I like how in fates, characters have a limited pool of innate classes but can get 2 more classes from befriending and marrying each other. I make a significant distinction between that and something like three houses where any character can go down any class line you pick for them. When I'm playing conquest and I put Xander into hero through friendship with Laslow, there's a sense of him learning from and carrying on from someone who's touched his life. When I see his sprite it's like, oh, he's doing Laslow's pose. He's learning his skills. I also like this kind of class management, because the pool of characters you have influences what plans you can do with each character. Three houses characters basically just do whatever they want in a complete vacuum. Engage has limited rings to apply to your characters that could make builds fight for space with each other, but you can still swap them around as you please. Fates characters act both as possible sources and recipients of classes from each other, it makes support charting a really interesting process methinks.
I'm on the opinion that for three houses it makes more sense because this is a school they are here to learn. Of course they're going to be able to change their major. That just made logical sense to me. I don't like it as much in engage because if these people have been training these skills all their lives, they really shouldn't be able to drop them at the behest of Alear just because he said so. I do agree that the whole gaining and extra class option through relationships and marriage was a really nice touch from those games and I absolutely loved it. But I think that class changing being free and open in three houses just make sense for the game.
@@gayjebus4079 I have my own litany of issues with three house's systems, mostly that I don't think fire emblem is suited to the Persona style timetable with a mission at the end of each month. While conceptually the ability for any character to study into any class is fitting for the school setting, I think the game doesn't do enough to encourage using a variety of classes. There's nothing stopping you from just going "Okay, this is a Wyvern school now you're all going to learn how to be a Wyvern Rider". Maybe if you had a limited number of spaces for each proficiency training, or if the map design was generally better at giving units niches, or if character affinities were more impactful.
@@big_azzy well I do agree that the time system could have been done better. I kind of liked it because it helped me resist my base and unbridled urge to sit on. Not doing the story and doing side missions for 5 years straight and then getting bored of the game and stopping and then not touching it again for another 3 years. I think the game does as good of a job as it can with the system that it wants to give in the field that it wants to give when it comes to class changing of pushing the player in a direction for certain units . The entire reason I say that is because of the weapons affinity letters in the game where certain people are just bad at learning certain things. Also, is it really a bad thing that the player can just decide you know what f*** this? Everyone is not going to be a wife and writer because it's funny. I don't think that's bad thing. Imagine that you're Edelgaurd and you're thinking you just taken over the world and there's nothing anyone can do and then you just see a fleet of dragons pull up. Honestly my baby said she you is that they're really cool skins for post time skip don't stay for class changes.
Seriously, Fates had possibly one of the best gameplay in the series (ESPECIALLY Conquest), if the writing were up to par then it would easily be ranked as one of the best FE games ever made. Honestly, I feel like most of the issues with the writing in this game trace back directly to the existence of Revelation. From Revelation itself being ...... one of the stories of all time to just how many plot contrivances and character assassinations exist in the other routes just so that you literally cannot learn about "the secret true story because otherwise how could we sell you Revelation ???". Also, Revelation just straight up removes any hopes of the themes having any punches because it renders the other two paths moot by existing. The fact I derailed the comment this hard should be an indicator of how much I LOATHE Revelation I think
@@sephikong8323 Wanna know the saddest thing? There's a chance that the writing WOULD'VE been up to par. I don't remember the exact circumstances; but I know that the original game director wasn't able to implement his full vision for the game, and a lot got changed. It could've been so much better. Oh well, we have fanfiction I guess.
I think class is really important for identity just because of how much it’s needed to tell a story about that character. Gonzalez is the best example. High speed, and the highest strength stat. But no accuracy. If he wasn’t axe locked you wouldn’t associate him with being “a dumb brute” because if he had a different class with those stats they wouldn’t matter. Case and point; Kagero. She literally has his same stat spread, with the only difference being her Hp stats cut into her res growth. Do you look at kagero and see a dumb brute? Why not? She’s got high speed, the highest strength growth, but terrible accuracy. Well being a ninja greatly changed that. But if you marry her to Arthur (or corrin) and make her a berserker, now suddenly you just have Gonzalez again. Ninja changes her identity so Much. She goes from a brute to a duelist all because she wields a very accurate but weak weapon despite being a very strong but inaccurate character. When you can change classes so freely unit feel drops off hard because FLAWS are what often define units more than strengths. And when you can just give them a class that compensates for those flaws then what defines thems just thrown away.
Well the thing is it is Kagero's identity because she was forced to be a ninja because she was physically strong enough to do the task and took her brother's job because he was supposed to be a ninja, but was too weak.
@@JMarchel we did join forces with invaders who attacked another kingdom and started the entire conflict. But it's ok because they have quirky personalities
Yea not going to lie engage showed just how dumb the current class system really is, oh all the important characters get unique classes while everyone else just gets normal stuff. Like you could have given them unique classes and just gave good classes that fit the identity of the other characters. Like nothing wrong with that, as is it feels like these characters all got special attention like they are the favored child of some dude while everyone else is forced to eat cafeteria food.
@@christianlangdon3766 at least give the base units the luna sol etc skills. Etie would be so good with Luna same with rosemary with the skill the princess got to do that extra damage especially when you get a critical on top of it. But nope they give it to the royals So much wasted potential for more fun units. It basically made crit be your skill use.
I like this idea. This feels like a great in-between for making other units stand out in different fields while providing the "customizability" function through the self-inserted Protagonist.
my personal gripe with the customization of modern fire emblem is that when any unit can become any class, and their flaws can be fixed with relative ease, (with the exception of a few outliers), it really feels like no one has their own dedicated niche that ONLY they can fill. this issue is made worse by the fact that the majority of units in engage have very forgettable/useless personal skills that don't really create niches for them either. the benefit of this is that you never have to feel like your favorite character is useless or weak, and in ironman scenarios it's way easier to replace lost units. i think that there's a happy medium to be found between giving players too much freedom or making them feel too constricted. i'm just hoping that they find it sometime soon lol
I feel like Fates had really great unit identity by allowing every character to get every class *in theory*, but with some stipulations. Giving each character one extra secret class actually makes units feel more different, not less: it makes which of your servants you get first a much more important decision, for example. I’d also point to Selena and Laslow: they join only two chapters apart in the same class, but are mechanically very different. Not only because of their stat differences, but also because of their hidden classes: Ninja and Sky Knight are very different niches that are both relevant to their unit identities. Just having a class in your pool is a pretty important thing, actually, since it can enable partner reclassing for other units as well, and overall it does a lot to define a unit’s niche. I think it’s a big part of why Conquest is considered one of the best balanced games in the series: sure some strats are better than others, but every unit has a real niche just by virtue of the class system.
I would say in Selena's case that her easy friendship access to Wyvern Rider is also very important. It really helps her strength, which sky knight kind of hurts. Conversely Laslow has access to Berserker through Keaton which lets him stack Rally Strength with his personal rally. That's a completely different path from going for sol ninja shenanigans with his heart seal. I think the important thing is that there are at any moment a handful of clear paths to send a unit down, compared to the absolute choice paralysis of a completely open ended system.
I always like to point to azama as a great example of this He's a TERRIBLE priest, but he's great at fighting if you switch him to his apothecary line and it's more "cynical" classes. Making him so ill suited for his role not just in terms of lore but also in mechanics really adds a ton of characterization to him.
16:03 Fates does this the best when it comes to Heart Seal Options/Class sets that units have. While not every unit has one to represent something about about them. A Large amount of the cast does Both Royal Families have the older sister start in a flying mounted class. Camilla has Wyvern as her base class while Xander and Elise have Wyvern has heart seal options. Hinoka has Sky Knight while as her base class while Ryoma and Sakura both have Sky Knight as their heart seal options. Even Azura has it as hers most likely for this reason and why they made it so Songstress's parallel class is Troubadour since her mother Arete is a Strategist. Meanwhile the younger brothers both get left out of this showing that them, mainly Leo, feeling left out or unwanted has some ground to actually stand on. Effie and Hana, 2 retainers and best friends of their lady, both have their innate Heart Seal classes as Troubadour and Cleric specifically, meaning you don't have to actually achieve an A+ Rank to get those classes with a Friendship seal as they are already best friends. In terms of already eastablished friendships we have Kagero and Orochi, though only one way. Kagero and Orochi consider themselves best friends but only Kagero has the other's base class has a Heart Seal option. But Orochi has Apothecary showing her background as a someone who would gather herbs as a child. Meanwhile Charlotte has troubadour as her reclass option due to wanting to appear as the delicate weak woman she tries to show people. Another reclass option that shows a character's background would be Hayato. He has Diviner as his base class but has Oni Savage his other option which shows his relationship to Fuga, whose 1st reclass option is Oni Savage. However Fuga has Samurai as his base class and not Oni Savage. Jakob is in a similar boat. While Jakob's base class is Butler (Troubadour) he is given the Cavalier as his reclass option due to Gunter. While they aren't related Gunter is effectively Jakob's adoptive father as he is the man who basically raised him and taught him everything he knows. One of the better Heart Seal reasons held by anyone would go to Felicia and Flora. They are both from the Ice Tribe, both daughters of the chief, both have Maid (Troubadour) as their base classes. However the Ice Tribe in is known for having Fighters, Mercenaries, and Dark Mages. Felicia only has Mercenary as a reclass while Flora has Dark Mage and Mercenary as hers. These 2 having Maid as their base classes show that the Ice Tribe serves Nohr thus putting Maid over what their base classes should be. Now one of the more blatant ones would have to be the Awakening Trio: Laslow, Selena and Odin. They each have a Hoshidan reclass option to show that they aren't from Nohr. Odin and Selena both have reclass options linking back to what is relative to them. Odin having Samurai is obviously a nod to him being a Myrmidon in Awakening and Selena while not actually being a Pegasus Knight still has it showing her remembering her mother. Laslow is the real odd one out as he doesn't have Samurai or or an Axe class as a heart seal. Now the most out of the way reason for any reclass option in Fates goes to Kaden. His reclass is Diviner which promotes into Onmyoji specifcally. This is a historical nod to Abe no Seimei who was a Onmyoji. However it was speculated that he was actually a kitsune or the child of a human and a kitsune.
As much as fates didn't do jack shit with lore, it had so many good ways to imply at things with its characters like the reclass options and the general hoshidan/nohrian split. I'll never not be a little sad that it wasn't a better-written game, but I'm just as sad that we haven't had those moments of brilliance taken into a new fire emblem yet.
Just to add to your point about Hayato and Fuga, Fuga's second class would be due to his bestie being Sumeragi and fighting alongside a master swordsman like that has given Fuga some good understanding about swordsmanship.
I think the reason Laslow has Ninja as his heart seal class is because he’s actually really shy despite his philandering. Ninjas are known for stealth so it’s like the part of him he keeps hidden away as it were
If I can add to this convo, Laslow's ninja secondary class is from his mother, as the "class" he inherits in awakening as the mother's main class is filled in by thief.
I'll rather have unit identity. The idea behind the huge roster was because before reclassing became an option, you would only have so many units that perform in certain areas. So, the games gave you more than unit of a type and class so if you got RNG screwed or the unit died, you could use the replacement. Without this, the huge roster just doesn't make sense and dilutes the amount of characterization and development each character has. If the game will allow reclassing, then the roster should be smaller and the story more character driven. If the game will not allow reclassing, then the big roster makes sense and the characters feel unique since your first, say, pegasus knight will feel the niche of speedy high mobility flying unit until you get another pegasus knight.
Unit identity is something I deeply value. I rarely change a unit's class to anything that I feel isn't perfect for that particular character. Usually I either adjust my play style and tactics to accommodate or I try to change their class to a nice balanced in-between of what I would find more convenient and what works for them. It just feels right ya know?
12:28-12:45 Oops! All Fliers I feel like this also could be the reason to dimishing units identity, your class doesn't matter unless it's a busted flier and when everyone is a flier no one is special. Units become just a bunch of checkboxes: "Can you be a flier?" Yes, "Would it be difficult to make you one?" No, "Welcome to my endgame team, Flier No 22"
I've been playing Triangle Strategy recently and I think it handles this really well because each unit is very gimmicky. Even supposedly universal mechanics, such as follow up attacks, are really only useful with a few units because few units have a good strength stat, which is required for a decent follow up. No unit shares the same role and it really helps the units hold their own identity.
Yeah you need a high strength stat to do meaningful damage with a follow up but even weak attacks can trigger those relevant follow ups. And honestly some skills who trigger the exact same status serve entirely different roles and perform well in very different maps which is honestly really cool as far as unit roles go. Take lionel as compared to erador for example. Both have a provoke skill but the way they control the battlefield with their provokes varies widely to the point where half the time one is better and half the other is. Erador’s is better when starting at a terrain disadvantage and surrounded because while it’s range isn’t large it targets all around him. It’s absolutely vital on maps like the one of you go with Frederica’s plan to blow up the bridge. Lionel meanwhile not only has significant vertical range but significant horizontal as well. He’s great in maps where you can either take a fortified position or start at one because where as erador is trying to get enemies to attack him Lionel hides behind the front line and taunts the enemy front line so they aren’t able to attack your front line giving them a reprieve from damage and also luring enemy magic attacking or supporting units preventing healers or offensive magic units from doing any magic neutering them and just generally annoying the most threatening enemies. He performs well on avlora’s assault or the true showdown with gustadolph on the path to the true ending with the prince specifically by standing atop the gate and annoying the mages and the enemy next to whatever unit you have blocking the stairs up towards your back line. He provokes key targets that can threaten to disrupt your otherwise impenetrable position. Erador you yeet in there to provoke as many as possible
This leans over into the removal of class as a system of categorization, and more every character is just unique. Which, I like, don't get me wrong, i generally like these kinds of games more, but it's generally not how FE works.
@@ultimaterecoil1136 Berwick Saga does something similar where three units with the same exact skill or class can vary wildly in how they use it. Skill example: Elbert the cavalier, Kramer the mercernary and Percival the Thunder Mage all have the skill bowbreaker, which makes them good at dodging longbows, crossbows and ballistas. However, Elbert is a cavalier with the provoke command skill (makes selected unit within 5 range auto aggro towards him) which makes him good at baiting long range ballista or dangerous bow users. Kramer is a mercenary with the hiker skill which makes him good at going after bow users perched up above mountain tiles since his avoid doesn't get climbing up them (and moving faster above them as well). Finally, Percival's thunder magic has the same range as longbows, so he can always counter them. Wildly different uses with the same skill Class example: You get two lance knights during the first chapter named Leon and Abel. Leon has deathmatch which lets him fight enemies for 5 rounds of combat while Abel gets vantage which lets him attack foes before they can counter and if he hits, stops their combat from happening altogether meaning one is very player phase oriented while the other is enemy phase oriented. You get another lance knight later named clifford who just has better stats than them, but their skills differentiate them enough to make all three very distinctly used.
I think classes are a bigger deal that you make them out to be, mostly in terms of the differences between mounted units and unmounted units. In games like fates and three houses there is very little reason to not make everyone in your army into a wyvern, or in engage’s case to not make everyone into a wyvern/griffon knight/warrior/mage knight depending on their stat spread. It stops units like Rosado for example from having a niche as one of the few fliers, because he’s not actually one of the few fliers anyone can be a flier.
There is a reason not to use all fliers in Three Houses and that is lack of high tier flying battalions on most routes and only able to use standard adjuntants. In maddening you want to limit your fliers to a max of 4-5 due to this
@@boredomkiller99 Also, making everyone the same class is mind-numbingly boring and does nothing to showcase a characters unique best self, so there's that too.
To me, I think unique unit identity / gameplay feel is important, and I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, but I think a way the newer games give units more identity is through things like crit quotes, and battle quotes in general. Things that couldn’t be done as well in older games. Seeing units do their little victory pose after winning an encounter (yes even though the poses are usually the same for the same classes), hearing them say their victory line is something that makes you feel like playing as Annette is different than Lysithea, for example
In that same vein of Character-specific quotes, we could have Character-specific animations, regardless of what class they're currently promoted into, and it probably wouldn't be any more work than what they currently do, considering just how many classes there are in a typical FE outing with a typical-sized army. For example, if you have a character with a loud or bubbly personality, they could reflect that in their animation along as they celebrate. It would be a far better way to communicate that to the player than, after reclassing, they just do the default boring animation.
@@LegendofKal Fates did this, off the top of my head, Charlotte drops her axe over her shoulder, twirls her hair & bends over (keeping up her dainty facade despite being a Berserker) and Benny, a pacifist, drops his weapons and sighs once he kills an enemy (whereas other Generals strongly pose with their lance & shield). Not every character has one, but iirc it’s around 20% of the cast which is a LOT when u think abt it, and a larger portion of Echoes’ cast has these as well (tho there’s less characters and less classes, and some classes will get rid of custom animations)
Triangle Strategy, imo, is the SRPG to have the greatest success at creating unique units with their own identities and values. EVERY single unit, no matter how useless, has a use case abd sometomes can ve the difference between winning and losing a map. It was sooo well thought out
I love that game and how every character had something going for them and how there were defense maps where the architecture was actually on your side as if your fortress had been built with actual battles in mind. I think it trumped over Engage for me, due to limiting your choices somewhat and therefore not making me research about the best builds for each character for hours on end.
Personally, I'd like more unit identity and would be willing to sacrifice customization to suit that. Sacred Stones having *branching class trees* activated my neurons at a young age, but I typically try to keep a unit close to their original class in early games. I like when there is variety of a character's gameplay, but not to the detriment of conveying that the character has a particular set of strengths and weaknesses.
FE8's branching promotion trees strike me as a nice compromise between player customization and unit identity, although the branching choices weren't well balanced (why would you ever choose Falcoknight over Wyvern Knight for Vanessa apart from aesthetics?)
Genealogy is my personal favourite game for unit identity. Kaga said in an interview that he wanted every character to have something only they could do, and it shows. What aids this though, is the small cast combined with no deployment limit, meaning no-one ever competes for team slots so you can freely drop someone in just to use their utility skill once or twice. The issue is everyone's "unique assets" are far from equal (e.g Lewyn and Quan's holy weapons vs Arden being the only potential General) There's a few Engage units who do have decent gameplay/story integration in their roles though, Clanne for one. He starts as a Mage but has a far better Strength growth, Sword proficiency, and tutorial images show him promoting to Mage Knight. He seems to lean towards mixed attacker, but if you test him in pure physical classes he's surprisingly good in them, better than some people who start in physical ones. Last time I used him, I started headcanoning that he'd take over Vander's role in the future... only to find out this literally happens in his epilogue. Clanne was always geared more towards being a protecting knight than a mage. I guess I'm not too bothered by Engage because of my playstyle, I don't like to use too many people of the same class unless they're VERY distinct (e.g Warrior Amber and Anna) and rarely go for "oops all fliers" because it's not fun to me. So I at least prefer this to Shadow Dragon's system, where anyone could jump between classes at zero cost (beyond needing to build up weapon levels). My main issue with Fates' is that supports/shipping ends up affecting a unit's viability TOO much and I feel that players should be allowed to go with personal preferences without gimping a unit's viability. (e.g Conquest basically demands you have a good Bowbreaker user by Chapter 25, which is easy enough when you ship Selena/Laslow, but I prefer Selena/Keaton) So by default Awakening gets my top spot in modern reclass systems.... except I hate how levels don't reset, which.
Unit Identity is really important to me, and I agree with pretty much everything that you've said in this video. It makes me sad seeing things like "Warrior Lindon is his best class." I've given a ton of thought to what the best class system would be, and I think the old promo system of one class per unit is the best. There are definitely moments where I make exceptions throughout the series, like how I'm (only slightly) more okay with Avatars going outside of their normal class routes; how I want Hilda and Edelgard to be a Hero because to me, it fits them (but sometimes Warlock since they have really interesting Spell lists); and how FE8's trees or Awakening's class pools manage to give players options but keep things within reason to the character, despite still having issues like Tana/Vanessa being optimal in a class that takes away the Pegasus from the Pegasus Knight, or the fact that Tiki, a dragon, can become a dragon-rider.
