Happy new year and welcome to a new installment of the Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread! Please feel free to share any kind of Fire Emblem opinions/takes you might have here, positive or negative. As always please remember to continue following the rules in this thread same as anywhere else on the subreddit. Be respectful and especially don't make any personal attacks (this includes but is not limited to making disparaging statements about groups of people who may like or dislike something you don't).
Robin being either Lucina's mother or her lover cheapens the emotional impact of awakening's story and dampens both her and Chrom's character.
In most instances, especially in fantasy fiction, it is generally assumed that people will do basically anything for either a partner or for immediate family, even if making such a decision is naive and has dramatically worse consequences later down the line.
I think that the decisions that Chrom makes throughout the story are special and significant because they aren't done for a partner or family- Robin is just someone who Chrom happened to meet and become friends with. And Chrom is still willing to risk basically ending the world just so that Robin doesn't have to die.
Chrom could, if he wanted to, just kill Robin in their sleep, and a lot of the issues that arise in Plegia 2 basically cease to be issues. Heck, Lucina literally has a scene in the game where she will attempt to kill you, and if you agree to be killed, it is not her, but Chrom who steps in to prevent Robin from dying.
I know we play as Robin, so it seems more obvious that that would happen, but it's important to not just gloss over the severity of what Chrom is doing here.
Lucina has essentially spent her entire life training to be able to defeat Grima and fix the world. Chrom is her father and has, just a few chapters previous, had an incredibly emotional reunion with her after years of her never seeing him. And yet, Chrom is able to look at everything his kid has dedicated her entire life to, and still decide to fight to keep Robin alive- even if Robin themselves say they're OK with dying.
That, in my opinion, speaks more about the kind of person that Chrom is than really anything else. Sure, the game isn't completely devoid of any emotion if Robin is his wife, but it sure does give him much more of a reason to not want to kill her. Chrom's choice to save Robin is highly characterizing, precisely because Lucina's decision (to just kill Robin and prevent the end of the world), is arguably the better and more logical choice.
When the game refers to "the invisible ties that bind people", I've always felt it was referring to this more than just "oh well I mean Robin is my daughters boyfriend so it would be a bit rude to kill him". I mean, heck, Chrom is willing to risk an actually possessed Robin straight up stabbing them with a massive zeus-style lightning bolt in his chest. That's insane, and it yet again solidifies the idea that Chrom really does care about all of the people around him to the fullest extent.
Just while we're here- yeah, I think Lucina's judgement is super lame for her if you are married/her mum. Like this is everything she has worked for her entire life and she basically falls at the last hurdle because her pesky emotions got in the way? The things she has seen and likely has had to do to actually get to where she is today- I really feel like stabbing a guy she met a few chapters ago is not going to be that big of a deal.
And while I kind of understand it more if Robin is her mum, like, Lucina has known this for her entire life. She knows what happened in the past and will have known that she does need to (from her understanding) kill her own mother to save the world. It's not like it's new information for her.
Idk, I think she is more interesting when actually willing to kill Robin, (and if Chrom wasn't there, Robin just dying at the end of the chapter)
Throwing my hat into the avatar discourse ring by saying that removing avatars will not magically fix every problem you might perceive with modern FE game writing, and that the older FE games also had problems that didn’t involve avatars.
I’ll also remind everyone that avatars make a lot of money (seriously just LOOK at the amount of works involving the avatars on AO3 or in fanart) and are fairly popular and I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s a moderate sales drop off from a lack of them.
I don't think it's a silver bullet or that we once had a flawless golden kingdom, but I do think there is a blatantly obvious cause and effect between establishing players in this avatar role and a lot of writing choices I don't like.
I don't really care how much money the franchise makes because I'm not a shareholder, but I do think that's an oversimplification. If the next game drops the avatar and makes no other changes then yes, I would expect a sales dip. However, if that is just one of many changes it makes for the better than I don't think it's hard to imagine it being the new breakout success of the series.
It wouldn’t solve everything, but it sure would let characters say the protagonists’s name in the dialogue.
solution: Just let them say protagonist name if standard/canon name is used.
That’s clearly impossible. They’re going to force me to name my Robin Reflet because they couldn’t be bothered to localize the code comparing strings
Even with Turnwheels and 99% of players never letting a unit stay dead, Permadeath is still an essential mechanic for Fire Emblem.
Choosing to reset (in older games) or turnwheel instead of letting a unit die is in fact interacting with the mechanic. Just because the games are not designed around Iron Manning doesn't mean they aren't designed around Permadeath.
The biggest impact I feel like permadeath has on every FE game is that it discourages you from sacrificing units to get out of a tough situation. I played through Engage's Fell Xenologue a while ago, which is its own can of worms, and the forced casual mode alongside the high difficulty made it feel incredibly different from just playing FE normally. and not just because it completely lacked the dopamine of exp bars filling up and level ups. That Xenologue damn near requires you to sacrifice units into the wood chipper in last ditch efforts to complete the chapters, which is not something I had ever really experienced in a Fire Emblem game. That said, I don't really want that to be the default way to play any full FE campaign.
Sending a unit to the wolves is a ridiculously strong tactic when there are minimal consequences. Sure they could experiment with Lasting Injuries or some other mechanic, but it's never going to be as elegant as "Units Die When They are Killed"
If I remember right, Virion and Robin have a support about playing Chess, and despite Virion beating Robin every time, he claims that Robin is the better tactician because Virion's strategies only work because he is willing to sacrifice his pieces to achieve victory, whereas Robin tries his best to not lose any pieces. We should be trying to be Robin and not sending units out to die. Unless we are trying to be Excelblem, and at that point thematic consistency is thrown out of the window for Shenanigans.
+1
To add to that, the only modern game really designed without Perma death in mind/really annoying to ironman is 3 Houses, due to low amount of units and much higher than usual investment needed. Yeah some other modern games aren't as ironman friendly as some classics, with most having unit numbers on the lower end and needing some kinda investment, but they can still be 'comfortably' ironman'd
Removing Permadeath might improve writing and make the characters matter more in the story, but FE will lose one of it's centeral gameplay elements if it ever does that.
Honestly I don’t even know if removing permadeath would improve writing, because most FE casts are just too big to give focus to every member of your army.
True true. But it's one of the reasons i see often on why Permadeath should be removed.
Yeah I think the players who don't understand the point of permadeath if deaths cause resets, also just aren't good enough at the game to grasp how OP it is to sacrifice units left and right.
I also wouldn't want the game to enforce resetting on death, because that then just removes the ability to play through a mistake, or sacrifice units at all, which even if I don't do that, the option to do so should still be there.
If Seliph x Julia ain't there in the never happening FE4 remake (even if just a replication of the jealousy glitch), the remake is useless and not even worth playing. Not even worth reading/watching as a LP.
OtoH, the remake makes it official without making the jealousy glitch needed, that will elevate the remake further and make it actually worth playing.
...Or i can just go read the manga for my Seliph x Julia dose.
On less incesty stuff, DK Bananza Finale is peak jo. I have a few problems with the game, but that finale is absolute 10/10
Bummed to see a resurgence on avatar discourse. The game mechanic of being able to pick a gender and the writing criticisms people pin to avatars (mainly bland protagonists all side characters love) have basically nothing to do with each other.
If you're unhappy with the writing, just say that. Being able to make alear a girl isn't the reason you hated the writing in engage. If path of radiance was released today, you'd be able to make ike a girl and name her whatever you want.
What are you talking about? The main purpose of picking a gender and customizing a character is to support the audience's ability to self-insert as the avatar, which incentivizes the writers to fawn over the player character and pull its narrative punches when it needs to judge them (e.g.: Corrin in CQ). It also incentivizes the writers to not characterize them too specifically, so as to maximize the number of people able to project themselves onto the avatar.
There's a reason that the games with avatars tend to have weaker writing; the restraints of the self-insert prevent them from being as interesting as a defined character.
I think there is a correlation in FE between bad writing and games that have avatars/self inserts/main character you can name. It definitely feels like other characters are more obliged to praise those characters.
To be Fair and Balanced (TM) that's not to say that for example Alm or Ike don't get such praise every now and then. Or that it's necessarily the (only) cause for such writing. Or that it isn't theoretically possible to have a game with avatars that doesn't suffer from this. But I don't think it's deniable that thus far in FE, they've gone hand in hand.
Correlation does not imply causation. Generic self inserts are popular and easy to write, and are everywhere in anime these days. The decision to go that way with fire emblem is just keeping in like with anime trends.
There's no shortage of JRPGs where you can name the character that don't have this problem, so it's fairly obvious that it's much more than theoretically possible.
Ngl i think PoR would be way weaker if Ike was able to be girl (in a non misogynistic way)
In what way? Genuinely curious, what in the story do you think no longer works if Ike were a girl instead?
