Current Events > Fire Emblem Engage: 4th Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/12746jc/details_about_nintendo_dream_fe_engages/

So yeah, the rumors/theories about this game being ready to go a while ago are 100% confirmed now. Apparently, Engage was in development at the same time as Three Houses and was originally scheduled to come out in 2020 to coincide with the franchise's 30th anniversary. But COVID delayed the release, and since they were already going to miss the anniversary, they decided to shelf it even longer to stick with Fodlan cast and release Warriors: Three Hopes first. But they used the extra time to polish the gameplay (particularly the Engage system) even more, and with how much fun I've had playing the game, I'm glad it turned out this way.

Some other info from this interview is that the devs deliberately made this game very different from Three Houses, and that the game originally had a higher rating from CERO but things were changed to lower the rating and appeal to younger audiences.

^ That actually explains a lot. I'd say it all paid off and I'm glad as a developer they were able to shelf it to polish and fine tune everything. Nothing felt off about it even when I did my Maddening run but there still was a challenge to be had. If only other companies were willing to let something actually be baked to perfection as it were.

Also hey, how have you all been?

DLC drops in a few days. How is the DLC going to play out? Will you continue your file or will it be similar to the Ashen Wolves DLC? I'm playing through Three Houses now (up to Guardian Moon so Jeralt just died). I forgot how much I love this game but I don't have much interest in Ashen Wolves. I like Balthus but the other characters don't have much appeal to me.

Calwings posted...

I'm glad it turned out this way.

Engage came out at the perfect time for me personally. I beat Three Houses twice and couldn't make it a third time due to burn out. This was towards the end of 2020. I would not have been able to play through Engage after spending months playing Three Houses. In 2021 I was more focused on my PS5 and then last year when Engage was announced is when I got the urge to play Fire Emblem again but I told myself to wait for Engage as I was playing through Persona 5 anyway.

remandramdoll posted...

Also hey, how have you all been?

Good. What about you? Been playing any other games?

SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Good. What about you? Been playing any other games?

Got moved to a different work site and lost 8 hours a day but the worst part is the teens are well. Teens, I guess. Incompetent, unreliable, undertrained, and always trying to sneak off to get out of actually doing anything.

it's up

The fixed level for the Xenologues is just leveling the characters to 15 in their base class. Absolutely no consession is made for the unpromoted units. Bravo, Intelligent Systems, bravo.

PBusted posted...

it's up

Oh thank you for the reminder I thought it was dropping on Friday for some reason

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/60860/~/how-to-update-fire-emblem-engage#v200

Looks like all that's in the update is the DLC chapters, the new classes, and the free FEH items being made available to everyone without needing to connect to FEH. Since this is the last announced update, I guess it's time to give up hope for New Game+ or a "keep default outfit" feature being added.

Calwings posted...

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/60860/~/how-to-update-fire-emblem-engage#v200

Looks like all that's in the update is the DLC chapters, the new classes, and the free FEH items being made available to everyone without needing to connect to FEH. Since this is the last announced update, I guess it's time to give up hope for New Game+ or a "keep default outfit" feature being added.

Oh sweet for the FEH gear, sad about the lack of a NG+ feature :'(

I've been playing a solo run and I really hate Elthunder right now. It's usually not a big deal because it's usually just a couple of them, but this map I just played has them all over the place. They're not threat, but since I'm a Thief right now I don't have a range of 3, so I can't kill them with the Counter Attacks and the map is taking forever

Man, that DLC Nel and Zephia alt are really sweet. pact them up if you want heart boners

I think after I finish this DLC, I'm going to take an extended break from this game. I eventually want to do two more playthroughs though, one with male characters only (to balance out my female characters only playthrough that I finished recently) and one where I use all of the characters that I didn't use in any of my first 3 playthroughs and the DLC characters. That way I use every single character in the game in a playthrough at least once.

Yes, even Vander.

Every time i play a Fire Emblem game I say to myself, This time Ill actually care to find out more about the characters, but that only last for a little bit before Im skipping with Start. All the characters are so childish and say nothing impactful. The MC is always a complete push over and I hate the Avatar system.

