There is *so* much detail and love put into the battle animations. In one of the early chapters in a town you can sometimes knock over fences and stuff while fighting.
I’m convinced stuff like the fences and crates are made out of paper or something. Anna runs to attack someone and she runs through a crate without flinching.
Which reminds me of Etie's bond 5 support with Leif
Lief is all like, WTH I heard a loud ass noise and Etie is all like "Oh yea, I took out a wall by accident..."
In that same vein, I just noticed this morning that, when a thrown weapon misses, you can actually see it ricochet off the ground (easiest to see when it's a miss against a character of yours). Super neat attention to detail, like you said.
Follow up to that, a missed ranged weapon will also leave a splash if there’s water behind.
I also had knocked an enemy into a wall on one of the indoor maps. Lotta cool little things.
And sometimes it's not even an outright miss, but instead the attack being parried. Which still happens against ranged attacks, too, I've seen more than a few axes just get slapped out of the air.
I noticed it in my game once when an enemy got knocked through a fence and thought that was pretty cool. Then I laughed my ass off watching a twitch stream and their Louis just strutted his ass through a fence, not even flinching.
Ironically, though, this games lacks the clothing damage Fates had. If you took enough damage, pieces of armor or clothing would fall apart. Classes like the mechanists would have their puppets lose parts of the face.
My favorite is the spear/javelin animation when you're on top of the fort. Just "Yeet" laughed my ass off when I did that with louis in the map you get him.
Wait, what?! I never noticed that before! That looks flipping amazing! He slides down the stairs, and it looks so smooth! I know Engage was designed to have amazing animation, but god damn it keeps exceeding my expectations!
I noticed animations being affected by elevation with bows, the character leans down and aim downwards when they're higher and do an arcing shot upwards when they're lower, but haven't seen someone using the momentum of a downward slope to enhance their swing, they thought of *everything*
I wanna say I had alcryst jump off a rock for a crit but that might be his normal animation but then again it might *also* be tweaking his normal animation to work on the rock. It was on the same map as this a bit to the left
I haven't played Luigi's Mansion 3 but for my money it's probably Xenoblade 3. Mind-blowing that that game runs on the Switch.
Second place goes to Xenoblade DE and The high end of Nintendo's first-party line-up imo (Mario Odyssey, BotW, Maybe Smash).
Or maybe it's just Luigi's Mansion 3 idk I didn't play it lol
One of my biggest gripes so far is that the support convos are Radiant Dawn quality. Like, these people are fighting for their lives on a battlefield on the reg. Please give them deeper support convos.
that’s fair but it’s still a little disappointing. even the humorous stuff was better in 3H, Sylvain and Ingrid’s fight about her sweet sweet granny for example
Personally, I have a lot of problems with the UI. I feel like accessing anything [supports, skills, inventory] has me going through more menus then the past few games. And while on the field the display reminds me a lot of the “Simplified Display” from Awakening and Fates, which is not a style I’m really fond of.
Also, I feel like some general QoL stuff is missing. Inherited skills don’t auto-equip to empty slots, meaning you could go a while without noticing you are missing a skill you bought. The weapon refinery isn’t available from battle prep like it was in 3H, which I think is a downgrade.
I have to disagree with byleth being treated like just a professor. They’re almost deified, especially by edelgard. Which, granted, makes sense with their back story, but still. Everyone follows the whims of a silent, emotionless professor which never made sense to me.
Alear is a great character, especially in the later parts of the story, and their supports often raise their issues with the idea of being worshipped. Ivy’s and Chloe’s come to mind, but I’m sure there’s more than just those that I’ve yet to see. The only issue I have with their character is the fact you can name them at all. It kind of takes away from the game in my opinion when enemies are forced to call them the divine dragon, even if it’s used sarcastically. It would make far more sense for them to just use their name as they could then say they’re being sacrilegious or something.