No longer gay
Yeah Ike might be one of the worst examples to pick for not having a predefined gender for the old lords. I am biased as someone who puts a lot of weight into him being a gay man, but Ike is one character where I think something would be lost if you could choose their gender. Like OP elsewhere is pointing to how avatars help with gender representation, but as a gay woman I care more about Ike being gay than I would have cared about Ike being a woman.
That's literally exactly what i thought lol you read my mind
Ikea
I'm very glad POR is available on the Switch 2! It's heartening to see all the threads of people playing one of the least disputed GOATs in the series for the first time.
Unfortunately I’ll still recommend emulation. The ability to super speed up through the enemy phases is just too good as QOL.
Also if you want to play Radiant Dawn after (which one should, playing only the first half of the Tellius duology should be criminal), you might as well play on Dolphin for the transfer bonuses.
On a personal level I absolutely agree. But it’s clear there’s a significant number of players that aren’t us here, who prefer the ease and official way to play, so nonetheless I’m glad it’s on S2 NSO!
I find it immensely funny this thread happens to be the incest discussion trend. I don't know why everyone's talking about it, but it is wild to see it being brought up repeatedly
what no fortunes weave news does to a sub
I'm so sorry for starting this
ok but your post was really funny and worth it
You simply did not know what you would unleash. It's not your fault
I've said it before, i'll say it again
we need more pink haired men.
Marluxia laugh
Leif should’ve inherited Ethlyn’s pink hair, Kaga was a coward smh
sigurd could have inherited (presumably) his mom's pink hair too we were robbed
We need less pink haired man (Makalov).
I capped him last time. It was not worth it.
There's no way you guys really think Ike getting his inventory stuffed with swords in NA PoR was an intentional balance patch (that they reverted in PAL), right?
I think I've written enough
dbg_print()functions to know one when I see one...I don't think I've ever seen someone claim that Ike getting four iron swords was intentional but it'd certainly be a take.
That seems to me to be the implication here. (And look at the comment scores!)
That whole thread makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out. Whatever they were planning to do with the tutorials on the new Easy Mode was too much effort, I guess, for the coder who slapped a bulk debuff on some Maniac enemies and called it a day.
More like:
print("got this far 0")
...
print("got this far 1")
...
print("got this far 2")
...
print("got this far 3")
I have written a lot of debug functions in my programs. Wouldn't call them "glitches" because they're explicitly programmed in. Just because something isn't a glitch doesn't mean it was meant to be in the finished product.
Easy is more fun than Hard! Okay, that's a personal preference, but after trying to do a tin man Hard of path of Radiance, I decided to concurrently do a tin man easy run. It's interesting to see how similar the enemy quality (English version, btw) with enemy attack being lowered I think and the hit chances being lower. But their HP is the same. There are also a couple more enemies that have also been more aggressive. Then of course, the exp gain being completely different. Even if they left the stats completely the same, just the fact you will be several level highers will make your units safer. I really just like seeing the level up and the stats growing (does easy change growth rates or something, I feel like I've been getting more really good level up). But something interesting is my Ike is so strong so fast he can't gain levels anymore for several chapters. It might be a fun fan game design to bring back the class based seals, and also pair them with multiple promotion tiers to try and get the players to swap units around as they get to promote at one point but will then have to wait to promote while a later 1st promotion gets a sooner 2nd promotion.
Edit: they definitely lower the defense of armor knights by a lot. The cavalry knights have been feeling the same.
There's something about reading "tin man" that brings back memories of old league of legends flame and saying your jungler belongs in plastic 3 or wet toilet paper 5.
Maybe we should have a name for all types of playing the game.
Iron man- standard setup, you can't reset, if the lord dies you lose
Bronze man- the same but if the lord dies you can keep playing on a reset
Tin man- the same but with checkpoints every so often
Plastic man- the same but you get 1 free redo whenever
Paper man- the same but you can get 1 use of save states
Tissue paper man- casual mode
Cotton wool man- phoenix mode.
Then the other side of the spectrum
Silver man- if any unit dies its an instant loss
Gold man- no saving the game, even if it crashes, and you can't turn off the console ever
Platinum man- if you lose the game, you must uninstall it
Francium man- if you lose the game, you must destroy your console.
Emmeryn man- if you lose the game, you die.
Oh wow people talking about incest in the series in this thread. Well my take on it is that I don't give a shit about whether or not there's incest in the games. It's fictional. All I care about is whether or not it makes sense within the story and that it's well written. If FE can have stories about war, warcrimes, genocide and racism, it can also delve into incest for all I care.
That'd be a sensible take if incest was something that was discussed in the FE series or even criticized outside of a few cases on Gen 1 of FE4. most cases it just sorta happens and everyone treats it like its just another couple. it is not delved into like war genocide and racism
also when are war crimes talked about in FE lol
It’s fiction. I don’t need stories to tell me that incest is bad m’kay or some shit, all I care about is if it can make compelling writing.
Also I like how you in the same comment acknowledge that genocide is something the series uses in stories but question when war crimes are discussed. It’s pretty easy to find examples of civilians being targeted in various games.
Yeah but war crimes imply that there are laws for wars in the games, which are not brought up. Genocide is pregty straight foward.
And again, my point is that it doesn't make for compelling writing, because it's not written. it's not discussed positively or negatively. it just happens. its the opposite of compelling
Okay you're arguing semantics, you can acknowledge war crimes without having to acknowledge a real life legal system of war. It's about the spirit behind it with what's considered a valid military target or not and the difference between a combatant and non combatant.
Also it's not like in real life countries like America or Israel give a shit about international law.Also a story doesn't need to discuss something in a positive or negative lense to be compelling, it can discuss something in an overall neutral light.
I like Marx/JP Xander.
I don't know if this is a popular or unpopular opinion, but FE really ought to ditch avatar protagonists. Since there's no actual character customization system, there's no meaningful benefit to having a protagonists whose only customizable elements are their name and sex. Especially since from 3H onwards FE has had most dialogue voiced, and characters without set names cause awkward dialogue problems. It's not even like there's some tradition here; avatars in their modern form only started with Awakening.
Being able to choose the character's sex actually is a major feature. Many women feel very underrepresented in video games and being able to play as a girl is valuable to them.
Being able to name them could go away, although the awkwardness from having everyone in the game just call them a title is overstated in my opinion.
Not sure how true that is; Persona and Dragon Quest remain popular with women without that function.
But if it matters, they could just make an actual female protagonist then.
Both of those franchises have included that option in the past. One of the biggest criticisms of the persona 3 remake is that they didn't include that option.
Also, just because women do still like games with male protagonists doesn't mean they wouldn't be happier with female ones.
I just finished 3H and it felt so weird Blythe wasnt voiced at all. Made her (/him) come off as so lifeless
I don't disagree from an opinion point of view, but you miss the main reason avatar are renamable and you can choose their gender : they are designed to be a self-insert power fantasy for the player. People conflate "customisatable character" and "self-insert character", but while the two are linked they are not synonymous
I'll take the opposing side and say they should keep the avatar characters, except bring back customization options from Fateswakening, and let me roleplay and make decisions.
I'd argue there are plenty of RPGS with great stories that have no set character. In fact I'm pretty sure some of the best stories in the genre are in CRPGs with no defined character.
There are ways around this, such as giving a character a moniker.
Honestly you don't even have to give them a moniker you can just not have the name be voiced. I played through 40k Rogue Trader recently and while that game does have characters refer to you with titles (like Lord Captain or Your Ladyship/Lordship), there are also plenty of times where characters will refer to you as "Name" or "Name von Valancius" and the name just isn't voiced. The lines are always written/delivered in a way where it never feels unnatural, and you actually get to show things like differing levels of intimacy or casualness based on whether or not people call you by your name.
But FE protagonists are almost entirely pre-defined aside from their name and sex. It's not like WRPGs (e.g. Skyrim) where the protagonist is entirely player-created. Also, in the latter case the player has far more freedom to decide the protagonist's actions.
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If we were judging real people, both would be culpable; Peri for what she does, and Xander for enabling it. Remember, of course, that Fates is a work of fiction, which (believe it or not) was made on purpose.
When people say that Peri ruins Xander, it's less that her actions as a person reflect poorly on him as a person, and more that the writing decision of Peri being his retainer damages Xander as a character in the narrative.
From the main plot, the writers want us to think that Xander is grim, serious, and loyal to his country until the end. Despite the fact that he works for a tyrant and can be an antagonist, he's shown to be honourable and chivalric. It's a well-worn character archetype seen since FE1. This sort of character works best when the only thing stopping him from working with you is his loyalty; without that, his valour could be used for the greater good. This sort of thing makes for good tragedy, see Camus, Eldigan, Galle, etc.
Where I'm going with this is that hiring Peri because he's horny isn't something a grim but honourable knight would do. It requires him to act out of character, and since the tragedy only works when he's a decent person underneath, hiring Peri damages the emotional core of Xander's fate (not that it wasn't already catastrophically damaged by the inept dialogue and plot of Fates, but Peri's character writing makes it worse).
Edit: changed word order for flow.