4 is the only one that seems to have adults with adult issues

Bad_Mojo posted...

Every time i play a Fire Emblem game I say to myself, This time Ill actually care to find out more about the characters, but that only last for a little bit before Im skipping with Start. All the characters are so childish and say nothing impactful. The MC is always a complete push over and I hate the Avatar system.

4 is the only one that seems to have adults with adult issues

Byelth doesn't seem to be the type, then again I never played 3 houses so I don't know how much shit he/she willingly put up with or how much hesitance they have compared to Robin, Corrin and Alear

Byleth isn't even a character. Second worst FE character of all time after Corrin.

ngl a bit disappointed that fan-requested qol like ng+ and outfit customization didn't make it in. And that the DLC level scaling isn't implemented very well.

I finished the Fell Xenologue. The unit balancing was all out of whack, chapter 5 was more challenging than I expected, and the writing was questionable at times, but overall I enjoyed it. Nel and the Wings were great, but Nil was a piece of shit. Mauvier was the MVP of the Xenologue for me, both for how well my Mauvier performed in the battles and for how cool the alternate world's Mauvier acted in the story right up to the end.

It's a shame that the characters you bring from the Xenologue to the main story always join as the equivalent of newly promoted units and don't scale to your progress. If you clear the Xenologue really late in the game or in postgame, the characters join too underleveled to be of any use, but if you clear the Xenologue too early like before the chapter 10-11 gauntlet, then they'll be overleveled and will stomp the game if you use them right away. It seems like the "optimal" time to do the Xenologue if you actually want to use the characters in the main story right away is like chapter 14-16, but then the Xenologue will be at its toughest to complete because you won't have many emblems at your disposal to take into it. Plus, if you complete the Xenologue early but also do it before the DLC chapters for the Emblem bracelets, then those DLC chapters are suddenly scaled to a higher level a lot earlier than they should be, meaning you have to wait to do them until much later.

TL;DR to sum up my rambling: This Xenologue was implemented really badly, both for the balancing within the Xenologue and how it interacts with the main story and the other DLC chapters. It's a fucking mess, but despite the bad implementation, I still found it fun to play.

Wow... That's shocking if the Xenologues actually scale with your current progress... Considering supposedly the main story doesn't scale all that much, it's not a good thing. Seems enemies have bad growth rate, so when you're way higher lvl than the "intended" experience, the enemies just don't catch up to the stat growth of most of your units. However, if you do the main story as is, they tend to catch up to your character's stat growth. I'm guessing the base intended stats of the enemies are good, but their growth rates aren't

legendarylemur posted...

That's shocking if the Xenologues actually scale with your current progress

They don't. The Xenologues are a walled-off garden that sets both the enemies and your characters to a specific level for each chapter, and it also sets all of your characters back into their base classes and gives you a set inventory to work with. You also don't gain any experience (or skill points if I recall correctly) in the Xenologue, and permadeath is turned off in the Xenologue even if your main story playthrough is set to classic.

The only things you can take from the main story into the Xenologue are which Emblem/Bond rings you have available and any inherited skills your characters have, and the only things you can take from the Xenologue back into the main story are the rewards you get at the end for completing the whole Xenologue.

These rewards include the characters you recruit during it, which all join your main story party at either level 1 promoted or level 20 in a special class that doesn't promote. They join at those levels no matter where you are in the main story, hence what I said above about how you can possibly complete the Xenologue too early (so they would be overleveled) or too late (so they would be useless to help).

Just finished my final run on 3 Houses for a long while and I'm about to move on to this one, but I have a few questions 1st. All of which have to do with flaws that I felt like 3 Houses had and whether they're changed in this one or if they remain the same for the most part.

1. How is the difficulty? I didn't like hard in 3H felt too easy, but then you had such a steep jump from hard to Maddening, with nothing in between. Is hard actually challenging this time around, or should I just stick to Maddening?

2. How is the class balance? Do fliers still reign supreme, or is there more of a level playing field between flying and grounded classes.

3. Other than gender exclusive classes and different S supports, is there any other reason for picking female over male or vice versa (like how female Byleth would get Sylvain as a free recruit in 3H)?

