Classes seem to be weird in this game

[Vexal]

After going over the trailer a few times, along with the twitter footage I noticed something really.....strange.
 

• The Pegasus Knights. Dear lord the Pegasus Knights. Chloe is our usual, spear-locked Pegasus Knight, but we see enemy Pegasus Knights using swords *or* axes. Keyword being 'or', as they only have one of the weapon icons. Sadly the first clip of Chloe doesn't show if she has one or two weapon icons at the start.
• Vander is seemingly axe locked. Just has the axe icon, no other weapon types in his inventory.....yet he's a pre-promote Paladin?
• A thief is using a hammer.
• Celine is an interesting one. She has the weapon icon of swords and staves, but is still able to use Celica's Warp Ragnarok. Either classes don't weapon lock (which makes me wonder what the icons are even for then) or weapons/spells tied to the equipped Emblem Rings bypass weapon locks.
• Celine and Alfred are both of the Noble class, but they have different weapon icons and movement types. Alfred has a spear icon and is on a horse with 5 movement, while Celine has the Mystical movement type along with the weapon icons described above.

With all the above points considered, It seems like weapon access will entirely be determined by the character, if not the character-class combo. For movement I think it'll be a similar case, but potentially only for the traditionally on-foot classes....assuming we have free form class changing still.

[ciphertul]

We will just need more info on this. We can't make a solid claim just yet.

Okay re-re-rewatched the teaser and the only time 2 weapon icons are shown is if the unit can use/has a staff. You see an Ally during Celine/Celica engage that only shows a Tome, but both Framme and her brother show their weapons (Fist for Framme and Tome for brother) and staff.

So it seem the icon only shows what weapon that unit currently has equipped. As before Celine attacks she has a sword equipped.

Edited September 17, 2022 by ciphertul
More info.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

53 minutes ago, Vexal said:

Celine and Alfred are both of the Noble class, but they have different weapon icons and movement types. Alfred has a spear icon and is on a horse with 5 movement, while Celine has the Mystical movement type along with the weapon icons described above.

This one is nothing new. In Sacred Stones, for instance, there were two variants of Lord (and Great Lord) - one using Swords, and one using Lances. If the Noble class is used for "major characters aside from Alear", then it could be that each Noble has unique weapon types.

As for Vander, maybe he only has the Axe icon because he only brought Axes? Doesn't mean he can't bring Swords or Lances instead. It's not clear at the moment. 

58 minutes ago, Vexal said:

Celine is an interesting one. She has the weapon icon of swords and staves, but is still able to use Celica's Warp Ragnarok. Either classes don't weapon lock (which makes me wonder what the icons are even for then) or weapons/spells tied to the equipped Emblem Rings bypass weapon locks.

It's an interesting thought - in this model, you could use certain Emblem Rings to expand a unit's weapon options. Bow Lucina suddenly takes on even more value, when she's the only way to get Bows on non-Bow classes. Of course, this is all speculative at the moment.

[joevar]

2 hours ago, Vexal said:

After going over the trailer a few times, along with the twitter footage I noticed something really.....strange.
 

• The Pegasus Knights. Dear lord the Pegasus Knights. Chloe is our usual, spear-locked Pegasus Knight, but we see enemy Pegasus Knights using swords *or* axes. Keyword being 'or', as they only have one of the weapon icons. Sadly the first clip of Chloe doesn't show if she has one or two weapon icons at the start.
• Vander is seemingly axe locked. Just has the axe icon, no other weapon types in his inventory.....yet he's a pre-promote Paladin?
• A thief is using a hammer.
• Celine is an interesting one. She has the weapon icon of swords and staves, but is still able to use Celica's Warp Ragnarok. Either classes don't weapon lock (which makes me wonder what the icons are even for then) or weapons/spells tied to the equipped Emblem Rings bypass weapon locks.
• Celine and Alfred are both of the Noble class, but they have different weapon icons and movement types. Alfred has a spear icon and is on a horse with 5 movement, while Celine has the Mystical movement type along with the weapon icons described above.

