Hrothgar777

When I started this game, I don't think I could've anticipated how much it'd grow on me. I shelved Engage for something like 1-2 months after I first got it, and here I am now, still playing it every single night long after first beating it. I thought this would be a pale shadow of Three House's glory but I was wrong. It's just as worthy in its own right, albeit in a different way. I'm hooked on the sense of achievement after whiplashing from "total despair because this is physically impossible and I've been unlucky too many times" to the sudden sight of Louis or Alear being displayed as the battle's MVP. It pleases me to see how far I've improved from being unable to do Normal Mode skirmishes to doing like 2 a night on Hard Mode. I never fell in love with the battles in Three Houses. It was part of the experience, but there was no way I could make that the centrality of my playthrough and be satisfied. And now, after having sat through the same lackluster story twice, I'm not 100% sure that I won't try again for Maddening when I finish (I'll probably beat Chapter 17 tonight). Maybe not because it'd be an even longer investment of time than my Hard Mode run, and because I don't know if I'll be able to do it if they just ignore my armor guy, but what I will say is that I'm not already fatigued. It is something that I'm half considering. I frigging love Fire Emblem. Even their "disappointing anniversary game" feels like a technical marvel that I don't know how they fit onto such a low-powered console.

Louis is the GOAT. This shut-eyed man (a pervert in the original Japanese, and "people watcher" in the English localization) on horseback, wrapped in gleaming armor, equipped with a Ridersbane+5 and a Spear+3, is a sight to behold. He is the glue keeping my Hard Mode playthrough from completely unraveling. Lately (I'm on Chapter 15 now) he's been somewhat less useful because the enemy is diversifying and has more mages on hand for when they swarm me, and because an excess of ranged units compels me to equip him with the less powerful Spear. That being said, I also haven't been using Pure Water at all. Maybe now would be a good time to start, and maybe this one trick will give him a second wind for the second half of the journey. Thankfully he now has a buddy in Jade, the other rising star of my party, who admittedly didn't start off strong at all and took me a lot of frustration to get to where she is now. Unfortunately I can't rate him according to the guidelines of this thread. I don't have all the information needed to do so, and I've been level grinding up a storm through this playthrough (with Louis as the main beneficiary of these efforts). I'm just taking this chance to share my casual thoughts on the character.

I watched the Veyle supports on YouTube the other night, looking to see if at least one of the Lythosians would hate her for killing Lumera. And instead I got "Hey Veyle this is a tasty pickle, innit". She literally murdered the god/mother of god of their religion and they're all like "Hello little girl you're so precious and adorable." So, yeah; I think it's fair to say Fire Emblem doesn't know how to write this kind of scenario. If it were realistic she wouldn't be safe spending even 2 minutes in the Somniel surrounded by devotees of the Divine Dragon.

Thank you very much. Next time I boot it up, I'll be sure to follow up on this. I guess up until now I've been playing Engage without the benefit of inherited skills, which would help explain why I was struggling so much even on Normal. This next question is completely trivial but it's something I've been wondering about since last night, when I played through the chapter 10 battle again.

The English dub for Engage is not of inferior quality to the Japanese dub. There. I said it. What's more, the theme song feels like it was first composed in English and then awkwardly translated into Japanese.

Personally, I think next console will be backward-compatible with the Switch, so there'll be no need to port or remaster anything for it during the 2020s decade. If you get the new console and then throw out your rusting old Switch from 2017, and then you feel nostalgic for Three Houses, all you'd need to do is blow the dust off your cartridge and insert it. I do, however, think there's at least 30% chance the next proper installment will be set in Fodlan. The franchise pre-Awakening was pretty good about tying games together, with Sacred Stones being the only one 100% unconnected to any other title IIRC. And even Fates was a quasi-sequel to Awakening, in that a lot of Awakening's cast inexplicably migrated to the world of Hoshido and Nohr. Two games being either on the same console or one being backward-compatible with the other is a big factor, I think, because it makes it easy to go back and play the original game that the new one succeeds and references if you haven't already. A factor which, again, will probably come into play here. There was a 5-year (or 4 1/2 year) gap between FE Warriors 1 and 2. Assuming a repeat of this for FE Warriors 3, we won't see anything before 2026 or 2027. By this time, there should be a new FE title to spin off, and New Genealogy will be old news. ...Assuming its sales look more like Engage than 3H, anyway. Which I think will be the case; what people are forgetting in all the FE4 remake hype is that the original sold "only" 498K units, which was far less than Mystery. When Mystery was remade for the DS it sold only 250K; granted, it was a Japan-only release, but if it had an international sales pattern which resembled Blazing Blade, this still would've been 1 million units or less. Even combining this with the sales of Shadow Dragon we're only talking about 1.6 million, or a return slightly above 2x the original game. I can't see New Genealogy clearing 2 million.

