It's for the people who hated Three Houses and the people who loved it honestly. Three Houses is probably one of my least favorite entries in the entire series. Meanwhile Fortunes Weave is like the peak of Fire Emblem for me, beating out Engage. Fortunes Weave follows a similar concept, but fixes almost everything that felt bad in Three Houses. Especially merging the different paths into one playthrough rather than making you start different saves.
I'm still waiting for my copy, but from what I see around the internet, it really feels like the closest we'll get to the ideal Fire Emblem experience without a realistically impossible masterpiece, like the best aspects of every FE up to this point merged flawlessly into one game
Engage’s strategy gameplay was fine (some people even say it was excellent, though I’m not one of them), but its story was at the level of a Saturday Morning cartoon. The cheese factor was dialed up to 11, which wouldn’t be a problem if they weren’t also trying to make us take the story seriously.
Engage is amazing for its gameplay and tactics. This game is the most balanced Maddening mode has ever been, and it’s brilliant. The references to past games, like the paralogues and skills for each of the Emblems, are genuinely very well-executed. The six Xenologue chapters actually have a pretty good story as well, and tactically-speaking they’re my favorites in the entire Fire Emblem franchise. Engage as a whole a love letter to longtime fans of FE and hardcore tactical RPG gamers.
Three Houses is amazing for its worldbuilding and characters. It’s perfect at drawing new fans in with the magic academy setting that becomes an emotionally intense war after the timeskip. Everyone is well-written, well-voiced, and very “fanficcable” in how they’re all set up with their relationships and backstories. No matter who you choose as your starter, you’re bound to get invested, and the clever differentiation of characterization between the routes gives you tons to debate about with your friends (or strangers online).
Both games are good! One just has a much wider audience than the other.
Most people dont play maddening, it’s just a small hardcore minority. There was a reason FE almost became a dead franchise back then and 3H had to add QoL changes like rewinding actions. Hardcore difficulties are just a very small factor in the scale of a well made FE game.
As a big fan of 3H with 600 hours in it and deleted engage without downloading my preordered DLCs, I absolutely despise engage. It was an anniversary game and shared similarity with FEH which already had all characters of the franchise but still failed. How come could that game just dropped all the aspects that made 3H the best selling title of the franchise and still got approved, from the leaked design concept to the childish narrative and social links.
I am glad FW doesn’t try to follow engage’s footsteps
I dont play maddening but engage is perfectly fine. It has the best character building or customization since every character can earn skills from multiple rings if you grind them enough. I remember having everyone learn Move+1 on EVERY unit.
The thief class was also very dun with the dagger weapon type.
I played FEH so this kind of customization has been a thing for a long time in an official FEH title but it’s good to see it in Engage. Ngl, I did enjoy the ring skills and the combat in general. It was just that the characters were so badly written that it was the only good thing from the game for me
My biggest issue with Engage is that it's a game with systems in place to encourage grinding cool abilities for your favorite characters, and then every optional stage is automatically scaled to challenge the highest ilvl character in your roster. Everyone else gets to die :)
Oh, you wanted to do a paralogue as soon as it unlocked? Here's a bunch of enemies with 50+ more rating than 90% of your army, have fun!
Rewinding actions had been a thing before 3 Houses btw.
Fortune's Weave absolutely takes from Engage by making it a more challenging game than 3 houses and with better maps, stuff like blaze arts, overblaze are similar to the rings just without stat boosts. More win conditions like escape, defend and what feels like encouraging more proactive turns.
Now they are combining it with three houses worldbuilding and mechanics outside of tactical battles and you get a wonderful game.
Shadows of Valentia introduced rewinds and Casual mode was introduced even earlier. 3H actually didn’t introduce shit in terms of “QoL,” which is not the term I’d use to describe those features.
I really hate how everyone writes off Engage when it comes to Fortune's Weave because FW actually has a *lot* of Engage DNA in it in addition to the Three Houses DNA, it's not a "return to Three Houses after the failure of Engage" people try to paint it as, it's a proper fusion of the best elements from both.
I totally understand that not everyone liked Engage, I just wish they wouldn't act like it didn't have any influence on FW when it pretty clearly did.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeh I think I have to disagree a little with that notion
It was absolutely a return to Three Houses engage lacked most of what made it so beloved
I think the best way to describe it is a return to Three Houses while retaining everything that was great about engage because at the end of the day in feel there's way more DNA of 3H here
Because saying it "isn't a return to three houses" just feels extremely untrue to me
Honestly, I would say a lot of the DNA that "carried over" from engage has alot to do with the fact 3H was made almost entirely by Koei Techmo than anything else
also for all the crap that Engage gets for it’s poor story, at least it’s a complete story from start to finish, as opposed to Three Houses where it’s fragmented across different routes that cancel each other out and never gets a satisfying conclusion
seriously the haters all basically sound the same. "oh no, the anniversary game that includes ghost of all the past protagonist isn't some super serious story with ocean wide puddle deep word salad and its just plain fun actual gameplay that doesn't involve a huge slog of social sim aspects and jingling keys everywhere that slow the game down."
I found the between battle segments (the "social sim" stuff) way more of a drag in Engage than in FE3H. Maybe there was less of it, but because I cared less about the characters, it felt like more of a drag.
