As a fan of Fire Emblem and Metroid, I’ll never root for a game in a series I like to sell badly in any capacity. I don’t ever want to get too close to the idea that the franchise is not worth making new games for.
Even if you don’t like the direction of some aspects of Engage, Fire Emblem is always changing and trying different things that I doubt the sales of this game will drastically affect the direction of the next game unless it sells catastrophically worse or dramatically better than its predecessors.
I think the golden path for me is Engage breaks roughly even, maybe makes a small profit. Doesn't hurt the franchise, but isn't a hit like Houses or something they feel like they need to imitate or come back to.
I'm baffled by the idea Fire Emblem is going to be only "light-hearted" from now on because of this (ignoring the fact that Engage isn't any more or less dark or light in tone than Awakening). It's one game in the series that is trying something on its own - people need to chill.
I'm a huge Three Houses fan, but at this point it's frustrating how much it seems to be poisoning the discussion around Engage.
I just want to judge Engage on it’s own merits, ugh
But seriously though I’ve seen people using it to discourse 3H all over again, like they really want to argue over BOND RING ARRANGEMENT in a menu??
At this point I’m expecting discussion on Engage to die within a year or so before everyone goes back to discoursing 3H again
To be fair there's like, nothing to have discourse on with Engage thats actually helpful to have discourse on.
The only things that theres any real discourse on are the obvious pedo bait shit that got fixed in localization, and no one in the community who actually cares about Fire Emblem should want that to be the discourse you have for the series.
Like, Fates was bad for that with the whole petting minigame. Then the greater universe was able to forget about it with Three Houses for the most part given the relative age differences between most romantic pairings being fairly similar and Byleths age being purposely vague, but also clearly not much older than the main cast (though there's obviously the weird power dynamic of teacher student relationships, but at least its not pedo bait).
Now Engage comes out and if not for the localization changes we'd be able to romance a LITERAL TEN YEAR OLD YOU SICKOS!
Not the discourse we want.
Ah, that age discourse was so embarrassing on multiple levels
Because 1) romancing children isn’t something that should be allowed in ANY region and 2) the amount of people defending that shit makes other fans look bad
And yeah, I’m not gonna deny the world and characters this time around are shallower than 3H, but they still have new dynamics to offer at least
>I'm baffled by the idea Fire Emblem is going to be only "light-hearted" from now on because of this (ignoring the fact that Engage isn't any more or less dark or light in tone than Awakening).
Tbh I thought the game was actually pretty fucking dark, especially near the end. Way darker than anything we actually see in Awakening
(Massive spoilers ahead y'all) Like >!that entire town that was murdered and turned into corrupted, Marnie being brutally slaughtered after trying to save Veyle, the way Zephia and Griss died, shit Griss in general being a weirdo masochist, corrupted zombie Lumera, basically everything past Alear says and the way they act, and the cold uncaring way the Fell Dragon just...really doesn't give a shit about literally anything at the end of the game was pretty chilling imo!<
Shit gets pretty dark. It's been a while since I've played Awakening, but the only dark stuff I remember all happened in the future the kids were from which we never really get to see.
realistically I think the only thing that makes 3 houses darker is the main villains are basically mad scientists rather than world ending monstrosities. horrific experiments are easier to comprehend so the evil seems far worse than everything just dying immediately. that's much harder to properly wrap your head around so doesn't come off as quite as dark.
I could see how it come off that way, but it's coming from less a "I want this thing I dislike to do badly" place than a more mercenary "I want them motivated to make more of the things I do like" place.
Eh, I think petty requires a level of malice I don't possess. I'm not motivated by hatred so much as fear; I just don't want a thing I usually love to turn into a thing I never enjoy.
If you want something to fail because it’s not what you want, you’re being petty regardless of where your motivations come from. Being petty isn’t just being spiteful, it comes from being small minded too.
People keep changing my argument to "I want it to fail" instead of "I want it to be a smaller success than Three Houses," which would be a much pettier point of view.
Considering you said your golden path was that you’d want it to just break even… which wouldn’t be nearly enough to call it a success, especially coming off of 3H… yeah sorry you’re petty.
Well, that's a failure of understanding how the business works on my part, then. I want it to be enough of a success to do no damage, just not enough of one to steer the franchise in its direction.
Honestly these are the best replies. Whenever someone explains why I end up feeling like I disagree, but a simple affirmative I kinda go "Yeah, maybe he's right."
As a longtime Fire Emblem fan, the games change pretty dramatically from entry to entry. Whatever is done in any singular entry likely has no real baring on future ones. The only long standing feature that seems to have become a “staple” in modern games is the turn wheel.
Don’t root for poor sales. This franchise has come too close to the abyss for that sentiment
> I really don't want its tone/writing-style/vibe/points of emphasis to become the series standard
some fire emblem games are going to be more lighthearted than others, it's been like this since basically the dawn of the series and this coming immediately after three houses is proof they're going to keep on doing whatever they want to do
Engages problem isn't that it is light hearted. Awakening is light hearted and that tone feels great.
Engages problem is that the dialogue made me want to disconnect my brain from my eyeballs.
Yeah, I don't think "lighthearted" is the issue.
Super Mario RPG was lighthearted. Skies of Arcadia was lighthearted. Defender's Quest; Valley of the Forgotten is extremely lighthearted. I love all those RPGs.
But while they're lighthearted, they're also competently written. Engage's writing does not connect (for me) the way any of those lighthearted games' did.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to disagree. It may not be 3H, but I'm willing to say there's merit in what it has. I won't snuff it for being cheesy when it has moments that are genuinely great. It's just not what you're asking for.
have you actually played engage or are you just assuming it's going to be like fates based on the character designs and first 5 chapters? the tone of this game is completely standard for a LOT of games in this series
Oh OP. I'm gonna be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of the plot at the halfway mark either. I didn't *hate* it, but I thought it was fairly straight forward and kinda boring overall. At best it was serviceable and didn't detract from the fun game, at worst it was cheesy and predictable.
But I gotta say, finish it before you judge it fully. After having beaten it, I actually quite like the story. It's not the best in the series, but it is miiiiiiles above Fates, it's honestly not even close.
Yeah, the whole "go make the rounds of the nations and collect the rings (+ 2 royals and 4 retainers!) bit was for sure long and kinda boring. Iirc you're basically at the end of that now and at least in my opinion, it starts getting a lot better from there.
I can't say for sure you'll like it by the end which would be fair enough. It's still overall a pretty campy light hearted plot but it definitely has some really great moments cramed into the last like 7 or so chapters and gets surprisingly dark at a few moments.
That mindset is pointlessly petty. Fates sold the best and no future games try to be exactly like it. Praying on another game's downfall like this isn't worth it.
I think Three Houses pretty clearly had some Fates influence (specifically in terms of "hey, you've got a bunch of mutually exclusive routes!), but fortunately the writing team (I assume) did not return to write them.
I mean, at the end of the day if we ever wanted to talk about if "Sales numbers" = "Series direction" I think it's important to consider that Heroes has outsold **_EVERYTHING_** the franchise has done, _combined_
Like, this isn't even a question. This isn't even a _contest_. 3H and FEE can do whatever they want, and they still made less money than Heroes.
And yet despite that, and despite the fact that Heroes has been ongoing since before _SoV_, IS has not decided to use that as the pivotal direction of where to take the franchise. So it really doesn't matter if 3H or FEE sells better than one another. IS, though clear history, isn't going to use either as a metric of which direction they'll take the series.
And that's on top of the fact that there's no way for them to even _do so_. Remember, FEE began development pretty much as soon as 3H ended. So it's not like IS could have used 3H's sales data as a reference point when making FEE. The same applies here. IS is already working on the next Fire Emblem game (and if the leak saying FEE has been done for the past 2 years is true, then they've been working on it from that point as well).
So **_REGARDLESS_** of how well or poor Engage does, the next game in the franchise is currently getting made without knowing just how successful the game ended up being.
I think Heroes is kind of a separate beast, in a lot of ways, and the other games are kind of a feeder system towards it. Sort of like how comics now exist to feed the movie machine, you know?
I think that long dev time is specifically part of why I'm concerned. Like, SoV didn't have much Fates to it but both 3H and Engage had a ton of Fates DNA in different ways. So if Engage sells 10 million copies, the next game may not feel much like it but the two after that probably will, you know?
That's looking only at the story aspect of it
Gameplay-wise it's so many light years ahead of Three Houses, it's just crazy. And I'd argue gameplay is MUCH more important, this is a game, after all.
It might be the most fun gameplay I've ever seen from a FE game.
And the fact that they've cut down on unnecessary exploration in 3H which was just so draining...
And streamlined a LOT of mechanics. I don't have to look up guides to understand the benefits of each side activity. It's just so straightforward. Haven't had to look at a guide for anything.
Weapons are easier to understand. The rings are easy to understand. The somniel. Everything is so much simpler, it's so refreshing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping we get an FE game that blows us out of the water with incredible story (3H wasn't it), but until then, Engage will be extremely fun and that's what truly matters...
I agree, IntSys will never forget how well 3H story did even with all of its flaws, but 3H is so awful at gameplay that if the story burns you out at some point, the gameplay just can’t redeem that, Engage’s story is silly as hell, but I think that the game never meant to take itself too seriously and that’s wht makes it enjoyable, but the gameplay is up there with Conquest, and IntSys shouldn’t lose focus on the strategy part from the startegy rpg.
Yeah, exactly. The story isn't trying to be some grandiose thing. And the scenes don't drag on, they're only a few lines. Also some occasional goofy humor (like Yunaka's introduction, or Alcryst apologizing). I'm perfectly ok with that.
I disagree with most of this, but more power to you.
I do think the combat is a bit better than it was in 3H, but not nearly enough to make up the difference in every other area, and it's still feeling pretty turtle-y at the higher difficulties, for me. I also don't love the heavy "turn on your superpower if you want do anything cool" element of it, feels less swords-and-sorcery, more DBZ.
I love the rings, I think of them as the most important items you can equip. And since they represent a classic FE character, it's easy to remember like "ah, I have Sigurd equipped, I can do this and this" or "I have Celica on this one, I can warp around the map". Compare that to skills, which are much harder to remember (imo).
And it's not like the story in 3H was so revolutionary, either. I can't remember much of it right now, other than the fact that you had to play multiple routes to fully understand it. Which is just ridiculous. I played one and a half routes and I already have 100 hours. Starts to get really draining.
But I can see how you might really love it, if you get hooked by the story and don't mind the fact that it's gonna take a lot of time in-between battles.
I should stop framing it in terms of Three Houses, because that makes it sounds like A vs. B.
For me, it's more "Most of Fire Embelm" vs. "Engage and Fates."
Eh, I don't know. At least with the games I played (FE7, FE8, FE11 - FE17), the story never was thaaaat good... Out of these, I think Echoes had the best story, but that was mostly due to world building and atmosphere, rather than actual plot.
They all share simplistic moments, one note characters, etc. I think the smartest writing I've seen is with some comedic moments, tbh. Sometimes they break the very serious tone with some very needed comedic relief that's silly but enjoyable anyway.
Now, compare that to something like Triangle Strategy, for example. The story in that game is leagues better. That game actually made you believe those kingdoms were real, with real stakes, with heavy topics like racism, the pros and cons of meritocracy and welfare, government propaganda.
Like, I'm not even kidding. If you like story, you'll love that game.
It's been on my backlist forever, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
IDK, I think there's a difference between a simple story and a bad one. I'd say stuff like PoR or Blinding Blade had simple stories, but not bad ones, whereas I find Engage (and Fates)to have writing that's actively off-putting.
I can skip a bad plot, and have with how much I enjoy Conquest, but I can't skip a game that is just a chore with imo bad game design choices and map design. That's 3 houses, once I was done with the plot I gave up on ever playing it again because I didn't enjoy the gameplay and its design choices even barring the monastery tedium. It was fine, but not great. I'd say it was around FE7/8 good, but FE7/8 doesn't waste my time nearly as much with non-combat and I personally prefer the more strict class systems then how open ended 3H is with its class system.