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People arent fully blaming Peri, theyre just saying her writing involving Xander is the straw that breaks the proverbial back so to speak.
It is a Xander problem.
But simultaneously that problem would not exist if Peri did not exist; it’s not like that same problem exists between him and his other retainer. I think that’s what people mean when they blame her for it.
Just finished Sacred Stones, the 6th game down on my quest to play every FE game before FW and the first GBA FE I've played. Overall, I liked it a lot even though it was a lot more basic mechanically than I would have preferred.
I will say now that I've actually played a GBA FE, I heavily disagree with them being a good starting point for new players, though. The most common argument I see in favor of them is that they're the most mechanically simplistic of the series. My counterpoint to that would be that even the most mechanically complex FE game is pretty damn basic overall with most of its mechanics being optional to engage with unless you're playing on the highest difficulty. What these GBA games do lack is some pretty basic QOL features (Turnwheel, enemy range indication, etc) whose presence actually would be pretty important for a first time player.
is turnwheel really quality of life? it's a full-ass gameplay mechanic that fundamentally alters core gameplay and moment to moment decision making. iirc quality of life is stuff that discreetly removes artificial tedium/wastes of time, like being able to buy items in bulk instead of individually and so on. having to replay a map due to a death gives you different RNG to grapple with, so it's not the same at all.
i feel like if turnwheel counts as quality of life then low difficulty in general is quality of life, which doesn't make sense to me
turnwheels presence also 'enables' some design quirks from the devs end, like the 3h maddening ambush spawns that seem to exist to burn your turnwheel charges, for example.
in terms of fundamental changes to moment to moment decision making, your turnwheel charge count directly influences your ability to risk dicier RNG (hit rates, crit rates, etc), which is a stark difference compared to pre-turnwheel games. you can play with turnwheel charges in a myriad of ways (blow them early to try to squeeze around riskier RNG, save them as much as possible, etc) such that there's a lot of interaction and self-expression involved between the mechanic and the player---doesn't really feel like QoL.
Other than FE6, I find the GBA FE games to be the low point of the series. Imo 3 Houses is the best starting game.
it's always a little funny how easily the 2 NES entries are forgotten
It's not better but Gaiden is a significantly more ambitious game than anything on the GBA which means I respect it more on some level. The GBA game was the peak of IS playing it safe
It’s so hard for me to replay the GBA games because of the lack of QoL. I miss the danger zone so much, having all enemy ranges available at a single button press as opposed to selecting an enemy and manually counting the spaces is a huge pain.
And without emulator speedup, the games can feel a bit slow, not being able to skip a particularly large enemy phase or speed up animations kinda sucks.
I think this is a fair assessment tbh. I think that the GBA games (specifically 7) can be a good 2nd or 3rd game to try, but I really feel like people recommending FE7 and especially FE8 to first timers do sort of miss what a lot of new players might actually want.
People have a habit of going "oh, new players must want the simplest and most braindead mechanics imagineable with a very simple story". While no one actually plays that way.
If we are talking about the best games to start with, I think 3H is closest to an objective "best" answer. It's the game that's most likely to appeal to the largest number of people, it's still understandable and despite what this subreddit will tell you, the core gameplay is similar enough to the rest of the series to where you will be able to move to the other games from there.
I would have said awakening as well in the past, but the 3DS is a much older console now than the switch, so I can't see a reason to recommend anything other than 3H for a first timer. Too many people get caught up in trying to recommend their favourite game and it's not really the point of what a new player recommendation is.
The GBA games are incredibly easy to emulate, and a good middle ground for the rest of the series.
Regardless of how easy they are to emulate, recommending emulation to new/curious fans in the modern gaming space does turn people off.
The world is not the same as it was 10 years ago. These days, your OS basically does everything for you, so lots of people in the "video game playing" age are just not wanting to do that. There's a massive difference between saying "hey, this game is available on the console you already have and know how to use" and "here is this 20 year old game that you will play on your PC".
Yes, emulation is ridiculously easy to do once you know how, but it doesn't make it any less confusing or off-putting for someone who has never done it before.
If someone is coming in new and fresh, you want to give them the route that is going to give them the lowest possible resistance to them enjoying things the most. That game is 3H, and I really don't think we can just say "well it's easy" to players who have any issues emulating.
It is pretty funny when people recommended those games for a 1st game, despite the fact that there is a reason why Fire Emblem was niche until Awakening
It really feels like a lot comes from people still annoyed that 3H is the most popular game and the really odd insistence that it's a game way too detached from the series, which is something i never understood, because for the most basic mechanics the franchise follows the same gameplay
Also i think is a case of "If you play the most recent game you will hate the older ones" which is something you can find in a lot of franchises
idk I think baseline/GBA FE has enough mechanics to appeal to or even confuse new players, I don't think we need to look towards more complex titles for that sake. No thoughts on story.
Like I agree 3H is good or even great for first timers depending on what you know of their taste but I don't think it's necessarily wrong to recommend a "simpler" title
edit: oh my god people REALLY downvote Vaikeguy for anything now lmao
I don't think being mechanically simplistic is necessarily the "biggest" selling point towards new players for those games.
I think by far the biggest reason is just that the games (well, FE7 and 8 to be specific. Nobody says to start with FE6) are relatively easy. People could say FE8 is the easiest game in the series and Eliwood Normal is also easy, which is what you are forced to start with. Plus, FE7 has the Lyn mode tutorial to explain everything and no other games have anything close to that. So I think that is a very big selling point, along with them being relatively easy to access (NSO or just a simple emulation).
Now yeah, no casual mode or turnwheel is a drawback vs modern games. But I wouldn't say that would make it or break it to where a new player absolutely needs those or else they can't get into it.
Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not saying the GBA games are the absolute best recommendation to play first, but just am saying I still think they are a good one.
Edit number 2: Another thing- I would recommend FE7 over a game with modern QoL in Engage. Why? Better story is a big reason. That is definitely something that may turn people away. I know FE7's story has issues if you really look into it but it's not that noticeable at first impression.
All the modern games are easier (except maybe Conquest if you ignore casual/phoenix mode) on their lowest difficulty, this isn't actually a thing just a product of this place and its "only the highest difficulty matters" mindset! (See also: "actually Thracia is one of the easier games")
(Well and this subreddit being very disproportionately filled with people who started with the GBA games)
While I don’t know if all the modern games are easier than Sacred Stones, I do agree that if you’re looking for an easy game, the modern games can certainly be a pretty cozy ride.
Birthright and Awakening are both very easy pick up and play games gameplay wise, 3H is also pretty simple to finish even if you just stick to the canon class routes, and all three have infinite grinding if someone feels they need to power level more to beat a tricky map.
The thing about Birthright and Awakening though is that nowadays, being able to play them is a lot more difficult. Not too likely they will be able to play it on an actual 3DS, and emulating it would be much more involved than the GBA games would, plus you have the NSO option for GBA if that applies to you. It's a lot more accessible, and I don't think it's a strictly difficulty only based recommendation.
I do think 3H is a top tier recommendation FWIW so that doesn't go against that but I'm not saying GBA games are the best choice, just that they still are a good one.
I can't actually prove this since I don't play the games on the absolute lowest difficulty, but if that's what we compare then wouldn't the games be relatively the same difficulty level? And FWIW I wouldn't really count Phoenix mode when it comes to Fates, and also you can't assume the new player wants to play Casual mode either.
The whole discourse around whether Engage is trying to be serious or not doesn't really matter. Mostly comedic media can have serious moments, and mostly serious media can have comedic moments. You can also have both at a similar level.
In fact, some of the most emotional moments can come from the contrast between comedy and tragedy.
Engage's writing is just bad. It's bad regardless of whether it's attempting to be serious, lighthearted, or anything in between.
It matters to me tbh in part because I don’t think Engage handles the serious and lighthearted portions equally as poorly.
I know - and think I get why - a lot of people hate every aspect of Engage’s writing. But I still view the more lighthearted moments as more of a mixed bag, mostly depending on the characters involved. The supports (which I know aren’t part of the story, but are part of the writing) I also view as a mixed bag that depends on the characters involved - generally speaking though they’re allowed to have more lighthearted moments and the serious moments aren’t as serious due to the lower stakes.
But I ultimately still think the story is dogshit not only because I think most of the serious moments there are bad - and often come across as very serious - but also because of how much more of the game they take up than the more lighthearted moments, especially in the 2nd half of the game.
If someone says I shouldn’t take the story seriously I’d also like to know why I shouldn’t. I’ve legit seen some people not be able to back up that claim if they even just get past the theme song and artstyle.
Yeah, the anime Konosuba is a comedy but has great writing that makes you love the goofball cast. Engage tries capturing that style but trying to make you take it seriously.
Fortune's Weave will release around 7 years after 3 houses (I can't believe it either). In that time we also had 3 hopes in 2022. The next mainline game may not release until earliest 2029 at the current rate of production.
It's no suprise that some people, including myself, are feeling a bit of Fodlan fatiuge. In the span of a decade, we will likely only have 2 unique Fe worlds with one of them being the practically worldbuilding-less Elyos.
