Three things I hope the mainline Fire Emblem games make into a series staple

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I’m mainly talking about three things:

  • I think it’s high time third tier classes become a mainstay from here on out:
    I’ve been playing Engage since it first came out last year, and I still have yet to finish the playthrough (I’m at 70+ hours, and I have yet to start Chapter 21), but that’s neither here nor there. So why am I mentioning it, you might ask?
    Well, it’s because due to the overabundance of Emblem trial maps, as well as me having delved into two of the DLC maps (Tiki, Soren and Chrom/Robin), I have accidentally stumbled into overpowered territory. Hard Mode has now become a cake-walk, when before I had to do two skirmishes in order to not die to anything that moved back in Chapter 13. I kinda miss that difficulty, and it’s a bit unfair for a difficulty-enjoyer like me to be penalized because I wanted to try out the DLC and get Chrom and Male Robin, since as a shipper, I really wanted to get their ring.

Anyway, all that to say that now, as I have to head into Chapter 21, most of my characters are tier 2-level 17 and above. I really dislike the fact that my characters soon won’t be able to earn any more experience, since they cap out at 20, and I really think that having something like third-tier classes in place would do a lot to alleviate this issue, as well as raise the enemy’s potential accordingly.
Sure, I can make my units go back to tier 1 and raise them from there in order to either change their class path or repeat it, but I’m not a huge fan of how promotion works in Engage.

TLDR → If the game is gonna give me the opportunity to play through many emblem trial maps (which I don’t perceive as grinding, since I think that they are story/gameplay relevant in order to get more Emblem skills - still wish they had been seamlessly woven into the main story path instead of feeling jarringly disjointed, though), and thus throw way too strong enemies at me, making me earn a boat-load of experience in the process, then I would like to leave the archaic two-tier unit system behind, since I don’t think it fits how modern Fire Emblem games are designed, and instead gain access to third tier classes like in Radiant Dawn or Echoes, in order to keep unit progression going instead of artificially resetting them down to first tier.

  • I also think that supports should have a D and possibly even an E-tier level, as well as only unlock for units that are being deployed in battle:
    First of all, please have support conversations be unlocked based on how many chapters units are deployed in together, like Path of Radiance and Vision Quest.
    I seriously don’t understand why Intelligent Systems feels the need to keep in the mechanic of characters spending time next to each other in battle, as well as having them gain points through shallow activities in each modern FE’s respective hub-world. The conversations feel much more disjointed from what is going on, and we don’t get to see as many characters react to what’s happening in the plot. Plus, it’s an annoying chore.

Secondly, going back to Engage (not mentioning Three Houses since I haven’t played it yet), I don’t think characters who aren’t deployed in battle should be able to unlock support conversations.
While playing Engage, I’ve been really liking Yunaka (the fact that her VA is great, and the fact that she came with Micaiah, one of the most underrated protagoinists, imo, especially helped in that regard).

Me liking Yunaka so much (Etie, Anna, Clanne and Jean too), though, has come at the expense of witnessing almost every single support combo she has in the game.
Like, don’t get me wrong, I had fun reading Yunaka and these others peeps’ supports, but when I eventually go back to this game, what new thing will I be able to discover, support-wise?
At least in the older titles I could be surprised at which characters had conversations with whom, and getting to see not all of them per playthrough was a fun incentive to replay the games.

Thirdly, since I would love for characters to only be able to have supports with the ones they are being deployed alongside, I think having support conversations start at D (or even E tier) would do a great job in terms of not keeping us players starved for character interactions throughout the adventure, especially if said adventures end up taking as long as Engage.

Lastly, although I am not the biggest fan of S-supports, since I think that an A-support paired ending can and has done the trick in the past, if they do end up bringing them back, for the love of all that is holy, please don’t make S-supports exclusively straight again (or path-exclusive and next to none like Fates)!:triumph:
As a Male Robin/Chrom shipper, I hate that I have to mod the game in order to get to enjoy my ship (for which I’ve read some fantastic fanfiction, btw), unlike the players who got to enjoy every posssible straight combination Awakening and Fates had to offer. Heck, as much as I love Echoes, even there the only gay character I can recall, Leon, is stuck having an unrequited love interest, so what gives? I expect better from this series going forward.

