Dark Emblems. More like Disappointing Emblems!

[Jotari]

Okay, I think enough time has passed that I can comfortably make this thread about an endgame feature. It's not a major spoiler, but Sombron summons all the other final bosses to aid him in the final battle. I love this idea! My oh my is it such cool fanservice. And the convos the Emblems have with them are great. It's Grade A fanservice....that gets a D for effort. Because they really did nothing to make this idea come alive and I'm dissapointed. I'm still glad they did it, but it really feels like they half assed it. Or less. As it is basically just the titles of the enemies and the battle Convo. Was that really the best they could do? The game had been finished for like two years, they definitely had the time to do better. Was it a money issue? Would it really have been that costly to import some animations from the other titles? Ashnard, Ashera, Medeus, Grima, Anankos, Duma and Nemesis all have 3D models already.  Okay, some of them might be very dated 3D models on hand held consoles, but you can obscure that with smoke and shimmering transparent effects. And if that would really not look good, then the Smash Ultimate approach of just using JPEGs with light movement could have worked. I certainly would have appreciated it more than putting the same kingdom hearts cloaked figure to represent 12 very different individuals.

Visual representation aside, there's also the gameplay aspect. They do their job being several nodes you need to knock out to damage Sombron, but again it doesn't feel like the characters in question. I'm going off memory here and the data doesn't seem to be online yet to verify, but there are no skills or weapons or anything that reference the original villains. No Dragon Skin or Gurgurant. There isn't even an attempt to match the classes. Half them being dragons would have been a bit untenable, but Ashnard could have been on a wyvern lord and Julius/Veld/Nergal could have been of the several mage classes. The likes of Idunn could have also been a General to reference Zephiel (and indeed maybe she is, but that would only be by coincidence and not intention to make the situation cohesive). I could do with the classes not matching if attempts were made elsewhere as mixing classes is a way to use Emblems, but it would have been the bare minimum that could have been done. Narratively the Dark Emblems should be existing in the same was as all the other Emblems in the game. But they just aren't functioning that way. I know it'd be a lot of effort to make them functionlly identical to the emblems the player can use, but I really wish they had done something more than what is the lowest possible effort.

[Acacia Sgt]

I suppose if they hadn't gone the route of corrupted Emblems, the Dark Emblems could've been used for that instead.

[Jotari]

15 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I suppose if they hadn't gone the route of corrupted Emblems, the Dark Emblems could've been used for that instead.

Certainly if they had decided to use them throughout the game then they would have made them more complete, vs an endgame only thing. It reminds me of the spirits from Radiant Dawn's endgame which have no battle animations. Which doesn't bother me much since I use map animations from the start in Radiant Dawn, but it must have felt pretty disconnected for people who had played through the entire game with animations on only to find the enemies in the final two chapters inexplicably have no animation cut aways.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, the extent of the dark emblems seems to be that you can completely annihilate them with their chosen rival (and the classes support this, like Duma being held by a General so your Celica-user, presumably a mage, demolishes him extra hard).

For that reason, I think it's fair not to expect class matching, in that these aren't actually the emblems themselves you're fighting, just generic corrupted who happen to be holding them (like the ones in Chapter 11). I do agree that engage weapons might have been fun.

I also have some issues with how the battle goes structurally. The first time I did that battle, I only saw the first two rounds of dark emblems; since then I've only ever seen the first. So yes, I've never seen the third set of emblems, and I've certainly talked to others who shared my experience. Now, on the one hand, I'm personally glad I didn't see the third, because I already felt the final battle was longer than I'd like (especially with the completely needless first stage; granted you can Entrap-skip that). On the other hand, I think it's disappointing that I haven't seen them. I'm not really sure what the solution is.

[Jotari]

17 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yeah, the extent of the dark emblems seems to be that you can completely annihilate them with their chosen rival (and the classes support this, like Duma being held by a General so your Celica-user, presumably a mage, demolishes him extra hard).

