Which features from Engage do you want to come back (and not)?

[lenticular]

Fire Emblem has a habit of adding new features with every game. Some of them end up becoming permanent additions to the series, while others end up (for better or for worse) being a one time only affair. Of Engage's new and unique features, which are the ones that you want to see again, and which are the ones that you hope are never coming back?

For me, I don't want to see Emblems again. They were fun as a one-time gimmick, but that's all. I do like the limited use super moves that are Engage Attacks, though. They were an improvement on Three Houses' Gambits, and I hope that IS continue to build on the idea. I don't want to see most aspects of the Somniel making a return, though. No mini-games next time, please, and definitely no gacha mechanics. I also hope that they completely rework the system of classes, promotion, and reclassing; I think that the one they have in Engage is the least fun in a long time. Achievements are not a bad idea in theory, but the way they were implemented didn't work for me.

In terms of combat mechanics, I like that each class of unit has its own ability, and how that could be used as a balance to stop mounted units automatically outclassing infantry. I also like the Engage version of chain attacks way better than how other games have handled it, so I hope that comes back. Engage probably has my favourite incarnation of knives too, and I'd be happy to see that return. On the other hand, arts feel very underwhelming, so I'd like to see them either removed or severely reworked. I also don't enjoy the break mechanic at all (for various reasons which probably deserve their own thread) and am hoping that's a one-and-done.

Probably there's other stuff too, but that's all that's immediately coming to mind. How about you?

[Dark Holy Elf]

29 minutes ago, lenticular said:

For me, I don't want to see Emblems again. They were fun as a one-time gimmick, but that's all. I do like the limited use super moves that are Engage Attacks, though. They were an improvement on Three Houses' Gambits, and I hope that IS continue to build on the idea. I don't want to see most aspects of the Somniel making a return, though. No mini-games next time, please, and definitely no gacha mechanics. I also hope that they completely rework the system of classes, promotion, and reclassing; I think that the one they have in Engage is the least fun in a long time. Achievements are not a bad idea in theory, but the way they were implemented didn't work for me.

I basically second all of this. Limited-use special attacks are fun. The class system... yeah is a mess. It feels like an awkward transition out of the Awakening/Fates system. Second Seal to reset your level is silly. I hate how internal level is this important stat which is completely invisible. Please just use the FE4/3H system where level is properly displayed and is not reset by reclassing. Even the way old games do it is so unintuitive to new players: "No, Marcus might be Level 1, but the game means Level 21..."

Big fan of every class having its own special property; this led to the most balanced set of classes FE has had in a long time. Break... it's okay? I think it was pretty interesting and I wouldn't mind it returning in some form, but I don't like it being the only effect of weapon triangle, and I especially don't like how it means the weapon triangle becomes player-phase-only. It's really weird to me that e.g. swords don't beat axes on enemy phase at all. Even just allowing break to occur on enemy phase (which would make you sword-users immune to smashing axes, for instance, and let lance-user avoid being doubled by swordmasters if they hit with the counter) would at least address some of my concern, although you'd have to be careful of the interaction with Vantage.

Engraving is pretty cool, I wouldn't mind seeing that again. Customizing weapons and shoring up weaknesses is a lot of fun. Might need to watch out for the +evasion effects next time, those were probably overtuned and would definitely be overtuned if we go back to 2RN.

Speaking of which I generally prefer 2RN and hope we go back to that.

I hope Fixed Mode returns as an option. I like it, it's good. Random can be fun but I like seeing how characters "should" turn out, no reason to not provide players with an option.

