Fire Emblem Catch All

But is there pedophilia teacher's romancing high school students like in the last game?

Er, wasn't there a 5 year time jump so everyone was over 18?

Still pretty weird but it wasn't Persona-weird romancing maids and teachers when you're still a male high school student.

There was a time jump, yes.

It’s definitely weird that you start building the foundation of relationships as the teacher, though.

Engage skills. Mechanics spoilers. And character name reveals. Even the preview image spoils who the 6 engage rings are, if you haven't seen yet.

Spoiler:

Looks like they went with one male MC from a previous game and one female, when you had options. I wonder if you get a choice again or if they just did default one of each.

Seems interesting. Maybe a day 1 for me.

I have to admit that I don’t quite get this mechanic. Are these just buffs and debuffs from previous games and now they’re just in human form?

Japan site updated with all 12 Emblems in the main game.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FjkykNRXEAE_BUo?format=jpg&name=900x900)

And of course DLC was announced this week for the Three Houses characters, all as 1 emblem. Guessing each of the 4 DLCs will have another emblem.

Not surprised but also kind of find it $&@!ty that they are putting the Three Houses in the DLC.

I don’t know… this might be the least excited I have been for a FE game.

January 20th is fast approaching. I hope it is good.

Fire Emblem Engage Goes Back To The Series' Roots

I kind of figure I'm buying it anyway so no need to watch.

I suppose there's a chance I wait for a sale but it's a tiny one at this point.

I watched this short combat preview from IGN the other day:

It made me much more confident about the combat and UI improvements this time around. Now it's just a wait and see on the story and other out of combat components.

I really soured on Three Houses due to normal being way too easy. Will have to wait on this to see how it does difficulty.

Fire Emblem Engage - Nintendo Switch - Big Tech Upgrades vs Three Houses

Less social-sim and better battles, I think I'm in!

This is looking really good. I’m excited to dig in after finishing Phantom Brave. I’m 3 chapters away from the end of that one. This will be a good change of pace.

Suvanto wrote:

Less social-sim and better battles, I think I'm in!

Me too. I got very bogged down with the school stuff and didn't really like it. Finding a book and wandering around to everyone trying to give it to them, picking two or three people to sing in the choir, buying flowers on a person's birthday, etc.

Me three. I loved it at first, but over time, I felt like I just spent so much time in the monastery. And, the presence of all that extra stuff to do made it hard for me not to engage. I think there could have been just one free weekend between each chapter, and less hide-and-seek stuff.

I agree, I enjoyed the Monastery section for about the first half of the game, but it felt very tedious in the back-half. Not even getting into additional playthroughs. And it perfectly nags that min-maxer part of my brain that refuses to let me skip it.

I liked the social aspect, but I played it all the way through 3 times and it really wore out it’s welcome by the end of the 1st play through, to say nothing of the 3rd.

I also don’t think it was as well thought out as, say, a Persona. It just wasn’t interesting enough on its own merits and the text being so small made it physically difficult to play in handheld mode. I didn’t feel that way about Persona’s social mode. Which is all to say I prefer the direction they seem to be going.

Well consider me the outlier here I guess. I loved the social stuff in Three Houses. I'm disappointed to see them lessening the focus on, but this cast of characters looks far less interesting anyways so far, so maybe it's for the best.

I am glad to see the combat improvements though. That was the weakest aspect of Three Houses by a mile.

I also mostly enjoyed the social stuff, but I never got close to finishing Three Houses because the combat got real easy and for some reason they wouldn’t let you up the difficulty mid-game.

More excited as the day gets closer.

Is Fire Emblem Engage Really THAT Appealing..?

Yeah I'm committed to finishing up Midnight Suns in the next week so I can dive into this day 1.

Part of me wants to go back and finish the last 3 Houses run I was on but it doesn't seem likely at this point

The thing I liked about 3H was the creation of a system with systemic evils and casting every character (including the villain) in shades of grey.

E gets rid of all that.

I maintain fire emblem advance (the one with eliwood, lyn, and hector) has the most sympathetic villain with Nergal. If you manage to do complete a hector hard mode three kishuna run, his backstory is fully fleshed out, and I was quite upset in the final chapter with that death quote. I am a gba generation supremest though, for fire emblem.

Something about this I'm not vibing with right now...maybe it's just the design of the MC, or the aggressive nostalgia bait by bringing back older heroes. I otherwise adore Fire Emblem games though, so I'll still be keeping an eye on what people are thinking.

And I sat out on the launch of Three Houses since I wasn't sure about the whole school thing, until the post launch buzz made me jump in anyway and it wound up being my runaway GOTY. So maybe waiting to see how it hits (and to find out which is the right difficulty level to go with) isn't the worst thing in the world.

Yeah, it feels very... not gacha, but gacha-adjacent. Which doesn't appeal. But if someone comes back and says the battles are strong then it'll be hard to stay away. After I finish my Blue Lions run. And Triangle Strategy. And Tactics Ogre.

Eh, from watching the trailer it looked like there were just 6 or 8 Emblems you could get. It's not something crazy like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 with all the blades. The fact that there are a couple of recent heroes in DLC only is a bit annoying. But I'll probably wait on that, just like I waited on 3H. There was not enough to ever make that season pass worthwhile to me.

Twitter says review embargo lifts at 9am tomorrow!

82 on Metacritic. Many of the below linked there.

Siliconera- 10/10
DigitallyDownloaded- 10/10
IGN- 9/10
Game Informer- 9/10
Shacknews- 9/10
Nintendo Life- 9/10
Video Chums- 9/10
CGMagazine- 8.5/10
Digital Trends- 8/10
Metro- 8/10
Twinfinite- 7/10
WellPlayed- 7/10
Checkpoint- 6.5/10
Inverse- 6/10

Dexerto- 10/10
GodisaGeek- 9.5/10
Player 2- 9.1/10
Vooks- 9/10
Destructiod- 9/10
Stevivor- 9/10
Everyeye- 9/10
GAMINGbible- 9/10
NintendoWorldReport- 9/10
TheSixthAxis- 9/10
VG247- 8/10
Screen Rant- 8/10
Wccftech- 8/10
Pocket Tactics- 7/10
GamesRadar- 5/10

Nintenderos- 9/10
Vandal- 9/10
Games Machine- 9/10
Glitched Africa- 9/10
IGN Italia- 8.8/10
Jeuxvideo- 8.5/10
PlaySense- 8.5/10
Geeks & Com- 8.5/10
Trusted Reviews- 8/10
Nintendo Insider- 8/10
Gfinity- 8/10
NME- 8/10
Press Start- 8/10
GameSpot- 7/10
VGC- 6/10

Not really surprising is it?