Fire Emblem Engage - Nintendo Switch - Big Tech Upgrades vs Three Houses
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ม.ค. 2023
- One of the most impressive strategy franchises for Nintendo Switch is back - and developer Intelligent Systems continues to deliver highly impressive gameplay, this time backed by big improvements to the series' core technology. John Linneman reports.
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The music transitions you pointed out at 11:07 sounded absolutely stunning. Gave me chills when the camera zoomed back out to an overhead view of the field. Love everything I've seen so far from Engage!
RIGHT!! shit gave me goosebumps
Three Houses does the same thing. Love it!
They've been doing this since Awakening tho
I (unironically) love the way people are still impressed by adaptive music in games.
Not new but appreciated that its still here
I don't think anyone was expecting a technical marvel, but performance and nice visuals are always a much needed target to achieve. Happy to see these are improved from 3H. Another excellent review my friends
Great optimization for the target hardware. Love to see it on switch.
This is how it’s done
Man this is what pokemon should have been.
Sad pokemon fan noises
@@MFillmore Difference is IS is passionate about their games unlike GF who just care about meeting the quota
@Millard Fillmore unfortunately pokemon will still sell like hot cakes even if it was running @10 fps with 380p Resolution
Between the visual upgrades and the return to a traditional narrative, I can see this game getting stellar reviews.
FE Engage seems to highlight why I am a huge advocate for good art direction. It really makes a difference. Especially when you make a game designed around hardware limitations instead of brute forcing it.
@@wadewilson6628 Maybe, but there’s nothing wrong with that
@@wadewilson6628 art direction
@@wadewilson6628 Or pehaps he just like the overall graphics, it is a improvement from Three Houses.
@@wadewilson6628 ??? This game will age better because of it's art direction.
@@wadewilson6628there were anime girls in the last game, so if that was all that mattered, their comment wouldn’t exist. Maybe you’re projecting?
Note that while Intelligent Systems did most of the creative work on Three Houses, it was actually co-developed by Koei Tecmo, who handled most of the technical aspects of the game, as well as writing the Blue Lions scenario. I would speculate that Intelligent Systems was actually working on Paper Mario and then went to work on this game straight after.
So really, this game is the true follow-up to Awakening/Fates, both mechanically and visually. The Engage mechanic is an obvious evolution of the pair-up mechanic.
One more thing - the person who leaked Engage last year claimed that the game has been finished since 2020 and was supposed to release that year to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Fire Emblem. It might explain why the game is so polished. It definitely explains how preview builds have managed to go out so early!
Isn't this being co-developed with Gust (the Atelier devs at Koei Tecmo) tho?
@@legendarren Not sure! I did see that rumour too, but I don't think that's been formally announced. Ninty didn't even announce that 3H was co-developed with KT until the game actually released!
@@agromchung we'll need to look at credits because prior to release we wont know who is responsible ,it seems
this needs to be pinned
Koei definitely wrote a lot more than just the scenario for the Blue Lions, as the story itself just screams inspired by Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I would say that much of the story just felt like a proper war drama, which for a lot of fans echoed back to what older FE games were. Characters that felt more fully realized and attuned to the war setting rather than the more "built around one character trait" types we were introduced to in Awakening and Fates. This was probably why it resonated so much with fans of the older FE games.
I always always always appreciate John highlighting the game soundtrack. It gave me goosebumps this time
Good news tech wise.
Three houses struggled to run in Garreg Mach, even with it's textures and details at ultra low or something, big framedrops during character/party scenes, which was quite an achievement.
love it when you include the little soundtrack snippets
Excited to pick this one up. Thanks, for the preview!
Embarrassing
Now I'm exited! Superb presentation as always John
I'm playing TH mainly on my Oled screen and maybe i'm not too picky, but I love it overall, really like characters design, combat sequence, etc. So I think I will love Engage!
Im glad to see that the text appears to be larger and more legible this go around.
That loading screen is amazing.
Instead of just Byleth running to the other end you have the whole party of lords running together like they are actually going on an adventure.
Are you gonna be able to tilt the controller and move them around though? 🙃
@@agromchung
Most likely
So excited for Engage, glad to see its the massive performance + visual upgrade it appeared to be based on trailer.
Can't wait to play it! Thanks for the preview!
Great vid John! I am so incredibly excited for this game!
The first thing I noticed as soon as the announcement trailer came out was how much more clean and colorful it looked. Now I'm even more excited for this game to come out.
Looking at the pre-rendered cutscenes though I wish that one day we can get a Fire Emblem that looks like that in engine. Maybe in like 2 more generations based on how little each Nintendo console improves power-wise.