Even if it isn't set in Fodlan exactly, it's still the same world. I hope it's more of a Valentia situation where it's almost completly disconected but based on Sothis being there and IS wanting to milk 3H as much as possible, I kind of dobt that.
This is not the same situation as other related games like Fe7 or Fe10. They released much closer together to the 1st game and, with the expeption of Fe1/3, didn't have any games in-between them.
Assuming it doesn't release at a busy time for me, I'll still play Fortune's Weave when it releases but I wouldn't say I can't wait. I'm a bit indifferent overall.
I don't know about you, but when I heard that in Japan these games are known as the "Dagsion games", my mind jumped to Dagda. So I believe this game takes place in Dagda, and that Dietrich is from Fodlan, with Leda being Almyran like Claude, Cai being Dagdan and Theodora being confirmed as the ruler of Saramis/Salamis.
First death of POR, Boyd in chapter 2. Totally my fault, so I'm resetting. All the enemies have been attacking Ike like he is FE1 Marth which seems weird.
What's the point of the Dawn Brigade if the Greil Mercs are gonna be playable anyway?
To be a set of Daein POV characters in a game where youre not exclusively playing one set / faction the whole way through.
But why play as the jobbers who'll get in Ike and friends' way anyway?
are you trolling or is this a sincerely held position?
Because there's a whole half-a-game before then where the Greil Mercs aren't usable, chapters after they come back where they aren't usable, and chapters after that where you're forced to split your army so may need to rely on them, depending on how you've been playing?
Yeah but why couldn't we have gotten a Mystery of the Emblem-like where you control Ike and friends from the get go?
Because that wasn’t the story the devs wanted to tell.
"What's the point of your pre-promotes if your promoted units are gonna be playable anyway?"
Also there's usually a story attached to these games, so thematically the Dawn Brigade makes sense.
Hate that it's officially called Crimea Attacks now. Crimean Army Sortie was always the better name.
I swear it was called that in Brawl as well?
Ok but they also have the track 'Against the Dark Knight', a translation mistake that has persisted even into smash ultimate
What's the actual name of the track?
Against the black knight. He's called the dark knight in Japanese
Am I the only one who feels like Thracia's reputation surpasses it? Like there seems to be this whole threatening vibe around it where people say stuff about how you need a guide and how you can get softlocked on the final chapter, and I've seen people get scared off of playing it because they think it's something more than it is.
Yeah, you can lose chapters due to poor planning and if you blow through all your good tools you can get stuck, but the same could be said about ever FE game. I've seen someone get stuck on the Demon King because they spent all their legendary weapons and none of their team members could deal enough damage, and if that can happen in a game as "easy" as FE8 then why is Thracia special in this regard?
Thracia is unique in that it has special ways to screw you over, like not having a Sleep Edge for 18 or not having A staves for 12, but these aren't things that will break your run, just things that will stop you from getting other cool things. Thracia also emphases using strong tools over applying big stats to problems so the difference between good and bad resource management is harsher, but I feel like anyone who is able to beat any midly difficult FE game can handle Thracia.
Also, while I haven't played Thracia blind, I know some people who did play blind/semi-blind and they beat if fine. Blind Ironman can be hell if you're not prepared but you could say the same for a lot of games.
I’d say it’s because you have to think more than using strong combat units, because strong combat isn’t enough in the game. You need to make use of status staves, know what to capture and where to find it… most FE games you can get by so long as you have bigger numbers, and sufficient strategic positioning.
Obviously that’s a gross exaggeration, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt the need to use status staves in all the FE games I’ve played. (though I also blame years of RPG status effects being useless conditioning me to never trust them)
The problem is that in Thracia it is much easier to screw yourself over compared to the other games. You even pretty much explain how it’s more punishing in the rest of your comment, and thus kinda contradict your point.
The game demands that you use strong tools to get through the maps (especially with all the enemy staff hell you deal with in the last handful of chapters), but then also makes getting those tools a pain in the ass to get or even know about in a lot of cases. Combine that with how the game likes to throw a bunch of cheap bullshit at you and you get a game that absolutely deserves its reputation, at least in my opinion.
The game gives you a few free Silence staves and a few free Warp staves. The first Sleep staff and the Sleep Edge are the only tools that I can think of that the game makes difficult to get (and difficult is already pushing it for those because just warp/thief).
Yeah Thracia is generally one of the easier games actually, FE6 is way harder. Especially once you learn the Thracia mechanics. I feel like even once you learn FE6 it's still pretty difficult.
Fully agreed. I legitimately believe its just a self perpetuating cycle where people hear thracia is "the difficult and obtuse one" then play it looking for surface level qualities that fit that description and then repeat it back.
"Did you know that heal staffs can miss??" Is something i hear all the time about thracia but that conveniently leaves out so much context about the actual game that function is in and the actual game you play with it. Nobody ever seems to mention that vulns heal to full, have 3 uses and are everywhere. Also ofc when your staffers hit 10 skl then they literally cant miss (and early on you get the odo scroll to boost skl growth by 30% too...)
Why is it that we take for granted the fact that every player must be able to recruit every character and get every secret and if thats not reasonable then the game is cruel and obtuse? Aside from the overexaggerated but still real final chapter softlock, missing things in thracia does not doom you in any way. The game is still beatable if you just keep going forwards, xavier doesnt jump out the screen and beat you up because you couldnt recruit him. This kind of mentality is exactly why the modern games just have the majority of the cast autorecruit. Because these "optional" objectives dont seem to actually be treated as optional by most players.
I feel like that is kind of inevitable for any game that is both somewhat challenging and has (even highly unlikely) potential softlocks. People trip over themselves offering any prospective new player guides and advice and warnings not because the game is so impossible, but because they are disproportionately scared that that player will wash out.
To be fair, those very cool things do make the game significantly less... frustrating? It definitely has a particular difficulty curve. Things like warp skips, stopping reinforcement spawns, using Ensorcel, saving up staves, or meeting certain gaiden requirements to get characters like Asbel or Tina saves you from several turns of things like disarming ballistae, dealing with status staves, or having much trouble with certain bosses.
I think that's kind of the other half of the equation, yes. Some players want to bumble through the obscure game and are okay with only learning and using whatever scraps of information they can discover themselves, but I think the average player has a better time when they actually know about all the cool shit they can do. Making informed strategic choices using all the different systems is usually just more fun, so it makes sense to want the new player to have that experience.
I think that anyone who claims Engage has the worst story or dialogue of anything they've ever played or watched should consider themselves extremely lucky.
this statement shouldn't exonerate engage for having a dull, threadbare narrative that is still somehow represented by more dialogue than is needed, but anyone putting conquest over it is willfully disingenuous. "it has more effort put into it" as if that effort wasn't invested specifically into shitting all over itself
My counterpoint is that outside of Fates, what other major RPG has a story that is executed worse than that of Engage? Even games that are known for having weak stories, such as SMTV, at the very least don't feel as outright amateurish as that of Engage's plot, they don't botch their emotional scenes as spectacularly, and they don't drag out their stories for as agonizingly long as Engage does - which I think is what drags Engage's writing from bad to abysmal. Given a choice between a bad story that is over quickly and a bad story with a literal anime season worth of cutscenes, I will take the bad story that is over quickly. The execution in say, SMTV might not be great but even something like SMTV at least doesn't have a ten minute long sad death scene for a monstrously evil villain or a six minute death scene half an hour into the game.
I'd argue that base Smt V sometimes reaches Engage lows; at least the original game.
You had a long and emotional death scene for Tao when she barely talked for five minutes total, she is gone for the third arc, comes back at the beginning of the fourth and no one ever even mentions her. And she is one of the most important characters in the cast. The hat scene is another iconic scene for how bad it is.
There are definitely RPG stories that have been considered stinkers (FFXV, Veilguard, Dragon's Dogma 2, etc). I haven't played the latter two, so I can't really say if they are worse than Engage in execution. However, I will say that base FFXV was pretty bad; calling it unfinished would be putting it lightly.
It's honestly difficult naming a game because even in the games I’m thinking of, there’s usually some silver lining. Like base FFXV was pretty terrible, but even then I cared more about Noctis' crew than the entirety of Engage's cast put together.
For the FFXV example, I think it ultimately comes down to whether you consider writers who aim for something interesting and fail catastrophically to be better or worse than writers who stick to a formulaic narrative and still fail—just slightly less so. As bad as Engage is, there were probably less points I was baffled at than in base FFXV.
For me personally, I'll take the better character writing and plot black holes in base FFXV; y'all can keep Engage's narrative.
Also, I haven't played CoC—but SMT V Vengeance's CoV is one of the stronger megaten narratives imo (it's no Devil Survivor, but it's significantly better base and I'd even argue IV).
I feel like FFXV didn't so much have a bad story as an unfinished one. Like, whenever the game was doing something, I usually liked it, and honestly, as I think about them in comparison, Engage is the unfavorable one narratively. It's a poorly told mess of a story, but the credits hit and you realize the game was doing something right.
