Board 8 > So now that the dust has settled, how's Fire Emblem Engage?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Good? Bad? Somewhere in-between?

I feel like it doesn't have the cultural staying power of 3H or Awakening.

I never got around to 3H but I thought it was much better than Awakening

Gameplay is great, Story is... not, Characters also aren't with a few exceptions. All IMO of course.

Definitely don't think it will have the cultural staying power of Three Houses (Edelgard/House Debates will ensure that) and I definitely prefer 3H as a game but depending on what you look for in Fire Emblem I can see why one might prefer it.

Gameplay wise it's arguably the franchise's best, story and most of the characters leave a lot to be desired. It's not even like the characters are bad, they just aren't...fleshed out as much as 3H characters. There are definitely some standouts, some surprising, but not a whole lot.

Also the DLC is bad.

But the gameplay did enough for me that I played the game 3 times in a row back to back with no NG+, just skipping all the cutscenes for the subsequent playthroughs.

It is a very good but unfortunately forgettable entry. It sold very well, but isn't on track to do the numbers of the heavy hitters. I hope they don't throw out the good parts of the game for the next mainline entry after the FE4 remake. I would be traumatized if they removed the break system at this point.

Good gameplay. Passable story. Could have really used a New Game+ but doesn't have it.

I've been playing all the games since Awakening, and it's the first one I dropped before finishing. I just didn't like the gameplay changes, especially the Emblem rings and how classes didn't have their own level up skills. In the previous games, I enjoyed grinding up supports and raising characters through multiple classes to get the skills I wanted on them (and their children in the applicable games). That fun was just missing for me in Engage. The maps were pretty good, but that alone wasn't enough for me I guess.

I may have also just been a bit burned out on SRPGs at the time, since I started it up almost immediately after doing two runs of Triangle Strategy.

See I absolutely fucking loved that skill juggling was removed. I can't stand that stuff. Galeforce grinding can burn in hell.

But hey, I've got Awakening as my bottom ranked game in the franchise. Clearly I'm not down with a lot of the stuff it brought to the table lol.

Skill juggling was removed? Did I just hallucinate getting Canto on my entire main team? >_>

I think the idea is one can just use Bond Fragments and SP to buy skills without grinding in a particular class or configuration.

Oh, for sure, it's much easier to do it that way... as I learned like 2/3's of the way through the game LOL.

But the element is still there IMO especially given absent grinding the skill costs will eventually get too high for you to just slap every good skill on everyone so you have to make decisions.

Yeah, I heard that gameplay is great. The fight UI also looks really slick.

Also knowing that you don't need to grind and do eugenistic experiments to get skills makes me happy.

No NG+ is crazy though, didn't even Radiant Dawn have that? Not sure about PoR since I didn't have Gamecube.

I think Three Houses is the first and only FE game with a NG+. Radiant Dawn unlocked higher difficulty levels as you beat them but I don't think anything carried over. PoR unlocked the use of bands after beating the game but once again no carryover between playthrough.

Radiant Dawn let you recruit two characters in a second playthrough, but that's as much of a NG+ thing that it had.

Thorn posted...

Oh, for sure, it's much easier to do it that way... as I learned like 2/3's of the way through the game LOL.

But the element is still there IMO especially given absent grinding the skill costs will eventually get too high for you to just slap every good skill on everyone so you have to make decisions.

Yeah but that's just it, you're saving an making whatever decision you want, playing as whatever class you want, all the time.

You're not suffering through grinding every female unit on Dark Flier for hours on end.

SP was another problem. I felt like I was being penalized by wanting to play with every unit, because like 17 or so chapters in, I had barely any SP (or bond levels) on anyone. I could've gotten more if I had been meticulous in swapping Emblems around every battle, but ugh.

It's definitely the best of the Awakening - Fates - Engage trio, but still has a lot of the same design sensibilities, even the bad ones. It's arguably more of a traditional SRPG than ever since the emblems make all of your units so overwhelmingly powerful. Much more asymmetric than previous games where your units were essentially working with the same kits as the enemy units.

The story is straight up bad. Not Fates bad but bad nonetheless, and worse, it's lazy. You fight the same four bosses the entire game, presumably because they didn't want to make new assets for bosses that would only be in one chapter. Several of the same exact scenes/character arcs that happened in Fates are cribbed wholesale by Engage. It sucks!

The character designs looked stupid prior to release but within the context of the game they still look really stupid.

Everyone is unapologetically bisexual though so A+++ for that

Overall I don't think it's going to make many new FE fans but probably won't lose many either. It's fine.

If you enjoy Fire Emblem gameplay, Engage delivers. It also has plenty of goofy supports and, thanks the Emblems, references to older FEs. On the other hand, if you want a riveting story or complex world building, you're out of luck. (At least they remembered to name the continent.)

UshiromiyaEva posted...

You're not suffering through grinding every female unit on Dark Flier for hours on end.

I came in here to hear about Engage, not be reminded of the pain of Awakening grinding. T_T

Kenri posted...

The story is straight up bad. Not Fates bad but bad nonetheless, and worse, it's lazy. You fight the same four bosses the entire game, presumably because they didn't want to make new assets for bosses that would only be in one chapter. Several of the same exact scenes/character arcs that happened in Fates are cribbed wholesale by Engage. It sucks!

Yeah this is what has me hesitant on getting Engage. Good gameplay but bad story absolutely reminds me of Fates, and I think Three Houses (Not a flawless game) set the bar pretty damn high on what I expect out of a story.

But then I hear the gameplay is actually the best we've had yet so maybe I can put story aside and grab it?

mnk posted...

SP was another problem. I felt like I was being penalized by wanting to play with every unit, because like 17 or so chapters in, I had barely any SP (or bond levels) on anyone. I could've gotten more if I had been meticulous in swapping Emblems around every battle, but ugh.

The Well that was added in a post release patch is supposed to help a lot with SP. But, I haven't done a run to try it out myself. Probably still not enough if you want to literally use every single unit, though.

I couldn't imagine using every unit in an FE playthrough. I use exactly as many units as the max deployment slots in the largest map, no more. I'd rather just replay the game again with all different units.

I like using a lot of units in an FE game though I never try to actively use all of them. Especially for units that come late in the game.

I don't normally play FE for story but usually enjoy the characters. I didn't really enjoy Engage's characters. There are a couple okay ones but most are on the lower end of the series.

The gameplay is very good, however. I'm not sure I would say its the best, but its certainly a hell of a lot better than 3H and Birthright + Revelation.

Quite fun, though it certainly suffers from the aspects other than the core gameplay being rough. I think the story gets better towards the end, and the music at least is generally great, but the story and characters in general have issues.

I played it for a bit. I really didn't enjoy it much so I ended up dropping it. Far inferior to 3H in basically every way.

Engage is a very by the book FE game aside from the emblem ring nechanic thrown it. Fun enough if you want to play FE.

The DLC is really good though. Highly recommend.