Is Engage Maddening any Good?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2023
- Fire Emblem has often struggled with making its highest difficulty both challenging and fun. I take a look at Engage's Maddening Mode to see what mechanics work well, which ones don't, and whether or not Maddening as a whole is a good experience.
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Music: Roy's Jawn by Pun
Sorry for the delay this week! We were without power for 5 days due to the texas freeze, but we should be back to our regularly scheduled weekly videos this weekend :)
One thing I like about Maddening is that the early maps, where the devs know pretty much exactly how strong your team is because you're still getting multiple new units each map, is balanced perfectly around those units. Like Maddening Etie and Alcryst both have exactly enough might to oneshot the fliers on the map you get them, and Amber's killer lance crits 33 on enemy sword fighters with 32 health when you get him.
Yeah, early Maddening is definitely better fine tuned than fucking 3h omg
It’s great that Engage made the weapon triangle not just viable but actually tactical, feels so good giving your characters multiple Emblems to raise their weapon proficiencies and using a great mix of different classes and weapons.
Tbh yeah, i remember back in fates for example I'd just spam all the same class 'cause even with weapon triangle I never actually felt threatened. In Engage I actually have to be careful against enemies so that I don't screw up and die because I kept getting broken and left defenseless. Likewise, it makes taking on a chapter significantly more fun because I can focus on disarming a foe and then following up with a stronger but squishier unit safely
And then they made Armoured Knights OP because they cannot be broken. It is nice in a way since Armoured Units tend to fall behind in most other games due to low movement. Stick a Sigurd ring and boom.
@@coolyeh1017 yes! I've been running Sigurd on Louis since I got him, being able to wall enemies so hard and travel so fast is honestly broken
I just wish there was some effect on hit/avoid
@@TheRazormoon I mean while it's not there, each weapon class has their strengths and weaknesses in that regard I think. Noticeably, axes generally have lower hit rates, swords tend toward higher avoid and lances are pretty balanced with decent hit and avoid all around. They don't interact as much within the triangle but each are valuable in their own way outside of breaking
A 50% discount on all SP skills would make the game much more exciting with all the skill choices, while leaving SP generation rate unchanged.
I wish you could "refund" some SP choices, or sell skills, I have so many regrets from early game choices 😔
I think they should’ve given every enemy another skill but also doubled or gave a 50% boost to sp gain while giving you a third ability spot, maybe give enemies increased stats to compensate
The recent addition of SP books with the Ancient Well makes the game so much more fun imo, being able to get a lot of SP more easily is great
I'm surprised everyone focuses on Corrin's terrain ability, to me I absolutely relied on her movement restriction after attacking ability. Being able to hold bosses in place, or perhaps some close enemies you couldn't clear on player phase was massive.
When i attacked into a corrupted beast and froze like 6 other guys i knew Corrin was gonna be really good
Her engage attack is also amazing. The terrain ability is just top of mind because I use it pretty much constantly lol.
I’m only playing Hard mode atm but I put Corrin on Anna as a Thief, she has like 170+ evasion if she’s in some trees or on a fort 😂 (she also has some of Marth’s Avoid I think only +15 atm)
Enemies swarm her and have 0% hit rate, and she gets me lots of +500 gold, but I imagine on Maddening mode this won’t work 😅 Mages are her only real threat but usually I can just risk it and kill the 1 or 2 mages quickly and then heal
Also draconic hex 😫. Literally best ability it’s like franks red hot I put that shi on everything
I don’t think about it much but when a boss starts coming at me with a whole army that ability has been an absolute godsend. I normally keep Corrin on Alear but there’s been times where putting her on someone with Thunder made a massive difference in setting up a big freeze
I think my favorite part of this game is how broken forging is. If you get a couple dogs and donate wisely, you can easily get access to a Bolganone and a Thoron before chapter 8.
Early game was perfect: Not too hard! It really eases you into the difficulty, and by chapter 11, it’s razor sharp. Good sign of games to come!
15:00 Mauvier absolutely whipped the rug out from under me when he warped like three paladins right next to my healers. He then proceeded to do do again when he rescued Marni and her goons over to me and I then had to fight them all at once
Great video! As soon as news about engage started coming out, I knew I wanted my first playthrough to be on Maddening. The enemies were so incredibly strong, fast and bulky that every turn I felt like I was one wrong move away from losing several units in a single enemy phase. Last night I completed my first run, and it was absolutely one of the best fire emblem games I've ever played. I'd say my favorite chapters are 11, 17, 22, and 24. I do wish the game had a few more unique chapter objectives, as most of the time it's just "kill the boss." Although with how powerful the enemies are, I think I'd go insane if I had to rout the enemy on any lategame chapter.
I also love how useful staves are in this game, entrap, warp, obstruct, and freeze all provide amazing utility that's really hard to find. I know I wouldn't have been able to beat most of the game's bosses if I couldn't entrap staff them or warp my own units to them.
This really needs a ng+. Hopefully there's something in the direct
Great video! I’m almost done with my maddening run, Ch21, no casualties. I’m hoping to finish it by next month. Agreed particularly with your comments on fixed growths.
