So what were your overall opinions about Engage?

[vanguard333]

48 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Lumera's relationship with Alear being explored would be more interesting than turning her into yet another dead Fire Emblem parent.

 

Maybe dragons can't breed with humans in this world and Sombron seems to be the only male dragon left. Or maybe she wants a child she won't outlive by thousands of years. 

Yeah, I agree; Lumera surviving and her motherly relationship with Alear developing would've been more interesting than her being yet another dead Fire Emblem parent. The main theme of the game is found family, and Alear and Lumera are supposed to be the biggest example of that, but we don't actually get to see it; we meet Lumera at the end of chapter 1, she gets killed off at the end of chapter 3 after having spent chapter 2 doing nothing but saying lines that are only given to characters that are about to be killed off, we get a flashback-of-sorts to how Alear and Lumera first meet, and they have one more dying-Lumera conversation after the player defeats Corrupted-Lumera. We never actually get to see the game explore them being family.

Plus, it would've been nice having a divine dragon that still has their dragonstone. I get Corrupted-Lumera only having her human form, since dragonstones in this game shatter when a dragon dies, but that makes it all the more disappointing that Lumera never uses her dragon form outside of cutscenes when alive.

 

Sombron is the one who suggested that Zephia have kids, and it's clear from the way he suggests it (and from his surprise when Zephia asks that he be the father of her child) that he meant with someone other than him, so he at least thought she would be able to have kids without him. Also, Zelestia becomes the leader of a new village of mage dragons in her solo ending, though it doesn't say that she has kids and it's possible this village could've originated from her finding surviving mage dragons after the war.

[Sunwoo]

I'm not quite done with Engage yet, but all I'm going to say is that Engage has the worst story of any FE game I've ever played. I'd go as far to say it has the worst story of any video game that I've played, but that's only because I don't play a huge variety of video games.

That said, I'm enjoying it far more than 3H. The gameplay is way better, for one. Also, there are characters I genuinely like in Engage whereas for 3H it was just "I guess Ferdinand, Mercedes, and Claude are all right ..." And the Engage mechanic had a very Power Rangers-esque feel, which is a big plus for me, which could also be a contributing factor to me enjoying Engage more.

tl;dr

Game is fun, story is a 0/10. Fun fact: I have a word document of my thoughts on the main story chapters, and my entry for chapter 22 takes up an entire page.

[vanguard333]

I just finished my first playthrough of Fire Emblem Engage, so I can finally give an overall opinion on the game itself, or rather an overall opinion on the base game, as I deliberately avoided all the DLC content except Emblem Tiki for this playthrough (and I only gave Emblem Tiki to Alear so that Alear would actually have a dragon form). I will do another playthrough where I go through the DLC content, but I'm going to take a break and play a different game first. So, here's my opinion on the base game:

I don't think it's the worst Fire Emblem story; Fates is still definitely the worst, but it is definitely in the lower tier. I don't mind its lack of ambition; what bugs me is that the story still has a lot of issues despite being a simpler FE narrative. I've been saying for a while now that ambition has tended to be the enemy of a good FE story and that a new FE game should go for a simpler story that the team would then have time to refine and fully explore and develop. This game has the simpler, less ambitious narrative I was hoping for, but it isn't refined and it doesn't fully explore and develop.

Another problem with the game is that, even though there are five characters in it that are referred to as dragons, only two actually have dragon forms that see use at any point, and only one of those two actually sees it be used in the gameplay. I could definitely understand wanting to focus more on the emblems, but then the game shouldn't pretend to also be a story about dragons.

The characters are fairly interesting overall. Granted, I didn't see all the different supports, but, while these characters can get a bit gimmicky at times, they are nowhere near as bad as Fates could get at character-writing. My personal favourite would have to be Ivy. I also think this game has the best variation of Anna in a long time.

The worldbuilding is surprisingly okay; I was expecting almost Fates-levels of worldbuilding (i.e. practically none), with the ring shaped continent and the four kingdoms each having one specific gimmick, but instead, it's closer to Awakening (so about average).

Where this game definitely shines is the gameplay; I can't say anything new here. The Emblems are a really good mechanic. I don't think the break mechanic should appear in future games, but I liked it here. One thing that I don't like is the weapons that have to attack last and only attack once; unless they're in the hands of someone who can't double-attack anyway, like Louis, they're useless. I don't mind arts, but I almost never really found myself using them, unlike in Three Houses where I always had one fist-weapon unit.

The Somniel really makes me miss the menu-based system from the Tellius games. I am tired of mind-numbing mini-games that I have to play anyway because they provide gameplay benefits and I'm tired of returning to the same base over and over again rather than letting the game feel more like a journey.

[Unsight]

I like Fire Emblem Engage. It's the culmination of so many great things in one game.

• Vander is incredibly dapper and also one of the best, if not the best, Jagens in the entire franchise.  He has good accuracy and decent strength so he can chip enemies down but not enough speed to double nor enough strength to accidentally kill.  He has enough HP to take hits for weaker characters and can bait enemies toward him for your weaker units.  His class skill/passive is unfortunate but it's the only thing subtracting from his perfection.  He does exactly what you want a Jagen to do without being useless or overpowered (yeah, Seth and Marcus, I'm calling you out).
• Every unit outside of Vander is viable.*  Not only that, but you're getting a constant stream of immediately useful units.  Whether you're playing an Iron Man game where you don't reset on unit death or you've just had bad RNG for random growth, the game helps you by giving you new, viable units the entire way.  Some units require more investment than others but it's nowhere near previous installments where you could dump 30+ levels into a character and they'd still end up bad.
• The map design is amazing.  Chapter 4 might be one of the best-designed maps in franchise history.  You have two units holding out against enemies that you have to get to.  You're encouraged to be proactive and split your army right away.  There are optional objectives that can be risky to go for.  There's terrain to work with or around as well as choke points to use or defend.  The enemy even gets reinforcements that throw you for a loop.  It's such a great map and Engage has lots of great maps.
• The game is colorful and bright.  Each character has an interesting, unique design that makes them distinctive and they're placed against a constantly changing backdrop of green, blue, red, black, yellow, etc.  There's a lot of variety in what you're looking at which not all past Fire Emblem installments have done quite as well.
• The time rewind is a great mechanic.  Nothing is more salt-inducing than playing a very long Radiant Dawn or Fates map only to have a mistake or unlucky crit at the last minute cause you to lose a unit forcing you to restart the entire map.  The ability to negate bad RNG on long maps lets you enjoy the map sans frustration.
• SP is super nice.  Fates asked the player to do some very complicated cast pairing and child-planning to get "the good abilities."  Three Houses forced you into hours upon hours of classes and monastery management.  Being able to equip any ring, gain SP, and buy whatever you want for your units is very refreshing.  You spend less of your time doing things that almost feel like chores and more of it just playing the game.
• Emblems fix things.  If I need a unit to be faster, I can staple Lyn to them and they are faster.  If I need a unit to be tough, I can duct tape Ike to their back and they are tougher.  It's an unparalleled level of character customization and between buyable skills, stat boosts, and engage skills it opens up so many great options.
• Maddening is good.  The Fire Emblem franchise has a lot of ups and downs with difficulty modes.  Some games get it right, some games do not, and some get it very, very wrong.  Maddening in Engage does it right and fixed growth is excellent as it lets everyone share the same experience to an extent.  You no longer live and die by the RNG.

