@@Rodri34451 True, but they basically disappeared as soon as the important villains showed up, you need the mooks so that the actual villains have some sort of "Hype"
I mean she does at least have the third highest strength in the game after Amber and Panette so her strength training does show, and she does have a smaller body even with her training so the low build fits too. It would have been much better to just start her in Fighter and Boucheron in Archer since their growths match those better. Archer has horrible bases which tank her starting stats (She only has 3 less base strength than Fogato 9 maps earlier) and Boucheron has incredible high skill and speed like Snipers normally do and horrible strength even in Warrior. Etie probably also should of had Strength Taker as a personal skill to match her personality except they didn't like personal skills in this game.
Having Etie by a gym bro, have the best strength of any female unit, and still be mediocre in the strength department would be far too based for this game.
It definitely feels like they designed the retainers first and assigned them a personality and role. Most of them do not match the aesthetics of their royal and country with Solm being the biggest culprit. Like you’re telling me that Bunette is from the desert nation?
I am 100% certain, the Engage team decided, " This is classic FE units are expendable in the game, so they must have no plot relevance" to avoid writing 200 alternative dialogues in the case of a main character dying.
Imagine if Three Houses did this. Dorthea was just a girl who sung. Mercedes had no relationship with her brother and was only obsessed with the church. No one would care about these characters because they would only be units to throw away.
FE need to give up the actual "death" part of permadeath and just make the characters permanently crippled when their HP hits zero so they can still do story stuff and be done with it. They only ever tried to make it make sense in one game and that was one of the ones that had a direct sequel making their efforts useless.
@@DisplayThisOkay some of the older games actually do that, at least for certain characters with "plot relevance" (ie. Marcus in FE6&7. Its only noted in their "death" quotes where they mention "withdrawing" instead of making death noises lol)
@@DisplayThisOkay Better and more impactful: Don't be lazy. Go all-out. Make every character (Yes, that means no main Lord who fights!) killable. Make them all plot-relevant. Make the plot ADAPT to who lives and dies. Will it take work? Yes, yes it will. But with a cohesive script and a main story that relies on the player character tactician lord with everyone else just being the army, you can make it work.
One thing that will always strike me as utterly hilarious as to how bad the world building is, but also the choices surrounding Pepsi-man, is the reveal about them. Pepsi-man is dragon Jesus as far as the world building goes, and most everyone worships them as such. Then comes along the revelation that they are actually a bad dragon and not Jesus dragon. And no one in the cast has any issues, 3/4s of the planet worship Pepsi-man, and there is no crisis of faith or questioning of reality with what should be an earth shattering revelation. One that shows their worldview was a LIE. Everyone just kinda shrugs and ignores it mostly. Hell Pepsi-man doesn't prior to this feel all that special or divine for that matter. At least Byleth had a built in god mechanic with the times pulse, Pepsi-man needs a shinny rock to do that...which reminds me, why is that rock just glossed over with little elaboration? A rock the manipulates time is something anyone would kill for, never mind nations.
If I remember correctly, that type of rock can only be made by mage dragons, aka zephia, and most other people probably have no idea that it exists. It's something that was supposed to be a secret emergency button for veyle, but for some reason she accidentally dropped it after killing lumera. Basically, the reason why people don't fight over it is because no one really knows it exists, or that it could only be made by zephia, who is not on their side and certainly wouldn't just hand one over to them.
Most of the cast didn't really worship Alear that seriously, since they had been worshipping Lumera for the last 1000 years and Alear kinda came out of nowhere, so there was not that much emotional attachment towards worshipping him, barring Ivy and the party dude whose religious practices were already quite different from the main stream. Most importantly, everyone who learned the truth had already been through thick and thin with Alear and even a blind man could see how different he was compared to Sombron.
@@Edagui97 Actually they kind of did! Firene being HEAVILY Devotee to the Divine Dragon's Royal Family visited Alear when they were resting, Note that Celine when she calms down recognizes Alear immediatly as she and Alfred HAVE visited! Diamant even mentions seeing them as well! Alcyst likely was too stressed from watching the border, or was left behind to watch the Castle when Morion and Diamant went to Lythos and the Sominel which is why he didn't recognize Alear. (Though PEPSI LOOK should have made that obvious, I'm still remembering Jean and Jade's recruitment where it took Alear having to SAY they were the Divine Dragon for them to realize "WHAT, this WEIRD LOOKING PEPISI PERSON IS DIVINE! I WOULDN'T HAVE GUESSED WITH THEIR WEIRD LOOK) In alot of the supports, Alear despite being "Divine" is sort of the "Only Sane Man" out of the cast who each have their "quirks" (They went the angle of the "Mystical Character" being normal minded and the "Mortals" being the "weirdos") and as you said. They've been with Alear LONG enough and KNOWN them long enough for the "Fell Dragon" thing to be relevant (and ANY of Alear's "Crimes" working under his/her father was 1000 years ago.....they were ALSO the reason he was sealed in the first place! Had they finished the job, they wouldn't be DEALING with Sombron in the current day! Actually I still wonder why Lumera didn't do it and just sealed Sombron now that I'm thinking on it, I just assumed she didn't want to waste too much time and power that could go to seeing if she could save Alear) all the revelation did was confirm to everyone the FULL truth of Alear's Origins (The game always felt like a RETREAD of Awakening and Fates story Threads, FATES ESPECIALLY while doing the stuff that people note ALOT on their "Fix it" to Fate's story. Like Corrin KNOWING their origins instead of keeping a secret! Veyle being what Lilith should have been in that she is both your sister AND an Antagonist! And Lumera coming back from the Death, I liked HERS more then Mikoto's!) which the Antagonist never hesitate for one moment (well Zephia and Veyle which makes sense) to bring it up! I like to PRESUME Sombron figured it out the moment Zephia confirmed she found no body where he was sealed. But as he ESTABLISHED, he really doesn't give a shit, he only had ISSUE with Alear because they DARED "bite the hand that fed" even when he was a crappy father who saw them as a tool he'd KILL the moment he was "disappointed" and was mad his own "behavior" was used against him! As for the Rock. I will give A_normal this. It only was relevant ONCE in Chapter 10/11 then never comes up again. So maybe it's better not to make it a "Story/Gameplay Integration" if it's not going to be brought up much! But then Three Houses did the same thing! Thales is shown to No-Sell Divine Pulse....yet he NEVER uses it in the gameplay. And Byleth gives up like ONCE after Thales blocks their attempt to kill Kronya before she shanks Jeralt! They never really explained too well how many PULSES. I do feel next game the OPTION to turn it off or not should be made (Maybe a Reward after Non-skirmish Battles if you win without using it once or had it turned off) I think that would shut up some of the whining (or just increase as the "challenge" bros/gals complain they can't CONFIRM if a Let's Play has it off or on! Who the fuck cares, stop punishing NON-CHALLENGE Players by enforcing! Already tired of hearing the WHINING about the fucking Emblem Rings/Bracelets) and Weakening it so the "why don't they just go back in time THIS or THAT" (I always presumed the Rock was the only reason Veyle as in EVIL Veyle SURVIVED her fight with Lumera. Only getting Lucky the JUST WOKE UP SO WEAK Alear showing up and Lumera shielding was the reason she WON by surviving, she only found out Lumera was dead AFTER Zephia learned of it from Alear after all! Note the stone did NOTHING till the next chapter, meaning it was likely out of juice when Veyle dropped it when she retreated! She could have attacked AGAIN after attacking, but it's clear that was a Desperation attack! But without the story CONFIRMING it, all I just stated is Assumptions! But then sad part is people will STILL get mad they were TOLD this because they hate being treated like their stupid! "Can't fucking WIN")
I really wanted to learn more about the world but they barely talk about it. Heck even in supports it doesn’t feel like anyone except Diamant actually acknowledges the world heck he’s one of the few characters that knows a war is happening
I ain't gonna deny that the story in Fire Emblem Engage does leave a lot to be desired but I feel this comment screams confirmation bias. The entire reason why Alear was still worshipped as the divine dragon was because they are the true successor to Lumera. Remember; Before meeting Lumera, Alear has all-red hair from his lineage to Sombron but after receiving power from Lumera, some of his hair turned blue because Lumera saw him as a son even if she wasn't his Mom biologically. While circumstances are different, it is similar to Byleth. Byleth wasn't really related to Rhea, aside from all that Sothis's heart stuff, but he was still named Rhea's successor and it seemed the people of Fodlan were fine with it aside from Crimson Flower for obvious reasons. While the methods were different, Alear's situation does end up being similar to Byleth's. You have a protagonist, they come into contact with some sort of Godly representative or are Godly themselves, they inherit power of said God, and go on to become the new leader.
Just a little advice before I watch this video: don't do red borders at the bottom of the thumbnail. On the main page, It makes it look like you have already watched the video and might scroll past it, since RUclips promotes already watched videos from time to time.
On the note of personal skills, I will always remember Owain from awakening as my favorite. It gave a bonus if the main weapon had 13 or more custom characters in the name. It not only gave a nice bonus, but heavily encouraged the player to make custom wepons in order to utilize it. And when you would see players online you could see all the crazy names people came up with! Lore, creativity, and useful in one package!
22:10 Now that I watched the video, Etie was localized differently. Etie was suppose to have Maribelle's Gimmick, but for some reason, they made her a Strong Women archetype, which was also part of her gimmick and not her main one
Also the localization was also pretty horrible but it’s technically been like that in three houses and in games such as fates so I am not too surprised. The localizers definitely need to be fired or replaced with AI translation with the help of a single human being making minor edits to the Ai translation to make it flow smoother. So a human responsible for making small minor edits to the localization while it’s fully translated by AI. Hiring a single person to localize the game imo would have been a smarter idea and only limiting their roles to fixing things that don’t make sense or arn’t being translated properly by making smaller edits in certain areas. The way the localization industry has been it’s just awful as of late, I’d say if Nintendo truly cared about their IP they would have most likely had gotten rid of these horrible localizers in IS.
@@fakesmile172 fire emblem seems to have the worst localization out of nearly every Nintendo product. Some even call the localization woke because of the things that they are refusing translate over to English like how one of the character in fire emblem engage was comparing the size of her melons to another female character (that translation got completely cut in the English version) other localization changes either made no sense or just were terrible localization. Nintendo seriously needs to start policing and having strict guidelines when it comes to localization so that we could have the most accurate script we could possibly have. It’s part of the reason I am extremely fearful of a fire emblem 4 remake because if the same localizers work on that game they will just butcher the localization and likely the real reason I don’t even want anymore fire emblem games anymore in the west unless their is extreme measures taken against IS localizers.
@@Holy_Crusaderwestern localizers are also forcing in their personal beliefs to serve a political agenda. It was exposed by the dragonquest director for 3-hd that the West acts like the mafia to force their gender cult ideology on other countries.
The character designer is Mika pikazo who is known for her flashy pop art style with vibrant contrasting colours and taking advantage of value differences over hue shift. While I really like her artsyle, it's absolutely not a fit for the FE franchise and setting. That's a decision that the producers made that they really shouldn't have.
It’s worse, seeing as Mika was told barely anything about the World these characters are from, until AFTER she designed them. So the reason the characters don’t resemble their own countries half the time, is because Mika didn’t know where they were from.
I absolutely hate when my character is worshipped as a god the minute you start which is why I despise both Corrin and Alear. And holy shit, the whole overlaying all the female characters to show they are just variations of each other is something i never noticed
@@catinapan4956 I'm pretty sure I remember there being a good bit of friction from certain characters to his inauguration as a professor, though it might've been mainly Seteth. Still, he's not treated as the LITERAL god, just a damn good mercenary who can handle himself very well. At least, most of the time. And no, I'm not calling Byleth a good character.
Luckily Corrin and Alear are still actual characters. The same can't be said for the 3H block of wood people call Byleth who is also hero worshipped to the point the 3 Lords can't function without them around.
@@Ender41948you could even say the same for Corrin. Yeah they wake up being attended to by servants and are doted on by their sisters, but that's normal familial care. And even then there's more immediate conflict with Corrin's adoptive family than there is with Alear. Yes we were adopted into royalty but Garon is tyrannical conquerer that sees his children as nothing more than tools to further his ends. The first mission he gives Corrin is literally a suicide bombing. And when we reunite with the hoshidan royals, we aren't immediately welcomed with open arms by everyone. Takumi doesn't trust Corrin at all. Even if you join the hoshidans his trust still needs to be earned. And even fates doesn't treat Corrin like a God. He's just a prince. Engage paints Alear as a God right from the get go.
11:33 If I remember correctly, in Veyle and Corrin's bond, Veyle says that she buried her dragon stone so as not to hurt people and that she doesn't even remember where she buried it.
@@ghost245353 They could have easily made it so alear could transform after becoming the divine dragon and got a new stone made by lumera along with the pact ring. Since lumera knew about alears heritage it would have made sense that she could have figured something out.
And Zephia´s dragon stone is the thing we use to redo turns. It has her exact colour scheme. Evil Vayle loses it in the beginning of the game and it is never brought up again, Zephia seemingly not even aware of its existence or trying to get it back.
Alear gave his/her dragon stone to Veyle, and it is finally broken in Ch21, but I don't read that because the story is cringe. Veyle buried her dragon stone, well, who cares about details of the script. Nel, Rafal can actually transform, but I never play the ever worst DLC. No idea. So, why don't the dragons transform? It's weird. Typical. 😄
I feel the biggest offender is how childish Engage is, comparing to Three Houses (and the rest of the whole series). It wouldn't surprise me if this was by design by pressure after Three Houses, the timeline matches. It would be "perfect" timing for the company to make FE more "accessible", Smash Bros popularity, Switch audience, so on, but that's just a theory.
Ah alcryst. As soon as he did that jumping in the air and landing on his knees made me bench him immediately. Didn't care that he had better stats than my Etie
@@tbahr123 I personally can't stand him. All he does is whine and complain about how pointless he is. His personality bugs me too much and he isn't even a good unit for me to like him that way.
@@shadyshyguy4058 Not even close. He only does damage when Luna procs due to his horrible strength making him wildly inconsistent. Panette and Kagetsu can match his Luna damage 100% of the time and really don't need Lyn at all, while Amber and Etie are both better Lyn users since they will also match his damage from 2 Luna hits 100% of the time while having the same or more availability. Consistent reliability is important in FE.
@@hanzou1238 Like what stats are you comparing Alcryst does not have significanly lowers strength than anyone, and he is like one of the few character in the game who actually gets the boost from it's personal passive always for just playing normally.
The thing that makes Engage’s character designs EVEN WORSE is that you see them directly next to the emblems - which are old and simple designs that easily outshine (almost) all of them!!!
tbh, I think its mostly due to the game-engine, as creating entirely new character body and face meshes is probably too much effort for a game that sells as comparatively poorly as the FE franchise unfortunately. IMO, just one more reason to abandon the true 3D graphics and go 2D or 2.5D pixel-art again. It looks better (imo, i know many disagree), holds up better over time, and is likely simpler to work with. that being said, i'm biased because it also makes it easier for me to make my own character portraits and animations for rom hacks lmao.
@@avaliantsoul5408 You may have a point, but Three Houses exists and has fantastic character designs. Three Houses sold 4 million copies and engage sold 1.6 million despite only really appealing to fans while having a bizarre art style that turns a good percentage of those "hardcore" players away. Fire Emblem has no excuse to be making characters in this way.
@@maxcap60713H's art style is really good in the 2D portraits, but I felt like the 3D renders were... lackluster. Partly due to the Switch's lacking power compared to other home consoles at this point, but I don't care to argue that point anymore because Nintendo is never gonna be competing with Xbox, Sony, or PC for computing power. 3H's main artistic issue was the lack of maps, on which I can only speculate, but it seems reasonable that it may be due to the amount of time and effort it takes to design, and render the more detailed 3D environments in comparison to 2D. I also just think Fire Emblem's fantasy setting with magic that ranges from little balls of fire to summoning earth-shaking storms lends itself better to a more highly stylized artistic direction which 2D and 2.5D seem more suitable for. Engage really just feels poorly thought out, like they just bet far too much on the appeal of old characters.
I guess I should try bringing up the game's world building. Friene: They are self sufficient and this makes them more aloof and closed off from other nations as they don't have to rely on others. Their culture is a light hearted one celebrating fables while also having a high level of refined living given all the tea farms and fashionable clothes. The king died of a terminal illness that his son now suffers from, and it is the expectation that the princess would have to take the throne from his cold dead body. Brodia: A mining based economy that expands territory by launching wars. Cruel retaliations have been launched by Elusia in return, slaughtering innocent fishing villages. The nobles are in support of these wars and many exotic balls are held celebrating their opulence. Military strength and riches are the theme here, signifying their power. The queen of brodia still lives, she was moved to a remote location for her own safety. Elusia: the most prominent feature is the main academy that everyone is obligated to attend at some point in their life, as this is the kingdom of knowledge. As such they have the most skilled expertise in goods and craftsmanship in all the land. King hyacinth fought with his brother for the throne and ended up winning, banishing his brother in the process, and then hiring his brother's supporter Lindon. Hyacinth had many wives, having children- the half sisters hortensia and ivy. It is a den of intrigue with many bureaucrats squabbling, plotting and backstabbing each other to rise high in court. Also it is the country that worships the fell dragon. Solm: a queendom run by calm rational thinkers with the aim of maintaining their own freedom. They appear carefree on the surface but they're cunningly studying other nations and managing their relations for either warfare or peace- whatever works for them, given the interactions fogado and timerra have with the other characters. During the war with the fell dragon they were the best equipped and prepared to fight on their own, and pointedly refused to help any other nation. They are a wild bunch, and wolf racing is a popular sport. And yeah nothing is going on in Lythos.
While I agree that mangs came at the point in a pretty reductive manner, I feel like a lot of the world building for the game comes from supports instead of the main story. Now is that a good or bad way of doing it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Idk
@ That's true. The supports are better written than the story as the supports actually take the time to flesh out characters, while the main story is just the usual war with an added touch of silliness. Would be better if it was both. I think the best world building is when you can infer it out of the characters and the land, and it just naturally being brought up rather than being handed the exposition dumps from a lore book somewhere. I like what they did with solm- they have a facade of goofing off- like when the queen forgets where the ring is- but theyre actually extremely pragmatic- the queen herself is proud of her daughter for choosing to sacrifice her. Stuff like that which tells you more about the people and their ideals and methods.
Lythos had more divi e dragons but they all died at some point the land of the divine dragons was a dead kingdom of an old people which is why its so empty even though it has large structures
Firene and Solm are revealed at different points to be HORRIBLY-run, due to having avoided war for so long. Firene is so centralized that the governors live in the capital, and don't know what's going on in their territories they nominally possess. Solm is so decentralized that its provinces might as well be their own countries, and the military has withered away into being just the royal guard (the Sentinels).
Another thing I'd like to add is that it tried to appeal to both newcomers and veterans in the worst way possible. They gave the game a shiny new artstyle that made the characters look like a bunch of V-tubers and touted the accessibility for new fans, but they also made a lot of the story revolve around "Emblems", who are essentially fanservice that only have meaning to the kind of people that could write the game's wiki articles.
@@TheMaestroMizerousyeah but they assumed long time FE fans don't care about character, world building and writing, which many do and were not happy with this edition.