My personal favorite chapter was Chapter 10
Between the debuffs, unit freezing and terrain, Corrin probably gets my vote for best Emblem, though Miciah comes a close second with her insane staff range and Great Sacrifice saving my ass on more than one occasion
This video just came up on my recommendations and I just wanted to come by and comment that I loved the video and I'm looking forward to checking out the channel :))
Your videos are great! I’m so happy to see you grow.
dude great review! Love the in-depth points.
Your comment on Jean really interested me. I've had the idea for a deep dive on Fire Emblem's different take on the "trainee" or Villager unit, but never really got around to writing it and putting it into a video. But Jean seems like a really interesting idea on the idea.
Usually Villagers tend to be sort of just redundant in relation to when you get them. It's usually more beneficial to put your efforts into a unit you already have, rather than training up a weak unit who could *potentially* get strong.
One that comes to mind is Donnel in Awakening, who in my opinion is really not great in Lunatic/Lunatic+ (although he can be a good father for a gen 2 like Kjelle because of the classes he passes down). He's kind of a diet Soldier at the start, but at least on promotion he can go Hero or Fighter. Although by the time you can reclass him to Merc or Fighter you might as well have trained up Vaike, or just recruit Gregor.
Jean on the other hand starts in a much less fought over role in Engage, an early game healer. By the time his paralogue unlocks you'll really only have Framme as your main healer (and their stats are pretty similar, although as they are a healer they don't matter too much). With staff xp in this game is actually a bit generous compared to how slow it would be in some of the older games and the Micaiah ring providing tons of XP when using Great Sacrifice, he can catch up fairly well to the rest of your party. Along with that, chain guard provides a helpful niche when you need to bait in an enemy, or when you need to save a unit from death on enemy phase. Being able to shape his potential due to his class growths being doubled is really interesting to me.
anyway that's my random shpeel.
tl;dr is that other villagers are redundant but Jean fulfills a niche and is pretty easy to train
Ross in Fe8 is awesome too. He appears in a very early chapter so there isn't much competition for slots. He is still terrible from start to promotion but at least you get time to train him.
@@Stachelbeeerchen yeah I would say that Ross is alright. One good design choice with him is that the weapon he starts with is 1-2 range. So you can just hide him behind someone else and feed him kills. And like you said, he joins early enough to have time to train.
I like Amelia, but yeah she’s kinda bad. General is funny but she’s really hard to do well with.
Ewan joins far too late to be of any use imo.
@@Eshyyyyy ewans only use is as a summoner if you somehow could give him 20 levels worth of experience.
Those phantoms make hardmode into babymode.
@@Stachelbeeerchen Yeah but you can also just promote Knoll in chapter 15 for an ez Summoner. But yeah Summoner is probably Ewan's best bet for being used
Mozu from in Fates is a great example of this.
In Birthright she's redundant, she's a Hoshidan class and her class options of going into Archer get covered really early by Takumi and Setsuna.
In Conquest however that choice is a bit different since the only character she may compete with is arguably Niles if you take the 2nd Seal option with her. In a fast run you never bother since she is still pretty weak but giving her the 2nd seal allows her to fulfil that niche as well as give a flying option to Effie in Kinshi Knight.
Thanks for this review! I just finished the game on Hard and had an absolute blast, and was wondering if I'd enjoy Maddening. Sounds like I would!
This was a really insightful video and really well written
what a good video, here is some engagement (also I totally agree, having only barely started maddening I'm loving it and looking forward to the rest)
I put Lyn on Jade on my first playthrough and she was amazing. I love it when General. dabble
You should make a character tier list video one day. Your insights seem to be the strongest of any FE YTuber I've seen so far.
Thanks for saying that! I do plan to talk more about unit viability in the future, and on the streams recently, but I want to play a bit more before I make a tier list.
@@actuallizard Wise!
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get three houses or engage on switch but I think this video has convinced me to get engage
Awesome review! I'm finishing my first Hard playthrough and I am super excited to start maddening. Fixed mode on the first playthrough might be kinda fun since it will force me to use different units who I just ignored immediately on Hard. I also had no idea Micaiah could 4 person warp lol. That's amazing and I'm definitely using that next playthrough.
You're in for a treat! Hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)
I did a hard run, currently on a hard run with fixed,its actually very fun to have fixed growths as you can influence their stats by changing classes due to their growths.
Next i will do maddening fixed since that was the intended way
She can do 4 range obstruct, rescue and warp. It's super busted with the right tools. Lyn can also draw out bosses with her arrows and aggro them to get closer like a certain boss in Chapter 24 or in Ike's Paralogue to use ontop of warp so they draw closer to your range
I completed the game under this mode, no DLC. it was brutal.. but fun, took me around 100 hours.
