So what were your overall opinions about Engage?

[Saint Rubenio]

31 minutes ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

This is something often lost in the general "story bad, gameplay good". No, the combat is good. The map design is good. But skirmishes and the Somniel also count as gameplay, and those are dreadful.

As one of those "story bad, gameplay good" folks... Look, I have to agree, but after Three Houses, I'll take it lol. I was utterly terrified of IntSys taking 3H's success to mean "gameplay is irrelevant, focus only on writing" and starting to disregard combat more and more until FE turned into a glorified VN series (still am, with Engage's far worse reception), so when Engage came out with its legitimately good maps, I was blinded to the bloat.

Still, there's no denying that I felt its impact on my replay. I definitely would prefer if hubs like Somniel and Monastery just went away for good - or, at the very least, let it be an option to do all the tasks (all of them) in a simple menu that doesn't waste my time as much. It would significantly improve the replayability of these games if 75% of the playtime wasn't spent waiting for the game to load or running around doing menial, repetitive tasks.

No comment on the skirmishes. I've always ignored skirmishes in FE, the progression system in these games is never able to accomodate for endless grinding. So when Engage's skirmishes turned out to be crappy I just proceeded to ignore them like in every other FE that has them.

[samthedigital]

2 hours ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

So why is the Somniel even here? Why isn't it a series of menus?

My guess is that it's for gameplay/story integration. The more cynical side of me wants to say that it's to pad out the runtime and to make the game more appealing to casuals, and the real answer could be a mix of both or none of them.

3 hours ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

But skirmishes and the Somniel also count as gameplay, and those are dreadful.

I'm going to disagree with the skirmishes. They're fine for casuals and people who want to take advantage of it to make the game easier; it's a limited resource on Maddening anyway. The Somniel is not the same because it's impossible to avoid if I want to forge or use the arena. Dogs also generate a significant amount of materials. I still prefer it to the Monastery because there isn't much of a time commitment even if I don't like it, but unfortunately the system is probably here to stay regardless.

[MeteorPhoenix]

See, I think skirmishers are particularly terrible for casuals. They're hard. You can't really use them the way you can use the ones on 3H on normal mode.

On the Somniel, I fervently wish IS decides what type of game they want to make before deciding on something like the Monastery or the Somniel. This game didn't need this. Replayability is already frustrating with the way the DLC characters work and no NG+, it's just one more thing.

[Florete]

The idea of a hub world like the Somniel I don't think is a problem. I think it can even be a good thing as a wind down time after a long, stressful battle. The problem with the Somniel and the Monastery is all the stuff you can only do once per visit, meaning you have to run around and do a bunch of stuff every time you return if you want to feel like you're playing "properly." Take the FOMO out of it and it's fine.

[vanguard333]

4 hours ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

So why is the Somniel even here? Why isn't it a series of menus?

I can honestly say that the Somneil really made me miss the menus from the Tellius games.

Menus vs explorable base is a trade-off of convenience and immersion, with menus being far more convenient and explorable bases being more immersive, and whether the trade-off is worth it all depends. In the case of Garreg Mac, I felt that it was definitely worth it because it was such a core part of the game. The Somneil, by contrast, just comes across as inconvenient and almost needless. 

[Humanoid]

Skirmishes even on normal are a weird "win harder" mechanic that's counter to what I'd actually want to use them for. The difficulty and the fact the entire map aggros immediately means it's tuned around taking your strongest team every time. The result is that on the difficulties that skirmishes are spammable, your A-team gets even more pointlessly above the power curve and your weaker units fall even farther behind and are less able to handle the next skirmish. God forbid anyone would want to change up their team and try new characters.

As a bonus nasty side effect, it means resource acquisition is locked behind this backwards system and the undesirable things it does to your overall lineup. In the end, Paralogues became the place to attempt to catch people up on XP. Speaking of paralogues, it seemed weird to me that they basically hid the references to the original maps to people who explicitly memorised them. What would be the harm in actually naming the sub-bosses instead of just having them be generic units. I may not have played the original games but I would have appreciated knowing that hey, this random general here represents Arvis or Black Knight or whoever.

 

As for the Somniel, chopping off everything south of the swimming pool and the needlessly twisty garden area in the west would probably be a start. Make it about as quick to navigate as Fates' castle and I'd probably have minimal complaints.

