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StarTopic Fire Emblem Engage |ST| Your Hidden Desire to Have Neon Joy-Con-Coloured Hair. Mark spoilers!

I'm going to give Framme the Tiki DLC. It seems like everything it does can really boost her. We shall see.

OT:

The fact that I had to use some clutch Chain Guard's and Obstruct Staffs to get a win...(y)(y) Hard mode so good. I'm going through heal staffs like water though.
 
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I've been enjoying most of the voice acting so far, even if it's a step down from Three Houses. But Amber opening his mouth = instant dislike lol. It's a shame since he has a cool design.

I'm surprised at how much influence FEH does have on this game with stuff like Tempest Trials and SP for learning skills, but it's a good fit.
 
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Got my first two S Rings back to back. One is Faye S which boost magic and looks decent for Clanne who I probaly will never give an Emblem ring to.
 
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SammyJ9 said:
I’ve only really ever played Three Houses, how is this different from that game? Why would you wait until level 20 to class change? Don’t you want to change jobs ASAP so you have better stat growths?
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You don't really want the growth rates from the promoted classes, what you want is the promotion bonuses. As an example promoting Alear to Divine Dragon only gives +5% growth to defense, res, and luck which isn't anything to write home about. The more useful promotion bonus is the +1 mov, access to fist weapons, +3 bld, and +1 or +2 to every other stat. It could take 5-10 levels to get a similar type of power boost, assuming you don't get horribly rng screwed. Of course the real prize is the boost in movement and access to a new weapon type. Movement is the best stat in FE and having more of it is always a good thing. Additionally with how powerful the break status is, getting more options for breaking foes is a huge boost.

In most FE games, most of your units are never getting to the level/stat caps unless you do an excessive amount of grinding or only using a handful of elite units. In the more recent FE titles the real reason to stay in a class beyond level 10 is to gain access to class skills. It's why in 3 Houses some people would suggest having x character get y proficiency so they can get z skill before switching into the class you actually want them in.

I honestly believe "wait till level 20 to promote" is on a similar tier of of bad advice for FE beginners as "bench your Jeigan asap". It's advice from an era where people spent more time theory crafting what units were good at the end of the game instead of actually playing the game. That's not to say promote everyone at level 10 asap, just don't hurt yourself in the mid game with a bunch of level 15-18 unpromoted units when the game is throwing tons of promoted enemies at you.
 
Gave in and cancelled my Amazon order in favor of digital. I'm up to the end of Chapter 4 and have some early thoughts brewing.

  • Loving the characters introduced so far.
  • The writing is very straight forward and I appreciate that even if I prefer the tone and complexity of Three Houses.
  • The early maps are simple but interesting.
  • Alear is a fun protagonist.
  • The Emblem Ring mechanic is a lot of fun to use and offers a lot of utility.
  • Breaking is a cool twist to the weapon triangle.
I'll need to play more to really get more detailed thoughts, but so far, yeah, it's great!
 
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BassForever said:
You don't really want the growth rates from the promoted classes, what you want is the promotion bonuses. As an example promoting Alear to Divine Dragon only gives +5% growth to defense, res, and luck which isn't anything to write home about. The more useful promotion bonus is the +1 mov, access to fist weapons, +3 bld, and +1 or +2 to every other stat. It could take 5-10 levels to get a similar type of power boost, assuming you don't get horribly rng screwed. Of course the real prize is the boost in movement and access to a new weapon type. Movement is the best stat in FE and having more of it is always a good thing. Additionally with how powerful the break status is, getting more options for breaking foes is a huge boost.
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Right, and all that makes sense, but then what’s the downside to classing up immediately? I’m a bit confused. It’s not like you lose levels somehow. Wouldn't it be better to have the benefits of better movement + stats right away at level 10 while you level up to 20+ rather than waiting until 20? That's 10 levels you're not getting any benefit? I feel like I'm missing something here
 
SammyJ9 said:
Right, and all that makes sense, but then what’s the downside to classing up immediately? I’m a bit confused. It’s not like you lose levels somehow. Wouldn't it be better to have the benefits of better movement + stats right away at level 10 while you level up to 20+ rather than waiting until 20? That's 10 levels you're not getting any benefit? I feel like I'm missing something here
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When you promote, your level resets to 1, but the level cap stays at 20. If you wait til 20 to promote, you get all of those level ups, and then get reset to 1, where you get to hit 20 again for a total of 40 potential level ups. If you promote sooner, you miss out on the level-ups between 11 and 20, depending on how early you did it.

