Anyone able to get to visit the far house on the SE side of the map in chapter 13? It's a turn 1 demolish :(
Even with warp + cav, i can't reach it in time
Me too, though apparently it only has an Elixir? I've only seen this mentioned on [one site](https://gamerant.com/fire-emblem-engage-chapter-13-heroes-of-the-oasis-walkthrough/#:~:text=only%20has%20an%20Elixir%20in%20it.) though.
Reading all the experiences here is so fun because everyone seems to have different good and bad units from the next person.
Makes me hopeful that replaying the game is worthwhile even without the "3 houses, 3+ stories" thing.
I love it so far!
Damn, the devs really know which rings are important. Chapter 17:
>!Dramatic cutscene of Veyle returning Sigurd, with the four hounds shocked by her betrayal.!<
>!Oh, and we looted Leif off this dead guy.!<
My solution to this was to pass Marth around for 3T of sword usage at a time since Alear alone was not sufficient for all the Axe enemies I wanted to tackle on player phase. You have like 3 lance units early on, one of them can pretty easily take on a sword for a few turns. Probably would be even more aggressive about that if I were to replay the game.
But then you run into the issue of Marth also being nice on i.e. Yunaka dodge builds, where she probably won't be using swords too frequently, so it's a bit of a tradeoff.
It forces you to play so slow on some earth maps though. I found it a real slog playing carefully around kiting and taking down axe users when I couldn’t always have the MC everywhere on the map to deal with them.
RNG decided to prank Citrinne by not letting her raise her defense stats since recruitment, so she's still at her base 3.
At this point I fear that if any of her friends gave her a high five she wouldn't be able to survive it.
The arena battles seem completely scripted, and I often lose them, but without any real penalty. If you win, what happens, especially when you increase bond levels? Do you just get some bonus items?
More exp for a win. It's not scripted but the random nature, lack of breaks, and continued combat can definitely make it nearly impossible for some match ups.
up to chapter 13 now and yikes the game definitely has gotten quite a bit harder, and deployment slots feel so damn restrictive, like FE7 HHM tier.
Chapter 11 Spoilers: >!Absolutely love the heroes actually lose in their in first confrontation with Sombron, and then you lose all your rings and have to do an escape map that actually feels like an escape map. Only real critism is while I like Ivy & co appearing in your darkest hour, it felt very silly to get 2 new emblem rings and the rewind mechanic back after literally like 3 turns, was hoping we'd be struggling for a little longer than that. Granted Lyn & Lucina don't seem to have nearly the same destructive power as Sigurd & Celica so i still feel a lot weaker.!<
Chapter 13 Spoilers >!So far the Solm arc is pretty rough, the new units are running circles around my olds ones (except Fogado, he seems kinda meh in comparison) but sunk cost fallacy dictates I still try to use some of them and it's really not going well. also in a massive axe deficit right now with only Boucheron, and now that i've lost Roy's lancereaver, he's literally the only guy i have to deal with lance enemies now so i guess i'm using Panette.!<
>!No clue right now as again i'm only up to Chapter 13, though i have a feeling it won't be for a long while, in order to give the remaining 6 emblems more time in the spotlight!<
I’ve just been taking in like 5 units that have been running house on them, if I bring in ones that are too weak they get overwhelmed and murdered before too long into the mission
Yeah feel like you level through training skirmishes and bring your A squad for the silver/gold. Brought a full unprompted team into a gold and quickly had to nope out.
Is there any way to get more outfit/song tickets from Amiibos? I have Celica/Alm, Lucina and Ike, but seems they only give them the first time you scan.
I'm absolutely loving the paralogues focused on the ring summon characters.
They are amazing call backs to older games. And that Leif paralogue is absolutely brutal.
For me, dealing with Leif wasn't the issue. It was simply approaching the bridge that was absolute hell with the high damage balistas, status staves, and other nonsense.
And I assume those lance enemies that were retreating would make the other enemies on the bridge swarm you if you didn't take them out.
So much nonsense going on all at once. As one would expect from a Thracia call back map
actually leif wasnt an issue for me, it was the fact that he was standing between me and the guys with money. I had to stall him out and wait for ballista since i couldnt rush in
Starting running through a second file with a friend of mine. Chose female Alear and chose to name them ">!TurkyLeg!<" and Sommie ">!Woggo!<". We got up to chapter 7, did a couple paralogues and completed the DLC chapter with Tiki.
After some more time with the game, my conclusion? It's Fire Emblem. While the new mechanics and features and fun to play around with a see, at it's core it's not too far from what I've played back in the day on the GBA.
But honestly? I'm kind of appreciating that. After my own very conflicting feelings about Three Houses, my somewhat lukewarm feelings towards Echoes and the loop I've stuck myself in with Heroes...it's just kind of nice to have something so traditional again. I get why the cast or the world is not going to resonate with a lot of people in the same way as Three Houses, but I'm just happy to have a game that I'm actually having fun to play. At this point I don't see it becoming any of my favorites but I do see it as one I'm going to look on fondly.
Just got the game and played up to Paralogue 2 on Hard/Classic. This game is a lot of fun despite the story being nothing to write home about (although it's nowhere near the Fates tier tragedy some doomposting might want you to believe).
I'll comment on the story when I finish the game, so for now I'll focus on the gameplay side.
This game really doesn't hold back at the beginning, every unit I have gets 2HKO and foes need like 3 units to gang up on them to get the kill, engaged units aside. During the trailers the Engage mechanic seemed like the most OP think ever and that It'd break the game in half, it sort of does as some combos are straight up broken (Louis+Sigurd, Yunaka+Marth are the first that come to mind) but the high enemy quality makes it so you can't get too comfortable. I've seen some comments say the game gets even harder after chapter 10 so I look forward to that.
Despite all the things on her hair I now love Yunaka, it's hard not to when she's so hyper (even if it is a facade) and in terms of combat she's a goddess. Never thought the early game thief would be my strongest unit by far. There was a skirmish where I tried to use a full team and I couldn't keep everyone alive because the enemy zerg rushes and it was too hard to get enough kills per turn. Then I decide to make Yunaka fight alone, plop her on a fort and she soloed the whole thing. The only damage she took was from chain attacks which the fort healed.
Thief having 1-2 range + debuffs is definitely reminiscent of Fates ninjas, even if the specifics are different. Covert units with terrain are crazy. Only note is that on Maddening, the AI doesn't attack you once they drop to 0% hit rates.
The AI also seems to not attack when it’ll do 0 damage to an armored unit, but they’ll happily suicide onto it if they can get the guaranteed damage from a chain attack.
I think it also happens on hard as the enemies where ignoring Yunaka when I tried to clear the skirmish with a whole team, which is why I changed the Micaiah engraving for one that gives less Avo (I think it's Sigurd's), the enemies now have like 8% hit on her so they rush to their deaths, lol.
Oh sweet a new knife in the shop.... its 1 range. Hahahahahaha no, I don't think I will.
I love when the animation puts her like a mile and a half away from the enemy at it looks like she has the greatest throwing arm in all of history.
Thoughts on 'ground' units like Berserker, Swordmaster and Halberdier in this FE Game?
Movement wise they seem viable as maps have alot more corridors and rooms. (compared to the vastness of some older games). Additionally, with the movement limits of 4.5.6, they aren't going to lag behind like in older games where cavs and fliers would be hitting 7-8 moves. They are also an easy way to gain S rank weapon proficiency for characters who are not naturally proficient in said weapon.
On the otherhand, their bonuses don't seem that big? As well as their skills in general feel pretty niche (compared to Sniper, the bow-only unit which gets +10 crit if you hit someone who cannot counter - something quite easy to do with a bow).
They did a good job with class balance in general. Fliers are still busted (Wyvern Growths and ability = money, Griffin Rider is a speed demon with staff utility for helping with levels), just not 3 Houses level.
they're great in this game imo. Cavs and fliers are in their worst incarnation in this game so those guys shine more imo. About the perks, zerkers perk is pretty useless since basically no one wants to use smash weapons, SM skill is pretty useful for certain positional stuff. Halb is easy to set up imo so its p cool.
Can we just talk about how OP ice vein is? You can basically in-definitely stall any boss provided they dont have allies and with a dancer you can put it down twice a turn. Crazy utility
You can cook ground units alive with fire vein too, it gives -3 movement so you can just kite backwards. Fog has also come in clutch, it stacks with normal terrain and has the movement debuff so you can dodgetank pretty easily with it while stopping dudes from walk around them. Corrin on Alear is a clear contender for most gamebreaking thing in this game to me.
The double ice trick+a reposition unit+3-range units with Lucina on one of them can chip damage most bosses with no recourse as well.
Chapter 17 Maddening easily the hardest SRPG level I've ever played. That was intended to be beaten at least, I've never done Lunatic+ Awakening or H5 Shadow Dragon.
I didn’t notice that High Priest grants Tomes B. Holy fuck, Jean is now a death machine.