Some folks go overboard, but saying, "Engage has better story and dialogue than the worst stuff in existence" is not a very high bar.
Also, I'd say its worse than some of that stuff.
Like okay, it technically has a better story than some shitty fanservice JRPG, but you could argue that the writing in that is supposed to be dogshit on some level. So while it might be technically better than that sort of thing, I'd argue its execution is even worse.
There's a difference in knowing that you are writing something shitty, and then having shitty writing and also expecting to move the audience in some grand way.
The problem with Engage is the characters talk so much and have so little to say, as well as characters stop being relevant to the story quickly.
I would claim it as the most uninspired or effortless story I've seen in a FE game.
Now, as for RPG's in general? There are probably a few I'd put above it in that regard like Tales of Zestiria (that game's story singlehandedly made me drop it. It truly is awful).
Zestiria had really really weird progression mechanics too iirc. A really difficult game to play through I dropped it partway and I've bought like every game in the tales series.
I finished the game last month and even now I have no idea what the hell was that equipment system
Tales of Arise?
Arise's story was infuriating, in that I can see how the elements of this narrative could be put together to make something compelling, but everything is just so haphazardly thrown together to make it worse than the sum of its parts. It really needed another draft.
There are also plenty of elements that work well in one area of the narrative, but are honestly terrible in others. For example, the big bads of each area are mustache twirling despots, which makes them uninteresting as characters unto themselves, but the fact that they've risen to the top is an indictment of the antagonist's Social Darwinist ideology. It works thematically because it argues that the ideology sucks because it hands power to obviously evil asshats, but it fails on a character level because the obviously evil asshats just aren't that interesting.
I still can't believe they had a skit where they claim that the slave owners were also people with their own problems
As someone who has read more than their fair share of trashy fanfics, I agree wholeheartedly.
That said, I do still think that Engage's dialogue is bad and it does take me out of the experience, no hyperbole needed. Anytime where I feel like I'd rather skip a portion of a game (whatever it may be, doesn't have to be story-adjacent) than engage with it, that just becomes a game I don't want to play anymore. I like playing Engage, but this is a real struggle. Once I want to start skipping things, I tend to drop a run, and that's why I haven't finished my 2nd playthrough of it. It's not that I need strong dialogue to like a game. I'm fine to play a romhack with literally no dialogue or plot at all if the maps are fun. I just want to play games as holistic experiences. I hate skipping stuff.
Tangentially related, I would also like to say that Engage being inspired by Tokusatsu does make sense and it wouldn't even come close to being the worst Tokusatsu ever made.
There are many series that are cheesy, take themselves seriously and are of bad quality. It's perfectly on brand for many Tokusatsu shows. In fact, there are so many bad Tokusatsu shows that I would honestly put Engage in the bottom 33% of them just barely. Go-onger, Ninninger, most of the 80s Sentai productions, Power Rangers Turbo, Megaforce, Super Megaforce, Ninja Steel and specially Super Ninja Steel. Sure, you have GOATed shows like RPM, Space, Gokaiger, Jetman etc, but the writing quality and conflicting tone from Engage is something you would absolutely find in your early Saturday morning cartoon.
At least with Engage you can skip dialogue and some cut scenes :v
Engage and Gozyuger are two peas in a pod, change my mind
I know nothing about Gozyuger but if it's an anniversary series with bad writing, is goofy but tries to take itself seriously then yeah it would be an Engage lol.
Anniversary series with bad writing also cover Zi-O and Decade but they weren't as goofy. Gozyuger is more "mid writing" but its chief problems are from elements outside of its control.
Megaforce is the Fates of Power Ranger/ Sentai. THERE'S A SIMPLE EXPLANATION FOR THAT!
???
Wat
I think both Fates and Megaforce have bad stories, but they are in no way comparable in terms of why they suck.
Megaforce is an anniversary season with really bad dialogue, characters like Troy and Jake that make Hisame and Garon look like The Count of Montecristo and Ramses II, and the worst part of all is that Megaforce and Super Megaforce is fucking boring.
Fates on the other hand has a really good cast, solid supports between characters and while the story can be bad, it's also very entertaining because of how batshit insane some decisions are taken within the story. Stuff like Azura's crystal ball, Xander having Peri as a retainer because God Forbid a man is attracted to a crazy, hot, big booba lady that will just kill him and the deal with not killing the Hoshidan Royals while Zola captured them is just baffling, but entertaining.
Imo there has been no FE game yet that has Megaforce/Super Megaforce's combination of cut-out "charatcers", bad dialogue, bad story and being a snoozefest. The Star Wars Prequels certainly fit the criteria and some DQ and FF games do fit, but not FE yet.
RPM is GOATed indeed.
I ended up enjoying Engage more when I started viewing it as a Toku show. The final roll call at the end with all the Emblems is just chef's kiss.
Side note: When Nelucce shows up in Chapter 5, I thought he would be a recurring comic relief villain ala Bulk & Skull but then he got killed off :[
Nelucce perfectly understood his assignment of being the "goofy trecherous villain underling who gets the snot kicked out of him" and he'll always be goated for that.
I had the same thought as you that he would be like Engage's Team Rocket or Starscream but instead that honor went to the Hounds lol.
I feel like him showing up, making the player say "ohhh I get it, we're doing that goofy trope", and then immediately being murdered to establish how evil and dangerous Zephia is feels like a microcosm of Engage's approach to storytelling. It sometimes gestures towards a fun trope or idea, but it's just SO much more interested in the serious fantasy drama stuff and cannot wait to get back to it.
Engage would be so much more enjoyable if they leaned further into the camp instead of vacillating between "campy tokusatsu tribute installment" and "we demand to be taken seriously"
To be fair, there are many "campy tokusatsu" that "demand to be taken seriously" similar to Engage. They end up being worse than Engage too. I agree with your overall message of the game should have being taken itself less seriously. Engage having bad story dialogue wouldn't have made it better no matter where in the spectrum Engage landed though.
https://www.reddit.com/r/KamenRider/s/gANo5VBoMk
Yeah putting Jeanne instead of Live on there was a choice
I would compare Engage to Fairy Tail both have bright fkashly colors, tons of fanservice, with plots that work best when it doesn't try taking itself seriously That and terrible villains Acnologia would fit right in Engage.
I really don't understand this type of comment when people say things like this about Engage. The overall plot is absolutely intended to be taken seriously, it has scenes that are absolutely intended to be read as emotional and has pretty serious and dark themes. Take away the cheesy theme song and emblem summoning, and it's almost all serious besides an occasional comic relief scene (which every game has).
I'll always say that my biggest criticism of Engage isn't that it's goofy or cheesy but that it doesn't lean into it hard enough for me to say it is without it feeling almost like cope. Not to say it shouldn't of ever been serious but i can think of plenty of media that are mostly goofy comedic fun that also knew to be fully serious when it was needed without it feeling too weird.
Would people still hate Engage if it did? Yea probably but it would at least be more clear what the game is trying to do.
At this point, I just take Engage's main story for what it is: a pretty flawed script that has some stupid moments and fails at a lot of what it sets out to do, but is also mostly inoffensive and has a few actual highs, until Ch. 22 goes batshit and we get that whole unintentionally hilarious cavalcade of contrivances and conveniences (minus Zephia's death scene, which just fucking sucks). Definitely in the lower-rung of FE stories, but I don't find it infuriating, frustrating or disappointing like other games in the franchise. I also find it easy to appreciate in a so-bad-it's-good way because I think it's earnest and funny in spots (unlike much of Fates, a much stupider and much more self-serious set of games in terms of main plot).
I mean you can have your opinion of the story, I would mostly disagree with what you said (I would say it's not "inoffensive", there's huge problems I have with it and there's issues I have basically the whole story, Fates is the only other game in the same ballpark of "bad" IMO) but this isn't really my point here which isn't really about the quality of it. I'm just saying the story isn't just meant to be a silly unserious "Saturday cartoon". It's absolutely meant to be taken seriously.
I think it's inoffensive at best. Like, it tops out at uninteresting and kinda boring, and fails catastrophically whenever it wants to try and do anything.
Also, more people need to play Tokyo Mirage Sessions to see what Saturday Morning Cartoon vibes and immaculate gameplay are, because it's not Engage.
Inoffensive at best is definitely accurate. Praise for it basically tops off at "yeah it's fine and I didn't mind it".
That's fair, and on that last point, we most definitely agree.
Because it has scenes like Solm with the Prince treating Corrupted like a pest problem not taking it the least bit seriously. Engage has a goofy tone like Fairy Tail with only a few serious arcs like Tartaros for example far between
You can name a joke or two in pretty much any story. Jump to a random point in a cutscene compilation of Engage and 95% of the time it'll be characters dryly explaining things to each other or character drama. Only two chapters after that scene we're seeing Veyle be overcome by confusion and despair after being held accountable for murdering everybody's parents, and the next chapter is about Hortensia going mad with grief. Those are the scenes people generally remember from Solm.