However, like BassForever said, there's more to promoting than just resetting your level which is why you may not always want to wait until level 20 to promote.
 
Metroid said:
When you promote, your level resets to 1, but the level cap stays at 20. If you wait til 20 to promote, you get all of those level ups, and then get reset to 1, where you get to hit 20 again for a total of 40 potential level ups. If you promote sooner, you miss out on the level-ups between 11 and 20, depending on how early you did it.

However, like BassForever said, there's more to promoting than just resetting your level which is why you may not always want to wait until level 20 to promote.
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... OH. That's the critical information I was missing, I had no idea your level reset. I thought it was like Three Houses, where your level just goes up and up into the 40s. That's a really interesting way of doing that! Now this all makes more sense. So there's a tradeoff between getting maximum value for your levels versus wanting the benefits of changing class sooner.

This is going to really mess with my "try to keep a party who's all the same level" tendancies
 
SammyJ9 said:
Right, and all that makes sense, but then what’s the downside to classing up immediately? I’m a bit confused. It’s not like you lose levels somehow. Wouldn't it be better to have the benefits of better movement + stats right away at level 10 while you level up to 20+ rather than waiting until 20? That's 10 levels you're not getting any benefit? I feel like I'm missing something here
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Historically, promoted units gain less exp unless they're killing other promoted units. Since promotion bonuses are static, if you don't need the boost right away you can take advantage being unpromoted to kill other unpromoted enemies to level faster. Additionally if the character in question already has good growths in a key stat you want to get to high values, those extra levels can go a long way.

Here's a few hypothetical situation

Scenario A: You promote a unit at the start of a battle that's level 10. They get the big stat boost (+2 all), they get a bunch of kills but only get 1 level where they get +1 str, +1 spd, +1 def. So your net here is +3 str/spd/def, +2 everything else.

Scenario B: You keep the unit unpromoted for the same battle, they get a bunch of kills and get 3 levels. The net of those levels is +3 str, +2 spd, +2 dex, +3 def, +2 luck. You then promote after the battle is over, your net stat gains are +5 str/def, +4 spd/dex/luck, +2 everything else.

Scenario C: Same as scenario B, however you get rng screwed, and your net levels are +1 str, +1 def, +1 spd, +1 luck and then you promote, you net +3 str/def/spd/luck and +2 everything else

In scenarios B and C the mission was more challenging because you didn't have the promoted unit with extra move, weapon types, and the big +2 all stat buff to start. Scenario A the mission was a lot easier, but your unit doesn't end up as beastly as it would have in Scenario B. Of course if you get the unlucky scenario C, you made the battle harder for a single extra point of luck which really wasn't worth it.

That's why it's hard to give advice on when to promote in FE. There's valid reasons to wait on promotions and valid reasons to promote right away. All of the above doesn't even take into consideration learning skills which starting in Awakening further complicated the "when to promote" discussion.

Edit: I didn't even process that your only experience was 3H where levels don't reset. 3H is a very different beast compared to all other FE games lol.
 
SammyJ9 said:
... OH. That's the critical information I was missing, I had no idea your level reset. I thought it was like Three Houses, where your level just goes up and up into the 40s. That's a really interesting way of doing that! Now this all makes more sense. So there's a tradeoff between getting maximum value for your levels versus wanting the benefits of changing class sooner.

This is going to really mess with my "try to keep a party who's all the same level" tendancies
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Hah, that's what I figured. Three Houses was definitely different in that regard.
 