It would be neat if you could reduce the SP costs of skills based on your bond level. Something like a 15-30-50% decrease in the skills of that Ring. It might not be enough to fix some of the insane skills that cost 8000 SP but it would really help the mid tier ones costing 1k instead of 2k or something.
i can see a "can you beat engage without backup units" in the future. Honestly my favorite mechanic in the game so far
oops late game spoilers in the latter half of the video. oh well
Going from 3H maddening to Engage Maddening is like going from Awakening Lunatic to Conquest Lunatic, or Path of Radiance Maniac to Radiant Dawn Maniac
Isn’t awakening lunatic worse than the rest of those lol. And isn’t path of radiance the easiest of the games
@@2265Hello To be fair, Awaking lunatic is fine, Awaking lunatic + is just... unfair in every possible way, namely because of how much randomness is forced into the game. it would be much more fun if the + skills weren't randomlnly given to all units ( inculding bosses, sometimes making them impossible to beat )
@@2265Hello i mean in terms of design because Awakening and Path of Radiance's challenge difficulties are both 2 of the least fun FE experiences. 3H maddening isn't quite that bad but it's hyperbole
@@xuanathan in other words from challenging and boring design to challenging and fun design
@@2265Hello Exactly this imo, lunatic + awakening is one of my least favourite fe experiences, where as I love conquest lunatic. Very similar to the difference between three houses and engage - it just seems like the devs spent more time on balancing them but idk if that's just me
Well, it's maddening throughout many moments, especially early on when even your Rapier-using engaged Alear does zero damage to armored units, so at least it lives up to its name.
The maddening AI is really damn good though, i love how they actively use their strengths and weaknesses in order to take you out where you're weakest [even stuff as simple as sending weapon-appropriate units even if the unit is technically weaker solely because, as the weapon appropriate unit, they can Break you].
Also, the Corrin ring with Yunaka is ridiculously good since she can benefit from it so hard, so the point she can become nearly unhittable.
Great video and completely agree. Engage on Maddening with the emblem system and new weapon triangle is really fun.
8:23 I got a clip on Leif's paralogue of Louie overriding through like 5 mage knights with the riders bane and killing them all and by God was it satisfying
Please upload this somewhere, I desperately want to see this
Great video, this is my favorite fe so far, I’m on ch10 on maddening as my second run and k am not looking forward to ch11 lol
My experience at maddening in a nutshell:
Corrupted: You have chosen death
Bandits: BUENOS DIAS SEÑIORITO
Bosses: omae wa mou shindeiru.
My team: half were hero class with dual assist+ 💀.
Anna: With max luck butches golds out of enemy corpses
Yukina: Critting 4/5 times
Lunar+ is 5000 SP and I really wanted it but just couldn't farm enough.
I never warp skipped in Maddening on 3H ever. I didn't think that game was that bad, but the ambush spawns were definitely the most annoying part. You literally had to put units in their range to trigger them and place your units with that knowledge in mind.
Plus those units attacked the same turn they spawn which is annoying af
Engage's Maddening is balanced the same way as 3 House's?!
Fantastic video.
Subbed.
Love the video but just curious; do you wear a retainer? XD
SP costs only make the problem of new recruits being better even worse, some of the early units can be very hard to catch up SP wise if you aren’t farming with micaiah, I hope they fix this once the dlc updates come
I don't know if it is, but I know that I'm early af on this video.
Maddening is fucking amazing in Engage. Three Houses Maddening was very difficult, but artificially; Engage perfects it.
Meanwhile my Maddening run, which is the only difficulty I play FE games on: Alear runs in and smashes everyone on the map, and I have to actively chase her with my other units so they can get XP too. She was basically able to clean most of the maps by herself as early as chapter 14. My headcanon is that she's some battle crazy lunatic because I couldn't stop myself from just throwing her forward in the middle of half a dozen enemies.
Great video!
Doing my first playthrough on hard. Was hoping for a decent challenge without having to min-max everywhere and allowing some room for error while building characters as I learned the game. Been fun so far, but sounds like a second playthrough on maddening will be worthwhile 👍
I played my first playthrough on maddening and finished the game 2 days ago. It's probably the best hardest difficult in recent fire emblem, maybe the whole series. I actually had a lot of fun on maddening, some of my favorite map's where chapter 11, 17, 21, pact and my absolute favorite 22 I wanted something like 22 would happen before the game came out and it was really good.
I really liked how unlike 3 houses the game actually gives you units throughout the game that are actually strong so losing someone wasn't as big of a blow or just replacing someone that's falling behind. The only 2 units I kept pre chapter 11 where lapis, a Griffin knight with eirika who killed most things because sieglinde is cracked, and framme because I was stubborn (she did have micaiah). My 2 best units where merrin, who ended as a mage knight with Marth that was vary adaptable with magic and swords, and panette a tanky warrior with Ike that just CRIT killed anything also my dragon slayer (fun combo is using the break staff on dragons for 50% more damage).
I found pretty much all the emblem's useful in some way, Lyn to get bosses to move early (emblem trials), lucina for her chains and shield, byleths dance, corrins terrain was just essential and my Alear was basically a corrin bot for most the game, eirika being the bane of corrupted, Ike the tanky CRIT god on panette. Roy I see is considered the worst emblem but I gave him to my Alear who's only redeeming quality was a corrin bot became like my 3rd best unit, hold out should not be underestimated or the stats he gives. Leif is probably the only one I feel is underwhelming, I didn't really have anyone that uses him well and he delt no damage, his weapons are weak and he tends to switch to them, being his thing
great in-depth look at the game
I'm sure I didn't optimize anything, and I definitely didn't understand the class changing and such, but I really enjoyed my maddening playthrough of 95 hours. It was very tough but not tough enough that I ever raged. Chapter 11 with those darn freeze units got me close though
man, I sure do love these bosses that have 60 hp, multiple revive stones, 30 defense, 30 resistance, and veteran +
I wasn't sure about buying Engage after reading and watching a lot of negative stuff about it... but this video made me REALLY crave for an ironman maddening run now! Thank you for this wealth of information and motivation! Maybe I'll even win your giveaway copy, haha... and if not, this will be bought soon enough
A note about SP gain is that now, with the addition of the Ancient Well, it's much easier to gain SP thanks to the SP books that it can drop
Honestly it was a great addition imo, makes it way easier to play around with skill combinations
for chapter 17, I used a very out of the box strat where I line up 3 fliers and a few more land unit to tank Sigurd skill over the sea and lead it straight in my group when I want to trigger the boss, due to the map design, sigurd will skill through the sea and be isolated in my group for an easy kill, the rest of the bosses have to slowly move there and then the island with small bridge creates perfect choke point to defend the siege.