With all the above points considered, It seems like weapon access will entirely be determined by the character, if not the character-class combo. For movement I think it'll be a similar case, but potentially only for the traditionally on-foot classes....assuming we have free form class changing still.

you forgot Framme. cutscene shows her holding staff, but then she kick ass like an MMA artist. the trailer also has a brief snippet where both icon appear at same time (staff and body art)

character when fusion-emblem has Weapon or tome (in celine case) where its bluish in their inventory. almost definetely coming from the emblem effect i guess

but regarding fine details about class, i suggest wait a bit more for actual gameplay-focused trailer

[Jotari]

Could be that everyone can use (almost) any weapon is being retained from Three Houses. If not, then I'm very curious as to why they gave pegasus knights axes. That would be a first for the series (outside of Three Houses everyone can use {almost} everything, of course)

[know_naim]

5 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

It's an interesting thought - in this model, you could use certain Emblem Rings to expand a unit's weapon options. Bow Lucina suddenly takes on even more value, when she's the only way to get Bows on non-Bow classes. Of course, this is all speculative at the moment.

This seems to be a possibility.

From the game's product page: 

"Engaging lets you inherit weapons, skills, and more from these battle-tested legends."

https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/fire-emblem-engage-divine-edition-switch/

Meaning that engaging is actually how you build up your units. Engage with Marth a lot, poof, you can use swords and Marth-like skills. Not impossible that' how reclass will also work. 

[VincentASM]

Yeah, I'm a bit confused with regular classes. Especially Pegasus Knight. It feels like they're going the Three Houses route, yet we only ever see one weapon icon in the available status screens.

As others have mentioned, staff is an exception, because it's counted like an accessory.

I imagine Emblems will spice things up, yeah. Like there's one time Framme's brother(?) has Sigurd equipped, but he's currently wielding tomes. This should let him wield Sigurd's lances should he Engage. Similar to how Celine gets access to Celica's tome and staff while Engaged.

[Azz]

With staves, I have a theory that some units may be able to use staves and a weapon type and that the conventional priest/cleric class that is locked to healing may not be present in this game. Every healer we have seen thus far has had a secondary weapon, which is certainly odd for what appears to be early game footage.

As for other units that have been wielding weird weapon types, I have no idea. Maybe the game is taking a heroes approach and having generic enemies wield different weapons types to diversify battles? Will be very interesting to see when we get more videos of gameplay.

 

[The PaperCrafter]

Classes having no identity again... 

[ciphertul]

1 hour ago, The PaperCrafter said:

Classes having no identity again... 

With the fact Peg knights have been seen wielding 3 different weapon types it is concerning, maybe just maybe it might be an enemy only thing?

[Fabulously Olivier]

Maybe Pegasus Knight can branch off into Wyvern Rider in this game.

As for Framme, she's just a War Cleric. Nothing surprising.

[VincentASM]

21 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

As for Framme, she's just a War Cleric. Nothing surprising.

But she joins near the very beginning of the game xD

In mainline FEs, we rarely have healers who can attack right off the bat, especially early on.

[joevar]

if staves in this game really treated like accessory/item than proper weapon, i hope that is sign we will have more than basic triangle (sword-axe-lance). which make it plausible reason why staves are like that: because its not part of any triangle loop.

[Jotari]

35 minutes ago, VincentASM said:

But she joins near the very beginning of the game xD

In mainline FEs, we rarely have healers who can attack right off the bat, especially early on.

Racking my brains and off the top of my head I can only think of Nana in Thracia and Felicia/Jakob in Fates as early game healers with offensive ability (and even Felicia and Jakob are in some weird prepromote yet not prepromote grey area). And I guess Micaiah if you really want to get technical and count Sacrifice.

[lenticular]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Racking my brains and off the top of my head I can only think of Nana in Thracia and Felicia/Jakob in Fates as early game healers with offensive ability (and even Felicia and Jakob are in some weird prepromote yet not prepromote grey area). And I guess Micaiah if you really want to get technical and count Sacrifice.

In Shadows of Valentia, Genny and Silque both start off with both Recover and Nosferatu, I believe. And of course, there's Three Houses, where everyone can attack with anything because Three Houses is Weird. Which is still only five games out of sixteen, but notably includes each of the past three mainline games, in some form or another.

