The hands-on Previews have dropped

[Taho]

Hi everyone!

 

Today, two hands-on previews have dropped, one from IGN:

 

and one from Gamespot:

 

They reveal stuff we haven't seen so far, like the free movement gimmick, and possibly more (I haven't really analysed them yet). They seem to have had access to chapter 5, along with the battle preparations and the interlude at Garreg Mach Somniel base.

I'm sure we'll get a few more of these within the next 24 hours or so.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I had a visceral reaction to IGN's "nostalgia that doesn't exist" line.

[vanguard333]

Due to IGN always having extremely bad takes (and I don't really trust Gamespot either), I watched both videos with the volume at 0 and just focused on watching the gameplay and cutscene footage. Did I miss any info by doing so?

I can't believe I only noticed this now, but I just noticed that the older, bearded playable character is named Vander. Due to having watched Arcane recently, I jokingly couldn't help but wonder if (Arcane spoilers below)

Spoiler

he will seemingly die a third of the way into the story and come back near the end as a werewolf monster with amnesia.

So, human characters can also get corrupted by the main evil magic in this game; it's not just the emblems who can be corrupted. That's interesting.

 

[Ziegenpeter]

Weird that Nintendo only invited those two to the preview event. Either that, or the other publications take their time with the previews.

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I had a visceral reaction to IGN's "nostalgia that doesn't exist" line.

But it's true for me, except for Marth and Roy. I really loved that FE song in Melee, but since they've never really advertised it, I never really looked into it until I got Awakening

[Hawkwing]

Took a look at both videos. To summarize the main points made in each one:

IGN:

• The visuals are an upgrade from Three Houses, and the animations the most "anime" the series has gotten.
• The game's build seems finished. No expected features were missing, and the game as a whole seems polished.
• Character stats and information being on the bottom of the screen was a welcome UI upgrade.
• The Engage mechanic was reminiscent of Pair-Up, but as an equipable item. The buffs of the mechanic felt familiar, while still bringing a lot new to the table.
• An interesting question was raised about the focus on nostalgia: Would the returning Emblem characters be enough to convince people to buy the game? It took until the seventh installment until the series reached the west, and unless they played Fire Emblem Heroes or messed with spotpass/DLC in Awakening, some fans would be unfamiliar with several of these characters. Perhaps it would garner interest in the history of the franchise?
• If the rest of the gameplay was similar to the demo, Fire Emblem Engage may be the best playing modern Fire Emblem game. They didn't see enough of the story to comment on it.

Gamespot:

• Though the "life sim" aspects from Three Houses are present, the focus is on the tactical battles.
• A fair amount of time in the hub area is focused on equipping characters, unlocking skills, and preparing for the next battle.
• The weapon triangle is a welcome return, and Breaking is an interesting addition.
• Any character can equip and bond with every Engage ring, and while some combinations are better than others there is still a ton of tactical variety.
• Bond rings can be equipped in place of Emblem rings. They offer passive buffs and are accumulated through a gacha minigame.
• After three turns, Engaging will be used up, and it will have to be refilled through combat.
• You can swap between moving on a grid and a more fluid movement on the map. A nice Quality of Life upgrade.
• No weapon durability. Hopefully, less time will be spent in shops buying equipment, though they wondered how the games economy is balanced around this.
• In Somniel:
  • You can interact with characters new and old.
  • Manage an animal pen.
  • Do weight training for temporary stat buffs.
  • Cook meals to build relationships.
  • Upgrade Emblem rings.
• Each Emblem ring has an upgrade path for each character. These include permanent stat buffs and unique skills. There are a dizzying amount of combinations to dig into, and players are given a lot of flexibility on how to build characters.
• First impressions of characters is they seem to be pretty archetypical, but that's not unusual for Fire Emblem. Hopefully they have more to them that meets the eye.
• Visuals and animation are great, and it doesn't seem to have any performance issues that recent Switch games are infamous for.

Nothing too surprising if you've been keeping up with the updates on Engage.

[Fabulously Olivier]

I don't mind infinite-durability weapons. Fire Emblem was the outlier for having durability.

