I will say that for as comedically flat and undynamic as the cutscenes are, the voice actors do a shockingly good job imo. F!Alear's VA was, to me, really good. There's a lot of good individual scenes where she does a great job acting out the sort of quiet rage or masked sadness that she needs to. The script she's given isn't exactly high art, but she did a great job selling it, and made me care at least a little when the rest of the game did not.
I'll say across the board, the actors go above and beyond the material they were given. I picked Male Alear and his performance at the end of Chapter 3 is the only reason I wasn't laughing.
I had the same feeling. I've suggested in the past that good VAs will sound bad given bad writing. But somehow that's not true here. Maybe because the writing or dialogue is not bad as far as its distinct from the story.
Chapter 24 F!Alear's voicework is frankly incredible, it solidified her above M!Alear to me tbh. This game's dub elevates it soooo much honestly, I wasn't expected to get dragged into the plot but the cast is brought to life so well I couldn't help it tbh.
I think this is why good direction is so important. For the most part, this game has good direction (not always; Past Alear is pretty poor in my opinion) and it helps carry the dialogue
Man I always thought Three Houses got a lot of hate for its graphics and coloring, but anytime I see someone transition to a capture or footage of Three Houses compared to Engage it does make me realize that they were right lol. Engage is a much prettier game. Not perfect, but definitely better than Three Houses.
You should never crack an egg on the side of the dish you're using because you'll get eggshells in the mixture, FYI. Use a flat surface instead, baker's pro tip!
Dont listen to him, he's trying to deprive you of important calcium from eggshells. You should be getting at least 3 cups of eggshells a day in your diet.
If you want a good example of dynamic and well done cutscenes in contrast that can be done on the Switch, I recommend Xenoblade 3. The cutscenes have actual direction and motion going on and at times feel like a high budget 3D anime.
I personally find the extended exposure to the Hounds over multiple chapters interesting from a story standpoint, but I think all they'd really have to do to make it more interesting gameplay-wise is have the Hounds swap the rings around a little more. Fighting Marni with Roy would be a rather different experience to fighting her with Sigurd and it would make the Chapter bosses feel unique while still using the same villains. I get that there's a limited number of potential combinations when the heroes are slowly regaining the rings, but it would've been a really good way to demonstrate potentially unconventional uses to the player that they can then use for themselves once they got that Emblem back. Mauvier in Chapter 19 did exactly this with his Micaiah Warp/Rescue gimmick and I loved it, but it would've been more interesting if he didn't also have Micaiah every other encounter. You could've had Zephia with Micaiah flying around and using an Obstruct Staff to hinder your progress and separate your units, or Griss using her to NosTank. Just feels like they could have switched it up a little more and it would've made your encounters with them more memorable. It might've even made the Hounds seem a little more cunning because they weren't just running back the same loadout every time.
They sorta did that in chapter 11 were marni had sigurd and zephia marth, but yeah while I personally don't mind their repeated encounters that much your idea does sound really cool, especially since they also have good mixed stats(griss and marni have more onesided stats but even then their strenght and magic are workable) so you could try some out there combos
You hit the nail on the head with the story. The actual plot itself is fine, but the awkward story presentation is the biggest thing holding it back. I remember in Chapter 14, when Hortensia expresses surprise at Ivy being alive...even though Ivy has been physically present in the cutscene for like 2 minutes before this. Strange moments like that. It's why I couldn't take Rodrigue's death on 3H's Blue Lions route seriously, the execution was so awkward and stiff. As well as the pacing to a lesser extent. Sombron's motivations are fine, but what hurts it is that it's delivered through 5 minutes of monotonous exposition, and Chapter 24 is the first chapter in the story where we get any substantial characterization for the guy, so that exposition *has* to do a lot of legwork. The Hounds suffer this problem as well, but to a lesser extent because we do actually get some amount of time getting to know them (arguably a bit too much time, but that's a different argument), but those 5 minutes before they die are still doing like 80% of the work. This obviously wouldn't be an issue if they were evil for the sake of it, but if you want to give your villains actual motivation, you need to do more than that.
The other day I was watching the Boucheron and Etie B support with my sister and we were both laughing really hard until Etie just approached Boucheron and starterd "eating" his sandwich, my sister stopped, looked at me and told me "the animation, what happened?". That made me think how much work it has to go into the story/ support scenes with the 3D models and environments to prevent the scene to look dull or just break immersion, something portraits get away with because you use your imagination
Yeah, if Engage had the Tellius Capacity system, it would have straight up been better for it. Currently there's DLC Emblems with skills that cost 8,400 SP without many good ways to grind the currency beyond doing trials maps endlessly for those randomly dropped 1,000SP items. Not even a New Game+ mode to carry SP across multiple playthroughs like Tales of Symphonia's Grade so you can do silly things like acquire Starsphere at the beginning of every run for every character, if you so chose.
The real issue I have with these cutscenes isn't so much their presentation - they're not great, but they don't make any real technical mistakes outside of 'zephia's model has some clipping issues' - but the absolute lack of parsimony. Characters spend so much time and so many words on so very little in this game (and the series as a whole). You might not be able to communicate nuanced ideas through expressions as easily with 3d models, but you can write what's going on in less words either way!