The entire V-Tuber thing is especially jarring because of the Fire Emblem conceit that everyone is a military member. It works in something like Tales of Berseria because no one is putting Velvet or Magilou in charge of an army (people who might be, like Elanor or Eizen get more commander-esque designs). If I was in a military unit and you told me Hortensia was in charge, I'm looking for the first opportunity to desert. Like... Fire Emblem is military. You don't have to stick to strictly military designs, but designs need to fall within 'this would be reasonable for a very flamboyent soldier, at least for impractical dress gear.'
To be fair on the subject of some dragons not transforming, I recall it being a thing in previous Fire Emblem games that dragons need a dragon stone to transform. So, it might be the case that the dragon characters who don't transform don't have a dragon stone.
Remember when Alcryst resented Ivy for being one of the perpetrators of King Morion's (Alcryst's father) death? I thought the game was going for an interesting character dynamic that would further develop both characters... then they ereased Alcryst from the plot. In fact, all the siblings of the main lords get ereased from the plot, which is a pity because I consider them to be more interesting characters than of Diet Dimitri, Chrike, Camilla 1.5 and Clussy. Another point is that you could easily rewrite some retainers to be... not retainers. This is just coming from the top of my head so some characters may already have this backstory but going through the trouble to check it out is a pain. -Have Boucheron be a wandering mercenary from no land in particular -Have Citrinne be a mage student from a prestigous magic academy -Have Jade be a border guard that only knows Diamant by his title -Have Kagetsu be a travelling swordsman from a far-away land outside Elyios -Have Zelkov be an infamous Elusian thief -Have Pandreo be a local Solm priest -Have Bunet be an ordinary chef that needs to become stronger to protect his family/business/etc. I don't recall if some of these characters already have the same backstories and stuff (they probably do), but it all goes to waste when they are retainers the moment we meet them in the game, it also ruins their personality because one of their main motivations for existing will always be "I need to serve/protect Lord/Lady ________".
@@TheGamersState and the baseless simping for the bland avatar character, being wyvern riders with magic, eldest princesses of the EvilKingdom.png, purple, and utterly screwed by the terrible overarching stories of their games
@@FlanMcBean 1. Ivy simping isn't baseless, she makes it clear she worshipped the divine dragon out of rebelleon as she hates the way her superiors operate in secret. 2. Pretty sure Camilla's primary weapon is an axe, unlike Ivy who focuses way more on tomes. 3. Technically true but feels like cherry picking. 4. She's "purple"? Ivy's outfit is purple and Camilla's hair is purple but anything else is different. What even is this? 5. This I can agree on The point I'm making is while yes, circumstances are similar between the 2 but in terms of actual character they are nothing alike. Ivy has a hard time showing her emotions and is seriously scared of ghosts while Camilla openly embraces her emotions, casually talks about trees that eat people alive, and is implied to go on murdering rampages. Even the way they show their affection to the avatar is different.
20:02 I think the big thing id that stylistically, each character is trying to be "attractive" in the most broadly appealing/lowest common denominator sense. Like take Etie for example. She talks a lot about her muscles and working out, etc. Yet outside of her abs (which kinda look out of place on her bodytype and in art because none of her other flesh is rendered that way) she prrtty much just matches every other character proportionally. Her shoulders are just as skinny, her thighs are just as thin, her arms are just as noodly (and you can have a lean built character, but no part of her aside from her stomach suggests any kind of toning). Not to mention nothing about her design really screams "i like working out" which is a huge part of her personality. Theyre trying to on one hand appeal to the whole "muscle mommy"/"tomboy" fetish, but dont go more in because their focus is more on the clothing aspect. So much of their designs are based more around bright colors than other features because said features are so samey.
Yeah, it's basically showcasing how shallow anime tropes are. Also the body types are almost 100% guaranteed to be because of simplifying development for the clothing change system. Every Fire Emblem since Awakening has both suffered and benefited from leaning harder into Anime tropes and the sim date elements, but I really hope we get a more dramatic and well written/designed game. FE3H had the illusion of "depth", but it was all tell with no show...which makes me not care one bit because I never got to experience it/see anything and then needing video breakdowns just to make the storyline even make sense because of it's unfinished/half-baked branches.
And in doing so you appeal to no-one. Characters like Rosado who appeal to those who like traps will serve to outright REPEL that majority who do not like traps. While people may be politically browbeaten into not outright saying so, they still feel that way - even moreso thanks to aforementioned browbeating. It's really better to just appeal to a few people. Or hey, don't have a romance thing at all; it's not necessary. Ike's wife is an unnamed woman whom he met after his games ended - both of his paired endings are with potential blood brothers.
@ it’s not identity when it never bothered to have one Low fantasy is supposed to make magic special but fire emblem always treated magic as just a normal thing
@@thomasquesada7248 I think the OC was referring to well te Sominel and the fact the protagonist is a Manakate! Now I think Three houses went TOO far in the Low Fantasy angle with the loss of the shapeshifters AND Manakate (Seteth and Flayn don't shapeshift, so don't REALLY count as "Manakate" traditionally despite the fact they kind of are!) while Engage went TOO far on the High Fantasy angle! Ironically they're is ALOT of Cake Eating with both entries (everything to do with Rhea, Byleth and Sothis as an example for 3H and well Much of the NONE fantasy stuff with Engage! I swear my issue with the Sominel is it creates the SAME fucking problem Fates did with the MyCastle! Why don't the character's retreat within there or something?! The Sominel makes it WORSE as My Castle is mentioned only like ONCE in it's introduction to the plot! The Sominel is APART of the plot to an extent! I don't hate the place as I like exploring, but I feel Fire Emblem going forward should use the BASE CAMP from Three Hopes as THAT made more sense then BOTH Garrag Mach and the Somine as a stop between for your Army before the next battle! I didn't mind LOSING customization of My Castle as I BARELY Customized mine! Only added the ESSENTIAL and the Statues of character's I'm using and that was it each playthrough, Garrag Mach was fun first playthrough, but a part of me REALLY wanted a menu, same feeling STILL with the Sominel that lets me ACCESS the functions without needing to be there! Sort of like Base camp back in Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn for those of us who DON'T want to stop moving forward with the plot! This could ALSO help in situations where it's STUPID, ironically Three Houses had the right idea with the Shops being available on the Map menu, Engage did the same but only for Weapon and Item shop AND NOT THE BLACKSMITH which I found foolish! Will say simplifying the Forging Material was good, but they could STILL work it better! I disliked so many DIFFERENT materials in Three Houses, but I think their going in the right direction with the Ingots.....just hope they find a DIFFERENT way to get them then the DOGGOS) But anyone complaining about the HIGH FANTASY that is Pepsi-Kun/Chan! I feel their an INCREASE of what they were trying with Byleth and Corrin. Frankly speaking BYLETH was at their best (especially IF YOUR CAN HAVE THEM FUCKING SPEAK, 3H showed this with SHEZ and Byleth ironically in that spin-off) when they were an ADVISOR/AIDE like Robin to the chosen Lord! I'd like that to come back! Avatars in Fire Emblem should NOT be the main protagonist. Yeah Byleth and Shez were "main charactes" but in the overall plot and everything, your chosen LORD of the Three is the main character, you are THEIR partner! And that works better then Corrin and Alear (though I dont OUTRIGHT hate Corrin and I actually LOVE Pepsi-Kun/Chan! They were EVERYTHING I wanted Corrin to be...sans the Dragonstone, I feel SLIGHTED that never came into play even if Emblem Alear is a nice replacement) I would like the Emblem Rings to STAY in the series, but not be as you see them in this entry. Make them a sort of mix of the Crusader Scrolls/Bond rings/Starspheres of the series! Buffers that give a Stat Bonus AND Growth Modifier and maybe a unique skill or so, but you don't get skills off them and by DEPOWER I mean about as strong as the S RANK Bond Ring Bonuses! DON'T make them a major story element either. Frankly some people, ESPECIALLY Three House newcomers likely got caught off guard about how far they went in the OPPOSITE direction tone wise because Three Houses was pretty fucking Dark (I laughed abit when this was said cause I didn't feel it was THAT Dark compared to FE4-5 now THOSE were fucking dark, I will say it does come CLOSE though) so this was an attempt to lighten it up. But it went pretty far in that direction (while still havng it's dark moments!) But lets be real! Metaphor from Atlus pretty much was the more SUCCESSFUL answer to the OVERPOPULATION of "Low Fantasy Game of Thrones wannabes" that makes Engage LOOK abit better (same with Three Houses abit) because I think folk are TIRED of all the GOT wannabes! FE did it LONG before it was COOOL (FE4 and 5) as they did it when the BOOKS were out at that, before anyone even KNEW what game of thrones (which was SUPER Low Fantasy as magic was RARE to see and the fantasy to the people in that world was coming back in a "I thought it was all LEGEND" manner! Low Fantasy means magic is RARE to that "It was LEGEND" manner! I mean the people in alot of the FIRE EMBLEMS sans the Shapeshifter absent ones like FE4-5 have easy access to magic. It's the SUPER RARE stuff, the "Avada Kedavra" that aren't EASY ACCESS) So I feel if the next FE tones it down abit from Engage! It will be better for it! At least make the "3H" Stans calm the fuck down
In defense of Etie through her support with Bucheron she comes off as very self conscious of the fact that she isn’t as big as him and keeps asking about his secret to working out. those two retainers have a dynamic where one doesn’t work hard and has build come to them naturally the other works hard and never advances. And lastly at least her constant working out is reflected by her high strength growth
"Greetings, oh Divine Dragon. Would you like some of the pickles I made especially for you?" A) " Thank you Clanne, I truly appreciate all the things you do for me". B) "Bother me again and I'll fill that jar with your innards". Best part is that the options were labeled as "thanks" and "no thanks".
I remember an early fake leak from Engage saying that Alear's hair color would change throughout the story depending on your choices. Imagine if that were true.
This is honestly how I thought Fates would be at first. Conquest allowing Corrin to outright be a villain protagonist would have been incredibly interesting.
About the number 4 showing a lot on japanese media, it is a buddhist ifluence of the 4 heavenly generals, the "shitenno", also 4 can sound like death and be a unlucky number, 4 generals + evil conotations = evil generals, any story with a maoh (demon king), will have this trope in some shape, final fantasy does this a lot with the 4 fiends, anime about demon kings, and so on, when you realize what it is you will start to see this everywhere
People defend the game for it's gameplay but even that falls short in some aspects due to it's balancing favoring speed so much that griffin leaves everything in the dust if you cant afford the SP to carry other classes to keep up.
Ok, I'm going to try to keep this breif (famous last words), but I want to go over the points you made Mangs because...it's fun. *The World Building* I agree on mostly everything. Honestly, what they could have done to fix this is to cut the roaster/countries in half. Fierne and Solm are the most irrelevent out of all the characters/places Alear goes during the story. If you cut them, you could heavily focus on the war and character development between Brodia and Elusia. The only counties to have "arcs" in the game while Fierene and Solm have...nothing. If the story cut out Alear and Diamant and Ivy were the main characters, instead? Even better, that's all you need. Give them an enemies to lovers story line with a Romeo and Juliet twist in the end and I guarantee Engage would have been a better game story wise. I don't even think you need the emblems as along as we, the fans, care about the characters we are playing as. I do want to correct you on two things though mangs. The first is the game does explain that Mavier stays with the hounds to protect Veyle because he is her retainer. It is mention in chapter 18 (I think), the one where they are on the boat, but the game did explain why, it's just they didn't push that idea enough I think because we barley see him protect her at all. The last thing is from my experience, while there is literally almost no lore to this world at all. Diamant in one of his supports with Framme actually says that a thousand years ago. Lumeria blessed Brodia to help protect them during the war. This is, as far as I'm aware of, the only time Lumera's protection is brought up and, again, makes Diamant look like the more complex character and possible MAIN character because he knows this...and Alear, for some reason, doesn't. Ivy also ,um, tries to get closure later when she takes back Elusia...but Griss just laughs at her and she is never aloud to give a big speech about how she will change her country for the better. Even Xander, and to another extend Dimitri were aloud to do that in the end game...but not Ivy? Huh... Also, super glad you brought up how the elements of each country does not make any sense. Brodia should NOT be next to Elusia, the snow county. Thats...not how weather works from a basic level. If IS created this world where you worked your way up (Like having Solm and Firene be closer to the equater while Elusia is the closest to the polls, for example, that would make more sense. *The Villain's* I present to you a line that incapsulates the villain's motives in the game (Chapter 23) Veyle: Why are you helping us now?" Zephia: I'm not sure of that myself. Me: Why is she giving them a crystal to help them succeed and not take them down with her? That one Power Ranger Mega Force meme: It's far too complex for you to understand. Nuff said... *Alear* Everything you said about Alear are my complaints with them and I agree they are the worst avatar in the series. If you watch interviews on Alear's concept. They were suppose to be even MORE cowardly, and nintendo had to stop them from doing it. Also, the fact that the director of the game believes fans don't like selfless hero's when fricken DIAMANT EXSITS is absurd to me. He literally contradicted his own statement by creating Diamant, a complex, selfless hero who is, last I checked, *THE MOST POPULAR ENGAGE CHARACTER.* It depends who you ask, but if your looking at the polls from Hero's, he's the most popular male character in the game, but there was a twitter post a while back that said Diamant was the most universally loved character in Engage world wide. To add salt to the wound as well. If you look up the most popular characters in Japan, Diamant is the second most popular character in that country under Alear. I get why Japan specifically would like Alear, but elsewhere? Their really hit or miss, or hated,. Alear is just a controversial character that has completely divided the fanbase, period. I hate always going back to Diamant but...Alear's and Diamant's C support. Literally Alear could not take out a SINGLE corrupted on her own and Diamant had to protect them. Alear pretty much makes Diamant look good in this game every chance they get...and it also shows within the dialog. Personally, I feel the avatar has to go. They had their time and I want a new FE game where the main character has his/her own identity. Robin was debatably the only good avatar...and they made them worse ever since, it's time to move on. *Dialog* If you forget about the cliche father death for a moment. The only part of the game that was written well AND had potential was the Brodia arc. Before and after that, it's absolute, cringy trash that takes me out of the experience. Hell, I would even argue that if Diamant's relationship was development more with his father, it COULD have been something complelling we have never seen before. A crown prince going out of his way to protect his father out of fear of not being good enough? That's sounds fricken awesome and you could have made a whole game centered around just that concept alone! Yes, the father death is super, overdone at this point, but I am in the belief that you can STILL make a father death super compelling if you do something new. That's how writing stories have worked for thousands of years, maybe longer! Put your own new ideas into it and you can have your cake and eat it too and I don't see anything wrong with that. The "Was I a good son" line was and still is the most impactful line in the whole entire game. I think part of that was because the VA for Diamant did such a good job with him. It didn't feel cringy like Alear. You felt the emotion and the turmoil of Diamant realizing that he has to kill his father. Chapter 10, to me, is the best chapter in the game because of these conversations. I...just wish the motion capture was better because, damn, those cutscenes just completely suck ass in this game and chapter 10 is the worst example of it. *Retainer Trope* I agree. The crown princes/princesses were all you needed in this game with some commoners thrown in. That's it, that's all Engage needed to do. *Character designs* Again, Brodia. They have the overall best designs because every design in the country is themed consistently. Everyones colors match, they have almost the same aesthetic or type of clothing if that makes any sense, and while I love Kegetsu's design. The problem is he does not fit in with the county of Elusia. His backstory explains he was a prince somewhere close to Solm, so to me after hearing that, his design would be better suited as a solm retainer...but the Japanese style still doesn't fit in the world of Engage and that's my biggest problem with Kegetsu's design. What sucks is, as a woman, the only really attractive males in this game (to me) are Diamant...I'll throw Kegetsu in there...that's it. Like, where are my attractive men at? I feel like FE always have several, but because a lot of the males in this game have same face syndrome, IS can't make a beefy character or a differently built character with muscles because they might have used the same template for every character. That's why the muscles on Ike in this game look so hideous. It's like they got an artist who knew who to draw women with breasts and curves...but not men with attractive proportions and muscles. How do I know this? Do not look at any of the male characters in this game with their shirt off. It's ugly and super cursed and I have seen better artwork of the male characters with their shirts off on tumbler. *Personally skils.* I agree. I have nothing really to say other than I wish many of the old mechanics where in this game. I also feel that having characters next to each other for a bonus is worthless in Engage. It's barley noticable and the two characters are never on screen together. This is a rant in itself, but having supports made sense for Awakening and Fates because you could get married and have kids. So seeing a character protect their husband, wife or child made getting those supports worth it, and it added stakes if you really cared about a particular couple or child. Engage is just not built that way and I think if marriage was completely out of the question... *in the American version anyway* Then they shouldn't of had supports at all, but that's just my take on the issue anyway. I will end this by saying I wished you talked about the music because I think Engage has the worst tracks in the whole entire series. I hate that I have to be "don't mention Brodia, don't mention Brodia"...but fricken Brodia's chapter 10 track was the only track aloud to have a choir. Not even the final battle had a choir, a literally staple to the series at this point! Like, WHAT? Ok, I'm done. Good think Nintendo only gave Engage a year of shelf life. I hate Nintendo as much as the next guy...but they knew this shit was bad, which is why Engage had one of the shortest physical copy runs before canceling them out right. Nintendo sent this game out to die on purpose. I'm pretty confident in saying that.
I think because supports are used as a world building tool they won’t get rid of them. In this game they are WAY too necessary. Holy fuck Etie’s personal skill is dogshit, and I’m mad because they’re my favorite character to use!
I used to hate Fates for its bad writing, but Engage's writing makes it look like a masterpiece in comparison. The dialogue in Engage is not just terrible but also incredibly boring, sure, some characters are good, but overall I think it's the JRPGs with the worst story I've ever played
Things I disliked: > No Paralogues. These go hand in hand with worldbuilding. The Emblem Paralogues don't count. Like, imagine a paralogue that unlocks if Ivy and Diamant are alive, and it involves getting two Elusian and Brodian armies to stand down, with rewards depending on how many enemy soldiers are still alive at the end. > The skirmish difficulty scaling. If you had one or two units that got all the experience, it over-inflates the difficulty of the skirmishes so that you can't train weaker units. If you beat the DLC too early, it's even worse because the extra characters always join prepromoted Level 1, even if you're at the end of the game. > The game doesn't properly explain SP: you still gain some SP if you use bond rings. It's always better than nothing. But the fact the game doesn't tell you this meant I got halfway through the game with a good portion of my party having no SP because I just kept Emblems on my favourite characters only. > I would also say some of the class skills are the worst in the series so far. For once, Berserker is worse than Warrior in all regards. No innate crit, the devs seriously thought Smashing weapons would be a huge deal, so they gave berserker a class skill that revolves around it. > The Lord/retainer schtick is worse here than Fates. At least in Birthright and Conquest, some retainers joined separate from their liege. In Engage, we get 10 units in the space of 4 chapters during the Solm arc for example, that you now have to integrate into your party.
While I agree that the localization for Fire Emblem games are atrocious and Engage is no different, I played the entire game in Japanese (voice and text) and let me tell you, the Japanese script is only marginally better than the localized version. The scene you described with the running dogeza is a really BAD scene no matter the version you play, it just doesn't fit what Fire Emblem spent decades establishing about itself, nor does it make any sense within the context of the game (the second prince is introduced as a badass sovereign not willing to take any risks and endangering his people by trusting possible spies, only to undo it all with a gag and spend the rest of the game portraying him as a weak-minded wimp who never shows his resolve again in the story and gets immediately sidelined by his older brother)! I am petitioning to get Japanese companies to create and enforce guidelines against localizers to prevent their stupid censorship and Woolseysm in the future, but we have to give credit where it's due and should do the same with criticism - the localization of Engage, as terrible as it is, is not the one responsible for the flaws in the writing; that blame falls on the Japanese writers! To keep it short, the humor in this game is bad in Japanese as well.