Nice to see the game will come out in this level of quality. Love FE:TH, gonna play FE: Engage on day one.
Engage is looking really good. I could never really get into Three Houses and as a fan of the 3DS games this seems much more my style.
Same here, hoping for a bit more “back to basics” experience. Three Houses had a bit too much extra stuff going on and it almost felt like the strategy maps were secondary to the exploration and Persona style relationship building. Awakening is still my favourite of the series so far, with Echoes a very close second.
"As a fan of the 3ds games"
Yeah. I guess you could say that this game was meant for you.
@@scull0234 Agreed. I can't shake the thought that what made Three Houses the top selling FE game was the fetch quest/visual novel etc stuff tacked onto the main tactical rpg.
Engage might please older fans of the series but it could disappoint a lot of the fans of TH, and i hope that i'm wrong bc TH might have been my favourite game of all time...
@@scull0234 The thing is if you want Persona style gameplay, the Persona games exist and are even on Switch now. Turn-based tactics are what the main series Fire Emblem games are known for and should be the focus.
You could never get into FE Three Houses because of its graphics lol. It had better graphics than the 3ds FE games. You care a lot about graphics yet you game on a 3ds. Stop the BS.
I'm very excited to play Engage. It looks beautiful plus the legacy characters adds more hype.
I hope we have some iconic tracks like 3Hs did. I lost my mind the first time I heard Fodlan winds.
This game looks good both graphically and gameplay wise. And thanks DF for another great Switch review!
My dude, the game runs like f*cking trash. Its a stuttering, unfluid mess.
@@simonrockstream whatever you say homeboy
@@simonrockstream - another stupid playstation fanboy with the 1 boring exclusive a year...
@@simonrockstream that's not what they showed on this preview
@@anibalmax1981 but they did
Thank you John great video as always your videos enjoyable to watch as ever
Absolutely can't wait for this one. On a whim I bought a game I never heard of called Fire Emblem: Awakening back in 2012 because I needed something to play on my 3DS and that game was, and perhaps still is, one of the very best Nintendo games. I've been addicted to FE ever since.
I was in the same situation. There were no games to really play on the 3ds at launch. That’s when I went on TH-cam and saw a TH-camr named Etika playing FE Awakening. He ended up getting me into the FE franchise.
My introduction to the franchise was the demo for Fire Emblem: Awakening which was one of the first demos I ever played on the system and it alone sold me on the franchise. I never did buy Fire Emblem: Awakening, instead I ended up emulating the GBA titles on my modded Wii which I also used to played Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. I want to get back into the franchise at some point especially since Fire Emblem Fates has been sitting on my shelf for the better part of the last 4 years.
@@ZackSNetwork rip etika
@@GenerationZ313 Fire Emblem Awakening was the singular game that saved the franchise from the brink, and was a love letter to all the prior games. If you haven't played it, please do.
@@Babolat3216 just keep in mind that not all the character writing is as good as some of the other games, simply because it just has so many.
Hi there! Great content as always. I know this is a long shot, but I have a question: how did you get the trailer footage for this game? I'm trying to put together a video myself, but I can't find any official trailer source outside of TH-cam. I would greatly appreciate if you could answer. Thank you!
EDIT: After re-watching, it seems you already have a copy of the game, so you probably pulled your footage directly from the console.
Thanks John! Great review, I liked that you gave the credit to Mika Pikazo, great illustrator and character designer. If you are a vtuber enjoyer you know who she is
What a great video, nice one John!
Can't wait for this. Loved FE:TH. Very excited to find out if the soundtrack is as awesome as TH.
Looking forward to it on the 20th been replaying final fantasy tactics and can't wait for more tactical goodness
That music change is technically called “dynamic music” (in this case it’s vertically I think) This becomes more and more common.
Day one. Can’t wait for the game!
Excited for Engage going a bit more back to the series roots. Haven't been super into an FE game since the two Radiant games
I mean, it might not be cutting edge, but I think that the exploration segments do look quite nice. I wouldn't mind an entire traditional RPG using those visuals. Golden Sun could be a good candidate. Pokemon too, obviously.
Great review - Engage certainly seems like a significant step up from Three Houses! Still haven't played a Fire Emblem game yet, but this looks like a really solid entry to start with.
Interestingly, I heard Engage was developed in Unity, compared to Koei-Tecmo's in-house engine used for the other FE games on Switch. Maybe that has something to do with the increased performance?
makes me want to pre-order straight away
Can’t wait for this game. It drops right before my birthday. I just know it’s about time for Nintendo to drop new hardware now.
