@“Tradegood”#p101006 love the idea of the “one for the new fans, one for the old heads” dynamic. i'm kind of somewhere in the middle, since Awakening was the first Fire Emblem i really fell in love with (despite being a huge fan of the Advance Wars series), so i can appreciate both sides of the equation.
and thanks for the history lesson! i didn't realize how colourful these characters were even in the 80s! (and yes Cain is clearly a fuckboy, damn.)
Hell is working remotely, in grabbing distance of your Switch, and knowing you could start playing a brand-new Fire Emblem right this second, and yet refraining, to please your corporate zaibatsu overlords.
Hiya Papaya!
Engage is even more camp than I imagined! If Three Houses is Madonna, then Engage is Lady Gaga. It's brimming with way more artistic confidence, it's way more melodramatic, and the cast are so much more colorful. The baddie Zephia, the spacecase Chloé and the crying axeman Boucheron are some of my early favs. Holy Brocc-oly.
The Somniel is ridiculous in the best ways. The strength building exercises are good fun and a genuine challenge, I like the achievements and the gatcha mechanics are interesting and I don't think they'll matter much in the long run. Dressing up Sommie and having him follow you around makes 'hangout time' even more cute. But the funniest, most unrestrained thing Intelligent Systems has ever done has got to be the "waking you up from a nap" mechanic. They put a ton of time and effort into such a strange unrealistic interaction but it's a fun way to reveal more of the character's personalities.
The Engage-ment rings remind me of Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Probably because they are basically Personas. Fingers crossed Tsubasa comes as a DLC character, she would _serve_ in this game.
I feel a little bad for anyone going in expecting classical opera but getting a drag show, but I'm 👏 here 👏 for 👏 it. If you can't get down with the carefree fun vibes you might hate this game.... but the gameplay is as good as it's ever been. They brought back the weapon triangle, and included gauntlets over bows. I like the new classes and my early impression is that it's pretty balanced on Hard.
@“Tradegood”#p101285 included gauntlets over bows.
Oh HECK yeah
Hey, is the story stuff in Engage weird or gross or offputting in any way that I haven‘t picked up on? I hate to ask, but I see the anime RPGs in 2023 and I start to get worried, that’s the world we live in I GUESS
(honestly asking because I've been icked out and disappointed by Xenoblade 3 and Bayonetta 3 of late and don't feel like doing that again for $60; but Engage looks super pretty and fun! I know the narrative is going to be mega dumb, and not a lick on Three Houses -- I downright enjoy mega dumb stuff [Renata Price at Waypoint compared it to a Saturday morning cartoon, and I usually jell with her opinions] if it's stupid in a fun and breezy way, just not in the mood to be disappointed in the writer's room on a social level or to sit through a script that thinks it's incredibly deep when it's actually 100 hours of dumb as heck. Where are we on the dumb-fun ratio?)
@“tokucowboy”#p101460 I totally hear where you're coming from. Let me say it like this: In the first half-hour of this bubble-gum colourful, extremely fun-to-play tactics game, a giant fire-blasting dragon is revealed to be your mom, who transforms into a human who appears to be exactly the same age as everybody else (which includes two children, and one man who appears to be wearing a false beard, who also all look to be the same age), and the camera pauses on her boobs (guess how big they are!) for a full second before moving up to show her face.
If that ain't everything you need to know. You know?
@“whatsarobot”#p101467 Well that sounds like a lot of very dumb fun. On the boob shot front, I‘m hoping the tone is more like Three Houses’ “everyone is hot in anime war” and less like latter-day Xeno's attempt to keep a straight face while perpetually male-gazing at stuff that makes Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball look like a Pentecostal sim?
@"tokucowboy"#p101519 It is more restrained than something like Xenoblade 2 for sure. I don't think there's anything story-wise that sexualizes the characters, it's more like a scene is playing out normally and it _just so happens_ to have a couple women with big cleavage in it. If it bothers you, you can buy clothes that can make them look more modest -- or even dress them like characters in other games.
Part of me thinks wonders if the game was designed for a primarily female audience, just with how female-centric it is compared to basically every other game I've ever played. Almost all of the pivotal characters are women with very different styles and personalities. The men are kind of there as supportive hunks while the women make the big decisions that shape the story (aside from the Brodia boys).
I'm at Chapter 12, after a big incident happens, and can confidently say the story isn't really important, it's just a vehicle for the characters to interact. There's a shallow vaneer of political intrigue and lore, but it's just a road trip where a bunch of misfits come together to fight cartoony villains. The characters 100% make the game worth it and there's plenty of dumb fun to be found.
@“Tradegood”#p101285 The Engage-ment rings remind me of Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Probably because they are basically Personas.
That’s not really how I took it. Everyone mentions the weapon triangle but was surprises me more is how much I enjoy that there are no jobs this time. Together with the more intricate maps, this plays a big part in the GBA feeling of the game.
I am all for job systems in games but the flexibility reached by Three Houses ended up damaging the variety of gameplay and contributed to the shallowness of the battle maps (the biggest issue of 3H). I appreciate that we are back to the traditional promotion system, but apparently with much more choice regarding promotion (I think? Only reaching lv.10 with most characters just now).