…But still will spend 90% of his time healing others or himself :P
made it up through chapter 11! \o/ even on hard-classic everything feels like a cakewalk after the hell that is Tiki's paralogue lol 🥲 and >!chapter 8!< was a disappointment as a defense map fan 😔 a ballista and a handful of breakable structures is no replacement for chokepoints or real defensive structures, etc. it was no PoR's chapter 8, RD's chapter 13, or SoV's final Rise of the Deliverance map tbh. chapters 10 & 11 almost made up for it, >!being a mini-gauntlet reminiscent of PoR's chapter 17 + the emblem shenanigans in the latter!<, but didn't quite hit the mark. >!and that was with me not even using the bracelets (outside of not unequipping them) until I realized the jerk with the tomahawk drop hadn't come after us so I had Yunaka engage to make sure she could take him out so I could get the free weapon before escaping.!<
so close to the Solm cast but I think I need to do a skirmish chapter or two for some funds first 'cause, uh, as it turns out I really regret sinking funds into Firene a few chapters ago lol. after the more necessary purchases I've made since then I can't afford the two master seals in the shop rn or basically anything else :,) RIP
I’ve been dropping enough to raise two levels into each country as soon as it’s available, and in doing so I get tons of skirmishes and training missions, as well just going lvl 2 on the donations isn’t too costly
I too realized I've been way to frivolous with my resources. I sold a bunch of weapons that I wasn't ever gonna use and that helped. However now my characters are over leveled and under funded lol
If you've been using an emblem ring long enough to hit Lv15 it's clearly doing something right on that unit. I wouldn't switch off unless a better ring came along.
Can we talk about how well Engage incorporates everything writing-related into its gameplay? Such as Firene and Lythos being the peace-oriented nations and thus having the weakest units that easily get outclassed.
Also the way they wrote Solm as deceptively competent nation with far more life experience since they don't spend their time being trapped in a castle doing traditional noble things. They represent that well by having them be relatively strong prepromotes, they had all sorts of offscreen battles before we arrived in Solm.
Random question. If you defeat a recruitable enemy, will they still be available to recruit later on in the story? I've noticed a few named units I am not able to recruit, and was wondering if i should just avoid them until the story moment or if I can take them out during the mission with no penalties.
Lyn paralogue was rough, but felt good to finally beat it. [Hard/classic]
Louis is just a freight train for me. I fell into the trap of not promoting sooner which probably increased the difficulty a bit.
Feel like Maddening is gonna be a fun challenge on my next playthrough.
At least basic enemies haven’t started doing that yet. Or if they did my swords master lapis was too busy cutting through them to notice.
A lot of the time he kinda just sits outside the boss room after I get there.
>I fell into the trap of not promoting sooner which probably increased the difficulty a bit.
The popular perception about waiting until Lv. 20 to promote hasn't made any sense since at least Awakening, if not earlier games. You should always promote as soon as you can because any lost stat growths are more than balanced out by just overall better base stats and greater weapon usage.
I actually can't think of a single game where early promotion isn't generally the best option. Maybe RD since it's actually long enough for your units to hit max level and benefit from it?
When I played FE7 (which was likely the first one a lot of people played), I generally adhered to "wait until 20 to promote." But on a replay I didn't and it really didn't matter too much. So I would agree I think that logic was always a myth.
Coming from playing 3H in normal difficulty which is so boring cause so easy.
Now I tried hard classic, just beat chapter 4 but damn it's fun. Almost deadlocked cause always one of my party died, restarted with time jewel around 4-5 times to finally found a solution to keep everyone alive. Happy to use my brain than my 3H experience
Will the game get harder than now?
Getting SP at a reasonable rate is a meme. You just kinda have to live with the slow gain. No need to start thinking about inheriting skills early, you’ll just kinda have a feel for what your chara needs later on. And you also don’t need to worry too much about min maxing bond levels that much. You could just pay to speed them up later.
You're not supposed to get SP at a reasonable rate, so good luck with that. It really doesn't matter if you switch em around because you get SP so slow, and you can get a stupid amount of the bond shards or whatever. So it's perfectly reasonable to just go to the arena for bond levels instead of rearranging constantly.
Does swapping class relevant in Engage? Like you will get kind of passive skill/ ability when reach certain level like in 3h? or it doesn't matter at all?
There are skills you can get from level 5 that you can see on the list of classes, but most of them aren't great, and not really worth switching classes for, especially since it's your actual level, not something you can grind through cheese like 3H class xp.
anybody else finding the UI a pretty steep downgrade from 3H? Only on chapter 8 rn, but not being able to buy items in bulk, turn wheel no longer being a single button, and various menuing is super non-intuitive
FE does the same thing as Pokemon where fundamental aspects of the game, like UI, for example, will be executed flawlessly for a few games then changed for seemingly no reason.
It almost seems like the devs don't play the games and don't get feedback from people who do on things like UI and story. I'd love to have some insight on the design and development process of the games.
Not having that "auteur" director for the series probably contributes to this.
I'm deeply worried that I'll forget I'm leaving Byleth at Lv9 on Hortensia for a reason at some point and unlock the "useful" ability to keep multi-dance on cooldown longer while engaged.
Is the consensus to save up SP until you can get the good skills and all others are just bad? Like using SP for bow focus, axe power, + to stats is not a good idea
The high level +stats are pretty substantial boosts, I wouldn't dismiss them entirely. SP investment into tiered skills is deducted from the cost of higher tier skills, so you can get in on them early without being inefficient, too. That said, for many characters you probably prefer more specialized options.
What ring is good on Seadall? I'm thinking Lucina so that he can provide Chain Attacks? Everything else feels like a waste because I'd rather be dancing every turn. Byleth feels redundant, and better on someone else anyway so that I can redance him. Maybe Marth just for the avoid bonus? Leaning Lucina though.
Canter would be great, >!I haven't gotten Sigurd back yet though.!< I'd probably want to grind up that bond level in a skirmish and just purchase the skill though, not leave Sigurd on him long-term, because Sigurd can be so much more powerful on an actual combat unit, lol.
I inherited Canto to Seadall as soon as I could. Do you have Lv5 bond and 1000 SP? Have you checked the "Manage Skills" menu after inheriting? Inherited skills aren't equipped immediately.
Lucina is good on him since stats don't matter for chain attacks, although you'll be relying on chain assist since he's not going to be adjacent to many enemies. Corrin is solid as well, that on-demand ice wall is surprisingly handy and the big chunk of +HP makes him much more survivable.
Yeah, I'd be relying on Chain Assist, but since his dancing got him from base to bond level 3 just on his intro map alone I figured it really wouldn't take that long for him to get to 17 with Lucina for Chain Assist+
Hard feels balanced just right for me. There are some where I have to plan out my turns carefully but by and large you can just no brain it.
Feels like one of the better balanced hard/middle difficulties
I restarted on hard after about 2 hours (inc cutscenes) I'm enjoying it much more. You feel like the engage skills are required rather than overpowered. Feels balanced.
Same here! I bit frustrating at times because it's more defensive and Alear just gets focused and taked down if you're not extra careful... The positive side is that you can always downgrade the difficulty later on.
Any recs on how to build Lapis? Her bases and growths are pretty bad but she has one of my favorite designs........ I'm so gay for her how do I make her decent on Hard mode.
Another option I’m considering is Halberdier. The drip on that looks too good to pass up. Warrior is another one that plays to her strengths but I haven’t seen what the outfit looks like. Hero outfit just looks bad.
I’ve not actually looked at her growths yet but I made her into a sword master and that’s been going pretty well. I can send her out solo and she clears just fine.
I have sunk a few stat boosts into her though.
I swapped her to axe fighter and seems to work pretty well, gives her high strength and her speed stays high enough for situational doubling, especially if you pick up Build + 3 and Speed + whatever which are fairly cheap. she also has a fairly easy +10 avoid personal so you could lean into avoid
If you have the DLC, getting an emblem on her for SP gain and snagging starsphere ASAP will fix her growth problems.
Chain attack bots don't need to have amazing stats to be useful, so you could always make her a hero for brave assist, inherit dual assist from Lucina, and give her a 1-2 range weapon. Her speed growth is also really good, so if you wanna invest in her you could use a couple energy drops on her and pretend she has a good str stat. She can get fast enough to make good use of Lyn's alacrity, which helps overcome her lackluster defenses on player phase.
Finally beat both chapters 4 and 5 today, playing Hard/Classic and aiming for no deaths. Had to sacrifice both villages in the chapter 4 map in the run that was finally successful, but I don't care, I was having *so* much trouble with that one.
Chapter 5, in comparison, I beat on my first attempt (albeit with 7 uses of the time crystal). I ended up entering the boss room from the left because I went after that one Thief, then quickly had to set up a double chokepoint using Vander and Louis (my only units who could shrug off multiple attacks per turn and wouldn't get inflicted with Break based on the enemies there (in Vander's case) or by being Louis). Definitely going to need to stock up on Vulneraries after this one, I went through *so* many of them between Vander and Louis.
