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

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The Three Houses era of that infighting was more or less Edelgard uber-stans versus pretty much everyone else.

I don't have time to watch the video, but when people say this game might be a return to form, I want to know what form is the form.

Awakening?
Fates Conquest?
Shadows of Valentia?
The GBA era?
The Kaga era?
I got Fateswakening vibes. A lot of the stuff the video points out isn’t really unique to the GBA games, and the emblems system seems to be an evolution of the pair-up system.

Three Houses covers “new” Fire Emblem, Engage covers “3DS” Fire Emblem, and (hopefully) Genealogy covers “retro” Fire Emblem. Everyone wins.
 
I'm curious how you see that. I know Engage is supremely colorful, but the glimpses of gameplay don't really feel that way to me.
The video does a really good job to explain so I'll just give the bullet points if you can't watch.
1) weapon triangle with class base weapon ranks, which means no freeform character customisation and reclassing
2) the map design is smaller, more dense with choke points, villages and strategic terrain
3) it has a jagen, a pre promoted paladin whose role is to help weaker units in the early game
4) smaller stats and not the inflated stats of Threehouses or radiant dawn
5) simpler story with no multiple routes
Of course some are speculation but that's the vibes I'm getting from the trailer, a GBA fire emblem with skill system, even the hero summoning feels more like equipment than actual summoning.
 
When you boot up 3 houses in the bottom it says co-developed by KT. So I went back in to the 3 houses trailers and sadly none do the same thing Engage did.
I did not notice till later but at the bottom of the Engage trailer it just mentions Nintendo/IS. Like before we don't know the full staff on this game so we will wait and see.
 
When you boot up 3 houses in the bottom it says co-developed by KT. So I went back in to the 3 houses trailers and sadly none do the same thing Engage did.
I did not notice till later but at the bottom of the Engage trailer it just mentions Nintendo/IS. Like before we don't know the full staff on this game so we will wait and see.
per original leaks from earlier this year that leaked the game and the protag many have deemed Pepsi/Colgate-san/chan. It was co-developed between Gust Studios (Atelier series) a subsidiary of Koei Techmo, Koei Techmo themselves and IS/Nintendo
 
I wish fire emblem would go back to being a list of missions

I prefer the streamlined approach
Do we know if this will have all the extra fluff like the last few?

edit: I just rewatched the trailer... and it showed you standing next to a sheep so I guess there's that.
 
per original leaks from earlier this year that leaked the game and the protag many have deemed Pepsi/Colgate-san/chan. It was co-developed between Gust Studios (Atelier series) a subsidiary of Koei Techmo, Koei Techmo themselves and IS/Nintendo
Well the rumor was a collaboration not necessarily co-developed, hence the comment I did. I think the rumor was always suggesting that Gust only helped out in the art direction, and KT and IS did the rest of the work. We will probably know soon.
 
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I wish fire emblem would go back to being a list of missions

I prefer the streamlined approach
Do we know if this will have all the extra fluff like the last few?
The trailer literally showed the hub area.

I'd say that the days of FE being battle > battle prep menu > battle are over. I'm not sad to see that go.
 
The trailer literally showed the hub area.

I'd say that the days of FE being battle > battle prep menu > battle are over. I'm not sad to see that go.
I mean I don't mind a hub... But I do hope it's more streamlined than it has been lately.
 
Oh, that's fair. The monastery was enormous.
actually you know what would be cool is if they had different game modes, similar to how they did it for those who just want to play through the story...
A mode where you just want to do back to back missions would be neat... that way the game could have everything for everyone.
 
I stand by the fact that the main problem with the monastery was that it was pretty cool for the first playthrough and then immediately fell off a cliff.

I don't think a hub by itself is the problem, Three Houses' just wasn't enough to sustain what the game wanted. I think a more well-designed, dynamic hub, which seems to be what this game is promising, would end up working fairly well. Especially if it isn't a multi-route game
 
I wish fire emblem would go back to being a list of missions

I prefer the streamlined approach
Do we know if this will have all the extra fluff like the last few?

edit: I just rewatched the trailer... and it showed you standing next to a sheep so I guess there's that.
I think the best way to make the hub work is to make it mostly cosmetic and skippable, threehouses hub gave to much advantages to get ignored and so you where mostly forced to use it especially at the start, if it gets kind of nerfed in this game I think it will be less annoying and make the game more streamlined.
Also get ready for multiple hubs for the fe4 remake, that game is pretty much made for it and like a third of the game is micromanaging your units before and during the chapter.
 