 

However, if you're penalizing all weapons to justify using iron and other basic weapons throughout the game, you're simply doing it wrong. Use that Forge to your game's advantage. Design to eventually abandon the iron and steel not only linearly through Silver, but also into Killer, Brave, etc. The choice at endgame should be between comparably viable endgame weapons - not gimped endgame weapons and starter weapons.

[Emobot7]

Thank you so much for the summary Hawkwing, I won't lie, I really didn’t feel like watching those videos. 

 

18 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

An interesting question was raised about the focus on nostalgia: Would the returning Emblem characters be enough to convince people to buy the game? It took until the seventh installment until the series reached the west, and unless they played Fire Emblem Heroes or messed with spotpass/DLC in Awakening, some fans would be unfamiliar with several of these characters. Perhaps it would garner interest in the history of the franchise?

Honestly, it’s indeed an interesting question but I think its mostly not worth the worry. Most fire emblems fans have had some exposure to Roy and Marth at least through Super Smash Bros and potentially also through Shadow Dragon (Marth only obviously) on the DS. Likewise, those who played Shadow of Valencia will know about Celica. Meaning the only characters who might really be unknown in the west are Sigurd and Leif and even then, there possibility of exposure thanks to Heroes. Not knowing maybe 3 or 4 of those 12 characters honestly doesn’t seem like too much of negative and I doubt it really put off a lots of fire emblem fans. 

 

18 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

Bond rings can be equipped in place of Emblem rings. They offer passive buffs and are accumulated through a gacha minigame.

That’s actually a really good idea when you think about it, it adds a side activity and make it so character not equipped with an emblem ring can still get some kind of bonus. I actually like that and I must concede I didn’t understand that was what the gacha minigame was for until now.

 

18 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

First impressions of characters is they seem to be pretty archetypical, but that's not unusual for Fire Emblem. Hopefully they have more to them that meets the eye.

That’s not great but not really surprising, there were a lot of sign of Engage being similar in structure with the 3DS games which had more archetypical characters (and I don't mean that as a negative for the 3DS game, it was part of their charm) so it make sense. No, I just hope its not too bad and characters are not just walking cliché. My one hope is that, while the world in Engage isn't as complex as 3 Houses, it does end up being more complex than the worlds of the 3DS games. Good worldbuilding sometime goes a long way into making deeper and more flesh out characters and characters interaction. 
 

9 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

However, if you're penalizing all weapons to justify using iron and other basic weapons throughout the game, you're simply doing it wrong. Use that Forge to your game's advantage.

Honestly, it would be great if we could remove penalty on better tier weapon through the Forge, I don't know if that what you were implying but that be a good way to make late game weapon more viable at least. 

Edited December 14, 2022 by Emobot7

[Marros Kinvares]

9 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I don't mind infinite-durability weapons. Fire Emblem was the outlier for having durability.

 

However, if you're penalizing all weapons to justify using iron and other basic weapons throughout the game, you're simply doing it wrong. Use that Forge to your game's advantage. Design to eventually abandon the iron and steel not only linearly through Silver, but also into Killer, Brave, etc. The choice at endgame should be between comparably viable endgame weapons - not gimped endgame weapons and starter weapons.

I'm honestly less worried about this since Weapon weight is in this game unlike Fates. Balancing your damage, hit chance, and speed for weapons seems reasonable to me. Plus the Build stat can apparently grow with levels.

I'm still wrapping my head around the Blade/Greatlance type weapon effect, but it seems like it has tactical uses at least.

[Vexal]

12 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I don't mind infinite-durability weapons. Fire Emblem was the outlier for having durability.

 

However, if you're penalizing all weapons to justify using iron and other basic weapons throughout the game, you're simply doing it wrong. Use that Forge to your game's advantage. Design to eventually abandon the iron and steel not only linearly through Silver, but also into Killer, Brave, etc. The choice at endgame should be between comparably viable endgame weapons - not gimped endgame weapons and starter weapons.

