Board 8 > Fire Emblem Engage

(+) Yeah! (+)

Since I'll be out of town for a few months beginning late February, I'm thinking of getting another Switch game (nevermind that I haven't finished some of them).

So yeah, thoughts about FE: Engage? A close friend of mine says it's got great gameplay.

It's good. The story and characters suck at the start but do get better as the game goes along. The gameplay is indeed great.

Amazing gameplay and great characters. Story doesn't hit for a lot of people but imo it doesn't really matter, the game is fantastic

Yeah usually I don't really weigh FE's story against it. Thanks for the replies so far. Thankfully I can find a used copy cheap so I'll check it out ASAP.

Feel free to keep sharing your impressions though!

Story is bad. Like bad enough that I actually hated voice acting in games because the dialogue being said was that bad. Its never really so bad its funny either.

Characters are actually alright. Standard one character trait like Awakening and Fates, but some of them are still pretty good, largely thanks to supports.

Gameplay is great! Even beyond the Engage rings which are a blast, I also like some of the new mechanics in the game, especially breaking and weapons. Chain attacks are very dumb, though.

Possibly the series' best from a gameplay standpoint.

Just don't get caught up in the trap of doing all the DLC characters stuff at once as soon as it unlocks, if you even get it. There's sooooooooo much.

Gameplay (The SRPG part, at least. Somniel/"Academy" bit is awful) is very fun. Story is garbage. Characters... a mixed bag, but on the whole not great either (but also a couple of standouts who are.)

Which makes it really hard to place for recommendations. Really might come down to what you're looking for. If you like FE it's probably worth it.but it does rely a bit on why you like it IMO.

Some of the earlier maps are really strong and if you want a lot of lategame customization you can make some crazy builds.

Storyline has some good highs but also can be very by the book boring for awhile.

If you like FE is probably worth a buy, if you don't or are iffy on it then I wouldn't necessary recommend.

Man I wanna play it again right now. The actual maps are for the most part SO GOOD. I played it 3 times in a row in release....but skipped almost all the cutscenes after the first go, if that gives any implication. It's just great to actually play though.

And I really really love some of the characters! I like a lot of the designs, too, even if a ton of them did not translate well from the excellent 2D art from the Mika Pikazo.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

And I really really love some of the characters!

I mean, Lapis is a national treasure. But there are also some pretty lame characters too!

Panette is my spirit animal.

Jean is my boy. And of course there's hiya papaya

Kagetsu is top tier

I played through Three Houses last year and thought it was awesome, really loved a lot about it, the supports and relationships between characters were the best they've ever been, and really loved the three house dynamic, but kinda thought the gameplay got pretty bleh, even playing on the hardest difficulty I could for my first time through

Going into Engage right after was awesome. They really juiced up the gameplay with the engage feature... it's just awesome. It was exactly the shot in the arm I was looking for. I've kinda put it on pause though - I'm playing on the hardest difficulty you can your first time through again, and overall the difficulty is just fine, but bosses are way too strong. They take no damage from most units and will one round most units, and they actually move around. I'm kinda perplexed on how to deal with these mother fuckers. It's getting to be a game of "try and surround with my toughest units so they dont immediately die and then try to fire everything and kill the boss before they actually kill somebody because now that my whole army is in range they WILL kill somebody" and its getting a bit tiring.

I feel like the Engage mechanic is such a huge revolution for the series that it's going to be very weird when the next game doesn't have it. I mean, they could replace it with something else, but man it was just a whole new ball game.

Of course of the next game is Genealogy Remake, then that shit needs to stay far away!

It's kinda bad by the standards of the series IMO. Like the gameplay is okay but it's very heavy on the RPG side and light on the strategy, more about throwing flashy moves around than positioning and action economy etc. At some points it feels more like an FFT/Disgaea/Devil Survivor type game than FE, which is your call on whether that's good or bad.

The story and art are atrocious, and the bad story even bleeds over into the gameplay sometimes, as you e.g. spend the whole game fighting the same four bosses over and over.

I guess consider this a tepid recommendation if you don't have anything better to play? It's not unplayable; I finished the whole thing and even had fun with it. But I'd take like 80% of the series over it.

I skipped this one because the art style looked awful, and nothing I've heard about the writing sounds any better. Maybe it has the best gameplay in the series but that only goes so far.

I've only played two Fire Emblem games (Three Houses and Engage) but I thought the gameplay wasn't great in either.

Each battle just consists of getting your units just outside the attack range of every enemy and then attacking them on your next turn.

I'm sure there's more strategy on the hardest difficulties but a normal 1st playthrough was just kinda boring.

But yeah if you like Fire Emblem and know what you're getting into they're fine.

IMO the worst thing about the gameplay is how skirmishes are just too hard. They scale to the highest level units so you can't really use them to train weak units

I genuinely don't think the story is THAT bad. I wouldn't say it's GOOD but it's not that bad! I put an obscene amount of hours into doing everything at every difficulty with every character and it was def my game of the year whenever it came out.

hombad46 posted...

IMO the worst thing about the gameplay is how skirmishes are just too hard. They scale to the highest level units so you can't really use them to train weak units

To be fair, Skirmishes are the worst thing about modern Fire Emblem period.

They need to stop designing these new games around being able to just do random battles whenever, and go back to a locked stage count.

Bad story, bad character designs. Supposedly has good gameplay but I played the first 7 maps and wasn't feeling it by then. Seems like it is locked at 18fps. I did not enjoy my time.

It reminded me of how much fun
i had with previous games in the series and
I asked myself more than once why I didnt replay one of my favorites instead of this game.

Thanks again everyone for your thoughts.

I also looked more into it and the character building system sounds right up my alley. I love customizing characters that enable wacky builds (why Phantom Brave is one of my favorites).

But these discussions do make me think about what I seek in FE. I do enjoy SRPG gameplay obviously, although not to the extent that I prefer the hardest modes. I enjoy some challenge.

As for story, to be honest, I never really cared THAT much for any of the FE stories. It's more about the characters and it's good when they have at least one strong personality trait that they build around on (so like the FE:A/FE3H approach is fine).

Anyway, ordered my copy, I got it for ~$26.