[whase]

There are a lot of mechanics I like in Engage, but pretty much all of them were a little overdone imo.
- I really enjoy the backup type, dealing that little bit of extra damage when you position your units well makes for a nice strategic choice. Though maybe 10% can be a little much, 20% from hero is certainly too much. Adding Dual Support+ is just stupid strong. 
- Avoid bonusses on terrain are always nice, but some units get 60% avoid buffs in this game. That's simply way too much. Though I have to say they did balance this well enough not to be too much of a problem.
- On reclassing, the idea of needing to collect the right weapon proficiencies to reclass to a certain class is nice, and I liked it in 3H as well. Though it does seem to have gotten a little too easy in this game.
- I quite like the break mechanic, but I don't like it as the only weapon triangle advantage. I hope they bring back the GBA or Awakening advantages and add a slightly weaker version of break to it.
- The Emblems are a fun, one time gimmick, pretty sure they weren't planning on bringing them back, but yeah, don't bring them back. The strength of the effects makes the game far too chaotic imo.
- Buying your abilities with sp, that's an interesting one. I'm not sure I like the additional resource needed here, but I do like the idea behind it.
- Forging materials, why? I never really questioned it in 3H, but the amount of different resources is skyrocketing and it needs to stop.

And last and maybe least;
- We're teaching kids to pick up poop now? Why? Who thought giving manure as gifts was a good idea? Had they made manure necessary for a farming mini game or something, then sure, throw in the joke that you can give it as a gift. But the entire item is there as a joke and it's just... no

[Taho]

Here are the features that stand out to me:

- BREAK: I had fun with that, and I'd be happy seeing it again. It made for a nice change of pace and forced you to rething your tanking on enemy phase, and your placement on player phase. I did find it a little OP though, and sometimes (most of the time) you can play without getting hit once, like you could with the monsters in 3H, and that's a bit too easy.

- SMASH: bloody useless... I barely used any smash weapons and I really couldn't see the point of them considering the drawbacks. Attacking second + no doubling was way too much IMO. They should have picked 1. And on enemy phase, how often have you seen the hulking berserker coming at you, and getting double crit-0RKO before they can even take a shot... That's bad game design.

- Emblems: I agree with everybody else, nice one-time feature, but please don't bring them back.

- Engaged attacks: they're fun and impressive, but I believe I enjoyed 3H's weapon arts better. However, because weapon durability was made moot in 3H because of your infinite resources, I'd like the price for weapon arts to be a little higher (maybe a simple cool down would do it)

- Reclassing: I loved 3H's reclassing system (even though the classes themselves were treated rather poorly in terms of balance). I'm not a fan of the reclassing system in Engage, which is indeed very close to Awakening. TBH, I was very happy with a more restricted system, like you get in RD, that worked fine to me. Let the mage be a mage, it's fine...

- Donations: decent idea, but completely underused, I felt

- Mini games: I can see why they do it, but honestly, I played each mini game once and then stopped altogether so I could play the actual game. They're not Triple triad or Blitzball by a loooooong shot (I could play Blitzball till my eyes bled). 

 

I guess there are others... I might make another post later. 😉

[Florete]

Break is a cool feature that I wouldn't mind seeing an improved version of. I really just want weapon triangle advantage to be relevant on both phases.

I think Engage's class system is better than Three Houses', but I'm still not a fan of "everyone can be anything." It induces a lot of choice paralysis and takes uniqueness away from characters. It also often results in a couple classes being better than all the rest (usually Wyvern Riders, also Warrior in Engage), which is just dull. Awakening and Fates still have the best version imo. I also really am not a fan of how weapon level is completely static and based purely on class. Oh yeah and internal level blows.

Emblems are great and I'd say I honestly would like to see them come back, but in a different form. Engage is a celebration title so it made sense to do this with past characters, and a new game could revive the feature itself without the callbacks to past games. After all, we've had turn rewinds for three games in a row and it's been called something different each time.

I don't, however, like the bond rings system or SP and skill inheritance. I guess if you took the gacha elements out of bond rings it would probably be fine, and the SI system runs into the same issue as the free class system. Engravings are cool, though.

Class types are a great idea. Implementation may need work (armored units being immune to break wasn't enough), but it's a start.