I actually think that the manakete-wyvern knight connection for Tiki and Nowi is actually really nice Because they're dragons, they're better at bonding with Wyverns
If they want to keep doing full reclassing, then they need to plan for a good compromise between customization and narrative at the conception of their games. Three Houses provides context and narrative and mechanical time that has to be spent developing a character towards one class, with your choice being logically easier or more difficult to accomplish based off the character's preferences. They can generally keep their unique outfits, their personality based personal skills matter more specifically in the early game when they're less polished, and they're not designed or written to be extremely associated with any gameplay role beyond weapons for the lords. This is in contrast to Engage, which designs characters to be associated with common series archetypes and classes, but lets you do whatever you want with them at random times at the cost of whatever made their designs special, replicating the mistakes of the DS games where they let you do whatever whenever with characters who completely revolve around their classes and the archetypes they created.
Feel like your underating three houses here as many characters are rather associated with certain classes. The lords especially and certain mage characters feel almost tied to their respective class ideas. Hence why you would rarely see lythesia as anything but a mage, due to how absurdly busted she is mechanically in that role. Likewise golden deers big dumb boi is probably going to be a footlocked melee class without major investment. And even with that little payoff. Yet we also get the opposite of this where golden deers cast are somewhat pigoened hole in their role it makes them a bit better for easy gameplay. Vs say the blue lions where few of them have a distinct mechanical identity to the point that you put all of them into draco knights with little sacrifice. While you can say make golden deer go against type you really don't much from it, lythesia as a Frontline is just bad and so is mage big boi. So even in the same game we see some units have rather strong unit identity mechanically speaking and some with extremely weak ones. Like the farmhand who sucks because he distinctly lacks one is a major component of his character.
A lot of Houses unit identity problems lie in the physical characters. Using your example Mercedes is a healbot with weak offense (Seriously her reason list is bad), Annette has accurate spells and rallies, Marianne trades utility for strong combat magic with high crit and more magic combat arts, and then there’s Lysithea.
I think Sacred Stones did a good job of this, and could be polished into a good modern system, where, say, every unit has a promotion tree, but once they promote they can freely reclass between those promotions. You can either stick to strict class trees, or make individual units define, or just color their class selection, maybe, say, Armor Knights can go to general, great knight, or Halberdier, but maybe this specific guy just doesn't like horses, so can do maybe Warrior instead of Great Knight. Maybe find a happy medium between Shadow Dragon reclassing, Sacred Stones branches, and Fates character class pools
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 I feel like simple promotion trees are not bad for older games, but in a newer game (that isn't a remake), it would be more fun to have at least some amount of options that make sense. I think awakening did this really well, though honestly, you could limit it more than awakening did and still have plenty of options for customization
Fates at least let you have almost any class on almost any character but with a somewhat steep condition through the S and A+ supports Completely free reclassing doesn't really work especially in engage where units have their personal bases designed to make up for bad/good class bases... that you then immediately reclass them out of - Such as Kagetsu, Merrin, Pandreo and Pannette that all start in weaker classes with better bases... compared to Bunet, Goldmary and Rosado, that start in stronger classes with lacking bases. You can reclass the first 4 to immediately make them completely busted, but the latter 3 are harder to fix. Goldmary at least has a nutty def base.
Good video! For me Ive really never enjoyed the customization aspect of the genre all that much tbh which is partially why I love triangle strategy so much each character feels mad unique to play with
I’m surprised you didn’t mentioned prf weapons as another way to give units a unique identity. In combination with personal skills and stats, prf weapons can give real good niches. Imagine a healer character to proclaims himself to be an exorcist, so he gets a personal white tome that’s effective against monsters. Maybe this is the only white magic tome in the game. Or maybe an old sword master with low strength, but given a personal brave sword that doesn’t inflict the same pentalties that other units would get using brave weapons (such as high weight or stat penalties). An old sword master who can consistently quad would be cool. Maybe he could get Luna too to really solidify his story.
Prfs are good, but I dislike the idea of locking a resource to a single unit. Promoted the fomo FE has always battled with, trying to make the player NOT reset for every small mistake. That said, SD did them best imo, having things like Excalibur at high Weapon Ranks, but Merric can use it at Base, so most of the game it's actually his prf. More game should de like that.
Kaga was experimenting with giving uniqueness to characters through prf all the way back in 4 and 5. The philosophy of giving units cool and unique weapons (and cool and busted weapons anyone can use) is alive and thriving in his later games. I recommend Vestaria Saga if you want to get an idea for this.The MC on lvl one has his Edelstern; a goated Brave Rapier. Throughout the game, units get prf weapons or you will acquire amazing weapons from enemies, chests, and shops. It’s even very well supported since you get access to weapon repairing items every few chapters. So, if you’re smart, you can really get some mileage out of a lot of the weapons.
This is why I think reclassing isn't always a good choice. Having a class is easily one of the strongest aspects of unit identity, since it's another aspect of unit appearance. And appearance is usually one of the things that you'll immediately notice about a unit. Although I hate Fates, I believe it does have the best reclassing options in the series. You have one innate, and you could get 2 more depending on who you support with. I think having more than one reclass starts to destroy unit identity, considering how few classes there often are in a game. For example, you can start to feel the overlap in reclassing options in Awakening even though a unit only has access to one more personal class.
I do really like Awakening's form of reclassing. Every unit gets enough to give them versatility and gives replay value while keeping a sense of uniqueness. Personally I really enjoy reclassing in modern games, I think Three Houses does it better than Engage however, because each unit has so much personality and character built into them they all feel unique with their own combat arts and whatnot. Engage doesn't have that and like you said, you can't even keep them in their default outfits (RIP Lapis and Panette, they're outfits are so fire). Engage in general is bad at highlighting characters, I think the system is fine if it's incorporated more like Three Houses or Awakening
another thing that Three Houses does to make class uniqueness happen is via the boons and banes when teaching a unit certain proficiencies. Like, a player's natural instinct with Lysithea is to make her a Gremory due to her faith and reason boons and because she is characterized as a magical prodigy, or more people would use Holy Knight Marianne because she has a proficiency in faith, horses, and a budding talent in lances (plus Blutgang) and because her character is tied to the goddess and animals. Other different ones are Leonie with Bow Knight due to her boons in Lances, Horses, and Bows. You can go so on and so forth with examples like these, like with Hubert, Raphael, Caspar, Lorenz, Felix, Ingrid, etc etc. And while it's true that unit identity does deteriorate after you become more accustomed to the system and realize the meta, it still helps to make at least your first one or two playthroughs memorable
Is it weird that Engage's characters always stood out to me in gameplay far more than 3H's did? I seem to be in a huge minority, but I find Engage's cast far more memorable than most do since most of them make a strong demonstration of their use-cases in their joining chapters. For example, Etie has a clear niche in oneshotting fliers (even on Maddening) in the early chapters and that alone makes her stand out in spite of fairly mediocre growths. Meanwhile, I struggle to differentiate Bernadetta, Ashe and Ignatz's gameplay roles in 3H, beyond "Ashe has a Locktouch personal skill I never needed" and "Ignatz sometimes ends up in Mortal Savant I guess". (Some of them get that useful volley-shot skill that you only really need on Maddening but I already forget who. I think Ignatz can be a rally-bot also?)
@@BigKlingythat’s because classes actually matter in engage while 3H lategame has every unit being virtually identical: -can one-round everything -can use any weapons -has canto+ -can take more hits than enough due to low enemy density Also not having 3/4 different early game helps
@@thomasquesada7248- Sounds like a skill issue. As in “I’m not skilled enough to beat this game with a diversified army, so wyvern rider army goooo!”
@@LucaxCorp lmao you can’t fucking read I had a very diversified army and it won’t change that 3H units are all virtually identical through high stats everywhere
Most often a personal skill is just not enough uniqueness. Compared to Engage Three Houses did a slightly better job at it with having exclusive combat arts and magic. As a game developer myself I understand that its often too much work too make every character unique, so you have to be creative to make him/her feel unique instead. In Engage it would be cool if the region the character is from had gameplay impact like all brodians having access to a specific class, skill or equipment unique to them or unique ring synergies(in addition to the subclass system).
They fiddled with that in Fates actually, most classes were divided along nationality, Nohrian or Hoshidan, a character often had access to a decent chunk of the classes from THEIR side through things like Supports and their own natural reclass options, but limited or no access to classes from the other side Edit: Weapons also got this treatment, to a lesser degree, you generally had 2 versions of most weapons, a Nohrian and a Hoshidan one, they differed in stats and trends a bit, nothing huge, but it occasionally meant one was more useful than the other between the Iron Sword and the Iron Katana for example
While I'm sympathetic to the effort involved in making entire large casts of characters feel unique, I'd also say that this should be one of Fire Emblem's primary objectives, as the large varied casts of unique characters are one of its most defining features. It seems like right now they only focus on making them unique *characters,* while letting them as units slip far too often into samey-ness.
CAs are really not the way. They're all basically the same thing, just with different names. And in maddening, the same happens to magic, since there is basically impossible for a mage to double, then only damage matters. And worse of all, this only makes it so units underperforming in magic can never become better at it, which is something the classic weapon rank system does (start bad, work hard and expend a lot for better staves). But 3h already makes it painfully slow and boring to level up any rank, so they might as well have done us a favor detering us fron grinding stupid stuff.
@@SinNun-tx5jp There's a lot of issues with how mages are constructed in general, in particular: They all get constructed the same for some reason, meanwhile, melee classes can literally have their highest and lowest stats swapped between Sword users and Axe users
I think making personal skills more wild is the play. In their current state, you can certainly piece together what a character is about from their skill name and effect, but the effects often don't feel impactful enough to warrant caring unless you really like said character for other reasons. One skill idea I was theorycrafting is for a "parry" for Arts/Gauntlet user who can disarm opponents upon evading their attack. While it would not be wholly reliable, it could set up plays that few if any other units could replicate if the player was feeling brave. But basically, let personal skills enable crazier things that are exclusive or nearly exclusive to that unit. Alear and Veyle's auras are even on the right track, despite just being auras because of how much they can alter a round of combat.
Honestly I really like Modern FE unit customization, It feel really nice when you find a unit/class/item combo that just works really well. I honestly really want to see more gimmicky personal skills. Cause alot of the engage and three houses personal skill just felt like a nice bonus rather than part of their identity. I think the most powerful skills should be the personal they get. Giving more personal skills a pop up or some other visual effect would also give more identity.
This is a good balancing factor i think. Like look at 3Hs's Bernadetta. That's a really bad unit on the basics, but when you account for the personal skill and the combination of skills she can learn like Vengeance, Pass and Encloser, she is a really unique unit. This should be more or less the standard way to go about it imo.
Personal skills could be a great way to add more identity. I think because the emblem rings could be passed around that made personal skills feel less important, but in a future iteration without emblems I could see three or four personal skills really affecting how units develop and function in a team.
@@guedesbrawl i personally don’t like extensive reclassing and unit customization. I prefer being given limitations and having to strategize from there, it feels boring and pointless without the limitations on the characters. This is probbaly the main reason i don’t enjoy the newer games as much. When I play I do try to push them onto the path that makes sense for them, but it’s less enjoyable knowing that I could do some bs and win for free.
Additionally 3H characters have different boons and banes in weapon growth, budding talents, and different spell pools. These things helped make the characters unique which was kinda missing in Engage bc the gimmick of the Emblems was easy to pass around to anyone, personals don’t add much, and the Emblem skill changes are based on class type not on the unit themselves. So in Engage the only unique units were the royals, Alear, Veyle, Zelestia, Nel, and Rafal bc they have unique classes
Unit clothes and attire is mostly an increased expectation from a more customizable game and envisionment standards to me. In older games, the static picture for characters means that someone like Amelia won't gain massive shoulder guards or a suit of armor within that picture when she class changes but you don't really imagine her going into battle without it. Nor do units gain an attire variation that is unique to them other than maybe color variations within those games either save for a few select units. Stat and skill wise, I unironically learned from FEH and various gacha games that these and game balance is a fucking thin line held together by scotch tape. You have FEH's skill inheritance system where a unit is only differentiated by 1 unique skill (so far), their thesis-long weapon description, and stats that vary among units of similar generational BST by 1 to X points which is considered moot in the long term. The term godswords exist for a good reason, and there's no Kagetsu yet.
an oft-ignored element of customization in discussions like these is the very selection of which characters you choose to use in a game. to go as far as to remove something like reclassing or even branched promotions entirely is not to meaningfully put any real end to customization and both should be on the table when discussing paths forward (even if customization for its own sake is an easier crowd-pleaser than more defined individual units when it comes to official releases). when you remove something like branched promotion, different outcomes for two characters in the same starting class is an avenue for unit identity that now exists. likewise, stuff like gaiden and echoes show that limiting who exactly can change classes can result in an setup of "customization of your starting team" without rendering the entire cast merely a selection of portraits to apply to whatever class utility you consider their statline to be suited to.
It'd be interesting if they experimented with this compromise via a personal skills that could evolve with a limited class pool. Like, the unit had a base personal skill no matter what, but in it's 'ideal classes' the skill grew and enhanced itself to better synchronize with its intended classes. So there's a clear benefit to conforming to unit intention, but still some freedom to break the mold. also more unique unit models is literally always a good call, even if that's only by way of giving the character a specific color set that's applied regardless of class.
Customization is a big priority for me, but I also don't like characters to lose ALL their identity in the name of flexibility, because then there's nothing interesting to do with the customization. For me the line is somewhere between Fates and Three Houses-and I admit, it may just be because a huge chunk of units in 3H join at roughly the same time and in the same class, but when I look at the cast I may as well be looking at a bunch of cookie-cutter soldiers spit out of a character generator. It just doesn't get the neurons firing, at least until you dig in to their growths and skill/magic learnsets. Meanwhile, Fates gets me excited right-off to see what you can do with a unit that applies their existing strengths in unexpected ways, like Outlaw Nyx with a Shining Bow or... well, a lot of stuff with the beast units. It's a fine line, but the two should be working together imo, not fighting for space.
I like the awakening or fate classes though i'm fine with either option honestly i like both customizing and identity so whoch ever one i get i'll be happy
games should also use prf weapons to make characters unique. In Berwick Saga, there's a mage who gets a wind orb that attacks 4 times for low damage, which is great against low-res enemies, another who gets a fire orb that attacks once for high damage, which can chunk just about any enemy, and a third who gets a thunder orb that attacks for 2-range, which pairs well with his anti-archer skill. My favorite is the sword that attacks 3 times but sets evade to 0.
I did think of this as well, I think the main issue is, cast size. I tried it myself and it actually gets pretty hard to make a prf weapon for every single character, and then you still have to deal with the implications. In a sense personal skills have a similar issue as well, and the engage personal skills felt kinda eh. Even in 3h or fates they were kinda hit or miss as well. That being said, I'm not opposed to the idea, if they can pull it off successfully that would be great. IF that is.
Even kaga (since fe5) only gave unique weps to some and not the rest, heavily nudging players to use certain characters while the rest are irredeemable garbage.
@@inconemay1441 I think theres only one character in Berwick who is irredeemable garbage, and even he gets the Gullveig as his effective prf. Sure for example the Jagen doesnt get a prf, but he also doesnt need one.
In terms of personal skills I adore, Timera’s really takes the cake for me. Not only is it pretty nice to have, reducing enemy crit in a 2 tile radius is always nice, but it also really synergises well with what we know about her. She loves singing but is also sorta terrible at it (as evidenced by like half her supports). Idk, it just makes me happy thinking about it Edit: Racket of Solm is the skill’s name
@@SinNun-tx5jp Not every engrave gives dodge. You have 10-12? deployment slots and a select few engraves that gives crit avoid. As someone who’s played ironman runs before, even a 1% crit chance is scary, and sometimes there is no way to avoid it.
@@ThisIsntATH-camr there's 6 engraves that give dodge in vanilla and 3 Emblems that give luck (4 with Roy, I believe any unit has enough luck growth for at least 1 point), that's 9 or 10 units who are warded from almost all enemies, for there's very few enemies with killers. And that is asuming they were ever threatened, because luck gives 1 dodge while dex is only 0.5 crit, so most enemies are just below naturally. Seriously, pretty much only Ivy has to ever worries about crits, as if Eirika, a marth or fire engrave didn't already were exelent choices for her. Also, 10 frontline units, units who see retaliation often, is already, very unrealistic. Likely there'll be 3 to 5, less depending on how much you juggernaut, the rest are likely player phase bots who dread ever getting hit already. And arguing anything could go wrong in an ironman, still doesn't justify the fear of crits, because there are other ways mitigate thier threat. Sheer defense also, Ike, monk blocks, attacking out of range, getting out of range preemtively, rallies (do supports give dodge in this? I never bothered) , etc. Even in a game were there's weapons with innate dodge, it's cheaper and better to just use the game mechanics. In fates is just better to pair up than supply each unit a bronze, and pretty much only Arthur will have the issue consistently.
I liked how Three Houses balanced unit identity tbh - any unit can be any class but a lot of other levers are pulled to make each one distinct - Proficiencies, learned Skills, Combat Arts, Spell Lists, Crests, even starting houses/join conditions. Even whether a unit has a just has crest or doesn’t changes up their possibility space a lot thanks to the Relic Weapons. Units like Sylvain or Catherine have a really unique identity just based on their conditions to join. I think Engage has some of this stuff - whether a unit joins before or after Ch.10, and thus can’t inherit stuff like Canter until later chapters, makes big difference imo. But overall, there’s not much making them unique besides growths
I appreciate Engage actually keeping some of the character's colors when changing classes like in the sprite era. But damn it would kickass if they went back to each character having only a handful of classes so they could design each outfit with more detail and personality. Even with the same base, two different characters as Snipers could look very unique
The unique character outfits in Engage could've been implemented the same as how 3 Houses has an option that allows you to customize their outfit. Personally, I would just make each character have their unique outfit available as an option for every class (except the supposed restriction on the mounted classes).
I very much prefer units being in one class line with no reclassing. At most maybe certain units like trainees or villagers can exist that have more class options.
I like fates system of sharing skills so new game plus is more interesting on early skills for easier early mode especially if you want to do conquest Same with capture units those are fun and give an extra giant cast of characters to your group A good unit to me is either early with good growths to build up or mid/late game with a bulky enough set that they only need a seal or a few levels to be on par. Trainee units must be early game or else they are just Amelia ewain in not needed as some of the early mage or horse units are just better in general by then
Adding onto that visual aesthetic point: Every character in the game has a handful of personal outfits just for them. The problem is these are ONLY usable in the base. They don't impact most of the gameplay, so I kinda forgot about them by the time I left Brodia.
@kollie79engage uses different models on map than in battle/3d so it would be too big for the game to make every outfit accessible in combat, they should let you use the base outfit tho
@@thomasquesada7248A go big or go home situation, either put all that monumental effort onto adding them to combat or just don't bother putting them in since the only usable places are too short and inconsecuancial.