This. It's why I'm glad that stat debuffs so far haven't been a thing outside of Corrin. The heavier weapon types (For physical the variants such as poleax's and blades and for magical the thunder tome) seem to be justifying their higher mt by not being allowed to double, crit, or both, and while I don't think we've seen the descriptions for the silver weapons yet, with the exception of the training Art weapon, no weapon has had a downside without some form of bonus to offset it

[NeonZ]

13 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

However, if you're penalizing all weapons to justify using iron and other basic weapons throughout the game, you're simply doing it wrong. Use that Forge to your game's advantage. Design to eventually abandon the iron and steel not only linearly through Silver, but also into Killer, Brave, etc. The choice at endgame should be between comparably viable endgame weapons - not gimped endgame weapons and starter weapons.

I think the issue there was forging. They really didn't seem to take in account forging while balancing those weaknesses, which is what led many stronger weapons in Fates to uselessness, since forged versions of weaker weapons could make them completely redundant.

[Fabulously Olivier]

14 hours ago, NeonZ said:

I think the issue there was forging. They really didn't seem to take in account forging while balancing those weaknesses, which is what led many stronger weapons in Fates to uselessness, since forged versions of weaker weapons could make them completely redundant.

What I'm saying is that there shouldn't be weaknesses. We should be balancing around replacing Iron with Steel, and Steel with Silver/Brave/Killer/etc. We should be balancing around replacing Hand Axes with Short Axes with Tomahawks. You know, like any other game.

[Naoshi]

I hope they give us the demo, if they do I hope its something like three hopes where you could play first couple chapters

[NeonZ]

7 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

What I'm saying is that there shouldn't be weaknesses. We should be balancing around replacing Iron with Steel, and Steel with Silver/Brave/Killer/etc. We should be balancing around replacing Hand Axes with Short Axes with Tomahawks. You know, like any other game.

The issue is that in FE usually there are reasons to keep using weaker weapons, like being cheaper and having more uses. That's what they were trying to do by giving stronger weapons weakness, so you can't just "upgrade" to better weapons and throw away everything else. Like I said though, forging really breaks that since it allows creating stronger weapons without any weakness.

[Dylan Corona]

These games look amazing, the Rings had me a little worried, but by features alone this seems like it will be an amazing game. But who knows. Can't wait till the 20th, these previews are amazing.

[Armchair General]

23 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

What I'm saying is that there shouldn't be weaknesses. We should be balancing around replacing Iron with Steel, and Steel with Silver/Brave/Killer/etc. We should be balancing around replacing Hand Axes with Short Axes with Tomahawks. You know, like any other game.

I thought that the only other weaknesses was weight and accuracy, aside from how hard silver weapons were nerfed in Fates?

[Keikyushi]

On 12/16/2022 at 12:00 AM, Fabulously Olivier said:

What I'm saying is that there shouldn't be weaknesses. We should be balancing around replacing Iron with Steel, and Steel with Silver/Brave/Killer/etc. We should be balancing around replacing Hand Axes with Short Axes with Tomahawks. You know, like any other game.

Actually, aside from the stupid silver weapon nerf and weak ass S rank weapons, I actually quite like Fate weapons' weaknesses. It allows for more interesting choices you have to make, not just go crazy with strong weapons late game. 

What I personally want Engage to do is limit the number of strong weapons you can buy to balance no durability. You don't feel the need to hoard weapons anymore, but you have to choose what weapon for each units, which still satisfies my weapon management side, and weak weapons would still have a use late game (since there won't be enough silver for every units, for example)

[Hawkwing]

On 12/14/2022 at 5:53 PM, Emobot7 said:

Thank you so much for the summary Hawkwing, I won't lie, I really didn’t feel like watching those videos. 

No problem

On 12/14/2022 at 5:53 PM, Emobot7 said:

That’s not great but not really surprising, there were a lot of sign of Engage being similar in structure with the 3DS games which had more archetypical characters (and I don't mean that as a negative for the 3DS game, it was part of their charm) so it make sense. No, I just hope its not too bad and characters are not just walking cliché. My one hope is that, while the world in Engage isn't as complex as 3 Houses, it does end up being more complex than the worlds of the 3DS games. Good worldbuilding sometime goes a long way into making deeper and more flesh out characters and characters interaction. 

To be fair, they only played one map and didn't mention supports at all. That's not a lot of time for anything other than first impressions, and Fire Emblem can be hit or miss in that regard.