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.
Oh wow that is true, isn't it? I haven't played the game in so long but they do a great job with that if I remember it correctly.I probably also have a soft spot for Lyn's story interacting more closely with indigenous people which I rarely see in ANY videogame.
I will say that Golden Deer is the wackiest of them all. The other paths don't get as crazy (but are still fun).i finished golden deer finally.
i finished golden deer finally. i was in the second half of the game when i stopped playing it last, because returning to the decision paralysis of the monastery again was a bit exhausting. of course, after actually griping about this in discord and getting reminded of a bit more context-primarily that without the ability to recruit other characters anymore and with my professor level near max it started to feel less like something to try and min-max, and as the end got closer and i got more and more characters who felt super overpowered, i started really just rushing through, finishing the last several main battles in a few nights
on the first night of that, i had been feeling that this is quite a long game (which it is, especially for one with multiple hugely exclusive story branches), and one where, for fire emblem, there was a lot of time and effort per Cool Battle, and that i would be kind of unlikely to want to play it again. but man, those last couple, huh? they were pretty fun, and also despite not remotely changing my mind that the story was kind of silly overall, definitely got wild enough for me to find them fairly entertaining. and hearing that the other routes are way different and that the story's not really fully baked as a whole makes the thought of playing the others almost more exciting. like, is there going to be different stuff like that? is it possible that not all of the weird stuff that came up will be anywhere close to fully explained? i would be down for that
(engage looks hilarious mechanically though, i totally want to play it at some point)
this is the first time i've made a character more powerful than the lead without even trying, lol...claude just got incredibly out of control once he got a wyvern to ride for free; the kind of thing where it becomes more work not to just let them mvp. got to do the whole warp cheese a couple times and everything. hilda was that character in the first half though, and lysithea, leonie, seteth, shamir, and catherine all felt like characters who could carry battles with only a little support too. so the last battle was a tiny bit harder than i expected, considering; all the minor guys were still a little chumpy but the last boss' stats were way higher than everything else, and i didn't have a character who fundamentally crushed him. which surprised me a little. it was fun though. i really should've played on hard though, i definitely will if i go again