Got my copy in the post this afternoon- but have only had a chance to play for about twenty minutes.
First impressions - nice, clear animations. Combat seems fun, yet to really see how the time turner works. And the fighting seems very zoomed in, compared to other FE games - which should work better in Handheld mode.
I may just set my alarm early to get in some play time in the morning!
Played it for 16 hours, yeah it's okay.
It's already better than the 3DS games I've played. Maps are fucking good again, they changed combat so the weapon triangle is no longer in effect but certain weapons get skills that can destroy other weapons so it kinda' still lives on. The storyline starts off with a woman stabbing someone to death and has stuff like executions and it's just so much better already on gameplay and story. (not saying much for the latter, yeah)
The main new feature is your role as a Professor, it's like Persona 5 but not. You basically do sidequests there (don't expect Witcher 3) and train your students to get better at weapons and skills through a number of different menus, it's quite in depth to type out but not to actually do but I think the end result is quite satisfying, just watching all these bars increase.
Important note: you can reclass any character into anything you like, as long as you train them properly. There are still very obviously defined class paths to follow if you stick to the natural progression, but you're a teacher… you teach. If you want to brute force that archer into learning sword skills or have a magician end up on a horse, just teach them the right skills. 
And the weapon triangle is still in effect. It's definitely still there.
It is, it's just different. You get stuff that naturally works against stuff like armoured units (like Maces) flying units (bows) and the new Combat Arts Axe/Lance/Sword -breaker, but simple one on one is pretty negligible. I think the combat art system is really good actually, makes combat way better then it ever has imo.
It's not even just that, game keeps introducing a lot of new systems, such as Battalions/Gambits, which is basically equippable..well, battalions that can activate special abilities like poison, knockback etc. On my Edelgard I have 'Blaze' which is an aoe fire bomb that blows up a main target and sets a few surrounding tiles on fire. These also pin enemies to the spot to stop them rushing down your weaker units. So now in any confrontation you're like, trade less damage for a Gambit, use a Combat Art for specialised damage at the cost of wearing the weapon out (oh yeah, FE has weapon durability, have fun with that :o) or just normal attack which is more straight forward.
Anyway, this is probably my Game of the Year so far, in a year where FFXIV released the best expansion it ever had and we got Devil May Cry 5 reviving a legendary series, this has absolutely blown me away. Partly because I never played a Fire Emblem on console before. Maps are much much better designed, and so bloody huge at times it's a wonder you even get through them sometimes, they're like 2 times as big as I remember the handheld ones being.
Played it for 16 hours, yeah it's okay.
Anyway, this is probably my Game of the Year so far
Ah I was just trying to play down my gushing lol.
I did my favourite map yet so far. Had to defend a town from being invaded by Pirates and Mercenaries and they had Wyvern Riders to boot. I beat the map but couldn't stop the Wyverns passing the Town entrance so it said I failed but I still passed…so probably missed a cool reward, oh well.
It could be ended by rushing the commander (I don't like doing that though, I'm technically doing this to rinse EXP) but the lose condition of not killing people who trespass the village is unique. So I had an Archer stay back and shoot down the Wyverns on her own. Meanwhile everyone else split, leaving town and pincer-ing the 3 docked Ships from two directions, this included using a Great Knight to Snorlax a bridge while a healer ensured he didn't die, very basic but effective and feels good to pull off especially since enemies pool in front of him like this:
—– A
GK AAA
—– A
And we have Gambits now, so I had an aoe attack to him them all despite him being a non caster.
Just another great map in the game. And again, seeing a battle take place and watching my units dodge and guard and counter on complete ship felt almost cinematic.
There was room for even more tactics. My Byleth had a Goddess Ring that healed every turn, and Dorothea heals units stood next to her every turn. If I gave that to a Great Knight, would he even be killable? Then again, he needs it less so I can give it to someone else etc..tactics. :o
I have genuinely no idea what's happening in this game.
I'm on month 3, I think, and have been winning the battles easily (I assume because they're basically tutorial battles). But everything is SO dense, the menus are awful, and nothing is explained in any detail. I have to stop playing every five minutes to google stuff.
"Why is my axe man hitting things twice?"
"What are those stars on the character screen…?"
"What does instructing people in those little icons actually do?"
At the moment the game is just sort of happening around me. I haven't made a single confident decision.
Ah, we have a thread for this? Good, I'm confused too.
Mostly I'm just winging it, every decision I make some numbers somewhere are going up so I can't be doing too badly I guess. Stuff is slowly falling into place. I can remember about 5% of the characters' names now, basically the ones with really terrible hair.
Turn off the voices: not only is the acting terrible, but with them on you either end up listening to the voice acting in full, which takes ages, or just hammering through screens with everyone going "Buh" "Huh" "Guh" all the time.
My main problem is the bloody monastery sections, trudging around collecting ingredients for someone's dinner or looking for a special plant or something. Everything else is nice and snappy and menu-driven then it expects you to do half a dozen side quests every week. I'm spending longer on this drivel than I am on the actual battles.
Why IS your axe man hitting things twice?