My first play through was actually on maddening (without dlc) and I still enjoyed it a lot, though there were a lot of frustrating mechanics. I still think that spawning reinforcements in your spawn like on chapter 22 is completely unreasonable. Or changing the win condition after you’ve beaten the first one like in the pact ring paralogue also seems unfair. And sometimes the map agro to prevent turtle strats is entirely too aggressive, especially on maps where they overdo the reinforcements. Finally, there’s the issue of certain enemy classes being completely unbalanced relative to other enemy classes (I’ve never been so nervous to see an enemy hero/warrior, wolf knight, or griffin knight in my entire life but berserkers are a joke). But overall maddening mode was a great experience, and I’m looking forward to playing the game on a lower difficulty for more causal enjoyment. I like that they were so thorough about the balance because it really feels like they covered all their bases to keep the game fair and honest. That being said, this is *not* the kind of game you are intended to Ironman, especially not on your first try (see chapter 20 or any of the maps where the win condition changes).
As one of the five Fates fans I am so happy that Corrin is borderline broken in some scenarios
Hey there’s at least 6 of us!
Conquest has some of the best gameplay in the series.
@@karhu7581100% agreed
Glad someone realized how helpful Corrin is on Alear on maddening. I did maddening on my first playthrough and Corrin was easily the best emblem.
This is so true , you dont even need to be engaged with her to access dragon vein.
Started on maddening which is rough. Would not recomend unless you are fine with restarting saves at some points. Example should probably use alcryst but might have killed a bunch of enemies with etie or the same with making lapis a sword master then imediately getting kagetsu.
13:41 Completely underrated to the (extremely wonderful) review, I just want to say that this HAS to be some of the worst luck possible in this singular instance.
My favorite strategy was instead of making every unit super strong I spent a majority of time making my units so unbelievably evasive and powerful that they would never take any damage and act as Walls to the enemy being unable to get past
I just started maddening and I’m glad it isn’t just impossible right off the bat haha
Honestly I really like hard mode. I think it’s a good mode for iron man’s. You have the rewards of grinding more but you get exponentially more risk with it.
how is it higher risk tho
@@alextorres5467 more grinding means more opportunities that you can wipe that you can’t prepare for. If you only do the story missions then you can plan for that. If you grind you can loose a unit to some random bullshit. It’s more for the iron man no turning back time game.
As a huge fan of the game I'm now going to try leaving my comfort zone of hard and try beating maddening for the first time!
Here's hoping I don't get clowned on lmao
I'm currently on Chapter 10 Maddening classic atm. Trying to beat the Fell Xenologue so I can use the extra units. The only Divine Paralogue I have left to do is Chrom/Robin's stage. Right now I have Alear lvl 1 Martial Monk with rnk 9 Tiki, Framme lvl 14 Martial Monk with rnk 1 Veronica, Chloé lvl 3 Griffin Knight with rnk 10 Celica, Anna lvl 1 Griffin Knight with rnk 10 Miciah, Alcyrst lvl 14 Lord with rnk 7 Edelgard, Yunaka lvl 21 Thief with rnk 10 Marth, and Diamant lvl 2 Successeur with rnk 2 Hector.
I'm about halfway through my first run on Hard and I'm thinking of just starting over on Maddening because I'm already at a point where I can just have Alear solo everything. If Maddening is better than it was in FETH then I'm down!
My Alear with tiki in hard mode is insanely good hahaha! 35 defense and like 26 res. Just absolutely tears through enemies.
This video was very informative, thanks so much! I’m nearly done with Hard mode (with casual deaths), and I found Hard mode is actually challenging for me 😂
I didn’t think of Miciah and a 4 person warp, I just had each of my staff users have individual warps, what a waste of these staves, oh well! I wonder if Hortensia with her +1 staff range could get a 5 person warp?
Btw you can make any one unit a backup unit with Lucina, I went with Ivy and a Thoron, I really like your backup units strategy and will probably do the same in Maddening mode! I have mostly Calvary in my run :)
Hard was a nice playground to become familiar with units, skills, passives, and how to allocate resources. I could've started on maddening but I don't think I would appreciate or enjoy the challenge as much since it seems unfair in many cases.
I want to try maddening mode for once, but I struggle a little on hard classic usually on any chapter after 12. Honestly im surprised i finished chapter 10 considering how hard that was for me.
I need to find a way to improve so i can play better, so i decided to start over and hopefully i can get better with this playthrough. I just need to figure out who to give rings to, and if i give them one then i have to know which ring to give them.
Actually can anyone give me some tips to improve with battles? On normal i can just grind and bomb rush, but that got boring for me on 3 house's. But Hard mode feels alot different. And i plan to get the dlc, but that wont be until next month.