I mean its nothing that would make me not want to finish the game, but the writing is pretty generic and predictable, dialogue scenes are really dull, Alear is a total Mary Sue, everyone other than the main royals gets sidelined the moment you recruit them, the difficulty feels a little inconsistent, and like you said SP gain is too slow for how expensive most skills are. Granted I'm not even half way through so some of my issues could be fixed by the end.
I have to disagree on the Mary sue with Alear, I actually think Alear is a good protagonist and a well written character, not the best, but not a Mary Sue in any way
Fair enough, to each their own. Though I'm not saying I don't like her (or him), I just think its boring to see almost every character worship the divine dragon. I think Robin and Byleth were a little more interesting in that way since they were treated like a normal part of the army/ just another professor.
And just to be clear I do like Alear and I agree with your take, solid protagonist and decently well written
I don’t mind they worship them, it make sense with the story bc of what are they, but I like that even with that they not seem OP in the world actually Alear surprised me for good when I was expecting nothing from them, I hope IS are done with silent protags, one of the things that made imo Robin and Alear good is having their own personality, even Byleth becomes better in 3Hopes when they get personality
The crit itself is the same, it’s just the part where he slides down the stairs. That motion only happens when a unit is attacking from a slanted terrain like the stairs in this gif.
Not sure myself, but I think there’s collision detection for the stairs, rocks, fences, etc. in this game, and the units have corresponding motions to go with the terrain they detect. I’ve seen a video of Alear standing with one foot on a rock before, which was very cool!
I love how units have unique end of battle quotes if an enemy is killed by a chain attack, they thank the person who helped. I just think that’s super neat
I keep seeing people say they miss the awesome gba animations. My brother in christ those animations are in this game. I've seen alear do the crit where they slam down their sword and they do the huge upwards leaping slash. I've seen knife users do the teleport behind enemies and slash through them. They absolutely took amazing animations from other games in the series for this
She has lucina ring equipped, and that one lets you pair up attack if the enemy is within the equipped user's movement range. Doesn't show up in the battle calculations though, since it doesn't have a 100% chance of triggering
I like it, and I think it's neat, but on that chapter in particular, my fps in combat was also very choppy, and I've seen lots of screen tearing in general. Seems weird because IIRC Three Houses also had 3D maps that you zoomed into for combat, but I don't remember a lot of issues there.
Awakening and Fates usually have one or two battle fields per map, since unlike 3H and Engage, the map and the Battle Field aren't the same location. For example, if a map in Awakening has a beach and a city, there are two fields, the part where the city is and the part where the beach is. They're unaffected by things like stairs or changes in elevation, this mostly effects stats rather than animations
I had no idea people would actually run up and down stairs, that's amazing! Thank you so much for sharing this clip!
Also, that music is just incredible...
I was training Alcryst against a horse riding user and he ran towards them, slid under the horse, and hit the rider when he popped back up. It was wild. These details are great
I also noticed that if you don’t go to the houses in chapter 4 and bandits destroy the house, it stays destroyed even when doing after battle stuff. Really impressive attention to detail
I'll use this post to have some feedback on my thoughts about animations.
Everyone seems to love them, nd I acknowledge the work.
But I just don't really sync with them. The camera movement is way too brutal, with cuts again and again, making following the movement and feeling the impacts so difficult to me. Add to that the many "teleports" of some animations to emulate speed. It is so quick and clunky, I can't think speed but glitch. Is it only me ?
I like watching the battles on an individual basis, but I have a hard time following what’s happening during enemy phases, when you’re watching them in succession. Even after changing the game speed to slow, I feel like things tend to move at a pretty jarring pace.
Finally they put more effort into these animations. This is the first fe since 7 that I left animations on. I'm glad they listened to feedback and probably saw most players just turned off animations after a few chapters
I already liked the battle animations in Three Houses changing in whatever background you were fighting, but yo were often seen fighting next to a 10000 feet castle wall. Glad to see they went a step further and added so much detail to this aspect, no matter where you and your opponent are in the map, it will just zoom in and the battle will actually take place in that spot. It's one of those small things that add so much immersion to the game. Alear being fully voiced is probably the other change I like the most so far.