I think that initial Alcryst scene was done really early in development, and they just never bothered to change it. Being a Lapis fan, I noticed that she's wildly different in just that scene. She looks mad the whole time, and says, "If you can't dodge one arrow, you aren't worthy to enter. Here, the weak serve the strong." It's the complete opposite of her actual personality, and that tough-guy attitude never shows up for even one line of dialogue anywhere else. I like dorky, easily-flustered Lapis much more.
@@MidwestArtMan I really hated her for that first dialog and didn't realise what an awesome character she is until I played her and watched her supports. She's a completely different person.
@@MidwestArtMan I personally would have liked this example of Brodia’s “might makes right” mindset in a character. Might JUST be a personal thing though.
I would like to add another thing that FE Engage did wrong: The Paired Endings How did it screw that up? Simple, by making it so *ONLY ALEAR* gets paired endings. This EXACERBATES past problems of characters that only have endings with the Avatar, because now EVERYONE only has endings with the Avatar. And paired endings are among the things that can GREATLY influence the replay value of a Fire Emblem game. Wanting to know how things go with this and that unit get paired up and such things. And Alear falls into the old problem of the paired ending being pretty much the same no matter who he/she ends up with aside from the partner's name, like in Awakening. The ONLY true difference between ANY paired ending is with Alfred. Since if he doesn't end up with Alear, he *DIES* from his illness. Truly, THAT point feels like the unholy fusion of multiple things you listed.
I was very much bothered by this too for multiple reasons. Firstly, Alear is going to outlive everyone by thousands of years, so why have a marriage system for them at all. Secondly *IT'S NOT EVEN MARRIAGE ." When you pair Alear up with someone, it's a symbol of trust, not marriage, which at that point, why even have it, and lastly. In the Japanese version of the game, Alear DOES marry whoever you pair them up with, but everywhere else, it was changed to "friendship." Even though you can marry in 3H as well. I feel like they butchered that too because you don't even marry until after you beat the game. Again, why have it at all.
@@binxthebinx6575 But remember that 3H still has paired endings for other units that can greatly influence how their stories end (just look at Lysithea) while Engage just has Alear whose paired endings boil down to "Alear ruled Elyos fairly and (insert unit name here) was there at his/her side", something that we had moved on from since we left the 3DS.
@@lunatic0verlord10 That's true too and I'm shocked that they didn't continue this in Engage. It's just a complete misfire all around, but knowing this game. Even if there were paired endings with everyone. The english translation would have changed it to be "a bond of trust" not "marriage." The english translation for almost all of Alear's S rank supports were so utterly butchered for the worst that I don't even know if I would want paired endings in this game if the translation team was going to change stuff that drastically.
@@binxthebinx6575 Yeah, this game is, writing-wise, the worst game of all. No wonder this is the first FE game to sell less than the previous one, compared to how each mainline game since Awakening would always outsell the previous one.
Ah yes, Shulk is a photoshopped Little Mac. I like Engage, but I do agree with a lot of these points. However, I do have a few criticisms: - Mauvier was clearly with the Hounds to protect Veyle. Like with Marni, the reason he cares so much is never really explained, but it's there. - Etie's personal 40% Str growth is actually on the high end for the cast. It's only beaten by Amber, Panette, and Rosado at 45%, and Madeline alone at 50%. The Bld criticism is legit, though.
Another thing to say about the writing feeling A.I generated how they handled Chapters 10 and 11. At the end of 10, the party is trapped, but at the beginning of 11, we are miraculously outside. Somehow, the time crystal is in Veyels possession. We defeated a ring-bearing enemy let's get the ring, oh wait, no, Veyel can somehow pause time and take the ring, which isn't how the time stop works for us. Oh, look, it's Ivy, and she somehow stole the time crystal from Veyle, but we can't take the rings from fallen enemies now because...
CONTEXT POST The reason why Alear is worshipped in Engage is due to their connection with Lumera who was a divine dragon that spend years trying to bring peace to the land, and not only do she has Stewards of the Dragon looking after her, but also Alear who is her child. There is also Alfred and Celine who would visit Alear when their asleep. Also Dragons are awesome! Corrin was seen as a sibling for most of the story for both Conquest and Birthright, Heck in Revelation both sides turn on him and he had to fight to get both nations to work together and even than it was only near the end of each VER; after proving himself time and time they listen to him. Byleth was born no heart beat and in Jeralt's diary it explains their condition and its for that reason why they come off "empty" It was not till Sothis awakening that Byleth emotion's and expression start to appear.
Two main reasons : - Marketing was not good. They just slap Fire emblem and thought it would sell. 3 Houses Marketing was insane , there was literally updates about it and trailers about the game and what "SOLD" the game to everyone was the "TIME SKIP TRAILER" where all the lords were at each other throats and it was so hype - Secondly is because is really hard to follow up the "best selling Fire Emblem game" which was 3 Houses. Like sure gameplay wise Engage might feel like an upgrade but story wise and how it was portrayed it felt like a big downgrade. From having 3 and (one hidden story) and played with a big cast of characters that were set up for each house , to being lock in to a main character who is like a Corrin 2.0 lol. - Engage might have sold better had they focus more on their marketing on having a lot more throwbacks to previous FE games , show a lot more of the game , and like show a really "engaging moment" like 3 Houses did on their time skip trailer.
@@henryreturns1397 it also doesn’t help that engage’s story tried to be a best of fire emblem Awakening and Fates plot points, but somehow did them even worse.
@DoggyP00 I'm just saying that the first thing I thought when I first saw the game was that I thought it was some weird spinoff and not a normal sequel.
@@BigmanDogs yup, the random thought you had based on your imaginary version of a game you didn't bother to look at for more than 2 seconds is the sole reason for why it failed
The alcryst scene is 100% an absolutely horrible portrayal and the absolute dumbest writing and is a prime example of how out of touch, especially coming from three houses, IS was with their playerbase in terms of story quality.
I'll give Etie this much: Archery is a deceptively strength-dependant fighting style. A bow's full power and range requires an archer strong enough to properly draw it, and war bows are monstrously hefty. The thin, speedy archer archetype (while perfectly valid for good old rule-of-cool) feels overplayed and is not true to what those weapons require from their wielder. If anything, I'm surprised that FE doesn't have more strength-based archers, especially as that in-game stat largely dictates their damage output.
Thin, speedy archers do in fact work better in personal combat, if not in army-based fights. You can be strong enough to draw a warbow a relatively small number of times whilst also being slim and agile enough to outrun a pursuer and do spinning jump shots. And really, Three Houses is the only Fire Emblem that has any kind of large unit combat. The Suikoden series represents the different demands of personal versus army combat by using two completely different battle systems for both, natch.
Learning and then being unable to unsee that the MC (and I believe) the Lords and Retainers her designed by a VTuber artist. Really killed it for me, in non animated cutscenes they moved like VTuber model, a janky cheap one at that. And Hortensia and Ettie are just Iron Mouse and Buff Pup with just enough changed to not get a copyright claim from their agencies
To make it even worse, when people ask the vtuber artist why? She said the director didn't give any direction (really I hardly believe that) so she just draw things randomly she didn't even know the thing about the country or background story.
One of the biggest grievance i have with Engage is the fact it introduces the idea behind the Zero Emblem during the final chapter of the game and we get no real explanation about it only to be given a story dlc and then have it not come up whatsoever during said story DLC. Logically, the dlc should have focused on that lingering question from the main story: The Zero Emblem. What is the Zero Emblem, who even is it, what does it do, etc. Instead of getting that, we get a DLC story that introduces two new characters who didn't exist in any shape or form outside of being children of Sombron and as well as good versions of the hounds, all to simply be playable characters once you finish the DLC story as well as be a sort of explanation for where the Emblem Bracelets came from but that's it. Where was with Fates' story dlc effectively being the aftermath of the Birthright and Conquests routes and focusing on the children units, Three Houses' story dlc focusing on the Ashen Wolves, Sitri and Jeralt's past at the Monestary, and SoV's story DLC being focused on the events prior to the start of the game regarding the Deliverance's beginning and the backstory regarding those characters, nearly everything regarding Engage's Story DLC was created for the purpose of having a story DLC because they likely felt obligated since it's been a thing for the past FE games since Awakening and not because they wanted to answer any of the lingering questions the story of Engage would have left the player with like, again, the Zero Emblem.
You raised the cost being a major reason for both similar character design and the inability of crafting different scene in case a main character die (so you can't really have them be important in the plot) First of all, crafting different scene in case of character death isn't that hard nor expensive. The main cost would be the voice acting but seeing how heavy the voice acting already is, I suspect the cost wouldn't be so high. The other thing you need to prepare is the dialogue, and for that you need a narrative designer. Safe to say, any Fire Emblem should have at least one, but seeing the resultat of Engage story, I'd be curious about how many they were and their experience. As for similar character design, I can accept that a bit more, seeing how long and costly character 3D models, rigs and animation could cost. Making a different model would imply A LOT MORE works, to make it usable. HOWEVER, there is tools and smart ideas that can be useful to reduce that cost. Some were used, like the fact they kept a similar face for each character, so you won't need to make a whole set of facial expression. But my problem is that, despite the budget friendly choices to reduce the cost of making these characters, I don't feel like this budget was used smartly elsewhere, especially about the talking animation and emotes, which could have make theses characters less robotics. The rest of your analysis on the accessories characters are wearing is highly probable. I wish they would have created at least more bodies to convey multiple character types at least My main question would be : what is the budget of this game? I feel like the minimum was spent to make it marketable and to raise as much profit as they could. And even if that was the case, I'd wish they settle on a good artistic direction and start keeping assets for the next game. One thing that is under appreciated in the GBA games is that cool animation made in Binding blade were reused in Blazing Sword, allowing for unique animation to be created for this game AND for Sacred Stones. Just like you, I feel distant from this game and really wish they could pull out something great again for the next game Sorry for the wall of text, and thank for anyone brave enough to read it xD
i want to enjoy engage so badly but i am so beyond burnt out and exhausted of it. the entire game feels like its embarassed of itself so it refuses to have any cutscenes or depth bcuz it doesnt wanna tell you whats going on fates may of had a "bad story" but dang it had heart and told you every bit of its lore and worldbuilding, it cared about its world. engage just wants to get the adventure over with. maybe ill enjoy engage more when its not "the newest fire emblem game" but until then its painful to try enjoying 😭
Did we play the same game? Im not a fan of either, but fates worldbuilding is argueably much worse than engage. We hardly know anything about fateslandia. We dont even know the name of the continent. We know only a tiny bit about the culture of hoshido and noir. Valla is a mess. Its character building was pretty good though. While many of its characters fell into the trap of being one note, many had supports that built depth to them. Its no three houses in that regard, but its still alright.
I had a thought how to fix avatars, give them a set of questions in the beginning for boons and banes, sex, class, that sort of thing. Then have them pick a background like one of four like orphan noble clergy or soldier something like that, and just make their supports have dialogue options. You have agency, customization, the story is intact, and you can insert in a way that feeds your head cannon without pole jocking the whole time like you’re a celebrity
The first half is actually how you picked Kris' boons and banes in FE12 (past, present, future), improving on that and having it tie more into the avatar themselves would be a huge step forward
Engage as a whole is this enigma that teeters between what makes an FE Game good and bad. Yeah it's the most interesting and engaging (haha funny joke) gameplay in the series alongside a few breakout stars from the cast, but they somehow did everything else wrong. I believe we can get a good story and good gameplay sometime soon, whether it be whatever the next FE remake is or just a new title on the switch 2. Talks of this game died a year ago, and this game has way overstayed it's welcome. Hoping for some good news at The Game Awards.
Mauvier is only part of the hounds to guard Veyle. He's basically the Vander equivalent and has a protective relationship with the normal Veyle, the same way Vander guards Alear. Alear and Veyle don't turn into dragons because Alears dragon stone shatters when he dies to Sombron in the final act, and Veyle destroyed / hid her own stone away in an attempt to seperate herself from her father because she wants to be nothing like him. I think Veyles reasoning is explained in her bond conversation with Corrin As for Alears design, its basically explained that Alears actual hair colour is naturally red, because Alear is a fell dragon, not divine. After Alears first death to Sombron in the war 1000 years ago, Lumera uses her "divine dragon powers" to revive and heal him. Which is what causes part of his hair to turn blue when he reawakens. When Alear is revived yet again as an emblem, his appearance resembles Marth (the first fire emblem lord) and is finally completely divine. Honestly, I have a feeling that Engage will be the end of the modern fire emblem era. It references and pays homage to all past games in the series, and the game ends with the emblems leaving Elyos. The next fire emblem game is probably going to be extremely different from what we're used to. Possibly mass 3d exploration, and if its a remake of Geneology, I wouldn't be surprised if exploration is done on horseback. Just addressing some comments made in the video!
About Etie: 1st of all, her personality in Japanese engage is completely different, the same way effie was changed, she's a Ojou sama archetype in JP that likes to train, Vs in English just being Haha im strong woman. With that in mind, her design makes perfect sense. 2nd Etie has one of the highest str growths in the game, only beaten by Amber and Panette (not counting dlc), who only beat her by 5%. If you compare a 10/1 warrior etie with a 10/1 alcryst, she will have +7 str over him, while being slower by 2 speed points. And even in her "canon" promotion of sniper she beats him by 3 str points at the same level once promoted. Her biggest issue is just Sniper itself being a bad class in engage, which is why Warrior etie is so good as she only loses out on the brave bow, while maximizing her STR. 3rd Etie having low build is part of her character, as her deal is working out as much as boucheron, but not even having any of the gains that he naturally has, where she straight up accuses him of steroid use (once again JP only), as units this is reflected in her having high str and low build, while Boucheron has the 4th lowest str growth in the game and the highest Build growth in the game. I'd say of the firene squad, alfred is the worst character done gameplay wise, as he legit has nothing (besides luck) over Louis, but Etie is a clear case of what the devs intended, with the only possible issue with it, is Sniper just being a bad class, feel like if warrior was her promoted class, more people would have seen her strengths.
So basically the edges were sanded right off of her which leads to major misunderstanding and dissonance? I was always wondering why her cold demeanor in posing, expression, what have you seemed at odds with her attitude in dialogue, I guess I have my answer to that.
All of your points are solid. The one I feel the most is the one with most of the cast being either a royal or one of their two retainers. That and your point on world building. Honestly, it feels like Engage just took everything Fates did either bad or mediocre and cranked it up to 11. At least Fates had a fun my castle system that took about a minute to do all of your activities in and it didn't have fishing. Only thing I liked was the gameplay, which was fun... until I feel tempted to keep a spreadsheet handy of all of my characters internal levels so I can do the side battles without getting curb stomped by the over-leveled enemies that zerg rush you. What were they thinking with that?
Well ALL THAT But also, the Model are the SAME Like, the Base of the model Are the same This tells you they design thebody and artivulation first, then edited each with unnecessary add ons. 3 houses has VERY diferent body proportion, this one dosnt, even characters that are "smaller" have the same proportio s, indicating is just a size down model
I can ignore most of Engage's issues. But the two things I hate the most about it, that keep me from replaying it, are the lack of deployment slots, and the ludicrous amount of reinforcements they spam you with in the late game.
I think there are definitely some games that do both of these things way worse than Engage, but I have the same exact issues with Fates and Hector Hard Mode, so I totally see your point tbh.
This threw me off as well. In the positive video, he was definitely referring to the gameplay mechanics felt like FE. In this, one, I think he's talking about the overall presentation of the world, story, characters.
On the point of personal skills: I've always felt that there should be a way to boost them somehow, either through making them become a Personal Skill+ upon reaching an internal level of 20, training them up through some in-game tutor or having story sidequests that could get them to be boosted, maybe even through a combination of these or other methods, depending on the character itself. That way the main character gets it mainly get theirs through story progression, like how promotions used to work before, and they could get the most overpowered ones to compensate getting them later the everyone else, other characters in the meathead archetype could have a requirement of participating in 50 arena battles and winning in order to get theirs boosted, aloof or dismissive nobles could come to terms with their responsibilities through sidequests, the overprotective retainer could get it so their skill that makes it so they jump in the way of oncoming attacks gets a guaranteed defensive skill proc after jumping in to defend an ally after doing so X amount of times and watching a cutscene with their noble chastising them for their recklessness, etc. This way personal skills don't have the problem of either falling off in the mid to late game because the original skill isn't cutting it anymore or that they start off so insanely powerful that they become mandatory deployments in the early game but fall off later because the unit's stats aren't up to snuff anymore. And it adds in more flavor for your Strategy/Social Sim game.
...and I guess I'll bring up the four hounds too. Marni and Griss were broken people who were indoctrinated into this. Marni was abandoned by her mom as a kid at a fell dragon church, Griss was a wretched disciple who hurt himself to please the dragon god. Mauvier is the only one who defects as he's a full grown adult who swore allegiance to Veyle, not the fell dragon himself. Zephia is allied with Sombron because she respects power, and because she wants a child- living for thousands of years means seeing and forgetting countless faces and none of them mattering in the end. A child to give her company and who could stand the test of time. The villains aren't to be sympathized with, they're a bunch of wackos who are crazy and enjoy burning down orphanages but they still have character and goals. Zephia was not "redeemed", she just found closure in getting to know what love felt like after a life of closing herself off from it. They're goofy cartoonish villains who are really just messed up people. And that's a step above shallow.
@@TheMaestroMizerous If you want a gameplay/story reason, you're out of luck, since the most likely reason is because voicing more characters is more expensive. I'm no expert here, but considering how much better than 3H the graphics are, I would assume the budget is there.
There's nothing wrong with a "goofy cartoonish villain" - more real-life villains fit that definition than don't. As Terry Pratchett said, there's no such thing as moral grey, only black that stays black, and white that's got a bit grubby. Sometimes that white can get VERY grubby, but a lot of evil people out there are gonna stay that way.
I never understood the emphasis on Engage’s gameplay. It’s fun at first, but the rings and the silly over the top transformations totally tank the enjoyment in the later chapters.
There’s another glaring problem with Engage. It’s a really bad crossover game. All the previous lords do it show up as the McGuffin of the day. There’s no going into their worlds, battling enemies from their, see some of their allies. Just a paralogue and the “dark emblems” which couldn’t even bother to model their villians. You could swap out the lords for generic legendary heroes and nothing would change. Also Engage’s nostalgia concept would be novel ,with it wasn’t for the fact that every Fire Emblem after Awakening that isn’t Three Houses and Hopes had one.
To be fair, they probably had nowhere near the budget to make the game long enough to explore all the Emblem's worlds. FE games usually feature about 24-30 chapters, for featuring 13 different worlds, you'd easily need at least another 26-39 chapters, which could potentially more than double the length of the game. And at that point, it would feel like heavy bloat.