I feel like there were some key things that were missed about how the character customization still maintains a character’s uniqueness aside from stats and personal skills. One being that, at least in 3H, no two units can do the exact same thing even if they share certain qualities. Having Linhardt as a Bishop and having Flayn as a Bishop is having two very different Bishops. Even though they have the same offensive magic, their supportive magic is different. Same thing with having Ferdinand as a (primarily) Lance using Paladin and having Lorenz as a (primarily) Lance using Paladin, since only one of those two gets access to Swift Strikes. Also Ferdinand has more weapon proficiencies which means it is easier to make him a more versatile Calvary unit overall compared to Lorenz who would require more work. I think unit learnsets does a good job of displaying their uniqueness as it shows us their capabilities and also says something about their character. Like how the only characters in 3H capable of using Dark Magic are characters that are connected to TWSITD. And 3H isn’t the first game to do it. Even though in Echoes it is kind of hard to make everyone the same class (since only the dread fighter can be reclassed to villager), most mages/magic classes can be pretty unique since certain units learn certain spells. Kliff was actually my preferred mage over Luthier because Kliff just had a better set of spells and (to my knowledge) Luthier never had anything to offer that could compete. Also having Silque and Faye as my Clerics gave me two completely different support units that offered different things. So even though not every game will have the learned skills system, it’s possible for units to be customizable and still unique. It would just require some playing around on the part of the devs.
Unit identity is the absolute most important part of Fire Emblem for me, it's why I have hundreds of hours across countless playthroughs of both Awakening and Fates, while I've only played through 3H three times and am yet to complete a single Engage campaign. There's a critical balance that needs to be struck between keeping units distinct and allowing unit customisation. I think Fates hit that balance the best (if you ignore the online features), with each unit being defined by a personal skill, stats/growths and their two starting classes, and customisability available in a choice of two additional classes that come via making careful decisions about which character pairings are going to be of most benefit (and are going to feel the most in-character, if you're into the dating sim side of the game). Engage adds one thing to that formula, having class-locked class skills that add a little bit more value to the decision of what a unit's final class should be, but then destroys that by making most of a unit's definition come from which engage they're equipped with, giving every unit access to every one of the core classes, and then contradicting themselves by giving half the units unique classes that further removes customisation and isn't actually giving them that much unit identity anyway thanks to the lack of skills. And I think that when any unit can be anything, that isn't really customisation either, because it feels arbitrary. I enjoy customising Lissa in Awakening because it's funny to give a giant axe to this healer who starts off unable to even attack, and then work out what combination of available skills is going to best enable her to smash skulls. If Lissa were in Engage, she'd just be yet another unit who has equal right to be any class, who just happened to start as a cleric. Giving her an axe and face-smashing skills isn't "customising Lissa", it's just allocating one of the models I have to one of the classes in the list. In Engage, Framme quickly became my favourite character to begin with because I put Micaiah on her and that made her this versatile problem-solver, the most unique unit in my party. But as I played more, I soon realised that there was nothing unique about Framme at all, this was all just the result of putting Micaiah on a Monk vessel, and because every character can be a Monk and every character can use Micaiah, then this wasn't a good customisation choice to maximise Framme's value, I just happened to have assigned Framme's model and name to the "teleporting Monk" unit template. I don't think unit identity and customisation are opposed, and I don't think Engage represents high customisation Fire Emblem. Customisation requires limitations. Customisation is being given a set of options and creating the combination that speaks the most to you. In Fates, you get a new puzzle on every single unit. In Engage, there's one puzzle, the class list, and you do that same puzzle as many times as you have units you can be bothered to grind, with only very slight and entirely optional variations.
I like making my own units specialization! For example, my Hortenzia is the queen of quirky battle strats with her 4 staffs that disrupt the ennemy's plan and she rarely ever attacks on her turn. It's really fun to deviate from the classic "this unit is good on offense and this one is good on defense".
I think the opposite of most people. 3H and Engage have the strongest unit identity in the entire series. People tend to forget an important thing. Cross game identity. Navarre, Joshua, PoR Zihark and so on to me have 0 identity because they all blend together in a generic archetype that exist every game whitout adding anything that make them stand out. Only Rutger stand out by being broken. Felix however, is a lot more than that. He can play like that but he can leverage his stats in completely different ways. A perfect example is something i am doing in my re H5 SD run. Draug is a fairly generic Armorknight that do hia job and then get benched. This run i noticed that he was faster than Gordin and Castor and decided to try an hunter reclass. He became much more interesting. First, a glass cannon archer, then, after i promoted and brought him back in General, a bow focussed armorknight so fast it double most mobs. I never played a bow focussed armor, let alone a fast one. This is unique and is something few characters could pull off because few character join at low level and an high speed growth in SD. As for engage, i spent hours upon hours on the spreadsheets to figure out wich kind of build can be run with each characters. I never had this much fun planning builds in FE and a big reason for it is that the combination of reclassing and fixed mode allow me to know exactly that X unit met Y benchmark with Z resources.
The high customization, rather than allow for player expression, gives me analysis paralysis. Too many options and I can't decide which direction to go in.
customising units is just way too much fun to give up now that it's in the series. imo fates did it best - the smaller initial pool of classes helped make each unit feel distinct, but also, because getting outside of a unit's primary/secondary class option involved support, by the time you have them in a class with a more generic appearance you already have a good feel for how the unit plays and what their character is. also it's just a lot of fun navigating a unit through the class system in order to accrue skills or make non-standard builds (I have a great memory of a playthrough where I got camilla into onmyoji for example)
I just remembered how Valkyria Chronicles handled their units. Since Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy game with tanks and guns classes are exactly that, classes. You don`t train your units individually you train classes instead. What differentiates your units/characters are a list of up to 4 personal quirks, which can be both positive and negative. A veteran with a back injury for example suffers from accuracy loss, when he hides behind sandbag cover, so he is more suited for offensive tasks or aproaching through tall grass. Another one loves the smell of grass, so she gets accuracy boosts when running through grass instead of roads. Plus, your units/characters unlock an additional quirk, when you use them more often, which is often more directly related to being at the front.
@@MrSentinel07 Yeah, Darkest Dungeon uses something similar. While you have generic units with the same basic abilities, they can be more suited for different tasks depending on the random quirks they come with and develop during their expeditions. (though you have the option to remove them or make them permanent for min-maxing).
I think there's a lot of room for middle ground in this topic. One I think would be worth trying is Preferred Classes, where you can re-class into anything but each unit has 1 base and 1 or 2 promoted classes that they prefer and get a bonus while in, like maybe they get an additional skill in that class or a stat bonus as well as their unique outfits while all other classes get generic outfits. Like maybe a character who starts in Myrmidon can promote into Hero for Sword Avoid +20 or Sword Master for Desperation, but all other units don't get either of those bonuses, or an Armor Knight that can promote to Fortress Knight with +1 Move or Great Knight with +4 Speed. Another good option would be limiting how many times you can reclass. Maybe your reclass item isn't sold in stores and you get 1 from completing a story chapter and theres 2-3 available from paralogues or enemy drops but that's it. You can guaranteed reclass one unit and if you go out of your way you can get some others, but for the most part you are stuck with their bases and the limited promotion options for that base
I personally think that what was said about reclassing in Awakening as opposed to Fates is a bit misleading, just take Hayato in Fates, for example: he starts as a diviner thanks to his talents lying mostly in magic, and when you fight him as an enemy in Conquest, he's promoted into an onmyoji, which highlights his focus on magic predominately. Yet despite it seeming to be at odds with his character as presented by his starting class, he can heart seal into an oni savage, which being big, extremely bulky and muscular is very much so at odds with Hayato's identity as a mage, and without context, it doesn't make a lot of sense as a reclassing option that he would naturally have access to. But knowing that Hayato is the adopted son of Fuga changes this perception completely in my opinion: Fuga himself is also very muscular and extremely skilled in martial combat, and as Hayato's father figure, it is reasonable to think that he would look up to his tribe's chieftain, which is reinforced in their supports in Revelations. It's also worth noting that perhaps another reason why Hayato would have the oni savage as a heart seal reclass is because one of it's promotions is able to use tomes, thus tying back to his magical talents as a diviner. A similar argument could be made for Elise being able to reclass into a wyvern rider in Conquest, as she similarly looks up to her big sister Camilla, of whom shares this class line. For both of these 2 units, however, they can still effectively become any class existing in the game with supports from other units by unlocking the options to use a friendship or partner seal, regardless rather we're talking about the dark mage, knight, samurai, archer, or whatever else have you -- the difference is that they aren't going to have all of these options from one playthrough to the next since what they get in this context can be changed depending on who you prioritize them gain support points with. Because of this, I would argue that much like in Awakening, a character's natural reclassing options tell us something about that character, because regardless of how many classes they technically have access to because of the way the game's reclassing system works and lets you incorporate a wide variety of other characters' classes into the mix, the ones that they DO have naturally (by that I mean using a combination of heart and master seals) can NOT change and vary and are effectively set in stone. That said, I do think that this was the roots of where unit identity started to matter less came from, as while Awakening also had the same kind of flexibility in choosing classes for different characters, it was only applied to the child units, such as Severa, Brady, Gerome, or Lucina -- this was changed in Fates to give every character access to effectively whatever class they wanted, with the game even doing away with certain classes like the pegasus knight or fighter being limited by sex: this means that (as previously stated more than once) any character can be any of the different base classes in the game. It was Fates giving the player this kind of flexibility that I think influenced this aspect of game design moving forward, since now there was something of an expectation being set for this to become a more regular feature moving forward, and this was only further encouraged by the playerbase enjoying having more of this newfound freedom -- both in terms of having fun messing with how you choose to play each unit from one playthrough to the next to help keep things more interesting, and also in giving players that are interested enough more options to choose from to better optimize certain units by choosing classes based both on what they want that unit to do as well as what skills they want them to learn. This leads me to think that the problem has to do with how freely you can choose different classes in the most recent games -- a point in which I do agree with from this video -- because at least in Fates and Awakening, you still had certain class sets that each character had no matter what, and this by default doesn't give them every class in the game -- you have to work for that if there's a particular class you want a certain unit to be that they don't have readily available to them -- by removing this makes each character feel less unique in this regard because you can have every character become a certain class if it so tickles your fancy. While I know all this doesn't give any attention to anything else like stats, join time, aesthetics and whatnot brought up in this video, I do, however feel that class is still one of the more important factors in unit identity overall, because even in games with the ability to reclass, most of the time, the average player will probably think of a certain character based on what class they are when first recruited -- not to say the other things don't have an impact on this topic -- but we connect with characters based on this because regardless of whatever you do with them, 'their class' will be what they are identified as because it's set in stone
Unit identity makes customization so much more fun, if anyone can be anything for free then there's not much point thinking about what to do, instead you're just filling a quota of what to use I want the fates system again, unique class sets with opportunity cost methods of having any option available, and personal skills that all have some kind of useful niche and encourage using certain classes for synergy
Something that could also be done regarding unique outfits is to have certain themes. For example: Default outfit, strong unit outfit, mounted outfit, light armor outfit, and caster outfit. That can still make units feel unique and not be as brutal on the designs
Unit Identity is super important to me. FE9 is easily my favorite Fire Emblem - which has very little unit customization, but I still really feel like the RPG mechanics stand out. In FE9, its not about customizing a unit, its more about allocating your resources (EXP, BEXP, Only 1 Forge per chapter, skill scrolls are consumable, etc.) and that makes it so that you end up customizing your army as a whole rather than individual units. I haven't played any of the games prior to 9, but I've played Awakening, Fates, Three Houses, and Engage. I get major analysis paralysis in all of them. The way I end up enjoying the game is to just bump the difficulty down to Hard instead of Maddening or Lunatic, and then very heavily limiting reclassing. Like, I'll change a couple units class here and there, but its almost always a permanent change - I'll make an Archer into a Myrmidon and then promote to Swordmaster and keep them there, for example.
My thoughts exactly. Imagine how an amazing chapter like Elinica’s Gambit would be butchered in a game with reclassing? Part of what makes that chapter special is that most of those units are very particular in what they can do because their identity is so strong. The devs knowing what you have access to is considered in the map design. Player customization is cool but the series played excellently without it and I don’t think it’s really worth the drawbacks; I’d rather they focus on improving other game elements entirely.
what would solve this is give units special classes based on the weapon and starting class and their growth rate I think that would give each character some uniqueness. Some examp[les for engage characters lapis-a sword user class with high speed, merrin-a sword rider, panette-armored axe user, chloe-special flyer just for her, diamant-a exclusive class for being a lord character. citrine get an exclusive mage class Another way to fix things bring back the pairing system from awakening and make it so if a character wants to reclass into a class that uses a different weapon, they have to pair up with a unit using that weapon. Ex if a lance user want to reclass into a magic class they have to pair up with a magic unit or if they want to become an armored axe unit and is a lance unit, they have to pair up with an armored unit then switch to pairing up with an axe unit. The class would be determine by the support level between characters c=beginner, b=advanced, A=master class
I really enjoy the class system in Fates because it feels like a decent balance of what you mentioned. You have limited class pools for each character, and through their reclass options it can tell us more about the character, like Charlotte being able to reclass into troubadour to play into her act as a really dainty and helpless maiden. But then you get some customization options through the A+ and S rank class seals. Sure, Corrin can become anything under the sun, but it's more restrictive for other characters, and kind of a pain to move one skill you got for a character over into another file.
I think no reclassing or Sacred Stones promotion trees are best. I also appreciate the Tellius games which allow units to choose a weapon type to gain the ability to wield upon promotion based on their class. This doesn't count as a reclass or even a branching promotion, but it feels so good to do. It feels like you're actually gaining something when you choose the weapon type and aren't just arbitrarily shuffling around unit classes to try and put a specific character in their ideal class or learn specific skills, or even just arbitrarily promoting for the stat bonuses and 20 extra levels to grind through. Really fun way of making promotions feel important, plus it also allows for unit identity to be partially influenced by the player without compromising individuality on the whole. Oscar can't just start flying on a wyvern out of nowhere and wear ugly spiky armor while wielding a weapon he didn't even start out using, but he can now use bows, swords, or axes depending on the player's choice.
I really love how you broke down the different ways FE characters have identity and feel memorable. The flavor, pacing, context. There’s a surprising amount of overlap with those ideas in other video games with large casts, and even other mediums like D&D, books, movies, and shows.
11:54 In regards to the outfits, I think it’d be really cool if they changed it to something similar to what Xenoblade 3 did! Each character has their own outfit that gets a different layer on top for each class. I’m very bad at explaining it haha but it might help make each unit feel more distinct!
6 videos deep Started plying fire emblem again after years off. Whole twitter drama years back put me off of 3H. Got back into my gba carts and I love this channel. Picked up engage and will eventually finish 3H. Subbed. Thank you for the content!
I would love some kind of option to allow a character to keep their unique outfit in other similar classes. I like to experiment but sometimes the personal colours of a unit really don't work with some of the generic class looks. Yunaka and Kagetsu in engage can be hard to reclass because their colour scheme doesn't fit very well with some of the other classes. But I get why the developers don't want to create a unique version of every class outfit, it's way too much work. The flexibility of being able to reclass and try new things adds a lot of replay value for me. As an example in my current 'oops all backup units' run of engage I'm testing out the great hero Hortensia with Micaiah. So far it's been very interesting to have her in the centre of the formation, poking and doing utility staff things. But I wouldn't be able to do these silly things, without the option to reclass to whatever I want. A thought might be to keep a specific set of reclass options that have unique looks for characters and when you complete the game and are in new game+ you get the option of reclassing to whatever you want and the aesthetics can be a little more jank (still keep the option for the base class outfit though). But I would also like to see randomization options in the base game once you are in new game+ as well, which is a common mod for older titles.
I'd say a good way to keep the unique identity while keeping the large customization would be by taking cues from Three Hopes and having a class promotion line specific for units that allows them to keep their unique outfit. I'd add having "unique class skills" as well. Class skills that only this specific unit possesses.
Not a mainline entry of the series but I love how Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes gave each character a Unique Ability or Attribute that makes them always unique.. even if you can just use a merc whistle to get that ability as an Item anyone can equip.. For example I love playing Petra due to her Wind Step ability
I feel like make some kind of compromise between the two. Add Three Houses weapon proficiency system but if that unit is bad with a weapon, give that character an stats/damages dealt penalty since not everyone can master combat with every weapons, if an unit is good with an weapon, then give it an bonus and if neutral then nothing. Give every characters an "canon" set of classes like where they got their personal outfit with that class but still allow to change to any classes. Also make personal skill more interesting maybe. (As much as I hate Horstensia, I will always remember her from Engage because of her heal bot personal skill.) Or all the personalisation aspect part could be an reward as part of a new game + mode or simply part of Casual mode, I think there many ways to fix the problem and still make everyone happy to be honest.
Friendship seals i feel were the best way to do both customization and keep unit identity. Ex.) You could grab fighter skills as Selena without even swapping to fighter, then you could swap to wyvern to capitalize on her high bulk along with the +5 hp skill you grabbed earlier OR make use of gamble on her high skill classes.
Generally speaking when it comes to reclassing I tend to not to reclass often because I like units in their cannon class. To me it just feels right in my mind.
Personally, I think they need to dial back the accessibility of class availability. The unit/class availability in Fates was probably the best balance. Every unit had a secondary class and they could gain access to a 3rd and 4th class through friendship and S-supporting, meaning you had to actually work for these rewards. Meanwhile in Engage, certain classes are abundantly overused (Wyvern, Warrior and Mage Knight) simply by virtue of being the strongest classes in the game that anyone can access. Units no longer fill a niche because a certain unit will just do that job better. The only true Niche-fillers in Engage (and with DLC, it's debatable) are some of the royal units, notably Ivy and Hortensia (and to a lesser degree, Fogato), due to their unique classes. And Seadall, for obvious reasons. The sheer volume of availability actually hurts the overall strategy of the game. Why bother using Swordmasters when Hero is just better? The class offers nothing except a mobility skill designed to encourage setup, but then you can just use a Wyvern to one-round the enemy and make positioning strats using Swordmaster/Haberdiers completely irrelevant.
To me, unit feel is incredibly important. Not the *most* important thing, but it's the best way to set apart repeat playthroughs. Making you experiment with different units to wildly different results, instead of maybe using different units in the same classes that still enable all the same tactics. Also, gameplay niches attached to characters means experimenting will often endear you to the character themselves as well. Using new characters for gameplay reasons also gives you their supports, their quotes, their animations. Maybe on a first run you only used Robin and Henry as mages, maybe then you use Miriel and Tharja. Or maybe you reclass Lissa to Sage and Sumia to Dark Flier. You'll still have two mages at the end of the day, but with very different feeling experiences. I do believe fates does it best - every unit gets one additional classline, but every classline is theoretically available to any unit. However, getting access to those classes requires a LOT of planning via S and A+ supports, and the limited number of seals (especially in conquest, where you can't grind either). If there's one build your heart is set on, then you CAN make it possible - it just takes a lot of work, and everybody else is going to be kicking around in their default classes. The one additional classline also tells a story for all of them. Maybe Jakob and Felicia both start as servants, but Jakob reclasses to the Cavalier classline and Felicia to Troubadour, making Jakob a more physically offensive unit, and Felicia a magical/supporting one, which also reflects back on their personalities, as Jakob is a strict "do it yourself to do it best" type, meaning as Cavalier he can charge ahead and deal with enemies, whereas Felicia always attempts to support others with various tasks out of disbelief in her own abilities. And that's just the story told by their class pool in tandem with their suppports, without personal skills and stats attached, because both of these further enhance these traits. Generally I'm really tired of "anyone can be anything with little effort." On one hand it's choice paralysis - if anyone can be anything, then what the hell do I do with them? This problem was most evident in Three Houses, where everybody starts in the Commoner/Noble class and you need to figure out "intended" class paths through talents, less so in Engage where everyone at least starts in a functional class for them. On the other hand it just makes repeat playthroughs boring, because again, I can just do the same thing with different faces. At least if I pick between Miriel and Tharja, they have access to different types of magic, meaning Miriel gets effective damage against fliers, and Tharja gets all the weird shenanigans dark tomes get up to. Both magic users, but with twists between them. Damn this was a whole essay. That is to say, great video! Great points, I agree with all of em, basically. I wish customizability hit more limits. Sometimes playing inside the box is all the more interesting, just to see how you can break the box from the inside.
