So I just finished FE Engage and all of its DLC on Maddening/Classic (Fell Xenologue on Maddening). Some thoughts.
I'm very displeased with the story.
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The main character being worshipped by all their allies feels very powerfantasy-contrived. An environment where everyone continuously praises you and stresses how superior you are to them is a recipe for disaster and I hate how this game does not criticize it at all. Sure the MC might say they’re just like everyone else, and they should just be treated normally, but all that amounts to is to emphasize how modest MC is instead. It’s just not healthy, and MC not getting punished for that (MC growing overconfident and learning that their allies treating them like this is not conducive to results or something similar) sends a very wrong message.
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If the second crystal had been destroyed a thousand years ago, why would MC worry about it being submerged and all? I get that they still needed to travel to the past to ensure it actually gets destroyed (actually, do I get that? Time travel gets a bit fuzzy), but somehow nobody at any point seems to sense it’s already gone or anything?
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Characters don’t seem to take danger seriously, and as a result make choices that should be poor IRL, but somehow get rewarded in plot. Punishment similarly gets handed out arbitrarily, like “Oh, your time crystal was taken off-screen, now you lost your emblem rings, time to run.” Examples of this:
- Ch21, pre-battle. Mauvier ‘defects’ (he hasn’t yet, really, and MC knows this, but w/e) and Marni notices this AFTER approaching him, somehow not noticing he’s with MC and crew until it’s too late. Marni should have been captured/killed at this point by MC. Instead, MC offers to take Marni with them to Lythos castle, where her allies, and therefore MC’s enemies are. This doesn’t make sense, MC is increasing their enemies’ firepower. Marni decides to take MC up on this offer even though these are her enemies and she’s vastly outnumbered with no way to escape on open sea. MC and co. + Marni arrive at Lythos castle and MC allows Marni to join her allies. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how this move only serves to strengthen the bad guys because Marni defects and gets killed, solidifying Mauviers defection to the MC’s crew.
These events all ignore basic stakes to get to Marni’s tragic death/redemption. Enemies are far too willing to lend one another a helping hand with no chance of gaining anything, within reason at least. MC helping Marni SHOULD hinder their main goal and therefore not be done. Yet, it somehow ends up working out as because of this Mauvier joins the party and Veyle’s helmet gets cracked allowing her to break free and join the party as well. There’s no logic here and I hate it.
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Ch25, pre-battle. Veyle decides to enter Gradlon Temple alone to kill Corrupted Lumera and spare the MC (and their allies) the burden of having to kill MC’s mother. This is obviously a terrible idea that ends up backfiring when Veyle (surprise-surprise) learns that C. Lumera can beat her handily. I don’t know why Veyle thought why she alone would be enough to beat a crystal guardian, when the other guardians (presumably) took a party of fourteen units to beat. Where does this confidence come from?
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Ch25, pre-battle. Veyle locks out MC and crew by barricading the door, somehow. MC manages to break through just before C. Lumera would kill Veyle. “How did you get here? I blocked the door” Asks Veyle, to which MC responds: “We… broke through.” This line, is just so funny to me. Like, yeah, obviously MC and co. numbering about three dozen people will be able to take down a barricade improvised by one person who went ahead of them 1 minute ago, but this somehow surprises Veyle. Like, as if the writer just admitted that their stakes were so shoddily built that they don’t need a good explanation to break them. I reckon at some point the idea of this level is that you break Veyle free, but this got scrapped and the plot got changed to fit… poorly.
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Bit anticlimactic at the end there, where we don’t get even a glimpse of the Emblem of Foundations. Figured we would get a third phase considering the first can handily be beaten in one turn, and the second is over pretty fast too. like somehow you can just skip eight of the twelve dark emblems if you just beat the boss in the first turn you down the shield. This, the final boss, is also the only lategame boss without Veteran+. Why? I suppose it’s fine to have the final battle be a formality. Not sure, but I was also kinda done with this game by now, so I suppose I welcome it.
Unit customization is really satisfying.
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Being able to reclass everyone into any class is fine by me as I prefer to have as diverse a cast (when it comes to their classes) as possible regardless of efficiency (unless it gets really egregious); I won’t end up having a cast of all berserkers or w/e is considered meta.
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Emblem Bracelets tend to serve multiple (not complementary) roles, which can really drive creativity. “Do I put Chrom on a physical unit to blast armor classes with Giga Levin Sword, or a magic unit to take advantage of +10 magic damage on player phase, or a support unit to rally spectrum+ my allies? Put Camilla on a cavalry type to get +4 movement due to Soar’s type bonus, or slap her on a Qi Adept type for the +2 movement tile of frost, or even a dragon type for even more dragon vein utility?” etc.
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Drawbacks can be taken advantage of. Emblem of Radiance’s engraving increases a weapon’s Mt at the cost of far greater weight. But then, Heavy Attack increases damage by
max(weight-speed, 5). Enchanter has access to the convoy, but is a Qi Adept that does not have access to staves. However, give them Micaiah and now they have access to a far greater array of staves in the convoy with increased range and area-of-effect. Only S-rank staves are unavailable, but then the only S-rank staff I’ve seen is Nodus in FX Ch6, and you won’t have enchanter the first time you do that, so it matters not.
