• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

Pre-Release Fire Emblem Engage — Pre-release Discussion Thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
Koei Tecmo is one of Nintendo's worst technical partners unfortunately and they're one of if not the most partnered dev for them which makes their hardware look bad when the worst tech dev team is given the most partnerships.
Maybe Omega Force puts more attention to gameplay than graphics and event then I say this happens more with them developing for nintendo first party games as Samurai Warriors 4 looks and performs great on Switch, and Gust team is doing some magic with the Switch specs as Atelier Sophie 2 is one of the best looking games on the system, hell it even has a perfomance mode that wasn't even added to the PS4 version.
 
Definitely, I understand as someone who's felt similarly especially these days when everyone always begs for a Switch Pro because the Switch is "outdated and bad". It plagues a lot of Switch releases so I feel a little sensitive when games I'm excited for get bogged down by the talk. However sometimes I do wonder why Nintendo and their partners struggle so much with exclusive Nintendo console releases. Like, they should be the ones leading the charge for technical capability yet they are usually, if anything, the reason why people complain about Switch specs. We know the Switch can do waaaaay better than what they produce in games like FETH, every Pokemon game, SMTV. They are somehow the most technically incompetent.

That's why I appreciate companies like Ubisoft Milan, PlatinumGames, Monolith Soft, Retro Studios (when they do release games), Capcom (the MH games), Next Level Games, Virtuos, The Zelda & 3D Mario teams for being the main examples of technically proficient developers for Nintendo hardware. They know how to find the perfect balance of art and technical design too to create visually impressive games. Even Camelot (which we know is a very underbudgeted and understaffed dev team) makes technically nice Switch games. Aces and Super Rush, though short on content which I definitely agree they should be given more time and budget to make more complete games on release, look great. Intelligent systems is good when it's in house developed.

Koei Tecmo is one of Nintendo's worst technical partners unfortunately and they're one of if not the most partnered dev for them which makes their hardware look bad when the worst tech dev team is given the most partnerships. It's frustrating that they don't care as much as they should sometimes. Maybe not even for the sake of visuals but for performance. You'd think Nintendo would care about performance hiccups when it impacts gameplay aka their bread and butter but they don't.


The most recent Atelier games are amongst the best looking games on Switch
Are made by Gust, as probably this FE too
And it shows imho
1 secondo clip from twitter probably is not the best way to judge it graphic wise imho
 
Everything about this game just looks so creatively uninspired. I guess it makes sense if it's a greatest hits anniversary title but after Three Houses tried some new stuff for the series, I'm not really feeling this one.
 
Everything about this game just looks so creatively uninspired. I guess it makes sense if it's a greatest hits anniversary title but after Three Houses tried some new stuff for the series, I'm not really feeling this one.
I don’t know, it seems like a mixed bag of elements just like TH was. It’s just that Engage feels more like a direct sequel on the path that Awakening and then Fates took, both of which had some fun ideas and some that weren’t so good too (well, quite a lot where Fates is concerned). Awakening had zero variety in mission design and pair-up was unbalanced. Fates fixed the pair-up a bit and gave the factions nice themes, but the story and character tropes were often utter nonsense. But then TH had a load of stuff that wasn’t great (from my perspective) mixed in with stuff that felt really fresh too (which to me was the interlinked back stories of the entire cast rather than just each one embodying a simplistic tired trope). One of the things I like about the series is that willingness to mix things up. As much as I vastly preferred the art direction of TH to the character designs of Engage, I won’t miss all the school/calendar/lesson plan stuff and weak battlefield design of TH either. If Engage ends up as a mixed bag of fun new ideas for the genre, memorable stuff and stuff that doesn’t really work but has potential, that’ll be about the most ‘Fire Emblem’ thing it could be! :)

Honestly I think it’s a real strength of the series that’s it’s as experimental as it is and happy to invent, change and abandon major mechanics as it sees fit. I don’t think it gets as much credit as it should for being so experimental. But then I feel the same about Zelda and Metroid too.
 
Last edited:
If the game has conquest style gameplay and maps. it could be the most basic Fire emblem game and I’ll be happy.

I’ll take Radiant Dawn gameplay as well.