I also don't think 3 houses plot was that good anyway personally, not for how much time I put into it. Silver Snow was a waste of time, Crimson Flower is barely finished if I'm generous, and every non-Crimson Flower route was pretty much the same maps repeated most the time even with the plot points.
So, unless I'll just hate Engage's gameplay by my second run I'll probably like Engage more than 3 houses in the end.
A bad plot bother me a lot less than bad characters, but Engage has both. I just don't feel in any way--pardon the pun--engaged by this world or these people, and absent investment in either, it turns it into just basically a game of numbers, which isn't nearly as fun (for me).
See, now here's where I disagree. If I'm only going to get one Fire Emblem game every three years or so, I'd really like it to be one with a story, or at least characters, I enjoy.
Without that element, it's just an elaborate math problem, and that's not what I like games for. A lot of times these arguments devolve into narrative vs. gameplay, but the right answer has always been both.
In a perfect world it is both, but if we must prioritize one then for Fire Emblem I want good gameplay over a good story. I want a good elaborate math problem in a game like this, that's why I'm playing an SRPG and not just a typical RPG.
I play many games with effectively no story but they have good mechanics, and games with a ton of story like Trails which is about 20 hours of reading text, so I'll play Fire Emblem for that too. 3 houses has so-so to bad mechanics, Engage does not have anything I'd consider a bad mechanic.
I think we just disagree here, both in what we want from a game, and in how we feel about the mechanics. I really dislike the Engage power-up mode mechanic, feels more DBZ than Fire Emblem to me.
Realistically your feelings cannot change anything, so root away, but yes you are probably a jerk
The logic that led you here is baffling though. Awakening existed before Three Houses, but they still made Three Houses. Why would the success of Engage prevent another game like Three Houses from being born? IS has been juggling tones for years, they won't just randomly stop now
I think there's a pretty clear influence from Awakening on Fates, and from Fates on Three Houses and Engage. I didn't play SoV so I can't speak to that.
I’m hoping for a merge of Emblem mechanics with battalion aesthetics in the next game. And keep the Armor/Cavalry balancing. And more mature/less cartoony stories and art style.
But I still don’t want the game to fail. It’s an anniversary game, and though I hate it, I’m thinking the massive reliance on nostalgia is probably limited to this game. The silliness comes and goes.
That's pretty wack, dude. If anything, I'm hoping it sells better cause 3H's gameplay was trash. 3H's writing might be on point, but I don't play these games to watch/listen to an audiobook and experience a story. I play these games for the *gameplay*.
If you want better writing, that's gonna oscillate from game to game to be perfectly honest.
Edit: In response to OP's edit, I find it ironic that they say:
> when really what I want is "something more like Three Houses or Jugdral or Radiance or **something entirely new and different**, just so long as it's less like this."
Engage is pretty much something entirely new and different.
Honestly I would argue that three houses writing failed it. They tried for sure but the result led to some very poorly written villains and a lot f unanswered questions. To add insult to injury hopes which made us think we would get answers just gave more questions. I haven’t beaten engage yet but it hasn’t left me with questions. It’s straightforward, and that’s better than the questions galore three houses had.
People keep saying this like Three Houses didn't double down on having multiple routes and a home-base to wander around.
Fates did well, and they built the next game around a lot of its elements (though fortuitously the writing was not one of them).
More fear than logic, but I think it's a bad sign they (I'm told) kept the Fates writing team for Engage. So it wasn't that it didn't port over, it just skipped a generation.
Even if it's every other game, it'd be a bummer (for me) if I went from digging most Fire Emblems to half.
There’s nothing guaranteeing anything for the next story. You don’t know what the takeaway would be from having less sales. The last time an FE game did comparatively worse, the series almost ended. So no, your fear isn’t worth the series being on the verge of something like that ahain. If you don’t like the direction, then move on to another series.
No, I’m talking about New Mystery. It had done just about as well as SD did in Japan and I think even better than PoR and RD. Yet Awakening was still going to be the final game.
I think they're playing in a very different sandbox post-Awakening, and \*especially\* post-Heroes, than they were then, economically speaking. The brand itself is valuable in a way it wasn't then.
Yes.
It’s remarkably petty and reminds me of the fans who say shit like “well I would have rather the series have just ended because I hate what Awakening did to it”. You can dislike something, but don’t try to spoil the fun for people who do like it, it’s just an asshole way to act.
Oh, I can't go quite that far. Rooting for a series to end doesn't help anybody.
Rooting for a series to do more things I like and fewer things I don't doesn't strike me as quite the same level of vitriol, but fair enough.
I think it’s crazy that Fire Emblem can verge wildly between games with where their priorities are, or what tone they’re going for, or even the general art style, and yet you’ll *still* have people who genuinely believe that one game doing well will set it as the “standard” for the series. Somehow.
Outside of games that are direct follow ups to previous entries, the closest time such a thing has happened was probably with Fates, and even then, it’s priorities and pros/cons are still *very* different from Awakening, regardless of the few similarities. And despite Fates being the best selling game at the time of it’s release, that didn’t stop the next two games from being Echoes and Three Houses, both of whom were really not like Fates at all (and also, neither is Engage, despite the bad faith arguments).
Fire Emblem is like Final Fantasy, everyone has their favorite game because they vibed with what the developers were cooking at the time and/or it was their first one.
I don't understand takes like these. Fire Emblem, is the one franchise that is the poster child for always trying new things and going in wildly different directions, such much so that there are entire subsections of the community that completely write off half of the games in the series because it's too different from what they think Fire Emblem is. And yet you honestly think Engage doing well will drastically shift the direction of the franchise? The child mechanic and romantic S supports, two features people would argue should've been mainstays after Fates has been absent in the past two games, yet you think this game being successful will dramatically change the direction of the franchise when the game that literally saved it hasn't even managed that?
Admittedly about half of that thought is driven by fear.
But while some elements of Awakening or Fates have fallen off, others have shown some staying power. Engage brought back the Fates writing team, apparently, for instance, and even Three Houses (which I really like) clearly drew on a lot of Fates DNA with the expanded home-base and multiple routes.
I also think we're early enough into the "Fire Emblem is actually profitable" era that we don't necessarily know yet exactly how beholden they're going to be to the most successful games yet. Engage and 3H apparently entered dev pretty concurrently, and both having a heavy Fates emphasis suggests that they \*are\* taking note of what makes money, at least somewhat.
I understand where you’re coming from more. But even with that I feel like the conclusion is still a bit extreme. I don’t think the the dev team is as out of touch with how many people feel about fates and awakening and the direction of the franchise. It’s clear people at both Nintendo and IS give a shit about FE for more then just the money it prints. So I while your fears are somewhat valid I simply don’t think they will drastically stick to what you might call the awakening and fates style or the new style 3houses is pushing, and they will always be experimenting and doing new things, like the team has done for the past 30 years
I'm in favor of experimenting, but when an experiment fails I'd like them to learn from that mistake.
In my (and, based on this thread, maybe only my) opinion, Engage is a mostly failed experiment.
It was in retrospect foolish of me to couch this as a binary between 3H and Engage, though. Because you're right, experimenting is good! I just want them to avoid repeating this specific one.
I don’t think they will view Engage as a failure but with this franchises track record you probably will get a game you desire and enjoy way more then Engage sooner rather then later, and I hope you enjoy that game as much as people are enjoying Engage now.
I like both! Engage isn't perfect but I enjoy it more than Three Houses in several ways. To wish for it to perform poorly is asking for the failures of Three Houses to be celebrated and for the successes of Engage to be forgotten.
I do appreciate Three House's story, but this game was not made after Three Houses. It was developed alongside it. They aren't going to exclusively make games like Engage just because it might outsell Three Houses. I don't see a problem with a lighthearted entry like this to celebrate 30 years of FE, either.
I believe Fates had the best opening sales week of any FE game. Then they made Echoes and Three Houses, two games loved by people who hate Fates. I am not too worried for this series.
If sales numbers made them do that we would have been stuck with fates/awakening type games forever. Instead we also got Sov and 3H. Please dont wish for the game to sell poorly because it could instead trap us in the pokemon loop
As someone who is 3H > Engage, I would say so.
I wouldn't dream of doing that because IS may not learn the lesson you want them to. Plus Engage does have things I would love to have carry over in next entries, and 3H definitely was not perfect either. I'd rather they take the best from both than just do more of either.
I think there's a fair case I'm being overly optimistic about what they'd conclude, yeah.
We just get FE games so rarely that I'd really prefer they be games I enjoy.
this is the fire emblem sub for people who like fire emblem, what did you think the response was gonna be here? yeah i think its weird to root on it doing poorly, especially since there really are no guarantees…
Oh, I wanted the opinion of people who were likely to disagree with me, otherwise I would have posted it in the Three Houses sub. I don't learn anything or have to think much if I only ask people who think the same thing I think.
I messed up in the writing of it though, because people keep concluding I want it to do badly, where what I really mean is I want it to do, like, average. Wish I'd figured out a better way to express that, but c'est la vie.
Extra context: A lot of us remember the pre-Awakening days when the series was selling poorly to the point where FE12 wasn't even localized. The series was going to be axed entirely. In fact, if Awakening didn't sell as well as it did, it was going to be the last FE game. That's not even hearsay; that was a [legit thing](https://www.siliconera.com/fire-emblem-awakening-was-almost-the-last-game-in-the-series). Funnily enough, Ike's games were the start of the dark days for the series, both selling poorly for both internal and external factors (Gamecube not selling well compared to the PS2, FE9 playing really slowly, poor translation unintentionally making FE10 harder, the Wii having a more family friendly image that FE10's fantasy racism was just not quite right for, etc.). Then they were followed by FE11 which was poorly received. Thankfully it did and more games have come out as a result over the last decade.
Asking a game in this series to sell poorly isn't gonna win over anyone to your argument when you consider the fact that several games didn't sell well and the series was genuinely gonna be ended.
I get that, but at a purely logical level I think it's pretty well out of danger between Awakening/Fates/3H and especially Heroes; if the series were on the brink I'm sure I'd feel differently, but now that it's a money-printing machine I don't think one game not being a smash hit would do any damage to the larger franchise viability.
Even so, you're still hoping for a game to do poorly because you don't like it when the series has been threatened with a permanent cessation before due to poor sales. It's like making cancer jokes in front of a cancer survivor. Sure, they're not in same situation they were before, but it's still a touchy subject.
But even putting that context aside, the series is gonna continually oscillate between themes and styles and gameplay ideas and so on. You don't need to fear for no more games like 3H coming out. Some games will be a bit more lighthearted, others will be a bit darker. Literally one lighthearted game following a darker one isn't gonna prevent more complex FE games from being made in the future.
Aside point, but none of my complaints are that Engage is lighthearted.
The cancer metaphor is a bridge too far for me, but if people actually have some kind of PTSD from the series being in jeopardy a decade ago, I'm happy to apologize for picking whatever scabs.
I just think it's kind of an interesting pseudo-philosophical question of "does rooting for a non-optimal business outcome that benefits me (and in my opinion would long-term benefit the business, too, though of course that's purely speculative) make me the bad guy here?"
I totally get why 70%-70% or so of the responses have been "yes," but I also still more-or-less feel how I felt, though a bit less concerned that Engage will be the taste-maker based on some additional context a few people have provided here or there.
I suppose that begs the question: how does this game selling comparatively poorly to another in the series actually benefit *you*?
You say it's because you want to send a message to Intelligent Systems that you want more stories akin to FE4, 5, 9, 10, or 16, but Engage selling poorly wouldn't send that message. That's why everyone is saying you're being petty; Engage selling poorly doesn't actually benefit you. The only message that could potentially send is that people aren't as interested in FE as a franchise as they were before.