Loved the "androgynous -ish"(?) male design. The graphics are glowing and there seems to be a lot of stuff to do and an engaging (lol) story. The back from the past stuff is neat, and the "Persona" feeling of the engaging is just my thing. Loved to see Lyn and Marth, hope we get Roy, Ike, Edelgard and Claude!!

Can't wait to see more about the world map, villages/dungeons and more story.
 
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I'm curious if there will be some sort of route split later in the game where you choose red or blue for your hair lol. Going off the art that's been shown off of the game, red and blue seem really important beyond just being the colors of Alear's hair.

Even if we do get some kind of "red vs. blue" route split, I'm guessing it won't be until much later in the game (remember how Byleth's hair color didn't change until right before the timeskip?) and it probably won't be too radical anyway, this game definitely seems to be a single linear story first and foremost.
 
Personally, I'm not expecting there to be very many rings to collect in the game. I think it's going to be like Holy Blood, 12 variants, and something for the bad guys. Regardless, still very interested in seeing how it goes.
 
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They're unlikely to go back to the mission based style unless it's for a specific route like in Fates or a remake. The monastery or an equivalent is here to stay because the social stuff has become too popular, to my chagrin. At least I didn't mind it too much in Three Houses. There's a lot of stuff locked behind it which I did in my first Black Eagles playthrough by fast traveling all over the place and then ignored it in subsequent playthroughs. I do wish they made it either more optional or more streamlined though.
 
Three Houses Monastery was good for like 4-5 chapters. And unfortunately meant 90% of the game it sucked.

I liked what Fates did better but that was mostly cuase it was super small and easy to walk around, plus upgrading as it goes. Plus being able to change the music for the hub lol. And Fates Soundtrack is one of the best in the series.
 
Damn, I feel so alone in liking a lot of the Monastery stuff. My only issue with it is that it was too big. I suppose there could be a middle ground where there's a way to streamline it all for folk who don't wanna deal with all of the walking and running around

The real question no one is asking is if PVP is back.
Well PvP is trash so good on them for not asking for it
 
Damn, I feel so alone in liking a lot of the Monastery stuff. My only issue with it is that it was too big. I suppose there could be a middle ground where there's a way to streamline it all for folk who don't wanna deal with all of the walking and running around


Well PvP is trash so good on them for not asking for it
Oh, I personally loved the monastery, too. I just understand the size of it was an issue for people.
 
I don't see the issue with the monastery, you can fast travel around, not like you need to walk on foot everywhere.

Also they are never gonna do another new (non-remake) game that is just a set of menus/missions. People would see it as too simple/cheap. We are gonna have some kinda hub going forward. it may vary is size and use game to game but it's here to stay. Whether it be a monastery/village/castle/mansion/military camp/flying city in the sky we'll have something to free roam in between battles and interact with our army/do minigame/management/social stuff.
 
I don't see the issue with the monastery, you can fast travel around, not like you need to walk on foot everywhere.

Also they are never gonna do another new (non-remake) game that is just a set of menus/missions. People would see it as too simple/cheap. We are gonna have some kinda hub going forward. it may vary is size and use game to game but it's here to stay. Whether it be a monastery/village/castle/mansion/military camp/flying city in the sky we'll have something to free roam in between battles and interact with our army/do minigame/management/social stuff.
Even beyond avoiding being seen as simple/cheap, it's just kinda become the trend for strategy/tactics games in recent days (possibly because of Three Houses' success)

Diofield, Triangle Strategy, that Lost Eidolons game, hell, even Firaxis got in on the party with Midnight Suns. Hubs are the new thing for the genre, at least for now, and that's probably because there's a demand for them
 
We may not even be restricted to only a single base this time around. The Reddit leaker who leaked most of the famous leaked images said that there would be towns and dungeons to explore, and potentially an overworld (although he could have just meant a traversable 2d map ala Awakening/SoV/FE8, wording was a bit weird so not 100% sure what he meant). If he was telling the truth, then I imagine towns and dungeons will be a major reveal later on, maybe in an Engage Direct? One of the screenshots he posted was of a menu at the base, and when translated the bottom option said "go to world map", so that's something to keep in mind too.