I like class variety when it aligns with the character's identity. It makes sense that trainee units in Sacred stones have a wider tree of promotion options, and it makes sense that the villagers in SoV can choose a class. The freedom doesn't feel as good when the options contradict the unit's personality and interests.
12:36 or making several sets of outfits for each class- a practical one, a fancy one, a ragged one, etc. That way the outfits can still fit the personality, even if they are generic.
In three houses I felt each unit was unique because of the skills and combat arts they learned that set them apart from each other. Ashe, Ignatz, and Bernie are very different because they learn different combat arts while also all having VERY different personal skills. From kinda niche to really op. Three houses managed to make units unique in combat arts and skills that you could tutor As for engage units tend to feel less unique. I still love their personalities but overall the personal skills did not do much and personal stats are just simply unbalanced between all of the units. It makes units less unique because they have less unique things about them to set them apart
I feel its disingenuous to call them "destined to be a hunters volley bot" Sure you can do that but even in the same class their personal skills make them more unique and unique combat arts to do that as well. Ignatz gets some neat sword combat arts and he is extremely accurate. He can be known for having super consistent criticals. Bernadetta has vengence which can make her a satisfying boss killer who can melt someone in one hit. Ashe.... Well he doesn't get much but hey sometimes being mediocre can make a unit feel unique in that way.
@@SleepyBrady You are right IGN and Bern aren't the same unit and Ashe is thier knock off. Bern and Ashe are both knock off of IGN. Bern's personal is worse Defiant attack, which any men can and should get, specially if commoner. If anything, this means Bern peaks earlier, for she has nothing to work on after sniper.
I like customization to an extent. Being able to do something like dismount a flyer or cavalier to cater towards a chapter. However, being able to do something like tell Florina “Hey you’re gonna wear heavy armor now and be a general” would just feel wrong unless you had to actually put in the work. The Three Houses system is close to being good but just doesn’t get there. It tells you the intended direction for characters but doesn’t really punish you for doing your own thing, and if changing that direction had to be earned it would be a lot better. Don’t force me to mold them from a generic student, make them heavily specialized in something and make me work for the change. It’s why I love the system in Fates and can live with the systems in Awakening, which is the second best, and even Shadow Dragon, where you’re limited based on how many of a unit type you already have.
You perfectly spoke how I felt about every unit having access to every class. That was one of the gripes I had when playing Three Houses: every unit could very well just be the same. At least Three Houses gave you the option to keep their personal outfits, where Engage didn't... What's with that cosmetic step-down? Lol Personal skills help differentiate between units giving them their own identity... if done correctly. It's sad that some characters are stuck with oddly specific, impractical or unimpactful personal skills.
I’ve always focused significantly more on using units as I think they are “intended”, like keeping the units within their initial class line. Not optimal I guess, but I think it helps merge gameplay and personality mode in a way that I like. It also never feels like I’m “exploiting” the game, as I value experiencing the game close to dev intention. Even though newer games give you a lot of options to mess with classes, I’ve never felt like I wanted to really mess around with them because I just prefer keeping characters in their own class line for thematic purposes. With so many people focusing on stats and optimization in the FE community, I’m glad to hear that there are other people still thinking about unit identity.
Maybe it's just because I'm new: I got on with 3 houses, and enjoyed my time with Engage. But I feel like unit identity's decrease is in service to something that the games continue to put emphasis on: Character's finding their spaces to play in. Because here's the thing, Engage and 3 houses have some HUGE rosters. I reckon it's assumed that not everyone is going to like every character, and so on. For instance, I love engage's Boucheron and Etie, but overlooked Vander. Mostly because of cultural osmosis telling me he had massive death flags, and his experience requirements seeming high enough that I just assumed he wouldn't be around for long. But I wanted to play him still. I liked the old codger. And I found ways to use him, often shepherding around and drawing aggro for characters I could level easier, with special note going to Jean and the rest of the kids over all, who all have things they start specialized in. But get to play around with as the game goes on. This loop itself kind of repeated a few times over, and I found myself using this flexibility to find not what I thought was their best thing, but what their most interesting thing was. I used what few weaknesses these characters had to characterize them and make them distinct to my playthrough, and that's the mark I feel the games have been trying to hit. From what I can tell there's more ROOM for character/player expression in the last two models, and so they're leaving it there for you to create your teams and rosters. Almost like pokemon in a way. Which - Concerning lmao. But I enjoyed it. IUDK.
One thing on the unique outfits is I think units should keep unique outfits when moving down certain classes. 3 Houses tries this giving unique appearences to some of the characters for certain Tier 2 Classes but the lack of proper "direct" Tier 3 upgrades for some classes ment you'd lose the asthetic if you wanted to keep upgrading a unit. The idea is there but the execution is lacking and id almost rather not have the 3rd tier classes if they couldnt design for them in that way. Someone else in the comments said it best in that the reason for larger casts in older games was because they needed characters to fill a wide variety of unit roles for the player. But in a game where customization is king that isnt necessary and id much rather have a smaller cast with more heavy focus on them as individuals. A smaller cast also means more time can be spent giving them more unique models and animations for other classes that would otherwise be spent on making a whole other unit. One side thing that also bugs me is that theyve pushed this "customize characters however you want" but still gender lock classes for whatever goddamn reason? I appreciate slightly that Engage toned it down but the Pegknight restriction is still there and the restrictions in 3Houses are just completely goofy
Unit identity is crucial for me, even with branched promotions and reclassing. I remember reclassing everyone in Awakening for skills and then getting them to the class I thought fit them better as characters. Even in Sacred Stones, I pick the class that I think fits the character's personality better.
Re: Merrin vs Kagetsu, I actually think Merrin has the better first impression. Once you have the timewheel back the map's basically over, I find that Kagetsu almost never does anything for me on 11 (maybe one attack). Merrin puts in a lot of work on 13 in comparison. The bigger reasons imo are that Kagetsu is just better (even if not by THAT much the difference is still there), and that the game more strongly encouraging reclassing Kagetsu. Merrin does way better in Wolf Knight than Kagetsu does in SM, so most players will only reclass Kagetsu and keep Merrin in Wolf Knight. Additionally Kagetsu gets an A sword rank in B+/B+ classes while Merrin doesn't get a boost in anything, which while not actually being that important, further pushes most from reclassing her. So in general I think unit identity largely suffered due to emblem identity being more important, which I think they did an excellent job with. And while I think completely free reclassing is a mistake and I'd prefer they go back to class sets or revisit Engage's proficiency system (and make it way harder/impossible to learn new ones), I find myself having way less issue with it in Engage compared to 3H. You bring up join situation, and I think 3H unit identity suffers tremendously from the game dumping a full roster on you, all with a blank slate class. Who units are competing with for levels and resources, whether they had access to the early game emblems, stat spreads, Engage just does so much better for me than the amorphous blob that is the 3H students, where it feels like anything I'd try to turn them into just devolves into either vantage/wrath sweeper or combat art spammer. I actually think one of the bigger problems with Engage was with weapon ranks, it's harder for individual weapon proficiencies to be meaningful when the most impactful weapons are almost always at C (magic/killer) or B (Tomahawk). Not letting you choose default outfits in Engage was a bizarre choice and I'm not sure why they didn't provide the option. There are some sick palettes out there (Great Knight Celine makes me want to start another run just so I can use that) but just...why?
Welp, I'm commenting on a video. To answer the question you asked at the end of the video, I personally would prefer a loser system that allows me to bring the units I care about over a system that makes me bring units I don't care for. The thing I disagree with is your assertion that we can't have unique uniforms for every class, there are two solution to this. First solution is just to have fewer characters, that way you can spend more time and resources on their design and story. Second being to have class skins be variations on a theme where all of them are wearing the same uniform but have customized it in a way that matches their characters. (Scruffy characters have a wrinkled uniform, sneaky characters continue to wear darker clothes, squishy characters might wear a bit less armour then other people in the same class, Rosado wears the female version of the class armour, child characters uniform might be noticeably a little to large for them, ect, ect) I think little tweaks like that would absolutely be enough to preserve that class identity you where talking about.
I'd actually like less customization. I just get hit by choice paralysis when I have too many options, and would rather have a game balanced around mor elimited sets of usable tools. If you look at Shadows of Valentia's Rise of the Deliverance maps on hard mode, those, especially the final map, were extremely fun. That's because they could balance it around a team they knew you'd have. I couldn't nuke through the enemies with one unit. I had to trade around the horseslayer, I had to swap around unit placements, etc... I'm not saying to remove leveling and everything, but having less to customize means easier balance because the developper knows what you could feasibly have to work with at that specific time. For skills, Path of Radiance did it best. Soren was the wind mage with Adept. Tormod had plus 1 move. Ike could learn Aether. Tauronea had his own weird niche where you could do wrath/resolve on him, even if he wasn't amazing. Characters coming with some skills, which takes space int heir limited pool is great.
Engage can be finnicky with unit individuality I think Some have good unit individuality, Hortensia for example offers completely irreplaceable staff utility on top of her unique class, so she feels like a very unique unit Then conversely there's Kagetsu and Merrin. I pretty consistently see Kagetsu placed as The Best Unit™ while Merrin doesn't even get top 5, which usually really confuses me because they are almost the exact same unit, just one has a bit later join time and slightly worse str Then of course there's Louis and Madeline who can really only be armored or great knights do to their personal growth spread, it's almost impossible to build them with speed unless you really really focus on it and then, again conversely, there's Zelestia who's stat spread let's her be almost anything. She can do magic, she can do physical, she could even hypothetically support. She is anything It feels like they just kept going back and forth on how diverse they wanted the cast to be, really
It would be interesting if every unit kept their outfit in every class... but every class had a specific set of extra bits to add onto the outfit. Like armor units would have a full breastplate, mages would get a hat or long sleeves, the lighter martial classes would get that weird armored strap, warpriests could steal the cage skirt from Awakening, etc. The only issue is making this work without egregious outfit clipping might be as much work as just making bespoke outfits for each class per character, so I don't know how viable it is as an idea.
So, I definitely fall somewhere in the middle on unit identity. I want to keep the ability to customize my army any way I like, but I also want to have a reason to use specific units. With a roster as big as Engage had, limiting reclassing options wouldn't have made a big difference in crafting my ideal army because there are way more units than you'll be able to use anyways, but I'd rather the game emphasize each unit's individuality (through personal skills or stats, perhaps) than just force me to use whatever classes are "best" for that unit.
Another point to mention is how classes are, well, not made equal. 3H breaks when you reclass everyone into a Wyvern Lord. The maps are not made around you having 10 Wyvern Lords and suddenly the game becomes a ''Wyvern Lord tier list'' choice simulator. Which makes units like Haar so much more memorable iconic thanks to how their availability comes into play along with his stats AND his class to make him extremely useful right away in the chapter he joins in part 3. Once you can give everyone the experienced veteran class, including the dainty princess and the 15 year old boy, it just completely loses its prestige and uniqueness.
One way to look at it is that character customisation vs unit identity is a trade off between replayability and making the first playthrough better. Customisation allows for lots of different ways to take your party of characters, and lots of different runs you could make happen. Strong unit identity makes for stronger storytelling (through representing the story in gameplay mechanics) and having more memorable, enjoyable characters, which make for a much better first playthrough (Not that its bad for the other playthroughs, but story matters much more the first go around). I know some people play fire emblem games 15 times a year with a different challenge for each run, but as someone who only plays the game once (with maybe a replay some years down the line), I find that having a strong unit identity makes for a better experience. Restricting customisation also makes fine tuning things like difficulty curves easier, letting the devs more finely craft the experience and steer the player away from un-fun optimisations (i.e. Three Houses making everyone a wyvern rider)
While playing through Three Houses multiple times, I never really leaned in on the high customization - I let units be what they wanted to be, and just played into their inherent strengths. It may be a boring way to play, but I found it more gratifying to make a sort of hyper-class endgame unit, a unit that just matches their class, abilities, and stats so well that by the final few maps, almost any of them could be warped straight to the boss and kill everything in the room alone.
I feel like something that might have been worth sating is that in games with open reclassing, there is always a question of why not to put every character in the best class in the game? I was playing through 3H on maddening and had to take time to seriously answer why I shouldn't make everyone a wyvern lord, sniper, or grappler because those classes were really strong on the characters who were in them. I put Dimitri and Sylvain in paladin and with Sylvain especially, I sort of wish I had gone for wyvern rider because it wouldn't have been as much work as Dimitri, but the flying would have been really nice on levels with a lot of difficult terrain.
I'd say either A) put more limits on reclassing that open up in the endgame or new game+ B) limit or give exclusive skills to specific character reclasses like in SoV
Personally, I would love to see IS expand on the initial branching promotions mechanic. If base classes had four branching promotions instead of two, it could allow for much more variation between units without needing too many different models or even animations to differentiate them. Whether reclassing between your promotions is unlimited or can only be accessed with a mechanic similar to the emblem rings, I feel having only five possible classes per unit makes it much easier to maintain unique traits such as animations and class outfits. It's fine if certain units have unique classes, but it really should only be like four units max to avoid prioritizing them so much over the rest of the units.
I'd put identity as more important than customisation, but both Identity and customisation are important. I think engage does both of these in a manner which is only ok. I think this was because they wanted to highlight the importance of the Emblam Rings. Sure anyone can be any class, but that's just one decision, and you get two more decisions for what Emblem skills to inherrent (which is emblem centric, and uses the emblem dust stuff which I found to be too limited a resource), after that you only have decisions on what weapons to give, which utilises the Emblem seals you put on a weapon (another emblem related resource which is limited to one emblem seal per emblem). Three Houses does both very well. One again you can put anyone into any class, but it's a lot more difficult to put someone in a class they "don't want" to be in, because they have to acquire skill points which is influenced by if they are naturally inclined for or against using a weapon-type. After that, you have a choice of 5 skills, 3 combat arts, a battalion and learnable spells. Skills, arts and spells are all drawn from a long list which is different for each character, while this may make many units 'just worse' versions of others, many have very interesting abilities which give idntity alongside customisability.
I love the point about the animations! In fates, Mozu is the character that I remember best, because when you first see her as a green unit, her village just died and she's a lvl 1 villager. In combat, her knees are shaking, she flails around basically and if she gets a kill she sighs in relief that it's over. And even as an archer, she still has those clumsy animations, and it's so endearing. I can't say that there's a single character from engage I remember, aside from Louis (idr how to spell his name funnily enough), they all felt... The same. Not even their personalities really stuck all that well... I have a better time with 3 Houses, but I enjoyed the characters more.
My personal thought on just a general design would be to have the classes themselves be more flexible and then remove reclassing. Granted I am unsure how well this sort of thing fits into fire emblem in particular. Classes help define boundaries and characterize your characters. Broadening the scope within such classes can preserve the class identity and still allow for a fair amount of customization and unique strategies. Certainly though it is nice to have such open ended customization so being able to make your own character into whatever class would make sense to me.
Dual classing might be a fun mechanic. Games like Bravely Default or Octopath used that. Each unit could have their own fixed base class, plus a second class of their choosing. It would require a pretty big rework of all fire emblem classes to make that work though, something IS doesn't tend to do.
Unit Identity is important to me. Nothing dumber than seeing 5 wyverns and 3 gremories and a dancer and whatever on your team because that's optimal. I care more for the character than the customization. I'd love to see more stuff like Sacred Stones with branching promotion paths though. Keep more identity but still have defined choices to make.
I still think that the way Fates did classes made units still stand out more than the newer titles like three houses and engage. Every single unit has two or three classes that they always have but a few additional based on marriage or friendship.
So much this. Even if every unit can theoretically end up in any class, there's a huge difference in, say, Selena joining in ch 10 and getting wyvern from a fast A+ support with beruka or camilla, and Peri joining in ch 13, and having to wait several chapters for xander join and then spend 4-5 chapters building an S support (with high competition for that marriage) as her only route into wyvern. This difference is balanced by peri having better stats and a better base class, which creates an interesting dynamic. Do you get selena into wyvern asap, or do you use peri instead and have to wait a lot longer to get into wyvern? Or do you try something else? Selena has access to pegasus knight innately, which Peri can only get from a corrin marriage, which you only get one in of in a playthrough.
Yes I would say Fates is a step above Three Houses and Engage in this regard. Characters are very flexible, but you have to work harder to get them into different classes, so their initial setup and what classes are available to them feel more meaningful.
I think the biggest problem with engage unit identity is personality more than anything, 3 houses let you go into anything but the characters personality, origin and purpose we're all quite different which made all of them feel very distinct. Also engage should have given to every unit at least a unique outfit in their "canon" class, that would have helped at lot.
One thing I really appreciated from the GBA era was the custom sprites. Joshua and Rutger are two amazing swordsmasters. They effectively play the same, but are easily identifiable from eachother. Rutgers redish brown tunic, Joshuas hat, etc etc. Guy, another Myrmidon, with his pony tail. Mathew and Legalt, the thieves from FE7. Sain, Kent, and Lowen, the cavaliers. They all had personal customization to their sprites. While yes the 3D models have their own as well, the ability to just oh-so freely customize them all is kind of a turnoff for me. I liked Awakening, I liked 3Houses, but other than the characters headmodel (and maybe a couple of classes per character), they can quickly just look generic with just their head to identify exactly which character is which. Tharja's base model is quite fan-servicey, but class her as a pegasus knight and she loses the sheer outfit she wears in favor of generic armor. Even if her generic armor was darkened to match her color pallet, it would help. Instead, we have copy-pasted assets. Hell, if you cheat and change, say, Lowen into a General, he retains his color pallet. (indeed, some characters have really good color pallets as classes they can't achieve, while others get seriously fooked, but hey, that's modding/cheating for you).
Great video. Agree with everything you said, though I feel like stat wise, characters are actually more unique than in 3H. Especially on nightmare where things like Lapis’s speed, Goldmary’s defense, and Etie’s attack REALLY make a difference. At the end of the day, My biggest gripe with engage is the outfits and no NG+ ! Why do they also switch to a generic outfit when they promote!?? And why can’t we keep their outfit like a toggle in 3H?? So many steps forward except for l things that absolutely kill replayability
I like how in fates, characters have a limited pool of innate classes but can get 2 more classes from befriending and marrying each other. I make a significant distinction between that and something like three houses where any character can go down any class line you pick for them. When I'm playing conquest and I put Xander into hero through friendship with Laslow, there's a sense of him learning from and carrying on from someone who's touched his life. When I see his sprite it's like, oh, he's doing Laslow's pose. He's learning his skills. I also like this kind of class management, because the pool of characters you have influences what plans you can do with each character. Three houses characters basically just do whatever they want in a complete vacuum. Engage has limited rings to apply to your characters that could make builds fight for space with each other, but you can still swap them around as you please. Fates characters act both as possible sources and recipients of classes from each other, it makes support charting a really interesting process methinks.
I'm on the opinion that for three houses it makes more sense because this is a school they are here to learn. Of course they're going to be able to change their major. That just made logical sense to me. I don't like it as much in engage because if these people have been training these skills all their lives, they really shouldn't be able to drop them at the behest of Alear just because he said so. I do agree that the whole gaining and extra class option through relationships and marriage was a really nice touch from those games and I absolutely loved it. But I think that class changing being free and open in three houses just make sense for the game.
@@gayjebus4079 I have my own litany of issues with three house's systems, mostly that I don't think fire emblem is suited to the Persona style timetable with a mission at the end of each month. While conceptually the ability for any character to study into any class is fitting for the school setting, I think the game doesn't do enough to encourage using a variety of classes. There's nothing stopping you from just going "Okay, this is a Wyvern school now you're all going to learn how to be a Wyvern Rider". Maybe if you had a limited number of spaces for each proficiency training, or if the map design was generally better at giving units niches, or if character affinities were more impactful.