As an added fun fact in the discussion about bases, growths, and promotions. The real FE try/die hards have not only beaten almost every FE game with hacked versions of the game where everyone has 0% growths, they've beaten them where your growth rates are negative, and you lose stats when you level.

I'm not about that life, but watching those kinds of runs really helped me to break out of my "old school" FE bad habits ie don't use Jagens, wait till level 20 to promote, give boots to your slowest unit, a character is only as good as they are in endgame, etc
 
BassForever said:
Historically, promoted units gain less exp unless they're killing other promoted units. Since promotion bonuses are static, if you don't need the boost right away you can take advantage being unpromoted to kill other unpromoted enemies to level faster. Additionally if the character in question already has good growths in a key stat you want to get to high values, those extra levels can go a long way.

Here's a few hypothetical situation

Scenario A: You promote a unit at the start of a battle that's level 10. They get the big stat boost (+2 all), they get a bunch of kills but only get 1 level where they get +1 str, +1 spd, +1 def. So your net here is +3 str/spd/def, +2 everything else.

Scenario B: You keep the unit unpromoted for the same battle, they get a bunch of kills and get 3 levels. The net of those levels is +3 str, +2 spd, +2 dex, +3 def, +2 luck. You then promote after the battle is over, your net stat gains are +5 str/def, +4 spd/dex/luck, +2 everything else.

Scenario C: Same as scenario B, however you get rng screwed, and your net levels are +1 str, +1 def, +1 spd, +1 luck and then you promote, you net +3 str/def/spd/luck and +2 everything else

In scenarios B and C the mission was more challenging because you didn't have the promoted unit with extra move, weapon types, and the big +2 all stat buff to start. Scenario A the mission was a lot easier, but your unit doesn't end up as beastly as it would have in Scenario B. Of course if you get the unlucky scenario C, you made the battle harder for a single extra point of luck which really wasn't worth it.

That's why it's hard to give advice on when to promote in FE. There's valid reasons to wait on promotions and valid reasons to promote right away. All of the above doesn't even take into consideration learning skills which starting in Awakening further complicated the "when to promote" discussion.

Edit: I didn't even process that your only experience was 3H where levels don't reset. 3H is a very different beast compared to all other FE games lol.
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Great write-up! This makes a ton of sense now that I know how the level resetting works, lol. I've played a couple older Fire Emblem games but not long enough to really get to classing up, so I'm showing my ignorance here.

So how many promotion ranks are there? Three Houses had, IIRC, Base -> Beginner -> Intermediate -> Advanced -> Master. But if you could get 20 levels per, then max level would theoretically be 100 (relatively speaking). I'm assuming that in Engage the 'Base' class at least really isn't a thing
 
BassForever said:
As an added fun fact in the discussion about bases, growths, and promotions. The real FE try/die hards have not only beaten almost every FE game with hacked versions of the game where everyone has 0% growths, they've beaten them where your growth rates are negative, and you lose stats when you level.

I'm not about that life, but watching those kinds of runs really helped me to break out of my "old school" FE bad habits ie don't use Jagens, wait till level 20 to promote, give boots to your slowest unit, a character is only as good as they are in endgame, etc
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Oh yeah I'm fully with you here. Negative growth rates are mindboggling but prove that these games are definitely doable without grinding
 
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SammyJ9 said:
Great write-up! This makes a ton of sense now that I know how the level resetting works, lol. I've played a couple older Fire Emblem games but not long enough to really get to classing up, so I'm showing my ignorance here.

So how many promotion ranks are there? Three Houses had, IIRC, Base -> Beginner -> Intermediate -> Advanced -> Master. But if you could get 20 levels per, then max level would theoretically be 100 (relatively speaking). I'm assuming that in Engage the 'Base' class at least really isn't a thing
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Most FE games only have 2 tiers, base and advanced/promotion, Engage also uses the 2 tier system. Engage uses the same "prestige" system from Awakening and Fates where you can use a second seal to reset your level and change to another class. This lets you learn the new classes skills while keeping your old stat increases and skills. I don't see it being as useful in Engage since you have such a limited pool of skill slots (that are also shared with emblem ring skills) unless that gets expanded later on that I don't know about.
 