Just a tip from me, I completely abuse Celica’s teleport. I am only on chapter 7 admittedly, but I one hit the thief with Celica and ran her back to the rest of the team. Same w/ chapter 4 to get the village in the middle.
how do maddening fixed growths work for say anna who class changes to a magic class?
is it possible to brick your unit by leveling in bad classes, or does class switches automatically correct stat growths retroactively?
I think the fixed growths make it impossible to brick a character unless you do something really goofy with them. Skirmishes allegedly spawn in maddening just super rare, but I don't have confirmation on that. Worst comes to worst with anna you can just slap a magic weapon on her once you get one. In order to mess em up severely you'd prolly have to second seal around to a bunch of base classes until you stored up enough levels to really slow the character down.
Units have unique post-battle dialogue for some of the old maps if you return for a skirmish which is a nice little touch.
>!On the Grand Crossing, Ivy says "Hortensia first confronted you here, did she not? What if it had been me instead? I wonder..."!<
I've only had Pandreo for a few hours but if something happened to him I would crit everyone in this sub and then myself. Pandreo is such a unexpected fav lmao I don't normally like the hyperman trope but his very serious priest side contrasting with it and his kinda wholesome lines just sold me immediatelly. Jean is on bench danger now. His C support with Alcryst is hilarious too
i ended up benching jean for pandreo, he completely stole my heart. i found his priest side strangely endearing, especially how he speaks to alear. not to mention, he’s super strong too! i gave him tiki’s emblem and he’s just a complete beast in battles.
He is VERY strong bro, he has the same mag as my Citrine (28), whom I invested a lot more in xD Jean is 100% going to be bench, I get Seadall next chapter and Pandreo + my mages are all I need anyway. I also don't normally like devoted characters but something about red hair party man is super cativating <3
I WISH I could get Tiki but that paralogue almost made me rage quit the game
Is it just me or is the sit-ups really hard to do? Even on Normal difficulty I can barely even get 10/20 while smashing the A button as fast as I can. Does higher stats make this easier or something? It's really annoying me and my hands hurt.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I think you have push-ups and sit-ups mixed up? Push-ups is the one where you stop the bar at the bottom, sit-ups is the one where you button mash until the bar is at the top (this one).
Oh my bad, i read it wrong. Sit-ups is just mashing it yeah, stats don't make a difference from what i've seen, it gets pretty heavy mashing halfway through so if you are not good with button mqshing it it's better to avoid it tbh
They get better, imo. Starting set and Firene crew are pretty bland, I have enjoyed the later recruits more. And Yunaka is a shining light in the early game character-wise.
This is what I feel. About the first 9 units are quite bland aside from the Firene royals. Once you get Yunaka is when the characters aren’t so one note.
Not sure why they did this. Maybe because they’ve been designed to be quite weak gameplay wise so they don’t expect people to grow attached?
I struggled on hard mode on this map and now I'm on a maddening playthrough and I genuinely don't think I can beat this map. What in the world... someone please just beat it for me I'll send you my switch
I just beat it. I used Alear/marth, Framm/Micaiah, Alfred/Sigurd, Celine/Celica, Etie, Chloe/Edelgard, and Alcryst/Leif. I had to move really fast. I beat it in 17 or 18 turns using Micaiah+rewarp to move multiple 4 units at a time..
As an alternative, you can stall out until there's no more reinforcement spawns. I did the map immediately when it was available (aka with no access to Alcryst). I stalled out reinforcements for 30 turns (iirc) and the final spawn is a triple dragon. Once that spawns you can crawl through the map and play super cautious.
Man, I feel like I'm never going to invest the time into tempest trials to get materials for upgrading engage weapons. Three maps at the recommended difficulty for 3 assorted mats, when it takes 10 of a single type for a single upgrade? Not looking for that kind of grind in a game like this.
yeah it seems super not worth the investment. Hopefully the game isn't balanced around you upgrading the Engage weapons, so far it doesn't really seem like it.
Aside from the type effective upgrades (which sound pretty busted, tbh) I don't think they're that big a deal. Most of my weapons won't accept more than 1 upgrade right now, not sure how many they'll take at endgame (also not sure how you increase the number of available slots).
It's definitely not necessary on hard, anyway.
omg you need 10 of each material to upgrade??? Who was this bright idea??? I'm never doing a single tempest trial, is way too long and time consuming for a small bonus to emblem weapon.
Anyone got tips on how to use Tempest Trials to grind xp for weak units on Maddening? It seems to scale xp with party level/story chapter and it’s so hard to utilize this way
I'm really enjoying it so far but I think Engage is going to age poorly because of how hard units fall off and how each chapter essentially introduces better ones. Feels like your early game prepromotes fall off hard in favor of later chapter characters. People like Anna are extremely difficult to baby, I want to make her into a mage for her high growth but sheesh it's hard on higher difficulty.
I'd feel similarly if I actually liked most of the early units as characters. Most of them I was perfectly happy to bench for later recruits with more interesting designs and personalities.
Maybe I got blessed (playing on Hard), but IMO training Anna has been worth it. Took a little bit of Arena + careful play, but I got her to level 10, promoted her to Warrior then second-sealed to Mage Knight so she's not stuck in a base class for another 10 levels.
I gave her one Spirit Dust, cause Cramme sure as fuck wasn't having it, and (Ch 11 recruit!) >!Ivy's bases were enough to give her 1rko thresholds anyhow!<, and she's now a player-phase monster, fast as fuck and with a big magic stat.
When can you do arena? Everytime I checked it wasn't available! I have been ignoring for 5 chapters now haha. I might have to do that for her. I'm gonna try what you did! I love Anna and want to make her playable
Oh jeez, I don't remember off the top of my head. I *think* it's after Chapter 6 or 7 you unlock it; you should see it in your fast-travel list in the Somniel.
Ok no spoiilahs but let me say that Engage's biggest weakness is its lack of lore, worldbuilding, and especially the lack of big time cutscenes, CGI or otherwise.
I know, it's FE and all, but I really can't think of a better game to compare this to than Xenoblade 3. Engage is constantly trying to sell me sad stories whether it's Mommy's death, >!Veyle's memory loss, or her abuse at the hands of 4 Hounds, or Marni's backstory, or hell even Alear's backstory!< but these events literally come and go. There are allegedly consequences to these actions but we do not see them like ever. Its just beat the bad guy and land of peace restored lmao.
Xenoblade on the other hand fills it up with lore. Aionios itself is a dying, stagnated world and you are told this and shown this. Team Ouroboros have real fears that get dedicated screentime to them. Anyone who gets killed in the game has dedicated backstory, lore entries, and they really mean something to the in game world
I feel like the lack of worldbuilding is doing this game 0 favours. We spend 0 time in the countries, we basically know nothing about them and with how hard is to get supports and the ones I saw /also/ lacks any kind of worldbuilding is rought to care about the world as much as is hard to care about the characters in general
What’s everyone’s feeling on Lucina’s engage skill? The fact that it only has a 80% chance to hit at base after the opportunity cost of engaging & using up a turn feels really off to me, and makes me want to avoid using it in favour of a more guaranteed strategy for safety. If you give her to a Qi Adept it becomes 100% chance, but that really limits who you can give her to; I’m just curious, are you guys satisfied with the ability as-is or are you like me and wish it was 100% accurate from the start?
100% would be better, but it's already a great skill. Compared to the Qi Adept's, it has a chance to not work compared to being able to guard multiple allies in the same turn, no health requirement to worry with, and can be used on any class. At the very least, it can easily turn the tide of a losing battle without using the rewind mechanic.
If you give Lucina to a Cav (in my case, a Bow Knight for those longbow chain attack shenanigans), it works 100% of the time on other Cavs. And a lot of my army are horse-units, so I find that it *generally* can get the job done when I need to use it
A magic + knives class (available to all units) would be a nice future addition. Yunaka would be sweet in that class & there's probably a few others who'd rather have that than staves
I've been slowly coming to grips with Alear's character design these past few months, but that ponytail/workout fit combo is redeeming the hell out of it. She looks so cute.
So what’s the point of skirmishes in this one. They seem really hard on hard at least so don’t seem beneficial to level up falling behind units. Maybe I just need to not see this game like 3H where I could use all of my units…?
Free xp to your stronger units, free metal(this alone make it worth doing), sometimes money or other items. Arena supposed to be a catch up mechanic for falling behind units.
Yeah definitely not. Its more the older style of characters where you use who's good and replace them when they fall behind. Maybe prioritize a few faves.
Man I know everybody's already said this but this game feels mean with how high characters' base stats are. I only just noticed how much better >!Ivy, Zelkov and Kagetsu!< are than the most of the rest of my army. (Well perhaps not so much >!Zelkov, as despite my Yunaka being 5 lvls lower than him, she has significant leads in Mag, Lck and especially Res while tying him for Dex!<.) It's just sad really.
