For me, Engage did some things well gameplay-wise, but the story and characters were rather lackluster, to say the least. I personally think that while the Emblems only really work for this game, I'd like to see the Break system incorporated into future titles.
They defiantly put more focus to animation and combat in engage. If they can take that and do it with characters and story for the next one, it will be fantastic
I kinda of feel bad for engage. Basically just make a better story characters while keeping the animation and gameplay you’ll have no reason to comeback to this game
I played the game 2 times. One regular playthrough, my first one. And a second one where i skipped every cutscene and every support, even supports i didn't know yet. I was so INCREDIBLY uninterested in EVERY SINGLE character, it was bad. Needless to say that i didn't finish my second playthrough. Gameplay is incredibly good, but without story and characters to carry it, the game falls too flat for me. I am a story and characters guy, i need to be invested in those things to enjoy even the BEST gameplay. It wasn't my game.
I actually skipped dialogue in my first play through, I think two chapters from finishing the game I said to myself "Why am I still playing this?" And I stopped. Went back to do Fell Xenolouge when I heard good things, finished that. (enjoyable) Tried a paralouge to upgrade a ring and I remembered that feeling again. Dropped it again.
Interesting perspective. I’m currently on my second attempt, I never got far in my first, the plot was just ticking me off. I know FE has some bad, bad stories in past games, but something about this one led to me dropping it early. I’ve found that skipping the cutscenes and treating the game as a great level pack has actually made it more enjoyable to me.
My expectation was that the DLC would explain who Zero Emblem is. The DLC did not explain who Zero Emblem is. My headcannon is that it's Nell from Famicom Wars.
I'm really happy to learn that engage has that gaming core to it. as someone who came in in three houses, I almost didn't realise how terrible the maps were, because I didn't have a frame of reference. Now, if we could combine the two of them, that would be an incredible game and hopefully bring together the two sides of the community they seem to represent
@@easyygo3008unfortunately, there are people like me who lack the hardware to emulate things. Just for the record, my potato laptop starts to sound like an airplane taking off just from using Chrome.
Honestly, I wanted to like engage. But the story and characters were so... Bland that despite the gameplay i couldnt bother myself to keep playing. Cause there just didn't feel like any point to. I don't care about these people and events, I don't want to see more of them. And keep in mind, this was someone who was able to get through birthright and Revelation. Yeah. Engage sits well below those for me because at LEAST the characters feel cool and good. Even if the story is lacking, the supports are good. Don't know how anyone will ever be able to complain about awakening's story after engage. ... That all said though, I did kinda like Diamant. He looked pretty dang cool. .... Also, it isn't the dragon protagonists that are the problem, it's the effort put into them. Make us a GOOD dragon protagonist please. It could be so compelling done right.
Game is fuckn terrible, you are never invested into it. Is lije playing a FE version of mario kart that focuses on puzzles and gimmicks rather than military tactics
Good video! I'm a gameplay-first sorta guy (I mean, I love Fates Conquest), so in theory Engage ought to be my jam--but honestly, I just couldn't do it. The maps and mechanics are strong, but they aren't Conquest-tier; not strong enough to make up for the absolute cringefest that is the writing and characters. The thing I love about Conquest is that it has a small cluster of very strong core mechanics, and it spends the campaign throwing out maps that increasingly demand player mastery of them. Engage, by contrast, has a *zillion* unconnected mechanics that shift from character to character based on who has what ring, and then either are or aren't on cooldown at any given moment. The ring powers just introduce too much for the player to keep track of relative to the value they add to the game, IMO.
I think my issue with the rings is that you lost half of them for half the game. Its kinda like losing a unit you spent a whole bunch of time training and then being forced to reform tactics without them just yo have them return and be forced to readjust. We dont usually have that in fe: once a unit is recruited theyre with you till the end.
I think what also helped conquest is despite the bad story the characters overall seemed decent enough. Sure it can get trope ish but they were still entertaining to an extent
How do you feel towards the localization of FE games in general? It bothered me when a support conversation was removed in fates and pivotal dialogue was removed in 3 houses and so many words in engage were change on how they mean.
I would always rather the original intent and messaging be carried over, if at all possible. It hasn't been a deal breaker for me at any point in the series' history but I always would prefer to see what the original writers had to say, over somebody else.
For starters I love how the game looks. The battle animations are well done, the gameplay is fun, the map designs feel good. Building characters is easy and fun, and emblems to me add a great new mechanic to battles I just unfortunately have so many issues that while I love engage and will do more play throughs (at the time of writing I only recently completed my first) far from a favorite. One: emblems. It’s not necessarily that they make the game too easy themselves, it’s the fact they’re too easy because no one else but you has them. Sure sometimes we fight ivy, veyle the hounds etc using them but they don’t often feel like a threat with them since they stay in one spot, giving you time to plan around them, and at that point they’re the equivalent of a generic boss with a prf weapon. The emblems don’t make bosses that threatening since while ivy sniping you with Lyn sounds scary at first, it’s ivys attack stat. Just bait it with a tanky unit, and she can only use the attack once anyways so it really doesn’t matter. I feel like the idea of Sombron with the dark emblems was so cool! Emblems of all the bosses and villains from past series? Cool! Till you see they’re just generic enemies and an idea shoo horned into the litteral final battle of the game. Maybe if dark emblems were brought up sooner, fleshed out more, and given to the bosses after we get out emblems back, it would have been a really cool fix Character writing; I agree that character motivations are weird. Diamant really is like the only One with a motivation. Sure he just gives us the emblem ring cause god said so big then the Elusian army kidnap his father. He now his stakes to join us to save his father. Then when his father is killed his motive changes to avenging his father. Great! Ivy and hortensia too. They join to avenge their father and reclaim their kingdom. The issue is that the rest of the characters all feel like they’re written to be comedic in some way. They have one personality trait, rosado being cute and loving art, Chloe likes fairy tales and weird food, Alfred likes muscles. With Alfred it’s a real shame because most of his character is hidden behind ONE support with his sister. If you just miss it, you miss most of his character. Yunaka being bubbly and trademarking hiya papaya for fe fans to spam and think it’s funny (joking) timerra singing about meat, Merrin being some girl obsessed with big collecting bugs, Fogado and his retainers being the equivalent of frat boys, with pandreo being a party animal priest who howls. And these all sound like exaggerations but for some of them that really is most of their character and it’s disappointing. Sure in three houses we had chatacters like lysithea and lindhardt with their sweets and napping quirk, but they were much more than that. Lysithea was a part of an experiment and lindhardt was extremely intelligent, even playing a role in the ashen wolves dlc. You can have quirky characters but they need something to make them stick. Towards the end game the lords just feel like characters to give an audience reaction. “oh no!” “Divine one” kinda just standing there to react. Deigns wise, they feel too modern. Zelkov and yunaka get VR headsets when engaged, diamant straight up has Jordon’s on in his somniel outfit. It clashes with the medivel theming the series has, and that this game is still trying to go for. I feel they’re over designed too. Rosado looks great, but then his wyvern is all decorated and makes looking at him in battle a little muddled. But then you reclass them and they look a little more generic since like three houses they’re designs are only used in one class but at least In three houses I could toggle them to keep their designs in any class that wasn’t mounted. Personally hortensia was the straw that broke the canals back when it came to designs in this game. It’s a shame because some designs are great, personally Solm has some of my favs but even then they feel like they’re over doing them and being flashy for the sake of it. None of the designs looked uniformed and while yes diffrent kingdoms will have different fashion, three houses still let the characters rep their kingdoms and homes, and still looked unified with each other. Just some thoughts. Engage is by no means a bad game. Far from it. It is definitely fun at the very least and looks amazing. But man even going in with a more open mind I was still a bit disappointed with a lot of aspects of it.
I seriously, SERIOUSLY want to give you props with this retrospective. Out of all the reviews I have seen in the past year, this retrospective is not only the most fleshed out and fair, but it is the most truthful review of Engage to date. I watched a 1 year later retrospective of Engage just a few days ago from another creator and all he said in that review was "Emblem rings good, story bad, best fire emblem game ever." The point is even thought the emblem ring gameplay is stellar, there are other gameplay elements that drag Engage down that many reviewers never touch upon and I am so glad that you do. Everything that you mentioned in your video I agree with one hundred percent. The only real thing from your positive section that I kind of wished you mentioned was how ugly the outfits are when you second seal a unit to a different class. The armor is so butt ugly in this game that there are some units like Diamant and Kegetsu who have such amazing designs that I can't bring myself to second seal them. The armor looks THAT BAD. I think the hero design is hands down the worst out of all of them and was the class I wanted to switch Diamant to, but I refused to make him look like a horse. I just hate it so much.
Wow, that's very high praise! Thank you binx! I'm glad you enjoyed! There are a lot of the second seal designs I do like, but some like hero are definitely rough. They could've just taken the GBA hero designs, made them 3d, and been done with it. But we got... That. Gross.
@@TitaniumLegman I also appreciate that Jane didn't go out of her way to get Engage if she knew she wasn't going to like it. Just like her, I am a very story centric kind of person and I believe Fire Emblem has always been half story half gameplay. I went into Engage blind, so if I had known the story was as bad as it was. I would have done the same thing. It's hard sometimes to get into a conversation about Engage because there are many people who just play Engage for the gameplay and nothing else. I won't say that they're wrong, Fates suffered the same way where most just skipped the story and went straight to the gameplay, but at the same time. Fire Emblem deserves to have a great story. It is one of the few active Nintendo franchises that is aloud to do so (other than maybe Zelda.) What IS needs to do is combine a deep and dark story with a ton of themes with Engages gameplay and art style. You can have comedy in your fire emblem games, there's nothing wrong with that! It just sucks because if you look hard enough, there are themes in Engage that are worth exploring. Even though the father death is cliche at this point, I liked Diamant's dilemma when it came to protecting his father. It is something I have never seen a protagonist do before and I liked the dynamic a lot. Same with Ivy, if we knew more about the relationship with her and her father, I think that could have captivated a lot of people since she is already going through a redemption arc. Engage is literally just "wasted potential, the game." As someone who writes on their free time, I wish I was in the room when IS was drafting this. If they had changed just a handful of things and maybe cut down the roster by half (I seriously don't think you need Firene and Solm since no one in those sections go through arcs like Brodia and Elusia do) you could have had a better game here. Have Alear mediate the war between Brodia and Elusia, create a romance between Diamant and Ivy, why not! We haven't had a cannon relationship in years, set it up like Romeo and Juliet and you immediately just created a better story with tension (honestly, taking anything from Shakespeare can make any story better.) Plus, if you do this, the fathers don't have to die! You can keep them alive and maybe kill off the leads instead, it would be different! Point is I thought about this for a while and there are things IS could have done to fix the story, again, wish I was in that room cause man, some of the characters in Engage really do deserve better.
@@binxthebinx6575engage in general is just as rough discussion to talk about. It has very good gameplay but the other half sucks (characters, story,) fire emblem shouldn’t feel like a chore and yet engage felt that way due to how un engaging the story is and the characters are. The hero worship got old fast and it sucked how many characters ruined their introduction by fanboying the divine dragon. I get he’s a god but even then they should still keep their personality in tact. Heck many characters also suffer from bad first impressions. Funny enough Diamant and ivy personally should’ve been the main characters they are way more interesting since they are at war with each other. Not to mention Diamant also feels like an actual fire emblem character compared to the rest of the cast. When you mention fate, fates had the worst story but I felt like the journey wasn’t as bad due to the world building within the game. I also preferred the cast in fates because despite being trope they at least had some moments to shine with their dialogue before being introduced so you had a minor idea what their personality is like. Engage if you’re a retainer good luck trying to get some screen time cause many times they only get a few lines and they mostly waste it praising alear(although I feel the worst offender by far is kagetsu whose only two sentence in his join chapter is about talking about the rings and joins in a chapter where your trying to run away from the enemy) One thing that got me out of this game is the characters none of them felt like they relate to the world around them funny enough Diamant shares some in game lore that helps with world building the rest of the cast rarely talk about. I think what also doesn’t help is alear is basically the person who you must agree with and it can cause other characters to not look interesting since many of alear support are just bad. For example amber you don’t get to see his funny personality in alear support and unfortunately many people got amber c support with alear and that left a horrible impression on amber cause he’s actually quite funny but alear doesn’t help the character unless they get A and even then if the character impression with alear is bad your not gonna want to learn more about the character
@@Yoshixandir Whenever Engage is brought up. Talking about Diamant and how he should have been the main character is just a popular discussion to have at this point. I am still EXTREMELY salty about that because Diamant was a lord/prince character I wanted in the leading role for YEEEAARRS! When was the last time someone like that was the main character (excluding remakes, aka, Echos). Chrom...almost 12 FRICKEN YEARS AGO...AAAAHHH!! I just hate how robbed Diamant was, seriously. It has now gotten to a point for me where I almost WISH IS made a sequeal just so that I can see more of him. In fact, in the second game, kill off Alear, make Diamant the main character and have the story heavily focus on the other leads (Ivy, Alfred, Timmera) and, you know, DEVELOP THEM! But IS would never do that because they don't have the BALLS to take feedback seriously, and that's how this is probably going to stay until someone on that team gets the picture. That we are so sick of avatar characters in the leading role. We want a main character now with their own identity and no matter how many times we complain about Corrin, or Byleth, they repeat the same mistakes, which is why we got Alear. I'm so over it. I want a Brodia game not...whatever the hell this was...
