engage is the only Fire Emblem I've beaten on maddening or equivalent. Immediatly before this, I replayed Conquest Hard mode. A little apples to oranges, as there's no rewind mechanic in that game, but honestly, Conquest Hard felt drastically more difficult than Engage maddening. Engage just gives so many more tools to work with than any other Fire Emblem. You find yourself in seemingly impossible scenarios pretty regularly, but I've found there's almost always a way out, usually involving some clever use of Byleth, Corrin and/or Micaiah. Obstruct, vein of fire, vein of ice, bonded shield, these are tools just not available in any other game in the series. Additionally, the quality of life enhancements are really helpful. Being able to see the attack power and speed of every enemy on the map at once makes calculations so much easier, and a quick overview of the map lets you know which enemies can be doubled by which characters. Using Lyn's extremely cost effective Speed+ skill really helps keep the team on top of the game. That skill isn't a big deal in normal or hard, but in maddening, it's almost as good as canter. Now, engage also has a lot of non-tactical skill. Knowing how to efficiently spend resources for smithing, how to make efficient donations, make good choices on types of weapons to use, which engravings to put on what weapons for each character, and knowledge of what skills are good use of SP are all things that will help immensely in a good run, and make the difficulty absolutely plummet compared to a blind run. Jumping directly into maddening may be another story, but with good knowledge of all the game mechanics, Engage is definitely on the easier end of things. I'm now working on doing an iron man hard mode run of Engage. The first non-early screwup run I made I got comfortably to the village on fire map, then I messed up trying to take a shortcut and things fell apart really fast. The experience feels much easier than my FE8 hard mode iron man, which was the easiest iron man I've attempted, aside from some trivial normal mode runs of FE7 and Shadow Dragon.
Reinforcements and breaking out in three Houses: * Enemy units patiently waiting for their turn to fight you * Reinforcements and breaking out in Engage: th-cam.com/video/NND8FAkGPn0/w-d-xo.html
@Calvin no, but Engage does have Turn 2 reinforcements and/or reinforcements every turn on certain maps. The second to last map gives you a few grace turns but then it becomes "Here are 12 reinforcements every single turn"
From many of the playthroughs I've watched of Engage, it seems the RNG is always tilted towards the CPU i.e. you will miss high percentages and the enemies will hit lows. That right there gave me an initial negative impression. Even though in 3 Houses on Maddening it seems like certain maps/situations will "bake in" an auto miss/auto enemy hit despite probability (especially on Chapter 13 non-CF), for the most part the RNG system feels like your 90's would almost always hit. [except for my last VW run where Lysithea pre-Uncanny blow would always seem to miss important 80's and low 90's)
Three Houses also has different RNG: if an attack is likely to hit it will be further skewed towards hitting than it would normally be. so a 75% chance to hit becomes more like 85% chance. Conversely, attacks that are significantly below 50% will have their probability cut even further. so a 25% chance to hit is closer to 15%. The only time where the probability rating shown ingame is more or less accurate is values close to 50, 0, or 100. Engage does the same thing but to a lesser extent and only to values above 50. Same for crits. This is what makes it feel like low probability hits are happening more often than they should; the game is actually being honest this time, but human psychology doesn't gel well with how probability actually works, so games tend to fudge it a lot.
Random number generation is also complete bullshit at times. Losing a unit because they got hit 4 or 5 times in a row when the enemy only has a 3% hit rate feels fucking awful, even though it's just bad luck
People argue that dlc and emblems make engage maddening easier, exp and gear is nice and help a lot, but by late game, you really can't just walk up and do what you want. The amount of flyers with magic weapons and heavy weapons all while 3 mages and dagger users coming. It's fun af
3H was a very boring maddening for me, personally. It felt like Lunatic+ Awakenibg in the start. Do these things to git gud or just play Hard. I love Engage because, even thought it's harder, you have many more options due to some over powered strats. Edit: fixed typo
Engage let’s you totally break your game as soon as you get Lucina. Flyer Bonded Shield. Additionally, the weaknesses of fliers are basically nonexistent in Engage.
Engage is definitely harder for better map design alone but 3 houses gives you more tools to experiment with. Engage is less fun currently because of the sp cost of skills and state of the overall economy. Recently went back to 3 houses because of how bad engage sp economy is. I just wanna have fun as well as a challenging experience but its discouraging seeing skills in general be unobtainable like holdout +++ because its 5000 sp and if you don't want to do the most boring miciah grind you never get even close to 5000 sp in one engage playthrough and sp books only give like 2300 sp at most if you feed it to one unit so the books are worthless imo.
Yeah SP management is really bad, it's not like you need to save up to get good skills but even with grinding it's almost impossible. You're basically dead set only on 1 or 2 good 1000-3000 skills because the SP earning mechanics is just that bad. No experimentation and no mistake allowed. They really need to revamp SP earning mechanics either make it 1.5 or 2x faster.
I somewhat agree but I personally feel that the well sp books were meant to be in the main game because they balance out the sp income. Idk what you were doing but I was able to get about 4 5000 sp skills on one play through by the end of my second maddening run without grinding. I always gave up enough items to do a four star return and maybe I just got lucky.
I’m not too far into engage yet so we’ll see as I get farther but for me, early game three houses was definitely more challenging. Engage did hit quite a bit difficulty spike in chapter 10 and 11, and while I thought 10 was a well designed challenge, chapter 11 was just bullshit. Really cool concept but why did they need to give every fucking enemy a chance to crit. It got to the point where it felt like I was just playing a slot machine as I knew how to beat the map, it was just a question of getting the right rng so one of my units didn’t just die randomly
I think once you know what you are doing in 3h is way easier. There are just so many super op tools at your disposal. But I think engage is easier to stumble through on maddening than 3 houses.
