🕑Timestamps🕑 00:00 Intro 00:31 Is the game any good? 02:03 The game's length 03:20 Engage's incredible skill ceiling 04:48 Some initial praise 06:52 Game mechanics 07:48 Low movement 10:00 The Break mechanic 12:22 The Emblem Rings 15:07 Deployment slots 16:28 Enemy scaling 17:28 Paralogues 18:47 Map design 20:43 The Bosses 22:29 The Draconic Time Crystal 26:01 The Somniel 32:50 Playable units 36:41 The Story (SPOILERS START HERE) 39:37 Avatar worship 41:28 The theme of Engage 41:56 Cringe 47:15 The Four Hounds 51:16 Veyle 52:58 Illogical cutscenes 55:02 Sombreron 56:41 Scenes that drag out 58:29 Overexplaining 1:00:13 The Emblem's role in the story 1:03:09 Some more ranting 1:06:00 Closing thoughts
Hey Mangs, sorry if you've already done this. But maybe someday you could play Disgaea 1/2? Crazy gameplay and strategies, you go bonkers the second playthrough with guides.
@@Mangs1337 Sweet! What a goated Patron back then haha. Looking forward to seeing you react, even though it was 5 years ago. I've only been subbed since somewhere last year.
This is a really good example of a lot of dissonance between what was said and what was done. Why did Lynn kill 4 of my allies and then go "wow look at how strong our bond is!"
What Zephia does to Marni is literally just her emulating what she's seen Sombron do to his own kids countless times. He's her point of reference for how you treat a family. And that is their depth, a disfunctional abusive family.
@@kaffka9221 still makes what she said a joke and the game did not leave itself enough time or room to accurately dive into that topic. another joke is veyle thanking zephia “for everything”-GIRL SHE GAVE YOU NOOOOTHING LMAO
@@asmrtpop2676 you don't need the game to specifically try to dive into that topic and you would have to try to think in a different perspective. Obviously to us she's definitely an abusive mother figure, but she herself thinks otherwise. It's like how in Demon Slayer where Rui's view of an ideal "family" was warped and toxic in reality because "family members" who do not perform their expected roles in his eyes were worthless.
@@brendanmohareful I can understand a bit the disfunctional family part but the bond emblems being all "Yay friendship!" while they are actively killing your units just doesn't feel right.
I think the biggest highlight of the game for me was that boss units will actually come attack you along with their guards. Usually Fire Emblem games have bosses just sit on a throne until you destroy all the enemies around them and they are only a threat if they manage to crit or you miss them too many times.
**spoilers** Mauvier does need to be in the 4 hounds to be Veyles knight though. Marni and Griss were adopted by Zephia when they were still fairly young. Those two follow Zephia blindly because she's like a mother to them. Mauvier joined as an adult as a priest of the fell dragon. He became worried about veyle when he noticed they did not care about hurting one of the beings they worship to achieve Sombrons goals. He cannot serve Veyle directly without being a member of the hounds.
The entirety of the Fell Faith doesn't make sense in Engage's world. Yeah, Awakening did it too with the Grimleal. But Awakening had the sense to make the Grimleal an unreasonable fanatic cult that's mostly in the shadows and off screen until Validar is in power of Plegia. And even then, everyone acknowledged Plegia is shady af. The Fell Faith doesn't work because we are supposed to believe an entire society of thinking reasonable people that live in a world with a tangible, provable, benevolent dragon god chose to became essentially Satanist worshipping a god who is only after destruction and his own goals because the people's prayers to dragon mom couldn't be answered.
@@skyeschlueter9877 It's a slippery slope. If a few characters have multiple personal effects/skills players will want all characters to have multiple effects/skills. It's going to be a balancing nightmare.
To me the big issue with the character roster that made it hard to get with them is that basically everyone comes in a group of 3. The royal and their two retainers. Getting 3 new characters at once when the deployment slots are so low means it's hard to give time to them if you like your current. Usually you'll have 1 person that you don't mind a bunch if they miss a map here or there to test others. But three, no. Also the retainers always seem to get a huge backseat to the royals. Royals get 3 character traits which almost makes them seem like a character, retainers get 1 thing that's their gimmick. Honestly I think that's part of why the love for yunaka, a main story character that isn't a royal/retainer and has more than 2 lines. Just to me the recruitment of a character is part of the draw, racing to a village or npc before they kill themselves lets me feel like I earned them. When basically all of them walk up and say, "Oh you're the savior, let me join you now for the next fight." Also no time do we have have a character introduced to us that doesn't immediately join. No seeing mage general of someland doing things until you're strong enough to have them join. Not even hearing a tale of them before. Like when you push into chapter 10, how cool would it be if Diamont was like, "Yo, I sure wish we had that Solm princess here, I hear stories of her taking on bandits camps all by herself to make her land safe, having someone like that would be helpful in this raid" Let us have some buildup to look forward to you know? The closest thing to this is Alcryst being like, "my brother is great, you'll see him after 1 chapter."
It is a good Day when Mangs uploads a hour long video. I like Fire Emblem a lot but your reviews make it even better. Thank you Mangs I hope you have a great day and I hope your feeling better now.
I’ll be honest my favorite characters were people like Diamant & Boucheron because at least they talk to you like an actual human being unlike half the cast.
Fr they are my favorites too, the only other units I really liked were Anna, bc she’s Anna. And then Yunaka bc her switching up how she talked was actually interesting and is payed off but listening to her supports. There were some others that were all right but some of them are just so cringe
The personal skills were so well crafted in Fates (especially the skills of the adults), but afterward, no other installment did it any justice. The personal skills in Three Houses were laughable. Most of them were either just rehashes of others, useless, or plain irrelevant. But Three Houses also supported crests, which to me were the actual 'personal skills'. If they made them both ridiculously good, then I can see this causing balance issues. In Engage, however, I guess the rings are the substitute for the personal skills, in how well the gameplay is centered around using them, that I almost forget that they are even there, especially when the skills on the enemies aren't that threatening like they were in Fates (Conquest especially). I feel like the personal skills in Engage are just dismissible, since the rings are that powerful and meaningful gameplay-wise. If Fire Emblem will continue creating these different game mechanic elements, like crests and rings (having their own unique properties), then I don't think we need personal skills anymore. By that point, I can see them all just being something like, 'Luck percent change of healing 10%'.
I would argue that very few of the personal skills in Three Houses were irrelevant. Most were just meant to either be more useful early on or late game. The skills of units like Leonie, Sylvain, and Dedue were useful early on but not that useful later while Ferdinand has one that is not that good early but amazing later on. The house leaders, Ignatz, and Bernadetta had skills that were useful all the way through so I would say Personal skills were honestly better in 3 Houses than Fates.
@@maxicheese4609 A lot of them have tradeoffs or oddly specific conditions to activate but there's a few that are universally good. Main character, the other dragon, Yunaka's, Merrin's (particularly since so many of the other good units are female), Anna. Diamant's is very good too, it has no downside if he's attacking with advantage or just enough damage to kill before a counter. Ivy's is OK but not really reliable to get kills with, Alfred's is alright but falls off. Lapis' is good as long as she doesn't need to crit. But more of them are like Etie's where it's a very specific niche that will barely ever see use, and when it does it's not nearly as impactful as turning a miss into a hit or vice versa.
@@Claudekr the thing with the royals is that their advances class skills are essentially second personals and some of them are really good Ivy with grasping void, Hortensia having a percentage chance to not use staff uses which is REALLY strong if you get lucky with the staff that instantly fills your whole armies engage meters, The Brodia princes having exclusive access to Sol and Luna etc
My biggest critique is the world building. I don't mind the simple/recycled plot foundation, but the world itself feels entirely EMPTY of people outside of your group. You see only a handful of NPCs in the entire game. They talk about different kingdoms, but you only spend a couple chapters in each place (border, castle, border) with no development of the place before moving on. I think the Tellius games have probably done the best in this regard. Each kingdom was unique, they had their own politics and interactions, and more importantly that all mattered. None of the stuff in this game matters outside of "get rings and win"
I think 8 and before do the worldbuilding best. Jugdral and Elibe especially. This has been a complaint I have had with FE for a long time now, but it's never going to get addressed at this point. Same with the absurd character designs.
@@GawainSSB they also had multiple games set in the same world. I think its a problem that they keep jumping around. Its nice in a meta sense that the "verse" has expanded, but each game world is emptier then the last.
@@javxion6576 considering how much content and script they cut from 3H (up to 40% based on some statements), Fodlan is still well fleshed out. Its got a bit of an open ended feel to it, where not everything is explained.
100% agree about the weapon triangle. I was also sad to see there was no hit/avoid increase, even a slight one. Especially when I would fight bosses, who usually couldn’t be broken. I always find it annoying when bosses are immune to the game’s mechanics.
Totally agree! I feel like well designed bosses use the games mechanics in interesting ways, not just have a skill that says, "game mechanics don't apply here!"
Instead of unbreakable bosses, take the yellow breaking squares from 3H. First break cracks the square. The second break breaks the yellow square and the enemy.
On unit spawning in the base, each one appears at specific times during the day. You have to sleep in the somniel for the time of day they are out and about.
Review was spot on. I personally find it really sad that not many characters left a big impression on me. Even after some years I think about the 3H students like Ferdinand or even Shamir. At least Engage has best girls like Ivy and Miss Hiya Papaya.
@@ivanbenkovic610 Also Yunaka has the best supports with everyone even with Alear out of everyone in the game and to top it off, her voice actor is Catherine from 3 Houses.
A few classes get the ability to manipulate other units positioning like swap and pivot. You can also get unit moving abilities through skill inheritance like advance, canter, and reposition. And then finally bond rings have a few where the S rank gives a repositioning move like shove and draw back. So once you get a bit further in you'll probably be able to put some of these moves on the characters, it's quite flexible once the options are available.
@@coolgabe555 Mia S bond ring has shove, But The next best thing is Ike ring with Reposition at a very cheap 200 SP. Considering it cost 400 Bond frags to start Inheriting, it is not half bad at all and almost everyone (Exclude your Dancers and maybe your main Staff user/healer) can use it.
52:01 While we didn't get that sort of stuff with Veyle, we kind of got it with Past Alear with Lumera. Past Alear is very apathetic about carrying out Sombron's tasks, but does them to not get killed. And then they meet Lumera who shows them kindness, and we have the loyalty conflict that resolves with Alear eventually fighting Sombron. I still like what we got with Veyle, though. If she wasn't brainwashed, we wouldn't have gotten her as the fun sadistic villain her evil version is; also the arc that's about saving the good Veyle did feel emotionally engaging to me. In my view, the brainwashing stuff makes it more compelling to want to save her from her exploiters, whereas the loyalty conflict would have fitted better if she was a protagonist. Also, regarding the Four Hounds: When they expose their backstories, it becomes clear that they were all orphans who were taken in by the cultists who seeked to revive Sombron, and Zephia "adopted" them into the family she wanted to build for herself. I mean, it's not farfetched to have three radically different individuals with different origins but similar unfortunate circumstances coming together because an organization seeking to recruit vulnerable people got them together.
Zephia: "Okay Sombron, there's only one dragon of each type left over here. You're a guy and I'm a girl, and I'd rather not end my own race, so how about we--" Sombron: _marries a human instead_ Zephia: "FFFFFFFFFFFFFF--"
Tbh all of the stuff regarding the past was vastly more interesting then everything else, and makes me wish that the game focused on Alear during the war with the divine dragons, it seems as of it could have potentially made for a good war story with morally grey characters, but instead we got the most generic Anime/ jrpg story imaginable.
Regarding character design and characterization, I think despite a lot of characters that are just caricatures rather than characters, there are still some standout amazing pieces of characterization in the game even when you don't consider the supports. For me the most well-characterized is Yunaka, where even in the chapter you get her you end up learning a lot about her all through the game showing you rather than telling you. You get the whole thing with her acting all silly and cheery and she's obviously not being entirely forthcoming. But then you get into combat and the moment you hear her crit voice line where her VA changes her tone of voice and drops her pitch, coupled with the zoom in on her face showing a very cold expression, and suddenly you realize that she isn't just a silly, quirky thief. And that made her so much more interesting as a result. During my playthrough getting to experience that one moment of epiphany is what made Yunaka my favorite character of this game.
I actually personally find most of these characters _less_ caricature-y than Three Houses, so far? The big difference between them isn't that they're more or less caricatures than Three Houses, it's that they're super friendly and accepting! They have a ton of emotional range, too, so they can come off as overacted I guess, but I find them more relatable and human because of that range. I agree Yunaka is amazing though, excellent character _and_ excellent unit. But even Céline lands pretty well for me (even if she talks about tea too much), and Framme is amazing and adorable in those moments where she's not fangirling too hard over Alear. Also, big props to Louis for somehow managing to not be Lorenz 2.0 despite… y'know.
@Mihai Mercenarul lol exactly if you've been watching anime and playing jrpgs for the past 20 years you'll see characters like her all over the place.
My Yunaka actually crit on literally her first attack, and after watching her cheery silly introduction, that whiplash of tone made me think her first attack was guaranteed to crit just to show that she isn't quite what she seems to be, ahaha.
For the paralogue difficulty, the game tells you how hard the paralogue is before going in, so I've just been comparing each to the difficulty of the main story chapters and doing them in order. I've yet to see a paralogue I can just faceroll through, but I'm only 2/3rd through the game.
The 4 movement is great. It rebalances the classes so that mounted units are not just the most broken thing like many past games. Now every class gets to do something broken, whether its armor ignoring breaks or backups causing a death by a thousand cuts through true damage or covert having super high avoid - every class type is now viable. Even healers.
@@Lyhila High Movement has always been The strongest stat in the series, and Cavaliers only stopped being great since Echoes/Three houses. Even then, Those games are dominated with High Movement classes. Dread Fighter dominates Echoes, which have 7 Move when the lowest movement being 4 for the majority of the game and Three houses have Wyvern Lord because Canto/Canter existed in that game.
@@Lyhila Cavs are still some of the tankiest units and some of the few good enemy phasers in the game. They have mastery of the weapon triangle (which is why Louis as a great knight honestly works really well over General) and javalins and axes are very good weapons. They also have some good strength values. Even Alfred, despite his painfully slow start, turns into a mini-Louis by the end of the game. Same thing with Amber. Amber actually has so much build, he can actually double with the Brionac. Notice that infantry lance users all have low builds and are stuck to iron or steel weapons. Most would take a 10 speed loss with the Brionac, which really defeats the point of having it. So yeah, in addition to more movement, they can enemy phase well, require less healing and equip strong weapons at 1-2 range. Cavs also have special effects on various emblem rings as well - another way Engage defines the classes.
.... you have my respect sir. While I disagree about the story being bad (it's not good as the Tellius games or Three Houses but I honestly enjoyed it), you gave a fair judgement on the game, and you recognized its GREAT value on terms of gameplay and map design. It might sounds odd, but many reviewers haven't been fair on that regard, and they judged the game ONLY for the story, ignoring everything else, which I find really unfair and unprofessional. But you did what is right and you gave a fair reviews even thought I disagree about the story, hopefully others follow your example in future. Thanks man.