His Axe Man must be a lot faster than who he was hitting, it's either twice as fast or more.
I played with Japanese voices and I liked the performances, although Edelgard having Mitsuru's voice actor sounds great.
As for the Monastery, if you don't like the cast you will not like it as much, most people tend to latch on to a few favourites but they are a bit…more anime than previous although I can't see anyone saying Awakening had a better cast. It's very blatantly Persona like, but with Fire Emblem staples like 'support conversations' put in there, this is also where you eventually steer people down class builds and skill mastery so I can assure you its at least very important.
The idea is you latch on to some favourites and personally tutor them into solid units.
Combat wise I cant say much with confidence because it's been years, what I CAN say with confidence is strategy is better than it's ever been, through additions like Gambits and tweaks to the weapon triangle system you have much more agency in battle than ever. Also maps are great this time, Awakening had garbage maps but this has good map design and varied objectives.
I should dig this out so I can remember the specifics of combat.
See, take the weapon triangle system. I assume that’s a Pokémon-style rock, paper scissors. (You don’t have to explain, I’ll google.)
But at no point is that mentioned, anywhere. I don’t know if axes are weak against horses, or even how to tell what ‘type’ of enemy I’m attacking before I attack. It’s all aggressively obtuse.
My ONLY strategy in battles is to move a random one of my units close to the enemy, then press attack.
It's a bit different in this game to other games in the series, it used to be rock paper scissors where Axes beat swords, swords beat lances, and lances beat axes but now it's mostly only in Combat Arts you can get later that say 'Sword Breaker' or such hence the 'tweaks', it's much less restrictive in that you can run up to an Axe user with a Sword and have more of an equal chance. If that sounds super less interesting in a tactical sense, what we lost in that we more than gained in stuff like the Battalions/Gambits.
So it's been a while but they might not have mentioned it because of that, the speed thing giving you extra attacks I can't see them telling you because it.
Strategy in battle will depend on the units you are using and how you develop them, if you're using Archers you'll want to put them somewhere their range can hit an enemy without being hit back, like having a heavy armour knight on a chokepoint, the Gambits you might not have a lot of but there's some that say 'stop an enemy moving for one turn' so they can't rush your weakest unit, and so on.
Okay I'm fully onboard with this now. After about two weeks of constant googling, I know roughly what all the icons mean.
There are still some odd quirks (the faster you are, the more times you hit, and weaker weapons seem to be faster… so you do more damage with weak weapons than strong ones) but I'm enjoying myself. The battles are very easy – I'm one-shotting enemies that take 1 or 2 health off me – but aside from that balancing issue it's great. It's definitely one of those "I'll have one more go and th… oh it's midnight" games.
BLACK EAGLES 4 LIFE!!!!!!!!
Yeah Hubert can do one, but I'm all aboard the Petra train.
Hubert is creepy as fuck but Edelgard »»» anything, finally a Fire Emblem Lord in the series who wields an Axe! (In her case like it weighs hardly anything)
Also, Dorothea was practically a Goddess of Death for me, and she's one of my favourite characters.
Genuine question for anyone who's finished this, especially if they've played more than one path through the game - BIG SPOILERS - don't click if you haven't played through the game:
Spoiler - click to showDo the different paths tell different stories, or different viewpoints on the same story? I'm playing as the Blue Lions and I'm about halfway through the second act. In my game, Edelgard was revealed as being behind the big scheme from the first half of the game and now everyone is uniting to take her down. If I played as Edelgard instead, would I simply get a different version of this story with (say) Dimitri being the Big Bad instead? Or would I play the SAME story from Edelgard's point of view and find out why she did what she did?
I think it's the latter. The villain is always the villain.
Ah, that’s what I was hoping. That’s a much more interesting way of doing things.
I don't think I spoiled anything but I'm deleting that anyway.
Spoiler - click to showBut yes, everyone comes after you in her route, but it's not completely the same and Golden Deer is even more different than both, so the replay value here is off the charts even if the first half will always be the same.
DLC route is good.
It is kind of insane how big this game is. I'm probably going to hit 60 hours on my first playthrough and the game feels complete as it is… the story has been great, the writing for all the characters has been spot on and if this was all the game was then I'd be more than satisfied with it. The fact there are three (I think) other routes through the game plus a DLC mini-campaign is mind-blowing.
I don't think I'll be replaying this immediately but it's great to know that if I decide to replay it a year or two down the line then I've got a substantially different experience waiting for me.
It's the first post Awakening Fire Emblem I've really liked, they really nailed it with the map design and story imo, people always argue over 'who was right' online and whilst people can get too serious and childish with it I think it's at least a triumph for the route system. Like, look at how the Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright/Conquest/Revelation thing went down on DS in comparison. (tbf you did have to buy those routes separately…)
For me it's the great map design (gone are Awakening's flat fields, mostly) and new combat mechanics, Gambits offering more choice in battle then ever, just really good to actually play.
Speaking of which, codes for Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes are now up. There's a demo as of today and it's getting pretty positive coverage…
I'll definitely download it, if only to see how well it runs. After Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Calamitous Framerate, I'm not expecting much.