There are more good things to say and some bad things too.  Some of the story complaints are a bit overwrought.  As someone who is (at the time of writing this) replaying Fire Emblem Fates Revelations, there is an entire universe of bad writing that Engage isn't anywhere near.  Anyone 0/10'ing Engage's story is just being dramatic.

* We're going to quietly pretend Jade/Maddening doesn't exist and just about every unit on the next 2 maps after joining doesn't double her.

[New Acc 443]

Hmmm, so I'm currently on chapter 16 of a Hard Playthrough + Chapter 4 on Fell Xenologue, so my opinions about Engage may change, but here are some thoughts. I think this game has a lot of good, but some things weren't handled the best way.

• Story is OK so far. Not on the level of 3 Houses, and I think I may like elements of Fates story more like the different settings, music, characters, etc. However, I don't think what's been presented so far is that bad and I like how the game goes into depth to every nation. However, I find it a bit weird that the big loss occurred on chapter 11, since chapters 12 - 15 seem like "business as usual" more or less. The way the emblems are seen as gods in this world is pretty cool.
• Gameplay is generally good, but DLC paralogue & skirmish scaling is just so bad and backwards. In the skirmishes in particular, the best strategy to train weak units is to just give them Tiki's emblem, put them on a fort, and solo the mission, which is antithetical to tactical gameplay. The skirmishes in Birthright were not like this and you could at least put some tactical thought to them to clear out the enemies the fastest, but that's not an option here.
• Fell Xenologue on hard mode is BS. Reinforcement spam doesn't work on enemies that you can't easily one round or enemy phase. I'm not an expert on the engage mechanics in general, so maybe I am missing something to make them easier to deal with, but what I do know is that in the way I'm playing the game, turtling to separately deal with the reinforcements is the best strategy, which imo is not good game design. Other games like Fates weren't like this, at least in the sense the reinforcements could be ORKOed. Reinforcements were tricky, but good pairups and positioning could make them trivial to defeat, though they could also slow down the pace of the map to encourage turtling at times. However, in Fell Xenologue 3, you need to deal with 8 fliers that spawn in sets of 4 that cannot be easily enemy phased or one rounded when approaching the boss + which units have extremely shaky hit rates vs, meaning that the one archer you are using might not even be able to do their job.
• People say the Fell Xenologue units are bad, but tbh the only one that is unfathomly bad is Nil so far imo. The rest of the squad can at least sometimes contribute.
• Currently, I don't enjoy the Engage mechanic as much as Pair-up in Fates, but I do not understand the full intricacies of Engage, hence I can't comment on that too much. I didn't enjoy Pair-up in Fates either for the longest time due to not understanding how it worked.

In general, I think the game went multiple steps back in a few places. There's no reason DLC paralogue and skirmish scaling should be this bad when Fates handled, scaling on those just fine (not perfectly, but fine) and the DLC integration into the main game is much worse than Cindered Shadows or Echo's Cipher DLC (where you didn't need to jump through too many hoops to use the new units in your main game. Cinders Shadows on hard was also much more fun to playthough compared to Fell Xenologue as well imo. Maybe if I drop the difficulty to normal, Fell Xenologue won't be too bad, but from what I hear, there are no stakes on Normal.

In terms of positives, I really like this game's artstyle and music. The engage mechanic is still pretty fun, though timing Engage's and understanding how to fill the engage meter after using it is hard. Graphically, this game is great. I like most of the characters + their designs, though not a fan on how long it takes to actually build supports. The Japanese voice acting is great (haven't listened to english dub, though the english opening is surprisingly really good). I like how this game went back to a more Fates-esque to gameplay as well.

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, New Acc 443 said:

Fell Xenologue on hard mode is BS. Reinforcement spam doesn't work on enemies that you can't easily one round or enemy phase. I'm not an expert on the engage mechanics in general, so maybe I am missing something to make them easier to deal with, but what I do know is that in the way I'm playing the game, turtling to separately deal with the reinforcements is the best strategy, which imo is not good game design.

You're expected to have set up your units with good skills, emblems, etc. It's a neat idea in theory, but none of the DLC is implemented well in my opinion; it doesn't work well in practice. I could rant about it, but I'll refrain for now.

Edited July 23, 2023 by samthedigital

[New Acc 443]

2 hours ago, samthedigital said:

You're expected to have set up your units with good skills, emblems, etc. It's a neat idea in theory, but none of the DLC is implemented well in my opinion; it doesn't work well in practice. I could rant about it, but I'll refrain for now.

Yeah, and that's a design decision I unfortunately don't jive with since I wanna use the units while playing the main game. I think Cinders Shadows handled that perfectly since a new save file would let you recruit the abyss units whenever you wanted with scaling levels and everything, so long as you completed Cinders Shadows before.

Shadows of Valentia forces you to complete new maps to use the new units as well, but unlike here, you can use the main party you've been building up during the main game and you get the units immediately. The way its framed in that game is more like Jean's paralogue, which imo would have been the way to go about doing the DLC instead of what they went with here. I believe there was also a pretty good breakpoint of when you wanted to recruit these units, which is the start of Act 3, where they were strong, but not OP.

I guess its not all bad, since the nature of Engage gives you flexibility on how you want to build your unit and what your units can do. In subsequent playthroughs, I will likely do Tiki's Divine Paralogues early, skip the rest of the emblem paralogues until lategame (or just entirely) and play the Fell Xenologue on Normal with no emblems & no skills barring on Nil to make it not a complete snoozefest. I'm sure the reason other players find Normal so easy is because they are using high tier skills and Emblems, but without those, I could see it being decently fun and challenging to do efficiently. That is also roughly 6 chapters of Arena grinding, bond fragments, well grinding, and support grinding, all of which will be nice to have. I'd imagine a good breakpoint to get the new units would be somewhere between Chapter 13 - 16, which I'll experiment with eventually.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, samthedigital said:

You're expected to have set up your units with good skills, emblems, etc. It's a neat idea in theory, but none of the DLC is implemented well in my opinion; it doesn't work well in practice. I could rant about it, but I'll refrain for now.