The prevalence of flat cutscenes where characters do little more than stand around is certainly a budget/resource issue. The writing is harder to excuse as 3H was much more tolerable in that regard. So you have this combination of corny dialogue and lack of cinematography that turns a bog standard story into something almost insufferable. The fact that the game is so good despite its story is a testament to just how great the gameplay is. No other Fire Emblem game has forced me to play creatively and use every tool at my disposal.
i restarted my maddening playthrough when the dlc wave dropped and i have come to the conclusion this is my favorite fire emblem experience ever. The game constantly reveals layers of balance and the emblems are always upending my ideas of what worked and didnt, it is legit tough to pick power emblems because they are so balanced with utility.
I think the game is solid. It has its flaws but nothing too terrible. The gameplay is a major step up in my opinion from Echoes and 3H. The characters and story are just alright. Nothing great but nothing awful
It's a good point about the game tearing you down at chapter 10. I like the fact that instead of constant growth, they throw a major setback at you and you need to find a way out of it without relying on the skills you're probably used to at that point. It reminds me somewhat of Three Houses Silver Snow at chapter 12 where (spoilers, obviously) Edelgard and Hubert leave your party and you're suddenly deprived of probably your strongest unit, maybe two of your strongest, just before the biggest battle so far. And then the following chapter starts you with just Byleth and Seteth and slowly feeds your characters back to you. Both feel like a dramatic reversal not just in how to strategize but in storytelling-through-gameplay.
I think Engage is a fine enough game. It's definitely carried by its gameplay and map design though, and while I get that for some people that's all that matters (especially after the last two mainline games were pretty subpar in those areas) but I still think it's disappointing that the first non-remake game developed in house by IS since Fates isn't much better writing wise and that it even borrows some plot beats from that game. Now Engage isn't as bad as Fates obviously: it helps that it doesn't take itself seriously (for the most part at least) and you'll have actually to try to reach the lows of "Justice is an illusion", the stupid kid subplot from Revelations or the entire second half of Conquest, but let's be honest these are all pretty low bars to surpass. I get that story wasn't the primary focus for this title, I just fear that we may end up with another Fates in the future when they eventually try their hands at a more ambitious plot. I just hope that someday we will have a modern FE game that excels at both story and gameplay so we don't have to ignore one half of a game just to enjoy the other half. The only feasible way I can see this happening is if IS lets the KT writers work on the story while they take care of the rest.
Having to fight the hounds 500 times makes them really anoying villains and for me the most anoying part is that they try to redeem every single one of them and it's so poorly executed
There was only an attempt to redeem Mauvier and Marni. Zephia helping the party at the end was motivated primarily by spite toward Sombron, and Griss was entirely unapologetic And I think most fights with them feel different enough that it rarely feels *too* samey. The varied map design and whether they have an Emblem or not contributes to this
Trying to save Mauvier was both expected and fine, imo, after playing enough FEs, you realize he's the Camus archetype, so he is either meant to die fighting for what he truly believes in, or joins your ranks as he realizes the person he follows no longer aligns with the vision he holds. Idk what they were trying to do with Marni, though, she did a 180 out of a sad story, and it is kinda hard to be simpathetic towards her, so why even save her to begin with. Zephia I kinda liked until they tried to "redeem" her, and Griss, as one dimensional as he is, is probably the most enjoyable of the villains, just by virtue of sticking to his guns all the way through.
I really love Engage. It clearly had a ton of passion poured into every part of it. I love the more simple story and the supports are amazing. I feel bad for people that expected this game to be something it is not, or prefers the tone of 3H, but for me, it's perfect. I genuinely get so excited whenever Goldmary gets another support rank with someone, cause I know I am in for a good time! I am glad you enjoyed it Bopper~
Haven’t played a second of Engage yet (God of War Ragnarok is a bigass game!), but I loved this analysis nonetheless, and I’m excited to enjoy this game. Glad you loved it, and thanks as always for your excellent thoughts and insights).
Engage truly is a culimarion of the series in every way and alot of it is good but it's also got a good amount of fire emblem core falts across the franchise especially in the late game were there were a couple of good late game maps there was also enemy blobs with a gimmick tho I will give them props for doing reinforcements well mostly they weren't really time wasters and for 2 maps they were hurry up buttons tho they are a bit less effective with the turnwheel. Also for the story God why do we still have avatars I'm fine with Gary stue main protage because well its a battle of good God vs evil God but having the aqured pauses in dialog to were alears name is shown in text but not spoken makes alot of scenes lose their weight
looking forward to the boss video. The fact that Nalucce moves on maddening was such a jump scare. The hounds are repetitive, but they are a lot better designed than good ol' Macbeth FE4
I personally disagree with your take on the story's last third but I do think the presentation is a pretty big problem. I get what they're going for but honestly you can't have the flat camera zoom and pan cutscenes for the majority of your story presentation, it's just weird.