So instead, here we have the Engage system that allows any character to change their job for only three turns, which allows many characters to shine by shouldering potentially two completely different roles in battle. This is especially obvious when you try to involve Jean the Lv.1 healer, who seemingly acts as this episode’s Donnel / ドニ but inside a game with no freewheel class attribution. I was able to get Jean to kill off several enemies early on by ~~associating~~
@“chazumaru”#p101540 I appreciate that we are back to the traditional promotion system, but apparently with much more choice regarding promotion (I think? Only reaching lv.10 with most characters just now).
Not only do Emblem rings let you change your job for a chapter but they let you increase your proficiency so you can change classes more easily. It does require a little bit more planning than just clicking the wyvern button in Three Houses, but it's pretty open ended.
Yes Jean is a lot like Donnel. His growths are whatever but he has the 'expertise' skill which will probably stack and make him crazy by the end of the game. I've chosen to neglect him though because Framme is more narratively interesting and for some reason she has had insane growths for me, she's currently rated the strongest in my party by like 15 points and I mostly just use her for chain guarding/healing Chloé and Céline while they slay.
After being laid up post-surgery for four days I too have had an about-face on this game. Yes the character designs are hideous and the writing is a joke, but the flip side of this is that IntSys evidently got the memo about how little I care re: Fire Emblem stories and has re-centered this game around shuttling you from challenging battle to challenging battle without all the drudgery of forcing you to care about management sim and character development stuff that made me give up on Three Houses very early on.
This game is very, very stupid and I’m down with it.
Sucks that you can’t get Vestaria Saga on Switch though.
@“tokucowboy”#p101519 Xenoblade 2 was especially risible because it simultaneously reached deep into the abscesses of otaku fetish territory and also wanted us to get earnestly invested in a 100-hour plot dealing with Very Serious Themes, sometimes panning the camera straight up the heroine’s 18+ cosplay ass and boobs during supposedly serious scenes of emotional vulnerability.
The worst thing I’ve seen in the first few hours of Engage apart from the general absurdity of every character in your party wanting to go down on you at all times (regardless of age and gender) is that the game introduces your mom - literally, your character’s mother - by resting the camera on her big mommy milkers. 5-10 minutes later depending on difficulty, she is DEAD in a cutscene worthy of Dante. I’m having a harder time being offended by this.
at about what hour mark does it stop relentlessly introducing new busywork mechanics?
btw “Pooper” is not really a demeaning name for the little catdog thing because he literally does poop crystals when you please him. These crystals can be used to play a vintage Fire Emblem character gacha game that is very important for min-maxing your party. Good stuff. You can also give him the protagonist’s ridiculous hair, just because.
@“yeso”#p101952 idk but as others have noted the fussy bullshit stat management mechanics seem a lot more streamlined and easily ignored than the last few games in the series. This may change but early on it feels like a step in the right direction, that is away from Fire Emblem pretending to be something it’s not outside of a few silly minigames.
so not for a while then
@“yeso”#p101955 If you want a new Fire Emblem without all the froofy anime game bullshit, and I mean this 100% genuinely, please play Vestaria Saga on Steam and report back if it’s worth it! They just released an enhanced version last year I think. (Also if you’re in the market for a Switch tactics game and you care about actually good writing, I’m just going to assume you’ve already played Tactics Ogre Reborn!)
On the other hand, if you want all the anime without all the Fire Emblem
I have Tear Ring and Berwick if Engage doesnt work out yeah
It's not just the writing I'm struggling with, it's that there's so much clutter to sort through to get to an actual experience of some kind. But it could be a matter of taste of course and I already grinched out about this in the other thread
@“yeso”#p101957 I mean I generally dislike that stuff too, at least in Fire Emblem where the core game design is so lean and robust that all the additional management layers IntSys tries to pile on top to make the games 80 hours long or whatever inevitably feel like gratuitous busywork. So far Engage seems to genuinely have less of that than the previous games, which is pretty promising. There is still some, but it’s leaner and easier to ignore (at least initially).
Play Tactics Ogre
@“2501”#p101956 If you want a new Fire Emblem without all the froofy anime game bullshit, and I mean this 100% genuinely
There is also Redemption Reapers which is coming to Switch, PS4 and Steam on February 22nd. From the director and team behind Ender Lilies, with the help and balance adjustments from the director of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, a story by the scenarist of Metal Gear Solid 1•2•3., and a soundtrack by one of the composers of Fire Emblem Awakening & Fire Emblem Fates (and Ōkami, Bayonetta, Dragon’s Dogma etc.).
I don’t understand why Engage has you walk around the battle map after you finish the battle proper. It’s sort of like how in Shining Force you fight on the map, then also move through it to the next beat. But in Engage, you can’t actually go anywhere, you have to walk 8 feet to the glowing spot and warp back to the overworld map. That’s after you talk to all the party members just milling around you you get 10 or 50 or whatever “bond points”. You can also find like a carrot on the ground for some reason. And/or a golden retriever to send back to “the somniel”. Why do I have to do any of this shit lol
And I actively dread moving onto the next battle because it means another cutscene. The writing in this game is just the dinner dinner dinner thing from that Xbox 360 game everyone laughs at, over and over again.
Sorry this is just my opinion I’ll shut up now, don’t mean to grinch on anyone’s good time