I was initially really excited to see the Fell Xenologue's approach to character use. Specifically I thought it would be a great chance to use Yunaka who I dropped in the main playthrough. But quickly did I realize that novelty was a pipe dre because the challenge level was so high those end game skills and Emblem Bonds were vital to clearing even the first turns of the first stage on lunatic. Still liked it though, because that challenge level was right up my alley, but it felt poorly conceived with it's central mechanic.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Jotari

[samthedigital]

2 hours ago, New Acc 443 said:

Yeah, and that's a design decision I unfortunately don't jive with since I wanna use the units while playing the main game. I think Cinders Shadows handled that perfectly since a new save file would let you recruit the abyss units whenever you wanted with scaling levels and everything, so long as you completed Cinders Shadows before.

The Cindered Shadows approach of having a self contained challenge was what I was expecting going into it since I didn't want to risk spoiling anything before buying. The half approach isn't what I wanted, but I would have personally enjoyed it quite a bit if I didn't have to play through it every single time just to use the characters. I don't understand why it couldn't have been implemented in a similar way where the units scaled to the party relative to the chapter or whatever.

50 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I was initially really excited to see the Fell Xenologue's approach to character use. Specifically I thought it would be a great chance to use Yunaka who I dropped in the main playthrough. But quickly did I realize that novelty was a pipe dre because the challenge level was so high those end game skills and Emblem Bonds were vital to clearing even the first turns of the first stage on lunatic. Still liked it though, because that challenge level was right up my alley, but it felt poorly conceived with it's central mechanic.

I want to go back and play the Xenologue on Maddening myself when I have the time. I tried Maddening originally when the well is first unlocked, but it was practically impossible to get through the opening without having a perfect defensive formation, and I didn't have the patience to figure out if it was even doable. I ended up playing through on Normal mode after unlocking the first 6 emblems and DLC characters because I wanted to use the DLC characters on my playthrough. I have to wonder when the player is expected to go through the Xenlogue though. It seems to me that it's more fun to do later on in the game given the extra options, but then there isn't any point to the unlockable characters being  tied to it because we don't get to use them.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, samthedigital said:

The Cindered Shadows approach of having a self contained challenge was what I was expecting going into it since I didn't want to risk spoiling anything before buying. The half approach isn't what I wanted, but I would have personally enjoyed it quite a bit if I didn't have to play through it every single time just to use the characters. I don't understand why it couldn't have been implemented in a similar way where the units scaled to the party relative to the chapter or whatever.

I want to go back and play the Xenologue on Maddening myself when I have the time. I tried Maddening originally when the well is first unlocked, but it was practically impossible to get through the opening without having a perfect defensive formation, and I didn't have the patience to figure out if it was even doable. I ended up playing through on Normal mode after unlocking the first 6 emblems and DLC characters because I wanted to use the DLC characters on my playthrough. I have to wonder when the player is expected to go through the Xenlogue though. It seems to me that it's more fun to do later on in the game given the extra options, but then there isn't any point to the unlockable characters being  tied to it because we don't get to use them.

Well at least the difficulty of Fell Xenologue is divorced from the difficulty in your main file. So if you just want the characters you can just auto battle skip your way through most of the maps on normal.

[samthedigital]

25 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well at least the difficulty of Fell Xenologue is divorced from the difficulty in your main file. So if you just want the characters you can just auto battle skip your way through most of the maps on normal.

That's effectively what I did, but I would much rather not have to every time I want to use them. The other issue that I have with the dlc items aren't opt in; they are transferred to the inventory right away. The "solution" is to uninstall the dlc and the like, but it's an extra step that I wouldn't have to take in Three Houses or Conquest for example.

[Perkilator]

I was hard on it at first but after checking it out on YouTube, I warmed up to it.

 I haven’t heard good things about Fell Xenologue, though, so I’m gonna avoid it.

[New Acc 443]

Beat Chapter 17, a few paralogues, and the Fell Xenologue.

I had to drop down the difficulty of Fell Xenologue down to Normal on the final map. I got put in an extreme bad position in the bottom right portion of the map, where regardless of what I did, I would lose, like 5+ units in a single turn even with the most optimal dancer rescue strats because the enemies approaching from the top were too strong lol. The map was very challenging though in a good way and forced me to look at stuff like reaching certain stat thresholds with certain emblem rings, giving units specific items like the Armorslayer and Hammer to beat the Armors, taking advantage of personal skills + dancer strats to get the units off the platform in time, etc. Really tested my knowledge of the game, forced me to optimize my units w/ skill inheritence. Perhaps I'll attempt it again another time when I'm better at the game.

So of the OC's, I'm using Nel, Rafal, and Zelestia. All three are pretty solid in their base class imo. I also turned Etie into a Mage Cannoneer. She's aight in the class, a pretty good debuffer / chip damage dealer with Corrin's Weapon and Lunar Brace.

I'm currently a fair deal overleveled (roughly 5 levels above the level curve based on the skirmishes in the overworld) and Chapter 17 was still tough, even with Bolting from Sorren + Draconic Hex letting me debuff and deal high damage to monsters. Enemies agro pretty hard on this map and Zephia's movement range and power are extremely high, making her tricky to deal with. Such a jarring contrast to the previous chapter, which I thought was really tame by comparison.

Some thoughts on the plot I want to share too:

Fell Xenologue

Spoiler

I liked the scenarios the Fell Xenologue put you in and the original characters, but some things about the "twist" of everyone being dead rubs me the wrong way. I don't actually have a problem about this twist on its own and think it would have made the entire scenario a lot more tragic than it would be otherwise, but Nil's involvment in it ruins everything. I thought that everyone becoming corrupted was like some sort of disease that spread like wildfire and made everyone go berserk. This actually would have made the scenario very tragic, since everything would have been out of the OCs control. But nah, we learn that Nil turned all the royals into corrupted, including Ivy, Hortensia, and Fogado, implying that he did that to everyone else too. If that's the case, why was he working with Nel instead of joining the enemy with overwhelmingly larger numbers? Why were the corrupted soldiers going to war with each other in various chapters? Haphazardly involving Nil in the creation of the corrupted was a pretty boneheaded decision that ruins the entire story since it makes so many other details not make sense. This is a case where less would have been more. If Nil wasn't involved in the creation of the corrupted, that would have made the story drastically better imo.

At the very least, the final map felt like a true final boss, with a pretty good gimmick and involvement from multiple characters from the story. Felt very bittersweet, like Shadows of Valentia and Crimson flower's final map. And Rafal's ending was really good imo.