On a similar note, the Discord leaker, (the person who leaked the fifth image, the one of female Alear from the front) has been proven correct with some of the things he posted, including the name of the game, the name Alear, the weapon triangle, etc. One of the things he posted that hasn't been proven yet is that the central hub is smaller in size. I can't imagine they would want there to be less exploration in Engage, so I think it would make sense (assuming the leaker is correct) that the hub is smaller specifically because of towns, dungeons, and stuff being added. Plus, it just makes sense for Engage to have a greater scope and ambition than the game that came before it, as I also can't imagine IS wants to just do the same exact thing as 3H again.
 
I think the best way to make the hub work is to make it mostly cosmetic and skippable, threehouses hub gave to much advantages to get ignored and so you where mostly forced to use it especially at the start, if it gets kind of nerfed in this game I think it will be less annoying and make the game more streamlined.
Also get ready for multiple hubs for the fe4 remake, that game is pretty much made for it and like a third of the game is micromanaging your units before and during the chapter.
That would unfortunately kill most of my interest in the hub. What I loved most about it was the incremental progression it gave you: Doing all the tasks to best optimize your teacher rank, so you could do more tasks, so you could better improve your units, so you could plan out their eventual final classes, etc. That gameplay loop was addicting as hell for me
 
That would unfortunately kill most of my interest in the hub. What I loved most about it was the incremental progression it gave you: Doing all the tasks to best optimize your teacher rank, so you could do more tasks, so you could better improve your units, so you could plan out their eventual final classes, etc. That gameplay loop was addicting as hell for me

I did all of that stuff too, but only because support conversations and character classes were effectively locked behind it. To me it was all rote busywork, and I’d prefer to see it gone.

Fortunately for you (and unfortunately for me), there seems to be plenty of walking around and upgrading the town.
 
I did all of that stuff too, but only because support conversations and character classes were effectively locked behind it. To me it was all rote busywork, and I’d prefer to see it gone.

Fortunately for you (and unfortunately for me), there seems to be plenty of walking around and upgrading the town.
I wouldn't mind if they split the difference and just had both the hub and a menu list you could select everything from also. Diegetic alongside non-diegetic options exist in plenty of other games.
 
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Im not a huge fe fan to begin with, but the school/monastery stuff completely killed 3h for me. I'd like something like shadows of valentia again.
Sacred stones was my first game and I just assumed all of the previous FE games had a traversable map until I played the FE with Lyn on the Wii U eshop, I had also skipped PoR and Radiant Dawn until getting back in the series with Awakening. Sacred Stones used to be my favorite, but that has been supplanted by Shadows of Valentia.
 
I don't see the issue with the monastery, you can fast travel around, not like you need to walk on foot everywhere.

Also they are never gonna do another new (non-remake) game that is just a set of menus/missions. People would see it as too simple/cheap. We are gonna have some kinda hub going forward. it may vary is size and use game to game but it's here to stay. Whether it be a monastery/village/castle/mansion/military camp/flying city in the sky we'll have something to free roam in between battles and interact with our army/do minigame/management/social stuff.
For me it wasn’t the running around/fast travel required for sidequests and to access various facilities, and more that the school classroom stuff to train units and the calendar system just felt pasted in from somewhere else to me. In the second half of the game, where you’re deep into a war and the professors need to be trained too to make up the numbers as 2/3rds of the kids (if you didn’t recruit them all into some ludicrous mega-house!) are arrayed against you, the gameplay loop doesn’t even work in terms of what’s going on in the story either. Would any of the characters really care about a school year at that point when you’re managing a continent-wide war and a third of your ‘students’ are your peers on the staff.
 
For me it wasn’t the running around/fast travel required for sidequests and to access various facilities, and more that the school classroom stuff to train units and the calendar system just felt pasted in from somewhere else to me. In the second half of the game, where you’re deep into a war and the professors need to be trained too to make up the numbers as 2/3rds of the kids (if you didn’t recruit them all into some ludicrous mega-house!) are arrayed against you, the gameplay loop doesn’t even work in terms of what’s going on in the story either. Would any of the characters really care about a school year at that point when you’re managing a continent-wide war and a third of your ‘students’ are your peers on the staff.
Well, to be fair, in the war arc, you're not teaching classes over an academic year. You're giving seminars on how they can further improve, yes, but it's not framed as you being an academy teacher.

