I only critique because I love. Even with my heavier focus on Advance Wars, FE's an important series to me and I'd like to see it do better. Also if you're reading this sometime after the video goes up, I'm in the US of A, baby!
I've not ha time to play the game. Good cause reviews hold it up, bad cause I don't have time for games. Still haven't played Tears of the Kingdom. (Granted, it was mostly an issue of my Switch needing it's cooling paste replaced, got that fixed now so can play the A games.) Replaying games you've beaten usually needs some form of challenge or change, unless they're really really good..
I think looking at everything collectively really shines a light on engage issues, I mean, there isn't a debateable right or wrong (like in 3 houses) to keep it relevent, personally I love that aspect in game narratives, we really don't get anything like that here, there's also things like characters and presentation, which most of us find lacking with the entry to say the least. Don't get me wrong I really learned to love a handfull of the characters in engage. But nothing in the game really pulls your interest other than the mechanics and sleek high fps paintjob, something the series lacked in a 3D sphere 😥
I highly agree because I was always invested in games like three houses, blazing blade and tellius because of the world, characters and plot twists but Engage felt extremely predictable and lack luster
yah this is my experience as i had several problems with the story especially with Alear and some of the choices they make when they find out the truth about themselves. Hell the DLC had a better story though that isn't saying much.
I whole heartedly agree about the premise not feeling as special as the developers think. In most other series a crossover game is a fan's wet dream, allowing characters across dimensions to meet one another and calling back to old characters that haven't been relevant in years. The problem with Fire Emblem is this isn't the first time the series has done crossovers. In fact, you could say the series has too many crossovers within a short timespan. Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Warriors, Tokyo Mirage Session, and now Fire Emblem Engage. It also doesn't help that Heroes is still ongoing and fresh in people's minds. When your main selling point is that the game will include heroes from older titles, it doesn't feel unique given we already had 3 games that beat it to the punch.
Smash too, it's not a crossover per se but fighting using some of the most popular characters in the series (Marth, Lucina, Ike) does scratch that crossover itch to an extent also
The characters didn’t quite appeal to me and I felt the rings were almost... baiting? Like “Hey!! Marth! Look! It’s Marth! You love that guy!” “Hey FE4 fans! We didn’t forget about Sigurd!” “Did you start with 3DS?! Here’s CORRIN!!!” It just doesn’t feel like it has its own identity.
The characters in engage all looked like clowns from different circuses. They didn't fit. Like that one comment said, fates designs and outfits were great. I still think about their class outfits, they were amazing!! You looked at the retainers and knew who they went with. All the retainers in engage looked like random people picked from different worlds. No one matched at all. Yet fates was able to have characters fit the theme but look unique to themselves.
Also the art style just looks way too generic. The art style of Awakening and Fates and especially Echoes was great as it was modern yet still Fire Emblem. Three houses was a bit weaker but Engage feels like it's throwing out the entire Fire Emblem look. Especially the bright hair and ultra clean look just look out of place in a line-up of Fire Emblem. Engage feels like a bootleg Fire Emblem game. In terms of art style the best one is Echoes. Not just in modern fire Emblem but in the series as a whole.
@@DonVito703Hostensia literally looks like a clown. I thought her being a princess was a joke and she was using it as a way for the characters to go easy on her in her fight. Did not expect her to join your party and her to have a tragic backstory. I couldn’t take her seriously since she sounded annoying and clown
Fire Emblem 3 houses had 3 different stories, and characters really connected to. Felix stans, Dimitri bros, Claude fans, it had a real fanbase for the characters and a die hard interest in the dramatic storytelling and character conflicts. Regardless of if the strategy was the best or not, it had staying power because you thought about the story, the characters, the world. Fire Emblem Engage is a good strategy game. Fantastic gameplay. But as a strategy game, you pick it up, you beat the one route game, you say wow, good strategy game, and then you drop it. It's not worth thinking about further, the characters don't have staying power, I have not seen people be die hard fans of these guys, or talk about how the story was so profound or interesting. It might just be that as a good strategy game, it's good at being consumed, enjoyed, and then dropped for whatever next strategy game comes next. My thoughts on perhaps why interest declined so much.
@@yang6642nah, the church route was copy pasted from Claude's route and it's existence undermines Claude's character in that Seteth comes up with the same schemes and plots that Claude did. That's what you get when you tell and don't show.
Three Houses set the bar really high for storytelling and setting. Its a really good example of an imperfect masterpiece. Its got A LOT of issues, but my god the good certainly outshines the bad, at least for me. Haven't played Engage, it just doesn't appeal to me. Three Houses grabbed me from that very first trailer, and never let go.
@@greenmountainpokemon2112 Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience. Tsutomu Tei also said that the decision for Engage to have a single path, rather than the branching paths in Three Houses and Fates, was made early. Genki Yokota, producer from Nintendo, said that some players were intimidated by too many branching paths and would assume they had to play all of them. Tei felt that a simplified story structure would allow players to put all their focus on the tactical gameplay. In other words, Intelligent Systems is trying way to appeal to beginners.
Stories are what make things more interesting for me to play a Fire Emblem game. Not to mention, they gave us a dragon avatar when we already got one, one whose 3 stories in 1 was absolutely disappointing.
@sonogrande7628 Even the og players acknowledge how important the story is to these games. 7 and 8 had great supports and solid stories which breathed a lot of life into the games replayability, same with the Tellius games, more so on the character side than the story, and even then at you could tell they were trying to write something decent. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignoring what supports have done for the games.
Something just occured to me based on your thing about sakura and elise You can take a lot of moments where the characters of fates are on full display being cool or cute or whatever. If I close my eyes and imagine a character like ryoma or xander I see them on the battlefield with incredible strength and stubborn pride, despite their stories being quite bad. When I think of most engage characters I picture moments of them walking towards the camera saying something vaguely cringeworthy. This may mean the direction is worse than the visuals because it strips away the characterisation from the scenes and it makes you feel very detached
I think for me (even if I haven't played fates) the characters have distinctive identities beyond like that one quirk engage has like alear getting always praised as a divine dragon the twins frame and cramme being alear worshippers Céline liking tea, alfyn being anxious etc when I get first impressions I'll compare that to maybe flayn who at least the only thing I don't get in a first impression is she loves fish
I feel people confuse bad writing in Fates meaning bad characters. The characters in Fates, while most are dumb for sure, were still very likable. Especially the families.
I cannot agree more about your art direction opinion. When engage was just leaks I refused to believe it was real because I genuinely thought it looked too generic to be real. I said "Fe always has a style to it, these designs look like a bootleg genshin". Ik that's over said but if something echoed that much, maybe there's some truth too it.
Problem with using unity engine and everyone pretty much using the same or similar "anime" shader... which unity don't even do well to begin with. Dragonball in UE already did a lot better but their technical artists also did a lot of their own shaders. Nintendo studios really need to hire graphic programmers that can do shader much better
@@supermariohack3218 The game's art style was largely driven by Mika Pikazo, an illustrator new to the Fire Emblem series. The team at Intelligent Systems was impressed with her vivid and colorful drawings that "popped". This perfectly matched their goal of appealing to a broad audience, including younger players.
I also agree with the art design, for me the main issue is that the characters clothes, hairstyles and color combos are very mismatched , and they don't blend together , they look more like they are from a multiplayer game with "create your own anime skins of your avatar" so the characters don't feel like they are from a fantasy medieval settings, instead more like an anime cosplay convention without a set theme
Is it just me, or does it seem like the characters in FE games are becoming more and more eccentric and tend to behave less and less like well-adjusted humans. Not every character needs to be quirky and out there. I found many, MANY characters in Engage to be outright bizarre, and that shit got annoying. It DEFINITELY makes the plot feel unserious, and that's boring.
part of why Diamant is one of the most popular characters in Engage is BECAUSE he's boring. People prefer a boring character to a not-boring one that's just annoying. Says a lot about the cast, doesn't it lol
I think the character design point is probably the most compelling thing to me. One other gripe that I had with the game that I’m not sure whether it’s a popular opinion is that units don’t really feel like they stand out from each other. With the way the reclass system in Engage works, it felt like a lot of units were one reclass away from being the exact same as each other with the only difference being a few points in stats. Coupled with the way characters powercreep each other, for the most part I was just picking whichever ball of stats was the largest. Obviously there are a few exceptions to this but for the most part, Engage was a game full of characters I didn’t care about writing or designwise who I also had no interest in using gameplaywise because they all felt the same.
For me, I think my thing with the reclassing is, I'm fine with it in 3H but found it largely worthless in Engage And I think why is as you said, units could quickly become very samey 3H had every character have strengths and weaknesses in different areas, (along with varying unique spell lists), so to me reclassing was more fun when it came to making units classes they actively struggle with (General Flayn moment). So while anyone can be almost anything, there's still that upward climb that can make the experience feel different to me But in Engage, because there's no strengths/weaknesses meaning there's no real punishment to making units whatever you want. Doesn't help skills are almost exclusively tied to Emblems
@@OriginalGameteer high res units being in armored classes is actually such a good time! Probably won’t hit that hard on a counterattack unless it’s a magic weapon or combat art, but they’ll never die
And friend of mine and I had the same thought. The art style of the characters felt weird and even the online footprint of the main character was met EXTREMELY poorly, and rightfully so. I mean colgate/pepsi protagonist is a silly look at best. The previous games gave characters a lot more life, even with 3 Hopes, Shez turned out well and was uniquely designed. The new stuff feels like a regression with character specific skills being reduced, and overall just making the game from more noted into something more arcadey. The fact there were memes galore of unit uniqueness; “You did wait with Dedue? That’s illegal!” Anyways the characters in the new game just don’t have the charisma or pull the last game had. Plus Engage just overall looked rather cartoony.
I agree wholeheartedly! As someone who only watches FE content, the reclassing and the rings also rob lets-plays of a lot of micro-storytelling, because every character feels the same, most become irrelevant past their joining chapter, and can be made good without much effort - there's is no emotional payoff of - for example - dragging someone like Rolf through FE9 for him to become good by the end. In Engage you would just put a ring on him, problem solved.
@@28Decimo The game's art style was largely driven by Mika Pikazo, an illustrator new to the Fire Emblem series. The team at Intelligent Systems was impressed with her vivid and colorful drawings that "popped". This perfectly matched their goal of appealing to a broad audience, including younger players.
Engage's lack of presence online isn't due to it's plot, it's due to one factor >unlike Fates and especially 3H, it didn't have team/faction wars to cause endless debates I also want to point out that at one point Nintendo actively mentioned “Hey remember those 8 guys from Smash? Yeah they’re in Engage, please play the game.” Also I guess you could argue Engage didn’t get a Smash Boost like 3 Houses got.
This so much. One of the reasons Game of Thrones was so massive was the fact that people could root for one side or another, and there was no truly defined "good" side. 3H definitely took a lot of influence from that and that's a big part of why it succeeded so much. Also at least for me, the really good (by FE standards) writing in 3H gave the characters so much personality and made me care about them so much, that it augmented the gameplay. Because I actually felt like I was sending real characters I really liked into harm's way, and when they pulled off a particularly vital crit or survived on 1HP it was more meaningful. Definitely helped to makeup for the somewhat lackluster map design and balance. I still really like Engage but I don't think it's that mysterious why it hasn't taken a place in the zeitgeist like 3H did. As long as they do the Genealogy story justice in the remake though, I think that has a lot of potential.
Honestly I don't get the Smash argument. Byleth's inclusion in the game arguably made people even less interested in Three Houses and just dismissed it as another boring anime sword game without giving it an actual chance.
@@PeruvianPotatoand if memory serves right byleth was the last character they revealed in the first Dlc wave. At that point the game was already a top seller for a while
In mine opinon enagage was for people who played Awakenings/Fate and did not find 3H fun. If we look at the some of the things the 3 games they have in common(Their opening/game artstlye, their goofy sometimes odd support, their well design simple and sometimes smooth combat/skils/class game mechanics, their final DLC has them all going to a diffrent timeline) it would make sense that for people who came from or played 3H would be turn off on Engage. In the end I see this as a good thing as it shows that the DEVS are making games that please diffrent part of their fanbase and that just a games purely base on popularity. PS enjoy your days off and listen to the MEAT song.
There is actually interview which came out month ago, which tells that 3H and Engage were developed parallely. So IS really went and said "Okay, we need one innovative FE and one traditional FE"
The issue is definitely the story. A good chunk of it consists of everybody telling Alear how amazing and important they are without showing *why* they're amazing and important. And they kill off a major character early, and played it up as a pivotal moment, but the drama surrounding it wasn't earned; it was the 2nd or 3rd chapter and we barely knew this person.
the killing off like that is Fire Emblem in a nutshell though, if you're a Fire Emblem parent, you are expected to die, it's more shocking when they don't.
fates also has a lot of deaths like that, corrin mother dies on the tutorial like part of the game that can be skiped, 2 sages die on revelation with like 1 chapter of lifespan and a few text boxes of screen time, deaths of npcs tends to be a very weak point of fire emblem though my perspective might be jaded since i played awkening and 3 fates only
It definitely comes down to the characters and story. Yeah, Edelgard morality debates were, and remain, awful, but it kept people talking about the game. Plus the question of “what was your favorite route?” always gives Three Houses fans something to talk about. And then there’s the characters. Compared to Claude, Dimitri, and Edelgard, the lords are abysmal and one note. Even Byleth, the living embodiment of “no thoughts, head empty,” had more going on. Nearly the whole cast in Engage has just one joke that is beaten into a bloody pulp. Hope you find “Amber like alpacas” funny the first time you hear it, because you certainly won’t the 38th!
Idk really know if it's terrible localization or just bad writing in both JP and NA scripts but just hearing the word acid come out of some of Engage's characters give me bad flashbacks to Treehouse's butchered localization of Fates when it came out. Bad localization and lack of faithful translation in Japanese made games always churns my fucking bile.
I guess everything mentioned are all very valid reasons for why Engage has plummeted in terms of relevance, but among other things I have to mention absolutely horrendous marketing - INTENTIONALLY horrendous marketing. And here is where comparing it to Three Houses gives us an interesting viewpoint. Three Houses was announced years before its launch. The initial trailer had no final logo, didn't use the final fonts, even the voice actor for Edelgard was changed after it. The UI was very raw, the battalions worked very differently, and a lot of characters weren't even given proper models yet. We were presented with a game that was so unfinished that even if they wanted, they couldn't give us much more information. So for months to come we were kind of just sitting there waiting for the next piece of news that came a year later with the release date being moved all the way to 2019. And that waiting while being in complete darkness in and of itself generated hype. Which they used to trick us into thinking Three Houses would simply be a school setting dating sim throughout the whole game. And then they dropped post-timeskip designs and everybody went crazy when they realized how epic this game and its story would be. That cathartic feeling of being hyped about something and having that feeling fulfilled is something Engage never did. The game was announced half a year before its release, by that time it had already been finished and immediately, from the first seconds of the trailer we knew EXACTLY what to expect - a generic Awakening inspired story with a lot of nods to the history of the franchise that wouldn't have much of its own to stand on. And that alone has killed the excitement for many people who started hoping that after the Fates backlash IntSys would've learned their lesson. Before the release of Three Houses everyone was talking about it - who is the best leader, which house to choose, what is that happens during the 5-year gap, what's with Dimitri's eye, why are they at war? After the release, the whole community was riled up, and even the voice actors like Joe Zieja became very active on social media, interacting with the fans and even streaming the game. Engage had none_of_that. No pre-release hype. No post-release hype. The cast is nowhere to be seen, the DLC was blurted out mindnumbingly fast and even Heroes has only launched ONE Engage banner so far. ONE. Look back at how much Three Houses content we got in 2019 in the first 6 months following the game 's release. And compare. It almost feels like IntSys are the ones who treat Engage as failure. It's like they never actually meant for the game to be successful and live long. Like they just needed this game to fill up a certain time frame while they work on the next, bigger project, and they don't want to waste time marketing a game that has very little replayability and little to nothing in terms of story and strong characters. But that's just my opinion.
I think you are right on the last part but i think its heavily due to world circumstances. It was supppsed to be an anniversary game but got horribly delayed which also delayed a lot of their other projects. Engage is a simple game that was probably meant to be more fillery and tide people over. I mean just look at how fast the dlc released. all of it in like 2 months. Three Houses was super ambitious and literally according to interviews engage was suposed to be the opposite. I wouldnt say "want it to fail" but there definitely wasnt as much power behind it.
@@-lord1754 Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience. Tsutomu Tei also said that the decision for Engage to have a single path, rather than the branching paths in Three Houses and Fates, was made early. Genki Yokota, producer from Nintendo, said that some players were intimidated by too many branching paths and would assume they had to play all of them. Tei felt that a simplified story structure would allow players to put all their focus on the tactical gameplay. In other words, Intelligent Systems is trying way to appeal to beginners.
I didn't realize just how important characters designs were until Engage. A lot of them were so busy or even downright eye sores it brought down my ability to get invested in them. I think what hurt this the most is the lack of art portraits. The 3D models with only like 4 face/body types shared between everyone did no favors
And many of the characters with the better designs are bad in terms of stats, or character personality. Framme has one of my favorite designs in the game. But we all know how well she performs.
A lot of new Fire Emblem fans care about character designs and playing waifu simulator. With engage having terrible designs, crap story and very little paired endings, the game is selling a lot less than Three Houses.
That's where 3 Houses more understated design knocked it out of the park in my view. It appealled to both anime fans and regular high/medieval fantasy fans as well, many of which had never played FE before. Intentional or not I feel that made it more digestable for a wider demographic to begin with. And once you started playing the story hooked you in and the rest is history 😂
Fate’s story wasn’t GOOD, but it was still a STORY. A story that believed in itself, took itself seriously, it tried to be a real world with real characters, and established boundaries and artstyle. Engage doesn’t even try, the characters are hardly even characters, it’s essentially a string of random events just to tie together why you’re in fighting on sand instead of grass. Because of how all over the place it is, it feels like it doesn’t have it’s own personality. There’s nothing to talk about, because the game doesn’t give you anything to talk about as it has nothing to say.
I recall when Engage came out everyone kept saying “story doesn’t matter as much to me as gameplay Engage has cool gameplay thus I’m gonna love this game.” These same people ended up being unable to complete a second playthrough of the game bc they just got bored. I think that really shows something. I don’t remember the last time I myself only played an FE game just once… I’ve always gone back for a second run through
I completely agree, as I was one of those people lol. It’s worth noting I think, that part of the boredom is the barrage of horrible cutscenes and dialog. Contrast to shadow dragon for example, where the story and cutscenes is very minimal and one button skippable. With engage, I’m constantly reminded of the terrible story, which weighs on the boredom
Doesn’t help that Alear’s character was about as *engaging* as a piece of drift wood. He’s like the worst aspects of Corrin and Robin rolled into one character.
Odd take considering I only played Echoes once and could not be bothered to play it again. Maybe it's just me but replaying a fire emblem game is probably one of the most draining things to do. I think I forced myself to replay 3H and do silver snow and I ended up enjoying it significantly less
Yep, i didn't finish my second playthrough either. Aside from the gameplay there was nothing for me. I really don't understand how anyone could like any of the characters, to this day. I won't shame anyone who likes them, but it feels very weird to me.
3:01 "and their main character Ike having an insane popularity in Japan" I'm going to assume he meant the West because in what world is anything Tellius popular in Japan???
Ike plushies sold in Japan sell out at a similar rate to Lucina plushies. A few time on official merchandise websites in Japan, they ran out of Ike plushies around the same time they ran out of Lucina plushies. So, Ike has a pretty big following in Japan because he is the only main character in Fire Emblem who is just a normal guy, he has no special powers, he isn't royalty/demigod, people in his own mercenary company hate him, he doesn't rule a nation after his story concluded, he is just your average soldier who just got buff as he grew up.
@@johnathanedwards9054 Ike is the son of a Daein Noble one of the Four Rider who is friends with the king of the largest Laguz country and he gets blessed by the goddess to be the only person allowed to kill the goddess. Not to mention, "your average soldier" doesn't inherit a personal army from their noble father after having a grand total of 2 missions under his belt by the ripe age of 17.
@@mr.sellout6284 Maybe in the modern era, but in medieval times mercenaries were a dime a dozen with them making up the majority of armies. Some of which were former nobles who renounced their titles to seek adventure and glory for a price.
@@johnathanedwards9054"only normal guy who has no special powers" Ike has strength and speed superior to that of both branded and laguz, who are supposed to be blatantly superhuman, and the reason why? Because Greil just had magically superpotent genes and he was also insanely superhuman too- the strongest man in the world. Oh and his mom and sister are completely magically incorruptable too for some reason. Ike is by no means normal and his heritage is massively privileged with abilities for no good reason plotwise. He's also not of non-noble stock either, because Greil was a noble. Tellius has some real shitty writing in places, and Ike is often the center for it. It is hilarious how Micaiah used to get the "Mary Sue" treatment by fans when Ike is twice the Sue she is.
In terms of the story I've always been baffled at how many characters act. I haven't played Engage in a while but I still distinctly remember the revelation that Solm had a massive spy network and was able to prepare for the invasion that Elusia launched. Actively not telling Brodia and Firene, two kingdoms they HAVE AN ALLIANCE WITH about it. This information could have assisted Firene and Brodia in the war effort greatly, maybe Diamant and Alcrysts father would still be alive. Yet no one cares that they didn't say a word about this. Why? Cause they're the "good guys" too? Solm gets no reprecusions while characters like Ivy who go against their own country to fight for what they believe is right, get animosity throughout the story. Ivy betrayed the enemy to fight for us, Solm betrayed us for themselves. Engage characters rarely feel like genuine humans, and the only times they do are in cutscenes. Instances like that make me feel so disconnected. People can work together even if they have animosity towards one another. Conflict can be non-violent and not everyone can be friends. Path of Radiance had characters like Shinnon, Soren, and Janaff who showed animosity towards another race, yet could still work together for a common goal and even bond. Makalov was a scumbag charlatan who caused endless grief to his sister, people rarely just gave him a pass but some even fell in love with him. People are unique and react differently to different people. Having everyone like each other just because they're "good guys" is bad writing and it certainly isn't ENGAGEing.
@@aninymouse1651 I'm only aware that Mika designed the main characters? Anyway, to me Mika is a very hit or miss artist and so far her (?) art is much more suited for pin-up attention grabbing illustration rather than for character design that will be transfered to a simplified 3D and lost a lot of oomph in the process.
@@aninymouse1651 You could say that, but if you want to go technical the responsibility should be the one who hire, give a direction on what to draw, and approves it. Usually producer/director/art director. Usually in this case concept artist/character designer just draws what they are told to and their designs must have faced revisions if the decision makers deemed it necessary.
@@egbertmilton4003 No he does in fact have taste in videogames. 3H is borderline unplayable in multiple playthroughs, the difficulty never hits a middle point of balanced and enjoyable, the story has a lot more flaws than the people discussing it ever give it thought to, the Monastery being the bigger problem and how long it does take to do anything in the game. Also memorable? 3 Houses? Blue Lions maybe, because Dimitri mogs the entire screentime to divert you away from all this pathetic attempt at telling a war story.
@@egbertmilton4003brother they can have an opinion 💀 personally think 3H was amazing and would return cuz idm heavy story telling games, but the strategy aspect of 3H wasn't very gd at all. This person clearly finds more fun in gameplay than story and that's ohk. Also awakening respect I still love tht game
I think some of the biggest issues with the character designs really just boil down to the fact it's trying to do too much. Either it added something really extra and wacky or random, over exaggerated something in the design, made something that instead of complementing the design it actively fights against it, arranged the design that draws the eye away and steals attention in a way that feels awkward, or any combination of these. It's just really busy and kinda chaotic to the point it almost comes off as random. If you showed me some of these characters and told me they were from some kind of lighthearted, whimsical fantasy Gacha game, I'd believe you.