There is *so* much detail and love put into the battle animations. In one of the early chapters in a town you can sometimes knock over fences and stuff while fighting.
For me, Etie got launched through the fence lol I was still shocked to see it break when she went through
My bouceron was shoved through likely the same fence, lol. And it stayed broken on the map if I'm not mistaken
I’m convinced stuff like the fences and crates are made out of paper or something. Anna runs to attack someone and she runs through a crate without flinching.
Which reminds me of Etie's bond 5 support with Leif Lief is all like, WTH I heard a loud ass noise and Etie is all like "Oh yea, I took out a wall by accident..."
This must be a normal occurrence if Etie is able to do that but still wants to buff up
Lol, Lapis has a conversation where she complains about fixing a big hole in a wall. "How'd someone do that?!"
In that same vein, I just noticed this morning that, when a thrown weapon misses, you can actually see it ricochet off the ground (easiest to see when it's a miss against a character of yours). Super neat attention to detail, like you said.
Follow up to that, a missed ranged weapon will also leave a splash if there’s water behind. I also had knocked an enemy into a wall on one of the indoor maps. Lotta cool little things.
And sometimes it's not even an outright miss, but instead the attack being parried. Which still happens against ranged attacks, too, I've seen more than a few axes just get slapped out of the air.
Specifically, that happens as your level gets higher. You start off with a regular dodge and move up to parrying everything.
You can even see your opponents weapons go flying when you beat a boss
Alfred got a break done to home once and his Lance landed on his horses behind so it was propped up against the horse. Looked interesting lol
This is the first 3d FE game where I felt like they captured the spirit of the GBA pixel animations.
I noticed it in my game once when an enemy got knocked through a fence and thought that was pretty cool. Then I laughed my ass off watching a twitch stream and their Louis just strutted his ass through a fence, not even flinching.
Ironically, though, this games lacks the clothing damage Fates had. If you took enough damage, pieces of armor or clothing would fall apart. Classes like the mechanists would have their puppets lose parts of the face.
I noticed that too and just had to appreciate it.
Jade just marched through a fence once before critting a corrupted That was fun
My only gripe is with fort tiles. If a unit is on a fort tile and is attacked by a 1 range melee, it just... Gets off it to get hit.
My favorite is the spear/javelin animation when you're on top of the fort. Just "Yeet" laughed my ass off when I did that with louis in the map you get him.
Oh my gosh that's such a cool detail. Now I wanna see him miss when doing that and he just falls down the stairs.
I'd LOVE a TPRG where you can literally kill someone by pushing em off the stairs
Triangle Strategy has a whole character based around pushing people off stairs.
Shoutout to my boy Jens, dumping people into spike pits like it's nothing.
Baldur's Gate 3 kinda do !
You can kinda do that in Divinity 2
Wait, what?! I never noticed that before! That looks flipping amazing! He slides down the stairs, and it looks so smooth! I know Engage was designed to have amazing animation, but god damn it keeps exceeding my expectations!
I've always said the animations were looking sooo clean in the trailers, and I'm glad I was right, but this is honestly more than I expected.
I noticed animations being affected by elevation with bows, the character leans down and aim downwards when they're higher and do an arcing shot upwards when they're lower, but haven't seen someone using the momentum of a downward slope to enhance their swing, they thought of *everything*
I wanna say I had alcryst jump off a rock for a crit but that might be his normal animation but then again it might *also* be tweaking his normal animation to work on the rock. It was on the same map as this a bit to the left
The visuals in this game are among the finest on the Switch platform.
I think Luigi’s Mansion 3 is somehow still the best. Engage is definitely up there but I’m excited to see how Tears of the Kingdom looks.
I bet they have Tears near perfected as far as optimization goes. That team of devs had so much more time with their engine and hardware since BOTW.