Gingerbread Man said:
Can I do an unlimited amount of skirmishes late in the game? So far, I avoided them (I'm at Chapter 12), but I'm worrying I'm losing exp.
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On normal/hard they're unlimited and spawn based upon the real world clock. Very easy to exploit.

On Maniac only a handful spawn the entire game.
 
Does Chapter 8 have a Three Houses reference?
Defending the Monastery from Edelgard's invasion map?
 
Kingpin Rogers said:
How’s everyone enjoying the game then? I have high hopes for when I get round to playing it myself.
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I'm having a blast - the battles are the most fun I've ever had in this genre before. The music & visuals are also just delightful.

Tbh I have no idea how this game only ended up with an 82% on metacritic (still a very good score I know). Just feels incredibly low even taking into account all the aspects that people might have wanted to return from 3H.
 
Kingpin Rogers said:
How’s everyone enjoying the game then? I have high hopes for when I get round to playing it myself.
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Combat is fantastic, it's super fun and the maps are tightly designed. This is some good-ass Fire Emblem

Story and characters are a whole lot of nothing. They wanted a vehicle for teaming up with past Fire Emblem characters, and that's about all the effort that went into writing. Totally worth it for the gameplay, tho.
 
I'm only at Chapter 4, so this might change, but so far I'm getting the impression I was a Three Houses fan, not a Fire Emblem fan. It's likely because so far I'm finding the story and writing really bad and the characters fairly uninteresting. The combat is fun (I would say it's different from 3H, not necessarily better or worse), so hopefully it's enough to retain my interest

The graphics and performance really are a substantial upgrade though. If you showed me both games and told me they were on different hardware generations I would have believed you
 
Kingpin Rogers said:
How’s everyone enjoying the game then? I have high hopes for when I get round to playing it myself.
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I'm having so much fun. Even if the writing isn't there, I'm even enjoying that. They really just nailed this. I have some issues with it, but I'm loving the ride.
 
hologram said:
I'm only at Chapter 4, so this might change, but so far I'm getting the impression I was a Three Houses fan, not a Fire Emblem fan. It's likely because so far I'm finding the story and writing really bad and the characters fairly uninteresting. The combat is fun (I would say it's different from 3H, not necessarily better or worse), so hopefully it's enough to retain my interest

The graphics and performance really are a substantial upgrade though. If you showed me both games and told me they were on different hardware generations I would have believed you
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yeah the writing is so bad that I'm just zooming through the convos really. 3H was very different. The writing was interesting as were the characters. So far only Alear is interesting as he seems to be the only somewhat 3 dimensional character. The writing feels like if you gathered a group of 18-21 years olds with little writing experience to write a low budget anime in 2 weeks lol. I'd really like to know how many if any 3H writers touched this game. The VA work is pretty subpar outside of Alear. Even someone as renown as Justin Briner sounds amateurish but that's because of what he has to work with.

With that said. I'm having fun lmao. I can tell that the ring system will make the hard and maddening difficulties more entertaining.
 
If you do the Tiki DLC quest make sure you get the Golden Item in the middle of the map via Rewarp or Warp. I had to go back in my save to get the item -__-
 
Weebos said:
It's a pretty common map type in the series.
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The respawing fliers made me think of it specifically. Could be just similar, though.

On the subject of Relay Battles, I can't seem to finish any? Just says no data found or whatever
 
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While I do like this game, I think I’m coming to the conclusion that I’m way more of a “Three Houses fan” than just a “Fire Emblem fan”. Like I played Awakening and both Birthright and Conquest, but neither of those nor Engage are hitting like TH did.