Genealogy: Yes, and I'll go so far as to predict it's going to be announced in the September 2023 Nintendo Direct. And no, I'm not "coping" as I ultimately concluded it probably wouldn't be announced in the June Direct. A new console means heightened quality expectations, which is more work, so I think Nintendo's going to shoot for the last leg of the Switch's life span to keep new console hype from making the final product seem like a disappointment, which means they won't wait much longer before announcing it. My guess is, there's a better than 50% chance we'll have it sometime next year. Thracia: Yes, I think it'll be shoehorned in with Genealogy either as something playable from the moment you first boot up the main menu, as unlockable side content when you progress enough in Genealogy, or as a purchasable DLC. The story is too tied in with Genealogy for, say, a 5-year wait between FE4 remake and a FE5 remake. By then people would have forgotten what the FE4 remake was about, so they wouldn't be able to effectively market it unless the two are packaged together. Three GBA games: Probably not a remake. I suspect one day they'll be sold in a bundle together like the MMBN Legacy Collection, with little if any change to the original code. Granted, the fact that one's already been made available online throws this into question. Though I guess they could still justify this by throwing in some bonus content, like a "Maddening" mode, online play, special artwork, etc. Anything beyond that: It's much too early to say. There's extremely little precedent when it comes to remaking games from the 3D era.

So I decided to replay it, this time on Hard Mode, and I just started Chapter 9. I've been pleasantly surprised by how manageable this is (so far, at least), considering the frustrations I had on my first playthrough. I expected this to be a lot rougher but now I'm on Chapter 9 and I have no reason to think I won't be able to keep going. I'm paying more attention to stuff like bond rings, using emblem rings for quicker level grinding, forging, etc., and that should probably make a difference. But anyways, my question: Is it true that a unit can only have two inherited skills? It looks like there's only two slots, so I've been cautious and I haven't let anyone inherit yet (I plan to before the Chapter 10 fight). In my first playthrough I had units like Alear inherit way more than two, and the game didn't stop me, so I'm a little confused. How does this work?

Didn't Japan have the most notable feudal system outside of Europe? Like, "a samurai with a new sword is allowed to randomly decapitate a passing civilian to test its sharpness" kind of feudalism? Did Fire Emblem unironically use the word tithe?

-It goes without saying you ought to upgrade your weapons from time to time. HOWEVER, this doesn't always mean you should throw out what you'd equipped a unit with before. I've been surprised by how often a "weaker" weapon ended up doing more damage. For this reason it might be helpful to equip several at a time so you have options when going into a battle. See which one will do the most damage, has the best accuracy, best chance of a critical hit, etc. Likewise, if you have the spare room it doesn't hurt to give your lancer or axeman a ranged weapon. -For difficult skirmishes, hunker down in favorable terrain with all your units huddled together. Don't try to advance to the other end of the map, because it'll be hard to keep formation and the enemy will pick off your most vulnerable people one at a time. When this happens, you lose their valuable skillset and the hardness of the already hard battle will steadily compound; for example, you might need Clanne or Celine to knock out an armored unit who Alfred only deals 4 damage to, but you've lost both of them to attacks from martial arts users. If you have somebody who can take a lot of hits, position them in the front and at points of restricted movement (e.g. bridges) where the enemy can't just go around them to attack the rest of your party. If you have archers or mages, put them behind this line. Prioritize keeping your healers alive and use them to sustain your party until you've finished killing the enemy. Note that this won't work in most chapter battles, because you're required to advance. Not only that but late chapters will actually penalize you for not advancing quickly enough. What I'm describing works for the optional battles on maps you've already completed. It also helped me survive Alear's paralogue. But in both skirmishes and chapter battles, if a turn passes where you've lost one person too many, I strongly recommend that you rewind and try doing something differently. Maybe you kill one fewer enemy in that turn as a result, but the math more than checks out if, over the remaining course of the battle, that unit is able to kill another 5 or 6 enemies. -Don't forget to collect "Achievements" in the Cafe Terrace, because that's a source of free Bond Fragments. Above that is the "Donations", which increases the possible reward from doing skirmishes. I've heard Firene's is not worth boosting more than once, if even that. That's because money is a valuable commodity that you don't get easily, so think before you splurge on something you're not sure of. -If a unit increases their Bond Level with an Emblem, and it says you have a new ability, that does NOT mean the ability is automatically yours. This may be true while you're engaged for 3 turns, but not otherwise. For that, your unit needs to "Inherit Skill".