The dynamic soundtrack was definitely already present in Three Houses!
Since Fates, actually. Possibly Awakening too, but it's been so long since I've played it and I don't recall for certain.
@@sword_of_dusk Yeah it existed in Awakening as well. All games prior would just cut to a battle specific theme.
@@skeith804 I appreciate the confirmation on that. I've deeply enjoyed the way combat themes work since Awakening, though I do miss the old specific battle tracks from everything pre-Awakening.
* Adaptive soundtrack. A soundtrack that reacts to game-play changes and events is called an adaptive (or reactive) soundtrack. 'Dynamic' means a completely different thing when discussing music to what gamers seem to think it means.
how many time are they going to resurrect fell dragon? like do they even consider if he wants to be resurrected? they are like those medics in battlefield that goes through everything to revived you end up getting themselves and you killed
Indeed! Fire Emblem Engage is my first console game (I played the mobile version) and I’m very surprised how I got in love with this game! This game is incredible and the story is one of the most interesting story ideas that I’ve ever saw!
Fire Emblem is one of my favorite RPG series (I'm a sucker for games with anime art styles..) fully animated attacks, voice acted dialogue, a good story, everything I could ask for. 😁
I'm already reading complaints from journalists that its a "tonal wipelash," seemingly happily ignorant to the fact that Engage is closer in tone to its other entries than Three Houses.
I could understand why they might say that, It's entirely possible that what made TH so popular in comparison to the older FE titles was the persona style social aspect... cutting them out might have been a good thing for fans of the older style of FE but it miiight go down like a lead balloon for all the newer fans...All pure conjecture obviously.
@@filejacker00 Three Houses is more closer in tone to the Snes games ( most specifically Genealogy of the holy war ) and the Radiant duology (the ike games). The 3ds games were loathed by older fans, Awakening for it and more casual aproach, and Fate for being a "tonal mess" and the amount of waifu bait.
I grew up playing FE: Sacred Stones, I liked three houses more than I thought I would and I'm very excited for this one
I also grew up (was about 18) when Sacred Stones released. The only reason I stopped the series for a few years getting back into it with Path of Radiance & Radiant Dawn, was because my GB Advance was stolen from the factory I worked at.
FE's gameplay loop and very particular story beats the way it is presented hooked me to this day so I always give it a chance. Awakening was alright, but I didn't stick with it too long. FETH was very good, but my life was too busy/backlog was too deep so bounced off of that too regrettably.
The main theme for a fire emblem game is always the thing that gets me hyped
I’m so happy for fire emblem creators and fans. It’s been such a great franchise for decades with high quality games
Definitely was on the fence about this ever since I saw the first trailer, the DF analysis has bumped it up for me big time.
Game looks dope, and I had already preordered the collectors edition so I was picking it up regardless lol, love Fire emblem.
You were on the fence, but you preordered the collector’s edition? 🧐
K, weeb.
@@jaspelino1963 Still love fire emblem too much to not pre order and give it a try lol.
@@jaspelino1963 I’m assuming as it can be cancelled since you usually aren’t charged until it ships - in case the reviews are poor.
@@sirlimen333 🕺
Its better in comparison than i expected at first
really like how colorful engage is
I been waiting to see what you guys think of Engage as it looks much brighter than 3Hs
Yes on the OLED it’s amazing
arghhhhh this looks like the fire emblem I wanted when I got 3 houses - looks so good!
3:44 Oh yeah, I feel it resonating with me!
it looks pretty good. I'll give it a try!
but playing "have byleth jump over the loading bar with the gyroscope" was half of the fun in Three Houses! Kidding aside, I am super happy to see a great art update and better performance.
Battle animations remind me of the GBA games in the best way
Color me a bit surprised tbh. The visual style for Engage is far more cohesive than Three Houses and is just a lot more polished overall. Not a big fan of the designs but I still appreciate the colors, lighting, and how the environments actually match the characters now instead of the weird visual clash 3H had. Honestly just great to see the devs legitimately learn from the last game and improve on the next which isn't always the case, especially on Switch.
Definitely getting this game when it goes on sale for $30. Will have to see what the DLCs have to offer before getting the expansion pass.
What an amazing looking game. It's amazing what you can do with lower end hardware if you properly OPTIMIZE
**cough cough** game freak **cough cough**
@@tezzie_ I mean one game is also a closed Strategy RPG where the big visuals only show up in a small hub or snippets with the battle animations and the other is a seamless open world RPG, along with Bayonetta 3 running badly and being bigger and Witcher 3 also looking like crap even if it runs decently. I don't get why people are so hesitant to admit the Switch is a major issue for certain types of games alongside developer optimization.