I’m currently playing Maddening mode and the game feels balanced. Staggering my Emblems as I progress through a map and recharging before boss encounters have worked so far. It feels like I can create momentum if I use the right rings every few turns. Gameplay and map design feel great to me. Although I feel choked on SP. I like taking the following strategy with skills. Picking up 1-2 cheap skills to make it through early game. Investing a few heroes into decent mid-game skills and saving a couple of my heroes for big skills.
It really does feel like the broken stuff you can do is more limited in engage’s 3:34 maddening than previous games. Hell some of the current op starts in this game are tame compared to 3H. While it maybe a bit early to just I think the balance can be summed up as this. the game is balanced but it has its quirks.
It's getting choked on SP and Gold hard if you don't know what you're doing or what specific thing you need for sure. Maddening is fair at the start but gets very tricky or rough on difficulty spikes especially on Paralogues that you'd need to finish them very quick or wait later and I think setting them to your level on maddening would be kind of painful.
For the Paralogues, I did them all as soon as they showed up so they all felt pretty challenging, I think the idea is they wanted to set a hurdle for you to jump in order to get the ring's full power but didn't want to make it insurmountable because I feel like scaling them to you would make some such a nightmare for people who are more casual players or maybe not good build crafters. Maybe I just don't remember Fogado's join chapter very well but he was amazing. To be fair I promoted him to Cupido and then immediately second sealed him to Warrior, the fat increase to strength and build made him hit hard and often double most units and as a warrior he was a backup type that could use a longbow so tooooons of free chip damage. Panette I kind of get, honestly of the girl trio from solm only Merrin felt good right away. Timerra is just so incredibly tiny so her immense speed doesn't matter cuz she loses half of it from her weapon and Ike is such a terrible choice of ring for her. But with Panette I took 1 look at her and her personal skill and knew this girl would be a monster with Ike's ring for wrath and Axe power and then as soon as Leif came back i slapped Vantage on her and she decimated everything. She was the type of unit that needed some investment but became a monster when built right. I felt it a little lacking that you didn't talk about the best unit in the game though... Mother fucking Kagetsu WHY THE FUCK IS HE SO STRONG AND FAST JESUS CHRIST YOU GIVE HIM LYN'S RING AND HE JUST KILLS EVERYTHING AND NEVER GETS HIT. And if you forge his fucking Wo Dao he just crits everything, he was so insane and required literally no investment other then slapping Lyn's ring on him. I haven't quite finished my hard mode run yet but I'm pretty close, one thing I will suggest when you play maddening though is if you bought the DLC just give everybody bond 5 with edelgard and slap lineage on everybody. I didn't think to do this until later in the game when it kind of didn't matter anymore but I could see that being super clutch on maddening.
Actually on Timerra Ike actually makes the most sense for her since her personal class skill sandstorm scales off defense. On hard not maddening having Ike on her basically makes a proc of sandstorm an instakill on most enemies basically making her dex stat effectively a critical percentage. Maddening makes this not very viable though since 40 defense is and laguz friend is not enough to survive later maddening stages :/
@@nickchan4462 I didn't think about that interaction but then again I had a Mangs moment where her first intro was terrible and I just decided not to bother with promoting her. I looked at what her promoted stats would be and decided she was not good enough to keep around lol
@@AstraProc so if you save before a battle go and try to get a s ring if you don’t get it. Go reload the game enter the battle then exit and rinse and repeat
One thing that I was waiting for all game but we never got was Alear turning into a dragon. Instead of being resurrected twice it would have been better having them get the dragon stone from their sister to save the day and escape. I beat the game on maddening mode and one important thing I learned that saved time was that dining hall, working out, and tonics do NOT stack the same stat. For example, you cannot have +6 strength only a max of +2. I only ate dome bread/any food that gave +1 to str, spd, mag, def. There is a lot more optimizing tips but half the fun of maddening is figuring them out yourself.
I feel like I'm the only person who went into the story with low expectations and finished the game feeling like I at least enjoyed the narrative, even if the story isn't that great. There were definitely eyerolling moments, but I felt that there were some well executed moments as well.
For me, I think this is better than Fates (of course) and Awakening (I hate time travel conveyed poorly. Until the dlc came, Awakening fell into that same trap Sonic 06 walked into), but otherwise? Yeah- this is not a very good story for the standard’s of this series.
Regarding the difficulty and balance of Engage I feel like someone has said best: “the game is pretty well balanced in a variety of areas but it has its quirks.” You can definitely do some broken strats. Some maps you can one turn but from what I can tell that’s either if you don’t do them the moment they come out or it was intentional
The Four Fangs were leagues better than the hounds. They follow someone who was clearly evil but at least some of them were suspicious and Brendan was clearly manipulated by Sonia's lust making him feel like a victim. Even when you fight Linus' map, he orders the villagers to exacuate before the fight because they are not monsters, they don't want to get people involved. Making them very 3 dimensional
Hell, even the "4 great bosses" of Tellius were better. Just cause of Petrinne and the Black Knight. Bryce might have been a forgetable pushover, and it was kinda interesting who the other one was in Radiant Dawn (even if i forgot his name), but in net worth, they are still better
Visualy, my biggest issue was with Zelkov. Lot of times I thought I played with everyone since they all were greyed out and was wandering, why did my turn did not end. Only to realize I can still use Zelkov. :D And regarding the story *spoilers warning* I agree it wasnt great, I was able to go with it, but it really fell apart with Alear's death/revival. That was a moment where even I wasnt able to swallow the amount of nonsensical macguffins happening. And looking at Sombron and his motives... He is Gollum. All the things he did was just to find "my precious".
It was certainly *hard* to find Zelkov on the *map*. Still, as a thief, it makes *sense* that he is *hard* to *find*. (interesting to see how the asterisks respond in RUclips comments)
Watching Mangs get married made him my favorite Disney Princess. If nothing else though, seeing Engage break him for all the wrong reasons was truly a sight to behold.
My wall of text thoughts on this: Animations were nice... though wow all these characters being these angels in suits feels... a bit weird? (I'm assuming that's the whole "engage" attack thing) I'm glad that the animations convey the over-the-top craziness of older FE though, combat animations are usually quite important to me in a Fire Emblem game. I still feel meh about a lot of the character designs, and the clips did not do the environment graphics any favors. I was surprised that the deployment slots were so low, interesting. Overall impressions don't seem bad from this review, though I personally care too much about story and characters myself to let it go, its a big part of the "RPG" experience after all, I miss the days when I got to enjoy the stories and characters of FE *with* the gameplay, rather than having them now apparently be mutually exclusive nowadays. Good criticisms of the story, I despise lack of development in protagonists and a lack of true "struggle". If you're already the greatest thing since sliced bread, right from the start where is there to go? Also: LOL at "can we have a normal character join the party please?"... killed me. I guess all of them have to be these odd, kooky, weird special snowflake characters these days. I'm fine with unique characters but the uniqueness has to be both good in the way its handled, and they have to be important enough to warrant the uniqueness, these feel more like cringy, in-your-face gimmicks instead. ...Dunno what's going on with those supports though... its rare to hate characters from their supports after initially liking them lol. The villains sound like total idiots, wasted potential, and disasters... lol. No comment on the feet shots, you'd know more than I would about that :^). Honestly... some of this storytelling sounds almost insulting to intelligence with things like fading to black to deal with writing yourself into holes... They could've at least given something to BS it with, rather than literally nothing, its like having blank pages in a book and then skipping to the part afterwards.. Not to mention the bad scenes... yeesh. What's hilarious to me is that they didn't apparently explain the multiverse thing at all... like, lol. Maybe, its for the best they didn't explain those things... I don't think I'd want them to disrespect the past games by going too deep into that part. I agree with you that you can have a fun story with great gameplay too imo, its a shame that it feels like people have to choose between them these days. Didn't expect the deployment slots to be so limited and the game to actually be hard, I guess the gameplay really is intended to appeal to both newbies and hardcore veterans alike. Did you talk about the soundtrack at all? I don't remember hearing about it here, did it have good music?
I think the 4 movement was to compensate for the display. For me, it seemed like it was more often that the enemy attack range was running offscreen than in other fire emblem games. Maybe it was just me though
Imma just put my own thought here since it's fitting. I agree with your analysis of the avatar robbing the protag of the heroes journey. Very well put. As far as the game goes, the Sonmniel still has the same issues for me as the monastery, even if it's toned down a bit. My main gripe is the bond fragments and loading times are annoying and I still feel like I'm wasting my time there. If the bond fragments were only accessible from the achievements, if the arena didn't exist and I could buy/forge inherit skills without moving around and having all these loading times then it wouldn't have felt that way. At least in fates you can move around a LOT faster and with less loading times so you can get what you want really quickly before you go to battle. As far as story goes, I do think it's possible to make a simple story where you don't try hard without being cringe. If you can't make a complex story that moves the player then don't even try. And yet engage keeps telling you how to feel without earning it and that's annoying. FE6's story isn't all that interesting but it's doesn't try to tell you how to feel about it all the time, and this self-restraint makes the blandness less annoying. It means that it becomes easier to lower your expectations and just enjoy it for what it is. I don't feel like giving it a rating, for some reason.
Somniel is really well designed, and to me that's actually the problem. I spend so long in-between chapters because there is so much to do. At least the monastery had a faster rotation to it after a bit, but Somniel just expands and demands more effort the deeper you go.
I mean, personally I feel like most of the time the game _has_ earned it when it "tells" me how to feel. Even the mildly ridiculous Lumera death scene lands way better in the game than in the trailer, which is something that actually surprised me. You can call these characters overacted if you want, but I actually find their emotional and vocal range makes them more relatable than Three Houses's cast. The Somniel _does_ get annoying after a bit, but to nowhere near the same extent as the Monastery because the game doesn't even try to actually _demand_ that you do these things. I have never tried fishing and I have never tried Wyvern Ride.
Somniel is fine, the monastary was fine too except for the fact that you had to do 3-4 weeks of shit there vefore moving on, it outstayed its welcome and didnt rrally make sense from a story perspective for some chapters. Also the story is very basic and boring but cringe? What are people cringing at, theres nothing that bad about its story and characters outside of the solm princess singing
I thought there was such a missed opportunity when they revealed Alear to be a fel dragon. It would have been neat to have the roster of units you've built up until now to temporarily dissolve with their faith in you shattered. It would have been such a unique take to the fire emblem series to have your staunchest supports who've idolized you from day 1 to suddenly turn their back on you (or maybe even turn their swords against you) for a couple of chapters while Alear figures out their place in the world. Would have had the player sympathize with the persecution Veyle went through too actually experiencing a brief moment of it as opposed to just being told to feel sad about it.
I can see how that would be interesting, but it also makes almost no sense. If it happened earlier in the story, maybe. But by the time it happens, you've been together through a lot, and most of the cast have been directly helped by Alear. The pacing is awful, because they resolve it almost immediately. Playing up the doubts Alear has about their friends only for them to ultimately stick by them would be better, but having it come to a full blown party schism would be difficult to sell without some other prior motivations that just don't exist. Maybe a Gatrie and Shinon moment, but I struggle to even think of characters who would act like that.
@@grampaseri That’s the thing, the writers technically wrote themselves into a corner in that regard, as everyone pretty much worships everything about Alear, that there’s hardly anyone that can fill ANY sort of position to be more critical about Alear’s true heritage. Thus it wouldn’t fit no matter what point it happens in the Story.
@@nickcalderon2637 It's only a corner if they wanted to go that direction, but there's no indication it was even a consideration. No need to leave ambiguous escape hatches for plot points they have no intention of exploring. In that respect it's at least consistent, albeit unexciting.
overall. pretty fair review. mostly positive and negative when needed. i would rant a bit more about some maps , objectives , chain attacks and about Marni's death as well but i understand you can only rant so much. Just wish they handled things better in places. A ringless run? I would love to see it.
I've been plating fire emblem since I was 7, when fire emblem for GBA came out in the US. As someone that has collected all of the game, this one is easily becoming my favorite.. Maybe I will do my first fire emblem stream after work in an hour ;)
ringless seems an interesting challenge as it not only means you don't get the brokenness of the rings and engage features it also means you are limited to the amount of skills you can inherit as you need rings equiped to get sp. So you are pretty much locked into the amount of sp the character starts off with meaning its alot more important what skill u choose to inherit.
That’s interesting. I didn’t know SP worked like that. I have some characters earning SP with rings forged from an emblem. Maybe that’s the work around to still unlock abilities? Not ringless, but emblem-less.
@@MrVisde yep those are considered rings just bond rings instead of emblem rings. The prerequisites to earning.more sp as far as I'm aware is u either have to have an emblem ring or a bond ring equipped to earn sp
I reclassified Panette to a warrior asap and she just felt so much better. So I get were Mangs was coming from. Bit of a shame too as her warrior outfit doesn’t look as good as her berserker design IMO.
@@ihatetheantichrist9545 Really Berserkers are just bad, Warriors have a better skill and get access to bows, without the crit bonus they normally get, there is just no point to them.
The characters are very hit or miss to me. I for example love Merrin and Mauvier, they have some really good supports. But characters like Goldmary were painful, and there were some characters I just literally didn't care about at all.
*About the Somniel:* The reason you will want to do the "mobile retention tasks" after every chapter is to gain Bond Fragments. If you want to inherit certain skills from Emblem Rings you will be spending *a lot* of these fragments on Arena battles to level up the bonds. My two largest pet peeves of this game are the really tedious Somniel activities, and the severe lack of Build (constitution) on 80% of the characters. Seriously, who the hell creates a Berserker with less than 10 Con in a Fire Emblem game?
My only theory for build being abysmal across the cast was the devs SORELY overestimated making build a stat that can level up. Either they underestimated how low the growth rates were, or vastly overestimated how much people would grind infinitely.
Probably this. I had to spend SP on Liif's "Build +3" for some of the "heavier" builds I had, Panette and Diamand among others. If I hadn't The entire cast would be using iron and upgraded silver weapons for the most part. Edit: *Where are the Body Rings!?*
The lack of bld really sucks especially since bows and anti-unit type weapons tend to be heavier than they should. It really sucks that characters like Etie are made even worse by the fact that they have no bld growth, which is ironic because all she does is exercise. If/when they update this game I hope they give every character +5 bld because its annoying. Although, instead of getting bld you should probably just invest in spd or speedtaker since the bld penalty just reduces your speed and nothing else.
@@Aldourien Alcryst and Lapis are direct upgrades from Etie as far as I'm concerned. The only thing Etie has over Lapis is 15 more strength but literally nothing else, not even her personal skill is better. As for armor knights, you kinda need someone to tank so I just threw some boots on them to increase their movement. It's funny seeing enemies deal 0x2 to mine.
Its crazy Engage has this cool skill inheritance system but made the SP gain near nonexistent lol. Maybe I did something wrong but even my most used units hardly had SP. I cared so little about the story and characters I mashed the skip button whenever characters started talking
yeah its a really weird system they choose for sp gain. You only get 1 sp per xp gained while your unit has an emblem equipped and 1 sp per 2 xp gained while your unit has a bond ring equipped. Meaning for most people they will never get more than 4000sp even on characters they use all the way through the game.
Mangs: Ughhh the Four Hounds again? Really. Also Mangs: I've been defeated, but I can't fall here! (rematches King Arthur on AWBW again). (jk I just couldn't resist to make that comment xD still going thru the review, good to see an upload egg!)