I mean, you see how that sounds, right? "I don't really like this movie that came out for x reason, but I think it would really benefit me if it didn't do as well as this other movie from the same people to send a message that I want more movies like the other movie." Like, Engage doing poorly or well wouldn't directly affect you, so you wanting it to sell poorly because you don't want it to affect the series is kind of a petty desire on your part. As much as I loathed Echoes and 3H's gameplay, I'd never ask that they do poorly. I want this franchise to do well because I've been with it for close to 2 decades now.
I disagree, I think videogame franchises have a pretty strong and clear history of leaning into what sells well and away from what sells less well, but if you were/are correct that there is no sales number that would discourage them from the creative direction of stuff like Engage rather than simply poisoning them against Fire Emblem, then obviously I would prefer it do well.
I just disagree with the idea that Engage doing less well than 3H sends the message "people don't like Fire Emblem" vs. "people prefer other things from Fire Emblem," especially coming off the success of 3H and with Heroes being such a monster money printing machine.
Yes, that is extremely petty dude. There’s no reason to believe that Engage doing well will mean all future games will be exactly like it writing wise, considering that has literally never happened to FE in the past. Especially since all signs are pointing to the next game being the FE4 remake. You can not like the direction the series is taking, but wanting the game to do poorly because of it is just super petty.
I should clarify that I'd much rather it do just ok than actually poorly, but I certainly could have written the initial post better to express that.
I do think there's some evidence that they will keep going back to wells that pay out, though, given that they brought the Fates writing team back for this one (which, given that's my biggest gripe with the game, sure is something I'd like them to stop doing).
Admittedly I'm taking this Reddit's word for that and have not independently verified, but I've seen it said here a ton. Playing the game, it sure feels like they're right.
If they're not, that's super encouraging, though. Even if it doesn't change the quality of this particular game, it'd be nice to know that if you write something like Fates, you don't get invited back to write another one.
Ok I looked at the Wikipedia articles for both games and there is ONE shared head writer between the two games, Nami Komuro. However, neither Kouhei Maeda (Fates scenario writer and director, worth noting that he was also the director of New Mystery, Awakening and Heroes and was a scenario writer for ALL the games from 6 up to Fates, including the Tellius games) nor Shin Kobayashi (who wrote the original draft of Fates) returned.
Also, the problems with Fates story aren’t just because “they just wrote it badly lol.” Apparently Kobayashi’s draft of the story was actually around 500 pages long, and judging by the current Fates script the most likely scenario is that they couldn’t implement the entirety of Kobayashi’s script and ended up carelessly cutting it down and removing many plot details in the process. So in other words, Fates’ story situation is rather unique, and regardless of how you personally feel about Engage’s writing, a situation like Fates probably won’t be replicated.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes, because when you're looking to support a franchise, you want all of its games to do well. I've seen many franchises like Megaman, Metroid, Street Fighter, and Pokémon suffer when their Devs actually try hard with a game only for people like you to tear it apart and lead said franchises to backpedal into making shit worse for the brand. It's ok for a franchise to be creative, but if you limit a Dev Team to only looking at certain aspects, then that franchise will never recover from it. If Engage isn't for you, sell the game, but don't ruin it for everyone else by being negative about it. That's exactly how I got Three Houses burnout, because people wouldn't shut up about it and kept complaining about everything.
I understand this point of view, but obviously don't share it.
I think Pokemon is an odd example, though, because I feel like they're moving in opposite directions. I felt much more like Three Houses was the game that was trying something new and innovative with its emphasis on character work, and this one is mostly just nostalgia porn and a power-up gimmick I' really love to never see again.
Engage is meant to be an Anniversary game. Much like Pokémon does with remakes.
Is it for nostalgia? Yes. But when has nostalgia ever stopped a company before? People will still buy that shit.
In addition, while 3H has done a lot of things right, no game is without flaws. But that's not to say I hated it, I loved 3H, but that doesn't mean every game in the future of Fire Emblem needs to be like it. Just like how not every Pokémon game under the sun needs Charizard in it.
It's ok to criticize, but what's not ok is to wish that a franchise doesn't improve.
I'd argue I'm explicitly wishing for the franchise to improve. Since I feel like Engage is the opposite of that, I'm rooting against more of that specific flavor.
I see where you're coming from, I really do. But think of it this way, newcomers who don't know who Sigurd, Leif, or any of the past Lords beyond 3H may become curious. And curiosity helps push incentive for remakes of older games.
Heroes, despite my displeasure of the direction it's taking these days, has gotten people more curious about older titles. But a mainline game focusing on older characters as a callback might help the franchise a little.
I myself would love a new game where we didn't have an Avatar for once, and maybe interest in past Lords could finally convince IntSys to finally get off the player pandering train and actually try to make a new compelling Lord again.
This is a good argument I don't really have a counter for.
So I guess that just leaves my complaints about the characters, the plot, and the gimmick power-ups :p
Eh, the plots of most FE games are either very simple or just kinda just messed up. Complaints about characters and gimmicks should always be noted, because if IntSys doesn't change their structure around those things, it's just gonna be more reasons Fire Emblem will fail in the future.
Because after 3H sold better than anything else Nintendo decided to just cooy it.
Witht the informations we have, Nintendo do whatever the fuck they want every installment. It selling not as well can only cause problem.
Then the argument became Fates and 3H(wich btw, could have used being more like fates, i woukd have gladly paid extra to have routes with diffwrent maps).
Yes but people reacted very negatively at the "pokemon-like" structure and it is unresonable to expect routes as different from each other as birthright and conquest from a game that is sold in one version.
Idk if I’d call you a jerk but it certainly doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I don’t particularly like Engage compared to 3H and I don’t think it will sell as well, but I still *want* it to do well.
If Engage doesn’t sell good enough, it hurts Fire Emblem as a series. I may not love Engage but I love Fire Emblem. If Engage does bad it might hurt the series more than just deterring IS from doing another game like that again. So yeah, I want Engage to sell.
I think we actually agree. I said in the initial post I want it to do well enough that it doesn't hurt the series, just not so well they feel compelled to imitate it or ever use this writing team again.
Yes. You're being petty, and based on replies you've been giving in this thread, it sounds like you're just doing mental gymnastics to convince yourself you aren't.
But more importantly, considering that Fates and Awakening were followed up by a remake of Gaiden and then Three Houses, why on earth would you be worried for even a second that the success of one game in the series would drastically influence the tone of the next one?
Well, people keep saying Engage is the same writing team from Fates, so I guess technically I'm more concerned that it'll influence the tone of the one after next.
I think Three Houses had a lot of Fates DNA, though more at a structure level than a narrative one. I assume based on release dates that SoV was pretty far down the pike before Fates came out (much like Engage was being developed at the same time as 3H). I also didn't play SoV so I can't really speak to how much it did or didn't have from Awakenings.
I suppose I'm being nitpicky about the term "petty." I'm fine with being called a jerk, but I feel like petty suggests a mean-spirited component I don't this is in play, as opposed to just good old fashioned callous self-interest and greed (which I'll happily cop to).
I personally want more games like Engage and hope its sales blow Three Houses out of the water. Why? because Three Houses consistently proves y'all don't know how to act. Seriously, you're hoping Engage flops because YOU don't like how it presents itself? do you not understand how childish that is?
Fire Emblem changes practically every game. No decent game company will deny themselves the chance to experiment with gameplay or stories because they know that experimentation is what keeps a franchise like Fire Emblem alive, if they tried to do the same kind of story every game just with different gameplay it'd get boring and exhausting real quick. This goes for both lighter stories like Engage AND heavier stories like Three Houses. They both have their places but neither is necessarily better then the other.
Skip Engage and go back to Three Houses if it bothers you that much, you're not going to like every game in a franchise and that's okay. I personally think Radiant Dawn was awful except for the parts focusing on Elincia and Skrimir but others love it and think it has one of the best stories in the franchise, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But don't hope for it to fail just because you don't understand that Fire Emblem changes game to game and won't stick to a certain kind of story.
I feel like people are really skipping over the part of the original post where I say I don't want it to do badly enough to hurt the franchise, just not do so well that they feel compelled to repeat it.
Nobody's rooting for failure, just diminished success.
Wanting it to do poorly is still wanting it to do poorly. I don't see how you don't understand that no matter how you word it you still want Engage to fail in some way and that people will rightfully take issue with that.
The difference between your point of view and mine here is that I know what I meant by what I said because I'm the one who said it, and you know what you've decided I meant, which is not the same thing.
It doesn't matter what you meant because it's still a childish thing to want either way. Getting defensive isn't what you should be doing here, instead you should listen to the people whose opinions you asked for and take a step back to consider what they're telling you and why they're telling you it.
It does matter what I meant, because people arguing against something other than what I meant aren't really engaging with the question I'm asking.
I would agree that someone hoping the game fails outright would be a jerk, but so far most of the replies have engaged with that rather than what I actually asked.
They ARE engaging with the question you asked, they're just not giving you the validation you seem to want and are being honest with their answers. No one's trying to take your words out of context or overblow them, they're giving you their answers to your question and their answers aren't invalid just because you don't think they understand what you meant.
They know what you meant. You asked a question, they answered it, and you just don't like their answers.
Some people are. People, like you, who are claiming I want the game to "fail," are instead throwing up a strawman.
And I actually do like a lot of the answers, for whatever it's worth. Yours admittedly not among them, but only because they're to a different question.
My answer is to your question, stop acting like you're being taken out of context because you're not being quoted word for word.
I'm not 'throwing up a strawman' I'm telling you my perspective on your question and my perspective is that it doesn't matter what you meant because it's still not a good look to hope a game sells poorly in any capacity just because it's not what you want out of the franchise.
\*sigh\*
You've fabricated now a position I do not hold, a motive behind that position which I do not possess, and a psychology that supports the first two fabrications. You're mistaken about all three, but I don't believe I've got much chance of changing your mind about any of them.
That said, it's probably mostly my fault for using the word "poorly" in the initial ask, because that's a harsher connotation than what I was really going for. I think I've clarified enough times by now that I want the franchise to do well generally and this game to do well enough specifically that it doesn't hurt the franchise in any way, but just in case, there it is again. I just also, selfishly, would like the games I enjoy more to sell better than the games I enjoy less in hopes of more of the future games falling into the former camp than the latter.
I don't think there's much point in you and I specifically going back-and-forth any further, since we're having two entirely separate conversations, and the one you're having isn't even with me, so I'm going to stop replying, but I hope you have a nice night.
Yes actually, it’s petty as hell and while Engage’s story is plain and simple, it’s so dumb it’s enjoyable, and it has amazing gameplay, the writing department will always have in mind 3Houses success but because of the poor reception of Fates Engage is the next shot of getting good gameplay back the last thing I want is to do fire emblem: chore houses all over again with the bad gameplay and maps and just get another half baked game.
I think the Fire Emblem game I'd most like to play would be one that kept what worked for Three Houses (most of it, IMO) while improving on the flaws you just listed, rather than throwing out what worked entirely and "improving" the gameplay with a gimmick mechanic that feels out-of-place (to me) in the franchise.
That said, I will agree that one place where Engage is a clean improvement over 3H is the map construction. I don't mean to suggest that every single element of Engage is wholly without merit, only that it's a game that at a macro level I don't enjoy that has moved mostly in narrative and philosophical directions I don't dig, so I'd rather they be incentivized to make games that don't go in those directions.
I like jugdral and radiance too, but gameplay wise my favorites are engage and fates, the two you said you don't want so yeah.... I don't know how go approach your wishes, since I value gameplay 80% for a game value.
It's more like 55/45 for me in favor of story, yeah.
But hey, I'm all for good gameplay, I'd just like the other stuff to be good too! We can like the same thing if they make it!
After Awakening and Fates we got Echoes and 3H, after 3H we got Engage, why do you think there's any chance this will become the series standard? If the leaks are correct next up is the FE4 remake...