Easy, just throw away all nobles and retainers. Make MC and his guards/stuards as a starting party and all other units in the game will be lords from another games. You go into worlds, like two chapters on lord each, and beat big bad in the last one. Simple and pretty.
designed to have ng+ but didn't have ng+ could have allowed for early access to seals to change out builds use of skills inherited from later emblems to allow someone like Bunnet actual relevance in his niche from Celica's Favourite Food skill because why would you inherit that on him late game when you get her back (putting aside why you'd use him at all) the emblem rings gatcha system the starvation of seals early game. Its unhinged how long you have to wait before you have a chance to promote
I have a discord friend who keeps insisting Engage is better than 3 houses saying 3H sucks because it's all built around and focused on a silent protagonist and that the rest of the cast's progression tied to them when no that's no what hapens at all. Was it mistake to make Byleth a silent protagonist because they were leaning hard into persona as inspiration yes and 3Houses has many flaws and that's one of its bigger ones but the universe is not solely focused on Byleth and the characters go through plenty of growth without them. I can't say the same for engage which seems to solely exist to worship Dragon Jesus
I 110% agree with every one of your criticism with Engage but if I may add one more that may seem controversial, but is necessary that makes Engage "good" but is actually bad: the gameplay. Yes, the new mechanics are interesting and give a new spin on Fire Emblem; even if the Break, Chain Attack, and Smash gimmicks remind one of Xenoblade if they've played that. However, the gameplay is SO focused on Emblems and their abilities that it's an uphill battle to have the characters you want to invest in learn the abilities you want that it's a time sink to even learn them, not to mention that it's near impossible to do a no Emblem run when you start the game because the tutorial battle incentivises you to use the Marth Emblem. You can try and go to the Arena to learn abilities faster but that costs resources which are limited in quantity as well as money which is much more limited. Say what you want about the DLC of the past Fire Emblem games but at least three of the DLCs for Awakening and Fates gave you an opportunity to earn oodles of gold, weapons to sell for gold, and/or experience sponges to invest in every character you wanna try out. In Engage? Good luck with wanting to try out every character cause of the terrible ass level scaling overworld enemies have even with Tiki's exp. booster ability. And don't even get me started on the revival stone mechanic bosses start to have after a few chapters in... Yes... Fire Emblem has always had a problem of how to handle their bosses, however, lore and strategy wise it makes sense that they would mostly just sit around on a fort/castle waiting for the others to beat them: they're literally the last line in defense and for guarding the area they're in and if they moved anywhere else they'd essentially give up their postiion and surrender to their foes. Yes, the revival stone mechanic not only ensures that they can move around a little more loosely making them more dangerous and lethal, but they're giving up castle/fort benefits to ensure they don't go down. Even in the past when Fire Emblem bosses started moving, they at least made sure they had monstrous stats, abilities, and/or weapons making them a genuine threat to the player. In Engage, you start to question how and why antagonistic characters you've already beaten with multiple revival stones are back with more revival stones. And yes, this problem does extend to the DLC which exacerbates this flaw even further.
I also think the gameplay is overhyped to hell and back. Is it fun? Sure, but there are still issues. Like for example, if one of your units die mid game, there is no easy way to level up a lower level unit if you need to. So in theory, if everyone you used died late game, your fucked and have to start over. I also don't like the arena because it's never enough, and to top that off. You never have enough SP to do anything. You CAN grind for SP, but every map in the game can take an hour or more to complete one way and they never give you enough SP to get anything worth wild with skills. Yes, YES! I WANT TO PLAY MAPS FOR HOURS AND HOURS FOR DAYS ON END UNTIL I CAN GET HOLD OUT+++ FOR A SINGLE UNIT. THAT SOUNDS AMMAAAZZZING! *Sarcasm* Lastly, like Mangs brought up recently in his streams, you spend way more time in the hub than actually playing the game and because of that, it's a complete chore. I also don't love the breaking mechanic, though it is an interesting idea in concept...but the supports. This is the biggest issue I have because like, they did this how many times already??? If I put Diamant and Alcryst together on the map, HAVE THEM FIGHT TOGETHER. The chain attack animation is such a cop out when Awakening and Fates did this better in spades. HOW DO YOU FORGET THIS??? IT BOTHERS ME! XO At That point, why have supports at all. There are no stakes because you cannot marry or have children like awakening and fates. So when you protect someone, it feels earned since you care about them. Engage has none of that and because character development between the cast is almost nonexistent. When someone dies or by some chance protects another character, you don't give a shit and that's the main problem I have with the supports in general. Hands down the number one issue I have with the gameplay in Engage.
My own main issue with Alear is how the game keeps hammering at the point that they are a divine dragon, then you are a fel dragon, then a mix of both due to Lumera giving you her divine power... But even with ALL THAT, Alear never does anything related to being a typical dragon, not even as a cool ending cinematic or just as a one time transformation for the final fight! They keep calling you a dragon, but never let you do anything that FEELS dragon-like. Hell, they make you into an Emblem, but you still get no actual dragon gameplay. And how cool would it have been if Alear ended up as a new form of dragon, made up of a combination of fel and divine energy, focussing more on your dragon aspects, instead of just making you an Emblem, the "fire emblem"! Not giving Alear a dragon form in any way with how often the dragon thing is brought up, is like saying that someone in a movie is the best sniper on the planet, but outside of carrying their rifle on their back the entire movie, and people talking about how good they are, we never actually see them shoot. Alear just feels like a dragon in name only, and as a way to make them plot essential...
one of the more annoying things in the last few games are dragons that don't transform and might as well be human. And when they do transform like Corrin. it's usually not the best class they can have. They give Corrin a special sword afterall.
Tbh, I think that was the point, they wanted a story that felt like they took every fire emblem trope into a blender and made a game. It was, in a sense, a celebration of fire emblem, brining back all the lords, tons of maps and music from those games, while having a story that feels like asking an AI to generate a fire emblem script after only reading every fire emblem game. Did it work well, not really, but it felt like thats what they were going for.
I wonder how much different Engage would feel if it wasn't actually an FE game but a spinoff into a different genre like a fighter or a beat-em-up or another Warriors title.
21:59 The point of Etie as a character is that she wants to get muscle but no matter how much she trains she can't achieve it so I think it makes sense that she doesn't have much build from a gameplay perspective.
In the case of Mauvier, he was with the hounds because they were serving Veyle under Sombron and he already knew her before that. I'm thinking he was close with Marni since Marni and Veyle were kind of similar
I would had made the 4 hounds , other surviving children of sombron desperate to gain lord sombron approval and validation , and prove their not useless
@25:36 so the DLC goes both ways - you have a breakpoint in maddening that if you do DLC before then, its doable and easy. If you wait too long, the scaling switches everything into impossible mode.
On the Mauvier and the 4 Hounds thing, it's from memory so I'm not 100% sure but I believe he mentions that he, like one or two of the others, was raised by Sombron's church. It's not delved into super deep but he grew up in an environment where he was taught what is right and wrong by people who worship Sombron. He has doubts at times but he's in the 4 Hounds because he got promoted there over time.
TLDR : The Monastery >>>> The floating castle For me the floating platform was alot more disappointing than the monastery, primarily cause it was so disconnected from the rest of the world. The design was barren and the colors where pretty meh. Also it being flying kind of made me wonder where the merchants are getting their goods and stuff. It never truly felt like it belongs in the world, even worse than the My castle, which at least had the point of being removed from the rest of the world to hide. On the flip side, you cannot separate the Monastery from Fodland. Rhea and her family have been in this land day one and its influence is felt everywhere, from the knights, to the charities to the market place and most importantly the students. We see a dozen differing sides and opinions just walking though the place. We see how the history of this place was built up over centuries and how it comes to influence the political and spiritual side of Fodland. That's not even touching on the beautiful design, how it suddenly blends that it is both church, school and fortress all in one. I normally only dip in once or twice a month, so I never go the fatigue of running around, even after my 5-6th playthrough. Speaking of running around, all the characters normally have something to say about the event that just happened and what it going to happen at the end of the month, which helps flesh them out without needing supports. Meanwhile in engage, I stopped speaking to my units cause they never had anything interesting to say.
Absolutely laughable take The monastery is easily the worst thing that ever happpened in the franchise and somehow is more of a time waster than ambush spawn
As an Elibe fan im required to poont out that Nabata is the Desert. Arcadia is the village. On the other things though... Yeah thats true. Didnt even notice the design thing until you pointed it out. But i thinj the biggest thing that killed this was that not only were the characters redesigned but even the story was! You're basically playing through both Awakening and Fates all over again. Not only that you were playing through a version of Fates and Awakening that had nothing of why it was good. Awakening had you retreating after a massive battle against the Plegians in an effort to rescue Emmeryn only to realize it failed. Engage had... You somehow getting away after having all of your Emblems taken away like... How, how did you all get away? Fates, oh look its the "My parent got used by the bad guy just like Mikoto, Sumeragi and Arete" Also the hero worship got to the point that it was already very annoying. I liked it better when it was Mark, youre just a bystander who happened to be here. Which i personally think is jow ot should have been done. For the characters i also feel that the problem was just as you said, they're one and done. Not like Elibe where Legault gave the group suggestions. As for the DLC though, yeah, just, what were they thinking? In Hard mode the final DLC level takes forever to make with no room for error while playing it on normal allows you to 2 turn the level. I just hope that the next game learns from this to not repeat it.
I feel like a lot of people forget just how much Elibe's characters play into the story. Yeah, the supports hide a lot of interesting (and important) info, but Marcus withdrawing instead of dying since he shows up in between chapter frequently to give info/directions, Legault guiding the crew, Nino and Jaffar on occasion, it feels like most of the characters can play a role, and offer their knowledge and expertise to the Lords to guide them. IDK tho, i may just be glazing FE7 tbh
A lot of this is opinion based which is fair enough but allow me to make a few corrections to claims which aren't. Bear in mind I don't give two hoots about story or lore but even my glancing over it seems to be a little more informed than some of the takes made here. In regards to the four hounds Mauviers motivations with Marni are actually brought up in his supports with Veyle, infact practically all his support chains are about his motivations and regrets about the four hounds. Zephia and Griss wasn't meant to be a love story, it was meant to be about how her one driving force was her desire to have a family and the irony that she didn't realize that Griss and the hounds were basically the children/family she wanted the whole time, although I agree the death scene goes on too long. They explain the lack of Dragonstone situation with Alear and Veyle. Veyle talks about how as long as your Dragonstone is intact you are still alive, and buried hers a long time ago. This is further brought up in the xenologue where if Nel dies her Dragonstone breaks. In the case of alear she gives her stone to Veyle before her 1000 year sleep, this stone then breaks the first time that alear dies in game. This is why neither of them turn into dragons, whether or not this is a good idea or not is leaning into opinion territory. Same face while bordering on opinion I will say, what would happen if you layered the faces of practically any of the casts of fire emblem games A minor point but you say Etie ONLY has a 40% strength growth, this is the second highest personal strength growth in the entire game so I'm not too sure what you mean by this. The build point works though however it was kind of done as a joke between retainers that she tries really hard while boucheron does nothing and is stacked, their supports are all about this. Etie was ripped pretty hard by the localization team and if you take a look at some of her japanese supports is one of the characters with the most changes outside of goldmary and rosado. I don't really understand why your last point was it doesn't feel like fire emblem when in your video yesterday you said it feels like a more classic fire emblem, which one is it? All in all this video was much of what I expected, complaints about visuals and writing as opposed to actual gameplay. Which is probably one of the main dividing parts of engage on how much the individual values those two things over each other. As a side note if I engage defender numero uno had to say what I think engage did wrong it would be 1. severe lack of marketing, 2. Suspect UI issues (surprised there was no mention of this) 3. Relying on a core fan base of long term fans of the series as opposed to the vastly larger new fanbase brought in by three houses. 4. Putting the DLC on the world map as opposed to in a menu, fooling people into thinking its part of the main game itself and destroying their playthroughs
The UI issues were horrendous. They literally have to let you inherit skills in the arena in an update because no one wanted to go to the ring chamber just to inherit skills
1: "See a characters supports to view their motivation" is bad game design. Supports are optional. A characters motivations should be explained in the main story, especially with a major antagonist like Mauvier. 2: That's fair. I still think they just didn't want to spend budget animating a dragon-form, but maybe that's just me. 3: For the GBA games they would look similar due to how sprites are confined to a certain row of pixels, but for some of the later games, they would look very different. 4: Fair enough. 5: Engage feels more like Classic FE than most modern FE games in terms of pure gameplay, however, it's aesthetic presentation and feel is more akin to Tokyo Mirage Sessions than Classic FE. I could have worded this better though. 6: Wow can't believe Speedwings is negative about Engage. It's truly joever ヅ JK ty for the comment. We'll probably always disagree on Engage, but that's fine. We can at least take some joy in knowing there are at least 2 fans out there who like the game ;D
Oh yeah that UI can be super ass. The class selection in particular is something I actively despise. An incredible class system that is squished into a corner of the screen despite needing much more space.
@@Mangs1337 I actually agree with the majority of your negative points on things like story and presentation etc. The difference is these barely effect my enjoyment of the game compared to the parts I do value.
i have played through most of the fire emblem games a few times, 3 houses i have 30+ playthroughs cause i very much enjoy the games faults and all, but when it comes to engage, just 1 playthrough bore me to hell, the characters were very bleh at best, the fact that alfred's story is the same no matter what you do feels so bad to me, outside of using tiki to buff everyones stat growth i either feel extremely overpowered or massively underpowered. The support dialogues even more so with the emblems themselves are frankly wasted, characters says 1 line emblem says 1 line then character says they are greatful they are here as an A rank support like why even have it there, i honestly stopped doing supports cause they had very little to even talk about and felt like it took away from the whole game, which sucks cause 3 houses i still listen to all support dialogues even after the 30th playthrough. sure the game looks cool, but I dont play fire emblem for the looks 3 houses wasnt great looking compared to other games on the switch but the characters and story were some of the best parts of gaming for me in the last few years, this game felt like a Saturday morning cartoon dubbed and edited by funimation, frankly i wouldnt be surprised if the swords were turned into finger guns ala early yugioh, i was so hyped of this game and it had a lot of potential even more so with alear being "evil" in the past, almost felt like we could have been given a choice to turn evil again, but no power of friendship and all. there are fun fun parts of the game, yes the battles are some of the more fun i have had and the engage system is a lot of fun, but when i can play fates more than once and enjoy my time and i cant even fathom playing through this game a second time, really hurts and disappoints me. sorry for the rambling.
Diamant has everything set up to be a protogonist for the game. He even has a dead parent trope. Not to mention he’s one of the few characters that are actually acting like they are in the middle of a war
"The awful VTuber designs of Engage..." YES! GODDAMNIT YES! That. That exactly. Look at 19:39 look at the contrast between Ike's design and the rest of the characters. It's not even my favorite rendition of the second best Ike design. (Path of Radiance Ike looks better, fight me) Same thing for other emblems. Sigurd's design is gold, it's simple, and it's awesome. When I hear about a new Fire Emblem, look at a trailer and see the clown parade that's going to serve as my cast, I don't buy the damn game. The writing and the character personalities sealed the deal once more of it made its way online.
Honestly, I think the best way to fix the retainer AND avatar worship in one go is make the Avatar a voiceless retainer, establish early on a simple reason for tagging along with the Main Lord, and leave it there, no other dialogue needed, if the Avatar needs to be Game Over on Death, make the story partially be the Avatar's observation of the Main Lord. At the most for other retainers, have a single "Named Bodyguard" retainer per major Royal character.
Unless I’m misremembering, wasn’t Mauvier in the group because of his affection for good Veyle? Now why doesn’t he take her and run? He either doesn’t think it will work or knows Veyle is dumb and cares for Sombron too much.
The villains in the game can be summarized like so:
"Damn, I've been defeated, but I can't fall here. I must make my retreat"
It's like they didn't want to add disposable mooks
@@MK7219000 Funny because before their appearance, every boss was just a random enemy with a slightly unique model
@@Rodri34451 True, but they basically disappeared as soon as the important villains showed up, you need the mooks so that the actual villains have some sort of "Hype"
The name Brodia still cracks me up, because it's Bro country.
DudeBrodia
Fun Fact, Jin from Cyberbots and Marvel vs Capcom has a Mech called Blodia
Lythos the lit country😂
Sounds like Barney Stinson wrote it.
I'm so glad someone brought up Etie. Why is her personality a gym bro and yet she's dressed like a Mario princess and has stats befitting of one.
I mean she does at least have the third highest strength in the game after Amber and Panette so her strength training does show, and she does have a smaller body even with her training so the low build fits too. It would have been much better to just start her in Fighter and Boucheron in Archer since their growths match those better. Archer has horrible bases which tank her starting stats (She only has 3 less base strength than Fogato 9 maps earlier) and Boucheron has incredible high skill and speed like Snipers normally do and horrible strength even in Warrior. Etie probably also should of had Strength Taker as a personal skill to match her personality except they didn't like personal skills in this game.
Having Etie by a gym bro, have the best strength of any female unit, and still be mediocre in the strength department would be far too based for this game.
It definitely feels like they designed the retainers first and assigned them a personality and role. Most of them do not match the aesthetics of their royal and country with Solm being the biggest culprit. Like you’re telling me that Bunette is from the desert nation?
Because early game archers have to suck, as is tradition.
@@SerpenTyxIf they wanted to make her bad then they failed at that.
I am 100% certain, the Engage team decided, " This is classic FE units are expendable in the game, so they must have no plot relevance" to avoid writing 200 alternative dialogues in the case of a main character dying.
Imagine if Three Houses did this. Dorthea was just a girl who sung. Mercedes had no relationship with her brother and was only obsessed with the church. No one would care about these characters because they would only be units to throw away.
FE need to give up the actual "death" part of permadeath and just make the characters permanently crippled when their HP hits zero so they can still do story stuff and be done with it. They only ever tried to make it make sense in one game and that was one of the ones that had a direct sequel making their efforts useless.
@@TheMaestroMizerous Me, who played Golden Deer: Mercedes has a brother?
@@DisplayThisOkay some of the older games actually do that, at least for certain characters with "plot relevance" (ie. Marcus in FE6&7. Its only noted in their "death" quotes where they mention "withdrawing" instead of making death noises lol)
@@DisplayThisOkay Better and more impactful: Don't be lazy. Go all-out. Make every character (Yes, that means no main Lord who fights!) killable. Make them all plot-relevant. Make the plot ADAPT to who lives and dies.
Will it take work? Yes, yes it will. But with a cohesive script and a main story that relies on the player character tactician lord with everyone else just being the army, you can make it work.
One thing that will always strike me as utterly hilarious as to how bad the world building is, but also the choices surrounding Pepsi-man, is the reveal about them. Pepsi-man is dragon Jesus as far as the world building goes, and most everyone worships them as such. Then comes along the revelation that they are actually a bad dragon and not Jesus dragon. And no one in the cast has any issues, 3/4s of the planet worship Pepsi-man, and there is no crisis of faith or questioning of reality with what should be an earth shattering revelation. One that shows their worldview was a LIE. Everyone just kinda shrugs and ignores it mostly. Hell Pepsi-man doesn't prior to this feel all that special or divine for that matter. At least Byleth had a built in god mechanic with the times pulse, Pepsi-man needs a shinny rock to do that...which reminds me, why is that rock just glossed over with little elaboration? A rock the manipulates time is something anyone would kill for, never mind nations.
If I remember correctly, that type of rock can only be made by mage dragons, aka zephia, and most other people probably have no idea that it exists. It's something that was supposed to be a secret emergency button for veyle, but for some reason she accidentally dropped it after killing lumera.
Basically, the reason why people don't fight over it is because no one really knows it exists, or that it could only be made by zephia, who is not on their side and certainly wouldn't just hand one over to them.