Watching ur video now, but want to write down my perspective before you influence it. I think Engage is a way easier maddening Run for a couple reasons. Maddening 3 houses didn’t come until a future update with new game plus meaning it was made with that in mind. So because of thag a fresh file maddening run is harder then Engage. Engage also gives you a lot more options I feel like without having to plan out the church segments for the average player. Engage maddening never has me bashing my head. Blue lions route (only did blue lions maddening) idk man I wanted to quit sometimes lol
Another thing that could be happening is by the time engage maddening I have a lot of fe experience under my belt making it feel easier. Awakening lunatic, conquest lunatic and Blue lions maddening
Sorry for the message spam but I find this topic interesting, ice coffee did you play 3 houses on release? If so that means ur first run wasn’t maddening. 3 houses has a lot of information front load on stuff you can actually abuse to make it easier. Where engage you went into maddening blind not knowing anything. I think that can effect why you think engage is harder? Or am I off base? Because I’m on chapter 17 maddening and I’m not feeling how it’s harder then engage
I played 3 houses 1-2 years after it shipped and started on Maddening. My first run was blind and was kind of all over the place, my 2nd run was much easier and every run after that was insanely easy.
Depends on the route, Golden Deer and Eldelgards are a breeze on Maddening, Blue Lions final fight is decently hard but the Church route in my opinion is still harder then Engage. Unless your playing NG+ then obviously Engage will be harder.
I fhonestly think Engage Normal is harder than 3H Hard. I smashed 3H Hard, but I actually lost 2 units on my first Engage Normal run [One was an error on Ch11 before I got the crystal back so couldn't rewind; the other was Boucheron who... yeah]
The only thing hard about 3H Maddening was the reinforcements being triggered by where you were on the map. Battalions were kind of broken, even more so than the Emblem Rings imo.
i played a lot more Maddening mode for 3H and only 1 run of Engage maddening and i found myself using the time crystal in Engage for unit death than 3H. 3H maddening was easier, but is it because i just knew the tools over playing it so much? and then you can just break the game since all you need is warp and crits and specific battalions. Maybe thats why to me Engage was much harder. Though I do also think Engages bosses are much harder too because they can destroy your characters more often, like past Alear. And you cant just dodge tank Alert stance + or use 1 unit to really solo everything with easier skill builds since its much more limited in Engage. Obviously all of this is without grinding or you can just bulldoze through with fully maxed characters. Engage overall game in Maddening > 3H.
Engage is much harder. Maps are less cheesable and well made in general. They try to punish turtling and stat caps exist. Multiple health bars boss. 3Houses has stuff like hunter's volley which makes any unit 1round and other ridiculously strong mechanics with gambits. Lords are stupidly strong, Seth tier units like Shamir and Catherine are free.
I wonder if in the past 8 months your opinion has changed, because I've always felt Engage has the easiest maddening mode yet. Like, I went into Engage maddening completely fine and didn't have any trouble until the last act, but 3H Maddening blind would've been absolutely murderous.
I found 3H front loaded difficulty harder to deal with as both games can be completely broken by mid game if you are using all your tools at your disposal. Engages more challenging end game maps are still relatively easy compared to 3H early maps. Engage does have a lot more tools and mechanics going on so it's more overwhelming on a first playthrough. I think dodge tanking needs a massive nerf like a minimum 30% hit going forward in the series as it keeps breaking the difficult in the modern FE games.
3H difficulty was a total joke. They even had to patch in a harder mode, cause it was so easy. Might have just gotten blown by the RNG or whatever, but Engage offers a MUCH greater challenge, and is much more enjoyable. 🤷
I wanted to play 3H on harder difficulties because I enjoyed the mechanics and aesthetics around me. I have yet to finish Engage because the characters are clowns and the story is so bad. Furthest I get is like..18 before I get bored to death and stop caring what is happening in the game.
I fucking hate maddening on this game. It is so fucking annoying. I love the game play and the challenge of it. However, there is so much stuff in this game that annoys the hell out of me. I agree it is harder than 3 houses. I have went back to hard after I beat it on maddening.
3h has a terrible difficulty balance, you start with nothing and a bunch of scrubs and quickly trivialize everything with an op wyvern army to the point the game is super boring.
3Hs front loads it's difficulty. You start the game with basically no tools to deal with bloated enemy stat balls, but then you do get the tools to trivialize it all. Engage starts moderately difficult, but will escalate it up at a pace comparable to the growth of your characters and the tools at your disposal. Engage also has more side objectives with things like villages and chests you can choose to go for that would also add difficulty to the map.
I also prefer fixed growths which allows you to be more tactical and not get rng screwed halfway through a run.
I love the villages/chests, it adds pressure to an otherwise chill position
Yeah I agree with this. I feel three houses is probably more difficult in the early chapters, but the endgame is far easier especially if you use the grinding options available. Engage on the other hand has a far more difficult mid and endgame
Yeah it's really only the first, like, 5-6 chapters that are legitimately super hard, but your units start scaling up quickly if you know what you're doing and the next few chapters become a breeze. There's a huge difficulty spike after the timeskip, but by then you'll have really busted units with a ton of tools to easily match this spike.
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
The think that made 3H so friendly for me, even at maddening, was the availability of reposition, and reposition + canto. I could almost always have perfect mobility and out maneuver myself out of any situation.
This took some getting used to for me in Engage. I was too used to canto on 8 move flyers
Overall I agree. However, I think Engage is easier in the beginning than Three Houses. I also think engage is balanced better. Reinforcements in 3 houses just blindside you to force you to use divine pulse. Engage reinforcements often give you time to respond... and wonder if you can beat the map in the next few turns before being completely overwhelmed 🤣
Lol yeah engage throwing reinforcements at you that you can see coming in the next turn or 2 and the existential dread that comes with that 😳 but then you engage everyone together and barely get through it with the power of friendship
Trying to read all the dialogue in engage is the real maddening difficulty although the actually gameplay feels much better this time around with better map design, weapon triangle, balanced difficulty curve, etc
agreed here! i stomaching the story was the real difficulty =)
@@johnzin6447meh it was pretty ok to me. It was cheesy cliched and kinda stupid but pretty easy to digest I thought of the story as for all ages. Pretty colors cool effects and watnot with a big baddy at the end.