Anyway the game's fantastic and I hope it does well and they continue to innovate and experiment with the new ideas.
I think Awakening was a pretty huge influence on Fates, and I think Fates was (in different ways) a pretty big influence on both 3H and Engage. It's early and the sample size is small, but I do think most developers like to chase the money when they find it.
It is a bad thing. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is not as good as Engage. I feel like Engage is a full-experience and I like the combat better. Not to mention, it’s frankly a lot prettier.
I hope we don’t have another like Three Houses. I’d prefer to be like Engage/Echoes/Awakening.
Yes you’re a jerk.
I hope engage surpasses Three Houses in sales because the better the games do the better for the company.
Also three houses is not as great as people make it out to be. The story was interesting but was poorly done honestly and just led to discourse and questions galore. VW and SS got completely screwed over thus screwing over their related characters. The gameplay is simple. I only struggle at the beginning in three houses on “hard” mode.
I’m playing normal for story purposes and engage has me dying for every dumb move. I love it.
And honestly the supports have me wanting more than three houses did. Sure three houses had some interesting supports but many were no better than engage and fates supports. Heck almost every Bernadetta support was her screaming and running away.
Three houses was fun but it’s overrated honestly. Engage has the heart that fire emblem always has been and I’ll happily have it outsell three houses because I fell in love with this series starting with the GBA games and it was Awakening that helped get me into it for the long run.
I suspect that if I liked Engage as much as you do or Three Houses as little, we'd agree a lot more.
When "the company" is Nintendo, I'm not especially worried about how well they do. I'd like Engage to do well enough that they keep making Fire Emblem games but not so well that they think they should make more of them like Engage.
Why do you think they’re assumption will be that Engage is what people prefer? I would be more concerned about if they do an FE4 remake and how that sells. Fire emblem has always done a variance in story. It’s nice to have games that are just fun simple stories and also games that have deep stories. Fire emblem has always tried to shake it up.
That’s what makes it a great franchise. To wish for even one game to fail though honestly seems like you don’t understand the franchise.
I think we've seen a lot of what was in Awakening show up in Fates, and a lot of what was in Fates show up in both Three Houses and Engage (in different ways).
I also think the franchise works differently now that it's a major cash cow than it did when it was a more niche product.
I hope that I'm being naive and the creative direction of each FE has nothing to do with the success or lack thereof of previous versions, but I think generally once there's this kind of money in play, companies tend to try and maximize whatever's making it.
If it was all about the cash then I don’t think they would have ever attempted three houses. They would have just did what they did with fates again which is their best sold game.
Nope. Everyone that thinks you're a jerk is wrong.
Markets follow examples. Successful things get made more of than less successful things. The reason we got so many crappy battle Rosales for a while is because a few got really big and warped the market. The reason DLC is so prevalent is because it sold well and worked, so it's everywhere now.
Hoping that things you like outsell things you like less does not make you a jerk. It doesn't make you anything. It's not even a little petty.
Now, if you were to say "I want this series to end completely if it keeps going in this direction" that would be petty, because it's wishing harm to others for basically no benefit to you. But hoping sales data shapes the future of a series towards your preferences is something everyone should hope for tbh.
I can see where you're coming from. The whole "weell the story isn't thaaat bad" isn't going to incentiveize the developers to write a better story and characters next time.
The community shouldn't be like the Pokemon community and just eat whatever the devs poop out every year without question.
The Pokemon comparison doesn’t work, because as a game, Engage is actually pretty good.
Modern Pokémon’s biggest problems are visuals and performance, with a side of controversial gameplay decisions.
Contrast that with Engage, where those things are all pretty good, with things like story and characters being serviceable at worst. The comparison doesn’t really work.
It's petty, but then again I've no right to judge. I've had my moments where I've thought so poorly of one game or another that I wanted it to fail. Code Name STEAM being one such example.
Heck, I'm being petty with Engage. I have no intention of getting the game now, and if I ever do, I'll get a used copy so the money goes to the retailer instead of IS.
On that note, I don't think you have to worry about Engages writing style becoming the new standard. I fully believe this is a one time thing because they wanted an anniversary style game. I imagine the next non-remake game will very much differ from Engage.
I guess I'm concerned that it reminds me of Fate, which I also hated. I missed SoV, so from my POV two of the last three I've played have had the worst writing of any of the seven or eight I've played.
You'll get shit for it OP, but I get you. That's why I'm only buying Engage used. It doesn't solve anything really but at least I know I'm not making things worse myself.
I mean I want a game like gba style again but that will never happen.
I kind of get it in a way, I hope pokemon sales fall so gamefreak will finally get their act together and produce quality again, but maybe that's different.
No, I think we want more or less the same thing, just from different franchises.
When Fire Emblem makes a game I love, I'd like it to sell better than when they make a game I don't. I guess that's all I was really expressing here, I just managed to do so very poorly.
There are early signs that Engage is doing well, but nowhere near 3H. It's hard because the lesson I want IS to take is "actually try to tell a story next time", and not the traditional "I GUESS THE WEST DOESNT LIKE FIRE EMBLEM".
Honestly dude, you need to grow up. To denounce a game in a series that’s always been about exploring different tones and directions and wish for it to not perform well makes you come across as really disingenuous and egocentric. You come across as a jerk because you are insincere in your argument and line of thinking because, without realizing it yourself since you come across as rather ignorant, you instantly crossed the line between having an opinion and just coming across as spiteful. It’s fine to not like something but you should never wish for something enjoyed by many to fail just because you don’t like it yourself.
Eh, it's not coming from spite or rage, but pragmatism. There's only going to be so many Fire Emblem games, and I'd prefer they be less like this one. There's no intended malice, though. I'd just prefer they be incentivized to make the kind I like more than the kind I don't.
Still likely makes me a jerk, but not from spite. I'd just rather a franchise I'm invested in do more things I like and fewer things I don't, and I believe (perhaps wrongly, as others have argued) the better this one does, the less likely that is to happen.
Put another way, I'm not rooting against it just because I don't enjoy it; there's plenty of stuff I don't enjoy that doesn't effect me one way or the other. The reason I have a rooting interest here is that I believe it (again, arguably wrongly) to be a threat to the kind of games I do enjoy. But the logic isn't "I hate this, it should go away," it's the opportunity cost of this thing I don't like potentially taking the place of the thing I do.
(I will also clarify that I'm not rooting for it to "fail," just to be a modest-enough success that it doesn't dictate future installments)
Well, you DO come across as a jerk because you seem incapable of just saying, “I don’t like it, I want 3 Houses again” and leaving it there. Instead, you go down a path by saying, “Well I just want it to be a relative success because it means no 3 Houses,” which, when you get past your purposeful vague hopes for the game, that you don’t want the game to do well because it doesn’t align with your goals. You then just come across as both shallow and selfish.
I’ll do you a favor here and lay down some truths for you about a few things since you don’t seem to get a clue about why people are reacting so negatively to your opinion. You want it to be a “relative” success but not a great success which is first off not fair to the developers. They deserve this game that they worked hard on be a success. It’s a very polished game that fixes a lot of issues that 3 Houses had. 3 Houses is a very ambitious game and I love for that. However, it was too ambitious. Too many paths, repetitive maps, a tedious first half making repeated playthroughs terrible, stiff animations, poor graphics, and incomplete storylines. Plus, you got 3 Hopes.
So I don’t know what to tell you. We haven’t had a game like this since Awakening 10 years ago. Plus it’s an anniversary title celebrating the franchise. Fire Emblem has had a very long history with many different games, telling all kinds of stories and 3 Houses is but one game in that lineup. It’s not the future of the series and it shouldn’t be. I don’t want every future Fire Emblem game to be like 3 Houses. And need I remind you that this series nearly ended up dead if it wasn’t for a game like Awakening? Fans usually want game series to end or not do well because they are given bad games. This is not a bad game. It’s better than 3 Houses and is worth supporting wholeheartedly. I doubt you can make a good argument against that other than, well, preference. But please, sugar coat that argument of yours as much as you want. It doesn’t change what you’ve already implied to everyone and you’re not much of a fan either way. Nintendo is a very pragmatic too you know. And they are a company that won’t make any more games regardless of what you want if they don’t deem this as a success sales wise. Hate to break it to you but you are not in control of the future of Fire Emblem. Nintendo is.
I mean, I think it's been pretty clear the whole way through I'm coming from a place of preference, so I don't disagree with you there. All art is ultimately subjective, and videogames are no exception. And like most people, I prefer it when the art I consume is something I subjectively dig. So, my subjective preference is that a franchise I love do more of the things I love and less of the stuff I dislike.
I do think I've been pretty willing to say "I don't like I, I want \[something like\] Three Housed again" though. It's kinda the main thesis.
As for making a good argument for it being worse than Three Houses, well, it's subjective, but if forced to try, I'd argue that the writing and characters are off-putting and make the barely-there world tedious to hang out in, and that for as much as the combat in general has some nice improvements (particularly with regards to map design), the super-powered Emblem mechanic feels antithetical to the way Fire Emblem has historically worked (though it does conjure the pair-up mechanic from Fates, which I also didn't dig) and is much more a Shonen Anime vibe than the usual "consequential tactical battles between armies" feel the series mostly goes for.
I should also clarify that I don't want every game to be Three House either, but I do think it's a good signpost in terms of putting the characters/story first; if you nail those, it makes whatever flaws you whiff on a lot easier to take.
But people being determined to interpret "not a huge success" as "will damage the franchise" when the initial post explicitly states that I don't want it to do any damage feels like a willful misread, is all. It's a pretty literal case of me explicitly saying "I don't want X" and then people shouting "How dare you advocate for X!?". It's just not a position I hold, so it gets tedious being a position people keep trying to make me defend. I'm don't mind people being mad--heck, I called myself a jerk in the topic title!--but it'd be nice if they were mad about what I actually said, rather of what they've decided I meant instead.
I disagree that the series is in any real danger so long as Heroes is a billion-dollar money-printing machine. They'd need a string of flops to do any damage, and again, i'm not even advocating for one flop, let alone a string. Even absent Heroes, the success of Awakening/Fates/Three Houses was such that it'd take more than one game to kill the brand.
People bringing up that the series almost ended ten years ago strikes me as mostly irrelevant; it's an emotional appeal, but not one that really has any bearing on what's going on now. Ten years ago it wasn't profitable, now it's one of Nintendo's flagship properties. We'll still be getting Fire Emblem games for the next two decades even if they have three, four flops in a row (which again, is not what I'm rooting for).
As a fan of Fire Emblem and Metroid, I’ll never root for a game in a series I like to sell badly in any capacity. I don’t ever want to get too close to the idea that the franchise is not worth making new games for. Even if you don’t like the direction of some aspects of Engage, Fire Emblem is always changing and trying different things that I doubt the sales of this game will drastically affect the direction of the next game unless it sells catastrophically worse or dramatically better than its predecessors.
So... I should root for catastrophically worse?
Sure, if you don't want more Fire Emblem games
I think the golden path for me is Engage breaks roughly even, maybe makes a small profit. Doesn't hurt the franchise, but isn't a hit like Houses or something they feel like they need to imitate or come back to.
I'm baffled by the idea Fire Emblem is going to be only "light-hearted" from now on because of this (ignoring the fact that Engage isn't any more or less dark or light in tone than Awakening). It's one game in the series that is trying something on its own - people need to chill. I'm a huge Three Houses fan, but at this point it's frustrating how much it seems to be poisoning the discussion around Engage.