Incomplete information on maps is extremely frustrating. Halfway through Fell Xenologue I just decided to look up info regarding reinforcements and such beforehand.
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Sigurd’s paralogue. You beat the enemy at the southern fort and suddenly two dozen more enemies spawn, all aggroed immediately. Yeah I wasn’t prepared for that, sorry? Like, How was I supposed to know the bridge would lower without me even pulling a lever or anything?
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FX Ch3. I managed to trigger all three different sets of flier reinforcements at once by overextending. I just didn’t cross any of the thresholds until I crossed all three of them in the same turn. I can’t deal with this many enemies at once, but how was I supposed to know this is how these reinforcements would trigger?
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FX Ch6. Extremely trial-and-error. Had to look up when and where reinforcements would spawn so I could plan an extra move ahead, because otherwise I wouldn’t make it. Punishment for letting Fell Nil kill units when moving is very small compared to the effort it takes to ensure the punishment isn’t meted out. Not to mention, only up to two revival crystals can be gained by Fell Nil in this manner. Meaning, if you succesfully cleared out the first four islands but failed at the last two, it makes no difference compared to failing all six. Chose to hurry along and just let Fell Nil clear each island, which made the stage a lot more manageable. It just sucks I had to restart the stage halfway through simply because I couldn’t have known this beforehand.
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Every Fog-of-War stage, but especially Ch20. I hate FOW. Put a randomly placed high-damage-dealing boss in and you somehow make things worse. Fortunately, he hangs out at the end of the stage after you clear one revive crystal, but, of course, I had no way of knowing that beforehand.
Some other gameplay things tested the limits of my vocabulary. Maybe Maddening mode was not tested properly?
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Fishing minigame. The giant fishes you get when you unlock the supreme fishing rod. Holy cow, these are annoying. Maybe it’s a joycon thing, but I can’t for the life of me get the game to acknowledge I’m pulling the stick in the right direction. Also, for the love of god, someone tell the people at IS about RSI. This repeatedly-mashing-the-same-button thing is ridiculous. So glad I found a mod on GameBanana to skip this. Thank you SpookyPix!
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Why fish though? Well you get bond fragments, up to 10k every time the Somniel resets, after you’ve completed Ch20. Ok, but why farm bond fragments? Some people do it for the S-rank bond rings, which are mostly outclassed by Emblem Rings and Bracelets, which I already had most of by Ch20, so that didn’t interest me. However, Bond fragments can be used to increase Engage weapon’s capacity which allow you to upgrade various stats of theirs, such as Mt., Hit and even Spd. However, I reckon most people don’t bother with this as it requires ridiculous amounts of grinding in Tempest Trials (or relay trials if you’ve got NSO). This is where Chrom!Sevy’s save editor came to the rescue. Ty circles, for bringing this up. If it weren’t for this though, I’d have completely ignored Engage weapon augmenting. The grinding is seriously far too ridiculous. Especially for a game mode like Maddening which tries to hinder grinding wherever it can. I’ve noticed, whenever Bond fragments are mentioned in this thread, nobody brings up using them to augment engage weapons. Goes to show I suppose.
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Another example of “What is RSI?” Sit-ups for HP-boost. This is seriously garbage; Get this stuff out of your game. Timing-based stuff like Push-ups and Squats is fine though.
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Donations seem very unfeasible. You just don’t get a steady stream of income to really justify spending that much money. Money is also used for weapons, weapon upgrading, staves, seals, tonics. It just hardly makes sense. Brodia especially, as you only spent like three? chapters in there in the early game, without ever returning save for two paralogues. Also what’s +30/40/50% skirmishes if a skirmish appears like once every ten chapters?
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Speaking of skirmishes, can I PLEASE change the currently playing song for non-skirmishes stages? I don’t need to listen to the same song for on average two and a half hours (that’s how long these stages take me on maddening, according to the summary displaying at the end).
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Weapon Break. Really cool in theory. Like, if unit A breaks enemy E, then unit B safely attacks E without having to worry about getting countered. However unit B will have to kill E in their follow-up for this to make sense. If B kills E in their first attack, there’s no point to E being broken. Alternatively, E is still alive after both unit A and B attacked it, at which point (unless something is going very wrong) E must be a boss. Here’s the rub, bosses all have Veteran+, meaning they can’t be broken.
Other things.
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Absolutely love the look of engaged units. Hovering above the ground, feet pointing downward, makes them really look superior. Crits giving us a close-up (not a cut-in!) really come off amazingly, not to mention the choreography being absolutely stellar. Rule of Cool and all. So. So. Sooooo satisfying.
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The secret Engage+ attacks are awesome. I first discovered that Emblem Bracelet Engage attacks get additional effects when adjacent to someone wearing an Emblem Ring of the same origin with Houses Unite+, which is also the best Engage+ attack already. Suddenly, a totally different animation plays. My mind went “Oh, of COURSE!”. Aha-Erlebnis. That feeling, sooooo good.
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Céline, Ivy and Hortensia. They’re all wearing these dresses that don’t really make sense. Timerra too. Rule of Cute, I suppose? I’m kinda conflicted, because despite their impracticality, they do look nice. Zephia/Zelestia though… I mean, please. This is the reason why it’s hard to tell people about my hobbies. It’s just really, really embarrassing.
Glad to get that off my chest.