It seems this fandom got its hopes up and then took the L. My guess is, this Direct was in June because it replaced E3. If they normally had an E3 announcement separate from Nintendo Direct then there was nothing out of the ordinary about today. I wouldn't have minded not getting Fire Emblem if they announced a Mystery Dungeon instead, since we're literally 8 years overdue for a new one, or a new Donkey Kong release in the style of DK64 or Diddy's Kong Quest, but why would Nintendo do that when they could give us an umpteenth 2D Mario scroller game instead? /s

^Frick. This feels strangely prophetic. The "SNES Classic" could definitely be that one Mario RPG from the '90s.

An unspoken rule of remaking games: There's no point doing so if there's not a dramatic graphical leap between it and the original. I think there's good reason why, say, with the Pokemon remakes Nintendo has been gradually slowing down. Once the originals hit 3D there was a kind of diminishing return for remaking them, so they started waiting longer to let hardware/software advances factor in, or at the bare minimum to allow enough time for nostalgia take hold among the fanbase. Brilliant Diamond was sort of dumpy, and SoV's maps appeared low-budget, suggesting a new FE remake won't look as nice as Engage. When the original was for the Super Nintendo this doesn't really matter, but a product of the Wii era? Nah.

I think it goes without saying what everyone here wants (*cough* "HADOOOOKEN!" *cough*). Reasons why I think this is going to be a big nothing-burger: 1. It's June. Engage's from-announcement-to-release window was insanely short (4 months), but that was probably a fluke; for Three Houses, we received 13 months of advanced notice. For a release beyond 6 months later, it'll spill over into 2024, which goes beyond the scope of this video. 2. Nintendo will want to avoid IP fatigue from announcing too many games for the same series in a short time. It's only been 5 months since Engage. Furthermore they also announced very recently that an old FE title was getting ported for the Switch. 3. 40 minutes isn't a whole lot of time. They'll probably waste half or a third of the video not talking about any specific game, and each announcement will take like 4 or 5 minutes. On the other hand: 1. The past few years, most Nintendo Directs have come out in either February or September. This one's in June, which is irregular and suggests there might not be a big lineup to announce, clearing up more potential space to talk about that. So long as they don't talk about Pikmin for 20 frigging minutes. 2. IIRC two different studios did 3H and Engage, and the 3H studio has put out nothing new since 2019. If so, we've already been overdue for an announcement for quite some time.

Interestingly, back in 2005 the official trailers spoiled more or less the whole plot of the movie. George Lucas was like "everyone already knows. Whatever. They'll come watch it anyway because it's just that awesome."

