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This is gonna be fun, Engage is a fantastic game and I love FE let's plays in general, plus you have a great history of them so I think it's gonna be a good time.Artix posted:with art by a vtuber artist that really shows. I really, really hate whoever started saying this and spread it throughout the entirety of Fire Emblem discourse, because it's broadly speaking complete bullshit. Mika Pikazo has been a popular artist for a long time, the art style she's known for predates (japanese) vtubers as a concept, she only designed three of them, and based on the timing of when Engage started development she was almost certainly contracted to do the art for it before she ever made a vtuber rig. The issues with Engage's art style (if you even wanna call them issues) are mostly due to bad art direction. There was an interview that basically revealed that they kinda just had her design a whole bunch of characters without much information about them, which leads to the main actual problem, which is that the character designs aren't really cohesive with each other and the setting. There isn't much in the way of thematic design for the royalty and retainers of a given country, etc. On their own merits I think the character designs are great, their colorfulness and the general aesthetics of the game feel very reminiscent of the GBA games - especially the combat animations. They're fun and crisp and colorful and flashy while being easily readable, in a way that 3D fire emblem has never come even close to pulling off prior to Engage. (I also really hate the crossed bangs) The music has a few really good tracks and is kinda average for the series otherwise imo, but the series has good music overall so that's a positive. The writing isn't particularly good and it definitely does have some rough patches but I think it's also not too far off the series average. The worldbuilding is virtually nonexistent, but the plot itself is pretty good albeit basic, the supports are arguably the best in the series overall, and a lot of the stilted dialogue issues can be blamed on the translation which is far from unique for the series especially recently. What it is is internally consistent. It's a dumb saturday morning cartoon but it works. You don't need to know why things are the way they are because that's not really the point, turn your brain off and smash your dudes against their dudes. It's an anniversary celebration game that's intended to be dumb and silly and over-the-top and it works at that. My scorching hot take is that I think the overall writing of Three Houses is worse. The gameplay is of course the best the series has ever been by a landslide and I'm sure you'll show that off like woah Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Mar 22, 2024 |
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Mar 22, 2024 02:36
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 08:21 |
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XainZero posted:Fire Emblem Engage is stupid (positive).
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Mar 22, 2024 18:06
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One thing I definitely recommend you do if you haven't, OP, is to link a Fire Emblem Heroes account. It takes like five minutes to do from scratch and you get a few bond rings that give you reason to do some interesting strategic positioning especially in the earlygame, plus some weapons that are cool as gently caress.
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Mar 22, 2024 21:29
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Faillen Angel posted:Alear at their best feels like a pastiche of Corrin, where their informed rightness is simultaneously justified and also riffed on. It's kind of funny, though most of the better content is in supports. That is actually because of Engage's bosses not rewarding exp the same way as they do in other games in the series. Seth, Titania, etc. gained exp as level 21 characters in their games, so they'd be even worse off than Vander for leveling if it weren't for bosses in the previous games giving gobs of bonus exp.
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Mar 27, 2024 05:16
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Dance Officer posted:Seth and Titania, and fe7 Marcus, also have way better stats than Vander. They absolutely do, but even with worse stats Vander could at least still theoretically have a longer lasting impact than he currently does if they'd let him level up a couple times off the first few bosses if you choose to do that, like you can with those better characters. As-is you can't even level him until you're far enough in that he's so far behind as to be not even slightly worth it unless you're doing a gimmick run, which is sad as I kind of like him as a character and it would be nice for more of his support convos to show up organically.
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Mar 27, 2024 14:04
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Framme is one of the best users of a certain emblem we'll see much later on so I always end up using her for the long haul. In the meantime, chain guard does get a bit less relevant the better you are at the game, but that's not something I've ever had to worry about  Zulily Zoetrope posted:Good news, you don't actually have it equipped. Only skills listed as "Sync" are automatically equipped as soon as you unlock them. Bad news, this also goes for the other "Avoid +10" skill that doesn't come with drawbacks. The only avoid you should be getting from Marth right now is the Perceptive skill and whatever bonus speed his ring is at. It doesn't really get explained at all, no. The skill system in this game has a bunch of weird caveats like that, it's kind of a mess and is one of the biggest flaws in the game imo.
