Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

Crikey that was satisying... just now finished my Hard mode run clocking in 96 hours (!) and thats after switching from a normal mode run clocking 24 hours (!!).

This is most certainly not an 81% quality game. I'd at the very least put it in the low 90's thanks to the most outrageous joyously broken combat system leaps and bounds more satisfying then any other FE title i've played (which is most of them).
Daring to go for (and puling off imo) a vastly different but captivating artstyle and finally, being able to pack several emotional punches throughout the campaign all absolutely reversed my initial pensiveness and dismay at the changes .
Surpringly so on that last point. My initial sigh at the overly-cutesy and seemingly paper-thin characters later gave way to a genuine feeling of peril for the cast after a fair few hairy moments.

As epic a story as Three Houses was, I found keeping track of each characters family history and maintaining motivation and empathy became frankly tiring after about 150 hours. Engage on the other hand keeps it simple but still manages to shock, delight and instil hype in the player.

81% pffft... I refuse to believe a large chunk of reviewers saw the story through to a point where they'd begin emotionally investing in the characters, let alone be able to buy the fantastic 2 to 3000 SP Emblem bond skills.

I guess after all this rambling, thats my point... review scores are not gospel and reviewers are humans like you and I with an admittedly difficult job to do. One persons desire and motivation to pour 100 hours into a game might be torture for the next person for which it simply dosnt "click" but still needs to produce a review score.

If something genuinely piques your interest then give it a go. Concentrate on the positive aspects and reviews and dive in with an open mind.

... on classic mode... with Yunaka reclassed to wolf rider... obviously.

Did Nintendo ever announce they'd restock old FE amiibo or something? I found (and immediately ordered) both Alm's and Celica's for RRP while I was randomly trying to find the BotW Zelda one and I remember those being WAY more expensive for a while since they're fairly old at this point.

Chapter 24 down. What a nice twist and turn there. I'm more than likely going to do a couple skirmishes tomorrow and chapter 25. I read there are 26 chapters, so I should be able to finish the game in the next couple of days barring any issues.

@Buizel
Not even close. Play Fates if you want to see what an actual bad story looks like. Engage is high literature by comparison.

Even so, it's a must play, cheesy story and all. Fire Emblem Fates Conquest (and Revelations, I'd argue) has some of the absolute best map design and fun gameplay mechanics the series has ever seen, only being rivaled by Engage itself. The pair up mechanic was balanced and perfected in Fates, as well as the adjacent follow-up mechanic.

@Dom_31 pretty much every FE amiibo got a re-release for this game. Unless you live in the States, then it was only Corrin P2 and Marth.

No, I'm not still salty about that. Why would you ask?

I haven't quite finished the game yet, am somewhere in Chapter 20 now, but this is probably my least favorite Fire Emblem game since Awakening (i haven't played a FE game before that), sharing its spot with Fates for me.
The Story really doesn't grip me at all, granted it never had been anything mindblowing before, but at least i felt that at least some characters used to have a bit more depth than their tropes before. I guess that is just me, after reading some of the comments, but i really can't bring myself to feel emotionally attached to the Characters, especially if they are letting out one cringe comment after another in every cutscene. I am used to some Characters being like that, but i can't even build up meaningful relationships between them and roleplay my own headcanon together because the game watered the system down to A levels at max with discussions that are unbelievably short and pretty much amount to shallow chit chat. Maybe that was the case before as well and i am just salty that i couldn't create any couples... but if i can't do that, then i do expect a step up in the writing direction for characters to see them develop a certain way.
The other minigames are also really tedious in my opinion and start devolving into more of a chore after doing them more than twice. The big fun thing to do next to the main gameplay was building relationships and maybe some stats, i just cannot understand why they would remove that feature. Or, if they remove the feature, at least create better characters with a predetermined path to make up for that gameplay feature...

Sorry, this is just my little rant over here, but i found fate at least fun, because you could go so far with the relationships there, even though the story wasn't quite that profound. The gameplay was also solid enough.
In Engage the gameplay is far better and prettier, but pretty much everything else falls short and as such makes the game a lot more boring to me, since there is nothing fun to do for me except battling more and that quickly burns me out...
I still enjoy and probably will enjoy the rest of the game to a certain extent due to the main gameplay and the presentation of the music and style.