Chapter 17

Spoiler

Chapter 17 was amazing. The enemy reveals their card and shows how ruthless they can be destroying an innocent village in Firene. Evil Veyle is an intimidating and competent, though Zephia isn't far behind. Now, the villains here aren't portrayed as entirely unbeatable, but what I like is that they go extreme lengths to emotionally torture the Heroes. They dangle Marth and good Veyle in front of Alear, destroyed an innocent village in Alfred and Celine's kingdom just for the hell of it and revived Hyacinth just to emotionally torture Ivy and Hortensia a bit. The ending where good Veyle impersonates bad Veyle just to steal Zephia's ring  and pass it to Alear at the last second was pretty great too. What's I especially love is that this entire scenario takes place during a beautiful sunset.

The after battle portion is also quite sad too. You can talk to some of the villagers and they point out how their lives were ruined. The Firene cast also talks about how awful it is what happened to the village. Really tragic stuff.

[Etrurian emperor]

Despite my criticism of the story I've consistently said Engage has great gameplay and I stand by that. But there are also some moments of questionable game design where I wonder how the devs never picked up on it.

-The most baffling decision was making skirmishes completely useless. The very point of skirmishes is to train your weaker units, but because skirmishes are so oppressively hard you simply cannot afford to take any unit that's lagging behind, because that means that unit is getting swarmed to death. The enemies are too numerous, too powerful, and with too high mobility for lower level units to survive. That benched characters keep begging Alear to let them fight again implies that the devs did imagine it to be possible for benched units to be trained up to snuff again.

-Character recruitment is a little weird in Engage. Because of the lord+retainer system you acquire units in batches of three. This ensures you pretty consistently get new characters, but the character slots the game gives you are very limited. Another curious aspect is that the newer characters almost always outclass the ones you already have. Considering that in the first Fire Emblems later units were often weaker to serve as a replacement for units you lost, and as a semi punishment for losing them this approach seems a bit against the spirit of the series. Sometimes a character who joins later should outclass your units if they're a particularly big deal, but it being a consistent pattern is just strange, and makes early units seem disposable. 

-I said it before already but the game's obsessive love with reinforcement spawn is annoying. I get prompted players to keep up the phase, but there are better ways. They didn't need to use reinforcement spawns as the only way to get players playing fast. 

 

[Jotari]

39 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Despite my criticism of the story I've consistently said Engage has great gameplay and I stand by that. But there are also some moments of questionable game design where I wonder how the devs never picked up on it.

-The most baffling decision was making skirmishes completely useless. The very point of skirmishes is to train your weaker units, but because skirmishes are so oppressively hard you simply cannot afford to take any unit that's lagging behind, because that means that unit is getting swarmed to death. The enemies are too numerous, too powerful, and with too high mobility for lower level units to survive. That benched characters keep begging Alear to let them fight again implies that the devs did imagine it to be possible for benched units to be trained up to snuff again.

-Character recruitment is a little weird in Engage. Because of the lord+retainer system you acquire units in batches of three. This ensures you pretty consistently get new characters, but the character slots the game gives you are very limited. Another curious aspect is that the newer characters almost always outclass the ones you already have. Considering that in the first Fire Emblems later units were often weaker to serve as a replacement for units you lost, and as a semi punishment for losing them this approach seems a bit against the spirit of the series. Sometimes a character who joins later should outclass your units if they're a particularly big deal, but it being a consistent pattern is just strange, and makes early units seem disposable. 

-I said it before already but the game's obsessive love with reinforcement spawn is annoying. I get prompted players to keep up the phase, but there are better ways. They didn't need to use reinforcement spawns as the only way to get players playing fast. 

 

I don't know if I've ever enjoyed skirmishes in as a mechanic in any if the Fire Emblem games they've been in. It feels like they're just more annoying than beneficial. If they're challenging then they're just kind of a waste of time compared to the main story. If they're easy and you can just skip them then you're basically not playing the game and just trading your time for exp. Their first incarnation, surprisingly, is probably the most interesting, as the fact that they move across the map means they're are a challenge and one that you will have to manage in tandem with the main campaign. Sacred Stones already has the tower of Valni as exp farming, skirmishes just serve to block off the map. Awakening should be the most appealing for them given it's design philosophy of more sandbox like play, but they're rendered obsolete by the DLC.

Rather than skirmishes, I'd much rather some kind of mechanic where you can replay a map as if it is the story chapter, only with whatever units and skills you want, maybe with the enemy levels being averaged to match whatever army the player deploys.

Of course, for distributing extra exp, Tellius' bonus exp is so much better, giving you additional goals in the main campaign and letting you have more control over what units you want to give favoritism. Its a real shame it didn't become a standard part of the series.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Jotari

[New Acc 443]

6 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Despite my criticism of the story I've consistently said Engage has great gameplay and I stand by that. But there are also some moments of questionable game design where I wonder how the devs never picked up on it.

-The most baffling decision was making skirmishes completely useless. The very point of skirmishes is to train your weaker units, but because skirmishes are so oppressively hard you simply cannot afford to take any unit that's lagging behind, because that means that unit is getting swarmed to death. The enemies are too numerous, too powerful, and with too high mobility for lower level units to survive. That benched characters keep begging Alear to let them fight again implies that the devs did imagine it to be possible for benched units to be trained up to snuff again.

-Character recruitment is a little weird in Engage. Because of the lord+retainer system you acquire units in batches of three. This ensures you pretty consistently get new characters, but the character slots the game gives you are very limited. Another curious aspect is that the newer characters almost always outclass the ones you already have. Considering that in the first Fire Emblems later units were often weaker to serve as a replacement for units you lost, and as a semi punishment for losing them this approach seems a bit against the spirit of the series. Sometimes a character who joins later should outclass your units if they're a particularly big deal, but it being a consistent pattern is just strange, and makes early units seem disposable. 

-I said it before already but the game's obsessive love with reinforcement spawn is annoying. I get prompted players to keep up the phase, but there are better ways. They didn't need to use reinforcement spawns as the only way to get players playing fast. 

 

Adding insult to injury, the DLC skirmishes are random levels, which makes it seem like they are paywalling skirmish grinding.

I'm not a fan of the class balancing either. Why does Swordmaster have worse stats than griffin rider in every category (especially Res)? IMO Infrantry units should have significantly higher stats than mounted units since they are at a disadvantage by default due to not possessing a mount, though I may be underselling the utility of being a backup unit, at the utility of chain attacks can't be understated, especially vs bosses. Single weapon classes like Sword Master are worse off in this game too due to the break mechanic compared to other classes like Heroes (esp since Heroes have a way better passive). Other classes like paladin also seem a bit bad compared to classes like Great Knight, though there may be utility I'm missing.