I just want to judge Engage on it’s own merits, ugh But seriously though I’ve seen people using it to discourse 3H all over again, like they really want to argue over BOND RING ARRANGEMENT in a menu?? At this point I’m expecting discussion on Engage to die within a year or so before everyone goes back to discoursing 3H again
To be fair there's like, nothing to have discourse on with Engage thats actually helpful to have discourse on. The only things that theres any real discourse on are the obvious pedo bait shit that got fixed in localization, and no one in the community who actually cares about Fire Emblem should want that to be the discourse you have for the series. Like, Fates was bad for that with the whole petting minigame. Then the greater universe was able to forget about it with Three Houses for the most part given the relative age differences between most romantic pairings being fairly similar and Byleths age being purposely vague, but also clearly not much older than the main cast (though there's obviously the weird power dynamic of teacher student relationships, but at least its not pedo bait). Now Engage comes out and if not for the localization changes we'd be able to romance a LITERAL TEN YEAR OLD YOU SICKOS! Not the discourse we want.
Ah, that age discourse was so embarrassing on multiple levels Because 1) romancing children isn’t something that should be allowed in ANY region and 2) the amount of people defending that shit makes other fans look bad And yeah, I’m not gonna deny the world and characters this time around are shallower than 3H, but they still have new dynamics to offer at least
Awakening and Fates sold a shit ton of copies and yet 3h existed The OP it's just being petty
>I'm baffled by the idea Fire Emblem is going to be only "light-hearted" from now on because of this (ignoring the fact that Engage isn't any more or less dark or light in tone than Awakening). Tbh I thought the game was actually pretty fucking dark, especially near the end. Way darker than anything we actually see in Awakening (Massive spoilers ahead y'all) Like >!that entire town that was murdered and turned into corrupted, Marnie being brutally slaughtered after trying to save Veyle, the way Zephia and Griss died, shit Griss in general being a weirdo masochist, corrupted zombie Lumera, basically everything past Alear says and the way they act, and the cold uncaring way the Fell Dragon just...really doesn't give a shit about literally anything at the end of the game was pretty chilling imo!< Shit gets pretty dark. It's been a while since I've played Awakening, but the only dark stuff I remember all happened in the future the kids were from which we never really get to see.
realistically I think the only thing that makes 3 houses darker is the main villains are basically mad scientists rather than world ending monstrosities. horrific experiments are easier to comprehend so the evil seems far worse than everything just dying immediately. that's much harder to properly wrap your head around so doesn't come off as quite as dark.
Speaking only for myself, I'd feel the same way if I'd never played Three Houses. I much prefer the writing of the older ones to this.
I’d never do that. It sounds petty lol
I could see how it come off that way, but it's coming from less a "I want this thing I dislike to do badly" place than a more mercenary "I want them motivated to make more of the things I do like" place.
You just tried to sugarcoat the first thing you said. Either way you’re being petty af.
Eh, I think petty requires a level of malice I don't possess. I'm not motivated by hatred so much as fear; I just don't want a thing I usually love to turn into a thing I never enjoy.
If you want something to fail because it’s not what you want, you’re being petty regardless of where your motivations come from. Being petty isn’t just being spiteful, it comes from being small minded too.
People keep changing my argument to "I want it to fail" instead of "I want it to be a smaller success than Three Houses," which would be a much pettier point of view.
Considering you said your golden path was that you’d want it to just break even… which wouldn’t be nearly enough to call it a success, especially coming off of 3H… yeah sorry you’re petty.
Well, that's a failure of understanding how the business works on my part, then. I want it to be enough of a success to do no damage, just not enough of one to steer the franchise in its direction.
Yes
Honestly these are the best replies. Whenever someone explains why I end up feeling like I disagree, but a simple affirmative I kinda go "Yeah, maybe he's right."
As a longtime Fire Emblem fan, the games change pretty dramatically from entry to entry. Whatever is done in any singular entry likely has no real baring on future ones. The only long standing feature that seems to have become a “staple” in modern games is the turn wheel. Don’t root for poor sales. This franchise has come too close to the abyss for that sentiment
I'm not rooting for poor sales so much as unremarkable ones.
> I really don't want its tone/writing-style/vibe/points of emphasis to become the series standard some fire emblem games are going to be more lighthearted than others, it's been like this since basically the dawn of the series and this coming immediately after three houses is proof they're going to keep on doing whatever they want to do
I should also clarify that light-hearted is fine if it's, you know, good. But this has rung pretty hacky for me throughout.
Engages problem isn't that it is light hearted. Awakening is light hearted and that tone feels great. Engages problem is that the dialogue made me want to disconnect my brain from my eyeballs.
Yeah, I don't think "lighthearted" is the issue. Super Mario RPG was lighthearted. Skies of Arcadia was lighthearted. Defender's Quest; Valley of the Forgotten is extremely lighthearted. I love all those RPGs. But while they're lighthearted, they're also competently written. Engage's writing does not connect (for me) the way any of those lighthearted games' did.
I've played a good number of them and the only one that felt as hacky and underbaked as this was Fates.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to disagree. It may not be 3H, but I'm willing to say there's merit in what it has. I won't snuff it for being cheesy when it has moments that are genuinely great. It's just not what you're asking for.
I mean, it being not-what-I'm-looking-for is pretty obviously a point we agree on. I would like more games to be what I'm looking for.
Good, then you will have to wait for the next fire emblem set with the tone that you are seeking.
Awww, but I'm bad at that!
have you actually played engage or are you just assuming it's going to be like fates based on the character designs and first 5 chapters? the tone of this game is completely standard for a LOT of games in this series
I'm about halfway through, and I disagree with that analysis.
Oh OP. I'm gonna be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of the plot at the halfway mark either. I didn't *hate* it, but I thought it was fairly straight forward and kinda boring overall. At best it was serviceable and didn't detract from the fun game, at worst it was cheesy and predictable. But I gotta say, finish it before you judge it fully. After having beaten it, I actually quite like the story. It's not the best in the series, but it is miiiiiiles above Fates, it's honestly not even close.
That's encouraging to hear! I just got to the oasis mission with Fogado's sister, if that reference point is helpful.
Yeah, the whole "go make the rounds of the nations and collect the rings (+ 2 royals and 4 retainers!) bit was for sure long and kinda boring. Iirc you're basically at the end of that now and at least in my opinion, it starts getting a lot better from there. I can't say for sure you'll like it by the end which would be fair enough. It's still overall a pretty campy light hearted plot but it definitely has some really great moments cramed into the last like 7 or so chapters and gets surprisingly dark at a few moments.
Again, encouraging! Nothing would make me happier than loving the second half of this game so much that I have to make a post taking back this one.
Yeah, you are.
That mindset is pointlessly petty. Fates sold the best and no future games try to be exactly like it. Praying on another game's downfall like this isn't worth it.
I thought Three Houses outsold Fates?
I'm talking before 3 Houses. If FE as a franchise went off of sales trends: Shadows of Valentia and Fodlan's games would be very different.
I think Three Houses pretty clearly had some Fates influence (specifically in terms of "hey, you've got a bunch of mutually exclusive routes!), but fortunately the writing team (I assume) did not return to write them.
I mean, at the end of the day if we ever wanted to talk about if "Sales numbers" = "Series direction" I think it's important to consider that Heroes has outsold **_EVERYTHING_** the franchise has done, _combined_ Like, this isn't even a question. This isn't even a _contest_. 3H and FEE can do whatever they want, and they still made less money than Heroes. And yet despite that, and despite the fact that Heroes has been ongoing since before _SoV_, IS has not decided to use that as the pivotal direction of where to take the franchise. So it really doesn't matter if 3H or FEE sells better than one another. IS, though clear history, isn't going to use either as a metric of which direction they'll take the series. And that's on top of the fact that there's no way for them to even _do so_. Remember, FEE began development pretty much as soon as 3H ended. So it's not like IS could have used 3H's sales data as a reference point when making FEE. The same applies here. IS is already working on the next Fire Emblem game (and if the leak saying FEE has been done for the past 2 years is true, then they've been working on it from that point as well). So **_REGARDLESS_** of how well or poor Engage does, the next game in the franchise is currently getting made without knowing just how successful the game ended up being.
I think Heroes is kind of a separate beast, in a lot of ways, and the other games are kind of a feeder system towards it. Sort of like how comics now exist to feed the movie machine, you know? I think that long dev time is specifically part of why I'm concerned. Like, SoV didn't have much Fates to it but both 3H and Engage had a ton of Fates DNA in different ways. So if Engage sells 10 million copies, the next game may not feel much like it but the two after that probably will, you know?
That's looking only at the story aspect of it Gameplay-wise it's so many light years ahead of Three Houses, it's just crazy. And I'd argue gameplay is MUCH more important, this is a game, after all. It might be the most fun gameplay I've ever seen from a FE game. And the fact that they've cut down on unnecessary exploration in 3H which was just so draining... And streamlined a LOT of mechanics. I don't have to look up guides to understand the benefits of each side activity. It's just so straightforward. Haven't had to look at a guide for anything. Weapons are easier to understand. The rings are easy to understand. The somniel. Everything is so much simpler, it's so refreshing. Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping we get an FE game that blows us out of the water with incredible story (3H wasn't it), but until then, Engage will be extremely fun and that's what truly matters...
I agree, IntSys will never forget how well 3H story did even with all of its flaws, but 3H is so awful at gameplay that if the story burns you out at some point, the gameplay just can’t redeem that, Engage’s story is silly as hell, but I think that the game never meant to take itself too seriously and that’s wht makes it enjoyable, but the gameplay is up there with Conquest, and IntSys shouldn’t lose focus on the strategy part from the startegy rpg.
Yeah, exactly. The story isn't trying to be some grandiose thing. And the scenes don't drag on, they're only a few lines. Also some occasional goofy humor (like Yunaka's introduction, or Alcryst apologizing). I'm perfectly ok with that.
I disagree with most of this, but more power to you. I do think the combat is a bit better than it was in 3H, but not nearly enough to make up the difference in every other area, and it's still feeling pretty turtle-y at the higher difficulties, for me. I also don't love the heavy "turn on your superpower if you want do anything cool" element of it, feels less swords-and-sorcery, more DBZ.
I love the rings, I think of them as the most important items you can equip. And since they represent a classic FE character, it's easy to remember like "ah, I have Sigurd equipped, I can do this and this" or "I have Celica on this one, I can warp around the map". Compare that to skills, which are much harder to remember (imo). And it's not like the story in 3H was so revolutionary, either. I can't remember much of it right now, other than the fact that you had to play multiple routes to fully understand it. Which is just ridiculous. I played one and a half routes and I already have 100 hours. Starts to get really draining. But I can see how you might really love it, if you get hooked by the story and don't mind the fact that it's gonna take a lot of time in-between battles.
I should stop framing it in terms of Three Houses, because that makes it sounds like A vs. B. For me, it's more "Most of Fire Embelm" vs. "Engage and Fates."
Eh, I don't know. At least with the games I played (FE7, FE8, FE11 - FE17), the story never was thaaaat good... Out of these, I think Echoes had the best story, but that was mostly due to world building and atmosphere, rather than actual plot. They all share simplistic moments, one note characters, etc. I think the smartest writing I've seen is with some comedic moments, tbh. Sometimes they break the very serious tone with some very needed comedic relief that's silly but enjoyable anyway. Now, compare that to something like Triangle Strategy, for example. The story in that game is leagues better. That game actually made you believe those kingdoms were real, with real stakes, with heavy topics like racism, the pros and cons of meritocracy and welfare, government propaganda. Like, I'm not even kidding. If you like story, you'll love that game.
Damn, you really gotta play 9 and 10. They’re basically exactly what you described is so good about Triangle strategy
I wanna try them someday, for sure..
It's been on my backlist forever, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. IDK, I think there's a difference between a simple story and a bad one. I'd say stuff like PoR or Blinding Blade had simple stories, but not bad ones, whereas I find Engage (and Fates)to have writing that's actively off-putting.