Put another way, if you ask somebody "So what happens in Jojo's Bizzare Adventure?" they will likely launch into a list of whacky and memorable events. If you ask somebody "What happens in Engage?" they'll probably mostly talk about Alear's family drama, because it is by far the most centralizing thing.
There's also Timerra's meat song. That's a memorable scene, despite my best efforts.
And I said yeah, there's occasional comic relief scenes. Every FE game does that. The overall story though? Absolutely meant to be serious. Constant deaths, abuse themes, the whole "what is family" theme, everything was meant to be taken seriously.
I was gonna say something about Andersen and Wilde and Grimm and then I noticed you meant the anime/manga series lol
Never watched Fairy Tail, but I agree that Engage does have a very shonen feel to it.
I've been playing a lot Kof xv and Guilty Gear Strive recently, and Takehito Koyasu voices Shingo Yabuki and Zato-1. So I was wondering whether FE ever had him on in any roles. Lo and behold, Kagetsu is voiced by him in Engage.
It's nothing interesting, but I'm surprised it took FE this long to get him on.Oh damn, apparently the page didn't load fully. He did a lot more(Seteth in three hopes and a few Heroes stuff.)I'm not sure there’s an FE with voice acting that he hasn’t been in, maybe the Satelleview game? Heck, he was even the announcer in the Japanese dub of the FE direct.
as of a few days ago he voices one character from every mainline game sans tellius, garcia just got added to heroes and is voiced by him too
Pent's not in FE6 and I think counting Lewyn for Thracia is a stretch. IMO he should still cover an FE5 character, an FE6 character, and somebody who is in both Tellius games.
set of games or worlds is probably a better way to word it
Truly a man of every region
People talk about avatar worship and shit, and while I do agree, I think sometimes it can be funny.
One type of character I’d like to see is a total kissass and suck up. They worship the main character or avatar, not because they genuinely like them, but because they expect something out of it.
“My lord, you are the light of this army. Your magnificence gibes hope to the soldiers. If anyone deserves to rule the continent, it’s you. And I as you’re aid with a generous salary”
You know, Hubert in Three Houses kinda toes this line if you do Crimson Flower. He’s always schmoozing and singing your praises once you choose to side against the Church in a slightly more wholesome edgy anime boy version of Lord Varys.
Now that I think of it, Claude too at first, more blatantly. He’s definitely a kissass whose “smile doesn’t reach his eyes” because he wants to use Byleth’s power (Byleth can use the Sword of the Creator, which Claude wanted to use initially himself) and eventually his political influence as Rhea’s successor. By Part II your friendship is genuine, but even so, said friendship (or marriage if you’re feeling spicy) is imperative to securing an alliance between Fodlan and Almyra.
I think the only issue with that is if you have that character in an avatar-centric game then there is literally only one arc they could ever have, and that is the kinda trite and played-out "the kind and trusting avatar's genuine camaraderie and trust melts the heart of the schemer and forges them into a true friend."
would fit better for a villain I think. to some extent you could slightly argue birthright does this (eh...) and 3H occasionally gestures in that direction (but very route dependent and weak). Would certainly serve to ironically humanize an avatar character a little more as it would show that whatever importance they have is at least somewhat puffed up by others to their own ends and is not actually real. But yeah somewhat lacking as a player unit (especially bc IS but also I think most devs would not make a character whose arc ends in a way that doesn't tie things up neatly in a happy ending bow)
I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem in of itself. There are many tropes in fiction that have been done countless times, and will continue to be done til the end if man.
What matters most is how it’s done
I think that is true in the broadest possible sense, but every time they have done "cynical character comes around to realizing the avatar actually rocks" it ended up just being another drop in the bucket of same-y avatar supports.
Genuinely feel like people who criticize reclassing don't know what they're talking about in terms of how actual play of those games goes. Not only does reclassing sucks criticism seem to flatten a system that operates differently in every installment it appears in in ways that I think lead to meaningful differences between how you approach reclassing strategy between them, but I think its essentially just a regurgitated meme at this point that you 'make everyone a wyvern rider' or whatever. This is just generally untrue on the face to anyone who has any deeper engagement with say, Fates or Three Houses.
I think in Fates as an example, I don't think even the chapters that encourage lots of fliers really push you to more than half your team and even then that's often only for those chapters. Chapter 25 to Endgage encourages you to reclass many units you've made Wyverns to infantry classes again since flight is less impactful, and better infantry combat stats excel here for units like Hero Xander or Berserker Camilla. Bow utility for dealing with enemy fliers is also seemingly deeply disvalued it seems as well, and Wyverns don't have access to it in that game.
Ultimately at this point any mention of 'unit identity' in these contexts makes my eyes glaze over, its nothing but a buzz word at this point.
i feel like you're unknowingly writing the argument for the other side lol
even if its just a couple guys, encouraging players to reclass their units to a specific class over specific chunks of chapters does homogenize things to some measurable extent, as admitted here. part of the fun in fire emblem---at least before reclassing---was committing to raising certain units and dealing with the characteristics of their class through thick and thin. the nature of exp investment incentivized this sort of commitment, as the decision between deploying
a) a unit you've invested in but is in a suboptimal class for the given map and
b) a unit that lacks investment but is in a more ideal class for the given map
usually leans towards a), but even then there are enough tradeoffs that you get interesting player self-expression that emerges as a result. when you can just swap the unit you've been training to an ideal class, there's no interesting decision to be made anymore---the best parts of a) and b) get merged together. the tradeoff is like, they might gain some weapon exp that isnt super relevant later or something. when decisions are more obvious and less interesting, you have to shoot yourself in the foot by ignoring obviously good approaches to get uniquely different playthroughs/unit compositions.
its only homogenized if you flatten the game experience to a a particular couple chapters though, which is the point I'm making. when you look at the game as a whole, if there's a meaningful sense in which units are different, its in the different utility they provide across the the whole of their game experience.
meaningful differences still exist between units in, most, games with reclassing I'm familiar with, and I find the argument that just changing a class totally nullifies that is disengaged with the actual practical experience of the system; Fates's options for reclassing are restricted in a way that requires engagement and planning to get the best suited classes for a given unit, with consideration with how this will use up resources that could impact other units. In this lens, Xander having innate Wyvern access is part of his identity, if that has any meaning, and over all utility and strengths/weaknesses as a unit in the game as a whole, not something that is true of everyone simultaneously.
i don't think they argue that it 'totally nullifies' it (although DSFE gets pretty close!). anyway...
when you have class sets, there are naturally better classes within those class sets broadly speaking, and then there are also classes within that class set that logically suit the given unit. this creates a pressure to reclass units into the obviously best choice in a way that fundamentally differs from how traditional FE design influences decision making in this area---and can be argued is unfun-feeling.
the way level up RNG/emergent factors (permadeath) influences your access to, say, decent dracoknights, is way weaker in the reclassing game compared to the traditional one. this is because you can deliberately prioritize RNG blessed units with relevant resources in the reclassing game in the process of raising dracoknights (and reclass additional needed ones if someone dies), whereas traditional class systems force you to deal with whatever happens to your given dracoknights. if beruka ends up with terrible stats, siegbert can swoop in and fly instead, for example. in a traditional system, you'd instead have to make a decision of if you want to abandon the dracoknight training project or try to salvage it. with reclassing, you're given the needed redundancy to far more consistently have the strongest classes in their tip-top form. three houses and engage are definitely the better examples of this, but the point still stands broadly speaking.
the result is more same-y team compositions, since now RNG has less influence on forcing you to diversify your class compositions.
I mean unit identity is an important thing. Its not really for gameplay balance reasons. It's for fun reasons.
Even if it made for totally fair gameplay, part of the point of units being different classes is from a narrative perspective. Often times, a units personality will fit their class- it shows their preferred or "best" way of fighting. And in the rare cases where this isn't true, that can be used as a narrative device as well- "why is this Bishop acting so unholy".
That falls to pieces if you can then take that person out of that class and put them into something else.
"I am Xander, wielder of Siegfried and Prince of the-".
Nope, you are Xander, wielder of the iron bow because I made you into an archer.
Even if you would never want to do that, the option to do it hurts the characterization of said unit through gameplay.
3H problem isn't that making everyone a wyvern is the super meta. It's that if you want an individual unit to be good, you can just make them into a wyvern. So if we were all using our favourite unit, then we would all do decently well if they were flying around on a dragon
That's... lame. One of the best things about this genre is that different people prefer different things. There is personality and self expression present in the style that people choose. If we can all stick our best unit in a really good class and they all do sort of the same while supporting them, it's a bit of a honk mimimimimi situation.
Heavy amounts of reclassing (like it being optimal to jump through loads of different classes) also tends to lead to big fluctuations in unit stats and combat performance. I'd argue this does quite drastically change how players view units in a negative way. No longer are units really defined by the strengths and weaknesses of their class, but just by small things like base class access or personal skills or differences in growths.