I love Mika Pikazo but I feel for her style to work with Fire Emblem, which I believe it could, she needed someone to help her "pull back" so to speak.
@@rhettmitchell Its a common issue in the media industry (video games or otherwise) where very talented artists and writers get carried away without someone to hold them back, resulting in good ideas being poorly executed. Most of the designs are fine they just have a few things too much in a lot of cases (Yunaka's stars or Celine's massive dress).
I don’t necessarily think Engage was a full blown failure, but it is certainly not the long lasting success that 3 houses was. A modern day rpg needs a plot that grabs you and Engages incredibly basic “must stop the big bad evil dragon” style plot just does not cut it anymore. Add on top of that the mostly very forgettable characters and it’s pretty easy to see why Engage has zero longevity in comparison to its predecessor.
Man the worst part about it for me was like... I was actually liking the story towards the end. Things were picking up, being explained, getting a bit interesting. Then in the final chapter Sombron goes from being a threatening/kinda cool villain to like... whatever the hell they thought that shit was LOL. The entire final convo with him about his motivations killed him as a villain to me my god that segment actually was so bad it ruined all the buildup.
@@SPONGCHAOi kinda got the same feeling, which made the story even more disappointing for me because the potential was there to make it something more.
It actually does cut it... when you make it a simple plot so that you can have actual characters. As I understand it, Engage's story is abut stopping the dragon with cardboard cut outs for allies.
@@xana3961I think Engage does a horrible job with making characters interesting in the actual plot because looking at supports most of these characters are a lot more interesting and deeper than their first impression. Like Celine seems like just a nice girl, but through her supports you see that she’s anxious about her brother’s potential to relapse into illness as well as her cold demeanor in willing to protect her country and brother. Though that’s only seen in supports. That’s the issue they’re only seen in supports which are an optional mechanic that requires you to use two characters and have them near each other to even unlock. Three Houses pushed the personalities of it’s characters way more in the plot. Yes some things wouldn’t be known without supports, but you could see how events affected them and their opinions on upcoming battles through the cutscenes before and after maps. Engage tries to do this with some text boxes in post battle maps and at the Somniel sometimes, but those text boxes are usually only relegated for the first heir to each country, any recruited character that map, and like a select handful of randoms. The royals also don’t seem to exhibit much change in actual cutscenes.
@@SPONGCHAOnot all did they make his motivations last minute, we still literally know basically knowing about the zero emblem Yknow, the reason this plot happened to begin with
I'm pretty sure the Switch's age is not the reason - Pokemon, Zelda, Mario are not suffering from this problem in 2023. I also don't think it's because there are more games to play - this had to be an issue in 2019 with Three Houses as well. Nothing has changed here in just 4 years. I really do think the issues with the character designs, the non-serious story and tone, avatar worship, poor writing, and weak world building rank among the top reasons people bailed on the game. What we're seeing from the sales numbers is that the hard-core Fire Emblem players bought it and stuck with it for the gameplay and the more casual players dropped off or didn't buy it (which is ironic because all of the stupid cooking and mini-games is primarily aimed at them). They need to realize the casual players really care about the writing, characters and designs - the mini-games don't matter. I have no doubt they will coarse-correct here because the problem isn't that hard to see.
people are harping hard on the character designs and, while not wrong, this problem could have been heavily alleviated by simply giving us the tried and true character portraits that fire emblem is known for to anchor each aesthetic into place
Sequel to 3Houses could not sell poorly, even if it outright tried to be a bad game. (The strongest marketing for a piece of media is the success of a previous entry in the series.) Also, i don't entirely buy the theory that the game failed due to lower attention span. TikTok was also around when 3Houses was released and it didn't suddenly take a nose dive i relevancy like Engage. I can go back and try out older games that I have never played of genres I don't even like and still have a lot more fun with those games than modern games. The worst part is that I can't even explain why I don't like Engage. I just get bored halfway through the game and don't want to continue. It's not the story or the characters. It wasn't even the reference pandering that made me drop it. I just don't think it's fun to play. Simple as. Edit: spelling
The story is bland and predictable, the characters are SUPER bland and their design are all over the place. The rainbow hairs and outfits just dont cut it. None have the presence, impact, or charisma of 3H lords The worst being the player avatar, who is extremelly gullible, and whos whole personality is being polite and non-offensive I'll tell you what is the "little something off" everybody mentions : they do not look/feel human, and arent relatable in the slighest as such, which makes it hard to _engage_ They tried to please the _modern_ western audience, and lost their soul in the process
@@lorewalkercho7291 Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience. Tsutomu Tei also said that the decision for Engage to have a single path, rather than the branching paths in Three Houses and Fates, was made early. Genki Yokota, producer from Nintendo, said that some players were intimidated by too many branching paths and would assume they had to play all of them. Tei felt that a simplified story structure would allow players to put all their focus on the tactical gameplay. In other words, Intelligent Systems is trying way to appeal to beginners.
That’s the issue with engage. Ironically how unengaging it is. A bad story like fates can still make you want to continue since at least maybe either the cast is somewhat entertaining like the royals or your curious how the trainwreck of the story is gonna end. Engage is the opposite where the story is bland and predictable if you know the tropes or how safe the story is you can literally predict what’s gonna happen
"And all those lord you like, come and play me haha" I think Excelblem already joked about it, but that gimmick is fun as fuck considering how available FE games are FE1 is no longer available because Nintendo tried to create FOMO with it FE2, FE3 are not translated and aren't on any virtual console FE4, FE5 and FE6 are only on JP's virtual console FE7 is only available in virtual console (unless you pay a truckload for a physical copy), which is gonna get taken down one day FE8 to FE15 are only obtainable by physical copies, which are extremelly expensive since Nintendo killed the eshop because fuck you FE16 is the only game you can get both physical and online for a fair price But hey, nostalgia! It's not like Heroes already took that spot or anything anyway!
The biggest problem I have with Engage is the character designs. They just don't feel like they're real people living in a real world. Just made it feel like Fortnite to me. Like the designs came first and then they just plopped them into a random map. Really prevented me from empathizing with them. Doesn't help that the story is also pretty bland and uninspiring, but I could get into a generic story if I can empathize with the characters, and I just couldn't do that for a large portion of the cast. I do really love the gameplay though.
I think they look more like random avatars created in a MMO's character selection. The same model with different hair and clothes picked from a small selection of styles, plus a ton of random accessories tacked on.
Hi! Artist here! I loved your point about the aesthetics and wanted to elaborate with what I understand thus far. Engage’s art direction is hinged on the very attractive style of the artist rather than their affinity for character design- thus the very iconic class designs from previous games that add a lot to the game’s atmosphere and immersion are incredibly lacking. The very modern-fashion style of the characters (i.e sage outfit, yunaka thief outfit) with no clear inspiration or direction other than what is trendy in real life is very jarring and makes it very difficult to players to get a feel for the setting of the game, and thus ruins immersion and makes harder suspension of disbelief. In contrast, most fe games have very iconic class/character designs that are largely very specific; most armored classes (and I believe the mage classes too? not sure though) have been modeled off of medieval european aesthetics. Sword masters are chinese and japanese inspired. They also can convey a lot about the class/character- i.e thieves are dressed in very soft clothes that must help with sneaking around. Fe Fate’s european nohr classes and japanese hoshidan classes are very strong in design because the player/viewer recognizes the aesthetics and is thus able to make connections about the characters themselves, the setting, culture etc. Engage largely lacks this. Take Griss and Yunaka- they’re hard to even tell what class they belong to (why is the mage top-less? Why is the thief in clanky, gold plated heels?), even harder to determine is where they are from (lack of location/culture-based unity in designs outside the lords is very disappointing because of the premise of 4 large, geographically unique countries) or even what time period they are in (the oddly fan-service-y chest windows and yunaka’s… side windows? feel very much like modern, artistic runway models or gacha-esque, marketable design- which is odd for a game where said characters spend most of their time on battlefields). TLDR; the designs lack cohesiveness and specificity which is detrimental to the visual world-building and immersion of the game, leading to a overall foggy, dream-like experience of the game rather than a solid and memorable one.
I think if Engage released in place of Radiant Dawn, it would have actually killed the franchise. It sold well because of how popular Fire Emblem is right now (the fact that its main gimmick is being able to use lords from all previous popular titles is just more evidence of this). It will always be a failure to me. It might not be a financial failure, but if we get another Engage, it will start to damage the franchise significantly.
I honestly feel bad for Mika Pikazo. She's a pretty brilliant young artist IMO and clearly poured a ton of passion into the object. I honestly think she'd handle a more grounded medieval anime aesthetic quite well. Trying to push appeal to an audience that isn't there was just bizarre.
She’s a talented artist but man, those designs look silly when translated to 3D in a medieval style setting. I’ve been looking at the concept art and character sketches and they look fine as 2D illustrations… If it was a 2D pixel art, it would’ve probably lent its over the top designs better.
@@RichardHannaythe thing is that the producer told her to go crazy with the design and didn't bother to tell her which characters should look like and where they came from. That's why Solm lords' retainer are... wacky and weird, as if they weren't from Solm at all, even their clothes doesn't match the weather of Solm. It's sad that she actually has good art skill but the art direction for engage is bad, which makes her works for the ingame characters look so wacky and almost uninteresting for the most part
@@raviolibirb8009these designs could go much better in another Tokyo Mirage Session, not a core Fire Emblem. Yet, she being told to go crazy should clear her of any faults, but I fear she may end up as a scapegoat
Calling an artist "brilliant" when it's extremely clear that their art doesn't connect with many/most people is an absurd amount of cope. The art of Engage is bad. Straight up. And it's bad because it's ludicrously overdesigned. Every character is too busy with too much going on, visually. This is amateur hour stuff for visual design. Because achieving perfect simplicity of form is goal of any great artist.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe you appear to have COMPLETELY ignored the previous comments, despite having read them. even someone like mozart can make shit music if he's told to make shit music bud.
I think it has mostly to do with with story and characters, specifically the lack of inner conflict amongst the playable party. Debates over Edelgard kept the presence of Three Houses alive for a long, LONG time. I'll be curious about how the Geneaology remake goes, because that one will probably generate a lot of "takes" with its story. Personally, I didn't like how formulated the character recruitment was for most of Engage's story, " here's a royal and their 2 retainers, and here's their sibling and their 2 retainers". It kind of limits the variety your story can tell. It'd be like if Tellius made Sanaki and Kurthnaga playable in PoR, even though the plot needs them to not be directly involved yet. It seems like ever since Fates, the franchise has wanted to incorporate a "which Harry Potter house are you" style component into the different factions, and Three Houses was the only one that truly landed for the audience.
Well speaking of Harry Potter, I guess the reason why Fire emblem engage didn’t “engage” with audiences is because they were focused on playing Hogwarts Legacy, which sold way more copies than engage at the time
@@samflood5631I actually played Engage way more than Hogwarts. I still haven’t finished my first playthrough while I’ve completed two for Engage. Once the Harry Potter novelty wears off the game is very mid.
Even though I was a diehard fire emblem fan since like 2010, Engage was the first game that I didn't buy. I don't know why but it just doesn't tug at me the same way previous fire emblem games did. I think the wrestling analogy you made was a major contributing factor to that. Much as I love the older fire emblem games and constantly revisit them, the fact that they're given so much attention and emphasis instead of a small tribute (such as how Marth is Lucina's inspiration or how you could visit valm which used to be valentia in Awakening) overshadows the cast and makes them feel like "oh yeah I'm here by the way". What made the fire emblem franchise so interesting to me was that it was holistically the same engine and gameplay experience but with entirely new mechanics, entirely new cast, entirely new plots and entirely new settings. Having all the older lords appear next to you makes it feel so... fanservicey. Every fire emblem game had its own identity and own feel, that's what made each game memorable. It was a fresh, new experience with the familiar game systems we've come to know and love. By having older lords in the game it makes the existing cast (and world) forgettable, exactly how you made the reference to the wrestling stars of older times to boost ratings because they don't have faith in the new rising stars to take up that mantle. Bringing up old lords to this extent has the same sense of pandering as how Pokemon keeps remaking gen one games over and over. Another one that rubbed me the wrong way was how overly flambouyant some of the character designs of engage are. It just makes the game feel too focused on the wrong things. You look at the cast of path of radiance or blazing sword and while you see some colorful types, Ivy, Hortensia, Panette, and even Alear feel TOO outlandish in design to the point where it gets almost comical. I can't take my lord seriously when their hair looks like toothpaste (yes I know the narrative significance to it). Yes the game is anime with its designs and always has been. But it's been getting more and more and more pronounced. I actually liked that all the three houses characters wore uniforms and had mostly "plain" aesthetics because it made them look like *real* believable characters with normal lives. Some of the engage characters look like they come straight out of a kids cartoon. Not to say we didn't have some wacky designs before but they were believable. Even Lumera's design, it's TOO shiny. You look at other dragon goddesses like Mila or Naga they had very subtle outfits to them, whereas Lumera looks like a walking bouquet of flowers. She's gorgeous don't get me wrong. But why does everyone in this game look so over the top in appearance? I take one look at Yunaka and think: "You mean to tell me there's a girl who was born with a bunch of stars in her hair? (I'm guessing they're just accessories but come on...) I also feel like the premise of "evil dragon mwahahaha" has been overused at this point, along with the whole "kings and lords of different lands and their retainers" spiel. They used it for fates, then used it for three houses, and have now used it for engage. I loved path of radiance because instead of a stereotypical dragon or demon lord it was just Ashnard, some mad crazy dude. Same goes for radiant dawn where we got to fight a god. To a lesser extent, I enjoyed blazing sword's whole antagonism with nergal, his morphs and the black fang (even though it ultimately ended with a big dragon). Ike is so popular as a lord because he's not a lord. He's a dude ass dude who did his own thing. It's another reason why I liked Micaiah so much even though her development was more stunted. She's not some hoity toity princess, she was a girl just trying to get by. Alm and Celica were also great because even though they ARE royalty, it was only nominally. They lived completely normal lives. Now we have Corrin (born from a dragon god), Byleth (born from a dragon god), Alear (born from a dragon god). Like okay I get it you're the child of the most important figure in the world. So help me if the next game has another MC who is born from a dragon god I'm gonna- All in all Engage doesn't look or feel like a fire emblem game to me. It gives the same vibes as heroes where it's all about fanservice (with the past lords), fanart material (with character designs), and recycled almost fanfictiony content. I'll probably play it eventually just because I heard good things about the gameplay. But it's not fire emblem to me. It's not a fresh, new experience. It has the same feeling as Pokemon Sword and Shield for me. It just doesn't feel the same. Is change wrong? No, and in fairness I might sound like a biased genwunner fire emblem player since I played the games before it became popular. That being said, I want to experience fire emblem. This doesn't feel like fire emblem to me. It feels like a generic anime game with anime characters/tropes and SJRPG mechanics. And this is coming from a big anime fan. But if I wanna play an anime game I might as well play an anime game that doesn't try to hide the fact that it's an anime game.
Evil Dragon Mwahahha isn't a recent thing though. Even Blazing Sword devolved into Evil Dragon mwahahha. Its a staple of the series, and honestly I'd hate for it to disappear. Engage has way too many flaws, but between the two Switch-Original Fire Emblems, Engage is far closer to the series' heart than Three Houses. Three Houses deviates from the formula in a way that worked. Engage takes the opposite road of sticking to all the tropes, the nostalgia, and fun, strategic gameplay, before ultimately failing because they were inattentive to what really matters: the Cast.
@@anristellariza9036engage played way too safe. Its story is simple but very bland. You can have a simple story and still be entertained. However engage felt it was a chore since the cast barely did anything worthwhile since their goal was literally get the rings and power of friendship
@@Yoshixandir Won’t lie to you i ended up beating the game last month on hard mode but i skipped every cut scene and support Gameplay like the majority said is pretty neat but the story is terrible mane. But i did end up finishing my maddening run on 3H.
@@Helloim_anthonythat’s literally the only thing people talk about engage. Amazing gameplay but man is the story and character bland. At least was bad that we can talk about it and at least it had an interesting lore. Engage I can’t do another playthrough
This is, what I have observed, are the flaws that contributed to Engage not doing well as compared to Three Houses: Character design and writing: Engage character design ended up with less while doing more as the examples stated with Yunaka and Goldmary. They could've just went without the stars for Yunaka. As for Goldmary, the pauldron looks out of place for her outfit and she'd be better off without it. It may just be the team bringing on some of their design ideas from Atelier into Fire Emblem. Story and character writing: Storywise, Engage is your classic player character gathers an army in search of holy relics that will help them win the fight against the BBEG, which is an evil dragon. Not really that "engaging" (pun intended) compared to Three Houses. Character-wise, the fact that the designs were not that appealling contributed on how there were not that many memorable characters. Most would possibly remember Yunaka's "Hiya Papaya" meme but that's just it.
After just finishing final fantasy 16, it really just makes me wish for another fire emblem game like path of radiance and radiant dawn. FF16 really gave me similar vibes that those games did. With different countries and leaders and political intrigue and a story that took itself seriously. With heavy themes about religion among others. That’s what really makes games stand out years later for me. The story, world and characters. Yes the gameplay of engage was fantastic, but the world and characters were so unbelievably dry and not memorable. Three houses was much better in this regard and why I remember the game so fondly all these years later. But even that game didn’t feel on the level of radiant dawn and path of radiance to me. I really hope the next fire emblem game has an epic, serious, and emotional story with a well thought out world and gritty character designs. That’s what will make it be a lasting game in my memory.
Didn't Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn almost killed the franchise? A mean engage sold 10 times more than those games. I am not saying that it couldn't work I am just saying that I probably wouldn't and it would be risky.
@@erkantiryaki5542 wait really? path of radiance had way better story and character and gameplay but hmmm and wait how did both of them almost do that but games like awaken and fates saved it? wut? but still in my opinion fire emblem heroes mobile game has better story than engaged and yea engaged and fate story that bad
@@ladyriethegoldendelmo5441 While not the ultimate solution, I think the availability of handheld consoles over home consoles plays a role. The Gamecube didn't sell very well, so you already have a smaller pool of viable players to begin with, and Path of Radiance came out a year before the Wii launched.
@@ladyriethegoldendelmo5441To put it simply, Awakening and Fates had better, more active marketing than the Tellius games. At the time the Tellius games were new, The GameCube was at its last years, (which the GameCube itself didn't sell very well compared to other consoles of its era due to DvDs and emo sh!t being trendy at the time) and Radiant Dawn came out literally the exact same day as Super Mario Galaxy 1. The latter dwarfed the former in terms of marketing. The closest we really had to mainstream marketing for the Tellius games at the time was Ike in Super Smash Bros Brawl and even then, Brawl came out a year after Radiant Dawn and Smash Bros wasn't nearly as oversaturated with Fire Emblem fighters back then as it is now.
Very nice video Mangs, I appreciate the balanced and reasonable perspective on Engage, and I agree with the aesthetics point. However I do have a few points of contention here: It is actually very much speaking against its reputation that Engage had such low sales compared to 3 Houses. There is *far, far* more market saturation with more Switches than ever being in people's hands compared to 3 Houses. (literally there have been over 125 million Switches sold, compared to the comparatively low Switch numbers at the time of FE 3 Houses release), and comparing it to Thracia isn't exactly ideal since there was a *lot* going against Thracia besides just a late release. The Switch isn't anywhere close to dead/replaced yet, compared to the SNES which was already done as a console by that point in time. The Nintendo 64 was released *4 years* before Thracia 776. Imagine a DS game (not a 3DS game) releasing in 2015. for reference. There is no indication of anything to replace the Switch coming any time soon, its not comparable. Engage was coming off the heels of a successful game in 3 Houses so there was natural interest in another entry to a franchise that was beloved at the time. I personally believe that word of mouth just informed people that the game was not worth it, combined with the questionable promo materials turning people off. Also, Fates was a disaster for the community and many people don't realize that Nintendo *lied* about sales numbers to inflate its numbers, which is *horrendous* for any company to do, and doesn't make sales information on that game trustworthy. You can read the Not only this, but Fates was the release of 3 games, its (very sketchy) sales numbers taking *that* into consideration, was a flop. Engage will eventually get its community reputation above trash like Fates did because it has good gameplay, but it took years for people to "give it a pass". Funnily enough I had a friend who pretty much had almost the exact same experience with Fates that yours did, so... lol. I also think that blaming the internet/attention span for the failure of Engage is questionable, something like Elden Ring was very popular on the internet and also sold ridiculously well as a game. Same for Hogwarts Legacy. I think that the internet has a role in the fact that interest in Engage dropped off so quickly because of people's lowered attention span, but if Engage was universally beloved and handled things differently, I'm confident that Engage would've made a lot more splash and had its interest lasted longer.
this comment confuses me. You tell mangs not to inflate fates numbers but then you say its a flop? I think what really happened is that there was inflated numbers because a lot of people bought all 3 routes lol
@@-lord1754 No, you misunderstand. Fates' sales numbers were falsified by Nintendo, which makes all the sales numbers involving that game untrustworthy to begin with (especially the most recent BS one currently floating around saying it magically became 3 million, that's a total load lmao). Now, let's assume that, even excluding that ridiculous 3 million figure that came out of nowhere, that it was sold around 2 million total copies to be fair to Fates. That 2 million sold is for 3 games *combined*. Those 3 routes also had the development costs of 3 games associated with them, as opposed to Awakening's single game development costs. If each game sold only around 700K to reach that, that would be a failure compared to Awakening, which was only *1* game in terms of development and costs, but sold as much as *all 3 games combined*. Basically, with Fates, you have to account for it being like 2-3 games in terms of development costs, and with that in mind, its *total* sales were barely around Awakening's. We *know* Awakening was a success, but for all we know, they might not have even broken even on Fates.
@@blazingswordchad3384 I see what you mean but it wasnt actually development costs of 2-3 games. Theres a LOT of asset reuse in between games even if they basically are separate games.
I'm just not into Fire Emblem anymore as much as I used to be. FE 7-10 were my favorite games but after that they just started adding new things and mechanics that I feel really bogged stuff down. That and I think reclassing makes things so boring. It was FUN having a normally great unit get terrible levelups, making you have to reconsider your roster and use someone you typically wouldn't use.
The way i see it, FE is in a franchise management crisis. Not the worst point ever but it's not good. And interestingly, the commercial success also may have a negative impact on all that, because it misleads the team about the game's direction... It came to a point i started suspecting that FE cannot last longer without awfully unfitting extravagant designs, elaborate relationship mechanics, waifus and other fanservice. Still the legacy of 3ds games at work. And since they literally saved the series, it's hard to imagine the devs not relying desperately on that stuff... In fact the tendency is to gradually increase, as Engage showed.
Another problem is that FE, despite how old and famous, overall became lacking in meaningful evolution of the gameplay formula and writing style. The game already had some issues since the beginning, but that could be more or less excused by how revolutionary and brilliant it was in the 90s. Then those lacking areas were never addressed, and after Kaga left the IS team shamefully exploited his original design without adding a fair number of important contributions, the necessary content to expand the franchise to the next level. And since the 3ds era that perspective became even more problematic... exactly because the waifus and stuff proved to be able to sustain the franchise. They became the priority to polish and elaborate in sequels, getting ahead of other issues. All that combined to the fact that Nintendo doesnt value FE as it deserved and has no ambitious vision for it. Like how they see and approach mainline Mario and Zelda games. The thing is that FE could have become much bigger and achieved so much more aside of good sales. But it's horribly stagnant and still one of the most barebones long running rpg franchises. Intolerable poor management, that just doesnt care enough to expand the games. After all it's the only healthy strategy rpg and it's safely carried by waifus and dating.