I like that additional passives that they gave to infantry units, liike extra avoid or being able to perform chain attacks + the general nerfing of mounted units by reducing movement, but IMO they didn't do enough to nerf fliers which are still broken in this game due to having better stats + ignoring Terrain. All the infantry specialist classes, like Sniper, Swordmaster, Halberdier, and Berserker, all seem much worse than in previous games since they can't Dual wield weapons in a game where WTA is important, S-Rank weapons come late (+ other classes can still access S-Rank weapons anyways so that advantage is mostly mute) and most units in these classes have very situational passives. Hero or Warrior are almost always better in this game if you want a backup unit. I think they should have given these classes special Bonuses like they did in Fates, like extra Hit, Crit, and Avoid, so they would be more appealing options.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, New Acc 443 said:

Adding insult to injury, the DLC skirmishes are random levels, which makes it seem like they are paywalling skirmish grinding.

I'm not a fan of the class balancing either. Why does Swordmaster have worse stats than griffin rider in every category (especially Res)? IMO Infrantry units should have significantly higher stats than mounted units since they are at a disadvantage by default due to not possessing a mount, though I may be underselling the utility of being a backup unit, at the utility of chain attacks can't be understated, especially vs bosses. Single weapon classes like Sword Master are worse off in this game too due to the break mechanic compared to other classes like Heroes (esp since Heroes have a way better passive). Other classes like paladin also seem a bit bad compared to classes like Great Knight, though there may be utility I'm missing.

I like that additional passives that they gave to infantry units, liike extra avoid or being able to perform chain attacks + the general nerfing of mounted units by reducing movement, but IMO they didn't do enough to nerf fliers which are still broken in this game due to having better stats + ignoring Terrain. All the infantry specialist classes, like Sniper, Swordmaster, Halberdier, and Berserker, all seem much worse than in previous games since they can't Dual wield weapons in a game where WTA is important, S-Rank weapons come late (+ other classes can still access S-Rank weapons anyways so that advantage is mostly mute) and most units in these classes have very situational passives. Hero or Warrior are almost always better in this game if you want a backup unit. I think they should have given these classes special Bonuses like they did in Fates, like extra Hit, Crit, and Avoid, so they would be more appealing options.

One of the most baffling things to me is that Generals are locked to one weapon. Generals have jumped around what weapons they have upon promotion but they have consistently been been multi weapon users since the first title, the only exceptions being Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia (where virtually everyone is mono weapon) and Old Mystery. Indeed sometimes they have as many as the entire triangle and Jugdral even gave them every physical weapon. So why are they three different classes of one weapon here? It's not as big a weakness as swordmaster as generals are immune to break, but it's still weird as you would definitely appreciate the extra offense utility of having more power to break enemies if they carried two (or even three) weapons.

[New Acc 443]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

One of the most baffling things to me is that Generals are locked to one weapon. Generals have jumped around what weapons they have upon promotion but they have consistently been been multi weapon users since the first title, the only exceptions being Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia (where virtually everyone is mono weapon) and Old Mystery. Indeed sometimes they have as many as the entire triangle and Jugdral even gave them every physical weapon. So why are they three different classes of one weapon here? It's not as big a weakness as swordmaster as generals are immune to break, but it's still weird as you would definitely appreciate the extra offense utility of having more power to break enemies if they carried two (or even three) weapons.

Yeah, probably should have just been given S-Rank weapons by default since they would appreciate the additional versatility (esp since generals are good users of the S-Rank Smash weapons due to their absurd tankiness. Mage Cannoneer technically has S-Rank weapons as an armored unit, but that's a special case.

Full weapon triangle control would be neat, but TBH generals don't need them due to being immune to break, which is why they are such good tanks. Other weapons like Knifes and Bows (specifically Long Bows) seems like they would be too good on generals, while Staves and Magic wouldn't really fit. I think Brawling as a secondary weapon could work though.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, New Acc 443 said:

Yeah, probably should have just been given S-Rank weapons by default since they would appreciate the additional versatility (esp since generals are good users of the S-Rank Smash weapons due to their absurd tankiness. Mage Cannoneer technically has S-Rank weapons as an armored unit, but that's a special case.

Full weapon triangle control would be neat, but TBH generals don't need them due to being immune to break, which is why they are such good tanks. Other weapons like Knifes and Bows (specifically Long Bows) seems like they would be too good on generals, while Staves and Magic wouldn't really fit. I think Brawling as a secondary weapon could work though.

I found Bows to be a very good weapon type for Generals in the DS games, but really they could have anything and it would be a net improvement. At least Swordmasters and their ilk are meant to be purist classes dedicated to a singular weapon. Generals are intended to be varied, because goodness knows they've historically needed something to help them (personally I think knights should have two weapons from base too, it's silly that cavaliers can but knights can't, outside of the very first game). So much so that the game actually does give multiple different weapon types to generals...just not at the same time.

[New Acc 443]

44 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I found Bows to be a very good weapon type for Generals in the DS games, but really they could have anything and it would be a net improvement. At least Swordmasters and their ilk are meant to be purist classes dedicated to a singular weapon. Generals are intended to be varied, because goodness knows they've historically needed something to help them (personally I think knights should have two weapons from base too, it's silly that cavaliers can but knights can't, outside of the very first game). So much so that the game actually does give multiple different weapon types to generals...just not at the same time.

I always got the impression that Great Knight was suppose to be the varied class that mastered all the weapons, while General was the tank with by far the best stats in the game. Normally, they have a secondary weapon, but I always assumed that was Great Knight's deal of being the master of all weapons, espicially in games like Three Houses, where they have two Faire Skills.

[Jotari]

4 minutes ago, New Acc 443 said:

I always got the impression that Great Knight was suppose to be the varied class that mastered all the weapons, while General was the tank with by far the best stats in the game. Normally, they have a secondary weapon, but I always assumed that was Great Knight's deal of being the master of all weapons, espicially in games like Three Houses, where they have two Faire Skills.

Great Knight certainly does go for multi weapons too, but that's not a mutually exclusive thing. The game that introduced Great Knights (as we know them) was Sacred Stones, where both Generals and Great Knights had full weapon triangle, even though General hadn't used swords in either of the previous games. Though of we were to argue balance, Generals kind of obviously should have more weapons than Great Knights. Great Knights ready have the extra movement.

[FashionEmblem]

So much to say, so little time about overall opinions on Engage. It really does come down to story vs. gameplay for me as it does for most people.

Story

The story is rather mediocre, but it has a few moments that work well. Chapter 10 works well emotionally if you get Diamant's and Alcryst's dialogue with the second boss of the map. Chapter 11 is a great moment for handing the player's their lowest moment and raising the stakes in both story and gameplay. I like the scene you get after Chapter 24 between

Spoiler

past Alear and Lumera. It's heartwarming to see Lumera willing to comfort her enemy because she realizes they are a traumatized child soldier and she finds a kindred spirit for how mutually lonely they are. It's such a shame that you get this context with only 2 more chapters left in the game, when it would have really helped sell her death in Chapter 3.