Fire Emblem has been lacking in that department for the last 2 games. Three houses especially was disappointing in that aspect.
 
Everything about this game just looks so creatively uninspired. I guess it makes sense if it's a greatest hits anniversary title but after Three Houses tried some new stuff for the series, I'm not really feeling this one.
I feel completely the opposite. School settings bore me to death and Three Houses did nothing to change that. Engage going back to basics made me really happy.

I also feel character designs of 3H was the lowest point of the modern series, bland designs and characters looked like clones of each other save for the hair. Engage going more anime is fixing this for me.
 
If the game has conquest style gameplay and maps. it could be the most basic Fire emblem game and I’ll be happy.

I’ll take Radiant Dawn gameplay as well.

Fire Emblem has been lacking in that department for the last 2 games. Three houses especially was disappointing in that aspect.
Honestly that’s all I really want from Fire Emblem. Interesting scenario objectives on interesting battlefields, and battle mechanics that encourage use of a whole force with strengths and weaknesses rather than having some individual units that are clearly much stronger than others. I think TH was my favourite cast so far in the way their backstories give you a lot of understanding of how broken Fodlan’s society was from two dozen different perspectives, but then I liked that about Radiant Dawn too. My ideal FE would be maps from Conquest, cast from TH, character designs from PoR/RD, and no player avatar unit, just a faction leader unit with strengths and weaknesses and a link to the troops they lead.

I don’t care either way about the social stuff and didn’t even notice the lack of them in RD. I quite like the battle and base conversations, but just don’t make me run around a base area to do pointless sidequests and fill bars or whatever to pad it all out. I want to be able to just get back into the battles as fast as possible without being left underpowered for not spending hours playing matchmaker and micromanaging stuff. Let me just restock kit from the convoy and get back to it.

It’s probably also why I liked Dark Deity so much. Interesting scenarios and class trees, a fairly basic nod to character social stuff and a few minutes tinkering with the force setup before the next chapter. The character backgrounds were simplistic and way more formulaic and less interesting than TH, but it pretty much reminded me of why I replayed the GBA games way more than I ever will TH. I still haven’t even touched a couple of the TH routes as I find everything about the monastery gameplay loop so dull after multiple playthroughs.
 
Last edited:
It's not about "technical incompetence," and the broad strokes with which you paint the technical side of KT's output is frankly childish.

Just as an example, Three Houses was developed on the same engine KT uses for their Musou titles. The engine is obviously not optimized for a strategy RPG, but they made it work (and then reused a lot of the assets and functionality for Three Hopes). Is it, graphically speaking, among the best of the best looking on Switch? No. Did it need to be? Also no.

But more than PHENOMENAL. GRAPHIC. POWER, the KT dev team crafted one of the most unique, most experimental titles in the entire franchise. Combat takes concepts that hadn't been seen since FE4 and out them in a mix with more established elements and brand new concepts. They experimented with ditching the weapon triangle and introducing a new weapon type. They made character and class progression more free-form than it had ever been. They expanded on the social elements. They wrote a story that took the branching path idea that Fates fumbled and made it work. They introduced and revisited all sorts of concepts, large and small, and while the game had its shortcomings, it was, in no uncertain terms, a success.

I really could not care less that Three Houses is not a graphic powerhouse. It didn't need to be. Most games absolutely do not.
I agree that though technically not proficient, they did still co-produced one of the best FE games despite the limitations. I hope to see the next game after Engage build on the tone and design.

Maybe Omega Force puts more attention to gameplay than graphics and event then I say this happens more with them developing for nintendo first party games as Samurai Warriors 4 looks and performs great on Switch, and Gust team is doing some magic with the Switch specs as Atelier Sophie 2 is one of the best looking games on the system, hell it even has a perfomance mode that wasn't even added to the PS4 version.
When they're so gameplay focused, it's weird for them to be satisfied releasing AoC as it did with such bad performance issues. I haven't played the Atelier games but I'll admit though not big tier games, they do look nice. Open world (?) And good performance based on what I saw. Art style is subjective so I won't get into that but definitely technically good for the budget. A good dev team. Was just weird to see that clip.