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Mar 29, 2024 03:01
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Faillen Angel posted:I've never had a Clanne turn out badly, but that's moreso because Engage's mages aren't super fast on average. A Mage Knight is really good to have. Framme is your primary early healer, plus she's good at stacking avoid and doesn't need a second seal to be in a Ki Adept class when both of those things become relevant for a specific Emblem later on. Even if her stats turn out bad she still maintains a strong use which can't really be said about most of the early joiners who are entirely reliant on hitting growths to outperform the later arrivals. She's one of the best characters in the game imo especially out of the pre-ch10 group.
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Mar 31, 2024 21:31
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Yeah Clanne (and another character who shows up a bit later that's the inverse of him with high mag growth in a physical class) can theoretically be good as a physical unit longterm but you have to first reclass him which you can't do until at least post-ch8 and then catch him up from a position of bad bases while other characters who start off way better start joining. That other character has an interesting niche that can make them worth using despite the issues if you want to invest in them, but Clanne doesn't really have anything going for him to make doing that worth it over using any of the very strong physical units who don't have his issues. He can also be okay as a fast mage knight but he is straight-up worse at it than at least two other characters unless he gets very lucky with his growths. He is, at least, extremely valuable for the first few chapters as a unit who can reliably double and hits resistance instead of defense, which is lower on most enemy (and player) unit types. If nothing else 2 range chip damage is always useful when you have limited units available.
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Apr 1, 2024 03:40
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Yep. Magic is so good in this game and there are relatively fewer characters who are any good at it that even a bad mage like Clanne is going to do a decent amount of work.
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Apr 1, 2024 03:51
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The death scene is well done in theory but really does not work at all in the context it's given in, because it's so abrupt. You aren't given enough time to care about her enough to justify what is intended to be a huge emotional moment imo. Alfred, Boucheron, and Etie are very weird characters. Alfred is tanky but doesn't really have anything else going for him, Etie is very good for killing early fliers and getting in safe chip damage but she has the worst overall stats of any character in the game, and Boucheron has the worst offensive growths of any character in the game but is beefy enough to be serviceable for the first several chapters and backup units are always helpful especially once you get him a hand axe.
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Apr 1, 2024 22:24
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Oh you actually let Framme die for reals? That's... an interesting decision.
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Apr 5, 2024 00:01
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W.T. Fits posted:Nah, he's playing on Casual. He just didn't want to bother with restarting the map since he didn't have access to turn rewind function yet. You can see her in the set up screen at the end of the map, right behind Alear. Oh whoops I missed that bit in the OP lol 
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Apr 5, 2024 03:29
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Marf :3
Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Apr 8, 2024 |
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Apr 8, 2024 00:21
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Celine's outfit is fabulous and I will absolutely die on this hill.  She is kinda unfortunate as a unit but if you invest hard in her and/or she gets really good level ups, she fills some weird unique niches rather well. Not at all good past the earlygame on a fixed growths maddening playthrough but here she might just turn out excellent. Sword Gryphon Chloe is great, Wyvern Chloe is great, weird builds like Martial Master Chloe are great, Chloe is just great. She's one of the best early fliers in the entire series in my opinion and that's a class of unit that's almost always good at minimum. Emblem Celica falls off pretty hard but if nothing else she's a statstick for mages that can provide the occasional effective engage weapon attack, and considering she's one of like 3 total non-DLC emblems that give mag, that's worth it if nothing else. Lances, in general, are in a really weird position in Engage. They're in the middle of swords and axes one the speed/hit/accuracy vs damage scale, which means they don't play well to either extreme, and they just have less utility options than either. Axes get more effective weapons, Swords get the far superior Levin Sword to the awful Flame Lance. When given a choice, there is no character in the game that wants to have lances over any other option, other than the classes that are restricted to them. You'll still want one or two characters able to take advantage of the lances you do get, because resources are limited and the game gives you several solid ones, but the Well makes that much less of an issue.