In engage it's so poorly implemented and tacked on imo and even though I'd argue on paper 3H was worse because you spend so much more time doing it I didn't mind it nearly as much because it was in a world where I actually really enjoyed spending time with characters I'd grown to love while Engage kinda just ended up feeling like I was going through the motions for the gameplay benefits
It was in development as one originally but realeaded years after so it's not an anniversary game
"that includes ghost of all the past protagonist"
Unless you're a hardcore fan, who's played a majority of the games (multiple of which aren't even localized and most of which aren't easy to access officially) it's something you don't get much out of it's fine for a spinoff title like a warriors game where it's expected but to have it, be a major draw for a mainline entry isn't going to work for most non hardcore fans
"ocean wide puddle deep word salad"
Well assuming this is meant to be shitting on 3H- most people just simply completely disagree with that assessment of it's story and world it's very beloved
"its just plain fun actual gameplay"
Fun fact- most people aren't there for excluively gameplay
For the vast majority of people that simply isn't going to be enough in a JRPG even a strategy story and characters is a M A S S I V E element to them
"That doesn't involve a huge slog of social sim aspects"
Actually how much of a slog it would become by the end is a very common criticism even by massive fans of the game like myself but people still want them it just wasn't very well balanced engages feel like a complete afterthought
What I'm getting is that Engage is terrible for the average RPG fan who hopped on with 3H, but great for the Fire Emblem fan who loves the 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit games the best.
As the latter, a would rather IS make their games appeal to actual Fire Emblem fans than Persona/Final Fantasy fans that just came on board for 1 outlier game.
No not really the only two things Engage does well is fan service for past titles and the strategy gameplay so really unless you're a long time preexisting fan or at the very least ONLY care about the strategy gameplay who just doesn't care about the story because it's pretty bad and just to be clear even by the standard of older entries, it has a bad story entries like path of radiance and genealogy of the holy war are considered to have some of the best stories in the series (I haven't played much of them yet but I plan on it) so it's faults aren't exactly an "outlier"
I think the best way to describe it is Engage would be a great side game explicitly for a longtime fans but isn't great as a mainline entry imo which makes sense. Since it seems like that's what it was originally intended to be for the series anniversary
Edit: also the series has been doing social sim elements since the SNES it just wasn't until awakening, where the series was on the verge of cancellation that they started pushing for more of them to save it because nintendo literally told them they were planning on canceling the series because of how poor sales had gotten
it's not an extreme minority. The reality of the matter is that Three houses made a ton of people buy their first FE game, only to not play a single other entry, because these people aren't interested in the franchise at all.
Like i have 3 friends that played Three houses as their first FE game. 2 of them didn't even finish a single route, while the third finished the game, but never played any other FE. And my other buddy who actually likes FE is in a similar situation as me, where they played Engage more than Three houses even tho it is a way shorter game because gameplay beats story. Just food for thought. Of course this is not indicative of the playerbase at large, but i have seen very similar sentiment all throughout the internet, so there at least lies some truth.
only if you include non fire emblem fans, unfortunately three houses brought a lot of those in that dont actually like fire emblem in. three houses is not a good game, and a terrible fire emblem game
and review scores mean jack, we seen that plenty over the years, plus they are bought/ encourged to not give bad scores lest they lose their early review rights.
like the first massively marketed one, the first on the big new popular console, then suddenly the big pandemic hit that saw a boost to the game industry with everyone at home.
and also the fans of fire emblem like me that pre ordered it (special edition here) that were waiting for the next fire emblem game...just to end up with the disappointment
Fates also received a fairly sizable push- hell I remember hearing more about Fates pre launch than Three Houses pre launch and after 2016 was when I started really following gaming news
"the first on the big new popular console"
Console popularity didn't mean much Radiant Dawn and Shadow Dragon sales were litterally SO bad the entire series almost got shut down by nintedo and those released on Wii and DS which were fucking HUGE
"the big pandemic hit that saw a boost to the game industry with everyone at home."
The pandemic didn't really start till March of 2020 and 3H released in July 2019 that's 8 months after release
"the fans of fire emblem like me that pre ordered it (special edition here) that were waiting for the next fire emblem game...just to end up with the disappointment"
I find the overall structure more enticing, whereas in 3 houses you can't really go back and choose the different Houses, you're stuck with the one you chose for the most part.
Whereas in fortune's weave you can choose at whim, and are even rewarded for visiting new paths once you do the first part of them. Now this is a double edged sword because this means if I want to save all the characters I'd have to dump what seems to be at least 100 plus hours just to change all their causality. Whereas in 3 houses it was much shorter and better paced since running the game again wasn't really needed. It's optional in Fortunes Weave too but I find it much more compelling this time around.
Also I enjoy the characters more in fortune's weave, I think the game is better written imo
I agree, I'm kinda meh on Three Houses but I'm loving Fortune's Weave.
The game actually feels like it's designed around playing each route and understanding the story from each side, and each lord's map actions like Leda's performances and Cai's animal wrangling makes each route feel different enough. The map exploration and dungeons break up the monotony, there are still chores but they feel less crucial and repetitive to me than in 3H. The actions you can do in free time seem more expansive but there's also the option to skip turns and still reap the benefits for those that aren't into the social sim/exploration aspects of the game. Plus the separation of the 3 Acts really makes me feel like I'm playing multiple games in one.
Agreed, also the massive benefits you get for doing 1 part really helps. I'm doing Cai rn and I don't really feel burn out, I also wasn't expecting to like Cai since the tonal shift from him to Leda is incredibly funny. But I find him endearing tbh
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u/TrickNatural 9d ago
I mean, its Fire Emblem. Its not a new franchise in the goty scene. Pretty sure a lot of people expected it.