Fire Emblem

[Tactician Karina]

Been a year with no sign of any step-by-step day-by-day recruit everyone guide, so may as well just go and not worry about most of the other students.

Here is a good guide for recruiting the students and faculty, I'd just go with lowering their requirements by giving them gifts and raising their supports to B rank if you don't want to raise a certain skill/weapon grade. Also New Game+ makes recruiting even more easy since you'll have the option to spend your renown to buy support ranks, skills, and your Professor Levels if you get tired of support and skill/weapon grinding.

 

[System Error]

Here is a good guide for recruiting the students and faculty, I'd just go with lowering their requirements by giving them gifts and raising their supports to B rank if you don't want to raise a certain skill/weapon grade. Also New Game+ makes recruiting even more easy since you'll have the option to spend your renown to buy support ranks, skills, and your Professor Levels if you get tired of support and skill/weapon grinding.

Yes I know that one. I want a step-by-step thing, what to do each day. A la those max all social links guides for Persona games. Especially since I'm playing on Hard which makes the grinding impossible. Do know about the NG+ thing too, but...gotta complete the game first to NG+. So what I'll probably do is build support for the Deer on this playthrough, and carry all that over into the next, and so on. And for now, woe be to anyone who isn't faculty or named Bernadetta, Linhardt, or apparently Felix.

 

[ReturnofMCH]

There’s also a site that catalogs glitches and programming quirks stuff better than serenes forest for 3H. I heard about it from the Speedrunner kirbymastah, who speedruns primarily FE and metroid

 

[TheCapsFan]

Fire Emblem fans: what are your thoughts on the newly announced spinoff, Fire Emblem: Three Hopes?

 

[Tactician Karina]

Kind of bummed about it ngl. It's a bit of a monkey's paw situation for me, I wanted a second FE Warriors knowing some 3H rep will certainly be in, but also rep's from installments that weren't in the first Warriors game, instead we got... Three Hopes with what might be most of 3H's cast yet again after just coming out of said game. I think almost most of the fan base seem to be in agreement that this FE reveal was kind of underwhelming, unless you're a big 3H fan then I guess this is perfect fanservice.

That said though, I'll still get it cause I just love playing Warriors games. And plus I get to play as Dimitri and Claude taking down mooks, so that'll be fun; I do hope that male Byleth is also playable, even if he's DLC or in a similar situation as male Corrin in the first game I just want to play as my boy (female Byleth is just okay to me, but her soulless doll eyes freak me out lol). Yuri would also be great to have playable, and hopefully most or all of the other students are in too, and not just the lords and select students that are popular with fans. I'm also hoping that the story won't mess with 3H's story, but with it being what seems to be a "Golden Route", then I hope they have a very good reason as to why the lords are willing to work together despite their stark differences in beliefs and views towards each other.

 

[Insanish Danish]

As a massive Three Houses fan and as someone who immensely enjoyed the first Fire Emblem Warriors, I'm all over it. It seems like it's going to be an AU and not part of the actual Three Houses timeline, so I don't think it's actually going to contradict anything that happens in Three Houses (which I would appreciate).

That being said, I'm also up for a third Fire Emblem Warriors with a variety of characters from across the series if they feel like being generous

 

[Dorothy]

Having only played Three Houses and thus skipped out on FEW since I didn't know the characters, this definitely seems more my speed.

 

[henrymidfields]

I've started playing since Binding Blade, but I have to admit, my opinion has been quite up and down.

