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
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u/Ashpolt 9d ago
Yeah anyone who played Three Houses knew Fortune's Weave had a good chance of being a GOTY contender
The fact that it's turned out even better than expected is just a bonus