@@lucariotrainer16 see DF's other video about it
@@lucariotrainer16 Xenoblade Chronicles 3 looks pretty good with a big open world, with battles taking place seamlessly within it while enemies roam in the background and have the ability to join battle dynamically. There's also Breath of the Wild. Pokemon just looks bad, it started with the art direction and got worse with bad technical limitations. Arceus looks a lot better on the same hardware as well.
Reminds me of my Nokia Ngage. 3 houses is probably my top 5 Switch game, Cant wait
That Kisara shield, tho.
So excited for this game!! Wish P3P came out earlier in month so i could beat it before FE Engage released bc wanted to replay it but it’ll have to wait
Persona 3 portable isnt worth your time man... just emulate or play the Persona 3 FES version either on PS2 or it's also on PSN. Much better than the botchered P3P that Atlus has the balls to release..
Loved FE3H but had to put it down due to the small text size wasn't adjustable and was simply too difficult for me to read in handheld. Any sense of the text size being larger or if its possible to adjust the size in Engage?
So excited to play this game. Got the collectors edition to support the devs.
After playing so much of Pokemon Violet, seeing that windmill moving normally threw me off for a bit, haha.
Great!....any support pcm audio or 5.1?
I really hope they can fix the camera zoom frame drop. It will drive me nuts. But with it fixed the fake looks like it will run so clean
I remembear read some leaks where they talking about how Gust team (Atelier series) was helping with the optimization and visual of the game, they did a great job with Ryza 2 optimization and Sophie 2 on switch pretty 2 games , so Gust is a team from Tecmo koei so this probably what happend and why the improvment
Can't wait for Nintendo Financial Report for 9 months in early February. I can say that Switch sell another 10 million units in holiday quarter October - December 2022. So 114 + 10 = 124 million as per end 2022
Was on the fence about this one, but this video has sold me. I personally love the anime art style, and the bold colors look beautiful! Very excited about this!
It's cool to see franchises like Splatoon, Xenoblade and Fire Emblem evolve to really make the most out of the Switch. Pokemon on the other hand...
Three houses was a banger so I really hope they manage to match that quality bar or maybe even surpass it with this one!
Looks really good for a switch game. I’m impressed.
About the part with Paper Mario, 3Houses was made by Koei Tecmo with the fe warrior engine, unless I somehow remember wrong.
Looking forward to getting the Divine Edition.
I wonder that they didn't mention how good the animations are of the battle portraits (not the fighting animations, they are always great). I mean this is the most polished tactic RPG ever, its a huge step above everything else we saw in that genre.
Fire Emblem Three Houses was the best selling SRPG ever, so it makes sense that Fire Emblem would have the biggest budget of any SRPG series.
Fire Emblem is basically to SRPGs what Pokemon is to turn based RPGs.
@@westonmeyer3110 It is easy to say such a thing now, but it wasn't all that long ago where Intelligent Systems were going to call it quits on the series if not for the overwhelming success of Fire Emblem Awakening. The next games maybe helped with diehards, but TH just cemented the success they were enjoying, and made FE a true household name in the West..
@@jaredponder4149
Awakening was 10 years ago now, that is an eternity in the gaming world.
This looks incredible tbh.
Completely irrespective of your lovely preview here, the Three Houses battle music always hypes me the fuck up lol
Not wild about the character models, but everything else looks like a solid improvement.
Tentacular hair on the main character kinda creeping me out tbh.
This actually looks a good deal better. Surprised.
This looks really good! Might be the first real FE game I play from start to finish.
It does look much better graphically than Three Houses. Even though I have zero knowledge on FE games before Three Houses, I’m interested!
Honestly, while it was made clear this is a big step up from Three Houses technically, I feel like the actual quality of the presentation was undersold somewhat. I think this actually looks great in graphical quality, they did a really good job and clearly worked hard to get the best out of it
nice to see Engage run & look better.. , just hope the balancing on hard mode is well done (FEs have become too easy on normal, but too RNG-ish on hard)
FE games have always been RNG-ish on harder difficulties
tf you mean, FE3H is a joke on hard
Great work on the vid! I'm happy about the technical improvements. I loved basically everything about Three Houses, but it was definitely hard to look much of the time. Loading times and certain frame rate issues were tough as well, so I'm excited to see how it plays firsthand.
One thing I'm definitely not excited about is these super Gust-y character designs. I like the Atelier games well enough, but 'Atelier Emblem' is not what I'm looking for. I hope the story and characterization knock it out of the park because I already want to hate these characters.
What's the song playing in the beginning of the video?