@@mauricesteel4995 The thief class is lacking the trademark sword and bow accessibility. You could technically say "we have wolf knight" for that but it just doesn't feel quite right. Honestly I feel like they just didn't bring back assassins because it could screw with game balance even if you took away their classic assassination skill. Since assassins have good evasion stats, they could potentially break several axe wielding foes against them. Then the rest of your team does clean up on enemies that can't counterattack briefly. If they nerfed the assassin class too much, fans would argue why were they even brought back.
My spine hurts when I remember how hard I cringed at the (spoilers) Zephia/Griss death scene. GOD IT WAS SO BAD. AND IT JUST WOULDN'T END 😭 I did enjoy experiencing this game as you streamed but man was I chugging haterade a lot of the time, lol
The funny thing is, Mikoto’s death in “Fates” did every sin that Lumera did… EXCEPT for not dragging the a tualdeath out. Which makes it 12 times more effective in hindsight.
Exactly as you say. Knowing when a scene has overstayed its welcome is a vital skill that Engage clearly did not posses. Brevity can amplify the impact of a scene immensely, and we see what happens on the other end here.
@@TitaniumLegman I agree. Edelgard's death scene at the end of Azure Moon is one of the most effective death cutscenes. There was only one word of dialogue, thus showing rather than telling and leaving a lot of things, such as Edelgard's reasons for throwing the dagger, open to interpretation.
41:58 It’s funny that you would say that because all of engage maps are based on/inspired by older games’ designs, chapter 11 is very reminiscent of Thracia chapter 7, Engage ch. 6 introducing Micaiah with a map that feels exactly like RD ch.3 and Engage chapter 4? What game other than gaiden would split your units apart that far just to teach you about celicas warp. engage is supposedly an anniversary game but only shows love to the series through its maps
$40 + $30 DLC is still too much for a game I know Im going to be skipping all the story cut scenes after an hour or two. I do appreciate this very thorough review though. It confirms a lot of my suspicions about the game and things Ive heard about here and there that have scared me away from it until now. Someday Ill get it because I love FE …but not yet, too much in my backlog and Unicorn Overlord is a month away. lol
I noticed it says you have 850 hours played for Three Houses? Respect. Thats nuts Haha The most confirmed time Ive ever dumped into a single game is maybe 250 hours into X-Com2 and 200 into Triangle Strategy and Witcher 3.
It should be noted at least some of that is idle time, I fell asleep with it on sometimes. But that said, I've played all four routes, did all the DLC, and then replayed Azure Moon two more times. 😅 I really love that game. My top three most played on Steam, for comparison, are 1000 hours in Destiny 2, 608 for Xcom 2, and 576 for tactics ogre. Again, there's idle time there, but still.
I’ll accept the Ivy… criticism, so long as you don’t turn around to Camilla and say “Now, THAT is what you should do.” Because Ivy has by far the superior personality, and if she wasn’t so over-designed it would be all: “Camilla? Never even knew her…”
Oh don't get me wrong, Ivy has great writing. Her design is just atrocious. Sexualized as she is, I do like Camilla's design more. The colors match far better and she looks more like a warrior than a fashion show competitor. So a win to Ivy for writing, and a win to Camilla for design, if we're comparing the two.
I might be able to put up with the largely terrible character designs if the story was very very good. Knowing that not even writing is any good means this just isn't worth my money or time. I'm sure I'd probably enjoy the tactical combat but that's just not enough for me. I very much hope we see a return to form for this series. Great video.
What I heard about the character designs is that the artist was not told what the game would be, only given vague instructions. That's why the characters don't look like they belong in each nation they're from, the artist never knew they would have to!
@@olbericaegis206actually there’s an actual interview where the artist did admit that she had no idea what these were gonna be for. If she knew if it was fire emblem she would’ve changed it. I believe ghast a fire emblem UA-camr did have proof of that interview
Germany, Japan, Egypt, and America all have very different looks to what they wear, so it makes way more sense for opposing countries to be different in style in games as well.
On earth, with disparate continents, sure. But Elyos is one continent, and a fairly small one at that considering how quickly travel takes place. To me that means there should be many more similarities.
@@TitaniumLegman Fire Emblem is about needing to use your imagination more, and how long everything took is undisclosed. They never traveled by foot, there is faster modes of transportation with wagons, horses, ships, wyverns, etc. Next game is going to lean a lot more into the fantasy side of things which they haven't done since path of radiance/radiant dawn... and it won't be an anniversary game unlike Engage being the 30th anniversary. The rings are Engage's gimmick, each fire emblem has their own special gimmick for that game. In terms of outfits, they wanted each country to have their own look - colours, patterns, etc. both in character design and the landscape/maps so that they stand out and are a lot more memorable.
The main thing to note is that everyone will have opinions, both good and bad about different aspects of any game in a franchise, especially one like Fire Emblem. While I did not like Engage as a whole, I will say that I did enjoy the gameplay and graphics shown and the beauty of the setting was great to see. However, for each positive, I enjoyed, I could not shake off a dislike for other aspects like the story presentation and the character designs and writing. I was just unable to enjoy the story because it often felt like a lot of the sections of the story tried to move the plot while also disregarding the characters themselves. For example, the player and Alear barely bond with Lumera or Veyle, and yet the game tries to convince the player that they did or when it tries to make the villains sympathetic near their death scenes. Then you have the character writing itself where the characters have personalities but a sizeable portion of them struggle to have growth in their supports as many supports would rather delve into the quirk of a character rather than show who they are as people with some exceptions like Yunaka and Hortensia. Then you have the character designs that look overly flashy and overdone with a barrage of colors and accessories that rarely tell the audience who they are or where they come from as representatives of their nation. My main issue boiled down is that Engage has decent ideas but the execution of those ideas needed more time to function. Anyone can like what they want but when a certain portion of the fanbase is saying the same critiques on a game, there is merit to all critiques and praises of said game, even if they are subjective. Hope you all have a great day.
I hate how some of the characters got introduce. For example you get lapis in a mission where majority of the units are using lance and then immediately you get Diamant and then after that you get kagetsu. Kagetsu probably got screwed the worse since you learn almost nothing about him on first impressions the only in game story wise he has is two lines and it’s only about him complementing on how the ring is pretty and he joins in a chapter where the goal is to escape not fight so you won’t really get to see how good of a unit he is especially if you already have your team set up by this point
Game really doesn't have good graphics. Try ffxvi for an rpg with actually goid graphics, animation isn't good either. Comlaring it to fe standards isn't good, as thecwhole industry is so far ahead already.
On the Hounds; the fact this game introduced a reason for bosses to survive battles (those health bar stones… things) and then didn’t just have certain bosses flee the battle when they hit their final health bars, is kind of baffling. They could even have used Nealucci to introduce this, as he flees before you kill him only to be offed by Zephia for his cowardice. Heck, I don’t like invoking Matsuno to put other titles down, but his titles since the 1990s had the function where bosses who needed to live for longer storylines would trigger retreats before they hit 0 HP. How does nobody else do this (and I’d say this for TriStrat too, where bosses need to be taken down but live or die based on story importance…)? Even FFXII did this; Gameplay And Story Integration isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but when you implement it that’s more interesting to me. And with retainers: it’s not like they didn’t exist even in the Archanea games (what’s a Christmas Cavalier Due for, right?!) but there wasn’t this whole “every lord king has two special snowflake buddies to help them” until Fates. There’s more naturalistic ways to have associates or randos come in (heck, FE8 had L’Arachel accompanied by Dozla and Rennac, but it didn’t feel like a formula there; they were also motivated by different things there). It can make the world feel smaller… I’d say the same for how 3H had nearly nobody that wasn’t a student or Academy Staff member be playable; the fact we couldn’t recruit enemies or NPCs on various maps, even if they weren’t given the same privileges in gameplay, is jarring to me and it’s a shame we haven’t had a bigger world (can we please have more than three or four, five at best, countries on the continent again?)
Engage was lacklusted in terms of the story, but holy sh*t, it was the best FE in terms of gameplay by a mile! And also map design was superb! I really enjoyed every single battle I've played. I hope next FE takes all the new stuff from Engage and adds Three Houses levels of story to it
Some of the choices for this game’s design were clearly inspired from Fates, like the royal/retainer characters and even the story beats in some cases were just…too much. I hope the next new game can bring the very cool new mechanics to a much richer world with a better story cause Engage seriously was lacking when it came to lore and even geography. Maybe if they use class rings instead of emblems and the “engage attack” is like a class based ultimate or combat art/spell.
At the time the game was released and I watched youtubers playing it I struggled for weeks if I should or shouldn't buy it for myself. I finally did to get over my grief that the Xenoblade chronicles 3 journey was over and I had a few weeks fun with it. I restarted over and over and over because of the overload of characters and the randomness about all of it. I put it down and never finished it. And I don't think I ever will. Even if there are characters that I like, they don't have any screen time or relevance to the story at all. It's a meme that the game has Engaged as its title and theme when you as the player (or better me correctly) can't engage with the world, characters, story ect at all. Gameplay is good and I don't play games with bad gameplay mechanics but it's definitely not all. I really enjoyed your review and agree completely with you (with Jane even more lol) If anything is to be learned by the game than it is Bouche is more than his two colours 😂❤
I think reason why many including me complain about engage so much is we can see in its dna there is alot there to work with. Hell even the story isnt unsalvagable all they needed was less fuck around and more sombron lore because i actually find his backstory kinda interesting even if his personality is as generic evil as it gets lol.
I love Engage, it has some of the best gameplay, combat and maps in the series. I found the characters lovable too. I want more games like this instead of 3H
I started the game with 3 Houses, since that I played Echoes, Fates Conquest, Awakening (I also played heroes, Warriors, 3Hopes and Tokyo Mirage Sessions)). I'm a big caracter and story guy. Out of all the main games I played and most of the spinoffs Engage is the game I enjoyed the least because I was never immersed in it. The combination of the caracter design and story made it so I never could take the game seriously (+the flood of waiting screens and the Somniel). The biggest example of what made me dislike the game is the treatment Jeralt vs the treatment of Lumera. When I first played 3 Houses I had the feeling that Jeralt would die but first I had like 20/25 hours of the game letting me know more about the caracter and grow attached to it. When he dies I could feel the Shock and Sadness of Byleth, during the chapter that follows all Garreg Mach caracters feel sad for Byleth, there's a sad music that's for the whole chapter outside of battles and Bernadetta gets out of her room for the first time to give flowers at Jeralt's Tombstone. For Lumera She gets killed like 2/3 chapters after we first met her and there's basically nothing happening between the first chapters of the game so I know her for like an hour and Alear forgot her so they basically don't know each other. How am I supposed to feel something for her death scene? The only thing I did during her death scene was feeling bored because it was not a short scene and then I started laughing because my Switch was going into sleepy mode. I don't remember what happened just after the scene because the dialogues between chapters are boring in this game whereas in 3H the dialogues between chapters makes the world of Fodlan more believable/alive. (I never skipped those dialogues before Engage, I started skipping them because they almost never change). After finishing the game what I wanted to do was not starting a 2nd playthrough but rather finishing my fifth playthough of 3H (I did Edelgard's route a 2nd time to finish the game in Maddening no NG+ for the title screen and I was still talking to the caracters). In 3H there are around 15 caracters that I like a lot and Marianne, Edelgard, Dimitri and Lysithea are among my favourite caracters in the franchise. In engage I like Ivy and Veyle a lot and Yunaka is one of my favourite caracter in the franchise. But I actively hate Alear for being loved while doing absolutely nothing. I bet nobody's gonna read that, I'm venting my frustration about this game.
Oups I didn't write about why I prefer the monastery than the Somniel. In Garreg Mach, I liked talking to the caracters and the daily things weren't really time consuming so I liked doing everything over and over (I know it's controversial). In the Somniel talking to the caracters is boring and they basically always say the same damn thing which makes me way less immersed in the game. Doing the activities takes a lot of time and are sometimes tiring, I hate the concept of the dog farm. I don't like the cooking system. In order to customise your caracters you must be in the somniel and get through multiple waiting screens.
I really *WANT* to like this game but I just don’t. The gameplay is excellent but the lack of a strong story or interesting characters ruins the experience for me. Three Houses gave us a rich story and characters that are still discussed passionately to this day, people got tired of Engage’s cast on their first playthroughs. I just don’t know how you’re able to fall off that hard.
