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Pyro Jack posted:Engage is neat despite having a plot that's a bit too back-to-basics and I can say that Alear is a bit more interesting than Byleth considering the former can talk and actually contribute in a conversation. The positive effect of Alear's ability to talk is really curtailed by the fact that I want to slap the everliving poo poo out of them. So yeah, put me in the camp of thinking the writing is really garbage. Gameplay wise, it really did step up the game, and the gameplay is fast-paced, fun, and flowing. At least on the maps. And despite some really baffling decisions in weapon balance. The out-of-combat sections honestly really suck, and hamper the core gameplay. Never got the DLC myself because I'm not paying money to make the fun gameplay easier and therefore more boring.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:05
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 11:56 |
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This beginning segment is what made me sure I was going to hate the story of this game. The cutscene with the Christmas twins charging into melee range just so that they could get into trouble is incredibly contrived. Like, you have a tome, why are you going into melee? The thought process was obviously 'they must be in trouble so we can save them', but they just kind of threw away their brains so blatantly to cause that situation.
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Mar 26, 2024 00:20
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The early game characters are weird in that they're really not worth using by and large. Like everyone other than Alear here? Framme's the only one who might be good for long-term use, and that's only because she's a zero-investment character who heals you and has her martial blocking move, which is supremely useful for safety margins when pulling bosses. Zero cost, good output. Hell, there's an example of this on this very first map you use her. The boss has a Riderbane's, so put Vander on the edge of her improved range and Chain Guard him. He does the best counter-attack damage, so he gets a free smite on her face to setup the experience for Alear. I don't think you get any good characters at all until you leave the initial zone, at the very least. For reference, I am a Maddening player, where experience is curtailed even harder and someone who doesn't play with DLC. Hence, experience and resources are considerations to be careful with.
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Mar 30, 2024 00:48
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Materant posted:God, I love that Lumera comes over to personally shiv you and beat it into your head that Engages make your units ridiculously strong. This mission is fantastic for teaching the players to treat the emblem rings highly. Her 'SURPRISE, MOVEMENT' really hammers in home just how much they shift the gameplay. At least for veterans who already have a good idea of what they're doing. I can imagine that new players can find this jarring.
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Mar 30, 2024 06:24
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Excellent summation here, ungulateman. Thank you for taking the time to consolidate the thoughts on unit comparison here. My personal feeling is that the unit comparisons also see more relevance on the higher difficulties, due to the fact that it puts the characters through the wringer. You get to notice some glaring shortcomings in this kind of environment that may otherwise not be a problem. For example: Clanne. This little mageling might have good speed and a great passive for reliability landing a shot when you need it, but in addition to his abysmal magic, on Maddening, his durability is also noticeably inadequate. Even as a Mage Knight, he risks getting one-shot by a good deal of enemies, which really hampers magic's usefulness with 1-2 range. And while he technically has a strength growth in the context of reclassing, the opportunity cost and the bad bases he works with ends up with the question of 'why bother'. As for the other characters: Alear: Lord character, mandatory. Oddly terrible in the beginning because without the Marth emblem, they suddenly stop being able to double most of the time. But has the opportunity for much support utility and gimmicky build setups as well. May as well give them the initial bulk of the exp, mandatory after all. Framme: Zero investment, no opportunity cost, good utility, doesn't take combat experience. I don't think her stats are actually good persay, but that really doesn't matter, she at least avoids getting killed most of the time if she ever has to take an attack from someone. Vander: Yeah, the bases and people already mentioned the problem with his internal level. Opinions here are Maddening based, as mentioned above.