@@constabrielbell4523 yeah I feel the same way. It wasn't like super bad or super good, it was just ok imo 💥 there are some parts of the story that I really liked and others that were really cheesy and awkwardly delivered that made me kinda laugh. So I mean it's not bad but it's nothing to write home about either in my opinion
Engage starts off okay like most fire emblems, but quickly spikes in difficulty around ch. 11. Skirmishes also spike a lot depending on average party level, which will give the enemy silver weapons at around lv 18-20 on hard (yes I said silver, that's how quickly the enemy gets powerful weapons to beat you over the head with). Beware of grinding your team before getting unlimited access to seals after ch. 17 because it was painful to keep track of the average level without a guide on the prepromote's hidden levels. Early promoting also makes it a pain to keep track if you didn't remember when you promoted them at.
I have 400 hours on 3 houses and at around 300 hours on engage and I think Engage is much harder but, Engage is much better to replay due to no monastery and a lot more fun with tools you are given at separate points in the game especially if do some restrictions on some tools like Miciah or Lucina ring. I think combat arts and gambits like stride really broke 3 houses for me especially being able to quad easily with some characters like Seteth or stopping groups of enemies or negating damage and Monastery made the times between gameplay feel worse on replays but story made it worth it imo. I think 3 houses is easier but story + dumb builds can make it more fun for some where engage doesn't have much reason to replay due to no route splits unless really like the gameplay that much and want to try out new things. I think they are both good games but good for different reasons.
No monestary and less loading time. The loading time kills my will to replay it on a regular basis.
One major improvement is the fact that movement in engage is less restricted to ground units. 3h I felt punished for using calvary or infantry.
Three houses seemed harder to me but i think its mostly because Engage gives you more options to do crazy things where in 3H its basically just timing gambits and using the Monastery right
My units seem to snowball alot faster in engage so even if there are more enemies i feel like i get away with so much BS that would never work in 3H...like Flying Lucina bond shield..
I agree. The chapters with very few emblem rings tend to be the hardest whereas it gets easier when you have more emblem but also know how/when to use them. I'm near the end of my 2nd maddening run and I started (first run blind) from only saving engage for the boss to constant spamming engage (2nd run) to level up my bond level and fully utilizing the emblem engage. A run with Engage or even emblem rings would be interesting to see. Also 3H and their BS reinforcements
3Hs maddening is harder at the beginning but you very quickly get to the point where you can 1-2 round most enemies. From that point on the game only gets easier as you get more units with canto and more ways to one round via combat arts. Meanwhile in Engage I feel like the enemies get progressively stronger compared to your units.
I just finished my first maddening playthrough of this game, but I did use DLC (because I didn't allow myself to use them on my Hard playthrough, and I wanted to see what they are like). With DLC, I think this game's maddening is a little bit easier than 3H maddening. This is likely just a personal thing, but I think the strategies that are effective here are more intuitive to how I personally solve problems. I also just prefer this game in general by a long shot. Thanks for listening to my rant.
Speaking of map mechanics, the DLC maps have pretty fun map mechanics, either increasing movement of you/enemies by a ton, opening up new routes as the turn count goes up, and reducing massively safe spaces on the map.
I agree mostly. I do think three houses is slightly harder to do without losing a single unit. There are 3 chapters in three houses where I got surprised during my first maddening run. The first one was "Tower of Black Winds" this was the chapter with the first corrupted beast at the end. If you walked to close to the wall the entire army of that map went after you which is basically game over when that happens. But once you know that you just don't do that and its very doable. The other part that is difficult there is the reinforcement on the upper right that acts on the same turn but that was just spending a reroll and this time was prepared.
The other map I had difficulty with was the second encounter with the black knight. I ended up having to sacrifice a unit as there was no way I could deal enough damage otherwise to kill him off. The second maddening run I did more planning however and managed to do it without sacrificing anyone. But still its kind of brutal the first time around.
The last one is the first chapter post timeskip where you start with only a single unit. If you know what to do it becomes easy however but I remember being intimidated the first time around. Apart from that three houses is far easier to break. Especially endgame flyers in this game are far more OP then in engage, with stance+ their avoid goes through the roof and you can just have enemies crash into them. The few times to do get killed by bad luck with RNG you just do a reroll and do things slightly different and done.
My main take is that three houses has worse AI, the same tactic of baiting some units, kill them of rinse repeat virtually always work. Warp abuse is even more OP in this game than in three houses but I never used it with the exception of that one paraloque because I really don't know how to get eagis shield otherwise :p
In engage AI forces me to play more aggresively and the enemy far more often advances towards you without you baiting them. This far more often result in getting pressured. Also the maps on engage are more diverse requiring different strategies in my experience. Gameplaywise I am having far more fun with engage.
Personally I think the dlc should have had a recall area for resources just for the sake of convenience for those who want to maintain the difficulty.
Really digging the channel as I run through this game!
Thanks :) I appreciate the viewership
Engage is the most balanced Fire Emblem by far and has the most and best gameplay improvements. Definitely the best game by far and going to be my game of the year!
This is the hardest Fire Emblem for sure, though Fates Conquest could be harder, but without rewind Conquest could feel harder because it was more annoying and with rewind Engage does not feel annoying to play so lessens the feeling of difficulty. So Engage is probably the harder game still while also being the most fun.