  • And Finally, please bring Radiant Dawn ledges back:smiling_face_with_tear:
    I still don’t get how they haven’t come back yet. They were a very fun game mechanic, and I swear I still have emotional scars from seeing how Nox Castle (Micaiah’s trial map) has stairs in Engage instead of ledges🤢
    Like bruh, how is Radiant Dawn, a 2008 WII GAME, outdoing you graphically? Legit disgusting stuff…
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how is it that the game is too easy when you took every single optional step to make your army as powerful as possible before continuing the main game? and the dlc is not main game content for a reason.

you’ve grinded for 70+ hours, of course you’re too strong for the main game. whether something is main story or side story doesn’t matter to grinding, if you’re putting the main game on hold to farm resources, you are grinding

it’s really silly to say the series is too easy when you’re the one who made it too easy in the first place (by grinding the hell out of your army)

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Well, I have grinded for 70+ hours, yes, but that’s because because the game kept giving me a reward for it in the form of either unlocking more powerful Emblem skills, or getting access to other Emblems on the DLC island. In past games I have never once sought out optional skirmishes in Sacred Stones, Awakening or Fates, because I always saw them as empty maps, totally void of both character moments and story progression.

Here in Engage, however doing optional skirmishes is an in-game achievement now, so how can the completionist side of me ignore that? Plus, back in Chapter 13 I really needed it, since I kept dying to everything there, and going through those only barely brought me up to level with the enemies there and onwards, until I went to DLC island.

I had never, prior to this, interacted with another Fire Emblem game’s DLC before, so I went into it thinking “Sweet, I’ll get more tools to play around with in order to keep up with this game’s difficulty!:star_struck:”.
Instead, what ended up happening was “Oh, I got way too much exp from Tiki’s, Soren’s and Chrobin’s maps. Now I roll over the main story and trial maps a little bit too much.:sweat_smile:”

All I’m saying is, having a third tier would make me feel more rewarded. It would be great if Intelligent Systems implemented this better next time, by either giving me an option to now roll over the enemies thanks to my DLC-acquired levels, or to have their potential grow higher and higher just like I did, in order to still deliver on the Hard Mode experience I had initially signed up for.

Also, I don’t feel good ignoring resources that are being offered to me.
Ignoring Somniel activities means potentially not getting more achievements and whatnot. See where the problem is? It’s a vicious cycle. Like sure, I could potentially ignore the Somniel etc. as much as possible, but it wouldn’t feel good, and I don’t have this problem with older FE games, where much more time was spent on the grid-map portion by comparison.

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He is not wrong

No no he’s got a point. He is also not wrong

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So play Maddening?

You used a character so much that you unlocked all their supports? Heaven forbid you should try using another character on another playthrough. Another player might have complained that they have to play the game dozens of times to see all the content.

More content is always nice, but have you considered that having 5 tiers of supports means about 40% more supports to translate and get voice acting for? Totally impractical for development costs. Those poor translators have lives lol

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If you want more class and support tiers, you should consider playing 3H, it has both of those. Though the supports are wildly unequal, some only have 2 tiers while others have 4 or more. S supports are avatar only, but are barely in the game, happening at the end with choosing someone you already had A rank with, so not much different than a paired ending (there are more gay options than in Fates.) Also, grinding is limited on hard difficulties, there’s a new game plus that carries over learned skills, etc.

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I really don’t get the hostile response here, tbh. I thought I articulated myself well enough in the post.
Hard Mode was hard enough as it was. It was doing just fine.
It’s me having played some of the DLC (but not expecting it to, though, since it was my first time) that made the game easier.

So… would that not make the game more replayable if I had to find out more about other characters in subsequent playthroughs?:face_with_raised_eyebrow: Yeah, I unlocked almost all of Anna’s and Yunaka’s supports 'cause I’m greedy like that, and the game allows me to do so, but… surely I can’t be the only one to think it weird and not totally earned that I get to see the supports of people I am not even deploying.

Also, because of this game having a ton of optional emblem trial maps, I am now at a point that I will be getting to see more and more supports of people I’m not even actually using in order to fill the void until the end of the game. Having more support tiers for the characters that I’m actually using would go a long way, imo.

