After playing Awakening, my first FE, I was glad that Three Houses had more non-combat stuff to do, but by the end I think it might actually have been too much. Maybe I'll like the balance in Engage.
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I completely agree here with JBear. My only caveat is that in Sacred Stones (also a disappointment to me but still a fun game) there were really only three units you basically HAD to use the Tower of Valni for, so the ability to grind only took away from the game to me because there was emphasis in design on it, and the game was decently difficult/interesting map-wise without any grinding at all. Three Houses had a different problem, which is that the game isn't particularly balanced around not grinding, or is balanced in any sense of the word at all, and so the battles felt pretty meaningless. Hopefully Engage can be closer to Sacred Stones in that the grinding is only there if you really need it, and the game is still balanced around not grinding, but I'm not holding my breath.My concern is the implication in one of the articles (I forget the specifics now; I read them yesterday) that there will be random/repeatable battles. My enjoyment of a Fire Emblem is inversely proportional to how much grinding it allows, because I find the design/balance tends to be much tighter when it's just X battles where the player is challenged to optimize their precious precious XP. It's why Sacred Stones and Awakening are two of my least favourite; the latter pretty much devolved into "go grind up your time babies if you want to use them". Three Houses represented a bit more of a middle ground in this regard, since although you could theoretically grind a ton, you often had more compelling options and were always on the clock.
Yeah, definitely. I meant more the broader narrative itself. I would've liked to see hers get out of its nascent stages and become the full game narrative with her still being the focus. Hector's perspective was definitely fun but I have fewer intact memories of it because I got a little fixated on performance ranks after my first playthrough with him.I think that both Lyn's story and the rest of the story have a lot of great interactions between characters just in scenes setting up the chapters, and it isn't just specific to Lyn's.