For that reason, I think it's fair not to expect class matching, in that these aren't actually the emblems themselves you're fighting, just generic corrupted who happen to be holding them (like the ones in Chapter 11). I do agree that engage weapons might have been fun.

I also have some issues with how the battle goes structurally. The first time I did that battle, I only saw the first two rounds of dark emblems; since then I've only ever seen the first. So yes, I've never seen the third set of emblems, and I've certainly talked to others who shared my experience. Now, on the one hand, I'm personally glad I didn't see the third, because I already felt the final battle was longer than I'd like (especially with the completely needless first stage; granted you can Entrap-skip that). On the other hand, I think it's disappointing that I haven't seen them. I'm not really sure what the solution is.

I'm in the same boat in regards to finishing the battle before the third phase. I think it's a fantastic final chapter, but by the end I was stretched very much to my limit. I was tempted to stick around for the final four (and I was really curious who'd they choose for Three Houses with it's three separate final bosses), but I wasn't sure I could beat him if I did and it's so long going for a third attempt (I failed my first) would just take so long. I think you've inadvertently pointed out the solution though. Just include the first wave in the first stage of the fight when Sombron is a human. That way the first stage feels less like filler and you'll almost certainly encounter all the Dark Emblems. Not sure how it'd be handled if you killed human Sombron before beating the first four Dark Emblems though.

Also, I was going to say in the OP that the only way they could have put in less effort was if they didn't bother to voice act the battle quotes, but then I remembered they actually didn't do that for the Dark Emblem death quotes! Like all of those characters except Veld had voice actors given to them in the years during Engage's production. It'd probably cost nothing to get the voice actor to read one more line of dialogue when they're already in the boot doing voice work for Heroes. It's also the portrait of the corrupted saying it, not even the hooded figure representing the Dark Emblem. Again, it would have been so easy to just reuse artwork here.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Jotari

[Perkilator]

10 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I suppose if they hadn't gone the route of corrupted Emblems, the Dark Emblems could've been used for that instead.

Yeah, I think they absolutely should've included the Dark Emblems as recurring rivals of the regular Emblems. Doesn't even have to be the same ones as in the endgame; it could work more like Rival Units in Project X Zone.

• Hardin can be the Dark Emblem of Archanea
• Berkut can be the Dark Emblem of Valentia
• Julius and Reinhardt can be the respective Dark Emblems of Judgral
• Zephiel and Nergal can be the respective Dark Emblems of Elibe
• Lyon can be the Dark Emblem of Magvel
• The Black Knight and Ashera can be the respective Dark Emblems of Tellius
• Hodded Grima can be the Dark Emblem of Ylisse
• Garon can be the Dark Emblem of Fateslandia
• Edelgard can be a different case where she initially starts as the Dark Emblem of Fódlan, but then later joins you.

[lenticular]

Yeah, I also only saw the first round of the dark emblems. Having the fight structured the way it is seems like a bit of a weird choice. I can't imagine that they weren't aware that the fight would be very beatable without seeing all of them. And, mechanically, you're incentivised to do so. Given that you only get limited time to attack Sombron, it seems natural to set things up so you can throw as much damage as possible at him during that time. I assume that they liked the way that the fight worked mechanically and decided that that was more important than making sure all the fanservice landed. And while I'm not really a fan of the fight myself, I get the impression that it's pretty well-liked so it's hard to say that they made the wrong choice.

If they'd wanted to emphasise the dark emblems more, then they could have changed the fight so that the shield reset every time you took down a health bar, forcing you to go through all 3 rounds of dark emblems. It would have needed to be rebalanced then, but I'm sure that could have been done. Another option would have been to change up the fight entirely. Having something vaguely similar to the Nemesis fight from Three Houses could have worked well to showcase the dark emblems, but it would have been disappointing to have mechanically similar bosses in two games in a row.