The most recent Atelier games are amongst the best looking games on Switch
Are made by Gust, as probably this FE too
And it shows imho
1 secondo clip from twitter probably is not the best way to judge it graphic wise imho

Hopefully we'll see the partnership expand with more games in the future to see how their relationship evolves. Maybe Gust will try something new artistically instead of their only tried and true
 
When they're so gameplay focused, it's weird for them to be satisfied releasing AoC as it did with such bad performance issues. I haven't played the Atelier games but I'll admit though not big tier games, they do look nice. Open world (?) And good performance based on what I saw. Art style is subjective so I won't get into that but definitely technically good for the budget. A good dev team. Was just weird to see that clip.
That's the thing, all of these games are running in the same engine than the ones they developed for Nintendo:
  • P5S
  • SW4
  • Atelier series
  • Blue Reflection
  • Fairy Tail
And with exception of Fairy Tail (which performs bad on any console) all of them are able to look very well and perform good on switch, so they have the know how. AoC perfomance and the looks of FE3H and FEW3H (as in how they use the engine not the art style) are the odd ones here, and in the end both results depends on Nintendo giving the ok
 
0
Gameplay will be amazing and the maps as well.
Hopefully the supports will be good and I may be one of the few, but I loved playing matchmaking.
Made you have control over who bonds with who and it's not random like in 3H (those endings)
 
I think at least some of the issues with Age of Calamity can be chalked up to the pandemic hitting during what would have been the tail end of development. The game's performance optimization wasn't there compared to other Switch Musou titles and the Divine Beast portions were an extra wrinkle in that. I would not cite the game as being emblematic of KT's overall Switch efforts.
 
Everything about this game just looks so creatively uninspired. I guess it makes sense if it's a greatest hits anniversary title but after Three Houses tried some new stuff for the series, I'm not really feeling this one.

I think after Three Houses I do like this one actually. Because Three Houses is quite a monster to get through if you want to see the full story and get a better grasp of what everyone is doing in their own story. It really felt a lot was not clear when you only played one story and technically by playing 2 or 3 routes you got the real picture.
This feels like a nice back to the roots kind of game. :D
 
I think after Three Houses I do like this one actually. Because Three Houses is quite a monster to get through if you want to see the full story and get a better grasp of what everyone is doing in their own story. It really felt a lot was not clear when you only played one story and technically by playing 2 or 3 routes you got the real picture.
This feels like a nice back to the roots kind of game. :D
Yeah it’ll a nice change of pace to play a FE with a single route again after Fates and Three Houses both set themselves up with needing to head through multiple paths to see all of it. I like the way some FEs do that, and some don’t. I do feel like if you are going to have multiple paths, at least make the split at the start (like Fates, or Sacred Stones) so you aren’t repeating large chunks of the early game (where things are more simple) on the multiple playthroughs that you’re encouraging players to make to see the whole story. I think SS remains my favourite ‘multiple route’ FE even if it kinda does it the other way around to TH and has the routes converge 3/4 of the way through. I guess TH has its faction choice early on which influences the characters you start with, even if the main content split is halfway through, but I still prefer a main route choice, meaning different missions, from the start.
 
0
Boooooo

They’re doing that thing where they don’t say the avatars name.

I hate that so much lol. No biggie. But I do wish the “canon” name is spoken from time to time at least.
Yeah, Nintendo has a pretty good text to speech technology, they can use it in instances like that. I loved the pronunciations of random words in Tomodachi Life.
 
I’ve only played Three Houses, and kind of thought that some type of relationship/confidant/etc. mechanic was a major part of the series. Do we have a large roster of team mates in this game that aren’t just fanservice ghosts? I really don’t have an attachment to any of the hero characters they’ve shown.
 
Yeah, Nintendo has a pretty good text to speech technology, they can use it in instances like that. I loved the pronunciations of random words in Tomodachi Life.
It would be the height of hilarity for the professionally delivered voice acting to be punctuated with computer-delivered names stated by the Tomodachi Life voice.
 