I am a story and character guy and that is why i felt bored with Engage after Chapter 9 or 10....I don`t disagree with the gameplay portion, but in my opinion characters are the thing that FE does better than most turn-based SRPGs.
I like Engage, but it doesn’t come close to Three Houses. My issues are all technical. 1) Three Houses forces you to move the story on. In Maddening, You get to do some grinding, but eventually you have to fight the Main Battle. In Engage, it’s choppy as you move to the next Main Battle. Even in Engage Maddening, I followed this Roadmap, Rush to chapter 10, at chapter 10 spend, then spend 100 hrs grinding Divine Paralogues, Fell Xenologue, Relay Trials. The rush from 10 to 18, to get Sigard back. At 18 grind all the accumulated Paralogues, more Relay Trials. Then one chapter at a time until chapter 26 My opinion, Relay Trials is not correctly designed. Relay Trials give out Stat boosters, Master Seals, Second Seals like candy In Engage, you can build a whole strong team on Relay Trials Stat Boosters and Master Seals Three Houses sparingly gave out Stat Boosters, enough for one fighter.
Having no game+ really killed the game for me. This was one of the first fire emblem game I felt like it was a chore to finish. While the game has good animations and gameplay, the characters and story were lackluster and it kept me from enjoying it since I lack any sort of motivation to continue it since i felt bored playing it. The characters were very one dimensional and a lot of the supports really failed to make me care for them especially in first impressions so many characters introductions were not good for example Celine I wanted to get to know her but almost every support I got from her she wouldn’t shut up about tea. I gave up trying to learn her due to her supports being bad the worst part she actually has a good support….in A which by that point I do not care for her. Many of these characters felt out of place with their design. Also for me it seems like the emblem rings were an afterthought many of these characters felt hollow they didn’t really feel like themselves only a small fragment of their personality got explored. It sucked cause for many of these characters they didn’t have voice acting until the mobile game and now they can actually speak and it’s not that interesting. Overall i found engage to be disappointing it has an amazing gameplay but due to the boring story and characters it drags it down
Is it possible that they didn't focus on story so much there was a lot complain about focusing too much in story and base stuff in f3h and they just want to play combat. That's why fee has very good combat but feeling lack in other feature.
It's possible? The issue I have tho, is that Engage has been in development since around the mid-point of Three Houses, when development was passed to Koei Tecmo after IS did the initial drafts. So realistically, 3H can't have had that big an impact on anything as fundamental as the story in Engage, unless they completely re-wrote it late in production. While possible, I'd be surprised if that was the case.
Awesome video as always! This is a topic that I've worried about because 3 Houses was such a great step after Fates... and then we got Engage lol. As much as I think the gameplay has a lot of mechanical depth, the game has always been about the characters for me. I don't feel excited when an Engage character gets a great level up, or sad when they die, I just want them to shut the hell up lol. Hopefully IS learns the right lessons from this game and they can't ignore the massive drop in sales either
@@TitaniumLegman It sold 1.6 mil so far which isnt terrible but is barely over a third of 3H's numbers and only slightly beats SOV and even the Warriors games.
This game had a lot of bad side but the gameplay was really good sadly and luckily with this title we can realise than even if animations & gameplay are greats they don't wheight much in front of good a storyline and nice written characters ( 3Houses was still really good in these both domains ), but this game doesn't have only flaws they added break weapon systeme, engage skills, tried to balance speed and was really fun, sadly for me his biggest flaw was to be released after 3houses who was amazing if we could i would just add engage new fighting features and their animation to 3houses you wouldn't need more.
Damn all the builds shown in the video looks so much fun. Even though I have 300 hours by now I always spammed the strong ones. This kinda inspired me to branch out more!
I completely love Fire Emblem Engage. Some of my favorite character designs and character builds was a blast. The colors were so vibrant and alive and just was right up my alley (definitely subjective but I’m on the positive end on character designs 😅) also I never cared for any fire emblem story to be honest (shadow of Valentia was ok) but I hold this up there with Awakening and Shadows of Valentia as some of my favorite Fire Emblem games
Great vid, I agree with your thoughts. I really enjoyed the combat, animations and the mechanics of the game. I just got so annoyed with the writing. Every character fangirling over the MC every other sentence just got annoying.
Never even finished that game, what a disappointment. I’m glad people who are super into the gameplay of FE games got one for them, but for me if you don’t have good characters and a good story your game isn’t for me. It seems I’m not alone since this game fizzed out in like a month while people STILL talk about 3 houses.
And even if you have issues with 3H in terms of say, story structure or what have you, it’s still a legitimately ambitious title. Especially for FE, in terms of aiming for a morally-complex conflict with particularly layered characters and even worldbuilding and lore that at least strives for the highs of Jugdral or Tellius… the fact that even the graphics, while corner-cutting, put Pokémon Gens VIII and IX to shame, is telling of why people wanted it to be more recognised as GOTY in 2019. It’s not like you need to hit certain tonal points either, but why the utter mess and over-exaggerated emotional beats?
@@borjankosarac3645 all that, and I actually cared for a lot of, if not all of the playable characters in 3 houses. I don’t think I cared for a single character in Engage except for Yunaka.
Honestly, as much as I enjoyed 3H at release and love the story path they took, Engage actually outlines just how many flaws that game had that we simply ignored. Map design was utter garbage. Background designs were dog $hit. The Monastery was a snooze fest and artificially made too large, but it could have been a tenth of the size and still kept all the same features and NPCs with way less running around. The enemy and map variety was seriously lacking and attacks and specials were just meh. Not to mention the severe lack of strategic element to the gameplay which Engage fixed big time. I also love the this video brings up attack animations because that's one of the biggest things we've missed out on since GBA. No FE is perfect, but 3H gets too much praise and not enough criticism for things it did poorly.
I have a good chunk of hours into the game but never finished it, even after probably 5 attempts. The early To mid game is really fun. There’s a good fe game buried under all the bullshit. But the late game suffers when every unit has a ring and the combat becomes a skill fest, and those transformation designs are terrible. Ringless runs are more fun lol
This is the first FE game I have beaten and have absolutely no desire to go back to. The somniel was like Gareg Mach x1000. It became so repetitive and tedious that it almost made me quit the game entirely. If I hadn’t been flying around everywhere for my honeymoon, I probably never would have beaten this game.
The most fun for the DLC Story is play it as soon as possible on normal, it is a really good very difficult difficulty while being fair and not frustrating, minus the infinite rewinds it is like a good implementation of a Maddening+ difficulty doing it this early on normal. Afterwards you can create a master save so you don't need to replay the DLC story over and over again and able to use the DLC characters and classes on repeat playthroughs.
I have such an unpopular opinion about this game. I agree with the criticisms but something inside me just can't hate this game or focus on the negatives, story wasn't the best sure (I'd still argue it's better than Fates and Awakenings stories) but the gameplay was easily the best in the entire series, and I didn't hate the characters either, simple? Yeah, but simple doesn't mean bad. In the end, it's not perfect but I still really enjoy this game, i hope future games improve upon the gameplay
I’m glad we got a game like this after the last two. I know some people care less about the gameplay side of things but as someone who enjoys it it’s been sorely missed with how well designed/balanced this game is.
If your meal doesn't grant STR it is optimal, as it's a free Stat boost whereas tonics cost (very limited) gold, a precious resource especially on Maddening.
Engage is my first FE game and my introduction to the FE series and I absolutely loved it. I was going through a tough time in my life, and the game really helped me as a welcome distraction because I would always lose track of time while playing. However, as a "new" fan of the series, reading mean comments about it especially those comparing it to Three Houses is what's keeping me from engaging from the community. To the point that I refuse to read any comments about the game because I know it's probably negative. It seems like in general, "if you hate engage = cool" / "if you like engage = you have low standards". TO EACH THEIR OWN, but I really don't think Engage is deserving of all the hate. I'm going to play Three Houses soon and I know I would love it as well but for what it's worth, I would always treasure Engage and my happy moments with the game.
I made it to the point timera was introduced and then stopped playing. Funny thing is I actually really like timera it's just I completely lost interest
I actually really like parts of engages story, mostly everything connected to Alears is actually interesting, and would it not be for the stupid setup with time travel, chapter 24 would be my favourite chapter story wise, for how it depicts past Alear. It also kind of makes me wish, that the game‘s plot was set in the past, but that would be a completely different game. Also, Lumera‘s death is still better than Mikoto in Fates, because, at least, Lumera has one pretty memorable gameplay moment (basically jumpscaring you with sigurd), before she gets killed. Thinking about it, basically everything Engage borrows from Fates is executed better here, than in Fates. Not that this is a high bar, because Fates is still the worst FE, story wise.
While the gameplay is good, the story and characters are less interesting to me than the previous games. It feels less epic. Maybe I was spoiled with Fates and Three Houses, but I wish it had multiple routes to justify replaying it.
Wow you’re the first person I’ve seen have some real issues with the character design in fire emblem. I’m not on social media besides UA-cam. So I tend to miss a lot of things like this. I find it funny my two favorite FE games are the ones with the worst plots in this game and Fates. I do enjoy the Saturday Morning Cartoon like plot regardless of its issues. My main thing is that I wanted more . Characters are very enjoyable, despite being very basic at times. Music is best in the series to this point. Gameplay is the most fun I’ve had since fates. I can’t get enough of it. This game as a whole issues included is just fun. I find myself going back to it every few months, like fates. I haven’t touched 3 houses since 2021. As much as I enjoy 3 houses, I didn’t it as much as these two games. Maybe I’m just contrary as an fire emblem fan.
underrated video, underrated game, not perfect but i can't front watching your live playthroughs reminded me how complex the gameplay really is and tbh for me the story isn't great but ain't bad either. love your coverage overall and looking forward to your coverage of Unicorn Overlord & 100 heroes
FE Engage plays really well. For me, the biggest problem is that the character designs don't necessarily fit the characters they're used for. I really like most of their designs tbh, but that's more because I also subscribe to vtuber content than anything else.
As someone who just got into the fire emblem series with engage, I think engage is a great game. I have to agree that the story is very basic and that it has some awful Character designs, but I still had a lot of fun with it. The gameplay was a lot of fun despite being very complex. The amount of things that I can customize about the units made the game a lot of fun. The emblems made the gameplay even more interesting. Giving every character with an emblem ring a "ultimate move" that might change the outcome of the turn or the entire fight gave the game even more depth. The Game was designed with the concept of the emblem in mind and you can feel that. I personally like the art style of engage and most of the character designs (some really are awful). The VA was very good. English isn't my native language so I don't care as much about it, but it was a lot better then most english VA that I heard. Overall I would give engage a 9/10. I am playing Three Houses atm so engages rating could still go up or down depending on how much I like Three houses. I'm 15h in my first three houses playthrough and I already have to say that it has better story than engage. I am not a fan of the art style and the character design. The gameplay is good, but not on the same level as engage. Three houses rating atm: 7.5/10
For my take with over 400 hours in it, the gameplay is spectacular, some of the best in the series. It’s an anniversary game, so it takes gimmicks from all the other titles and uses them in interesting ways that can make each build unique even if every unit is in the same class. The story is pretty cheesy, basically your classic shounen anime, but that’s to be expected from an anniversary game that’s supposed to make callbacks to previous titles. Of course it’s a tropey, feel-good story, it’s supposed to be, it exists to celebrate the series, not pose thought-provoking discussions like 3 Houses or Path Of Radiance. The story is fine for what it’s going for. The characters are a mixed bag. Generally speaking, the character writing is good, but the character design is bad. Each character is unique, and while some of them can be one-note or tropey, their uniqueness keeps things from feeling to similar during supports without different characters. It’s also nice that the support conversations don’t carry on too long, they say what they need to, give some information and growth, but don’t overstay their welcome like some support convos from other recent titles. The designs though are just wild. Apparently they hired a third party studio for the character designs, but forgot to tell that studio what themes they were going for with each character outside of “it’s an anniversary game”, so that’s why we got these wack designs for so many characters.
While I would agree that the character designs were uniquely dramatic for a FE game, they were much closer to the direction FE art style has been going than you give them credit for. If you look at the change from the GBA era to Tellius, then from Tellius to the 3DS era, Engage's design seems like more of a natural conclusion than Three Houses. Comparing to Three Houses as some pinnacle of character design also feels really weird when it was so bland. Put them in the same class and without the portrait icons you need to zoom way in to try to tell them apart based solely on their hairstyle and slight variations in stature. In Tellius, 3DS, and engage characters in the same class are immediately identifiable because of unique color schemes per character. Hot take here but if Three Houses didnt drop during the world situation that it did, becoming many people's first FE game, I doubt the overall community would look as favorably on it.
