#fireemblem #fireemblemheroes #fireemblemengage
Fire Emblem has a long history - But two of it's most recent games, Three Houses and Engage, find themselves in totally opposite positions. While Three Houses is an excellent game, Engage finds itself struggling to meet the same expectations.
In this analysis, I intend to go over why that is - From the story to the gameplay, how that gameplay is integrated into narrative, how mechanics are presented, how Supports are done and contribute to the overall tone, and how all of it came together to make Three Houses one of the most well regarded games of it's generation, while Engage.... Struggles.
And all of this will come from the perspective of someone who is relatively new to the Fire Emblem series
There’s a lot of people who say only gameplay matters and Engage is the game that put that theory to the test.
I should have used that line to sign off the video, that would have been perfect
Yep, and Engage is far better then three houses.
I do not agree with the "x aspect of a fe game does not matter". It often creates circle jerk discussions that go nowhere. Instead, it is best to state the pros and cons of a game and let the individuals decide what they gravitate towards. 3h has good-ish story (as in, in a single playthrough it is great, but playing it all creates some issues and discrepencies on the whole. Like the TWSITD being a big player in all stories and in azure moon, but in the latter, they are unceremoniously dealt with almost as an accident), amazing characters, garbage gameplay and replayability. Engage has garbage story riddled with plotholes, mid cast of characters (they can be fun, Amber's and Zelkov's are a favorite of mine, but they also needed more levity to balance it out) but outstanding gameplay and mechanics, and good replayability. I really love 3h characters. And I believe white clouds' maps range from decent, to genuinely great. But the game falls down the shitter in paralogues and post-timeskip. Making it unbearable to me.
@@Ai-jr4ou Yikes
@@heisdarkness7141 I mean... I have to agree with him Engage is a fun game to play while three houses is a fun read
I would argue the character creation in Baldur's Gate actually *is* incorporated into the story: an illithid puts a tadpole into your brain, then the tadpole demands “Who Are You” and *that's* when you start creating your character; the tadpole is searching your psyche to figure out who exactly you are, and you're revealing it to them via character creation. It's very didactic.
Mass Effect 1 also does this well, if I understand it correctly. Somebody, presumably either Anderson or Commander Shepard herself, is attempting to access Shepard's file. The data is incomplete, though, and certain key points have to be manually reconstructed, namely pre-service history, capabilities, and reputation. And also New Vegas, but c'mon. You could write an essay about character creation in New Vegas. No, this isn't hypothetical, you, reading this, could write an essay about the intricacies of getting shot in the head.
Fire Emblem games have a bad habit of bringing new and beloved mechanics forward from previous games without really understanding what made those mechanics work in context. Probably the most egregious example of this was the "offspring" mechanic - in Awakening, when two characters got strong enough support levels, sometimes their children from a post apocalyptic future version of the world came back in time to try and prevent that apocalypse - while this sounds a little silly on the surface, it was well integrated into the story and made your choices for who you built supports between feel like it carried a lot more weight. The next game in the franchise, Fates, decided to have a similar system, but instead of integrating the existence of these children into the overarching storyline, they were children that were essentially born during the events of the story and then raised in the "hyperbolic time chamber" pocket dimension that is your hub world; they're all suffering some deep-seated abandonment issues because your party members were spending months or years away from them in the real world for every battle they engaged in in the story. It just felt completely unnecessary and detached from the story and only there because it had been in the previous game. Engage I feel suffers a lot of the same issues, where the various hub activities and relationship building mechanics that made sense in the context of the Three Houses story just end up feeling tacked on when removed from the framework of Three Houses.
In defense of Fates, not only was the central theme of Fates about family, it also mechanically supported unit customization arguably even better than Awakening, so not having child units would be a missed opportunity. The way Awakening integrated child units was just about as 'silly' as Fates. Lucina was able to travel back to time from an apocalyptic future, and Azura once lived in but escaped from a special separate dimension, so it makes sense how children could be incorporated into each respective universe's lore. If anything, Awakening's use of time travel was more bullshit because, time travel, or timeline travel, is a helluva lot more convoluted than just having separate dimensions. Combine that with the presence of Fate's themes of family, and it makes much more sense for Fates to have child units, as opposed to Awakening.
Also because Fates doesn't have time travel, all the child characters were conceived by your units _at their current age._ At least with Awakening you can pretend that for example, Ricken didn't have contact with his wife until he was a grown man. That's not the case with Fates so the woman you pair with Hayato will be a pedophile. And so will be the man you pair with Elise and Sakura. (And honestly most of the cast...)
@@guy-sl3kr That's only assuming you purposely paired the younger characters with the oldest ones. Hayato with Elise or Sakura doesn't carry that negative connotation. That "just pretend" argument can go both ways, since age is never specified anyone could "just pretend" Hayato is 18 and so is his partner, just like how you could "just pretend" with Ricken.
@@gameplayerone3917 The fact that adults can conceive with children at all speaks for itself. And I don't think kids having kids with other kids is that much better. Sure you can headcanon everyone as being an adult if you want to stretch the limits of your imagination (and ignore your eyes and ears) but the child mechanic just does not work in Fates like it does in Awakening. It's as poorly thought out as the entire rest of its plot.
Nah Awakening did it better, Fates felt shoe horned in.@@gameplayerone3917 They could've forgone child units in order to make the story and characters already present better, especially Corrin.
Fun Fact: During lumeras first death scene my switch actually started going into sleep mode with the screen going dark that's how long that cutscene goes on it actually made me laugh a little at that death scene.
That happened to me like three times - Then, Alears first 'death' then Alears second 'death'. I feel like the console itself is trying to say something to me
@@QosmicVoid It's another benefit of Three Houses giving Byleth dialogue options; it forces you to press a button on your controller every so often
This exact thing happened to me too and had a hysterical laugh when it went started going into sleep mode
Just a little?
So idk if those were the same writers that wrote dialogues and scenarios for Three Houses, but I would like to ask them if they know the principle of “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” What the hell do I care if a random ass person dies 10 minutes in the actual game, that I have seen once. Should I care because they tell me it’s protagonist’s mother? I don’t. Not just bc someone tells me to without giving me any time to even get to know the character or see the relationship. Same goes for literally any “impactful” scene. They were mostly way too late in the game or had weird pacing. Why should I care about some random villain’s sob story in chapter 20? When they have done nothing but annoy me before. Why drop Sombron’s “tragic” backstory right before the final map? Made me laugh, rather than care, honestly, because it was ridiculous.
Byleth's lack of emotions is also linked to Sothis. Because in the opening dream Sothis is beginning to awake. Yes, Byleth had the dream before, but now it seems like it's different. Even in the Supports we see that later supports show Byleth being a bit more "human," smiling making jokes etc.
Yunaka's voice actress IS that good. Laura Post is extremely talented.
On my first playthrough, I just laughed about how awkward and long the first Lumera death scene was.
I accidentally skipped it partway through, bc I pushed the skip button when my Switch wanted to go to sleep mode.
Fr it's way too early, didn't feel anything after that scene
Probably the biggest issue i have with Engage is the cast, especially on. The first 6 units you get in the game, 2/3 of the cast until Brodia, are the Stewards who's main personality trait is worshipping Alear, and Alfred's group who's main character traits are getting stronger. So when you first unlock supports, your chance to explore how deep these characters are, it feels like you're watching the same two conversations for an hour.
The characters in Engage are atrocious. Absolutely atrocious. I thought a lot of the characters in Fates were derivative but, my god, Engage makes me appreciate Fates characters so much more. There are literally compilations like "Every Celine support but when she mentions tea it skips to the next one" and it's only 3 minutes long. I think her support with Alcryst is the literal only one that doesn't get skipped at all.
Then we also have characters like Ivy, who are supposed to be enemies, but even before they join, they already switched to actively worshiping Alear just like the rest.
This is actually familiar to a lot of talks people had from the shift from Awakening to Fates. Similar Fates took the aspects people liked from Awakening and dialed them up to a 100 regardless if it made sense, aka Child units, supports, and tropes. Although when comparing Fates and Engage, Engage still feels like the radical change.
Then splitting it into 3 games 2 which were pretty easy and conquest which is the 2nd hardest game I've played in the series behind only radiant dawn
Engage made me realize that story in games does matter and is more or less important depending of which games you're talking about. Engage is not a bad game but with a compelling story like Three houses it would've been one of my favorite Nintendo games
Agree. Engage isn’t a bad game but I will say to me it’s disappointing because I really felt bored playing this game despite the fun gameplay because I did not care for anything in this game
Agreed here. It’s probably the most mechanically sound and interesting fire emblem game. The story is so soulless though. It’s a celebration of the series, which is cool but I wish it actually tried more in that framework. Three house’s story was so thoughtful it’s just a shame to have lost that.
@@milesharrison2140 Maybe you can explain it since I don't get it. What did Engage do mechanically that made it so much different that earlier titles? All it added was: 1. The Emblem Rings a game item, that basically allowed you to make a hybrid class kind of like like Fe3H. Except with a few super powers. 2. The Break Mechanic, which was just the weapon triangle on steroids. (It overcorrected the problem in 3H, and should have been a skill exclusive of the assassin / thief.) Unless I am forgetting something, everything else in Engage is not new to engage. As I hear people praise Engages gameplay, but I just don't see what makes it stand out since I noticed a lot more that it stripped away (less classes, less weapon types, less magic) than it added.
@@thenecromancer8805 those two mechanics did a lot for my enjoyment of it mechanically. The emblem rings changed a lot strategy wise that I found interesting, specifically for the amount of them and the differences between them. Moreover their connection to skills made unit optimization interesting, though in some moments a bit time consuming. I do think that there could have been more classes, but with the classes we do have, the flexibility with units is insane units can end up being completely different through play throughs. It also has a good sized character pool, which is something that Fe3H lacked unless you recruit everyone. This left you with two options, playing the game on casual which I prefer not to or playing it on classic and spinning time back if you lose a unit. It’s nice to have a fire emblem game again where I can play with permadeath and still get to the end of the game. Stage design was also pretty solid though I can’t say for sure if it was better. Holy fuck the story is bad though. And not just oh it didn’t live up to the last game. Shit is just bad on its own. Literally skipped all that on the second play through, which is not a god sign.
@@milesharrison2140 Fair enough, I agree the map design was visually a lot better than the previous three games. I guess where I don't see eye to eye is my focus on what was missing. Since I ended up finding most the new mechanics to be too intrusive. That said, what I did like about the Rings mechanic is the idea of merging two classes which unlocked a whole new way to use characters. Which is why I am a fan of the idea of removing the class system entirely, and allowing players to build archetypes however they like. Kind of like an RPG where you can equip armor types, weapons, and mounts however you like for a characters as long as you meet the weapon, armor, and mount skill prerequisites. So instead of using a class token to unlock "paladin" you'd gain the paladin skills if you leveled up your white magic, mount, and armor profs.
Engage finished development midway through 2021 according to various game classification boards, so even if the developers had been interested in adding 3 Hopes' Shez as an emblem, the timeline shows that simply would not have been possible. Also, the most canon Byleth's Emblem has in Engage is that they're from White Clouds/Part 1. He's not meant to represent any route in particular, which is why his special interaction with Nemesis in Ch 26 of Engage alludes that while Byleth knows who Nemesis IS, he also has not met him beforehand. This special treatment Byleth gets is due to the devs deciding that Three Houses' canon route is... up to each player to decide (which incidentally played a role in much of the discourse involving its plot and characters).
Tbh, I always felt like it would have been more interesting if all 4 routes in 3 Houses were canon, Byleth resetting time each time to find the best outcome up until CF, which is the secret unlockable route where Byleth loses the power of Sothis, indicating that they don't need it any more. Its what I like to imagine. Especially since some endings seem to be made consciously worse than others (like Hapis endings in the og JP text stating that Those Who slither in the Dark attempt a great atrocity in which they succeed in Azure Moon exclusively).
but ! crimson flower is edelgard related and shes not a sexy man so..... is it rly the most interesting.