Balance is much better, but classes don't matter as much as the rings do. There are also really good mid-game recruits to make up for any lack of experience.

If you know what to do from the get go though, secretly the early units are better cuz you get to have Canter on them for most of the actual good and hard stages, and ch 18~ kinda suck and are easy.

But a good early mid chunk of the maps are great. There are also a ton of easy maps early to ease you a bit into the game. It's also perfectly acceptable to make mistakes as you get a bunch of units to make up for any mistakes

3H Maddening is like the first few chs are really hard, then in Blue Lions, the Part 2 1st chapter is stupidly difficult, but that's about it. In comparison to that, Engage Maddening is a bit more balanced out, but as I said, the last few chs kinda suck. Paralogues are either really good or really dumb but at least memorable, compared to most of the 3H paralogues which are pretty forgettable

Only Alear gets S rank in Engage

I can't answer your first question because I'm not the type who plays Maddening (Hard is hard enough for me) but I can answer the other two.

Srk700 posted...

2. How is the class balance? Do fliers still reign supreme, or is there more of a level playing field between flying and grounded classes.

There's a much more level playing field this time. All infantry units have a bonus type (Backup, Mystical, Covert, and more) that grants them a unique ability to make up for not being Flying, Cavalry, or Armored units. Plus, the Emblem rings also give extra bonuses when used by a unit of a certain type, which means you want to have more variety in your unit types.

Srk700 posted...

3. Other than gender exclusive classes and different S supports, is there any other reason for picking female over male or vice versa (like how female Byleth would get Sylvain as a free recruit in 3H)?

There are three side characters who have personal skills that give very minor stat buffs based on proximity of characters of a certain gender, and all of them are tied to female allies, so technically having a female avatar would make these abilities active slightly more often. But again, these are very minor stat buffs .Aside from that and Pegasus Knights being female only (but that's an unpromoted class and their promoted equivalent Griffin Knight is unisex) there's no gameplay difference at all between playing as a male or female avatar.

In terms of supports, there's no difference at all. You only get 1 S-support (from the Pact Ring, which you get late in the game), it can be used to S-support between your avatar and any character, and the conversations (including any romantic implications) from the S-support are the same regardless of your avatar's gender.

Good to know. One of the things I disliked about 3H is how like half of the advanced/endgame classes felt underwhelming, especially the sword based ones. Nice to hear that having variety in a team is good to have rather than just loading up on fliers and a select few grounded classes.

Wyvern Rider is still the best class overall, though not by much, and there are strong arguments for a lot of other classes. Alear's base class is really good for not so obvious reasons, Thief can be great dodge tanks, Armor classes are pretty great through the whole game somehow, since melee enemies heavily outnumber magic enemies. You also want several backup units as well, since being in hit range of the enemy will allow them to do 2~8 dmg at 80% hit. While it seems weak, it builds up especially when you can do many attacks without being counterattacked

Weapon balance is wack as usual, but I'd say the hit rate characters are actually good cuz it makes axes good. Killer weapons are the best by a pretty big margin, except on speedy characters, which aren't that necessary this game. There is a ring that basically makes any character ultra speedy, and putting it on your already fast unit is extremely redundant as the fast enemies aren't that dangerous.

Basically, overall there are way more thought put into it even from a surface level analysis compared to 3H where you can make way more than half your army into Wyverns and it would be the optimal thing to do.

I do wish Engage had combat arts though, not the shitty skill% skills

The solo endings for the new characters are amusing imao Rafel joins Alfred and Marviver in the "no divine one dick/pussy means they die after the game" club

Srk700 posted...

How is the difficulty? I didn't like hard in 3H felt too easy

I played Engage on hard mode and I'm currently playing Three Houses on hard mode. They're about even.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/6/AAPa_qAAEZAK.jpg
1. Alear
2. Diamant
3. Alfred
4. Alcryst
5. Pandreo
6. Veyle
7. Ivy
8. Celine
9. Yunaka
10. Framme
11. Sommie

Behold the most popular characters of Engage!
People love imoutos

Oh. Alfred and Diamant are my first two husbands

Eww...Alfred.

Im surprised to see Pandreo. Then again I never did his supports lol.