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Apr 1, 2024 03:21
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I'm not going to comment on the death scene since people have already said what I'd want to say about it. I'm actually a fan of this map because it's actually a bit threatening. It's not that hard, but you WILL lose a character if you get careless, which I think is the perfect balance for an early game map. As for the characters, Maddening is rather unkind to all of them, really. Alfred: His bases suck too badly. His serviceable growths have to pull him out of way too deep a hole, he gets doubled by nearly everything and 8 defense is not nearly enough to pull him out of that deficit. People compared his growths to a later armor knight, but that kind of ignores the fact that said armor knight starts with 17 defense... Etie: A strength archer is a fun idea, but its one that comes at the sacrifice of literally every other stat. She's less durable than Clanne due to having no res and less defense, and also risks getting doubled by nearly everything. Better than Alfred early because of the mostly accurate 2 range damage, but that's not a high bar. Boucheron: Probably the best of the bunch due to having enough HP and speed to soak hits, he'll never encounter a unit who'll kill him from full unlike the other two. Still not great mind you because his damage is middling and his bulk is compromised by his bad defense. However, Hand Axe chip and backup means that he'll work perfectly fine anyways for as long as you have him.
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Apr 2, 2024 02:44
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The Tomahawk idea sounds pretty neat actually, it leverages his one best stat into thwacking people hard. The problem that Clanne runs into is that his growths doesn't really work as a Mage, but if you want to reclass him, you really need to keep him at level 1 until you get 2nd seals. Mage will ruin him for using his physical growths due to bad allocation for that and also just a low growth total. And if you're doing that, then most of the benefits of having an early mage for damage kind of evaporate.
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Apr 3, 2024 02:15
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The thing that bothers me about the support conversations (well, more than the writing, which is a pretty big strike on the majority of them), is that they're wearing their initial battle clothes in it. Most of the conversations are in the Somniel or in a village or something, and you have these comfortable casual outfits you designed, maybe use them in the downtime supports?Slaan posted:Man, I have a feeling these I love you so much divine dragon let me worship you by doing your laundry supports are going to get old fast I think there are SOME good supports, but you can write off anything that is an Alear support for sure. Also write off anyone whose entire personality is worshipping Alear (hello, Christmas twins).
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Apr 5, 2024 02:21
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Ah, here are the first 3 good early game units you get. These three will save you a LOT of headaches by the power they bring in the early game. I actually consider their carry effect to be better than Vander's, the actual Jeigan. Celine: Starting off with the weakest of the trio, she's basically Clanne +. Speedy mage with somewhat anemic magic and an oddly high strength growth that'll come to no use. That sounds awful, and it hinders her, but the important part is that at an equal level she basically has a stat advantage where it counts. She's more durable to the point where she often survives an extra hit, and has more magic to work with. That's a crucial difference to allow her to Warp Ragnarok to just make things easier on you (there's a very strong opportunity on the very next map). She falls off like a sack of bricks off a cliff later on, but is immensely useful in the early stages. Later-joining character that is just flatly superior to an early recruit (in this case, Clanne), may be a recurring theme as time goes on.... Louis: So the majority of your units have been frail and bad at taking hits up to this point. Thank you, brick wall, for your timely intervention. Just like Alfred, he'll be doubled by most everyone. Unlike him, he won't be getting murdered because of that. He even has enough HP to survive a mage double (though he certainly won't like it) early on. And due to the armor knight passive being immune to breaks, he doesn't fear Axe users. In fact he tends to like them since they'll still attack him due to still doing a little damage. The one problem he has on Maddening is that he's TOO durable against a decent number of enemies. On Maddening, if a unit does 0 damage, they ignore the unit. To get around this, you'll end up loving to see a backup unit in a crowd of regular units. Backup units will still walk up to Louis to setup the backup attack, and will still try to smack him even if they're doing 0. Then others, even if they do 0, will attack Louis anyways due to the backup chip, allowing Louis to do a nice softening set of counter-attacks. And yes, he's Alfred + in function, again. Chloe: The goddess. High growths, good bases, but with offensive stats that tend to lag a bit. If you toss her the Marth ring, then suddenly you have a psychotic doubling machine, with the extra half-doubles generally giving her double damage to one-round a great deal of things. And makes her a good counter vs axe units when engaged. Even if you don't, she'll still delete mages happily for you, weather the storm of numerous sword units, and be your only flyer for the early game. Oh, and her passive is really good as a controllable way to just... increase her damage. For free. On a unit that often doubles. That sounds fair.... However, there's a secret that's an extension of the Marth ring. She really, really, wants to switch to Swords. The Levin Sword just calls out to her, with her magic growth. And as Cythereal mentions, you can get an early Levin Sword. She's by far your best candidate for the first Master Seal, because unpromoted flyer class growths are awful and the promoted ones are among the highest growths in the game. Switch her to Swords for a Sword/Staff flyer, and suddenly you have a death machine. Use Iron/Steel for a mage, and zap everything else. Watch the body count rise. Enjoy.