At the beginning I highly recommend that you don't focus too hard on bond rings, just pull enough that everyone you deploy has one--that allows you to gain SP for valuable skills. Your bond fragments are useful for buying bond levels with the emblem rings. There are select few S rings that are meaningfully useful, and it's up to you if you want to save scum for them. That aside, the beauty of this game is how versatile the emblem rings can be. A lot of people take Sigurd and put him on Louis; this makes him strong, mobile, and highly defensive. But you could also put him on Alear to more easily apply their personal skill, or leave him on Alfred, who can cross entire maps and take the best advantage of his Momentum skill. Emblems later in the game feel even more swappable. Some maps you want Lucina on a flier to provide Bonded Shield to other fliers, but another map it's more useful on cavalry, or on a knife user to apply dual strike poison. Corrin and Byleth have their uses on lots of different units. My point is, there isn't a need to fixate on a single pairing or strategy, and if something isn't working for the current chapter, it's possible you just need to rethink your core strategy and experiment with other combinations.
One big thing to consider for battles is stat thresholds, especially speed for doubling, and attack for kill power. Utilizing cooking/tonics and forges help you reach those thresholds, but it necessitates taking time to look at all grouped enemies' stats and choosing who you want to face them and whether they can hit those stat thresholds. This game gives you resources and you should use them! Your action economy is dependent on how many units need to dogpile an enemy to kill it, so having strong forges and temporary stat boosts, using rally, or positioning units like Alear to provide an attack buff, lets you have more versatility on player phase.
Grinding is not at all necessary to uncomfortably beat the game on maddening. By that I mean it is a challenge, but at a satisfying level. The only concrete tips to maximize resources I have to say are: put only dogs in your farm for ingots, and don't waste gold donating to the countries beyond 2/3. Other than that, how you build your units, use resources, and how much time you want to spend on the preps screen looking at stats is entirely up to you. Don't take tier lists and "optimal builds/pairings" too seriously, you make anything work. Best of luck!
@@marionberries I never messed with the bond rings before i restarted because I thought they were pointless. But I've been told that I should get at least Claude's and Olwen's S rank ring so I'll be on the lookout for those two later.
I see what you mean with Louis, he's a monster with Sigurd. But I'm thinking about benching Alfred already, to me he's really under preforming both on this playthrough and my last one. Probably Celine too since she hasn't gained any magic in any of her level ups.
With the emblems, my main problem is that I wouldn't know what to try on who. Like I know Lyn works best with archer units, so giving her to Etie, or Fogado when I get him. And I'm guessing Lucina will work with any fast physical unit like Alear. But other rings like Leif I don't know who would benefit from using him, since his skills seem all over the place. And from what I heard about Byleth, Corrin, and Erika's rings they have a lot going with them too.
Now that I think about it, I only ever look at what weapons the enemies have before I deploy my units. I'll have to right down the enemies stats then since it would be hard for me to remember them off the top of my head. But I thought being hyper aggressive wasn't a good thing on higher difficulties? I had to figure out how to play more defensively on Hard mode. But then again I guess that only applies to the main story missions and Paralogue's, I've notice the enemies on hard mode are hyper aggressive and swam you immediately so I just avoid skirmishes.
I'll admit I completely forgot about tonics since you never need them on normal mode. And I normally try to cook for supports, but I hardly get any food to cook with. except the small amount you find on the ground on post battles. And I normally avoid using the forge that much since even with the dogs I don't have a lot of materials to use, so far I just maxed Liberation since that's Alear's main weapon.
@@hitsumaru100 Oh there are certainly some really good S bond rings, none are strictly necessary or important if you lack the desire to save scum. Claude, Olwen, and Lilina are probably the best you can get. If you like using chain guard, Deirdre gets you renewal. Just having *A* ring at all is enough to start gaining SP though, which is most important.
Benching units is totally viable, if you're recognizing that a unit isn't getting good levels. This game has ridiculous later recruits. If you're looking for a good Alfred replacement, Kagetsu is incredible as a wyvern rider. Celine is straight up outclassed by Pandreo most of the time. They also come with guaranteed SP which makes getting skills easier.
Lyn can really go on any character that is strong and frail. A popular one is Ivy, she benefits from the speed and can nuke enemies without being touched thanks to Alacrity. Lucina's All-for-One is a bit middling, she really shines for Bonded Shield, or dagger Dual Strike. Putting her on a high res unit like Hortensia or a high def unit like Louis means that with the right setup, you can bait enemies into suic*ding on a powerful unit (Ivy, for example) and enemy phase entire groups. Leif unfortunately is only really good for giving build, so he's decent on the strong, fast girls like Lapis or Chloe who don't want to be weighed down. Hopefully these examples give you some inspiration!
Using the ZR function is really nice for quickly checking speed/def/res stats. It's not necessary to note everything, just getting an idea of where you want your stats to be is good. Honestly in the harder difficulties, you can turtle and play super defensively, but there's lots of times where reinforcements show up, thieves take treasure, or the boss decided to rush you after a number of turns. You often want to play very aggressively or else you will be swarmed and have trouble clearing the enemies. The main difference between normal, hard, and maddening is enemy density and enemy stats.