#spoilers# Thank you for pointing out the problems with the way the story is presented. It was very annoying, but I couldn’t pinpoint what the main problem was. The dialogue scenes are bland and just look silly to the point I can’t take them seriously (Unless Alear is having a moment, the voice acting was really good sometimes). I was also extremeley annoyed at the four hounds. The final confrontation left me very unsatisfied, even though I found that cutscene you mention to be a neat ending. Now I can somewhat put a label on what annoyed me. I truly dislike the 4 hounds and how they are exempt from consequences and how they spit on the tone that I‘m used to from fire emblem games. So much so, that when I recruited mauvier and realized I would have to endure his presence in the somniel and in further story segments I decided to turn him into a one way suicide flunky in chapter 24. I guess that made it satisfying. Otherwise I truly enjoyed this game. I wish I had realized sooner that I could fight my Fomo and skip the somniel, that would have cut at least 20 hours of playtime. And -while I recognise it’s in part due to fanservice, the final was really sarisfiyng and proudly checking on my low turn clears and mvps (Chloé and Sigurd usually, who was yours?) and reading on the life of my characters never gets old to me. I really want to replay this game at some point, which is more than I can say for the other new fe‘s. For me, this is in most cases a step forward from three houses and I hope they keep it up.
That’s unfortunate, mauviers supports are really well written Something that surprised me about this game it that the supports are usually pretty good! Unfortunately 30% of them have awakening syndrome where two characters just say there gimmick to the screen 3 times, but otherwise they range from neat-top tier FE writing
@@flogos989 I may have missed some good supports. The ones that stood out to me were Alcryst's, Kagetsu's and -to an extent- Hortensia's even though for her it's one good convo every 5... which, considering they're support conversations involving a very annoying character, were really hard to endure for me. I saw some potential in Mauvier,, so I can believe you when you tell me he's got good supports. I still don't feel bad though, I really wanted him off my roster. I'll see him shine in another playthrough maybe.
@@Haimi-fv5xj tbh the best part of supports in this game is that you can just go online and read the supports I’d recommend reading his support with pandreo, at least. It’s like top 5 FE supports in my opinion
Nice video, Professor. I wanted to ask, how do you feel about the character models themselves; I just can't get past how the vast majority of the characters have the exact same face shape. It exacerbates the problem with the animation, like you mentioned, because not only are the characters less emotive, but also less distinct and expressive as well.
The faces don't bother me a ton for this game specifically because it's a problem I expect from most 3D animation outside of the highest quality stuff. Faces are the hardest part for 3D animation to do well (I'm sure there's a reason, but I'm not too well versed in the technology behind 3D animation)
@@ProfessorBopper Well, I'm glad it didn't bother you too much. I'm sure when I put more time into Engage, I'll be able to look past it as well, but it's an odd aesthetic choice, especially given how emotive the original character art tends to be. It was one of the first things I noticed in the trailers, so it's been hard for me to ignore in cutscenes.
Holy crap. A 7 minute sequence with that kind of presentation? And I though Metal Gear could get bad with it's lengthy codec conversations. At least those games also have several standard cutscenes along with taking 8-10 hours to complete, not 40-60 hour one. Considering how simplistic the premise is, story sequences don't need to last that long. Fire Emblem plots more complex have said more in less time.
I... straight up forgot half of the stuff in the Somniel even existed. I have literally never used anything in the Somniel beyond the purely mechanical stuff.
Engage feels like the exact opposite of Echoes. Echoes had pretty meh to bad map design but a great story and presentation of said story while engage has a meh story with bad presentation but amazing map design
I vastly prefer Engage over Three Houses. Three Houses is such a slog to play with the Monastery being such a boring hub world that you're more or less forced to use, and most of the routes being very samey to each other. While I'm not super huge on the Somniel, I still really appreciate it that you're not crippling yourself for not using it, and the fact that the game is also just one linear story with no multiple routes is also very refreshing. It's also nice having a more simple storyline after three years of people arguing over which 3H lord did the most/least amount of war crimes. Sure, the story has it's fair share of dumb moments, particularly towards the end, but compared to a train wreck like Fates, it's at least serviceable.
I would say that every Fire Emblem after Path of Radiance has different flaws, but they can all be enjoyed if you focus on the good parts and dismiss the criticism. Each game has had different flaws which is part of the reason the rankings are all over the place.
the part about the cutscenes is so fucking true, on paper the story isnt that bad, it’s basic and predictable but still coherent and entertaining, however it’s not immersive at all because of the limited 3d models as you said! each time the characters were talking to the hounds after a battle just standing there and letting them run away for no reason i was so damn frustrated. the voice acting saved them a bit, but it wasn’t enough for me.
Unrelated but every time I hear someone make a passing reference to the blazing sword comercial my day greatly improves I personally started out hating the game because of how fanservicey it was, but then something clicked in my brain because the game was just waaayy too fun for me. Who cares if I can tell the npcs from the player characters with a passing glance, what if the world feels like 4 super mario level themes, so what if everyone looks like they are on this months genshin impact banner. I love fe engage for what it is despite all of that.
This is possibly a difference between Hard and Maddening, since it was useful in spots in hard mode (chapter 17 and 20 come to mind), but it was usually better for me to position Lucina to get a bunch of chain attacks and to just kill an enemy outright
@Professor Bopper I was warping with her and just letting enemies die into my units on hard. Rosado with Lucina Bonded ring and then Alear, Ivy, Kagetsu, and Seadall near the backside to not get targeted (he can't be hurt, but he won't one shot anything). This was essentially a wave of enemies just dying into my characters as they took 0 damage due to Bonded Shield while I got to double with super strong damage carries.