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Apr 9, 2024 00:26
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Artix posted:My first Chloe was very good, my second one spent almost the entire game as a staffbot until I finally got her a Flame Lance and she was...okay after that, but by that point killing things wasn't her job, it was just a nice bonus when she could snipe something. As I mentioned in my post, Chloe is weird in that she really rather use Swords. The reason why she sucked with the Flame Lance there... is because Flame Lances are AWFUL. They have 3 less MT, 10 less Hit , and have 5 more weight than a Levin Sword. It's like we're back to FE4 with non-sword weapons being inferior for no reason.
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Apr 9, 2024 00:31
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Chloe is ridiculous enough that any of the emblems could be useful, you could even justify Celica for the movement and the option to use Seraphim vs Knights or something before the advent of the Levin Sword.
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Apr 9, 2024 03:44
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Iunno, she looks really funny as a Warrior, the mismatch is fantastic.
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Apr 9, 2024 19:34
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The supports here are kind of a bad introduction that sets the tone as to what to expect from the support writing. They're near guarenteed to be the first supports you'll see. And what do we get? Really banal stuff that's not interesting in any way. Plus the Vander support sort of showcases my problems with the outfits they use in the supports. He's talking about doing various steward type activities. And he's wearing that plate mail, rather than the butler-esque outfit you see him in when in the Somniel. The farm is unfortunately one of those things that shows a rather lacking implementation overall. One animal rewards you items that'll permanently let you upgrade your weapons. The others.... they give you stuff related to temporary 1 map boosts that are really randomized in the first place. Not exactly an even setup. Unfortunately, the Somniel is one of those pain points for me that drag Engage down as a whole. It's the Post-Timeskip monastery problem of Three Houses, where the implementation makes the story suffer and the activities themselves are kind of a tedious waste of time.
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Apr 12, 2024 10:28
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That's a good display as to why Louis is the best early-game user of Sigurd. Just hurling him in the middle of a bunch of physical enemies without caring about defense is a really useful option to have. And in the early game, he'll survive a singular mage too. It never actually occurred to me to use a Sigurd-user for the left side. I actually use Celine + Celica for the left side on my runs. Even on Maddening, she one-shots the archer when teleporting into the archer corridor, 1RKOs the axe fighter, and 2RKOs the Thief, only taking one attack in the process. The other two enemies there tend to run down to fight as long as you have anyone slightly close to the area to pull them down to the rest of the group. Then she can refill her engage meter, loot the chests, and teleport back across the wall to rejoin the main crew in the throne room. Low turns used and it only pulls away 1 unit for a short time, rather than more. Overall, I do like how differing use of the emblems can make runs of the game look really different, even this early on. Story-talk, say hello to the 'villain gets away for no reason!' hour. However you play it, the boss here always ends up in a dogpile situation where he's surrounded by the bulk of your army. And he gets away when at zero because........ Map circumstances/story events disconnect are really kind of annoying. No effort into it, not even a 'SMOKE BOMB' or something.
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Apr 16, 2024 05:26
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There's a later emblem that has some of that same problem that I'm sure is going to cause a conversation when it appears. While Sigurd is better, there's only one of him. So the idea of Warp Louis or something isn't as silly as it sounds. The unit warped will most likely be more durable than your mages after all, so if the unit they zap dies to the Ragnarok + counterattack, the move could still have merits. Granted, it's for gimmick runs or if you're doing a run where you absolutely don't want to use Celine in any shape or form whatsoever.