We live in a strange world indeed when Pokémon has a much better story than the newest Fire Emblem. As a hobbyist writer myself the sheer amount of missed potential the campaign had both gameplay and story-wise just makes me sad. Also, I liken the Emblem rings to AI-generated versions of the heroes they're based on, lol. That's kind of the vibe I get from them, and it does explain why they're all so steadfast in protecting a world that that isn't even theirs (at least according to their copied memories). Overall though I have been enjoying the game a lot from my experience with it as my first Fire Emblem game. Happy to become a new fan of the series.
When it comes to certain characters, Yunaka is actually one of the best characters in the game. She is well written and very deep. Her 'gimmick' isn't what you think it is. She comes across as a bubbly, eccentric individual that looks funny. But it's all done for a very specific purpose. She's hiding a past she wants to forget, and doesn't want anyone else to find out about. This is explored deeply in her various supports. Her name isn't even Yunaka. It's a pseudo-name. And if you marry her, you actually find out what those stars are, and can infer from that why she has them in the first place. The problem is that, outside of the main cast of nobles, and Vander, none of the characters ever show up again after their initial chapter introduction. The only way you CAN get to know them is through their supports.
Heck and support can be hit or miss. I swear several characthers had the same support conversations. Some of the more interesting parts you don’t get until A and even then it depends who you talk to. Many characters I gave up learning since their supports were repeats or the b support was just the same gimmick
While I agree with the sentiment of gameplay over story, I tend to also give value to overall aesthetics and characters while being resistant to both the other. I’ll wade through mediocre storylines and grindy random encounters just to check out what kind of allies and foes lie on the next part. And Fire Emblem is no different, as a good draw of it to me is finding out what kind of warriors will join the party and what kind of enemies stand in their way. With that said, Engage having a generally unengaging character roster, the presence of the prior games’ characters (and how busted they are), bosses that retreat too much, the return of monsters as humans v0.5. This is clearly a game for me to skip (or on a more optimistic take, let it see if in a year my grievances die down enough for me to consider buying it), no matter how stellar the gameplay is. Let’s hope IS doesn’t learn the wrong lessons from this game.
The Disparity between personal classes really annoyed me, funny enough that it's to Fogado's detriment. So your unique skill is that : When you get attacked. While you are an archer. You have a chance. To deal additional damage on counter attack. equal to half the damage you took. This is on an archer class, you can figure out the rest. And then we have someone like Alfred. Who just gets pavise, like just that. It's good.
I think to get a unit that fell behind back into shape you can give it the Micaiah ring. Great Sacrifice gives A TON of exp. In hard mode if you keep Yunaka with it it's easy to really keep her overleveled. Every single time you engage and heal everyone you gain one level just for that. The ranged healing you get is also a good support for it so that it can keep gaining exp without having to deal with fighting enemies. You can also use the nonscaling paralogues for that, turning two of the issues of the game into solutions for each other. You can also give it an emblem with a big killer attack (like Leif's or Marth's) so that if it's falling behind you can at least kill enemies a few enemies to get that exp. That helped me with Framme and Anna. And last, you can use the arena.
Fogado and Panette were amazing for me (hahaha I know I know). it just goes to show how different runs can be for different people. Depends on who you invest in. I love that about Engage. I’m excited to do a second play through where I try characters I gave up on.
I think the point he's trying to make is that the first impression on a unit's purpose matters a lot. Louis and Etie being unbelievable when joining is a good example. Fogado doesn't get to use his movement in the chapter he joins and is weighted down by heavy bows, even though he's super fast. Panette is a killing machine, but she joins in a map where she can't do much on player phase. It's only after swapping out weapons or investment do these characters shine.
@@Seggtor I agree- I meant to say that, about the impressions, but forgot 😆. My impression of Hortensia, for example, is why I never used her. Maybe she’s good, but I never found out
so I just finished the game about an hour ago, and I love this game a lot because of nostalgia and old references to older FE games. especially ones I may have not even played yet, plus maps I may not know like the Thracia paralouge, for example, which was pretty badass. but also Mangs. I have a little guess for the emblems. well, not guess, but more of a self conclusion. I believe the emblem rings are just modern Einherjar. like awakening, just phantoms that copy the identity of the heroes long ago. but even though nothing is explained about the emblems, it's just fun to assume. but that's just me and another thing that makes me ram my head into a wall metaphorically speaking is that Alear doesn't transform into a goddamn dragon throughout the whole game! which, unlike corrin, can actually transform into one as proof. but Alear is like: "nah, no dragon form only human." which is bull honky! Alear are you a dragon or not? and yes even though Lumera is one, I really wanted to see Alear's version of a dragon form okay. also since I'm done speaking about engage. I'm gonna play an older game the rom Geneology of the holy war tomorrow so... do you have any tips Mangs?
A save state mechanic rather than a turn wheel mechanic does actually sound interesting. Having a limited number of times you can "save" a moment in time which gets overwritten when you make a new state would be a pretty cool idea for a future title. Maybe even on a maddening mode. A mechanic I really didnt like was the gacha. I want my Dire thunder and Claude rings easily for when I get to maddening. I totally agree. the story HURTS so much. I wish the game took itself more seriously. The MC's mom dies for gods sake. The team needed just that one person who liked to write as a hobby and let them write the story. On a really high point. I really like that there are so many pretty looking pre-rendered cutscenes. Even the combat in those cutscenes are pretty nice.
Hard disagree with the somniel loading zone take. I hated monastery loading. Especially the chapel gate at the north end, god that was a pain to wait on and im glad they didn't pull that in the somniel. The way i see it, the somniel ring chamber and arena loading is fine, like going to the second or third floor of the monastery.
As a person who has played every Fire Emblem I loved the paralogues and it made me want to go back and play all of them again. The gameplay was great and it was just enough to cover the bad writing and story. For the love of Mangs, Wangs and Dangs please I hope the writers don’t mess up a FE4 remake
Aside from the hope of remakes, Them releasing a "collection" for the 3 GBA games would be great. Only changes I would want them to make is for the multiplayer stuff.
I think rings equipped but not engaged on maddening mode would be a excellent challenge. I'm on chapter 6 of maddening mode and the early game so far is very challenging (due to limited options) and the engaged mode really helps chip away at the edge that early game maddening modes tend to have. It will be interesting to see if they power scale slower on maddening mode versus hard more. I used the DLC rings + DLC content and did all the paralogues (no skirmish or tower of trials) and found that I was always on par with the enemy units. I wasted way too many bond fragments early on making the non-engage rings and that made it challenging to max out the bond levels with all the rings to get all the skills/class promotions I wanted. Also, SP is much harder to come by when you're not doing skirmishes. So, planning out what skills that you want (sink 1000 SP pre "timeskip" to get canter on as many units as possible or save it for the other rings) and what classes early on should pay massive dividends. My Framme was also my strongest unit and at end game could do between 80-100 dmg per combat when engaged with Byleth ring. Chloe with Lyn ring dominated as she was magic blessed and could massacre enemies with a +5 flame spear. Alear really shined with the Corrin ring though it wasn't as utilitarian as say Sigurd or Byleth, the draconic hex and evil aura skills + torrential roar were fucking awesome to pin down really spooky enemies. There is an easy way to circumvent the low movement of this game. Emblem ring to get your characters the capability to second seal into mounted units. S rank weapons were not worth having 5 move character classes. S rank sword paladin made sword locked units so fucking good.
The roster size with limited deployment reminds me of Radiant Dawn's 4th chapter. Doing "runs" and picking a different set of units for the run adds to replay ability.
Mangs watches a support conversation about a narcissist (Goldmay). Decides he doesn't like the support conversation as it shows she is a narcissist. Made me laugh. Disagree with you on that you that supports should be optional, as otherwise they either have to just insert constant "I'm here" scenes in the main story that are easily removable if the character is dead. Supports are there since perma death exists.
Eeeh, tbh I agree with Mangs more although his point on Goldmary was silly for sure. as you said I do think the obsessions in supports make them more obnoxious in the story and flat like he said. I can tell you one of my favorite characters in FE9 Elincia is the best example of a character being given good narrative and character even though she lacks any supports. The issue is that requires a good story and characters and modern FE doesn't really have as good writing so the supports are kind of the needed aspect to any character growth more so.
@@mauricesteel4995 He definitely got to say 'so long' to Seliph as Oifey and Shannan escaped to Isaach... But you're correct, that he never had the chance to say Goodbye.
This game would be amazing with a randomizer. I don't mind getting later characters and rings earlier on. It doesn't change anything. But a new play though feels stale already knowing who's better then the others. I fielded anna for the sole purpose of making money and that's it. (poor 80% of the game lol) It's also very easy to miss or not use an asset or mechanic entirely. I never gave my units any inherited skills or weapon buffs/engraves. The only SERIOUS gripe I had was fighting the same people every chapter. Surely there are other important war figureheads that aren't the same... exact... people from the previous chapter.
By the way, Sombron's name is not really about Sombrero, it's actually even more stupid lol. Sombra is the Spanish word for shadow. On being a suffix for: big. So his name is the big Shadow. I prefer to insult him as El Sombritas.
This is the best FE game of all time. Gameplay was 10/10 and story was pretty decent. I took the story as a nostalgia porn going into it, so it met my expectations. Great review Mangs you crushed it bro
No. Best gameplay In the series? Probably. But overall. It's a 7/10. It absolutely fails in terms of story and characters. The opposite problem three houses had imo.
I feel like most of the problems in characterization, benching, screen time, etc, would be resolved if they had less characters. Most of them are just retainers of the lords and their sibling of each region, which there are 8 of them (already too much), so 16 units bound to those previous 8, as most of them joining in packs of 3, forcing you to bench characters you were using so they could join all at once. Even the lords didn't seem to have much screen time. If it was 1 lord, their sibling and 1 retainer for each would be so much better.
Watched the whole video. Boss fights, I think, don't need to take an IRL hour on hard mode. They're tough. They're long sometimes. But they aren't as long as what you did on stream, I think that could be cut down some. Otherwise, agree with just about everything you said. The developers themselves said, we'll make a simple story to introduce new players in, but I think you can have a simple and good story, and this was simply simple. Some of my friends have said, well it's intentionally campy and funny and that's what makes it good, it doesn't take itself seriously. I don't think, personally, that can excuse lazy writing, and it's also - if so - not the kind of story to my taste. To each their own though, and at least the gameplay is good.
Sombron: "I killed my only other child myself. Did you grab the body, by the way?" Zephia: "Err... no." _deleted scene of Sombron facepalming_ Sombron: "Okay, then I did not kill my only other child myself."
I’m only watching this review super late after my playthrough but I have to say it’s so amusing to me watching Mangs do the funny “but Fogado was my best unit” as I sit here on my completed blind maddening no dlc playthrough with most of the Solm units as my best units. -Fogado Radiant Bow with Wind God didn’t even give him an emblem. -Roy Pannette Eirika Engrave Tomahawk -Lunar Brace Merrin -Brave Sandstorm Timerra -Seadall for obvious reasons but also the way I broke Seadall was extra special since he was immortal. Ofc my playstyle is much different from mangs…as I assume most people do, but the character balancing portion feels so strange to me from a hard vs maddening experience.
So for the most part I agree with a good portion of your viewpoint, you're pretty spot on about basically everything. My only counter point is "when was the last time Fire Emblem had an interesting story?" Fire Emblem as a whole has almost exclusively been you're part of some ailing or perhaps already defeated kingdom and your closest neighbor(s) have decided to go cultist and start worshipping fell energies only to succumb to the very thing they worship, and it's your job to take them out. The only exception to this is probably Path of Radiance where you fight an actually human, albeit insane, final boss in Ashnard. Sombrero-Man, as you call him, seemed like the stereotypical supervillain of just wanting to break everything for the fun of it. Yet in the end it seemed that what he sought most was actually death. It's why he mentioned he felt the Emblem close by under every shaded tree, behind every dark corner. He either wanted to bring everything to demise with him, or he wanted to be defeated and die. Which seemed so far cry, and even his own final boss lines were basically a jab at the player of why are you still following this creature, when it clearly only seeks its own demise or otherwise to live in solitude away from everyone and everything else. The Emblems themselves, and their abilities was definitely a crapshoot. Spirits of heroes that were summoned from alternate worlds, and are completely intangible, with the exception of their own personal effects. Yet Marth's sword can be deflected by a mundane axe. It felt too much like they have tangibility, yet only selectively so, and they also had strange interactions when in combat. When your character takes damage, the Emblem reacts like they did too, yet the Emblem is not able to be harmed by mundane items, they probably can't even be interacted with period. This, for me, made them feel simultaneously weak but also outrageously powerful, and all of it on the spin of a wheel. Gameplay wise, some of them honestly feel pointless, even the DLC. Tiki is great, but despite the power boost for being a Dragon, her emblem weapons are weaker than your normal untransformed weapons the moment you have access to steel. Hector is simultaneously the worst and best because his def/res buff is tied to the base values, meaning already tanky units eat like kings whereas your squishies, the ones who actually need the buff, struggle even with his bonuses. Soren's main claim to fame is Flare, Anima Focus is kinda meh as debuffs don't stack and also only last 1 turn normally, and Camilla... tries to be too much like Corrin. Not that I didn't just slap Camilla on Celine and call it a day, since 11 mov Griffin Knight go brrr. Overall, the story does get a bit of a miss from me as I was able to pinpoint quite a few things before they happened, as there is too many flags that FE as a game series has raised too frequently for the story and progression of the game as a whole to feel new or unique. My two complaints overall about this game, as I cannot fault the story since as mentioned before the story is almost invariably as I described with one, maybe two, exceptions, is that the chain attacks seem like what the game was actually built around, given that Heroes get Brave Assault and all, and lastly that the enemy AI is... mind numbing. It metronomes HARD between galaxy brain genius, and utter buffoon. I left a flier unit in range of an Archer, knowing full well the effective damage would be big, and the Archer attacked my invincible unit all because chain attack go brrr. And they only got one chain attack. Yet I lost units multiple times (some I chose to move on without) to the galaxy brain where the game knows full well what attacks will land and charges squishies with that intent in mind. I actually wanted to just enjoy the game, so I started in normal casual, just because I didn't know what to expect regarding the Emblems and how the game itself worked. I enjoyed my gameplay and I felt powerful. I seldom felt like RNG was unfair, I did take some low accuracy attacks but most of the time I found myself mostly getting away scott free on many exchanges. Switch to hard classic, and all of a sudden I'm taking 3% hits, while missing true hit 99. I lost a unit I was training in Camilla's DLC map to a double crit from an enemy with 3% crit. I've lost my most powerful units to multiple 10% accuracy hits landing when they shouldn't.
Panette did have a rough srart but swapped her over to a warrior after a cfew levels and slapped a brave axe on her and she ended up one of my best units for damage, warrior is likely one of the best classes
For the story? If you like Power Rangers, you’ll like Engages story. It’s not just Power Rangers in the sense that you morph with the rings, but in the feel of black and white morality and cheesiness taken dead serious. I found it very fun, but it’s definitely not for everyone.