Engage story trash though. Felt like they barely put any budget into the quality. The gameplay is definitely it's strong point
@@lionelbulgin1739 yeah, the story is real simple but that's not truly a bad thing haha
Game of the year? I like engage but the last game of the year was Elden ring. You really think engage compares to a game like Elden ring? If Starfield comes out this year I think that game could make a case (if it’s everything that has been promised- Bethesda has had a bad track record in that department with FO 76).
If you only play switch, what about Zelda Tears of a Kingdom?
@Aviating Gamer That Zelda game probably goin to win. Sony ain't got nothing too crazy coming out this year except for Spider man but Engage will be snubbed
@@lionelbulgin1739 engage is a good game. But it is not a game of the year caliber game. I think it’s awesome you and others are enjoying it so much you think it’s at that level, but it is not anywhere near that level of game.
I’ll ask you the same question I asked the OP: do you think this game compares to Elden Ring? Because that’s the game that won GOY last year. By compare I mean do you consider both games to have a similar level of story and character depth, graphical fidelity, combat, replayibility, etc?
Im watching someone doing their first ever Fire Emblem game with Engage. He started off on Maddening. He is able to clear and farm every single map he’s ever done. The maps take awhile sometimes but that’s usually on prologues where they get reinforcements constantly.
Engage is definetely harder, heck, I played Blue Lions in Maddening, and I still found Engage's Hard mode less forgiving. There's also the fact that Engage seems to have an answer to almost any cheese strat, not everything, but the most "obvious" strats seem to be covered in some way or form.
Imo Part of 3H difficulty is that it front loads you with bs.
For me Engage was way easier. I went Church route in my maddening run though so might be why i think it was much harder not having a lord to hide behind.
3 houses early game is harder since you have no Gambits, and no durable units, wheras Engage has Vander, Alfred, and Louis.
But 3 Houses eventually gets trivial thanks to Dancing Stride and Warp sending a unit to the boss.
I’m about to enter chapter 10 on Engage, and so far I found early game easier since units don’t get one rounded, but lack of movement forces me to be careful who I send where. I have yet to see any means of skipping.
One thing I’ve liked so far is that the AI seems smarter in this game. Enemies won’t walk into dodge tanks ( I have yet to find out whether they walk into Vantage Wrath) Sometimes I’ve expected multiple enemies to focus down one of my units in their range since that was how 3 houses tended to go but sometimes a completely different unit often gets attacked (and broken). Enemies also start moving before you reach their attack range so regrouping before advancing is sometimes not possible. So far, every boss in Engage has been agro while many 3 houses bosses were stationary
After watching your videos, I noticed how you traded weapons to switch the equipped weapon. You always trade one weapon to the other inventory and than switch it back, that isn't necessary you know. You can just select the equipped weapon in the trade and trade it with the weapon from the same inventory that you want to be equipped.
you’re totally right about the reinforcements
My experience has been almost the opposite. I'm enjoying Engage's hardest difficulty way more and I feel like I'm way better at Engage. I guess it has something to do with rarely using the "best units", broken mechanics and warp strats.
Right? It’s weird that games can be super easy when you cheese them. Who would have thought!
Neither I exploit the hell out of both of them
Lmao.
Thanks for the tip m8 :)
I'm loving maddening so far for engage. I just finished Timerras intro chapter and played somewhat defensively and felt like I had 1-2 turns to reposition/heal with staves because of the onslaught of waves. Map mechanics add so much depth IE darkness punishing positions
15:35 Yeah, that's me minus 3H Maddening (no time). I always look up guides because I'm not intelligent enough to figure things out myself. Subpar IQ really is a curse.
In the middle of my first Maddening run, and while I do agree with this vid, I'm looking forward to seeing how I feel after another run or two.
This is a fascinating take to me, I have never found any part of engage maddening difficult (apart from emblem paralogues - but returning to a few of them after beating chapter 19 felt pretty easy. I previously completed the ike and lucina maps much earlier (as soon as they were available) - and have since beaten sigurd and Lyn maps)
I do play at (I think) a reasonable pace, beating most maps in ~3-9 turns - I did both Ike's paralogue and chapter 19 in 6 turns each.
To preface my experience with engage I don't do any additional grinding/full clear every enemy (if I can beat a map that turn, I won't usually take additional turns), and I haven't done any skirmishes.
It just feels like to me that the stat disparity basically doesn't exist in engage compared to 3h (early game). Mid/late game is ofc pretty easy in 3h as you stride warp 1 turn most maps and grow stat boosters, cook bullheads etc. But in my opinion early game is where all the most important difficulty lies since your available tools are much more limited - so in my opinion we should weight the early game difficulty much higher
Engage gives you one of the best lures in the franchise right at the beginning of the game (chain guard) and since the stat disparities aren't bad you can usually dogpile the group of lured units (the unit that hit you is probably low health after taking your counter attack/s from the chain guard) and then progress through the map - Deidre bond ring makes this very reliable to do each turn
As you mentioned engage also gives you 10 rewinds as soon as the mechanic becomes available which means most of the time you will be able to brute force any "tough" parts
On top of that engage will keep throwing really competent units at you as you go along that'll probably outclass your old roster - so a lot of the time death is meaningless in the early game. I feel like units aren't very distinguished in what they can provide (pretty much everyone is at least good if you give them Wyvern and/or canter) - units feel very replaceable
Forged steel weapons are very accessible and very strong in engage
Engage doesn't throw many fast units in the early/mid gamme (the few extremely frail 30 speed wolf knights being the exception) - nothing like the 50 speed assassins of 3h
Sure 3h has many broken repeatable tools (warp is much more powerful in 3h) but in engage I haven't felt like I've needed anything to get by, I've been coasting on the backs of my wyvern spam, engage also has access to the broken dance, goddess dance, dance combo and gives you access to it pretty early
I haven't played engage endgame yet so I'll reserve some judgement, but the difficulty has felt a lot more casual, way less intense than the early 3h chapters (I have been really enjoying engage I just don't have as much time to give to it as I'd like)
I think the thing that gets me from my experience in 3H is the fact that there wasn't too much i had to worry about outside the initial stat disparity, which yes is rough but managable with art usage and proper spacing. The early stages of madding up to getting everyone into a basic class at level 5-10 was the hardest but once I got past that I felt as though 3H maddening had dropped off a cliff challenge wise. I think it was around chapter 6 or 7 that you just have so many skirmishes and resources to use by then to bridge the gap that i felt less like I was playing maddening and more a slower hard mode run because things were slightly tankier or dodged more. By the time ch 8 3H maddening had come around, I was basically bum rushing the enemies with front line tanks because they weren't dying to anything and 1 shotting stuff with Byleth and other units pretty reliably, and it never really let up from that.