As much as I think engages story had a lot of potential and wasted it towards the end becus IS just wanted to keep this game light on story and not leave any loose ends, I still found a lot of the characters even recruits you get at the end of the game that I won’t spoil ofc really endearing thx to their voice acting and some of their supports. Lowkey wish IS returns to the more GBA style to the point and quirky supports rather then go back to three houses movie length support scenes with drawn out and really exhausting dialogue. If they wanted more world building base convos are far superior
the game EXCELS when it is being a silly shonen romp. The game's goofy and sometimes cringe-inducing attempts at comedy come off very silly and endearing to me. (It especially helps that the voice cast for the game goes fuckin ALL-OUT for the delivery of some of the games best jokes.) Any attempts at drama on the other hand rarely hits it's mark. I love a good 'ol melodrama as much as anyone else, but this games attempts a drama just ain't it, and it's definitely at it's most fun when it keeps it light and breezy, and let's the gameplay do the heavy lifting (because I enjoy the gameplay a LOT).
Honestly the content of the story and dialogue was good for me even at the end, but the single thing that I disliked the most in the game is, as you said, the presentation of the narrative. It's just fucking awfull. This is the same console that gave us Xenoblade 3, how are these cutscenes THIS BAD? It's made worse because the game is gorgeous outside of it. Some of the best combat animations in the franchise, great models, mostly great designs with some... notable exceptions. It makes the story cutscenes stand out like a sore thumb. The only exception is the fully animated scenes but, yet again, those make the average cutscene look even worse. Engage is within my top 3 FE games, I just wonder if it could have challanged Radiant Dawn for first if I didn't feel like looking away from the screen and just listening to the story. TL;DR: IS, put some money into your cutscenes, god. Gold star for literally everything else.
This game is in my top 3 of all FE's because its just a good time. I have fun with it. The gameplay loop is so entertaining and refreshing in a way that invigorated me after 3H knocked a lot of wind out of my sails. I wish you covered supports a bit more. I felt that a lot of 3H supports were just... not good. Flat and bland like the blank slate characters, but with Engage, it was back to Alear not being the only person who mattered. We got hints of characters outside of the protag character being a tragedy dump.
So how many FE games are going to come out before we all admit to ourselves that Intelligent Systems just isn't good at writing or telling stories? Yes, Engage's story isn't good, but if you've played more than one other FE game it's the least surprising problem. Of course, people will give examples of "better" FE stories, like FE4 or Tellius or possibly Three Houses, but they're wrong. Those stories aren't good, they're just more complex. IS is good at disguising complexity as depth and good storytelling. They decided to do something more simple in Engage and revealed yet again how bad they are at writing.
Path of Radiance ain't complex lol. It's pretty stock JRPG plot, it just has solid prose and decent worldbuilding Engage can absolutely have decent dialogue when it wants to. A lot of the supports are quite fun, some scenes in a vacuum are *written* well enough, and the boss convos are consistently great. It's biggest faults lie in it's presentation and pacing. It doesn't have much worldbuilding going on, but I don't see that as an inherent issue if it's not a priority to begin with, which the devs have said was the case
That complexity of story hides a lot of what makes a good story though. FE4 and the Telius saga are considered the top tier stories because we understand more about the setting, it's characters, and it's conflicts and get immersed more in the world.
That is an incorrect statement. You have listed 0 reasons why stories such as FE4, 5, 9, and 10 are bad. They’re good. They’re told well The script is written well And most significantly they let us have glimpses of the greater world. IntSys used to be consistently good at storytelling. Awakening is the game at which point they started shitting the bed, and Fates was no better.
It's not like there's one guy at Intelligent Systems who writes all of these games. There's been fire emblem games with good stories before. I doubt you'd agree with my picks though considering your opinion on the storytelling from the series.
@@MiyaoMeow588 I just can't get into a story if it seems like the world only exists as set dressing. By Chapter 2 I was asking "Does anyone actually live in this world? Why is the Divine Dragon's castle so empty? How did Vander, Clanne, and Framme get recruited as guardians when it seems like no one lives in Lythos?" and it never really got better. One of the things 3H did better than most other FE games was convincingly portray a world full of people with lives, goals, homes, factions, politics, etc.
Someone actually let him cook at the beginning of this vid
I will say that for as comedically flat and undynamic as the cutscenes are, the voice actors do a shockingly good job imo. F!Alear's VA was, to me, really good. There's a lot of good individual scenes where she does a great job acting out the sort of quiet rage or masked sadness that she needs to. The script she's given isn't exactly high art, but she did a great job selling it, and made me care at least a little when the rest of the game did not.
Honestly the god tier voice acting is what made the story go from forgettably mediocre to something I think is a solid high B tier FE story
I'll say across the board, the actors go above and beyond the material they were given. I picked Male Alear and his performance at the end of Chapter 3 is the only reason I wasn't laughing.
I had the same feeling. I've suggested in the past that good VAs will sound bad given bad writing. But somehow that's not true here. Maybe because the writing or dialogue is not bad as far as its distinct from the story.
Chapter 24 F!Alear's voicework is frankly incredible, it solidified her above M!Alear to me tbh.
This game's dub elevates it soooo much honestly, I wasn't expected to get dragged into the plot but the cast is brought to life so well I couldn't help it tbh.
I think this is why good direction is so important. For the most part, this game has good direction (not always; Past Alear is pretty poor in my opinion) and it helps carry the dialogue
Man I always thought Three Houses got a lot of hate for its graphics and coloring, but anytime I see someone transition to a capture or footage of Three Houses compared to Engage it does make me realize that they were right lol. Engage is a much prettier game. Not perfect, but definitely better than Three Houses.