Still, unlike the monastery, establishing that sense of place did not work at all with how the Somniel is implemented. In Three Houses, you could generally believe that everyone returned to the monastery after every chapter to do the various tedious chores because that's how the narrative and passage of time are constructed. Okay, sometimes it made no sense, like taking day-trips to skirmish inside an active volcano that the game otherwise implies is a long way away. But ignoring the ridiculous re-use of those maps, it's all pretty coherent.

By contrast, the Somniel is actually immersion-breaking because if you follow the story it never implies any sort of return to the home base between chapters. It's a pure design contrivance, there just so they can check a box on a feature list, a perfect reflection of the formulaic manner in which the game was built really. It's like if in Lord of the Rings, the gang returned to the shire after every set piece while still acting like they're on a long, arduous one-way journey.

[Jotari]

27 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Speaking of paralogues, it seemed weird to me that they basically hid the references to the original maps to people who explicitly memorised them. What would be the harm in actually naming the sub-bosses instead of just having them be generic units. I may not have played the original games but I would have appreciated knowing that hey, this random general here represents Arvis or Black Knight or whoever.

I liked that the references where more implicit than explicit. As someone who does have encyclopedic knowledge of Fire Emblem's history, it gave that minor dopamine rush to be like "I see what you did there."

[samthedigital]

12 hours ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

See, I think skirmishers are particularly terrible for casuals. They're hard. You can't really use them the way you can use the ones on 3H on normal mode.

You can't use them to play catchup in the same way that you would in 3H or Sacred Stones to be sure, but it's still possible to grind weak units by doing things like spamming heals with Micaiah and intentionally taking damage with a Corrin dragon vein. I guess it would be possible to keep everyone at even levels too. It's not really a good system, but at least it can work, and it's something that can be ignored anyway. I'll take your word about the difficulty since I've never bothered with Skirmishes or Normal mode.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, samthedigital said:

You can't use them to play catchup in the same way that you would in 3H or Sacred Stones to be sure, but it's still possible to grind weak units by doing things like spamming heals with Micaiah and intentionally taking damage with a Corrin dragon vein. I guess it would be possible to keep everyone at even levels too. It's not really a good system, but at least it can work, and it's something that can be ignored anyway. I'll take your word about the difficulty since I've never bothered with Skirmishes or Normal mode.

The Training Skirmishes also implement Casual mode. So you can freely fight them without worry about your characters dying, though they all get bonus exp at the end, so there's incentive to keep them alive.

[samthedigital]

53 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The Training Skirmishes also implement Casual mode. So you can freely fight them without worry about your characters dying, though they all get bonus exp at the end, so there's incentive to keep them alive.

I did a bit of digging. Apparently there's a retain exp feature that I had forgotten about, and the final chapter is seemingly also repeatable for exp for the endgame? This is clearly an aspect of the game that I'm an expert on lol.

[Humanoid]

13 hours ago, Jotari said:

I liked that the references where more implicit than explicit. As someone who does have encyclopedic knowledge of Fire Emblem's history, it gave that minor dopamine rush to be like "I see what you did there."

I think there could have been a happy medium in that regard. As it stands, someone new to the series going through the paralogues would just see a bunch of generic underdesigned maps. I looked up some of the maps afterwards and noted there are some little hidden bonuses like, say, the Goddess Icon hidden on Sigurd's map where some important thing happened in the original game. I didn't feel like I was missing out by having no idea about that.

Instead they took things to the other extreme where every bit of personality was taken out of the map by having literally every enemy on it other than the Emblem was just labelled "Fabrication". There's a world where they can have interesting nods to series veterans in these maps while at the same time not having them be as bland as they are for newcomers.

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

I think there could have been a happy medium in that regard. As it stands, someone new to the series going through the paralogues would just see a bunch of generic underdesigned maps. I looked up some of the maps afterwards and noted there are some little hidden bonuses like, say, the Goddess Icon hidden on Sigurd's map where some important thing happened in the original game. I didn't feel like I was missing out by having no idea about that.

Instead they took things to the other extreme where every bit of personality was taken out of the map by having literally every enemy on it other than the Emblem was just labelled "Fabrication". There's a world where they can have interesting nods to series veterans in these maps while at the same time not having them be as bland as they are for newcomers.

I don't see them as related points. The quality of the map is the quality of the map and the paralogues do indeed vary in their quality quite a lot compared to the main campaign. That isn't changing if we label a character Ishtar or Julius. An underdesigned map is still an underdesigned map. The quality of the fanservice is going to be judged on the quality of the fanservice. And for me, the exact kind of person they're aiming this at, I prefer it this way. And if I were to hypotosize a more casual fan's reaction to such a thing if they did label it, then it would be "why should I care?". Plus labeling the enemies would naturally draw on the expectation of them having portrait art and even their prf weapons and such. And if they weren't going to do that for the Dark Emblems they certainly weren't going to do it for paralogue subbosses. Ultimately I think going the half measure would just make the references more dissapointing (which the Dark Emblems are).