Problem with this is that Byleth does have knowledge of certain events post-White Clouds. It seems like his general 'canon' for him in Engage follows CF the most closely due to appearance but that they do pull from the other routes as if he has (as a result of being an Emblem) become aware of different timelines and paths he could've taken. Also let's be real, everyone knows of Nemesis in Fódlan by yhe time of 3H and I wouldn't even say he's the main antagonist of that game. I think the reason he was picked as the Dark Emblem for 3H is because he's the only other wielder of the SotC and compared to Rhea and Edelgard (in any route that isn't CF) he's the only outright evil major enemy you fight.
@@docphil9602 I'm 30, even if I was into men which I'm not Edelgard has Hubert, Ferdinand and Jeritza on her team, so she is objectively right. Black Eagles men are just too refined for normies.
So here's my biggest gripe with the premise of Engage - the emblems. Why not make THEM the basis of the religion in the world? Have Alaer be an emblem from the start, but one that nobody knew existed. And (s)he doesn't exist within a ring, she just manifested. Then the rings can have a religious significance, and the old heroes be worshipped. We could see how the worship affects the characters etc. The Divine/Fell Dragon plot was kinda meh to begin with because it really didn't matter one bit. Heck, have the villains revive the antagonists from previous games. Have us fight the Black Knight, and the Death Knight and shit!
Considering the point of Engage was to be a big anthology of previous games as a celebration of how far Fire Emblem has come, actually playing into the nostalgia pandering would have been good... or, at least better than what we have.
@@lo4tr I also toyed with the idea that why woudln't they just make the Emblems the party members? Instead of having them just hang around.
One thing about the hubworlds. In Three Houses, you only NEED to explore once per month - if all you care about is the story beats the characters might give you. Which are often relevant to what's going to happen. After that you can just fight, do seminars or rest. In Engage, whenever you do a side mission... you are incentivized to go back to the Somniel to do all the chores again, because it resets. Meanwhile in Three Houses they go "okay want to fight? You can do 3 fights before the next time you decide what to do. No faffing about in the hub world first"
You are just biased 3h does the exact same shit but worse. The problem is the way the game is designed it objectively unoptimal to do this thing, why would I rest when eating does the same thing? Why would I fight when the arena does the same thing. The way the games are designed in engage you can literally just skip the somniel if you don't care about the fluff dialogue where in three houses because of the cancer that is prof. Level you have incentives to run around and do fetch quests 3 times a month while playing cancerous mini games. The game (on maddening) is not designed around you only going to explore 1 time each month, while engage irs way quicker to get back into the action. There's a reason long time fe find think the monastery sucks balls. The only reason you should do anything else is when there's paralogues available
@@cringekid3993 You just mad an argument for not having the Somniel, not an argument for why the Monastery sucks. The thing is, if you are "conditioned" to think the hub world brings benefits, then the Somniel is 100% worse. Besides neither me, nor the video is debating hub worlds VS none. We are comparing why the one in Three Houses works better. If you also look at the Monastery as a story driver, then it surpasses the Somniel right away. There's plot points being given to you in the Monastery, the Somniel has none. These are plot points I don't really see how you would get elsewhere? Other than longer expositions dumps. Part of why Three Houses cast stands out way more than Engage is also due to you interacting with them outside of Supports. But, again. It's an argument over Monastery VS Somniel, not "how could it be done even better?" I have thoughts on that, for another time. Although the world building and small story and character beats I haven't really figured out how you could do better.
@@TheAurgelmir If you're going based on story alone, yes you're correct the Somniel doesn't hold nearly as much relevance as the Monastery. But if going by gameplay, 3H is much MUCH worse, its a constant grind and if you're playing for efficiency then it's a requirement. Again like the guy said above, long term FE players hate it, you cannot just do it once and move on for the month when playing Maddening otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot. 3Hopes drastically improved on this, it's too bad it doesn't matter because it's a Warriors game, but they clearly learned from 3H and then moved that into Engage with the Somniel. Players wanted the monastery to be less of a grind and the Somniel is. You could argue "arena battles and meals are just as required/bad" but they take up a forth of the time, you're done with them in 5 minutes vs the drastically increasing time it takes for the monastery. I never thought a video game would make me hate fishing in it, but 3H made that crap unbearable.
While I do find the somniel shallow from a story and character perspective, I think it is better than 3h's monastery as that one was WAY more detrimental to gameplay. Fates and onwards, hub worlds are, imo, at their best when serving as a small stop-gap between difficult and well-designed chapters. A place to shortly gain your composure, managing resources, and planing for the next map. And to be fair, I do think the monastery does fine here up until the arena unlocks. Both encourage participating in activities for resources that can be applied to the maps. But 3H asks you to do it 3 times or more before a chapter. Unfortunately said chapters are very low quality. With nearly all of them blending into one another due to the rampant map reusage. Creating a bad gameplay loop. Engage asks you to do the somniel once before a chapter (not counting tempest trials). As well as having well designed maps, each with a distict theme that test the player fair and square. After completing a chapter, you go back to preparing for the next chapter via gathering bond fragments/supports/money/forges/the well, etc. I personally prefer the Fates hub, as it was more fast paced. But I would rather take the somniel over monastery.
This is just straight bias. Somniel is 100% optional but lets you min max whole team IF you want. Monestary in the other hand is a required slog that you HAVE to do if you want to stand a chance in maddening
Three Houses also had the benefit that instead of the game simply telling you that you commanded an army, it *gave* you an army to command. The battalion system made you the commander of an army often exceeding 1'000 soldiers (8 students plus one teacher, each equipped with the largest battalions makes 9 x 120 = 1'080). Engage tells you that you lead an army, but all you have is an armed friend group.
I mean, pretty much every FE game talked as if you lead an army, while you have an armed friend group. Sigurd went to war with an entire nation, TWICE, with only his armed friend group.
3H has arguably done that in the worst way
@@Emiturbina Yet it did it, and the other games ddin't.
@@IchHassePasswoerter No, not at all, I meant it did it the worst in the series, even worse than fucking TMS
@@Emiturbina Then, how, exactly, is *not* displaying an army a better way to show an army than literally having one?
"I wish Ike and Michiah could interact" Us FE fans "They do wdym, there is a whole game with them as primary protags"
Radiant Dawn moment
@@Pogma776 Best fire emblem game moment
Blood pact moment
@@BHox01 the bird turned into me moment
*The honest truth is pretty ugly.* *The Short Version:* Nintendo put a employee as the lead developer for the game who had no experience. A basic "Yes Man" who likes action games and not turn based tactics games, and was heavily influenced by Nintendo wanting to aim for a New Younger Audience which meant dumbing down the game, and making it flashier. *The Long Version:* If you read the "Ask the Developers" interviews that were released. The guy in charge (Tsutomu Tei), had never been a director of a game at IS before, and seemingly never discusses having any previous experience working on a FE game. So while I can't say what his previous role was, it doesn't seem to be significant enough to mention in his bio. If anything, just someone picked by Nintendo to lead the development. I'd link the Nintendo article, but KZhead is pretty finicky with links these days. (Ask the Developer Vol. 8, Fire Emblem Engage Part 1, 2, and 3) Listening to the other two employees of Nintendo that were in the interview. Tei and the two mention wanting to "appeal to a broader audience" and saying that RPG mechanics such as the Awakening / Fates marriage system took too long to play out in the game. According to them it "wasn't fun" so they developed the Emblem Ring idea instead. With the goal of introducing the "fun elements" early on. I'll quote the Nintendo stooge "Higuchi: We wanted to introduce this fun element for players as early as possible. I felt that the fun of tactical RPG games wasn't as intuitive or immediate as that of action games." So basically you had Nintendo heavily influencing the game with employees who were more interested and familiar with Action games than tactics RPGs. Then from the games IS developer, "Tei: People often say that turn-based tactical RPGs seem difficult or too complicated... In fact, I’m not very good at them myself." Take of that what you will, I take it as even the new IS dev wasn't interested in making a Tactics game. Just taking orders and advice from his Nintendo handlers. "Tei: We had several candidates. We were looking for an artist whose design style would appeal to a broad audience - including younger players - as well as the ability to portray a variety of characters. Among the candidates, Mika Pikazo-san's drawings were colorful, vivid, and really popped! They were a perfect fit for the flashy direction we wanted for this title." So from that we can see the "broader audience" meant appeal to children. In spite of marketing toward long time fans, which makes no sense since new players and young players would not get any of the references. So basically they tried to do both and focused on the younger new audience by lying to the older one. As it would seem, the games development and design was all over the place. Trying to create a game for a new younger audience, while throwing a bone to the old players to make it seem like they were not being abandoned when they were. As for another section about their Artist choice that influenced the game in a bad way. Tei: "Well, I thought it'd be better to be upfront about the request. That said, there was one concern she had. Since she usually draws young characters, she was concerned about her confidence level in some of the character design." So to answer why all the characters were loli or V-tuber style. It's because that's the only style the artist knew, and he went with it. Also, it also turns out it was her idea to make toothpaste-chans hair color red and blue. As before Tei just went with whatever he was told, advised, or requested. From everything I have read, Tei should never be in charge of any product. Unless he was specifically chosen because he just follows orders and has no skill as a leader or director. "Tei: As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm not very good at strategy games myself, so during development, I hoped to create a game that even those like me would want to try out or find interesting."
I couldn't have been more disappointed in everything Engage did. The Break mechanic forced the game to be more offense focused like an action game. Making counter attackers / defensive play styles obsolete. (It should have been an Assassin exclusive skill.) Not to mention, FE3H introduced the idea of player choice. Where Engage had none of it. The characters were all one dimensional and cringe. With generic "Hahaha I'm evil" villains. No deeper motivations until the death scenes which far too little character exploration far too late. Then lets not start about how dreadfully short the class list was or the weapon list. FE3H had the right idea letting the players equip any melee weapon to a class instead of V1, V2, or V3 of the same class. I could go on... as a professional writer I can easily write a better plot outline for a tactics game in a day. Though that's not saying much compared to Engages plot.
Engage was: *Lazy, Sterile, & Corporate* Now don't get me wrong, I have plenty of gripes with Fe3H I can write a post twice as long. Though I shouldn't need to say that when I am talking about engage to keep the sycophants from starting the "what about"-isms. The problem is the only praise I can give Engage is its maps, that's it, and that's a very low bar.
*Personally a few things I would like to see in FE:* 1. Instead of a "hub world," FE games should just use the simplistic "My Castle" hub mechanic like from FE: Fates. (I honestly found the time sink of 3H and Engage unnecessary) 2. Use an Archetype system instead of a class system, as every class combination that can exist in FE has at some point in the series. (The way to do this is actually really simple, the inventory system would just need to be altered so you can equip one armor, one mount (or lack of), a primary and secondary weapon, and then three loot item spaces like an RPG instead of the default FE inventory bag that lets you carry 6 of anything. Thus instead of class tokens, throughout the game you'd unlock mounts and armors at merchants (or find them) like you would a weapons in your typical FE game. Equipping certain combinations would grant bonuses / traits like a class (hence an archetype). Thus allowing the game to grant the freedom to have all the classes you'd want in a typical FE game, but not breaking the game as it would follow typical item rarity which replaces class progression as well as normal weapon, armor, magic triangle balancing. Though what about advanced classes? The way this would be introduced is through leveling up certain combinations of weapons, armors, or mounts which levels up your archetype. So A rank white magic, A rank mount, and A rank heavy armor would grant you the paladin archetype when you have heavy armor, a horse mount, and white magic equipped.) 3. Story Matters. (Pretty straight forward, in that the gameplay and story both need to be good. As the formula for FE combat really has not changed much except in the past two recent titles, and really did not need to. Making maps more dynamic and varied like the old FE games would solve a lot of complaints, while more interesting enemy placement as would go a long way to solve the gameplay problems. On the other hand story wise it's not hard to write a good RPG plot for a tactics game, they just need to (though will not) hire a better writing team. After all Nepotism and Corporate is Nintendo's middle name.) 4. Return to its more serious roots. (FE in its GBA days and somewhat in later titles was less anime and more what you'd expect from a plotline in a world like Berserk. Such a tone, kept the setting grounded in medieval tropes instead of 2nd rate anime tropes.)