[vanguard333]

Yeah; the dark emblems were really disappointing. When I completed the game for the first time a bit over a week ago, I willfully held back and made sure not to defeat Sombron too quickly just so I would see all the dark emblems, and, looking back, I honestly would've preferred to have just defeated Sombron as soon as possible. The dark emblems are the main letdown in what otherwise was honestly a really good final boss fight (although one of the main reasons it's a good boss fight is that it's the only time in the game outside of four cutscenes that anyone actually is a dragon).

 

I'm honestly not sure how to improve them; do too much and they risk overshadowing Sombron himself. I like the idea of Engage weapons: the Ashera Emblem could have judgement, the Ashnard Emblem could have Gurgurant, Loptyr could have, well, the book of Loptyr, Nemesis could have the counterfeit Sword of the Creator, etc. I'm not sure what emblem weapons could be provided, however, by the ones that are dragons/eldritch abominations.

[Jotari]

31 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Yeah; the dark emblems were really disappointing. When I completed the game for the first time a bit over a week ago, I willfully held back and made sure not to defeat Sombron too quickly just so I would see all the dark emblems, and, looking back, I honestly would've preferred to have just defeated Sombron as soon as possible. The dark emblems are the main letdown in what otherwise was honestly a really good final boss fight (although one of the main reasons it's a good boss fight is that it's the only time in the game outside of four cutscenes that anyone actually is a dragon).

 

I'm honestly not sure how to improve them; do too much and they risk overshadowing Sombron himself. I like the idea of Engage weapons: the Ashera Emblem could have judgement, the Ashnard Emblem could have Gurgurant, Loptyr could have, well, the book of Loptyr, Nemesis could have the counterfeit Sword of the Creator, etc. I'm not sure what emblem weapons could be provided, however, by the ones that are dragons/eldritch abominations.

I think the breath attacks could work. An armoured knight shooting out a stream of dark fire, why not? But if that's too weird, then the dragons and demons with no obvious weapons could get unique skills instead.

[Acacia Sgt]

You know, Formortiis actually has three attacks (Demon Light, Ravager, Nightmare), so he could pull it off.

Anyway, this made me think. It would be cool if, say, Idunn had an attack where she summons a War Dragon. Not summon like on the map, just for the attack animation.

[SnowFire]

For what it's worth, I saw the third wave, but I also didn't know how the fight "worked" and beat the first wave of Emblems without inflicting any damage on Sombron at all.  Didn't realize his barrier would be back up the next turn, I figured it'd be more like an HP trigger for when the barrier was restored.  Also, I had kind of a low damage team.

On the design...   One of the core "ideas" of FE Engage is that of Emblems being wielded by a specific user, and granting that user unusual powers.  As such, having random Corrupted enemies getting powered up by Dark Emblems - even when not "on theme" - actually works well enough here, IMO.  It shouldn't just be an old boss rush; it needs to be old bosses powering up other enemies.  However, there's a strong need for "comprehensibility".  You don't want to expect players to stop the game and go read all the cool callback abilities to 12 new enemy types this late so they aren't ambushed by surprise range 3 breath or whatever.  This kind of limits how much cool stuff you can throw in, at least if you're not also nerfing the fight to hell to avoid accusations of being cheap.

(As a side note, this is where I mention again that rewriting the plot to have the whole last arc of the game all take place in the past would have been cool, and one reason is gameplay: it would have been an excuse to have most of the Fell Regular Emblems fighting against you, and those really are comprehensible: you know how those work already!  Therefore they can be used as enemies without requiring new learning this late.)

On the art, of course models of the bosses would have been cool, but I respect that building a new 3D model is one of the most expensive things to do in the game, and you're not even guaranteed to see all 12 of these.  It would have been nice if they could have done, say, 3 models - maybe one for the berserk dragons, one for male enemies, and one for female enemies.  But oh well. 

Basically, I have some minor wishlist items, but I don't think the existing implementation was too bad.  If they really did want to have "complicated" Dark Emblems, they would have needed to mechanically cue them more: whether just straight up popping up tutorials to explain things in the final maps, or having some sort of Dark Emblem preview map before the final.

Edited July 28, 2023 by SnowFire