I also like subtle story details you notice on repeat like Lumera asking Alear how they summoned Marth pre-Chapter 2 for

Spoiler

the eventual reveal after Chapter 20 that Alear's invocations reveal they are fell dragon spawn.

And, that's about it for the good to me. For the bad, we start of with Lumera's immediate death flag at the outset of the game. Killing off the young protagonist's parent at the outset of a fantasy adventure is a standard trope. Petty cliché at this point, but also narratively functional as it makes for a good inciting incident forcing the protagonist to abandon their innocence and set forth with some inherent drama and trauma. Problem is, if you also make the protagonist an amnesiac (also a standard utility trope, to diegetically justify exposition to the audience), the death of their parent loses all of the punch. And when you contrast it with later good boss dialogue from sons, who do have their memories intact, killing their father, it's extra infuriating that some of the writing staff does understand how to make a short-lived parent's death have some punch. Even worse, they have done this twice now with Fates! In a row! (excluding SoV as a remake and Three Houses due to Koe Tecmo's involvement). It feels like one of two things: either their writing staff has a rudimentary understanding of the functional uses of these tropes and thinks you can slap them all together with wanton abandon, or we are getting an early draft of their script with time/resources/budget preventing them from fixing these glaring flaws.

Add onto this the under-baking of all the backstories for the villains

Spoiler

whom are all shown to be sympathetic, in scenes right before their deaths. I get the story wants to be snappy since it's deemphasized as a mere vehicle for moving you chapter to chapter, but what's the point of recycling the same bosses again and again if you are not going to bother making them characters until their expiration dates. I find it so insulting to the player as a consumer of storytelling that I would have preferred no backstory and just let them be bad guys who die, excepting maybe Marni (since she impacts Mauvier so much).

My final big story gripe is Chapter 22

Spoiler

and Alear's death and resurrection not once, but twice! Over the course of a single chapter! Even Jesus only had the audacity to resurrect once so far. This almost shoots the moon for me and is so absurd that it's kind of awesome camp, but seriously, way to immediately cheapen both fake out deaths by having them reversed so immediately. It's not the abject worst story-telling since there is set-up—we know Veyle is good at making corrupted and the Emblems hint at their special power a couple of times previously—but they really could have revived Alear once and save on some of the absurdity.

Otherwise the story is a straightforward mediocre macguffin fetch quest. Character writing I would also say is average to mediocre with a few stand outs in some supports (e.g., Yunaka, Citrinne, Céline, Fogado, and Rosado). I guess the reason Engage's story bothers me so much is because it borrows so much from Fates, and feels like they learned nothing from their past mistakes. Seriously, our avatar protagonist is an amnesiac dragon child, who turns out

Spoiler

to be a child of the evil dragon.

Then their mom dies pretty much immediately upon reunion. Then you set forth on your fantasy adventure where you recruit units mostly based on them being royals with two retainers each (there are even 8 royal siblings in both games). And, in the late moment of desperation

Spoiler

dragon child dies but is resurrected by the power of friendship.

It was uninspiring in Fates, where at least Conquest has an interesting premise. In Engage, the story is executed a bit more competently, but does not even have an interesting premise nor fail in interesting ways.

Gameplay

Gameplay is pretty great. I personally like this more than Conquest, but that's also largely because I have become a better Fire Emblem player since and if the game is going to be a creative challenge I appreciate a rewind mechanic as a quality of life upgrade for my stumbles. I like the map design and I like the emblem powers for giving tools to the player (and the enemies). Early game Maddening with fixed growth is very tightly balanced and forces you to really use all your tools. For example, Etie falls 3 attack short of one-shotting fliers in Chapter 4, which means that Alear's personal skill can help her score those one hit kills. At the start of Chapter 5, you have an armored knight that Céline leaves with 1 HP when attacking with Fire, Celica, and Resonance, so better use either a chain attack or Alear's personal to score that kill. Special shout outs to Chapter 11 for the gameplay/story integration as you make a desperate break for it, Chapter 14 for encouraging you to use Astra Storm to bait out the Hounds one by one, Chapter 17 for the epic 6 on 6 emblem cage match, Chapter 19 for giving a boss a Warp staff and Micaiah to flood your side of the map with reinforcements, and Chapter 25 for rewarding the player if they realize they can rewarp/rescue half their deployment into the center of the map on turn 1. There's also a lot of fun to be had in paralogues, but to avoid making this list too long, special shot outs to Leif's paralogue for incentivizing a Micaiah Rewarp to deal with those cracked out southern ballistae.

I also think the class system is one of the better ones. Reclassing is mostly easy since bond fragments are plentiful (sometimes emblem availability can make it difficult, however) and the classes are more balanced than usual, with actual reason to use some infantry in addition to your fliers thanks to chain attacks for backups and covert avoid bonuses. Being immune to break and just obscenely defensive is great for armors, just wish they got a point of movement on promotion or Wary Fighter returned from Fates (though the combination with Ike might be too strong, so I understand its exclusion). Cavalry are maybe a bit too nerfed (or, rather, fliers should be more nerfed), and a lot of infantry classes lack great niches (Generals, Swordmasters, Berserkers and Snipers are rather underwhelming), but I will take the improvements.

My only complaint about the map design is that towards the end the game relies a bit too much on making the enemies super bulky stat balls. The most egregious to me is Marth's paralogue where the enemy quality is a bit too high in my opinion and overly incentivizes a defeat boss warp skip—I'd like the choice to play the map without abject suffering (Chapter 25, which I praise above, has a similar issue but the warp skip there makes me feel clever for creating a free choke point for a third of the map, rather than just skipping the entire level—although further skipping Chapter 25 is an option too, if desired).

My other complaint is one mentioned by others, which is the strange power leveling for recruitable units. Typically, I would think of most later recruits of being sidegrades or downgrades for the characters you have trained up to that point—i.e., if you train your zeroes to heroes you are rewarded and if you let them die (or hit the bench) you get a viable replacement, but it's often a bit of a punishment. This is inverted in Engage where the later recruits having better stats, free levels, and often prepromoted (saving you the expense of a Master Seal) so that you are disincentivized from training anyone up. For example, why bother with Clanne, Céline, or Citrinne when Ivy and Pandreo are around the corner? Building/training your units is also hampered by the SP system making it difficult to equip skills that improve characters (especially early ones who join with bad SP and a dearth of emblems to accumulate SP), but that has been mitigated by the free well update.

tl;dr

Overall, I would say Engage is a great strategy game, but a poor RPG. Lots of tactical depth in the map design, interesting tools for the player to concoct creative strategies, and an improved class balance, combined with a lackluster story and lack of a training arc for your combatants.