I feel the problem with 3 House’s art style is that it tries go for realism, but that mostly translates to a lot of muddy browns and grays.
You should never crack an egg on the side of the dish you're using because you'll get eggshells in the mixture, FYI. Use a flat surface instead, baker's pro tip!
Dont listen to him, he's trying to deprive you of important calcium from eggshells. You should be getting at least 3 cups of eggshells a day in your diet.
I think it's funny how the anniversary game in a franchise full of dead dads is ultimately about killing your dad
If you want a good example of dynamic and well done cutscenes in contrast that can be done on the Switch, I recommend Xenoblade 3. The cutscenes have actual direction and motion going on and at times feel like a high budget 3D anime.
I personally find the extended exposure to the Hounds over multiple chapters interesting from a story standpoint, but I think all they'd really have to do to make it more interesting gameplay-wise is have the Hounds swap the rings around a little more. Fighting Marni with Roy would be a rather different experience to fighting her with Sigurd and it would make the Chapter bosses feel unique while still using the same villains. I get that there's a limited number of potential combinations when the heroes are slowly regaining the rings, but it would've been a really good way to demonstrate potentially unconventional uses to the player that they can then use for themselves once they got that Emblem back.
Mauvier in Chapter 19 did exactly this with his Micaiah Warp/Rescue gimmick and I loved it, but it would've been more interesting if he didn't also have Micaiah every other encounter. You could've had Zephia with Micaiah flying around and using an Obstruct Staff to hinder your progress and separate your units, or Griss using her to NosTank. Just feels like they could have switched it up a little more and it would've made your encounters with them more memorable. It might've even made the Hounds seem a little more cunning because they weren't just running back the same loadout every time.
They sorta did that in chapter 11 were marni had sigurd and zephia marth, but yeah while I personally don't mind their repeated encounters that much your idea does sound really cool, especially since they also have good mixed stats(griss and marni have more onesided stats but even then their strenght and magic are workable) so you could try some out there combos
You hit the nail on the head with the story. The actual plot itself is fine, but the awkward story presentation is the biggest thing holding it back. I remember in Chapter 14, when Hortensia expresses surprise at Ivy being alive...even though Ivy has been physically present in the cutscene for like 2 minutes before this. Strange moments like that. It's why I couldn't take Rodrigue's death on 3H's Blue Lions route seriously, the execution was so awkward and stiff.
As well as the pacing to a lesser extent. Sombron's motivations are fine, but what hurts it is that it's delivered through 5 minutes of monotonous exposition, and Chapter 24 is the first chapter in the story where we get any substantial characterization for the guy, so that exposition *has* to do a lot of legwork.
The Hounds suffer this problem as well, but to a lesser extent because we do actually get some amount of time getting to know them (arguably a bit too much time, but that's a different argument), but those 5 minutes before they die are still doing like 80% of the work.
This obviously wouldn't be an issue if they were evil for the sake of it, but if you want to give your villains actual motivation, you need to do more than that.
The other day I was watching the Boucheron and Etie B support with my sister and we were both laughing really hard until Etie just approached Boucheron and starterd "eating" his sandwich, my sister stopped, looked at me and told me "the animation, what happened?". That made me think how much work it has to go into the story/ support scenes with the 3D models and environments to prevent the scene to look dull or just break immersion, something portraits get away with because you use your imagination
The idea to make SP into a growing capacity rather than a currency is actually such a genius idea
Yeah, if Engage had the Tellius Capacity system, it would have straight up been better for it.
Currently there's DLC Emblems with skills that cost 8,400 SP without many good ways to grind the currency beyond doing trials maps endlessly for those randomly dropped 1,000SP items. Not even a New Game+ mode to carry SP across multiple playthroughs like Tales of Symphonia's Grade so you can do silly things like acquire Starsphere at the beginning of every run for every character, if you so chose.
The real issue I have with these cutscenes isn't so much their presentation - they're not great, but they don't make any real technical mistakes outside of 'zephia's model has some clipping issues' - but the absolute lack of parsimony. Characters spend so much time and so many words on so very little in this game (and the series as a whole). You might not be able to communicate nuanced ideas through expressions as easily with 3d models, but you can write what's going on in less words either way!
The prevalence of flat cutscenes where characters do little more than stand around is certainly a budget/resource issue. The writing is harder to excuse as 3H was much more tolerable in that regard. So you have this combination of corny dialogue and lack of cinematography that turns a bog standard story into something almost insufferable.
The fact that the game is so good despite its story is a testament to just how great the gameplay is. No other Fire Emblem game has forced me to play creatively and use every tool at my disposal.
Great discussion - it really makes wish that you did more FE breakdown/analysis videos, you have a great way of talking about game design!
Here's some more! ruclips.net/p/PLcWV_6O5CL_THupafGfJsrnYUtge56nv4
i restarted my maddening playthrough when the dlc wave dropped and i have come to the conclusion this is my favorite fire emblem experience ever. The game constantly reveals layers of balance and the emblems are always upending my ideas of what worked and didnt, it is legit tough to pick power emblems because they are so balanced with utility.