@@thenecromancer8805At least you actually give solutions as to what you'd like to see instead of just saying, "Let's go back to 3H formula."
@@ResurgentRaven KZhead does a bad job of dis-allowing long form discussions due to its character limit. So naturally that is what happens most of the time, just people voicing their surface thoughts instead of fully voicing their concerns. That and most people understand it is a waste of time for the most part since most people will also respond the same instead of having a conversation like they might have if the users talked in person.
Somniel serves as a great example of what I personally found is missing from Engage, that Three Houses has in spades: World building. Three Houses has such a deep backstory, which builds the world. And, from the world the people of the world are born. This is the source of tension. The Church, the Kingdom, the Empire all play major parts in the tension of the game. (The alliance is just there, just like Claude) But, engage has no world. No, a map isn't a world. Engage has a doughnut with four different glazings and a villain. Nothing in the story makes any sense. Which means the stakes don't make any sense. It's also not helped by "magical corrupted" standing in for humans. You fight Humans what? Once in all of Engage? I think the rather bland plot could have been aided a lot with an actual world that has a history - like Three Houses.
I absolutely agree about the Corrupted. Its one thing to have actual monsters like Gaiden and Sacred Stones, but having the main bad guys be an army of undead that are just reskinned humans feels cheap. At least the Morphs in Blazing Sword were rare and mostly only used because Nergal had killed the Black Fang. Even the Risen from Awakening were utilized better thanks to most of them being used as villains to the child units that encountered them before time traveling. Then there is the Vallites, who were poorly implemented and the Corrupted who have nothing going for them; no lore, no mystery.
The design of the protagonist means I will never even attempt to play Engage, even with piracy being an option.
Having played every English released Fire Emblem, I notice that I'm more partial towards the games with more quality and detailed stories. I find the issue surrounding Fire Emblem's gameplay to story dilemma to be bland. Just because a game like Engage has the best gameplay in the series doesn't excuse its plot holes or its shallow characters. The same is true for Three Houses, it's fantastic themes and characters doesn't fully excuse the plot inconsistencies or the gameplay changes. Still, I'd rather have Three Houses, as it feels like a more complete experience compared to Engage. Engage, while a pretty good celebration of the IP itself, really did not feel like it deserved to be a mainline game, and I struggle to understand why the bomb was dropped so hard in nearly every department but the gameplay. Regardless, I hope they learn what makes both games work, as well as what doesn't, and create a new entry with the gameplay quality of Engage, and the character quality of Three Houses.
I agree entirely. I'm honestly not that bothered if they go more an Engage or Three Houses direction in terms of how the narrative presents itself - All I really care about is the strengths being taken from both. Give me an Engage-Style story with decent writing and characters and I'm more than down for that
@@QosmicVoid well as a person who watch’s fire emblem content, atleast it’s not fate’s (fire up the emulator as I recommend the fire emblem binge from the oldest to newest plus “canon spin off’s” as three hopes adds depth to three house’s, though it’s kinda obvious that blue lions are the best route in either game”
@@diegoizaguirre3452 Honestly, there is worse than Fates. Granted, not much worse, but I do think that occassionally, Fates did have it's merits. Three Houses and Awakening were the peak of the series though, no doubt about it.
@@diegoizaguirre3452 eh. fates was fine its just a meme to hate on it. most of the complaints about Fates are mechanics that date back to FE4, and at least it wasnt as visually difficult as Engage (IMO). Conquest had some stellar maps. if you are a person who just watches FE content, id recommend actually playing fates before casting too much judgement. Its not the best but id say its middle quality. its not a good *fire emblem* game but its a good RPG. fates was rather fun and replayable with really memorable characters and careful design.
@@user-vk7cz5sf4w I thought fates was the one with increadable gameplay but an absolute garbage story
18:30 The intro to engage is a reference to an important scene in FE Awakening involving Lucina, Lucina tells a tale of her timelines future which has an extremely similar beat and choreography to the engage intro and both are “premeditations” of events to come. But like 99.99% of the references in engage, unless you played the older games then all of these references are go over your head and that is egregious, leaving you with a scene that isn’t trying to support its own narrative but instead piggybacking on your understanding of other, better scene that these are parodying. Makes you truly wonder why they left this game in the direction of someone who never designed tactics games, made the gameplay and design towards younger, newer player… but then made this an anniversary game with everything about its plot and main mechanics be a “Hey remember this dingus from fire emblem and the shadow boiled potato?”
Wait, but the intro scene in Awakening actually happened in Lucina's future didn't it?
My thought on the bandit attack is that they were never supposed to run into Byleth and Jeralt. I think they were supposed to have the two other heirs killed, but most of all scare away the third professor, so that Jeritza would take over as the teacher for the Black Eagles. So, in a way I think maybe Edelgard being the one under attack in the turn back time scene is a bit of an oversight. Should have been Claud.
I’m saying this at the beginning of the video, so you may cover it later. But the reason I love three houses so much more than engage is: I give a crap about the characters, I know who they are. But three houses is kind of unique in fire emblem in it gives you less characters than normal Fire emblem games (assuming you don’t recruit everyone). Once I realized that engage gives you so many characters so often and expects you to replace your units all the time, I no longer cared about any of them. I could name maybe 5 characters from engage.
buddy that's the reason three houses was so permadeath unfriendly, I myself don't like iron mans but a good amount of the community does and three houses is the most anti iron man game in the franchise other then the warrior spinoffs potentially, engage is far less bad then other fe games because in engage all the characters are viable, imagine liking bantu in marth's game or sophia in fe6, you're in for a terrible time trying to use them(both are also 100% outclassed in every way by a different unit of the same role as them in the same game)
@@pandabanaan9208 I think the solution would have been to be able to have faceless generic soldiers like you could hire in Fates. For whatever reason, FE really does not want you to have generic / faceless soldiers. In fact, it would be cool if you started a FE game with mostly faceless soldiers (who when they reach their first support level with you) become a face character. So you have your protagonist and small main cast, but will unlock new characters by what hired characters you use who have the potential to evolve into a side character. I think FE does suffer from character bloat.
@@thenecromancer8805 honestly if this is such a big issue for some people that when they see a large cast they immediately lose value as individuals the best approach might be shadow dragon, or new mystery idk wich one has it but one of those two has specific characters that can only be recruited if other characters are dead, this would fix the whole not getting any new units issue of three houses while also making it so some players stop caring about the individual units before then though if they also search the wiki in advance then there isn't much to do as you do have to choose between either having a large cast to validate permadeath as a worthwhile mechanic or have a small cast without permadeath, we can't really pull a D&D were next session a new character will pop up to fill the empty spot on the small team so we have to sorta choose
@@pandabanaan9208 I'm just speaking from what I see for the most part. In the grand scheme of things I don't play on Iron-man or even hard mode for that matter. As I play games for the stories. Though my idea is more or less just ripping something that they used in Fates since it would solve the permadeath problem in my view. As it relates to the large cast of characters, its more so an earlier FE game mindset. As in the early FE games you had a much smaller cast of characters, and their supports tended to be directly related to the story instead of being about generic character hobbies or quirks. It basically can be summed up as a hope that the writing quality would improve if they focused on doing a few characters right. Though I think this is a false hope since IS is just full of bad writers.
@@thenecromancer8805 that's not really true though, as ealy as fe4 we have had very large casts and there isn't really a direct connection between cast sizeand writing quality, I think path of radiance base convos were probably some of the best ways to handle a large cast as you would essentially have two characters have a free support convo about recent story events or other stuff, it gives them time to shine without having to be super relevant to the main chapters
Im pretty late to this video but the community needs videos like this and players like you who provide new insight to a series with a small but diehard fanbase. I enjoyed the video
FE3H got fans new and old reinvigorated in the series and excited to revisit older entries with fresh new eyes. People loved Fire Emblem when 3H came out. Whether they were new fans who still preferred 3H upon visiting older games or not due to the visible intricacy of its world, the relevance of its characters, its lively voice acting, its beautifully grounded art direction, its exciting soundtrack, or its unique mechanics that both made battles more involved and exciting and told the story using its mechanics with incredible consistency, or if they found a new favorite among the older games because of the many reasons to like those too, 3H didn’t divide a fanbase into people who didn’t understand fire emblem and people who did, it gave people a gateway of a game that was greatly enjoyable to most people, with everything Fire Emblem is about to keep them interested in its past. Mostly, its developers and voice actors and creative team were just as passionate about the game as Fire Emblem fans were. It was made by a team consisting of big fire emblem fans-Koei-after all. It’s not wonder how they could tell just what everyone craved out of the genius FE format, and why 3H stuck the landing so well; it’s creators were among the audience. Fire Emblem Engage……displayed what it looks like when developers are driven by greed in the creation of something people are meant to resonate with, around, and enjoy. Say goodbye to careful detailing of things that make a game feel loved, and say hello to what is immediately, visually, corporate. People picked up on this immediately, and immediately the game dropped off in sales for those that were willing to give it a chance. If Engage wasn’t so grueling to audiences on its own, I would say Fire Emblem Heroes was Fire Emblem Engage’s worst flaw. 3H created a fanbase that loved Fire Emblem, Engage created a fanbase that felt like Fire Emblem hated them.
I feel like you could say the same about fates though, fates became one of the biggest punching bags in gaming even outside of the fire emblem community, and then later on came the fates apology train to say actually fates did some things pretty good, only with engage instead of first everyone hating it then people liking it both happened at the same time also let's not kid ourselves this is nintendo, everything they do is corporate, you can even see it in 3h, why do 3 of the routes have so much in common, not because koei techmo couldn't have made more maps it's because nintendo is nintendo, it's probably also why all the recent fe games have dlc, because nintendo wants to fill their pockets with our money, recent nintendo has started to become more and more corporate, I love the warriors games but it's no coincidence the two most recent entries are spinoffs of popular games(breath of the wild and 3h), anything nintendo does well is despite the fact it is coming from them
@@pandabanaan9208 I cant disagree that anything Nintendo will have corporate roots, but I do disagree that it’s so blatantly visible, if visible at all in the games before Engage. It’s nowhere near as obtrusive. 3H most definitely had repeated maps solely because of budget and time limitations. With their ceaseless effort in every other achievable area like diligently consistent dialogue which changes depending on the route or time, the fact that the game was “two times” the size it was originally intended to be, because they were so inspired to keep adding more to the game, I am 100% confident saying if Koei had the ability to expand 3H further they would have. We can go back and forth on whether their time was misplaced in certain areas, which I’d agree with, but that doesn’t have much to do with passion and corporatism. DLC I go back and forth on, but at least it was made after they knew people *wanted* more. The same can be said of spin-offs. Following 3H’s commercial success, Engage had no excuse for its most widely accepted flaws because those flaws had nothing to do with budget. Its story and characters didn’t need more, it just needed to be different, and often times could have actually done with less. The only excuse for it is at best ineptitude and at worst laziness. The director interviews are even more revealing. The game was conceived solely with the idea to “broaden audiences”. They follow this up by saying 3H was conceived with the idea to be an “adult war chronicle”. One is financially driven, the other was naturally inspired. There’s also the gacha mechanic, the game’s ties to Heroes-again, in the director interviews they say they “hope players will become interested in Heroes” after playing Engage-the fanservice and selection of an artist who said herself she was “concerned” about the character designs because she “only draws young characters”… There’s just so much incriminating material and things from the directors’ own mouths that directly seep into every aspect of the game, and that I’m confident in saying soured too many peoples’ experiences and turned them off of the game. I agree that this isn’t mutually exclusive to Engage, but I think 2020 and the ‘vid especially exasperated it to vapid extremes-like they think people have gotten more desperate and reliant on escapism and gacha and the like-and Engage is I think the face of that shift for Fire Emblem
@@EXchoco even before engage nintendo has changed, they rushed out like 3 pokemon games in 1 year and had several other games like mario strikers BL that very clearly show nintendo has lost itself, even tears of the kingdom wich I've heard is a good game(personally didn't find it that fun and feel little reason to give it another try after playing for several hours and having a pretty bad time) is just breath of the wild 2 because the first game was succesfull, even back in fates they brought back several awakening characters for fanservice and in awakening you have that one dlc mission, also fe heroes, so here's a weird question, I like fe engage and skylanders and what do they have in common, they are entirely corporate driven but still have something in there that I find very enjoyable, that's something I've come to terms with, not every game is a fear and hunger, a passion project of a developer who wanted to realise his vision no matter if it would be succesfull or not, many games were made because the studio wanted money, they only care about pleasing the fanbase to get more money from them though still fail because corpos are dumb, from my perspective three houses was made as a switch fire emblem game as it's primary goal similar to pokemon sword and shield, it's just that three houses stuck the landing and was good despite the greedy intentions the highed ups had when they made the project start
If Engage makes Fire Emblem hate me then I must be a masochist because I'd take a million Engages over one Three Houses. It would be horribly disappointing to me if every FE game from here on out had weak gameplay and a pointless hub because it was always trying to emulate TH.