Most of the cast didn't really worship Alear that seriously, since they had been worshipping Lumera for the last 1000 years and Alear kinda came out of nowhere, so there was not that much emotional attachment towards worshipping him, barring Ivy and the party dude whose religious practices were already quite different from the main stream. Most importantly, everyone who learned the truth had already been through thick and thin with Alear and even a blind man could see how different he was compared to Sombron.
@@Edagui97 Actually they kind of did! Firene being HEAVILY Devotee to the Divine Dragon's Royal Family visited Alear when they were resting, Note that Celine when she calms down recognizes Alear immediatly as she and Alfred HAVE visited! Diamant even mentions seeing them as well! Alcyst likely was too stressed from watching the border, or was left behind to watch the Castle when Morion and Diamant went to Lythos and the Sominel which is why he didn't recognize Alear. (Though PEPSI LOOK should have made that obvious, I'm still remembering Jean and Jade's recruitment where it took Alear having to SAY they were the Divine Dragon for them to realize "WHAT, this WEIRD LOOKING PEPISI PERSON IS DIVINE! I WOULDN'T HAVE GUESSED WITH THEIR WEIRD LOOK)
In alot of the supports, Alear despite being "Divine" is sort of the "Only Sane Man" out of the cast who each have their "quirks" (They went the angle of the "Mystical Character" being normal minded and the "Mortals" being the "weirdos") and as you said. They've been with Alear LONG enough and KNOWN them long enough for the "Fell Dragon" thing to be relevant (and ANY of Alear's "Crimes" working under his/her father was 1000 years ago.....they were ALSO the reason he was sealed in the first place! Had they finished the job, they wouldn't be DEALING with Sombron in the current day! Actually I still wonder why Lumera didn't do it and just sealed Sombron now that I'm thinking on it, I just assumed she didn't want to waste too much time and power that could go to seeing if she could save Alear) all the revelation did was confirm to everyone the FULL truth of Alear's Origins (The game always felt like a RETREAD of Awakening and Fates story Threads, FATES ESPECIALLY while doing the stuff that people note ALOT on their "Fix it" to Fate's story. Like Corrin KNOWING their origins instead of keeping a secret! Veyle being what Lilith should have been in that she is both your sister AND an Antagonist! And Lumera coming back from the Death, I liked HERS more then Mikoto's!) which the Antagonist never hesitate for one moment (well Zephia and Veyle which makes sense) to bring it up! I like to PRESUME Sombron figured it out the moment Zephia confirmed she found no body where he was sealed. But as he ESTABLISHED, he really doesn't give a shit, he only had ISSUE with Alear because they DARED "bite the hand that fed" even when he was a crappy father who saw them as a tool he'd KILL the moment he was "disappointed" and was mad his own "behavior" was used against him!
As for the Rock. I will give A_normal this. It only was relevant ONCE in Chapter 10/11 then never comes up again. So maybe it's better not to make it a "Story/Gameplay Integration" if it's not going to be brought up much! But then Three Houses did the same thing! Thales is shown to No-Sell Divine Pulse....yet he NEVER uses it in the gameplay. And Byleth gives up like ONCE after Thales blocks their attempt to kill Kronya before she shanks Jeralt! They never really explained too well how many PULSES. I do feel next game the OPTION to turn it off or not should be made (Maybe a Reward after Non-skirmish Battles if you win without using it once or had it turned off) I think that would shut up some of the whining (or just increase as the "challenge" bros/gals complain they can't CONFIRM if a Let's Play has it off or on! Who the fuck cares, stop punishing NON-CHALLENGE Players by enforcing! Already tired of hearing the WHINING about the fucking Emblem Rings/Bracelets) and Weakening it so the "why don't they just go back in time THIS or THAT" (I always presumed the Rock was the only reason Veyle as in EVIL Veyle SURVIVED her fight with Lumera. Only getting Lucky the JUST WOKE UP SO WEAK Alear showing up and Lumera shielding was the reason she WON by surviving, she only found out Lumera was dead AFTER Zephia learned of it from Alear after all! Note the stone did NOTHING till the next chapter, meaning it was likely out of juice when Veyle dropped it when she retreated! She could have attacked AGAIN after attacking, but it's clear that was a Desperation attack! But without the story CONFIRMING it, all I just stated is Assumptions! But then sad part is people will STILL get mad they were TOLD this because they hate being treated like their stupid! "Can't fucking WIN")
I really wanted to learn more about the world but they barely talk about it. Heck even in supports it doesn’t feel like anyone except Diamant actually acknowledges the world heck he’s one of the few characters that knows a war is happening
I ain't gonna deny that the story in Fire Emblem Engage does leave a lot to be desired but I feel this comment screams confirmation bias.
The entire reason why Alear was still worshipped as the divine dragon was because they are the true successor to Lumera. Remember; Before meeting Lumera, Alear has all-red hair from his lineage to Sombron but after receiving power from Lumera, some of his hair turned blue because Lumera saw him as a son even if she wasn't his Mom biologically.
While circumstances are different, it is similar to Byleth. Byleth wasn't really related to Rhea, aside from all that Sothis's heart stuff, but he was still named Rhea's successor and it seemed the people of Fodlan were fine with it aside from Crimson Flower for obvious reasons.
While the methods were different, Alear's situation does end up being similar to Byleth's. You have a protagonist, they come into contact with some sort of Godly representative or are Godly themselves, they inherit power of said God, and go on to become the new leader.
Just a little advice before I watch this video: don't do red borders at the bottom of the thumbnail. On the main page, It makes it look like you have already watched the video and might scroll past it, since RUclips promotes already watched videos from time to time.
On the note of personal skills, I will always remember Owain from awakening as my favorite. It gave a bonus if the main weapon had 13 or more custom characters in the name. It not only gave a nice bonus, but heavily encouraged the player to make custom wepons in order to utilize it. And when you would see players online you could see all the crazy names people came up with! Lore, creativity, and useful in one package!
@nessdbest8708 hmm, so it is
@@nessdbest8708 hmm, so it is
@@nessdbest8708 Literally told you he got your point the first time
Fun fact from awakening to engage the story starts with Mc main character is seen waking up from their sleep.
Echoes, being a remake of an early entry in the series rather than an original story, is the exception that proves the rule.
22:10 Now that I watched the video, Etie was localized differently. Etie was suppose to have Maribelle's Gimmick, but for some reason, they made her a Strong Women archetype, which was also part of her gimmick and not her main one
Fwiw, historically archers had some jacked arms because drawing bows repeatedly and quickly takes a lot of strength.
@@SerRompalot If you look at the skeletal remains of archers, their right arms are longer than their left by ≈20%
Gotta love western Wokalization.
This is why I an learning 日本語
Wait...who's Maribelle? Are you referring to Marni?
@TheGamersState Maribelle from Awakening
It's games like Engage that push people away from anime and make them assume that all anime is poorly written cringe
That’s definitely true, it gives anime a bad rep. Atleast from the perspective looking at it from the eyes of an outsider looking in
Also the localization was also pretty horrible but it’s technically been like that in three houses and in games such as fates so I am not too surprised. The localizers definitely need to be fired or replaced with AI translation with the help of a single human being making minor edits to the Ai translation to make it flow smoother. So a human responsible for making small minor edits to the localization while it’s fully translated by AI. Hiring a single person to localize the game imo would have been a smarter idea and only limiting their roles to fixing things that don’t make sense or arn’t being translated properly by making smaller edits in certain areas. The way the localization industry has been it’s just awful as of late, I’d say if Nintendo truly cared about their IP they would have most likely had gotten rid of these horrible localizers in IS.
@@Holy_Crusader
Nintendo really is hit or miss with localization
@@fakesmile172 fire emblem seems to have the worst localization out of nearly every Nintendo product. Some even call the localization woke because of the things that they are refusing translate over to English like how one of the character in fire emblem engage was comparing the size of her melons to another female character (that translation got completely cut in the English version) other localization changes either made no sense or just were terrible localization. Nintendo seriously needs to start policing and having strict guidelines when it comes to localization so that we could have the most accurate script we could possibly have. It’s part of the reason I am extremely fearful of a fire emblem 4 remake because if the same localizers work on that game they will just butcher the localization and likely the real reason I don’t even want anymore fire emblem games anymore in the west unless their is extreme measures taken against IS localizers.
@@Holy_Crusaderwestern localizers are also forcing in their personal beliefs to serve a political agenda.
It was exposed by the dragonquest director for 3-hd that the West acts like the mafia to force their gender cult ideology on other countries.
The character designer is Mika pikazo who is known for her flashy pop art style with vibrant contrasting colours and taking advantage of value differences over hue shift. While I really like her artsyle, it's absolutely not a fit for the FE franchise and setting. That's a decision that the producers made that they really shouldn't have.
It’s worse, seeing as Mika was told barely anything about the World these characters are from, until AFTER she designed them. So the reason the characters don’t resemble their own countries half the time, is because Mika didn’t know where they were from.
I absolutely hate when my character is worshipped as a god the minute you start which is why I despise both Corrin and Alear.
And holy shit, the whole overlaying all the female characters to show they are just variations of each other is something i never noticed
Didn't Byleth got the same treatment too? Everyone was glazing Byleth azz just cuz his dad.
@@catinapan4956 I'm pretty sure I remember there being a good bit of friction from certain characters to his inauguration as a professor, though it might've been mainly Seteth. Still, he's not treated as the LITERAL god, just a damn good mercenary who can handle himself very well. At least, most of the time.
And no, I'm not calling Byleth a good character.
Corrin > Byleth.
Luckily Corrin and Alear are still actual characters. The same can't be said for the 3H block of wood people call Byleth who is also hero worshipped to the point the 3 Lords can't function without them around.
@@Ender41948you could even say the same for Corrin. Yeah they wake up being attended to by servants and are doted on by their sisters, but that's normal familial care. And even then there's more immediate conflict with Corrin's adoptive family than there is with Alear. Yes we were adopted into royalty but Garon is tyrannical conquerer that sees his children as nothing more than tools to further his ends. The first mission he gives Corrin is literally a suicide bombing. And when we reunite with the hoshidan royals, we aren't immediately welcomed with open arms by everyone. Takumi doesn't trust Corrin at all. Even if you join the hoshidans his trust still needs to be earned. And even fates doesn't treat Corrin like a God. He's just a prince. Engage paints Alear as a God right from the get go.
Get to work on the engage Ironman
You mean the Eggage Ironman.
Better yet, ringless Engage.
11:33 If I remember correctly, in Veyle and Corrin's bond, Veyle says that she buried her dragon stone so as not to hurt people and that she doesn't even remember where she buried it.
Also, the game tells us that Alear is considered a defect by Sombron because they cannot transform.
@@ghost245353 They could have easily made it so alear could transform after becoming the divine dragon and got a new stone made by lumera along with the pact ring. Since lumera knew about alears heritage it would have made sense that she could have figured something out.
And Zephia´s dragon stone is the thing we use to redo turns. It has her exact colour scheme. Evil Vayle loses it in the beginning of the game and it is never brought up again, Zephia seemingly not even aware of its existence or trying to get it back.
Alear gave his/her dragon stone to Veyle, and it is finally broken in Ch21, but I don't read that because the story is cringe.
Veyle buried her dragon stone, well, who cares about details of the script.
Nel, Rafal can actually transform, but I never play the ever worst DLC. No idea.
So, why don't the dragons transform? It's weird.
Typical. 😄
I feel the biggest offender is how childish Engage is, comparing to Three Houses (and the rest of the whole series). It wouldn't surprise me if this was by design by pressure after Three Houses, the timeline matches. It would be "perfect" timing for the company to make FE more "accessible", Smash Bros popularity, Switch audience, so on, but that's just a theory.
That wouldn't make sense either, since the whole Emblem gimmick is based on nostalgia pandering.
@@Edagui97and even then it still wasn’t good because unless you play the past game or smash bros you really don’t know anything about the characters
It had the same writer as fates which had the most reviled storytelling in the series
@@firenze6478 Ah, that explains why the story is just as dogshit as Fates
Nothing about Engage would change if the Emblem Rings were Smash Bros characters like KIRBY.
Ah alcryst. As soon as he did that jumping in the air and landing on his knees made me bench him immediately. Didn't care that he had better stats than my Etie
Unironically one of the best characters in the game, but holy crap is that the worst first impression in the world. I don’t blame you at all
@@tbahr123 I personally can't stand him. All he does is whine and complain about how pointless he is. His personality bugs me too much and he isn't even a good unit for me to like him that way.
@@hanzou1238 Although all you need to to is give him Lyn and he is the best unit in the game by far.
@@shadyshyguy4058 Not even close. He only does damage when Luna procs due to his horrible strength making him wildly inconsistent. Panette and Kagetsu can match his Luna damage 100% of the time and really don't need Lyn at all, while Amber and Etie are both better Lyn users since they will also match his damage from 2 Luna hits 100% of the time while having the same or more availability. Consistent reliability is important in FE.
@@hanzou1238 Like what stats are you comparing Alcryst does not have significanly lowers strength than anyone, and he is like one of the few character in the game who actually gets the boost from it's personal passive always for just playing normally.
The writing in this game has some of the worst prose I have ever read
The thing that makes Engage’s character designs EVEN WORSE is that you see them directly next to the emblems - which are old and simple designs that easily outshine (almost) all of them!!!
oof that template argument was pretty damming
tbh, I think its mostly due to the game-engine, as creating entirely new character body and face meshes is probably too much effort for a game that sells as comparatively poorly as the FE franchise unfortunately. IMO, just one more reason to abandon the true 3D graphics and go 2D or 2.5D pixel-art again. It looks better (imo, i know many disagree), holds up better over time, and is likely simpler to work with. that being said, i'm biased because it also makes it easier for me to make my own character portraits and animations for rom hacks lmao.
@@avaliantsoul5408 You may have a point, but Three Houses exists and has fantastic character designs. Three Houses sold 4 million copies and engage sold 1.6 million despite only really appealing to fans while having a bizarre art style that turns a good percentage of those "hardcore" players away. Fire Emblem has no excuse to be making characters in this way.
@@maxcap60713H's art style is really good in the 2D portraits, but I felt like the 3D renders were... lackluster. Partly due to the Switch's lacking power compared to other home consoles at this point, but I don't care to argue that point anymore because Nintendo is never gonna be competing with Xbox, Sony, or PC for computing power.
3H's main artistic issue was the lack of maps, on which I can only speculate, but it seems reasonable that it may be due to the amount of time and effort it takes to design, and render the more detailed 3D environments in comparison to 2D. I also just think Fire Emblem's fantasy setting with magic that ranges from little balls of fire to summoning earth-shaking storms lends itself better to a more highly stylized artistic direction which 2D and 2.5D seem more suitable for.
Engage really just feels poorly thought out, like they just bet far too much on the appeal of old characters.
“Ivy’s barbecue lit” had me 😂
I guess I should try bringing up the game's world building.
Friene: They are self sufficient and this makes them more aloof and closed off from other nations as they don't have to rely on others. Their culture is a light hearted one celebrating fables while also having a high level of refined living given all the tea farms and fashionable clothes. The king died of a terminal illness that his son now suffers from, and it is the expectation that the princess would have to take the throne from his cold dead body.
Brodia: A mining based economy that expands territory by launching wars. Cruel retaliations have been launched by Elusia in return, slaughtering innocent fishing villages. The nobles are in support of these wars and many exotic balls are held celebrating their opulence. Military strength and riches are the theme here, signifying their power. The queen of brodia still lives, she was moved to a remote location for her own safety.
Elusia: the most prominent feature is the main academy that everyone is obligated to attend at some point in their life, as this is the kingdom of knowledge. As such they have the most skilled expertise in goods and craftsmanship in all the land. King hyacinth fought with his brother for the throne and ended up winning, banishing his brother in the process, and then hiring his brother's supporter Lindon. Hyacinth had many wives, having children- the half sisters hortensia and ivy. It is a den of intrigue with many bureaucrats squabbling, plotting and backstabbing each other to rise high in court. Also it is the country that worships the fell dragon.
Solm: a queendom run by calm rational thinkers with the aim of maintaining their own freedom. They appear carefree on the surface but they're cunningly studying other nations and managing their relations for either warfare or peace- whatever works for them, given the interactions fogado and timerra have with the other characters. During the war with the fell dragon they were the best equipped and prepared to fight on their own, and pointedly refused to help any other nation. They are a wild bunch, and wolf racing is a popular sport.
And yeah nothing is going on in Lythos.
While I agree that mangs came at the point in a pretty reductive manner, I feel like a lot of the world building for the game comes from supports instead of the main story. Now is that a good or bad way of doing it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Idk
@
That's true. The supports are better written than the story as the supports actually take the time to flesh out characters, while the main story is just the usual war with an added touch of silliness. Would be better if it was both. I think the best world building is when you can infer it out of the characters and the land, and it just naturally being brought up rather than being handed the exposition dumps from a lore book somewhere. I like what they did with solm- they have a facade of goofing off- like when the queen forgets where the ring is- but theyre actually extremely pragmatic- the queen herself is proud of her daughter for choosing to sacrifice her. Stuff like that which tells you more about the people and their ideals and methods.
Lythos had more divi e dragons but they all died at some point the land of the divine dragons was a dead kingdom of an old people which is why its so empty even though it has large structures
Firene and Solm are revealed at different points to be HORRIBLY-run, due to having avoided war for so long.
Firene is so centralized that the governors live in the capital, and don't know what's going on in their territories they nominally possess.
Solm is so decentralized that its provinces might as well be their own countries, and the military has withered away into being just the royal guard (the Sentinels).
Another thing I'd like to add is that it tried to appeal to both newcomers and veterans in the worst way possible. They gave the game a shiny new artstyle that made the characters look like a bunch of V-tubers and touted the accessibility for new fans, but they also made a lot of the story revolve around "Emblems", who are essentially fanservice that only have meaning to the kind of people that could write the game's wiki articles.
And it only appealed to gameplay and long time FE fans no one else.
@@TheMaestroMizerousyeah but they assumed long time FE fans don't care about character, world building and writing, which many do and were not happy with this edition.
IS is stupid. Basically the whole reason to play FE4 is for the amazing story. What even is a "old fan" to IS anyway?
@@zxylo786 I think it's just an excuse fans made up for what was a very cash grabby style anniversary game.
The entire V-Tuber thing is especially jarring because of the Fire Emblem conceit that everyone is a military member. It works in something like Tales of Berseria because no one is putting Velvet or Magilou in charge of an army (people who might be, like Elanor or Eizen get more commander-esque designs).
If I was in a military unit and you told me Hortensia was in charge, I'm looking for the first opportunity to desert.
Like... Fire Emblem is military. You don't have to stick to strictly military designs, but designs need to fall within 'this would be reasonable for a very flamboyent soldier, at least for impractical dress gear.'
To be fair on the subject of some dragons not transforming, I recall it being a thing in previous Fire Emblem games that dragons need a dragon stone to transform. So, it might be the case that the dragon characters who don't transform don't have a dragon stone.
shouldve given them dragon stones then
@@novacorponline Also Zephia and Veyle are mage dragons and they are stated to lack dragon forms in exchange for much higher magic potential
I hated Engage because it does not respect the player's intelligence in the least, you really brought across several of the ways in which it did so.
Remember when Alcryst resented Ivy for being one of the perpetrators of King Morion's (Alcryst's father) death? I thought the game was going for an interesting character dynamic that would further develop both characters... then they ereased Alcryst from the plot.
In fact, all the siblings of the main lords get ereased from the plot, which is a pity because I consider them to be more interesting characters than of Diet Dimitri, Chrike, Camilla 1.5 and Clussy.
