Club Nintendo

[RolStoppable]

IcaroRibeiro said:

RolStoppable said:

Engage is more or less a blend of Awakening, Fates and Three Houses, taking elements from each game and shaking them up a bit. No idea which one of these aforementioned games' direction will be dominant in the end

Spend a couple of hours on Reddit and you will see. The only thing people were talking was about who can get a romantic S-support in the end game

The fandom is now dominated by weeaboos. That's why the female cast seems to be created by a waifu generator and the male cast seems to be an anime version of Jpop idols

And that's why the social aspects in this game looks so alien to the game instead of something organic and well thought (like Persona or Three Houses). This is a game designed to be like classic old Fire Emblems, but they need to keep putting saunas and cafes so you can spend your time romancing your partner even if this has a very minor impact on the actual evolution of your units unlike Awakening where marrying was an actual way to unlock characters and passing them skills

As much as I love social sims, you cannot just add them randomly without giving them context and purpose and purpose is something Engage sorely lacking 

I am not going to waste my time on Reddit. Romance began to dominate as the topic of conversation with Awakening, so nothing new as far that is concerned.

And no, Engage is not designed to be like classic old Fire Emblems, but rather like the three most recent ones (Awakening, Fates, Three Houses) sprinkled with appearances of classic Fire Emblem lords. I also disagree on this being anything like a social sim, because support conversations and equals to S-supports have long been a mainstay in the FE series. Saunas and cafes aren't more than additional ways to earn support points, so they don't bother me. What does bother me is characters being locked behind marriages like in Awakening and Fates which necessitated grinding for support points for a few hours in order to complete all couples. Not so much to unlock characters, but rather to unlock sidequest maps.

Speaking of grinding, the tower of trials in Engage is a major slap in the face. Fighting three battles in a row against ~25 enemies each, but without EXP gains outside of a very small participation bonus for all deployed units is a giant waste of time. It's even more upsetting when you consider that Engage has skirmishes on the world map, so additional EXP are already available and the balance of the game is unchecked anyway. But no, the developers had to separate grinding for EXP and a special brand of items. It's so dumb.

Engage is first and foremost Awakening in its flawed design (incredible amount of grinding options and time wasters), then some Three Houses (expansive hub with various activities that slow down the pace) and a little bit of Fates (unbreakable weapons with lots of modifiers to remember). It's already clear that I'll have to keep going back to Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn for my Fire Emblem fix and I've only completed chapter 11 in Engage up till now, because I've been busy with other matters the past two days. The old Fire Emblem games offer so much replay value because the gameplay is so good: You spend the vast majority of your time on the battlefield, inbetween you go shopping and equip your units, all via plain menus. But since Awakening, and including the remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden known as Echoes, the developers have kept adding stuff that makes the games hard to stomach, and that's why I keep going back to the pre-Awakening era all too often.