Despite not thinking much of Fire Emblem Warriors as a musou game this is looking pretty interesting even if I don't really care about extending the story of 3H with a 'what if', that fact that it's set in that universe makes the omission of most of the FE universe make more sense this time and the footage so far is pretty good.
Hyrule Warriors (the original) is one of my all-time favourite games, I absolutely love it and have bought it on three separate platforms.
The original Fire Emblem Warriors was OK but it was a lot smaller in scale and I didn't have any connection to most of the characters. I played it through once but never felt the need to keep plugging away at it in the same way I did with HW.
If Three Hopes manages to match the scale and ambition of Hyrule Warriors with the setting and characters of Three Houses - and does so at more than 15fps - then it could be something really special. Fingers crossed anyway.
Yeah I noped out of FEW the second I saw it didn't give a shit about the older games bar a few characters, Hyrule Warriors is still the best musou that isn't Warriors Orochi 3 though, easy. I'll download the demo for this at some point and I wouldn't have done so a few weeks ago so it's doing something right…
OK, Three Hopes looks great. I’m in. Worth checking out the demo, Al.
OK, so it took me a little while to get into it, but Three Hopes is really good.
It's genuinely a sequel to Three Houses in every way that counts. It's got exactly the same level of writing and characterisation and the plot, if anything, is even denser and more convoluted. It definitely assumes you've played the previous game. Again it's got three full routes to follow lasting 40+ hours each and this time they diverge for pretty much the entire length of the game rather than splitting at the halfway point. Pretty much all the systems from Three Houses have made it across: character classes, weapon forging, adjutants, skills and abilities, support conversations, they're all in here. And the new main character Shez is more engaging and interesting than Three Houses' Byleth.
The difference is that missions are Dynasty Warriors-style musou battles rather than turn-based strategy. That's great because I love these. You still get to play as all the same characters except now you are controlling them directly as whirling tornadoes of destruction rather than plodding slowly across a map.
I was expecting a fun spin-off but actually this is a full-blown sequel albeit in a slightly different genre. One of the most pleasant surprises of the year. I've not really got into a Warriors game since the original Hyrule Warriors but this is definitely going to be up there.
I really want to play this…eventually! Also sorry I didn't say anything but yes, I have played the demo and stopped because it seemed to be one of those monster ones and I know you can probably transfer your save but it feels weird to commit then have a large gap before you carry on the actual game, anyway I have played enough to know it's as good as you say at least.
Weird to imagine playing a musou for the story, but I'm really attached to my Edelgard route save and everything, so if it's truly good then it has that over basically every other musou.
Fire Emblem Engage is good, story is just about what I expected so far but gameplay is smooth and feels great. I feared the loss of the combat arts and gambits from Three Houses would be too much of a scale back but I guess for the somewhat different pace of this game it works? (This doesn't mean I think it's better) I was worried the Engage mechanic would be too overpowered so I am playing on Hard Mode and as of Chapter 5 it doesn't seem to be too strong at all, the mage who gets the ability to literally warp across the map and double cast is as close as it's gotten but she's also really squishy too.
You know what IS a massive improvement? The fact the protagonist is voiced and speaks as if they were an actual character…well, they ARE an actual character I guess but still also technically an 'Avatar' like Byleth/Corrin/Robin before them. Like the story isn't great so far but 've been pleasently surprised by that aspect.
Also, some of the 'Emblem' characters you get in this are Lords from games we didn't even get here in the UK but I quite like the idea that this as some sort of anniversary game will get more people to try the other games in the series prior to Awakening. I really hope the rumours of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (FE4) remake are true because it is one of those games and it's supposed to be super good, it's been long since fan translated of course but if it's happening I'd like to know!
I find the graphical style they've used for Engage a bit icky. They've reverted to a more anime style and all the female characters look like they're about 8. At least in Three Houses most of the characters looked like adults. Then you hear that the localisation team had to change some of the dialogue to remove references to dating minors - and people are actually angry about that - and I'm figuring I'll probably give this one a pass.
You know what IS a massive improvement? The fact the protagonist is voiced and speaks as if they were an actual character
Shez in Three Hopes is the same, it seems to be the new direction for the series. An improvement over the weird mutes that came before.
I'm not a fan of Fire Emblem and I like Fire Emblem Engage. So, in that respect, I think it does its job? Though I'm not a fan of all the ladies being so… booby. Fan service be damned.
That is strange, isn't it? I recently played a bit of the first game on GBA, and it wasn't like that. There were decent, well-written, well-rounded, and appropriately-dressed female characters. Since then, the series does seem to have descended into "fan service" (why does that phrase just mean over-sexualising the female characters?) I find it a bit off-putting. I played the mobile game that came out a few years ago, and it was a good game but eventually drowned in it's own horniness.
"fan service" (why does that phrase just mean over-sexualising the female characters?)
It's a term from the Japanese anime community in the 70s and 80s, used to refer to shots "giving the fans what they want".
The game in motion definitely looks like quite an upgrade to Three Houses, smooth as butter, more colourful and just animation wise.
And more boobs!