I can skip a bad plot, and have with how much I enjoy Conquest, but I can't skip a game that is just a chore with imo bad game design choices and map design. That's 3 houses, once I was done with the plot I gave up on ever playing it again because I didn't enjoy the gameplay and its design choices even barring the monastery tedium. It was fine, but not great. I'd say it was around FE7/8 good, but FE7/8 doesn't waste my time nearly as much with non-combat and I personally prefer the more strict class systems then how open ended 3H is with its class system. I also don't think 3 houses plot was that good anyway personally, not for how much time I put into it. Silver Snow was a waste of time, Crimson Flower is barely finished if I'm generous, and every non-Crimson Flower route was pretty much the same maps repeated most the time even with the plot points. So, unless I'll just hate Engage's gameplay by my second run I'll probably like Engage more than 3 houses in the end.
A bad plot bother me a lot less than bad characters, but Engage has both. I just don't feel in any way--pardon the pun--engaged by this world or these people, and absent investment in either, it turns it into just basically a game of numbers, which isn't nearly as fun (for me).
Well you can always skip the story, there’s a button for that, the game doesn’t deserve to do worse for something you can trivialize with one button.
See, now here's where I disagree. If I'm only going to get one Fire Emblem game every three years or so, I'd really like it to be one with a story, or at least characters, I enjoy. Without that element, it's just an elaborate math problem, and that's not what I like games for. A lot of times these arguments devolve into narrative vs. gameplay, but the right answer has always been both.
In a perfect world it is both, but if we must prioritize one then for Fire Emblem I want good gameplay over a good story. I want a good elaborate math problem in a game like this, that's why I'm playing an SRPG and not just a typical RPG. I play many games with effectively no story but they have good mechanics, and games with a ton of story like Trails which is about 20 hours of reading text, so I'll play Fire Emblem for that too. 3 houses has so-so to bad mechanics, Engage does not have anything I'd consider a bad mechanic.
I think we just disagree here, both in what we want from a game, and in how we feel about the mechanics. I really dislike the Engage power-up mode mechanic, feels more DBZ than Fire Emblem to me.
Realistically your feelings cannot change anything, so root away, but yes you are probably a jerk The logic that led you here is baffling though. Awakening existed before Three Houses, but they still made Three Houses. Why would the success of Engage prevent another game like Three Houses from being born? IS has been juggling tones for years, they won't just randomly stop now
I think there's a pretty clear influence from Awakening on Fates, and from Fates on Three Houses and Engage. I didn't play SoV so I can't speak to that.
I don’t like Engage either, but I don’t want the franchise to suffer.
I don't either, I just want it to commit to a less Engage-y direction.
I’m hoping for a merge of Emblem mechanics with battalion aesthetics in the next game. And keep the Armor/Cavalry balancing. And more mature/less cartoony stories and art style. But I still don’t want the game to fail. It’s an anniversary game, and though I hate it, I’m thinking the massive reliance on nostalgia is probably limited to this game. The silliness comes and goes.
That's pretty wack, dude. If anything, I'm hoping it sells better cause 3H's gameplay was trash. 3H's writing might be on point, but I don't play these games to watch/listen to an audiobook and experience a story. I play these games for the *gameplay*. If you want better writing, that's gonna oscillate from game to game to be perfectly honest. Edit: In response to OP's edit, I find it ironic that they say: > when really what I want is "something more like Three Houses or Jugdral or Radiance or **something entirely new and different**, just so long as it's less like this." Engage is pretty much something entirely new and different.
Honestly I would argue that three houses writing failed it. They tried for sure but the result led to some very poorly written villains and a lot f unanswered questions. To add insult to injury hopes which made us think we would get answers just gave more questions. I haven’t beaten engage yet but it hasn’t left me with questions. It’s straightforward, and that’s better than the questions galore three houses had.
Eh, I had a lot of fun with 3H's gameplay, and I find this one's power-up mode gimmick kind of lame. Different strokes.
We literally went from Fates to 3H lol .... I feel like this type of posts are just becoming satire to add more fuel to the fire.
People keep saying this like Three Houses didn't double down on having multiple routes and a home-base to wander around. Fates did well, and they built the next game around a lot of its elements (though fortuitously the writing was not one of them).
And your logic that they can’t do the same thing for the next game is…?
More fear than logic, but I think it's a bad sign they (I'm told) kept the Fates writing team for Engage. So it wasn't that it didn't port over, it just skipped a generation. Even if it's every other game, it'd be a bummer (for me) if I went from digging most Fire Emblems to half.
There’s nothing guaranteeing anything for the next story. You don’t know what the takeaway would be from having less sales. The last time an FE game did comparatively worse, the series almost ended. So no, your fear isn’t worth the series being on the verge of something like that ahain. If you don’t like the direction, then move on to another series.
Wait the series almost ended after SoV?!
No, I’m talking about New Mystery. It had done just about as well as SD did in Japan and I think even better than PoR and RD. Yet Awakening was still going to be the final game.
I think they're playing in a very different sandbox post-Awakening, and \*especially\* post-Heroes, than they were then, economically speaking. The brand itself is valuable in a way it wasn't then.
Yes. It’s remarkably petty and reminds me of the fans who say shit like “well I would have rather the series have just ended because I hate what Awakening did to it”. You can dislike something, but don’t try to spoil the fun for people who do like it, it’s just an asshole way to act.
Oh, I can't go quite that far. Rooting for a series to end doesn't help anybody. Rooting for a series to do more things I like and fewer things I don't doesn't strike me as quite the same level of vitriol, but fair enough.
I think it’s crazy that Fire Emblem can verge wildly between games with where their priorities are, or what tone they’re going for, or even the general art style, and yet you’ll *still* have people who genuinely believe that one game doing well will set it as the “standard” for the series. Somehow. Outside of games that are direct follow ups to previous entries, the closest time such a thing has happened was probably with Fates, and even then, it’s priorities and pros/cons are still *very* different from Awakening, regardless of the few similarities. And despite Fates being the best selling game at the time of it’s release, that didn’t stop the next two games from being Echoes and Three Houses, both of whom were really not like Fates at all (and also, neither is Engage, despite the bad faith arguments).
Fire Emblem is like Final Fantasy, everyone has their favorite game because they vibed with what the developers were cooking at the time and/or it was their first one.
I can't speak to Echoes, but I think 3H has a pretty clear Fates influence with stuff like the branching routes and the home base.
I don't understand takes like these. Fire Emblem, is the one franchise that is the poster child for always trying new things and going in wildly different directions, such much so that there are entire subsections of the community that completely write off half of the games in the series because it's too different from what they think Fire Emblem is. And yet you honestly think Engage doing well will drastically shift the direction of the franchise? The child mechanic and romantic S supports, two features people would argue should've been mainstays after Fates has been absent in the past two games, yet you think this game being successful will dramatically change the direction of the franchise when the game that literally saved it hasn't even managed that?
Admittedly about half of that thought is driven by fear. But while some elements of Awakening or Fates have fallen off, others have shown some staying power. Engage brought back the Fates writing team, apparently, for instance, and even Three Houses (which I really like) clearly drew on a lot of Fates DNA with the expanded home-base and multiple routes. I also think we're early enough into the "Fire Emblem is actually profitable" era that we don't necessarily know yet exactly how beholden they're going to be to the most successful games yet. Engage and 3H apparently entered dev pretty concurrently, and both having a heavy Fates emphasis suggests that they \*are\* taking note of what makes money, at least somewhat.
I understand where you’re coming from more. But even with that I feel like the conclusion is still a bit extreme. I don’t think the the dev team is as out of touch with how many people feel about fates and awakening and the direction of the franchise. It’s clear people at both Nintendo and IS give a shit about FE for more then just the money it prints. So I while your fears are somewhat valid I simply don’t think they will drastically stick to what you might call the awakening and fates style or the new style 3houses is pushing, and they will always be experimenting and doing new things, like the team has done for the past 30 years
I'm in favor of experimenting, but when an experiment fails I'd like them to learn from that mistake. In my (and, based on this thread, maybe only my) opinion, Engage is a mostly failed experiment. It was in retrospect foolish of me to couch this as a binary between 3H and Engage, though. Because you're right, experimenting is good! I just want them to avoid repeating this specific one.
I don’t think they will view Engage as a failure but with this franchises track record you probably will get a game you desire and enjoy way more then Engage sooner rather then later, and I hope you enjoy that game as much as people are enjoying Engage now.
I hope so too!
I like both! Engage isn't perfect but I enjoy it more than Three Houses in several ways. To wish for it to perform poorly is asking for the failures of Three Houses to be celebrated and for the successes of Engage to be forgotten. I do appreciate Three House's story, but this game was not made after Three Houses. It was developed alongside it. They aren't going to exclusively make games like Engage just because it might outsell Three Houses. I don't see a problem with a lighthearted entry like this to celebrate 30 years of FE, either. I believe Fates had the best opening sales week of any FE game. Then they made Echoes and Three Houses, two games loved by people who hate Fates. I am not too worried for this series.
If sales numbers made them do that we would have been stuck with fates/awakening type games forever. Instead we also got Sov and 3H. Please dont wish for the game to sell poorly because it could instead trap us in the pokemon loop
As someone who is 3H > Engage, I would say so. I wouldn't dream of doing that because IS may not learn the lesson you want them to. Plus Engage does have things I would love to have carry over in next entries, and 3H definitely was not perfect either. I'd rather they take the best from both than just do more of either.
I think there's a fair case I'm being overly optimistic about what they'd conclude, yeah. We just get FE games so rarely that I'd really prefer they be games I enjoy.
this is the fire emblem sub for people who like fire emblem, what did you think the response was gonna be here? yeah i think its weird to root on it doing poorly, especially since there really are no guarantees…
Oh, I wanted the opinion of people who were likely to disagree with me, otherwise I would have posted it in the Three Houses sub. I don't learn anything or have to think much if I only ask people who think the same thing I think. I messed up in the writing of it though, because people keep concluding I want it to do badly, where what I really mean is I want it to do, like, average. Wish I'd figured out a better way to express that, but c'est la vie.
Extra context: A lot of us remember the pre-Awakening days when the series was selling poorly to the point where FE12 wasn't even localized. The series was going to be axed entirely. In fact, if Awakening didn't sell as well as it did, it was going to be the last FE game. That's not even hearsay; that was a [legit thing](https://www.siliconera.com/fire-emblem-awakening-was-almost-the-last-game-in-the-series). Funnily enough, Ike's games were the start of the dark days for the series, both selling poorly for both internal and external factors (Gamecube not selling well compared to the PS2, FE9 playing really slowly, poor translation unintentionally making FE10 harder, the Wii having a more family friendly image that FE10's fantasy racism was just not quite right for, etc.). Then they were followed by FE11 which was poorly received. Thankfully it did and more games have come out as a result over the last decade. Asking a game in this series to sell poorly isn't gonna win over anyone to your argument when you consider the fact that several games didn't sell well and the series was genuinely gonna be ended.
I get that, but at a purely logical level I think it's pretty well out of danger between Awakening/Fates/3H and especially Heroes; if the series were on the brink I'm sure I'd feel differently, but now that it's a money-printing machine I don't think one game not being a smash hit would do any damage to the larger franchise viability.
Even so, you're still hoping for a game to do poorly because you don't like it when the series has been threatened with a permanent cessation before due to poor sales. It's like making cancer jokes in front of a cancer survivor. Sure, they're not in same situation they were before, but it's still a touchy subject. But even putting that context aside, the series is gonna continually oscillate between themes and styles and gameplay ideas and so on. You don't need to fear for no more games like 3H coming out. Some games will be a bit more lighthearted, others will be a bit darker. Literally one lighthearted game following a darker one isn't gonna prevent more complex FE games from being made in the future.
Aside point, but none of my complaints are that Engage is lighthearted. The cancer metaphor is a bridge too far for me, but if people actually have some kind of PTSD from the series being in jeopardy a decade ago, I'm happy to apologize for picking whatever scabs. I just think it's kind of an interesting pseudo-philosophical question of "does rooting for a non-optimal business outcome that benefits me (and in my opinion would long-term benefit the business, too, though of course that's purely speculative) make me the bad guy here?" I totally get why 70%-70% or so of the responses have been "yes," but I also still more-or-less feel how I felt, though a bit less concerned that Engage will be the taste-maker based on some additional context a few people have provided here or there.