That happened to me with Rath once in FE7. I promoted him as soon as I got him in Eliwood's story and he hardly gained any stats. I forgot to heal him at one point and I think Lloyd or Linus killed him with a light brand of all things or something like that. I didn't care enough to reset because Rath had fell off so hard.
People said the same to xenoblade series when people hated the machanics being changed they boggled them down. MMO FF12 games play was already outdated even by 2010 standards and it isolated the xeno fans.
When you brought up fates compared to engage it got me thinking. I think the difference is that Fates story was bad while Engages story was boring. Bad is more interesting than boring at the end of the day. I also remember feeling like there was a lot of potential with fates and a lot of interesting story hidden behind supports. I think others must have felt that way as well because I've watched so many videos where people discuss how they could change or rewrite fates as well as analysis videos on characters or lore. I haven't really seen that for Engage much. Engage has no secrets, no hidden lore or greater world building to inspire discussion. I also agree that Story, Gameplay and character design are all equally important aspects of a video game. Awakening was a bit if a mess but it did good enough in those three area that it suceeds. Fates has good gameplay, good designs and just enough nuggets of potential sorry for people to want to still play and talk about it. Engage has good gameplay and some good supports but lackluster story and bad design. It's ironic that despite being so over the top the designs still manage to look generic. I like the artist, i think you can tell from her art that she is really good at making the crazy colours work, but in 3d is doesn't work at all, and it doesn't suit fire emblem.
I absolutely love the gameplay in Engage; I think it's a ton of fun and much more player-phase oriented than most Fire Emblem games with is a huge plus for me. That said, I struggle to want to play through it a 2nd time because most of the characters just aren't likeable.
I watched the whole video. Three houses was my first FE game. I really enjoyed the fact that there were three factions, cool looking characters who are not over the top in design, and interesting gameplay. I’ve gone back and played awakening and that was even better designed than 3H. Engage was just, so, over the top with its characters and almost none are someone I can relate to. I do like the game a lot still.
@@MrPublius Don’t worry about this antagonistic jerk. Three houses had a few flaws but it truly shined in the character and story development where the characters grew in many of their supports while also removing many of their quirks from those supports. I would also recommend the Gba games as they are simple stories but are better than Engage due to the world building and character motivations that push the story. Hope you enjoy fire emblem and have fun
@@eternaldarklight8204 lmao « few » flaws Three houses as flaws absolutely everywhere and even on it’s supposed strong points like unit building and story and that’s not even when it’s just horrible game design
@@thomasquesada7248 Hahah, are you really going to go that route. Trust me, Engage just failed to connect with players due to its character writing and story telling that failed to keep people interested on the game. Meanwhile other fire emblem games showed plot twists and new information that helped keep the players engaged and interested like three houses, blazing blade, path of radiance and more. Overall Engage is a poorly executed game that fails in most aspects that are not gameplay
@bomberL9xd you assume that because I started with 3 houses that I, ab initio, cannot be a fan now? I never complained about the core mechanics of Engage. Firstly I’ve played 3H, Awakening, Engage, and now 7, in that order and have enjoyed them all. When do I get my fan card? Secondly, even if, let’s assume I played 3H and enjoyed that, does that automatically assume that I can’t criticize another game for certain things I enjoyed about 3H? Thirdly, combining one and two, if I played three houses first, enjoyed it, enjoyed engage, enjoyed awakening and 7, but think certain things were done better in three houses still, that completely invalidates ALL of my credibility? Or are you being too critical of a game that departed from the original formula because of personal preference? Lastly, persona is a great game too, but fire emblem is waaaaay better. I’ll let you know in a month or two when I finish shadows and fates, but I’ll still probably think three houses was good.
2:50 Engage is probably going to be the inverse of the radiance games. *Good stories & characters give games long term staying power.* Initial sales depend mostly on how much hype from marketing is around and general market size of the series. The better stories made 3H take off after its initial wave and still has it sticking around. The radiance games stick around for the same reasons. *People recommend it to others bc they want to share the story and characters to talk about.* People do not recommend games because of great gameplay nearly as much. Engage meanwhile benefitted from the FE & gaming market being much larger by now, but dried up after the initial wave because its story does not attract extra people like it does for the other games but drives them away instead. Its gameplay still might keep it alive if modders provide enough fresh content long term.
personally i feel like three houses was the outlier not engage. the story of three houses sparking so much discussion alone probably carried the game. lots of people talked about things happening in three houses who was wrong who was right etc. its just no the same with engage.
the multiple routes probably help with that immensely as early on people would be talking with other players about how their experiences differed. People who were not playing the game could have easily wanted to be part of those discussions and FOMO is a powerful motivator.
I think you got a point. 3 Houses was more about hard decisions that makes you fight against the other heroes that makes it impossible to have a ending without sacrifice while Engage was basically the MC gaining allies to take down the big baddie without much drama or backstabbing. I felt sad when I lost Edelgard on my first playthrough of 3 Houses for not getting max support.
@@kylewood4488-b9r There are no hard decisions to make in 3H when you can recruit every character sans the other lord and their retainer. What's worse is that everything works out and Fodlan flourishes regardless of what lord you choose.
@@Videodrome1991 Midwit take. He's not talking about the purely practical gameplay decisions, he's talking about the moral complications associated with each lord and their method to reach Fodlan's prosperity. The characters can simultaneously all be well-intentioned and have equally valid visions for the future which will all lead to a good outcome, but also be incompatible with each other (at least as far as they can tell) and have various ethical failings, especially when they're on the losing side and start getting desperate. You could easily say that Byleth's influence is precisely what decides Fodlan's fate, since they're the one attracting students of other houses under the banner of the house they chose. In this sense the fundamental decision is which lord you think will lead to the best outcome for Fodlan, although this also limits the player's perspective. They're just not privy to the virtues of the other lords (or Rhea), or the full scope of what drives them. Could 3H's story have been even better? Certainly. But it's a great number of steps along the correct direction for the series going forward.
@@Kageryushin Moral complications? Ethical failings? Dude please, this is 3H. Edelgard is an accessory to your father's murder and never gets reprimanded by Byleth for it in her own route. This is the same game where every route follows a strict script no matter what characters you recruit. It doesn't matter what values the lords hold or what actions you take, everything works out in the end. Fodlan prospers. The End. This isn't Fallout New Vegas where your actions have consequences. As for Byleth, he's a tool for self-inserting (until Hopes gave him a silver of soul) and one of the worst parts of the game because everyone washes his balls to the point of abandoning their home houses for him despite having little to no personality.
3:50 I noticed the same trend by comparing metacritic number of user review increases. Engage & 3H having similar initial waves but then 3H getting a 2nd much larger wave, while Engage dried up. Experiencing the story takes time. That explains the delay for 3H's 2nd wave. People learned that the story was good and recommended it to others alot. Engage's story if anything did the opposite. (Accelerating the drying up of the initial wave by people warning that the story is bad.)
I haven't even finished a playthrough yet but my big think of why people talk about this less than 3 houses is that stories are what people's minds attach to, and stories are only as good as their character's thoughts and actions. 3 houses was all new people in a unique setting for the series whereas in engage half the cast is "Hey 'member this guy." Yes there are all the new characters, but they're diluted by all the people who's function in the story and gameplay can be replaced by a magic crystal that makes you stronger.
I'm torn on which Switch FE I prefer overall.. On the surface 3 Houses feels a little more vintage FE.. My only pet peeve was the text was a little small which made it difficult to see at times.. So many games nowadays make you strain your eyes which is a little uncomfortable.. I am a fan of both entries however and have minimal complaints.. I wouldn't say Engage is a failure as far as its peers but what I did notice is whenever a new big release drops the previous one appears to be instantly forgotten about.. And there has been quite a few noteworthy releases this year
Something I heard a while back which really interested me was that a lot of the character designs straight up don't look like they're in the correct setting. FE is a war like setting and having characters with kooky and bright flashy designs instead of darker colors or some type of battle armor just feels off. Almost like they don't take war effort seriously.
The theory at the end makes a lot of sense and wow is it kinda depressing, but I hope Engage gets a wakeup call for what it did right and what it did wrong and the higher-ups don't just discard everything about Engage
9:00 Tons of people seem to talk about how the design was a big reason for it "failing", but I don't think that's the case and this might be just a loud minority. Character design is something you can see immediately. Even before buying the game. However initial sales were the only time Enage did well. The fall off came after some time passed. That lines up with story being the reason as that one does take more time to find out if you like or dislike it. It also lines up with what people say the most in their reviews. Character design is mentioned semi-regularly, but the bad stories gets named as the reason in almost every review. Including even positive reviews often mention the story being bad, but it's good anyway.
Let me put it this way: Three Houses was talked about for 2 or 3 years after release I have not heard a single thing about Engage other than the fact that it released at some point. So something must have gone wrong
What went wrong is how unengaging the game really is after the hype wore out. It’s fun to play but boring to discuss and a bit uninteresting. The issue with engage is how bland it feels. The world characthers supports story feels bland. Fates may had a bad story but at least we can still talk about it heck I at least remember many of the fates cast name meanwhile I can only remember a few of the characters in engage
it was not really a failure, but more like could have done more than what they presented. For instance, more supports converations (maybe not all voiced and more bonds with the emblems), bigger story in each nation, more side missions, more variety in emblem trials, a past arc, and the fell xenolgue would have being so much better if it continued from the point where the MC knows about him/herself's nature. If the DLC was much longer I think it would have being more interesting too. Main campagin story wise, I think they could have added more time between each event. so that it feels logical that the MC gets attached to certain characters, and that it feels more like an ongoing war with the Fell Dragon....etc
I haven't played Enguage, and your point on character designs seems to match my feelings on the game. I just saw the box art, saw the two in center with the Pepsi colour scheme, and immediately wanted nothing to do with it. I like some absurd designs, but those hit in a weird way that bugged me.
@@D0MiN0ChAn The game's art style was largely driven by Mika Pikazo, an illustrator new to the Fire Emblem series. The team at Intelligent Systems was impressed with her vivid and colorful drawings that "popped". This perfectly matched their goal of appealing to a broad audience, including younger players.
@@orangeslash1667 still, the colgate hair and v-tuber aesthetic sadly won't win me over 🥲 which is okay, i have plenty of other FE titles to return to and appreciate
Great video with some very interesting points, I especially liked the zoomer attention span concept. I agree that Engage will most probably end up viewed like fates in the future as the actual core gameplay is fun. The main way I see it is the idea of in the future playing three houses again and skipping story or playing engage and skipping story is a complete no contest for me.
@@Speedwinghere Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience. Tsutomu Tei also said that the decision for Engage to have a single path, rather than the branching paths in Three Houses and Fates, was made early. Genki Yokota, producer from Nintendo, said that some players were intimidated by too many branching paths and would assume they had to play all of them. Tei felt that a simplified story structure would allow players to put all their focus on the tactical gameplay. In other words, Intelligent Systems is trying way to appeal to beginners.
@@orangeslash1667 I'm confused by your last statement as from what you're saying right up to the last sentence instead implys that three houses is the casual game with more focus on story and character interaction hence being more appealing to beginners and engage with its heavier emphasis on gameplay and nostalgia baiting is more appealing for veterans of the series imo. Not that it nessisarily actually ended up that way for engage but from a design point of view I'm convinced that's what they were going for. It was meant to be the anniversary title after all.
15:15 While that is true in general *I think Engage's skill system missed a big opportunity to be better by 1) limiting it to only 2 skill slots.* You're already limited by SP. Having only 2 slots means you're just going to pick only the strongest skills, when the different SP cost for skills would have been ideal for also having the option of deciding to instead get alot of weaker skills instead of just the strongest ones, as you always do with the other games anyway. In fact in this game because weaker skills also take away SP from getting stronger skills they're even less worth getting than when you learn them early from a class like in the other games. *2) Being able to sell skills back for the same SP cost* would have been an excellent feature aswell, so you can experiment around alot.
Hey Mangs, good points on the reasons. I did like myself Engage, and I would've loved to keep playing it for a few more playthroughs (i played 3), but so many games were releasing in quick succession. Advance Wars RBC, Zelda tears of the kingdom, and generally me being pretty busy with college the few months following Engage's release. That aside, these are the pros and cons I find with engage: Pros: -Combat animations have not been this great since the GBA era, normally i turn them off in fates/awakening and even 3Houses, but i kept these on for all my 3 playthroughs. -Map design was a breath of fresh air after the copypasta maps of 3Houses -Having less skill slots and skills being generally more impactful makes character building much more streamlined and a blast. -Engage rings are a pretty great and fun mechanic overall. -Bosses having resurrection stones and engage attacks makes them an actual challenge and thrill to fight this time around. -I personally like the more stylized artstyle of this game, guess i'm part of the 50% that liked the artstyle -Monastery/Somniel elements not being too intrusive and mandatory makes replaying less of a chore. I sometimes find myself wanting to replay 3Houses, but the thought of having to do monastery management to be able to play fire emblem puts me off. - Being able to just "buy" skills and reclass with easy makes it pretty easy and fun to try new builds -The soundtrack is insane Cons: -Character designs felt a little bit overdone. Don't get me wrong, I like some like Yunaka and Céline (i really like poofy dresses), but others like Timerra and Ivy's grate (they should have made Ivy's Somniel outfit her main design) are too much. It generaly made designs pretty hit-or-miss. -Lack of New game plus of sorts is weird, i really feel like we should've gotten a way to pass on skills we already knew, engage weapon upgrades, and bond rings. -Engage weapon upgrades being locked behind the tempest trials mode at such low drop rates is bad. I'd rather go through the game with the fallen off engage weapons in late game than grind for hours for little amounts of crystals (luckily mods have us covered with purchaseable crystals) -Mandatory "plot bad" point. I feel like it tries too hard to be generic, I feel like it could've been done better and allowed the personalities of the old lords to shine in the story. -The fact that many great characters are locked behind supports is weird. I used to hate Yunaka because of the impression she left on the player during main story, but her supports really show how deep of a character she actually is, making her one of my favourite. I feel like they should've made some of these characters shine in main story (was gonna make a 3Houses comparison, but 3H cheats by being able to allocate a route to a handful of characters each) -The world feels dead and uninteresting, seriously, are there no civilians anywhere apart from Firene and Solm? Would've loved to see the world developed a bit more. -Villians are badly written and comically evil. -Lack of true romantic S-rank supports for the main character is boring. Not sure why they decided to make them all platonic -Lack of paired endings, a feature that has been around for ages being removed is another red flag. Makes me question wether they're thinking of moving away from romance in FE in general. Paired endings added a level of replayability and interaction between the characters. -The Fell Xenologue was hella dissapointing. Can't believe I payed $20.00 for 7 bracelets (that arguably could've been in the game since the begginning) and a half baked Xenologue. IS needs to rethink DLC, cuz even Cindered Shadows in 3Houses gave us 4 deep characters that interact very well with the main cast. (and it gave us Constance)
Story wise, it was too linear and the plot twists were terrible. MC dies three times: 1. In the past 2. Protecting best girl Veyle 3. Recharging the emblems. Then gets revived as an emblem? Come on. Not to mention the nations have no culture which is reflected by the cast, Zelkov, Kagetsu, Jean, Pannette. Character wise, localization hurt the game more than the story: Louis' "people watching", Etie and Goldmary's support (What? Women arent alow to have a beautiful body?), pact ring. Speaking of Goldmary, I'm mad that the censored her being self conscius about gaining weight. Unpopular opinion, I like Celine's dress and shoes. But I also like the AI designed Celine just as much I think Goldmary's design might be offputing by the shoulder piece or the color yellow or personal opinion, not enough emphasis on her booba The only character designs I don't like are Bunet, Jade, Amber, Boucheron, Etie, and maybe Hortensia because of the contrast in color
@@Factboy12 It's not just the story or characters but how these factors are portrayed on Engage where they feel like caricatures rather then believable people. Many supports in Engage rely on the quirks of a character rather than allowing them to grow as people. While there are some good supports, these are the exception. Many other fire emblem games like blazing blade and the tellius games had simple stories but keep the player interested due to the world building, characters and how they fit into the game itself
Engages Gameplay is definitely the best in the Series,but the Story and Charchter designs are just.. terrible.The Charchters feel overdesigned and they don't look like they are meant to be in a a Fire emblem game set in an mediveal world.I didn't finish engage because towards the end it just started feeling like a chore.The story was just so uninstersting and at times super frustrating because of how the Charchters were acting in the Main story's cutsence.(being dumbed down and obsessing over alear in the main story)The Somniel part was fun for like 1-2hours but afterwards it was really boring,and I wish we had more charchter dialogue on the somniel.Engage had so much poteinal but it all was wasted.I really hope they get better writers or spend more time on the story elements and the Charchter designs for future games. Another nitpick for me was as Mangs mentioned in the video-the lack of personality shown in the main story.Engages supports are really nice,and i liked a handfull of them but it saddens me that the Charchters feel so dull in the main story.Alear and Zelkov's support is by far my favourite, because you get to see how much personality both alear and Zelkov actually have, but in the main story alears personality is watered down to a point where you just don't like Alear. Really unfortunate, since alot of supports showcased how much personality the Charchters actually have ,that the main story failed to showcase.
New to fire emblem and so far got to chapter 24 on normal in Engage and feel that without playing 3H I can see the character design being disappointing and overly shiny plastic by comparison. Really enjoyed the gameplay and feel that the snappy animation adds to it but it has to be looked on as a slightly shallow celebration title but there's a game in here.
every time i see someone talk about how good engage's cutscenes looked i feel like they must be people who only played 3 houses because to this day the cinamatics from awakening are some of my favorite video game cutscenes ever. the one with grima looming over the dragons table? the zoom in on lucina's eye? they really handled the switch from 2d anime to 3d really well, i liked that they didnt try to make it look 2d and instead worked to make the 3d look as beautiful as possible. the bright purple and blue tones, sense of scale, facial animations and sense of movement was really well done in them. i liked the ones in fates too. i mean, the ones where you dont slam full speed into boobs. like the corrin transformation one with all the water in the air. possessed takumi, leo in the swamp, facing ryoma, theres a lot of really cool high impact visuals. i didnt really dig the way echoes, 3H and now engage kinda... dropped that direction to try to make everything look 2d again. espessially bc as an animator who pays attention to these details a lot, both 3H and engage just ended up looking uncanny. 3H felt a lot like a lot of 2d anime ppl with 3d hair on their heads. not ever model shades the same and they end up looking misplaced, or the focus on the 2d eliment begins to take more precedent over making them look good at all. i think back to the cutscene where jeralt gets stabbed. i thought that scene looked like shit. engage decided to take the worse parts of engage and make them look emptier, less organized, more misplaced and jumbled, and too visually busy at all times. at some point, engage became so much at once it became a visual load of nothing. when every character is trying to be the quirky one, nobody is charming. people liked henry in awakening because he was so starkly different than everyone else. when everyones henry, henry just becomes annoying. engage was a master of taking characters no one cared about and putting them in giant empty rooms to say mind rottingly boring, predicable things. i love story, i love animation, when i played engage, i felt tempted to skip cutscenes and dialogue, on a first playthough. i didnt even know what i was going to see and i didnt really care to. the fans want more mature story telling, and they gave us the most dumbed down immature story yet. at some point i feel like IntSys isnt listening to fans at all. hell, i dont feel like IntSys is looking at what makes their games succesful at all either!
I truly tried to enjoy Engage, however it's important aspect that made me quit the game was the lack of of that Fire Emblem charm. Like what Mangs said the character designs feel off even with great designs like Goldmary. The AI redesign of Celine looks more Fire Emblem than the official ballroom dress which looked distracting and impractical in a series where characters like Tharja exists. The Fire Emblem charm in my opinion is a combination of good medieval fantasy designs, strong character personality, and believable immersion into it's world. All of these FE Engage severely lacked. Compare Engage to FE Echoes, which also had a simple story. The difference was that Echoes continent of Valentia felt believable and oddly breathtaking at times with it's music and first person point and click viewing mechanic that gave players a more personal connection to it's characters and world. Engage showed a lack of care for the Fire Emblem world that captivated many of us to the point it felt like a knock off. Alear herself easily could had been on par with Alm/Celicia if she wasn't held back by the Avatar system. She has a good design, her voice acting carries the unremarkable story, and the divine dragon concept held a lot of potential. I tend to hold the unpopular opinion of liking the avatar characters due to seeing severe untap potential with their characters. For Alear it was fun seeing her act kinda dorky in her supports, but most of it was overshadowed by the cringe elements of Engages cast. The cringe got so bad, it felt like Alear was going to break the fourth wall out of frustration. To sum things up Alear belongs in a better Fire Emblem game.
Engage probably had quite a few reasons to fall off so fast. Don't really think it's just attention span. That would have hurt 3H too. With it's many routes. With it's early big sales. it seems many a FE fans gave it a chance but left the game unsatisfied. The story , character writing and character designs certainly hurt it. It left the fanbase with little to talk abouit and few character to care for and discuss. Heck. Despite it's flaws. Fates talk lasted a long time after release. for good ot bad. Engage doesn't even have that. I know the devs wanted another Awakening to appeal to new players but they just failed with that too. Just adding some old characters is not gonna convince new players to try it. As for the next game and Engage's effect on it? i think it will not effect a remake too much but more players might be wary of the next fully new game.
I think there's a slight censorship factor in play with how badly it did, but that wouldn't save the game's story and writing either way even if there wasn't any. The gameplay wasn't bad or anything, it just feels like there's not much else to say beyond that for Engage. The game's artstyle is a HUGE turn off for majority of people and that's going off of when people reacted to Alear's design. Game accessibility could be a factor too since its a Switch-only game. Fire Emblem Engage kind of deviates from what makes Fire Emblem truly appealing would be the most sensible conclusion.
To me it was only a huge turn off to the 3H fanboys. Literally everyone who hated on the design had to bring up 3H as if it was the only FE game in existence. I personally liked most of the designs in Engage but hey that's just me. Nothing I say matters in the long run.
@@Spyder-MarthI can assure you it wasnt just 3houses fanboys, the designs were extremely offputting for me and even still just stick out really badly in the series
@@DourFlower The game's art style was largely driven by Mika Pikazo, an illustrator new to the Fire Emblem series. The team at Intelligent Systems was impressed with her vivid and colorful drawings that "popped". This perfectly matched their goal of appealing to a broad audience, including younger players.
@@DourFlowerI can vouch. The artstyle made the game unappealing to many not just fans. Hell one of my friends didn’t even know that engage was a fire emblem game they thought it was some weird spin off. The vtuber artstyle was a horrible choice however the game has other issues besides the artstyle: a boring story that’s generic, a main character worshipped too much by the cast, many of the cast felt boring and anime tropes too the extreme. Ironically engage failed to engage with it’s audience even newer fans didn’t feel like touching this game which is a bit funny since they did like 3H
Gotta be brutally honest here. I only care about FE if it has a good story. And this game made me realize that because it did NOT have a good story. I don’t care how fun the gameplay is. If the story isn’t keeping me hooked then I stop playing. After Echoes and Three Houses this was a huge disappointment. I’ll still be a fan of the series but this game makes me want to replay Three Houses again.
I see more people being apathetic to Engage's story than being outraged like they were with Fates, which might actually be worse for its legacy in the long run. With Fates, I remember so many people being furious at how awful the story was, but that made the game stick with them in the years since its release. I still see people arguing over characters like Corrin and Takumi and Azura seven years later. Meanwhile, Engage's story seems to be more "in one ear, out the other", which is probably going to result in most people completely forgetting about it over time. None of the characters have made much of an impact on the community, for good or ill, like Lucina, Xander, or Dimitri have (except maaaaaaaaaybe Yunaka? Maybe?), and for such a character-driven series, that's practically a death sentence for this game's memorability. I enjoyed going through Engage as a video game, but while there were some characters that I liked, like Yunaka, Fogado and Griss, I barely remember what happens in the plot besides the Emblems being corrupted and Veyle having a Gollum personality split (and also "the Fire Emblem", for obvious reasons), while I can recall almost everything that happens in Three Houses from memory.