[Humanoid]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

And if I were to hypotosize a more casual fan's reaction to such a thing if they did label it, then it would be "why should I care?".

Yeah, that's probably true for someone genuinely new to that content, for whom literally any nods to the original game would have likely been pointless. I guess I'm thinking more about the FEH cohort who would know about these characters and their broad personalities from having them around, but have never looked into it any deeper than that.

Then again, that kind of concern didn't stop them from implementing the weird Bond Ring system which did use old, ill-fitting art, so it could go either way.

P.S. I still didn't understand the Dark Emblem thing in the final battle at all since there seems to be zero repercussions to just powering through the shield with zero risk thanks to Canter and Reposition. I'm sure it's relevant on the highest difficulty but I didn't even have to pretend to pay it any respect like I did with the avalanches or the frikkin' laser beams, etc.

[Xander]

Probably been discussed to death already but since I just got the game and finished less than a month ago, have we discussed ideas on how to fix (or at least salvage) the story? I considered: what if Queen Lumera and Sombron's motivations were switched and Lumera was the game's final boss? Lumera fakes her death in the early game and her entire motivation was to revive her trueborn only child who died in the war? However in this version of the story the Emblem Rings were lost in the war or never relinquished by the Fell Dragon's followers instead of hidden. Having this twist gives a level of emotional impact completely lacking from the main story as is, and I think a nice plot twist would at least add a level of uniqueness to an otherwise uninspired story where we get no answers and ideas are left half finished.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Xander

[Hrothgar777]

5 hours ago, Xander said:

Probably been discussed to death already but since I just got the game and finished less than a month ago, have we discussed ideas on how to fix (or at least salvage) the story? I considered: what if Queen Lumera and Sombron's motivations were switched and Lumera was the game's final boss? Lumera fakes her death in the early game and her entire motivation was to revive her trueborn only child who died in the war? However in this version of the story the Emblem Rings were lost in the war or never relinquished by the Fell Dragon's followers instead of hidden. Having this twist gives a level of emotional impact completely lacking from the main story as is, and I think a nice plot twist would at least add a level of uniqueness to an otherwise uninspired story where we get no answers and ideas are left half finished.

This wouldn't make sense as a motivation to turn evil. The only known way to revive somebody in Engage is to necromance their corpse (if still intact) and then have the emblems use the miracle. She could ask Veyle to do this, and so she wouldn't have to make a deal with Sombron. And assuming this is no longer possible since her child's body has decomposed, I don't see what Lumera could hope to accomplish either way.

If she wanted to open the portal to other worlds to find an alt version of her child in one of them, then that could make sense I guess. One of the game's many contradictions is that, before entering the Chapter 26 battleground, one of the emblems mentioned that the opened portal would unleash a kind of flood that would destroy the world of Engage, whereas later Sombron mentioned they were free to live peaceful lives after he left and nobody disputed this. Going with the first interpretation, it could be Lumera willing to sacrifice the world for the sake of her reunion, making her a slightly less psychotic version of Sombron.

Two extra reasons why Nintendo wouldn't have done this: first, Sombron was advertised as the villain in the months before the game dropped. Audiences geared their expectations around the simple, straightforward plotline that they saw in trailers. A random bait-and-switch where "haha it was Lumera all along" for no good reason would've felt cheap. I'd be willing to make for an exception if the game deconstructed classic Fire Emblem tropes (such as light goddess vs. dark god) in an effective way and used the initial setup to further this end, but what you're describing wouldn't really be that.

Second, becauseThree Houses was the game before Engage. Making Lumera into a carbon copy of

Spoiler

Rhea

would've drawn additional criticism to a game which they knew already had a super lackluster narrative.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Hrothgar777
Choice of language pre-edit might've inadvertently come across as insulting.

[Humanoid]

The whole Fell Dragon thing is tired and formulaic but is not the part of the plot I genuinely loathe.

No, it's the initial part of the game, travelling to the four conveniently symmetrical kingdoms that neatly divide the entire continent into four different coloured quarters like it was the old Microsoft Windows logo. Each kingdom conveniently has a single-parent monarch with exactly two children each both of prime adventuring age, perfectly gender-balanced across all four pairs, and each prince(ss) having exactly two retainers. A literal child could come up with something less contrived than this nonsense.

