czircon

C. Zircon

@czircon

Hello

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I live in Portland and sometimes I make video games if I can find somebody who will pay me to do it.

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czircon
@czircon

Fire Emblem Make It So

I'm on chapter 5 of Fire Emblem Engage and I'm not really sold on it yet. I don't have a problem with the garish visual design like most people seem to (as much as I enjoyed Three Houses, I thought it looked like a muddy mess most of the time), and the battles have been pretty fun, but the stuff in between seems pretty lackluster. My favorite part of Three Houses was guiding all the characters on how to develop their skills, and it seems like that's entirely absent. You can do little minigames to do push-ups and stuff to get a temporary stat bonus, but they're not fun and go on way too long. You can polish your emblem rings (exciting stuff). You can feed and pet a Pokemon that's pretty cute, but so far all that's done is give me some bond fragments, which I'm already swimming in (they are apparently used for a gacha where you can get rings that give you little stat bonuses that barely seem worth the effort of creating and equipping them).

The titular "Engage" mechanic is, I dunno, fine, I guess. You can basically just make a character way more powerful for three turns, in various ways depending on which ring they have equipped. You can swap the rings onto different characters, which seems like it gives you an overwhelming amount of options, but they have bonuses when used with characters of a particular type, so I don't know why you wouldn't just keep them on those characters. In between fights you can use bond fragments to level up a character's bond with a particular ring, which I guess is good if you want to swap them around between characters a lot, but again, that doesn't seem all that beneficial? I dunno, maybe it is. There are a lot of systems and they make me feel like there's probably an "optimal" way to use them, but I have no idea what it is, so I'm just kind of bumbling through and ignoring a lot of it.

The story is incredibly generic. People have said that the characters are good in this one, but none of them stand out to me so far.

I dunno, man. Maybe some of this stuff gets better or makes more sense later on. It's been getting good reviews. I'll keep going but first impressions are not great.

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KindestWeapon
@KindestWeapon

I think there is some bias going on for those, like me, who say it's great. Fire Emblem games pre-awakening, had great map and combat designs, no social or raising sim mechanics, and often goofy or meaningful support conversations. While each story overall was a little dark and mature, there were a still some fun stuff in there.

So for a lot of people, this game is pure fire emblem fan service and a callback to why we fell in love with the series. That said, for newer fans it seems like this game has scaled back on features from the previous entries. And I think that's valid, I totally get it. I also acknowledge this game is lacking many aspects. Map exploration after battles is just... nothing. The Engage mechanic is almost too strong. I agree that a lot of the activities at the Sommiel feel like a waste of time and could be streamlined; feels like a half-assed bone to throw at Fates and Three Houses fans.

That said, I like the reintroduction of the importance of the weapon triangle and the break manage. QoL stuff like no more weapon durability, being able to grind via optional skirmishes, etc. from Awakening/Fates made it in here. Maps are interesting again. And I think the dialogue is hilarious.

My main problem with the "every jrpg needs to have a social sim aspect because persona 5 blew up" trend is that I felt characters and protagonists became flat. Protagonists became voiceless player inserts. Party members couldn't have their own bonds, friendships, and romances; everything needed to be vague enough for players to interpret scenes as they liked and characters needed to be romantically available for any kind of marriage pairing. While these characters aren't wicked strong and there may be some ball dropping here and there, I like these little goofs a lot. As extreme as their personalities are, they feel more real than an Awakening/Fates/Three Houses character. And Robin was fine, but after Corrin and Byleth, I am really glad Alear is their own person.

They gave us Echos after Fates and now we got this after Three Houses. Maybe they'll alternate classic and modern Fire Emblem games? I can't say for sure, but that's probably the best way to ensure everyone gets what they want. Anyway, this ended up being way longer than I thought it would be, but hopefully that sets some possible biases from older fans into context?

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