As an aspiring character designer, 3H has some of my favorite character designs of all time and not...because of covid? They are grounded in their own world and tell of their places in their world, as well as their personalities. Even in their uniforms, Chinatsu Kurahana still manages to show how each character would wear the uniform in different ways. They're vibrant enough that they stand out and compliment each other, and enable the artist to play with many complimentary colors, but not so much that they feel out of place in a medieval setting. The diversity of body type, hair styles and ages is very much appreciated in an anime game as wall. Judging the character designs based on their class outfits is really odd to me because it implies these people should be immediately identifiable by crazy large and vibrant hair, and doesn't recognize that the class outfits are not their natal, intended designs and are only an option for the player to be able to identify their units and the enemy by class from afar, which is generally encouraged to be turned off in your own units. This also implies that the portraits are not just a part of a nicely readable battle UI to help the player navigate battle without the necessity to make the designs unpleasant to look at in closer quarters, and are instead an indicator that the characters need to be so eccentric that the player can tell them perfectly apart from meters away at the behest of visual storytelling. Even then, I found it pretty easy to tell then apart on the maps
@@EXchocoYes, they should be identifiable. It's a huge misstep in character design to have your army nearly indistinguishable from generics of the same class, and to say otherwise is an objectively bad take as it impacts gameplay negatively. Fire Emblem is not a visual novel, it's an SRPG. Not being able to easily tell your units apart at max zoom is a straight downgrade that hasn't been an issue in any other FE game since the sprite-based games 20 years ago.
@@battlecarrier I think what EXChoco is saying is that the character designs in Three Houses feel grounded in the world of that game--they feel of a piece with the setting, whereas the character designs in Engage feel like a hodgepodge of random cosplayer-bait that never properly coheres. I do think you're right that it's important to be able to tell units apart, but tbh I just can't recall ever having that issue in 3H.
@@battlecarrier It seems like everyone else had no problem identifying the units. The portraits also help masterfully while being really lovely and expressive pieces of 2D art. Saying that you should discount those is like saying, i can’t read the battle forecast when I don’t have the battle forecast up! Like, yeah…because you don’t have the battle forecast up. I think you might be making a mountain out of a molehill with this one
Really, the longer I played the game and analyzed the story of Fire Emblem Engage, as well as put up with the people that crap on this game, the more I actually began to honest to god believe that the story and characters are ACTUALLY good. But hey, it’s just matter of perspective.
It's some of the most fleshed out bad guys we've ever had. Sure characters take a long time to die, but we actually learn about them. Tell me anything about Ursala from fe7 vs zephia. Same with Lumera vs Mikoto from fates
@@mor3gan285 I think the reason why we fight the Hounds so many times is because they are the evil rivals to Alear’s team. Just as Veyle (as her evil self) is meant to be an evil counterpart to Alear, the Four Hounds are pretty much the evil foil to the Four Crown Royals Alfred and Mauvier Diamant and Griss Timerra and Marni And Ivy and Zephia
I'll take a villain without much backstory over a villain with contrived sympathies every day of the week. If you're gonna make something like the hounds work, it has to be far better written and integrated into the narrative than the dumpster fire that the hounds were (mauvier was better since he's an anti-hero turned ally)
@@TitaniumLegman it’s better that than Zephia and Griss suddenly forming a conscious and joining Alear’s army. Would you have preferred that? Just because a villian gets a sympathetic death scene doesn’t mean that the villain themselves are sympathetic. Besides, it’s somewhat cathartic in a way that Zephia died at the last minute knowing that if she wasn’t such an 🤬, she probably wouldn’t have destroyed the family that she herself created. And those who she abused, Mauvier and Veyle, is the one who caused her too realize too late as she dies a pitiful death.
I'd have preferred she just died. Period. I didn't want her to join, and I didn't care about her story precisely because of how they presented it. If we'd been able to just finish her it would have been more cathartic.
Well wishes to your mother! I love Engage, it has issues with its writing, but I adore the gameplay and designs Are the designs too busy? Well yes, yes they are sometimes. But I still think there’s a lot to love here, and I hope elements of the art style here are carried over for future entries
For me the insane level of avatar worship made me want to throw up and second when I first got to the part in Brodia I wanted to throw up again. The writing, characters and overall world building is so unbelievably bad it is down right insulting. I mean fk when I watch baby shark with my niece I feel like it has better writing and characters then engage... Overall if this is what Fire emblem is gonna be going forward I am done with the series. Hopefully we get something that respects it's player base in the future. Also side note: making the protag a dragon and not be able to turn into a dragon is just the dumbest, laziest idea ever fking stop it I.S
100% bad design. The trailer got me like: wtf... Every character in the trailer looks from a diferent game. And then there are characters from all the games in the mix, making this issue even worse
3:09 "all art is subjective HOWEVER MY OPINION MEANS MORE AND IT'S OBJECTIVE WHEN I SAY IT" You couldn't even keep yourself from contradictions for even 10 seconds wow. That's impressive.
The story has (almost) never been Fire Emblem's strong point. Since the DS/3DS episodes I don't have too much hope in that regard... I don't know if the developers want to keep it simple to reach everyone or at least the youngest or if it's more laziness... I recently played a Fire Emblem made by fans: Vision Quest ( based on the game Sacred Stone) and my god it's better written! I find that a bit sad... Besides, I'm really impatiently waiting for Nintendo to decide to remake Fire Emblem 4 with a more adult storyline! Anyway, great video and I 100% agree with you !
Your girlfriend sounds like she has similar mindset as me and quite a history with FE but I've played all FE games that have come out in the west and a few japanese exclusives like Bending Blade and Geneology of the Holy war. Unlike her I actually gave Engage a shot and I can clearly say I'd rather watch grass grow for the rest of my life than to ever play through Engage evwr again. I can agree that the gameplay is solid, but its gameplay can only do so much. Character designs are visual vomit save for a select few and support conversations range from trash to barely being mid. Still I'll be the first to admit that I liked Hortensia and Ivy's support conversations and they ended up being my only motivation to push through the game. Also Alear having a romantic anding with everyone is a stupid idea. He/She should have had platonic endings like previous FE protagonists. I hope IS stops with the whole avatar crap and just go back to having a pre set protagonist. Edit: Voice acting in this is a mixed bag of bad and good with mostly bad. I wouldn't call it anywhere near excellent. If anything Three Houses had far better voice acting than Engage and I played it exclusively in English and this is coming from a guy that mostly avoids English dubs. Still to each their own so I'll respect your opinion.
I think the first half of the game sets a bad impression. The jokes dont land to well, the firene characters are the weakest to me, and once you actually get 4+ rings it really opens. It took me a year to finish it, but i zoomed through the later third and loved it
I think the simplest way to put it for that end bit in the video, why people have stated away from it? Clashing stories and a unappealing aesthetics will deter others away no matter how good your gameplay is. I enjoyed parts of the gameplay, and disliked -- no, let me recant that. I hated this story so much, that after I finished the game, streaming it to my boyfriend, I deleted it off the Switch. I genuinely am so tired of being gaslit by others how this is secretly a "good" story or that my standards are "Too high". Like no, we are not doing this. Most FE games generally have better set up story wise, with generally more nuanced characters. This was just not it. It was visually repulsive from an aesthetics stand point. The story was just... I'm not going into my rant. I have too many dark urges when I think of this game's story and characters. I genuinely feel bad my boyfriend got this for me last V-Day. When you gift things to your significant other, you tend to expect it is to their taste or something they'd enjoy. He, who can be a real weeb. Even he disliked it. This game was kinda nothing. The Xenologue writing was awful too. One of my friends tried to defend that shit and I was like, "We don't defend bad writing around these parts." I think the best, objective thing I can say about this game? It deserved a better writer, the women who wrote it might have saved FE with Awakening. But this isn't FE Awakening. This isn't even the divisive Fates. This isn't a Spin off. This is a main entry, by a character who threw her notes at this, and somehow has way less soul each attempt. It strikes me as if she doesn't care, and is doing it because she thinks everyone will just buy everything despite the awful writing quality, which has sadly been a case. Like give the series some new writers who actually care about characterization. Make me care about the war effort. I don't care about this match maker bs. I don't want a weird circus act acting as my army. "I just want a fleshed out world with god characters that are fighting for something we the player can believe in. It's why so many loved the Telius games. This is not rocket science." Tl;dr "Bad Aesthetic and Story can turn people away from decent gameplay innovations. The cringe outweighs the good."
I actually really enjoy the flashy character designs and artstyle especially over 3H. The story started out strong but deflated for me as the game went on and while I think this is the best gameplay of the series I do thin there are some design decisions that are very questionable like taking away half of your rings for half the game and the endless barrage of high level reinforcements near the end. The Fell Xenologue highlights the game's major weaknesses on both fronts
the game is too anime, and that's saying something as FE is a very anime series, and I am an anime fan. I just look at half the designs and they strike me as the kind of thing people make up that don't like anime and are making designs simply to make fun of it.
I hope they steer away from this all-offense unrealistic and puzzle like pure numbers take on strategy. It limits the amount of realistic strategies you can employ. I guess it works for a game with such a flat world and characters and nonsensical story, and I understand why people like it and probably wouldn’t call it poorly made, but once I heard the directors say they thought tactics games weren’t “intuitively fun” and thought they needed to make it the way it is to “expand their audience”, the reason this game fell totally flat in every aspect both story and gameplay for me began to make sense. I desperately hope this is a one-off flop and they learn from Engage’s poor reception.
But FE maps are consistently at their best when employing an all-offense approach. Also, what do you mean by 'realistic strategies' and why are they inherently better than "unrealistic"?
For the next FE game, just please don't give the main protag design to a Vtuber. That's the main thing that sticks in my brain, she looks like Ronald McDonald...
if you paid attention to the story, you would realize it is really good and actually would enjoy it, everything you said about the writing and story showcases you did not pay attention whatsoever because everything gets explained to why things happen and no, the villain group is not evil for the sake of being evil either.
As a long time Fire Emblem fan I lost interest in the franchise after Three Houses. There were too many JRPG mechanics, too much story and not enough battles. I put around 90 hours into my Hard/Classic playthrough and there were only around 20 chapters. Even though I enjoyed the game I was burnt out and didn't want to play it again or another like it. If you're saying I can just skip all of the story and have great gameplay I'm actually interested again.
I disagree. I think the analysis and tone is objective and fair in fact I would point to this review as one of the reasons I’m comfortable buying the game now, as Ive been on the fence with Engage for over a year now.
For me, Engage did some things well gameplay-wise, but the story and characters were rather lackluster, to say the least. I personally think that while the Emblems only really work for this game, I'd like to see the Break system incorporated into future titles.
They defiantly put more focus to animation and combat in engage. If they can take that and do it with characters and story for the next one, it will be fantastic
I kinda of feel bad for engage. Basically just make a better story characters while keeping the animation and gameplay you’ll have no reason to comeback to this game
I played the game 2 times. One regular playthrough, my first one. And a second one where i skipped every cutscene and every support, even supports i didn't know yet. I was so INCREDIBLY uninterested in EVERY SINGLE character, it was bad. Needless to say that i didn't finish my second playthrough. Gameplay is incredibly good, but without story and characters to carry it, the game falls too flat for me. I am a story and characters guy, i need to be invested in those things to enjoy even the BEST gameplay. It wasn't my game.
I actually skipped dialogue in my first play through, I think two chapters from finishing the game I said to myself "Why am I still playing this?" And I stopped.
Went back to do Fell Xenolouge when I heard good things, finished that. (enjoyable) Tried a paralouge to upgrade a ring and I remembered that feeling again. Dropped it again.
Interesting perspective. I’m currently on my second attempt, I never got far in my first, the plot was just ticking me off. I know FE has some bad, bad stories in past games, but something about this one led to me dropping it early. I’ve found that skipping the cutscenes and treating the game as a great level pack has actually made it more enjoyable to me.
My expectation was that the DLC would explain who Zero Emblem is.
The DLC did not explain who Zero Emblem is.
My headcannon is that it's Nell from Famicom Wars.
I was thinking the Zero Emblem was at least partially responsible for the apocalypse in the other realm, if not the catalyst. A man could dream
Great job with this video man, must have been a gigantic undertaking!
-shows up in the chat pop-in-
'look Gary, there I am!'
I'm really happy to learn that engage has that gaming core to it. as someone who came in in three houses, I almost didn't realise how terrible the maps were, because I didn't have a frame of reference. Now, if we could combine the two of them, that would be an incredible game and hopefully bring together the two sides of the community they seem to represent
Play path of radiance and radiant dawn on an emulator. We already had that
@@easyygo3008 :D And we'd like more from the franchise, wouldn't we?
@@easyygo3008unfortunately, there are people like me who lack the hardware to emulate things. Just for the record, my potato laptop starts to sound like an airplane taking off just from using Chrome.
Honestly, I wanted to like engage. But the story and characters were so... Bland that despite the gameplay i couldnt bother myself to keep playing. Cause there just didn't feel like any point to. I don't care about these people and events, I don't want to see more of them.
And keep in mind, this was someone who was able to get through birthright and Revelation.