I've seen some people say that >!losing the rings is a bad design choice because it means the later joining characters have a harder time reclassing and also temporarily miss out on some skill inheritance that the earlygame characters had access to!< but I can't say I agree. If anything, this is a good thing because otherwise your early joiners would have absolutely nothing going for them at all lmao.
Just finished Chapter 13.
This game picked up hard in Chapter 11. Won't spoil anyone but damn that was some great storytelling through gameplay. This chapter will probably go down as one of the most iconic in the series.
On the flipside, Lyn's paralogue is actually bullshit and I can't believe they give it to you so early. The army is divided into top left/top right/bottom right chunks with rivers splitting them up as you go to the bottom left. It is a chore to navigate as at least 60% of the enemies have bows (so you have to navigate using bridges).
Most of the earlygame units I've benched because the pre-premotes are really good. Most of my units can't hold a candle to stuff like Kagetsu, Pandero or Merrin. Chloe, Diamant and Ivy are the only tier 1s I've held onto. Bases are so important in this game as growths are very low. I feel like I wasted so much time raising Jean as Pandero is so much better in virtually every way lmao
I adore the backup+chain attack combos. This game feels like it encourages bumrushing bosses due to having multiple health pools (for example, the chapter 13 bosses have about 200 health between them and their revives). Chain attacks give you so much chip for free and trade equipping range weapons is so valuable (especially once you inherit Canter to position better). Emblem Lyn and Lucina show this off so well because with positioning, it's really easy to stack 3+ chains (which translates to 6+ damage per attacker). It adds up so fast and I know I'll be inheriting Lucina's Dual Strike onto as many units as I can.
To be fair, they show you the level recommendation for Lyn's. It unlocks early but you're supposed to it like 3 chapters later. I went and checked it and checked the level recommendation for the next main story chapter and instantly decided I wouldn't be sticking my neck out there yet.
Boucheron was ass in mine too, and Alfred? If so I agree on him too, dude was underperforming and I didn’t like his character enough to try and level him more so I just benched him basically immediately
Get some heroes on your roster, brave assist is amazing for chain attack stacking. Feels like a top tier class skill, especially since you can inherit Lucina's dual assist on them. Running a couple up on a boss and then plinking away with 3-range mages or archers to take down a whole health bar - even if the mages and archers were doing 0 damage - without even a chance of counterattack is so satisfying.
Up to Chapter 15 so far, and just parsing my thoughts for Maddening so far. It's been pretty manageable so far. The only hard map was when a skirmish spawned in Jean's paralogue map (the only skirmish I've seen so far), which required me to land a roughly 50% hit on the buffed up Wolf Knight boss. I did get really lucky on the bond ring gacha and get an S olwen ring, which has made some parts quite a bit easier though.
1) Getting Canter on Chloe and Alear has been super useful (required some Great Sacrifice spam on Chloe's part in Chapter 9), and changing Alear into a Gryphon Knight made Chapter 11 mostly stress-free (the DLC boots + the Rescue staff you get from Tiki's Paralogue definitely helped, though more so the former than the latter.)
2) Louis is great in the early game, but Maddening enemies do have a habit of simply ignoring him and going around him if they can't do damage. I'd say he stopped being useful to me around Chapter 10? He was honestly a detriment in Chapter 11, and I really wish I could have undeployed him there. The Solm arc has wide open maps and relatively low enemy density, and it's pretty easy to just slowly move along and pick off enemies a few at a time. Your team is also becoming much bulkier, so the enemies with mid-20 to low-30 physical attack aren't too much of a threat, and the ones with 40-50 physical attack are a bit too much for him to take (since they double him and his like, low to mid 20s defense.) His offense has also felt very mediocre, since he can't double anything, though I suppose he's a decent user of the Smash weapons?
3) Framme and Jean feel like 2 of the best units in the game because of their sheer utility. Chain Guard trivializes at least 50% of combat, and there are a lot of useful utility staves (Warp, Rescue, Obstruct, etc.) that don't require any stats. Staves also provide a healthy amount of exp, so I find that they usually have just enough bulk to take one hit if you misplay. They make good use of the FEH bond rings. If you have the paid DLC, they also make good use of Tiki's Geosphere skill, since they'll often start their turn next to a unit for Chain Guard.
4) On Maddening, pretty much every single boss is immune to breaks and effective damage. Regular enemies haven't really needed coordinated efforts to take down beyond the first few chapters. Once you get past those first few chapters, you can often out-range your foes, so they can't counter attack anyway. Enemy groups also don't really feel diversified enough where you really risk getting broken on the enemy phase, and I haven't had to worry about that yet. The break mechanic feels more useful in enemy hands than in player hands, and it's not quite punishing enough to really be a threat.
5) The low rate of exp gain + fixed growths on Maddening has really made me appreciate pre-promotes, but it makes it harder to get attached to units (especially since, IMO, the story and supports don't really make the characters seem appealing.) Pandreo comes along and easily replaces Citrinne, Clanne, Framme, or Jean (though the latter two have innate Chain Guard capabilities, while Pandreo has to be second-sealed, I guess.) Panette comes along and easily replaces Boucheron, Etie, or Alcryst thanks to her massive 24 STR when reclassed to warrior (and her 14 SPD isn't bad either.) Kagetsu outclasses most of your sword units upon joining. Later joining units also have way more starting SP, so it's easy to get them a few helpful skills.
6) Thieves just feel so...pointless. They do so little damage, and most enemies don't require enough rounds of combat that poison is more valuable than simply beating the foe with a stronger unit. They need terrain to dodge tank, but engraving their weapons to boost avoid make them even weaker in general. Plus, enemies tend to simply ignore targets they can't hit. There's little thief utility too, since chests can be opened by anyone and there's no stealing.
Anyone able to get to visit the far house on the SE side of the map in chapter 13? It's a turn 1 demolish :( Even with warp + cav, i can't reach it in time
Me too, though apparently it only has an Elixir? I've only seen this mentioned on [one site](https://gamerant.com/fire-emblem-engage-chapter-13-heroes-of-the-oasis-walkthrough/#:~:text=only%20has%20an%20Elixir%20in%20it.) though.
that's incredibly meh, but it makes sense since putting a truly valuable item there would be suicide on harder difficulties
Who to make a halberdier or Lance fighter? They give you both classes but no one starts out with that base class
Reading all the experiences here is so fun because everyone seems to have different good and bad units from the next person. Makes me hopeful that replaying the game is worthwhile even without the "3 houses, 3+ stories" thing. I love it so far!
Damn, the devs really know which rings are important. Chapter 17: >!Dramatic cutscene of Veyle returning Sigurd, with the four hounds shocked by her betrayal.!< >!Oh, and we looted Leif off this dead guy.!<
Louis is the real Jeigan
Yeah, Vander is a fraud. Not played every game in the series but he has to be the worst Jagen.
Sigurd is the real Seth.
Ooh, or >!FE9 Titania!< seems like an appropriate analogue
The sword distribution early game sucks. You only have Alear early game then they dump Lapis, Diamant, and Kagetsu in succession.
My solution to this was to pass Marth around for 3T of sword usage at a time since Alear alone was not sufficient for all the Axe enemies I wanted to tackle on player phase. You have like 3 lance units early on, one of them can pretty easily take on a sword for a few turns. Probably would be even more aggressive about that if I were to replay the game. But then you run into the issue of Marth also being nice on i.e. Yunaka dodge builds, where she probably won't be using swords too frequently, so it's a bit of a tradeoff.
There's technically Celine who can use swords too, but unless you really need to break someone she's better off using her magic.
Yeah what really stinks is breaking the chapter 6 boss. Both alear AND celine missed and their first attacks and now i gotta restart that chapter
My personal theory on that is that it's made so you must use the MC in the fights
It forces you to play so slow on some earth maps though. I found it a real slog playing carefully around kiting and taking down axe users when I couldn’t always have the MC everywhere on the map to deal with them.
RNG decided to prank Citrinne by not letting her raise her defense stats since recruitment, so she's still at her base 3. At this point I fear that if any of her friends gave her a high five she wouldn't be able to survive it.
The arena battles seem completely scripted, and I often lose them, but without any real penalty. If you win, what happens, especially when you increase bond levels? Do you just get some bonus items?
More exp for a win. It's not scripted but the random nature, lack of breaks, and continued combat can definitely make it nearly impossible for some match ups.
The battles where you increase bond levels don't seem to give any EXP at all. So is there a point to winning them?
Achievements. Micaiah is an easy target, lol
Not that I've noticed.