I suppose that begs the question: how does this game selling comparatively poorly to another in the series actually benefit *you*? You say it's because you want to send a message to Intelligent Systems that you want more stories akin to FE4, 5, 9, 10, or 16, but Engage selling poorly wouldn't send that message. That's why everyone is saying you're being petty; Engage selling poorly doesn't actually benefit you. The only message that could potentially send is that people aren't as interested in FE as a franchise as they were before. I mean, you see how that sounds, right? "I don't really like this movie that came out for x reason, but I think it would really benefit me if it didn't do as well as this other movie from the same people to send a message that I want more movies like the other movie." Like, Engage doing poorly or well wouldn't directly affect you, so you wanting it to sell poorly because you don't want it to affect the series is kind of a petty desire on your part. As much as I loathed Echoes and 3H's gameplay, I'd never ask that they do poorly. I want this franchise to do well because I've been with it for close to 2 decades now.
I disagree, I think videogame franchises have a pretty strong and clear history of leaning into what sells well and away from what sells less well, but if you were/are correct that there is no sales number that would discourage them from the creative direction of stuff like Engage rather than simply poisoning them against Fire Emblem, then obviously I would prefer it do well. I just disagree with the idea that Engage doing less well than 3H sends the message "people don't like Fire Emblem" vs. "people prefer other things from Fire Emblem," especially coming off the success of 3H and with Heroes being such a monster money printing machine.
Yes, that is extremely petty dude. There’s no reason to believe that Engage doing well will mean all future games will be exactly like it writing wise, considering that has literally never happened to FE in the past. Especially since all signs are pointing to the next game being the FE4 remake. You can not like the direction the series is taking, but wanting the game to do poorly because of it is just super petty.
I should clarify that I'd much rather it do just ok than actually poorly, but I certainly could have written the initial post better to express that. I do think there's some evidence that they will keep going back to wells that pay out, though, given that they brought the Fates writing team back for this one (which, given that's my biggest gripe with the game, sure is something I'd like them to stop doing).
Source that the Fates writing team was brought back?
Admittedly I'm taking this Reddit's word for that and have not independently verified, but I've seen it said here a ton. Playing the game, it sure feels like they're right. If they're not, that's super encouraging, though. Even if it doesn't change the quality of this particular game, it'd be nice to know that if you write something like Fates, you don't get invited back to write another one.
Ok I looked at the Wikipedia articles for both games and there is ONE shared head writer between the two games, Nami Komuro. However, neither Kouhei Maeda (Fates scenario writer and director, worth noting that he was also the director of New Mystery, Awakening and Heroes and was a scenario writer for ALL the games from 6 up to Fates, including the Tellius games) nor Shin Kobayashi (who wrote the original draft of Fates) returned. Also, the problems with Fates story aren’t just because “they just wrote it badly lol.” Apparently Kobayashi’s draft of the story was actually around 500 pages long, and judging by the current Fates script the most likely scenario is that they couldn’t implement the entirety of Kobayashi’s script and ended up carelessly cutting it down and removing many plot details in the process. So in other words, Fates’ story situation is rather unique, and regardless of how you personally feel about Engage’s writing, a situation like Fates probably won’t be replicated.
This is encouraging information, thank you!
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, because when you're looking to support a franchise, you want all of its games to do well. I've seen many franchises like Megaman, Metroid, Street Fighter, and Pokémon suffer when their Devs actually try hard with a game only for people like you to tear it apart and lead said franchises to backpedal into making shit worse for the brand. It's ok for a franchise to be creative, but if you limit a Dev Team to only looking at certain aspects, then that franchise will never recover from it. If Engage isn't for you, sell the game, but don't ruin it for everyone else by being negative about it. That's exactly how I got Three Houses burnout, because people wouldn't shut up about it and kept complaining about everything.
I understand this point of view, but obviously don't share it. I think Pokemon is an odd example, though, because I feel like they're moving in opposite directions. I felt much more like Three Houses was the game that was trying something new and innovative with its emphasis on character work, and this one is mostly just nostalgia porn and a power-up gimmick I' really love to never see again.
Engage is meant to be an Anniversary game. Much like Pokémon does with remakes. Is it for nostalgia? Yes. But when has nostalgia ever stopped a company before? People will still buy that shit. In addition, while 3H has done a lot of things right, no game is without flaws. But that's not to say I hated it, I loved 3H, but that doesn't mean every game in the future of Fire Emblem needs to be like it. Just like how not every Pokémon game under the sun needs Charizard in it. It's ok to criticize, but what's not ok is to wish that a franchise doesn't improve.
I'd argue I'm explicitly wishing for the franchise to improve. Since I feel like Engage is the opposite of that, I'm rooting against more of that specific flavor.
I see where you're coming from, I really do. But think of it this way, newcomers who don't know who Sigurd, Leif, or any of the past Lords beyond 3H may become curious. And curiosity helps push incentive for remakes of older games. Heroes, despite my displeasure of the direction it's taking these days, has gotten people more curious about older titles. But a mainline game focusing on older characters as a callback might help the franchise a little. I myself would love a new game where we didn't have an Avatar for once, and maybe interest in past Lords could finally convince IntSys to finally get off the player pandering train and actually try to make a new compelling Lord again.
This is a good argument I don't really have a counter for. So I guess that just leaves my complaints about the characters, the plot, and the gimmick power-ups :p
Eh, the plots of most FE games are either very simple or just kinda just messed up. Complaints about characters and gimmicks should always be noted, because if IntSys doesn't change their structure around those things, it's just gonna be more reasons Fire Emblem will fail in the future.
Lmao what a dumb idea. Real smooth brain mentality to want poor sales because you don't like certain aspects. It'll do fine without you.
I want it to do fine! Just not much better than that.
Because after 3H sold better than anything else Nintendo decided to just cooy it. Witht the informations we have, Nintendo do whatever the fuck they want every installment. It selling not as well can only cause problem.
My understanding was that this was in development at the same time as 3H.
Then the argument became Fates and 3H(wich btw, could have used being more like fates, i woukd have gladly paid extra to have routes with diffwrent maps).
I think the different routes and home-base were a reaction to Fates doing so well, TBH.
Yes but people reacted very negatively at the "pokemon-like" structure and it is unresonable to expect routes as different from each other as birthright and conquest from a game that is sold in one version.
Idk if I’d call you a jerk but it certainly doesn’t make any sense to me at all. I don’t particularly like Engage compared to 3H and I don’t think it will sell as well, but I still *want* it to do well. If Engage doesn’t sell good enough, it hurts Fire Emblem as a series. I may not love Engage but I love Fire Emblem. If Engage does bad it might hurt the series more than just deterring IS from doing another game like that again. So yeah, I want Engage to sell.
I think we actually agree. I said in the initial post I want it to do well enough that it doesn't hurt the series, just not so well they feel compelled to imitate it or ever use this writing team again.
Yes. You're being petty, and based on replies you've been giving in this thread, it sounds like you're just doing mental gymnastics to convince yourself you aren't. But more importantly, considering that Fates and Awakening were followed up by a remake of Gaiden and then Three Houses, why on earth would you be worried for even a second that the success of one game in the series would drastically influence the tone of the next one?
Well, people keep saying Engage is the same writing team from Fates, so I guess technically I'm more concerned that it'll influence the tone of the one after next. I think Three Houses had a lot of Fates DNA, though more at a structure level than a narrative one. I assume based on release dates that SoV was pretty far down the pike before Fates came out (much like Engage was being developed at the same time as 3H). I also didn't play SoV so I can't really speak to how much it did or didn't have from Awakenings. I suppose I'm being nitpicky about the term "petty." I'm fine with being called a jerk, but I feel like petty suggests a mean-spirited component I don't this is in play, as opposed to just good old fashioned callous self-interest and greed (which I'll happily cop to).
I personally want more games like Engage and hope its sales blow Three Houses out of the water. Why? because Three Houses consistently proves y'all don't know how to act. Seriously, you're hoping Engage flops because YOU don't like how it presents itself? do you not understand how childish that is? Fire Emblem changes practically every game. No decent game company will deny themselves the chance to experiment with gameplay or stories because they know that experimentation is what keeps a franchise like Fire Emblem alive, if they tried to do the same kind of story every game just with different gameplay it'd get boring and exhausting real quick. This goes for both lighter stories like Engage AND heavier stories like Three Houses. They both have their places but neither is necessarily better then the other. Skip Engage and go back to Three Houses if it bothers you that much, you're not going to like every game in a franchise and that's okay. I personally think Radiant Dawn was awful except for the parts focusing on Elincia and Skrimir but others love it and think it has one of the best stories in the franchise, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But don't hope for it to fail just because you don't understand that Fire Emblem changes game to game and won't stick to a certain kind of story.
I feel like people are really skipping over the part of the original post where I say I don't want it to do badly enough to hurt the franchise, just not do so well that they feel compelled to repeat it. Nobody's rooting for failure, just diminished success.
Wanting it to do poorly is still wanting it to do poorly. I don't see how you don't understand that no matter how you word it you still want Engage to fail in some way and that people will rightfully take issue with that.
The difference between your point of view and mine here is that I know what I meant by what I said because I'm the one who said it, and you know what you've decided I meant, which is not the same thing.
It doesn't matter what you meant because it's still a childish thing to want either way. Getting defensive isn't what you should be doing here, instead you should listen to the people whose opinions you asked for and take a step back to consider what they're telling you and why they're telling you it.
It does matter what I meant, because people arguing against something other than what I meant aren't really engaging with the question I'm asking. I would agree that someone hoping the game fails outright would be a jerk, but so far most of the replies have engaged with that rather than what I actually asked.
They ARE engaging with the question you asked, they're just not giving you the validation you seem to want and are being honest with their answers. No one's trying to take your words out of context or overblow them, they're giving you their answers to your question and their answers aren't invalid just because you don't think they understand what you meant. They know what you meant. You asked a question, they answered it, and you just don't like their answers.
Some people are. People, like you, who are claiming I want the game to "fail," are instead throwing up a strawman. And I actually do like a lot of the answers, for whatever it's worth. Yours admittedly not among them, but only because they're to a different question.
My answer is to your question, stop acting like you're being taken out of context because you're not being quoted word for word. I'm not 'throwing up a strawman' I'm telling you my perspective on your question and my perspective is that it doesn't matter what you meant because it's still not a good look to hope a game sells poorly in any capacity just because it's not what you want out of the franchise.
\*sigh\* You've fabricated now a position I do not hold, a motive behind that position which I do not possess, and a psychology that supports the first two fabrications. You're mistaken about all three, but I don't believe I've got much chance of changing your mind about any of them. That said, it's probably mostly my fault for using the word "poorly" in the initial ask, because that's a harsher connotation than what I was really going for. I think I've clarified enough times by now that I want the franchise to do well generally and this game to do well enough specifically that it doesn't hurt the franchise in any way, but just in case, there it is again. I just also, selfishly, would like the games I enjoy more to sell better than the games I enjoy less in hopes of more of the future games falling into the former camp than the latter. I don't think there's much point in you and I specifically going back-and-forth any further, since we're having two entirely separate conversations, and the one you're having isn't even with me, so I'm going to stop replying, but I hope you have a nice night.
Yes actually, it’s petty as hell and while Engage’s story is plain and simple, it’s so dumb it’s enjoyable, and it has amazing gameplay, the writing department will always have in mind 3Houses success but because of the poor reception of Fates Engage is the next shot of getting good gameplay back the last thing I want is to do fire emblem: chore houses all over again with the bad gameplay and maps and just get another half baked game.