Yes it was, i know people like to use the "It was the 4th best selling of the series" but the fact that right now all Nintendo franchises are seeing growth, there is no word of mouth and the devs wanted new people to get into the series makes it a relative failure That emulate comment is weird, you can make that argument for anything, and lets be honest almost everyone who emulates Switch is pirating it, the way to emulate it legally is so convoluted and involves having one of the early Switch that were sold that can be hacked And the "Switch is showing its age" argument doesn't really work as Zelda has showed and both new Mario games will sell a lot
I think engage was a weird title. It had in my opinion the best gameplay I’ve played in the series but has one of the worst stories 😭. I personally though looked passed the story issues and played for the gameplay and it was amazing for me. It definitely isn’t the best or the worst so it’s in a weird place of just being middle of the road
Engage by no means had the worst story, litterally all of fates exist first off. Engage knew what it wanted to be and executed on it. Was the story good? No it was never meant to be, it was meant to be a highly stereotypical story of fire emblem, but it was coherent and finished what it set out to start.
Three Houses was my first ever Fire Emblem game, and I loved it. Going from that to Engage, narratively, just felt so cheesy and weak. I couldn't get engaged in the characters and story the same way I did with Three Houses. Could be I simply didn't have the history with Fire Emblem to enjoy a game that focuses so much on that history.
I would like to offer an additional viewpoint that wasn't discussed in the video. Three Houses is Fire Emblem's best-selling game. It was a 'jumping-on point' for a lot of players and brought a lot of new fans to the franchise. I can't help but wonder if these new players possibly just didn't understand/care about all of the previous lords being in Engage? The game leans heavily into nostalgia that these newer fans simply do not have. Not only that but if you include all of the Lords attached to the rings/bracelets the game has a LOT of characters. Long-time fans of the franchise are already familiar with the lords and their quirks, but to new players, I think it could be considered a little overwhelming. Add that to a lot of the new characters suffering from being overdesigned and it's all just too much. I think some of those players who jumped on at Three Houses picked up Engage and it had strong sales initially because they thought 'I really enjoyed the last Fire Emblem game!' and then sales and interest plummeted because the experience they had wasn't as good (poor story, over-designed characters, reliance on nostalgia that they just don't have) and word of mouth did not encourage further sales and maintain interest in the same way that Three Houses did.
Personally, I've never forgiven Fates. Then again, I didn't enjoy the incredibly dense skill gameplay either. There are a lot of enemy skills that completely invalidate a unit's stats or positioning, and I found it to be incredibly frustrating and often found it feeling very unfair. I played through the entirerty of conquest, hoping I would eventually come to like it. I think running straight into Camilla's tits in the end cutscene was the last straw for me. I heard birthright was different, and purchased it... but only made it through about 5 maps before shelving the game permanently. Game story is very important to me for any rpg, and strategy rpgs like Fire Emblem are not remotely an exception. And seeing that Engage was a cringefest that I could have written better in my sleep was far and away the largest reason I didn't buy it.
The level of censorship was a failure, I mean the MC is 17 so they decided to remove the entire concept of engagem leaving him/her a forever-alone loser rather than raise the age.
Even if this video is not as Edited as the "3Houses did right/Wrong", I like this style of podcast videos. Would not mind for more in the future. Great video Mangs!
The thing though is that mangs' primary audience and popularity is built on GBA fire emblem so asking engage to immediately tip the scales of years of work with 3 other games immediately is kinda unfair
I'd say yes : the game tries hard to be "broad appeal the game" focusing more on shared benefits with their IOS game than their mainline titles and it shows - the core selling points of nostalgia bait emblems are the WEAKEST element and barely delve into their character than face value exaggerations of them, the character design for gacha bait than logic in anyway the point of the game was just low bar investment with casual appeal, it "plays well" which means nothing in the grand scheme than it allows a lot of things cause its easier and more coddled also really day 1 dlc that has skills that make it inherently p2w - pay to win faster, that tells of everything to this brand right now another big issue is localization - its all a lie and telling of censorship and egotistical translators adding their own spin cause they think they're so interesting and better than the actual writers, the result is the writing is terrible and more childish than it actually is i worry for the next remakes if they ever do cause this design philosophy is going to destroy the writing and style of the games to appeal to the masses
I didn't touch Engage since TotK went out. My guess for the failure, Alear design and the previous lords leading to an impression of fanservice bait. I liked some character design such as Ivy, Diamant or Celine.
Was Fire Emblem Engage a Failure? When I see all the bad review about this game, it's doesn't surprise me because I doesn't stop repeat that too much grab monney game kill the grab monney game as the Fire Emblem serie have made the big mistake of his life to follow the Pokemon and Kirby path by release one game every years in a Call of Duty style with not enough work into it and why? Because Fire Emblem, just like Pokemon and Kirby, are into the Nintendo game to be the most popular in Japan so we can say they have somes big sales at their release as a grab monney game since Nintendo mainly focus on them for the monney. If it's not true then why 6 years later the Nintendo Switch still don't have any Star Fox, Kid Icarus or F-Zero games despite the Switch is the best opportunity to made somes old game comeback at life for made them know to the new players who join Nintendo those last years and who don't know much about Nintendo video game serie since the Nintendo Switch is very popular arround the world and even surpass the Nintendo 3DS sales? Why the Switch isn't able to get his own Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country except get a old Wii U game ported to the Switch like most of the Mario Wii U games already did to be back on Switch despite previous Nintendo console before the Switch wasn't into the port of old game to next console and for the Wii U games ported to the Switch still be sold for 60 dollars instead to reduce the price? Why we just get 4 Pikmin games with 3 port and one new game and 2 Metroid games without any news about Metroid Prime 4 as if Nintendo doesn't really care about his own community while Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby get one game every years if Nintendo isn't hungry about monney? Did it a sort of stupid favoritism or something if it's not for the monney? However, more Nintendo keep abusing to release the same grab monney game and more their grab monney game become garbage. Take Pokemon for example: If it was a time the Pokemon community was welded together and approve every Pokemon games as good game even if the release of a new game was rare, since Nintendo release them one or 2 games per years, the community is defintiively destroy and in wars between those who like the games like they are and doesn't care about how it look like while others hate the game because ugly graphics, recycled gameplay, bad story mode, glitch in the last game from 2022 and others stuff they say and, without belong to any of these clans, I think Digimon is more better than Pokemon because Bandai have the honnor to not treat his own community like a piece of sh*t and have the respect to listen their own community unlike Nintendo/Pokemon compagnies so, thanks to Bandai, we get Digimon Cybert Sleuth and Next Order with a good optimized Switch and Steam port with a good story mode with nice graphics and addictive gameplay so no longer wonder why somes news on internet was saying somes good reviews about Digimon Next Order at his Steam and Switch release unlike the last Pokemon from 2022 about, the random news that I have read, was having fun to sink the Pokemon game into the mud for several problem about the game like why Nintendo tester don't test their own Pokemon game before release in public and that its the Nintendo community who do the job instead the Nintendo tester for notice all the glitch. Plus the Legendary from Pokemon will never surpass the Royal Knight from Digimon who are more better and more awesome than those stupid Legendary from Pokemon about most of them are very forgettable without have anything special except proove they are so dumb for let themself be captured by a evil Pokemon trainer. For Fire Emblem Engage, well, I think everyone know why but for short and from what people in my country was saying about the game: The game is too much fan service, somes of the DLC was garbage and too much expensive despite the bad quality, the english dub was disappointing that most of people have prefer play the game with Japan voice despite they would prefer the english voice if it wasn't a disaster, the story who look like too much kiddy unlike Awakening who was more an adult story, useless characters in the game about most of players who explain they have prefer kill most of the characters they meet just for not hear them later since most of the conversation are useless and don't bring anything special to the story, somes scene who can made players very uneasy like the little girl kid who fall in love to an old adult characters and say to him so love word so the pedophiles who play this game must have been really happy to see a such scene like that and wihout forget that the characters design who are still ugly but it's been a while we know it thanks to Smash Ult with most of the Fire Emblem roster who have blue hair, sword, cape and moveset too much similar to each other so that the Black Knight (despite he is a trophy for help us), Corrin and Daraen are the only characters who are very unique and deserve to be in Smash for the design, weapons and moveset who made the mspecial unlike Marth and all his clones so when I see somes FE characters who are too similar to each others like Chrom, Ike or Lucina I wonder what they really do in Smash Ult or in their original serie except be the brothers and sisters of Marth? For Kirby Return to Dreamland Deluxe, the remake was half good and half bad unlike the good old classic Wii version who was just good and never bad. Why? For short: Useless black line arround the characters since the classic game didn't have any and it look more ugly in cutscene because the black lines are too much visible, Dedede face who is still ugly and, funny part, people already complain it in Forgotten Land but Nintendo/Hal Laboratory love play deaf when it suits them for made same mistake twice and, except adding new mini game and Magolor side story to the game who are the two only good new things about the Deluxe version, Nintendo don't have made any gameplay upgrade like made the friendly AI from Star Allies be back for Return to Dreamland Deluxe if we are too lazy for play with others players and still no new playable characters for the Kirby main story like have somes friend dream from Star Allies be back like Dark Meta Knight, Taranza, Susie and somes others so it's definitively better to play the classic wii game on a Wii or Wii U with a price who is less than 60 dollars if we do somes search for buy the game on internet than waste 60 dollars for a bad remake if Nintendo/Hal Laboratory didn't mess with it. It's sad to say but the Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby serie gonna be hated for good and gonna made a bad reputation for Nintendo if Nintendo keep messing with Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby by overused them by release too much game every years just for the monney since they are the most Nintendo popular game in Japan to get too much attention while they forget their good others video game serie like Star Fox, Metroid, Kid Icarus, F-Zero, the real Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country Swicth and others so, it's sad to say it too but, if Nintendo have planned to create a new console who don't will have any link with the Nintendo Switch familly anymore from the rumor that I have heard, I don't gonna buy it if it's for be in front of a Nintendo Switch-like about most of the game who are release are grab monney game like Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby while other Nintendo game are forgotten due to be less popular than their grab monney game and, if I'm into Nintendo, it's because they have so much video game serie and always try to made various game without favoritism when Iwata was alive but it seem like the favoritism for the monney is become a hight priority for them and not really the community itself and I'm far away to be the only one who don't gonna buy the next Nintendo console. It's been a while than the F-Zero and Kid Icarus community no longer support Nintendo and, from what I have hear, I have notice than the Star Fox and Metroid community are the next who will no longer support Nintendo since they feel like that Nintendo take them for a dick and that Nintendo is more focus to release Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby grab monney game instead to care to a new Star Fox game or don't have do anything special for the Star Fox 30th anniversary this year unlike their grab monney game who get a anniversary with special stuff like new game and else while Metroid Prime 4 have been announced since 6 or 7 years without any news about it so if Nintendo release a new console, Nintendo gonna fall from their dream monney cloud and be back at the reality by see that their next console have very bad sales due to how Nintendo have treat their own community with the Nintendo Switch. So, if people are still bad faith about all those important information who are true and verified by still claim it's still false, then the conversation is close and I wish to the Fire Emblem community to enjoy the best that they can the Fire Emblem games because, by know how is become Nintendo today by just care for grab monney game, the next Fire Emblem game gonna be like Engage by be another garbage like saying the people so enjoy the best that you can about all the good memories you remember with past Fire Emblem game before Engage because the next Fire Emblem game who is supposed be release somewhere in 2024 from somes rumor leaks gonna be a big disappointment again ;)
You know I just noticed that no Engage Characters won this years Choose your legends Now compare that to how dominant 3 houses characters were the past few choose your legends polls for FeH These characters haven't had any impact on the fandom
The characters just arent worth talking about The only reason people still talk about fates is either to bash on it for its trash ass features or its shameless horniness. Engage doesnt even have that much from a characterization perspective All people will say about it when/if they remember it is "oh yeah, that game had really good map design" and thats hardly a topic of lengthy discussion
Ivy, Yunaka, and Goldmary are fan service oriented characters. Their outfits leave very little to the imagination. And I talk about Fates because I really enjoyed it.
i am just happy alear is fully voiced and not fully silent or barely even talk. some of the voice deliveries especially by the male alear is fantastic, its not anywhere near the levels of Berkut or Dimitri but still its nice. problem is the delivery doesn't happen often another thing is alear's sword liberation has no story significance whatsoever, even in gameplay i didnt find anything special, surprisingly it doesn't even have "effective against corrupted". i always viewed supports as a way to give charecters more development or personality. you cant have every person in an entire army to recieve character development in the main story and that's understandable also fire emblem proves that making the main protagonist a dragon will result in a bad story but fun gameplay
I don't think it was quite the art style at all, I like the character designs, it's the cleanest looking game in the series imo and I also stopped paying attention to it myself as soon as I was done with it. Engage had a single path story with a lame twist with almost no moral grey to discuss. It felt like the story was designed for young children so it really kind of leaves nothing to discuss. You're right that it's most apt to compare it to Fates but I'd argue in that comparison, the lack of paths compounds the problem. On top of that Fates at least did fan service well, something Engage also didn't do well at all. Now I'm not trying to claim that a game can't be done with a single path anymore, I just think it requires some depth and moral grey. Any of the 3 houses paths provide a higher level of discussion than the single Engage path. Now I'm not saying Engage even had a bad story, I think you don't really need anything more than what we got when the mechanics are great, but it's a story that goes out of it's way too provide little discussion. On top of that because it was coming off potentially the most interesting scenario in the series the whiplash kind of turned people off.
7:14 We don't. Everyone admits that Fates and Engage have miserably shit storylines at this point, and even subpar visual aesthetics - Engage moreso than Fates, but people seem to prefer Echoes, 3H's and Tellius' more "overcast tones" and "down to earth" medieval fantasy-focused look. We also say that Conquest (though not really Birthright and certainly not Revelations) and Engage are overall mechanically well-designed (probably better overall than 3H and Tellius, though Engage's hub is fucking ass IMO) and most people appreciate them for that fact. We want IS to retain the positive ideas they learned from the designs of these games while holding themselves to the storytelling standard set by their best efforts. If we take for granted that Tellius and Echoes are top contenders for the best storytelling (if not the best stories) in the series, then barring 3H, FE's best storytelling efforts have generally come out at really bad times. Path of Radiance came out on a console that performed considerably below par and had no promotion. Radiant Dawn came out early on a successful console, but 1) didn't have the mass appeal of the gimmicks that put said console on the map, 2) was a sequel to a game that too few people had played to begin with, and 3) had no promotion. Echoes came out at the very end of the 3DS' lifespan and had no fucking promotion. I'd also say New Mystery has good storytelling - great relative to Engage - but the west didn't even get the chance to legitimately experience it. Even the stories of these FE games aren't without their own flaws to quibble over, of course, but they're great showings for the series overall. 3H is the first time the series delivered good storytelling and experienced financial success at the same time, so it's understandable why a game like Engage, which was in development before 3H released and made its splash, would take cues from and exaggerate the qualities of Awakening, Fates, and Heroes - the money-makers of the franchise until now. I just pray IS sees the way the wind is blowing at this point.
The take on people's attention spans is an interesting take, i do also believe that many just wrote this game off at first despite the high numbers talking about how bad it looked and all that. Warning for those who care, this comment contains spoilers for the game. Personally i think it's perfectly fine. It's not perfect, but certainly not bad. The gameplay's great, that goes without saying since many do seem to agree on this. But saying the story is a failure in return doesn't sit well with me. Fates's story is pretty bad because of how much it tries to overcomplicate things, and Corrin is worshipped a lot despite them doing some pretty silly things. With Engage i just feel like that's not the case. Its story is just very simple, and Alear's basically a celebrity who has to cope with what's expected of them and i think their journey is pretty well executed. I also think Veyle's arc is really well done, she's basically become one of my favourite FE dragons because she's actually very relevant to the story. I think the story is pretty decent, especially in the 2nd half from when the first truly major roadblock happens. Even Tiki did a few favors and then kind of disappeared. As for character designs, i agree with that they are overdesigned but personally i prefer complicated over boring. That might just be me, though. Combined with that, a lot of the characters are likeable and i enjoy their supports. That said, there's some flaws for sure. I like Clanne and Framme, and i understand Lumera making a big impression on Alear. But the twins being overly excited to meet their hero and the drawn out death scene are kind of awkward. The story actually gets quite good in the 2nd half as i said, but the first impression is pretty poor. Moreover, the villain motivations are pretty weird. The hounds (notably Zephia) and Sombron really did not need sympathetic backstories, especially Zephia since hers wasn't rightfully rebutted by the heroes. I did understand, but i'd rather they were truly evil like the likes of FE4 Hilda or Gharnef. The simple story does make sense as a reason why this game would fall off, though. There's just little to discuss, aside from what characters people do and don't like. But most characters just aren't that controversial, not enough to get into long rants about them anyway. But maybe i prefer it this way, to not have continuous keyboard wars over Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude and Rhea and who is actually the evily evil dastardly villain. You can't really do that about the characters in Engage, since they're so clear cut about where their allegiances lie and what they're about. TL:DR: I think the quality of this game's aspects is just fine, and that it's mostly poor first impressions mixed with characters being not controversial enough to be so aggressively talked about as the 3H lords.
so as someone that can enjoy a game with a bad story (have over 900 hours in fates) I enjoyed engaged but completely agree it left a lot to be desired. I think what got me the most was just not having anyone to get attached to if they would've cut down on the cast to expand the characters in the story it would've helped a lot in that aspect. As the game stands It feels like I'm playing an all corrin run in fates, a bunch of pretty faces that are fun to use and customize but don't have much to make them memorable.
This game fell into the same trap Fates did, where it's essentially "Fire Emblem Royals" where Royal and noble characters just are supposed to be the coolest ever, making the non noble/royal characters just cheerleaders for the non royals
I’m a strong believer that STYLE can make or break a game. Persona (5) being a great example. I consider both series to be in a unique niche regarding their overall appeal. Persona 5 catapulted the series in popularity but the overall gameplay compared to early entries was changed much. But its style, from the flashy special moves, the cut-ins, cut scenes, even the menus and their transitions blend so well together. It knows the style it wanted and was refined to a razor edge. Engage feels lose it’s it style, frist the extreme, over the top, and clashing character designs don’t mesh with each other, specially when put next to the simpler designs of many of the ring heroes. Drop that in to a generic fantasy setting it it just compounds it.
I don't agree with the take there is too much competition or that people don't have the attention span anymore or even that the switch is aging and under-powered.... those were all true when Three Houses blew up. I think the weak response from the initial purchasers to the story and characters turned to much less favorable word of mouth, that turned into less of an algorithm push on social media and it just naturally petered out. Engage just... couldn't compete and didn't live up to the expectations three houses built for new fans who wouldn't buy the game day one.
If anything I think it was a contextual failure. Releasing a nostalgia trip game about celebrating the franchise with a more simplistic story after the first mainline release in home consoles in over a decade which pushed FE forward in many aspects (class flexibility was my favorite for replayability) and hooked literally millons of new fans to the series was Engage's biggest mistake in my mind. It didn't feel like a build up or progression in all fronts but rather a back to the roots approach that targeted hardcore fans. Not bad in itself but timing wasn't great. (Also V-tuber design protagonist may have killed a bit of the hype pre-release becoming the but of jokes. Next time I hope we get avatar customization and be done with that aspect)
I only critique because I love. Even with my heavier focus on Advance Wars, FE's an important series to me and I'd like to see it do better.
Also if you're reading this sometime after the video goes up, I'm in the US of A, baby!
YOU SOLD 2 COPIES OF REVELATIONS, YOU ARE ONE OF US ONE OF US
Mangs is a REV CHAD!
Enjoy your stay in the US, Rev-chad Mangs!
Welcome to 'Murica!
I've not ha time to play the game. Good cause reviews hold it up, bad cause I don't have time for games. Still haven't played Tears of the Kingdom. (Granted, it was mostly an issue of my Switch needing it's cooling paste replaced, got that fixed now so can play the A games.)
Replaying games you've beaten usually needs some form of challenge or change, unless they're really really good..
I think looking at everything collectively really shines a light on engage issues, I mean, there isn't a debateable right or wrong (like in 3 houses) to keep it relevent, personally I love that aspect in game narratives, we really don't get anything like that here, there's also things like characters and presentation, which most of us find lacking with the entry to say the least. Don't get me wrong I really learned to love a handfull of the characters in engage. But nothing in the game really pulls your interest other than the mechanics and sleek high fps paintjob, something the series lacked in a 3D sphere 😥
Engage had good gameplay but failed to create a world you wanted to spend some time in. Once you were done, you were done.
This pretty much. When you're not playing it you're not thinking about it at all.
@@paranoia1896agreed
I highly agree because I was always invested in games like three houses, blazing blade and tellius because of the world, characters and plot twists but Engage felt extremely predictable and lack luster
Facts
yah this is my experience as i had several problems with the story especially with Alear and some of the choices they make when they find out the truth about themselves. Hell the DLC had a better story though that isn't saying much.
I whole heartedly agree about the premise not feeling as special as the developers think. In most other series a crossover game is a fan's wet dream, allowing characters across dimensions to meet one another and calling back to old characters that haven't been relevant in years. The problem with Fire Emblem is this isn't the first time the series has done crossovers. In fact, you could say the series has too many crossovers within a short timespan. Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Warriors, Tokyo Mirage Session, and now Fire Emblem Engage. It also doesn't help that Heroes is still ongoing and fresh in people's minds. When your main selling point is that the game will include heroes from older titles, it doesn't feel unique given we already had 3 games that beat it to the punch.
Smash too, it's not a crossover per se but fighting using some of the most popular characters in the series (Marth, Lucina, Ike) does scratch that crossover itch to an extent also
The characters didn’t quite appeal to me and I felt the rings were almost... baiting? Like “Hey!! Marth! Look! It’s Marth! You love that guy!” “Hey FE4 fans! We didn’t forget about Sigurd!” “Did you start with 3DS?! Here’s CORRIN!!!”
It just doesn’t feel like it has its own identity.
The characters in engage all looked like clowns from different circuses. They didn't fit. Like that one comment said, fates designs and outfits were great. I still think about their class outfits, they were amazing!! You looked at the retainers and knew who they went with. All the retainers in engage looked like random people picked from different worlds. No one matched at all. Yet fates was able to have characters fit the theme but look unique to themselves.
this comment is too funny 🤣
@@tonyleite851 "clowns from different circuses" just killed me 😂😂
Also the art style just looks way too generic. The art style of Awakening and Fates and especially Echoes was great as it was modern yet still Fire Emblem. Three houses was a bit weaker but Engage feels like it's throwing out the entire Fire Emblem look. Especially the bright hair and ultra clean look just look out of place in a line-up of Fire Emblem.
Engage feels like a bootleg Fire Emblem game.
In terms of art style the best one is Echoes. Not just in modern fire Emblem but in the series as a whole.
@@DonVito703Hostensia literally looks like a clown. I thought her being a princess was a joke and she was using it as a way for the characters to go easy on her in her fight. Did not expect her to join your party and her to have a tragic backstory. I couldn’t take her seriously since she sounded annoying and clown
Fire Emblem 3 houses had 3 different stories, and characters really connected to. Felix stans, Dimitri bros, Claude fans, it had a real fanbase for the characters and a die hard interest in the dramatic storytelling and character conflicts. Regardless of if the strategy was the best or not, it had staying power because you thought about the story, the characters, the world.