@@big_azzy well I do agree that the time system could have been done better. I kind of liked it because it helped me resist my base and unbridled urge to sit on. Not doing the story and doing side missions for 5 years straight and then getting bored of the game and stopping and then not touching it again for another 3 years. I think the game does as good of a job as it can with the system that it wants to give in the field that it wants to give when it comes to class changing of pushing the player in a direction for certain units . The entire reason I say that is because of the weapons affinity letters in the game where certain people are just bad at learning certain things. Also, is it really a bad thing that the player can just decide you know what f*** this? Everyone is not going to be a wife and writer because it's funny. I don't think that's bad thing. Imagine that you're Edelgaurd and you're thinking you just taken over the world and there's nothing anyone can do and then you just see a fleet of dragons pull up. Honestly my baby said she you is that they're really cool skins for post time skip don't stay for class changes.
Seriously, Fates had possibly one of the best gameplay in the series (ESPECIALLY Conquest), if the writing were up to par then it would easily be ranked as one of the best FE games ever made. Honestly, I feel like most of the issues with the writing in this game trace back directly to the existence of Revelation. From Revelation itself being ...... one of the stories of all time to just how many plot contrivances and character assassinations exist in the other routes just so that you literally cannot learn about "the secret true story because otherwise how could we sell you Revelation ???". Also, Revelation just straight up removes any hopes of the themes having any punches because it renders the other two paths moot by existing. The fact I derailed the comment this hard should be an indicator of how much I LOATHE Revelation I think
@@sephikong8323 Wanna know the saddest thing? There's a chance that the writing WOULD'VE been up to par. I don't remember the exact circumstances; but I know that the original game director wasn't able to implement his full vision for the game, and a lot got changed. It could've been so much better.
Oh well, we have fanfiction I guess.
I think class is really important for identity just because of how much it’s needed to tell a story about that character. Gonzalez is the best example. High speed, and the highest strength stat. But no accuracy. If he wasn’t axe locked you wouldn’t associate him with being “a dumb brute” because if he had a different class with those stats they wouldn’t matter.
Case and point; Kagero. She literally has his same stat spread, with the only difference being her Hp stats cut into her res growth. Do you look at kagero and see a dumb brute? Why not? She’s got high speed, the highest strength growth, but terrible accuracy. Well being a ninja greatly changed that. But if you marry her to Arthur (or corrin) and make her a berserker, now suddenly you just have Gonzalez again. Ninja changes her identity so
Much. She goes from a brute to a duelist all because she wields a very accurate but weak weapon despite being a very strong but inaccurate character.
When you can change classes so freely unit feel drops off hard because FLAWS are what often define units more than strengths. And when you can just give them a class that compensates for those flaws then what defines thems just thrown away.
Well the thing is it is Kagero's identity because she was forced to be a ninja because she was physically strong enough to do the task and took her brother's job because he was supposed to be a ninja, but was too weak.
Engage: royals and commoners working together in unity. That's why the royals get special classes. It's all about equality
Engage: it's called separate but ✨ equal✨
@@JMarchel we did join forces with invaders who attacked another kingdom and started the entire conflict.
But it's ok because they have quirky personalities
The true unity is that all the royal classes suck.
Yea not going to lie engage showed just how dumb the current class system really is, oh all the important characters get unique classes while everyone else just gets normal stuff. Like you could have given them unique classes and just gave good classes that fit the identity of the other characters. Like nothing wrong with that, as is it feels like these characters all got special attention like they are the favored child of some dude while everyone else is forced to eat cafeteria food.
@@christianlangdon3766 at least give the base units the luna sol etc skills.
Etie would be so good with Luna same with rosemary with the skill the princess got to do that extra damage especially when you get a critical on top of it. But nope they give it to the royals
So much wasted potential for more fun units. It basically made crit be your skill use.
I believe the main protagonist should be custom but everyone else gets the few options like in Fates and Awakening
I like this idea. This feels like a great in-between for making other units stand out in different fields while providing the "customizability" function through the self-inserted Protagonist.
And in Fates, the Spouse of the Avatar and Kana inherit that customability
Honestly one of the best unit identity mechanics was in Fates with the unique skills
@@LittlePinkBowserDon't Three Houses and Engage also have unique skills?
Fates did it best
my personal gripe with the customization of modern fire emblem is that when any unit can become any class, and their flaws can be fixed with relative ease, (with the exception of a few outliers), it really feels like no one has their own dedicated niche that ONLY they can fill. this issue is made worse by the fact that the majority of units in engage have very forgettable/useless personal skills that don't really create niches for them either. the benefit of this is that you never have to feel like your favorite character is useless or weak, and in ironman scenarios it's way easier to replace lost units. i think that there's a happy medium to be found between giving players too much freedom or making them feel too constricted. i'm just hoping that they find it sometime soon lol
I feel like Fates had really great unit identity by allowing every character to get every class *in theory*, but with some stipulations. Giving each character one extra secret class actually makes units feel more different, not less: it makes which of your servants you get first a much more important decision, for example. I’d also point to Selena and Laslow: they join only two chapters apart in the same class, but are mechanically very different. Not only because of their stat differences, but also because of their hidden classes: Ninja and Sky Knight are very different niches that are both relevant to their unit identities. Just having a class in your pool is a pretty important thing, actually, since it can enable partner reclassing for other units as well, and overall it does a lot to define a unit’s niche. I think it’s a big part of why Conquest is considered one of the best balanced games in the series: sure some strats are better than others, but every unit has a real niche just by virtue of the class system.
the planning and investment fates had to change classes was amazing
ie Selena being a mercenary but her other class is pegasus knight because as Severa her mother Cordelia was a pegasus knight
I would say in Selena's case that her easy friendship access to Wyvern Rider is also very important. It really helps her strength, which sky knight kind of hurts. Conversely Laslow has access to Berserker through Keaton which lets him stack Rally Strength with his personal rally. That's a completely different path from going for sol ninja shenanigans with his heart seal.
I think the important thing is that there are at any moment a handful of clear paths to send a unit down, compared to the absolute choice paralysis of a completely open ended system.
@@LuminousArc92all three of the interdimensional heroes have a hoshidian class as their heart seal unlike the rest of the conquest cast
I always like to point to azama as a great example of this
He's a TERRIBLE priest, but he's great at fighting if you switch him to his apothecary line and it's more "cynical" classes. Making him so ill suited for his role not just in terms of lore but also in mechanics really adds a ton of characterization to him.
16:03 Fates does this the best when it comes to Heart Seal Options/Class sets that units have. While not every unit has one to represent something about about them. A Large amount of the cast does
Both Royal Families have the older sister start in a flying mounted class. Camilla has Wyvern as her base class while Xander and Elise have Wyvern has heart seal options. Hinoka has Sky Knight while as her base class while Ryoma and Sakura both have Sky Knight as their heart seal options. Even Azura has it as hers most likely for this reason and why they made it so Songstress's parallel class is Troubadour since her mother Arete is a Strategist. Meanwhile the younger brothers both get left out of this showing that them, mainly Leo, feeling left out or unwanted has some ground to actually stand on.
Effie and Hana, 2 retainers and best friends of their lady, both have their innate Heart Seal classes as Troubadour and Cleric specifically, meaning you don't have to actually achieve an A+ Rank to get those classes with a Friendship seal as they are already best friends.
In terms of already eastablished friendships we have Kagero and Orochi, though only one way. Kagero and Orochi consider themselves best friends but only Kagero has the other's base class has a Heart Seal option. But Orochi has Apothecary showing her background as a someone who would gather herbs as a child.
Meanwhile Charlotte has troubadour as her reclass option due to wanting to appear as the delicate weak woman she tries to show people.
Another reclass option that shows a character's background would be Hayato. He has Diviner as his base class but has Oni Savage his other option which shows his relationship to Fuga, whose 1st reclass option is Oni Savage. However Fuga has Samurai as his base class and not Oni Savage.
Jakob is in a similar boat. While Jakob's base class is Butler (Troubadour) he is given the Cavalier as his reclass option due to Gunter. While they aren't related Gunter is effectively Jakob's adoptive father as he is the man who basically raised him and taught him everything he knows.
One of the better Heart Seal reasons held by anyone would go to Felicia and Flora. They are both from the Ice Tribe, both daughters of the chief, both have Maid (Troubadour) as their base classes. However the Ice Tribe in is known for having Fighters, Mercenaries, and Dark Mages. Felicia only has Mercenary as a reclass while Flora has Dark Mage and Mercenary as hers. These 2 having Maid as their base classes show that the Ice Tribe serves Nohr thus putting Maid over what their base classes should be.
Now one of the more blatant ones would have to be the Awakening Trio: Laslow, Selena and Odin. They each have a Hoshidan reclass option to show that they aren't from Nohr. Odin and Selena both have reclass options linking back to what is relative to them. Odin having Samurai is obviously a nod to him being a Myrmidon in Awakening and Selena while not actually being a Pegasus Knight still has it showing her remembering her mother. Laslow is the real odd one out as he doesn't have Samurai or or an Axe class as a heart seal.
Now the most out of the way reason for any reclass option in Fates goes to Kaden. His reclass is Diviner which promotes into Onmyoji specifcally. This is a historical nod to Abe no Seimei who was a Onmyoji. However it was speculated that he was actually a kitsune or the child of a human and a kitsune.
As much as fates didn't do jack shit with lore, it had so many good ways to imply at things with its characters like the reclass options and the general hoshidan/nohrian split. I'll never not be a little sad that it wasn't a better-written game, but I'm just as sad that we haven't had those moments of brilliance taken into a new fire emblem yet.
Just to add to your point about Hayato and Fuga, Fuga's second class would be due to his bestie being Sumeragi and fighting alongside a master swordsman like that has given Fuga some good understanding about swordsmanship.
I think the reason Laslow has Ninja as his heart seal class is because he’s actually really shy despite his philandering. Ninjas are known for stealth so it’s like the part of him he keeps hidden away as it were
If I can add to this convo, Laslow's ninja secondary class is from his mother, as the "class" he inherits in awakening as the mother's main class is filled in by thief.
@@jawwer00 Except Inigo does not get Thief unless his dad has the class in Awakening. His Assassin Promo comes from getting Myrmidon from his mother.
I'll rather have unit identity.
The idea behind the huge roster was because before reclassing became an option, you would only have so many units that perform in certain areas. So, the games gave you more than unit of a type and class so if you got RNG screwed or the unit died, you could use the replacement.
Without this, the huge roster just doesn't make sense and dilutes the amount of characterization and development each character has.
If the game will allow reclassing, then the roster should be smaller and the story more character driven.
If the game will not allow reclassing, then the big roster makes sense and the characters feel unique since your first, say, pegasus knight will feel the niche of speedy high mobility flying unit until you get another pegasus knight.
We still need a huge roster for ironman or no reset runs in order for players to not get completely stuck, regardless of unit identity or reclass
Unit identity is something I deeply value. I rarely change a unit's class to anything that I feel isn't perfect for that particular character. Usually I either adjust my play style and tactics to accommodate or I try to change their class to a nice balanced in-between of what I would find more convenient and what works for them. It just feels right ya know?
12:28-12:45 Oops! All Fliers
I feel like this also could be the reason to dimishing units identity, your class doesn't matter unless it's a busted flier and when everyone is a flier no one is special. Units become just a bunch of checkboxes: "Can you be a flier?" Yes, "Would it be difficult to make you one?" No, "Welcome to my endgame team, Flier No 22"
@@tyrobityll embrace armor emblem. Make everyone armor units and March through your conquest
I've been playing Triangle Strategy recently and I think it handles this really well because each unit is very gimmicky. Even supposedly universal mechanics, such as follow up attacks, are really only useful with a few units because few units have a good strength stat, which is required for a decent follow up. No unit shares the same role and it really helps the units hold their own identity.
Hard agree.
Yeah you need a high strength stat to do meaningful damage with a follow up but even weak attacks can trigger those relevant follow ups. And honestly some skills who trigger the exact same status serve entirely different roles and perform well in very different maps which is honestly really cool as far as unit roles go. Take lionel as compared to erador for example. Both have a provoke skill but the way they control the battlefield with their provokes varies widely to the point where half the time one is better and half the other is. Erador’s is better when starting at a terrain disadvantage and surrounded because while it’s range isn’t large it targets all around him. It’s absolutely vital on maps like the one of you go with Frederica’s plan to blow up the bridge. Lionel meanwhile not only has significant vertical range but significant horizontal as well. He’s great in maps where you can either take a fortified position or start at one because where as erador is trying to get enemies to attack him Lionel hides behind the front line and taunts the enemy front line so they aren’t able to attack your front line giving them a reprieve from damage and also luring enemy magic attacking or supporting units preventing healers or offensive magic units from doing any magic neutering them and just generally annoying the most threatening enemies. He performs well on avlora’s assault or the true showdown with gustadolph on the path to the true ending with the prince specifically by standing atop the gate and annoying the mages and the enemy next to whatever unit you have blocking the stairs up towards your back line. He provokes key targets that can threaten to disrupt your otherwise impenetrable position. Erador you yeet in there to provoke as many as possible
This leans over into the removal of class as a system of categorization, and more every character is just unique.
Which, I like, don't get me wrong, i generally like these kinds of games more, but it's generally not how FE works.
Right, it's not something Fire Emblem can really replicate, but I still think it's interesting
@@ultimaterecoil1136 Berwick Saga does something similar where three units with the same exact skill or class can vary wildly in how they use it.
Skill example: Elbert the cavalier, Kramer the mercernary and Percival the Thunder Mage all have the skill bowbreaker, which makes them good at dodging longbows, crossbows and ballistas. However, Elbert is a cavalier with the provoke command skill (makes selected unit within 5 range auto aggro towards him) which makes him good at baiting long range ballista or dangerous bow users. Kramer is a mercenary with the hiker skill which makes him good at going after bow users perched up above mountain tiles since his avoid doesn't get climbing up them (and moving faster above them as well). Finally, Percival's thunder magic has the same range as longbows, so he can always counter them. Wildly different uses with the same skill
Class example: You get two lance knights during the first chapter named Leon and Abel. Leon has deathmatch which lets him fight enemies for 5 rounds of combat while Abel gets vantage which lets him attack foes before they can counter and if he hits, stops their combat from happening altogether meaning one is very player phase oriented while the other is enemy phase oriented. You get another lance knight later named clifford who just has better stats than them, but their skills differentiate them enough to make all three very distinctly used.
I think classes are a bigger deal that you make them out to be, mostly in terms of the differences between mounted units and unmounted units. In games like fates and three houses there is very little reason to not make everyone in your army into a wyvern, or in engage’s case to not make everyone into a wyvern/griffon knight/warrior/mage knight depending on their stat spread. It stops units like Rosado for example from having a niche as one of the few fliers, because he’s not actually one of the few fliers anyone can be a flier.
There is a reason not to use all fliers in Three Houses and that is lack of high tier flying battalions on most routes and only able to use standard adjuntants.
In maddening you want to limit your fliers to a max of 4-5 due to this
@@boredomkiller99 Also, making everyone the same class is mind-numbingly boring and does nothing to showcase a characters unique best self, so there's that too.
To me, I think unique unit identity / gameplay feel is important, and I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, but I think a way the newer games give units more identity is through things like crit quotes, and battle quotes in general. Things that couldn’t be done as well in older games.
Seeing units do their little victory pose after winning an encounter (yes even though the poses are usually the same for the same classes), hearing them say their victory line is something that makes you feel like playing as Annette is different than Lysithea, for example
In that same vein of Character-specific quotes, we could have Character-specific animations, regardless of what class they're currently promoted into, and it probably wouldn't be any more work than what they currently do, considering just how many classes there are in a typical FE outing with a typical-sized army.
For example, if you have a character with a loud or bubbly personality, they could reflect that in their animation along as they celebrate. It would be a far better way to communicate that to the player than, after reclassing, they just do the default boring animation.
@@LegendofKal Agreed
@@LegendofKal Fates did this, off the top of my head, Charlotte drops her axe over her shoulder, twirls her hair & bends over (keeping up her dainty facade despite being a Berserker) and Benny, a pacifist, drops his weapons and sighs once he kills an enemy (whereas other Generals strongly pose with their lance & shield). Not every character has one, but iirc it’s around 20% of the cast which is a LOT when u think abt it, and a larger portion of Echoes’ cast has these as well (tho there’s less characters and less classes, and some classes will get rid of custom animations)
@@level0118 I completely forgot about Charlotte and Benny, the rare exceptions!
Triangle Strategy, imo, is the SRPG to have the greatest success at creating unique units with their own identities and values. EVERY single unit, no matter how useless, has a use case abd sometomes can ve the difference between winning and losing a map. It was sooo well thought out
Ah ladders tactics my favorite
I love that game and how every character had something going for them and how there were defense maps where the architecture was actually on your side as if your fortress had been built with actual battles in mind. I think it trumped over Engage for me, due to limiting your choices somewhat and therefore not making me research about the best builds for each character for hours on end.
@Edagui97 Then I'm sure you'll love Unicorn Overlord. You can try out the demo rn
Personally, I'd like more unit identity and would be willing to sacrifice customization to suit that. Sacred Stones having *branching class trees* activated my neurons at a young age, but I typically try to keep a unit close to their original class in early games. I like when there is variety of a character's gameplay, but not to the detriment of conveying that the character has a particular set of strengths and weaknesses.
FE8's branching promotion trees strike me as a nice compromise between player customization and unit identity, although the branching choices weren't well balanced (why would you ever choose Falcoknight over Wyvern Knight for Vanessa apart from aesthetics?)
Genealogy is my personal favourite game for unit identity. Kaga said in an interview that he wanted every character to have something only they could do, and it shows. What aids this though, is the small cast combined with no deployment limit, meaning no-one ever competes for team slots so you can freely drop someone in just to use their utility skill once or twice. The issue is everyone's "unique assets" are far from equal (e.g Lewyn and Quan's holy weapons vs Arden being the only potential General)
There's a few Engage units who do have decent gameplay/story integration in their roles though, Clanne for one. He starts as a Mage but has a far better Strength growth, Sword proficiency, and tutorial images show him promoting to Mage Knight. He seems to lean towards mixed attacker, but if you test him in pure physical classes he's surprisingly good in them, better than some people who start in physical ones. Last time I used him, I started headcanoning that he'd take over Vander's role in the future... only to find out this literally happens in his epilogue. Clanne was always geared more towards being a protecting knight than a mage.
I guess I'm not too bothered by Engage because of my playstyle, I don't like to use too many people of the same class unless they're VERY distinct (e.g Warrior Amber and Anna) and rarely go for "oops all fliers" because it's not fun to me. So I at least prefer this to Shadow Dragon's system, where anyone could jump between classes at zero cost (beyond needing to build up weapon levels). My main issue with Fates' is that supports/shipping ends up affecting a unit's viability TOO much and I feel that players should be allowed to go with personal preferences without gimping a unit's viability. (e.g Conquest basically demands you have a good Bowbreaker user by Chapter 25, which is easy enough when you ship Selena/Laslow, but I prefer Selena/Keaton) So by default Awakening gets my top spot in modern reclass systems.... except I hate how levels don't reset, which.
Unit Identity is really important to me, and I agree with pretty much everything that you've said in this video. It makes me sad seeing things like "Warrior Lindon is his best class." I've given a ton of thought to what the best class system would be, and I think the old promo system of one class per unit is the best. There are definitely moments where I make exceptions throughout the series, like how I'm (only slightly) more okay with Avatars going outside of their normal class routes; how I want Hilda and Edelgard to be a Hero because to me, it fits them (but sometimes Warlock since they have really interesting Spell lists); and how FE8's trees or Awakening's class pools manage to give players options but keep things within reason to the character, despite still having issues like Tana/Vanessa being optimal in a class that takes away the Pegasus from the Pegasus Knight, or the fact that Tiki, a dragon, can become a dragon-rider.