So far engage has currently punished me hard on being both too passive in some maps and too agressive in others, and generally forced me into positions where i've had to actually retreat my entire army and reroute units around the map to get them into better spots where they are more needed. The very early ch bosses (5 comes to mind) are, while not hard to defeat, forced me into having to come up with a perfectly executed plan to avoid losing a unit in classic because I didn't want to risk giving them a single chance to get their own turn, as they would double or outright one of my units. At least in terms of thinking about things, Engage definitely has made me put way more thought into it's runs than 3H ever did.
There's also the AI, which I think is a lot more improved compared to 3H. It's still cheesable, but I recall putting tanks in front of my units in 3h and the enemy just running into them and attacking them for 0 damage, and ignore the mage even if they were in range. Engage seems to have dropped that entirely. They'll put units that do no damage right next to your armored unit and try to restrict their movement while other units go after your supports, or in the case i found once, place units next to you without hitting because they are backups and will chain attack you down. That might just be my luck but i've also had them go out of their way to weaken units just enough for the boss unit to come in and kill them, and then open the way for the weaker units as a result.
In general, I guess you could say engage has made me way more cautious and respect the enemies units and tools, something I didn't really do much after the first 6 chapters in 3H. And it's for that reason that I have to actually plan my turn (and potentially back up due to a single bad move at times) that I do consider engage harder. I haven't hit the midgame in my run though, as im doing a blind maddening run but that's been my thoughts so far.
@@Kalanin399 very thought out and in depth reply, thanks for your perspective
I'm at chapter 22 maddening and haven't felt challenged by the game at any point so far - but I always do the strength training for alear and eat for +2 speed
I also don't use armoured units which probably made things a lot easier for me haha
Warp is a lot weaker than in 3h, but rescue is probably just as strong if not stronger (due to rescue bots in 3h probably having pretty low mag until you are able to warp skip every chapter anyway) but both are still very strong in engage
And I just can't get past the fact that we have 10 rewinds in engage - I can't even imagine losing any map with that in tow
Idk I just haven't ever found myself in a situation where I couldn't deal with the combat in front of me
I think people are still fresh from their first engage run and thus are not fully equipped with the knowledge of the game yet thus making it way harder. I'm close to finishing my 2nd maddening run and it the game seems much easier now (still hard though) simply because I did many things wrong in my first run (blind and also on maddening). I had 4-5 units that can reliably do damage and relied heavily on chain attacks for damage. Last map took me 6hours (1 try) because I had dug myself into such a deep hole. Almost the entire game I barely used any engage energy refills because I was being conservative and because I did not know what's coming next so I only engaged when I'm at the boss or when in a pickle. On my second run I'm actively spamming engage because I know I don't have to save all my engage for the boss and engage in general is just so powerful. I also picked more good units this time and invested less in bad units (still trying out some other characters because I like them). I think after a few more runs under the belt more people will have a different opinion. Engage definitely had better gameplay and i think rewards you much more for tactical thinking than 3H, much more variability and differentiation to make it fun and exciting to experiment. That said, I've not broken 3H like you did. I tend to play each 3H run with a certain theme and challenge in mind and i've only touched IW gambit a few times, never used the dancer battalion or the shield one you mentioned. I've mainly used battalions as stat sticks and damage via gambits. On engage first run early game I feel like if i have to play perfectly to beat the boss but on my second run I had more leeway since I knew the game much better then. I feel like there are only a handful of chapters/paralogues that are truly difficult when you know the game well whereas 3H has more bs chapters and bs reinforcements. Then again I might be a bad 3H player but better in Engage.
Also I would like to add that I've limited myself to 1 rewind per map for my 2nd run and it's not that bad albeit that I still have to reset many times 😆
Over 12 hours some days? If you're not careful, pockets of fluid may start to build up on the thumb side of your palms. That happened to me last year when I played too much Halo, but I got unlucky and it leaked into my wrist. I couldn't lift weights, pick up heavy objects, push things, or stretch with my right hand for about a month or two until it went away.
It was very unnerving when i try a mid game skirmish and everything on the map just runs straight towards me. Have to hid in a corner and pray.
Engage without any doubts. In three house just the start is hard. In engage the levels after 21 are hellish if your strat isn't ready
12:30 completely agree, the fucking reinforcement spam in engage especially toward the mid to endgame (paralogues included) is egregious as hell and it soured my experience with maddening, frankly.
I actually prefer 3H ambush reinforcements to the stupid shit that happens in engage, fucking 10+ reinforcements every turn, in a game where the player has much weaker power in enemy phase. Ambush spawns are bad, yes, but usually I could handle 2-3 ambush reinforcements with rewind and slight repositioning, and enemy phasing felt more reliable in 3h.
I had a good time with it but I built my team with good mobility and high damage just because those were the types of classes I wanted to use so I could just push forward and ignore the reinforcements
Engage definitely harder but 3 houses is the better game overall especially when you included the story.