**Just rambling about my own thoughts. Not criticism; just opinions:** I'm actually glad Paralogues don't scale because they're useful if I want a more lax map after a tough fight, or just want to grind a bit (especially on Maddening), but I can see why others would prefer scaling, especially if you wait until late game to play them. I was always _pretty_ close in level when I did them, so my experience gains and difficulty levels were fine, but that would be annoying if I played differently. Still, for _my_ back-and-forth playstyle, it worked perfectly, and I do think there's something to be said about maps that tell you what level they're designed for and let you decide when you want to tackle them. I agree with Engaged units being hard to tell apart. I don't expect any patch, but I'll dream of some quick, lazy _optional_ UI that maybe adds the pixel icons of each character onto them. That'd be perfect. Agreed with the Engrave menu, and Arena intros. I'd like to be able to skip Supports faster too, at least on secondary playthroughs. I know you _can_ skip them, but it still has to start loading first, and I wish I could just hit a button to complete it instantly, instead of a fade to black, and _then_ you can _start_ skipping, and it still takes a few more seconds after that to _fully_ skip. It's a very minor gripe, but it'd be nice. (A 'support all' feature would be even _better._ Think, if you could just click a button and finish all supports in an instant, similar to collecting Bond Fragments from Achievements. Beautiful). Panette was super underwhelming my first playthrough too, but on my Maddening playthrough, I'm trying to use more Backups (because I was watching Excelblem? N... Nooooo), and she is now my beloved boss killer who destroys almost everything she touches. I whittled bosses down with Poison in Hard Mode. I use Panette, solo, with a Killer Axe in Maddening Mode. Here's hoping she doesn't fall off later on (her speed _is_ admittedly being boosted by Lyn right now). As for the storyline, I figured they purposefully copied things from their past games as an homage, which is why it's _so_ over the top and predictable, but that's nothing more than a conspiracy theory. I found it 'fun,' not well-written, but being 'fun' did make it one of my top _FE_ stories (though production values _definitely_ helped with that; having 3D scenes showing off the big moments with varying lighting and angles is so much more impactful than having a bunch of minimally expressive busts talking about it). I _did_ find the end of the game far too fast-paced, though. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but I'll just say I agree with what you mentioned about Endgame. I wasn't a fan of the Four Hounds. I really like it when bosses come back at least once (it makes it feel more like a rivalry of sorts), but five times? Too much. Not a fan of Veyle either. Overall, super enjoyable game. Even the designs are growing on me (though not Alear. Sorry, Alear). I thought Timerra and Hortensia looked ridiculous, and now I respect them both, designs and all. _Also, the fact that everyone has their own unique casual wear is SO thoughtful. It's such an unnecessary thing to add in the grand scheme of things, which just makes me respect it even more that they went out of their way to design them anyway. Huge props._ In closing... ...Bye-a Papaya. 👋
While I mostly agree with your review of the game, I dont agree with the Somniel being optional. It basicaly is mandatory if you want a significant boost of extra power, and it is not a good mybase feature and these are some of my reasons why: -Going back to the Somniel to go pick up more crafting materials from the farm is pretty much the only reasonable way to get weapon upgrade materials. I feel bad for anyone who figures out around chapter 20 or so that Dogs bring you Silver Ingots semi reliably, and all other animal offerings are simply pointless compared to that. -The training room has SO. MUCH. WAITING. Just let me skip the intro animations!!!!!!! -There are 2 loading screens between the 2 most important Somniel facilities (Training room and the Ring room) and you cannot access those features any other way. If you want somebody to learn new skills from a ring you need to first load into the training room, wait for the intro animations of both characters, load OUT of the training room and then load into the ring room. I think you can warp from one of the rooms to the next to skip 1 loading screen inbetween, but even then why on gods green earth are these services just not behind the Somniel loading screen or accessible from a menu... Its not like the Somniel doesnt have room for both??? -Potentialy +2 to most important stats from food is not "nothing" even late game, and, AGAIN, you cannot skip the damned loading screen for the table conversations (and unlike 3 Houses there seems to be no unique dialogue between characters, theres barely any difference in dialogue if the chef burns the food)! And if you want to do the good foods, you need to go pick up all the random items around the Somniel cause your farm is stuck with 5 dogs fetching you Silver ingots. (I said SILVER you damn... you know what, you brought Steel, I should not complain, atleast its not 1/90th of a silver ingot like your buddy FEtch McIrons over there). -Theres another loading screen when you go do the minigames, and while Strenght training and especialy fishing can be skipped without any real consequenses (+2str for Alear can be nice, but not necessary, especialy because food can already give you the +2 and they dont stack), you are SO strapped for cash most of the time that the extra items you get from the wyvern minigame either save you money by being usefull as is, or providing 500-1000 gold in sellable items that you pretty much need to do that every time. -Want an extra 200 bond fragments between maps? Well then its time to "Pet and feed Sommie!!!" and take A WILD &"#¤&/! STAB IN THE DARK if thats a quick and painless process, or if theres plenty of INBUILT waiting negotiating those bond fragments out of that fecker! In summary: Maybe on a more casual or speedy playthrough the Somniel isnt that big of a deal and it "can" be skipped, but you lose out on SO much power, even more so than the Monastery that your making the game harder on yourself by not doing "Somniel maintenance". And BOY is all that maintenance needlesly time consuming and tedious. It may seem fine at first glance, but from the point of view of someone whos still on chapter 15 cause I like to take my time with Fire Emblem games and milk out every advantage from every system the game gives me, as well as do plenty of skirmish battles to keep most of my roster up to speed so I can take whatever feels appropriate story wise for each map. I honestly do not think the Somniel is an improvement on the Monastery. Atleast the monastery had solid gameplay implications and integration and I didnt feel quite as frustrated by spending time in it. The Somniel is a detached, tedious and yet fairly mandatory part of the game. IF you want to eke out every advantage you can get. BUT I will concede that it can indeed be skipped unlike the monastery... However, if the primary qualification for a game system being good is "can it be skipped/ignored", then something is VERY wrong with said system. Love your content, just wanted to let off steam built up over my growing frustration with the Somniel and hearing "its not that bad". Ill come watch the spoiler section of your review in a week or 2.
@@sowianskiwojownik5973 man not for me. Monastery was almost totally skippable but also felt more organic when you did it. The Somniel is a mind-numbing chore that you need to do to get your skills and whatnot. I despise it with a passion.
Very good, very fair review. You know, I personally wasnt too bothered about how the story was, as long as the gameplay is good, but with just how good said gameplay turned out to be, it is a little sad that the story was so messy. Either way, great video, I think you did a fine job of covering the games strengths and weaknesses and I cant really find any fault with anything you said. By the way, can we talk about how Sigurd is like, the only emblem to do anything story wise? At times he even felt like he was of equal importance to Marth, which is.. suspicious.
Can you maybe make an overview of all fire emblem titles? Some odler titles like the first 5 are pretty obscure, and you said FE 4 has the best story by far, or anytime you make a comparison with other titles. Like, which games are the easiest or the hardest(FE9 maniac mode?), which are worth it to play for the story(FE4 apparently), which games are better or worse than their remakes(is there any reason to play the famicom FE1 over the DS remake for example). Which games had other features you enjoyed(corrin-quest?) or you didn't enjoy. For newcomers that would be really informative, when "as good as Fates" doesn't tell me much because I don't know anything about Fates.
I played in Korean with Japanese voice acting. Koreans and Japanese have some very key similarities between languages (although they look very different) that... makes lost in translation to be the least of all languages when it's translated from Japanese other than reading Japanese itself. Also, due to similarities in language + self studying Japanese + watching lot of Animes and general Japanese TV shows also grant me good amount of Japanese listen as well, so I actually understand good amount of what I hear directly. I am mentioning this mainly because I am aware that the game may feel cheesy, but the script and delivery (voice) make it sound like just casual anime trope-like instead of feeling downright awkwardly cheesy when it's delivered in English... I played some of it, and yikes... same scene definitely felt off in English/English combo. I can agree that script is not well written, as it's quite clear that game didn't really seem to give a crap on story in general, but if you have some familiarity with Japanese voice, by all god, turn it on... it will help IMMENSELY. However, that can also cause some translation mismatch if you have some Japanese listening as well.
If you can understand Japanese well enough to listen to it, you should be able to understand it well enough to read it. This game doesn't really have complicated language.
@@myon9431 Unfortunately I didn't study enough to read many Kanji. Thing is, if someone read what the Kanji is, I have very good chance of understanding it. Which means if Seiyu read their lines, I can actually understand good amount if not all, but when plain text with Kanji thrown in the game, I can only understand average 30% of it. I didn't really sit down and study Japanese hardcore as much, and I have to thank Korean being the first language to actually understand Japanese.
47:50 Black Knight is a recurring villain done right. he shows up only a few times, he is pretty much unbeatable until his final battle, and actually beating him is a challenge. Death Knight is a villain defused by showing up too early and too much, he shows up too early, and can be sending packing quite easily, making him not intimidating at all;. the Hounds recurring villains are done terribly, they seem like a shitty version of Grado's Generals, showing up too much consecutively, and having rushed redemption arks for no reason. Zephia redemption scene involves her introducing a challenge for the protagonist and then giving the solution to said challenge IN THE SAME CONVERSATION. its like if someone gives you 10 bucks and 10 minutes later they just take the money back for no reason. also, when they are against you, they merge into this single character that wants to kill you, and only become individuals during the rushed scenes that the writers want you to feel bad for them.
0:30 I think your introduction of the review is missing the very important warning about *only the gameplay being good, but the story & characters being very bad.* With that being the essence of it, I think that's what people should hear first as a summary. *How much people will like this entry will very heavily depend on how much they want good story and characters.* The more people care about that and the less they care about gameplay, the less they will enjoy it. People who come from three houses and play only for story & characters will most likely despise it.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Especially the story. It felt like it just took the worst parts of previous games and threw them together. I despised any scenes involving the Four Hounds aside from Griss's death. Alear really needs to learn a thing or two from Garon about how to deal with enemies.
I think a lot of the issues that Mangs has with the game is due to where the focus of the game was. To me the devs wanted to celebrate 30 years of fire emblem and make the game fun, hence why we got so many different mechanics that were nods to different games in the series that worked surprisingly well altogether, and I think they accomplished those goals. Unfortunately, the story took a dive, but that's kinda to be expected because all of the resources and thoughts were put into making a fun game. By chapter 9 I kind of figured the story was never going to be a focus, which caused anything that required writing to suffer. Yeah, there were some good characters that were deeper below the surface, like Alfred, but you had to dig through so many support convo before finding those little gold nuggets. Not everything needed to have A B C support levels. A lot of the convos can be cut down to just B and C (I would know since I'm trying to get all support convos on my 1st run before going min/max). Overall, the game is good. I don't really care that much about the story since it seems it was never something the devs focused on. I can see myself doing multiple runs with different builds because that's just how fun it's been. I think that Mangs should treat this game more like a sandbox where you can get really in-depth with customizing units to do really fun things.
I’m about halfway through and I have been loving my time with the game. It’s so well done. Even the storyline is like a fun Saturday morning cartoon…can’t take it too seriously. The one thing I wish they would’ve done differently is limit the amount of characters joining your party…it’s like 3 new characters every chapter 😂 hard to get familiar with your crew when there’s a better character joining the next chapter. Oh well, on an Ironman Maddening run I’ll probably need all the characters I can get 😂
Thats right. Its a light hearted excuse to give us a great game. Localizers had a field day censoring supporta though, and that makes me very sad as the cast really grows on you as you use them
I believe that in maddening paralogue chapters do scale. I remember the tiki paralogue took so many tries and trying the level up through main chapters for it to get harder. Same thing happened with the lyn paralogue too.
@@xTxCxMx I'm wondering if they were afraid of soft locking people out of bond levels. The DLC paralogues unlock stuff, but are fully optional. If you don't do the regular paralogues, you can't max bond with that emblem.
🕑Timestamps🕑
00:00 Intro
00:31 Is the game any good?
02:03 The game's length
03:20 Engage's incredible skill ceiling
04:48 Some initial praise
06:52 Game mechanics
07:48 Low movement
10:00 The Break mechanic
12:22 The Emblem Rings
15:07 Deployment slots
16:28 Enemy scaling
17:28 Paralogues
18:47 Map design
20:43 The Bosses
22:29 The Draconic Time Crystal
26:01 The Somniel
32:50 Playable units
36:41 The Story (SPOILERS START HERE)
39:37 Avatar worship
41:28 The theme of Engage
41:56 Cringe
47:15 The Four Hounds
51:16 Veyle
52:58 Illogical cutscenes
55:02 Sombreron
56:41 Scenes that drag out
58:29 Overexplaining
1:00:13 The Emblem's role in the story
1:03:09 Some more ranting
1:06:00 Closing thoughts
Hey Mangs, sorry if you've already done this. But maybe someday you could play Disgaea 1/2? Crazy gameplay and strategies, you go bonkers the second playthrough with guides.
@@Daan_Knobbout I played it 5 years ago, haha ruclips.net/video/T_K2n6Gn7MU/видео.html
@@Mangs1337 Sweet! What a goated Patron back then haha.
Looking forward to seeing you react, even though it was 5 years ago.
I've only been subbed since somewhere last year.
What about shez he has a mysterious background that now body knows and shez is willing to kill himself if he goes berserk and is the most human. 🥰🥰😀😃
i kinda feel bad for the emblems rings they are treat poorly
Zephia going on about the Four Hounds as a family after what she does to Marni was a joke
This is a really good example of a lot of dissonance between what was said and what was done. Why did Lynn kill 4 of my allies and then go "wow look at how strong our bond is!"
What Zephia does to Marni is literally just her emulating what she's seen Sombron do to his own kids countless times. He's her point of reference for how you treat a family. And that is their depth, a disfunctional abusive family.
@@kaffka9221 still makes what she said a joke and the game did not leave itself enough time or room to accurately dive into that topic. another joke is veyle thanking zephia “for everything”-GIRL SHE GAVE YOU NOOOOTHING LMAO
@@asmrtpop2676 you don't need the game to specifically try to dive into that topic and you would have to try to think in a different perspective. Obviously to us she's definitely an abusive mother figure, but she herself thinks otherwise. It's like how in Demon Slayer where Rui's view of an ideal "family" was warped and toxic in reality because "family members" who do not perform their expected roles in his eyes were worthless.
@@brendanmohareful I can understand a bit the disfunctional family part but the bond emblems being all "Yay friendship!" while they are actively killing your units just doesn't feel right.
I think the biggest highlight of the game for me was that boss units will actually come attack you along with their guards. Usually Fire Emblem games have bosses just sit on a throne until you destroy all the enemies around them and they are only a threat if they manage to crit or you miss them too many times.
That's a double-edged sword though. Some bosses like Sigurd actually become easier because they're moving.
Normally the games change them up between who stays on the heal title and who charges at you.
@@breloompauncher5593 lol Sigurd played himself on my run too.
Oh you're just gonna come up to me and leave your 100 mage knights behind? fine by me
@@breloompauncher5593I actually had to try and AVOID killing Sigurd too soon cause I wanted exp from all the reinforcements
I agree. The boss units coming to get the player is a huge step up for this game, over the others.
**spoilers**
Mauvier does need to be in the 4 hounds to be Veyles knight though. Marni and Griss were adopted by Zephia when they were still fairly young. Those two follow Zephia blindly because she's like a mother to them. Mauvier joined as an adult as a priest of the fell dragon. He became worried about veyle when he noticed they did not care about hurting one of the beings they worship to achieve Sombrons goals. He cannot serve Veyle directly without being a member of the hounds.