Yeah. Engage sits well below those for me because at LEAST the characters feel cool and good. Even if the story is lacking, the supports are good.
Don't know how anyone will ever be able to complain about awakening's story after engage.
... That all said though, I did kinda like Diamant. He looked pretty dang cool.
.... Also, it isn't the dragon protagonists that are the problem, it's the effort put into them. Make us a GOOD dragon protagonist please. It could be so compelling done right.
Game is fuckn terrible, you are never invested into it. Is lije playing a FE version of mario kart that focuses on puzzles and gimmicks rather than military tactics
Good video! I'm a gameplay-first sorta guy (I mean, I love Fates Conquest), so in theory Engage ought to be my jam--but honestly, I just couldn't do it. The maps and mechanics are strong, but they aren't Conquest-tier; not strong enough to make up for the absolute cringefest that is the writing and characters.
The thing I love about Conquest is that it has a small cluster of very strong core mechanics, and it spends the campaign throwing out maps that increasingly demand player mastery of them. Engage, by contrast, has a *zillion* unconnected mechanics that shift from character to character based on who has what ring, and then either are or aren't on cooldown at any given moment. The ring powers just introduce too much for the player to keep track of relative to the value they add to the game, IMO.
I think my issue with the rings is that you lost half of them for half the game. Its kinda like losing a unit you spent a whole bunch of time training and then being forced to reform tactics without them just yo have them return and be forced to readjust. We dont usually have that in fe: once a unit is recruited theyre with you till the end.
I think what also helped conquest is despite the bad story the characters overall seemed decent enough. Sure it can get trope ish but they were still entertaining to an extent
How do you feel towards the localization of FE games in general? It bothered me when a support conversation was removed in fates and pivotal dialogue was removed in 3 houses and so many words in engage were change on how they mean.
I would always rather the original intent and messaging be carried over, if at all possible. It hasn't been a deal breaker for me at any point in the series' history but I always would prefer to see what the original writers had to say, over somebody else.
For starters I love how the game looks. The battle animations are well done, the gameplay is fun, the map designs feel good. Building characters is easy and fun, and emblems to me add a great new mechanic to battles
I just unfortunately have so many issues that while I love engage and will do more play throughs (at the time of writing I only recently completed my first) far from a favorite.
One: emblems. It’s not necessarily that they make the game too easy themselves, it’s the fact they’re too easy because no one else but you has them. Sure sometimes we fight ivy, veyle the hounds etc using them but they don’t often feel like a threat with them since they stay in one spot, giving you time to plan around them, and at that point they’re the equivalent of a generic boss with a prf weapon. The emblems don’t make bosses that threatening since while ivy sniping you with Lyn sounds scary at first, it’s ivys attack stat. Just bait it with a tanky unit, and she can only use the attack once anyways so it really doesn’t matter. I feel like the idea of Sombron with the dark emblems was so cool! Emblems of all the bosses and villains from past series? Cool! Till you see they’re just generic enemies and an idea shoo horned into the litteral final battle of the game. Maybe if dark emblems were brought up sooner, fleshed out more, and given to the bosses after we get out emblems back, it would have been a really cool fix
Character writing; I agree that character motivations are weird. Diamant really is like the only One with a motivation. Sure he just gives us the emblem ring cause god said so big then the Elusian army kidnap his father. He now his stakes to join us to save his father. Then when his father is killed his motive changes to avenging his father. Great! Ivy and hortensia too. They join to avenge their father and reclaim their kingdom. The issue is that the rest of the characters all feel like they’re written to be comedic in some way. They have one personality trait, rosado being cute and loving art, Chloe likes fairy tales and weird food, Alfred likes muscles. With Alfred it’s a real shame because most of his character is hidden behind ONE support with his sister. If you just miss it, you miss most of his character. Yunaka being bubbly and trademarking hiya papaya for fe fans to spam and think it’s funny (joking) timerra singing about meat, Merrin being some girl obsessed with big collecting bugs, Fogado and his retainers being the equivalent of frat boys, with pandreo being a party animal priest who howls. And these all sound like exaggerations but for some of them that really is most of their character and it’s disappointing. Sure in three houses we had chatacters like lysithea and lindhardt with their sweets and napping quirk, but they were much more than that. Lysithea was a part of an experiment and lindhardt was extremely intelligent, even playing a role in the ashen wolves dlc. You can have quirky characters but they need something to make them stick.
Towards the end game the lords just feel like characters to give an audience reaction. “oh no!” “Divine one” kinda just standing there to react.
Deigns wise, they feel too modern. Zelkov and yunaka get VR headsets when engaged, diamant straight up has Jordon’s on in his somniel outfit. It clashes with the medivel theming the series has, and that this game is still trying to go for. I feel they’re over designed too. Rosado looks great, but then his wyvern is all decorated and makes looking at him in battle a little muddled. But then you reclass them and they look a little more generic since like three houses they’re designs are only used in one class but at least In three houses I could toggle them to keep their designs in any class that wasn’t mounted. Personally hortensia was the straw that broke the canals back when it came to designs in this game. It’s a shame because some designs are great, personally Solm has some of my favs but even then they feel like they’re over doing them and being flashy for the sake of it. None of the designs looked uniformed and while yes diffrent kingdoms will have different fashion, three houses still let the characters rep their kingdoms and homes, and still looked unified with each other.
Just some thoughts.
Engage is by no means a bad game. Far from it. It is definitely fun at the very least and looks amazing. But man even going in with a more open mind I was still a bit disappointed with a lot of aspects of it.
Funny thing it feels like Diamant is the only one that felt like a fire emblem character due to writing and design. I wish he was the main character
I think Engage shows a sign that we could get new games and stories that take place in old worlds like Elibe and Tellius.
I seriously, SERIOUSLY want to give you props with this retrospective. Out of all the reviews I have seen in the past year, this retrospective is not only the most fleshed out and fair, but it is the most truthful review of Engage to date. I watched a 1 year later retrospective of Engage just a few days ago from another creator and all he said in that review was "Emblem rings good, story bad, best fire emblem game ever." The point is even thought the emblem ring gameplay is stellar, there are other gameplay elements that drag Engage down that many reviewers never touch upon and I am so glad that you do.
Everything that you mentioned in your video I agree with one hundred percent. The only real thing from your positive section that I kind of wished you mentioned was how ugly the outfits are when you second seal a unit to a different class. The armor is so butt ugly in this game that there are some units like Diamant and Kegetsu who have such amazing designs that I can't bring myself to second seal them. The armor looks THAT BAD. I think the hero design is hands down the worst out of all of them and was the class I wanted to switch Diamant to, but I refused to make him look like a horse. I just hate it so much.
Wow, that's very high praise! Thank you binx! I'm glad you enjoyed!
There are a lot of the second seal designs I do like, but some like hero are definitely rough. They could've just taken the GBA hero designs, made them 3d, and been done with it. But we got... That. Gross.
@@TitaniumLegman I also appreciate that Jane didn't go out of her way to get Engage if she knew she wasn't going to like it. Just like her, I am a very story centric kind of person and I believe Fire Emblem has always been half story half gameplay. I went into Engage blind, so if I had known the story was as bad as it was. I would have done the same thing.
It's hard sometimes to get into a conversation about Engage because there are many people who just play Engage for the gameplay and nothing else. I won't say that they're wrong, Fates suffered the same way where most just skipped the story and went straight to the gameplay, but at the same time. Fire Emblem deserves to have a great story. It is one of the few active Nintendo franchises that is aloud to do so (other than maybe Zelda.) What IS needs to do is combine a deep and dark story with a ton of themes with Engages gameplay and art style. You can have comedy in your fire emblem games, there's nothing wrong with that! It just sucks because if you look hard enough, there are themes in Engage that are worth exploring. Even though the father death is cliche at this point, I liked Diamant's dilemma when it came to protecting his father. It is something I have never seen a protagonist do before and I liked the dynamic a lot. Same with Ivy, if we knew more about the relationship with her and her father, I think that could have captivated a lot of people since she is already going through a redemption arc.
Engage is literally just "wasted potential, the game." As someone who writes on their free time, I wish I was in the room when IS was drafting this. If they had changed just a handful of things and maybe cut down the roster by half (I seriously don't think you need Firene and Solm since no one in those sections go through arcs like Brodia and Elusia do) you could have had a better game here. Have Alear mediate the war between Brodia and Elusia, create a romance between Diamant and Ivy, why not! We haven't had a cannon relationship in years, set it up like Romeo and Juliet and you immediately just created a better story with tension (honestly, taking anything from Shakespeare can make any story better.) Plus, if you do this, the fathers don't have to die! You can keep them alive and maybe kill off the leads instead, it would be different! Point is I thought about this for a while and there are things IS could have done to fix the story, again, wish I was in that room cause man, some of the characters in Engage really do deserve better.
@@binxthebinx6575engage in general is just as rough discussion to talk about. It has very good gameplay but the other half sucks (characters, story,) fire emblem shouldn’t feel like a chore and yet engage felt that way due to how un engaging the story is and the characters are. The hero worship got old fast and it sucked how many characters ruined their introduction by fanboying the divine dragon. I get he’s a god but even then they should still keep their personality in tact. Heck many characters also suffer from bad first impressions. Funny enough Diamant and ivy personally should’ve been the main characters they are way more interesting since they are at war with each other. Not to mention Diamant also feels like an actual fire emblem character compared to the rest of the cast. When you mention fate, fates had the worst story but I felt like the journey wasn’t as bad due to the world building within the game. I also preferred the cast in fates because despite being trope they at least had some moments to shine with their dialogue before being introduced so you had a minor idea what their personality is like. Engage if you’re a retainer good luck trying to get some screen time cause many times they only get a few lines and they mostly waste it praising alear(although I feel the worst offender by far is kagetsu whose only two sentence in his join chapter is about talking about the rings and joins in a chapter where your trying to run away from the enemy)
One thing that got me out of this game is the characters none of them felt like they relate to the world around them funny enough Diamant shares some in game lore that helps with world building the rest of the cast rarely talk about. I think what also doesn’t help is alear is basically the person who you must agree with and it can cause other characters to not look interesting since many of alear support are just bad. For example amber you don’t get to see his funny personality in alear support and unfortunately many people got amber c support with alear and that left a horrible impression on amber cause he’s actually quite funny but alear doesn’t help the character unless they get A and even then if the character impression with alear is bad your not gonna want to learn more about the character
@@Yoshixandir Whenever Engage is brought up. Talking about Diamant and how he should have been the main character is just a popular discussion to have at this point. I am still EXTREMELY salty about that because Diamant was a lord/prince character I wanted in the leading role for YEEEAARRS! When was the last time someone like that was the main character (excluding remakes, aka, Echos). Chrom...almost 12 FRICKEN YEARS AGO...AAAAHHH!!
I just hate how robbed Diamant was, seriously. It has now gotten to a point for me where I almost WISH IS made a sequeal just so that I can see more of him. In fact, in the second game, kill off Alear, make Diamant the main character and have the story heavily focus on the other leads (Ivy, Alfred, Timmera) and, you know, DEVELOP THEM!
But IS would never do that because they don't have the BALLS to take feedback seriously, and that's how this is probably going to stay until someone on that team gets the picture. That we are so sick of avatar characters in the leading role. We want a main character now with their own identity and no matter how many times we complain about Corrin, or Byleth, they repeat the same mistakes, which is why we got Alear. I'm so over it. I want a Brodia game not...whatever the hell this was...
I just wish they brought back the assassin class. It's one of my favorites.
It's especially hilarious given that not one but BOTH of your thieves ARE. ASSASSIN'S. CANONICALLY.
Thieves are assassins in anything but name. Including having promoted unit base stats.
@@mauricesteel4995 The thief class is lacking the trademark sword and bow accessibility. You could technically say "we have wolf knight" for that but it just doesn't feel quite right. Honestly I feel like they just didn't bring back assassins because it could screw with game balance even if you took away their classic assassination skill. Since assassins have good evasion stats, they could potentially break several axe wielding foes against them. Then the rest of your team does clean up on enemies that can't counterattack briefly. If they nerfed the assassin class too much, fans would argue why were they even brought back.
My spine hurts when I remember how hard I cringed at the (spoilers)
Zephia/Griss death scene. GOD IT WAS SO BAD. AND IT JUST WOULDN'T END 😭
I did enjoy experiencing this game as you streamed but man was I chugging haterade a lot of the time, lol
I agree- the worst part was that it keeps on going after the protagonists leave, and it turns out that Griss is still alive.
Lumera’s death too. 6 full minutes of exposition and crying…🙄
The funny thing is, Mikoto’s death in “Fates” did every sin that Lumera did… EXCEPT for not dragging the a tualdeath out. Which makes it 12 times more effective in hindsight.
Exactly as you say. Knowing when a scene has overstayed its welcome is a vital skill that Engage clearly did not posses. Brevity can amplify the impact of a scene immensely, and we see what happens on the other end here.