I think Three house's world building is better than it's story, the main plot is fine but the world building and lore is the best since the Tellius games. Engage has better overall gameplay though.
i did beat 3 houses without any problem losing some units here and there but nothing else, in engage i had to restart the game more than once and every other map i get stuck
I'm only on ch 5 maddening on engage but three houses seems harder tbh but hard mode on engage seems tougher than hard mode on 3 houses
They nailed the challenging but fine hard mode.
Lol come back after you finish maddening and revisit this comment. It starts off very easy
You'll see, i actually like that the beggining its hard but not that hard, but some later maps will have you sweating for sure.
In 3h the first maps are extremely hard but once you have a solid strategy for them they are easy, late game 3h however its very easy.
In engage it progresively gets harder and harder.
Three houses starts off hard in the beginning because every single unit has that annoying pass ability and the AI would just b line it to your ranged units
I much prefer Engage's reinforcements because they don't attack on the turn they spawn. It makes me think, "Showtime" instead of "Rewind Time"
I have been having so much more fun with the gameplay of Engage, even if I still prefer 3 Houses for its storytelling. As a strategy game I would recommend Engage 400 times more.
Just finished the Solm castle map where you have to fight 3 Hounds at the same time and wow, it was crazy. Despite how impossible it looked I was barely able to clutch it out and I didn't even have to use the turn wheel.
Almost every Engage map is a fight to the finish where you are given the exact tools you need to win, in contrast the only time I've ever felt this in 3 Houses was during the BL and SS final maps. 3 Houses feels like it was designed around someone who had an entire team of ground units with damage AOE battalions, while engage is a lot more intentional and accounts for every single tool you do or could have.
Maddening classic blind for both games btw.
Dude I'm struggling more with engage hard mode than I ever did with 3H madenning lol
Idk, I feel like the engage emblens provide quite a nasty boost to the units that it trivailizes alot of maps. If you use Seadall as a Dancer and have another support unit with Byleth.. its super easy to cheese alot of maps and enemies. Given, I am only halfway through my first maddening run, and hard mode wasnt necessarily insanely difficult. I just remember Blue Lions run even with New Game+ and using all the auxilary battles I could and playing that final chapter 4/5 times and pulling ny hair out when I hit Turn 100 and lost 🤣🤣🤣
From someone who suck at TRPG, I do find Three Houses way more difficult than Engage. I feel like Three House difficulty was pretty unfair/bullshit like with ambush reinforcement which doesnt exist in engage thankfully (It would had been hellish if they existed in engage ngl) and the game difficulty spike being all over the place. Like TH prologue in my opinion is a threat if you aint careful and chapter 1-2 is ridiculous, compared to Engage where I mostly found most early-mid game chapters to be Hard 2.0, I mostly got trouble at the endgame chapters but Engage difficulty spike feel more fair and I feel like the game do give you the tools to succeed. But maybe its just me and Im bad at managing weapons durability or dont understand Three Houses mechanics.
It feels like when people talk about the best way to beat 3H Maddening it usually involves skipping the levels or cheesing the game with some skill exploit. That says to me, alongside my experience playing it the normal way, that it is not a good difficulty mode.
I agree with you. Can't recall ever restarting a map in 3 H in. Now in engage Ive probably restarted 10 to 15 times in my first playthrough
It's odd... I restarted at least 6 times in 3H (3 maddening runs + 1 hard), and in two maddening runs in Engage I only restarted once in the main game (and another one in Tiki's paralogue in my second run using DLC)... And I use a lot the "Mila's Turnwheel" in engage just to correct player phase RNG because it's so abundant... I think both games are pretty easy, but i believe is more about the difficulty curve of these games being different than one being harder than the other, but because early game 3H is worse, it's harder for me...
@@elaphar I think of a reason why my restart counter was so high that I tended to get to like 4 uses of the turn wheel Id just restart thinking that I just needed to look at it from the beginning again
The thing about Engage's maddening is that it actively punishes you if you train full deployment. And rewards you with low deployment. you can literally solo the game with Alear on Maddening, as several people have already done already. Because his speed is so high, with the correct setup, every enemy will have 0 hit on him, and you can just walk past everything without any enemy phase threat.
You can do that in Three Houses... and Fates... and Echoes... and Awakening. It's not unique to Engage.
@@jackmanleblanc2518 I'd argue it's a lot harder to setup in other games. in 3H, it's extremely difficult to get enemies to have 0% hit rate on Byleth, he'll need an excessive amount of setup to achieve and RNG can screw you over hard without the existence of fixed growths. Alear will always be powerful in maddening fixed, because well... it's fixed. In awakening, it's near impossible to solo in Lunatic+ because lunatic+ is fucked. Too many enemies have counter+ which will make you kill yourself. Echoes is just easy period, I autobattle that game.
Would also argue fates, it's fair enough to say through most of the game to solo, but towards the end, particularly in Conquest and Revelations, enemies have a shit load of debuffs, I did a lot of solo challenges in fates, and it's always difficult towards the end. Even with all maxed cap stats, the debuffs just ruins your day if you get debuffed and swarmed at the same time.
Cool. Can't wait to try it.
@@verde5738but the thing is the enemies can chain attack.
Three Houses is very difficult at the beginning and becomes very easy after, like Awakening. You have to do like 5-6 very hard maps and then it's a nobrainer.
Engage has a better difficulty curve, like Conquest. That is why people will find it more difficult. Basically once you clear a difficult map, the one after will be more difficult and it can be really tiring.
One reason for me : Chain attack, something new and ennemis can kill you easily without corrin ability
Engage is the only Fire Emblem I've beaten on maddening or equivalent.