Fire Emblem Engage is a good strategy game. Fantastic gameplay. But as a strategy game, you pick it up, you beat the one route game, you say wow, good strategy game, and then you drop it. It's not worth thinking about further, the characters don't have staying power, I have not seen people be die hard fans of these guys, or talk about how the story was so profound or interesting. It might just be that as a good strategy game, it's good at being consumed, enjoyed, and then dropped for whatever next strategy game comes next. My thoughts on perhaps why interest declined so much.
I think this describes the problem perfectly
*four stories
@@yang6642nah, the church route was copy pasted from Claude's route and it's existence undermines Claude's character in that Seteth comes up with the same schemes and plots that Claude did. That's what you get when you tell and don't show.
@@TheNuts1225 and why I like three Hopes as it fully realized Claude
@@demi-fiendoftime3825AKA rewrote him entirely to where his actions don't even line up with his ambitions and overall feels like it was a fanfic
Three Houses set the bar really high for storytelling and setting. Its a really good example of an imperfect masterpiece. Its got A LOT of issues, but my god the good certainly outshines the bad, at least for me. Haven't played Engage, it just doesn't appeal to me. Three Houses grabbed me from that very first trailer, and never let go.
I absolutely loved 3 house's... I enjoy it soooo much, I replay it about every 6mo 😅
Yes, I haven’t touched mine in ages…
@@greenmountainpokemon2112 Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience.
Tsutomu Tei also said that the decision for Engage to have a single path, rather than the branching paths in Three Houses and Fates, was made early. Genki Yokota, producer from Nintendo, said that some players were intimidated by too many branching paths and would assume they had to play all of them. Tei felt that a simplified story structure would allow players to put all their focus on the tactical gameplay. In other words, Intelligent Systems is trying way to appeal to beginners.
@orangeslash1667 Well now that we've seen the difference in reception between 3H and Engage hopefully we get more like the former.
@@EquaYonah A couple alternative options to Fire Emblem are Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 4.
I think Alear design filtered a lot of people out of the game
And for better or worse, good storylines is what keeps discussion about the game going
Also I think that only old g players play fe for the gameplay, the majority of people play for the story/characters.
Stories are what make things more interesting for me to play a Fire Emblem game. Not to mention, they gave us a dragon avatar when we already got one, one whose 3 stories in 1 was absolutely disappointing.
Yeah, for me the design was a big motive as to why i didnt even care about this game.
The blue/red together was so bad. Lmao
That's literally the main reason I avoided the game. The color clashing was painful to look at.
@sonogrande7628 Even the og players acknowledge how important the story is to these games. 7 and 8 had great supports and solid stories which breathed a lot of life into the games replayability, same with the Tellius games, more so on the character side than the story, and even then at you could tell they were trying to write something decent. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignoring what supports have done for the games.
Something just occured to me based on your thing about sakura and elise
You can take a lot of moments where the characters of fates are on full display being cool or cute or whatever. If I close my eyes and imagine a character like ryoma or xander I see them on the battlefield with incredible strength and stubborn pride, despite their stories being quite bad.
When I think of most engage characters I picture moments of them walking towards the camera saying something vaguely cringeworthy.
This may mean the direction is worse than the visuals because it strips away the characterisation from the scenes and it makes you feel very detached
What, you do not like moment when everyone says Time for Engage! and engage all over big evil dragon? Peak fiction.
@@Artemas_16 Fire Emblem Engage!
And yet we find engage characters fighting and beating ennemies more often that fates characters
I think for me (even if I haven't played fates) the characters have distinctive identities beyond like that one quirk engage has like alear getting always praised as a divine dragon the twins frame and cramme being alear worshippers Céline liking tea, alfyn being anxious etc when I get first impressions I'll compare that to maybe flayn who at least the only thing I don't get in a first impression is she loves fish
I feel people confuse bad writing in Fates meaning bad characters.
The characters in Fates, while most are dumb for sure, were still very likable. Especially the families.
I cannot agree more about your art direction opinion. When engage was just leaks I refused to believe it was real because I genuinely thought it looked too generic to be real. I said "Fe always has a style to it, these designs look like a bootleg genshin". Ik that's over said but if something echoed that much, maybe there's some truth too it.
Same.
When i first saw the game, i just thought "Why does this look so... cheap?"
Problem with using unity engine and everyone pretty much using the same or similar "anime" shader... which unity don't even do well to begin with. Dragonball in UE already did a lot better but their technical artists also did a lot of their own shaders. Nintendo studios really need to hire graphic programmers that can do shader much better
@@supermariohack3218 The game's art style was largely driven by Mika Pikazo, an illustrator new to the Fire Emblem series. The team at Intelligent Systems was impressed with her vivid and colorful drawings that "popped". This perfectly matched their goal of appealing to a broad audience, including younger players.
I also agree with the art design, for me the main issue is that the characters clothes, hairstyles and color combos are very mismatched , and they don't blend together , they look more like they are from a multiplayer game with "create your own anime skins of your avatar" so the characters don't feel like they are from a fantasy medieval settings, instead more like an anime cosplay convention without a set theme
Is it just me, or does it seem like the characters in FE games are becoming more and more eccentric and tend to behave less and less like well-adjusted humans.
Not every character needs to be quirky and out there. I found many, MANY characters in Engage to be outright bizarre, and that shit got annoying. It DEFINITELY makes the plot feel unserious, and that's boring.
part of why Diamant is one of the most popular characters in Engage is BECAUSE he's boring. People prefer a boring character to a not-boring one that's just annoying.
Says a lot about the cast, doesn't it lol
I think the character design point is probably the most compelling thing to me. One other gripe that I had with the game that I’m not sure whether it’s a popular opinion is that units don’t really feel like they stand out from each other. With the way the reclass system in Engage works, it felt like a lot of units were one reclass away from being the exact same as each other with the only difference being a few points in stats. Coupled with the way characters powercreep each other, for the most part I was just picking whichever ball of stats was the largest. Obviously there are a few exceptions to this but for the most part, Engage was a game full of characters I didn’t care about writing or designwise who I also had no interest in using gameplaywise because they all felt the same.
For me, I think my thing with the reclassing is, I'm fine with it in 3H but found it largely worthless in Engage
And I think why is as you said, units could quickly become very samey
3H had every character have strengths and weaknesses in different areas, (along with varying unique spell lists), so to me reclassing was more fun when it came to making units classes they actively struggle with (General Flayn moment). So while anyone can be almost anything, there's still that upward climb that can make the experience feel different to me
But in Engage, because there's no strengths/weaknesses meaning there's no real punishment to making units whatever you want. Doesn't help skills are almost exclusively tied to Emblems
@@OriginalGameteer high res units being in armored classes is actually such a good time! Probably won’t hit that hard on a counterattack unless it’s a magic weapon or combat art, but they’ll never die
And friend of mine and I had the same thought. The art style of the characters felt weird and even the online footprint of the main character was met EXTREMELY poorly, and rightfully so. I mean colgate/pepsi protagonist is a silly look at best. The previous games gave characters a lot more life, even with 3 Hopes, Shez turned out well and was uniquely designed. The new stuff feels like a regression with character specific skills being reduced, and overall just making the game from more noted into something more arcadey. The fact there were memes galore of unit uniqueness; “You did wait with Dedue? That’s illegal!” Anyways the characters in the new game just don’t have the charisma or pull the last game had. Plus Engage just overall looked rather cartoony.
I agree wholeheartedly! As someone who only watches FE content, the reclassing and the rings also rob lets-plays of a lot of micro-storytelling, because every character feels the same, most become irrelevant past their joining chapter, and can be made good without much effort - there's is no emotional payoff of - for example - dragging someone like Rolf through FE9 for him to become good by the end. In Engage you would just put a ring on him, problem solved.
@@28Decimo The game's art style was largely driven by Mika Pikazo, an illustrator new to the Fire Emblem series. The team at Intelligent Systems was impressed with her vivid and colorful drawings that "popped". This perfectly matched their goal of appealing to a broad audience, including younger players.
Awakening-1.9 million
Fates-3 million
Echoes-1 million
Three Houses-4 million
Engage-1.6 million
Engage's lack of presence online isn't due to it's plot, it's due to one factor
>unlike Fates and especially 3H, it didn't have team/faction wars to cause endless debates
I also want to point out that at one point Nintendo actively mentioned “Hey remember those 8 guys from Smash? Yeah they’re in Engage, please play the game.” Also I guess you could argue Engage didn’t get a Smash Boost like 3 Houses got.
This so much. One of the reasons Game of Thrones was so massive was the fact that people could root for one side or another, and there was no truly defined "good" side. 3H definitely took a lot of influence from that and that's a big part of why it succeeded so much.
Also at least for me, the really good (by FE standards) writing in 3H gave the characters so much personality and made me care about them so much, that it augmented the gameplay. Because I actually felt like I was sending real characters I really liked into harm's way, and when they pulled off a particularly vital crit or survived on 1HP it was more meaningful. Definitely helped to makeup for the somewhat lackluster map design and balance.
I still really like Engage but I don't think it's that mysterious why it hasn't taken a place in the zeitgeist like 3H did. As long as they do the Genealogy story justice in the remake though, I think that has a lot of potential.
Honestly I don't get the Smash argument. Byleth's inclusion in the game arguably made people even less interested in Three Houses and just dismissed it as another boring anime sword game without giving it an actual chance.
@@PeruvianPotatoand if memory serves right byleth was the last character they revealed in the first Dlc wave. At that point the game was already a top seller for a while
@@PeruvianPotato Well to add to that point they also released a DLC for 3 Houses after the Byleth Smash Reveal.
I just been too busy with other things and haven't finished the game yet.
In mine opinon enagage was for people who played Awakenings/Fate and did not find 3H fun. If we look at the some of the things the 3 games they have in common(Their opening/game artstlye, their goofy sometimes odd support, their well design simple and sometimes smooth combat/skils/class game mechanics, their final DLC has them all going to a diffrent timeline) it would make sense that for people who came from or played 3H would be turn off on Engage. In the end I see this as a good thing as it shows that the DEVS are making games that please diffrent part of their fanbase and that just a games purely base on popularity. PS enjoy your days off and listen to the MEAT song.
Holy shit thanks!
And yeah the meat song is levels of cringe I didn't think possible. It's almost as if they leaned into it.
There is actually interview which came out month ago, which tells that 3H and Engage were developed parallely. So IS really went and said "Okay, we need one innovative FE and one traditional FE"
@@Artemas_16
Do you have the link to the interview?
@@chrisf.9595 it was posted in main FE subreddit, maybe post is still there.
The issue is definitely the story. A good chunk of it consists of everybody telling Alear how amazing and important they are without showing *why* they're amazing and important.
And they kill off a major character early, and played it up as a pivotal moment, but the drama surrounding it wasn't earned; it was the 2nd or 3rd chapter and we barely knew this person.
the killing off like that is Fire Emblem in a nutshell though, if you're a Fire Emblem parent, you are expected to die, it's more shocking when they don't.
@@VikTimmy Oh yeah, it's fine that they did it. But the scene dragged on for like 10 minutes.
@@howlingdin9332 legend has it that she didn't die, she is instead still dying
That death scene was one of the worst scenes in the entire series. At least the gameplay was super good.
fates also has a lot of deaths like that, corrin mother dies on the tutorial like part of the game that can be skiped, 2 sages die on revelation with like 1 chapter of lifespan and a few text boxes of screen time, deaths of npcs tends to be a very weak point of fire emblem though my perspective might be jaded since i played awkening and 3 fates only
It definitely comes down to the characters and story. Yeah, Edelgard morality debates were, and remain, awful, but it kept people talking about the game. Plus the question of “what was your favorite route?” always gives Three Houses fans something to talk about.
And then there’s the characters. Compared to Claude, Dimitri, and Edelgard, the lords are abysmal and one note. Even Byleth, the living embodiment of “no thoughts, head empty,” had more going on. Nearly the whole cast in Engage has just one joke that is beaten into a bloody pulp. Hope you find “Amber like alpacas” funny the first time you hear it, because you certainly won’t the 38th!
discrepo, Amber es el peak de la comedia
Dem muss ich widersprechen, Bernstein ist das höchste komödiantischte Gut in Engage
Amber constantly failing at being a warrior from a nation of warriors will never stop being funny. 😂
@@johnathanedwards9054in spite of the constant alpaca stuff, Amber is a good bean
Idk really know if it's terrible localization or just bad writing in both JP and NA scripts but just hearing the word acid come out of some of Engage's characters give me bad flashbacks to Treehouse's butchered localization of Fates when it came out.
Bad localization and lack of faithful translation in Japanese made games always churns my fucking bile.
I guess everything mentioned are all very valid reasons for why Engage has plummeted in terms of relevance, but among other things I have to mention absolutely horrendous marketing - INTENTIONALLY horrendous marketing. And here is where comparing it to Three Houses gives us an interesting viewpoint.
Three Houses was announced years before its launch. The initial trailer had no final logo, didn't use the final fonts, even the voice actor for Edelgard was changed after it. The UI was very raw, the battalions worked very differently, and a lot of characters weren't even given proper models yet. We were presented with a game that was so unfinished that even if they wanted, they couldn't give us much more information. So for months to come we were kind of just sitting there waiting for the next piece of news that came a year later with the release date being moved all the way to 2019. And that waiting while being in complete darkness in and of itself generated hype. Which they used to trick us into thinking Three Houses would simply be a school setting dating sim throughout the whole game.
And then they dropped post-timeskip designs and everybody went crazy when they realized how epic this game and its story would be. That cathartic feeling of being hyped about something and having that feeling fulfilled is something Engage never did.
The game was announced half a year before its release, by that time it had already been finished and immediately, from the first seconds of the trailer we knew EXACTLY what to expect - a generic Awakening inspired story with a lot of nods to the history of the franchise that wouldn't have much of its own to stand on. And that alone has killed the excitement for many people who started hoping that after the Fates backlash IntSys would've learned their lesson.
Before the release of Three Houses everyone was talking about it - who is the best leader, which house to choose, what is that happens during the 5-year gap, what's with Dimitri's eye, why are they at war? After the release, the whole community was riled up, and even the voice actors like Joe Zieja became very active on social media, interacting with the fans and even streaming the game.
Engage had none_of_that. No pre-release hype. No post-release hype. The cast is nowhere to be seen, the DLC was blurted out mindnumbingly fast and even Heroes has only launched ONE Engage banner so far. ONE. Look back at how much Three Houses content we got in 2019 in the first 6 months following the game 's release. And compare.
It almost feels like IntSys are the ones who treat Engage as failure. It's like they never actually meant for the game to be successful and live long. Like they just needed this game to fill up a certain time frame while they work on the next, bigger project, and they don't want to waste time marketing a game that has very little replayability and little to nothing in terms of story and strong characters.
But that's just my opinion.
I think you are right on the last part but i think its heavily due to world circumstances. It was supppsed to be an anniversary game but got horribly delayed which also delayed a lot of their other projects. Engage is a simple game that was probably meant to be more fillery and tide people over. I mean just look at how fast the dlc released. all of it in like 2 months. Three Houses was super ambitious and literally according to interviews engage was suposed to be the opposite. I wouldnt say "want it to fail" but there definitely wasnt as much power behind it.
@@-lord1754 Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience.
Tsutomu Tei also said that the decision for Engage to have a single path, rather than the branching paths in Three Houses and Fates, was made early. Genki Yokota, producer from Nintendo, said that some players were intimidated by too many branching paths and would assume they had to play all of them. Tei felt that a simplified story structure would allow players to put all their focus on the tactical gameplay. In other words, Intelligent Systems is trying way to appeal to beginners.
@@orangeslash1667 I know how does this change what I said
@@-lord1754 I had a hard time understanding what you just said, never mind!
Also not enough dragons
I didn't realize just how important characters designs were until Engage. A lot of them were so busy or even downright eye sores it brought down my ability to get invested in them. I think what hurt this the most is the lack of art portraits. The 3D models with only like 4 face/body types shared between everyone did no favors
And many of the characters with the better designs are bad in terms of stats, or character personality. Framme has one of my favorite designs in the game. But we all know how well she performs.
A lot of new Fire Emblem fans care about character designs and playing waifu simulator. With engage having terrible designs, crap story and very little paired endings, the game is selling a lot less than Three Houses.
That's where 3 Houses more understated design knocked it out of the park in my view. It appealled to both anime fans and regular high/medieval fantasy fans as well, many of which had never played FE before.
Intentional or not I feel that made it more digestable for a wider demographic to begin with. And once you started playing the story hooked you in and the rest is history 😂
Fate’s story wasn’t GOOD, but it was still a STORY. A story that believed in itself, took itself seriously, it tried to be a real world with real characters, and established boundaries and artstyle. Engage doesn’t even try, the characters are hardly even characters, it’s essentially a string of random events just to tie together why you’re in fighting on sand instead of grass. Because of how all over the place it is, it feels like it doesn’t have it’s own personality. There’s nothing to talk about, because the game doesn’t give you anything to talk about as it has nothing to say.
Heck fates story is bad but at least we can discuss about it. Engage you can’t cause it’s so generic and bland.
I recall when Engage came out everyone kept saying “story doesn’t matter as much to me as gameplay Engage has cool gameplay thus I’m gonna love this game.” These same people ended up being unable to complete a second playthrough of the game bc they just got bored. I think that really shows something. I don’t remember the last time I myself only played an FE game just once… I’ve always gone back for a second run through
I completely agree, as I was one of those people lol.
It’s worth noting I think, that part of the boredom is the barrage of horrible cutscenes and dialog. Contrast to shadow dragon for example, where the story and cutscenes is very minimal and one button skippable. With engage, I’m constantly reminded of the terrible story, which weighs on the boredom
Doesn’t help that Alear’s character was about as *engaging* as a piece of drift wood. He’s like the worst aspects of Corrin and Robin rolled into one character.
Odd take considering I only played Echoes once and could not be bothered to play it again. Maybe it's just me but replaying a fire emblem game is probably one of the most draining things to do. I think I forced myself to replay 3H and do silver snow and I ended up enjoying it significantly less
Yep, i didn't finish my second playthrough either. Aside from the gameplay there was nothing for me. I really don't understand how anyone could like any of the characters, to this day. I won't shame anyone who likes them, but it feels very weird to me.
There is just so much of it in this game. Almost like two cutscenes and three dialogues before each battle.
3:01 "and their main character Ike having an insane popularity in Japan"
I'm going to assume he meant the West because in what world is anything Tellius popular in Japan???
Lol no Ike merch consistently sells out in Japan over all other lords
Japan likes big buff guys
Ike plushies sold in Japan sell out at a similar rate to Lucina plushies. A few time on official merchandise websites in Japan, they ran out of Ike plushies around the same time they ran out of Lucina plushies. So, Ike has a pretty big following in Japan because he is the only main character in Fire Emblem who is just a normal guy, he has no special powers, he isn't royalty/demigod, people in his own mercenary company hate him, he doesn't rule a nation after his story concluded, he is just your average soldier who just got buff as he grew up.
@@johnathanedwards9054 Ike is the son of a Daein Noble one of the Four Rider who is friends with the king of the largest Laguz country and he gets blessed by the goddess to be the only person allowed to kill the goddess.
Not to mention, "your average soldier" doesn't inherit a personal army from their noble father after having a grand total of 2 missions under his belt by the ripe age of 17.
@@mr.sellout6284 Maybe in the modern era, but in medieval times mercenaries were a dime a dozen with them making up the majority of armies. Some of which were former nobles who renounced their titles to seek adventure and glory for a price.
@@johnathanedwards9054"only normal guy who has no special powers"
Ike has strength and speed superior to that of both branded and laguz, who are supposed to be blatantly superhuman, and the reason why? Because Greil just had magically superpotent genes and he was also insanely superhuman too- the strongest man in the world.
Oh and his mom and sister are completely magically incorruptable too for some reason.
Ike is by no means normal and his heritage is massively privileged with abilities for no good reason plotwise.
He's also not of non-noble stock either, because Greil was a noble.
Tellius has some real shitty writing in places, and Ike is often the center for it. It is hilarious how Micaiah used to get the "Mary Sue" treatment by fans when Ike is twice the Sue she is.
In terms of the story I've always been baffled at how many characters act. I haven't played Engage in a while but I still distinctly remember the revelation that Solm had a massive spy network and was able to prepare for the invasion that Elusia launched. Actively not telling Brodia and Firene, two kingdoms they HAVE AN ALLIANCE WITH about it. This information could have assisted Firene and Brodia in the war effort greatly, maybe Diamant and Alcrysts father would still be alive. Yet no one cares that they didn't say a word about this. Why? Cause they're the "good guys" too?
Solm gets no reprecusions while characters like Ivy who go against their own country to fight for what they believe is right, get animosity throughout the story. Ivy betrayed the enemy to fight for us, Solm betrayed us for themselves.
Engage characters rarely feel like genuine humans, and the only times they do are in cutscenes.
Instances like that make me feel so disconnected. People can work together even if they have animosity towards one another. Conflict can be non-violent and not everyone can be friends.
Path of Radiance had characters like Shinnon, Soren, and Janaff who showed animosity towards another race, yet could still work together for a common goal and even bond.
Makalov was a scumbag charlatan who caused endless grief to his sister, people rarely just gave him a pass but some even fell in love with him.
People are unique and react differently to different people. Having everyone like each other just because they're "good guys" is bad writing and it certainly isn't ENGAGEing.
I very distinctively remember the country’s being in a non agression pact not an alliance
I feel that the creative team had a bunch of discarded character ideas and then they just decided to do a game with them.
Just like a band who puts a song that wasn’t good enough for the first album as the lead single for their second album.
Didn't Mika Pikazo design them?
@@aninymouse1651 I'm only aware that Mika designed the main characters? Anyway, to me Mika is a very hit or miss artist and so far her (?) art is much more suited for pin-up attention grabbing illustration rather than for character design that will be transfered to a simplified 3D and lost a lot of oomph in the process.
@@zeroyuki92 I agree with you. But I'm just saying, isn't she to blame?
@@aninymouse1651 You could say that, but if you want to go technical the responsibility should be the one who hire, give a direction on what to draw, and approves it. Usually producer/director/art director. Usually in this case concept artist/character designer just draws what they are told to and their designs must have faced revisions if the decision makers deemed it necessary.
Graphics makes you interested in game.
Gameplay makes you return to the game.
Story makes you remember the game.
(c) Shigeru Kojima or whatever
Yes I still randomly play engage even after 3 runs. Awakening/fates too. While 3H was a master piece - it is too slow for me ever return to now.
@@XalronsGachaWell you have no taste. The quote is right anyways, your just one of the exceptions
@@egbertmilton4003 No he does in fact have taste in videogames. 3H is borderline unplayable in multiple playthroughs, the difficulty never hits a middle point of balanced and enjoyable, the story has a lot more flaws than the people discussing it ever give it thought to, the Monastery being the bigger problem and how long it does take to do anything in the game. Also memorable? 3 Houses? Blue Lions maybe, because Dimitri mogs the entire screentime to divert you away from all this pathetic attempt at telling a war story.
Almost all i remember about 3H is the drama it caused 😅
@@egbertmilton4003brother they can have an opinion 💀 personally think 3H was amazing and would return cuz idm heavy story telling games, but the strategy aspect of 3H wasn't very gd at all. This person clearly finds more fun in gameplay than story and that's ohk. Also awakening respect I still love tht game
I think some of the biggest issues with the character designs really just boil down to the fact it's trying to do too much. Either it added something really extra and wacky or random, over exaggerated something in the design, made something that instead of complementing the design it actively fights against it, arranged the design that draws the eye away and steals attention in a way that feels awkward, or any combination of these. It's just really busy and kinda chaotic to the point it almost comes off as random. If you showed me some of these characters and told me they were from some kind of lighthearted, whimsical fantasy Gacha game, I'd believe you.