Edited August 1, 2023 by FashionEmblem

[New Acc 443]

7 hours ago, FashionEmblem said:

So much to say, so little time about overall opinions on Engage. It really does come down to story vs. gameplay for me as it does for most people.

Story

The story is rather mediocre, but it has a few moments that work well. Chapter 10 works well emotionally if you get Diamant's and Alcryst's dialogue with the second boss of the map. Chapter 11 is a great moment for handing the player's their lowest moment and raising the stakes in both story and gameplay. I like the scene you get after Chapter 24 between

  Reveal hidden contents

past Alear and Lumera. It's heartwarming to see Lumera willing to comfort her enemy because she realizes they are a traumatized child soldier and she finds a kindred spirit for how mutually lonely they are. It's such a shame that you get this context with only 2 more chapters left in the game, when it would have really helped sell her death in Chapter 3.

I also like subtle story details you notice on repeat like Lumera asking Alear how they summoned Marth pre-Chapter 2 for

  Reveal hidden contents

the eventual reveal after Chapter 20 that Alear's invocations reveal they are fell dragon spawn.

And, that's about it for the good to me. For the bad, we start of with Lumera's immediate death flag at the outset of the game. Killing off the young protagonist's parent at the outset of a fantasy adventure is a standard trope. Petty cliché at this point, but also narratively functional as it makes for a good inciting incident forcing the protagonist to abandon their innocence and set forth with some inherent drama and trauma. Problem is, if you also make the protagonist an amnesiac (also a standard utility trope, to diegetically justify exposition to the audience), the death of their parent loses all of the punch. And when you contrast it with later good boss dialogue from sons, who do have their memories intact, killing their father, it's extra infuriating that some of the writing staff does understand how to make a short-lived parent's death have some punch. Even worse, they have done this twice now with Fates! In a row! (excluding SoV as a remake and Three Houses due to Koe Tecmo's involvement). It feels like one of two things: either their writing staff has a rudimentary understanding of the functional uses of these tropes and thinks you can slap them all together with wanton abandon, or we are getting an early draft of their script with time/resources/budget preventing them from fixing these glaring flaws.

Add onto this the under-baking of all the backstories for the villains

  Reveal hidden contents

whom are all shown to be sympathetic, in scenes right before their deaths. I get the story wants to be snappy since it's deemphasized as a mere vehicle for moving you chapter to chapter, but what's the point of recycling the same bosses again and again if you are not going to bother making them characters until their expiration dates. I find it so insulting to the player as a consumer of storytelling that I would have preferred no backstory and just let them be bad guys who die, excepting maybe Marni (since she impacts Mauvier so much).

My final big story gripe is Chapter 22

  Reveal hidden contents

and Alear's death and resurrection not once, but twice! Over the course of a single chapter! Even Jesus only had the audacity to resurrect once so far. This almost shoots the moon for me and is so absurd that it's kind of awesome camp, but seriously, way to immediately cheapen both fake out deaths by having them reversed so immediately. It's not the abject worst story-telling since there is set-up—we know Veyle is good at making corrupted and the Emblems hint at their special power a couple of times previously—but they really could have revived Alear once and save on some of the absurdity.

Otherwise the story is a straightforward mediocre macguffin fetch quest. Character writing I would also say is average to mediocre with a few stand outs in some supports (e.g., Yunaka, Citrinne, Céline, Fogado, and Rosado). I guess the reason Engage's story bothers me so much is because it borrows so much from Fates, and feels like they learned nothing from their past mistakes. Seriously, our avatar protagonist is an amnesiac dragon child, who turns out

  Reveal hidden contents

to be a child of the evil dragon.

Then their mom dies pretty much immediately upon reunion. Then you set forth on your fantasy adventure where you recruit units mostly based on them being royals with two retainers each (there are even 8 royal siblings in both games). And, in the late moment of desperation

  Reveal hidden contents

dragon child dies but is resurrected by the power of friendship.

It was uninspiring in Fates, where at least Conquest has an interesting premise. In Engage, the story is executed a bit more competently, but does not even have an interesting premise nor fail in interesting ways.

Gameplay

Gameplay is pretty great. I personally like this more than Conquest, but that's also largely because I have become a better Fire Emblem player since and if the game is going to be a creative challenge I appreciate a rewind mechanic as a quality of life upgrade for my stumbles. I like the map design and I like the emblem powers for giving tools to the player (and the enemies). Early game Maddening with fixed growth is very tightly balanced and forces you to really use all your tools. For example, Etie falls 3 attack short of one-shotting fliers in Chapter 4, which means that Alear's personal skill can help her score those one hit kills. At the start of Chapter 5, you have an armored knight that Céline leaves with 1 HP when attacking with Fire, Celica, and Resonance, so better use either a chain attack or Alear's personal to score that kill. Special shout outs to Chapter 11 for the gameplay/story integration as you make a desperate break for it, Chapter 14 for encouraging you to use Astra Storm to bait out the Hounds one by one, Chapter 17 for the epic 6 on 6 emblem cage match, Chapter 19 for giving a boss a Warp staff and Micaiah to flood your side of the map with reinforcements, and Chapter 25 for rewarding the player if they realize they can rewarp/rescue half their deployment into the center of the map on turn 1. There's also a lot of fun to be had in paralogues, but to avoid making this list too long, special shot outs to Leif's paralogue for incentivizing a Micaiah Rewarp to deal with those cracked out southern ballistae.

I also think the class system is one of the better ones. Reclassing is mostly easy since bond fragments are plentiful (sometimes emblem availability can make it difficult, however) and the classes are more balanced than usual, with actual reason to use some infantry in addition to your fliers thanks to chain attacks for backups and covert avoid bonuses. Being immune to break and just obscenely defensive is great for armors, just wish they got a point of movement on promotion or Wary Fighter returned from Fates (though the combination with Ike might be too strong, so I understand its exclusion). Cavalry are maybe a bit too nerfed (or, rather, fliers should be more nerfed), and a lot of infantry classes lack great niches (Generals, Swordmasters, Berserkers and Snipers are rather underwhelming), but I will take the improvements.

My only complaint about the map design is that towards the end the game relies a bit too much on making the enemies super bulky stat balls. The most egregious to me is Marth's paralogue where the enemy quality is a bit too high in my opinion and overly incentivizes a defeat boss warp skip—I'd like the choice to play the map without abject suffering (Chapter 25, which I praise above, has a similar issue but the warp skip there makes me feel clever for creating a free choke point for a third of the map, rather than just skipping the entire level—although further skipping Chapter 25 is an option too, if desired).