1:05:22 SPOILER FOR FIRE EMBLEM FATES- but they DID in fact do this with the Birthright route After a certain battle a cutscene plays and if you got to a certain support level with Kage (A if I remember correctly) he survives, otherwise he dies
Which, honestly, was surprisingly ballsy for that game.
Similar thing happens with Dedue and Lysithea. Really bit me in the ass when I first played Three Houses.
Three Houses characters and Supports: Traumatized people who work through their trauma, and how they exist in the world Engage's characters and supports: We are vtuber moe-blobs, doing moe-blob things.
this isnt really accurate, though. a lot of engage supports are pretty good, it just so happens that the first few characters you get (and hence the first supports you unlock) are super trope-y. seadall, ivy, diamant, citrinne, alcryst, panette, goldmary, yunaka - that's just a handful of engage characters with great supports. unfortunately a good chunk of other characters have middling supports, but i found even the weaker supports to be fun and charming. alear is the one that surprised me the most. his supports with the twins leave a bad first impression but they genuinely have some really great supports, too. if we're being fair, bernadetta's supports are pretty garbage. they all start the same and end the same. same with byleth's. i wint deny that 3H has some of the best character writing in the series but we shouldn't act like engage is far worse
@@jerielc709honest it's got a few duds in 3h more than it's fan boys wanna admit tbh
Dude have you read Bernadetta’s supports? It is not “working through trauma”, it’s constantly repeating one character trait
@@Logans_Login this! Not just that but sometimes the main plot will literally make her act like she hasn't gone through her character growth
I have the opposite perspective - I played all FE games, except Three Houses, Engage and spin-offs - and I can agree with most points except one. Alear's design is nothing short of horrendous, both aesthetically and in the context of the world they're in. They look like christmas tree with so many clashing design elements that if anything made me appreciate simpler designs of previous main characters and realize why they worked. You can look at Fates characters for example and even without any context figure out which are from different countries or tribes, while in Engage if someone told me Yunaka and Hortensia are sisters, being a part of family circus, which Timerra is also a part of, I would believe it. If someone told me Bunet, Pandreo, Merrin and Panette are retainers of a royal family living in the desert land I would think my leg is being pulled - they don't have even a sliver of a tan on them and their outfits are terrible for desert environment. This is all over Engage, and it feels like characters were designed first, before anyone had any idea where to put them in the world. Everything else you pretty much nailed, though. That calendar system in 3H sounds very interesting, and I'm looking forward to eventually check it out.
Yep, it's such a stretch from a medieval fantasy aesthetic and jumps straight into high fantasy anime.
@@thenecromancer8805 It wouldn't be a major issue if it wasn't done such haphazardly. Take Elusia as an example - you can make cool looking anime winter outfits. Instead, both Ivy and Hortensia wear something you would see at a masquerade ball or a fancy tea party, and their retainers aren't much better. This game even has a gear system, which was a perfect opportunity to give everyone different outfits based on where the current chapter takes place or even make characters used to a certain environment more effective, since they themed each country after a season. But it's nothing more than a window dressing. Even Fates took the time to explain why Felicia and Flora are not bothered by cold, regardless of their outfits.
Yeah, it all feels super messy. It was one of the first things i even pointed out when we got a list of characters before the game even released. Fates' designs were great when it comes to feeling actually coherent- even Azura and Corrin were designed so they would always slot in to either country while also clearly looking foreign and it was done with a very smart color system that worked alongside pre-existing world influence in outfits as well as design motifs repeated on characters of each kingdom commonly. nohr's being black, purple and blue . with floral shapes on the medallions on characters such as niles, xander, leo. and the "scaled" armor lacing. hoshido's being blue, orange and red. with bow shapes on characters such a ryoma, sakura, saizo, and actually like everyone... these countries SHARE blue, as well as white/ivory/silver as a prominent neutral. meaning corrin and azura both fit in the color schemes of either. the way the characters are designed themself is a perfect example of designing with the intent to tell someone about the character on their first look. i doubt anyone who sees Xander for the first time expects him to be anything except for a stubborn and serious, rather hardcore guy. he's clearly of a high station as well. you get it, i dont need to explain the way traits build up a recognizable personality in a design. but the colors of each country also help reflect the tone of each, literally being "light and dark", "day and night". (and of course, purple is matched to orange and red... main opposing characters even have matching or opposing silhouettes and color placements. its super fun to dig into, compare ryoma and xander side by side, for starters they share a stripe down the center. ill let you have fun picking apart the rest) the point is, i gathered characters from Engage to see what colors each country shared as their main, shared color between citizens of it. the result was messy. some characters look like theyre maybe... related to *eachother*, like siblings seem to have *some* thought, but as a country, youre left shaking your head. so sure, maybe its opinion based on if the designs are any good (they arent IMO. i didnt see a single design in Engage that i was like "WOW..." about. except maybe in disgust.) but its very much factual that there wasnt much thought put into why characters look the way that they do. i look at a character from engage, and i just have to ask myself "who is this person? how do they act, where are they from, what are they about?" and in return feel totally lost. the ones i do pick up on end up feeling more like jokes than anything else. im glad someone else picked up on it. i mean, we're fire emblem fans, we're not in search of anything groundbreaking but its disappointing and this feels like a new low. we'd been doing so well, and IntSys and Nintendo have the money and means to do better than ever in this regard. There really is no excuse. Engage's characters dont even look like theyre from the same game at times. seeing some characters side by side looks like i visited someones deviantart and found crossover fanrenders for franchises ive never heard of. it scares me for the future of FE as someone who's interest is very character and story heavy, espessially with the rumors of FE4's remake just getting more and more credible, and potentially closer. (which im already worried about due to censorship concerns.)
@@user-vk7cz5sf4w To be fair, Nintendo has had the budget to do better with all of its brands for decades. Yet instead chooses to put every title on a shoestring budget, very short dev time, and then pocket the gross profits while giving next to nothing to the devs it publishes. If you're curious as to why the game was such a mess, the lead dev accidently admits he's the reason the game is a disaster in the Ask the Dev interviews if you read them all.
@@thenecromancer8805 yep, and yeah sadly i am aware of it.. i actually hypothesized the day of the nintendo direct trailer that it was to "bring in new, younger fans"... reading more and seeing not just that but admittance to "not liking SRPGs" was really a ride.
Three Houses was the first game to make me feel emotional, it was such a good game and still is. It's my favorite game of all time and it'll probably stay that way. Btw my first route was the Dimitri route.
I remember playing until time skip and then being so giddy about seeing what “my kids” would look like now, after 5 years of war and how the reunion would play out, that I stayed up until 2AM just to finish the map. And went “Look at them!!!” several times. Because I cared about the cast. For engage, at chapter 16 or so, I turned to my partner and said, “man, I just want this to be over.”
I went into Three Houses blind, and when I saw my babies after the timeskip again, I was sobbing. In front of my family too. Naturally, I was made fun of for that.
Geralts death was incredibly well done, and was forshadowed well in advance, so you as the player saw it coming. It happens at a dramatic moment, but does overpower the scene. Other things can still happen. The tears fall, Byleth has been noticably emotionless for alot of the game, and to see the tears fall, and then the rain start, cutting to the silhouette of the two was powerfull. It didnt need to be over the top and dramatic, it just needed to be somber and sad. And thats what it was. I actually regularly revisited Geralts grave every month, just before the capstone mission.
This is utterly fascinating as someone who is a long time fan of the fire emblem series! It’s so refreshing hearing these games, especially the modern ones, looked at from an outsider’s perspective. So much of Three Houses and Engage are building on MODERN mechanics that have built up as radical shifts in the Fire Emblem series since Awakening. Each installment since Awakening has gone to greater and greater lengths to experiment with the series, its most foundational mechanics, and its familiar story formula. Hearing how a NEW player to the series engages with these mechanics, story beats, and their expectations because of them is eye-opening to the absolute core of this beloved franchise of games. Namely its not JUST game mechanics, its not JUST story, its not JUST character or rpg elements. I think you said it best in that you liked Three Houses because of the SUM of its parts rather than any one part by itself. Engage fails to have those parts seamlessly move together. It doesn’t make it a bad game, but it does make it feel less like a good Fire Emblem game. Thank you for the awesome video, I’d love to see more if you ever engage more with the series!
It always felt so weird how the story quality changed between engage and three houses, three houses isn't the best fe game but I still liked it and actually finished it multiple times but I still haven't bothered finishing engage once
Made by different studio's. Engage was written and produced by IS. While in 3H IS was just "supervising." IS can't write since they fired their only good writer ten years ago.
Three Houses was written by Dynasty Warriors writers overseen by the Fire Emblem people. Same writing team as the original FE Warriors. As much as people shit on Dynasty Warriors, the games do usually manage their casts very well, especially in direct interaction, and they have done so many cliches that they know how to really work them. Hubert? Basically just Sima Yi and Jia Chong combined. Edelgard? A massively downgraded but still okay Cao Cao. Lorenz takes inspiration from Zhang He. Linhardt is a lazier Sima Zhao. There's plenty more. Heck, even Dimitri's crazed determination is basically just Yukimura Sanada from Samurai Warriors.
I bought engage on release play until like chapter 16, got bored, and finally forced myself to beat the game literally 3 hours ago. Worst story, I've ever experienced in any game in a long time. Engage genuienly makes me worry what the next FE will be like, while 3H made me nothing but excited for the future of FE.
1:16:10 in the defense of Three houses, in Fire Emblem as a series most characters tend to have romantic endings with people of the opposite sex, with very few exceptions, and about the same amount of vaguely *implied* romantic relations between people of the same sex. Essentially in the previous 2 FE games where you could choose your main character's sex, you were also choosing what sex your spouse would be, opposite to your own (unless you marry the one granted bi-sexual for each sex in Fates). Three Houses was quite progressive in this, with several female characters being bi-sexual, and 1 bi-sexual man (3 if you include post-release updates and DLC). Bernedetta, and a few other characters, only swing one way, which can be "hypocritical" in some cases where characters who do not want to marry Byleth will still have paired romantic implied endings with members of the opposite sex anyway. You're not their type I guess.