One thing I'll say about engage is that with all the new Units they give me, it makes me feel a bit overwhelemed. I'm the type of guy who likes to use everybody.
Doesnt that apply to all FE games? Its just 3 house fooling you into having a smaller roster if you dont go out of your way to recruit peeps
@@lunanasushistax6692hard agree. My favourite things about FE 6 and 7 was that it gave you a crap ton of units for new play throughs.
The one problem I have with the late game maps is that there are too frequently mass reinforcements. Just my opinion and I'm sure some people like it, but it felt like the map was only hard because of the position and number of the reinforcements
Imagine grinding sp post well introduction or with veronica
I enjoyed it until I realized I couldn't grind at all, which meant leaving half the units behind. I decided on hard instead; I buy a game to actually PLAY it, everyone, etc.
With the give away, would it be possible to just get a Nintendo switch gift card, say if we already have the game?
Sorry, I already have the copy of the game I'm giving away! Maybe next time :)
@@actuallizardThat’s alright! I was just curious.
Fixed growths should be a setting IMO, I personally just do not prefer it because it forces me to drop units that I have grown attached to. Fixed growths make most units not named Kagetsu, Alear, Ivy, Hortensia, and Alcryst feel mediocre.
I definitely want to try another run at maddening with the different perspective on the game I have now.
I barely ran any backup units at all, I just passed lucina's skill to most of my units so anyone had a chance to participate in a chain attack
They need to be a backup or engaged with Lucina to use it though
@@haveagoodday7021 yeah I just noticed 😅
this felt more of a guide than a review.
What is this “four man warp” you were referring to? Is it from an emblem ? Or am I using the staff worng?
When engaged and using micaiah's emblem all staves have an AoE.
when a unit is engaged to Micaiah, staves affect multiple squares, so you can use warp or rewarp on multiple units at once.
@@actuallizard oh good to know
I will say this is the first game where I actually like using warp and it not feel like a cheesy thing
I'm coming from Three Houses on Hard/Classic as my first game. Outside of the final maps, I can't really recall having too difficult of a time. While I didn't struggle as much adjusting to Engage's Hard/Classic as some of my other friends, Chapter 24 was what finally pushed me over the edge and made me start thinking about the game at a higher level, turtling no longer being an option. After banging my head against the brick wall of the 15 turn limit and the constant overwhelming reinforcements, I sat down and thought carefully about what skills to inherit, developing strategies like Micaiah warping and Corrin ice veining to veining to avoid the dreaded avalanches. Switching from the passive turtling I'd been doing for most of the game to the hyper aggressive push where I had units constantly changing lanes depending on what enemies were coming up completely changed how I viewed Fire Emblem's gameplay and has me super excited to try a Maddening run, something I never even considered for Three Houses.
Nice to hear that mounted/flying units aren’t as centralizing here as in other FE games. There comes a point in most games where you can park a Wyvern Lord or Paladin in a bunch of enemies and watch them destroy all comers. It can be fun but it’s not particularly interesting. (I love you Path of Radiance, but…)
Well, I mean we slingshotted the other way such that the Paladin is one of the worst classes in the game.
Wyverns still good tho
Funny how Weapon Triangle is more prevalent, yet there's only a handful of classes who can handle multiple weapon types, namely all of the male (except Alcryst) royals' unique T2, Hero, Great Knight, and Wyvern Knight, which doesn't even get a T1 now.
My pure wolf riders team is fun. With magic weapons and armor breaking weapons it's viable.
I have not played this game yet but only hearing about the Wolf rider class made me think of the Goblin riders (goblins who rite wolfs) from the anime "that time I got reincarnated as a slime" being a part of the protagonists army. I found them both cool and cute. Watching
I feel like the late game map design wasn't very good. Veyle and Lumera's chapters were both basically "please just warp staff to cheese me" and several of the others get slowed to a glacial crawl. I particularly didn't like the infinitely spawning Freeze staff units fliers in the volcano chapter...Or anything that spawned infinite with the "No EXP/SP for killing me" skill.
play faster and you see them less. I think those infinite spawn is created to anti turtle. I think it gave each map better pacing cuz otherwise people just spend like 5 turns shuffling unit before the boss.
Hmmm, frankly I stuck to Hard Mode "BECAUSE" Lunatic/Maddening never appealed to me because of everything you described in 3H Maddening (I despise Ambush Reinforcements, ESPECIALLY "Same Turn" ones! Had many Anxiety attacks in FE where this happened and I had to deal with it!) Honestly I hoped they have slighty increased base stats and more skills to make them more challanging, not alot of BULL! Which is why I never was willing to give Engage Maddening a chance (Didn't help many people didn't sell Engage maddening well by dogging on certain units that were my favorites like the "Lapis/Kagetsu conflict" and by dogging, I mean outright INSULTING like they were looking for to start a flame war! I was actually on the fence because of the stuff about the A.I.! Fixed Growths sound interesting as well! Hope when they get around to making "Custom" difficulty in a future FE! They let you choose to have Random or Fixed rather then regulating it to the highest difficulty only).