In awakening, this is mostly OK, as you can't constantly class-hop with second seals due to it resetting your level, but in fates, your units really do feel a bit all over the place. I get that it's optimal, but it's a bit like if you're playing a DnD session and you change from mage to rogue to monk to barbarian to mage again in 5 hours. Like it's not what everyone signed up for
My problem with this is that we can't really draw distinction between these things at all, and that's apparent in discussions I've seen where identity and unit quality are used interchangeably. this isn't actually wrong, as its actually a natural logical thing that any difference between units is, inevitably, comparable to each other from a strategic stand point.
I fundamentally believe that this isn't true. Its a meme that's regurgitated. I posted Zoran's Golden Deer Endgame elsewhere because I genuinely think the examples in his run are a good set of units who are not made good by being made Wyverns: genuinely, it is not the best class for Lorenz, it doesn't fix Raphael's speed issues, why the hell would you make any mage with warp access a Wyvern so on and so forth. It is true to an extent that a great deal of physical units perform well as a Wyvern Lord, but it isn't always the best class for a given unit still and that's a meaningful difference between what is being said when people claim you should just make everyone or anyone a Wyvern Lord in Three Houses. I've done that, it's markedly noticeable how poorly some units do comparatively.
I think Wyvern Lord as a class is markedly less homogenizing in 3 Houses than it is in Conquest due to differences between both games. The problem people have with 3 Houses' class system, and to an extent some of the examples of Fates' you cite like making Xander a bow unit, is mistaking "I can do this" with "I should" and blaming that on the class system as somehow forcing ones hand, and thus erasing any meaningful characterization of any unit.
For me it doesn’t because it is completely optional. Like, if I care about Felix being a swordsman so much that I feel reclass him would negatively impact that, I would just keep him in the myrmidon class line. And honestly, reclassing being optional is why I’ve always struggled to understand where people are coming from with this complaint. It’s not really a mechanic you have to interact with unless maybe if you’re playing the highest difficulty mode, but even then, that’s when the game demands complete mastery over its mechanics so it makes sense it would have you interact with it.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just missing something.
I never once touched reclassing in the 3ds games except for extra skills and just kept everyone in their default class line growing up
I get what you're saying, but just to jump off, I don't super love the "highest difficulty is the only place it's required" line of argument. If a player struggles with the balance of any difficulty, using a system that almost strictly gives them more power will help them with the game, so while they could just get better, they will still have an incentive to use that optional system. I don't think the norm is for some one to struggle with a game, see that there's a powerful tool, but say "no, I will continue to struggle to keep narrative consistency". This is mitigated the more balanced the options are; Yknow we don't switch Xander to a bow user because of his PRF and because bows aren't worth switching to, but if bows were better more people would switch to that, and people would more and more as bows got better and better
Anyways if characters are balanced around the ability to change classes, and the hardest difficulty is tuned well enough that you should be using class change to its fullest, you're gonna need great class balance to stop you from making that change. Alternatively your class design can work in tandem with your unit design to make the units more distinctive. Without reclassing you can balance ie Kagetsu around the fact that he's going to be in an inferior class/a class with more tradeoffs than the ideal, but not so great that he doesn't break the game open. Comparing him with Rutger, both are fantastic combat units in their respective games, but despite being in a way more streamlined combat system I think Rutger is more distinct feeling in his game, is more associated with the swordmaster class, and gives you a reason to use swordmaster with its distinct tradeoffs that doesn't exist in Engage.
I'm not really anti-reclass overall, but there's definitely tradeoffs, and ways to do it better and ways to do it worse. To me it seems obvious that there's a degree of homogeneity if you don't provide other ways for units to feel more distinct, Engage Emblems to me are a great step in that direction and gave you some incentives for other stuff, although with its own shortcomings
Engage's gameplay is not better than Three Houses and is much worse than Fates.
Only thing I really disagree with is the last point. The monastery potions are kinda what stop me from replaying three houses for me. I don't like the somniel portions of engage that much as for me it's a game I like playing but skip all cutscenes, but I feel less punished in gameplay for not spending much time in somniel. In three houses I feel like I spend as much time in monastery as playing the game and it's really bad for replaying. On the first playthrough it's great.
I mean the Emblems are really just the units and the others aren't really gameplay criticisms.
Engage gameplay is significantly better. It’s not remotely close.
-3 houses has bad unit identity. Open class systems funnel characters into the strongest classes (in 3H bow knight and wyvern). Characters who aren’t strong at what those do are just worse. Any game with an open class system will have this.
-early units in engage are still great. Chloe, Celine, citrine, Louis, alcryst, and Boucheron all scale perfectly well into late game. Anna is a solid mage and Jean is a VERY good trainee, one of the best in the series.
-break is fine. Enemies use it as well. It’s a neat system that emphasizes just how one sided they are. If I have a lance and you have a sword, the disadvantage is gigantic due to range.
-Animations are not gameplay.
-music is not gameplay.
-the somniel is nowhere near as awfully tedious as the monastery. I go to the somniel and check upgrades, pets, the well, then do 3 training fights and I’m out. This takes 3-4 minutes. 3H has the whole motivation system to make you actually eat with students, the forge and shops are on the other side of the map. There are quests for items that you want or need to do (Anna for the stat boosters, gardening for boosters).
Not to even mention how awful the maps of 3 houses are compared to engage.
Honestly your point about break doesn't make sense for anything other than the lance > sword. How exactly would going up and punching someone have an advantage over a bow?
I mean closing distance does give you advantage against archers. Arrows have a lot of momentum and damage immediately after being fired, but up close aiming and knocking is hard.
But if the reach is your example the advantage of a lance vs sword, well then, to punch them you have to actually get to the guy with the bow. Who can just shoot you from a long ways away. And also, wouldnt the sword or lance be better than your fists if you did close the gap anyways? So then why don't they have an advantage too?
Basically what I'm saying is... The full weapon triangle doesn't make sense in reality.
Cool, let's make break 1 shot units instead because it's apparently really important to show a "massive advantage"
Counter point, combat arts and things like authority rank make units very differentiated in the sorts of combat roles they can excell at and do encourage more creativity with unit builds. Wyvern/Bow Knight being the only classes anyone should be is over stated and overlooks some viable tanking infantry builds, magic units, and the viability of hunters volley snipers.
I'll give Zoran's golden deer finally as an example of a set of viable endgame units; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=129cDKjImR4
There's a lot of characters here who would just not perform as well as Wyvern Riders and loose out on a lot of utility and combat performance.
I’d take it a step further and say Hunter’s Volley is so viable that a lot of people would tell you Sniper is better than Bow Knight.
It’s still a good class but the only characters that I think usually prefer it over Sniper are Leonie, Cyril, and Bernadetta, and that’s mostly because they can rely on some other combat art. Giving it up otherwise is usually a risk that you may or may not want to take depending on what else they offer, but there are also characters like Shamir that are almost always better off as a Sniper.
it's legitimately a rare moment in FE and something I hope comes up more in the future. Bow knights are more stat-demanding to be able to one round. But they have insane projection between massive attack range (even if hitting at 5 range is not exactly reliable), canto, and 8 move, making them amazing at things like hit and run tactics and chip. Whereas a sniper is much less mobile but much less stat demanding and even if a sniper and bow knight have same strength and the bow knight has enough speed to double, the sniper still has upside with the damage boost on volley. In practice how much this really matters is kinda +/- but it's good enough and putting more emphasis on such distinctions would be beneficial (and map design that actually values both types of contributions).
Combat arts serve to make the rich richer. The broken classes that dominate 3 houses ALSO make use of the combat arts, and there are virtually no bad units that are made good by access to a combat art.
You really want to go down the magic rabbit hole? There are few games in this series where mages are worse than 3H. Set spell lists means that there is virtually no salvaging a bad mage. The tiny few who get warp stand leagues above literally every other mage, and even then they’re functionally more utility bots to enable strong physical units. Good combat mages are a handful of a handful.
Genuinely class and unit balance is so ungodly fucked in 3 houses. Some dudes run doesn’t change that. Most units are viable in most games with investment. That doesn’t really prove much.
My point is that combat arts help define who is good in the game, and at what specifically, which is largely what people mean by unit identity.
Ditto for mages being feast or famine, you especially don't strictly want to make your good mages wasted on not being able to cast spells, which is a mark against the claimed universality of Wyvern/Bow Knight. Unique spell lists ultimately are an argument against weak unit identity, there's no just 'grind any staff user to warp' in 3 Houses.
Actual demonstrations of unit viability on maddening difficulty trump vibe based whiteroom arguments like this, as they show what's actually possible in practice. Its not about just whats 'viable' but what is practically best for a given unit; many are not made good by simply being forced into Wyvern Lord.
Except again, functionally they don’t. The same units that are good with arts are also good without arts. That’s the point. The rich get richer.