The entirety of the Fell Faith doesn't make sense in Engage's world. Yeah, Awakening did it too with the Grimleal. But Awakening had the sense to make the Grimleal an unreasonable fanatic cult that's mostly in the shadows and off screen until Validar is in power of Plegia. And even then, everyone acknowledged Plegia is shady af.
The Fell Faith doesn't work because we are supposed to believe an entire society of thinking reasonable people that live in a world with a tangible, provable, benevolent dragon god chose to became essentially Satanist worshipping a god who is only after destruction and his own goals because the people's prayers to dragon mom couldn't be answered.
@@neog8029 How would you make it work then?
I think the solm units should have a reduced penalty in sand. It'd make them feel better.
agree! could be nice to give some of them personals that reduce movement penalties, it's not like they have good personals anyway
Although fitting, that personal skill would be useless on 90% of the other chapters.
@@Aldourien how bad would it be for their personals in particular to have multiple effects?
Agreed
@@skyeschlueter9877 It's a slippery slope. If a few characters have multiple personal effects/skills players will want all characters to have multiple effects/skills.
It's going to be a balancing nightmare.
I found myself audibly laughing my ass off at the story at least like 5 times during scenes that were definitely supposed to be serious
To me the big issue with the character roster that made it hard to get with them is that basically everyone comes in a group of 3. The royal and their two retainers. Getting 3 new characters at once when the deployment slots are so low means it's hard to give time to them if you like your current. Usually you'll have 1 person that you don't mind a bunch if they miss a map here or there to test others. But three, no. Also the retainers always seem to get a huge backseat to the royals. Royals get 3 character traits which almost makes them seem like a character, retainers get 1 thing that's their gimmick. Honestly I think that's part of why the love for yunaka, a main story character that isn't a royal/retainer and has more than 2 lines.
Just to me the recruitment of a character is part of the draw, racing to a village or npc before they kill themselves lets me feel like I earned them. When basically all of them walk up and say, "Oh you're the savior, let me join you now for the next fight." Also no time do we have have a character introduced to us that doesn't immediately join. No seeing mage general of someland doing things until you're strong enough to have them join. Not even hearing a tale of them before. Like when you push into chapter 10, how cool would it be if Diamont was like, "Yo, I sure wish we had that Solm princess here, I hear stories of her taking on bandits camps all by herself to make her land safe, having someone like that would be helpful in this raid" Let us have some buildup to look forward to you know? The closest thing to this is Alcryst being like, "my brother is great, you'll see him after 1 chapter."
It is a good Day when Mangs uploads a hour long video.
I like Fire Emblem a lot but your reviews make it even better.
Thank you Mangs I hope you have a great day and I hope your feeling better now.
I’ll be honest my favorite characters were people like Diamant & Boucheron because at least they talk to you like an actual human being unlike half the cast.
straight facts, and they’re also ridiculously strong haha
Thats where all the fun is tho
@@Herossandwitch no
Fr they are my favorites too, the only other units I really liked were Anna, bc she’s Anna. And then Yunaka bc her switching up how she talked was actually interesting and is payed off but listening to her supports. There were some others that were all right but some of them are just so cringe
You aren't actual human being though ? :D
The personal skills were so well crafted in Fates (especially the skills of the adults), but afterward, no other installment did it any justice. The personal skills in Three Houses were laughable. Most of them were either just rehashes of others, useless, or plain irrelevant. But Three Houses also supported crests, which to me were the actual 'personal skills'. If they made them both ridiculously good, then I can see this causing balance issues. In Engage, however, I guess the rings are the substitute for the personal skills, in how well the gameplay is centered around using them, that I almost forget that they are even there, especially when the skills on the enemies aren't that threatening like they were in Fates (Conquest especially). I feel like the personal skills in Engage are just dismissible, since the rings are that powerful and meaningful gameplay-wise. If Fire Emblem will continue creating these different game mechanic elements, like crests and rings (having their own unique properties), then I don't think we need personal skills anymore. By that point, I can see them all just being something like, 'Luck percent change of healing 10%'.
I would argue that very few of the personal skills in Three Houses were irrelevant. Most were just meant to either be more useful early on or late game. The skills of units like Leonie, Sylvain, and Dedue were useful early on but not that useful later while Ferdinand has one that is not that good early but amazing later on. The house leaders, Ignatz, and Bernadetta had skills that were useful all the way through so I would say Personal skills were honestly better in 3 Houses than Fates.
Honestly, the only personal engage skills I find useful is the Hortensia one.
@@maxicheese4609 A lot of them have tradeoffs or oddly specific conditions to activate but there's a few that are universally good. Main character, the other dragon, Yunaka's, Merrin's (particularly since so many of the other good units are female), Anna. Diamant's is very good too, it has no downside if he's attacking with advantage or just enough damage to kill before a counter. Ivy's is OK but not really reliable to get kills with, Alfred's is alright but falls off. Lapis' is good as long as she doesn't need to crit. But more of them are like Etie's where it's a very specific niche that will barely ever see use, and when it does it's not nearly as impactful as turning a miss into a hit or vice versa.
@@Claudekr Just to add to your list, Alcryst has a great personal skill that's easy to use as well.
@@Claudekr the thing with the royals is that their advances class skills are essentially second personals and some of them are really good Ivy with grasping void, Hortensia having a percentage chance to not use staff uses which is REALLY strong if you get lucky with the staff that instantly fills your whole armies engage meters, The Brodia princes having exclusive access to Sol and Luna etc
My biggest critique is the world building. I don't mind the simple/recycled plot foundation, but the world itself feels entirely EMPTY of people outside of your group. You see only a handful of NPCs in the entire game. They talk about different kingdoms, but you only spend a couple chapters in each place (border, castle, border) with no development of the place before moving on. I think the Tellius games have probably done the best in this regard. Each kingdom was unique, they had their own politics and interactions, and more importantly that all mattered. None of the stuff in this game matters outside of "get rings and win"
Sounds like Fates.
I think 8 and before do the worldbuilding best. Jugdral and Elibe especially. This has been a complaint I have had with FE for a long time now, but it's never going to get addressed at this point. Same with the absurd character designs.
@@GawainSSB they also had multiple games set in the same world. I think its a problem that they keep jumping around. Its nice in a meta sense that the "verse" has expanded, but each game world is emptier then the last.
Tellius, Elibe and Fodlan are the best FE continents
@@javxion6576 considering how much content and script they cut from 3H (up to 40% based on some statements), Fodlan is still well fleshed out. Its got a bit of an open ended feel to it, where not everything is explained.
100% agree about the weapon triangle. I was also sad to see there was no hit/avoid increase, even a slight one. Especially when I would fight bosses, who usually couldn’t be broken. I always find it annoying when bosses are immune to the game’s mechanics.
To be fair, that's what makes it a boss.
@@_Faded
Eh, a bad boss, maybe. They should test you on your knowledge of said mechanics, not invalidate them.
Totally agree! I feel like well designed bosses use the games mechanics in interesting ways, not just have a skill that says, "game mechanics don't apply here!"
Instead of unbreakable bosses, take the yellow breaking squares from 3H. First break cracks the square. The second break breaks the yellow square and the enemy.
On unit spawning in the base, each one appears at specific times during the day. You have to sleep in the somniel for the time of day they are out and about.
Review was spot on. I personally find it really sad that not many characters left a big impression on me. Even after some years I think about the 3H students like Ferdinand or even Shamir. At least Engage has best girls like Ivy and Miss Hiya Papaya.
Yunaka actually best girl, next to Petra now
Ferdinand goated. Rip the va
@@ivanbenkovic610 Also Yunaka has the best supports with everyone even with Alear out of everyone in the game and to top it off, her voice actor is Catherine from 3 Houses.
I've noticed a weird quirk where the supports are actively making me like some of the characters less. It's really bizarre.
@@yousquiddingme Yeah I felt like the character was going to annoy me based on her personality but her jp va saved it for me, her voice is so adorable
Really wish this game had a shove command. Feel that “barely out of range” bit so much and I’m not even that far yet.
I think one of the bond rings has it
Shove is in the game.
A few classes get the ability to manipulate other units positioning like swap and pivot. You can also get unit moving abilities through skill inheritance like advance, canter, and reposition. And then finally bond rings have a few where the S rank gives a repositioning move like shove and draw back.
So once you get a bit further in you'll probably be able to put some of these moves on the characters, it's quite flexible once the options are available.
@@coolgabe555 Mia S bond ring has shove, But The next best thing is Ike ring with Reposition at a very cheap 200 SP. Considering it cost 400 Bond frags to start Inheriting, it is not half bad at all and almost everyone (Exclude your Dancers and maybe your main Staff user/healer) can use it.
Skill issue tbh
52:01 While we didn't get that sort of stuff with Veyle, we kind of got it with Past Alear with Lumera. Past Alear is very apathetic about carrying out Sombron's tasks, but does them to not get killed. And then they meet Lumera who shows them kindness, and we have the loyalty conflict that resolves with Alear eventually fighting Sombron. I still like what we got with Veyle, though. If she wasn't brainwashed, we wouldn't have gotten her as the fun sadistic villain her evil version is; also the arc that's about saving the good Veyle did feel emotionally engaging to me. In my view, the brainwashing stuff makes it more compelling to want to save her from her exploiters, whereas the loyalty conflict would have fitted better if she was a protagonist.
Also, regarding the Four Hounds: When they expose their backstories, it becomes clear that they were all orphans who were taken in by the cultists who seeked to revive Sombron, and Zephia "adopted" them into the family she wanted to build for herself. I mean, it's not farfetched to have three radically different individuals with different origins but similar unfortunate circumstances coming together because an organization seeking to recruit vulnerable people got them together.
Zephia: "Okay Sombron, there's only one dragon of each type left over here. You're a guy and I'm a girl, and I'd rather not end my own race, so how about we--"
Sombron: _marries a human instead_
Zephia: "FFFFFFFFFFFFFF--"
Tbh all of the stuff regarding the past was vastly more interesting then everything else, and makes me wish that the game focused on Alear during the war with the divine dragons, it seems as of it could have potentially made for a good war story with morally grey characters, but instead we got the most generic Anime/ jrpg story imaginable.
Veyle's Mom is a Mage Dragon, and she's not Zephia, so is that why Zephia is mad?
@auraguard02 wouldn't it have made sense for zephia to simply have a child with one of Sombrons children? Like Alear?
Bangs, Dangs, Wangs, and Mangs.
All defeated by Mr Clean.
Edit: 57:56 is my favorite part of the review.
Regarding character design and characterization, I think despite a lot of characters that are just caricatures rather than characters, there are still some standout amazing pieces of characterization in the game even when you don't consider the supports.
For me the most well-characterized is Yunaka, where even in the chapter you get her you end up learning a lot about her all through the game showing you rather than telling you. You get the whole thing with her acting all silly and cheery and she's obviously not being entirely forthcoming. But then you get into combat and the moment you hear her crit voice line where her VA changes her tone of voice and drops her pitch, coupled with the zoom in on her face showing a very cold expression, and suddenly you realize that she isn't just a silly, quirky thief. And that made her so much more interesting as a result.
During my playthrough getting to experience that one moment of epiphany is what made Yunaka my favorite character of this game.
I actually personally find most of these characters _less_ caricature-y than Three Houses, so far? The big difference between them isn't that they're more or less caricatures than Three Houses, it's that they're super friendly and accepting! They have a ton of emotional range, too, so they can come off as overacted I guess, but I find them more relatable and human because of that range. I agree Yunaka is amazing though, excellent character _and_ excellent unit. But even Céline lands pretty well for me (even if she talks about tea too much), and Framme is amazing and adorable in those moments where she's not fangirling too hard over Alear.
Also, big props to Louis for somehow managing to not be Lorenz 2.0 despite… y'know.
Yunaka was very bland and overrated
@Mihai Mercenarul lol exactly if you've been watching anime and playing jrpgs for the past 20 years you'll see characters like her all over the place.
My Yunaka actually crit on literally her first attack, and after watching her cheery silly introduction, that whiplash of tone made me think her first attack was guaranteed to crit just to show that she isn't quite what she seems to be, ahaha.
@@FlameUser64you are very naive
For the paralogue difficulty, the game tells you how hard the paralogue is before going in, so I've just been comparing each to the difficulty of the main story chapters and doing them in order. I've yet to see a paralogue I can just faceroll through, but I'm only 2/3rd through the game.
The 4 movement is great. It rebalances the classes so that mounted units are not just the most broken thing like many past games. Now every class gets to do something broken, whether its armor ignoring breaks or backups causing a death by a thousand cuts through true damage or covert having super high avoid - every class type is now viable. Even healers.
Actually mounted units are... not so great ?
@@Lyhila High Movement has always been The strongest stat in the series, and Cavaliers only stopped being great since Echoes/Three houses. Even then, Those games are dominated with High Movement classes. Dread Fighter dominates Echoes, which have 7 Move when the lowest movement being 4 for the majority of the game and Three houses have Wyvern Lord because Canto/Canter existed in that game.
@@Lyhila Cavs are still some of the tankiest units and some of the few good enemy phasers in the game. They have mastery of the weapon triangle (which is why Louis as a great knight honestly works really well over General) and javalins and axes are very good weapons. They also have some good strength values.
Even Alfred, despite his painfully slow start, turns into a mini-Louis by the end of the game. Same thing with Amber. Amber actually has so much build, he can actually double with the Brionac. Notice that infantry lance users all have low builds and are stuck to iron or steel weapons. Most would take a 10 speed loss with the Brionac, which really defeats the point of having it.
So yeah, in addition to more movement, they can enemy phase well, require less healing and equip strong weapons at 1-2 range. Cavs also have special effects on various emblem rings as well - another way Engage defines the classes.
Isn't the movement difference between infantry and mounted still the same though (+2)?
@@javxion6576 No. Mangs got confused with promoted Calvary, which has 6 move in this game. Cavaliers have 5 move and Infantry has 4.
.... you have my respect sir. While I disagree about the story being bad (it's not good as the Tellius games or Three Houses but I honestly enjoyed it), you gave a fair judgement on the game, and you recognized its GREAT value on terms of gameplay and map design.
It might sounds odd, but many reviewers haven't been fair on that regard, and they judged the game ONLY for the story, ignoring everything else, which I find really unfair and unprofessional. But you did what is right and you gave a fair reviews even thought I disagree about the story, hopefully others follow your example in future. Thanks man.
*I can safely say that marrying is the most hard thing in Engage*
Idk man, I think thats the hardest thing to do irl XD
I’m currently playing Maddening mode and the game feels balanced. Staggering my Emblems as I progress through a map and recharging before boss encounters have worked so far. It feels like I can create momentum if I use the right rings every few turns. Gameplay and map design feel great to me.
Although I feel choked on SP. I like taking the following strategy with skills. Picking up 1-2 cheap skills to make it through early game. Investing a few heroes into decent mid-game skills and saving a couple of my heroes for big skills.
It really does feel like the broken stuff you can do is more limited in engage’s 3:34 maddening than previous games. Hell some of the current op starts in this game are tame compared to 3H. While it maybe a bit early to just I think the balance can be summed up as this. the game is balanced but it has its quirks.
It's getting choked on SP and Gold hard if you don't know what you're doing or what specific thing you need for sure. Maddening is fair at the start but gets very tricky or rough on difficulty spikes especially on Paralogues that you'd need to finish them very quick or wait later and I think setting them to your level on maddening would be kind of painful.