Smash weapons are a cool idea in theory but they need a lot of work. If you're going to be attacked first when initiating the benefits need to be a lot bigger. I find they're best used on enemies who can't counter and get killed in one hit; the former is fine as a strategical workaround of their weakness, but the latter defeats the purpose of the pushback. Honestly, though, I think it'd be really hard to make the pushback feel valuable outside of very specific and probably setup circumstances.

The Somniel isn't bad, but it's a real pain that it wants you to repeat tasks over and over again. I don't want to run around picking up fruits, do strength training, go fishing, do a wyvern ride, and whatever else every time I return.

Poison is good. I dabble in slightly poisoning myself.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Compliment sandwich time!

Good: the Forge system. It's basically an evolution of what Echoes did, with different currencies and multiple "plus" states. Really feels as though your weapons are growing with you. The Engraves are really neat, too, and hopefully the next game offers even more experimental ones.

Bad: the SP system. It just felt like another currency to manage, and micro-manage, like "oh, make sure you put on a Bond Ring for your one Arena battle!". It also discourages experimentation, by forcing a unit to "commit" to a certain skill, with no chance to get a "refund".

Good: the Class categories. Putting certain classes into groups, and giving those groups a shared skill, is a neat idea. Stuff like Qi Adepts "chain guarding", or Mystics uniquely ignoring terrain boosts. Some felt like a cop-out (Cavalry is literally just a stat boost), but I think it's a decent model going forward.

Bad: the leveling and EXP. Just when I'd thought that 3H "fixed" leveling, by keeping it consistent and very "what you see is what you get", Engage pulls us back to "your level resets when you promote or reclass", Awakening-style. Not only that, but a hidden "internal level" that screws Vander in particular. And this time, you just "promote and never look back", rendering the first tier obsolete. 

Good: the cooking system. It's a neat, quick way to boost stats and supports across the army, with some resource input. It could use some refining, but it's solid at its core.

Bad: all the other minigames. They're fun the first time, but... but they just take too long! I wasn't in love with how 3H did fishing, but at least it didn't make me abuse my controller for minutes on end. And what you get from exercise is just so inferior to the cooking.

Good: Engage Attacks. I like the analogy with gambits, but this time, you have even more control over them (i.e. bringing a Silver Blade to Lodestar Rush, or using Astral Barrage with a Covert for extra range). Maybe the next game will bring back battalions, but make Gambits more like Engage Attacks?

Bad: Ring Polishing. We were this close to a game without face-touching, and now we have... Ringship. Imagine you're polishing your Sinnoh badges, and they start making grunts and groans. Yeah, I don't have to do it, but if I open up the menu, and all I see is frowny faces, that doesn't reflect well on me as a person, now does it?

[Jotari]

I think of all of Engage's new mechanics, the one I'd most like to see return is Smash. Mainly because it's the one mechanic that simply didn't work for Engage, but was good in theory. And I think they were very close to working well. You have incentives to move enemies around in this game due to how chain attacks work. I think their major issue that has people writing them off is their hit rates. It's just too risky to take all that damage for something that might straight up fail, especially when half the time you want to move an enemy is to get them off avoid boosting terrain. So I wouldn't just improve their hit, I would give it the Surge treatment. Smash weapons should have infinite hit. The user commits so much to the attack they get stabbed in the process, but they still hit with it. And speaking of infinite hit, Surge should come back too. Would infinite smash weapons step on the niche of Surge? Yes, but it's a niche that deserves stepping on. Infinite hit is just cool and if it were more prolific in this game via it being a property of Smash weapons too, well then the ridiculous levels of avoid might have something that actually hard counters.

Most people are saying they don't want Emblems back, and I get that. But as someone pointed out with a thread yesterday, Emblems are basically the best variation of Laguz we've seen in the series. So I don't want to see Emblems come back per se, but I would like to see the mechanics of it implanted into maybe a special specific class of units. Maybe they could even just be how manaketes work. We don't need to have the legacy fan service aspect to utilize the mechanic if it works.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Jotari

[Dark Holy Elf]

Some things I forgot about:

Donations: Please no, they're terrible. One thing I enjoy about Fire Emblem is managing your fixed amount of money well: what staves/weapons/forges do you want to buy? That's cool. Donations are "please dump this large amount of money down a well for nebulous benefit" which completely messes with this economy. Either the money spent on donations is a waste, or it has a long-term benefit which is completely opaque to the player, and just rewards memorizing which donations are "worth it". Both are bad design.