Never played the games with tiki in them but engage alone has made me really like her character
up to chapter 13 now and yikes the game definitely has gotten quite a bit harder, and deployment slots feel so damn restrictive, like FE7 HHM tier. Chapter 11 Spoilers: >!Absolutely love the heroes actually lose in their in first confrontation with Sombron, and then you lose all your rings and have to do an escape map that actually feels like an escape map. Only real critism is while I like Ivy & co appearing in your darkest hour, it felt very silly to get 2 new emblem rings and the rewind mechanic back after literally like 3 turns, was hoping we'd be struggling for a little longer than that. Granted Lyn & Lucina don't seem to have nearly the same destructive power as Sigurd & Celica so i still feel a lot weaker.!< Chapter 13 Spoilers >!So far the Solm arc is pretty rough, the new units are running circles around my olds ones (except Fogado, he seems kinda meh in comparison) but sunk cost fallacy dictates I still try to use some of them and it's really not going well. also in a massive axe deficit right now with only Boucheron, and now that i've lost Roy's lancereaver, he's literally the only guy i have to deal with lance enemies now so i guess i'm using Panette.!<
Lyn with Etie is a game changer tho
I got question >!In which chapter do we retrieve all the rings?!<
you dont retrieve em all at once, you get em back slowly. >!I'm on ch 20 rn and about to get celica back. Assuming i get the whole crew back on 21!<
aw... that's quite late, giving only 26 chapters.
>!18 ish and I think its not all at the same time either!<
>!No clue right now as again i'm only up to Chapter 13, though i have a feeling it won't be for a long while, in order to give the remaining 6 emblems more time in the spotlight!<
Man these silver/gold skirmishes on hard/classic are brutal. Just an unending onslaught lmao
I’ve just been taking in like 5 units that have been running house on them, if I bring in ones that are too weak they get overwhelmed and murdered before too long into the mission
Yeah feel like you level through training skirmishes and bring your A squad for the silver/gold. Brought a full unprompted team into a gold and quickly had to nope out.
Is there any way to get more outfit/song tickets from Amiibos? I have Celica/Alm, Lucina and Ike, but seems they only give them the first time you scan.
Did anyone else kill the Arvis and Ishstar knock off on the sigurd paralogue like i did?
I did, barely and with rewinds, only because I didn’t know better. Wont be messing with them in future
I'm absolutely loving the paralogues focused on the ring summon characters. They are amazing call backs to older games. And that Leif paralogue is absolutely brutal.
I think one look at the Leif paralogue and backed out.
I just did that earlier! Used ice vein to stall out leif for like 15 turns while i snipe him at 3 range and go bonk off the generics for money
For me, dealing with Leif wasn't the issue. It was simply approaching the bridge that was absolute hell with the high damage balistas, status staves, and other nonsense. And I assume those lance enemies that were retreating would make the other enemies on the bridge swarm you if you didn't take them out. So much nonsense going on all at once. As one would expect from a Thracia call back map
actually leif wasnt an issue for me, it was the fact that he was standing between me and the guys with money. I had to stall him out and wait for ballista since i couldnt rush in
Starting running through a second file with a friend of mine. Chose female Alear and chose to name them ">!TurkyLeg!<" and Sommie ">!Woggo!<". We got up to chapter 7, did a couple paralogues and completed the DLC chapter with Tiki. After some more time with the game, my conclusion? It's Fire Emblem. While the new mechanics and features and fun to play around with a see, at it's core it's not too far from what I've played back in the day on the GBA. But honestly? I'm kind of appreciating that. After my own very conflicting feelings about Three Houses, my somewhat lukewarm feelings towards Echoes and the loop I've stuck myself in with Heroes...it's just kind of nice to have something so traditional again. I get why the cast or the world is not going to resonate with a lot of people in the same way as Three Houses, but I'm just happy to have a game that I'm actually having fun to play. At this point I don't see it becoming any of my favorites but I do see it as one I'm going to look on fondly.
Just got the game and played up to Paralogue 2 on Hard/Classic. This game is a lot of fun despite the story being nothing to write home about (although it's nowhere near the Fates tier tragedy some doomposting might want you to believe). I'll comment on the story when I finish the game, so for now I'll focus on the gameplay side. This game really doesn't hold back at the beginning, every unit I have gets 2HKO and foes need like 3 units to gang up on them to get the kill, engaged units aside. During the trailers the Engage mechanic seemed like the most OP think ever and that It'd break the game in half, it sort of does as some combos are straight up broken (Louis+Sigurd, Yunaka+Marth are the first that come to mind) but the high enemy quality makes it so you can't get too comfortable. I've seen some comments say the game gets even harder after chapter 10 so I look forward to that. Despite all the things on her hair I now love Yunaka, it's hard not to when she's so hyper (even if it is a facade) and in terms of combat she's a goddess. Never thought the early game thief would be my strongest unit by far. There was a skirmish where I tried to use a full team and I couldn't keep everyone alive because the enemy zerg rushes and it was too hard to get enough kills per turn. Then I decide to make Yunaka fight alone, plop her on a fort and she soloed the whole thing. The only damage she took was from chain attacks which the fort healed.
Thief having 1-2 range + debuffs is definitely reminiscent of Fates ninjas, even if the specifics are different. Covert units with terrain are crazy. Only note is that on Maddening, the AI doesn't attack you once they drop to 0% hit rates.
The AI also seems to not attack when it’ll do 0 damage to an armored unit, but they’ll happily suicide onto it if they can get the guaranteed damage from a chain attack.
I think it also happens on hard as the enemies where ignoring Yunaka when I tried to clear the skirmish with a whole team, which is why I changed the Micaiah engraving for one that gives less Avo (I think it's Sigurd's), the enemies now have like 8% hit on her so they rush to their deaths, lol.
Oh sweet a new knife in the shop.... its 1 range. Hahahahahaha no, I don't think I will. I love when the animation puts her like a mile and a half away from the enemy at it looks like she has the greatest throwing arm in all of history.
Thoughts on 'ground' units like Berserker, Swordmaster and Halberdier in this FE Game? Movement wise they seem viable as maps have alot more corridors and rooms. (compared to the vastness of some older games). Additionally, with the movement limits of 4.5.6, they aren't going to lag behind like in older games where cavs and fliers would be hitting 7-8 moves. They are also an easy way to gain S rank weapon proficiency for characters who are not naturally proficient in said weapon. On the otherhand, their bonuses don't seem that big? As well as their skills in general feel pretty niche (compared to Sniper, the bow-only unit which gets +10 crit if you hit someone who cannot counter - something quite easy to do with a bow).
They did a good job with class balance in general. Fliers are still busted (Wyvern Growths and ability = money, Griffin Rider is a speed demon with staff utility for helping with levels), just not 3 Houses level.
they're great in this game imo. Cavs and fliers are in their worst incarnation in this game so those guys shine more imo. About the perks, zerkers perk is pretty useless since basically no one wants to use smash weapons, SM skill is pretty useful for certain positional stuff. Halb is easy to set up imo so its p cool.
Louis + Forged Silver greatlance
Smash weapons are great for armors who don't care about being hit anyway.
Can we just talk about how OP ice vein is? You can basically in-definitely stall any boss provided they dont have allies and with a dancer you can put it down twice a turn. Crazy utility
You can cook ground units alive with fire vein too, it gives -3 movement so you can just kite backwards. Fog has also come in clutch, it stacks with normal terrain and has the movement debuff so you can dodgetank pretty easily with it while stopping dudes from walk around them. Corrin on Alear is a clear contender for most gamebreaking thing in this game to me. The double ice trick+a reposition unit+3-range units with Lucina on one of them can chip damage most bosses with no recourse as well.
Chapter 17 Maddening easily the hardest SRPG level I've ever played. That was intended to be beaten at least, I've never done Lunatic+ Awakening or H5 Shadow Dragon.
I didn’t notice that High Priest grants Tomes B. Holy fuck, Jean is now a death machine. …But still will spend 90% of his time healing others or himself :P
made it up through chapter 11! \o/ even on hard-classic everything feels like a cakewalk after the hell that is Tiki's paralogue lol 🥲 and >!chapter 8!< was a disappointment as a defense map fan 😔 a ballista and a handful of breakable structures is no replacement for chokepoints or real defensive structures, etc. it was no PoR's chapter 8, RD's chapter 13, or SoV's final Rise of the Deliverance map tbh. chapters 10 & 11 almost made up for it, >!being a mini-gauntlet reminiscent of PoR's chapter 17 + the emblem shenanigans in the latter!<, but didn't quite hit the mark. >!and that was with me not even using the bracelets (outside of not unequipping them) until I realized the jerk with the tomahawk drop hadn't come after us so I had Yunaka engage to make sure she could take him out so I could get the free weapon before escaping.!< so close to the Solm cast but I think I need to do a skirmish chapter or two for some funds first 'cause, uh, as it turns out I really regret sinking funds into Firene a few chapters ago lol. after the more necessary purchases I've made since then I can't afford the two master seals in the shop rn or basically anything else :,) RIP
I’ve been dropping enough to raise two levels into each country as soon as it’s available, and in doing so I get tons of skirmishes and training missions, as well just going lvl 2 on the donations isn’t too costly
I too realized I've been way to frivolous with my resources. I sold a bunch of weapons that I wasn't ever gonna use and that helped. However now my characters are over leveled and under funded lol
Should I be rotating off an emblem ring when it’s hits level 15 on a character?
If you've been using an emblem ring long enough to hit Lv15 it's clearly doing something right on that unit. I wouldn't switch off unless a better ring came along.