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Apr 18, 2024 01:33
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Celica seems to be essentially making a weapon an anti-killer weapon so you can eat their attacks without worry. Unfortunately, I never found this to really be that useful. Something that wasn't mentioned is that Forging can also transform weapons into higher tier ones. So you can spend the resources to make an Iron weapon a Steel weapon, for example. It's cheaper to buy the weapon directly if you have the option, but this gets noticeably useful to get more copies of a weapon than are ordinarily available, or more impactfully get weapons earlier than when the game gives them to you. This is how you can get a really early Levin Sword, to use for Chloe's swath of destruction. It's not THAT helpful atm since she hasn't promoted, but even if you make it now it's still a 1-2 range option for Alear or a high MT weapon for Celine until Chloe takes up the blade.
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Apr 18, 2024 21:44
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Jean's an interesting case of the Villager archetype, and I personally like how it makes use of the reclassing system so that he can be completely different from each run if you wish. If you go magic Jean, you can just keep him as a Martial Monk to 10, then promote him and change his class then if you're inclined. This'll give him a high magic but no speed boost beyond his own growths, so if you want him doubling he's actually best as Chloe's promoted class funny enough, again with a Levin Sword (LEVIN SWORDS FOR EVERYONE). However, due to the lag time of getting the good class speed growth, he'll need some boosts to get it going. Alternatively, just keep him in a magic blaster class for a big 1 shot hit. If you want physical Jean, since he's so reliant on class growths, it's actually best to not level him as Martial Monk at all since he'll get next to no physical boost from it, and just leave him at level 1 till you get the option to start reclassing. There's a later thing that can be used to catch up lagging characters (even on Maddening). Most of the time, the early characters don't have enough oomph to really care for this anyways, so may as well go for the complete project character for the laughs. I'll talk more on the physical path once we see more of the classes, since the classes I've used for this hasn't appeared yet. It's also really funny to do.
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Apr 22, 2024 23:02
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That Celine synopsis is Celine.txt. Her only call to fame is being your best 'right now' Mage. However, that's honestly good enough for the periods of the game you use her. Framme's stats never really get good for the sake of combat, her selling points are Chain Guard and a good support list. So getting her Tomes isn't as good as it sounds, really. I thought Boucheron's default promotion was Warrior so he already has Bow proficiency? Alfred's days are numbered, he did not grow enough to actually be worth using.
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May 2, 2024 00:16
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I checked, apparently Boucheron's default promotion is Berserker, so he doesn't have the Bow proficiency. So you do have to get that (and you want to, because Berserker sucks in this game). Granted, this is second-hand investigation because I literally never promoted Boucheron before.
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May 3, 2024 23:30
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You didn't show off Micaiah's big selling point this map? Yunaka is an unabashedly good character writing wise, honestly she's like Astol from FE6. Mechanically inferior to her direct counterparts, but with intelligent writing in her supports.... that largely are about her, and you barely learn anything about the other person in the conversation. To her advantage, Thief's are much better combat wise in this game, and she's also first, which means she gets a lot of time to just be helpful for the player. Keldulas fucked around with this message at 22:02 on May 6, 2024 |
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May 6, 2024 22:00
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:I might have forgotten a thing or two about Micaiah, but isn't her huge selling point as an emblem not available yet anyway? Tools that are available right now and were not used in the update. I was talking about was her Great Sacrifice, and staves affecting all adjacent targets as well when engaged. Great Sacrifice will full heal everyone on the map, and put her at 1 HP. The reason why it's a big boost is that it gives a buttload of experience, due to each healed target adding to the experience given to the Micaiah user. You can easily get half a full level to far more from one use of it, depending on how many people you hit and what level they are relative to the Micaiah user. The aoe healing from staves is also great for exp, because you get exp from each target hit as well. This map actually hampers the ring so you aren't getting maximum effect, and it's still strong. For example, you can push aggressively with the bottom crew, spread the damage among them, even deliberately take some unnecessary counter-attacks. And then pop off the Great Sacrifice and suddenly Yunaka gets a ton of exp. The top only has 1 range enemies so she's in no danger. And she can heal herself by simply healing Alear while standing next to him for the exp of both targets and getting her out of the danger health. It'd be much more experience than the kills she gotten in this map. But the selling point later on is that Micaiah doesn't care about the unit it's on, even if they have crap magic, they'll still heal your entire team perfectly well, they may just need to use the Mend staff a bit more. And the exp increases more if you're lower level than the people you're healing. Which makes her an excellent method to quickly raise project characters (hello Jean) or simply give more exp to someone who's fallen behind. Even on Maddening, I've gotten him from level 1 after a physical reclass to level 9ish in two maps, which by that point he can fight perfectly well on his own from the aptitude bonuses. As for Yunaka falling off on Maddening, she gets hit two ways. Enemy speed rises enough that she stops being able to double far more enemies, which is painful. And Maddening AI doesn't attack people if they don't damage them (0 damage if defense or low single digit %s if dodgy). Which means that Thieves get hit hard since you have to not overdo their avoid when using the bushes and their Covert double benefit from it. Yunaka is still super useful for a decent span of the game, as she's still durable relative to a lot of your other options what with decent bulk and not getting doubled. An Iron Dagger +3 is fairly low cost while giving her a 1-2 option that far outranks the options of most others for her chunk of the game. And when she starts falling off, the Dagger becomes someone else's if you wish to switch out.