I don't say this to mean that gay people aren't real or anything homophobic, just that choosing a character at the beginning of the game, it's assumed that most other characters are straight, however in Byleth's support screen you can see everyone who can potentially be S supported from the start as well for exceptions.
16:50 Yeah, the design is great.....if you wanna be compared to Colgate toothpaste colors. 23:15 I dunno I feel like Byleth would've been fine with full voice acting since they made it work in Three Hopes.....then again I suppose since that was made by a different company their standards are higher. 31:30 the funniest thing about this cutscene is the fact that Jeralt always wears a shield on his back whenever you see him in gameplay but the ONE time he needs it is when he dies, the irony. 35:40 Honestly having Claude's ending being the canon route is rather fitting. Though Dimitri's might be good as well since you take out Those Who Slither In the Dark without knowing from previous playthroughs. 52:00 What would've been cool is if you DO end your month early you get to save Monica from dying and being replaced with the assassin (I forgot her name). Now granted the only thing that would change of that would be Jeralt living. 57:30 I knew straight away with Clanne and Framme that this game was one big avatar jerk off. 1:08:40 It's sad when the one character with actual detail is the best one, Yunaka standards should've been the norm. 1:42:45 I agree if it had at least a great story, so much of this game wouldn't feel as bad compared to FETH. 1:44:13 That's the reason why people still argue about whether or not Edelgard was right in doing the war to begin with, maybe it's due to her shortened life span so she needed to act quickly even if there was a lot of death and her being called a tyrant by most of Fodlan. Engage was good but the story made it feel boring, hell the Fell Xenologue was my favorite with how grim the story is, though the ending part was kinda dumb with Nel doing something stupid to get through Rafal's ego.
I do think 3h story has issues, but the shield thing in jeralt's death is not one of them. And even if he had the shield on his back, kronya could have just stabbed him on the side of the torsto to the kidney or something. It is not a razorback scenario from tf2 lol
While I agree with engages avatar worship being egregious, people strangely seem to forget that 3h does the exact same thing. Byleth is constantly told that they're so wonderful and kind and strong and can save the world, and they're so strong that they could defeat entire armies by themselves. But I will grant this, for some reason, despite the avatar worship being pretty samey, it's somehow a bit less grating. But apples and oranges to me, I love both games and will happily replay both
@@Danitron904 Darn no wonder.....I had TF2 on the brain lol.
@@Rui_Vuusen It's due to that unlike clanne and framme who come off as fan club screamers (which is annoying), everyone else compliments Byleth as a resourceful due to them growing up as a mercenary which in case mercenaries need to know survival and strategy so I can see the decent difference between the toothpaste divine dragon and the merc turned teacher.
I have a quote from a game that seems to have burrowed into my deep memory. "There are many ways we can do it, and the choice is yours" That's from the opening of Morrowind, when you are presented with your option on how to create your character - of which there were many. I always liked the in-medias Res type creation sequences.
I play Mario for the gameplay not the narrative or character development but when I play Fire Emblem it's the story and the characters I value more than the gameplay
24:02 to that point I say: Shez. The main character of Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes is for me the best of these kind of Characters. You select a option just like with Byleth but Shez actually says the line. And I rather have that. Having the character at least say what you choose 1:1 is what I think should be a must. I don‘t like them to be mute while all others speak their heart out.
Shez is so good.
You know who else is like Shez? Itsuki from TMS #FE. ACKNOWLEDGE TMS.
@@happyfat4620No.
I had the opposite impression of Dimitri on my first playthrough. “Holy Kingdom, eh? Sounds interesting, count me in!”
Agree with basically all of your points except Cindered Shadows. I didn't think it was crazy hard myself, and I liked the background it gave to Geralt and Byleth's mother. Everything else, spot on. Engage probably was the more fun game mechanically (Even if 3H did a great job of validating durability through weapon arts), but in everything else, 3H is my game.
Three Houses is quite the standout in regards to the Fire Emblem series as a whole. A common take I hear is that Three House fans are not Fire Emblem fans. - Prologue: "It was a dream/premonition" This has been occurring since Fire Emblem Awakening. I don't like it either but it's just a thing they do now. - "You are god" This is the worst incarnation of avatar circle-jerking they've ever done. - "Alear talking bad. Silent Byleth good." I don't agree with this take. Byleth talking in Three Hopes was much more preferable to being silent. Shez is a great example of the best of both worlds in this case: having both dialogue choices and them being spoken. Side-note: I can hardly consider Alear an avatar. They are very much just a lord that you can name. - The Divine Pulse This mechanic actually was introduced in the 3DS remake of FE Gaiden--Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. It was introduced to the player in a way similar to the Time Crystal in Engage as just a doodad someone gives you. - Lumera's 15 minute long death yeah. lol - Jeralt's death POV: You are a parent in Fire Emblem This is essentially a trope in the entire series where your parent will just eventually die. - Battle System Engage's maps are more condensed and it feels nicer than Three Houses. You pretty much covered all the good bits of Engage's gameplay. - "What are Emblems" They seem to be akin to AI Chatbots that are aware they aren't the original person. They also seem to be an amalgamation of the person they're based off of from various points in their life. (Or route in Byleth's case.) You can see examples of this being the case - "I wonder how Ike and Micaiah would have bonded" They're both in Radiant Dawn, which is a sequel to Path of Radiance. So you don't really need to wonder that much. - "Byleth's canon route" No, there are cases of him referencing things from other routes too. Like I said before, they feel like amalgamations, or more like the general *idea* of that person. - All games take place in the same universe Nope. Some games share the same universe, which you can see be the case in FE Awakening where you travel to the continent of Valm (FE Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia) and with Ike's descendant appearing in that game as well, though that one feels sort of iffy almost like it was just shoved in there with no reasoning. Excluding those, most of the games take place in their own universe or realm. - The social aspect This is unique to Three Houses. - The Hub Many veterans of the series do not like the hub areas. They are fine on a first playthrough but become very tiring on subsequent playthroughs, which they addressed in Engage by making the somniel smaller in scale. After playing the game for the nth time, you'll grow to hate it. Only FE Fates, Three Houses/Hopes, and Engage have a hub area. Fate's hub area can actually be attacked and acted as the PVP map for online play and you could customize the layout to your liking. It was also significantly smaller. Like, you would pretty much enter it for 1 minute and move on. You bring up how the monastery is better than the somiel as a hub area because it makes sense for them to go back there after every map, but not really. Even if it is in the center of the world map, it still takes significant time to travel back and forth. Three Hopes did this better by just having the hub area being a camp that your army picks up and moves with them. - Why are they dicking around Because Engage's story is just lighter in tone. That's pretty much it. The Somniel is a place for the player to dick around. - The calendar I don't mind it. It's not a plus or a negative to the game. This only appears in Three Houses. - "No clock or calendar, great that means I can 100% the supports!" You didn't *have* to do that. The boredom was all on you man. Not to mention the supports aren't very good in Engage. The calendar would not fix Engage's supports. The supports were gutted by the localization team as well. - "I couldn't S support Bernadetta as a female Byleth" This is normal. Engage is the only game to allow S supports regardless of gender. Every other game with S support mechanics only has one or two characters that will S support you regardless. - "Her S rank support was arbitrarily cut off without any warning or ability to know this was going to happen" I haven't played Three Houses in a while, but I'm pretty sure you can see [A B C S] in the support screen, so I'm not sure how much more clearer that could have been. - "You should do the DLC as soon as possible" You should absolutely not do this in Engage. You will cause skirmishes to scale up to their recruitment level and make your playthrough incredibly difficult should you engage in them. - "I don't care for the corrupted" Yeah no one really does. This enemy archetype exists to provide the player a faceless enemy to defeat. - Conclusion You should play the Tellius games. Start with Path of Radiance.
I appreciate such an in-depth comment but I can't respond to everything, so I'll just focus on a few. "Other people say Three Houses Fans aren't Fire Emblem Fans" That's very funny to me. I like to imagine people who talk like that saying 'You think my favourite game series is GOOD? How dare you "Byleth in Three Hopes" Yes, but in Three Hopes, Byleth wasn't the player-character, so them talking made sense. The rest may well just be a preference thing. "Amalgamation Emblems" This makes sense from a design perspective but from a narrative one that is hauntingly existential. And you could do something interesting with that. "didn't have to 100% supports" To be fair I didn't have to play the game at all - I don't feel like that's much of a reason for the Supports to get away with being bad and the process to be as agonizing as it is. "All games take place in the same universe" Well, Engage has changed the rules so, technically they all can, or can exist separately depending on whatever you want. "S-Ranks being cut off based on sex is normal" Normal does not equate to Good. Also you only got that Support Screen after you started a new playthrough. You'd have to restart the game to do that in that case, and you shouldn't have to do that anyway. "Ike and Micaiah" I have learned this, and it is both hilarious and frustrating to me that the two examples I picked at random did actually interact with one another.
@@QosmicVoidwith Ike and Micky I'm pretty sure during her side chapter, which is based off Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn chapter 3-13, at that was the location where she fought Ike. Note in their game they don't really like each other because Micky invades Ikes friend's country and Micky doesn't like Ike because her grooming project idolized him.
I hate this idea that Three Houses fans and series vets are mutually exclusive. The demographics between GBA or Tellius and Three Houses are pretty different but you'll find a huge amount of its fans are Jugdral vets, and you can't tell me that doesn't make a lot of sense, just look at all the name homages. To me acting like 3H fans don't have heavy overlap with the greater series fandom just feels like either taking a couple annoying people's tweets as a broad picture of the fandom, or just plain misplaced elitism. Idk all I'm saying is that fe7 boomers love to say things that deviate are "Not real fire emblem" but they get that mindset from growing up thinking fe7 was the first. Prior to Kaga leaving, every fe game was super different, hell I'd say Three Houses really carries the torch of Kaga, so yeah loads of us Series vets love Three Houses, forgive the rant.
Elitism is very dumb, I agree
-3H fans are not Fire Emblem fans There’s some deranged people who take it a step further and say 3H is not a Fire Emblem game.
One funny thing about Alear's "mom" dying......is that they did the exact same thing in Fates and people disliked it there too. So they learned nothing.
Blue lions is the best house and the best route
Preach
Ehhhhhhh...I thought Blue Lions was the weakest personally.
They are all amazing routes! I can not choice any single one
16:30 ih, you're definitely in the minority here as far as the fanbase is concerned. When the designs were first revealed, people DID NOT like the contrast between the red and blue hair, found the colors too bright and often made mocking comparisons to both Pepsi and Colgate. Someone even posted the design with darker shades of blue and red, which was generally better received. Right now, I wouldn't say people warmed up to the design, but rather their eyes adjusted to it
i'd say this - for how stupid the story is, mc looking like colgate clown is rather fitting
Great video. I'm a somewhat "recent" fan of the series, too, having only played from Awakening onward. Three Houses had rather different vibes to the other Fire Emblem games I had played before, and there were lots of things that I missed from the prior series - but I really loved Three Houses, especially after being disappointed in Fates. I feel like Three Houses had some of the most interesting, rough around the edges characters in the series as far as my experience with it goes (or maybe it just feels that way after, again, being disappointed in Fates lol) Engage just rubbed me wrong right from the start with its lineup of legacy characters. I never managed to get the sour taste of fan service out of my mouth - every time I caught a reference I recognized, I just wished they had made a new, fresh story, like what Three Houses felt like.