While we're on the subject of economies, if we're going to have buyable fashion (which I approve of), they should not cost resources that are actually useful for gameplay. I basically never bought any fashion items because I wanted all that iron/steel/silver for forging. If purely aesthetic items are going to have a cost, they should cost a resource which can only be spent on them (e.g. cotton/silk/etc.). This is also the only type of new resource I'd support at this point; there are definitely getting to be too many otherwise.

Smash weapons: I really like the idea of some weapons having last strike. It's both an interesting balancer for certain weapons, and also lets you plan around certain enemies: that berserker can't threaten my mage if they one-round first. I'm not massively in love with the smash weapons that currently exist in the game, though, particularly with how some of them can become "just use this for engage attacks". I don't really love high-power weapons which can't followup as a general design decision - I prefer that tag being saved for ranged weapons like Fates Hand Axe (etc.) or Engage Thunder.

[Sentinel07]

I liked the new class subtypes. I'd like to see those return.

I don't want Break to come back. I prefer how the triangle worked in the past.

Also, the changes to Skirmishes and building support were lousy. Skirmishes scaling to the protags level screws over any unit that falls behind. Removing support building on enemy phase makes supporting leveling more tedious.

[vanguard333]

I haven't played the game yet, so there isn't much I can say. There is one thing I can mention, but I'm not sure if it counts as a feature:

"Dragon" protagonists who don't actually have a dragon form: I hope this doesn't come back at all. It was underwhelming enough when Corrin's dragon form was heavily advertised only to be relevant for one chapter and be completely barebones in terms of gameplay; Alear supposedly being a dragon only to basically be a human in all but name is even worse. I don't see any scales, wings, fangs, claws or magic breath from Alear; all I see is yet another teenage sword-wielding human. If IS is going to say that the protagonist of a new FE game is a dragon, then they should actually be a dragon.

[Jotari]

20 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I haven't played the game yet, so there isn't much I can say. There is one thing I can mention, but I'm not sure if it counts as a feature:

"Dragon" protagonists who don't actually have a dragon form: I hope this doesn't come back at all. It was underwhelming enough when Corrin's dragon form was heavily advertised only to be relevant for one chapter and be completely barebones in terms of gameplay; Alear supposedly being a dragon only to basically be a human in all but name is even worse. I don't see any scales, wings, fangs, claws or magic breath from Alear; all I see is yet another teenage sword-wielding human. If IS is going to say that the protagonist of a new FE game is a dragon, then they should actually be a dragon.

They're kind of two half sides of the same coin. Corrin actually has the whole wings, fangs, claws and magic breath (not so sure on the fangs and claws actually), but no actual status or importance as a dragon. Meanwhile, Alear's status as a dragon actually is massively important to the plot and effects what can and can't be accomplished by the party...but that special status would be the same if we substitute the word dragon for Leprechaun. Combine the two together and you actually have a dragon protagonist.

[lenticular]

19 hours ago, whase said:

- On reclassing, the idea of needing to collect the right weapon proficiencies to reclass to a certain class is nice, and I liked it in 3H as well. Though it does seem to have gotten a little too easy in this game.

I quite like the general idea of having reclassing being tied to weapon proficiency, but I don't think it really worked in Engage because the system for collecting weapon proficiencies wasn't fun or interesting. Either you have the right Emblem and getting the proficiency is trivial or you don't and it's i possible. And for all that I liked Three Houses, I don't think that I would want that system to become a staple either.