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May 6, 2024 23:40
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Faillen Angel posted:Micaiah is, IMO, a top 1 emblem. Her only weakness is that her combat is only okay, but it's not even actively bad. This game is second only to Thracia for "insane things you can do with staves." The only problem with Micaiah's emblem's combat is that if you're using her combat, you're not using the other parts of her kit on that turn. The opportunity cost is insane because of how broken and unique her other benefits are.
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May 7, 2024 08:31
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Given the framing of the voting, is this run not going to use the bond arena to raise bond levels? The difference between the 6x and Clanne is that the growths are simply just better? 50 Mag/Dex/Spd, vs 35 Str/40 Dex/50 Spd. Plus the 6x recruit actually has less durability problems due to more HP growth (in Maddening this translates to getting one-shot by fewer enemies). 6x also comes in when you have Micaiah, so it's dead simple to get her to level 10 for her promotion when Master Seals/Second Seals become available. And they're likely to be higher level than Clanne is by this point. Jean actually already starts with Tomes, apparently his default promotion is High Priest. If either of the project characters get voted in, Micaiah should generally go to the lowest level people by default due to the exp.
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May 10, 2024 05:18
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Honestly, Thief's bases are high enough that they occupy a middle ground between an unpromoted and a promoted class. Yunaka does suffer a bit that her bases account for being paired with Thief bases, which means she does lose stats relative to that. However, the stats you lose kind of get compensated for the sheer amount of extra avoid you get from the doubling effect.
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May 11, 2024 07:19
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Celine sticks around by virtue of early game combat. Nothing in the early game will one round her and she has tomes, which is more than what 80% of the others have. It's honestly a bit early to bench her entirely out of the team, since honestly you have more deployment slots than necessary at this point anyways. But yeah, don't give her kills if you can help it, for sure.
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May 13, 2024 06:36
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 11:56 |
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Project Anna. Unlike the situation where Physical Jean wants to stay level 1 until Second Seals, it's generally better for Anna to just bite the bullet and hit level 10 first in Axe Fighter because: - She starts at level 5 already, so it's just 5 levels of unpromoted class growths - It means that she can start using Micaiah now to catch up, rather than have to wait for after second seals become available - Her main value is her innate growths, unlike Jean's case where he's essentially puddy to be molded by the class growths Axe Fighter still has some spd, HP, and build, none of which are bad for Anna either, so you don't lose THAT much relevant. Plus honestly, ignoring Strength growths (cause it's super irrelevant for Anna), Fighter has a growth total of 50, Flyers 50, and Mage 60. So she gains no real benefit from trying to reclass to the base class she eventually wants the promoted version of and is much better served just getting less unpromoted levels overall. For reference, Gryphon Knights growths totals 80 and Mage Knight 75 (again, sans strength). It also means that you just simply get to use Anna at higher power points earlier, and she starts being a full power member right on promotion and second seal, so the project period isn't even very long. It also means that you can end up raising Anna and another project, since they'll want Micaiah on different chapters of the game rather than fighting for it on the same ones. As for her class, Gryphon Knight or Mage Knight as you wish, and go from there. Neither option is strictly worse than the other. She'll do you well as a speedy magic blaster either way.
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May 14, 2024 06:06
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