@@TitaniumLegman I agree. Edelgard's death scene at the end of Azure Moon is one of the most effective death cutscenes. There was only one word of dialogue, thus showing rather than telling and leaving a lot of things, such as Edelgard's reasons for throwing the dagger, open to interpretation.
41:58 It’s funny that you would say that because all of engage maps are based on/inspired by older games’ designs, chapter 11 is very reminiscent of Thracia chapter 7, Engage ch. 6 introducing Micaiah with a map that feels exactly like RD ch.3 and Engage chapter 4? What game other than gaiden would split your units apart that far just to teach you about celicas warp.
engage is supposedly an anniversary game but only shows love to the series through its maps
$40 + $30 DLC is still too much for a game I know Im going to be skipping all the story cut scenes after an hour or two. I do appreciate this very thorough review though. It confirms a lot of my suspicions about the game and things Ive heard about here and there that have scared me away from it until now. Someday Ill get it because I love FE …but not yet, too much in my backlog and Unicorn Overlord is a month away. lol
I noticed it says you have 850 hours played for Three Houses? Respect. Thats nuts Haha The most confirmed time Ive ever dumped into a single game is maybe 250 hours into X-Com2 and 200 into Triangle Strategy and Witcher 3.
It should be noted at least some of that is idle time, I fell asleep with it on sometimes. But that said, I've played all four routes, did all the DLC, and then replayed Azure Moon two more times. 😅 I really love that game. My top three most played on Steam, for comparison, are 1000 hours in Destiny 2, 608 for Xcom 2, and 576 for tactics ogre. Again, there's idle time there, but still.
I’ll accept the Ivy… criticism, so long as you don’t turn around to Camilla and say “Now, THAT is what you should do.” Because Ivy has by far the superior personality, and if she wasn’t so over-designed it would be all: “Camilla? Never even knew her…”
Everyone laughed at Camilla when the trailers dropped but now everyone eats it up, I don't get it
Oh don't get me wrong, Ivy has great writing. Her design is just atrocious. Sexualized as she is, I do like Camilla's design more. The colors match far better and she looks more like a warrior than a fashion show competitor. So a win to Ivy for writing, and a win to Camilla for design, if we're comparing the two.
I might be able to put up with the largely terrible character designs if the story was very very good. Knowing that not even writing is any good means this just isn't worth my money or time. I'm sure I'd probably enjoy the tactical combat but that's just not enough for me. I very much hope we see a return to form for this series. Great video.
What I heard about the character designs is that the artist was not told what the game would be, only given vague instructions. That's why the characters don't look like they belong in each nation they're from, the artist never knew they would have to!
Source: trust me Bro.
@@olbericaegis206actually there’s an actual interview where the artist did admit that she had no idea what these were gonna be for. If she knew if it was fire emblem she would’ve changed it. I believe ghast a fire emblem UA-camr did have proof of that interview
Lmao what a FU from the director
Germany, Japan, Egypt, and America all have very different looks to what they wear, so it makes way more sense for opposing countries to be different in style in games as well.
On earth, with disparate continents, sure. But Elyos is one continent, and a fairly small one at that considering how quickly travel takes place. To me that means there should be many more similarities.
@@TitaniumLegman Fire Emblem is about needing to use your imagination more, and how long everything took is undisclosed.
They never traveled by foot, there is faster modes of transportation with wagons, horses, ships, wyverns, etc.
Next game is going to lean a lot more into the fantasy side of things which they haven't done since path of radiance/radiant dawn... and it won't be an anniversary game unlike Engage being the 30th anniversary.
The rings are Engage's gimmick, each fire emblem has their own special gimmick for that game.
In terms of outfits, they wanted each country to have their own look - colours, patterns, etc. both in character design and the landscape/maps so that they stand out and are a lot more memorable.
@@TitaniumLegman Also, Europe has radically different cultures from country to country and that is one continent.
The main thing to note is that everyone will have opinions, both good and bad about different aspects of any game in a franchise, especially one like Fire Emblem. While I did not like Engage as a whole, I will say that I did enjoy the gameplay and graphics shown and the beauty of the setting was great to see. However, for each positive, I enjoyed, I could not shake off a dislike for other aspects like the story presentation and the character designs and writing. I was just unable to enjoy the story because it often felt like a lot of the sections of the story tried to move the plot while also disregarding the characters themselves. For example, the player and Alear barely bond with Lumera or Veyle, and yet the game tries to convince the player that they did or when it tries to make the villains sympathetic near their death scenes. Then you have the character writing itself where the characters have personalities but a sizeable portion of them struggle to have growth in their supports as many supports would rather delve into the quirk of a character rather than show who they are as people with some exceptions like Yunaka and Hortensia. Then you have the character designs that look overly flashy and overdone with a barrage of colors and accessories that rarely tell the audience who they are or where they come from as representatives of their nation. My main issue boiled down is that Engage has decent ideas but the execution of those ideas needed more time to function. Anyone can like what they want but when a certain portion of the fanbase is saying the same critiques on a game, there is merit to all critiques and praises of said game, even if they are subjective. Hope you all have a great day.
I hate how some of the characters got introduce. For example you get lapis in a mission where majority of the units are using lance and then immediately you get Diamant and then after that you get kagetsu. Kagetsu probably got screwed the worse since you learn almost nothing about him on first impressions the only in game story wise he has is two lines and it’s only about him complementing on how the ring is pretty and he joins in a chapter where the goal is to escape not fight so you won’t really get to see how good of a unit he is especially if you already have your team set up by this point
Game really doesn't have good graphics. Try ffxvi for an rpg with actually goid graphics, animation isn't good either. Comlaring it to fe standards isn't good, as thecwhole industry is so far ahead already.
Great vid 👍🏽
On the Hounds; the fact this game introduced a reason for bosses to survive battles (those health bar stones… things) and then didn’t just have certain bosses flee the battle when they hit their final health bars, is kind of baffling. They could even have used Nealucci to introduce this, as he flees before you kill him only to be offed by Zephia for his cowardice.
Heck, I don’t like invoking Matsuno to put other titles down, but his titles since the 1990s had the function where bosses who needed to live for longer storylines would trigger retreats before they hit 0 HP. How does nobody else do this (and I’d say this for TriStrat too, where bosses need to be taken down but live or die based on story importance…)? Even FFXII did this; Gameplay And Story Integration isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but when you implement it that’s more interesting to me.
And with retainers: it’s not like they didn’t exist even in the Archanea games (what’s a Christmas Cavalier Due for, right?!) but there wasn’t this whole “every lord king has two special snowflake buddies to help them” until Fates. There’s more naturalistic ways to have associates or randos come in (heck, FE8 had L’Arachel accompanied by Dozla and Rennac, but it didn’t feel like a formula there; they were also motivated by different things there). It can make the world feel smaller… I’d say the same for how 3H had nearly nobody that wasn’t a student or Academy Staff member be playable; the fact we couldn’t recruit enemies or NPCs on various maps, even if they weren’t given the same privileges in gameplay, is jarring to me and it’s a shame we haven’t had a bigger world (can we please have more than three or four, five at best, countries on the continent again?)
Engage was lacklusted in terms of the story, but holy sh*t, it was the best FE in terms of gameplay by a mile! And also map design was superb! I really enjoyed every single battle I've played.
I hope next FE takes all the new stuff from Engage and adds Three Houses levels of story to it
Anna is my favorite character just for "ANY CUSTOMERS?"
Some of the choices for this game’s design were clearly inspired from Fates, like the royal/retainer characters and even the story beats in some cases were just…too much.
I hope the next new game can bring the very cool new mechanics to a much richer world with a better story cause Engage seriously was lacking when it came to lore and even geography. Maybe if they use class rings instead of emblems and the “engage attack” is like a class based ultimate or combat art/spell.
Love the game. Best mechanics and maps since fe10.
At the time the game was released and I watched youtubers playing it I struggled for weeks if I should or shouldn't buy it for myself. I finally did to get over my grief that the Xenoblade chronicles 3 journey was over and I had a few weeks fun with it. I restarted over and over and over because of the overload of characters and the randomness about all of it. I put it down and never finished it. And I don't think I ever will. Even if there are characters that I like, they don't have any screen time or relevance to the story at all. It's a meme that the game has Engaged as its title and theme when you as the player (or better me correctly) can't engage with the world, characters, story ect at all.
Gameplay is good and I don't play games with bad gameplay mechanics but it's definitely not all.
I really enjoyed your review and agree completely with you (with Jane even more lol)
If anything is to be learned by the game than it is Bouche is more than his two colours 😂❤
I think reason why many including me complain about engage so much is we can see in its dna there is alot there to work with. Hell even the story isnt unsalvagable all they needed was less fuck around and more sombron lore because i actually find his backstory kinda interesting even if his personality is as generic evil as it gets lol.
I love Engage, it has some of the best gameplay, combat and maps in the series. I found the characters lovable too. I want more games like this instead of 3H
Yikes
Based
Based on
Firts Fe game I ever played and its a banger foh sure, the combat and systems OooooFF
I started the game with 3 Houses, since that I played Echoes, Fates Conquest, Awakening (I also played heroes, Warriors, 3Hopes and Tokyo Mirage Sessions)).
I'm a big caracter and story guy. Out of all the main games I played and most of the spinoffs Engage is the game I enjoyed the least because I was never immersed in it.
The combination of the caracter design and story made it so I never could take the game seriously (+the flood of waiting screens and the Somniel).
The biggest example of what made me dislike the game is the treatment Jeralt vs the treatment of Lumera. When I first played 3 Houses I had the feeling that Jeralt would die but first I had like 20/25 hours of the game letting me know more about the caracter and grow attached to it. When he dies I could feel the Shock and Sadness of Byleth, during the chapter that follows all Garreg Mach caracters feel sad for Byleth, there's a sad music that's for the whole chapter outside of battles and Bernadetta gets out of her room for the first time to give flowers at Jeralt's Tombstone.
For Lumera She gets killed like 2/3 chapters after we first met her and there's basically nothing happening between the first chapters of the game so I know her for like an hour and Alear forgot her so they basically don't know each other. How am I supposed to feel something for her death scene? The only thing I did during her death scene was feeling bored because it was not a short scene and then I started laughing because my Switch was going into sleepy mode. I don't remember what happened just after the scene because the dialogues between chapters are boring in this game whereas in 3H the dialogues between chapters makes the world of Fodlan more believable/alive. (I never skipped those dialogues before Engage, I started skipping them because they almost never change).
After finishing the game what I wanted to do was not starting a 2nd playthrough but rather finishing my fifth playthough of 3H (I did Edelgard's route a 2nd time to finish the game in Maddening no NG+ for the title screen and I was still talking to the caracters).
In 3H there are around 15 caracters that I like a lot and Marianne, Edelgard, Dimitri and Lysithea are among my favourite caracters in the franchise.
In engage I like Ivy and Veyle a lot and Yunaka is one of my favourite caracter in the franchise. But I actively hate Alear for being loved while doing absolutely nothing.
I bet nobody's gonna read that, I'm venting my frustration about this game.
Oups I didn't write about why I prefer the monastery than the Somniel. In Garreg Mach, I liked talking to the caracters and the daily things weren't really time consuming so I liked doing everything over and over (I know it's controversial).
In the Somniel talking to the caracters is boring and they basically always say the same damn thing which makes me way less immersed in the game. Doing the activities takes a lot of time and are sometimes tiring, I hate the concept of the dog farm. I don't like the cooking system. In order to customise your caracters you must be in the somniel and get through multiple waiting screens.
It gets a lot of hate but i really enjoyed it, if only it had a good story with an interesting setting.
I got halfway through then stopped, then tried to finish it but gave up, too disappointing
I really *WANT* to like this game but I just don’t. The gameplay is excellent but the lack of a strong story or interesting characters ruins the experience for me. Three Houses gave us a rich story and characters that are still discussed passionately to this day, people got tired of Engage’s cast on their first playthroughs. I just don’t know how you’re able to fall off that hard.
I am a story and character guy and that is why i felt bored with Engage after Chapter 9 or 10....I don`t disagree with the gameplay portion, but in my opinion characters are the thing that FE does better than most turn-based SRPGs.
I like Engage, but it doesn’t come close to Three Houses. My issues are all technical.
1) Three Houses forces you to move the story on. In Maddening, You get to do some grinding, but eventually you have to fight the Main Battle.
In Engage, it’s choppy as you move to the next Main Battle.
Even in Engage Maddening, I followed this Roadmap,
Rush to chapter 10, at chapter 10 spend, then spend 100 hrs grinding Divine Paralogues, Fell Xenologue, Relay Trials.
The rush from 10 to 18, to get Sigard back. At 18 grind all the accumulated Paralogues, more Relay Trials.
Then one chapter at a time until chapter 26
My opinion, Relay Trials is not correctly designed.
