Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

So I went from saying “hey I need a little break from Xenoblade 2 cause it has so many design choices that really piss me off” to replaying about 30 hours of Fire Emblem Engage lol I honestly dunno if I am gonna even go back and finish Xenoblade 2 to be honest. The story, combat etc all great, but they just made that game borderline unplayable in every other aspect.

In terms of Engage, I didn’t love Fire Emblem Engage when I played it the first time, but still played like 70 hours of it anyway and rolled credits. Now replaying it fresh off of Xenoblade 2 and its massive pile of frustrations, honestly makes Engage feel like such a treat. Engage is designed almost in the opposite way of Xenoblade 2, in that every creative decision in Engage seems to be focused on making Engage as playable as possible, even if that may result in certain systems feeling a little shallow or basic.

I sorta forgot too how nice it looks for a Switch game, all the details in the animations make watching fights play out fun always, they can really make a fight between two units look like a choreographed cutscene somehow, and its a shame that whatever tech they used to bring that to a reality is probably going to be lost, as I don’t think Engage was particularly well received or sold well, and seems to have largely been forgotten. Swapping classes is a lot of fun, especially when you completely transform the role a unit may have previously filled. I also appreciate how out there some of Fire Emblem’s classes can be, and I’d argue this game doesn’t even have some of the weirdest ones. Plus, while Engage is pretty easy, there is something weirdly satisfying about a unit just absolutely going on a rampage as it takes on Unit after Unit, dodging, parrying and cutting them down. It is here where little animations really shine too, like how a dodge can be animated in lots of ways, like knocking a projectile out of the air, or doing a slick cut behind the person or whatever. Just always looks so cool.

Switch 2’s reference model leaking is interesting. Magnetic joy-cons are a great idea. It does seem slightly too similar but the changes could be on the software side and we pretty much know the internal gubbins by now and that’ll be a big improvement. Bizarre for a console to leak this badly without even being revealed.

@nessisonett apparently it will have hall effect joysticks.

@jdv95 Would definitely be welcome. The drift on the joy-cons is a nightmare, I’ve gone through two pairs and a couple sticks I’ve replaced.

@nessisonett honestly it could look the exact same and I wouldn’t care as long as the specs were a significant improvement

Joycons need better sticks and to be rounded on the bottoms. Literally nobody I know does the 'pop a joycon off to use it as a separate controller' thing.

@Pizzamorg I really enjoyed FE Engage. The writing can be a bit moronic, but I loved the gameplay, vibrant use of color (especially on the SWOLED), detailed character animations, etc.

The biggest downside for me is that skirmishes are borderline broken. They just spam you with enemies. They're far harder than any of the story maps and feel totally unbalanced.

Yeah @Ralizah I remember nothing about the story from my first play through, and a replay has not been good in that regard lol.

Again though, I feel like context matters. Xenoblade 2 loved doing this thing where it would make you watch a really lengthy cutscene, and then you’d walk two steps and then be throw right back into another one. Feels almost like it doesn’t belong on a Switch for that reason.

Because of that, I kinda appreciate that every new map in Engage tries to answer: who this new ally is, where we are, who the enemy is, who were a fighting in like six sentences spread out on either end of the battle and then they get you out of there.

I think more problematic are the Bonds / Supports. I’ve now played a few of the older games, and so I now know that isn’t as Engage exclusive problem in having support conversations that are about three words (not sentences, words) long and say nothing. But I dunno, there is still somehow something worse about how Engage does these, even if they aren’t a unique problem. Like most of the Units in Engage are barely even characters, and it’s weird how many Units have the same one note interests. Like there are like five Units whose only personality trait is having or wants to have muscles. Like was this written by AI or something?

And yeah the missions that power up the Emblems are a really sharp difficulty jump. Skirmishes are kind of more of a mixed bag for me so far. Again, not an Engage unique problem I now know from playing older games, but Fire Emblem’s AI design of having the CPU gun straight for the weakest link even when it doesn’t make a lot of sense a lot of the time to do that makes skirmishes kinda frustrating (especially if you play on the perma death mode) because respecing units, or even dragging new units up to the levels of everyone else can sorta feel impossible at times.

I also sorta don’t understand how XP really works, cause it kinda feels like if you respec a unit back into a base class to send them in a new direction for an advanced class, this means them extremely weak and fragile on the field, but they seem to still get the same amount of XP as any unit. You’d think if you had one of these get the killing blow on an advanced unit you’d get like multiple levels at once, but it doesn’t work that way.

This means that I have this huge roster of units, and use like four of them regularly, because its more frustrating than fun to drag new units up to their level, when the four of them can just clear entire maps on their own just with retaliation damage.

I really struggled with Engage at first because it's basically the polar opposite of Three Houses - whereas the latter excels in storytelling, character development, and in all of the side/RPG content associated with the monastery, the former has a nothing story, bland characters, and most of the stuff in the somniel just isn't worth bothering with.

That said, I began to appreciate Engage more when I focused on its core strength which is the core tactical gameplay (combined with the Engage gimmick).

NGL, reading about it here makes me tempted to revisit it over the Christmas break. Shouldn't be too time consuming considering I have no interest in revisiting the story/dialogue.

I'm with @Ralizah though, screw those skirmishes. How am I meant to use them for level grinding if they're 10x more difficult than the story?

@Buizel FR. The way the game is balanced makes it the only Fire Emblem game I'm considering doing the ultra hard difficulty on.

I went in expecting Awakening 2, but without the infuriating stupidity of Fates, and basically got that, so I was happy. I know some people hate the character designs, but I love the v-tuber style of it, lol.

@Pizzamorg Reclassing works fine if you synergize what classes and skills you're combining. And yeah, it's all too simple to use certain combinations of skills and emblems to turn certain characters into unstoppable killing machines. Which means they end up absorbing a lot of excess EXP unless you're deliberately using them less.