Sacred stones was my first game and I just assumed all of the previous FE games had a traversable map until I played the FE with Lyn on the Wii U eshop, I had also skipped PoR and Radiant Dawn until getting back in the series with Awakening. Sacred Stones used to be my favorite, but that has been supplanted by Shadows of Valentia.
It's really funny to think now about how Sacred Stones was an odd duck for borrowing so much from Gaiden, which at that point in time was labeled a black sheep for doing a lot of things that were considered out of step for the direction that Fire Emblem eventually tread in. And now, not only has Gaiden been remade (and with an emphasis on keeping everything that made Gaiden so unique), but Gaiden feels more influential on modern Fire Emblem than most entries that came after.
 
Well, to be fair, in the war arc, you're not teaching classes over an academic year. You're giving seminars on how they can further improve, yes, but it's not framed as you being an academy teacher.


It's really funny to think now about how Sacred Stones was an odd duck for borrowing so much from Gaiden, which at that point in time was labeled a black sheep for doing a lot of things that were considered out of step for the direction that Fire Emblem eventually tread in. And now, not only has Gaiden been remade (and with an emphasis on keeping everything that made Gaiden so unique), but Gaiden feels more influential on modern Fire Emblem than most entries that came after.
It still just felt pretty daft to be framing melee weapon skill training in the middle of a war as a college seminar, also that your young character is apparently so gifted at everything that they are teaching all the older professor characters about their core skillset too. It made sense for a young adult mercenary to be teaching teenagers about fantasy warfare in part 1, less so when that same young character is now instructing senior church knights about swordplay while also teaching veteran wizards about magic and the faction leaders about the one martial sphere those characters excel in.

Admittedly, this is part of what I really dislike about the ego-stroking of player avatars, that they sideline FE characters by being brilliant at everything, and the whole school setup doubles down by having you as literally an expert teacher in everything, which is way beyond just being a strategist/advisor. I disliked the implication of Byleth being better than Edelgard with an axe and able to teach the clerics at healing, and able to teach the dragons at how to be better dragons, and better than, say, Petra at being a Pegasus knight. It just felt ludicrous in terms of how knowledgeable Byleth was for some random young merc who turned up one day. Sticking with the same hub setup and calendar for part 2 just fell apart for me at that point too, when the monastery is also pretty empty, it’s obvious it’s set up for the first half when you’re developing all the students and it’s busy and exciting. But they really could have changed it up for the second half by having a change of hub that’s a bit smaller, more streamlined and tailored to each force.

As much as I prefer the designs of TH, this is one element of TH I’m happy they seem to be leaving behind, but also why I like the way that some series like FE change things up between entries, it’s creative and I can’t really fault them for that.
 
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It still just felt pretty daft to be framing melee weapon skill training in the middle of a war as a college seminar, also that your young character is apparently so gifted at everything that they are teaching all the older professor characters about their core skillset too. It made sense for a young adult mercenary to be teaching teenagers about fantasy warfare in part 1, less so when that same young character is now instructing senior church knights about swordplay while also teaching veteran wizards about magic and the faction leaders about the one martial sphere those characters excel in.

Admittedly, this is part of what I really dislike about the ego-stroking of player avatars, that they sideline FE characters by being brilliant at everything, and the whole school setup doubles down by having you as literally an expert teacher in everything, which is way beyond just being a strategist/advisor. I disliked the implication of Byleth being better than Edelgard with an axe and able to teach the clerics at healing, and able to teach the dragons at how to be better dragons, and better than, say, Petra at being a Pegasus knight. It just felt ludicrous in terms of how knowledgeable Byleth was for some random young merc who turned up one day. Sticking with the same hub setup and calendar for part 2 just fell apart for me at that point too, when the monastery is also pretty empty, it’s obvious it’s set up for the first half when you’re developing all the students and it’s busy and exciting. But they really could have changed it up for the second half by having a change of hub that’s a bit smaller, more streamlined and tailored to each force.

As much as I prefer the designs of TH, this is one element of TH I’m happy they seem to be leaving behind, but also why I like the way that some series like FE change things up between entries, it’s creative and I can’t really fault them for that.
Personally, I always found complaints of ego-stroking avatars in Fire Emblem comically overstated.
 