I use to never touch hard in general till Radiant Dawn's "mix up" where Normal mode was Hard Mode by accident, made me more willing to try Hard Mode in FE as for real, I thought they upped Normal mode difficulty for awhile before I found out about that mix up online (Awakening did make me scurry back to Normal because of Same Turn Reinforcements! But Fates brought me back to Hard mode! And 3H Maddening made me go back to Hard Mode). Maybe this one will be what convinces me to finally give it a chance (Just to let you know, I play with what units I want to play with! I prefer my own units "I Like" over "someone elses! And around Fates and 3H was when I was willing to play with EVERYONE! Though I do have my favorites! With Engage that's Lapis, Framme, Merrin, and Jade to name a few! Lapis is the ESPECIALLY favorite as I like the Farm Girl character since Nephenee back in POR! Use to view her as the BEST UNIT EVER till I finally got on FE Forums and found she was considered low tier! But then had to accept that it was because she was in a class I was being able to access for the first time! The Soldier which is STILL my favorite class in the series! And she was a GREAT introduction! Likely because I never noticed difficulty with characters because I don't "one man army" on purpose or often. So by the time she started One man Army-ing! She was RNG blessed and it was the end game chapters so everyone I invested in was stomping!)
But I will say you sold this mode to me far better by not "trying to dismiss/insult" and admitting some are better then other characters in a far more respectful way! (never said they weren't viable! Just that some will have more ease then others! But not "so only use those characters!" But "learn how to adjust" which is what I'm always doing in games and can't agree more with you! Though I am the tipe not to overflow my army with more then one unit in the same class! I tend to like uniqueness by my army being filled with everyone with a niche and in a different class! Paladins being the only exception in games the Great Knight is not in!) So again, thanks for the good review
Hell yeah! Challenging but not torturous like 3H
Hard is enough for me. Maddening/Lunatic is way to hard for me to have fun with in any Fire Emblem.
Too many wasted nights as a kid playing old FE games and needing to restart has me happily using casual mode these days. Even if I’m a hardcore FE fan I just hate feeling like I wasted time ahahha.
@@dent5672 If I don't spend at least 3 hours resetting a map then I think it's a waste of my time. I really like trying to puzzle out each map by trial and error and casual just destroys the fun for me.
@@dent5672 I mean the last three FE games gave you a rewind option that even works on the hardest difficulties.
I just wanna say, I think hard mode is the best overall difficulty level for this game. and a lot of it is because of how it actually demands you play smart still.
Fire emblem has had a problem with its hardest difficulties often just not being fun, from PoR's JP hard mode flooding you with enemies and ruining the pace of the game, Radiant dawn removing the weapon triangle which only really kills the nuance to the level design, to awakening/3H just asking you to cheat effectively the series has struggled a lot to make these remotely good ways to play and only exist for people who record these games to use to bolster how you should listen to them more because they beat Tedium Difficulty.
But i think the series struggles just as much with a standard hard mode that feels like its a fair improvement. Almost every game in the series handles difficulty like awakening; Lunatic literally cheats to goad you into getting the dlc or breaking the game, normal is so boringly easy chrom takes 0 damage from the first enemies in the game, but hard mode is just sorta....ok i guess. FE has almost never found the sweetspot for difficulty, with the only exceptions being FE6 and 10. If something is too easy the next step up will likely be very frustrating, With no standard option that feels genuinely challenging without going all out. Engage hard mode however constantly slaps you upside the head for not thinking things through and asking to you to bring your A game when you don't grind but doesn't ask you to min max everything which lets you experiment still with trying units you might normally bench.
It feels good to have a difficulty like this, Unit's notable strengths are very distinct so you feel like you get rewarded for using say Vander early on to set up kills like he was Marcus, but unlike 6 everyone is decent enough to make a team with and it rewards creativity, but also expects you to bring lots of creativity if you want to be able to handle what the game throws at you.
TLDR Hard mode usually isnt a real challenge in FE so its nice that theres one that doesnt let you auto pilot at all without having to play maddening
Maddening is really maddening.... I play maddening and classic on my first run... It is so time consuming and tough... U really have to choose ur team and stuck with them earlier, instead trying to play everyone (my issue I have to had every character on same level) .
I gave up after 2 side chapter and 7 chapters later. And change to Hard to have a smoother gameplay. Might challenge Maddening again when I done.
Actually impossible to use everyone on maddening
@@eragonroran7 That's most high end difficulties in FE, you're not supposed to use everyone on them.
i felt like the moment kamui (corrin) joined, maddening is no longer challenging. and the moment Sigurd came back, the game became easy mode
I played through the game on hard and now, nowing what to do, Maddening has honestly been easier to play.
I play with DLC and all the rizz, currently right before chapter 10/11 and it has been incredibly fun.
Funnily enough, Anna and Jean have been way easier to train up than in my hard playtrough.
Imo the most important thing for me was knowing before, which units I want to invest to, Forging priorities, to get 3H's EXP Boost and Tiki's statboost on all my units and sniping Caeda, Deidre, Olwen and Navarre S-Ring
also skipping all cutscenes was nice too.
I'm not speedrunning on purpose and spent like 2 hours resetting for Rings, but being on Chapter 10/11 I only spent 9 hours so far on this save.
So far to me it seems like doing no DLC + only using the weakest units would be no problem with the Right setup and propper planning and I haven't even touched the temporary statboosters yet
Tbh the dlc arguably trivialize the game. They are insane even for emblems (mainly tiki) but the biggest advantage they provide is having more emblems and engages when you are supposed to have less at certain points
But that aside the run you suggested should be very doable
I'm playing in Maddening Casual and I'm sure I would never ever touch it on Classic. Sometimes feels more annoying than fun tbh.