Immediatly before this, I replayed Conquest Hard mode. A little apples to oranges, as there's no rewind mechanic in that game, but honestly, Conquest Hard felt drastically more difficult than Engage maddening.
Engage just gives so many more tools to work with than any other Fire Emblem. You find yourself in seemingly impossible scenarios pretty regularly, but I've found there's almost always a way out, usually involving some clever use of Byleth, Corrin and/or Micaiah. Obstruct, vein of fire, vein of ice, bonded shield, these are tools just not available in any other game in the series.
Additionally, the quality of life enhancements are really helpful. Being able to see the attack power and speed of every enemy on the map at once makes calculations so much easier, and a quick overview of the map lets you know which enemies can be doubled by which characters. Using Lyn's extremely cost effective Speed+ skill really helps keep the team on top of the game. That skill isn't a big deal in normal or hard, but in maddening, it's almost as good as canter.
Now, engage also has a lot of non-tactical skill. Knowing how to efficiently spend resources for smithing, how to make efficient donations, make good choices on types of weapons to use, which engravings to put on what weapons for each character, and knowledge of what skills are good use of SP are all things that will help immensely in a good run, and make the difficulty absolutely plummet compared to a blind run. Jumping directly into maddening may be another story, but with good knowledge of all the game mechanics, Engage is definitely on the easier end of things.
I'm now working on doing an iron man hard mode run of Engage. The first non-early screwup run I made I got comfortably to the village on fire map, then I messed up trying to take a shortcut and things fell apart really fast. The experience feels much easier than my FE8 hard mode iron man, which was the easiest iron man I've attempted, aside from some trivial normal mode runs of FE7 and Shadow Dragon.
Engage Maddening is definitely more difficult imo. And that's after playing Three Houses DLC, Black Eagles and Golden Deer on Maddening..
With 3H, all you need is warpers, Constance, Bernie, and Leonie
They should’ve brought back lunatic + from awakening , I feel like engage’s skill list would have made it interesting
Reinforcements and breaking out in three Houses: * Enemy units patiently waiting for their turn to fight you *
Reinforcements and breaking out in Engage: th-cam.com/video/NND8FAkGPn0/w-d-xo.html
yep, I can confirm this to be true.
@Calvin no, but Engage does have Turn 2 reinforcements and/or reinforcements every turn on certain maps. The second to last map gives you a few grace turns but then it becomes "Here are 12 reinforcements every single turn"
From many of the playthroughs I've watched of Engage, it seems the RNG is always tilted towards the CPU i.e. you will miss high percentages and the enemies will hit lows. That right there gave me an initial negative impression. Even though in 3 Houses on Maddening it seems like certain maps/situations will "bake in" an auto miss/auto enemy hit despite probability (especially on Chapter 13 non-CF), for the most part the RNG system feels like your 90's would almost always hit. [except for my last VW run where Lysithea pre-Uncanny blow would always seem to miss important 80's and low 90's)
Three Houses also has different RNG: if an attack is likely to hit it will be further skewed towards hitting than it would normally be. so a 75% chance to hit becomes more like 85% chance. Conversely, attacks that are significantly below 50% will have their probability cut even further. so a 25% chance to hit is closer to 15%. The only time where the probability rating shown ingame is more or less accurate is values close to 50, 0, or 100. Engage does the same thing but to a lesser extent and only to values above 50. Same for crits.
This is what makes it feel like low probability hits are happening more often than they should; the game is actually being honest this time, but human psychology doesn't gel well with how probability actually works, so games tend to fudge it a lot.
Random number generation is also complete bullshit at times. Losing a unit because they got hit 4 or 5 times in a row when the enemy only has a 3% hit rate feels fucking awful, even though it's just bad luck
People argue that dlc and emblems make engage maddening easier, exp and gear is nice and help a lot, but by late game, you really can't just walk up and do what you want. The amount of flyers with magic weapons and heavy weapons all while 3 mages and dagger users coming. It's fun af
engage was a next level of difficulty in fe we haven't seen yet it was great.
3H was a very boring maddening for me, personally. It felt like Lunatic+ Awakenibg in the start. Do these things to git gud or just play Hard. I love Engage because, even thought it's harder, you have many more options due to some over powered strats.
Edit: fixed typo
Engage let’s you totally break your game as soon as you get Lucina. Flyer Bonded Shield. Additionally, the weaknesses of fliers are basically nonexistent in Engage.
Engage is definitely harder for better map design alone but 3 houses gives you more tools to experiment with. Engage is less fun currently because of the sp cost of skills and state of the overall economy. Recently went back to 3 houses because of how bad engage sp economy is. I just wanna have fun as well as a challenging experience but its discouraging seeing skills in general be unobtainable like holdout +++ because its 5000 sp and if you don't want to do the most boring miciah grind you never get even close to 5000 sp in one engage playthrough and sp books only give like 2300 sp at most if you feed it to one unit so the books are worthless imo.
Yeah SP management is really bad, it's not like you need to save up to get good skills but even with grinding it's almost impossible. You're basically dead set only on 1 or 2 good 1000-3000 skills because the SP earning mechanics is just that bad. No experimentation and no mistake allowed.
They really need to revamp SP earning mechanics either make it 1.5 or 2x faster.
I somewhat agree but I personally feel that the well sp books were meant to be in the main game because they balance out the sp income. Idk what you were doing but I was able to get about 4 5000 sp skills on one play through by the end of my second maddening run without grinding. I always gave up enough items to do a four star return and maybe I just got lucky.