I’ve only played Three Houses, and kind of thought that some type of relationship/confidant/etc. mechanic was a major part of the series. Do we have a large roster of team mates in this game that aren’t just fanservice ghosts? I really don’t have an attachment to any of the hero characters they’ve shown.
Supports have been a pretty major part of the series ever since the fourth game back in 1996

There'll be characters who aren't from older games, though we don't know how big the actual roster is

I'm with you, though; I don't like the focus on past hero characters
 
Supports have been a pretty major part of the series ever since the fourth game back in 1996

There'll be characters who aren't from older games, though we don't know how big the actual roster is

I'm with you, though; I don't like the focus on past hero characters

Three Houses was appealing to me without any history of the franchise - I just want more new stories, worlds, and characters surrounding similar SRPG gameplay.

I'm excited solely because I want a new Fire Emblem game, but the marketing thus far has been self-limiting. Marth remains a Smash Bros. character to me, and I don't see how this game is going to change that without feeling a bit contrived. I want to speak with teammates born in this world, and heavily invested in it. As long as we get enough of that, I'm happy to have weird Hero 'Summons' I guess.
 
I think people are overestimating how key the legacy characters are to the central narrative beyond their existence as magic ring ghosts.
 
We can only judge based on what they show us, and a huge chunk of the story-driving stuff so far has involved Marth
Can we be blamed when it’s been the focus of the English marketing thus far?
I only sat this because goodness if the FE fandom doesn't have a history of jumping to conclusions. I still remember people jumping to the conclusion that Three Houses would be Fates 2 in all of the bad ways once it was clear that the game had branching routes and an avatar lead.

If anything, Marth may have been emphasized in the trailer simply because he's Marth. The FE Twitter in particular has been revealing details of the original Engage cast to a greater extent thus far.
 
I only sat this because goodness if the FE fandom doesn't have a history of jumping to conclusions. I still remember people jumping to the conclusion that Three Houses would be Fates 2 in all of the bad ways once it was clear that the game had branching routes and an avatar lead.

If anything, Marth may have been emphasized in the trailer simply because he's Marth. The FE Twitter in particular has been revealing details of the original Engage cast to a greater extent thus far.

We’ll i can only hope that approaching launch that the emphasis shifts dramatically. Talking up Marth does little to little for expanding the audience. It just makes players like me care less.
 
We’ll i can only hope that approaching launch that the emphasis shifts dramatically. Talking up Marth does little to little for expanding the audience. It just makes players like me care less.
At the end of the day, Marth and the others are assists. Collecting the rings is evidently important to the story, but we're likely to be interacting with the non-Emblem characters far more.
 
0




New tweets, this time no character reveal or new clips unfortunately, but it gives us details on how the weapon triangle and breaks work. Basically, we've got the traditional WT as per usual, but gauntlets/fighting is also strong against bows, magic, and daggers. It'll be interesting to see how the game is designed around this system. Breaks, as people suspected, happens when you have a WT advantage over the enemy (and I assume vice-versa?) and they won't be able to fight for a turn.
 
Definitely, I understand as someone who's felt similarly especially these days when everyone always begs for a Switch Pro because the Switch is "outdated and bad". It plagues a lot of Switch releases so I feel a little sensitive when games I'm excited for get bogged down by the talk. However sometimes I do wonder why Nintendo and their partners struggle so much with exclusive Nintendo console releases. Like, they should be the ones leading the charge for technical capability yet they are usually, if anything, the reason why people complain about Switch specs. We know the Switch can do waaaaay better than what they produce in games like FETH, every Pokemon game, SMTV. They are somehow the most technically incompetent.

That's why I appreciate companies like Ubisoft Milan, PlatinumGames, Monolith Soft, Retro Studios (when they do release games), Capcom (the MH games), Next Level Games, Virtuos, The Zelda & 3D Mario teams for being the main examples of technically proficient developers for Nintendo hardware. They know how to find the perfect balance of art and technical design too to create visually impressive games. Even Camelot (which we know is a very underbudgeted and understaffed dev team) makes technically nice Switch games. Aces and Super Rush, though short on content which I definitely agree they should be given more time and budget to make more complete games on release, look great. Intelligent systems is good when it's in house developed.