Okay, so I have FINALLY beaten this game as of tonight. Now I can give my full opinion looking back on it. I can understand who this game was meant to appeal to: the kinds of people who love battling. Each game builds upon the battle mechanics of the last and makes improvements, and Engage was no exception. It did made four considerable improvements: first, the fact that it brought back daggers while keeping gauntlets/martial arts. My "successor to Three Houses" FE game fanfic predicted this much, but that was low-hanging fruit since it made no sense why 3H excluded dagger type weapons to begin with. Second, they brought back the weapons triangle, which was also low-hanging fruit in terms of things people could predict was going to happen. Third, the chain guard is a tactically useful ability that bosses on certain maps knew how to utilize well, and with Framme in my party I could occasionally use it myself. And fourth, having the full-body sprite of both combatants on-screen was just cool. It was also kind of ergonomic in that there was no accidentally mistaking who you were about to target. (But oh my word "Break" was annoying. So, soooooooooo annoying. I wish they hadn't included that because it almost never worked to my advantage.) Obviously, though, the selling point was the emblems. This gave my party an endless slew of abilities, items, and special moves, both when synced and when not synced. Though the next game certainly won't have magic glowy people from another dimension, my guess is it'll have something that works largely the same in fact. From start to finish the whole experience would've been a wet dream for a certain kind of player, and I respect this fact. Whatever my misgivings, I have to admire the work and forethought that went into programming this title. I haven't changed my mind about the difficulty. The raw disconnect between its kid-friendly exterior and its "one step removed from Thracia difficulty" interior was jarring, to say the least. I can understand why, of course: the game handed you an unprecedented number of tools with which to pimp out your units, so it felt the need to compensate. But at the same time, doing so effectively takes a lot of planning that the casual player might not manage well, resulting in the kind of experience I had. To clarify, I don't think I really struggled at all with the chapter battles. I even cleared Chapter 25 in one night. It was the skirmishes and paralogues (Alear's was a special kind of nightmare) that screwed me over. I did eventually clear them all, though, and now I can really appreciate the fact that some maps are "defensive". Pretty much every time I pulled through an impossibly tough match, it was because of favorable terrain with insurpassable walls which kept the enemy from swarming me on all sides, giving my healers time to do their stuff. But... All that having been said, I am not a battle guy. Granted, I probably wouldn't have purchased a Fire Emblem game that had zero battling in it, but the favorable "battling to non-battling" ratio for me skews very different than for, say, most people on this forum. I am, rather, the exact target demographic for which Three Houses was made. I like good stories, good worldbuilding, and good dialogue. I like good music and good visuals. Engage had good music (not 3H, at risk of sounding like a broken record, but still) and great visuals. The Chapters 10, 25, and 26 OSTs stood out as being exceptional. I enjoyed the Firene battle theme and the Firene Somniel theme. Seriously; A Tea Party in Firene is an underrated piece of art. Amazingly I never grew tired of it. If I were forced to play one song on repeat for eternity, it'd probably have to be that. Graphics-wise I'm not sure if this could be compared to Tears of the Kingdom (haven't paid much attention to it), but it's certain that a Fire Emblem installment has never looked so good, which makes me sort of excited for what the next FE game for the Switch's successor is going to look like. The post-battle sandboxes and the Somniel were eye candy, and the all-3D character sprites were executed well enough that 95% of the time it didn't detract from the experience at all. Granted, the excessive number of "cut scenes" that were nearly indistinguishable from regular dialogue could be a drag, but still. Which is to say it had genuine redeeming qualities from the vantage point of players like me. But this is outweighed by what the game does wrong. It can't be missed that Engage ripped off Fates (and yes, I know the guy who wrote it wrote Fates too, but he had no excuse for telling the same story twice). The Emblems are more vanilla than the most vanilla harem anime protagonist, and I never felt like there was an authentic, not forced-for-plot-reasons friendship between Marth and Alear. Even by the end of the game, I wasn't actually sad to see the emblems disappear: after 26 chapters I'd been given no good reason to be. The setting is completely two-dimensional. Brodia conducts violent raids on Elusia for...reasons. King Morion was an apparently good king who continued the raids for...reasons. Elusia is an entire country that worships the Fell Dragon (they're basically fantasy world satanists) for...reasons, despite indisputable historical evidence that Sombron was a bad guy. Sombron needs to consume royal blood for...reasons. Most people worship the Divine Dragon Lumera but we have no evidence that she used her influence to make the world a better place. There's little indication of how these societies are organized except that they're monarchies. Why should we care about these countries? How would the story have been any different had it just been Noshido vs. Hohr? Why should we care about the Four Hounds? Why was the Big Bad uninteresting until the very last chapter of the game? I really have nothing good to say about the writing. Most of the support conversations were silly nonsense that didn't even succeed at being funny. A few gems sprinkled in here and there, but you had to slog through a lot of metaphorical feces to find them. There were inevitably a couple of individual characters I liked but they could've been into a game with a much better scenario and script than what we got. The writing sucked booty and I'm the sort of person who considers this a cardinal sin of entertainment. In all fairness I knew before I even bought the game it was probably going to be like this. Three Houses earned my loyalty to the Fire Emblem brand, so I was going to play it regardless. What I'm hoping now is that FE18, either the elusive Genealogy remake or the next big thing in another 3-4 years, will shift the pendulum back toward players like me. But it doesn't hurt to play something different every now and then, and Engage was certainly that. I'm not going to even try to give it a rating, because I don't know how to do that competently. What I will say is that I don't regret the time sunk into it overall, but also that I wish I didn't have to add the qualifier "overall" to this sentence. Some miscellaneous comments: -I wanted to give the Pact Ring to Ivy or Framme, but instead I gave it to Alfred (having selected male Alear, no less) upon hearing that otherwise his postwar life story would have him die young. I guess I can look up the other S-Supports on YouTube. -But of all the characters, Sommie won me over the most. Let it be known that, over the course of my playthrough, I didn't waver in giving this ancient and terrible god his due offering: fish, milk, eggs, fruit, and head pats. And he deserved all of it, just for existing and for rocking those snazzy shades. -One pet peeve is that the game had characters like Ivy or Hortensia, who were pigeonholed by circumstance (boss's orders or literal brainwashing) into a villainous role for 2 or 3 chapters midgame and then they spent the rest of the playthrough making comments like "I must atone". -They made a literal class of unit called "Fell Dragon", with it being hereditary, but being one apparently has no effect on one's personality. Even Sombron seemed as much a product of nurture as nature. Which kind of begs the question: what even is a Fell Dragon? What's the real difference between them and Divine Dragons? -I feel like the Brodia-Elusia arc could've been fixed just by doubling down on the premise. One of my favorite TV series is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where the initial villains were a people called the Cardassians. They were bad guys from the start, but right when they shrugged off their military dictatorship and embraced democracy they were attacked by their warrior neighbors (the Klingons) and driven almost to the point of becoming a conquered people. In desperation they made a deal with the true big bad of the series, the Dominion. This is the direction I think Engage should've gone in, with Elusia cutting a deal with Sombron as a last resort to defend themselves from Brodian aggression. Instead of changing much of the game to make this work, all they'd have to do is expand upon what's already there. Add more conversations explaining why King Hyacinth did what he did, how King Morion's foreign policy contributed to this, the role of Brodian aggression in shaping Elusian religion, etc. Finally, the long-term consequences of Elusia's faustian bargian could've been explored. For example, after Hortensia left there could've been a local puppet regent who reluctantly answered to Sombron and sent Elusian soldiers into battle against the good guys until the very last chapter. Elusian civilians being rounded up and turned into Corrupted to fight in Sombron's army. Stuff like that. -On that note, I actually liked the way necromancy was handled in this game. An off-kilter facsimile of the original personality, but with vestiges of him or her still there, ranging from Morion's one line before he disappeared to the full restoration of Lumera herself as she lay dying a second time. They stumbled upon a good idea and they could've done more with it. I don't know what, but they could've done something. The number of potential scenarios that this concept opened up is vast.