Engage feels like it has an identity crisis. It tried to be anniversary game like awakening but they forgot why people enjoyed awakening in the first place. I get they added references with the past heroes however unless you played the past games you are not gonna know that much about them since many of them really don’t talk about their game and when they do it’s very brief in the prologues. It’s so awkward since it tries to appeal to veterans and newcomers but they ended up half committing to it
I mean the "fanservice" was always the point. The game was made to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the series, which is a big milestone.
Bruh Awakening is a decade old.
@@xacmashe3852 i know but fire emblem fandom can be a bit gate-keepey, and many would consider me a total newbie
@@CadmiumPoisoning thats fair, Fire Emblem fans are pretty stupid. I also started in awakening (really i started with Blazing Sword but i played it the same year Awakening came out) but fuck it, ten years is longer than some military expeditions I'm a vet. Don't listen to elitists.
Pokémon is an incredible litmus test for this formula as Pokémon’s story could be dog water but if the game is fun people will stan in. It took black and white YEARS to be appreciated for the story it was as a standout narrative in the franchise that they haven’t come close to trying since
I feel like Black and White was always appreciated by the people who played it and just hated by those who didn't. I have yet to meet a person who has actually played any gen 5 game and thought it was bad (unless they don't like any Pokémon games anyway).
@@Lysvsyl it was not.
@@Lysvsyl Yeah, I loved B/W from the start and I fully remember fighting many people on it online xD Nowadays everyone agrees that we were right all along and Gen 5 goes hard af
This is a great video by all accounts and I pretty much agree with everything in it. But man you could have not chosen a worse time to upload this video! Right now the online consensus in the FE community is “3H is a complete gameplay and narrative mess”, while also pointing out “Engage was a secret masterpiece this whole time?!” It’s just a cycle now where 3H is the popular game to hate on. The same thing happened with FE Echoes (the game before 3H) when 3H initially released people hated FE Echoes but now post engage it is looked back on fondly. Eventually I feel the next FE game will come out and people will move on from bashing 3H towards bashing engage instead. But I have to reiterate: This was a great video that was well presented and paced well, and I can’t wait to see what comes next from you!
That would explain a few things. My comments section for a start.
I feel like despite finding the story a mess I think most people are lying if they say it’s not good or even better than most fire emblems due to how it handles its supporting cast. Even ppl who I’ve seen be lukewarm on 3 Houses have admitted it has one of the best casts in the series. Tbh I feel like it’s less so “Engage is a secret masterpiece” and more so that all the people who were turned off by Engage’s vibes and writing problems haven’t stuck around. Therefore the ppl who can overlook the writing for the gameplay are the ones that are left.
Lol what you just described just reeks of insecurity bias. That does not speak well of Engage if you think about it.
The hate cycle is definitly a thing but I feel like engage isn't in a very good position itself, it's one of the most divisive games in the series only beaten by fates on release, there's definitly people who really like engage but I've encountered plenty who were either very dissapointed or outright despise it on the same level of hate that fates got back in the day, and honestly I already feel like the phase of looking more critically at three houses was a thing before engage released, from my perspective it's around a similar level as sacred stones and path of radiance were people have found issues with the gameplay but still like the story enough to overlook that In conclusion stay away from the broader fire emblem community, it's not all bad but man there is some of the most toxic confidently incorrect behavior there that you'll find and no matter wich game you like there will be a group of people calling it terrible with no further arguments
@@Dakress23 Engage fans are shockingly insecure, even for this fanbase. I've never seen a game where people get more upset if you try to criticize it (outside the Zelda franchise, that is).
I am a fan of the Fire Emblem series as a whole, so I want to add my perspective, though I ultimately agree with what you said. With that said, one of the issues with Engage in my mind is that it is to Fire Emblem what Wish is to Disney. Which means referencing plot points from previous titles in indirect ways. For instance, the random Alear is the child of the big bad is a reference to Gaiden; its remake, Shadows of Valentia; and Fates. Sombron's title as Fell Dragon is a reference to Grima from Awakening. So on and so forth. Hell, it directly borrows maps from previous titles. I think this leads to issues with the narrative, as the game tries to balance its more original ideas with the stuff from previous titles, making the plot more messy as a result. Three Houses, while borrowing concepts from Genealogy of the Holy War; namely magic bloodlines and their associated weapons; it borrows the calendar and related mechanics from Persona, and so show the series trying something very different from what it typically does. Combined with the multiple routes, and you get a plot that has one main thematic through line that isn't messed with in some way, even with the different routes. In essence, Engage has two big goals: reference previous titles in various ways and a theme of found family. I would say it tries to use the former to prop up the latter, which does lead to issues with those not well-versed in the series being confused. For instance, the moniker of Fell Dragon is likely meant to refer to a dragon that is made through the use of Divine Dragon blood, human blood, and something known as a Thanatophage; a bug responsible for the Risen, a zombie capable of wielding weapons (which the Corrupted are likely a reference to). This is what previous Fell Dragon Grima was, though he had no ability to do Emblem Ring shenanigans. So the plot gets very easily lost, especially given that this reveal was not in Awakening, but in the post-game of Shadows of Valentia. So that is not really as well known. Engage wants to do a lot, but in attempting to juggle everything, leaves out some of what draws people in (the pairings at the end of the game, for instance) and barely is able to keep it up. It still does so, but looks incredibly clumsy while doing so. (Also, just as a minor point, but the fact you specifically brought up Ike and Micaiah as the example of previous protagonists interacting, given that they did, mostly by trying to kill each other)
Of all the characters I could have referenced interacting, I used two that literally did. That would be hilarious if it wasn’t intensely frustrating. This does seem to explain a lot, though. Engage from what you're saying seems to be an amalgamation of a bunch of radically different ideas trying to co-exist seemingly just to reference other titles certainly would make some of the more baffling choices in this story make more sense. Doesn’t make them any better, mind you, but it does at least make what the developers were going for a bit more clear.
@QosmicVoid the only other funny combo you could have said was Sigurd and Leif given that Sigurd is Leif's uncle, though unlike Ike and Micky they never met in person due to being princes of two separate lands and other reasons.
What I'm hoping is that they can take some of the more basic things they did great in Engage (the break system is fantastic) along with as much of the intricate map design as their budget can handle, and just put a good story behind it. I'm also hoping that they can take inspiration from the things that did work in 3H and drop the less successful ones (map zoom-in was too budget intensive for its value, for example).
If a Fire Emblem game was like Engage (And from what I've learned a lot of them are) but it had a decent story - I think I'd be totally on board.
@@QosmicVoid You are in for a treat 😊
The Break system was atrocious, it took the already "high mobility offense meta" of recent FE games and put the weapon triangle on steroids. The idea you can just go up and disarm anyone just by having their opposed weapon type over-simplifies the game, and punishes counter attacker and defensive builds that were perfectly fine ways to play in all the prior FE games. It makes the attack phase so much more important than prior games in the series. After all, you and the enemy are just going to swarm a unit any chance you gets because once disarmed the unit can't counter at all for the rest of the phase which makes the defense phase pretty moot. The traditional weapon triangle is how the FE games should be, nothing more. If the break mechanic is included in the future it should only be a thief / assassin exclusive skill.
Very gratifying to see someone else elucidate all the things I loved about Three Houses and all the reasons that Engage struggles in comparison to it. And hey, best of luck getting rid of your anachronistic vestigial monarchy.
The one and only thing I disagree with is that I think it's fine that you can't romance Bernadetta as female Byleth cuz I think it's just cuz... Bernie's straight. It's kinda refreshing compared to the recent trend of the supporting cast in games being player-character-sexual. I only wish they'd be more consistent and make some of the characters *definitely* gay, such that you can *only* romance them if you share their sex. But, as you so frequently said, maybe that's just me.
While I'm on things I hellllla agreed with though: •I seriously don't get people who side with anyone BESIDES Edelgard - she wants to start a revolutionary war to abolish the privilege of the nobility and the theocratic overreach of the Church while replacing it with an egalitarian meritocracy? Uh, is there any way we can look into a ray gun that make video game characters real? And also, hot damn is the Fell Xenologue a better story than the Saturday morning cartoon that is Engage proper. My brother (much more generous towards Engage's shortcomings than I am) is totally on-board with that too; we'd honestly rather the Fell Xenologue be the main story and Alear's home dimension be the bizarro cartoon "everything is (creepily) fine" plane that it is for the DLC.
My biggest issue with engage is how little I cared about anything in that game. Didn’t care for the story characters or the supports. They all felt like a chore and frankly made me want to just finish the game just to get it over with. Another thing to me that engage kinda of annoyed me is the first impression. Engage might have one of the worst first impressions when starting a game even before the game came out there already people who decided to drop it since it just didn’t look appealing which fair enough marketing wasn’t good for engage. I think one of the biggest issue with engage it suffers from an identity crisis. Despite being an anniversary game, it has no idea who they want to cater to whether it’s newcomers or veterans so they did a awkward mixture where they tried to incorporate both but they kinda half assed it in a way for both sides. It’s one of the reasons why discussions for engage has been very critical and why people feel like it didn’t leave an impact to the game. While it’s not a bad game it could be considered a disappointment especially if people expected it to be like 3H. Now engage could still exist but at the same time they needed to change the story and characters a bit more so people would care about them
As a hard core Fire Emblem Fan, I agree. Engage was lack luster for me. There was some great ideas and nostalgia but it didn't hold up. I returned it after beating everything, while Three Houses I still have and replay.
I told my sister that had Engage came before 3 houses it would have been good (in its own right). But it had the disservice of coming after 3 houses lol
I've kept playing Three Houses happily. I gave up on Engage super quickly. I just looked up the character interaction cutscenes, laughed along to them, and priceeded to forget the game even existed. I'm a "story first" kind of gamer, so going from the beautiful angst of 3H to Engage's stupidity was... Disappointing and discouraging.
I played Enage before Three houses. Having played Engage before made TH3 so much better. Having the choice of which side you fight on in way cooler than just being the good guy.
To comment on the complexity thing. I believe that 3h is one of the best games to get in to FE with even with how different it is to traditional FE games as the game does a really great job at introducing the mechanics and hooking u with the story
I think a lot of people were put off by how the protagonist of Engage looked when they were first revealed, particularly the hair. Like yeah, I understand there is a lore reason behind why they look like that. But even though Fire Emblem takes a lot of pages from anime design wise, it was never really *this* crazy. Like yeah, Hilda for example has pink hair, but that was basically as far as it went. I feel a lot of people thought the stark half and half colgate hair idea was a little too far the "silly and stupid looking" track, and thus didn't even give Engage a chance.
Honestly this was one of my major issues with this series was the character designs I’m all for extra if it fits their characters or personality but some of the design including the protagonist made me feel like they were going too far and I just felt grating on my eyes. Same issue with some of the English voice lines that kept repeating. It made me actively hate a lot of the characters and the worship made it worse. I honestly couldn’t avoid it especially for my hate of the protagonists appearance and personality. I saw them everywhere.
Re: bandit plan It was a theory among Edelgard's fanbase later confirmed by Three Hopes that the bandit attack was meant to scare off the teacher Byleth took over for. Edelgard planned to have Jeritza (aka her subordinate) be the new teacher which would allow her more freedom to move in the shadows so to speak. Several clues from different characters make one think that she lead the others to Jeralt and Byleth knowingly but that is up to debate. Anyway, I don't think Kostas was any real danger to three superhumans lol Great analysis, I really enjoyed the video.