Another point is that you could easily rewrite some retainers to be... not retainers. This is just coming from the top of my head so some characters may already have this backstory but going through the trouble to check it out is a pain.
-Have Boucheron be a wandering mercenary from no land in particular
-Have Citrinne be a mage student from a prestigous magic academy
-Have Jade be a border guard that only knows Diamant by his title
-Have Kagetsu be a travelling swordsman from a far-away land outside Elyios
-Have Zelkov be an infamous Elusian thief
-Have Pandreo be a local Solm priest
-Have Bunet be an ordinary chef that needs to become stronger to protect his family/business/etc.
I don't recall if some of these characters already have the same backstories and stuff (they probably do), but it all goes to waste when they are retainers the moment we meet them in the game, it also ruins their personality because one of their main motivations for existing will always be "I need to serve/protect Lord/Lady ________".
Bruh, Ivy is nothing like Camilla. The best thing you can say they both have is their designs are fan service.
@@TheGamersState and the baseless simping for the bland avatar character, being wyvern riders with magic, eldest princesses of the EvilKingdom.png, purple, and utterly screwed by the terrible overarching stories of their games
@@FlanMcBean
1. Ivy simping isn't baseless, she makes it clear she worshipped the divine dragon out of rebelleon as she hates the way her superiors operate in secret.
2. Pretty sure Camilla's primary weapon is an axe, unlike Ivy who focuses way more on tomes.
3. Technically true but feels like cherry picking.
4. She's "purple"? Ivy's outfit is purple and Camilla's hair is purple but anything else is different. What even is this?
5. This I can agree on
The point I'm making is while yes, circumstances are similar between the 2 but in terms of actual character they are nothing alike. Ivy has a hard time showing her emotions and is seriously scared of ghosts while Camilla openly embraces her emotions, casually talks about trees that eat people alive, and is implied to go on murdering rampages. Even the way they show their affection to the avatar is different.
I'll always be pissed that Chloe had a god tier design with a terrible personality, I felt baited, they wasted such a good seiyuu as Hayamin on her.
What’s wrong with her again? Too one note?
20:02
I think the big thing id that stylistically, each character is trying to be "attractive" in the most broadly appealing/lowest common denominator sense.
Like take Etie for example. She talks a lot about her muscles and working out, etc. Yet outside of her abs (which kinda look out of place on her bodytype and in art because none of her other flesh is rendered that way) she prrtty much just matches every other character proportionally. Her shoulders are just as skinny, her thighs are just as thin, her arms are just as noodly (and you can have a lean built character, but no part of her aside from her stomach suggests any kind of toning). Not to mention nothing about her design really screams "i like working out" which is a huge part of her personality.
Theyre trying to on one hand appeal to the whole "muscle mommy"/"tomboy" fetish, but dont go more in because their focus is more on the clothing aspect. So much of their designs are based more around bright colors than other features because said features are so samey.
Yeah, it's basically showcasing how shallow anime tropes are. Also the body types are almost 100% guaranteed to be because of simplifying development for the clothing change system. Every Fire Emblem since Awakening has both suffered and benefited from leaning harder into Anime tropes and the sim date elements, but I really hope we get a more dramatic and well written/designed game. FE3H had the illusion of "depth", but it was all tell with no show...which makes me not care one bit because I never got to experience it/see anything and then needing video breakdowns just to make the storyline even make sense because of it's unfinished/half-baked branches.
And in doing so you appeal to no-one. Characters like Rosado who appeal to those who like traps will serve to outright REPEL that majority who do not like traps. While people may be politically browbeaten into not outright saying so, they still feel that way - even moreso thanks to aforementioned browbeating.
It's really better to just appeal to a few people. Or hey, don't have a romance thing at all; it's not necessary. Ike's wife is an unnamed woman whom he met after his games ended - both of his paired endings are with potential blood brothers.
I still think, that Robin was the best avatar
Shez is definitely no. 2
Shez mogs the other avatars hard
Weird opinion maybe, but my favourite avatar was Mark, literally being the strategist in the background.
Kris and Robin were alright Avatars but nobody will ever compare to Mark in FE7
Robin Number 1
Thank god we got unicorn overlord
One glance from me and it looked as if it had completely abandoned the "low fantasy" vibe which Fire Emblem had. It looked as if it had shed its soul.
Lmao
Fire emblem « low fantasy » was always just being generic and I’m glad titles like fate and engage decided to shook itup
@@thomasquesada7248 You ever think what you view as generic is actually just the series' identity?
@ it’s not identity when it never bothered to have one
Low fantasy is supposed to make magic special but fire emblem always treated magic as just a normal thing
@@thomasquesada7248 I think the OC was referring to well te Sominel and the fact the protagonist is a Manakate! Now I think Three houses went TOO far in the Low Fantasy angle with the loss of the shapeshifters AND Manakate (Seteth and Flayn don't shapeshift, so don't REALLY count as "Manakate" traditionally despite the fact they kind of are!) while Engage went TOO far on the High Fantasy angle! Ironically they're is ALOT of Cake Eating with both entries (everything to do with Rhea, Byleth and Sothis as an example for 3H and well Much of the NONE fantasy stuff with Engage! I swear my issue with the Sominel is it creates the SAME fucking problem Fates did with the MyCastle! Why don't the character's retreat within there or something?! The Sominel makes it WORSE as My Castle is mentioned only like ONCE in it's introduction to the plot! The Sominel is APART of the plot to an extent! I don't hate the place as I like exploring, but I feel Fire Emblem going forward should use the BASE CAMP from Three Hopes as THAT made more sense then BOTH Garrag Mach and the Somine as a stop between for your Army before the next battle! I didn't mind LOSING customization of My Castle as I BARELY Customized mine! Only added the ESSENTIAL and the Statues of character's I'm using and that was it each playthrough, Garrag Mach was fun first playthrough, but a part of me REALLY wanted a menu, same feeling STILL with the Sominel that lets me ACCESS the functions without needing to be there! Sort of like Base camp back in Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn for those of us who DON'T want to stop moving forward with the plot! This could ALSO help in situations where it's STUPID, ironically Three Houses had the right idea with the Shops being available on the Map menu, Engage did the same but only for Weapon and Item shop AND NOT THE BLACKSMITH which I found foolish! Will say simplifying the Forging Material was good, but they could STILL work it better! I disliked so many DIFFERENT materials in Three Houses, but I think their going in the right direction with the Ingots.....just hope they find a DIFFERENT way to get them then the DOGGOS)
But anyone complaining about the HIGH FANTASY that is Pepsi-Kun/Chan! I feel their an INCREASE of what they were trying with Byleth and Corrin. Frankly speaking BYLETH was at their best (especially IF YOUR CAN HAVE THEM FUCKING SPEAK, 3H showed this with SHEZ and Byleth ironically in that spin-off) when they were an ADVISOR/AIDE like Robin to the chosen Lord! I'd like that to come back! Avatars in Fire Emblem should NOT be the main protagonist. Yeah Byleth and Shez were "main charactes" but in the overall plot and everything, your chosen LORD of the Three is the main character, you are THEIR partner! And that works better then Corrin and Alear (though I dont OUTRIGHT hate Corrin and I actually LOVE Pepsi-Kun/Chan! They were EVERYTHING I wanted Corrin to be...sans the Dragonstone, I feel SLIGHTED that never came into play even if Emblem Alear is a nice replacement) I would like the Emblem Rings to STAY in the series, but not be as you see them in this entry. Make them a sort of mix of the Crusader Scrolls/Bond rings/Starspheres of the series! Buffers that give a Stat Bonus AND Growth Modifier and maybe a unique skill or so, but you don't get skills off them and by DEPOWER I mean about as strong as the S RANK Bond Ring Bonuses! DON'T make them a major story element either.
Frankly some people, ESPECIALLY Three House newcomers likely got caught off guard about how far they went in the OPPOSITE direction tone wise because Three Houses was pretty fucking Dark (I laughed abit when this was said cause I didn't feel it was THAT Dark compared to FE4-5 now THOSE were fucking dark, I will say it does come CLOSE though) so this was an attempt to lighten it up. But it went pretty far in that direction (while still havng it's dark moments!) But lets be real! Metaphor from Atlus pretty much was the more SUCCESSFUL answer to the OVERPOPULATION of "Low Fantasy Game of Thrones wannabes" that makes Engage LOOK abit better (same with Three Houses abit) because I think folk are TIRED of all the GOT wannabes! FE did it LONG before it was COOOL (FE4 and 5) as they did it when the BOOKS were out at that, before anyone even KNEW what game of thrones (which was SUPER Low Fantasy as magic was RARE to see and the fantasy to the people in that world was coming back in a "I thought it was all LEGEND" manner! Low Fantasy means magic is RARE to that "It was LEGEND" manner! I mean the people in alot of the FIRE EMBLEMS sans the Shapeshifter absent ones like FE4-5 have easy access to magic. It's the SUPER RARE stuff, the "Avada Kedavra" that aren't EASY ACCESS) So I feel if the next FE tones it down abit from Engage! It will be better for it! At least make the "3H" Stans calm the fuck down
In defense of Etie through her support with Bucheron she comes off as very self conscious of the fact that she isn’t as big as him and keeps asking about his secret to working out. those two retainers have a dynamic where one doesn’t work hard and has build come to them naturally the other works hard and never advances. And lastly at least her constant working out is reflected by her high strength growth
40% strength growth and 5% build growth in the archer class. To me, pannette executes the stupidly strong woman archetype better, but that's me.
I think Aliers hair would have worked if the player had dialoque options of good/evil choices and it would have unclocked more endings or smt
"Greetings, oh Divine Dragon. Would you like some of the pickles I made especially for you?"
A) " Thank you Clanne, I truly appreciate all the things you do for me".
B) "Bother me again and I'll fill that jar with your innards".
Best part is that the options were labeled as "thanks" and "no thanks".
I remember an early fake leak from Engage saying that Alear's hair color would change throughout the story depending on your choices. Imagine if that were true.
This is honestly how I thought Fates would be at first. Conquest allowing Corrin to outright be a villain protagonist would have been incredibly interesting.
About the number 4 showing a lot on japanese media, it is a buddhist ifluence of the 4 heavenly generals, the "shitenno", also 4 can sound like death and be a unlucky number, 4 generals + evil conotations = evil generals, any story with a maoh (demon king), will have this trope in some shape, final fantasy does this a lot with the 4 fiends, anime about demon kings, and so on, when you realize what it is you will start to see this everywhere
People defend the game for it's gameplay but even that falls short in some aspects due to it's balancing favoring speed so much that griffin leaves everything in the dust if you cant afford the SP to carry other classes to keep up.
Ok, I'm going to try to keep this breif (famous last words), but I want to go over the points you made Mangs because...it's fun.
*The World Building*
I agree on mostly everything. Honestly, what they could have done to fix this is to cut the roaster/countries in half. Fierne and Solm are the most irrelevent out of all the characters/places Alear goes during the story. If you cut them, you could heavily focus on the war and character development between Brodia and Elusia. The only counties to have "arcs" in the game while Fierene and Solm have...nothing. If the story cut out Alear and Diamant and Ivy were the main characters, instead? Even better, that's all you need. Give them an enemies to lovers story line with a Romeo and Juliet twist in the end and I guarantee Engage would have been a better game story wise. I don't even think you need the emblems as along as we, the fans, care about the characters we are playing as.
I do want to correct you on two things though mangs. The first is the game does explain that Mavier stays with the hounds to protect Veyle because he is her retainer. It is mention in chapter 18 (I think), the one where they are on the boat, but the game did explain why, it's just they didn't push that idea enough I think because we barley see him protect her at all.
The last thing is from my experience, while there is literally almost no lore to this world at all. Diamant in one of his supports with Framme actually says that a thousand years ago. Lumeria blessed Brodia to help protect them during the war. This is, as far as I'm aware of, the only time Lumera's protection is brought up and, again, makes Diamant look like the more complex character and possible MAIN character because he knows this...and Alear, for some reason, doesn't.
Ivy also ,um, tries to get closure later when she takes back Elusia...but Griss just laughs at her and she is never aloud to give a big speech about how she will change her country for the better. Even Xander, and to another extend Dimitri were aloud to do that in the end game...but not Ivy? Huh...
Also, super glad you brought up how the elements of each country does not make any sense. Brodia should NOT be next to Elusia, the snow county. Thats...not how weather works from a basic level. If IS created this world where you worked your way up (Like having Solm and Firene be closer to the equater while Elusia is the closest to the polls, for example, that would make more sense.
*The Villain's*
I present to you a line that incapsulates the villain's motives in the game (Chapter 23)
Veyle: Why are you helping us now?"
Zephia: I'm not sure of that myself.
Me: Why is she giving them a crystal to help them succeed and not take them down with her?
That one Power Ranger Mega Force meme: It's far too complex for you to understand.
Nuff said...
*Alear*
Everything you said about Alear are my complaints with them and I agree they are the worst avatar in the series. If you watch interviews on Alear's concept. They were suppose to be even MORE cowardly, and nintendo had to stop them from doing it. Also, the fact that the director of the game believes fans don't like selfless hero's when fricken DIAMANT EXSITS is absurd to me. He literally contradicted his own statement by creating Diamant, a complex, selfless hero who is, last I checked, *THE MOST POPULAR ENGAGE CHARACTER.* It depends who you ask, but if your looking at the polls from Hero's, he's the most popular male character in the game, but there was a twitter post a while back that said Diamant was the most universally loved character in Engage world wide. To add salt to the wound as well. If you look up the most popular characters in Japan, Diamant is the second most popular character in that country under Alear. I get why Japan specifically would like Alear, but elsewhere? Their really hit or miss, or hated,. Alear is just a controversial character that has completely divided the fanbase, period.
I hate always going back to Diamant but...Alear's and Diamant's C support. Literally Alear could not take out a SINGLE corrupted on her own and Diamant had to protect them. Alear pretty much makes Diamant look good in this game every chance they get...and it also shows within the dialog.
Personally, I feel the avatar has to go. They had their time and I want a new FE game where the main character has his/her own identity. Robin was debatably the only good avatar...and they made them worse ever since, it's time to move on.
*Dialog*
If you forget about the cliche father death for a moment. The only part of the game that was written well AND had potential was the Brodia arc. Before and after that, it's absolute, cringy trash that takes me out of the experience. Hell, I would even argue that if Diamant's relationship was development more with his father, it COULD have been something complelling we have never seen before. A crown prince going out of his way to protect his father out of fear of not being good enough? That's sounds fricken awesome and you could have made a whole game centered around just that concept alone! Yes, the father death is super, overdone at this point, but I am in the belief that you can STILL make a father death super compelling if you do something new. That's how writing stories have worked for thousands of years, maybe longer! Put your own new ideas into it and you can have your cake and eat it too and I don't see anything wrong with that.
The "Was I a good son" line was and still is the most impactful line in the whole entire game. I think part of that was because the VA for Diamant did such a good job with him. It didn't feel cringy like Alear. You felt the emotion and the turmoil of Diamant realizing that he has to kill his father. Chapter 10, to me, is the best chapter in the game because of these conversations. I...just wish the motion capture was better because, damn, those cutscenes just completely suck ass in this game and chapter 10 is the worst example of it.
*Retainer Trope*
I agree. The crown princes/princesses were all you needed in this game with some commoners thrown in. That's it, that's all Engage needed to do.
*Character designs*
Again, Brodia. They have the overall best designs because every design in the country is themed consistently. Everyones colors match, they have almost the same aesthetic or type of clothing if that makes any sense, and while I love Kegetsu's design. The problem is he does not fit in with the county of Elusia. His backstory explains he was a prince somewhere close to Solm, so to me after hearing that, his design would be better suited as a solm retainer...but the Japanese style still doesn't fit in the world of Engage and that's my biggest problem with Kegetsu's design.
What sucks is, as a woman, the only really attractive males in this game (to me) are Diamant...I'll throw Kegetsu in there...that's it. Like, where are my attractive men at? I feel like FE always have several, but because a lot of the males in this game have same face syndrome, IS can't make a beefy character or a differently built character with muscles because they might have used the same template for every character. That's why the muscles on Ike in this game look so hideous. It's like they got an artist who knew who to draw women with breasts and curves...but not men with attractive proportions and muscles. How do I know this? Do not look at any of the male characters in this game with their shirt off. It's ugly and super cursed and I have seen better artwork of the male characters with their shirts off on tumbler.
*Personally skils.*
I agree. I have nothing really to say other than I wish many of the old mechanics where in this game. I also feel that having characters next to each other for a bonus is worthless in Engage. It's barley noticable and the two characters are never on screen together. This is a rant in itself, but having supports made sense for Awakening and Fates because you could get married and have kids. So seeing a character protect their husband, wife or child made getting those supports worth it, and it added stakes if you really cared about a particular couple or child. Engage is just not built that way and I think if marriage was completely out of the question... *in the American version anyway* Then they shouldn't of had supports at all, but that's just my take on the issue anyway.
I will end this by saying I wished you talked about the music because I think Engage has the worst tracks in the whole entire series. I hate that I have to be "don't mention Brodia, don't mention Brodia"...but fricken Brodia's chapter 10 track was the only track aloud to have a choir. Not even the final battle had a choir, a literally staple to the series at this point! Like, WHAT?
Ok, I'm done. Good think Nintendo only gave Engage a year of shelf life. I hate Nintendo as much as the next guy...but they knew this shit was bad, which is why Engage had one of the shortest physical copy runs before canceling them out right. Nintendo sent this game out to die on purpose. I'm pretty confident in saying that.
I think because supports are used as a world building tool they won’t get rid of them. In this game they are WAY too necessary.
Holy fuck Etie’s personal skill is dogshit, and I’m mad because they’re my favorite character to use!
He had us in the first half
How?
I used to hate Fates for its bad writing, but Engage's writing makes it look like a masterpiece in comparison. The dialogue in Engage is not just terrible but also incredibly boring, sure, some characters are good, but overall I think it's the JRPGs with the worst story I've ever played
Things I disliked:
> No Paralogues. These go hand in hand with worldbuilding. The Emblem Paralogues don't count. Like, imagine a paralogue that unlocks if Ivy and Diamant are alive, and it involves getting two Elusian and Brodian armies to stand down, with rewards depending on how many enemy soldiers are still alive at the end.
> The skirmish difficulty scaling. If you had one or two units that got all the experience, it over-inflates the difficulty of the skirmishes so that you can't train weaker units. If you beat the DLC too early, it's even worse because the extra characters always join prepromoted Level 1, even if you're at the end of the game.
> The game doesn't properly explain SP: you still gain some SP if you use bond rings. It's always better than nothing. But the fact the game doesn't tell you this meant I got halfway through the game with a good portion of my party having no SP because I just kept Emblems on my favourite characters only.
> I would also say some of the class skills are the worst in the series so far. For once, Berserker is worse than Warrior in all regards. No innate crit, the devs seriously thought Smashing weapons would be a huge deal, so they gave berserker a class skill that revolves around it.
> The Lord/retainer schtick is worse here than Fates. At least in Birthright and Conquest, some retainers joined separate from their liege. In Engage, we get 10 units in the space of 4 chapters during the Solm arc for example, that you now have to integrate into your party.
While I agree that the localization for Fire Emblem games are atrocious and Engage is no different, I played the entire game in Japanese (voice and text) and let me tell you, the Japanese script is only marginally better than the localized version.