Koei Tecmo is one of Nintendo's worst technical partners unfortunately and they're one of if not the most partnered dev for them which makes their hardware look bad when the worst tech dev team is given the most partnerships. It's frustrating that they don't care as much as they should sometimes. Maybe not even for the sake of visuals but for performance. You'd think Nintendo would care about performance hiccups when it impacts gameplay aka their bread and butter but they don't.
I'mma have to disagree with you here.
Shin Megami Tensei V is one of the best looking games on the platform and it's very open ended and goes heavy on shading and lighting effects, high poly models and particles. It sins a bit with some aliasing and of course performance (which is not exclusive to it as we have BotW from EPD). But it's quite a technical achievement. Mainly because the monster designs, poly counts, lighting and particles is way more advanced than Persona 5 on the PS4(and sans resolution, it's also more advanced than even the current gen versions). I mean from the DF review we see some comparisons to P5 and SMT V really glows with its shading, textures and lighting. The demons look way better here. And that's from someone who absolutely loves cel shading and loves P5.

On Koei Tecmo, we know that with probably the sole exception of Fire Emblem Engage and maybe Three Hopes, their optimization is very compromised due to time constraints. Fire Emblem Three Houses took way more time since Fates than Fates from Awakening, and the game was supposed to come in 2018, even tho we know it had barely started development in Jan 2017 when it was announced, and KT also had to release FE Warriors late that year. While it graphically can look very ugly at times, the character models at least are very well done and the game is very ambitious.

Have to add here that they've done Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity. That game, while of course flawed due to its poor optimization and severe frame drops, shares more design/graphics with BotW(Link's model looks exactly the same to me and great plateau looks like it was ported from there). So the game looks stunning as BotW looks stunning. It's not some work any studio would do.

Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes looks already like a step forward from Three Houses graphically, and a step forward from AoC on performance.

Talking about their non-exclusive games, I have yet to watch comparisons again or gameplay videos but I've seen people on this thread compliment them. And Atelier Ryze (2 I guess?) looks absolutely stunning to me.

Fire Emblem Engage is a looker but that doesn't reflect all the scenarios and some terrains and scenes do look a bit bland. But it's anime aesthetic, models, Collor palettes and cutscenes do glow. It's gonna be one of the best looking games on its genre actually.

I think with due time and without going too far on scope(like what AoC and FETH tried I think), they can make some very good looking games. I mean they were the ones behind Metroid Other M and that's one of the best looking Wii games ever and its cutscenes beauty is yet to be matched even by some current gen games.
 
0
Woah woah whoa. What if we get music based off classic games!?

Shadow of Valentia has the best soundtrack in a fire emblem. Up there with Fates and Radiant Dawn
 


NoA tweeted the Marth convo from the JP Twitter with English VA 👀

The BL vibes I get from some of those conversations of Marth with Alear is quite something and I'mma fanfic hard with it lol.
Hopefully they give more MLM options this time.
(I felt queerbaited with Claude on TH tbh, shame I couldn't marry him).

Queer glory at its finest and "style" of Alear will make me feel some non binary love there too.

I'm so excited for this game Fami I saw its not that expensive on Play Asia so I might try to preorder it physically even.

Not to go reaching or super enthusiastic or anything like that, it's just that lately I've been so depressed that when a rare moment comes and I can finally see me living next year and try to get excited for a thing so I can be hopeful of something that might give me some joy. Sorry if it was a downer too.

GOAT HERE WE GOOO!! ❤️💙


Also Nintendo can you please release another trailer already?? We NEED to see more.
 
0




New tweets, this time no character reveal or new clips unfortunately, but it gives us details on how the weapon triangle and breaks work. Basically, we've got the traditional WT as per usual, but gauntlets/fighting is also strong against bows, magic, and daggers. It'll be interesting to see how the game is designed around this system. Breaks, as people suspected, happens when you have a WT advantage over the enemy (and I assume vice-versa?) and they won't be able to fight for a turn.

That seems to absurdly favor gauntlets, as they seemingly have no weaknesses. Wonder if they’ll have lower stats to compensate.
 