I think the game is solid. It has its flaws but nothing too terrible. The gameplay is a major step up in my opinion from Echoes and 3H. The characters and story are just alright. Nothing great but nothing awful
It's a good point about the game tearing you down at chapter 10. I like the fact that instead of constant growth, they throw a major setback at you and you need to find a way out of it without relying on the skills you're probably used to at that point. It reminds me somewhat of Three Houses Silver Snow at chapter 12 where (spoilers, obviously) Edelgard and Hubert leave your party and you're suddenly deprived of probably your strongest unit, maybe two of your strongest, just before the biggest battle so far. And then the following chapter starts you with just Byleth and Seteth and slowly feeds your characters back to you. Both feel like a dramatic reversal not just in how to strategize but in storytelling-through-gameplay.
I think Engage is a fine enough game.
It's definitely carried by its gameplay and map design though, and while I get that for some people that's all that matters (especially after the last two mainline games were pretty subpar in those areas) but I still think it's disappointing that the first non-remake game developed in house by IS since Fates isn't much better writing wise and that it even borrows some plot beats from that game.
Now Engage isn't as bad as Fates obviously: it helps that it doesn't take itself seriously (for the most part at least) and you'll have actually to try to reach the lows of "Justice is an illusion", the stupid kid subplot from Revelations or the entire second half of Conquest, but let's be honest these are all pretty low bars to surpass.
I get that story wasn't the primary focus for this title, I just fear that we may end up with another Fates in the future when they eventually try their hands at a more ambitious plot.
I just hope that someday we will have a modern FE game that excels at both story and gameplay so we don't have to ignore one half of a game just to enjoy the other half. The only feasible way I can see this happening is if IS lets the KT writers work on the story while they take care of the rest.
Having to fight the hounds 500 times makes them really anoying villains and for me the most anoying part is that they try to redeem every single one of them and it's so poorly executed
There was only an attempt to redeem Mauvier and Marni. Zephia helping the party at the end was motivated primarily by spite toward Sombron, and Griss was entirely unapologetic
And I think most fights with them feel different enough that it rarely feels *too* samey. The varied map design and whether they have an Emblem or not contributes to this
That’s why when Mauvier joined I sent that fool deep into enemy lines and let him figure it out.
Trying to save Mauvier was both expected and fine, imo, after playing enough FEs, you realize he's the Camus archetype, so he is either meant to die fighting for what he truly believes in, or joins your ranks as he realizes the person he follows no longer aligns with the vision he holds.
Idk what they were trying to do with Marni, though, she did a 180 out of a sad story, and it is kinda hard to be simpathetic towards her, so why even save her to begin with. Zephia I kinda liked until they tried to "redeem" her, and Griss, as one dimensional as he is, is probably the most enjoyable of the villains, just by virtue of sticking to his guns all the way through.
Wow! Really good analysis. You put your finger on the strengths and weaknesses of the game so well!
I really love Engage. It clearly had a ton of passion poured into every part of it. I love the more simple story and the supports are amazing. I feel bad for people that expected this game to be something it is not, or prefers the tone of 3H, but for me, it's perfect. I genuinely get so excited whenever Goldmary gets another support rank with someone, cause I know I am in for a good time! I am glad you enjoyed it Bopper~
Haven’t played a second of Engage yet (God of War Ragnarok is a bigass game!), but I loved this analysis nonetheless, and I’m excited to enjoy this game. Glad you loved it, and thanks as always for your excellent thoughts and insights).
I thought you were gonna eat the flour
Engage truly is a culimarion of the series in every way and alot of it is good but it's also got a good amount of fire emblem core falts across the franchise especially in the late game were there were a couple of good late game maps there was also enemy blobs with a gimmick tho I will give them props for doing reinforcements well mostly they weren't really time wasters and for 2 maps they were hurry up buttons tho they are a bit less effective with the turnwheel. Also for the story God why do we still have avatars I'm fine with Gary stue main protage because well its a battle of good God vs evil God but having the aqured pauses in dialog to were alears name is shown in text but not spoken makes alot of scenes lose their weight
looking forward to the boss video. The fact that Nalucce moves on maddening was such a jump scare. The hounds are repetitive, but they are a lot better designed than good ol' Macbeth FE4
I personally disagree with your take on the story's last third but I do think the presentation is a pretty big problem. I get what they're going for but honestly you can't have the flat camera zoom and pan cutscenes for the majority of your story presentation, it's just weird.
are you going to give engage a video on past perspectives in fire emblem games? like how the jagen of this game compares to others or the like?
So what I'm hearing is that Berwick Sagas castle menu still reigns supreme in the Fe/Kagaverse
The base from the Tellius games were really good too. The Somniel and Monestary are really just menus you can run around in with minigames.
Navaron city is one of the most brilliant elements of game design in the world, yes
I thought you were making crack for a second
#spoilers# Thank you for pointing out the problems with the way the story is presented. It was very annoying, but I couldn’t pinpoint what the main problem was. The dialogue scenes are bland and just look silly to the point I can’t take them seriously (Unless Alear is having a moment, the voice acting was really good sometimes). I was also extremeley annoyed at the four hounds. The final confrontation left me very unsatisfied, even though I found that cutscene you mention to be a neat ending. Now I can somewhat put a label on what annoyed me. I truly dislike the 4 hounds and how they are exempt from consequences and how they spit on the tone that I‘m used to from fire emblem games. So much so, that when I recruited mauvier and realized I would have to endure his presence in the somniel and in further story segments I decided to turn him into a one way suicide flunky in chapter 24. I guess that made it satisfying. Otherwise I truly enjoyed this game. I wish I had realized sooner that I could fight my Fomo and skip the somniel, that would have cut at least 20 hours of playtime. And -while I recognise it’s in part due to fanservice, the final was really sarisfiyng and proudly checking on my low turn clears and mvps (Chloé and Sigurd usually, who was yours?) and reading on the life of my characters never gets old to me. I really want to replay this game at some point, which is more than I can say for the other new fe‘s. For me, this is in most cases a step forward from three houses and I hope they keep it up.