I actually think that the manakete-wyvern knight connection for Tiki and Nowi is actually really nice
Because they're dragons, they're better at bonding with Wyverns
If they want to keep doing full reclassing, then they need to plan for a good compromise between customization and narrative at the conception of their games. Three Houses provides context and narrative and mechanical time that has to be spent developing a character towards one class, with your choice being logically easier or more difficult to accomplish based off the character's preferences. They can generally keep their unique outfits, their personality based personal skills matter more specifically in the early game when they're less polished, and they're not designed or written to be extremely associated with any gameplay role beyond weapons for the lords. This is in contrast to Engage, which designs characters to be associated with common series archetypes and classes, but lets you do whatever you want with them at random times at the cost of whatever made their designs special, replicating the mistakes of the DS games where they let you do whatever whenever with characters who completely revolve around their classes and the archetypes they created.
Feel like your underating three houses here as many characters are rather associated with certain classes. The lords especially and certain mage characters feel almost tied to their respective class ideas. Hence why you would rarely see lythesia as anything but a mage, due to how absurdly busted she is mechanically in that role.
Likewise golden deers big dumb boi is probably going to be a footlocked melee class without major investment. And even with that little payoff.
Yet we also get the opposite of this where golden deers cast are somewhat pigoened hole in their role it makes them a bit better for easy gameplay. Vs say the blue lions where few of them have a distinct mechanical identity to the point that you put all of them into draco knights with little sacrifice. While you can say make golden deer go against type you really don't much from it, lythesia as a Frontline is just bad and so is mage big boi. So even in the same game we see some units have rather strong unit identity mechanically speaking and some with extremely weak ones. Like the farmhand who sucks because he distinctly lacks one is a major component of his character.
A lot of Houses unit identity problems lie in the physical characters. Using your example Mercedes is a healbot with weak offense (Seriously her reason list is bad), Annette has accurate spells and rallies, Marianne trades utility for strong combat magic with high crit and more magic combat arts, and then there’s Lysithea.
I think Sacred Stones did a good job of this, and could be polished into a good modern system, where, say, every unit has a promotion tree, but once they promote they can freely reclass between those promotions.
You can either stick to strict class trees, or make individual units define, or just color their class selection, maybe, say, Armor Knights can go to general, great knight, or Halberdier, but maybe this specific guy just doesn't like horses, so can do maybe Warrior instead of Great Knight.
Maybe find a happy medium between Shadow Dragon reclassing, Sacred Stones branches, and Fates character class pools
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 I feel like simple promotion trees are not bad for older games, but in a newer game (that isn't a remake), it would be more fun to have at least some amount of options that make sense. I think awakening did this really well, though honestly, you could limit it more than awakening did and still have plenty of options for customization
Fates at least let you have almost any class on almost any character but with a somewhat steep condition through the S and A+ supports
Completely free reclassing doesn't really work especially in engage where units have their personal bases designed to make up for bad/good class bases... that you then immediately reclass them out of - Such as Kagetsu, Merrin, Pandreo and Pannette that all start in weaker classes with better bases... compared to Bunet, Goldmary and Rosado, that start in stronger classes with lacking bases.
You can reclass the first 4 to immediately make them completely busted, but the latter 3 are harder to fix. Goldmary at least has a nutty def base.
Good video! For me Ive really never enjoyed the customization aspect of the genre all that much tbh which is partially why I love triangle strategy so much each character feels mad unique to play with
I’m surprised you didn’t mentioned prf weapons as another way to give units a unique identity. In combination with personal skills and stats, prf weapons can give real good niches.
Imagine a healer character to proclaims himself to be an exorcist, so he gets a personal white tome that’s effective against monsters. Maybe this is the only white magic tome in the game.
Or maybe an old sword master with low strength, but given a personal brave sword that doesn’t inflict the same pentalties that other units would get using brave weapons (such as high weight or stat penalties). An old sword master who can consistently quad would be cool. Maybe he could get Luna too to really solidify his story.
Prfs are good, but I dislike the idea of locking a resource to a single unit. Promoted the fomo FE has always battled with, trying to make the player NOT reset for every small mistake.
That said, SD did them best imo, having things like Excalibur at high Weapon Ranks, but Merric can use it at Base, so most of the game it's actually his prf. More game should de like that.
Kaga was experimenting with giving uniqueness to characters through prf all the way back in 4 and 5. The philosophy of giving units cool and unique weapons (and cool and busted weapons anyone can use) is alive and thriving in his later games. I recommend Vestaria Saga if you want to get an idea for this.The MC on lvl one has his Edelstern; a goated Brave Rapier. Throughout the game, units get prf weapons or you will acquire amazing weapons from enemies, chests, and shops. It’s even very well supported since you get access to weapon repairing items every few chapters. So, if you’re smart, you can really get some mileage out of a lot of the weapons.
@@SinNun-tx5jp how about this: prfs buyable in Secret Shops. Ofc, the prices should be exorbitant without Silver Card
This is why I think reclassing isn't always a good choice. Having a class is easily one of the strongest aspects of unit identity, since it's another aspect of unit appearance. And appearance is usually one of the things that you'll immediately notice about a unit. Although I hate Fates, I believe it does have the best reclassing options in the series. You have one innate, and you could get 2 more depending on who you support with. I think having more than one reclass starts to destroy unit identity, considering how few classes there often are in a game. For example, you can start to feel the overlap in reclassing options in Awakening even though a unit only has access to one more personal class.
I do really like Awakening's form of reclassing. Every unit gets enough to give them versatility and gives replay value while keeping a sense of uniqueness. Personally I really enjoy reclassing in modern games, I think Three Houses does it better than Engage however, because each unit has so much personality and character built into them they all feel unique with their own combat arts and whatnot. Engage doesn't have that and like you said, you can't even keep them in their default outfits (RIP Lapis and Panette, they're outfits are so fire). Engage in general is bad at highlighting characters, I think the system is fine if it's incorporated more like Three Houses or Awakening
another thing that Three Houses does to make class uniqueness happen is via the boons and banes when teaching a unit certain proficiencies.
Like, a player's natural instinct with Lysithea is to make her a Gremory due to her faith and reason boons and because she is characterized as a magical prodigy, or more people would use Holy Knight Marianne because she has a proficiency in faith, horses, and a budding talent in lances (plus Blutgang) and because her character is tied to the goddess and animals. Other different ones are Leonie with Bow Knight due to her boons in Lances, Horses, and Bows.
You can go so on and so forth with examples like these, like with Hubert, Raphael, Caspar, Lorenz, Felix, Ingrid, etc etc. And while it's true that unit identity does deteriorate after you become more accustomed to the system and realize the meta, it still helps to make at least your first one or two playthroughs memorable
Is it weird that Engage's characters always stood out to me in gameplay far more than 3H's did? I seem to be in a huge minority, but I find Engage's cast far more memorable than most do since most of them make a strong demonstration of their use-cases in their joining chapters. For example, Etie has a clear niche in oneshotting fliers (even on Maddening) in the early chapters and that alone makes her stand out in spite of fairly mediocre growths. Meanwhile, I struggle to differentiate Bernadetta, Ashe and Ignatz's gameplay roles in 3H, beyond "Ashe has a Locktouch personal skill I never needed" and "Ignatz sometimes ends up in Mortal Savant I guess". (Some of them get that useful volley-shot skill that you only really need on Maddening but I already forget who. I think Ignatz can be a rally-bot also?)
@@BigKlingythat’s because classes actually matter in engage while 3H lategame has every unit being virtually identical:
-can one-round everything
-can use any weapons
-has canto+
-can take more hits than enough due to low enemy density
Also not having 3/4 different early game helps
@@thomasquesada7248- Sounds like a skill issue. As in “I’m not skilled enough to beat this game with a diversified army, so wyvern rider army goooo!”
@@LucaxCorp lmao you can’t fucking read
I had a very diversified army and it won’t change that 3H units are all virtually identical through high stats everywhere
Most often a personal skill is just not enough uniqueness. Compared to Engage Three Houses did a slightly better job at it with having exclusive combat arts and magic.
As a game developer myself I understand that its often too much work too make every character unique, so you have to be creative to make him/her feel unique instead.
In Engage it would be cool if the region the character is from had gameplay impact like all brodians having access to a specific class, skill or equipment unique to them or unique ring synergies(in addition to the subclass system).
They fiddled with that in Fates actually, most classes were divided along nationality, Nohrian or Hoshidan, a character often had access to a decent chunk of the classes from THEIR side through things like Supports and their own natural reclass options, but limited or no access to classes from the other side
Edit: Weapons also got this treatment, to a lesser degree, you generally had 2 versions of most weapons, a Nohrian and a Hoshidan one, they differed in stats and trends a bit, nothing huge, but it occasionally meant one was more useful than the other between the Iron Sword and the Iron Katana for example
While I'm sympathetic to the effort involved in making entire large casts of characters feel unique, I'd also say that this should be one of Fire Emblem's primary objectives, as the large varied casts of unique characters are one of its most defining features. It seems like right now they only focus on making them unique *characters,* while letting them as units slip far too often into samey-ness.
@@LoudWaffle Yeah... You kinda just hit the nail on the head
CAs are really not the way. They're all basically the same thing, just with different names. And in maddening, the same happens to magic, since there is basically impossible for a mage to double, then only damage matters.
And worse of all, this only makes it so units underperforming in magic can never become better at it, which is something the classic weapon rank system does (start bad, work hard and expend a lot for better staves).
But 3h already makes it painfully slow and boring to level up any rank, so they might as well have done us a favor detering us fron grinding stupid stuff.
@@SinNun-tx5jp There's a lot of issues with how mages are constructed in general, in particular: They all get constructed the same for some reason, meanwhile, melee classes can literally have their highest and lowest stats swapped between Sword users and Axe users
I think making personal skills more wild is the play. In their current state, you can certainly piece together what a character is about from their skill name and effect, but the effects often don't feel impactful enough to warrant caring unless you really like said character for other reasons. One skill idea I was theorycrafting is for a "parry" for Arts/Gauntlet user who can disarm opponents upon evading their attack. While it would not be wholly reliable, it could set up plays that few if any other units could replicate if the player was feeling brave. But basically, let personal skills enable crazier things that are exclusive or nearly exclusive to that unit. Alear and Veyle's auras are even on the right track, despite just being auras because of how much they can alter a round of combat.
Honestly I really like Modern FE unit customization, It feel really nice when you find a unit/class/item combo that just works really well. I honestly really want to see more gimmicky personal skills. Cause alot of the engage and three houses personal skill just felt like a nice bonus rather than part of their identity. I think the most powerful skills should be the personal they get. Giving more personal skills a pop up or some other visual effect would also give more identity.
This is a good balancing factor i think. Like look at 3Hs's Bernadetta. That's a really bad unit on the basics, but when you account for the personal skill and the combination of skills she can learn like Vengeance, Pass and Encloser, she is a really unique unit.
This should be more or less the standard way to go about it imo.
Personal skills could be a great way to add more identity. I think because the emblem rings could be passed around that made personal skills feel less important, but in a future iteration without emblems I could see three or four personal skills really affecting how units develop and function in a team.
@@guedesbrawl i personally don’t like extensive reclassing and unit customization. I prefer being given limitations and having to strategize from there, it feels boring and pointless without the limitations on the characters. This is probbaly the main reason i don’t enjoy the newer games as much. When I play I do try to push them onto the path that makes sense for them, but it’s less enjoyable knowing that I could do some bs and win for free.
Additionally 3H characters have different boons and banes in weapon growth, budding talents, and different spell pools. These things helped make the characters unique which was kinda missing in Engage bc the gimmick of the Emblems was easy to pass around to anyone, personals don’t add much, and the Emblem skill changes are based on class type not on the unit themselves. So in Engage the only unique units were the royals, Alear, Veyle, Zelestia, Nel, and Rafal bc they have unique classes
@@sirk603 So you hate actually being clever?
Unit clothes and attire is mostly an increased expectation from a more customizable game and envisionment standards to me. In older games, the static picture for characters means that someone like Amelia won't gain massive shoulder guards or a suit of armor within that picture when she class changes but you don't really imagine her going into battle without it. Nor do units gain an attire variation that is unique to them other than maybe color variations within those games either save for a few select units.
Stat and skill wise, I unironically learned from FEH and various gacha games that these and game balance is a fucking thin line held together by scotch tape. You have FEH's skill inheritance system where a unit is only differentiated by 1 unique skill (so far), their thesis-long weapon description, and stats that vary among units of similar generational BST by 1 to X points which is considered moot in the long term. The term godswords exist for a good reason, and there's no Kagetsu yet.
an oft-ignored element of customization in discussions like these is the very selection of which characters you choose to use in a game. to go as far as to remove something like reclassing or even branched promotions entirely is not to meaningfully put any real end to customization and both should be on the table when discussing paths forward (even if customization for its own sake is an easier crowd-pleaser than more defined individual units when it comes to official releases). when you remove something like branched promotion, different outcomes for two characters in the same starting class is an avenue for unit identity that now exists. likewise, stuff like gaiden and echoes show that limiting who exactly can change classes can result in an setup of "customization of your starting team" without rendering the entire cast merely a selection of portraits to apply to whatever class utility you consider their statline to be suited to.
It'd be interesting if they experimented with this compromise via a personal skills that could evolve with a limited class pool. Like, the unit had a base personal skill no matter what, but in it's 'ideal classes' the skill grew and enhanced itself to better synchronize with its intended classes. So there's a clear benefit to conforming to unit intention, but still some freedom to break the mold.
also more unique unit models is literally always a good call, even if that's only by way of giving the character a specific color set that's applied regardless of class.
Customization is a big priority for me, but I also don't like characters to lose ALL their identity in the name of flexibility, because then there's nothing interesting to do with the customization. For me the line is somewhere between Fates and Three Houses-and I admit, it may just be because a huge chunk of units in 3H join at roughly the same time and in the same class, but when I look at the cast I may as well be looking at a bunch of cookie-cutter soldiers spit out of a character generator. It just doesn't get the neurons firing, at least until you dig in to their growths and skill/magic learnsets. Meanwhile, Fates gets me excited right-off to see what you can do with a unit that applies their existing strengths in unexpected ways, like Outlaw Nyx with a Shining Bow or... well, a lot of stuff with the beast units. It's a fine line, but the two should be working together imo, not fighting for space.
I like the awakening or fate classes though i'm fine with either option honestly i like both customizing and identity so whoch ever one i get i'll be happy
games should also use prf weapons to make characters unique. In Berwick Saga, there's a mage who gets a wind orb that attacks 4 times for low damage, which is great against low-res enemies, another who gets a fire orb that attacks once for high damage, which can chunk just about any enemy, and a third who gets a thunder orb that attacks for 2-range, which pairs well with his anti-archer skill.
My favorite is the sword that attacks 3 times but sets evade to 0.
I did think of this as well, I think the main issue is, cast size.
I tried it myself and it actually gets pretty hard to make a prf weapon for every single character, and then you still have to deal with the implications.
In a sense personal skills have a similar issue as well, and the engage personal skills felt kinda eh. Even in 3h or fates they were kinda hit or miss as well.
That being said, I'm not opposed to the idea, if they can pull it off successfully that would be great. IF that is.
Even kaga (since fe5) only gave unique weps to some and not the rest, heavily nudging players to use certain characters while the rest are irredeemable garbage.
@@inconemay1441 I think theres only one character in Berwick who is irredeemable garbage, and even he gets the Gullveig as his effective prf.
Sure for example the Jagen doesnt get a prf, but he also doesnt need one.
In terms of personal skills I adore, Timera’s really takes the cake for me. Not only is it pretty nice to have, reducing enemy crit in a 2 tile radius is always nice, but it also really synergises well with what we know about her. She loves singing but is also sorta terrible at it (as evidenced by like half her supports). Idk, it just makes me happy thinking about it
Edit: Racket of Solm is the skill’s name
Steel weapons getting a passive +5 crit providing a constant source of paranoia?
Timerra: don’t worry girl, I gotchu
With engravings, why exactly is crit a concern? Also, hit rates, I never had a single attack under 98 hit after getting the awakening engrave
@@SinNun-tx5jp
Not every engrave gives dodge. You have 10-12? deployment slots and a select few engraves that gives crit avoid. As someone who’s played ironman runs before, even a 1% crit chance is scary, and sometimes there is no way to avoid it.
@@ThisIsntATH-camr
there's 6 engraves that give dodge in vanilla and 3 Emblems that give luck (4 with Roy, I believe any unit has enough luck growth for at least 1 point), that's 9 or 10 units who are warded from almost all enemies, for there's very few enemies with killers.
And that is asuming they were ever threatened, because luck gives 1 dodge while dex is only 0.5 crit, so most enemies are just below naturally. Seriously, pretty much only Ivy has to ever worries about crits, as if Eirika, a marth or fire engrave didn't already were exelent choices for her.
Also, 10 frontline units, units who see retaliation often, is already, very unrealistic. Likely there'll be 3 to 5, less depending on how much you juggernaut, the rest are likely player phase bots who dread ever getting hit already.
And arguing anything could go wrong in an ironman, still doesn't justify the fear of crits, because there are other ways mitigate thier threat. Sheer defense also, Ike, monk blocks, attacking out of range, getting out of range preemtively, rallies (do supports give dodge in this? I never bothered) , etc. Even in a game were there's weapons with innate dodge, it's cheaper and better to just use the game mechanics. In fates is just better to pair up than supply each unit a bronze, and pretty much only Arthur will have the issue consistently.
I liked how Three Houses balanced unit identity tbh - any unit can be any class but a lot of other levers are pulled to make each one distinct - Proficiencies, learned Skills, Combat Arts, Spell Lists, Crests, even starting houses/join conditions. Even whether a unit has a just has crest or doesn’t changes up their possibility space a lot thanks to the Relic Weapons. Units like Sylvain or Catherine have a really unique identity just based on their conditions to join.
I think Engage has some of this stuff - whether a unit joins before or after Ch.10, and thus can’t inherit stuff like Canter until later chapters, makes big difference imo. But overall, there’s not much making them unique besides growths
I appreciate Engage actually keeping some of the character's colors when changing classes like in the sprite era. But damn it would kickass if they went back to each character having only a handful of classes so they could design each outfit with more detail and personality. Even with the same base, two different characters as Snipers could look very unique
The unique character outfits in Engage could've been implemented the same as how 3 Houses has an option that allows you to customize their outfit. Personally, I would just make each character have their unique outfit available as an option for every class (except the supposed restriction on the mounted classes).
I very much prefer units being in one class line with no reclassing. At most maybe certain units like trainees or villagers can exist that have more class options.
I like fates system of sharing skills so new game plus is more interesting on early skills for easier early mode especially if you want to do conquest
Same with capture units those are fun and give an extra giant cast of characters to your group
A good unit to me is either early with good growths to build up or mid/late game with a bulky enough set that they only need a seal or a few levels to be on par.
Trainee units must be early game or else they are just Amelia ewain in not needed as some of the early mage or horse units are just better in general by then
Adding onto that visual aesthetic point: Every character in the game has a handful of personal outfits just for them. The problem is these are ONLY usable in the base. They don't impact most of the gameplay, so I kinda forgot about them by the time I left Brodia.
Ivy looks so much better in her Somniel clothes it's not even funny
@@knightofarnor2552ya no joke when she joined and I saw her at the base I said who are you
@kollie79engage uses different models on map than in battle/3d so it would be too big for the game to make every outfit accessible in combat, they should let you use the base outfit tho
@@thomasquesada7248A go big or go home situation, either put all that monumental effort onto adding them to combat or just don't bother putting them in since the only usable places are too short and inconsecuancial.
