quick engage thoughts (It’s Mid peak)

just wanted to scribble down some stuff, apologies if it’s illegible

ok first off the gameplay is fucking fantastic. i feel like my lens on the series as a whole isnt the best right now as its been a while since ive properly played the games as 3H killed my interest in the series lol but i think this is the most fun fire emblem to play. fantastic map design across the board, there were a few meh chapters (off of the top of my head i wasnt a huge fan of 17 or 19, a few paralogues like micaiahs stink) but the rest were super well made
the gradlon chapters are absolutely perfect and felt like a true test of the mechanics youve learned, they are TOUGH on maddening holy shit. i love the way that each chapter becomes a mad scramble to kill the boss at the end, you have to be aggressive in player phase always or you just get swamped
i could ramble about how good 24 and 25 are for hours theyre so fun

milas turnwheel or whatever its called in this is unnecessary at the start but i quickly found that the 10 use limit is pretty much perfect, most chapters towards the second half of the game i was using every single charge. its a nice fallback for the insane difficulty (although this is my first playthrough so IDEK)

the weapon system is a bit weird? brave weapons are pretty awful except in hyper specific situations and the legendary weapons you get at the very end are only good if you spend insane amounts of resources refining them. so usually silver weapons are absolutely the best. i thought refining and engraving was a good concept though, but i wish the game told me that dogs give you ore bc i only found that out very near the end

the skill system is a bit fucked. SP should be able to be redistributed, the fact that its such a commodity makes spending it scary and discourages creative builds. also some skills are just unobtainable altogether in maddening, youre gonna get about 3k SP altogether for each character by the end and the most expensive are about 5k i believe. and then some of the most powerful ones like canter and repo are insanely cheap? i dont understand what they were trying to do but then at the same time it feels like a really cool system is buried under all the fuckiness

emblems are cool, i expected them to be gimmicky and overpowered but theyre super central to the games design. theres a difficulty spike somewhere around ch17 where i feel like the game expects you to have finally gotten a grip on how to properly utilise all of your tools. i do think that some buffs/nerfs should have been made though, leif and roy are awful especially since theyre available for so few chapters. meanwhile corrin eirika and byleth are almost essential to actually beating the game
ive seen some discussion online about what emblems are good and barely anyone mentions how key corrin is? you can prevent huge swarms of enemy units from moving for four whole turns and can literally always set fire to block chokeholds and set fog for free 30% avoid. but then i felt like the game fully expects you to take advantage of her abilities so it was never unfairly overpowered. she should have dragon vein locked to when youre engaged anyway
some like marth and celica felt very good early game but then you get them back and theyre super underpowered. but then sigurd is just godlike for the whole thing
emblems are neat anyway im looking forward to playing with the dlc ones eventually

artstyle and char designs arent for me but at least they fit the world.
graphics are infinitely better than 3h though
music is absolutely the best in the series, the paralogue remixes are so good and enforcer of knowledge is the best boss theme

i dont wanna talk abt the story too much because i feel like everyone knew it would suck but it had its moments, namely near the beginning and end where its super cheesy
the parts where it tries to get serious are awful although i liked ch10/11 a lot
the characters are bad for the most part and i started spamming A through supports pretty quickly. i like all of the lords and their siblings though theyre cool. alfred best boy

alear is a decent protagonist? veyle is a blight on this game and whenever the story focused on her it was bad
i liked the four hounds but i feel as if you should fight them way less, the way theyre introduced as these unkillable threats in chapter 11 is chefs kiss (black knight) but then you just beat them like 3 chapters later and continue to fight them over and over. where are my generic enemy bosses add more of them

oh yeah and the fanservice for old fans was super cool!! it fits the game perfectly i loved seeing all the protagonists interact except WHERE THE FUCK ARE SELIPH ELIWOOD AND ALM

the last thing is that i feel like engage couldve been quite a few chapters shorter, you move at a very brisk pace through the world at first which is nice then suddenly it slows down immensely from around 13 to 20? there are definitely some chapters that could go. you spend 4 chapters getting to elusia castle (2nd time around) only for nothing to be there and you go home. game def slogs around this point and it doesnt help that you have 12 paralogues to do

this game wouldve been a 10/10 though if they did a title drop. they say fire emblem multiple times and emblem engage many times. just say “Fire Emblem… Engage!” cowards, i really expected it in the final cutscenes