[Fabulously Olivier]

1 hour ago, VincentASM said:

But she joins near the very beginning of the game xD

In mainline FEs, we rarely have healers who can attack right off the bat, especially early on.

Honestly? They may have rightly decided that isn't fun, and so gave them a weapon in their base class.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

In Shadows of Valentia, Genny and Silque both start off with both Recover and Nosferatu, I believe. And of course, there's Three Houses, where everyone can attack with anything because Three Houses is Weird. Which is still only five games out of sixteen, but notably includes each of the past three mainline games, in some form or another.

Well yeah, Three Houses is kind of the exception of any subject of "weapon x y combination".

Though touche on the Valentian mages. The reason they were given Nosferatu is kind of obvious. They didn't want them rendered useless after you heal with them too much, so they gave them a life draining spell. That was the theory, I'm sure. But in practice nosferatu is so inaccurate and healing is so low cost that you'll very rarely find your healers running out of HP.

The reason Butler and Maid have both knives and staves is less clear, as is kind of everything with what they were intending there. The obvious thing would have been to make a servant class that promotes into butler/maid and having them single tier. Not that I'm complaining, it was a weird way of doing things, but interesting weird. Anyway I don't think they gave them knives to avoid staff bots, since both Fates and Jugdral still have staff bots. It was probably more they were a promoted class and thus needed two weapons, and going with the traditional route of giving Butler/Maid a first tier class would pidgeon hole them into either a knife or staff unit which they were never meant to be. They were clearly designed more around visual design than gameplay design (though they're still fine in game design in their own weird way), if there were to be some niche they should have been knife exclusive since Nohr doesn't have a dedicated knife class (which is funny since they can only be promoted to from a staff class).

As for Jugdral (since it's not just Nana, I forgot Ethlyn existed), I honestly have no clue why they have swords. Maybe it just game down to early Genealogy's game design? They wanted Ethlyn to be able to compete with Edain, so they made her a worse healer, but then to compensate they gave her a sword (even though a horse is more than enough compensation, which later games kind of demonstrate, and they aren't even horse Emblem). Or they just have swords so Lachesis could pass down the Earth Sword to Nana?

Edited September 21, 2022 by Jotari

[Taho]

6 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Honestly? They may have rightly decided that isn't fun, and so gave them a weapon in their base class.

Yeah, that. Makes perfect sense to me. No more trudging through 15 maps, like Mist in Path of Radiance until she gets her sword and poney.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 9/21/2022 at 5:24 AM, Jotari said:

Racking my brains and off the top of my head I can only think of Nana in Thracia and Felicia/Jakob in Fates as early game healers with offensive ability (and even Felicia and Jakob are in some weird prepromote yet not prepromote grey area). And I guess Micaiah if you really want to get technical and count Sacrifice.

Love that you remembered Nanna in Thracia, but forgot Ethlyn in Genealogy. And in Gen II, we got Julia. Finally, Laura can technically smack people with her staff in Radiant Dawn.

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Love that you remembered Nanna in Thracia, but forgot Ethlyn in Genealogy. And in Gen II, we got Julia. Finally, Laura can technically smack people with her staff in Radiant Dawn.

I see Julia as more of a tome unit that can use staves than a stave unit that can attack given she has a higher tome rank and gets gifted tomes mid map. By the same metric you'd have to class Wendell too, even though he's obviously not. Course Julia probably will be using staves more than attacking in the practical reality of things (but then, so too will Master Knight Leif!).

Edited September 30, 2022 by Jotari

[DefyingFates]

On 9/21/2022 at 11:33 AM, Fabulously Olivier said:

Honestly? They may have rightly decided that isn't fun, and so gave them a weapon in their base class.

I hope even those who dislike 3H's system can agree on this, at least.

That said, I did like 3H's "free-for-all" system so I'm thrilled by the hints that Engage will go the same way. If anything I hope they take things further by turning "classes" into just what equipment you have equipped (e.g. making mounts/ armor equippable as some have suggested). So far I think it's interesting that the few classes we've seen so far seem to have been separated into categories instead (e.g. "Dragon", "Mystical"). I wonder how that will play out~