I haven't finished yet (getting closer and chipping away at it every night), but nonetheless I am far enough in the game to issue a verdict about one thing: This game showcased Intelligent System's absolute, unabashed contempt for Fire Emblem's casual gamers, who probably comprise a solid majority within the franchise. Before every single battle I fight, I go through the usual tedious rounds of securing stat boosts in the Somniel, and even then the vast majority of possible battles I could fight are off-limits to me. I fight what I can. I wasted an hour tonight on Leif's paralogue, which has to be among the worst thought out maps in all of Fire Emblem history. There's no explanation for why the game's lowest difficulty setting would have a map like this except that the entire development team was high on crack the day they made this one. Its design betrays no hint of an intent that it was meant to be winnable; at least four ballistae are positioned on the corners of the map, out of your reach but able to assuredly pick off a party member every time it strikes. Leif dodges a fair battle, which would've been reasonably challenging in its own right, basically in favor of cheating. At least the Zerg Rushing skirmishes are occasionally doable when the map is as such that you can defend a narrow chokepoint; no such remedial strategy seems to present itself here. But even if there is, I have no interest in looking at this map ever again. I have wasted enough time with Leif and I am moving on. To be clear, I am not just ranting about a single map. This is one particularly egregious example of a pattern I've seen over and over again. Even one early chapter had me commenting "This is harder than Three Houses." Which would, of course, be fine if that was what I wanted. Anyone who wants a more challenging game should have the option, and indeed they do. But freedom of choice should not be denied those players who just want a moderate challenge for which putting in a decent amount of effort is sure to yield a payoff instead of only frustration. Beyond this being true in principle, it doesn't make sense from a business standpoint either; in the 1990s, the age of maddeningly hard games the development team was apparently nostalgic for when they made Engage, a video game was a big "entertainment package" that you were expected to invest copious amounts of time into. In that day and age difficulty was a way of extending the play value of a low-powered but expensive cartridge/disk. But people have less patience and shorter attention spans today. If you get stuck on a game today, chances are good you'll just drop it partway through and move on to something else. That the team entrusted with one of Nintendo's most lucrative franchises was totally unable to comprehend this, and instead churned out a rather exclusive game with niche appeal, screams "unprofessional". If this was some esoteric project not intended to have mainstream appeal, then okay. Fine. But it wasn't. This was the frigging successor to Three Houses. Nintendo discussed its desire to bring in new players and introduce those who've never played FE to the series. Its brighter color palette was obviously meant to attract a younger audience. Intelligent Systems had no conceivable excuse for botching this as awfully as they did. ...I will follow up with one or more posts in the future whenever I've finished the game at last. But let me preface all of it by saying that I did undeniably get my money's worth. If I were to value the entertainment Engage provided at as little as $1.25 an hour, I would've already surpassed what I shelled out in real life. Each and every complaint that I have must be viewed in light of this.