Still, I think Mad/Casual and Hard/Classic are the best difficulties possible (in my opinion)
imo post game content is way better than new game plus
How do you do chapter 19 😭
On my maddening playtrhough I actually had everyone turtle on the boat. Used an evasion thief with corrin ring at the boats chock point. Then I abused 3 ranged units with canter to widdle down the giant conga line that was backed up on the dock from safety.
Have you tried playing the game without DLC?
I’m not a fan of engage as a whole however I will say this is actually gameplay I was hoping for in a Fire Emblem game since FE12. Especially when the hardest mode is actually hard and not just too many enemies (most of the time)
Really the only early game units that went with me to the end game were Louis and Chole and a good amount of the Brodie cast
It is good.
I hope maddening is good cuz hard is pretty boring easy ngl. Every once in a while one of the random missions will fuck me over but the story levels have been trivially easy since... well i think when i got yunaka lmao.
I'm just glad this game isnt flyer emblem
And the greatest thing is that while not anymore the absolute best tactic available, it is still there for those who enjoy it and it can get results while having its own pros and cons
I love me some fliers, but it's nice to have some variety :)
Oh I love flyers too, ivy and hortensia are great, but the wyvern lord squad got kinda bland
There were only two people I made into Wyvern Lords for my Maddening playthrough of Three Houses- Edelgard and Ferdinand. For everyone else, I chose classes that played to their strengths.
@@artificialaceattorney6822
Wyvern Lord probably played to their strengths better than things that weren't Wyvern Lord.
Unless they're a mage.
It's great. Not sure if it's conquest lunatic levels of great yet. Need to progress further
I mean end game is basically better off warp skipping so I wouldn’t call it a perfect
On the Yunaka example for fixed vs rng, fixed growth yunaka is guaranteed to be better than zelkov as long as you've used her enough, at lv17 she'll be equal or higher in every relevant stat and will surpass him in speed after that from higher growth
Level 17 yunaka by Zelkov's arrival seems like a very significant ask to me. Only seems plausible to get 1 or 2 units that high.
@@actuallizard she probably won't get to exactly 17 by that point but that just means zelkov will be ahead by only a couple stat points for the next map with less potential for after that
@@TommySkywalker11 actually that's not really the case. On average 20 levels Yunaka will have slightly more spd and res while zelkov will have slightly more str, hp and def. Yunaka comes at level 8 with a str of 10 and has a 35% base growth +10 from class growth making a 45% total growth(which is the same as zelkov by the way). When zelkov joins she would most likely be around level 12 with without favoritism with 11 str on average while zelkov has 15. Four points in strength means a lot as doubling(which both of them can do) could equal eight points of damage). You can use this example on all Zelkovs base stats/growths as there really is only a 10% difference with most of them.. On average there about they have the same endgame proformance. (Though you could always use them both)
TLDR: bases matter
@@professorwiggs5192 as I said zelkov will only be better if you haven't used her up to that point, at lv17 she has 13 str so a single energy drop will mean the two of them will always have equal str, HP is only a few points higher and def is largely irrelevant for their role, while res is a lot more important since mages will still be hitting sometimes and higher speed is always more useful
@@TommySkywalker11
1. Why give the strength drop to Yunaka for 15 str when I could give it to kelkov for 17 str. Also thives are most likely not going to kill on there own in maddening so patching them with an energy drop is kinda pointless. Many other units would want that instead of these two. Even if you did give it to her, she has the same strength growth and will end up with the same strength. At that point just use zelkov
2.There hp difference is 7 at endgame which is irrelevant but there def is another story. Yunaka at 17 has around 10 def with zelkov 14 but endgame zelkov with his 50% def growth rate thanks to class growths means he can take way more hits then Yunaka can. Plus this games uses mixed RN which means hit rates below 50% are more likely to hit you then past fe games (fe6-13) so there will be some physical attacks that will hit even at low hit rates. Besides a level 17 Yunaka has one more point of speed then base zelkov with a 10% growth differnce which very hardly matters.
3. There are more physical units then magic ones in the game. But she can be used as a anti mage unit due to her high res which is kinda unique so hey ill give you this one.
4. She will catch up to zelkov in level unless favoritism is involved. Say chapter 13 she is level 14, but zelkove will be 18. Chapter 15 she makes it to 16 but he is 20. This keeps going on until chapter 22 where there both 31. At that point she only has a few chapters left where she gets to enjoy being above him with these very few points instead of res. Mind you im using fixed growths to be fair here. Though she can have canter much earlier compared to him.
Besides there both good units. If your Yunaka is blessed that does not mean you should bench zelkov. He has great bases and can just reclass into another class.
I found this Maddening easier than three houses
Because it's too easy to stack avoid in this game.
And I found that all your enemies will pass turn if their hit rate is lower than all your members' avoid
I dispatch only 4 members (Each with avoid ~180+), then it becomes a no-brainer because I can just walk free to the boss, ignoring all the mobs and kill boss quickly
I believe the Maddening AI positions it units to attack you like normally but won't actually use the attack command if they have a 0% hit rate.
Chapter 25 is absolutely a shit experience for me though, its really punishing if you dont have enough units being invested in properly