Well here’s something that incidentally happens when most of your opponents are zombies, undermining the tragedy of war. They’re not having the conflict weigh on them, so they are just hanging out. The reanimated just know how to wield weapons, likely not prepare any kind of timely action against the good guys. I do generally dislike mindless entities in games, mostly because even early game boss units tend to feel like a person in the world of the game, unless the effect is deliberate and powerful such as a scene with Orson in FE8.
fe8 also had cooler monster variations, also there was that one map with the spider chasing after villagers coming to kill them and I have to be honest despite that map using generic giant spider monsters it feels way more like a war tragedy then the average map, like let's be honest after reaching a certain point in any of the games the enemy soldiers may as well be mindless zombies because you've killed so many of the faceless generics that even though they are humans the tragedy of war when fighting them has long been lost unless they have a unique portrait also forgot to mention morva, having a dragon child be forced to witness her zombified father definitely is up there with orson's 'wife' yeah the more I think about it, monsters are actually perfectly fine when depicting the tragedies of war as long as you use them well, things like fe8, fear and hunger and the battle for helm's deep do show mindless monsters can easily be used well as war tragedies when used correctly
@pandabanaan9208 honestly I think I prefer the older monsters/terrors simply cause they looked unique from the humans and had some sick designs (even if a number were basically just reskinned regular enemies) Awakening, Fates, and Engage all having undead mooks that look and fight identical to regular living soldiers definitely makes things a bit blander imo Did definitely make zombie versions of characters you DID know alot sadder, like at Blazing Blade's final chapter
So as someone that's played pretty much the entire series their is a bit of context I feel would help, and that is that FE may be 1 franchise but it's not a "constant" franchise. As an example let me say a few things about Thracia 776, the fifth game in the franchise. In Thracia there are no support conversations, weapons have durability but you can very rarely buy anything instead you can "capture", lowering your stats but if you "kill" a until with Capture you instead grab them and can raid their inventory for what you want, all stats for everyone is capped at 20 so stat differences work differently, and storywise it was made to take place in a single year during FE4's story constricting what it could do. FE likes to really change how it works, both gameplay and story. Which often makes it hard to recommend games to people. Liking Three Houses does not mean you'll like Engage, or Fates, or Tellius, and so on. Because they all have different focuses and structures and mechanics. From how you described liking the characters, the romance, and changing how each characters ending works I'd recommend Awakening if you want another FE game. It has some flaws you listed here but it's a great game with a lot of focus on characters and bonds and changing your fate. Quick note on that, Awakening had a bad reputation in some hardcore parts of the fandom, especially Reddit, but ignore them they are just being elitist without any real justification like 2/3rds of the time. I'll also say avoid the first 5 games as that was before support conversations became a thing.
Nah the view on awakening has mellowed out over the years it's really fates people have a problem with
Bro you need to play fire emblem awakening you would really be mad about engage
Awakening is probably the second best in the entire series, in my opinion.
Btw if you're curious about the pronunciation of Alear, there's audio of pretty much every playable character saying there name on the cutting room floor.
The whole summoning heroes from other worlds is a mechanic that was introduced in fire emblem heroes (their mobile ip). That game also pretty much establishes that there's infinite universes, and that every person's individual playthrough is all equally canon
This was super interesting! It’s nice to hear an opinion on this matter who isn’t a long time or hard-core fire emblem fan. I just wanted to mention some things that are often discussed within the community. A big one is many old timers hate avatars, and hub worlds. The only one that hasn’t been seen incredibly negative was Fates castle. Personally i find the monastary repetitive and I have a habit of just wasting time because I loose my train of thought on what of the many things I wanted to do. Avatars is an interesting one I personally like it for the customization options in gameplay but many don’t like it from a story perspective. One comment I found interesting is you liking Alear’s design I don’t like it their hair looks like plastic and the art style shift I think was one of the largest factors because it made Engage start of bad footing with the community and Three Houses fans. Another couple things to note you already briefly touched on this at the beginning but some Engage’s oddities are just standard Fire Emblem gameplay. Like Saphir joining so late is what’s called a replacement unit to replace someone who died. About the difficulty of the DLCs this problem really occurs because Engage and Three Houses is all about character and unit customization and the DLCs rip that away from you making the maps far more difficult than they really should be. I personally found it stupid on their part to rip the customization away from the player. I think another aspect that made Engage loose a lot of interest in the community was the lack of new game plus. Another aspect is the lack of limitation to customization. In three houses and fates there was a lot of effort put into altering class lines training weapon ranks and in fates case supports. Engage seemingly has too little and too many restrictions on class changing and build design at once. Class are really easily to slot anyone in without much thought at all but skills are only limited to two flexible slots hampering goofy builds. The Emblems do bring their own skills but it isn’t nearly as flexible compared to Fates and Three Houses. Overall I think it was a bad start followed by a weak story with good gameplay that was’t repayable that really hurt Engage.
This was a very interesting video. I hope you look into some more fire emblem games and decide to make videos on them to hear what your thoughts on them are. I especially recommend the dawn duology since they’re known for being the best written fire emblem games of all. But will warn you the protagonists of those two games (Ike and Miciah) are not at all avatars like you described enjoying Byleth being. They are very distinct characters who make most of their decisions without player input, but still put the player in charge of battle tactics.
yea i wonder how ike and micaiah would get along. damn if only they made an entire game about that. you could have ike and micaiah start off on opposite sides of a war that's outside of their control and then unite them in the final part against a common enemy or something. that would be so epic. too bad old fe games aren't actually real and you can't buy them.
I mean, you are unironically right on the can't buy them part. Good luck finding them anywhere.
Spectacular work.
Why are we afraid of "complicated"? Why do we look down on audiences like that? Game of Thrones is not an easy TV series, and yet it's probably the last good TV show we had - and it ended poorly because... it stopped being complicated. Sure, sometimes we want pulp fiction which is easy to follow along with, but even pulp fiction that stands the test of time was coherent to some degree. I got into Fire Emblem because of Three Houses being what it was. Heck look at the debate the game sparks, the Edelgard VS Dimitri crowds etc. And yet, who bothers to talk about Engage? It was just... there. It wasn't even a simple story, because it tried to be deep... it was just a game.
There's a differences between complex and bloated and alot of 3h is sadly VERY bloated its monastery system just is BAD, alot of its depth is only shown in maddening diffuclty and even then its often cheap and completely Bs
Three Houses is not at all complicated story wise, especially compared to games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Triangle Strategy. More complex than Engage sure, but not complex. Really it’s just Mole People Bad, everyone else kinda grayish depending on the route. Really I would argue that Engage is more complex overall as the gameplay has far more elements to it both in terms of map design and class abilities, whereas 3H is reclass into wyvern and win
@@Logans_Login yep Engage is definitely deeper mechanically and map quality wise
the late recruitment of several characters in Engage is because of Classic mode. Classic mode in Three houses is so completely unbalanced because you have your party you've trained, if you recruit people late you have them somewhat leveled, but when you're 5 chapters in to the war phase and someone dies, you can't just replace them with someone else, you're other party members are 7-30 levels behind whoever just died depending on when you recruited them, meaning you have to grind someone against enemies stronger then themself, the only exceptions are Lysithea Lorenz and Ashe depending on your route which you generally only get 1 of if you didn't recruit them, otherwise your highest level you last recruited is Seteth at level 23 in non crimson flower or Jeritza at 27 in crimson flower, (who the kind of people who play classic iron man often don't use because he's "dlc") which even then, is assuming you *only* lose 1 unit while not resetting for up to 8 chapters. otherwise the most balanced route for playing classic how it is intended is silver snow because you get 2 free level 21s, and you're only just now able to recruit hilda at level 23. Compare this to engage (or any other fire emblem game for that matter) and you lose a character and you have the option to either use a unit you recruited from a chapter or 2 ago, or wait for the next chapter to probably get someone decent. Late recruits generally range from existing on a casual playthrough/with resets because your existing army outclasses them, to being the only reason you're able to finish an iron man on classic because they're made to make it harder to soft lock yourself from everyone dying. The only time late recruits have ever bothered me in the past have been when they're forced on you, which admittedly happens with the last 2 characters in Engage with them adding 2 more unit slots than the previous maps, but at least they're not straight up forcing you to deploy new units on the last chapters like... some games **looks at 7 forced deployments in Radiant Dawn endgame** The issue isn't that you get 4 characters late, it's that they're treated like any other characters you have gameplay-wise despite 2 of them literally showing up in like 1 cutscene prior just to show they exist and you have no time to get their supports, that in my opinion, aren't even that great to begin with. In older games the late game characters typically exist in the story from much earlier, and you have limited supports to begin with and late game characters gain their supports faster. So by taking the "Everyone gets a bunch of supports from the start" mentality from Three Houses, as well as the classic fire emblem recruitment beats, they make it bad. Instead of taking notes from awakening and fates where some characters literally have like 2 or 3 support options they were like "how about those 2 characters you recruited on the super close to the last chapter get 16 C-A supports" making it not even feel worth going for In my opinion, I prefer that we get characters split up instead of whenever you want to recruit them in general. I think it worked for Three houses, but I stated why I don't think it works with how it's implemented, so I won't repeat it. I actually think the recruitment order for engage causes the player to actually have the opportunity to use whoever they want while getting to try how every unit feels due to the player starting with several mediocre characters and then finding a bunch of better units where you have to decide if they're worth switching out, which is something a lot of older games don't do well, having a ton of great units right from the start and everyone you find being just far enough behind your likely slightly over leveled units to not be worth training. The only issue with Lindon and Saphir specifically is they just so happen to be the last units who don't add extra slots, I've had 13 slots that I've had to slowly filter out my party for between 30 characters, by the time Rosado and Goldmerry roll around that's probably gonna be people's last permanent member change if even that, but at least you've seen those 2 since the early game and saw how they worked against you, but then these 2 random old people show up with very little existence prior it's just like "oh, well, I don't really want to get rid of anyone." Lindon is actually a very good unit if you train him right, and Saphir is... at least pretty decent, but those 2 characters are literally the only ones with no real part in the story and they're just there in case your units died. TLDR; in Engage, the last 4 units recruitment time isn't the issue, it's their number of supports and the lack of motivation the game gives you to want to know who specifically Lindon and Saphir are. Late recruits have a gameplay purpose for classic mode mainly and engage just executed it poorly. and this comment was way too long to address one small thing you said, 1:35:00 into the video but here we are
Instead of completing engage, I just made a new FE3H file because I couldn’t continue playing it
21:02 I remember playing this intro and thinking “this is literally just FE Awakening.” Like, it starts off the same with fighting a big bad and occurs in the future but the difference is that the fight DOES actually take place and is a glimpse of what happens in ONE of the futures, rather than being a dream. 30:11 funnily enough, the mechanic comes from Shadows of Valentia. Although, Awakening still managed to implement time rewind better AND make it more functional mechanically
7:54 You actually said it correctly the first time, there were apparently cut voice lines that say Alear’s name out loud. 9:58 Correction: Byleth has only had the dream about the opening battle multiple times, them meeting Sothis was actually the first occurrence.
1. You'll pry pirate "Ale-Arrr" from my cold dead hands 2. If you select the option that says that Byleth saw a young girl, Jeralt will confirm that Byleth has mentioned her before. Unless this is a translation quirk, I can't think of any other explanation than Byleth mentioning Sothis previously. I guess it could be referring to Seiros/Rhea, but that seems a strange way of going about that.
@@QosmicVoid I might be remembering the part of Byleth mentioning Sothis wrong, as I always choose the first option for most of my playthroughs.
@@QosmicVoid 1:04:45 Misunderstanding there my friend, Engage and Three Houses were not only developed by two different companies, but also developed at the same time (They’ve claimed this, but I still hold my reservations on the fact that Covid was somehow responsible for delaying Engage). So it wasn’t a decision to undo what the previous game did, it was a deliberate decision to just not do it in the first place. 1:06:33 I’ve seen a few other comments tell you that the Game showed you how far your Supports can go, so I won’t repeat that here. What I will say, is that I view the inability to not be able to romance whatever character you want, regardless of Gender, to be better in terms of the characters. I don’t care if it’s 2024, or if it’s fiction, not everyone is Bisexual or Gay/Lesbian, the characters more than likely still have preferences of their own. I’m honestly surprised that Engage went one step further and have only a few of the S Supports for Alear be romantic.