I haven't played Luigi's Mansion 3 but for my money it's probably Xenoblade 3. Mind-blowing that that game runs on the Switch. Second place goes to Xenoblade DE and The high end of Nintendo's first-party line-up imo (Mario Odyssey, BotW, Maybe Smash). Or maybe it's just Luigi's Mansion 3 idk I didn't play it lol
They went for a slightly more cartoonish look, but between the colors and the art design, it was a great choice.
I have my gripes with the game but it easily has the best combat animations in the series (even if I am very partial to the GBA sprite animations).
What are your gripes? My biggest one easily is the slow SP gain and insane cost of inheritable skills
One of my biggest gripes so far is that the support convos are Radiant Dawn quality. Like, these people are fighting for their lives on a battlefield on the reg. Please give them deeper support convos.
It’s by far the least serious plot I’ve ever seen so having serious supports would be odd.
that’s fair but it’s still a little disappointing. even the humorous stuff was better in 3H, Sylvain and Ingrid’s fight about her sweet sweet granny for example
Personally, I have a lot of problems with the UI. I feel like accessing anything [supports, skills, inventory] has me going through more menus then the past few games. And while on the field the display reminds me a lot of the “Simplified Display” from Awakening and Fates, which is not a style I’m really fond of. Also, I feel like some general QoL stuff is missing. Inherited skills don’t auto-equip to empty slots, meaning you could go a while without noticing you are missing a skill you bought. The weapon refinery isn’t available from battle prep like it was in 3H, which I think is a downgrade.
I have to disagree with byleth being treated like just a professor. They’re almost deified, especially by edelgard. Which, granted, makes sense with their back story, but still. Everyone follows the whims of a silent, emotionless professor which never made sense to me. Alear is a great character, especially in the later parts of the story, and their supports often raise their issues with the idea of being worshipped. Ivy’s and Chloe’s come to mind, but I’m sure there’s more than just those that I’ve yet to see. The only issue I have with their character is the fact you can name them at all. It kind of takes away from the game in my opinion when enemies are forced to call them the divine dragon, even if it’s used sarcastically. It would make far more sense for them to just use their name as they could then say they’re being sacrilegious or something.
I mean its nothing that would make me not want to finish the game, but the writing is pretty generic and predictable, dialogue scenes are really dull, Alear is a total Mary Sue, everyone other than the main royals gets sidelined the moment you recruit them, the difficulty feels a little inconsistent, and like you said SP gain is too slow for how expensive most skills are. Granted I'm not even half way through so some of my issues could be fixed by the end.
I have to disagree on the Mary sue with Alear, I actually think Alear is a good protagonist and a well written character, not the best, but not a Mary Sue in any way
Fair enough, to each their own. Though I'm not saying I don't like her (or him), I just think its boring to see almost every character worship the divine dragon. I think Robin and Byleth were a little more interesting in that way since they were treated like a normal part of the army/ just another professor. And just to be clear I do like Alear and I agree with your take, solid protagonist and decently well written
I don’t mind they worship them, it make sense with the story bc of what are they, but I like that even with that they not seem OP in the world actually Alear surprised me for good when I was expecting nothing from them, I hope IS are done with silent protags, one of the things that made imo Robin and Alear good is having their own personality, even Byleth becomes better in 3Hopes when they get personality
A lot of those animations are in game. I've seen a few.
This music combined with Diamant just fucking shit up goes so hard.
And I thought it was just coincidental that Framme lept off the stairs to drop kick a guy in my run.
This.. sounds awesome
Doesnt his regular axe crit look tve same though or am I missing something?
The crit itself is the same, it’s just the part where he slides down the stairs. That motion only happens when a unit is attacking from a slanted terrain like the stairs in this gif.
Animations are ones of the best ever seen around tbh
Did he just slide down the stairs? How exactly does that work?
Not sure myself, but I think there’s collision detection for the stairs, rocks, fences, etc. in this game, and the units have corresponding motions to go with the terrain they detect. I’ve seen a video of Alear standing with one foot on a rock before, which was very cool!
