not sure if I've ever done a harder turnaround on a game than this
when this game was first revealed, like many others I did not like the look of it one bit, it felt like fire emblem straying away from what really makes it fire emblem, chasing trends and whatnot in an attempt to become more relevant which granted wouldn't be the first time the series has done this, but after becoming a fan of these games over the course of last year it was all the more disheartening to see
as the release date was drawing closer and closer, a lot of the footage released for the game was starting to pique my interest, the new mechanics seemed fresh and interesting, the old ones were returning with a vengeance, the battle animations looked slick and refined, a lot of the music I heard was great and hey even the ensemble of these ridiculous-looking characters was starting to partially win me over
and then the game actually arrived, and all my initial worries were completely wiped out. this is a real-ass fire emblem game and a damn good one at that
yes the story is mostly whatever and the gameplay is great like many have expected but there's also so much more, yes the story is sort of bland but there's so much good gameplay-story integration in here that it was at the very least always (har har) engaging, yes a lot of the characters are gimmicky but there's a lot of great supports and by the end I had a quite strong band of favourites, yes the gameplay is great as I sort of expected it to be but also had a ton of surprises I was not expecting like really good anti-juggernaut mechanics that prevent mindless enemy phasing of all that moves at you and strong enemies that really take time and effort to take down, yes I often found myself spending a lot of time in the base but most of it was spent doing stuff I actually enjoyed like watching supports and building my characters and if you don't want to bother with extra stuff like workouts or wyvern riding and whatnot you really don't have to because this game really does respect your time
if I had to find negatives I'd say that yeah the story could have been more interesting I think, for example I think there was a great opportunity to make the protagonist become an arrogant spoiled brat after all the constant praise and adoration they receive with a perfect place in the story for them to get humbled and learn to be better but I suppose they just wanted to play it safe and make Alear more inoffensive, some of the music tracks I wasn't super fond of even though largely the soundtrack still stands tall, and several paralogues had me tearing my hair out and not for the good reasons like the main story map design did
I played this on hard and I certainly wouldn't mind coming back to this on maddening, I was going through a bit of a game burnout and Engage was a lovely way to break out of it
when this game was first revealed, like many others I did not like the look of it one bit, it felt like fire emblem straying away from what really makes it fire emblem, chasing trends and whatnot in an attempt to become more relevant which granted wouldn't be the first time the series has done this, but after becoming a fan of these games over the course of last year it was all the more disheartening to see
as the release date was drawing closer and closer, a lot of the footage released for the game was starting to pique my interest, the new mechanics seemed fresh and interesting, the old ones were returning with a vengeance, the battle animations looked slick and refined, a lot of the music I heard was great and hey even the ensemble of these ridiculous-looking characters was starting to partially win me over
and then the game actually arrived, and all my initial worries were completely wiped out. this is a real-ass fire emblem game and a damn good one at that
yes the story is mostly whatever and the gameplay is great like many have expected but there's also so much more, yes the story is sort of bland but there's so much good gameplay-story integration in here that it was at the very least always (har har) engaging, yes a lot of the characters are gimmicky but there's a lot of great supports and by the end I had a quite strong band of favourites, yes the gameplay is great as I sort of expected it to be but also had a ton of surprises I was not expecting like really good anti-juggernaut mechanics that prevent mindless enemy phasing of all that moves at you and strong enemies that really take time and effort to take down, yes I often found myself spending a lot of time in the base but most of it was spent doing stuff I actually enjoyed like watching supports and building my characters and if you don't want to bother with extra stuff like workouts or wyvern riding and whatnot you really don't have to because this game really does respect your time
if I had to find negatives I'd say that yeah the story could have been more interesting I think, for example I think there was a great opportunity to make the protagonist become an arrogant spoiled brat after all the constant praise and adoration they receive with a perfect place in the story for them to get humbled and learn to be better but I suppose they just wanted to play it safe and make Alear more inoffensive, some of the music tracks I wasn't super fond of even though largely the soundtrack still stands tall, and several paralogues had me tearing my hair out and not for the good reasons like the main story map design did
I played this on hard and I certainly wouldn't mind coming back to this on maddening, I was going through a bit of a game burnout and Engage was a lovely way to break out of it