@@QosmicVoid 1:27:55 I’m actually of the mind that Fell Xenologue was as bad as Engage’s Main Story. I treated Cindered Shadows as a non-canon Movie for an Anime, with a Story that even if it wasn’t that interesting, still gave SOME new insight to Fódlan as a whole, and thus I was able to enjoy it. Fell Xenologue on the other hand just felt lazy no matter how I looked at it “Ooh, the Good guys are Bad and the Bad guys are Good”, the explanation that everyone had been turned into Corrupted left me asking questions, rather than me being shocked. And the Final twist of Nil being Rafael, while good and interesting, was immediately ruined by Nel committing Persona 3, and Rafal having a FALSE Redemption Arc. By the end of the Xenologue, I cared about NONE of the characters enough for me to not create a save over the File with the completed DLC, and pretend it never happened. Finally, at the very least, you only have to beat Cindered Shadows ONCE to unlock the Ashen Wolves in the Main Story. You have to beat Fell Xenologue EVERY SINGLE TIME, to unlock the New Characters for a Single playthrough.
Great analysis. This really sums up a lot of my frustrations with Engage. For an anniversary title its rather disappointing how it treats the legacy characters. Anyway you should play the Tellius games (emulate them, physical copies are wildly expensive). I think you'd gel well with Ike and his story.
As someone who also has only played these two titles, I completely understood your critiques and I personally had a lot less fun with Engage because of the narrative dissonance throughout, whereas playing the role of a teacher was very rewarding, I had reason to want to help my students grow and succeed and to protect them
I don't know where but I saw a theory that said that Alear dreamed what happened in the prologue because they wanted to be the future Alear they saw, the one that appears in chapter 24. I don't know if its true, but it makes a little bit of sense.
Really interesting to hear someone who doesn't know anything about fire emblem and just got on board with Three Houses thoughts. As someone who generally reads up on series when I get into them, hearing a perspective where you didn't do any research on the larger franchise was actually kinda refreshing. Though, you not realizing warriors games are spin off games and expecting three hopes got me haha. That must have been shocking.
QosmicVoid, Subscribed because your content is fantastic!
Didn’t expect a FE video from this channel but happy to watch
The thing that still disappoints me the most about Engage is the lack of moral complexity recent FEs have had. The first instance I saw this was notable was in the chapter Dark Emblem where the antagonists starting using Emblems against you and I thought to myself: wait, if there are Dark Emblems... shouldn't they include Emblems of past antagonists... and that would've provided a more richer and complex story Engage could've had. You could also wield the Emblems of past antagonists and they reveal their side of the story of why they had to do what they did and give their perpsective of the events on Engage, and why they believe Sombron should be stopped. Go even further and have the antagonist Emblems interact with the heroic Emblems and have them not liking to work with each other but both sides understand they have to in order to stop the current threat. But NOPE. Instead, the battle is a generic good vs evil showdown with the antagonist Emblems showing up in the final chapter with the heroes going against them as generic Corrupted with fancy weapons spouting off vague statements that they've seen them before and they'll beat them again. Now I can understand to a certain degree why they didn't choose to cast VAs for the antagonists Emblems, but it's still VERY noticable once you think about it and once you hear Sombron's reasons why he did what he did, AFTER THE FINAL BATTLE IS OVER, it sours the whole experience ever further and makes the overall experience that is Fire Emblem Engage main game... lackluster. ...Fell Xenolouge does provide more moral complexity for the main antagonist's actions, but the execution of how they did gameplay is so much worse than it was for Cindered Shadows' gameplay that it's VERY noticable and is a different kind of disapointment compared to their original respective games.
I actually prefer Alear's character over Byleths silent protag ***in concept***. Seeing the characters have their own dreams, fears, problems and how they solve it is fun for me to watch, where i find silent protags a lost potential, and why i prefer 3 hopes Byleth as he has a more distinct personality The only issue is engage's story overall sucks, alear falls into one of the many characters whose personality i do not care for much.
Emblem Byleth being from Church route stuff is because originally Three Houses had one route and this game started development at the same time as houses [wow the quality is so bad for even more years in development]. The game was originally just a church route and that one route got split into the three Non Edelgard routes when they decided to do routes and the developers thought Edelgard was right and told IS they wanted to make an Edelgard route and let them do it but it was clearly the most rushed one cuz they added it at the end of development where the other three are made with pieces of the original one route.
Great video, as a long time Fire Emblem fan I think you did an amazing job analyzing the two games and even without knowing that 3 Houses production was far more rushed than Engage's you still made a lot of good points especially when it came to the covergence of gameplay with story . Even as a long time player of these game 3 Houses is my favorite, it was the first time I was angry that a character (Claude) wasn't gay/bi which revealed a lot about how I think about character writing. Additionally Byleth is almost as perfect as I think you can get having a story around a 'silent' protagonist. However with that said, Byleth's appearance in Engage made me realize that I don't actually like avatar characters that much, Especially when they are no longer in their story, because they sort of lack a definitive story to build off of.
you get a like and a subscribe from me. I have the exact same frame of reference as you. Three houses was my first FE game loved it. But I can sum up why I didn't enjoy engage in 2 words. Scooby Doo. I connected with three houses characters and felt invested. Engage feels like in the squeakiest screeching of voices "Golly The rings are missing, what are we gonna do?"
Its interesting hearing the opinion of someone who likes the main characters designs as someone who from the moment the artist in charge of character design was announced knew they would probably hate the design, and i was right. Its interesting to see that people have the exact opposite site reactions to some of the design elements.
My biggest problem with Engage compared to Three Houses is the way you recruit characters In Three Houses, you have to spend time with who you want to recruit, learn what they like, or talk to them at least And when they join your team, they aren't just someone you met yesterday, they are someone you know and you dedicaded your precious time to It is a brillant way to make you care for every character in your roaster In Engage, characters randomly join your team every few chapter without you knowing anything about them And unless they play an active part in a story, you won't hear anything from them ever again Sure you can spend time with them in Somniel and learn who they are, but who tf does that in the middle of a war ? It comes back to the genius of the calendar system in Three Houses. As a Persona fan, I knew I would like the game the moment I saw it By giving you a chance that fits into the story to spend time with your comrades, you feel like you're fighting with friends and not disposable body bags I know that most Fire Emblem games also give you a shit ton of characters you don't care about, and that's why Three Houses is the only Fire Emblem I like
Just to point that old games and engage give you a lot of units because they are compatible with perma death runs. Unlike 3H which is not perma death friendly. I personaly like how old games play with the way how you get new units, some you recruit by talking to enemy units other recruitments are easy to miss if you don't pay attention.
It’s because old games and engage were designed with losing characters in mind. Perma-death exists so that the “story” of your units wouldn’t always be the same, with different people being forced to used different units when they lost others. In 3H, since you start with such a weak cast and gain very few new characters, playing without resetting after deaths is not very appealing, especially in the horribly balanced maddening mode which will punish you greatly for not having built your units the right way, if at all.
This was a very good analysis and spot on to the general perception at large. Three Houses has great story and more importantly compelling world building that makes you care about the characters and situation you find yourself in on top of having great game play. Engage I would argue that while it has good or even above average game play and map design is severely let down but its train wreck of a narrative and lack of focus or direction.
Great video, @1:00:51 was where I hit the like button lol.
14:25 "Dimitri was a no go for me" AAAAAND he immediately missed the best route by default
coming from an edelgard fan, the best route is golden deer
Y'know it's weird, three houses and engage have opposite problems when it comes to just the gameplay. Three houses map design and long months cause it to be a chore to play in map, but the monastery segments are probably close to the best they could be. Meanwhile the somniel kinda feels like a chore and the maps are more than "grid with a couple bridges and occasionally a monster or 7"
I think the characters themselves have broken the argument between the two games. At least when the argument was between Fates and 3H, Fates didn't just have gameplay to carry it. It had amazing sprites, one of the best OST's for any game period, and great character design, for the most part. For every memorable character Engage has, Fates has 4 more.
Saying that Fates did not have the gameplay to carry it is weird, as mostly everyone agrees that before this game, Fates (Conquest) was the best FE game in terms of gameplay
45:00 "There's so much to do but there's no reason to actually fo it. " Yea, this is how I felt about this game. The somniel kinda reminded me of when Awakening had the babies from the future, and then Fates brought that same mechanic back. But it felt off, because it wasn't relevant to its context like in Awakening. Idk, Engage is just kinda meh for me
Have I told you that I learned ability to reset the calendar in 3 houses insert months what’s your opinion on that availability?
It’s like comparing a bands best album to a greatest hits comp.. I do love both titles however.. Three Houses is probably my favorite SRPG overall
53:07 No I didn't--I got a small handful of them, noticed that the support conversations were painfully boring, and promptly stopped trying to get more of them.
Kinda wish I'd done that to be honest
@@QosmicVoidengage support was one of the most boring and felt like a chore for barely a reward. Many of the characters I swear had repeating supports to the point I gave up on learning about majority of the cast because their quirky gimmick usually last for c and b. The biggest offender is Celine who I thought had a tea adiction. What I hate about some of the supports in engage it some characters do have an actual interesting story/backstory unfortunately it’s locked away late support. Like for me kagetsu is a lot more interesting unfortunately his supports that i got from him just has him being a generic nice guy and won’t share his backstory about running away from the throne until like his a support or the one that should’ve been in the main story Alfred disease that you have no idea he has it unless u get his a support and if you talk to right characters
EI-LAH?! oh, nails on a whiteboard for me...
I cannot add much more to the conversation than all the other commenters have already written, but there are two things I want to say: 1. Who the characters end up marrying if they have multiple A supports isn't random. You need a set number of support points to reach the next support level. Even once you've reached A, the game will still continue to count. The characters end up with the person they have the highest support, aka the highest number of support points, with. I always managed to get exactly the pairings I wanted, even without bothering to count. 2. Since you seem to enjoy the social sim aspects and the calendar system of Three Houses, I think you might enjoy the Persona series (the modern games: 3, 4 and 5).
I played through every route of three houses. I put down engage after chapter 5.
as someone who got into fire emblem back when awakening came out even with engage being more similar to the 3ds games i still got a problem with it and it mainly comes to story and characters well engage has good gameplay but that does not make up for the story being bad and me not liking any of the characters it hurts more when three houses has my favorite cast in the series but i am sure with both games being in development at the same time with the sales of both i expect the next game to be something that i will like more then engage also anyone who read this if you want a good fire emblem story go play the tellius duology
That last map in Xenlogue Maddening is real fucking crazy. I couldn’t do it when I first played it, but I came back to it months later after doing all of the DLC Emblem maps and was finally able to finish it. It took me 5 hours for that one map and I do not recommend anyone do it.
I'll be honest, I think Awakening handled their zombies alot better. They have them not as a army, but as a force of nature. They roam the lands, they no purpose, they are the dead that seek to bring only more death. Hell they even have a connection to the anti war message in the game, they are from a time where war consumed everything, where conflict has literally left the world as a wasteland before even the final boss showed up, they just put the final nail in the coffin.
1:07:02 Actually this is a localization thing. In the original script, all bond rings supports end in marriage (yeah, including the kids and your sister). This isn't the only thing that was changed in the localization tho. A lot of supports were changed for stupid reasons like Goldmary and Etie C support. I heard this also happened in Three Houses (like one of the updates of the game removing the mention of the punishment Bernadetta suffered from her father), but I don't know the extent of it compared to Engage.
Yknow what, as a European this is one localisation change I’m fine with. The last time we allowed Royal incest we got the Hapsburg Dynasty and that didn’t end too great
a big part for me between the two is if the game is replayable. three houses kinda makes you to have to play the game 4 times to get everything whereas engage is the same every time with no new game+ or carry over