Yeah, Nintendo has a pretty good text to speech technology, they can use it in instances like that. I loved the pronunciations of random words in Tomodachi Life.
I actually feel some gender euphoria when the native language of the animals in Animal Crossing New Horizons (that's like a sped up English with some robotic "japanese pronounced sonority" thing), mainly Tom Nook, cheers me with "Herou, Macê", I go like "OMG THAT'S SO CUTE 🥺😭"
 
0




New tweets, this time no character reveal or new clips unfortunately, but it gives us details on how the weapon triangle and breaks work. Basically, we've got the traditional WT as per usual, but gauntlets/fighting is also strong against bows, magic, and daggers. It'll be interesting to see how the game is designed around this system. Breaks, as people suspected, happens when you have a WT advantage over the enemy (and I assume vice-versa?) and they won't be able to fight for a turn.

OK, punching = good.
Got it
 
0
Woah woah whoa. What if we get music based off classic games!?

Shadow of Valentia has the best soundtrack in a fire emblem. Up there with Fates and Radiant Dawn
The main theme on the January 2015 trailer of Fates and Azura singing is still one of the most epic and vibes Nintendo has ever gone with more epic trailers(only beaten by Jan 2017 BotW trailer and E3 trailer of Odyssey).
 
0




New tweets, this time no character reveal or new clips unfortunately, but it gives us details on how the weapon triangle and breaks work. Basically, we've got the traditional WT as per usual, but gauntlets/fighting is also strong against bows, magic, and daggers. It'll be interesting to see how the game is designed around this system. Breaks, as people suspected, happens when you have a WT advantage over the enemy (and I assume vice-versa?) and they won't be able to fight for a turn.


The bare fists beats Knifes, Bows, and Magic.

Makes perfect sense.
 
0
That seems to absurdly favor gauntlets, as they seemingly have no weaknesses. Wonder if they’ll have lower stats to compensate.
It’s probably that the advantage tomes, knives and bows all have instead is a range of two squares- fists have advantage over those weapons if fists initiates combat, but those weapons don’t allow a counter from a range-of-one-square melee weapon like fists at all when initiating from two squares away. On top of that, swords, axes and lances all have options that allow ranged response (handaxe, javelin etc), maybe fists have no such option at all. Bows are also strong against fliers and tomes typically very strong vs heavy armour (can’t quite remember what daggers are typically strong against).

I don’t know. It’s not like the weapons triangle and various weaknesses have ever made any sense outside of an interesting game mechanic encouraging awareness of what you are sending up against what, so everything has strengths and weaknesses so a diverse force leaves you with various options to take out strong enemies. There’s no real reason for all axes to be stronger against lances/spears etc either, it’s just that the weapon/magic/class options have wildly expanded over time so it’s not quite as simple and elegant as it used to be.
 
Last edited:
0
Emblem of Echoes?


Hmmmmm. That’s interesting, would’ve thought Gaiden but it is the remake so okay. Unless Alm is in this as well but that would be boring being only Lords. Throw in some fun ones.

Archer 3-13 lol
 
Very curious as to what Sigurd's Emblem name will be, as that's probably gonna be what the Holy War remake is named as well
Interesting point. One thing I took out of Celica's emblem name is the debunking of Echoes as a subtitle for remakes. It seems that, at least based on this, that the name was only for Gaiden.
 
0
I'm pretty sure SoV devs have said themselves in interviews that the "Echoes" title would be used for potential future remakes, which makes total sense. I mean, why would they give the FE4 remake a completely different title instead of marketing it as the next Echoes game? Especially since SoV has an actual subtitle after "Echoes"... y'know, SoV aka Shadows of Valentia.

It is kinda weird that they would give Celica the name "Emblem of Echoes" tho, but as of now, SoV is the only game in the "Echoes" subseries, so I guess it doesn't matter too much.
 
0
Emblem of Echoes?


Hmmmmm. That’s interesting, would’ve thought Gaiden but it is the remake so okay. Unless Alm is in this as well but that would be boring being only Lords. Throw in some fun ones.

Archer 3-13 lol

It might suggest that they won't use the Echoes subtitle for future remakes as many of us presumed. At this point, most people call the FE 2 remake Echoes so even if the intended was for remakes be under the Echoes moniker, the name might already too attached with the 2 remake.
 
0
Status
Not open for further replies.


Back
Top Bottom