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Apr 9, 2024 04:17
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If the important somniel activities had been delegated to a menu a la the Path of Radiance base and the rest had been thrown in the garbage where it belongs, Engage would be a substantially more enjoyable experience. I feel similarly about the Three Houses monastery, which is at least interesting on a first playthrough but gets much worse and more tedious than the somniel is on subsequent playthroughs. Marth feels like just a boring generic sword guy emblem but is definitely extremely potent on a lot of characters, I like what he does quite a lot. Canto (gently caress you Treehouse for trying to rename it) is as always the most powerful skill in the series. Sunglasses Sommie is timeless and powerful
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Apr 12, 2024 15:47
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loving love Fiona Apple posted:I love Marf :3. I would die for Marf :3. I will kill for Marf :3.
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Apr 13, 2024 02:05
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The hallway set up perfectly for sigurd is so good
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Apr 16, 2024 15:36
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Jean is extremely flexible but you have to specialize him to make him useful. On maddening that results in somewhat of a glass cannon that's too little too late, but on hard you can turn him into a loving beast of a unit if you want to invest in him. I'm curious to see whether you'll use him (and how) or just bench him for more interesting characters.
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Apr 22, 2024 22:08
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Cythereal posted:Ah, Jean. This was the first anything I ever saw of Engage. Spoilers because of future characters in the UI. Ahahah that video loving rules
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Apr 22, 2024 22:15
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Warrior is good but definitely not the best class in the game, which is Wyvern again. I'm shocked, really.
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Apr 23, 2024 22:19
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Clanne and Etie got really bad levels on top of their kinda bad bases, so they're even worse off than normal. Alear is looking pretty good though, so imo we should get him further ahead while we can, as once we start taking advantage of Dragon emblem synergies for their utility he will have less opportunities for combat. as for the stat boosters imo we should give the Energy Drop to Chloe and the Angelic Robe to Alear because it shores up their weak spots and they're both shoe-ins for long term use.
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May 1, 2024 23:23
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Best Girl finally arrives!  It's hard mode and not lunatic, so the thing that specifically fucks Yunaka over (lunatic AI not attacking if they have a 0% hit chance) does not apply, therefore she fuckin rules and is a bit better than the guy who shows up later because we can put skills on her and such. Unless she gets really screwed in her growths, I'm all in favor of using her forever and forging the hell out of a knife for her.
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May 7, 2024 03:06
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FoolyCharged posted:You are forgetting the most important optimizations. If you bench her for the other thief or the third knife wielder you leave your team desperately short on "Zappy" energy and find yourself without a "Hiya, papaya" in sight. This leaves your team under performing to a depressing degree. That's right.
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May 8, 2024 12:54
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The decision on whether to invest the required amount into Jean or the 6x recruit for them to be worthwhile later on is honestly the point that everything else is gonna hinge on. If you decide to use one of them, they should get Micaiah at least until you can promote them. Otherwise, probably swap her around as needed to keep characters caught up if they start falling behind in levels.
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May 10, 2024 03:48
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Shei-kun posted:Do whatever is necessary to keep Yunaka viable.
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May 10, 2024 13:40
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In hard mode there will always be some enemies Yunaka can kill in one round even without a crit, as long as you keep up with forged knives and she doesn't get utterly atrocious luck. And then she'll be critting a whole bunch on top of that.
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May 10, 2024 23:24
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If we're gonna use Anna, which I'm kind of leaning towards, she should go into either sword gryphon or mage knight imo.
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May 14, 2024 13:11
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Materant posted:I remember the Lyn who gained exactly one point of defense over the course of the entire game, myself That LP was delightful. 
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May 14, 2024 13:58
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