I feel like there were some key things that were missed about how the character customization still maintains a character’s uniqueness aside from stats and personal skills. One being that, at least in 3H, no two units can do the exact same thing even if they share certain qualities. Having Linhardt as a Bishop and having Flayn as a Bishop is having two very different Bishops. Even though they have the same offensive magic, their supportive magic is different. Same thing with having Ferdinand as a (primarily) Lance using Paladin and having Lorenz as a (primarily) Lance using Paladin, since only one of those two gets access to Swift Strikes. Also Ferdinand has more weapon proficiencies which means it is easier to make him a more versatile Calvary unit overall compared to Lorenz who would require more work.
I think unit learnsets does a good job of displaying their uniqueness as it shows us their capabilities and also says something about their character. Like how the only characters in 3H capable of using Dark Magic are characters that are connected to TWSITD.
And 3H isn’t the first game to do it. Even though in Echoes it is kind of hard to make everyone the same class (since only the dread fighter can be reclassed to villager), most mages/magic classes can be pretty unique since certain units learn certain spells. Kliff was actually my preferred mage over Luthier because Kliff just had a better set of spells and (to my knowledge) Luthier never had anything to offer that could compete. Also having Silque and Faye as my Clerics gave me two completely different support units that offered different things.
So even though not every game will have the learned skills system, it’s possible for units to be customizable and still unique. It would just require some playing around on the part of the devs.
Unit identity is the absolute most important part of Fire Emblem for me, it's why I have hundreds of hours across countless playthroughs of both Awakening and Fates, while I've only played through 3H three times and am yet to complete a single Engage campaign. There's a critical balance that needs to be struck between keeping units distinct and allowing unit customisation. I think Fates hit that balance the best (if you ignore the online features), with each unit being defined by a personal skill, stats/growths and their two starting classes, and customisability available in a choice of two additional classes that come via making careful decisions about which character pairings are going to be of most benefit (and are going to feel the most in-character, if you're into the dating sim side of the game).
Engage adds one thing to that formula, having class-locked class skills that add a little bit more value to the decision of what a unit's final class should be, but then destroys that by making most of a unit's definition come from which engage they're equipped with, giving every unit access to every one of the core classes, and then contradicting themselves by giving half the units unique classes that further removes customisation and isn't actually giving them that much unit identity anyway thanks to the lack of skills. And I think that when any unit can be anything, that isn't really customisation either, because it feels arbitrary. I enjoy customising Lissa in Awakening because it's funny to give a giant axe to this healer who starts off unable to even attack, and then work out what combination of available skills is going to best enable her to smash skulls. If Lissa were in Engage, she'd just be yet another unit who has equal right to be any class, who just happened to start as a cleric. Giving her an axe and face-smashing skills isn't "customising Lissa", it's just allocating one of the models I have to one of the classes in the list. In Engage, Framme quickly became my favourite character to begin with because I put Micaiah on her and that made her this versatile problem-solver, the most unique unit in my party. But as I played more, I soon realised that there was nothing unique about Framme at all, this was all just the result of putting Micaiah on a Monk vessel, and because every character can be a Monk and every character can use Micaiah, then this wasn't a good customisation choice to maximise Framme's value, I just happened to have assigned Framme's model and name to the "teleporting Monk" unit template.
I don't think unit identity and customisation are opposed, and I don't think Engage represents high customisation Fire Emblem. Customisation requires limitations. Customisation is being given a set of options and creating the combination that speaks the most to you. In Fates, you get a new puzzle on every single unit. In Engage, there's one puzzle, the class list, and you do that same puzzle as many times as you have units you can be bothered to grind, with only very slight and entirely optional variations.
I like making my own units specialization!
For example, my Hortenzia is the queen of quirky battle strats with her 4 staffs that disrupt the ennemy's plan and she rarely ever attacks on her turn.
It's really fun to deviate from the classic "this unit is good on offense and this one is good on defense".
I think the opposite of most people. 3H and Engage have the strongest unit identity in the entire series.
People tend to forget an important thing. Cross game identity. Navarre, Joshua, PoR Zihark and so on to me have 0 identity because they all blend together in a generic archetype that exist every game whitout adding anything that make them stand out. Only Rutger stand out by being broken.
Felix however, is a lot more than that. He can play like that but he can leverage his stats in completely different ways.
A perfect example is something i am doing in my re H5 SD run. Draug is a fairly generic Armorknight that do hia job and then get benched. This run i noticed that he was faster than Gordin and Castor and decided to try an hunter reclass.
He became much more interesting. First, a glass cannon archer, then, after i promoted and brought him back in General, a bow focussed armorknight so fast it double most mobs. I never played a bow focussed armor, let alone a fast one. This is unique and is something few characters could pull off because few character join at low level and an high speed growth in SD.
As for engage, i spent hours upon hours on the spreadsheets to figure out wich kind of build can be run with each characters. I never had this much fun planning builds in FE and a big reason for it is that the combination of reclassing and fixed mode allow me to know exactly that X unit met Y benchmark with Z resources.
The high customization, rather than allow for player expression, gives me analysis paralysis. Too many options and I can't decide which direction to go in.
customising units is just way too much fun to give up now that it's in the series. imo fates did it best - the smaller initial pool of classes helped make each unit feel distinct, but also, because getting outside of a unit's primary/secondary class option involved support, by the time you have them in a class with a more generic appearance you already have a good feel for how the unit plays and what their character is. also it's just a lot of fun navigating a unit through the class system in order to accrue skills or make non-standard builds (I have a great memory of a playthrough where I got camilla into onmyoji for example)
I just remembered how Valkyria Chronicles handled their units.
Since Valkyria Chronicles is a strategy game with tanks and guns classes are exactly that, classes. You don`t train your units individually you train classes instead. What differentiates your units/characters are a list of up to 4 personal quirks, which can be both positive and negative. A veteran with a back injury for example suffers from accuracy loss, when he hides behind sandbag cover, so he is more suited for offensive tasks or aproaching through tall grass. Another one loves the smell of grass, so she gets accuracy boosts when running through grass instead of roads. Plus, your units/characters unlock an additional quirk, when you use them more often, which is often more directly related to being at the front.
I thought the same. It's an interesting system.
@@MrSentinel07 Yeah, Darkest Dungeon uses something similar. While you have generic units with the same basic abilities, they can be more suited for different tasks depending on the random quirks they come with and develop during their expeditions. (though you have the option to remove them or make them permanent for min-maxing).
I think there's a lot of room for middle ground in this topic. One I think would be worth trying is Preferred Classes, where you can re-class into anything but each unit has 1 base and 1 or 2 promoted classes that they prefer and get a bonus while in, like maybe they get an additional skill in that class or a stat bonus as well as their unique outfits while all other classes get generic outfits. Like maybe a character who starts in Myrmidon can promote into Hero for Sword Avoid +20 or Sword Master for Desperation, but all other units don't get either of those bonuses, or an Armor Knight that can promote to Fortress Knight with +1 Move or Great Knight with +4 Speed.
Another good option would be limiting how many times you can reclass. Maybe your reclass item isn't sold in stores and you get 1 from completing a story chapter and theres 2-3 available from paralogues or enemy drops but that's it. You can guaranteed reclass one unit and if you go out of your way you can get some others, but for the most part you are stuck with their bases and the limited promotion options for that base
if you want unit identity look no further than Berwick Saga. every character in that game has unique assets that set them apart profoundly.
I personally think that what was said about reclassing in Awakening as opposed to Fates is a bit misleading, just take Hayato in Fates, for example: he starts as a diviner thanks to his talents lying mostly in magic, and when you fight him as an enemy in Conquest, he's promoted into an onmyoji, which highlights his focus on magic predominately. Yet despite it seeming to be at odds with his character as presented by his starting class, he can heart seal into an oni savage, which being big, extremely bulky and muscular is very much so at odds with Hayato's identity as a mage, and without context, it doesn't make a lot of sense as a reclassing option that he would naturally have access to. But knowing that Hayato is the adopted son of Fuga changes this perception completely in my opinion: Fuga himself is also very muscular and extremely skilled in martial combat, and as Hayato's father figure, it is reasonable to think that he would look up to his tribe's chieftain, which is reinforced in their supports in Revelations. It's also worth noting that perhaps another reason why Hayato would have the oni savage as a heart seal reclass is because one of it's promotions is able to use tomes, thus tying back to his magical talents as a diviner. A similar argument could be made for Elise being able to reclass into a wyvern rider in Conquest, as she similarly looks up to her big sister Camilla, of whom shares this class line. For both of these 2 units, however, they can still effectively become any class existing in the game with supports from other units by unlocking the options to use a friendship or partner seal, regardless rather we're talking about the dark mage, knight, samurai, archer, or whatever else have you -- the difference is that they aren't going to have all of these options from one playthrough to the next since what they get in this context can be changed depending on who you prioritize them gain support points with. Because of this, I would argue that much like in Awakening, a character's natural reclassing options tell us something about that character, because regardless of how many classes they technically have access to because of the way the game's reclassing system works and lets you incorporate a wide variety of other characters' classes into the mix, the ones that they DO have naturally (by that I mean using a combination of heart and master seals) can NOT change and vary and are effectively set in stone. That said, I do think that this was the roots of where unit identity started to matter less came from, as while Awakening also had the same kind of flexibility in choosing classes for different characters, it was only applied to the child units, such as Severa, Brady, Gerome, or Lucina -- this was changed in Fates to give every character access to effectively whatever class they wanted, with the game even doing away with certain classes like the pegasus knight or fighter being limited by sex: this means that (as previously stated more than once) any character can be any of the different base classes in the game. It was Fates giving the player this kind of flexibility that I think influenced this aspect of game design moving forward, since now there was something of an expectation being set for this to become a more regular feature moving forward, and this was only further encouraged by the playerbase enjoying having more of this newfound freedom -- both in terms of having fun messing with how you choose to play each unit from one playthrough to the next to help keep things more interesting, and also in giving players that are interested enough more options to choose from to better optimize certain units by choosing classes based both on what they want that unit to do as well as what skills they want them to learn. This leads me to think that the problem has to do with how freely you can choose different classes in the most recent games -- a point in which I do agree with from this video -- because at least in Fates and Awakening, you still had certain class sets that each character had no matter what, and this by default doesn't give them every class in the game -- you have to work for that if there's a particular class you want a certain unit to be that they don't have readily available to them -- by removing this makes each character feel less unique in this regard because you can have every character become a certain class if it so tickles your fancy. While I know all this doesn't give any attention to anything else like stats, join time, aesthetics and whatnot brought up in this video, I do, however feel that class is still one of the more important factors in unit identity overall, because even in games with the ability to reclass, most of the time, the average player will probably think of a certain character based on what class they are when first recruited -- not to say the other things don't have an impact on this topic -- but we connect with characters based on this because regardless of whatever you do with them, 'their class' will be what they are identified as because it's set in stone
Unit identity makes customization so much more fun, if anyone can be anything for free then there's not much point thinking about what to do, instead you're just filling a quota of what to use
I want the fates system again, unique class sets with opportunity cost methods of having any option available, and personal skills that all have some kind of useful niche and encourage using certain classes for synergy
Something that could also be done regarding unique outfits is to have certain themes. For example:
Default outfit, strong unit outfit, mounted outfit, light armor outfit, and caster outfit. That can still make units feel unique and not be as brutal on the designs
Unit Identity is super important to me. FE9 is easily my favorite Fire Emblem - which has very little unit customization, but I still really feel like the RPG mechanics stand out. In FE9, its not about customizing a unit, its more about allocating your resources (EXP, BEXP, Only 1 Forge per chapter, skill scrolls are consumable, etc.) and that makes it so that you end up customizing your army as a whole rather than individual units. I haven't played any of the games prior to 9, but I've played Awakening, Fates, Three Houses, and Engage. I get major analysis paralysis in all of them. The way I end up enjoying the game is to just bump the difficulty down to Hard instead of Maddening or Lunatic, and then very heavily limiting reclassing. Like, I'll change a couple units class here and there, but its almost always a permanent change - I'll make an Archer into a Myrmidon and then promote to Swordmaster and keep them there, for example.
My thoughts exactly. Imagine how an amazing chapter like Elinica’s Gambit would be butchered in a game with reclassing? Part of what makes that chapter special is that most of those units are very particular in what they can do because their identity is so strong. The devs knowing what you have access to is considered in the map design. Player customization is cool but the series played excellently without it and I don’t think it’s really worth the drawbacks; I’d rather they focus on improving other game elements entirely.
what would solve this is give units special classes based on the weapon and starting class and their growth rate I think that would give each character some uniqueness. Some examp[les for engage characters
lapis-a sword user class with high speed, merrin-a sword rider, panette-armored axe user, chloe-special flyer just for her, diamant-a exclusive class for being a lord character. citrine get an exclusive mage class
Another way to fix things bring back the pairing system from awakening and make it so if a character wants to reclass into a class that uses a different weapon, they have to pair up with a unit using that weapon. Ex if a lance user want to reclass into a magic class they have to pair up with a magic unit or if they want to become an armored axe unit and is a lance unit, they have to pair up with an armored unit then switch to pairing up with an axe unit. The class would be determine by the support level between characters c=beginner, b=advanced, A=master class
really crazy to hear PangYa music out in the wild world of YT videos
I really enjoy the class system in Fates because it feels like a decent balance of what you mentioned. You have limited class pools for each character, and through their reclass options it can tell us more about the character, like Charlotte being able to reclass into troubadour to play into her act as a really dainty and helpless maiden. But then you get some customization options through the A+ and S rank class seals. Sure, Corrin can become anything under the sun, but it's more restrictive for other characters, and kind of a pain to move one skill you got for a character over into another file.
I think no reclassing or Sacred Stones promotion trees are best. I also appreciate the Tellius games which allow units to choose a weapon type to gain the ability to wield upon promotion based on their class. This doesn't count as a reclass or even a branching promotion, but it feels so good to do. It feels like you're actually gaining something when you choose the weapon type and aren't just arbitrarily shuffling around unit classes to try and put a specific character in their ideal class or learn specific skills, or even just arbitrarily promoting for the stat bonuses and 20 extra levels to grind through. Really fun way of making promotions feel important, plus it also allows for unit identity to be partially influenced by the player without compromising individuality on the whole. Oscar can't just start flying on a wyvern out of nowhere and wear ugly spiky armor while wielding a weapon he didn't even start out using, but he can now use bows, swords, or axes depending on the player's choice.
I really love how you broke down the different ways FE characters have identity and feel memorable. The flavor, pacing, context. There’s a surprising amount of overlap with those ideas in other video games with large casts, and even other mediums like D&D, books, movies, and shows.
11:54 In regards to the outfits, I think it’d be really cool if they changed it to something similar to what Xenoblade 3 did! Each character has their own outfit that gets a different layer on top for each class. I’m very bad at explaining it haha but it might help make each unit feel more distinct!
6 videos deep
Started plying fire emblem again after years off. Whole twitter drama years back put me off of 3H. Got back into my gba carts and I love this channel. Picked up engage and will eventually finish 3H. Subbed. Thank you for the content!
I would love some kind of option to allow a character to keep their unique outfit in other similar classes. I like to experiment but sometimes the personal colours of a unit really don't work with some of the generic class looks. Yunaka and Kagetsu in engage can be hard to reclass because their colour scheme doesn't fit very well with some of the other classes. But I get why the developers don't want to create a unique version of every class outfit, it's way too much work. The flexibility of being able to reclass and try new things adds a lot of replay value for me. As an example in my current 'oops all backup units' run of engage I'm testing out the great hero Hortensia with Micaiah. So far it's been very interesting to have her in the centre of the formation, poking and doing utility staff things. But I wouldn't be able to do these silly things, without the option to reclass to whatever I want.
A thought might be to keep a specific set of reclass options that have unique looks for characters and when you complete the game and are in new game+ you get the option of reclassing to whatever you want and the aesthetics can be a little more jank (still keep the option for the base class outfit though). But I would also like to see randomization options in the base game once you are in new game+ as well, which is a common mod for older titles.
I'd say a good way to keep the unique identity while keeping the large customization would be by taking cues from Three Hopes and having a class promotion line specific for units that allows them to keep their unique outfit.
I'd add having "unique class skills" as well. Class skills that only this specific unit possesses.
Not a mainline entry of the series but I love how Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes gave each character a Unique Ability or Attribute that makes them always unique.. even if you can just use a merc whistle to get that ability as an Item anyone can equip.. For example I love playing Petra due to her Wind Step ability
I feel like make some kind of compromise between the two.
Add Three Houses weapon proficiency system but if that unit is bad with a weapon, give that character an stats/damages dealt penalty since not everyone can master combat with every weapons, if an unit is good with an weapon, then give it an bonus and if neutral then nothing. Give every characters an "canon" set of classes like where they got their personal outfit with that class but still allow to change to any classes. Also make personal skill more interesting maybe. (As much as I hate Horstensia, I will always remember her from Engage because of her heal bot personal skill.)
Or all the personalisation aspect part could be an reward as part of a new game + mode or simply part of Casual mode, I think there many ways to fix the problem and still make everyone happy to be honest.
Friendship seals i feel were the best way to do both customization and keep unit identity. Ex.) You could grab fighter skills as Selena without even swapping to fighter, then you could swap to wyvern to capitalize on her high bulk along with the +5 hp skill you grabbed earlier OR make use of gamble on her high skill classes.
Generally speaking when it comes to reclassing I tend to not to reclass often because I like units in their cannon class. To me it just feels right in my mind.
Personally, I think they need to dial back the accessibility of class availability.
The unit/class availability in Fates was probably the best balance. Every unit had a secondary class and they could gain access to a 3rd and 4th class through friendship and S-supporting, meaning you had to actually work for these rewards.
Meanwhile in Engage, certain classes are abundantly overused (Wyvern, Warrior and Mage Knight) simply by virtue of being the strongest classes in the game that anyone can access. Units no longer fill a niche because a certain unit will just do that job better.
The only true Niche-fillers in Engage (and with DLC, it's debatable) are some of the royal units, notably Ivy and Hortensia (and to a lesser degree, Fogato), due to their unique classes. And Seadall, for obvious reasons.
The sheer volume of availability actually hurts the overall strategy of the game. Why bother using Swordmasters when Hero is just better? The class offers nothing except a mobility skill designed to encourage setup, but then you can just use a Wyvern to one-round the enemy and make positioning strats using Swordmaster/Haberdiers completely irrelevant.
To me, unit feel is incredibly important. Not the *most* important thing, but it's the best way to set apart repeat playthroughs. Making you experiment with different units to wildly different results, instead of maybe using different units in the same classes that still enable all the same tactics. Also, gameplay niches attached to characters means experimenting will often endear you to the character themselves as well. Using new characters for gameplay reasons also gives you their supports, their quotes, their animations. Maybe on a first run you only used Robin and Henry as mages, maybe then you use Miriel and Tharja. Or maybe you reclass Lissa to Sage and Sumia to Dark Flier. You'll still have two mages at the end of the day, but with very different feeling experiences.
I do believe fates does it best - every unit gets one additional classline, but every classline is theoretically available to any unit. However, getting access to those classes requires a LOT of planning via S and A+ supports, and the limited number of seals (especially in conquest, where you can't grind either). If there's one build your heart is set on, then you CAN make it possible - it just takes a lot of work, and everybody else is going to be kicking around in their default classes. The one additional classline also tells a story for all of them. Maybe Jakob and Felicia both start as servants, but Jakob reclasses to the Cavalier classline and Felicia to Troubadour, making Jakob a more physically offensive unit, and Felicia a magical/supporting one, which also reflects back on their personalities, as Jakob is a strict "do it yourself to do it best" type, meaning as Cavalier he can charge ahead and deal with enemies, whereas Felicia always attempts to support others with various tasks out of disbelief in her own abilities.