It's probably part of Engage's ost which isn't out yet
edit: I was wrong
@Daniel Krasovsky No I've heard it before, pretty sure it's either from Fire Emblem Fates or Heroes. I just don't remember the name.
Contest of pride from fates
@@-lord1754 There we go! Thanks a bunch
For future video, if you compare 2 games, please show the title of which game is currently displayed. You keep switching between Three houses and Engage here and frankly most of the time I didn't know which game was on screen and was very lost in the comparison.
Honestly it's easy, i haven't even played 3Houses. If it's brown it's 3H. If there is color is Engage.
You have a point though.
I forgot how rough the actual battle sequences looked in Three Houses because I always turned them off since day 1 so I could have a faster gaming experience. I may check this out, but Persona 4 Golden comes out on Switch the day before so I’ll hold off on Fire Emblem for now.
did they improve text size in a handheld mode ?
Pre-ordered the physical collector's edition! Fire Emblem is my favorite Nintendo series, followed by Xenoblade.
I’m so excited for this game. I know it’s not good a good habit to pre order games, but I’m a huge fan of fire emblem and I really wanted to get the special edition with the art book and other goodies for collection purposes. I first pre-ordered the special edition in September when it sold out shortly after. I surely wasn’t nearly as excited for this game as I am now I’m hoping the game is great and seeing this preview Im glad to see the game looks promising. I hope the story will be just as good as the standard that’s been set for a fire emblem game and these last 2 weeks can’t come soon enough
I pre-order at least 3 games per month. Don’t see what is „not good“ about it. Won’t ever stop this.
I don't see anything wrong with pre-ordering, especially when you can get lucky and find retailers offering pre-orders that are cheaper than retail price. I got Fire Emblem Three Hopes for £40 on a good pre-order deal and the usual price is £50.
nothing wrong with pre-ordering collector’s editions, especially for Nintendo games. it is hard to get Switch special editions without ordering early
I think pre-ordering physical editions with bonus stuff is fine. Pre-ordering it digitally is just shooting yourself in the foot if the game turned out to be bad. At least you can sell physical special editions if you're not a collector.
@@FelixS. Because many games came broken during launch.
Others, aren’t very good.
Cannot wait for this game
Correct me if I'm wrong... But TH was developed by Koei Tecmo. Thus the uneven technical presentation. They are notorious for their Switch framerates and low resolutions...
Regardless, keep in mind that TH pushes the Switch in battle scenes by displaying large numbers of characters. Engage limits that to atacker and defender, which obviously helps to keep the framerate steady.
Also also, I feel like the Monastery was a much more populated location than anything they have shown in Engage.
All in all, I think TH suffers from a much more ambitious scale both in the Monastery and in battles plus a somewhat incompetent developer. Even so, it looks reasonably good all things considered.
Koei Tecmo are behind the Fire Emblem _Warriors_ games, with the latter subtitled 'Three Hopes'. Intelligent Systems are the team behind the mainline games.
3H's was indeed co-developed by Koei Tecmo as IntSys needed more manpower and guidance since it was their first console game in over a decade and first HD title ever. Similarly, Engage is also co-developed, specifically by Koei Tecmo's Gust who were responsible for the graphics, technical/visual upgrades for this title.
@@JuiKuen No, Koei Tecmo was developing the visuals, technical and story for 3Houses mainline. IS were developing battle system and character design.
Ooh I'm getting excited. Aside from the mc, I like the new character designs a lot.
man, it's so true, 3H just doesn't have aa and often it makes their faces look blocky in handheld mode
One technical issue that almost ruined Three Houses for me was the ridiculously tiny text. They even had massive text boxes with a microscopic font. It was bad enough on the regular Switch and I can’t even imagine how bad it was on the Switch Lite. I know there is a magnifier function, but it’s frustrating to use. Looks like some improvement in this one with a chunkier font used throughout.
You might want to check your eyesight. (Not that more font sizes wouldn't be appreciated)
omg this. I feel like not enough people talked about this issue. had to do the gamer lean just to check skill and item descriptions lmao.
Damn this looks great!
The UI style reminds me of Fire Emblem Heroes ngl.
2:02 Cutting the song when it was at its peak, if i remember correctly that is a FE Fates DLC theme
While I am getting a bit tired and bored of the anime artstyle, this game visually/graphically might be one of the best ones on Switch up there with Luigi's Mansion 3 at the top. I am more excited for this than I was Three Houses
Thanks DF
Three houses is my favorite fire emblem. I expect great things from engage.
5:04 Call me biased, but I'm stuck on the image of Dancer Bernadetta here.