Relay Trials give out Stat boosters, Master Seals, Second Seals like candy
In Engage, you can build a whole strong team on Relay Trials Stat Boosters and Master Seals
Three Houses sparingly gave out Stat Boosters, enough for one fighter.
Having no game+ really killed the game for me. This was one of the first fire emblem game I felt like it was a chore to finish. While the game has good animations and gameplay, the characters and story were lackluster and it kept me from enjoying it since I lack any sort of motivation to continue it since i felt bored playing it. The characters were very one dimensional and a lot of the supports really failed to make me care for them especially in first impressions so many characters introductions were not good for example Celine I wanted to get to know her but almost every support I got from her she wouldn’t shut up about tea. I gave up trying to learn her due to her supports being bad the worst part she actually has a good support….in A which by that point I do not care for her. Many of these characters felt out of place with their design. Also for me it seems like the emblem rings were an afterthought many of these characters felt hollow they didn’t really feel like themselves only a small fragment of their personality got explored. It sucked cause for many of these characters they didn’t have voice acting until the mobile game and now they can actually speak and it’s not that interesting. Overall i found engage to be disappointing it has an amazing gameplay but due to the boring story and characters it drags it down
Is it possible that they didn't focus on story so much there was a lot complain about focusing too much in story and base stuff in f3h and they just want to play combat. That's why fee has very good combat but feeling lack in other feature.
It's possible? The issue I have tho, is that Engage has been in development since around the mid-point of Three Houses, when development was passed to Koei Tecmo after IS did the initial drafts. So realistically, 3H can't have had that big an impact on anything as fundamental as the story in Engage, unless they completely re-wrote it late in production. While possible, I'd be surprised if that was the case.
@@TitaniumLegman Okay, I didn't know. Thank for information!!
Awesome video as always! This is a topic that I've worried about because 3 Houses was such a great step after Fates... and then we got Engage lol. As much as I think the gameplay has a lot of mechanical depth, the game has always been about the characters for me. I don't feel excited when an Engage character gets a great level up, or sad when they die, I just want them to shut the hell up lol. Hopefully IS learns the right lessons from this game and they can't ignore the massive drop in sales either
I need to look at the sales data in comparison to 3H at this point, I'm wondering what those graphs look like.
@@TitaniumLegman It sold 1.6 mil so far which isnt terrible but is barely over a third of 3H's numbers and only slightly beats SOV and even the Warriors games.
3 houses was the biggest misstep I've ever witnessed
@@boop733 Womp womp
This game had a lot of bad side but the gameplay was really good sadly and luckily with this title we can realise than even if animations & gameplay are greats they don't wheight much in front of good a storyline and nice written characters ( 3Houses was still really good in these both domains ), but this game doesn't have only flaws they added break weapon systeme, engage skills, tried to balance speed and was really fun, sadly for me his biggest flaw was to be released after 3houses who was amazing if we could i would just add engage new fighting features and their animation to 3houses you wouldn't need more.
Damn all the builds shown in the video looks so much fun. Even though I have 300 hours by now I always spammed the strong ones. This kinda inspired me to branch out more!
Do it! There's so much fun stuff you can do in Engage, that I'm actually just now trying some of the meta, strongest builds. 😁
I completely love Fire Emblem Engage. Some of my favorite character designs and character builds was a blast. The colors were so vibrant and alive and just was right up my alley (definitely subjective but I’m on the positive end on character designs 😅) also I never cared for any fire emblem story to be honest (shadow of Valentia was ok) but I hold this up there with Awakening and Shadows of Valentia as some of my favorite Fire Emblem games
Great vid, I agree with your thoughts. I really enjoyed the combat, animations and the mechanics of the game. I just got so annoyed with the writing. Every character fangirling over the MC every other sentence just got annoying.
Good video Titanium from,Gabe P.s. Treehouse is to blame on Localization on supports
Yunaka And Laura Post is amazing!
Never even finished that game, what a disappointment. I’m glad people who are super into the gameplay of FE games got one for them, but for me if you don’t have good characters and a good story your game isn’t for me. It seems I’m not alone since this game fizzed out in like a month while people STILL talk about 3 houses.
Well three houses is closer to a masterpiece than a good games even if there's a great next FE people would still talk about 3Houses
I’d say I’m super into the gameplay of FE and still prefer 3H and Awakening to Engage across the board
And even if you have issues with 3H in terms of say, story structure or what have you, it’s still a legitimately ambitious title. Especially for FE, in terms of aiming for a morally-complex conflict with particularly layered characters and even worldbuilding and lore that at least strives for the highs of Jugdral or Tellius… the fact that even the graphics, while corner-cutting, put Pokémon Gens VIII and IX to shame, is telling of why people wanted it to be more recognised as GOTY in 2019.
It’s not like you need to hit certain tonal points either, but why the utter mess and over-exaggerated emotional beats?
@@borjankosarac3645 all that, and I actually cared for a lot of, if not all of the playable characters in 3 houses. I don’t think I cared for a single character in Engage except for Yunaka.
Honestly, as much as I enjoyed 3H at release and love the story path they took, Engage actually outlines just how many flaws that game had that we simply ignored. Map design was utter garbage. Background designs were dog $hit. The Monastery was a snooze fest and artificially made too large, but it could have been a tenth of the size and still kept all the same features and NPCs with way less running around. The enemy and map variety was seriously lacking and attacks and specials were just meh. Not to mention the severe lack of strategic element to the gameplay which Engage fixed big time. I also love the this video brings up attack animations because that's one of the biggest things we've missed out on since GBA. No FE is perfect, but 3H gets too much praise and not enough criticism for things it did poorly.
I have a good chunk of hours into the game but never finished it, even after probably 5 attempts. The early To mid game is really fun. There’s a good fe game buried under all the bullshit. But the late game suffers when every unit has a ring and the combat becomes a skill fest, and those transformation designs are terrible.
Ringless runs are more fun lol
This is the first FE game I have beaten and have absolutely no desire to go back to. The somniel was like Gareg Mach x1000. It became so repetitive and tedious that it almost made me quit the game entirely. If I hadn’t been flying around everywhere for my honeymoon, I probably never would have beaten this game.
it's funny, nintendo kept delaying this game for years just for ppl to still not be ready for it when it finally came out
I love this pastel little fever dream of a game. 3 houses set the standard for MODERN fe stories. Engage set the standard for gameplay. Period.
almost 300h in triangle strategy damn ☠️
I am a tactics FIEND
Triangle Strategy is special. First game since I was a child that I played through and then immediately felt compelled to play through again.
The most fun for the DLC Story is play it as soon as possible on normal, it is a really good very difficult difficulty while being fair and not frustrating, minus the infinite rewinds it is like a good implementation of a Maddening+ difficulty doing it this early on normal.
Afterwards you can create a master save so you don't need to replay the DLC story over and over again and able to use the DLC characters and classes on repeat playthroughs.
I have such an unpopular opinion about this game. I agree with the criticisms but something inside me just can't hate this game or focus on the negatives, story wasn't the best sure (I'd still argue it's better than Fates and Awakenings stories) but the gameplay was easily the best in the entire series, and I didn't hate the characters either, simple? Yeah, but simple doesn't mean bad. In the end, it's not perfect but I still really enjoy this game, i hope future games improve upon the gameplay
11:40 it’s sommie
I’m glad we got a game like this after the last two. I know some people care less about the gameplay side of things but as someone who enjoys it it’s been sorely missed with how well designed/balanced this game is.
Engage was rushed and lazy. I think it is good, that it didn't passed with community.
This game need new games+
You don't have to do the pushups to be "optimal" since the stat boost it gives does not stack with tonics/meals. Great video though.
If your meal doesn't grant STR it is optimal, as it's a free Stat boost whereas tonics cost (very limited) gold, a precious resource especially on Maddening.
Optimal =! Necessary.
Limited if you don't use Anna who is considered more meta@@TitaniumLegman
She is, but even then you're relying on luck to get her skill to trigger, and using up a party spot to do it.
Engage is my first FE game and my introduction to the FE series and I absolutely loved it. I was going through a tough time in my life, and the game really helped me as a welcome distraction because I would always lose track of time while playing. However, as a "new" fan of the series, reading mean comments about it especially those comparing it to Three Houses is what's keeping me from engaging from the community. To the point that I refuse to read any comments about the game because I know it's probably negative. It seems like in general, "if you hate engage = cool" / "if you like engage = you have low standards". TO EACH THEIR OWN, but I really don't think Engage is deserving of all the hate. I'm going to play Three Houses soon and I know I would love it as well but for what it's worth, I would always treasure Engage and my happy moments with the game.
FYI just choose one route in TH and if you don't feel exhausted go for the other houses.
I made it to the point timera was introduced and then stopped playing. Funny thing is I actually really like timera it's just I completely lost interest
I actually really like parts of engages story, mostly everything connected to Alears is actually interesting, and would it not be for the stupid setup with time travel, chapter 24 would be my favourite chapter story wise, for how it depicts past Alear. It also kind of makes me wish, that the game‘s plot was set in the past, but that would be a completely different game.
Also, Lumera‘s death is still better than Mikoto in Fates, because, at least, Lumera has one pretty memorable gameplay moment (basically jumpscaring you with sigurd), before she gets killed. Thinking about it, basically everything Engage borrows from Fates is executed better here, than in Fates. Not that this is a high bar, because Fates is still the worst FE, story wise.
While the gameplay is good, the story and characters are less interesting to me than the previous games. It feels less epic. Maybe I was spoiled with Fates and Three Houses, but I wish it had multiple routes to justify replaying it.
Wow you’re the first person I’ve seen have some real issues with the character design in fire emblem. I’m not on social media besides UA-cam. So I tend to miss a lot of things like this.
I find it funny my two favorite FE games are the ones with the worst plots in this game and Fates. I do enjoy the Saturday Morning Cartoon like plot regardless of its issues. My main thing is that I wanted more . Characters are very enjoyable, despite being very basic at times. Music is best in the series to this point. Gameplay is the most fun I’ve had since fates. I can’t get enough of it.
This game as a whole issues included is just fun. I find myself going back to it every few months, like fates. I haven’t touched 3 houses since 2021. As much as I enjoy 3 houses, I didn’t it as much as these two games. Maybe I’m just contrary as an fire emblem fan.
underrated video, underrated game, not perfect but i can't front watching your live playthroughs reminded me how complex the gameplay really is and tbh for me the story isn't great but ain't bad either. love your coverage overall and looking forward to your coverage of Unicorn Overlord & 100 heroes
FE Engage plays really well. For me, the biggest problem is that the character designs don't necessarily fit the characters they're used for. I really like most of their designs tbh, but that's more because I also subscribe to vtuber content than anything else.
Somniel is fantastic because it is completely separate to the story and world, it should and just needs to be a roaming home base.
As someone who just got into the fire emblem series with engage, I think engage is a great game. I have to agree that the story is very basic and that it has some awful Character designs, but I still had a lot of fun with it. The gameplay was a lot of fun despite being very complex. The amount of things that I can customize about the units made the game a lot of fun. The emblems made the gameplay even more interesting. Giving every character with an emblem ring a "ultimate move" that might change the outcome of the turn or the entire fight gave the game even more depth. The Game was designed with the concept of the emblem in mind and you can feel that. I personally like the art style of engage and most of the character designs (some really are awful). The VA was very good. English isn't my native language so I don't care as much about it, but it was a lot better then most english VA that I heard. Overall I would give engage a 9/10. I am playing Three Houses atm so engages rating could still go up or down depending on how much I like Three houses. I'm 15h in my first three houses playthrough and I already have to say that it has better story than engage. I am not a fan of the art style and the character design. The gameplay is good, but not on the same level as engage. Three houses rating atm: 7.5/10
For my take with over 400 hours in it, the gameplay is spectacular, some of the best in the series. It’s an anniversary game, so it takes gimmicks from all the other titles and uses them in interesting ways that can make each build unique even if every unit is in the same class.
The story is pretty cheesy, basically your classic shounen anime, but that’s to be expected from an anniversary game that’s supposed to make callbacks to previous titles. Of course it’s a tropey, feel-good story, it’s supposed to be, it exists to celebrate the series, not pose thought-provoking discussions like 3 Houses or Path Of Radiance. The story is fine for what it’s going for.
The characters are a mixed bag. Generally speaking, the character writing is good, but the character design is bad. Each character is unique, and while some of them can be one-note or tropey, their uniqueness keeps things from feeling to similar during supports without different characters. It’s also nice that the support conversations don’t carry on too long, they say what they need to, give some information and growth, but don’t overstay their welcome like some support convos from other recent titles. The designs though are just wild. Apparently they hired a third party studio for the character designs, but forgot to tell that studio what themes they were going for with each character outside of “it’s an anniversary game”, so that’s why we got these wack designs for so many characters.