I love Mika Pikazo but I feel for her style to work with Fire Emblem, which I believe it could, she needed someone to help her "pull back" so to speak.
@@vivalaglavii6736 yeah I’ve seen some of her other stuff, and I quite like it. Idk what went wrong
@@rhettmitchell Its a common issue in the media industry (video games or otherwise) where very talented artists and writers get carried away without someone to hold them back, resulting in good ideas being poorly executed. Most of the designs are fine they just have a few things too much in a lot of cases (Yunaka's stars or Celine's massive dress).
@@vivalaglavii6736 Star wars prequels moment lol
@@-lord1754 exactly that lol
I don’t necessarily think Engage was a full blown failure, but it is certainly not the long lasting success that 3 houses was.
A modern day rpg needs a plot that grabs you and Engages incredibly basic “must stop the big bad evil dragon” style plot just does not cut it anymore.
Add on top of that the mostly very forgettable characters and it’s pretty easy to see why Engage has zero longevity in comparison to its predecessor.
Man the worst part about it for me was like... I was actually liking the story towards the end. Things were picking up, being explained, getting a bit interesting. Then in the final chapter Sombron goes from being a threatening/kinda cool villain to like... whatever the hell they thought that shit was LOL. The entire final convo with him about his motivations killed him as a villain to me my god that segment actually was so bad it ruined all the buildup.
@@SPONGCHAOi kinda got the same feeling, which made the story even more disappointing for me because the potential was there to make it something more.
It actually does cut it... when you make it a simple plot so that you can have actual characters. As I understand it, Engage's story is abut stopping the dragon with cardboard cut outs for allies.
@@xana3961I think Engage does a horrible job with making characters interesting in the actual plot because looking at supports most of these characters are a lot more interesting and deeper than their first impression. Like Celine seems like just a nice girl, but through her supports you see that she’s anxious about her brother’s potential to relapse into illness as well as her cold demeanor in willing to protect her country and brother. Though that’s only seen in supports. That’s the issue they’re only seen in supports which are an optional mechanic that requires you to use two characters and have them near each other to even unlock.
Three Houses pushed the personalities of it’s characters way more in the plot. Yes some things wouldn’t be known without supports, but you could see how events affected them and their opinions on upcoming battles through the cutscenes before and after maps.
Engage tries to do this with some text boxes in post battle maps and at the Somniel sometimes, but those text boxes are usually only relegated for the first heir to each country, any recruited character that map, and like a select handful of randoms. The royals also don’t seem to exhibit much change in actual cutscenes.
@@SPONGCHAOnot all did they make his motivations last minute, we still literally know basically knowing about the zero emblem
Yknow, the reason this plot happened to begin with
Engage was disgusting, past heroes are stripped of their personality and just pandering to the fanbase as if we were complete idiots.
I'm pretty sure the Switch's age is not the reason - Pokemon, Zelda, Mario are not suffering from this problem in 2023. I also don't think it's because there are more games to play - this had to be an issue in 2019 with Three Houses as well. Nothing has changed here in just 4 years. I really do think the issues with the character designs, the non-serious story and tone, avatar worship, poor writing, and weak world building rank among the top reasons people bailed on the game. What we're seeing from the sales numbers is that the hard-core Fire Emblem players bought it and stuck with it for the gameplay and the more casual players dropped off or didn't buy it (which is ironic because all of the stupid cooking and mini-games is primarily aimed at them). They need to realize the casual players really care about the writing, characters and designs - the mini-games don't matter. I have no doubt they will coarse-correct here because the problem isn't that hard to see.
people are harping hard on the character designs and, while not wrong, this problem could have been heavily alleviated by simply giving us the tried and true character portraits that fire emblem is known for to anchor each aesthetic into place
Sequel to 3Houses could not sell poorly, even if it outright tried to be a bad game. (The strongest marketing for a piece of media is the success of a previous entry in the series.)
Also, i don't entirely buy the theory that the game failed due to lower attention span.
TikTok was also around when 3Houses was released and it didn't suddenly take a nose dive i relevancy like Engage.
I can go back and try out older games that I have never played of genres I don't even like and still have a lot more fun with those games than modern games.
The worst part is that I can't even explain why I don't like Engage. I just get bored halfway through the game and don't want to continue.
It's not the story or the characters. It wasn't even the reference pandering that made me drop it.
I just don't think it's fun to play.
Simple as.
Edit: spelling
The story is bland and predictable, the characters are SUPER bland and their design are all over the place. The rainbow hairs and outfits just dont cut it. None have the presence, impact, or charisma of 3H lords
The worst being the player avatar, who is extremelly gullible, and whos whole personality is being polite and non-offensive
I'll tell you what is the "little something off" everybody mentions : they do not look/feel human, and arent relatable in the slighest as such, which makes it hard to _engage_
They tried to please the _modern_ western audience, and lost their soul in the process
big agree, i almost want a refund for engage NOT because I want my money back but just because I don't want to encourage games like engage to be made.
@@Jugement This is the most ridiculously anime weeb game ever tf you mean western audience lol
@@lorewalkercho7291 Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience.
Tsutomu Tei also said that the decision for Engage to have a single path, rather than the branching paths in Three Houses and Fates, was made early. Genki Yokota, producer from Nintendo, said that some players were intimidated by too many branching paths and would assume they had to play all of them. Tei felt that a simplified story structure would allow players to put all their focus on the tactical gameplay. In other words, Intelligent Systems is trying way to appeal to beginners.
That’s the issue with engage. Ironically how unengaging it is. A bad story like fates can still make you want to continue since at least maybe either the cast is somewhat entertaining like the royals or your curious how the trainwreck of the story is gonna end. Engage is the opposite where the story is bland and predictable if you know the tropes or how safe the story is you can literally predict what’s gonna happen
"And all those lord you like, come and play me haha"
I think Excelblem already joked about it, but that gimmick is fun as fuck considering how available FE games are
FE1 is no longer available because Nintendo tried to create FOMO with it
FE2, FE3 are not translated and aren't on any virtual console
FE4, FE5 and FE6 are only on JP's virtual console
FE7 is only available in virtual console (unless you pay a truckload for a physical copy), which is gonna get taken down one day
FE8 to FE15 are only obtainable by physical copies, which are extremelly expensive since Nintendo killed the eshop because fuck you
FE16 is the only game you can get both physical and online for a fair price
But hey, nostalgia! It's not like Heroes already took that spot or anything anyway!
The biggest problem I have with Engage is the character designs. They just don't feel like they're real people living in a real world. Just made it feel like Fortnite to me. Like the designs came first and then they just plopped them into a random map. Really prevented me from empathizing with them. Doesn't help that the story is also pretty bland and uninspiring, but I could get into a generic story if I can empathize with the characters, and I just couldn't do that for a large portion of the cast. I do really love the gameplay though.
I think they look more like random avatars created in a MMO's character selection. The same model with different hair and clothes picked from a small selection of styles, plus a ton of random accessories tacked on.
Hi! Artist here! I loved your point about the aesthetics and wanted to elaborate with what I understand thus far. Engage’s art direction is hinged on the very attractive style of the artist rather than their affinity for character design- thus the very iconic class designs from previous games that add a lot to the game’s atmosphere and immersion are incredibly lacking.
The very modern-fashion style of the characters (i.e sage outfit, yunaka thief outfit) with no clear inspiration or direction other than what is trendy in real life is very jarring and makes it very difficult to players to get a feel for the setting of the game, and thus ruins immersion and makes harder suspension of disbelief.
In contrast, most fe games have very iconic class/character designs that are largely very specific; most armored classes (and I believe the mage classes too? not sure though) have been modeled off of medieval european aesthetics. Sword masters are chinese and japanese inspired. They also can convey a lot about the class/character- i.e thieves are dressed in very soft clothes that must help with sneaking around.
Fe Fate’s european nohr classes and japanese hoshidan classes are very strong in design because the player/viewer recognizes the aesthetics and is thus able to make connections about the characters themselves, the setting, culture etc.
Engage largely lacks this. Take Griss and Yunaka- they’re hard to even tell what class they belong to (why is the mage top-less? Why is the thief in clanky, gold plated heels?), even harder to determine is where they are from (lack of location/culture-based unity in designs outside the lords is very disappointing because of the premise of 4 large, geographically unique countries) or even what time period they are in (the oddly fan-service-y chest windows and yunaka’s… side windows? feel very much like modern, artistic runway models or gacha-esque, marketable design- which is odd for a game where said characters spend most of their time on battlefields).
TLDR; the designs lack cohesiveness and specificity which is detrimental to the visual world-building and immersion of the game, leading to a overall foggy, dream-like experience of the game rather than a solid and memorable one.
I think if Engage released in place of Radiant Dawn, it would have actually killed the franchise. It sold well because of how popular Fire Emblem is right now (the fact that its main gimmick is being able to use lords from all previous popular titles is just more evidence of this). It will always be a failure to me. It might not be a financial failure, but if we get another Engage, it will start to damage the franchise significantly.
I Think another three houses would damage the franchise espacially since people now know how fucking long the monastery is
@@thomasquesada7248 lets not forget the story is quite bad and the setting is quite useless. a school that is closer to an army camp than a school
@@thomasquesada7248this is the worst take I've seen
Is that why 3 houses is still being talked about and is still selling while engage isn't?
@@momokosakurada605You just love to hate if you think three houses had a bad story
@@c_f0rceit has dawg don't lie to yourself
I honestly feel bad for Mika Pikazo. She's a pretty brilliant young artist IMO and clearly poured a ton of passion into the object. I honestly think she'd handle a more grounded medieval anime aesthetic quite well. Trying to push appeal to an audience that isn't there was just bizarre.
She’s a talented artist but man, those designs look silly when translated to 3D in a medieval style setting. I’ve been looking at the concept art and character sketches and they look fine as 2D illustrations… If it was a 2D pixel art, it would’ve probably lent its over the top designs better.
@@RichardHannaythe thing is that the producer told her to go crazy with the design and didn't bother to tell her which characters should look like and where they came from. That's why Solm lords' retainer are... wacky and weird, as if they weren't from Solm at all, even their clothes doesn't match the weather of Solm. It's sad that she actually has good art skill but the art direction for engage is bad, which makes her works for the ingame characters look so wacky and almost uninteresting for the most part
@@raviolibirb8009these designs could go much better in another Tokyo Mirage Session, not a core Fire Emblem. Yet, she being told to go crazy should clear her of any faults, but I fear she may end up as a scapegoat
Calling an artist "brilliant" when it's extremely clear that their art doesn't connect with many/most people is an absurd amount of cope. The art of Engage is bad. Straight up. And it's bad because it's ludicrously overdesigned. Every character is too busy with too much going on, visually. This is amateur hour stuff for visual design. Because achieving perfect simplicity of form is goal of any great artist.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe you appear to have COMPLETELY ignored the previous comments, despite having read them.
even someone like mozart can make shit music if he's told to make shit music bud.
I think it has mostly to do with with story and characters, specifically the lack of inner conflict amongst the playable party. Debates over Edelgard kept the presence of Three Houses alive for a long, LONG time. I'll be curious about how the Geneaology remake goes, because that one will probably generate a lot of "takes" with its story.
Personally, I didn't like how formulated the character recruitment was for most of Engage's story, " here's a royal and their 2 retainers, and here's their sibling and their 2 retainers". It kind of limits the variety your story can tell. It'd be like if Tellius made Sanaki and Kurthnaga playable in PoR, even though the plot needs them to not be directly involved yet.
It seems like ever since Fates, the franchise has wanted to incorporate a "which Harry Potter house are you" style component into the different factions, and Three Houses was the only one that truly landed for the audience.
Well speaking of Harry Potter, I guess the reason why Fire emblem engage didn’t “engage” with audiences is because they were focused on playing Hogwarts Legacy, which sold way more copies than engage at the time
@@samflood5631I actually played Engage way more than Hogwarts. I still haven’t finished my first playthrough while I’ve completed two for Engage. Once the Harry Potter novelty wears off the game is very mid.
Even though I was a diehard fire emblem fan since like 2010, Engage was the first game that I didn't buy. I don't know why but it just doesn't tug at me the same way previous fire emblem games did. I think the wrestling analogy you made was a major contributing factor to that. Much as I love the older fire emblem games and constantly revisit them, the fact that they're given so much attention and emphasis instead of a small tribute (such as how Marth is Lucina's inspiration or how you could visit valm which used to be valentia in Awakening) overshadows the cast and makes them feel like "oh yeah I'm here by the way".
What made the fire emblem franchise so interesting to me was that it was holistically the same engine and gameplay experience but with entirely new mechanics, entirely new cast, entirely new plots and entirely new settings. Having all the older lords appear next to you makes it feel so... fanservicey. Every fire emblem game had its own identity and own feel, that's what made each game memorable. It was a fresh, new experience with the familiar game systems we've come to know and love. By having older lords in the game it makes the existing cast (and world) forgettable, exactly how you made the reference to the wrestling stars of older times to boost ratings because they don't have faith in the new rising stars to take up that mantle. Bringing up old lords to this extent has the same sense of pandering as how Pokemon keeps remaking gen one games over and over.
Another one that rubbed me the wrong way was how overly flambouyant some of the character designs of engage are. It just makes the game feel too focused on the wrong things. You look at the cast of path of radiance or blazing sword and while you see some colorful types, Ivy, Hortensia, Panette, and even Alear feel TOO outlandish in design to the point where it gets almost comical. I can't take my lord seriously when their hair looks like toothpaste (yes I know the narrative significance to it).
Yes the game is anime with its designs and always has been. But it's been getting more and more and more pronounced. I actually liked that all the three houses characters wore uniforms and had mostly "plain" aesthetics because it made them look like *real* believable characters with normal lives. Some of the engage characters look like they come straight out of a kids cartoon. Not to say we didn't have some wacky designs before but they were believable. Even Lumera's design, it's TOO shiny. You look at other dragon goddesses like Mila or Naga they had very subtle outfits to them, whereas Lumera looks like a walking bouquet of flowers. She's gorgeous don't get me wrong. But why does everyone in this game look so over the top in appearance? I take one look at Yunaka and think: "You mean to tell me there's a girl who was born with a bunch of stars in her hair? (I'm guessing they're just accessories but come on...)
I also feel like the premise of "evil dragon mwahahaha" has been overused at this point, along with the whole "kings and lords of different lands and their retainers" spiel. They used it for fates, then used it for three houses, and have now used it for engage. I loved path of radiance because instead of a stereotypical dragon or demon lord it was just Ashnard, some mad crazy dude. Same goes for radiant dawn where we got to fight a god. To a lesser extent, I enjoyed blazing sword's whole antagonism with nergal, his morphs and the black fang (even though it ultimately ended with a big dragon). Ike is so popular as a lord because he's not a lord. He's a dude ass dude who did his own thing. It's another reason why I liked Micaiah so much even though her development was more stunted. She's not some hoity toity princess, she was a girl just trying to get by. Alm and Celica were also great because even though they ARE royalty, it was only nominally. They lived completely normal lives. Now we have Corrin (born from a dragon god), Byleth (born from a dragon god), Alear (born from a dragon god). Like okay I get it you're the child of the most important figure in the world. So help me if the next game has another MC who is born from a dragon god I'm gonna-
All in all Engage doesn't look or feel like a fire emblem game to me. It gives the same vibes as heroes where it's all about fanservice (with the past lords), fanart material (with character designs), and recycled almost fanfictiony content. I'll probably play it eventually just because I heard good things about the gameplay. But it's not fire emblem to me. It's not a fresh, new experience. It has the same feeling as Pokemon Sword and Shield for me. It just doesn't feel the same. Is change wrong? No, and in fairness I might sound like a biased genwunner fire emblem player since I played the games before it became popular. That being said, I want to experience fire emblem. This doesn't feel like fire emblem to me. It feels like a generic anime game with anime characters/tropes and SJRPG mechanics. And this is coming from a big anime fan. But if I wanna play an anime game I might as well play an anime game that doesn't try to hide the fact that it's an anime game.
I guess Vars isn’t just an insightful voice for LoL, Smash and Genshin. He’s also one for Fire Emblem - the versatility!
Evil Dragon Mwahahha isn't a recent thing though.
Even Blazing Sword devolved into Evil Dragon mwahahha. Its a staple of the series, and honestly I'd hate for it to disappear.
Engage has way too many flaws, but between the two Switch-Original Fire Emblems, Engage is far closer to the series' heart than Three Houses.
Three Houses deviates from the formula in a way that worked. Engage takes the opposite road of sticking to all the tropes, the nostalgia, and fun, strategic gameplay, before ultimately failing because they were inattentive to what really matters: the Cast.
@@anristellariza9036engage played way too safe. Its story is simple but very bland. You can have a simple story and still be entertained. However engage felt it was a chore since the cast barely did anything worthwhile since their goal was literally get the rings and power of friendship
Couldn’t even finish this game. This made me want to go back to finish my maddening run on 3H
The opening scene where we had the alear worshippers squeeing like annoying fanboys made me regret buying this game lol
@@Yoshixandir Won’t lie to you i ended up beating the game last month on hard mode but i skipped every cut scene and support Gameplay like the majority said is pretty neat but the story is terrible mane. But i did end up finishing my maddening run on 3H.
@@Helloim_anthonythat’s literally the only thing people talk about engage. Amazing gameplay but man is the story and character bland. At least was bad that we can talk about it and at least it had an interesting lore. Engage I can’t do another playthrough
This is, what I have observed, are the flaws that contributed to Engage not doing well as compared to Three Houses:
Character design and writing: Engage character design ended up with less while doing more as the examples stated with Yunaka and Goldmary. They could've just went without the stars for Yunaka. As for Goldmary, the pauldron looks out of place for her outfit and she'd be better off without it. It may just be the team bringing on some of their design ideas from Atelier into Fire Emblem.
Story and character writing: Storywise, Engage is your classic player character gathers an army in search of holy relics that will help them win the fight against the BBEG, which is an evil dragon. Not really that "engaging" (pun intended) compared to Three Houses. Character-wise, the fact that the designs were not that appealling contributed on how there were not that many memorable characters. Most would possibly remember Yunaka's "Hiya Papaya" meme but that's just it.
After just finishing final fantasy 16, it really just makes me wish for another fire emblem game like path of radiance and radiant dawn. FF16 really gave me similar vibes that those games did. With different countries and leaders and political intrigue and a story that took itself seriously. With heavy themes about religion among others. That’s what really makes games stand out years later for me. The story, world and characters. Yes the gameplay of engage was fantastic, but the world and characters were so unbelievably dry and not memorable. Three houses was much better in this regard and why I remember the game so fondly all these years later. But even that game didn’t feel on the level of radiant dawn and path of radiance to me. I really hope the next fire emblem game has an epic, serious, and emotional story with a well thought out world and gritty character designs. That’s what will make it be a lasting game in my memory.
Didn't Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn almost killed the franchise? A mean engage sold 10 times more than those games. I am not saying that it couldn't work I am just saying that I probably wouldn't and it would be risky.
@@erkantiryaki5542 I’m not talking about what sold well. Of course a game like engage sold well, I’m talking about what makes a game memorable for me.
@@erkantiryaki5542 wait really? path of radiance had way better story and character and gameplay but hmmm and wait how did both of them almost do that but games like awaken and fates saved it? wut? but still in my opinion fire emblem heroes mobile game has better story than engaged and yea engaged and fate story that bad
@@ladyriethegoldendelmo5441 While not the ultimate solution, I think the availability of handheld consoles over home consoles plays a role. The Gamecube didn't sell very well, so you already have a smaller pool of viable players to begin with, and Path of Radiance came out a year before the Wii launched.
@@ladyriethegoldendelmo5441To put it simply, Awakening and Fates had better, more active marketing than the Tellius games. At the time the Tellius games were new, The GameCube was at its last years, (which the GameCube itself didn't sell very well compared to other consoles of its era due to DvDs and emo sh!t being trendy at the time) and Radiant Dawn came out literally the exact same day as Super Mario Galaxy 1. The latter dwarfed the former in terms of marketing.
The closest we really had to mainstream marketing for the Tellius games at the time was Ike in Super Smash Bros Brawl and even then, Brawl came out a year after Radiant Dawn and Smash Bros wasn't nearly as oversaturated with Fire Emblem fighters back then as it is now.
Very nice video Mangs, I appreciate the balanced and reasonable perspective on Engage, and I agree with the aesthetics point.
However I do have a few points of contention here:
It is actually very much speaking against its reputation that Engage had such low sales compared to 3 Houses.
There is *far, far* more market saturation with more Switches than ever being in people's hands compared to 3 Houses. (literally there have been over 125 million Switches sold, compared to the comparatively low Switch numbers at the time of FE 3 Houses release), and comparing it to Thracia isn't exactly ideal since there was a *lot* going against Thracia besides just a late release. The Switch isn't anywhere close to dead/replaced yet, compared to the SNES which was already done as a console by that point in time. The Nintendo 64 was released *4 years* before Thracia 776. Imagine a DS game (not a 3DS game) releasing in 2015. for reference. There is no indication of anything to replace the Switch coming any time soon, its not comparable.
Engage was coming off the heels of a successful game in 3 Houses so there was natural interest in another entry to a franchise that was beloved at the time.
I personally believe that word of mouth just informed people that the game was not worth it, combined with the questionable promo materials turning people off.
Also, Fates was a disaster for the community and many people don't realize that Nintendo *lied* about sales numbers to inflate its numbers, which is *horrendous* for any company to do, and doesn't make sales information on that game trustworthy. You can read the
Not only this, but Fates was the release of 3 games, its (very sketchy) sales numbers taking *that* into consideration, was a flop.
Engage will eventually get its community reputation above trash like Fates did because it has good gameplay, but it took years for people to "give it a pass".
Funnily enough I had a friend who pretty much had almost the exact same experience with Fates that yours did, so... lol.
I also think that blaming the internet/attention span for the failure of Engage is questionable, something like Elden Ring was very popular on the internet and also sold ridiculously well as a game. Same for Hogwarts Legacy. I think that the internet has a role in the fact that interest in Engage dropped off so quickly because of people's lowered attention span, but if Engage was universally beloved and handled things differently, I'm confident that Engage would've made a lot more splash and had its interest lasted longer.
this comment confuses me. You tell mangs not to inflate fates numbers but then you say its a flop? I think what really happened is that there was inflated numbers because a lot of people bought all 3 routes lol
@@-lord1754 No, you misunderstand.
Fates' sales numbers were falsified by Nintendo, which makes all the sales numbers involving that game untrustworthy to begin with (especially the most recent BS one currently floating around saying it magically became 3 million, that's a total load lmao).
Now, let's assume that, even excluding that ridiculous 3 million figure that came out of nowhere, that it was sold around 2 million total copies to be fair to Fates.
That 2 million sold is for 3 games *combined*. Those 3 routes also had the development costs of 3 games associated with them, as opposed to Awakening's single game development costs.
If each game sold only around 700K to reach that, that would be a failure compared to Awakening, which was only *1* game in terms of development and costs, but sold as much as *all 3 games combined*.
Basically, with Fates, you have to account for it being like 2-3 games in terms of development costs, and with that in mind, its *total* sales were barely around Awakening's. We *know* Awakening was a success, but for all we know, they might not have even broken even on Fates.
@@blazingswordchad3384 I see what you mean but it wasnt actually development costs of 2-3 games. Theres a LOT of asset reuse in between games even if they basically are separate games.
Elden Ring. Tears of the Kingdom.
No, it's not an attention span issue.
It's just not a game worth caring about more than one playthrough.
I didn't care for Elden Ring, too much lore to sift through and I kept dying every three seconds
I'm just not into Fire Emblem anymore as much as I used to be. FE 7-10 were my favorite games but after that they just started adding new things and mechanics that I feel really bogged stuff down. That and I think reclassing makes things so boring. It was FUN having a normally great unit get terrible levelups, making you have to reconsider your roster and use someone you typically wouldn't use.