For sure the game forces you to plan out your skill inheritance early on because any wasted sp means you will miss out on an optional build
I’m not too far into engage yet so we’ll see as I get farther but for me, early game three houses was definitely more challenging. Engage did hit quite a bit difficulty spike in chapter 10 and 11, and while I thought 10 was a well designed challenge, chapter 11 was just bullshit. Really cool concept but why did they need to give every fucking enemy a chance to crit. It got to the point where it felt like I was just playing a slot machine as I knew how to beat the map, it was just a question of getting the right rng so one of my units didn’t just die randomly
I think once you know what you are doing in 3h is way easier. There are just so many super op tools at your disposal. But I think engage is easier to stumble through on maddening than 3 houses.
Watching ur video now, but want to write down my perspective before you influence it. I think Engage is a way easier maddening Run for a couple reasons. Maddening 3 houses didn’t come until a future update with new game plus meaning it was made with that in mind. So because of thag a fresh file maddening run is harder then Engage. Engage also gives you a lot more options I feel like without having to plan out the church segments for the average player. Engage maddening never has me bashing my head. Blue lions route (only did blue lions maddening) idk man I wanted to quit sometimes lol
Another thing that could be happening is by the time engage maddening I have a lot of fe experience under my belt making it feel easier. Awakening lunatic, conquest lunatic and Blue lions maddening
WOOOW lol just finished, we disagree on this I guess lol
Sorry for the message spam but I find this topic interesting, ice coffee did you play 3 houses on release? If so that means ur first run wasn’t maddening. 3 houses has a lot of information front load on stuff you can actually abuse to make it easier. Where engage you went into maddening blind not knowing anything. I think that can effect why you think engage is harder? Or am I off base? Because I’m on chapter 17 maddening and I’m not feeling how it’s harder then engage
I played 3 houses 1-2 years after it shipped and started on Maddening. My first run was blind and was kind of all over the place, my 2nd run was much easier and every run after that was insanely easy.
@@IcedCoffeeGaming interesting, ur crazy indeed lol.
foot only run (no cav no flier)
I think Engage is definitely harder but 3H can still be more annoying lol
Depends on the route, Golden Deer and Eldelgards are a breeze on Maddening, Blue Lions final fight is decently hard but the Church route in my opinion is still harder then Engage. Unless your playing NG+ then obviously Engage will be harder.
I fhonestly think Engage Normal is harder than 3H Hard. I smashed 3H Hard, but I actually lost 2 units on my first Engage Normal run [One was an error on Ch11 before I got the crystal back so couldn't rewind; the other was Boucheron who... yeah]
The only thing hard about 3H Maddening was the reinforcements being triggered by where you were on the map. Battalions were kind of broken, even more so than the Emblem Rings imo.
I would guess Engage because it has less exploits currently
3h is definitely harder at the start, but it's not as enjoyable.
Engage is just a better game I think.
Map design is way better this time around, the other good map design is in Fates Conquest
I wish they would have given us a game that looks and played like Engage but had an amazing story like three houses.
So you're saying that Engage keeps us... engaged?
At least reinforcment don't play the turn they spawned like in 3H
i played a lot more Maddening mode for 3H and only 1 run of Engage maddening and i found myself using the time crystal in Engage for unit death than 3H. 3H maddening was easier, but is it because i just knew the tools over playing it so much? and then you can just break the game since all you need is warp and crits and specific battalions. Maybe thats why to me Engage was much harder. Though I do also think Engages bosses are much harder too because they can destroy your characters more often, like past Alear. And you cant just dodge tank Alert stance + or use 1 unit to really solo everything with easier skill builds since its much more limited in Engage. Obviously all of this is without grinding or you can just bulldoze through with fully maxed characters. Engage overall game in Maddening > 3H.
Engage is much harder. Maps are less cheesable and well made in general. They try to punish turtling and stat caps exist. Multiple health bars boss.
3Houses has stuff like hunter's volley which makes any unit 1round and other ridiculously strong mechanics with gambits. Lords are stupidly strong, Seth tier units like Shamir and Catherine are free.
what about FE awakening Maddening vs. Engage? Awakening is my favorite FE thats why.
I love engage way better it is harder but I love the challenges still suck at it but it’s fun
I wonder if in the past 8 months your opinion has changed, because I've always felt Engage has the easiest maddening mode yet. Like, I went into Engage maddening completely fine and didn't have any trouble until the last act, but 3H Maddening blind would've been absolutely murderous.
engage is easily harder to me
3h is way easier to broke than engage
I found 3H front loaded difficulty harder to deal with as both games can be completely broken by mid game if you are using all your tools at your disposal. Engages more challenging end game maps are still relatively easy compared to 3H early maps. Engage does have a lot more tools and mechanics going on so it's more overwhelming on a first playthrough.
I think dodge tanking needs a massive nerf like a minimum 30% hit going forward in the series as it keeps breaking the difficult in the modern FE games.
3H difficulty was a total joke. They even had to patch in a harder mode, cause it was so easy. Might have just gotten blown by the RNG or whatever, but Engage offers a MUCH greater challenge, and is much more enjoyable. 🤷
I wanted to play 3H on harder difficulties because I enjoyed the mechanics and aesthetics around me. I have yet to finish Engage because the characters are clowns and the story is so bad. Furthest I get is like..18 before I get bored to death and stop caring what is happening in the game.
Boy skip all does not sound fun at all 😂
The final map took me over 4 hours lmao for Blue Lions skip only
I fucking hate maddening on this game. It is so fucking annoying. I love the game play and the challenge of it. However, there is so much stuff in this game that annoys the hell out of me. I agree it is harder than 3 houses. I have went back to hard after I beat it on maddening.
Lmao this comment is funny
@@TheHipHopTrucka glad it makes you laugh. I wanted to make it like a book rant.
3h has a terrible difficulty balance, you start with nothing and a bunch of scrubs and quickly trivialize everything with an op wyvern army to the point the game is super boring.
Aside from the dumb academy,3H was better in every way
Three houses has seemed very inferior to me in all aspects compared to engage. And the difficulty in three houses is too poor.