So what? That is just my opinion. I think it would be good, and I would love if Intelligent Systems did this for the next game.
Also, ain’t no one rushing them to develop their Fire Emblem games at a rapid-fire pace. They can take their time in order to implement what I’ve suggested so far. Heck, Engage is so full of stuff it’s over-whelming sometimes.

You’re saying that what I’m suggesting might give more to the writers and Voice Actors to work with? Like, how is that bad? They totes have lives, sure, but if they aren’t spending their time working on a Fire Emblem game, with how talented they are, I would sure hope that they would have another gig lined up. ← hint, this would still cut into into their free time too, since they need to pay for bills and food.

If they are paid well, I don’t see why they couldn’t spend more time on D &/or E tier support convos.
I somehow don’t think that Intelligent Systems has been struggling for development costs for a while either now, you know? Say, the past 11 years?
Now it just sounds like you’re underestimating how far they can go for their games.

Edit: Also, are we going to ignore that Path of Radiance is a thing here? Like, that game had both supports AND info conversations. If they were willing to put that much effort back when they weren’t doing nearly as well, I don’t see why they can’t add info conversations back too, for this matter.

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Thank you for that. I didn’t know all this stuff😅
I am still on my first playthrough on Dimitri’s route - Chapter 3. It’s taking me a LOOOONG time, so I’m still not up to snuff with Three Houses discourse and mechanics. Heck, it still feels like I have to get the hang of battalion gambits. XD

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What makes you think anyone wants to play their favourite character in one playthrough and only one playthrough? What makes you think Johnny wouldn’t mix things up with other characters in a future playthrough? This was just one example, no need to treat it like it’s proof of an entire playstyle. Now, while your point about “another player” is valid, it gets muddied by how you worded the rest of your opinion.

I always think this sort of argument is a copout. It can be applied to literally anything, and l sure do hear it a whole lot in other fandoms when anyone has a suggestion relating to more content. Working more on one game is going to take time out of their lives, but their next job won’t? Maybe with the way deadlines are, ha.
I think a more agreeable aspect of this is the quality of the work due to the increase of quantity. The writers will likely make the supports overall less fulfilling since there would be more they’d plan to come up with.

Based on what you described in your post, it sounds like your issue comes more from the odd sense of difficulty pacing Engage can have depending on one’s actions. However, it can be argued that a third class tier would encourage the devs to be more conscientious of the difficulty curve. Having that wider scale would require more attentiveness.

I can’t speak for ledges, but I have noticed that FE has done this sort of “three steps forward, one step back” thing throughout more of the series. GBA FE goes from having a final boss with three attack animations plus crit, to a final boss with a stock-standard one attack/one crit in the very next game. One might even point out that SNES FE had melee units jumping around the battlefield and the camera scrolling! But, l feel that one’s more debatably opinionated. The final boss thing feels like a technical downgrade, while the SNES FE things feels like it could be an artistic choice. I had more examples, but I forgot them I don’t want to drag this out, so my point is that it’s a phenomenon l’ve noticed as well in other areas and l suggest it happens all throughout.

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Huh… never noticed this sort of stuff about the final bosses, mainly because it takes me way too long to reach them, but still. I was just having a conversation with a friend last night, who said how SNES animation, even on-map ones, could be surprisingly full of detail, and sometimes more engaging than newer ones.:thinking:

For my part it just stings that a very climatic and awesome Micaiah chapter was brought back, and had all of its elevation taken away. If I’m not mistaken, the DLC map back in Awakening of Elincia’s Gambit did not look nearly as bad.

Thank you! It’s so validating to hear. Other examples of this frustrating trend I’ve noticed it with is with the new Pokémon games, as well as with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and the Mario movie. I seriously fail to grasp when this complacent consumer attitude took root, but it’s very sad to see.
If fans can come up with fangames containing engaging characters, good storylines that allow their characters to develop, as well as take as much advantage of the setting as they can, have the game not be full of bugs, and also look good, then why can the big corporations not do that?

I would really love if it were possible to have both, tbh. Path of Radiance is the closest example I can think of where there’s both a lot of writing, as well as having it be great. I will always prioritize quality, though, since because of how poor the writing is in games like Fates, I really dislike most of the supports there.
And while I will always prefer quality, I hope we never get something as limitied as Echoes’ low amount of supports again.

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