[Saint Rubenio]

9 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

The whole Fell Dragon thing is tired and formulaic but is not the part of the plot I genuinely loathe.

No, it's the initial part of the game, travelling to the four conveniently symmetrical kingdoms that neatly divide the entire continent into four different coloured quarters like it was the old Microsoft Windows logo. Each kingdom conveniently has a single-parent monarch with exactly two children each both of prime adventuring age, perfectly gender-balanced across all four pairs, and each prince(ss) having exactly two retainers. A literal child could come up with something less contrived than this nonsense.

They could've at least spiced things up a bit by having a parent or two join, but nope. The two dads with death flags all over them die right on cue, and the mothers just... sort of cease to exist. #JusticeForSeforia

[MeteorPhoenix]

20 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

The whole Fell Dragon thing is tired and formulaic but is not the part of the plot I genuinely loathe.

No, it's the initial part of the game, travelling to the four conveniently symmetrical kingdoms that neatly divide the entire continent into four different coloured quarters like it was the old Microsoft Windows logo. Each kingdom conveniently has a single-parent monarch with exactly two children each both of prime adventuring age, perfectly gender-balanced across all four pairs, and each prince(ss) having exactly two retainers. A literal child could come up with something less contrived than this nonsense.

I remember people thinking that the plot would get better. And it (debatably) does, but there was never going to be a good story here.

I like Conquest more than Engage. The story is Conquest is worse (and by a lot), but goddamn, I can see some passion. Someone (without very much talent) tried to do something really cool, and fell on their face. I respect the hell out of that. Not the face petting, but oh well.

With Engage, it really does feel as if someone asked ChatGPT for a Fire Emblem script. It makes me upset.

Edited September 1, 2023 by MeteorPhoenix
typo

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Xander said:

Probably been discussed to death already but since I just got the game and finished less than a month ago, have we discussed ideas on how to fix (or at least salvage) the story? I considered: what if Queen Lumera and Sombron's motivations were switched and Lumera was the game's final boss? Lumera fakes her death in the early game and her entire motivation was to revive her trueborn only child who died in the war? However in this version of the story the Emblem Rings were lost in the war or never relinquished by the Fell Dragon's followers instead of hidden. Having this twist gives a level of emotional impact completely lacking from the main story as is, and I think a nice plot twist would at least add a level of uniqueness to an otherwise uninspired story where we get no answers and ideas are left half finished.

Making Lumeria the villain isn't a fix, it's basically rewriting the plot entirely. The simplest way to improve things would be to

1. Move Lumeria's death to later (most commonly cited being at the cathedral).

2. Even half hint that Sombron has a motivation earlier in the story.

3.Give us some actual minor bosses to develop Elyusia instead of beating the four hounds to death again and again.

22 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

The whole Fell Dragon thing is tired and formulaic but is not the part of the plot I genuinely loathe.

No, it's the initial part of the game, travelling to the four conveniently symmetrical kingdoms that neatly divide the entire continent into four different coloured quarters like it was the old Microsoft Windows logo. Each kingdom conveniently has a single-parent monarch with exactly two children each both of prime adventuring age, perfectly gender-balanced across all four pairs, and each prince(ss) having exactly two retainers. A literal child could come up with something less contrived than this nonsense.

If this were Tellius I know for sure Diamant would have had a much larger role in the first half, carrying out his own sortie separate to the player and only becoming a playable character later in the game after his plot relevance has diminished.

[Saint Rubenio]

2 minutes ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

I like Conquest more than Engage. The story is Conquest is worse (and by a lot), but goddamn, I can see some passion. Someone (without very much talent) tried to do something really cool, and fell on their face. I respect the hell out of that. Not the face petting, but oh well.

I won't lie, I also like Conquest's story more than Engage. Not quite for the same reasons, it just made me laugh my butt off every second scene, whereas Engage just kind of bored me until it got legitimately good for a couple chapters, dropped the ball and went right back to boring me.

Like, sure, they failed massively at writing a good character in Garon, but on the other hand they failed in such ways that turn Garon into a spectacularly entertaining character lol

[Shaky Jones]

9 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

won't lie, I also like Conquest's story more than Engage. Not quite for the same reasons, it just made me laugh my butt off every second scene, whereas Engage just kind of bored me until it got legitimately good for a couple chapters, dropped the ball and went right back to boring me.