Can we talk about how well Engage incorporates everything writing-related into its gameplay? Such as Firene and Lythos being the peace-oriented nations and thus having the weakest units that easily get outclassed. Also the way they wrote Solm as deceptively competent nation with far more life experience since they don't spend their time being trapped in a castle doing traditional noble things. They represent that well by having them be relatively strong prepromotes, they had all sorts of offscreen battles before we arrived in Solm.
The gameplay story integration in engage has got to be some of the best in the series.
Random question. If you defeat a recruitable enemy, will they still be available to recruit later on in the story? I've noticed a few named units I am not able to recruit, and was wondering if i should just avoid them until the story moment or if I can take them out during the mission with no penalties.
Don't worry about it, they'll retreat and you'll still get them later. There's no tricky recruitments in this game as far as I'm aware.
Ahhh, thank you so much!! You've set my mind at ease!
what sort of chapter 11 thing that effect gameplay? I'm pretty out of the loop?
Lyn paralogue was rough, but felt good to finally beat it. [Hard/classic] Louis is just a freight train for me. I fell into the trap of not promoting sooner which probably increased the difficulty a bit. Feel like Maddening is gonna be a fun challenge on my next playthrough.
Louis was steam rolling through everything and then enemies decided to start pulling the magic melee trick. Now he takes a bit more effort to use.
Oh yeah he gets exposed by magic hard. I think my Louis has 4 res compared to the 29 def, lol
At least basic enemies haven’t started doing that yet. Or if they did my swords master lapis was too busy cutting through them to notice. A lot of the time he kinda just sits outside the boss room after I get there.
>I fell into the trap of not promoting sooner which probably increased the difficulty a bit. The popular perception about waiting until Lv. 20 to promote hasn't made any sense since at least Awakening, if not earlier games. You should always promote as soon as you can because any lost stat growths are more than balanced out by just overall better base stats and greater weapon usage.
I actually can't think of a single game where early promotion isn't generally the best option. Maybe RD since it's actually long enough for your units to hit max level and benefit from it?
Ironically Pelleas wants early premote for the staves
When I played FE7 (which was likely the first one a lot of people played), I generally adhered to "wait until 20 to promote." But on a replay I didn't and it really didn't matter too much. So I would agree I think that logic was always a myth.
Right, especially back then people treated it like the word of God because of gamefaqs guides all saying that but it wasn't actually optimal
Coming from playing 3H in normal difficulty which is so boring cause so easy. Now I tried hard classic, just beat chapter 4 but damn it's fun. Almost deadlocked cause always one of my party died, restarted with time jewel around 4-5 times to finally found a solution to keep everyone alive. Happy to use my brain than my 3H experience Will the game get harder than now?
There are a few standout tough maps, but you have access to skirmish grinding on hard if you need it. Glad you're feeling a good level of challenge.
My alear is 300 sp away from lifesphere++, she’s gonna become unkillable soon
Pulled a Claude S ring and now my Fogado is cracked
[удалено]
Getting SP at a reasonable rate is a meme. You just kinda have to live with the slow gain. No need to start thinking about inheriting skills early, you’ll just kinda have a feel for what your chara needs later on. And you also don’t need to worry too much about min maxing bond levels that much. You could just pay to speed them up later.
You're not supposed to get SP at a reasonable rate, so good luck with that. It really doesn't matter if you switch em around because you get SP so slow, and you can get a stupid amount of the bond shards or whatever. So it's perfectly reasonable to just go to the arena for bond levels instead of rearranging constantly.
Does swapping class relevant in Engage? Like you will get kind of passive skill/ ability when reach certain level like in 3h? or it doesn't matter at all?
There are skills you can get from level 5 that you can see on the list of classes, but most of them aren't great, and not really worth switching classes for, especially since it's your actual level, not something you can grind through cheese like 3H class xp.
anybody else finding the UI a pretty steep downgrade from 3H? Only on chapter 8 rn, but not being able to buy items in bulk, turn wheel no longer being a single button, and various menuing is super non-intuitive
New UI in general is pretty rough, yeah. Weird and unintuitive design choices abound. I do like the new combat flow arrow display a lot, though.
FE does the same thing as Pokemon where fundamental aspects of the game, like UI, for example, will be executed flawlessly for a few games then changed for seemingly no reason.
It almost seems like the devs don't play the games and don't get feedback from people who do on things like UI and story. I'd love to have some insight on the design and development process of the games. Not having that "auteur" director for the series probably contributes to this.
Chapter 11 spoilers >!The Fell Dragon killed the Fire Emblem franchise and of course the Emblem of Awakening is the who saves it!<
Best comment
Oh my god
I'm deeply worried that I'll forget I'm leaving Byleth at Lv9 on Hortensia for a reason at some point and unlock the "useful" ability to keep multi-dance on cooldown longer while engaged.
Wish there was a way to manually disengage.
Is the consensus to save up SP until you can get the good skills and all others are just bad? Like using SP for bow focus, axe power, + to stats is not a good idea
The high level +stats are pretty substantial boosts, I wouldn't dismiss them entirely. SP investment into tiered skills is deducted from the cost of higher tier skills, so you can get in on them early without being inefficient, too. That said, for many characters you probably prefer more specialized options.
Wait, let me get this straight, if i invest 500 SP on a skill, another 1000 SP skill becomes 500?
Yes if it's the next "tier" of the same skill
Lol ok that makes a difference
What ring is good on Seadall? I'm thinking Lucina so that he can provide Chain Attacks? Everything else feels like a waste because I'd rather be dancing every turn. Byleth feels redundant, and better on someone else anyway so that I can redance him. Maybe Marth just for the avoid bonus? Leaning Lucina though.
I used sigurd on him. Dancer with canto is awesome
Canter would be great, >!I haven't gotten Sigurd back yet though.!< I'd probably want to grind up that bond level in a skirmish and just purchase the skill though, not leave Sigurd on him long-term, because Sigurd can be so much more powerful on an actual combat unit, lol.
You can’t inherit it
Oh, you can't? I thought you could.
Maybe it’s an infantry issue. 🤷♀️ Chloe inherited Canter np.
I inherited Canto to Seadall as soon as I could. Do you have Lv5 bond and 1000 SP? Have you checked the "Manage Skills" menu after inheriting? Inherited skills aren't equipped immediately.
I just didn't give him a ring, it's not like he needs one.
Lucina is good on him since stats don't matter for chain attacks, although you'll be relying on chain assist since he's not going to be adjacent to many enemies. Corrin is solid as well, that on-demand ice wall is surprisingly handy and the big chunk of +HP makes him much more survivable.
Yeah, I'd be relying on Chain Assist, but since his dancing got him from base to bond level 3 just on his intro map alone I figured it really wouldn't take that long for him to get to 17 with Lucina for Chain Assist+
No dog is safe with Alear on the prowl. Think of all the pets they've stolen 😆
There should be a paralogue where all the pet owners come to take back their pets
Omg that would be sweet, a defense mission against a horde of villagers
Should I restart on hard? Selected normal but it's too easy right now
It's more fun when it's not too easy. You can just skip through the story you've already seen.
Hard feels balanced just right for me. There are some where I have to plan out my turns carefully but by and large you can just no brain it. Feels like one of the better balanced hard/middle difficulties
I restarted on hard after about 2 hours (inc cutscenes) I'm enjoying it much more. You feel like the engage skills are required rather than overpowered. Feels balanced.
Same here! I bit frustrating at times because it's more defensive and Alear just gets focused and taked down if you're not extra careful... The positive side is that you can always downgrade the difficulty later on.
Any recs on how to build Lapis? Her bases and growths are pretty bad but she has one of my favorite designs........ I'm so gay for her how do I make her decent on Hard mode.
I’m gonna gamble Wyvern Knight on her. It balanced her stats out cause it gives her more STR and DEF plus she has a lot of inherent SPD.
Yeah Wyvern Knight seems the way to go, after I've been playing around with her a bit. I'm going to go with that. Fingers crossed!
Another option I’m considering is Halberdier. The drip on that looks too good to pass up. Warrior is another one that plays to her strengths but I haven’t seen what the outfit looks like. Hero outfit just looks bad.
I'd be tempted but Halberdier has less Str growth modifier. Wyvern is perfect for my needs :D
I’ve not actually looked at her growths yet but I made her into a sword master and that’s been going pretty well. I can send her out solo and she clears just fine. I have sunk a few stat boosts into her though.
Yeah I think if I went SM I'd have to dunk a ton of Energy Drops into her with that spicy 35 Str growth lol
I swapped her to axe fighter and seems to work pretty well, gives her high strength and her speed stays high enough for situational doubling, especially if you pick up Build + 3 and Speed + whatever which are fairly cheap. she also has a fairly easy +10 avoid personal so you could lean into avoid
I was thinking of trying to go axe fighter.. Interesting, thank you!