Just finished watching the streams.
Was some of the best content In an while.
Thank you!
For the Paralogues, I did them all as soon as they showed up so they all felt pretty challenging, I think the idea is they wanted to set a hurdle for you to jump in order to get the ring's full power but didn't want to make it insurmountable because I feel like scaling them to you would make some such a nightmare for people who are more casual players or maybe not good build crafters.
Maybe I just don't remember Fogado's join chapter very well but he was amazing. To be fair I promoted him to Cupido and then immediately second sealed him to Warrior, the fat increase to strength and build made him hit hard and often double most units and as a warrior he was a backup type that could use a longbow so tooooons of free chip damage.
Panette I kind of get, honestly of the girl trio from solm only Merrin felt good right away. Timerra is just so incredibly tiny so her immense speed doesn't matter cuz she loses half of it from her weapon and Ike is such a terrible choice of ring for her. But with Panette I took 1 look at her and her personal skill and knew this girl would be a monster with Ike's ring for wrath and Axe power and then as soon as Leif came back i slapped Vantage on her and she decimated everything. She was the type of unit that needed some investment but became a monster when built right.
I felt it a little lacking that you didn't talk about the best unit in the game though... Mother fucking Kagetsu WHY THE FUCK IS HE SO STRONG AND FAST JESUS CHRIST YOU GIVE HIM LYN'S RING AND HE JUST KILLS EVERYTHING AND NEVER GETS HIT. And if you forge his fucking Wo Dao he just crits everything, he was so insane and required literally no investment other then slapping Lyn's ring on him.
I haven't quite finished my hard mode run yet but I'm pretty close, one thing I will suggest when you play maddening though is if you bought the DLC just give everybody bond 5 with edelgard and slap lineage on everybody. I didn't think to do this until later in the game when it kind of didn't matter anymore but I could see that being super clutch on maddening.
Actually on Timerra Ike actually makes the most sense for her since her personal class skill sandstorm scales off defense. On hard not maddening having Ike on her basically makes a proc of sandstorm an instakill on most enemies basically making her dex stat effectively a critical percentage. Maddening makes this not very viable though since 40 defense is and laguz friend is not enough to survive later maddening stages :/
@@nickchan4462 I didn't think about that interaction but then again I had a Mangs moment where her first intro was terrible and I just decided not to bother with promoting her. I looked at what her promoted stats would be and decided she was not good enough to keep around lol
"You can go absolutely ham and send your armor knight into a hoard of enemies"
Chain attacks: Hold up, imma stop you right there
i mean, you can do that.
you just need Corrin.
@@ShyRanger Corrin has a skill that blocks chain attacks.
chain attacks deal 10% hp always, so hp stacking doesn't counter them on large numbers (4 enemy heroes attacking your tank deal 120% max hp)
@@jorgechi4627 This is assuming they are already in range right? Otherwise it's 60% max hp (0,10,20,30)
At level 5 Heroes attack twice with chain attacks
Fagado in my play through was actually really good 😆. Paired him up with Lynn and gave him the Radiant bow and let him destroy.
I wish they gave you more deployment spots. I also think they need to not make training earlier units completely obsolete.
The game could use some balance patching.
@@AstraProc I fully expect them to patch out the Gatcha exploit.
@@MogofWar what’s the gacha exploit?
@@AstraProc so if you save before a battle go and try to get a s ring if you don’t get it. Go reload the game enter the battle then exit and rinse and repeat
@@AstraProc Oh! You use a combination of RNG manipulation and save-scumming to guarantee you get an S-Rank Bond ring.
One thing that I was waiting for all game but we never got was Alear turning into a dragon. Instead of being resurrected twice it would have been better having them get the dragon stone from their sister to save the day and escape. I beat the game on maddening mode and one important thing I learned that saved time was that dining hall, working out, and tonics do NOT stack the same stat. For example, you cannot have +6 strength only a max of +2. I only ate dome bread/any food that gave +1 to str, spd, mag, def. There is a lot more optimizing tips but half the fun of maddening is figuring them out yourself.
I feel like I'm the only person who went into the story with low expectations and finished the game feeling like I at least enjoyed the narrative, even if the story isn't that great. There were definitely eyerolling moments, but I felt that there were some well executed moments as well.
Yeah, i just skipped everything lmao
For me, I think this is better than Fates (of course) and Awakening (I hate time travel conveyed poorly. Until the dlc came, Awakening fell into that same trap Sonic 06 walked into), but otherwise? Yeah- this is not a very good story for the standard’s of this series.
Regarding the difficulty and balance of Engage I feel like someone has said best: “the game is pretty well balanced in a variety of areas but it has its quirks.” You can definitely do some broken strats. Some maps you can one turn but from what I can tell that’s either if you don’t do them the moment they come out or it was intentional
I watched your entire playthrough and your reactions to the cringe was so funny! Keep up the great work Mangs, looking forward to a maddening run!
Saying story with a straight face at 0:28 was honestly so funny to me. Thanks for the review though Mangs, really well put together :)
The Four Fangs were leagues better than the hounds.
They follow someone who was clearly evil but at least some of them were suspicious and Brendan was clearly manipulated by Sonia's lust making him feel like a victim.
Even when you fight Linus' map, he orders the villagers to exacuate before the fight because they are not monsters, they don't want to get people involved. Making them very 3 dimensional
Hell, even the "4 great bosses" of Tellius were better. Just cause of Petrinne and the Black Knight. Bryce might have been a forgetable pushover, and it was kinda interesting who the other one was in Radiant Dawn (even if i forgot his name), but in net worth, they are still better
EGGcellent review. Thank you! I’ve really been enjoying Engage. Glad to see others do, as well
Visualy, my biggest issue was with Zelkov. Lot of times I thought I played with everyone since they all were greyed out and was wandering, why did my turn did not end. Only to realize I can still use Zelkov. :D
And regarding the story *spoilers warning*
I agree it wasnt great, I was able to go with it, but it really fell apart with Alear's death/revival. That was a moment where even I wasnt able to swallow the amount of nonsensical macguffins happening. And looking at Sombron and his motives... He is Gollum. All the things he did was just to find "my precious".
Oh thank goodness, i thought i was the only one...like, i love him and his look, but jeez i keep forgetting i havent moved him.
That's why I always tap ZL or whichever button to cycle through my units before ever hitting End Turn lol
It was certainly *hard* to find Zelkov on the *map*. Still, as a thief, it makes *sense* that he is *hard* to *find*. (interesting to see how the asterisks respond in RUclips comments)
Lol ikr
I think three houses was the best story we had in modern fire emblem in a long time
Watching Mangs get married made him my favorite Disney Princess.
If nothing else though, seeing Engage break him for all the wrong reasons was truly a sight to behold.
My wall of text thoughts on this:
Animations were nice... though wow all these characters being these angels in suits feels... a bit weird? (I'm assuming that's the whole "engage" attack thing) I'm glad that the animations convey the over-the-top craziness of older FE though, combat animations are usually quite important to me in a Fire Emblem game. I still feel meh about a lot of the character designs, and the clips did not do the environment graphics any favors. I was surprised that the deployment slots were so low, interesting.
Overall impressions don't seem bad from this review, though I personally care too much about story and characters myself to let it go, its a big part of the "RPG" experience after all, I miss the days when I got to enjoy the stories and characters of FE *with* the gameplay, rather than having them now apparently be mutually exclusive nowadays. Good criticisms of the story, I despise lack of development in protagonists and a lack of true "struggle". If you're already the greatest thing since sliced bread, right from the start where is there to go?
Also: LOL at "can we have a normal character join the party please?"... killed me. I guess all of them have to be these odd, kooky, weird special snowflake characters these days. I'm fine with unique characters but the uniqueness has to be both good in the way its handled, and they have to be important enough to warrant the uniqueness, these feel more like cringy, in-your-face gimmicks instead. ...Dunno what's going on with those supports though... its rare to hate characters from their supports after initially liking them lol.
The villains sound like total idiots, wasted potential, and disasters... lol. No comment on the feet shots, you'd know more than I would about that :^). Honestly... some of this storytelling sounds almost insulting to intelligence with things like fading to black to deal with writing yourself into holes... They could've at least given something to BS it with, rather than literally nothing, its like having blank pages in a book and then skipping to the part afterwards.. Not to mention the bad scenes... yeesh. What's hilarious to me is that they didn't apparently explain the multiverse thing at all... like, lol. Maybe, its for the best they didn't explain those things... I don't think I'd want them to disrespect the past games by going too deep into that part.
I agree with you that you can have a fun story with great gameplay too imo, its a shame that it feels like people have to choose between them these days.
Didn't expect the deployment slots to be so limited and the game to actually be hard, I guess the gameplay really is intended to appeal to both newbies and hardcore veterans alike.
Did you talk about the soundtrack at all? I don't remember hearing about it here, did it have good music?
I think the 4 movement was to compensate for the display. For me, it seemed like it was more often that the enemy attack range was running offscreen than in other fire emblem games. Maybe it was just me though
LETS SO HYPED! GLAD TO HEAR YOU'RE BETTER NOW
Imma just put my own thought here since it's fitting.
I agree with your analysis of the avatar robbing the protag of the heroes journey.
Very well put.
As far as the game goes, the Sonmniel still has the same issues for me as the monastery, even if it's toned down a bit. My main gripe is the bond fragments and loading times are annoying and I still feel like I'm wasting my time there.
If the bond fragments were only accessible from the achievements, if the arena didn't exist and I could buy/forge inherit skills without moving around and having all these loading times then it wouldn't have felt that way.
At least in fates you can move around a LOT faster and with less loading times so you can get what you want really quickly before you go to battle.
As far as story goes, I do think it's possible to make a simple story where you don't try hard without being cringe.
If you can't make a complex story that moves the player then don't even try. And yet engage keeps telling you how to feel without earning it and that's annoying.
FE6's story isn't all that interesting but it's doesn't try to tell you how to feel about it all the time, and this self-restraint makes the blandness less annoying. It means that it becomes easier to lower your expectations and just enjoy it for what it is.
I don't feel like giving it a rating, for some reason.
Basically the gameplay is great but story, characters and home base mechanics is forgettable.
Somniel is really well designed, and to me that's actually the problem. I spend so long in-between chapters because there is so much to do. At least the monastery had a faster rotation to it after a bit, but Somniel just expands and demands more effort the deeper you go.
I mean, personally I feel like most of the time the game _has_ earned it when it "tells" me how to feel. Even the mildly ridiculous Lumera death scene lands way better in the game than in the trailer, which is something that actually surprised me. You can call these characters overacted if you want, but I actually find their emotional and vocal range makes them more relatable than Three Houses's cast.
The Somniel _does_ get annoying after a bit, but to nowhere near the same extent as the Monastery because the game doesn't even try to actually _demand_ that you do these things. I have never tried fishing and I have never tried Wyvern Ride.
Somniel is fine, the monastary was fine too except for the fact that you had to do 3-4 weeks of shit there vefore moving on, it outstayed its welcome and didnt rrally make sense from a story perspective for some chapters. Also the story is very basic and boring but cringe? What are people cringing at, theres nothing that bad about its story and characters outside of the solm princess singing
I thought there was such a missed opportunity when they revealed Alear to be a fel dragon. It would have been neat to have the roster of units you've built up until now to temporarily dissolve with their faith in you shattered. It would have been such a unique take to the fire emblem series to have your staunchest supports who've idolized you from day 1 to suddenly turn their back on you (or maybe even turn their swords against you) for a couple of chapters while Alear figures out their place in the world. Would have had the player sympathize with the persecution Veyle went through too actually experiencing a brief moment of it as opposed to just being told to feel sad about it.
I can see how that would be interesting, but it also makes almost no sense. If it happened earlier in the story, maybe. But by the time it happens, you've been together through a lot, and most of the cast have been directly helped by Alear. The pacing is awful, because they resolve it almost immediately. Playing up the doubts Alear has about their friends only for them to ultimately stick by them would be better, but having it come to a full blown party schism would be difficult to sell without some other prior motivations that just don't exist. Maybe a Gatrie and Shinon moment, but I struggle to even think of characters who would act like that.
@@grampaseri That’s the thing, the writers technically wrote themselves into a corner in that regard, as everyone pretty much worships everything about Alear, that there’s hardly anyone that can fill ANY sort of position to be more critical about Alear’s true heritage. Thus it wouldn’t fit no matter what point it happens in the Story.
@@nickcalderon2637 It's only a corner if they wanted to go that direction, but there's no indication it was even a consideration. No need to leave ambiguous escape hatches for plot points they have no intention of exploring. In that respect it's at least consistent, albeit unexciting.
overall. pretty fair review. mostly positive and negative when needed.
i would rant a bit more about some maps , objectives , chain attacks and about Marni's death as well but i understand you can only rant so much. Just wish they handled things better in places. A ringless run? I would love to see it.
I've been plating fire emblem since I was 7, when fire emblem for GBA came out in the US. As someone that has collected all of the game, this one is easily becoming my favorite.. Maybe I will do my first fire emblem stream after work in an hour ;)
ringless seems an interesting challenge as it not only means you don't get the brokenness of the rings and engage features it also means you are limited to the amount of skills you can inherit as you need rings equiped to get sp. So you are pretty much locked into the amount of sp the character starts off with meaning its alot more important what skill u choose to inherit.
That’s interesting. I didn’t know SP worked like that. I have some characters earning SP with rings forged from an emblem. Maybe that’s the work around to still unlock abilities?
Not ringless, but emblem-less.
@@MrVisde yep those are considered rings just bond rings instead of emblem rings. The prerequisites to earning.more sp as far as I'm aware is u either have to have an emblem ring or a bond ring equipped to earn sp
Honestly even limited ring challenge will be sort of interesting especially in the late game.
I reclassified Panette to a warrior asap and she just felt so much better. So I get were Mangs was coming from. Bit of a shame too as her warrior outfit doesn’t look as good as her berserker design IMO.
Agreed Panette is actually quite good but man the game makes her look terrible in her joining chapter
@@ihatetheantichrist9545 Really Berserkers are just bad, Warriors have a better skill and get access to bows, without the crit bonus they normally get, there is just no point to them.
The characters are very hit or miss to me. I for example love Merrin and Mauvier, they have some really good supports. But characters like Goldmary were painful, and there were some characters I just literally didn't care about at all.
I'm already 40+ hours in and I'm hooked bad. I finally finished my 3rd house in 3H at 100 hours for each route
*About the Somniel:*
The reason you will want to do the "mobile retention tasks" after every chapter is to gain Bond Fragments.
If you want to inherit certain skills from Emblem Rings you will be spending *a lot* of these fragments on Arena battles to level up the bonds.
My two largest pet peeves of this game are the really tedious Somniel activities, and the severe lack of Build (constitution) on 80% of the characters.
Seriously, who the hell creates a Berserker with less than 10 Con in a Fire Emblem game?
My only theory for build being abysmal across the cast was the devs SORELY overestimated making build a stat that can level up. Either they underestimated how low the growth rates were, or vastly overestimated how much people would grind infinitely.
Probably this.
I had to spend SP on Liif's "Build +3" for some of the "heavier" builds I had, Panette and Diamand among others.
If I hadn't The entire cast would be using iron and upgraded silver weapons for the most part.