Like, as one of the 5 people that liked the monastery, the Somniel is such a downgrade. There’s nothing really to do hear and walk around & maybe, if I’m lucky, hear something different from the characters than the same thing they said last chapter. There’s no way to really build supports between characters other than battle, giving gifts, and eating together, unless I’m missing something. So instead of it being like Three Houses where at the end of every chapter I’d watch like 8-10 supports, in engage it’s like 3 per chapter. And as someone who really likes watching supports it’s disappointing.

And, and this could just be me, is this game way harder than TH? I beat that game 6 times and didn’t really have any problems with difficulty until like maybe the last maps in the routes. But even the skirmishes I’m losing units left and right. I just want to train up units I forgot about, but now they can’t really survive in any battle. Thankfully I only ever play on casual mode, but still.

Also why is this game not fully voiced? That definitely feels like a downgrade from Three Houses. The voice acting’s good here, and I wish I got to hear more of it.

But I’m still gonna see this game through to the end. Then hope the next game is something more my style. Happy that those that didn’t like Three Houses are satisfied tho.
 
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Only completed up to Chapter 6 so far, but I'm loving it! I've found two cute cats so far. I wonder how many more there are?
 
Weebos said:
Some classic Secret Shop nonsense, was the item worth it?
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To me, yes as it would bother me that I would not have access to something listed in the DLC that I paid for but couldn't access.

《Silver Card》
While you possess this item, in-game purchases in the Armory and Item Shop will be discounted by 30%.
Note: You can find this item in the newly added Divine Paralogue map.
 
blue2425 said:
To me, yes as it would bother me that I would not have access to something listed in the DLC that I paid for but couldn't access.

《Silver Card》
While you possess this item, in-game purchases in the Armory and Item Shop will be discounted by 30%.
Note: You can find this item in the newly added Divine Paralogue map.
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Ah, I missed it, but I know you can redo the map, I'll have to see if it's still there.
 
Weebos said:
Ah, I missed it, but I know you can redo the map, I'll have to see if it's still there.
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Yea it should still be there but I don't know how redoing maps worked so I just went back since I wasn't too far from save. But yea I'm not a fan of that type of stuff in paid dlc. Base game, I don't mind that much.
 
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Please refrain from generalizing based on things like nationalities. -PixelKnight, Harina, Irene
Played up till around chapter 7 on lunatic and not really enjoying it, turns the game into a slog because they were dumb enough to fixed growths in. Meanwhile hard is far far too easy. Game is more fun than 3H but I've kind of had my fill, Conquest this is certainly not. I really wish jp devs knew how to balance strategy games.
 
Leica said:
Played up till around chapter 7 on lunatic and not really enjoying it, turns the game into a slog because they were dumb enough to fixed growths in. Meanwhile hard is far far too easy. Game is more fun than 3H but I've kind of had my fill, Conquest this is certainly not. I really wish jp devs knew how to balance strategy games.
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You must be incredibly good because you're the first person I heard that said hard is easy. Also I disagree on the balancing.
 
Cheetah6442 said:
You must be incredibly good because you're the first person I heard that said hard is easy. Also I disagree on the balancing.
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Once you realize how busted certain units are it honestly gets pretty easy, I guess the most balanced way of playing would be hard with no grinding but even then I've never really been into the comical gap between hard and lunatic in Awakening onwards FE games. This one is more balanced than that at least.
 
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The Tiki DLC battle was really tough on hard, beat it by the skin of my teeth and several resets and readjusts. And then the Chapter 7 map was a complete joke by comparison.

Sigurd’s dash attack is SO satisfying when it lines up right. I had Alfred dash through five enemy units, OHKO three of them (two were mounted) and do half the health of the boss and another flier.
 
Clov said:
Only completed up to Chapter 6 so far, but I'm loving it! I've found two cute cats so far. I wonder how many more there are?
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There’s a lot! I’m on Chapter 8 and I think I have five cats? I love the animal adopting.
 
SammyJ9 said:
The Tiki DLC battle was really tough on hard, beat it by the skin of my teeth and several resets and readjusts. And then the Chapter 7 map was a complete joke by comparison.