Personally, I always found complaints of ego-stroking avatars in Fire Emblem comically overstated.
To each their own. Seems pretty obvious to me that having the main character be part dragon and immediately taken on to teach everybody else, including the entire academy staff, is a bit of a difference over time to you just having the skillset of being the strategic advisor to the faction leader, to having a unit, to sharing the spotlight, to being under the spotlight- there’s a through-line there from the advisor to Robin to Corrin to Byleth. Seems reasonable to comment on that development in a series where you field an army but your own young character is now a super, super special half-dragon and continually chucking the faction leader off stage while instructing all of their troops at their own specialisms. 🤷‍♂️
 
To each their own. Seems pretty obvious to me that having the main character be part dragon and immediately taken on to teach everybody else, including the entire academy staff, is a bit of a difference over time to you just having the skillset of being the strategic advisor to the faction leader, to having a unit, to sharing the spotlight, to being under the spotlight. Seems reasonable to comment on that development in a series where you field an army but your own young character is now a super, super special half-dragon and continually chucking the faction leader off stage while instructing all of their troops at their own specialisms. 🤷‍♂️
Byleth doesn't become a professor because they're part-dragon (well, as far as they know). They become a professor because Rhea wants an excuse to keep them around the monastery now that she's found them again since they were a literal newborn. It's not "Oh, Byleth's so special and can do anything, uwu!" It's "Byleth is a talented mercenary with plenty of experience of their own (and also has an annoyed dragon god living in their head)".
 
Byleth doesn't become a professor because they're part-dragon (well, as far as they know). They become a professor because Rhea wants an excuse to keep them around the monastery now that she's found them again since they were a literal newborn. It's not "Oh, Byleth's so special and can do anything, uwu!" It's "Byleth is a talented mercenary with plenty of experience of their own (and also has an annoyed dragon god living in their head)".
I realise why Rhea keeps them around for plot reasons, that’s fine. They are a talented mercenary, but ‘talented mercenary’ when they are only a young adult themselves is pushing it a bit when they are able to instruct the professors in magic and combat, plus all the flying units, when not being one themselves. I don’t know, it felt right when they are teaching teenagers about melee skills, but at the point they are giving senior staff like Manuela magic lessons in a college setting, or Alois/Catherine about swordplay, when those characters have anywhere from 1-3 decades more experience in those fields at the start of the game and then there’s a half decade Byleth skips, it feels a bit forced just to keep the ‘school/calendar’ gameplay loop going throughout part 2.

To me it shows the issue between the hub design working really well with a class of kids in academia, getting to know each other and conflicts between their backgrounds etc in part 1, but less so with a mix of ages in the team in a war in part 2. I don’t get how Byleth is a qualified tutor in every single esoteric field as a ‘skilled mercenary’, especially when some of the other academy staff are your peers (and able to train you in those skills) and professors of their own houses in part 1 but become little more than your student in part 2, outside of game mechanics needing army development to work as a school format.

Even then, I think something like training up Catherine being more like a duel, or Manuela not sitting at a desk with the rest of the students while you lecture her on the thing she was teaching for decades, could have made it feel a bit better for me. Or just ditching the whole lecture setting of the lesson completely and have the design of it happen out in the field as a ‘practical’, rather than a textbook, before heading out to a very real battle. Just feels a bit weird to still be learning all weaponry from books and a lecture from one person in part 2 when veteran soldiers like Alios and Catherine would be screaming at you that you don’t learn sword and axe combat from books today when you’re fighting for your life tomorrow, you learn them from practical lessons to get the muscle memory going. At the point they are on campaign the whole school aspect and calendar and everyone sitting at desks to listen to Byleth lecture them about the things they are better than Byleth at feels increasingly irrelevant and only there as they didn’t want to change the gameplay loop, and perhaps couldn’t as the whole character development side in TH is built around it.

Edit- reading back through my post, I feel like my criticism is really in the handling of part 2 in sticking to the same academy gameplay loop as part 1 rather than Byleth, so happy to concede the point here :)
 
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Watched the trailer again. The smaller maps and lower movement ranges do feel like a marked improvement in terms of interesting tactics, chokepoints etc. Good to see the return of the weapon triangle too.
 
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I like the brief animation of both combatants getting ready to fight just before the combat happens, that’s a nice aspect of the transition from field to combat screen!
Yeah, I agree. At first I was kinda disappointed that they replaced the traditional 2d art, (especially since the 2d art we do get to see on the boxart is really pretty, as is much of the non-FE art from the artist) but the more clips I see of it, the more I'm starting to like it. Having actual animations on the battle forecast screen instead of unmoving 2d art provides a cool visual flare never before seen in FE. I can't wait to see all the other animations for both playable characters and enemies!
 
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