That’s not a mark against wyvern. Your good mages are the warpers and rescuers who enable others to make aggressive plays. The handful that are good at combat at all are often better served enabling other units as well.
3H mage viability basically comes down to things they do outside of combat, which is damning of the games design.
Annette is great….as a rally bot (she can use magic axes okay). Dorothea has meteor! Which has limited uses and is better used as a way to get long range linked attacks consistently from her as a dancer.
Mages are mired by bad accuracy and low speed. To the point where a lot of people route mages through archer for hit +20. The ones that are considered actually good combat units are Hubert, Constance (with dlc) and Lysithea. Lysithea is a warper and Constance has a lot of utility and bolting for linked attacks.
Sorry, but “warp bot” isn’t a good or fun identity for a character.
Most characters outside of mages specifically can be brute forced into being decent through wyvern. It’s that broken. High defense, high strength, decent speed is a hell of a combo. Wyvern are genuinely so broken through the entire series, 3H is just dumb enough to not limit your amount of them.
Nobody actually means run 100% Wyvern btw. That’s just a straw man. Your army will have support units to help your wyvern and bow knights. You just make the game way easier by running the broken classes.
Strong and interesting personal skills are how you make characters unique. Panette in engage and Odin in fates are some great examples of this.
Using arts effectively is essential to maddening, what are you even trying to say here.
You're fundamentally misunderstanding what I'm saying here, which is that arts both shape unit identity in terms of who is good and not, and also encourage builds and usage on the map around those arts. Thats a form of unit identity, irrespective of class.
Nearly every GBA game mages are ultimately judged by staff access and joining ranks in it over combat, since the same preference for healing and warp utility is there. Its not unique to 3 Houses. The few that have great combat stand above the rest for it, but Erk isn't considered in the same league as Pent outside of grinding his staff rank.
Then why do people keep mentioning this as a gripe against the games? I mean, the obvious answer is this is hyperbolic argument people keep making and then walk back with shifting goal posts when you press it. That's not straw manning.
I think there is a case for 3 Houses being better gameplay, but engage has 2 really hard to counter design elements going for it. The first is map design. The maps are tighter spaced and enemies are placed a little smarter. And when comparing for flyer emblem I realized, 3Houses patalogues are just a nightmare for foot units. Second is difficulty. Hard in 3H feels easy while maddening has weird difficulty spikes. Engage overall feels smoother.
The break mechanic in particular is a tool that helps early game difficulty feel better imo.
They don't lol. You still have units better suited for certain emblems than others. If only the Emblems mattered there wouldn't be such a big reason to give Micaiah to Hortensia for example. Her personal skill is why its a good idea to give the Emblem ring to her. That is unique to her character.
Strange, because I've played the game long enough to conclude definitively that you can use whoever you want in Maddening. Some of the earliest characters like the Firene ones are ranked among the best in the game, too.
Almost like its a video game where gameplay matters...
Break encourages you to take the advantage when you see it, and also makes it so you don't let your own units stand around all nice and breakable. Really puts the SRPG into the SRPG if you ask me. Huge reason why Engage gameplay is the goat.
Has nothing to do with gameplay design. Purely subjective. I think Engage looks better animated than most games in the series but I got no evidence and neither do you, that's just how we feel.
Again, has nothing to do with gameplay. To me it has the 2nd best OST in the series. Again, got no mechanical elements to compare to a standard here, just like the music kind of how you don't like the music, so that's just another subjective and unrelated point.
Wish you would've elaborated more on this because I can't see how this is true. The Somniel is NEVER required to be used unlike the Monastery which locks you down early for mandatory quests and only lets you skip it less than a handful of chapters later. The Somniel is also much smaller and better organized. The Somniel is filled with lots of neat filler content you never have to deal with at all, where as the Monastery, even if you teleport, requires you to waste time for a whole ingame month before you can move on to the next map. Even skipping exploration and doing seminars/tutoring takes time and consideration, none of which is spent on playing the actual SRPG part of the SRPG. The Monastery is the single biggest reason 3H's replayability is so poor. This is on top of the fact that even if you manage to get through all of this fast enough, all you get is another squarey map with no interesting or challenging map design.
I am not against the idea that Engage isn't perfect. It's not. But I've yet to hear a valid reason why Three Houses (!) is better (!!) in terms of gameplay. I don't think that is the angle you should be aiming for.
The Emblems do matter more than the units carrying them. That's not to say that the unit carrying them doesn't matter, but the fact is that the Emblem is what you're using the unit for and plays mostly the same across different units.
The people who hate on the Somniel seem like the same who think FE should just stick to the super outdated (menu -> map) x 20+ chapters gameplay template, for some reason. Base exploration is like the most basic RPG feature that FE could take up too.
Let me be the voice of dissent, I like Garreg Mach, and think the Somniel fucking sucks. It manages to be the worst of both worlds, managing to be more cumbersome than a menu, while dodging any potential upside of a hub world. Garreg Mach wasn't interesting because it was a hub world, it was interesting because you could talk to the different characters, who were intentionally placed with unique dialogue for every single chapter. Engage scatters people randomly around so they can repeat vapid, generic lines that say nothing. Even if there are a few unique lines, they're tied to specific characters at specific chapters, require to not have given up talking to people, and even then the dialogue is so pathetic it might as well be generic anyways.
People shit on the activities in Garreg Mach like the Somniel doesn't have the push up minigame that takes forever for zero benefit. The actual layout is frustrating, with small halls and tight corners than make navigating a nightmare. Loading screens are between the only things that actually matter. The best thing anyone's ever said about the Somniel is that it's so unimportant that you can just skip past it faster, which is damning.
I'm just saying the FE community is in the minority when it comes to the hub world aspect. Most people I know who casually picked up Fire Emblem don't mind the exploration stuff and minigames- in fact seeming more like a typical modern rpg in that regard is what drew them to 3H. Some who I've seen crap about the Somniel the most (to the point where they think it ruins the game or something) are generally those who have the most conservative opinions about the new gameplay elements in recent FE- in that they're pointless and IS should stick to old GBA/DS/Tellius menus where you don't control your character in an environment. Regardless of what you personally perfer, that is not what people expect out of highly developed RPGs anymore.
Only 4 of those points are gameplay related tbf, haha.
Anyways, I definitely disagree with the overall point, I do think Engage has good gameplay, and is better than 3H (and I like 3H gameplay more than most). It has its problems of course though! But I can't agree with all these points.
-I do hate the Engage reclassing system and think it's an issue, but 3H isnt exactly great in the "unit diversity" department either. "Make everyone a Wyvern lmao" is oversimplifying it but it's not exactly completely false.
-I can agree with the early units being outclassed by late units sucks, but that isn't exactly that unique, think FE7 or the Dawn Brigade.
-Break is just kinda meh to me. I think it's fine early when it matters and then later on, it's ignorable since there's a bunch of stronger strategies that don't rely on you always breaking, so you really aren't doing it all game long. Plus bows and magic are very strong and they can't break anything.
-My biggest disagreement. The Monastery is definitely more of a slog than Somniel and hurts replay value. It's more "mandatory" to go through (a lot more of the Somniel is essentially filler you don't really need to interact with), and you go there more often, and its bigger/takes more work to get around. Add in tutoring taking up time and the fact that you need to go through the game 4 times to see all the story, it's definitely worse IMO. Not saying the Somniel is great either though.
3H also has a big issue- worse and repeated map design.
I don’t think the Dawn Brigade is the same situation as Engage. They are indeed mostly terrible long-term, but until Part 4 the only unit that has to compete with someone that outclasses them is Edward with Zihark.
RD’s balance is still pretty bad, but for the most part the worst units are just shit on their own merits (i.e. Fiona who is the only P1 Cav and is still awful) or have really wacky availability.
That said I agree it’s an issue in FE7… but I also criticize FE7 for said issue.
This is the pitfall where people compare characters based on things like weapon access that don’t mean anything. Every DB unit who only does combat is strictly outclassed from chapter 1-2 by Sothe because Sothe does 1-2 range combat better than everyone else; it doesn’t matter if he’s using knives and Nolan is using axes.
I was thinking in terms of it more for "raising someone for the whole game to bring to the tower" rather than looking at just the chapters they are forced in (which is also the case in Engage, for a while you have no better options to use than the outclassed Firene Squad). You could also look at the royal vs non-royal Laguz, same thing.
And TBF I do think it sucks in Engage, I wasn't trying to say it's not. I'm just saying this isn't a unique issue to single Engage out for. And in 3H while it's not a late game unit outclassing another for the feels bad, sometimes you can probably just recruit a better unit for basically free (Ashe vs using Bernie or Shamir, Caspar vs Balthus, in house Ferdie vs Sylvain).
That’s fair, but if someone takes until Part 4 in RD to get shafted they’re only missing out on 5-7 chapters (depending on if it happens immediately or takes until the tower) whereas anyone shafted by the midgame squad in Engage is, including paralogues, missing out on an upwards of 25 chapters. Even with the structural differences I think that’s a pretty big difference.