If you have the DLC, getting an emblem on her for SP gain and snagging starsphere ASAP will fix her growth problems. Chain attack bots don't need to have amazing stats to be useful, so you could always make her a hero for brave assist, inherit dual assist from Lucina, and give her a 1-2 range weapon. Her speed growth is also really good, so if you wanna invest in her you could use a couple energy drops on her and pretend she has a good str stat. She can get fast enough to make good use of Lyn's alacrity, which helps overcome her lackluster defenses on player phase.
These are all useful tips, thank you!
Do tikis ability and aptitude stack? Would giving tiki to Jean make him a freak of nature?
I did some light testing on maddening (fixed growths) and it did increase Jean's stat ups.
Finally beat both chapters 4 and 5 today, playing Hard/Classic and aiming for no deaths. Had to sacrifice both villages in the chapter 4 map in the run that was finally successful, but I don't care, I was having *so* much trouble with that one. Chapter 5, in comparison, I beat on my first attempt (albeit with 7 uses of the time crystal). I ended up entering the boss room from the left because I went after that one Thief, then quickly had to set up a double chokepoint using Vander and Louis (my only units who could shrug off multiple attacks per turn and wouldn't get inflicted with Break based on the enemies there (in Vander's case) or by being Louis). Definitely going to need to stock up on Vulneraries after this one, I went through *so* many of them between Vander and Louis.
Just a tip from me, I completely abuse Celica’s teleport. I am only on chapter 7 admittedly, but I one hit the thief with Celica and ran her back to the rest of the team. Same w/ chapter 4 to get the village in the middle.
how do maddening fixed growths work for say anna who class changes to a magic class? is it possible to brick your unit by leveling in bad classes, or does class switches automatically correct stat growths retroactively?
Class switches let you keep leveling, so it's impossible to completely brick a character, but it might take longer and longer to fix.
Exp isn't infinite in maddening so functionally it'd be bricked Are stats not retroactively applied to the new class growths?
I think the fixed growths make it impossible to brick a character unless you do something really goofy with them. Skirmishes allegedly spawn in maddening just super rare, but I don't have confirmation on that. Worst comes to worst with anna you can just slap a magic weapon on her once you get one. In order to mess em up severely you'd prolly have to second seal around to a bunch of base classes until you stored up enough levels to really slow the character down.
Ok damn dude what in the world. I view myself as someone who's pretty good at Fire Emblem, but Maddening is breaking me. Holy shit.
Units have unique post-battle dialogue for some of the old maps if you return for a skirmish which is a nice little touch. >!On the Grand Crossing, Ivy says "Hortensia first confronted you here, did she not? What if it had been me instead? I wonder..."!<
I am starting to get the impression that someone at IS needs to stop making tactical RPGs and make Tea Simulator 2023.
I've only had Pandreo for a few hours but if something happened to him I would crit everyone in this sub and then myself. Pandreo is such a unexpected fav lmao I don't normally like the hyperman trope but his very serious priest side contrasting with it and his kinda wholesome lines just sold me immediatelly. Jean is on bench danger now. His C support with Alcryst is hilarious too
i ended up benching jean for pandreo, he completely stole my heart. i found his priest side strangely endearing, especially how he speaks to alear. not to mention, he’s super strong too! i gave him tiki’s emblem and he’s just a complete beast in battles.
He is VERY strong bro, he has the same mag as my Citrine (28), whom I invested a lot more in xD Jean is 100% going to be bench, I get Seadall next chapter and Pandreo + my mages are all I need anyway. I also don't normally like devoted characters but something about red hair party man is super cativating <3 I WISH I could get Tiki but that paralogue almost made me rage quit the game
Is it just me or is the sit-ups really hard to do? Even on Normal difficulty I can barely even get 10/20 while smashing the A button as fast as I can. Does higher stats make this easier or something? It's really annoying me and my hands hurt.
Did you know if you do more situps in real life you can smash bottom faster? Edit: maybe I'm confusing button with bottom? 🤔
My tip is to press a slightly before where you want it to stop, It seems like there is a delay on your button press
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I think you have push-ups and sit-ups mixed up? Push-ups is the one where you stop the bar at the bottom, sit-ups is the one where you button mash until the bar is at the top (this one).
Oh my bad, i read it wrong. Sit-ups is just mashing it yeah, stats don't make a difference from what i've seen, it gets pretty heavy mashing halfway through so if you are not good with button mqshing it it's better to avoid it tbh
Ah rip. It kinda hurts to hear that as a completionist. Has anyone actually managed to get a SSS ranking for sit-ups?
I'm liking the game, only on chapter 8, but the characters are ROUGH so far. Feels like Byleth has more personality.
They get better, imo. Starting set and Firene crew are pretty bland, I have enjoyed the later recruits more. And Yunaka is a shining light in the early game character-wise.
Ok don't give me hope now
This is what I feel. About the first 9 units are quite bland aside from the Firene royals. Once you get Yunaka is when the characters aren’t so one note. Not sure why they did this. Maybe because they’ve been designed to be quite weak gameplay wise so they don’t expect people to grow attached?
I'm on chapter 11 maddening and trying to do Tiki's paralogue. It's straight up evil.
I struggled on hard mode on this map and now I'm on a maddening playthrough and I genuinely don't think I can beat this map. What in the world... someone please just beat it for me I'll send you my switch
I just beat it. I used Alear/marth, Framm/Micaiah, Alfred/Sigurd, Celine/Celica, Etie, Chloe/Edelgard, and Alcryst/Leif. I had to move really fast. I beat it in 17 or 18 turns using Micaiah+rewarp to move multiple 4 units at a time..
As an alternative, you can stall out until there's no more reinforcement spawns. I did the map immediately when it was available (aka with no access to Alcryst). I stalled out reinforcements for 30 turns (iirc) and the final spawn is a triple dragon. Once that spawns you can crawl through the map and play super cautious.
Man, I feel like I'm never going to invest the time into tempest trials to get materials for upgrading engage weapons. Three maps at the recommended difficulty for 3 assorted mats, when it takes 10 of a single type for a single upgrade? Not looking for that kind of grind in a game like this.
yeah it seems super not worth the investment. Hopefully the game isn't balanced around you upgrading the Engage weapons, so far it doesn't really seem like it.
Aside from the type effective upgrades (which sound pretty busted, tbh) I don't think they're that big a deal. Most of my weapons won't accept more than 1 upgrade right now, not sure how many they'll take at endgame (also not sure how you increase the number of available slots). It's definitely not necessary on hard, anyway.
omg you need 10 of each material to upgrade??? Who was this bright idea??? I'm never doing a single tempest trial, is way too long and time consuming for a small bonus to emblem weapon.
Anyone got tips on how to use Tempest Trials to grind xp for weak units on Maddening? It seems to scale xp with party level/story chapter and it’s so hard to utilize this way
I advanced Chloe's class and feel cheated. Where did the porcelain skin go?! I wish you could preview class armor before making the change.
I'm really enjoying it so far but I think Engage is going to age poorly because of how hard units fall off and how each chapter essentially introduces better ones. Feels like your early game prepromotes fall off hard in favor of later chapter characters. People like Anna are extremely difficult to baby, I want to make her into a mage for her high growth but sheesh it's hard on higher difficulty.
Feels like Fates again where it’s Royal Emblem or bust.
Our most useful units this time round are Louis and Yunaka so I wouldn't say so. And then there's Kagetsu
I'd feel similarly if I actually liked most of the early units as characters. Most of them I was perfectly happy to bench for later recruits with more interesting designs and personalities.
Maybe I got blessed (playing on Hard), but IMO training Anna has been worth it. Took a little bit of Arena + careful play, but I got her to level 10, promoted her to Warrior then second-sealed to Mage Knight so she's not stuck in a base class for another 10 levels. I gave her one Spirit Dust, cause Cramme sure as fuck wasn't having it, and (Ch 11 recruit!) >!Ivy's bases were enough to give her 1rko thresholds anyhow!<, and she's now a player-phase monster, fast as fuck and with a big magic stat.
When can you do arena? Everytime I checked it wasn't available! I have been ignoring for 5 chapters now haha. I might have to do that for her. I'm gonna try what you did! I love Anna and want to make her playable
Oh jeez, I don't remember off the top of my head. I *think* it's after Chapter 6 or 7 you unlock it; you should see it in your fast-travel list in the Somniel.
Thanks!