I have an idea that I've been toying with a little in my head. What if, for classes with multiple weapons, you can reclass into them if you know only one of the weapons, and use that to pick up the other proficiency. So, if I had a berserker (axe) and wanted to be a swordmaster (sword), I'd have to go through hero (axe + sword) to get there. And also actually spend some time in the hero class to actually pick up the proficiency. If you wanted to go to a radically different class, you'd have to daisy-chain through several intermediate classes to get to where you wanted to go. Maybe you want to turn your berserker into a bishop for some reason, but you'd have to go berserker -> warrior -> bow knight -> mage knight -> sage -> bishop or something like that. I don't really have the exact details in my head of how I think it should work, but the broad idea is that everyone can technically be anything, but that it takes enough effort to get them there that their starting class still feels important.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

I think of all of Engage's new mechanics, the one I'd most like to see return is Smash. Mainly because it's the one mechanic that simply didn't work for Engage, but was good in theory. And I think they were very close to working well. You have incentives to move enemies around in this game due to how chain attacks work. I think their major issue that has people writing them off is their hit rates. It's just too risky to take all that damage for something that might straight up fail, especially when half the time you want to move an enemy is to get them off avoid boosting terrain. So I wouldn't just improve their hit, I would give it the Surge treatment. Smash weapons should have infinite hit. The user commits so much to the attack they get stabbed in the process, but they still hit with it.

Oh, damn, I think I really like this idea. Auto-hit feels like the sort of thing that ought to be way to good, but in reality probably isn't. Most player character attacks end up being at or close to 100% hit anyway. Actually, thinking about this some more, how about turning smash from being a property of the weapon to a combat art? Maybe have it be something unique to armour units? Let them smash with any weapon they want, strike last, auto hit, and knockback?

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Donations: Please no, they're terrible. One thing I enjoy about Fire Emblem is managing your fixed amount of money well: what staves/weapons/forges do you want to buy? That's cool. Donations are "please dump this large amount of money down a well for nebulous benefit" which completely messes with this economy. Either the money spent on donations is a waste, or it has a long-term benefit which is completely opaque to the player, and just rewards memorizing which donations are "worth it". Both are bad design.

Agreed. Mostly. I can see the point of having a money sink for people who are doing a lot of grinding, or post-game stuff. But if that's the goal then it should be a lot clearer that that's the case. If it gave rewards that were only applicable to the equivalent of the Tower of Trials, then I think that would be OK, even if I probably wouldn't use it. At least, not unless the postgame were improved. Which is actually something I would quite like to see them have another try at.

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

Good: the Forge system. It's basically an evolution of what Echoes did, with different currencies and multiple "plus" states. Really feels as though your weapons are growing with you. The Engraves are really neat, too, and hopefully the next game offers even more experimental ones.

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, yeah, I enjoyed being able to improve my weapons. On the other hand, it made getting new weapons as drops or treasures feel much less impactful when they were worse than the forged weapons you already had. Especially for the portion of the game when you lose your ability to transfer engravings to new weapons.

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

Bad: Ring Polishing. We were this close to a game without face-touching, and now we have... Ringship. Imagine you're polishing your Sinnoh badges, and they start making grunts and groans. Yeah, I don't have to do it, but if I open up the menu, and all I see is frowny faces, that doesn't reflect well on me as a person, now does it?

My favourite thing about ring polishing was just how quickly it became obvious that I would have more fun if I pretended it didn't exist.

7 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Corrin actually has the whole wings, fangs, claws and magic breath (not so sure on the fangs and claws actually), but no actual status or importance as a dragon.

Pretty sure Corrin has hooves, don't they? So probably no claws.

[Jotari]

44 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Pretty sure Corrin has hooves, don't they? So probably no claws.

Always looked to me like they were walking on their knuckles. Kind of heavily calloused knuckles.

[vanguard333]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

They're kind of two half sides of the same coin. Corrin actually has the whole wings, fangs, claws and magic breath (not so sure on the fangs and claws actually), but no actual status or importance as a dragon. Meanwhile, Alear's status as a dragon actually is massively important to the plot and effects what can and can't be accomplished by the party...but that special status would be the same if we substitute the word dragon for Leprechaun. Combine the two together and you actually have a dragon protagonist.