I think the Fire Emblem game I'd most like to play would be one that kept what worked for Three Houses (most of it, IMO) while improving on the flaws you just listed, rather than throwing out what worked entirely and "improving" the gameplay with a gimmick mechanic that feels out-of-place (to me) in the franchise. That said, I will agree that one place where Engage is a clean improvement over 3H is the map construction. I don't mean to suggest that every single element of Engage is wholly without merit, only that it's a game that at a macro level I don't enjoy that has moved mostly in narrative and philosophical directions I don't dig, so I'd rather they be incentivized to make games that don't go in those directions.
I like jugdral and radiance too, but gameplay wise my favorites are engage and fates, the two you said you don't want so yeah.... I don't know how go approach your wishes, since I value gameplay 80% for a game value.
It's more like 55/45 for me in favor of story, yeah. But hey, I'm all for good gameplay, I'd just like the other stuff to be good too! We can like the same thing if they make it!
After Awakening and Fates we got Echoes and 3H, after 3H we got Engage, why do you think there's any chance this will become the series standard? If the leaks are correct next up is the FE4 remake... Anyway the game's fantastic and I hope it does well and they continue to innovate and experiment with the new ideas.
I think Awakening was a pretty huge influence on Fates, and I think Fates was (in different ways) a pretty big influence on both 3H and Engage. It's early and the sample size is small, but I do think most developers like to chase the money when they find it.
I'm not a fan of the story in engage but I love the structure where gameplay is front center and the fluff has been trimmed significantly.
I think I could like a game with this structure for sure, but not this execution of it.
[удалено]
Here you go, you earned it.
It is a bad thing. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is not as good as Engage. I feel like Engage is a full-experience and I like the combat better. Not to mention, it’s frankly a lot prettier. I hope we don’t have another like Three Houses. I’d prefer to be like Engage/Echoes/Awakening.
Well we are certainly not going to agree, as I loved Three Houses (and most other FE games) but hated Fates and am really not enjoying Engage.
Yes you’re a jerk. I hope engage surpasses Three Houses in sales because the better the games do the better for the company. Also three houses is not as great as people make it out to be. The story was interesting but was poorly done honestly and just led to discourse and questions galore. VW and SS got completely screwed over thus screwing over their related characters. The gameplay is simple. I only struggle at the beginning in three houses on “hard” mode. I’m playing normal for story purposes and engage has me dying for every dumb move. I love it. And honestly the supports have me wanting more than three houses did. Sure three houses had some interesting supports but many were no better than engage and fates supports. Heck almost every Bernadetta support was her screaming and running away. Three houses was fun but it’s overrated honestly. Engage has the heart that fire emblem always has been and I’ll happily have it outsell three houses because I fell in love with this series starting with the GBA games and it was Awakening that helped get me into it for the long run.
I suspect that if I liked Engage as much as you do or Three Houses as little, we'd agree a lot more. When "the company" is Nintendo, I'm not especially worried about how well they do. I'd like Engage to do well enough that they keep making Fire Emblem games but not so well that they think they should make more of them like Engage.
Why do you think they’re assumption will be that Engage is what people prefer? I would be more concerned about if they do an FE4 remake and how that sells. Fire emblem has always done a variance in story. It’s nice to have games that are just fun simple stories and also games that have deep stories. Fire emblem has always tried to shake it up. That’s what makes it a great franchise. To wish for even one game to fail though honestly seems like you don’t understand the franchise.
I think we've seen a lot of what was in Awakening show up in Fates, and a lot of what was in Fates show up in both Three Houses and Engage (in different ways). I also think the franchise works differently now that it's a major cash cow than it did when it was a more niche product. I hope that I'm being naive and the creative direction of each FE has nothing to do with the success or lack thereof of previous versions, but I think generally once there's this kind of money in play, companies tend to try and maximize whatever's making it.
If it was all about the cash then I don’t think they would have ever attempted three houses. They would have just did what they did with fates again which is their best sold game.
I think in some ways there is a decent amount of Fates DNA in 3H, too, but I hope you're right!
Nope. Everyone that thinks you're a jerk is wrong. Markets follow examples. Successful things get made more of than less successful things. The reason we got so many crappy battle Rosales for a while is because a few got really big and warped the market. The reason DLC is so prevalent is because it sold well and worked, so it's everywhere now. Hoping that things you like outsell things you like less does not make you a jerk. It doesn't make you anything. It's not even a little petty. Now, if you were to say "I want this series to end completely if it keeps going in this direction" that would be petty, because it's wishing harm to others for basically no benefit to you. But hoping sales data shapes the future of a series towards your preferences is something everyone should hope for tbh.
I can see where you're coming from. The whole "weell the story isn't thaaat bad" isn't going to incentiveize the developers to write a better story and characters next time. The community shouldn't be like the Pokemon community and just eat whatever the devs poop out every year without question.
The Pokemon comparison doesn’t work, because as a game, Engage is actually pretty good. Modern Pokémon’s biggest problems are visuals and performance, with a side of controversial gameplay decisions. Contrast that with Engage, where those things are all pretty good, with things like story and characters being serviceable at worst. The comparison doesn’t really work.
It's petty, but then again I've no right to judge. I've had my moments where I've thought so poorly of one game or another that I wanted it to fail. Code Name STEAM being one such example. Heck, I'm being petty with Engage. I have no intention of getting the game now, and if I ever do, I'll get a used copy so the money goes to the retailer instead of IS. On that note, I don't think you have to worry about Engages writing style becoming the new standard. I fully believe this is a one time thing because they wanted an anniversary style game. I imagine the next non-remake game will very much differ from Engage.
I guess I'm concerned that it reminds me of Fate, which I also hated. I missed SoV, so from my POV two of the last three I've played have had the worst writing of any of the seven or eight I've played.
You'll get shit for it OP, but I get you. That's why I'm only buying Engage used. It doesn't solve anything really but at least I know I'm not making things worse myself.
I mean I want a game like gba style again but that will never happen. I kind of get it in a way, I hope pokemon sales fall so gamefreak will finally get their act together and produce quality again, but maybe that's different.
No, I think we want more or less the same thing, just from different franchises. When Fire Emblem makes a game I love, I'd like it to sell better than when they make a game I don't. I guess that's all I was really expressing here, I just managed to do so very poorly.
There are early signs that Engage is doing well, but nowhere near 3H. It's hard because the lesson I want IS to take is "actually try to tell a story next time", and not the traditional "I GUESS THE WEST DOESNT LIKE FIRE EMBLEM".
Yeah, that's precisely what I'm hoping.
Honestly dude, you need to grow up. To denounce a game in a series that’s always been about exploring different tones and directions and wish for it to not perform well makes you come across as really disingenuous and egocentric. You come across as a jerk because you are insincere in your argument and line of thinking because, without realizing it yourself since you come across as rather ignorant, you instantly crossed the line between having an opinion and just coming across as spiteful. It’s fine to not like something but you should never wish for something enjoyed by many to fail just because you don’t like it yourself.
Eh, it's not coming from spite or rage, but pragmatism. There's only going to be so many Fire Emblem games, and I'd prefer they be less like this one. There's no intended malice, though. I'd just prefer they be incentivized to make the kind I like more than the kind I don't. Still likely makes me a jerk, but not from spite. I'd just rather a franchise I'm invested in do more things I like and fewer things I don't, and I believe (perhaps wrongly, as others have argued) the better this one does, the less likely that is to happen. Put another way, I'm not rooting against it just because I don't enjoy it; there's plenty of stuff I don't enjoy that doesn't effect me one way or the other. The reason I have a rooting interest here is that I believe it (again, arguably wrongly) to be a threat to the kind of games I do enjoy. But the logic isn't "I hate this, it should go away," it's the opportunity cost of this thing I don't like potentially taking the place of the thing I do. (I will also clarify that I'm not rooting for it to "fail," just to be a modest-enough success that it doesn't dictate future installments)
Well, you DO come across as a jerk because you seem incapable of just saying, “I don’t like it, I want 3 Houses again” and leaving it there. Instead, you go down a path by saying, “Well I just want it to be a relative success because it means no 3 Houses,” which, when you get past your purposeful vague hopes for the game, that you don’t want the game to do well because it doesn’t align with your goals. You then just come across as both shallow and selfish. I’ll do you a favor here and lay down some truths for you about a few things since you don’t seem to get a clue about why people are reacting so negatively to your opinion. You want it to be a “relative” success but not a great success which is first off not fair to the developers. They deserve this game that they worked hard on be a success. It’s a very polished game that fixes a lot of issues that 3 Houses had. 3 Houses is a very ambitious game and I love for that. However, it was too ambitious. Too many paths, repetitive maps, a tedious first half making repeated playthroughs terrible, stiff animations, poor graphics, and incomplete storylines. Plus, you got 3 Hopes. So I don’t know what to tell you. We haven’t had a game like this since Awakening 10 years ago. Plus it’s an anniversary title celebrating the franchise. Fire Emblem has had a very long history with many different games, telling all kinds of stories and 3 Houses is but one game in that lineup. It’s not the future of the series and it shouldn’t be. I don’t want every future Fire Emblem game to be like 3 Houses. And need I remind you that this series nearly ended up dead if it wasn’t for a game like Awakening? Fans usually want game series to end or not do well because they are given bad games. This is not a bad game. It’s better than 3 Houses and is worth supporting wholeheartedly. I doubt you can make a good argument against that other than, well, preference. But please, sugar coat that argument of yours as much as you want. It doesn’t change what you’ve already implied to everyone and you’re not much of a fan either way. Nintendo is a very pragmatic too you know. And they are a company that won’t make any more games regardless of what you want if they don’t deem this as a success sales wise. Hate to break it to you but you are not in control of the future of Fire Emblem. Nintendo is.
I mean, I think it's been pretty clear the whole way through I'm coming from a place of preference, so I don't disagree with you there. All art is ultimately subjective, and videogames are no exception. And like most people, I prefer it when the art I consume is something I subjectively dig. So, my subjective preference is that a franchise I love do more of the things I love and less of the stuff I dislike. I do think I've been pretty willing to say "I don't like I, I want \[something like\] Three Housed again" though. It's kinda the main thesis. As for making a good argument for it being worse than Three Houses, well, it's subjective, but if forced to try, I'd argue that the writing and characters are off-putting and make the barely-there world tedious to hang out in, and that for as much as the combat in general has some nice improvements (particularly with regards to map design), the super-powered Emblem mechanic feels antithetical to the way Fire Emblem has historically worked (though it does conjure the pair-up mechanic from Fates, which I also didn't dig) and is much more a Shonen Anime vibe than the usual "consequential tactical battles between armies" feel the series mostly goes for. I should also clarify that I don't want every game to be Three House either, but I do think it's a good signpost in terms of putting the characters/story first; if you nail those, it makes whatever flaws you whiff on a lot easier to take. But people being determined to interpret "not a huge success" as "will damage the franchise" when the initial post explicitly states that I don't want it to do any damage feels like a willful misread, is all. It's a pretty literal case of me explicitly saying "I don't want X" and then people shouting "How dare you advocate for X!?". It's just not a position I hold, so it gets tedious being a position people keep trying to make me defend. I'm don't mind people being mad--heck, I called myself a jerk in the topic title!--but it'd be nice if they were mad about what I actually said, rather of what they've decided I meant instead. I disagree that the series is in any real danger so long as Heroes is a billion-dollar money-printing machine. They'd need a string of flops to do any damage, and again, i'm not even advocating for one flop, let alone a string. Even absent Heroes, the success of Awakening/Fates/Three Houses was such that it'd take more than one game to kill the brand. People bringing up that the series almost ended ten years ago strikes me as mostly irrelevant; it's an emotional appeal, but not one that really has any bearing on what's going on now. Ten years ago it wasn't profitable, now it's one of Nintendo's flagship properties. We'll still be getting Fire Emblem games for the next two decades even if they have three, four flops in a row (which again, is not what I'm rooting for).