My other complaint is one mentioned by others, which is the strange power leveling for recruitable units. Typically, I would think of most later recruits of being sidegrades or downgrades for the characters you have trained up to that point—i.e., if you train your zeroes to heroes you are rewarded and if you let them die (or hit the bench) you get a viable replacement, but it's often a bit of a punishment. This is inverted in Engage where the later recruits having better stats, free levels, and often prepromoted (saving you the expense of a Master Seal) so that you are disincentivized from training anyone up. For example, why bother with Clanne, Céline, or Citrinne when Ivy and Pandreo are around the corner? Building/training your units is also hampered by the SP system making it difficult to equip skills that improve characters (especially early ones who join with bad SP and a dearth of emblems to accumulate SP), but that has been mitigated by the free well update.

tl;dr

Overall, I would say Engage is a great strategy game, but a poor RPG. Lots of tactical depth in the map design, interesting tools for the player to concoct creative strategies, and an improved class balance, combined with a lackluster story and lack of a training arc for your combatants.

Interesting points, though I did want to comment on a few things.

Lumera's death had more impact than Mikoto's death in Fates imo for a few reasons. In Fates, Mikoto's death was hodgepodged between a map where you fought off the hooded assassin responsible for her death & she wasn't the only casualty in the incident (a fair deal of innocent hoshidan's died as well) so her tragic end didn't really sting as much. In this game, the death occurs after a chapter of fighting off and mostly winning vs the invaders & is given more time to properly breathe here. Additionally, it felt as though Alear was more responsible for her death here, because he directly confronted the assassin, who was way above his paygrade, and his mother bailed him out at the last minute. In Fates, it never really felt like the death of Mikoto's was explicitly Corrin's fault because the assassin's identity was unclear and nothing was explained about the sword. Yeah she bailed him out, but the destruction seemed largely out of his control, as opposed to in this game. Lastly, this game has the advantage of full voice acting & seeing the way Alear grieved was pretty sad. I actually almost teared up there because the performance from the JP voice actor was just so good. I distinctly remember not feeling this way when playing Fates.

The structure of the death is very similar to fates and I can understand being disappointed in not changing it up, but I do think they learned a few things to make it feel more emotional this time around.

The McGuffin hunt nature of the plot is slightly elevated by the McGuffins being actual characters, which I think was a good move to shake up the formula compared to other games like the Binding Blade. The bond converations and paralogues let each of the rings show off their personality, making them feel as signficant to the journey as the characters using them. I will say that I like the way that the bracelets are handled more than the rings since you need to overcome a great trial to get access to the bracelets, while the rings are mostly just handed to you throughout the story (paralogues just make them stronger).

IDK, my plot standards aren't really high, which may be why I'm going easy on this game, but so far, I think this game has done a decent job of executing a believable setting with the various nations without handwaving stuff off. The main reason I didn't like Fates' plot overall was because several important elements to the world, like the Deeprealms, the pocket castle dimmension, and Valla, were not really explained or elaborated on, character motivations for important plot-related events were weak at best, and there were a lot of points where Corrin would blurt out something that was implied, which I wasn't a fan of. And even in Fates' case, I have been easing up to the plot when replaying it because it has some nice moment-to-moment elements that I overlooked when playing it before.

As for gameplay, I agree that fliers are too strong statwise. I get that fliers are OP in every game, but in this game in particular, the main reason they feel like the best class is due to their stats being really good. I'm guessing IS does this to balance out their skill floor being a bit higher than other classes, as being countered by two entire weapon types on top of break can be a tricky to deal with for a beginner, but I wish the skill celing for others classes could be as high as it is for fliers. At the very least, Fliers don't have broken innate skills like Avoid +10 and Canto like in 3 Houses, nor do that have dismounting to remove their only limitations (even though I think dismounting in general is a  cool mechanic).

 

[Annathor]

i'm a huge fan of engage, honestly. when you just skip the story, do minimal somniel, and just focus on the gameplay i think it's so much fun. they managed to make the emblems feel incredibly powerful without trivializing the game, and the more i play the more i find creative and fun strategies and character builds. at the same time, it doesn't feel like it needs to be as well thought out as something like conquest to get that effect.

 

obviously, the plot is a pile of garbage, but it's completely skippable so i find that i don't care that much. i put it pretty high on my tier list of FE games, and while i think it's obviously not perfect it's a fun game for me to replay, much more so than something like FE4, despite FE4's amazing story.

[Azz]

I personally really enjoy Engage despite its flaws.

Gameplay wise, it is one of the best FE games. Really good difficulty balancing, even on maddening. Great maps. Emblems feel powerful but not broken. Good class diversity and class types were a great addition. This is the first FE  (with reclassing) in a while where I feel like the meta isn't completely dominated by wyverns and that units that aren't mounted are utter crap. Biggest critique I have about gameplay is unit balancing. Early game units feel weak and need a lot of investing and said investment feels worthless once Kagetsu and the other mid-game pre-promotes come along and completely overshadow the Firene/Brodia units. But that's about it and regardless, every unit is still viable even if you do get straight up upgrades in some chapters. The Fell Xenologue is horrible though, but the DLC for this game is in general tbh.

Story wise... yeah we all know. I do think though that I don't have as much issue with the plot because it feels very Saturday morning cartoon/90s 4Kids dub vibes which is funny. I also really don't think the devs had any intentions of delivering this massive plot which I think softens it a little, compared with Fates which felt like it was was supposed to be this super grand and nuanced plot that fell super flat. Following Three Houses was gonna be hard anyways but I do appreciate a less intense story every now and again and Engage provided that. I do think that there were great moments too. Chapter 10/11 was great imo as was chapter 17, both gameplay and story wise. I think the story's biggest flaw is that the story was designed around highlighting the gameplay (chapter 11 and 17 being key examples of this) which made the story suffer. If the story had a bit more fine tuning, I do think it could've been a good but simple plot. Instead we got a fairly meh plot that even in its simplicity, was still rough.

Characters are okay. I do find the majority of the cast a bit meh, especially the Firenese and Brodians, but following the cast of Fodlan, who in fairness had Three Houses and Three Hopes to develop, its not really fair lol. If I had to list my top 5 characters, it would be Alear, Ivy, Fogado, Mauvier and Yunaka.

Engage also looks great. Best looking 3D FE by a mile. Feels like it combines the best visual aspects of every era of FE. This style would be perfect for remaking the GBA titles, its literally perfect. My only issue with the style is the Emblem's faces, but I think thats more so because I have a certain image of them from their base games and og art that kinda clashes with Engage's.

Overall, pretty decent game. I do hope the series follows suit in terms of gameplay, but I would really love if story and character wise, they took some cues from Three Houses, especially Azure Moon.