Are the Emblems fixed in terms of order you obtain them? Or does the game decide this randomly as soon as you start a new file (barring Marth, who's presumably always first)? I find it suspicious that when you do paralogue battles, an Emblem you got at the end of the previous chapter is often like "We've known each other all this time" and so on. I wonder if that's because there are scenarios where they were indeed obtained near the beginning and I just happened to be playing the scenario in which they weren't.

The skirmishes. I haven't tried the chapter yet, under the assumption that it would be harder than the skirmishes. But, having read more from here and the internet, it seems the reverse may in fact be true: that the skirmishes automatically get harder as you level up, whereas the main story battles are at a fixed difficulty.

Let me clarify that with the exception of Vander, everybody's at least level 16 (or they were, before I recently class changed Alear, Alfred, and Clanne). And when I say "at least 2 per chapter", that's speaking of roughly chapters 8-10. My average was higher before this. Alright, fair enough. The enemies were overpowered akin to the new skirmish matches. but they were also few in number. If you're talking about armor, then fair enough. IIRC only Louis and Vander qualify. Again, though, chapter 11 wasn't that hard. I did leave before killing them all, but I wasn't struggling much against the enemies I did fight. I'm literally talking the difference between one battle and then the very next. And this gap was shockingly enormous. This is solid advice. If the game lets you keep the EXP from skirmishes you lose, then that changes everything. But what are the consequences of losing? Do you forfeit items?

And yes, it was set on the lowest difficulty. I even tried to adjust it, just to be told it couldn't be altered because it was on the lowest difficulty.

(Because I'm sure I'll get a lot of judging assumptions for this topic, let me clarify that I beat Three Houses twice, along with Awakening and Fates previously. I might be an average gamer, but I'm not a terrible gamer.) So, to make a long story short, I bought Engage a few months ago. Due to life circumstances I stopped around chapter 6 or 7 before resuming it about a week or so ago. I did at least 2 battles for level grinding between chapters, and chapters 10 was a breeze. It was surprisingly easy. Then I did chapter 11, which was perhaps slightly more difficult but nothing too bad. And yes, I lacked emblem rings in 11 but was still able to clear it in one attempt without pulling my hair out. After completing 11, I saved and turned it off. I went to bed, woke up the next day, worked, and then picked it back up late this evening, expecting the game to be the same. There was, of course, no logical reason to think the game wouldn't be exactly the same: a slight difficulty increase from the last round of skirmishes I partook in. With the emphasis here being on "slight". ...But instead, hell was rained down upon my party. When I reloaded the game this evening, I found that every enemy now has silver weapons, their defense seems to be inexplicably buffed vs. chapter 11, my attacks seem way weaker, and the map is flooded with an ungodly quantity of opponents that I have to defeat or else I lose. Ironically, the only battle I've been able to win tonight was Lucina's paralogue. A sensible person would imagine a paralogue to be harder than the typical skirmish at the same point in the game that it's first offered, but in this case the number of enemies was far, far lower. It's almost as if Nintendo booby-trapped my game's software to make proceeding nearly impossible once I hit chapter 12. What I've witnessed tonight defies all conventions of how to scale difficulty in video games. I can't imagine the people who've been making games for this franchise for 32 years to miscalculate this so wildly. At this point, it's worth seriously asking a question that I never thought I'd have to ask: did I inadvertently do something that caused the game to suddenly hike the toughness of skirmishes? If so, is there any way to reverse it?