And that's just the story told by their class pool in tandem with their suppports, without personal skills and stats attached, because both of these further enhance these traits.
Generally I'm really tired of "anyone can be anything with little effort." On one hand it's choice paralysis - if anyone can be anything, then what the hell do I do with them? This problem was most evident in Three Houses, where everybody starts in the Commoner/Noble class and you need to figure out "intended" class paths through talents, less so in Engage where everyone at least starts in a functional class for them. On the other hand it just makes repeat playthroughs boring, because again, I can just do the same thing with different faces. At least if I pick between Miriel and Tharja, they have access to different types of magic, meaning Miriel gets effective damage against fliers, and Tharja gets all the weird shenanigans dark tomes get up to. Both magic users, but with twists between them.
Damn this was a whole essay. That is to say, great video! Great points, I agree with all of em, basically. I wish customizability hit more limits. Sometimes playing inside the box is all the more interesting, just to see how you can break the box from the inside.
I like class variety when it aligns with the character's identity. It makes sense that trainee units in Sacred stones have a wider tree of promotion options, and it makes sense that the villagers in SoV can choose a class. The freedom doesn't feel as good when the options contradict the unit's personality and interests.
12:36 or making several sets of outfits for each class- a practical one, a fancy one, a ragged one, etc. That way the outfits can still fit the personality, even if they are generic.
Totally agree, well said! I think it’s worth sacrificing some customization, they’ve clearly gone a bit too far in that direction
In three houses I felt each unit was unique because of the skills and combat arts they learned that set them apart from each other. Ashe, Ignatz, and Bernie are very different because they learn different combat arts while also all having VERY different personal skills. From kinda niche to really op. Three houses managed to make units unique in combat arts and skills that you could tutor
As for engage units tend to feel less unique. I still love their personalities but overall the personal skills did not do much and personal stats are just simply unbalanced between all of the units. It makes units less unique because they have less unique things about them to set them apart
Ashe is shittier Bernie and Ignatz, in that regard, Ashe is unique, but Bern and IGN are the same unit destined to be a hunter's volley bot
I feel its disingenuous to call them "destined to be a hunters volley bot"
Sure you can do that but even in the same class their personal skills make them more unique and unique combat arts to do that as well. Ignatz gets some neat sword combat arts and he is extremely accurate. He can be known for having super consistent criticals. Bernadetta has vengence which can make her a satisfying boss killer who can melt someone in one hit. Ashe.... Well he doesn't get much but hey sometimes being mediocre can make a unit feel unique in that way.
@@SleepyBrady IGN only gets Haze Slash. A weak attack that boosts evasion. Literally any Bow Art does better at doing damage without retaliation.
@@SleepyBrady You are right IGN and Bern aren't the same unit and Ashe is thier knock off. Bern and Ashe are both knock off of IGN.
Bern's personal is worse Defiant attack, which any men can and should get, specially if commoner. If anything, this means Bern peaks earlier, for she has nothing to work on after sniper.
The Friend Seals and Partner Seals always felt like a great way to tie a character's mechanical options to their narrative focus or arc.
I like customization to an extent. Being able to do something like dismount a flyer or cavalier to cater towards a chapter. However, being able to do something like tell Florina “Hey you’re gonna wear heavy armor now and be a general” would just feel wrong unless you had to actually put in the work.
The Three Houses system is close to being good but just doesn’t get there. It tells you the intended direction for characters but doesn’t really punish you for doing your own thing, and if changing that direction had to be earned it would be a lot better. Don’t force me to mold them from a generic student, make them heavily specialized in something and make me work for the change. It’s why I love the system in Fates and can live with the systems in Awakening, which is the second best, and even Shadow Dragon, where you’re limited based on how many of a unit type you already have.
You perfectly spoke how I felt about every unit having access to every class. That was one of the gripes I had when playing Three Houses: every unit could very well just be the same. At least Three Houses gave you the option to keep their personal outfits, where Engage didn't... What's with that cosmetic step-down? Lol
Personal skills help differentiate between units giving them their own identity... if done correctly. It's sad that some characters are stuck with oddly specific, impractical or unimpactful personal skills.
I’ve always focused significantly more on using units as I think they are “intended”, like keeping the units within their initial class line. Not optimal I guess, but I think it helps merge gameplay and personality mode in a way that I like. It also never feels like I’m “exploiting” the game, as I value experiencing the game close to dev intention. Even though newer games give you a lot of options to mess with classes, I’ve never felt like I wanted to really mess around with them because I just prefer keeping characters in their own class line for thematic purposes. With so many people focusing on stats and optimization in the FE community, I’m glad to hear that there are other people still thinking about unit identity.
Maybe it's just because I'm new: I got on with 3 houses, and enjoyed my time with Engage. But I feel like unit identity's decrease is in service to something that the games continue to put emphasis on:
Character's finding their spaces to play in. Because here's the thing, Engage and 3 houses have some HUGE rosters. I reckon it's assumed that not everyone is going to like every character, and so on. For instance, I love engage's Boucheron and Etie, but overlooked Vander. Mostly because of cultural osmosis telling me he had massive death flags, and his experience requirements seeming high enough that I just assumed he wouldn't be around for long.
But I wanted to play him still. I liked the old codger. And I found ways to use him, often shepherding around and drawing aggro for characters I could level easier, with special note going to Jean and the rest of the kids over all, who all have things they start specialized in. But get to play around with as the game goes on. This loop itself kind of repeated a few times over, and I found myself using this flexibility to find not what I thought was their best thing, but what their most interesting thing was.
I used what few weaknesses these characters had to characterize them and make them distinct to my playthrough, and that's the mark I feel the games have been trying to hit. From what I can tell there's more ROOM for character/player expression in the last two models, and so they're leaving it there for you to create your teams and rosters. Almost like pokemon in a way. Which - Concerning lmao. But I enjoyed it. IUDK.
Fire Emblem Fates class system with Three Houses/Tellius character writting is the anwser for this whole issue, and that's pretty much it.
One thing on the unique outfits is I think units should keep unique outfits when moving down certain classes. 3 Houses tries this giving unique appearences to some of the characters for certain Tier 2 Classes but the lack of proper "direct" Tier 3 upgrades for some classes ment you'd lose the asthetic if you wanted to keep upgrading a unit. The idea is there but the execution is lacking and id almost rather not have the 3rd tier classes if they couldnt design for them in that way.
Someone else in the comments said it best in that the reason for larger casts in older games was because they needed characters to fill a wide variety of unit roles for the player. But in a game where customization is king that isnt necessary and id much rather have a smaller cast with more heavy focus on them as individuals. A smaller cast also means more time can be spent giving them more unique models and animations for other classes that would otherwise be spent on making a whole other unit.
One side thing that also bugs me is that theyve pushed this "customize characters however you want" but still gender lock classes for whatever goddamn reason? I appreciate slightly that Engage toned it down but the Pegknight restriction is still there and the restrictions in 3Houses are just completely goofy
Unit identity is crucial for me, even with branched promotions and reclassing. I remember reclassing everyone in Awakening for skills and then getting them to the class I thought fit them better as characters. Even in Sacred Stones, I pick the class that I think fits the character's personality better.
Re: Merrin vs Kagetsu, I actually think Merrin has the better first impression. Once you have the timewheel back the map's basically over, I find that Kagetsu almost never does anything for me on 11 (maybe one attack). Merrin puts in a lot of work on 13 in comparison. The bigger reasons imo are that Kagetsu is just better (even if not by THAT much the difference is still there), and that the game more strongly encouraging reclassing Kagetsu. Merrin does way better in Wolf Knight than Kagetsu does in SM, so most players will only reclass Kagetsu and keep Merrin in Wolf Knight. Additionally Kagetsu gets an A sword rank in B+/B+ classes while Merrin doesn't get a boost in anything, which while not actually being that important, further pushes most from reclassing her.
So in general I think unit identity largely suffered due to emblem identity being more important, which I think they did an excellent job with. And while I think completely free reclassing is a mistake and I'd prefer they go back to class sets or revisit Engage's proficiency system (and make it way harder/impossible to learn new ones), I find myself having way less issue with it in Engage compared to 3H. You bring up join situation, and I think 3H unit identity suffers tremendously from the game dumping a full roster on you, all with a blank slate class. Who units are competing with for levels and resources, whether they had access to the early game emblems, stat spreads, Engage just does so much better for me than the amorphous blob that is the 3H students, where it feels like anything I'd try to turn them into just devolves into either vantage/wrath sweeper or combat art spammer. I actually think one of the bigger problems with Engage was with weapon ranks, it's harder for individual weapon proficiencies to be meaningful when the most impactful weapons are almost always at C (magic/killer) or B (Tomahawk).
Not letting you choose default outfits in Engage was a bizarre choice and I'm not sure why they didn't provide the option. There are some sick palettes out there (Great Knight Celine makes me want to start another run just so I can use that) but just...why?
Dude. You are making the best FE content right now.
"dingus" is such a good name for Alear
Welp, I'm commenting on a video. To answer the question you asked at the end of the video, I personally would prefer a loser system that allows me to bring the units I care about over a system that makes me bring units I don't care for. The thing I disagree with is your assertion that we can't have unique uniforms for every class, there are two solution to this. First solution is just to have fewer characters, that way you can spend more time and resources on their design and story. Second being to have class skins be variations on a theme where all of them are wearing the same uniform but have customized it in a way that matches their characters. (Scruffy characters have a wrinkled uniform, sneaky characters continue to wear darker clothes, squishy characters might wear a bit less armour then other people in the same class, Rosado wears the female version of the class armour, child characters uniform might be noticeably a little to large for them, ect, ect) I think little tweaks like that would absolutely be enough to preserve that class identity you where talking about.
I'd actually like less customization. I just get hit by choice paralysis when I have too many options, and would rather have a game balanced around mor elimited sets of usable tools. If you look at Shadows of Valentia's Rise of the Deliverance maps on hard mode, those, especially the final map, were extremely fun. That's because they could balance it around a team they knew you'd have. I couldn't nuke through the enemies with one unit. I had to trade around the horseslayer, I had to swap around unit placements, etc... I'm not saying to remove leveling and everything, but having less to customize means easier balance because the developper knows what you could feasibly have to work with at that specific time.
For skills, Path of Radiance did it best. Soren was the wind mage with Adept. Tormod had plus 1 move. Ike could learn Aether. Tauronea had his own weird niche where you could do wrath/resolve on him, even if he wasn't amazing. Characters coming with some skills, which takes space int heir limited pool is great.
Engage can be finnicky with unit individuality I think
Some have good unit individuality, Hortensia for example offers completely irreplaceable staff utility on top of her unique class, so she feels like a very unique unit
Then conversely there's Kagetsu and Merrin. I pretty consistently see Kagetsu placed as The Best Unit™ while Merrin doesn't even get top 5, which usually really confuses me because they are almost the exact same unit, just one has a bit later join time and slightly worse str
Then of course there's Louis and Madeline who can really only be armored or great knights do to their personal growth spread, it's almost impossible to build them with speed unless you really really focus on it
and then, again conversely, there's Zelestia who's stat spread let's her be almost anything. She can do magic, she can do physical, she could even hypothetically support. She is anything
It feels like they just kept going back and forth on how diverse they wanted the cast to be, really
It would be interesting if every unit kept their outfit in every class... but every class had a specific set of extra bits to add onto the outfit. Like armor units would have a full breastplate, mages would get a hat or long sleeves, the lighter martial classes would get that weird armored strap, warpriests could steal the cage skirt from Awakening, etc.
The only issue is making this work without egregious outfit clipping might be as much work as just making bespoke outfits for each class per character, so I don't know how viable it is as an idea.
So, I definitely fall somewhere in the middle on unit identity. I want to keep the ability to customize my army any way I like, but I also want to have a reason to use specific units. With a roster as big as Engage had, limiting reclassing options wouldn't have made a big difference in crafting my ideal army because there are way more units than you'll be able to use anyways, but I'd rather the game emphasize each unit's individuality (through personal skills or stats, perhaps) than just force me to use whatever classes are "best" for that unit.
Another point to mention is how classes are, well, not made equal.
3H breaks when you reclass everyone into a Wyvern Lord. The maps are not made around you having 10 Wyvern Lords and suddenly the game becomes a ''Wyvern Lord tier list'' choice simulator.
Which makes units like Haar so much more memorable iconic thanks to how their availability comes into play along with his stats AND his class to make him extremely useful right away in the chapter he joins in part 3.
Once you can give everyone the experienced veteran class, including the dainty princess and the 15 year old boy, it just completely loses its prestige and uniqueness.
One way to look at it is that character customisation vs unit identity is a trade off between replayability and making the first playthrough better. Customisation allows for lots of different ways to take your party of characters, and lots of different runs you could make happen. Strong unit identity makes for stronger storytelling (through representing the story in gameplay mechanics) and having more memorable, enjoyable characters, which make for a much better first playthrough (Not that its bad for the other playthroughs, but story matters much more the first go around).
I know some people play fire emblem games 15 times a year with a different challenge for each run, but as someone who only plays the game once (with maybe a replay some years down the line), I find that having a strong unit identity makes for a better experience. Restricting customisation also makes fine tuning things like difficulty curves easier, letting the devs more finely craft the experience and steer the player away from un-fun optimisations (i.e. Three Houses making everyone a wyvern rider)
While playing through Three Houses multiple times, I never really leaned in on the high customization - I let units be what they wanted to be, and just played into their inherent strengths. It may be a boring way to play, but I found it more gratifying to make a sort of hyper-class endgame unit, a unit that just matches their class, abilities, and stats so well that by the final few maps, almost any of them could be warped straight to the boss and kill everything in the room alone.
I feel like something that might have been worth sating is that in games with open reclassing, there is always a question of why not to put every character in the best class in the game? I was playing through 3H on maddening and had to take time to seriously answer why I shouldn't make everyone a wyvern lord, sniper, or grappler because those classes were really strong on the characters who were in them. I put Dimitri and Sylvain in paladin and with Sylvain especially, I sort of wish I had gone for wyvern rider because it wouldn't have been as much work as Dimitri, but the flying would have been really nice on levels with a lot of difficult terrain.
I'd say either
A) put more limits on reclassing that open up in the endgame or new game+
B) limit or give exclusive skills to specific character reclasses like in SoV
Personally, I would love to see IS expand on the initial branching promotions mechanic. If base classes had four branching promotions instead of two, it could allow for much more variation between units without needing too many different models or even animations to differentiate them. Whether reclassing between your promotions is unlimited or can only be accessed with a mechanic similar to the emblem rings, I feel having only five possible classes per unit makes it much easier to maintain unique traits such as animations and class outfits. It's fine if certain units have unique classes, but it really should only be like four units max to avoid prioritizing them so much over the rest of the units.
I'd put identity as more important than customisation, but both Identity and customisation are important.
I think engage does both of these in a manner which is only ok. I think this was because they wanted to highlight the importance of the Emblam Rings. Sure anyone can be any class, but that's just one decision, and you get two more decisions for what Emblem skills to inherrent (which is emblem centric, and uses the emblem dust stuff which I found to be too limited a resource), after that you only have decisions on what weapons to give, which utilises the Emblem seals you put on a weapon (another emblem related resource which is limited to one emblem seal per emblem).
Three Houses does both very well. One again you can put anyone into any class, but it's a lot more difficult to put someone in a class they "don't want" to be in, because they have to acquire skill points which is influenced by if they are naturally inclined for or against using a weapon-type. After that, you have a choice of 5 skills, 3 combat arts, a battalion and learnable spells. Skills, arts and spells are all drawn from a long list which is different for each character, while this may make many units 'just worse' versions of others, many have very interesting abilities which give idntity alongside customisability.
I love the point about the animations! In fates, Mozu is the character that I remember best, because when you first see her as a green unit, her village just died and she's a lvl 1 villager. In combat, her knees are shaking, she flails around basically and if she gets a kill she sighs in relief that it's over. And even as an archer, she still has those clumsy animations, and it's so endearing.
I can't say that there's a single character from engage I remember, aside from Louis (idr how to spell his name funnily enough), they all felt... The same. Not even their personalities really stuck all that well... I have a better time with 3 Houses, but I enjoyed the characters more.
My personal thought on just a general design would be to have the classes themselves be more flexible and then remove reclassing. Granted I am unsure how well this sort of thing fits into fire emblem in particular.
Classes help define boundaries and characterize your characters. Broadening the scope within such classes can preserve the class identity and still allow for a fair amount of customization and unique strategies.
Certainly though it is nice to have such open ended customization so being able to make your own character into whatever class would make sense to me.
Dual classing might be a fun mechanic. Games like Bravely Default or Octopath used that. Each unit could have their own fixed base class, plus a second class of their choosing.
It would require a pretty big rework of all fire emblem classes to make that work though, something IS doesn't tend to do.
Unit Identity is important to me. Nothing dumber than seeing 5 wyverns and 3 gremories and a dancer and whatever on your team because that's optimal. I care more for the character than the customization. I'd love to see more stuff like Sacred Stones with branching promotion paths though. Keep more identity but still have defined choices to make.
Average 3H endgame squad
I still think that the way Fates did classes made units still stand out more than the newer titles like three houses and engage. Every single unit has two or three classes that they always have but a few additional based on marriage or friendship.
So much this. Even if every unit can theoretically end up in any class, there's a huge difference in, say, Selena joining in ch 10 and getting wyvern from a fast A+ support with beruka or camilla, and Peri joining in ch 13, and having to wait several chapters for xander join and then spend 4-5 chapters building an S support (with high competition for that marriage) as her only route into wyvern. This difference is balanced by peri having better stats and a better base class, which creates an interesting dynamic. Do you get selena into wyvern asap, or do you use peri instead and have to wait a lot longer to get into wyvern? Or do you try something else? Selena has access to pegasus knight innately, which Peri can only get from a corrin marriage, which you only get one in of in a playthrough.
Yes I would say Fates is a step above Three Houses and Engage in this regard. Characters are very flexible, but you have to work harder to get them into different classes, so their initial setup and what classes are available to them feel more meaningful.
I think the biggest problem with engage unit identity is personality more than anything, 3 houses let you go into anything but the characters personality, origin and purpose we're all quite different which made all of them feel very distinct. Also engage should have given to every unit at least a unique outfit in their "canon" class, that would have helped at lot.
One thing I really appreciated from the GBA era was the custom sprites. Joshua and Rutger are two amazing swordsmasters. They effectively play the same, but are easily identifiable from eachother. Rutgers redish brown tunic, Joshuas hat, etc etc. Guy, another Myrmidon, with his pony tail. Mathew and Legalt, the thieves from FE7. Sain, Kent, and Lowen, the cavaliers. They all had personal customization to their sprites. While yes the 3D models have their own as well, the ability to just oh-so freely customize them all is kind of a turnoff for me.
I liked Awakening, I liked 3Houses, but other than the characters headmodel (and maybe a couple of classes per character), they can quickly just look generic with just their head to identify exactly which character is which. Tharja's base model is quite fan-servicey, but class her as a pegasus knight and she loses the sheer outfit she wears in favor of generic armor. Even if her generic armor was darkened to match her color pallet, it would help. Instead, we have copy-pasted assets.
Hell, if you cheat and change, say, Lowen into a General, he retains his color pallet. (indeed, some characters have really good color pallets as classes they can't achieve, while others get seriously fooked, but hey, that's modding/cheating for you).
Great video. Agree with everything you said, though I feel like stat wise, characters are actually more unique than in 3H. Especially on nightmare where things like Lapis’s speed, Goldmary’s defense, and Etie’s attack REALLY make a difference.
At the end of the day, My biggest gripe with engage is the outfits and no NG+ ! Why do they also switch to a generic outfit when they promote!?? And why can’t we keep their outfit like a toggle in 3H?? So many steps forward except for l things that absolutely kill replayability