The scene you described with the running dogeza is a really BAD scene no matter the version you play, it just doesn't fit what Fire Emblem spent decades establishing about itself, nor does it make any sense within the context of the game (the second prince is introduced as a badass sovereign not willing to take any risks and endangering his people by trusting possible spies, only to undo it all with a gag and spend the rest of the game portraying him as a weak-minded wimp who never shows his resolve again in the story and gets immediately sidelined by his older brother)!
I am petitioning to get Japanese companies to create and enforce guidelines against localizers to prevent their stupid censorship and Woolseysm in the future, but we have to give credit where it's due and should do the same with criticism - the localization of Engage, as terrible as it is, is not the one responsible for the flaws in the writing; that blame falls on the Japanese writers!
To keep it short, the humor in this game is bad in Japanese as well.
I think that initial Alcryst scene was done really early in development, and they just never bothered to change it. Being a Lapis fan, I noticed that she's wildly different in just that scene. She looks mad the whole time, and says, "If you can't dodge one arrow, you aren't worthy to enter. Here, the weak serve the strong." It's the complete opposite of her actual personality, and that tough-guy attitude never shows up for even one line of dialogue anywhere else. I like dorky, easily-flustered Lapis much more.
@@MidwestArtMan I really hated her for that first dialog and didn't realise what an awesome character she is until I played her and watched her supports. She's a completely different person.
@@MidwestArtMan True. It's so strange how vastly differently her personality changes from that cutscene to the actual game.
>Played with the Japanese dub
>IN JAPANESE
based and "fuck subs" pilled
@@MidwestArtMan I personally would have liked this example of Brodia’s “might makes right” mindset in a character. Might JUST be a personal thing though.
I would like to add another thing that FE Engage did wrong: The Paired Endings
How did it screw that up? Simple, by making it so *ONLY ALEAR* gets paired endings. This EXACERBATES past problems of characters that only have endings with the Avatar, because now EVERYONE only has endings with the Avatar.
And paired endings are among the things that can GREATLY influence the replay value of a Fire Emblem game. Wanting to know how things go with this and that unit get paired up and such things. And Alear falls into the old problem of the paired ending being pretty much the same no matter who he/she ends up with aside from the partner's name, like in Awakening.
The ONLY true difference between ANY paired ending is with Alfred. Since if he doesn't end up with Alear, he *DIES* from his illness.
Truly, THAT point feels like the unholy fusion of multiple things you listed.
I was very much bothered by this too for multiple reasons. Firstly, Alear is going to outlive everyone by thousands of years, so why have a marriage system for them at all. Secondly *IT'S NOT EVEN MARRIAGE ." When you pair Alear up with someone, it's a symbol of trust, not marriage, which at that point, why even have it, and lastly. In the Japanese version of the game, Alear DOES marry whoever you pair them up with, but everywhere else, it was changed to "friendship."
Even though you can marry in 3H as well. I feel like they butchered that too because you don't even marry until after you beat the game. Again, why have it at all.
@@binxthebinx6575 But remember that 3H still has paired endings for other units that can greatly influence how their stories end (just look at Lysithea) while Engage just has Alear whose paired endings boil down to "Alear ruled Elyos fairly and (insert unit name here) was there at his/her side", something that we had moved on from since we left the 3DS.
@@lunatic0verlord10 That's true too and I'm shocked that they didn't continue this in Engage. It's just a complete misfire all around, but knowing this game. Even if there were paired endings with everyone. The english translation would have changed it to be "a bond of trust" not "marriage." The english translation for almost all of Alear's S rank supports were so utterly butchered for the worst that I don't even know if I would want paired endings in this game if the translation team was going to change stuff that drastically.
@@binxthebinx6575 Yeah, this game is, writing-wise, the worst game of all.
No wonder this is the first FE game to sell less than the previous one, compared to how each mainline game since Awakening would always outsell the previous one.
Ah yes, Shulk is a photoshopped Little Mac.
I like Engage, but I do agree with a lot of these points. However, I do have a few criticisms:
- Mauvier was clearly with the Hounds to protect Veyle. Like with Marni, the reason he cares so much is never really explained, but it's there.
- Etie's personal 40% Str growth is actually on the high end for the cast. It's only beaten by Amber, Panette, and Rosado at 45%, and Madeline alone at 50%. The Bld criticism is legit, though.
Fun fact, if you overlay Shulk and Little Mac’s Ultimate Renders they still look photoshopped lmao
Another thing to say about the writing feeling A.I generated how they handled Chapters 10 and 11. At the end of 10, the party is trapped, but at the beginning of 11, we are miraculously outside. Somehow, the time crystal is in Veyels possession. We defeated a ring-bearing enemy let's get the ring, oh wait, no, Veyel can somehow pause time and take the ring, which isn't how the time stop works for us. Oh, look, it's Ivy, and she somehow stole the time crystal from Veyle, but we can't take the rings from fallen enemies now because...
I dont think you played the game bc all that is explained lol
CONTEXT POST
The reason why Alear is worshipped in Engage is due to their connection with Lumera who was a divine dragon that spend years trying to bring peace to the land, and not only do she has Stewards of the Dragon looking after her, but also Alear who is her child. There is also Alfred and Celine who would visit Alear when their asleep. Also Dragons are awesome!
Corrin was seen as a sibling for most of the story for both Conquest and Birthright, Heck in Revelation both sides turn on him and he had to fight to get both nations to work together and even than it was only near the end of each VER; after proving himself time and time they listen to him.
Byleth was born no heart beat and in Jeralt's diary it explains their condition and its for that reason why they come off "empty" It was not till Sothis awakening that Byleth emotion's and expression start to appear.
Two main reasons :
- Marketing was not good. They just slap Fire emblem and thought it would sell. 3 Houses Marketing was insane , there was literally updates about it and trailers about the game and what "SOLD" the game to everyone was the "TIME SKIP TRAILER" where all the lords were at each other throats and it was so hype
- Secondly is because is really hard to follow up the "best selling Fire Emblem game" which was 3 Houses. Like sure gameplay wise Engage might feel like an upgrade but story wise and how it was portrayed it felt like a big downgrade. From having 3 and (one hidden story) and played with a big cast of characters that were set up for each house , to being lock in to a main character who is like a Corrin 2.0 lol.
- Engage might have sold better had they focus more on their marketing on having a lot more throwbacks to previous FE games , show a lot more of the game , and like show a really "engaging moment" like 3 Houses did on their time skip trailer.
This might be because they were literally making both engage and 3 houses at the same time
And it would have helped a lot if the story wasn't garbage!
There's a reason why it didn't get the marketing that 3 Houses did. Nintendo knew they had a dud with those MC designs.
@@henryreturns1397 it also doesn’t help that engage’s story tried to be a best of fire emblem Awakening and Fates plot points, but somehow did them even worse.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 Engage surpassed Fates as the worst FE game ever
I think the main issue is that it primarily felt like a sequel to the mobile game from an optics standpoint
Yes, because it had one half assed mechanic that a tiny part of the game.
@DoggyP00 I'm just saying that the first thing I thought when I first saw the game was that I thought it was some weird spinoff and not a normal sequel.
@@BigmanDogs yup, the random thought you had based on your imaginary version of a game you didn't bother to look at for more than 2 seconds is the sole reason for why it failed
@@DoggyP00He’s not talking about the gacha mechanic, calm down.
@@definitelynotanarcissist.3135 Yeah, he's not talking about anything. That's the point.
The alcryst scene is 100% an absolutely horrible portrayal and the absolute dumbest writing and is a prime example of how out of touch, especially coming from three houses, IS was with their playerbase in terms of story quality.
I'll give Etie this much: Archery is a deceptively strength-dependant fighting style.
A bow's full power and range requires an archer strong enough to properly draw it, and war bows are monstrously hefty. The thin, speedy archer archetype (while perfectly valid for good old rule-of-cool) feels overplayed and is not true to what those weapons require from their wielder.
If anything, I'm surprised that FE doesn't have more strength-based archers, especially as that in-game stat largely dictates their damage output.
Thin, speedy archers do in fact work better in personal combat, if not in army-based fights. You can be strong enough to draw a warbow a relatively small number of times whilst also being slim and agile enough to outrun a pursuer and do spinning jump shots.
And really, Three Houses is the only Fire Emblem that has any kind of large unit combat. The Suikoden series represents the different demands of personal versus army combat by using two completely different battle systems for both, natch.
Learning and then being unable to unsee that the MC (and I believe) the Lords and Retainers her designed by a VTuber artist. Really killed it for me, in non animated cutscenes they moved like VTuber model, a janky cheap one at that. And Hortensia and Ettie are just Iron Mouse and Buff Pup with just enough changed to not get a copyright claim from their agencies
To make it even worse, when people ask the vtuber artist why? She said the director didn't give any direction (really I hardly believe that) so she just draw things randomly she didn't even know the thing about the country or background story.
@@catinapan4956 Kinda makes sense seeing how some characters don't fit that well on their region.
One of the biggest grievance i have with Engage is the fact it introduces the idea behind the Zero Emblem during the final chapter of the game and we get no real explanation about it only to be given a story dlc and then have it not come up whatsoever during said story DLC. Logically, the dlc should have focused on that lingering question from the main story: The Zero Emblem. What is the Zero Emblem, who even is it, what does it do, etc. Instead of getting that, we get a DLC story that introduces two new characters who didn't exist in any shape or form outside of being children of Sombron and as well as good versions of the hounds, all to simply be playable characters once you finish the DLC story as well as be a sort of explanation for where the Emblem Bracelets came from but that's it. Where was with Fates' story dlc effectively being the aftermath of the Birthright and Conquests routes and focusing on the children units, Three Houses' story dlc focusing on the Ashen Wolves, Sitri and Jeralt's past at the Monestary, and SoV's story DLC being focused on the events prior to the start of the game regarding the Deliverance's beginning and the backstory regarding those characters, nearly everything regarding Engage's Story DLC was created for the purpose of having a story DLC because they likely felt obligated since it's been a thing for the past FE games since Awakening and not because they wanted to answer any of the lingering questions the story of Engage would have left the player with like, again, the Zero Emblem.
6:58 He's doing the Dr.Wily.
You raised the cost being a major reason for both similar character design and the inability of crafting different scene in case a main character die (so you can't really have them be important in the plot)
First of all, crafting different scene in case of character death isn't that hard nor expensive. The main cost would be the voice acting but seeing how heavy the voice acting already is, I suspect the cost wouldn't be so high. The other thing you need to prepare is the dialogue, and for that you need a narrative designer. Safe to say, any Fire Emblem should have at least one, but seeing the resultat of Engage story, I'd be curious about how many they were and their experience.
As for similar character design, I can accept that a bit more, seeing how long and costly character 3D models, rigs and animation could cost. Making a different model would imply A LOT MORE works, to make it usable.
HOWEVER, there is tools and smart ideas that can be useful to reduce that cost. Some were used, like the fact they kept a similar face for each character, so you won't need to make a whole set of facial expression. But my problem is that, despite the budget friendly choices to reduce the cost of making these characters, I don't feel like this budget was used smartly elsewhere, especially about the talking animation and emotes, which could have make theses characters less robotics.
The rest of your analysis on the accessories characters are wearing is highly probable.
I wish they would have created at least more bodies to convey multiple character types at least
My main question would be : what is the budget of this game? I feel like the minimum was spent to make it marketable and to raise as much profit as they could. And even if that was the case, I'd wish they settle on a good artistic direction and start keeping assets for the next game. One thing that is under appreciated in the GBA games is that cool animation made in Binding blade were reused in Blazing Sword, allowing for unique animation to be created for this game AND for Sacred Stones. Just like you, I feel distant from this game and really wish they could pull out something great again for the next game
Sorry for the wall of text, and thank for anyone brave enough to read it xD
Walls of text are encouraged as long as they are coherent.
i want to enjoy engage so badly but i am so beyond burnt out and exhausted of it. the entire game feels like its embarassed of itself so it refuses to have any cutscenes or depth bcuz it doesnt wanna tell you whats going on
fates may of had a "bad story" but dang it had heart and told you every bit of its lore and worldbuilding, it cared about its world. engage just wants to get the adventure over with.
maybe ill enjoy engage more when its not "the newest fire emblem game" but until then its painful to try enjoying 😭
Did we play the same game? Im not a fan of either, but fates worldbuilding is argueably much worse than engage.
We hardly know anything about fateslandia. We dont even know the name of the continent. We know only a tiny bit about the culture of hoshido and noir. Valla is a mess.
Its character building was pretty good though. While many of its characters fell into the trap of being one note, many had supports that built depth to them. Its no three houses in that regard, but its still alright.
I had a thought how to fix avatars, give them a set of questions in the beginning for boons and banes, sex, class, that sort of thing. Then have them pick a background like one of four like orphan noble clergy or soldier something like that, and just make their supports have dialogue options. You have agency, customization, the story is intact, and you can insert in a way that feeds your head cannon without pole jocking the whole time like you’re a celebrity
It sounds like how the Ultimate General series handles it.
The first half is actually how you picked Kris' boons and banes in FE12 (past, present, future), improving on that and having it tie more into the avatar themselves would be a huge step forward
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon the avatars.
It's crazy that this video is way longer lol
Engage as a whole is this enigma that teeters between what makes an FE Game good and bad. Yeah it's the most interesting and engaging (haha funny joke) gameplay in the series alongside a few breakout stars from the cast, but they somehow did everything else wrong. I believe we can get a good story and good gameplay sometime soon, whether it be whatever the next FE remake is or just a new title on the switch 2. Talks of this game died a year ago, and this game has way overstayed it's welcome. Hoping for some good news at The Game Awards.
Mauvier is only part of the hounds to guard Veyle. He's basically the Vander equivalent and has a protective relationship with the normal Veyle, the same way Vander guards Alear.
Alear and Veyle don't turn into dragons because Alears dragon stone shatters when he dies to Sombron in the final act, and Veyle destroyed / hid her own stone away in an attempt to seperate herself from her father because she wants to be nothing like him. I think Veyles reasoning is explained in her bond conversation with Corrin
As for Alears design, its basically explained that Alears actual hair colour is naturally red, because Alear is a fell dragon, not divine. After Alears first death to Sombron in the war 1000 years ago, Lumera uses her "divine dragon powers" to revive and heal him. Which is what causes part of his hair to turn blue when he reawakens. When Alear is revived yet again as an emblem, his appearance resembles Marth (the first fire emblem lord) and is finally completely divine.
Honestly, I have a feeling that Engage will be the end of the modern fire emblem era. It references and pays homage to all past games in the series, and the game ends with the emblems leaving Elyos. The next fire emblem game is probably going to be extremely different from what we're used to. Possibly mass 3d exploration, and if its a remake of Geneology, I wouldn't be surprised if exploration is done on horseback.
Just addressing some comments made in the video!
About Etie:
1st of all, her personality in Japanese engage is completely different, the same way effie was changed, she's a Ojou sama archetype in JP that likes to train, Vs in English just being Haha im strong woman. With that in mind, her design makes perfect sense.
2nd Etie has one of the highest str growths in the game, only beaten by Amber and Panette (not counting dlc), who only beat her by 5%. If you compare a 10/1 warrior etie with a 10/1 alcryst, she will have +7 str over him, while being slower by 2 speed points. And even in her "canon" promotion of sniper she beats him by 3 str points at the same level once promoted. Her biggest issue is just Sniper itself being a bad class in engage, which is why Warrior etie is so good as she only loses out on the brave bow, while maximizing her STR.
3rd Etie having low build is part of her character, as her deal is working out as much as boucheron, but not even having any of the gains that he naturally has, where she straight up accuses him of steroid use (once again JP only), as units this is reflected in her having high str and low build, while Boucheron has the 4th lowest str growth in the game and the highest Build growth in the game.
I'd say of the firene squad, alfred is the worst character done gameplay wise, as he legit has nothing (besides luck) over Louis, but Etie is a clear case of what the devs intended, with the only possible issue with it, is Sniper just being a bad class, feel like if warrior was her promoted class, more people would have seen her strengths.
So basically the edges were sanded right off of her which leads to major misunderstanding and dissonance?
I was always wondering why her cold demeanor in posing, expression, what have you seemed at odds with her attitude in dialogue, I guess I have my answer to that.
All of your points are solid. The one I feel the most is the one with most of the cast being either a royal or one of their two retainers. That and your point on world building. Honestly, it feels like Engage just took everything Fates did either bad or mediocre and cranked it up to 11. At least Fates had a fun my castle system that took about a minute to do all of your activities in and it didn't have fishing.
Only thing I liked was the gameplay, which was fun... until I feel tempted to keep a spreadsheet handy of all of my characters internal levels so I can do the side battles without getting curb stomped by the over-leveled enemies that zerg rush you. What were they thinking with that?
The nations are basically the political compass
Dammit
My biggest issue with FE Engage characters is that anyone can tell me that they are V-Tubers and i will believe them instead of being FE characters.
No surprise considering the character designer is Mika Pikazo who has done vTuber stuff like Hakos Baelz's main design.
@@Rodri34451true though keep in mind when she designed the characters she had no idea it was for fire emblem nobody told her until way late
Well ALL THAT
But also, the Model are the SAME
Like, the Base of the model Are the same
This tells you they design thebody and artivulation first, then edited each with unnecessary add ons.
3 houses has VERY diferent body proportion, this one dosnt, even characters that are "smaller" have the same proportio s, indicating is just a size down model
@@Rodri34451 holy shit.
@@Yoshixandir That’s on the team 1000% for never informing her that she’s making character designs for a fire emblem game.
I can ignore most of Engage's issues. But the two things I hate the most about it, that keep me from replaying it, are the lack of deployment slots, and the ludicrous amount of reinforcements they spam you with in the late game.
Skill issue straight up
Never had any problem with reinforcements and lack of deployment slots is a fake issue
I think there are definitely some games that do both of these things way worse than Engage, but I have the same exact issues with Fates and Hector Hard Mode, so I totally see your point tbh.
18:22 I kinda love FE5's cast for that, it's full of commoners, con men, generic knights, etc.
25:55 but in the previous video you said that It feels like clasic fire emblem
This threw me off as well. In the positive video, he was definitely referring to the gameplay mechanics felt like FE. In this, one, I think he's talking about the overall presentation of the world, story, characters.
On the point of personal skills: I've always felt that there should be a way to boost them somehow, either through making them become a Personal Skill+ upon reaching an internal level of 20, training them up through some in-game tutor or having story sidequests that could get them to be boosted, maybe even through a combination of these or other methods, depending on the character itself.
That way the main character gets it mainly get theirs through story progression, like how promotions used to work before, and they could get the most overpowered ones to compensate getting them later the everyone else, other characters in the meathead archetype could have a requirement of participating in 50 arena battles and winning in order to get theirs boosted, aloof or dismissive nobles could come to terms with their responsibilities through sidequests, the overprotective retainer could get it so their skill that makes it so they jump in the way of oncoming attacks gets a guaranteed defensive skill proc after jumping in to defend an ally after doing so X amount of times and watching a cutscene with their noble chastising them for their recklessness, etc.
This way personal skills don't have the problem of either falling off in the mid to late game because the original skill isn't cutting it anymore or that they start off so insanely powerful that they become mandatory deployments in the early game but fall off later because the unit's stats aren't up to snuff anymore. And it adds in more flavor for your Strategy/Social Sim game.
...and I guess I'll bring up the four hounds too.