So I stopped playing for a while, but I recently picked back up as I have a TV with privacy again. Just cleared Chapter 11 so I'm still mid-game at most, but anyhow here are a few updated thoughts. -Chapter 10 was great. So far the game as a whole has been rather mediocre, but this chapter proved that Engage always had the potential to be more. Personally, I think it was the song that really sold this chapter; here, Intelligent Systems managed to turn the annoying theme song into something epic. I'm also a sucker for endgame "battle-hardened revolutionaries storm the palace looking to slay the tyrant" narratives, which this reminded me of for some reason. -The aftermath and chapter 11 was pretty good too. I figured Veyle was just a copy of goldfish-chan from Fates, but -I had 1200 SP on Alfred, a maxed out bond with Sigurd, and enough bond fragments to get him up with somebody else. I really should've had him inherit skills while I had the chance. Oof. -I turned Clanne into an archer and gave Framme Micaiah (though that's a moot point now). The two of them are my power duo, and I plan to keep them both regardless of whoever else I end up replacing. -On that note, I still have Vander in my party even though he's way lower level than everyone else. I don't know if I ought to keep him or not. Armored lance guy with the constantly shut eyes is kind of dead weight too. -The Somniel cat creature is like my patron saint. Everytime I return to the Somniel, the first thing I do is feed and pet him. Whoever thought to add sunglasses as an accessory, give him/her a raise because that's one cool kitty. -Haven't done the tower battles yet. Hopefully that'll be fun. -Doing skirmishes is getting to be more difficult, which probably means I'm not doing enough of it to keep up (lately, it's been only 2 before doing the chapter battle). Though to be fair they clearly upped the number of enemies too. -I really thought I was going to like the after-battle exploration but instead it's a real drag. Man. -Not gonna lie, Ivy's hot. Her dialogue and delivery so far has been pretty good too. I just hope she doesn't become an irrelevant background character now. -If I'm not mistaken, next they go to the desert kingdom or whatever it was. Here's to hoping the second half of the story will be more exciting than the first. Though, I heard somewhere that the Four Hounds succumb to "Team Rocket Syndrome" and get nerfed after the first battle with them. -Still not a fan of the name Sombron. Reminds of me of sombrero and makes it slightly harder to take this guy seriously as a villain.

War of Heroine's March, which I wrote some time ago on the video game fanon wiki. https://videogamefanon.fandom.com/wiki/Fire_Emblem_(GBC) At first it was just kind of a one-off page entry that I'd edit maybe once or twice, but lately I've been absolutely obsessed with this Game Boy Color emblem idea. What I've got in my head now is that the game would be divided into 2 parts, requiring the player to buy both in order to have the full game, for a total of 1 prologue and 21 chapters. They'd use a game boy link cable to transfer game data from Part 1 to Part 2 so that they could straight pick up on chapter 11 with the party they had at the end of chapter 10 on the other cartridge. The graphics outside of combat animations would look kind of like Gold/Silver. As of today, what I can't stop thinking about the most is the idea that in the very last stage, wherein Freya faces down the dragon Wormwood in a final assault, a high-energy GBC rendering of "Holding Out for a Hero" would play. That'd be bloody amazing.

On a related note, apparently this was leaked ahead of time by somebody on 4chan. He correctly described the content of today's announcement AND predicted some kind of upgraded Switch, be it either some slightly revised model of the existing Switch or the next big console.