@Solaine That's kind of how I'm feeling too. The pure combat side of things is great. It's fun, strategic, and looks great. But nearly everything outside of that just feels repetitive and superfluous. And I have also really been struggling to enjoy the story. It's just incredibly predictable and boring and I have hardly any interest in any of the characters. I put the game down a couple of weeks ago and have had no desire to return to it, unfortunately. Maybe I'll pick it up and finish it eventually, though.

Last chapter tonight and I'll have finished the game. Looking forward to closing it out.

Edit: Annnnnd I rolled the credits tonight. Rock solid game, and I absolutely loved the graphics/style. Loved the engage ability, and some of the characters.

Overall, great 8/10 for me. I can't put my finger on why, but I'd still say awakening and 3h are more enjoyable for me.

This weekend im planning on playing Fire Emblem Engage. Havent played a Fire Emblem game since Shadows of Valentia and Awakening for my Nintendo 3DS a couple of years ago.

so I dont know whats new for gameplay for the Nintendo Switch Fire Emblem games anyway but I mostly bought Engage for the story basically

Finished it the other day. Overall, better than 3H, but still too much filler/repetitive stuff. Enjoyed the engage features and references to past games.

@XandertheWise You really bought Fire Emblem engage for the story? That is something else, but i hope you enjoy the game nonetheless

@Solaine yes i did. Same reason why i bought Fire Emblem Echoes and Awakening years ago. I bought them for the story in the game.

You do know what a game's story is dont you? I dont get my rocks off over new updated gameplay mechanics or whatever they have these days

@XandertheWise ...Wow. Quite the reply there.

Also, Engage's story is absolutely not the strong point. I'd say it's probably the worst aspect of the game. If you're going into it hoping for a good story, you're probably going to be disappointed, unfortunately.

Admittedly, the story was what I primarily appreciated in Echoes and Three Houses.

All I needed this to do was not to actively distract me with how bad its story was, and... it doesn't. The story is fine, as far as that goes.

I'm guessing it was weirdly rude for no reason, right?

@Ralizah You nailed it lol

@XandertheWise I didn't want to talk down on you for enjoying the story of a game, i just meant to imply that the story might not be Fire Emblem Engages main selling point, at least not for me. I also enjoyed the story of awakening and especially echoes quite a bit and would argueably even trade most of the gameplay changes for a better story.
And it doesn't even have to be that complex, mostly i enjoy the fire emblem stories for having a few empires fighting each other seriously and i dunno, kinda feeling the characters and their motivations.
Doesn't have to be a Nier Automata or something profound

Okay, so I'm hoping to put a serious dent in finishing this tonight (I think I'm on Chapter 23? It's somewhere between 22-24.), and I really do love this game. It's not perfect, and I think the characters are part of that. There's an inconsistency between a lot of the interactions between them. Sometimes, it's these really great, heartfelt conversations. I adore Hortensia and Alcryst together. Sometimes, it's just the most bizarre thing ever, like with Hortensia and Celine. I think 3H had the character consistency that Engage lacks, and that's why there are many who prefer those characters.

Wave 3 DLC next week. They really gave us the content quick. I like that!

I hate waiting a year getting little doses of content that in and of themselves aren't enough to draw me back into a game.

I still haven't come back to this because ya, plus Metroid Prime Remastered dropped, and I've not been in a huge gaming mood lately.

But with Wave 3 and all the bracelet paralogs available, it may soon be time to wrap up these last 8 chapters. Then again, if you could all 11 paralogs I still have yet to do, and the 5 additional DLC paralogs, that's 24 more maps. And I'm already like 70 hrs in.

I finally make a proper start on the game over the weekend and, yeah... I'm guessing that Three Houses is going to go down as the outlier where Fire Emblem tried to grow up and tell a more nuanced story, because Engage isn't exactly trying hard.

Ah well, it's a fine game mechanically at least. I'll reserve judgement as to where it fits into the overall series ranking but I'll definitely be playing it to a finish.

@Matt_Barber The story will become a bit more nuanced as it goes on, it's not quite as clichéd fantasy stuff as the beginning would suggest... But yeah, you shouldn't expect Three Houses levels of political detail and shades of gray, this one has a way more traditional plot.