Yeah, Corrin doesn't look like they have fangs or claws. Now that I think about it, Anankos had claws but no fangs.

That's a good point; Corrin and Alear are both disappointing, but in opposite ways. Combine Corrin actually having a dragon form with Alear's being a dragon being plot-relevant and we would finally get a dragon protagonist. However, IS is probably more likely to do the opposite: combine Corrin's lack of status or importance as a dragon with Alear's lack of a dragon form to get yet another sword-wielding human FE protagonist.

[Technoweirdo]

On 3/8/2023 at 10:50 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Break... it's okay? I think it was pretty interesting and I wouldn't mind it returning in some form, but I don't like it being the only effect of weapon triangle, and I especially don't like how it means the weapon triangle becomes player-phase-only. It's really weird to me that e.g. swords don't beat axes on enemy phase at all. Even just allowing break to occur on enemy phase (which would make you sword-users immune to smashing axes, for instance, and let lance-user avoid being doubled by swordmasters if they hit with the counter) would at least address some of my concern, although you'd have to be careful of the interaction with Vantage.

Between Emblem design and how so many encourage being the aggressor, Chain Attack which itself encourages aggression, fliers being jerks ideally shot by archers who are notorious for having a weak EP, and thieves, I figure WTA having no effect when defending was another one of many decisions to encourage moving forward no matter what. ~~Tatakae, TATAKAE~~

Could WTA have -some- effect when defending? Maybe, but I think not Breaking was a balance decision because it disproportionately affects Swordmasters who lose a lot of power if they're incapable of doubling. Halberdiers wouldn't be affected as much, while Berserkers will laugh because they don't normally double anyways -- and then there's all the classes that exist outside the melee triangle. 

[Metal Flash]

Want:

I really like the miasma some maps have, makes positioning a bit more important. In general, the terrain effects are really cool, they add some neat strategy to maps.

I also like the canons Engage has, particularly the fire cannons 

Class sub-types are neat, would like to see them expaned upon in some way

Knives are a great weapon type

The Surge line of spells are interesting, 1-range spells that cannot miss.

Don`t want:

Donations can go, they don`t add anything of note, In fact, I forgot about them until mid-way through the game.

Ring polishing is a thing

The Panzer Dragoon style shooting game can go. Same with the strength training ones.

The smash weapons feel pretty lousy, such steep drawbacks just to knock an enemy backwards.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Metal Flash

[Xylaugheon Daily]

Honestly, nothing without tweaks besides maybe Engraving?

I want breaking back with more to it, like stat debuffing or some other bonus, like triangle advantage against said enemy on next attack, regardless of weapon.

Smash weapons are cool, but aren't enough on their own. I think Canter takes away from that gained space from smashing that in another game would work better, but it's still like more, like it breaking the hit targeted even without triangle advantage. Maybe bonus damage if hit into another enemy or wall.

[oomina]

The emblems can stay, but probably in another form.

I came to realize that the emblems are like robots in SRW, matching different characters with different emblems would give the player more options to choose from.

Sure we cannot have old characters come back as emblems every other game, but I feel the idea of "equippable skill sets" should stay.

Hope IS can combine this idea with Legendary weapons. In FEE the S weapons are quite underwhelming, have neither story importance nor real special effects. 

What if we can have legendary weapons act as emblems? For example, by having a lengndary weapon in inventory, the character gets a series of unique skills. The stats of these weapons can start at a level around iron-steel, but slowly increase with your character. so they are not overpowered early game and remain useful late game.

 

Break and Smash. IMO this system is more for the enemy, to tear apart the player's defense line. Making tank-counterattack less reliable.

I guess it adds some strategic play to the game, which is a good thing.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

21 hours ago, lenticular said:

Pretty sure Corrin has hooves, don't they? So probably no claws.

 

20 hours ago, Jotari said:

Always looked to me like they were walking on their knuckles. Kind of heavily calloused knuckles.

