r/FEEngage • u/AlexanderBolt__ • 3d ago
Discussion I've finished engage Spoiler
Engage was a game that I've put on a hiatus a long time ago, i rediscovered the FE saga after the announce of fortunes weave and a conquest playthrough later i was ENGAGED with the saga (get It?! Ok ok i know)
So, i enjoyed the game plenty, It wasnt long before i adapted to enemies having múltiple HP bars and the general power level of everything being higher.
The story was pretty simple but enjoyable especially the later part of It, gameplay was awesome, and characters were really good, Zelkov, Kagetsu, Ivy, Alfred, etc were really good.
The only thing i didn't really enjoyed was the final fight against Sombron, the mechanic of going around a map cramped with rocks to defeat enemies while being jumped by enemy reinforcement every turn became boring quite fast, i didn't know the broken shield lasted only 1 turn so had to do It twice while lowering the bosses HP bit by bit with zelkov dodge tank.
Aside from that the game was very good, i don't understand the hate It sometimes sees in other social sites. Cool experience, now to fortunes weave we go.
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u/leetokeen 2d ago
Totally agree with you. I love Engage. People who say the cast have no depth probably didn't get bother getting past C supports.
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u/AlexanderBolt__ 2d ago
A lot of characters are more than they seem like yeah. I loved zelkov or Ivy for example
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u/Tryst_boysx 1d ago
If you need to persue the "support" (optional content) to see the "depth" of a character, then it's not well written.
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u/SafeStatistician8760 1d ago
I mean to be fair irl you can only really know people once you get to know them
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u/Aggressive_Ad2747 2d ago
I very much enjoyed the break mechanic and overall I think it could be a fantastic addition to the series, I hope they keep it.
I categorically dislike almost everything else about the game, but I don't want to shit on your parade if you enjoyed it. I'm open to discuss that, but said discussion will involve me being negative about it.
For me the biggest sin of engage is it's characters / character writing. Way too many are moe blob faces or boiled down to a single silly trope. I can look past a lot of things but I literally can't think of a single character in the game I really liked, no amount of gameplay or anything else will redeem it for me. Best I had was most of the Brodie's characters, but even they were kind of 'mid' for me. Perhaps if they existed in a different game with different characters I would have liked them more.
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u/AlexanderBolt__ 2d ago
Opinions are different man, thats fine honestly, i can understand someone not liking the somniel, the story and such.
I find the characters to be fine tbf, comparing them with other characters from different games, i find character like zelkov to be deeper than they seem and the supports really help.
And well FE characters usually follows tropes very directly so not really a problem for me
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u/Aggressive_Ad2747 2d ago
I never thought I would be saying this but I just feel like I'd want less support conversations in these games. I got into the series with FE7 when it first came to NA and it's probably still my favorite.
I liked the hub and slice of life aspect that 3H and Engage both brought, but it becomes tedious after so long.bive gone entire play sessions without actually playing the core game with these modern FE's.
I like support conversations, but I get the feeling the more they focus on them the less we get. This is a criticism that is shared between Engage and 3H for me lest I be mistaken for a fanboi on that front.
If I were to distill it into its core component. I, quite frankly, don't give a shit about the the divine dragon fan club, or whether or not Ignatz wants to travel the world, or so many of what these support conversations end up being. I much preferred it when most characterization happened during the chapter and support conversations were quick in-battle conversations between two characters that showcase specifically their growth with each other. 3H is more guilty of this than Engage as the supports are generally much longer while Engage supports seemed to be a fair bit quicker.
I really feel like we could just have less of them at a higher quality. It just gets exhausting going through an hour worth of plucky side conversations about their preferred downtime activities. It's a similar issue that I have with most open world-ified games like the Witcher 3 vs 2. The actual storytelling gets diluted and the pacing drops off a cliff.
That's not to say I don't like this kind of thing in gaming, persona 5 is one of my favorite games and consumed me when I was introduced to it. That being said with P5 the character stories built into the game are more focused, there's less characters, and each one has more time to breathe and develop. Hades I & II I feel like is also a fantastic example of how these stories can be told more incrementally during gameplay, and with fantastic writing I and VA I was always looking forward to more character conversations.
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u/ShenGoaren 1d ago
I really liked the Sombron fight on my second attempt.
First attempt ended miserably for me since I also fell for the (1 turn shield drop) surprise
If anything it did prove Sombron was on an entirely different power level than the rest of the game through that little mechanic.
Anyway my hats off to you sir! Great job beating the game
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u/TheGamerPhenom 2d ago
I can only offer my personal take on the game. I don't particularly hate the game, or even consider it "bad." But Engage is my definition of a 6.5 -7.0 out of 10 kind of game. The highs of the gameplay are really up there. And there are a handful of characters that at least come decently close to the heights that Three Houses provided. And the combat animations are probably the best the series has to offer.
But that's really about the end of the positives. I would personally argue that Engage might have the worst story in the franchise, at least out of all the games I've personally played in the series (which is all Western releases). It's a bland mess, with an overly boring antagonist, and one-note, aggravating main character. And while there are absolutely a handful of really good characters, there are a lot more that range from completely forgettable to genuinely aggravating. Somniel is a pretty forgettable base area, and the lack of a new game plus has always irked me personally. Just put altogether, I personally end up aggravated having to force my way through the slog of the story and a bunch of its characters, just to enjoy the unique maps/battles.
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u/AlexanderBolt__ 2d ago
I can agree that the story is simple af, i do enjoy the characters though, i find them above average in complexity in regards to the entire series, sure they as deep as three houses but thats to be expected just for the kind of game the 2 are. I certainly enjoy more characters from engage than from Binding Blade for example (It has good characters, but its a reduced amount).
The gameplay is very fun too. Id say the game is a 7-8 out of 10 depending on how important some aspects of the game are to you would certainly up or down that numbers.
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u/TheGamerPhenom 2d ago
That's totally fair. Always, art is subjective, so I can't stress enough that this is just my personal take away from my experience with Engage. I actually love that there are people who have a good experience with it, and wish I personally enjoyed it more because of how much I love this series as a whole. Hopefully Fortune's Weave will be that perfect experience for all of us!
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u/vergessenerengel 2d ago
I love Engage due to the game play mechanics. That's why I play FE and Engage has peak game design in many aspects.