Compsognathus posted...

Eww...Alfred.

How can you say that about the divine one's first friend among the little ones?

BigG777 posted...

Im surprised to see Pandreo. Then again I never did his supports lol.

You should, dude really shows how chill kingdom of Solem is

tremain07 posted...

How can you say that about the divine one's first friend among the little ones?

You should, dude really shows how chill kingdom of Solem is

He's just such a little Shonen-loser. He does have a great solo ending though.

Compsognathus posted...

He does have a great solo ending though.

That's messed up, mate. Now whose gonna keep his psychotic sister from going full Edleguard

tremain07 posted...

That's messed up, mate. Now whose gonna keep his psychotic sister from going full Edleguard

Hopefully no one. Let Celine cook.

Why? so she can get blown out by the Divine one's nagging older sister?

Celine is about 5 times better a character and 3 times better a unit than Alfred.

The man is a bad starting Cavalier in Fire Emblem. Do you know how hard that is to be?

tremain07 posted...

Behold the most popular characters of Engage!

Yunaka is too low.
Citrinne should be there
How is Framme there
Diamant is pretty cool. He's my personal favorite male character in the game
Alcyrst is too much like Bernadetta.

Framme is an extremely early, extremely easy to train unit who is actually pretty decent.

Yeah Framme isn't the best healer in the game and she's a pretty mediocre combat unit. But she has near perfect availability and by nature of being a staff/chain guard bot can never really "fall off" like a lot of the other early joiners. She functions just as well in Chapter 2 as she does in Chapter 26.

Like I used her my entire first run not out of any grand favoritism but because I never felt the need to drop her. It also helps that I hate Hortensia and will never use her and her awful shrill voice.

She's not that bad in Japanese.

BurmesePenguin posted...

She's not that bad in Japanese.

Yes but I don't play in Japanese so the point is moot.

I'd gladly swap her out with FX Hortensia though. She was much better.

But now you have a reason to. Alfred is a second reason.

BurmesePenguin posted...

But now you have a reason to. Alfred is a second reason.

Yeah, it ain't gonna happen. Also there is no world or language where I'm not insta-benching Alfred.

He still shows up in cutscenes and it kills me when he does when I watch let's players play the game in Engrish.

I honestly think the solution to the "Alfred problem", where a character that you don't use keeps pretending he matters just so Alear has someone to talk to during cutscenes is to have the story cutscenes more dynamic. Have a script for your primary characters, but leave a few "generic" speaking roles in the story chapters. These generic roles get filled by units based on how often they get deployed. They'll all say the same thing but with their character flavor so it will make sense with the overall script. This keeps the characters you are using "in the story" and if people die the role gets filled by someone else.

This would result in fewer characters that couldn't die for plot reasons, and solve the issue where outside of supports, most characters are only plot relevant for their join chapter.

Basically I just want to kill Alfred and never see him again.

Geez You hate him that much?

Also, it makes sense to keep him, and others, alive For stuff like when they talked about never meeting the the desert queens kids, even though they visited a lot and stuff So, I do understand

I find him very annoying and he keeps showing up in cutscenes despite benching him at the earliest opportunity. It's a bad combo for livability.

That said obviously his role as a royal would make it harder for him to completely sideline him in the plot. There is always going to be more important plot-relevant characters, but like it would dramatically reduce his cut scene appearances to only those that are strictly necessary. Also backfilling my idea into an already written plot is not going to be perfect.

But to use your example: Celine could have stepped in if Alfred was dead or any of the Firinese retainers could drop a character-appropriate version of "Price Alfred had always mentioned that the Solm family were fairly elusive"

Maybe I personally dont have an issues with using specific characters for the story But I also dont hate any character enough to not want them in the story Plus, what happens when you dont use any of them? Its also probably hard to basically write that many multiple stories for a game like this

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/4/7/AAPa_qAAEZ2P.jpg

Alfred gets to be on a special poster with the divine one and Ivy doesn't Big boobs barely beat Sommie of all characters seems like this game is more popular with the fujoshis than the waifu lovers somehow I still wonder how Diamant is so popular dude sucks outside of his exclusive class