The way i see it, FE is in a franchise management crisis. Not the worst point ever but it's not good. And interestingly, the commercial success also may have a negative impact on all that, because it misleads the team about the game's direction... It came to a point i started suspecting that FE cannot last longer without awfully unfitting extravagant designs, elaborate relationship mechanics, waifus and other fanservice. Still the legacy of 3ds games at work. And since they literally saved the series, it's hard to imagine the devs not relying desperately on that stuff... In fact the tendency is to gradually increase, as Engage showed.
Another problem is that FE, despite how old and famous, overall became lacking in meaningful evolution of the gameplay formula and writing style. The game already had some issues since the beginning, but that could be more or less excused by how revolutionary and brilliant it was in the 90s. Then those lacking areas were never addressed, and after Kaga left the IS team shamefully exploited his original design without adding a fair number of important contributions, the necessary content to expand the franchise to the next level. And since the 3ds era that perspective became even more problematic... exactly because the waifus and stuff proved to be able to sustain the franchise. They became the priority to polish and elaborate in sequels, getting ahead of other issues.
All that combined to the fact that Nintendo doesnt value FE as it deserved and has no ambitious vision for it. Like how they see and approach mainline Mario and Zelda games. The thing is that FE could have become much bigger and achieved so much more aside of good sales. But it's horribly stagnant and still one of the most barebones long running rpg franchises. Intolerable poor management, that just doesnt care enough to expand the games. After all it's the only healthy strategy rpg and it's safely carried by waifus and dating.
This is me 100 percent!
That happened to me with Rath once in FE7. I promoted him as soon as I got him in Eliwood's story and he hardly gained any stats. I forgot to heal him at one point and I think Lloyd or Linus killed him with a light brand of all things or something like that. I didn't care enough to reset because Rath had fell off so hard.
People said the same to xenoblade series when people hated the machanics being changed they boggled them down. MMO FF12 games play was already outdated even by 2010 standards and it isolated the xeno fans.
When you brought up fates compared to engage it got me thinking.
I think the difference is that Fates story was bad while Engages story was boring. Bad is more interesting than boring at the end of the day. I also remember feeling like there was a lot of potential with fates and a lot of interesting story hidden behind supports. I think others must have felt that way as well because I've watched so many videos where people discuss how they could change or rewrite fates as well as analysis videos on characters or lore. I haven't really seen that for Engage much. Engage has no secrets, no hidden lore or greater world building to inspire discussion.
I also agree that Story, Gameplay and character design are all equally important aspects of a video game.
Awakening was a bit if a mess but it did good enough in those three area that it suceeds. Fates has good gameplay, good designs and just enough nuggets of potential sorry for people to want to still play and talk about it.
Engage has good gameplay and some good supports but lackluster story and bad design. It's ironic that despite being so over the top the designs still manage to look generic. I like the artist, i think you can tell from her art that she is really good at making the crazy colours work, but in 3d is doesn't work at all, and it doesn't suit fire emblem.
I absolutely love the gameplay in Engage; I think it's a ton of fun and much more player-phase oriented than most Fire Emblem games with is a huge plus for me.
That said, I struggle to want to play through it a 2nd time because most of the characters just aren't likeable.
Oof, Engage is heavily enemy phase oriented.
Bingo!
EXACTLY, these characters failed to leave an impression on people because they rarely grow as people in many of their supports and feel static
I watched the whole video. Three houses was my first FE game. I really enjoyed the fact that there were three factions, cool looking characters who are not over the top in design, and interesting gameplay. I’ve gone back and played awakening and that was even better designed than 3H. Engage was just, so, over the top with its characters and almost none are someone I can relate to. I do like the game a lot still.
@bomberL9xd You didn’t read dude. I also can assure you that you don’t determine who is or isn’t a fire emblem fan.
@@MrPublius Don’t worry about this antagonistic jerk. Three houses had a few flaws but it truly shined in the character and story development where the characters grew in many of their supports while also removing many of their quirks from those supports. I would also recommend the Gba games as they are simple stories but are better than Engage due to the world building and character motivations that push the story. Hope you enjoy fire emblem and have fun
@@eternaldarklight8204 lmao « few » flaws
Three houses as flaws absolutely everywhere and even on it’s supposed strong points like unit building and story and that’s not even when it’s just horrible game design
@@thomasquesada7248 Hahah, are you really going to go that route. Trust me, Engage just failed to connect with players due to its character writing and story telling that failed to keep people interested on the game. Meanwhile other fire emblem games showed plot twists and new information that helped keep the players engaged and interested like three houses, blazing blade, path of radiance and more. Overall Engage is a poorly executed game that fails in most aspects that are not gameplay
@bomberL9xd you assume that because I started with 3 houses that I, ab initio, cannot be a fan now? I never complained about the core mechanics of Engage.
Firstly I’ve played 3H, Awakening, Engage, and now 7, in that order and have enjoyed them all. When do I get my fan card?
Secondly, even if, let’s assume I played 3H and enjoyed that, does that automatically assume that I can’t criticize another game for certain things I enjoyed about 3H?
Thirdly, combining one and two, if I played three houses first, enjoyed it, enjoyed engage, enjoyed awakening and 7, but think certain things were done better in three houses still, that completely invalidates ALL of my credibility? Or are you being too critical of a game that departed from the original formula because of personal preference?
Lastly, persona is a great game too, but fire emblem is waaaaay better. I’ll let you know in a month or two when I finish shadows and fates, but I’ll still probably think three houses was good.
2:50 Engage is probably going to be the inverse of the radiance games. *Good stories & characters give games long term staying power.* Initial sales depend mostly on how much hype from marketing is around and general market size of the series. The better stories made 3H take off after its initial wave and still has it sticking around. The radiance games stick around for the same reasons. *People recommend it to others bc they want to share the story and characters to talk about.* People do not recommend games because of great gameplay nearly as much. Engage meanwhile benefitted from the FE & gaming market being much larger by now, but dried up after the initial wave because its story does not attract extra people like it does for the other games but drives them away instead. Its gameplay still might keep it alive if modders provide enough fresh content long term.
personally i feel like three houses was the outlier not engage. the story of three houses sparking so much discussion alone probably carried the game. lots of people talked about things happening in three houses who was wrong who was right etc. its just no the same with engage.
the multiple routes probably help with that immensely as early on people would be talking with other players about how their experiences differed. People who were not playing the game could have easily wanted to be part of those discussions and FOMO is a powerful motivator.
I think you got a point. 3 Houses was more about hard decisions that makes you fight against the other heroes that makes it impossible to have a ending without sacrifice while Engage was basically the MC gaining allies to take down the big baddie without much drama or backstabbing. I felt sad when I lost Edelgard on my first playthrough of 3 Houses for not getting max support.
@@kylewood4488-b9r There are no hard decisions to make in 3H when you can recruit every character sans the other lord and their retainer. What's worse is that everything works out and Fodlan flourishes regardless of what lord you choose.
@@Videodrome1991 Midwit take. He's not talking about the purely practical gameplay decisions, he's talking about the moral complications associated with each lord and their method to reach Fodlan's prosperity. The characters can simultaneously all be well-intentioned and have equally valid visions for the future which will all lead to a good outcome, but also be incompatible with each other (at least as far as they can tell) and have various ethical failings, especially when they're on the losing side and start getting desperate.
You could easily say that Byleth's influence is precisely what decides Fodlan's fate, since they're the one attracting students of other houses under the banner of the house they chose. In this sense the fundamental decision is which lord you think will lead to the best outcome for Fodlan, although this also limits the player's perspective. They're just not privy to the virtues of the other lords (or Rhea), or the full scope of what drives them.
Could 3H's story have been even better? Certainly. But it's a great number of steps along the correct direction for the series going forward.
@@Kageryushin Moral complications? Ethical failings? Dude please, this is 3H. Edelgard is an accessory to your father's murder and never gets reprimanded by Byleth for it in her own route. This is the same game where every route follows a strict script no matter what characters you recruit. It doesn't matter what values the lords hold or what actions you take, everything works out in the end. Fodlan prospers. The End. This isn't Fallout New Vegas where your actions have consequences.
As for Byleth, he's a tool for self-inserting (until Hopes gave him a silver of soul) and one of the worst parts of the game because everyone washes his balls to the point of abandoning their home houses for him despite having little to no personality.
3:50 I noticed the same trend by comparing metacritic number of user review increases. Engage & 3H having similar initial waves but then 3H getting a 2nd much larger wave, while Engage dried up. Experiencing the story takes time. That explains the delay for 3H's 2nd wave. People learned that the story was good and recommended it to others alot. Engage's story if anything did the opposite. (Accelerating the drying up of the initial wave by people warning that the story is bad.)
I haven't even finished a playthrough yet but my big think of why people talk about this less than 3 houses is that stories are what people's minds attach to, and stories are only as good as their character's thoughts and actions. 3 houses was all new people in a unique setting for the series whereas in engage half the cast is "Hey 'member this guy."
Yes there are all the new characters, but they're diluted by all the people who's function in the story and gameplay can be replaced by a magic crystal that makes you stronger.
I'm torn on which Switch FE I prefer overall.. On the surface 3 Houses feels a little more vintage FE.. My only pet peeve was the text was a little small which made it difficult to see at times.. So many games nowadays make you strain your eyes which is a little uncomfortable.. I am a fan of both entries however and have minimal complaints.. I wouldn't say Engage is a failure as far as its peers but what I did notice is whenever a new big release drops the previous one appears to be instantly forgotten about.. And there has been quite a few noteworthy releases this year
Something I heard a while back which really interested me was that a lot of the character designs straight up don't look like they're in the correct setting. FE is a war like setting and having characters with kooky and bright flashy designs instead of darker colors or some type of battle armor just feels off. Almost like they don't take war effort seriously.
The theory at the end makes a lot of sense and wow is it kinda depressing, but I hope Engage gets a wakeup call for what it did right and what it did wrong and the higher-ups don't just discard everything about Engage
9:00 Tons of people seem to talk about how the design was a big reason for it "failing", but I don't think that's the case and this might be just a loud minority. Character design is something you can see immediately. Even before buying the game. However initial sales were the only time Enage did well. The fall off came after some time passed. That lines up with story being the reason as that one does take more time to find out if you like or dislike it. It also lines up with what people say the most in their reviews. Character design is mentioned semi-regularly, but the bad stories gets named as the reason in almost every review. Including even positive reviews often mention the story being bad, but it's good anyway.
Let me put it this way: Three Houses was talked about for 2 or 3 years after release
I have not heard a single thing about Engage other than the fact that it released at some point. So something must have gone wrong
What went wrong is how unengaging the game really is after the hype wore out. It’s fun to play but boring to discuss and a bit uninteresting. The issue with engage is how bland it feels. The world characthers supports story feels bland. Fates may had a bad story but at least we can still talk about it heck I at least remember many of the fates cast name meanwhile I can only remember a few of the characters in engage
gameplay keeps you in the moment to moment but story is what carrys you after finishing a game
it was not really a failure, but more like could have done more than what they presented. For instance, more supports converations (maybe not all voiced and more bonds with the emblems), bigger story in each nation, more side missions, more variety in emblem trials, a past arc, and the fell xenolgue would have being so much better if it continued from the point where the MC knows about him/herself's nature. If the DLC was much longer I think it would have being more interesting too.
Main campagin story wise, I think they could have added more time between each event. so that it feels logical that the MC gets attached to certain characters, and that it feels more like an ongoing war with the Fell Dragon....etc
I haven't played Enguage, and your point on character designs seems to match my feelings on the game. I just saw the box art, saw the two in center with the Pepsi colour scheme, and immediately wanted nothing to do with it. I like some absurd designs, but those hit in a weird way that bugged me.
My thoughts exactly!
@@D0MiN0ChAn The game's art style was largely driven by Mika Pikazo, an illustrator new to the Fire Emblem series. The team at Intelligent Systems was impressed with her vivid and colorful drawings that "popped". This perfectly matched their goal of appealing to a broad audience, including younger players.
@@orangeslash1667 still, the colgate hair and v-tuber aesthetic sadly won't win me over 🥲 which is okay, i have plenty of other FE titles to return to and appreciate
Let's be honest this game fell off because no one ever ever ever ever ever wants to hear "the divine dragon looked at me!"again
Great video with some very interesting points, I especially liked the zoomer attention span concept. I agree that Engage will most probably end up viewed like fates in the future as the actual core gameplay is fun. The main way I see it is the idea of in the future playing three houses again and skipping story or playing engage and skipping story is a complete no contest for me.
Zoomer attention span theory is flawed because this didn't happen with three houses and most FE fans are adults
@@JordiumZ When I refer to zoomers I mean generation Z, which can be as old as 26 years old now
@@JordiumZ I feel that one's attention span matters little as long as the story overall creates immersion to retain one's attention.
@@Speedwinghere Both Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Engage started development around the same time with work proceeding in parallel; Three Houses was mostly created by a separate team from Koei Tecmo working in collaboration with IS. One of the goals behind Engage was to do something different from Three Houses, which has a more epic and adult war story, and to hearken back to Awakening as a work with appeal to a broad audience.
Tsutomu Tei also said that the decision for Engage to have a single path, rather than the branching paths in Three Houses and Fates, was made early. Genki Yokota, producer from Nintendo, said that some players were intimidated by too many branching paths and would assume they had to play all of them. Tei felt that a simplified story structure would allow players to put all their focus on the tactical gameplay. In other words, Intelligent Systems is trying way to appeal to beginners.
@@orangeslash1667 I'm confused by your last statement as from what you're saying right up to the last sentence instead implys that three houses is the casual game with more focus on story and character interaction hence being more appealing to beginners and engage with its heavier emphasis on gameplay and nostalgia baiting is more appealing for veterans of the series imo. Not that it nessisarily actually ended up that way for engage but from a design point of view I'm convinced that's what they were going for. It was meant to be the anniversary title after all.
15:15 While that is true in general *I think Engage's skill system missed a big opportunity to be better by 1) limiting it to only 2 skill slots.* You're already limited by SP. Having only 2 slots means you're just going to pick only the strongest skills, when the different SP cost for skills would have been ideal for also having the option of deciding to instead get alot of weaker skills instead of just the strongest ones, as you always do with the other games anyway. In fact in this game because weaker skills also take away SP from getting stronger skills they're even less worth getting than when you learn them early from a class like in the other games. *2) Being able to sell skills back for the same SP cost* would have been an excellent feature aswell, so you can experiment around alot.
Hey Mangs, good points on the reasons. I did like myself Engage, and I would've loved to keep playing it for a few more playthroughs (i played 3), but so many games were releasing in quick succession. Advance Wars RBC, Zelda tears of the kingdom, and generally me being pretty busy with college the few months following Engage's release. That aside, these are the pros and cons I find with engage:
Pros:
-Combat animations have not been this great since the GBA era, normally i turn them off in fates/awakening and even 3Houses, but i kept these on for all my 3 playthroughs.
-Map design was a breath of fresh air after the copypasta maps of 3Houses
-Having less skill slots and skills being generally more impactful makes character building much more streamlined and a blast.
-Engage rings are a pretty great and fun mechanic overall.
-Bosses having resurrection stones and engage attacks makes them an actual challenge and thrill to fight this time around.
-I personally like the more stylized artstyle of this game, guess i'm part of the 50% that liked the artstyle
-Monastery/Somniel elements not being too intrusive and mandatory makes replaying less of a chore. I sometimes find myself wanting to replay 3Houses, but the thought of having to do monastery management to be able to play fire emblem puts me off.
- Being able to just "buy" skills and reclass with easy makes it pretty easy and fun to try new builds
-The soundtrack is insane
Cons:
-Character designs felt a little bit overdone. Don't get me wrong, I like some like Yunaka and Céline (i really like poofy dresses), but others like Timerra and Ivy's grate (they should have made Ivy's Somniel outfit her main design) are too much. It generaly made designs pretty hit-or-miss.
-Lack of New game plus of sorts is weird, i really feel like we should've gotten a way to pass on skills we already knew, engage weapon upgrades, and bond rings.
-Engage weapon upgrades being locked behind the tempest trials mode at such low drop rates is bad. I'd rather go through the game with the fallen off engage weapons in late game than grind for hours for little amounts of crystals (luckily mods have us covered with purchaseable crystals)
-Mandatory "plot bad" point. I feel like it tries too hard to be generic, I feel like it could've been done better and allowed the personalities of the old lords to shine in the story.
-The fact that many great characters are locked behind supports is weird. I used to hate Yunaka because of the impression she left on the player during main story, but her supports really show how deep of a character she actually is, making her one of my favourite. I feel like they should've made some of these characters shine in main story (was gonna make a 3Houses comparison, but 3H cheats by being able to allocate a route to a handful of characters each)
-The world feels dead and uninteresting, seriously, are there no civilians anywhere apart from Firene and Solm? Would've loved to see the world developed a bit more.
-Villians are badly written and comically evil.
-Lack of true romantic S-rank supports for the main character is boring. Not sure why they decided to make them all platonic
-Lack of paired endings, a feature that has been around for ages being removed is another red flag. Makes me question wether they're thinking of moving away from romance in FE in general. Paired endings added a level of replayability and interaction between the characters.
-The Fell Xenologue was hella dissapointing. Can't believe I payed $20.00 for 7 bracelets (that arguably could've been in the game since the begginning) and a half baked Xenologue. IS needs to rethink DLC, cuz even Cindered Shadows in 3Houses gave us 4 deep characters that interact very well with the main cast. (and it gave us Constance)
Hey is there a place where I can see the ai art at 16:30 it's really good
Story wise, it was too linear and the plot twists were terrible.
MC dies three times: 1. In the past 2. Protecting best girl Veyle 3. Recharging the emblems. Then gets revived as an emblem? Come on.
Not to mention the nations have no culture which is reflected by the cast, Zelkov, Kagetsu, Jean, Pannette.
Character wise, localization hurt the game more than the story: Louis' "people watching", Etie and Goldmary's support (What? Women arent alow to have a beautiful body?), pact ring. Speaking of Goldmary, I'm mad that the censored her being self conscius about gaining weight.
Unpopular opinion, I like Celine's dress and shoes. But I also like the AI designed Celine just as much
I think Goldmary's design might be offputing by the shoulder piece or the color yellow or personal opinion, not enough emphasis on her booba
The only character designs I don't like are Bunet, Jade, Amber, Boucheron, Etie, and maybe Hortensia because of the contrast in color
ENG localization destroyed this game for me, but playing in Japanese is more bearable.
Just give us a game with Engage's gameplay and a story on the scale of three houses.
Should be simple
I agree. In terms of story, world and setting, Three Houses set the bar VERY HIGH.
Felt that EnGAYge was to cutesy.
@@Factboy12 It's not just the story or characters but how these factors are portrayed on Engage where they feel like caricatures rather then believable people. Many supports in Engage rely on the quirks of a character rather than allowing them to grow as people. While there are some good supports, these are the exception. Many other fire emblem games like blazing blade and the tellius games had simple stories but keep the player interested due to the world building, characters and how they fit into the game itself
Engages Gameplay is definitely the best in the Series,but the Story and Charchter designs are just.. terrible.The Charchters feel overdesigned and they don't look like they are meant to be in a a Fire emblem game set in an mediveal world.I didn't finish engage because towards the end it just started feeling like a chore.The story was just so uninstersting and at times super frustrating because of how the Charchters were acting in the Main story's cutsence.(being dumbed down and obsessing over alear in the main story)The Somniel part was fun for like 1-2hours but afterwards it was really boring,and I wish we had more charchter dialogue on the somniel.Engage had so much poteinal but it all was wasted.I really hope they get better writers or spend more time on the story elements and the Charchter designs for future games.
Another nitpick for me was as Mangs mentioned in the video-the lack of personality shown in the main story.Engages supports are really nice,and i liked a handfull of them but it saddens me that the Charchters feel so dull in the main story.Alear and Zelkov's support is by far my favourite, because you get to see how much personality both alear and Zelkov actually have, but in the main story alears personality is watered down to a point where you just don't like Alear.
Really unfortunate, since alot of supports showcased how much personality the Charchters actually have ,that the main story failed to showcase.
New to fire emblem and so far got to chapter 24 on normal in Engage and feel that without playing 3H I can see the character design being disappointing and overly shiny plastic by comparison. Really enjoyed the gameplay and feel that the snappy animation adds to it but it has to be looked on as a slightly shallow celebration title but there's a game in here.
Tbh engage feels almost like a "too safe" game
There was so little risk there was next to no gain
every time i see someone talk about how good engage's cutscenes looked i feel like they must be people who only played 3 houses because to this day the cinamatics from awakening are some of my favorite video game cutscenes ever. the one with grima looming over the dragons table? the zoom in on lucina's eye? they really handled the switch from 2d anime to 3d really well, i liked that they didnt try to make it look 2d and instead worked to make the 3d look as beautiful as possible. the bright purple and blue tones, sense of scale, facial animations and sense of movement was really well done in them. i liked the ones in fates too. i mean, the ones where you dont slam full speed into boobs. like the corrin transformation one with all the water in the air. possessed takumi, leo in the swamp, facing ryoma, theres a lot of really cool high impact visuals. i didnt really dig the way echoes, 3H and now engage kinda... dropped that direction to try to make everything look 2d again. espessially bc as an animator who pays attention to these details a lot, both 3H and engage just ended up looking uncanny. 3H felt a lot like a lot of 2d anime ppl with 3d hair on their heads. not ever model shades the same and they end up looking misplaced, or the focus on the 2d eliment begins to take more precedent over making them look good at all. i think back to the cutscene where jeralt gets stabbed. i thought that scene looked like shit. engage decided to take the worse parts of engage and make them look emptier, less organized, more misplaced and jumbled, and too visually busy at all times. at some point, engage became so much at once it became a visual load of nothing. when every character is trying to be the quirky one, nobody is charming. people liked henry in awakening because he was so starkly different than everyone else. when everyones henry, henry just becomes annoying. engage was a master of taking characters no one cared about and putting them in giant empty rooms to say mind rottingly boring, predicable things. i love story, i love animation, when i played engage, i felt tempted to skip cutscenes and dialogue, on a first playthough. i didnt even know what i was going to see and i didnt really care to. the fans want more mature story telling, and they gave us the most dumbed down immature story yet. at some point i feel like IntSys isnt listening to fans at all. hell, i dont feel like IntSys is looking at what makes their games succesful at all either!
I truly tried to enjoy Engage, however it's important aspect that made me quit the game was the lack of of that Fire Emblem charm. Like what Mangs said the character designs feel off even with great designs like Goldmary. The AI redesign of Celine looks more Fire Emblem than the official ballroom dress which looked distracting and impractical in a series where characters like Tharja exists. The Fire Emblem charm in my opinion is a combination of good medieval fantasy designs, strong character personality, and believable immersion into it's world. All of these FE Engage severely lacked.
Compare Engage to FE Echoes, which also had a simple story. The difference was that Echoes continent of Valentia felt believable and oddly breathtaking at times with it's music and first person point and click viewing mechanic that gave players a more personal connection to it's characters and world. Engage showed a lack of care for the Fire Emblem world that captivated many of us to the point it felt like a knock off.
Alear herself easily could had been on par with Alm/Celicia if she wasn't held back by the Avatar system. She has a good design, her voice acting carries the unremarkable story, and the divine dragon concept held a lot of potential. I tend to hold the unpopular opinion of liking the avatar characters due to seeing severe untap potential with their characters. For Alear it was fun seeing her act kinda dorky in her supports, but most of it was overshadowed by the cringe elements of Engages cast. The cringe got so bad, it felt like Alear was going to break the fourth wall out of frustration. To sum things up Alear belongs in a better Fire Emblem game.
