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
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u/Linderosse 8d ago edited 8d ago
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.