Like, sure, they failed massively at writing a good character in Garon, but on the other hand they failed in such ways that turn Garon into a spectacularly entertaining character lol

I don't dislike Engage story, certainly not to the extent of many fans calling it the "bad story good gameplay" game, but due to its very simplistic approach in many factors like the traveling through 4 worlds thing or other FE tropes, there's not much to praise in the long scheme of things either. I dont criticize it all too much given that I fully believe that this is the 30th anniversary game and I take the the tropes as an obligation, but aside from a few chapters, the plot doesn't interest me, so I consider the story to be somewhat boring mostly (although story is never a concern for me regarding FE, and I do quite like the cast overall). Its serviceable.

Conquest on the other hand, is so horrendous with its plot that its bloody hilarious. The unique elements of what it tries to go for are respectable, and whenever it messes up, and oh boy does it mess up, it fails in such a way that I cant help but smile like Garon. It feels like the perfect parody of a plot, and it being unintentional is the cherry on top.

[Acacia Sgt]

Can't speak about Conquest's, but to me Engage's story was enjoyable almost from start to finish. The end of Chapter 10 was like the one part I outright disliked... and the FX in its entirety.

[Etrurian emperor]

On 9/1/2023 at 9:43 PM, Saint Rubenio said:

They could've at least spiced things up a bit by having a parent or two join, but nope. The two dads with death flags all over them die right on cue, and the mothers just... sort of cease to exist. #JusticeForSeforia

Its especially disappointing but Seforia is actually pretty great. A wacky mom who's very fun to have on screen but also with a serious side when its required. 

[Saint Rubenio]

7 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Its especially disappointing but Seforia is actually pretty great. A wacky mom who's very fun to have on screen but also with a serious side when its required. 

I've been saying that for ages. No, really.

If she were playable I'd probably like her better than her children. Heck, I might already, even though she has five minutes of screentime. Solm is supposed to be such a unique and quirky country in general, wouldn't it have been great for it to be the one that broke the extremely stiff pattern the game uses up to that point and have the Queen join instead of one of her children?

Also, this is more of a hot take, but I think Hyacinth joining would've been interesting too. No, seriously, hear me out here. Consider Corrupted Hyacinth. He's basically the same guy, with his mind muddled by Veyle. The whole "corrupted cannot be restored ever, just kill them" thing is already a very thin plot excuse for why we can't save these people. So how awesome would it have been if his children could get through to him with heartfelt talks, he regained his free will and he pledged to use whatever time he has left to redeem himself for his mistakes in life? His supports could've delved into the nature of the corrupted, the church of Elusia, how he ended up under Sombron's thumb and his whole story with his brother that only ever exists in Lindon's supports. There was so much potential there, if they'd just been willing to put in the effort and creativity required.

...All that, and we would've gotten a dead octogenarian brawler. How wild is that concept? Heck there isn't actually a prepromoted martial master, he would've fit right into the cast like a glove.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Its especially disappointing but Seforia is actually pretty great. A wacky mom who's very fun to have on screen but also with a serious side when its required. 

While we all like Seforia as a character better, I think Eve actually stands out as weirder. As the plot actually brings you back to Firene and you even repel an invasion and she's just not factored in at all.

1 hour ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I've been saying that for ages. No, really.

If she were playable I'd probably like her better than her children. Heck, I might already, even though she has five minutes of screentime. Solm is supposed to be such a unique and quirky country in general, wouldn't it have been great for it to be the one that broke the extremely stiff pattern the game uses up to that point and have the Queen join instead of one of her children?

That makes me realize, they actually kind of did break formula in the latter half of the game. Or rather, they failed to finish their formula. Each nation gives you exactly 2+royals+4 retainers+1 other character (and apperantly Anna is from Elusia). Then, we get an extra character from Elusia and Brodia in the form of Saphir and Lindon. By all rights there should have been an eight character from Firene and Solm joining in the late game, the two nations with living monarch mommies. Mauvier is technically from Firene, but the game categorizes him as Grandlon, so we could even leave Eve out and just have Seforia. Not that sticking strictly to a formula is necessarily a good thing, just that it's weird we get Lindon and Saphir and then no one else adhering to the formula in that section of the game.

1 hour ago, Saint Rubenio said:

...All that, and we would've gotten a dead octogenarian brawler. How wild is that concept? Heck there isn't actually a prepromoted martial master, he would've fit right into the cast like a glove.

Is he really an octogenerian? Hortensia is only like 14 0.o Must be importing that industrial strength Viagra that Jedah is using.