Marni and Griss were broken people who were indoctrinated into this. Marni was abandoned by her mom as a kid at a fell dragon church, Griss was a wretched disciple who hurt himself to please the dragon god. Mauvier is the only one who defects as he's a full grown adult who swore allegiance to Veyle, not the fell dragon himself. Zephia is allied with Sombron because she respects power, and because she wants a child- living for thousands of years means seeing and forgetting countless faces and none of them mattering in the end. A child to give her company and who could stand the test of time.
The villains aren't to be sympathized with, they're a bunch of wackos who are crazy and enjoy burning down orphanages but they still have character and goals. Zephia was not "redeemed", she just found closure in getting to know what love felt like after a life of closing herself off from it.
They're goofy cartoonish villains who are really just messed up people. And that's a step above shallow.
That's fine but why did they need to show up and lose every chapter damn near. Why not have other villains than these guys?
@@TheMaestroMizerous If you want a gameplay/story reason, you're out of luck, since the most likely reason is because voicing more characters is more expensive.
I'm no expert here, but considering how much better than 3H the graphics are, I would assume the budget is there.
There's nothing wrong with a "goofy cartoonish villain" - more real-life villains fit that definition than don't. As Terry Pratchett said, there's no such thing as moral grey, only black that stays black, and white that's got a bit grubby. Sometimes that white can get VERY grubby, but a lot of evil people out there are gonna stay that way.
There is no world building on engage
Huh, that character overlap image is an interesting point
I never understood the emphasis on Engage’s gameplay. It’s fun at first, but the rings and the silly over the top transformations totally tank the enjoyment in the later chapters.
There’s another glaring problem with Engage. It’s a really bad crossover game. All the previous lords do it show up as the McGuffin of the day. There’s no going into their worlds, battling enemies from their, see some of their allies. Just a paralogue and the “dark emblems” which couldn’t even bother to model their villians. You could swap out the lords for generic legendary heroes and nothing would change.
Also Engage’s nostalgia concept would be novel ,with it wasn’t for the fact that every Fire Emblem after Awakening that isn’t Three Houses and Hopes had one.
To be fair, they probably had nowhere near the budget to make the game long enough to explore all the Emblem's worlds. FE games usually feature about 24-30 chapters, for featuring 13 different worlds, you'd easily need at least another 26-39 chapters, which could potentially more than double the length of the game. And at that point, it would feel like heavy bloat.
Easy, just throw away all nobles and retainers. Make MC and his guards/stuards as a starting party and all other units in the game will be lords from another games. You go into worlds, like two chapters on lord each, and beat big bad in the last one. Simple and pretty.
THE DIVINE DRAGON LOOKED AT ME
designed to have ng+ but didn't have ng+
could have allowed for early access to seals to change out builds
use of skills inherited from later emblems to allow someone like Bunnet actual relevance in his niche from Celica's Favourite Food skill because why would you inherit that on him late game when you get her back (putting aside why you'd use him at all)
the emblem rings gatcha system
the starvation of seals early game. Its unhinged how long you have to wait before you have a chance to promote
▶ What It Did RIGHT: ruclips.net/video/oiUgs9Lefpg/видео.html
This comment should probably be pinned.
I have a discord friend who keeps insisting Engage is better than 3 houses saying 3H sucks because it's all built around and focused on a silent protagonist and that the rest of the cast's progression tied to them when no that's no what hapens at all. Was it mistake to make Byleth a silent protagonist because they were leaning hard into persona as inspiration yes and 3Houses has many flaws and that's one of its bigger ones but the universe is not solely focused on Byleth and the characters go through plenty of growth without them. I can't say the same for engage which seems to solely exist to worship Dragon Jesus
The gameplay feels like it was crafted by masters of the genre, but the writing was done by a 12 year old girl.
I 110% agree with every one of your criticism with Engage but if I may add one more that may seem controversial, but is necessary that makes Engage "good" but is actually bad: the gameplay.
Yes, the new mechanics are interesting and give a new spin on Fire Emblem; even if the Break, Chain Attack, and Smash gimmicks remind one of Xenoblade if they've played that. However, the gameplay is SO focused on Emblems and their abilities that it's an uphill battle to have the characters you want to invest in learn the abilities you want that it's a time sink to even learn them, not to mention that it's near impossible to do a no Emblem run when you start the game because the tutorial battle incentivises you to use the Marth Emblem.
You can try and go to the Arena to learn abilities faster but that costs resources which are limited in quantity as well as money which is much more limited. Say what you want about the DLC of the past Fire Emblem games but at least three of the DLCs for Awakening and Fates gave you an opportunity to earn oodles of gold, weapons to sell for gold, and/or experience sponges to invest in every character you wanna try out. In Engage? Good luck with wanting to try out every character cause of the terrible ass level scaling overworld enemies have even with Tiki's exp. booster ability.
And don't even get me started on the revival stone mechanic bosses start to have after a few chapters in... Yes... Fire Emblem has always had a problem of how to handle their bosses, however, lore and strategy wise it makes sense that they would mostly just sit around on a fort/castle waiting for the others to beat them: they're literally the last line in defense and for guarding the area they're in and if they moved anywhere else they'd essentially give up their postiion and surrender to their foes. Yes, the revival stone mechanic not only ensures that they can move around a little more loosely making them more dangerous and lethal, but they're giving up castle/fort benefits to ensure they don't go down. Even in the past when Fire Emblem bosses started moving, they at least made sure they had monstrous stats, abilities, and/or weapons making them a genuine threat to the player. In Engage, you start to question how and why antagonistic characters you've already beaten with multiple revival stones are back with more revival stones. And yes, this problem does extend to the DLC which exacerbates this flaw even further.
I also think the gameplay is overhyped to hell and back. Is it fun? Sure, but there are still issues. Like for example, if one of your units die mid game, there is no easy way to level up a lower level unit if you need to. So in theory, if everyone you used died late game, your fucked and have to start over.
I also don't like the arena because it's never enough, and to top that off. You never have enough SP to do anything. You CAN grind for SP, but every map in the game can take an hour or more to complete one way and they never give you enough SP to get anything worth wild with skills. Yes, YES! I WANT TO PLAY MAPS FOR HOURS AND HOURS FOR DAYS ON END UNTIL I CAN GET HOLD OUT+++ FOR A SINGLE UNIT. THAT SOUNDS AMMAAAZZZING! *Sarcasm*
Lastly, like Mangs brought up recently in his streams, you spend way more time in the hub than actually playing the game and because of that, it's a complete chore. I also don't love the breaking mechanic, though it is an interesting idea in concept...but the supports. This is the biggest issue I have because like, they did this how many times already??? If I put Diamant and Alcryst together on the map, HAVE THEM FIGHT TOGETHER. The chain attack animation is such a cop out when Awakening and Fates did this better in spades. HOW DO YOU FORGET THIS??? IT BOTHERS ME! XO At That point, why have supports at all. There are no stakes because you cannot marry or have children like awakening and fates. So when you protect someone, it feels earned since you care about them.
Engage has none of that and because character development between the cast is almost nonexistent. When someone dies or by some chance protects another character, you don't give a shit and that's the main problem I have with the supports in general. Hands down the number one issue I have with the gameplay in Engage.
Lapis has an amazing design. I won't stand Lapis slander!
I like lapis but man did she get screwed over. Her join chapter then immediately you get Diamant and not to long kagetsu who will outclass her
My own main issue with Alear is how the game keeps hammering at the point that they are a divine dragon, then you are a fel dragon, then a mix of both due to Lumera giving you her divine power...
But even with ALL THAT, Alear never does anything related to being a typical dragon, not even as a cool ending cinematic or just as a one time transformation for the final fight! They keep calling you a dragon, but never let you do anything that FEELS dragon-like. Hell, they make you into an Emblem, but you still get no actual dragon gameplay.
And how cool would it have been if Alear ended up as a new form of dragon, made up of a combination of fel and divine energy, focussing more on your dragon aspects, instead of just making you an Emblem, the "fire emblem"!
Not giving Alear a dragon form in any way with how often the dragon thing is brought up, is like saying that someone in a movie is the best sniper on the planet, but outside of carrying their rifle on their back the entire movie, and people talking about how good they are, we never actually see them shoot. Alear just feels like a dragon in name only, and as a way to make them plot essential...
one of the more annoying things in the last few games are dragons that don't transform and might as well be human. And when they do transform like Corrin. it's usually not the best class they can have. They give Corrin a special sword afterall.
Frankly, Engage feels like a self-parody of the Fire Emblem series.
Tbh, I think that was the point, they wanted a story that felt like they took every fire emblem trope into a blender and made a game. It was, in a sense, a celebration of fire emblem, brining back all the lords, tons of maps and music from those games, while having a story that feels like asking an AI to generate a fire emblem script after only reading every fire emblem game.
Did it work well, not really, but it felt like thats what they were going for.
I wonder how much different Engage would feel if it wasn't actually an FE game but a spinoff into a different genre like a fighter or a beat-em-up or another Warriors title.
21:59 The point of Etie as a character is that she wants to get muscle but no matter how much she trains she can't achieve it so I think it makes sense that she doesn't have much build from a gameplay perspective.
In the case of Mauvier, he was with the hounds because they were serving Veyle under Sombron and he already knew her before that. I'm thinking he was close with Marni since Marni and Veyle were kind of similar
Didn't he or Veyle also want him to become her knight? That would be plenty motivation and he also had no where else to turn to.
I would had made the 4 hounds , other surviving children of sombron desperate to gain lord sombron approval and validation , and prove their not useless
@25:36 so the DLC goes both ways - you have a breakpoint in maddening that if you do DLC before then, its doable and easy. If you wait too long, the scaling switches everything into impossible mode.
It really does seem as if the writing and character designs were generated by an AI. Absolutely none of it is truly memorable.
What did you get wrong: The plural form of ducal realms is "duchies" not "dukedoms" 🤓
I think im the only one who named her Pepsi
I think I did the same in one of my playthroughs lol
On the Mauvier and the 4 Hounds thing, it's from memory so I'm not 100% sure but I believe he mentions that he, like one or two of the others, was raised by Sombron's church. It's not delved into super deep but he grew up in an environment where he was taught what is right and wrong by people who worship Sombron. He has doubts at times but he's in the 4 Hounds because he got promoted there over time.
TLDR : The Monastery >>>> The floating castle
For me the floating platform was alot more disappointing than the monastery, primarily cause it was so disconnected from the rest of the world. The design was barren and the colors where pretty meh. Also it being flying kind of made me wonder where the merchants are getting their goods and stuff. It never truly felt like it belongs in the world, even worse than the My castle, which at least had the point of being removed from the rest of the world to hide. On the flip side, you cannot separate the Monastery from Fodland. Rhea and her family have been in this land day one and its influence is felt everywhere, from the knights, to the charities to the market place and most importantly the students. We see a dozen differing sides and opinions just walking though the place. We see how the history of this place was built up over centuries and how it comes to influence the political and spiritual side of Fodland. That's not even touching on the beautiful design, how it suddenly blends that it is both church, school and fortress all in one. I normally only dip in once or twice a month, so I never go the fatigue of running around, even after my 5-6th playthrough. Speaking of running around, all the characters normally have something to say about the event that just happened and what it going to happen at the end of the month, which helps flesh them out without needing supports. Meanwhile in engage, I stopped speaking to my units cause they never had anything interesting to say.
Absolutely laughable take
The monastery is easily the worst thing that ever happpened in the franchise and somehow is more of a time waster than ambush spawn
As an Elibe fan im required to poont out that Nabata is the Desert. Arcadia is the village.
On the other things though... Yeah thats true. Didnt even notice the design thing until you pointed it out.
But i thinj the biggest thing that killed this was that not only were the characters redesigned but even the story was! You're basically playing through both Awakening and Fates all over again. Not only that you were playing through a version of Fates and Awakening that had nothing of why it was good.
Awakening had you retreating after a massive battle against the Plegians in an effort to rescue Emmeryn only to realize it failed.
Engage had... You somehow getting away after having all of your Emblems taken away like... How, how did you all get away?
Fates, oh look its the "My parent got used by the bad guy just like Mikoto, Sumeragi and Arete"
Also the hero worship got to the point that it was already very annoying. I liked it better when it was Mark, youre just a bystander who happened to be here. Which i personally think is jow ot should have been done.
For the characters i also feel that the problem was just as you said, they're one and done. Not like Elibe where Legault gave the group suggestions.
As for the DLC though, yeah, just, what were they thinking? In Hard mode the final DLC level takes forever to make with no room for error while playing it on normal allows you to 2 turn the level.
I just hope that the next game learns from this to not repeat it.
I feel like a lot of people forget just how much Elibe's characters play into the story. Yeah, the supports hide a lot of interesting (and important) info, but Marcus withdrawing instead of dying since he shows up in between chapter frequently to give info/directions, Legault guiding the crew, Nino and Jaffar on occasion, it feels like most of the characters can play a role, and offer their knowledge and expertise to the Lords to guide them. IDK tho, i may just be glazing FE7 tbh
Alear isnt a blank slate avatar. Theyre just kind of a mary sue
Mary Sue that start cowardly and lose everything after getting overconfident
In your dreams that may fit the Mary Sue definition maybe
Dang who would have guessed all the criticism is story.
A lot of this is opinion based which is fair enough but allow me to make a few corrections to claims which aren't. Bear in mind I don't give two hoots about story or lore but even my glancing over it seems to be a little more informed than some of the takes made here.
In regards to the four hounds Mauviers motivations with Marni are actually brought up in his supports with Veyle, infact practically all his support chains are about his motivations and regrets about the four hounds. Zephia and Griss wasn't meant to be a love story, it was meant to be about how her one driving force was her desire to have a family and the irony that she didn't realize that Griss and the hounds were basically the children/family she wanted the whole time, although I agree the death scene goes on too long.
They explain the lack of Dragonstone situation with Alear and Veyle. Veyle talks about how as long as your Dragonstone is intact you are still alive, and buried hers a long time ago. This is further brought up in the xenologue where if Nel dies her Dragonstone breaks. In the case of alear she gives her stone to Veyle before her 1000 year sleep, this stone then breaks the first time that alear dies in game. This is why neither of them turn into dragons, whether or not this is a good idea or not is leaning into opinion territory.
Same face while bordering on opinion I will say, what would happen if you layered the faces of practically any of the casts of fire emblem games
A minor point but you say Etie ONLY has a 40% strength growth, this is the second highest personal strength growth in the entire game so I'm not too sure what you mean by this. The build point works though however it was kind of done as a joke between retainers that she tries really hard while boucheron does nothing and is stacked, their supports are all about this. Etie was ripped pretty hard by the localization team and if you take a look at some of her japanese supports is one of the characters with the most changes outside of goldmary and rosado.
I don't really understand why your last point was it doesn't feel like fire emblem when in your video yesterday you said it feels like a more classic fire emblem, which one is it?
All in all this video was much of what I expected, complaints about visuals and writing as opposed to actual gameplay. Which is probably one of the main dividing parts of engage on how much the individual values those two things over each other.
As a side note if I engage defender numero uno had to say what I think engage did wrong it would be 1. severe lack of marketing, 2. Suspect UI issues (surprised there was no mention of this) 3. Relying on a core fan base of long term fans of the series as opposed to the vastly larger new fanbase brought in by three houses. 4. Putting the DLC on the world map as opposed to in a menu, fooling people into thinking its part of the main game itself and destroying their playthroughs
The UI issues were horrendous. They literally have to let you inherit skills in the arena in an update because no one wanted to go to the ring chamber just to inherit skills
1: "See a characters supports to view their motivation" is bad game design. Supports are optional. A characters motivations should be explained in the main story, especially with a major antagonist like Mauvier.
2: That's fair. I still think they just didn't want to spend budget animating a dragon-form, but maybe that's just me.
3: For the GBA games they would look similar due to how sprites are confined to a certain row of pixels, but for some of the later games, they would look very different.
4: Fair enough.
5: Engage feels more like Classic FE than most modern FE games in terms of pure gameplay, however, it's aesthetic presentation and feel is more akin to Tokyo Mirage Sessions than Classic FE. I could have worded this better though.
6: Wow can't believe Speedwings is negative about Engage. It's truly joever ヅ
JK ty for the comment. We'll probably always disagree on Engage, but that's fine. We can at least take some joy in knowing there are at least 2 fans out there who like the game ;D
Oh yeah that UI can be super ass. The class selection in particular is something I actively despise. An incredible class system that is squished into a corner of the screen despite needing much more space.
@@Mangs1337 I actually agree with the majority of your negative points on things like story and presentation etc. The difference is these barely effect my enjoyment of the game compared to the parts I do value.
i have played through most of the fire emblem games a few times, 3 houses i have 30+ playthroughs cause i very much enjoy the games faults and all, but when it comes to engage, just 1 playthrough bore me to hell, the characters were very bleh at best, the fact that alfred's story is the same no matter what you do feels so bad to me, outside of using tiki to buff everyones stat growth i either feel extremely overpowered or massively underpowered. The support dialogues even more so with the emblems themselves are frankly wasted, characters says 1 line emblem says 1 line then character says they are greatful they are here as an A rank support like why even have it there, i honestly stopped doing supports cause they had very little to even talk about and felt like it took away from the whole game, which sucks cause 3 houses i still listen to all support dialogues even after the 30th playthrough. sure the game looks cool, but I dont play fire emblem for the looks 3 houses wasnt great looking compared to other games on the switch but the characters and story were some of the best parts of gaming for me in the last few years, this game felt like a Saturday morning cartoon dubbed and edited by funimation, frankly i wouldnt be surprised if the swords were turned into finger guns ala early yugioh, i was so hyped of this game and it had a lot of potential even more so with alear being "evil" in the past, almost felt like we could have been given a choice to turn evil again, but no power of friendship and all. there are fun fun parts of the game, yes the battles are some of the more fun i have had and the engage system is a lot of fun, but when i can play fates more than once and enjoy my time and i cant even fathom playing through this game a second time, really hurts and disappoints me. sorry for the rambling.
Like if you think Diamant should have been the protagonist
Diamant has everything set up to be a protogonist for the game. He even has a dead parent trope. Not to mention he’s one of the few characters that are actually acting like they are in the middle of a war
NOT HAVING S RANK SUPPORTS PROPERLY AND PAIRED ENDINGS AS A PLAYER OF FE WHO ALWAYS DOES WHATEVER PAIRS I CAN I HATED THIS GAME
"The awful VTuber designs of Engage..."
YES! GODDAMNIT YES! That. That exactly. Look at 19:39 look at the contrast between Ike's design and the rest of the characters. It's not even my favorite rendition of the second best Ike design. (Path of Radiance Ike looks better, fight me) Same thing for other emblems. Sigurd's design is gold, it's simple, and it's awesome. When I hear about a new Fire Emblem, look at a trailer and see the clown parade that's going to serve as my cast, I don't buy the damn game. The writing and the character personalities sealed the deal once more of it made its way online.
Honestly, I think the best way to fix the retainer AND avatar worship in one go is make the Avatar a voiceless retainer, establish early on a simple reason for tagging along with the Main Lord, and leave it there, no other dialogue needed, if the Avatar needs to be Game Over on Death, make the story partially be the Avatar's observation of the Main Lord.
At the most for other retainers, have a single "Named Bodyguard" retainer per major Royal character.
Here's one thing Bwangs did wrong: Not finishing Golden Sun 2.
Unless I’m misremembering, wasn’t Mauvier in the group because of his affection for good Veyle? Now why doesn’t he take her and run? He either doesn’t think it will work or knows Veyle is dumb and cares for Sombron too much.
Happy holidays mangs