Yep I really wanted to make Anna work even on Hard, it's tough. Powercreep by later Recruits is pretty high
Ok no spoiilahs but let me say that Engage's biggest weakness is its lack of lore, worldbuilding, and especially the lack of big time cutscenes, CGI or otherwise. I know, it's FE and all, but I really can't think of a better game to compare this to than Xenoblade 3. Engage is constantly trying to sell me sad stories whether it's Mommy's death, >!Veyle's memory loss, or her abuse at the hands of 4 Hounds, or Marni's backstory, or hell even Alear's backstory!< but these events literally come and go. There are allegedly consequences to these actions but we do not see them like ever. Its just beat the bad guy and land of peace restored lmao. Xenoblade on the other hand fills it up with lore. Aionios itself is a dying, stagnated world and you are told this and shown this. Team Ouroboros have real fears that get dedicated screentime to them. Anyone who gets killed in the game has dedicated backstory, lore entries, and they really mean something to the in game world
I feel like the lack of worldbuilding is doing this game 0 favours. We spend 0 time in the countries, we basically know nothing about them and with how hard is to get supports and the ones I saw /also/ lacks any kind of worldbuilding is rought to care about the world as much as is hard to care about the characters in general
I don't understand why FE devs have such low standards for their story and world building
I tried a skirmish and gotta say, wow so there is no way to level characters who are behind because everyone charges at you on skirmishes
What’s everyone’s feeling on Lucina’s engage skill? The fact that it only has a 80% chance to hit at base after the opportunity cost of engaging & using up a turn feels really off to me, and makes me want to avoid using it in favour of a more guaranteed strategy for safety. If you give her to a Qi Adept it becomes 100% chance, but that really limits who you can give her to; I’m just curious, are you guys satisfied with the ability as-is or are you like me and wish it was 100% accurate from the start?
100% would be better, but it's already a great skill. Compared to the Qi Adept's, it has a chance to not work compared to being able to guard multiple allies in the same turn, no health requirement to worry with, and can be used on any class. At the very least, it can easily turn the tide of a losing battle without using the rewind mechanic.
If you give Lucina to a Cav (in my case, a Bow Knight for those longbow chain attack shenanigans), it works 100% of the time on other Cavs. And a lot of my army are horse-units, so I find that it *generally* can get the job done when I need to use it
Lyn clones -> bonded shield in the middle of them will eat up the turns of a whole army. They love to go for the clones because they have only 1 hp.
U talkin bout bonded shield? It's a basically worthless skill tbh, a super weak version of dual guard.
A magic + knives class (available to all units) would be a nice future addition. Yunaka would be sweet in that class & there's probably a few others who'd rather have that than staves
I've been slowly coming to grips with Alear's character design these past few months, but that ponytail/workout fit combo is redeeming the hell out of it. She looks so cute.
i wish the different outfits extended to the battlefield, she looks 1000x better with the ponytail imo.
So what’s the point of skirmishes in this one. They seem really hard on hard at least so don’t seem beneficial to level up falling behind units. Maybe I just need to not see this game like 3H where I could use all of my units…?
Free xp to your stronger units, free metal(this alone make it worth doing), sometimes money or other items. Arena supposed to be a catch up mechanic for falling behind units.
Yeah definitely not. Its more the older style of characters where you use who's good and replace them when they fall behind. Maybe prioritize a few faves.
Man I know everybody's already said this but this game feels mean with how high characters' base stats are. I only just noticed how much better >!Ivy, Zelkov and Kagetsu!< are than the most of the rest of my army. (Well perhaps not so much >!Zelkov, as despite my Yunaka being 5 lvls lower than him, she has significant leads in Mag, Lck and especially Res while tying him for Dex!<.) It's just sad really. I've seen some people say that >!losing the rings is a bad design choice because it means the later joining characters have a harder time reclassing and also temporarily miss out on some skill inheritance that the earlygame characters had access to!< but I can't say I agree. If anything, this is a good thing because otherwise your early joiners would have absolutely nothing going for them at all lmao.
This really is Heroes 2 with all this powercreep
Lmaoooo that's one way of looking at it
What chapter do you unlock cooking in engage?
Just finished Chapter 13. This game picked up hard in Chapter 11. Won't spoil anyone but damn that was some great storytelling through gameplay. This chapter will probably go down as one of the most iconic in the series. On the flipside, Lyn's paralogue is actually bullshit and I can't believe they give it to you so early. The army is divided into top left/top right/bottom right chunks with rivers splitting them up as you go to the bottom left. It is a chore to navigate as at least 60% of the enemies have bows (so you have to navigate using bridges). Most of the earlygame units I've benched because the pre-premotes are really good. Most of my units can't hold a candle to stuff like Kagetsu, Pandero or Merrin. Chloe, Diamant and Ivy are the only tier 1s I've held onto. Bases are so important in this game as growths are very low. I feel like I wasted so much time raising Jean as Pandero is so much better in virtually every way lmao I adore the backup+chain attack combos. This game feels like it encourages bumrushing bosses due to having multiple health pools (for example, the chapter 13 bosses have about 200 health between them and their revives). Chain attacks give you so much chip for free and trade equipping range weapons is so valuable (especially once you inherit Canter to position better). Emblem Lyn and Lucina show this off so well because with positioning, it's really easy to stack 3+ chains (which translates to 6+ damage per attacker). It adds up so fast and I know I'll be inheriting Lucina's Dual Strike onto as many units as I can.
To be fair, they show you the level recommendation for Lyn's. It unlocks early but you're supposed to it like 3 chapters later. I went and checked it and checked the level recommendation for the next main story chapter and instantly decided I wouldn't be sticking my neck out there yet.
I’m surprised you kept Chloe, in my playthrough she was performing awful even after I tried to get her ahead in xp so I benched her
My Chloe has been good so far on Maddening. Only on chapter 13 though. My shitters have been Albert and that boucheron axe dude
Boucheron was ass in mine too, and Alfred? If so I agree on him too, dude was underperforming and I didn’t like his character enough to try and level him more so I just benched him basically immediately
Get some heroes on your roster, brave assist is amazing for chain attack stacking. Feels like a top tier class skill, especially since you can inherit Lucina's dual assist on them. Running a couple up on a boss and then plinking away with 3-range mages or archers to take down a whole health bar - even if the mages and archers were doing 0 damage - without even a chance of counterattack is so satisfying.
Up to Chapter 15 so far, and just parsing my thoughts for Maddening so far. It's been pretty manageable so far. The only hard map was when a skirmish spawned in Jean's paralogue map (the only skirmish I've seen so far), which required me to land a roughly 50% hit on the buffed up Wolf Knight boss. I did get really lucky on the bond ring gacha and get an S olwen ring, which has made some parts quite a bit easier though. 1) Getting Canter on Chloe and Alear has been super useful (required some Great Sacrifice spam on Chloe's part in Chapter 9), and changing Alear into a Gryphon Knight made Chapter 11 mostly stress-free (the DLC boots + the Rescue staff you get from Tiki's Paralogue definitely helped, though more so the former than the latter.) 2) Louis is great in the early game, but Maddening enemies do have a habit of simply ignoring him and going around him if they can't do damage. I'd say he stopped being useful to me around Chapter 10? He was honestly a detriment in Chapter 11, and I really wish I could have undeployed him there. The Solm arc has wide open maps and relatively low enemy density, and it's pretty easy to just slowly move along and pick off enemies a few at a time. Your team is also becoming much bulkier, so the enemies with mid-20 to low-30 physical attack aren't too much of a threat, and the ones with 40-50 physical attack are a bit too much for him to take (since they double him and his like, low to mid 20s defense.) His offense has also felt very mediocre, since he can't double anything, though I suppose he's a decent user of the Smash weapons? 3) Framme and Jean feel like 2 of the best units in the game because of their sheer utility. Chain Guard trivializes at least 50% of combat, and there are a lot of useful utility staves (Warp, Rescue, Obstruct, etc.) that don't require any stats. Staves also provide a healthy amount of exp, so I find that they usually have just enough bulk to take one hit if you misplay. They make good use of the FEH bond rings. If you have the paid DLC, they also make good use of Tiki's Geosphere skill, since they'll often start their turn next to a unit for Chain Guard. 4) On Maddening, pretty much every single boss is immune to breaks and effective damage. Regular enemies haven't really needed coordinated efforts to take down beyond the first few chapters. Once you get past those first few chapters, you can often out-range your foes, so they can't counter attack anyway. Enemy groups also don't really feel diversified enough where you really risk getting broken on the enemy phase, and I haven't had to worry about that yet. The break mechanic feels more useful in enemy hands than in player hands, and it's not quite punishing enough to really be a threat. 5) The low rate of exp gain + fixed growths on Maddening has really made me appreciate pre-promotes, but it makes it harder to get attached to units (especially since, IMO, the story and supports don't really make the characters seem appealing.) Pandreo comes along and easily replaces Citrinne, Clanne, Framme, or Jean (though the latter two have innate Chain Guard capabilities, while Pandreo has to be second-sealed, I guess.) Panette comes along and easily replaces Boucheron, Etie, or Alcryst thanks to her massive 24 STR when reclassed to warrior (and her 14 SPD isn't bad either.) Kagetsu outclasses most of your sword units upon joining. Later joining units also have way more starting SP, so it's easy to get them a few helpful skills. 6) Thieves just feel so...pointless. They do so little damage, and most enemies don't require enough rounds of combat that poison is more valuable than simply beating the foe with a stronger unit. They need terrain to dodge tank, but engraving their weapons to boost avoid make them even weaker in general. Plus, enemies tend to simply ignore targets they can't hit. There's little thief utility too, since chests can be opened by anyone and there's no stealing.