That’s unfortunate, mauviers supports are really well written
Something that surprised me about this game it that the supports are usually pretty good! Unfortunately 30% of them have awakening syndrome where two characters just say there gimmick to the screen 3 times, but otherwise they range from neat-top tier FE writing
@@flogos989 I may have missed some good supports. The ones that stood out to me were Alcryst's, Kagetsu's and -to an extent- Hortensia's even though for her it's one good convo every 5... which, considering they're support conversations involving a very annoying character, were really hard to endure for me. I saw some potential in Mauvier,, so I can believe you when you tell me he's got good supports. I still don't feel bad though, I really wanted him off my roster. I'll see him shine in another playthrough maybe.
@@Haimi-fv5xj tbh the best part of supports in this game is that you can just go online and read the supports
I’d recommend reading his support with pandreo, at least. It’s like top 5 FE supports in my opinion
Engage > Three Houses
DAMN the red and blue -muffin.- -.- You saw nothing this was cupcake all along.
Daggers increase all damage by 1 per stack
Nice video, Professor. I wanted to ask, how do you feel about the character models themselves; I just can't get past how the vast majority of the characters have the exact same face shape. It exacerbates the problem with the animation, like you mentioned, because not only are the characters less emotive, but also less distinct and expressive as well.
The faces don't bother me a ton for this game specifically because it's a problem I expect from most 3D animation outside of the highest quality stuff. Faces are the hardest part for 3D animation to do well (I'm sure there's a reason, but I'm not too well versed in the technology behind 3D animation)
@@ProfessorBopper Well, I'm glad it didn't bother you too much. I'm sure when I put more time into Engage, I'll be able to look past it as well, but it's an odd aesthetic choice, especially given how emotive the original character art tends to be. It was one of the first things I noticed in the trailers, so it's been hard for me to ignore in cutscenes.
I just beat Engage yesterday on Christmas. I give it a 7. Alfred was my MVP
Holy crap. A 7 minute sequence with that kind of presentation? And I though Metal Gear could get bad with it's lengthy codec conversations. At least those games also have several standard cutscenes along with taking 8-10 hours to complete, not 40-60 hour one.
Considering how simplistic the premise is, story sequences don't need to last that long. Fire Emblem plots more complex have said more in less time.
I... straight up forgot half of the stuff in the Somniel even existed. I have literally never used anything in the Somniel beyond the purely mechanical stuff.
Engage feels like the exact opposite of Echoes. Echoes had pretty meh to bad map design but a great story and presentation of said story while engage has a meh story with bad presentation but amazing map design
good on you for using Trails in the Sky music :3
Bopper thinks he can just drop the video ever made of all time on a Monday, what a guy
I vastly prefer Engage over Three Houses. Three Houses is such a slog to play with the Monastery being such a boring hub world that you're more or less forced to use, and most of the routes being very samey to each other. While I'm not super huge on the Somniel, I still really appreciate it that you're not crippling yourself for not using it, and the fact that the game is also just one linear story with no multiple routes is also very refreshing. It's also nice having a more simple storyline after three years of people arguing over which 3H lord did the most/least amount of war crimes. Sure, the story has it's fair share of dumb moments, particularly towards the end, but compared to a train wreck like Fates, it's at least serviceable.
I would say that every Fire Emblem after Path of Radiance has different flaws, but they can all be enjoyed if you focus on the good parts and dismiss the criticism. Each game has had different flaws which is part of the reason the rankings are all over the place.
You may mention this later, but certain classes cannot be broken and you must do at least one damage to break an opponent.
Comment to make the algorithm engage more with this video, or should I say , Fire Emblem Enga-
"It's stands" killed me
the part about the cutscenes is so fucking true, on paper the story isnt that bad, it’s basic and predictable but still coherent and entertaining, however it’s not immersive at all because of the limited 3d models as you said! each time the characters were talking to the hounds after a battle just standing there and letting them run away for no reason i was so damn frustrated. the voice acting saved them a bit, but it wasn’t enough for me.
This is the game I have had the most fun with on maddening since FE12 lunatic reverse I like that it's well balanced
Unrelated but every time I hear someone make a passing reference to the blazing sword comercial my day greatly improves
I personally started out hating the game because of how fanservicey it was, but then something clicked in my brain because the game was just waaayy too fun for me. Who cares if I can tell the npcs from the player characters with a passing glance, what if the world feels like 4 super mario level themes, so what if everyone looks like they are on this months genshin impact banner. I love fe engage for what it is despite all of that.
Been waiting weeks for this video.
I cant watch the bulk of the video until I play engage for myself but I HAVE TO KNOW. WERE THE CUPCAKES YUMMY!!! they look so yummy...
My favorite part was when Marth said “It’s Engaging Time” and engaged all over the player phase
Sad that you didn't cover Lucina's Bonded Shield. It's stronger than everything except Divine Dance, and it's not limited to one per engage.