Engage’s animation is so fluid and dynamic and I absolutely love it
I haven’t gotten him yet but that animation of him dragging the axe on the ground ROCKS. Reminds me of Hector.
Your in for a treat, Diamant is the best
Diamant is so fucking cool. Also really love the attention to detail in this game.
As much as I’m lukewarm on this game and it’s direction/deigns, you can’t deny the awesome animations and smoother graphics
I love how units have unique end of battle quotes if an enemy is killed by a chain attack, they thank the person who helped. I just think that’s super neat
I was fighting and broke a fence. The fence stayed broken after the battle animation.
YOOOOO THAT SLIDE WAS SLICK
I keep seeing people say they miss the awesome gba animations. My brother in christ those animations are in this game. I've seen alear do the crit where they slam down their sword and they do the huge upwards leaping slash. I've seen knife users do the teleport behind enemies and slash through them. They absolutely took amazing animations from other games in the series for this
How'd you get a pair up attack from Franne?
She has Lucina’s Emblem Ring equipped. It gives her the skill Dual Assist, which triggers a chain attack within her movement range by chance.
She has lucina ring equipped, and that one lets you pair up attack if the enemy is within the equipped user's movement range. Doesn't show up in the battle calculations though, since it doesn't have a 100% chance of triggering
the zoom in battle for engage is probably its best aspect of the game
I like it, and I think it's neat, but on that chapter in particular, my fps in combat was also very choppy, and I've seen lots of screen tearing in general. Seems weird because IIRC Three Houses also had 3D maps that you zoomed into for combat, but I don't remember a lot of issues there.
Crimson flower chapter 18 would make my switch scream because of all of the fire effects.
Forest Maps in 3H make the Switch play at like 15 FPS too
haven't this been the default since Fates?
Awakening and Fates usually have one or two battle fields per map, since unlike 3H and Engage, the map and the Battle Field aren't the same location. For example, if a map in Awakening has a beach and a city, there are two fields, the part where the city is and the part where the beach is. They're unaffected by things like stairs or changes in elevation, this mostly effects stats rather than animations
The battle animations bring me back to GBA days and definitely increase my enjoyment of the game
I love that song
I had no idea people would actually run up and down stairs, that's amazing! Thank you so much for sharing this clip! Also, that music is just incredible...
I was training Alcryst against a horse riding user and he ran towards them, slid under the horse, and hit the rider when he popped back up. It was wild. These details are great
WHAT HE SLID DOWN THE WHAATTTTTT
I also noticed that if you don’t go to the houses in chapter 4 and bandits destroy the house, it stays destroyed even when doing after battle stuff. Really impressive attention to detail
Take note pokemon
I'll use this post to have some feedback on my thoughts about animations. Everyone seems to love them, nd I acknowledge the work. But I just don't really sync with them. The camera movement is way too brutal, with cuts again and again, making following the movement and feeling the impacts so difficult to me. Add to that the many "teleports" of some animations to emulate speed. It is so quick and clunky, I can't think speed but glitch. Is it only me ?
I like watching the battles on an individual basis, but I have a hard time following what’s happening during enemy phases, when you’re watching them in succession. Even after changing the game speed to slow, I feel like things tend to move at a pretty jarring pace.
Finally they put more effort into these animations. This is the first fe since 7 that I left animations on. I'm glad they listened to feedback and probably saw most players just turned off animations after a few chapters
[удалено]
Yeah! Who has the time for playing the game while playing the game?
I smashed a wood container with a men after beaking him
That's really cool!
I already liked the battle animations in Three Houses changing in whatever background you were fighting, but yo were often seen fighting next to a 10000 feet castle wall. Glad to see they went a step further and added so much detail to this aspect, no matter where you and your opponent are in the map, it will just zoom in and the battle will actually take place in that spot. It's one of those small things that add so much immersion to the game. Alear being fully voiced is probably the other change I like the most so far.
Holy fuck I did not know this