I interpret Corrin's dragon form to be based on the Qilin, given the slender legs and antlers. And those have cloven hooves.

21 hours ago, lenticular said:

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, yeah, I enjoyed being able to improve my weapons. On the other hand, it made getting new weapons as drops or treasures feel much less impactful when they were worse than the forged weapons you already had. Especially for the portion of the game when you lose your ability to transfer engravings to new weapons.

That's a fair point. Perhaps some Dropped or Chest weapons could've come "pre-forged" to some level? It's pretty silly to think that our Somniel has the only Blacksmith in the world.

Alternatively, if the next game brings back weapon durability, then Weapon Drops become more valuable. Because our forged/engraved weapons could've already broken.

22 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

While we're on the subject of economies, if we're going to have buyable fashion (which I approve of), they should not cost resources that are actually useful for gameplay. I basically never bought any fashion items because I wanted all that iron/steel/silver for forging. If purely aesthetic items are going to have a cost, they should cost a resource which can only be spent on them (e.g. cotton/silk/etc.). This is also the only type of new resource I'd support at this point; there are definitely getting to be too many otherwise.

It would've been so obvious to have a "farming system", like the Greenhouse in 3H. You have horse manure for fertilizer, plus a grove where fruit grows. Cotton could've totally been a crop there. As for silk... uh, maybe you could adopt silkworms from one of the post-battle locations?

[Galap]

I do like the idea of there being these supertypes of units, larger in scale than the classes, like backup, dragon, covert etc. 

 

I would like something like chain attacks to come back, but I think it should be more like fates' attack stance things, since I think the chain attacks were a bit too good since they completely bypass avoid and defence. It was cool in this game to have the option to chip enemies down with essentially unavoidable damage, and to have to deal with the enemy doing it to you, but I would prefer not to have that become a staple. Breaking was kind of boring IMO. It really didn't matter that much to me, to the extent that I often completely forgot it existed. I do find it extremely funny that the AI with the fracture staff never used it correctly a single time in my entire playthrough-- that is, it never used the staff on one of my units and then someone else attacked without getting countered. And it's pretty funny to me because as someone who is making my own SRPG game, It only took me a few second to think about how to write AI that would do it correctly every single time.

 

I know it's probably here to stay, but I really wish they would get rid of the time crystal. I mostly didn't use it, essentially only for misclicks, but I think what it does to the game is fundamentally bad, since I can tell that they're designing the game around you using the time crystal. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

5 hours ago, Galap said:

I know it's probably here to stay, but I really wish they would get rid of the time crystal. I mostly didn't use it, essentially only for misclicks, but I think what it does to the game is fundamentally bad, since I can tell that they're designing the game around you using the time crystal. 

I honestly feel it should stay just for misclicks alone. When I was younger I had time to redo parts of a map because I made a stupid misclick-type error or didn't notice something obvious. Now I don't, so rewinds are a big deal to me.

I definitely agree that e.g. 3H Maddening seemed designed around rewinds (between ambush spawns and some crazy reinforcements in certain paralogues), but with Engage I'm honestly less sure? The game seems pretty fair and I imagine you could reasonably play it without rewinds in most circumstances. There are a few exceptions, like the reinforcement by the Chapter 14 boss is unfair if you trigger it near the end of the player phase.

[lenticular]

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I definitely agree that e.g. 3H Maddening seemed designed around rewinds (between ambush spawns and some crazy reinforcements in certain paralogues), but with Engage I'm honestly less sure? The game seems pretty fair and I imagine you could reasonably play it without rewinds in most circumstances. There are a few exceptions, like the reinforcement by the Chapter 14 boss is unfair if you trigger it near the end of the player phase.

I think there are definitely a few spots which dump nasty surprises on you that can potentially lead to situations where you lose but it isn't realistically your fault. The change to the victory condition in the final paralogue springs to mind, as do the wyverns in fog of war in the chapter where you get Ike and Timera. But this is hardly something that's new to the series in Engage or since Shadowvs of Valentia. Pretty much every game in the series has these moments. I can certainly see the argument that Three Houses leans on time rewind too much and has way more nasty surprises than other games, but I don't think that Engage does.