Sigurd’s dash attack is SO satisfying when it lines up right. I had Alfred dash through five enemy units, OHKO three of them (two were mounted) and do half the health of the boss and another flier.
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The reward is worth it too, completely insane emblem.
 
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I’m on chapter 5. I love the battles and some of the new mechanics, the variation of the engage abilities, the UI, weapon triangle becoming ‘break’ and having foot knights ignore that. Chain guard, healers being able to fight better, the clarity of the ruleset and the battlefield, the visuals. The combat is something I’m going to wait until the end to form up some thoughts on as I want to see what it’s like when you’ve got a full army with emblems, they are crazy strong when some have them and some don’t. So if this post seems overly negative it’s only because I want to be able to do the battles justice, and as a big fan of SRPGs I love what I’ve seen so far!

However, the writing, the script and the characterisation, is downright terrible. It’s already simplistic but it’s also repetitive and aggressively bland, I can predict pretty much every line as it’s all variations on ‘you’re wonderful!’ and ‘we should save the innocent’. Like… yes alright you’re all fundamentally decent, heroic nobles that care about your people. But there’s no depth to any characterisation, no moments of memorable, good writing or wit that makes a character stand out from the rest or drills into what makes them an interesting individual. Just endless mild cliche. I feel like the ring emblems also needlessly prioritises chats with old characters over the new cast, giving them a central role when they are immortal spirits that have also offered zero emotion, characterisation or scenes that differentiate them from each other so far, just generic heroic support along the lines of ‘I’m with you all the way’. Are they just replica AI ghosts of the heroes? Then fine. But don’t imply that they actually care about stuff and have opinions then have them all act like robots. Given that the cast includes mythic legends from across time and space, a dragon in human form, endless royalty and veteran warriors, I don’t get how every single exchange doesn’t sparkle with interesting things to say or takes on events etc. It’s like it’s the biggest cast yet (including emblems) but everyone is as inoffensively bland as possible. It’s all just so skippable.

On top of that, even though the downtime stuff has been streamlined, it’s still bloated. Running around after the battles feels pointless and seems to only exist to show off the 3D battlefields that they built. I like collected the pets but it doesn’t really need you running around to do it. Polishing the rings feels like needless busy work and is just weird the emblems like it so much. The gacha element of the bond rings is too time consuming and random for such minor effects. I mean. None of it’s essential but it all just seems so pointless and lengthy for the sake of it, even if you like the activities/rewards.

I do really like how colourful the game is and most of the character designs, and the use of teal as a colour on both the Pegasus knight and the boy wizard retainer. But I do also think even the generic sexualization of the female half of the cast is bland and tired? Like, the heroic ones just have their chest on show. The evil ones are in fishnets etc. The introduction of most of them starts with a focus on their chest and then pans up. I can’t even be bothered to criticise it any further as that element is as tired and predictable as the writing. It’s not as bad as some other games but it matches the writing in that it just feels included and going through the motions for the sake of it.

I don’t think those elements will get better at all at this point, and it’s a shame as initial writing, dialogue and cut scenes are things that have a big impact early on in an SRPG before you’ve committed to lengthy battles, and Engage both stumbles out of the gate and hasn’t recovered so far on that front. It’s first big dramatic moment had zero impact for me.

However, the battles are heating up nicely. Also I like the pace of the game, that it doesn’t hang about, it moves quickly from key scene to key scene in the story. But I wish it just did so with a stronger eye for dialogue and characterisation as right now you could swap most of the lines around between the main cast and the emblems and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference outside of the generic excitability of the kids.
 
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Hocot8 said:
I'd really like to know how many if any 3H writers touched this game.
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3H and Engage have very different developers behind them on account of being developed by different teams.
None of the writers for 3H worked on this game, the main scenario director for Engage is Nami Komuro who is a writer at IS who worked on Awakening, Fates, and The Origami King.
Three Houses on the other hand had Yuki Ikeno, Ryohei Hayashi, and Mari Okamoto as writers, all of them from KT.
 
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