While I would agree that the character designs were uniquely dramatic for a FE game, they were much closer to the direction FE art style has been going than you give them credit for. If you look at the change from the GBA era to Tellius, then from Tellius to the 3DS era, Engage's design seems like more of a natural conclusion than Three Houses.
Comparing to Three Houses as some pinnacle of character design also feels really weird when it was so bland. Put them in the same class and without the portrait icons you need to zoom way in to try to tell them apart based solely on their hairstyle and slight variations in stature. In Tellius, 3DS, and engage characters in the same class are immediately identifiable because of unique color schemes per character.
Hot take here but if Three Houses didnt drop during the world situation that it did, becoming many people's first FE game, I doubt the overall community would look as favorably on it.
As an aspiring character designer, 3H has some of my favorite character designs of all time and not...because of covid? They are grounded in their own world and tell of their places in their world, as well as their personalities. Even in their uniforms, Chinatsu Kurahana still manages to show how each character would wear the uniform in different ways. They're vibrant enough that they stand out and compliment each other, and enable the artist to play with many complimentary colors, but not so much that they feel out of place in a medieval setting. The diversity of body type, hair styles and ages is very much appreciated in an anime game as wall.
Judging the character designs based on their class outfits is really odd to me because it implies these people should be immediately identifiable by crazy large and vibrant hair, and doesn't recognize that the class outfits are not their natal, intended designs and are only an option for the player to be able to identify their units and the enemy by class from afar, which is generally encouraged to be turned off in your own units. This also implies that the portraits are not just a part of a nicely readable battle UI to help the player navigate battle without the necessity to make the designs unpleasant to look at in closer quarters, and are instead an indicator that the characters need to be so eccentric that the player can tell them perfectly apart from meters away at the behest of visual storytelling. Even then, I found it pretty easy to tell then apart on the maps
@@EXchocoYes, they should be identifiable. It's a huge misstep in character design to have your army nearly indistinguishable from generics of the same class, and to say otherwise is an objectively bad take as it impacts gameplay negatively.
Fire Emblem is not a visual novel, it's an SRPG. Not being able to easily tell your units apart at max zoom is a straight downgrade that hasn't been an issue in any other FE game since the sprite-based games 20 years ago.
@@battlecarrier I think what EXChoco is saying is that the character designs in Three Houses feel grounded in the world of that game--they feel of a piece with the setting, whereas the character designs in Engage feel like a hodgepodge of random cosplayer-bait that never properly coheres. I do think you're right that it's important to be able to tell units apart, but tbh I just can't recall ever having that issue in 3H.
Yeah, not once did I (or anyone I know) have any problem knowing who was who or spotting characters on the map.
@@battlecarrier It seems like everyone else had no problem identifying the units. The portraits also help masterfully while being really lovely and expressive pieces of 2D art. Saying that you should discount those is like saying, i can’t read the battle forecast when I don’t have the battle forecast up! Like, yeah…because you don’t have the battle forecast up. I think you might be making a mountain out of a molehill with this one
Really, the longer I played the game and analyzed the story of Fire Emblem Engage, as well as put up with the people that crap on this game, the more I actually began to honest to god believe that the story and characters are ACTUALLY good. But hey, it’s just matter of perspective.
It's some of the most fleshed out bad guys we've ever had. Sure characters take a long time to die, but we actually learn about them. Tell me anything about Ursala from fe7 vs zephia. Same with Lumera vs Mikoto from fates
@@mor3gan285 I think the reason why we fight the Hounds so many times is because they are the evil rivals to Alear’s team.
Just as Veyle (as her evil self) is meant to be an evil counterpart to Alear, the Four Hounds are pretty much the evil foil to the Four Crown Royals
Alfred and Mauvier
Diamant and Griss
Timerra and Marni
And Ivy and Zephia
I'll take a villain without much backstory over a villain with contrived sympathies every day of the week. If you're gonna make something like the hounds work, it has to be far better written and integrated into the narrative than the dumpster fire that the hounds were (mauvier was better since he's an anti-hero turned ally)
@@TitaniumLegman it’s better that than Zephia and Griss suddenly forming a conscious and joining Alear’s army. Would you have preferred that?
Just because a villian gets a sympathetic death scene doesn’t mean that the villain themselves are sympathetic. Besides, it’s somewhat cathartic in a way that Zephia died at the last minute knowing that if she wasn’t such an 🤬, she probably wouldn’t have destroyed the family that she herself created. And those who she abused, Mauvier and Veyle, is the one who caused her too realize too late as she dies a pitiful death.
I'd have preferred she just died. Period. I didn't want her to join, and I didn't care about her story precisely because of how they presented it. If we'd been able to just finish her it would have been more cathartic.
Well wishes to your mother! I love Engage, it has issues with its writing, but I adore the gameplay and designs
Are the designs too busy? Well yes, yes they are sometimes. But I still think there’s a lot to love here, and I hope elements of the art style here are carried over for future entries
For me the insane level of avatar worship made me want to throw up and second when I first got to the part in Brodia I wanted to throw up again. The writing, characters and overall world building is so unbelievably bad it is down right insulting. I mean fk when I watch baby shark with my niece I feel like it has better writing and characters then engage... Overall if this is what Fire emblem is gonna be going forward I am done with the series. Hopefully we get something that respects it's player base in the future. Also side note: making the protag a dragon and not be able to turn into a dragon is just the dumbest, laziest idea ever fking stop it I.S
Geez, It's almost as if the Avatar was an actual in iniverse divinity :)
Man, some people are funny like this
That makes it no less annoying.
100% bad design.
The trailer got me like: wtf...
Every character in the trailer looks from a diferent game. And then there are characters from all the games in the mix, making this issue even worse
3:09 "all art is subjective HOWEVER MY OPINION MEANS MORE AND IT'S OBJECTIVE WHEN I SAY IT"
You couldn't even keep yourself from contradictions for even 10 seconds wow. That's impressive.
People liking or disliking art is separate from from designs that are Objectively bad from a design standpoint, yes. Thanks for paying attention
The story has (almost) never been Fire Emblem's strong point. Since the DS/3DS episodes I don't have too much hope in that regard... I don't know if the developers want to keep it simple to reach everyone or at least the youngest or if it's more laziness... I recently played a Fire Emblem made by fans: Vision Quest ( based on the game Sacred Stone) and my god it's better written! I find that a bit sad... Besides, I'm really impatiently waiting for Nintendo to decide to remake Fire Emblem 4 with a more adult storyline!
Anyway, great video and I 100% agree with you !
Rumors are swirling again about that FE4 remake, so it may be coming soon!
Your girlfriend sounds like she has similar mindset as me and quite a history with FE but I've played all FE games that have come out in the west and a few japanese exclusives like Bending Blade and Geneology of the Holy war. Unlike her I actually gave Engage a shot and I can clearly say I'd rather watch grass grow for the rest of my life than to ever play through Engage evwr again.
I can agree that the gameplay is solid, but its gameplay can only do so much. Character designs are visual vomit save for a select few and support conversations range from trash to barely being mid. Still I'll be the first to admit that I liked Hortensia and Ivy's support conversations and they ended up being my only motivation to push through the game. Also Alear having a romantic anding with everyone is a stupid idea. He/She should have had platonic endings like previous FE protagonists. I hope IS stops with the whole avatar crap and just go back to having a pre set protagonist.
Edit: Voice acting in this is a mixed bag of bad and good with mostly bad. I wouldn't call it anywhere near excellent. If anything Three Houses had far better voice acting than Engage and I played it exclusively in English and this is coming from a guy that mostly avoids English dubs. Still to each their own so I'll respect your opinion.
I think the first half of the game sets a bad impression. The jokes dont land to well, the firene characters are the weakest to me, and once you actually get 4+ rings it really opens. It took me a year to finish it, but i zoomed through the later third and loved it
Just ignore half the game to like it, is terrible advice. Better to skip FE Engage and just play an actual good game.
Its*
I think the simplest way to put it for that end bit in the video, why people have stated away from it?
Clashing stories and a unappealing aesthetics will deter others away no matter how good your gameplay is. I enjoyed parts of the gameplay, and disliked -- no, let me recant that. I hated this story so much, that after I finished the game, streaming it to my boyfriend, I deleted it off the Switch. I genuinely am so tired of being gaslit by others how this is secretly a "good" story or that my standards are "Too high". Like no, we are not doing this. Most FE games generally have better set up story wise, with generally more nuanced characters.
This was just not it. It was visually repulsive from an aesthetics stand point. The story was just... I'm not going into my rant. I have too many dark urges when I think of this game's story and characters. I genuinely feel bad my boyfriend got this for me last V-Day. When you gift things to your significant other, you tend to expect it is to their taste or something they'd enjoy. He, who can be a real weeb. Even he disliked it. This game was kinda nothing. The Xenologue writing was awful too. One of my friends tried to defend that shit and I was like, "We don't defend bad writing around these parts."
I think the best, objective thing I can say about this game? It deserved a better writer, the women who wrote it might have saved FE with Awakening. But this isn't FE Awakening. This isn't even the divisive Fates. This isn't a Spin off. This is a main entry, by a character who threw her notes at this, and somehow has way less soul each attempt. It strikes me as if she doesn't care, and is doing it because she thinks everyone will just buy everything despite the awful writing quality, which has sadly been a case. Like give the series some new writers who actually care about characterization. Make me care about the war effort. I don't care about this match maker bs. I don't want a weird circus act acting as my army. "I just want a fleshed out world with god characters that are fighting for something we the player can believe in. It's why so many loved the Telius games. This is not rocket science."
Tl;dr "Bad Aesthetic and Story can turn people away from decent gameplay innovations. The cringe outweighs the good."
Watched entire video yet I still feel like engage is bottom 5 FE game unfortunately for just lotsa reasons
I love FEE tho it's not perfect. I play this game over 200 hours.
I actually really enjoy the flashy character designs and artstyle especially over 3H. The story started out strong but deflated for me as the game went on and while I think this is the best gameplay of the series I do thin there are some design decisions that are very questionable like taking away half of your rings for half the game and the endless barrage of high level reinforcements near the end. The Fell Xenologue highlights the game's major weaknesses on both fronts
Many of the character designs are pretty awful or at least don't belong in a fire emblem game.
the game is too anime, and that's saying something as FE is a very anime series, and I am an anime fan. I just look at half the designs and they strike me as the kind of thing people make up that don't like anime and are making designs simply to make fun of it.
I liked the design, and I had a rattattouie moment with the gameplay as it took me to my happy place of Awakening, yes I am an awakening baby, sorry
It's daisy chain not train.
fire emblem engage had 10/10 game play and a 1/10 story. usual FE has like a 3/10 story if we are being honest.
I hope they steer away from this all-offense unrealistic and puzzle like pure numbers take on strategy. It limits the amount of realistic strategies you can employ. I guess it works for a game with such a flat world and characters and nonsensical story, and I understand why people like it and probably wouldn’t call it poorly made, but once I heard the directors say they thought tactics games weren’t “intuitively fun” and thought they needed to make it the way it is to “expand their audience”, the reason this game fell totally flat in every aspect both story and gameplay for me began to make sense. I desperately hope this is a one-off flop and they learn from Engage’s poor reception.
IS: More one note stories with colorful outfits and good gameplay for the next FE game coming up!
@@TheMaestroMizerous That’s when I’ve gotta dip out of FE tbh
But FE maps are consistently at their best when employing an all-offense approach.
Also, what do you mean by 'realistic strategies' and why are they inherently better than "unrealistic"?
Nobody will ever convince me this game has good english dub
For the next FE game, just please don't give the main protag design to a Vtuber.
That's the main thing that sticks in my brain, she looks like Ronald McDonald...
if you paid attention to the story, you would realize it is really good and actually would enjoy it, everything you said about the writing and story showcases you did not pay attention whatsoever because everything gets explained to why things happen and no, the villain group is not evil for the sake of being evil either.
Pretty good video, but it is a shame you can't pronounce "Alear" properly.
As a long time Fire Emblem fan I lost interest in the franchise after Three Houses. There were too many JRPG mechanics, too much story and not enough battles. I put around 90 hours into my Hard/Classic playthrough and there were only around 20 chapters. Even though I enjoyed the game I was burnt out and didn't want to play it again or another like it. If you're saying I can just skip all of the story and have great gameplay I'm actually interested again.
It's only legacy was making FEH worse.
Good. That thing got bloated years ago
Objectively, all of the character designs are visually incredibly great.
Three Houses was very poorly designed in every aspect.
You were pessimistic and negative the whole video.
I disagree. I think the analysis and tone is objective and fair in fact I would point to this review as one of the reasons I’m comfortable buying the game now, as Ive been on the fence with Engage for over a year now.
That's factually untrue.
@@ethanhunt3242 It wasn't objective at all. Gravity existing is objective, opinions on a game are always subjective.
Bruh you wanted him to kiss the game's butt 100%?
@@MasterStacona You want objective? How about the OBJECTIVE fact that your OP is flat out wrong, dare I say a lie?