Edit: *Where are the Body Rings!?*
The lack of bld really sucks especially since bows and anti-unit type weapons tend to be heavier than they should. It really sucks that characters like Etie are made even worse by the fact that they have no bld growth, which is ironic because all she does is exercise. If/when they update this game I hope they give every character +5 bld because its annoying. Although, instead of getting bld you should probably just invest in spd or speedtaker since the bld penalty just reduces your speed and nothing else.
@@autisonm I benched Etie and Louis the instant I could. Armour Knights are too slow for later in the game and Etie doesn't grow Spd at all.
@@Aldourien Alcryst and Lapis are direct upgrades from Etie as far as I'm concerned. The only thing Etie has over Lapis is 15 more strength but literally nothing else, not even her personal skill is better.
As for armor knights, you kinda need someone to tank so I just threw some boots on them to increase their movement. It's funny seeing enemies deal 0x2 to mine.
love this , itd be cool if you reviewed the older games like this as well.
Its crazy Engage has this cool skill inheritance system but made the SP gain near nonexistent lol. Maybe I did something wrong but even my most used units hardly had SP.
I cared so little about the story and characters I mashed the skip button whenever characters started talking
yeah its a really weird system they choose for sp gain. You only get 1 sp per xp gained while your unit has an emblem equipped and 1 sp per 2 xp gained while your unit has a bond ring equipped. Meaning for most people they will never get more than 4000sp even on characters they use all the way through the game.
You have to use either the bond or the emblem rings to get any SP
Mangs: Ughhh the Four Hounds again? Really.
Also Mangs: I've been defeated, but I can't fall here! (rematches King Arthur on AWBW again).
(jk I just couldn't resist to make that comment xD still going thru the review, good to see an upload egg!)
LOL
Someone compared this game to watching a power rangers episode. Honestly I agree, if you can look past the plot you can have a lot of fun
We live in a strange world indeed when Pokémon has a much better story than the newest Fire Emblem. As a hobbyist writer myself the sheer amount of missed potential the campaign had both gameplay and story-wise just makes me sad.
Also, I liken the Emblem rings to AI-generated versions of the heroes they're based on, lol. That's kind of the vibe I get from them, and it does explain why they're all so steadfast in protecting a world that that isn't even theirs (at least according to their copied memories).
Overall though I have been enjoying the game a lot from my experience with it as my first Fire Emblem game. Happy to become a new fan of the series.
When it comes to certain characters, Yunaka is actually one of the best characters in the game. She is well written and very deep. Her 'gimmick' isn't what you think it is. She comes across as a bubbly, eccentric individual that looks funny. But it's all done for a very specific purpose. She's hiding a past she wants to forget, and doesn't want anyone else to find out about. This is explored deeply in her various supports. Her name isn't even Yunaka. It's a pseudo-name.
And if you marry her, you actually find out what those stars are, and can infer from that why she has them in the first place.
The problem is that, outside of the main cast of nobles, and Vander, none of the characters ever show up again after their initial chapter introduction. The only way you CAN get to know them is through their supports.
I married Zelkov, pls tell me why Yunaka has the stars
Heck and support can be hit or miss. I swear several characthers had the same support conversations. Some of the more interesting parts you don’t get until A and even then it depends who you talk to. Many characters I gave up learning since their supports were repeats or the b support was just the same gimmick
Okay it's settled. Mangs is my official go to internet person for fire emblem, advance wars and medieval, blond lady related content.
While I agree with the sentiment of gameplay over story, I tend to also give value to overall aesthetics and characters while being resistant to both the other. I’ll wade through mediocre storylines and grindy random encounters just to check out what kind of allies and foes lie on the next part. And Fire Emblem is no different, as a good draw of it to me is finding out what kind of warriors will join the party and what kind of enemies stand in their way.
With that said, Engage having a generally unengaging character roster, the presence of the prior games’ characters (and how busted they are), bosses that retreat too much, the return of monsters as humans v0.5. This is clearly a game for me to skip (or on a more optimistic take, let it see if in a year my grievances die down enough for me to consider buying it), no matter how stellar the gameplay is.
Let’s hope IS doesn’t learn the wrong lessons from this game.
The Disparity between personal classes really annoyed me, funny enough that it's to Fogado's detriment.
So your unique skill is that :
When you get attacked.
While you are an archer.
You have a chance.
To deal additional damage on counter attack.
equal to half the damage you took.
This is on an archer class, you can figure out the rest.
And then we have someone like Alfred.
Who just gets pavise, like just that.
It's good.
I just realized why I like frame!!!
She's got an armpits showing outfit.
Probably why mangs recommend this game imo
This seems like a very solid review, good job mangs!
I think to get a unit that fell behind back into shape you can give it the Micaiah ring. Great Sacrifice gives A TON of exp. In hard mode if you keep Yunaka with it it's easy to really keep her overleveled. Every single time you engage and heal everyone you gain one level just for that. The ranged healing you get is also a good support for it so that it can keep gaining exp without having to deal with fighting enemies. You can also use the nonscaling paralogues for that, turning two of the issues of the game into solutions for each other.
You can also give it an emblem with a big killer attack (like Leif's or Marth's) so that if it's falling behind you can at least kill enemies a few enemies to get that exp. That helped me with Framme and Anna.
And last, you can use the arena.
Fogado and Panette were amazing for me (hahaha I know I know). it just goes to show how different runs can be for different people. Depends on who you invest in. I love that about Engage. I’m excited to do a second play through where I try characters I gave up on.
I think the point he's trying to make is that the first impression on a unit's purpose matters a lot. Louis and Etie being unbelievable when joining is a good example. Fogado doesn't get to use his movement in the chapter he joins and is weighted down by heavy bows, even though he's super fast. Panette is a killing machine, but she joins in a map where she can't do much on player phase.
It's only after swapping out weapons or investment do these characters shine.
@@Seggtor I agree- I meant to say that, about the impressions, but forgot 😆. My impression of Hortensia, for example, is why I never used her. Maybe she’s good, but I never found out
Fogado with magic bow goated
Panette + Wrath + Hold Out + Killer Weapon (or upgraded hand axe w/ crit)= ultimate killing machine
@@rufrox9947 she solo final chapter with crits 100%
so I just finished the game about an hour ago, and I love this game a lot because of nostalgia and old references to older FE games. especially ones I may have not even played yet, plus maps I may not know like the Thracia paralouge, for example, which was pretty badass.
but also Mangs. I have a little guess for the emblems. well, not guess, but more of a self conclusion. I believe the emblem rings are just modern Einherjar. like awakening, just phantoms that copy the identity of the heroes long ago. but even though nothing is explained about the emblems, it's just fun to assume. but that's just me
and another thing that makes me ram my head into a wall metaphorically speaking is that Alear doesn't transform into a goddamn dragon throughout the whole game! which, unlike corrin, can actually transform into one as proof. but Alear is like: "nah, no dragon form only human." which is bull honky! Alear are you a dragon or not? and yes even though Lumera is one, I really wanted to see Alear's version of a dragon form okay.
also since I'm done speaking about engage. I'm gonna play an older game the rom Geneology of the holy war tomorrow so... do you have any tips Mangs?
A save state mechanic rather than a turn wheel mechanic does actually sound interesting.
Having a limited number of times you can "save" a moment in time which gets overwritten when you make a new state would be a pretty cool idea for a future title. Maybe even on a maddening mode.
A mechanic I really didnt like was the gacha. I want my Dire thunder and Claude rings easily for when I get to maddening.
I totally agree. the story HURTS so much. I wish the game took itself more seriously. The MC's mom dies for gods sake. The team needed just that one person who liked to write as a hobby and let them write the story.
On a really high point. I really like that there are so many pretty looking pre-rendered cutscenes. Even the combat in those cutscenes are pretty nice.
totally agree on the hit/ avoid weapon triangle bonuses!
Oh Panette
My best unit, Mangs
How could you say bad thing about Panette
Hard disagree with the somniel loading zone take.
I hated monastery loading.
Especially the chapel gate at the north end, god that was a pain to wait on and im glad they didn't pull that in the somniel. The way i see it, the somniel ring chamber and arena loading is fine, like going to the second or third floor of the monastery.
As a person who has played every Fire Emblem I loved the paralogues and it made me want to go back and play all of them again. The gameplay was great and it was just enough to cover the bad writing and story. For the love of Mangs, Wangs and Dangs please I hope the writers don’t mess up a FE4 remake
Aside from the hope of remakes, Them releasing a "collection" for the 3 GBA games would be great. Only changes I would want them to make is for the multiplayer stuff.
Never played any fire emblem for it's story. Probably why I always enjoyed it for it gameplay. And the gameplay for this one is so fun
Mr. Clean + Lady Colgate is the best crossover ever!
I think rings equipped but not engaged on maddening mode would be a excellent challenge. I'm on chapter 6 of maddening mode and the early game so far is very challenging (due to limited options) and the engaged mode really helps chip away at the edge that early game maddening modes tend to have. It will be interesting to see if they power scale slower on maddening mode versus hard more. I used the DLC rings + DLC content and did all the paralogues (no skirmish or tower of trials) and found that I was always on par with the enemy units. I wasted way too many bond fragments early on making the non-engage rings and that made it challenging to max out the bond levels with all the rings to get all the skills/class promotions I wanted. Also, SP is much harder to come by when you're not doing skirmishes. So, planning out what skills that you want (sink 1000 SP pre "timeskip" to get canter on as many units as possible or save it for the other rings) and what classes early on should pay massive dividends.
My Framme was also my strongest unit and at end game could do between 80-100 dmg per combat when engaged with Byleth ring. Chloe with Lyn ring dominated as she was magic blessed and could massacre enemies with a +5 flame spear. Alear really shined with the Corrin ring though it wasn't as utilitarian as say Sigurd or Byleth, the draconic hex and evil aura skills + torrential roar were fucking awesome to pin down really spooky enemies.
There is an easy way to circumvent the low movement of this game. Emblem ring to get your characters the capability to second seal into mounted units. S rank weapons were not worth having 5 move character classes. S rank sword paladin made sword locked units so fucking good.
The roster size with limited deployment reminds me of Radiant Dawn's 4th chapter. Doing "runs" and picking a different set of units for the run adds to replay ability.
Mangs watches a support conversation about a narcissist (Goldmay). Decides he doesn't like the support conversation as it shows she is a narcissist. Made me laugh. Disagree with you on that you that supports should be optional, as otherwise they either have to just insert constant "I'm here" scenes in the main story that are easily removable if the character is dead. Supports are there since perma death exists.
Eeeh, tbh I agree with Mangs more although his point on Goldmary was silly for sure. as you said I do think the obsessions in supports make them more obnoxious in the story and flat like he said. I can tell you one of my favorite characters in FE9 Elincia is the best example of a character being given good narrative and character even though she lacks any supports. The issue is that requires a good story and characters and modern FE doesn't really have as good writing so the supports are kind of the needed aspect to any character growth more so.
There are three good parent deaths in Fire Emblem. Greil, Sigurds dad, and King Cornelius getting brutaly assblasted by Gharnef.
and SIgurd death's itself, its very tragic he doesn't even gets to say goodbye to his kid.
@@mauricesteel4995 He definitely got to say 'so long' to Seliph as Oifey and Shannan escaped to Isaach... But you're correct, that he never had the chance to say Goodbye.
This game would be amazing with a randomizer. I don't mind getting later characters and rings earlier on. It doesn't change anything. But a new play though feels stale already knowing who's better then the others. I fielded anna for the sole purpose of making money and that's it. (poor 80% of the game lol) It's also very easy to miss or not use an asset or mechanic entirely. I never gave my units any inherited skills or weapon buffs/engraves. The only SERIOUS gripe I had was fighting the same people every chapter. Surely there are other important war figureheads that aren't the same... exact... people from the previous chapter.
By the way, Sombron's name is not really about Sombrero, it's actually even more stupid lol.
Sombra is the Spanish word for shadow.
On being a suffix for: big.
So his name is the big Shadow.
I prefer to insult him as El Sombritas.
This is the best FE game of all time. Gameplay was 10/10 and story was pretty decent. I took the story as a nostalgia porn going into it, so it met my expectations. Great review Mangs you crushed it bro
No. Best gameplay In the series? Probably. But overall. It's a 7/10. It absolutely fails in terms of story and characters. The opposite problem three houses had imo.
I feel like most of the problems in characterization, benching, screen time, etc, would be resolved if they had less characters. Most of them are just retainers of the lords and their sibling of each region, which there are 8 of them (already too much), so 16 units bound to those previous 8, as most of them joining in packs of 3, forcing you to bench characters you were using so they could join all at once. Even the lords didn't seem to have much screen time. If it was 1 lord, their sibling and 1 retainer for each would be so much better.
Watched the whole video.
Boss fights, I think, don't need to take an IRL hour on hard mode. They're tough. They're long sometimes. But they aren't as long as what you did on stream, I think that could be cut down some. Otherwise, agree with just about everything you said. The developers themselves said, we'll make a simple story to introduce new players in, but I think you can have a simple and good story, and this was simply simple. Some of my friends have said, well it's intentionally campy and funny and that's what makes it good, it doesn't take itself seriously. I don't think, personally, that can excuse lazy writing, and it's also - if so - not the kind of story to my taste. To each their own though, and at least the gameplay is good.
I am happy to see you upload about this game again
Sombron: "I killed my only other child myself. Did you grab the body, by the way?"
Zephia: "Err... no."
_deleted scene of Sombron facepalming_
Sombron: "Okay, then I did not kill my only other child myself."
I’m only watching this review super late after my playthrough but I have to say it’s so amusing to me watching Mangs do the funny “but Fogado was my best unit” as I sit here on my completed blind maddening no dlc playthrough with most of the Solm units as my best units.
-Fogado Radiant Bow with Wind God didn’t even give him an emblem.
-Roy Pannette Eirika Engrave Tomahawk
-Lunar Brace Merrin
-Brave Sandstorm Timerra
-Seadall for obvious reasons but also the way I broke Seadall was extra special since he was immortal.
Ofc my playstyle is much different from mangs…as I assume most people do, but the character balancing portion feels so strange to me from a hard vs maddening experience.
So for the most part I agree with a good portion of your viewpoint, you're pretty spot on about basically everything. My only counter point is "when was the last time Fire Emblem had an interesting story?" Fire Emblem as a whole has almost exclusively been you're part of some ailing or perhaps already defeated kingdom and your closest neighbor(s) have decided to go cultist and start worshipping fell energies only to succumb to the very thing they worship, and it's your job to take them out. The only exception to this is probably Path of Radiance where you fight an actually human, albeit insane, final boss in Ashnard.
Sombrero-Man, as you call him, seemed like the stereotypical supervillain of just wanting to break everything for the fun of it. Yet in the end it seemed that what he sought most was actually death. It's why he mentioned he felt the Emblem close by under every shaded tree, behind every dark corner. He either wanted to bring everything to demise with him, or he wanted to be defeated and die. Which seemed so far cry, and even his own final boss lines were basically a jab at the player of why are you still following this creature, when it clearly only seeks its own demise or otherwise to live in solitude away from everyone and everything else.