[Dark Holy Elf]

52 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I think there are definitely a few spots which dump nasty surprises on you that can potentially lead to situations where you lose but it isn't realistically your fault. The change to the victory condition in the final paralogue springs to mind, as do the wyverns in fog of war in the chapter where you get Ike and Timera. But this is hardly something that's new to the series in Engage or since Shadowvs of Valentia. Pretty much every game in the series has these moments. I can certainly see the argument that Three Houses leans on time rewind too much and has way more nasty surprises than other games, but I don't think that Engage does.

Yeah fog is kinda inherently unfair. For what it's worth I don't think Engage tended to be as ridiculous with fog unfairness as numerous previous Fire Emblems (certainly including 3H, where the common Archer can attack from outside your base sight range), thanks to numerous well-placed torches giving you strong indications of what's coming (like even those wyverns you mentioned are visible flying through the torchlit areas, so you have some idea they're coming, though obviously you may not know where one is at a given time and still need to rewind once you learn the hard way - I certainly did).

Also fair on the changed victory conditions. For what it's worth I think the final paralogue is actually pretty fair about it, first because you have to suspect the victory condition is a lie because (a) you've probably already seen one previous map that lied and (b) the map would be ridiculously trivial if the listed win condition were true. But perhaps more significantly, the game will actually start a new player phase when you reach victory condition #1 (a decision I approve of).

That said I thought Chapter 22's victory condition lie was much crueller (no player phase restart on that one) and I definitely got burned by that pretty badly myself. And certainly I see no particularly good reason for either game to lie about its win condition. It would not be hard to say "Do X, then rout the enemy".

[samthedigital]

51 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

For what it's worth I think the final paralogue is actually pretty fair about it, first because you have to suspect the victory condition is a lie because (a) you've probably already seen one previous map that lied and (b) the map would be ridiculously trivial if the listed win condition were true. But perhaps more significantly, the game will actually start a new player phase when you reach victory condition #1 (a decision I approve of).

Most of the paralogues can be trivialized because the win condition is to kill the boss. I think that it's fair to assume that the last one is similar to the rest. Killing the boss and leaving all of the other enemies alive makes things much more difficult later on too because there are more enemies to kill before the enemies on the bottom start moving. I don't mind it too much because it's a quick reset, but I certainly don't like it.

The Ike paralogue is probably the example that sticks out the most to me though; it's possible to survive most of the map and treat it like a defend map before the gotcha moment happens. I ended up canning my first attempt and doing it later because I had no good way of dealing with Ike and surviving the rest, and it effectively wasted at least thirty minutes of my time. The one saving grace is that it doesn't affect future playthroughs; so it's only painful the first time and doesn't stick out if there's enough replay value.

Generally speaking I like the simpler approach to the class system. It would be great if the class skills were more balanced, but that's just nitpicking. The somniel being less intrusive to the core gameplay than the 3H equivalent is also appreciated, but I would still rather there be no rewards for busywork and for everything to be handled through menus. As much as I hate things like the somniel and monastery though I have no illusions of them not coming back in some form in the future; they're probably here to stay. 

[Galap]

16 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I honestly feel it should stay just for misclicks alone. When I was younger I had time to redo parts of a map because I made a stupid misclick-type error or didn't notice something obvious. Now I don't, so rewinds are a big deal to me.

Yeah, I think that a good compromise that would work well would be if you could only rewind to the start of the current turn. That way you can fix misclics or simple processing errors, but strategically you still need to do things the first time.

 

And for the final paralogue, the map wouldn't have lost anything if they just listed as the victory condition "prevent the boss from escaping and route the enemy".

Yeah the Ike paralogue rug pull was particularly dickish, since the game clearly labels all of the other destructible walls, but not THAT one.