Engage probably had quite a few reasons to fall off so fast. Don't really think it's just attention span. That would have hurt 3H too. With it's many routes.
With it's early big sales. it seems many a FE fans gave it a chance but left the game unsatisfied. The story , character writing and character designs certainly hurt it. It left the fanbase with little to talk abouit and few character to care for and discuss. Heck. Despite it's flaws. Fates talk lasted a long time after release. for good ot bad. Engage doesn't even have that.
I know the devs wanted another Awakening to appeal to new players but they just failed with that too. Just adding some old characters is not gonna convince new players to try it.
As for the next game and Engage's effect on it? i think it will not effect a remake too much but more players might be wary of the next fully new game.
I think there's a slight censorship factor in play with how badly it did, but that wouldn't save the game's story and writing either way even if there wasn't any. The gameplay wasn't bad or anything, it just feels like there's not much else to say beyond that for Engage. The game's artstyle is a HUGE turn off for majority of people and that's going off of when people reacted to Alear's design. Game accessibility could be a factor too since its a Switch-only game. Fire Emblem Engage kind of deviates from what makes Fire Emblem truly appealing would be the most sensible conclusion.
To me it was only a huge turn off to the 3H fanboys. Literally everyone who hated on the design had to bring up 3H as if it was the only FE game in existence. I personally liked most of the designs in Engage but hey that's just me. Nothing I say matters in the long run.
@@Spyder-MarthI can assure you it wasnt just 3houses fanboys, the designs were extremely offputting for me and even still just stick out really badly in the series
@@Spyder-Marthjust like how P5 fans felt turned off in SMTV
@@DourFlower The game's art style was largely driven by Mika Pikazo, an illustrator new to the Fire Emblem series. The team at Intelligent Systems was impressed with her vivid and colorful drawings that "popped". This perfectly matched their goal of appealing to a broad audience, including younger players.
@@DourFlowerI can vouch. The artstyle made the game unappealing to many not just fans. Hell one of my friends didn’t even know that engage was a fire emblem game they thought it was some weird spin off. The vtuber artstyle was a horrible choice however the game has other issues besides the artstyle: a boring story that’s generic, a main character worshipped too much by the cast, many of the cast felt boring and anime tropes too the extreme.
Ironically engage failed to engage with it’s audience even newer fans didn’t feel like touching this game which is a bit funny since they did like 3H
Gotta be brutally honest here. I only care about FE if it has a good story. And this game made me realize that because it did NOT have a good story. I don’t care how fun the gameplay is. If the story isn’t keeping me hooked then I stop playing. After Echoes and Three Houses this was a huge disappointment. I’ll still be a fan of the series but this game makes me want to replay Three Houses again.
I think starting with Awakening the art direction has been pretty polarizing.
I see more people being apathetic to Engage's story than being outraged like they were with Fates, which might actually be worse for its legacy in the long run. With Fates, I remember so many people being furious at how awful the story was, but that made the game stick with them in the years since its release. I still see people arguing over characters like Corrin and Takumi and Azura seven years later. Meanwhile, Engage's story seems to be more "in one ear, out the other", which is probably going to result in most people completely forgetting about it over time. None of the characters have made much of an impact on the community, for good or ill, like Lucina, Xander, or Dimitri have (except maaaaaaaaaybe Yunaka? Maybe?), and for such a character-driven series, that's practically a death sentence for this game's memorability. I enjoyed going through Engage as a video game, but while there were some characters that I liked, like Yunaka, Fogado and Griss, I barely remember what happens in the plot besides the Emblems being corrupted and Veyle having a Gollum personality split (and also "the Fire Emblem", for obvious reasons), while I can recall almost everything that happens in Three Houses from memory.
Yes it was, i know people like to use the "It was the 4th best selling of the series" but the fact that right now all Nintendo franchises are seeing growth, there is no word of mouth and the devs wanted new people to get into the series makes it a relative failure
That emulate comment is weird, you can make that argument for anything, and lets be honest almost everyone who emulates Switch is pirating it, the way to emulate it legally is so convoluted and involves having one of the early Switch that were sold that can be hacked
And the "Switch is showing its age" argument doesn't really work as Zelda has showed and both new Mario games will sell a lot
I think engage was a weird title. It had in my opinion the best gameplay I’ve played in the series but has one of the worst stories 😭. I personally though looked passed the story issues and played for the gameplay and it was amazing for me. It definitely isn’t the best or the worst so it’s in a weird place of just being middle of the road
I agree
Its the most fun ive had with a FE Game but the story was underwhelming after playing Three Houses
When I heard the title Engage from the leaks, I thought it was some weird Gacha game or something like Megaman Battle Network but Fire Emblem.
Engage by no means had the worst story, litterally all of fates exist first off.
Engage knew what it wanted to be and executed on it. Was the story good? No it was never meant to be, it was meant to be a highly stereotypical story of fire emblem, but it was coherent and finished what it set out to start.
@@Aeivious ikr
It was definitely a first for the franchise. A game being named for its main mechanic.
Three Houses was my first ever Fire Emblem game, and I loved it. Going from that to Engage, narratively, just felt so cheesy and weak. I couldn't get engaged in the characters and story the same way I did with Three Houses. Could be I simply didn't have the history with Fire Emblem to enjoy a game that focuses so much on that history.
I would like to offer an additional viewpoint that wasn't discussed in the video. Three Houses is Fire Emblem's best-selling game. It was a 'jumping-on point' for a lot of players and brought a lot of new fans to the franchise. I can't help but wonder if these new players possibly just didn't understand/care about all of the previous lords being in Engage? The game leans heavily into nostalgia that these newer fans simply do not have. Not only that but if you include all of the Lords attached to the rings/bracelets the game has a LOT of characters. Long-time fans of the franchise are already familiar with the lords and their quirks, but to new players, I think it could be considered a little overwhelming. Add that to a lot of the new characters suffering from being overdesigned and it's all just too much.
I think some of those players who jumped on at Three Houses picked up Engage and it had strong sales initially because they thought 'I really enjoyed the last Fire Emblem game!' and then sales and interest plummeted because the experience they had wasn't as good (poor story, over-designed characters, reliance on nostalgia that they just don't have) and word of mouth did not encourage further sales and maintain interest in the same way that Three Houses did.
Personally, I've never forgiven Fates. Then again, I didn't enjoy the incredibly dense skill gameplay either. There are a lot of enemy skills that completely invalidate a unit's stats or positioning, and I found it to be incredibly frustrating and often found it feeling very unfair. I played through the entirerty of conquest, hoping I would eventually come to like it. I think running straight into Camilla's tits in the end cutscene was the last straw for me. I heard birthright was different, and purchased it... but only made it through about 5 maps before shelving the game permanently.
Game story is very important to me for any rpg, and strategy rpgs like Fire Emblem are not remotely an exception. And seeing that Engage was a cringefest that I could have written better in my sleep was far and away the largest reason I didn't buy it.
The level of censorship was a failure, I mean the MC is 17 so they decided to remove the entire concept of engagem leaving him/her a forever-alone loser rather than raise the age.
Even if this video is not as Edited as the "3Houses did right/Wrong", I like this style of podcast videos. Would not mind for more in the future. Great video Mangs!
Underrated comment
Podcast videos are cozy
Blake spittin
I feel like the newer FE games are made for younger audiences than the FE games that came before it.
That really sucks.
I will always remember this as Iron colgate game. Sweet flavor, but you cannot swallow it.
4:45 That's a devastating poll result. An Ironman isn't even anything story related, but should be much more about gameplay, where Engage isn't weak.
The thing though is that mangs' primary audience and popularity is built on GBA fire emblem so asking engage to immediately tip the scales of years of work with 3 other games immediately is kinda unfair
I'd say yes : the game tries hard to be "broad appeal the game" focusing more on shared benefits with their IOS game than their mainline titles and it shows - the core selling points of nostalgia bait emblems are the WEAKEST element and barely delve into their character than face value exaggerations of them, the character design for gacha bait than logic in anyway
the point of the game was just low bar investment with casual appeal, it "plays well" which means nothing in the grand scheme than it allows a lot of things cause its easier and more coddled
also really day 1 dlc that has skills that make it inherently p2w - pay to win faster, that tells of everything to this brand right now
another big issue is localization - its all a lie and telling of censorship and egotistical translators adding their own spin cause they think they're so interesting and better than the actual writers, the result is the writing is terrible and more childish than it actually is
i worry for the next remakes if they ever do cause this design philosophy is going to destroy the writing and style of the games to appeal to the masses
I wanna be forced to impregnate a dragon
I didn't touch Engage since TotK went out.
My guess for the failure, Alear design and the previous lords leading to an impression of fanservice bait.
I liked some character design such as Ivy, Diamant or Celine.
Yunaka too
Was Fire Emblem Engage a Failure? When I see all the bad review about this game, it's doesn't surprise me because I doesn't stop repeat that too much grab monney game kill the grab monney game as the Fire Emblem serie have made the big mistake of his life to follow the Pokemon and Kirby path by release one game every years in a Call of Duty style with not enough work into it and why? Because Fire Emblem, just like Pokemon and Kirby, are into the Nintendo game to be the most popular in Japan so we can say they have somes big sales at their release as a grab monney game since Nintendo mainly focus on them for the monney. If it's not true then why 6 years later the Nintendo Switch still don't have any Star Fox, Kid Icarus or F-Zero games despite the Switch is the best opportunity to made somes old game comeback at life for made them know to the new players who join Nintendo those last years and who don't know much about Nintendo video game serie since the Nintendo Switch is very popular arround the world and even surpass the Nintendo 3DS sales? Why the Switch isn't able to get his own Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country except get a old Wii U game ported to the Switch like most of the Mario Wii U games already did to be back on Switch despite previous Nintendo console before the Switch wasn't into the port of old game to next console and for the Wii U games ported to the Switch still be sold for 60 dollars instead to reduce the price? Why we just get 4 Pikmin games with 3 port and one new game and 2 Metroid games without any news about Metroid Prime 4 as if Nintendo doesn't really care about his own community while Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby get one game every years if Nintendo isn't hungry about monney? Did it a sort of stupid favoritism or something if it's not for the monney?
However, more Nintendo keep abusing to release the same grab monney game and more their grab monney game become garbage. Take Pokemon for example: If it was a time the Pokemon community was welded together and approve every Pokemon games as good game even if the release of a new game was rare, since Nintendo release them one or 2 games per years, the community is defintiively destroy and in wars between those who like the games like they are and doesn't care about how it look like while others hate the game because ugly graphics, recycled gameplay, bad story mode, glitch in the last game from 2022 and others stuff they say and, without belong to any of these clans, I think Digimon is more better than Pokemon because Bandai have the honnor to not treat his own community like a piece of sh*t and have the respect to listen their own community unlike Nintendo/Pokemon compagnies so, thanks to Bandai, we get Digimon Cybert Sleuth and Next Order with a good optimized Switch and Steam port with a good story mode with nice graphics and addictive gameplay so no longer wonder why somes news on internet was saying somes good reviews about Digimon Next Order at his Steam and Switch release unlike the last Pokemon from 2022 about, the random news that I have read, was having fun to sink the Pokemon game into the mud for several problem about the game like why Nintendo tester don't test their own Pokemon game before release in public and that its the Nintendo community who do the job instead the Nintendo tester for notice all the glitch. Plus the Legendary from Pokemon will never surpass the Royal Knight from Digimon who are more better and more awesome than those stupid Legendary from Pokemon about most of them are very forgettable without have anything special except proove they are so dumb for let themself be captured by a evil Pokemon trainer.
For Fire Emblem Engage, well, I think everyone know why but for short and from what people in my country was saying about the game: The game is too much fan service, somes of the DLC was garbage and too much expensive despite the bad quality, the english dub was disappointing that most of people have prefer play the game with Japan voice despite they would prefer the english voice if it wasn't a disaster, the story who look like too much kiddy unlike Awakening who was more an adult story, useless characters in the game about most of players who explain they have prefer kill most of the characters they meet just for not hear them later since most of the conversation are useless and don't bring anything special to the story, somes scene who can made players very uneasy like the little girl kid who fall in love to an old adult characters and say to him so love word so the pedophiles who play this game must have been really happy to see a such scene like that and wihout forget that the characters design who are still ugly but it's been a while we know it thanks to Smash Ult with most of the Fire Emblem roster who have blue hair, sword, cape and moveset too much similar to each other so that the Black Knight (despite he is a trophy for help us), Corrin and Daraen are the only characters who are very unique and deserve to be in Smash for the design, weapons and moveset who made the mspecial unlike Marth and all his clones so when I see somes FE characters who are too similar to each others like Chrom, Ike or Lucina I wonder what they really do in Smash Ult or in their original serie except be the brothers and sisters of Marth?
For Kirby Return to Dreamland Deluxe, the remake was half good and half bad unlike the good old classic Wii version who was just good and never bad. Why? For short: Useless black line arround the characters since the classic game didn't have any and it look more ugly in cutscene because the black lines are too much visible, Dedede face who is still ugly and, funny part, people already complain it in Forgotten Land but Nintendo/Hal Laboratory love play deaf when it suits them for made same mistake twice and, except adding new mini game and Magolor side story to the game who are the two only good new things about the Deluxe version, Nintendo don't have made any gameplay upgrade like made the friendly AI from Star Allies be back for Return to Dreamland Deluxe if we are too lazy for play with others players and still no new playable characters for the Kirby main story like have somes friend dream from Star Allies be back like Dark Meta Knight, Taranza, Susie and somes others so it's definitively better to play the classic wii game on a Wii or Wii U with a price who is less than 60 dollars if we do somes search for buy the game on internet than waste 60 dollars for a bad remake if Nintendo/Hal Laboratory didn't mess with it.
It's sad to say but the Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby serie gonna be hated for good and gonna made a bad reputation for Nintendo if Nintendo keep messing with Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby by overused them by release too much game every years just for the monney since they are the most Nintendo popular game in Japan to get too much attention while they forget their good others video game serie like Star Fox, Metroid, Kid Icarus, F-Zero, the real Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country Swicth and others so, it's sad to say it too but, if Nintendo have planned to create a new console who don't will have any link with the Nintendo Switch familly anymore from the rumor that I have heard, I don't gonna buy it if it's for be in front of a Nintendo Switch-like about most of the game who are release are grab monney game like Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby while other Nintendo game are forgotten due to be less popular than their grab monney game and, if I'm into Nintendo, it's because they have so much video game serie and always try to made various game without favoritism when Iwata was alive but it seem like the favoritism for the monney is become a hight priority for them and not really the community itself and I'm far away to be the only one who don't gonna buy the next Nintendo console. It's been a while than the F-Zero and Kid Icarus community no longer support Nintendo and, from what I have hear, I have notice than the Star Fox and Metroid community are the next who will no longer support Nintendo since they feel like that Nintendo take them for a dick and that Nintendo is more focus to release Pokemon, Fire Emblem and Kirby grab monney game instead to care to a new Star Fox game or don't have do anything special for the Star Fox 30th anniversary this year unlike their grab monney game who get a anniversary with special stuff like new game and else while Metroid Prime 4 have been announced since 6 or 7 years without any news about it so if Nintendo release a new console, Nintendo gonna fall from their dream monney cloud and be back at the reality by see that their next console have very bad sales due to how Nintendo have treat their own community with the Nintendo Switch.
So, if people are still bad faith about all those important information who are true and verified by still claim it's still false, then the conversation is close and I wish to the Fire Emblem community to enjoy the best that they can the Fire Emblem games because, by know how is become Nintendo today by just care for grab monney game, the next Fire Emblem game gonna be like Engage by be another garbage like saying the people so enjoy the best that you can about all the good memories you remember with past Fire Emblem game before Engage because the next Fire Emblem game who is supposed be release somewhere in 2024 from somes rumor leaks gonna be a big disappointment again ;)
You know I just noticed that no Engage Characters won this years Choose your legends
Now compare that to how dominant 3 houses characters were the past few choose your legends polls for FeH
These characters haven't had any impact on the fandom
The characters just arent worth talking about
The only reason people still talk about fates is either to bash on it for its trash ass features or its shameless horniness.
Engage doesnt even have that much from a characterization perspective
All people will say about it when/if they remember it is "oh yeah, that game had really good map design" and thats hardly a topic of lengthy discussion
Ivy, Yunaka, and Goldmary are fan service oriented characters. Their outfits leave very little to the imagination. And I talk about Fates because I really enjoyed it.
i am just happy alear is fully voiced and not fully silent or barely even talk. some of the voice deliveries especially by the male alear is fantastic, its not anywhere near the levels of Berkut or Dimitri but still its nice. problem is the delivery doesn't happen often
another thing is alear's sword liberation has no story significance whatsoever, even in gameplay i didnt find anything special, surprisingly it doesn't even have "effective against corrupted".
i always viewed supports as a way to give charecters more development or personality. you cant have every person in an entire army to recieve character development in the main story and that's understandable
also fire emblem proves that making the main protagonist a dragon will result in a bad story but fun gameplay
I don't think it was quite the art style at all, I like the character designs, it's the cleanest looking game in the series imo and I also stopped paying attention to it myself as soon as I was done with it.
Engage had a single path story with a lame twist with almost no moral grey to discuss. It felt like the story was designed for young children so it really kind of leaves nothing to discuss.
You're right that it's most apt to compare it to Fates but I'd argue in that comparison, the lack of paths compounds the problem. On top of that Fates at least did fan service well, something Engage also didn't do well at all.
Now I'm not trying to claim that a game can't be done with a single path anymore, I just think it requires some depth and moral grey. Any of the 3 houses paths provide a higher level of discussion than the single Engage path.
Now I'm not saying Engage even had a bad story, I think you don't really need anything more than what we got when the mechanics are great, but it's a story that goes out of it's way too provide little discussion. On top of that because it was coming off potentially the most interesting scenario in the series the whiplash kind of turned people off.
7:14 We don't. Everyone admits that Fates and Engage have miserably shit storylines at this point, and even subpar visual aesthetics - Engage moreso than Fates, but people seem to prefer Echoes, 3H's and Tellius' more "overcast tones" and "down to earth" medieval fantasy-focused look. We also say that Conquest (though not really Birthright and certainly not Revelations) and Engage are overall mechanically well-designed (probably better overall than 3H and Tellius, though Engage's hub is fucking ass IMO) and most people appreciate them for that fact. We want IS to retain the positive ideas they learned from the designs of these games while holding themselves to the storytelling standard set by their best efforts.
If we take for granted that Tellius and Echoes are top contenders for the best storytelling (if not the best stories) in the series, then barring 3H, FE's best storytelling efforts have generally come out at really bad times. Path of Radiance came out on a console that performed considerably below par and had no promotion. Radiant Dawn came out early on a successful console, but 1) didn't have the mass appeal of the gimmicks that put said console on the map, 2) was a sequel to a game that too few people had played to begin with, and 3) had no promotion. Echoes came out at the very end of the 3DS' lifespan and had no fucking promotion. I'd also say New Mystery has good storytelling - great relative to Engage - but the west didn't even get the chance to legitimately experience it. Even the stories of these FE games aren't without their own flaws to quibble over, of course, but they're great showings for the series overall.
3H is the first time the series delivered good storytelling and experienced financial success at the same time, so it's understandable why a game like Engage, which was in development before 3H released and made its splash, would take cues from and exaggerate the qualities of Awakening, Fates, and Heroes - the money-makers of the franchise until now. I just pray IS sees the way the wind is blowing at this point.
The take on people's attention spans is an interesting take, i do also believe that many just wrote this game off at first despite the high numbers talking about how bad it looked and all that.
Warning for those who care, this comment contains spoilers for the game.
Personally i think it's perfectly fine. It's not perfect, but certainly not bad. The gameplay's great, that goes without saying since many do seem to agree on this.
But saying the story is a failure in return doesn't sit well with me. Fates's story is pretty bad because of how much it tries to overcomplicate things, and Corrin is worshipped a lot despite them doing some pretty silly things. With Engage i just feel like that's not the case. Its story is just very simple, and Alear's basically a celebrity who has to cope with what's expected of them and i think their journey is pretty well executed. I also think Veyle's arc is really well done, she's basically become one of my favourite FE dragons because she's actually very relevant to the story. I think the story is pretty decent, especially in the 2nd half from when the first truly major roadblock happens. Even Tiki did a few favors and then kind of disappeared. As for character designs, i agree with that they are overdesigned but personally i prefer complicated over boring. That might just be me, though. Combined with that, a lot of the characters are likeable and i enjoy their supports.
That said, there's some flaws for sure. I like Clanne and Framme, and i understand Lumera making a big impression on Alear. But the twins being overly excited to meet their hero and the drawn out death scene are kind of awkward. The story actually gets quite good in the 2nd half as i said, but the first impression is pretty poor. Moreover, the villain motivations are pretty weird. The hounds (notably Zephia) and Sombron really did not need sympathetic backstories, especially Zephia since hers wasn't rightfully rebutted by the heroes. I did understand, but i'd rather they were truly evil like the likes of FE4 Hilda or Gharnef.
The simple story does make sense as a reason why this game would fall off, though. There's just little to discuss, aside from what characters people do and don't like. But most characters just aren't that controversial, not enough to get into long rants about them anyway. But maybe i prefer it this way, to not have continuous keyboard wars over Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude and Rhea and who is actually the evily evil dastardly villain. You can't really do that about the characters in Engage, since they're so clear cut about where their allegiances lie and what they're about.
TL:DR: I think the quality of this game's aspects is just fine, and that it's mostly poor first impressions mixed with characters being not controversial enough to be so aggressively talked about as the 3H lords.
so as someone that can enjoy a game with a bad story (have over 900 hours in fates) I enjoyed engaged but completely agree it left a lot to be desired. I think what got me the most was just not having anyone to get attached to if they would've cut down on the cast to expand the characters in the story it would've helped a lot in that aspect. As the game stands It feels like I'm playing an all corrin run in fates, a bunch of pretty faces that are fun to use and customize but don't have much to make them memorable.
This game fell into the same trap Fates did, where it's essentially "Fire Emblem Royals" where Royal and noble characters just are supposed to be the coolest ever, making the non noble/royal characters just cheerleaders for the non royals
I’m a strong believer that STYLE can make or break a game. Persona (5) being a great example. I consider both series to be in a unique niche regarding their overall appeal. Persona 5 catapulted the series in popularity but the overall gameplay compared to early entries was changed much. But its style, from the flashy special moves, the cut-ins, cut scenes, even the menus and their transitions blend so well together. It knows the style it wanted and was refined to a razor edge.
Engage feels lose it’s it style, frist the extreme, over the top, and clashing character designs don’t mesh with each other, specially when put next to the simpler designs of many of the ring heroes. Drop that in to a generic fantasy setting it it just compounds it.
I don't agree with the take there is too much competition or that people don't have the attention span anymore or even that the switch is aging and under-powered.... those were all true when Three Houses blew up.
I think the weak response from the initial purchasers to the story and characters turned to much less favorable word of mouth, that turned into less of an algorithm push on social media and it just naturally petered out. Engage just... couldn't compete and didn't live up to the expectations three houses built for new fans who wouldn't buy the game day one.
If anything I think it was a contextual failure.
Releasing a nostalgia trip game about celebrating the franchise with a more simplistic story after the first mainline release in home consoles in over a decade which pushed FE forward in many aspects (class flexibility was my favorite for replayability) and hooked literally millons of new fans to the series was Engage's biggest mistake in my mind.
It didn't feel like a build up or progression in all fronts but rather a back to the roots approach that targeted hardcore fans. Not bad in itself but timing wasn't great.
(Also V-tuber design protagonist may have killed a bit of the hype pre-release becoming the but of jokes. Next time I hope we get avatar customization and be done with that aspect)