The Emblems themselves, and their abilities was definitely a crapshoot. Spirits of heroes that were summoned from alternate worlds, and are completely intangible, with the exception of their own personal effects. Yet Marth's sword can be deflected by a mundane axe. It felt too much like they have tangibility, yet only selectively so, and they also had strange interactions when in combat. When your character takes damage, the Emblem reacts like they did too, yet the Emblem is not able to be harmed by mundane items, they probably can't even be interacted with period. This, for me, made them feel simultaneously weak but also outrageously powerful, and all of it on the spin of a wheel. Gameplay wise, some of them honestly feel pointless, even the DLC. Tiki is great, but despite the power boost for being a Dragon, her emblem weapons are weaker than your normal untransformed weapons the moment you have access to steel. Hector is simultaneously the worst and best because his def/res buff is tied to the base values, meaning already tanky units eat like kings whereas your squishies, the ones who actually need the buff, struggle even with his bonuses. Soren's main claim to fame is Flare, Anima Focus is kinda meh as debuffs don't stack and also only last 1 turn normally, and Camilla... tries to be too much like Corrin. Not that I didn't just slap Camilla on Celine and call it a day, since 11 mov Griffin Knight go brrr.
Overall, the story does get a bit of a miss from me as I was able to pinpoint quite a few things before they happened, as there is too many flags that FE as a game series has raised too frequently for the story and progression of the game as a whole to feel new or unique.
My two complaints overall about this game, as I cannot fault the story since as mentioned before the story is almost invariably as I described with one, maybe two, exceptions, is that the chain attacks seem like what the game was actually built around, given that Heroes get Brave Assault and all, and lastly that the enemy AI is... mind numbing. It metronomes HARD between galaxy brain genius, and utter buffoon. I left a flier unit in range of an Archer, knowing full well the effective damage would be big, and the Archer attacked my invincible unit all because chain attack go brrr. And they only got one chain attack. Yet I lost units multiple times (some I chose to move on without) to the galaxy brain where the game knows full well what attacks will land and charges squishies with that intent in mind.
I actually wanted to just enjoy the game, so I started in normal casual, just because I didn't know what to expect regarding the Emblems and how the game itself worked. I enjoyed my gameplay and I felt powerful. I seldom felt like RNG was unfair, I did take some low accuracy attacks but most of the time I found myself mostly getting away scott free on many exchanges. Switch to hard classic, and all of a sudden I'm taking 3% hits, while missing true hit 99. I lost a unit I was training in Camilla's DLC map to a double crit from an enemy with 3% crit. I've lost my most powerful units to multiple 10% accuracy hits landing when they shouldn't.
Panette did have a rough srart but swapped her over to a warrior after a cfew levels and slapped a brave axe on her and she ended up one of my best units for damage, warrior is likely one of the best classes
For the story? If you like Power Rangers, you’ll like Engages story. It’s not just Power Rangers in the sense that you morph with the rings, but in the feel of black and white morality and cheesiness taken dead serious.
I found it very fun, but it’s definitely not for everyone.
I didn't watch his play through as I was playing it myself. Happy he enjoyed it and wants to play again. Waiting for the perma death run 😁
**Just rambling about my own thoughts. Not criticism; just opinions:**
I'm actually glad Paralogues don't scale because they're useful if I want a more lax map after a tough fight, or just want to grind a bit (especially on Maddening), but I can see why others would prefer scaling, especially if you wait until late game to play them. I was always _pretty_ close in level when I did them, so my experience gains and difficulty levels were fine, but that would be annoying if I played differently. Still, for _my_ back-and-forth playstyle, it worked perfectly, and I do think there's something to be said about maps that tell you what level they're designed for and let you decide when you want to tackle them.
I agree with Engaged units being hard to tell apart. I don't expect any patch, but I'll dream of some quick, lazy _optional_ UI that maybe adds the pixel icons of each character onto them. That'd be perfect.
Agreed with the Engrave menu, and Arena intros. I'd like to be able to skip Supports faster too, at least on secondary playthroughs. I know you _can_ skip them, but it still has to start loading first, and I wish I could just hit a button to complete it instantly, instead of a fade to black, and _then_ you can _start_ skipping, and it still takes a few more seconds after that to _fully_ skip. It's a very minor gripe, but it'd be nice. (A 'support all' feature would be even _better._ Think, if you could just click a button and finish all supports in an instant, similar to collecting Bond Fragments from Achievements. Beautiful).
Panette was super underwhelming my first playthrough too, but on my Maddening playthrough, I'm trying to use more Backups (because I was watching Excelblem? N... Nooooo), and she is now my beloved boss killer who destroys almost everything she touches. I whittled bosses down with Poison in Hard Mode. I use Panette, solo, with a Killer Axe in Maddening Mode. Here's hoping she doesn't fall off later on (her speed _is_ admittedly being boosted by Lyn right now).
As for the storyline, I figured they purposefully copied things from their past games as an homage, which is why it's _so_ over the top and predictable, but that's nothing more than a conspiracy theory. I found it 'fun,' not well-written, but being 'fun' did make it one of my top _FE_ stories (though production values _definitely_ helped with that; having 3D scenes showing off the big moments with varying lighting and angles is so much more impactful than having a bunch of minimally expressive busts talking about it). I _did_ find the end of the game far too fast-paced, though. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but I'll just say I agree with what you mentioned about Endgame.
I wasn't a fan of the Four Hounds. I really like it when bosses come back at least once (it makes it feel more like a rivalry of sorts), but five times? Too much. Not a fan of Veyle either.
Overall, super enjoyable game. Even the designs are growing on me (though not Alear. Sorry, Alear). I thought Timerra and Hortensia looked ridiculous, and now I respect them both, designs and all. _Also, the fact that everyone has their own unique casual wear is SO thoughtful. It's such an unnecessary thing to add in the grand scheme of things, which just makes me respect it even more that they went out of their way to design them anyway. Huge props._
In closing...
...Bye-a Papaya. 👋
While I mostly agree with your review of the game, I dont agree with the Somniel being optional. It basicaly is mandatory if you want a significant boost of extra power, and it is not a good mybase feature and these are some of my reasons why:
-Going back to the Somniel to go pick up more crafting materials from the farm is pretty much the only reasonable way to get weapon upgrade materials. I feel bad for anyone who figures out around chapter 20 or so that Dogs bring you Silver Ingots semi reliably, and all other animal offerings are simply pointless compared to that.
-The training room has SO. MUCH. WAITING. Just let me skip the intro animations!!!!!!!
-There are 2 loading screens between the 2 most important Somniel facilities (Training room and the Ring room) and you cannot access those features any other way. If you want somebody to learn new skills from a ring you need to first load into the training room, wait for the intro animations of both characters, load OUT of the training room and then load into the ring room. I think you can warp from one of the rooms to the next to skip 1 loading screen inbetween, but even then why on gods green earth are these services just not behind the Somniel loading screen or accessible from a menu... Its not like the Somniel doesnt have room for both???
-Potentialy +2 to most important stats from food is not "nothing" even late game, and, AGAIN, you cannot skip the damned loading screen for the table conversations (and unlike 3 Houses there seems to be no unique dialogue between characters, theres barely any difference in dialogue if the chef burns the food)! And if you want to do the good foods, you need to go pick up all the random items around the Somniel cause your farm is stuck with 5 dogs fetching you Silver ingots. (I said SILVER you damn... you know what, you brought Steel, I should not complain, atleast its not 1/90th of a silver ingot like your buddy FEtch McIrons over there).
-Theres another loading screen when you go do the minigames, and while Strenght training and especialy fishing can be skipped without any real consequenses (+2str for Alear can be nice, but not necessary, especialy because food can already give you the +2 and they dont stack), you are SO strapped for cash most of the time that the extra items you get from the wyvern minigame either save you money by being usefull as is, or providing 500-1000 gold in sellable items that you pretty much need to do that every time.
-Want an extra 200 bond fragments between maps? Well then its time to "Pet and feed Sommie!!!" and take A WILD &"#¤&/! STAB IN THE DARK if thats a quick and painless process, or if theres plenty of INBUILT waiting negotiating those bond fragments out of that fecker!
In summary: Maybe on a more casual or speedy playthrough the Somniel isnt that big of a deal and it "can" be skipped, but you lose out on SO much power, even more so than the Monastery that your making the game harder on yourself by not doing "Somniel maintenance". And BOY is all that maintenance needlesly time consuming and tedious.
It may seem fine at first glance, but from the point of view of someone whos still on chapter 15 cause I like to take my time with Fire Emblem games and milk out every advantage from every system the game gives me, as well as do plenty of skirmish battles to keep most of my roster up to speed so I can take whatever feels appropriate story wise for each map. I honestly do not think the Somniel is an improvement on the Monastery. Atleast the monastery had solid gameplay implications and integration and I didnt feel quite as frustrated by spending time in it. The Somniel is a detached, tedious and yet fairly mandatory part of the game. IF you want to eke out every advantage you can get.
BUT I will concede that it can indeed be skipped unlike the monastery... However, if the primary qualification for a game system being good is "can it be skipped/ignored", then something is VERY wrong with said system.
Love your content, just wanted to let off steam built up over my growing frustration with the Somniel and hearing "its not that bad". Ill come watch the spoiler section of your review in a week or 2.
100%. All the people that complained about the monastery and then praise this blows my mind. The somniel is FAR more tedious and boring.
@@cartergreen2309 Disagree, the Monestary is the biggest time sink and a waste of time.
@@sowianskiwojownik5973 man not for me. Monastery was almost totally skippable but also felt more organic when you did it. The Somniel is a mind-numbing chore that you need to do to get your skills and whatnot. I despise it with a passion.
I hope that the effort in the maps and battles continues and it is added in future fire emblems, remakes or not.
Very good, very fair review. You know, I personally wasnt too bothered about how the story was, as long as the gameplay is good, but with just how good said gameplay turned out to be, it is a little sad that the story was so messy.
Either way, great video, I think you did a fine job of covering the games strengths and weaknesses and I cant really find any fault with anything you said. By the way, can we talk about how Sigurd is like, the only emblem to do anything story wise? At times he even felt like he was of equal importance to Marth, which is.. suspicious.
Can you maybe make an overview of all fire emblem titles? Some odler titles like the first 5 are pretty obscure, and you said FE 4 has the best story by far, or anytime you make a comparison with other titles.
Like, which games are the easiest or the hardest(FE9 maniac mode?), which are worth it to play for the story(FE4 apparently), which games are better or worse than their remakes(is there any reason to play the famicom FE1 over the DS remake for example). Which games had other features you enjoyed(corrin-quest?) or you didn't enjoy.
For newcomers that would be really informative, when "as good as Fates" doesn't tell me much because I don't know anything about Fates.
I played in Korean with Japanese voice acting. Koreans and Japanese have some very key similarities between languages (although they look very different) that... makes lost in translation to be the least of all languages when it's translated from Japanese other than reading Japanese itself. Also, due to similarities in language + self studying Japanese + watching lot of Animes and general Japanese TV shows also grant me good amount of Japanese listen as well, so I actually understand good amount of what I hear directly.
I am mentioning this mainly because I am aware that the game may feel cheesy, but the script and delivery (voice) make it sound like just casual anime trope-like instead of feeling downright awkwardly cheesy when it's delivered in English... I played some of it, and yikes... same scene definitely felt off in English/English combo. I can agree that script is not well written, as it's quite clear that game didn't really seem to give a crap on story in general, but if you have some familiarity with Japanese voice, by all god, turn it on... it will help IMMENSELY. However, that can also cause some translation mismatch if you have some Japanese listening as well.
If you can understand Japanese well enough to listen to it, you should be able to understand it well enough to read it. This game doesn't really have complicated language.
@@myon9431 Unfortunately I didn't study enough to read many Kanji. Thing is, if someone read what the Kanji is, I have very good chance of understanding it. Which means if Seiyu read their lines, I can actually understand good amount if not all, but when plain text with Kanji thrown in the game, I can only understand average 30% of it. I didn't really sit down and study Japanese hardcore as much, and I have to thank Korean being the first language to actually understand Japanese.
47:50 Black Knight is a recurring villain done right. he shows up only a few times, he is pretty much unbeatable until his final battle, and actually beating him is a challenge.
Death Knight is a villain defused by showing up too early and too much, he shows up too early, and can be sending packing quite easily, making him not intimidating at all;.
the Hounds recurring villains are done terribly, they seem like a shitty version of Grado's Generals, showing up too much consecutively, and having rushed redemption arks for no reason. Zephia redemption scene involves her introducing a challenge for the protagonist and then giving the solution to said challenge IN THE SAME CONVERSATION. its like if someone gives you 10 bucks and 10 minutes later they just take the money back for no reason.
also, when they are against you, they merge into this single character that wants to kill you, and only become individuals during the rushed scenes that the writers want you to feel bad for them.
0:30 I think your introduction of the review is missing the very important warning about *only the gameplay being good, but the story & characters being very bad.* With that being the essence of it, I think that's what people should hear first as a summary. *How much people will like this entry will very heavily depend on how much they want good story and characters.* The more people care about that and the less they care about gameplay, the less they will enjoy it. People who come from three houses and play only for story & characters will most likely despise it.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Especially the story. It felt like it just took the worst parts of previous games and threw them together. I despised any scenes involving the Four Hounds aside from Griss's death. Alear really needs to learn a thing or two from Garon about how to deal with enemies.
I think a lot of the issues that Mangs has with the game is due to where the focus of the game was. To me the devs wanted to celebrate 30 years of fire emblem and make the game fun, hence why we got so many different mechanics that were nods to different games in the series that worked surprisingly well altogether, and I think they accomplished those goals. Unfortunately, the story took a dive, but that's kinda to be expected because all of the resources and thoughts were put into making a fun game. By chapter 9 I kind of figured the story was never going to be a focus, which caused anything that required writing to suffer. Yeah, there were some good characters that were deeper below the surface, like Alfred, but you had to dig through so many support convo before finding those little gold nuggets. Not everything needed to have A B C support levels. A lot of the convos can be cut down to just B and C (I would know since I'm trying to get all support convos on my 1st run before going min/max). Overall, the game is good. I don't really care that much about the story since it seems it was never something the devs focused on. I can see myself doing multiple runs with different builds because that's just how fun it's been. I think that Mangs should treat this game more like a sandbox where you can get really in-depth with customizing units to do really fun things.
Your Sombron cosplay is great :)
I’m about halfway through and I have been loving my time with the game. It’s so well done. Even the storyline is like a fun Saturday morning cartoon…can’t take it too seriously.
The one thing I wish they would’ve done differently is limit the amount of characters joining your party…it’s like 3 new characters every chapter 😂 hard to get familiar with your crew when there’s a better character joining the next chapter. Oh well, on an Ironman Maddening run I’ll probably need all the characters I can get 😂
Thats right. Its a light hearted excuse to give us a great game. Localizers had a field day censoring supporta though, and that makes me very sad as the cast really grows on you as you use them
😂So 😂true😂bestie😂!😂😂😂😂😂😂
I believe that in maddening paralogue chapters do scale. I remember the tiki paralogue took so many tries and trying the level up through main chapters for it to get harder. Same thing happened with the lyn paralogue too.
Tiki paralogue dose scale, and it scales really well too! For some reason the others dont though.
@@xTxCxMx I'm wondering if they were afraid of soft locking people out of bond levels. The DLC paralogues unlock stuff, but are fully optional. If you don't do the regular paralogues, you can't max bond with that emblem.