This is possibly a difference between Hard and Maddening, since it was useful in spots in hard mode (chapter 17 and 20 come to mind), but it was usually better for me to position Lucina to get a bunch of chain attacks and to just kill an enemy outright
@Professor Bopper I was warping with her and just letting enemies die into my units on hard. Rosado with Lucina Bonded ring and then Alear, Ivy, Kagetsu, and Seadall near the backside to not get targeted (he can't be hurt, but he won't one shot anything).
This was essentially a wave of enemies just dying into my characters as they took 0 damage due to Bonded Shield while I got to double with super strong damage carries.
Beautiful Hands.
common radiant dawn W for its skill system
As much as I think engages story had a lot of potential and wasted it towards the end becus IS just wanted to keep this game light on story and not leave any loose ends, I still found a lot of the characters even recruits you get at the end of the game that I won’t spoil ofc really endearing thx to their voice acting and some of their supports. Lowkey wish IS returns to the more GBA style to the point and quirky supports rather then go back to three houses movie length support scenes with drawn out and really exhausting dialogue. If they wanted more world building base convos are far superior
Great video Prof. Boppy. Probably the cringest game in the series so far, but the gameplay makes up for it.
we early w it
the game EXCELS when it is being a silly shonen romp. The game's goofy and sometimes cringe-inducing attempts at comedy come off very silly and endearing to me. (It especially helps that the voice cast for the game goes fuckin ALL-OUT for the delivery of some of the games best jokes.) Any attempts at drama on the other hand rarely hits it's mark.
I love a good 'ol melodrama as much as anyone else, but this games attempts a drama just ain't it, and it's definitely at it's most fun when it keeps it light and breezy, and let's the gameplay do the heavy lifting (because I enjoy the gameplay a LOT).
Holy shit, title sounds hella sus lol.
Honestly the content of the story and dialogue was good for me even at the end, but the single thing that I disliked the most in the game is, as you said, the presentation of the narrative. It's just fucking awfull. This is the same console that gave us Xenoblade 3, how are these cutscenes THIS BAD?
It's made worse because the game is gorgeous outside of it. Some of the best combat animations in the franchise, great models, mostly great designs with some... notable exceptions. It makes the story cutscenes stand out like a sore thumb. The only exception is the fully animated scenes but, yet again, those make the average cutscene look even worse.
Engage is within my top 3 FE games, I just wonder if it could have challanged Radiant Dawn for first if I didn't feel like looking away from the screen and just listening to the story.
TL;DR: IS, put some money into your cutscenes, god. Gold star for literally everything else.
With the exception of that one general on a boat, we never killed any of the villains in combat just wounded them into 10 minute death monologues.
I mean.... you stab them and that causes them to die so I'd call that a kill
@@Raindrop_2401 i have been defeated but i can't die here, i must retreat
This game is in my top 3 of all FE's because its just a good time. I have fun with it. The gameplay loop is so entertaining and refreshing in a way that invigorated me after 3H knocked a lot of wind out of my sails.
I wish you covered supports a bit more. I felt that a lot of 3H supports were just... not good. Flat and bland like the blank slate characters, but with Engage, it was back to Alear not being the only person who mattered. We got hints of characters outside of the protag character being a tragedy dump.
I wonder how this take has aged
So how many FE games are going to come out before we all admit to ourselves that Intelligent Systems just isn't good at writing or telling stories? Yes, Engage's story isn't good, but if you've played more than one other FE game it's the least surprising problem.
Of course, people will give examples of "better" FE stories, like FE4 or Tellius or possibly Three Houses, but they're wrong. Those stories aren't good, they're just more complex. IS is good at disguising complexity as depth and good storytelling. They decided to do something more simple in Engage and revealed yet again how bad they are at writing.
Path of Radiance ain't complex lol. It's pretty stock JRPG plot, it just has solid prose and decent worldbuilding
Engage can absolutely have decent dialogue when it wants to. A lot of the supports are quite fun, some scenes in a vacuum are *written* well enough, and the boss convos are consistently great. It's biggest faults lie in it's presentation and pacing.
It doesn't have much worldbuilding going on, but I don't see that as an inherent issue if it's not a priority to begin with, which the devs have said was the case
That complexity of story hides a lot of what makes a good story though.
FE4 and the Telius saga are considered the top tier stories because we understand more about the setting, it's characters, and it's conflicts and get immersed more in the world.
That is an incorrect statement.
You have listed 0 reasons why stories such as FE4, 5, 9, and 10 are bad.
They’re good.
They’re told well
The script is written well
And most significantly they let us have glimpses of the greater world.
IntSys used to be consistently good at storytelling.
Awakening is the game at which point they started shitting the bed, and Fates was no better.
It's not like there's one guy at Intelligent Systems who writes all of these games. There's been fire emblem games with good stories before. I doubt you'd agree with my picks though considering your opinion on the storytelling from the series.
@@MiyaoMeow588 I just can't get into a story if it seems like the world only exists as set dressing. By Chapter 2 I was asking "Does anyone actually live in this world? Why is the Divine Dragon's castle so empty? How did Vander, Clanne, and Framme get recruited as guardians when it seems like no one lives in Lythos?" and it never really got better. One of the things 3H did better than most other FE games was convincingly portray a world full of people with lives, goals, homes, factions, politics, etc.