• Binding Blade's been good - it's got a worldbuilding that's more extensive than Pokemon, and a plot that has some weird similarities to World War 2. In fact, I'm planning to do a reinterpretation of Binding Blade's story inside the present-day PokeAni XY setting.
• Sacred Stones was all right. I guess I am not as biased as for Binding Blade as the novelty wore off.
• Shadow Dragon's DS remake was good in that I finally managed to experience the game that started it all, but it wasn't so good in that there were still some dated gameplay stuff.
• I used to enjoy Awakening and Fates Conquest, but not anymore. The former was lackluster in both story and gameplay, and the latter's story was a massive dumpster fire. (The gamplay was better though, it had the difficulty of Binding Blade, but the difficulty balancing issues were much better.)
• TMSFE was fun to play. It's definitely not Pulitzer-prize material, but I enjoyed seeing the medieval aesthetic joining forces the the idol stuff. Also, I liked that this (and the Persona games from the other side it inherited from) focus on individual characters and is more focused on portraying the story as a team effort unlike most FE entries.
• Three Houses I think I like the best. It had some key stuff going in the right direction, including a much greyer conflict, a female protagonist that doesn't get shadowed by her male counterparts (or at least nowhere near as much) like what happens with Micaiah/Elincia in Radiant Dawn or Celica in Shadows of Valentia, almost all of the non-Lord characters contributing to the story and worldbuilding to some degree (and portray the story more as a team effort like TMSFE/Persona), and a lot of thought put into the world and setting. In fact, with the aforementioned PokeAni XY x Binding Blade, I'm incorporating and reinterpreting the titular three houses as the three Eurocorps regiments.

 

[TheCapsFan]

We're getting close to Engage, and I'm super excited for the game. It looks absolutely stellar and super clean, the combat seems much more like a return to a more traditional style, and the fanservice with the emblems looks like a lot of fun as a longtime fan of the series!

In the meantime, I'm almost to Part 2 of my Blue Lions run that I started a couple months ago. I had only played Black Eagles prior to this so I'm excited to see how the opposite side plays out in Part 2 of this route.

 

[Lylian]

I started Fire Emblem Engage yesterday.

 

[Tactician Karina]

Started Engage after it arrived this morning. So far, I do like how clean the character models and backgrounds look compared to Three Houses and Hopes, story wise I'm not too far in as I just completed chapter 4 and in the overworld before starting the next chapter. Also unlocked adopting animals, so that's neat. Alear's design is starting to grow on me, before I didn't like that they looked like a V-tuber (not a big fan of those things tbh), but seeing them in-game actually changed my mind on them (plus Fem!Alear's artwork in Heroes helped some too). My favorite characters so far though have to be Alfred and the twins Clanne and Framme, their designs aren't as bland after seeing the full outfits and seeing them in action, I also like what I've seen of their personalities.

Other thoughts I have on Engage: the Somniel is nice, I like how big it is and it kind of reminds me of something you'd see in a Disney princess movie, can't wait to see more allies roaming around once I get further in the story. English voice acting is not the best imo, after hearing one of the VA's saying the title and seeing videos of how other characters sound, yeah no, so I quickly changed to Japanese voices and it sounds much better to me. Being able to talk to NPC's/allies, finding items, and walk around the overworld after a battle is also a very nice touch, it looks like inspiration taken from Shining Force and I'm all for it.

I will say that I'm still pretty irritated that it looks like they didn't make Seliph, Alm, Eliwood, Hector, and Chrom into Emblem Rings. Unless they'll make them DLC like they did with Tiki, Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude (which I honestly dislike). But it would be nice to actually see them in game, and not just being lightly mentioned like how Sigurd said he left a child in death as well, when they were mourning for Lumera. Heck if Eirika and Ephraim can be summoned from the same ring, then surely Sigurd/Seliph, Celica/Alm, and Lucina/Chrom can be summoned together too (Sigurd/Seliph and Lucina/Chrom can be something like a parent/child ring and Celica/Alm can be like a lovers ring). And surely Lyn/Eliwood/Hector can also be summoned from the same ring similar to the Three Houses lords. Sorry for the slight rant, but yeah it ticks me off lol.

Outside of Engage, I've been building more units in Heroes. Specifically those from the two new banners, Khadein and Engage. From the Khadein banner I'm focusing on Byleth, and he's currently at +9 (thanks to him being a four star also), I'll also focus on Soren once he's in the grail shop. For the Engage banner I'm focusing on Alear and Alfred, so far Alear is +1 and Alfred is +5, I really dislike that they had another new unit share with Alfred's color as it's making it hard to build him up.

 

[ReturnofMCH]

I'm on chapter 7 and a bunch of paralogues done including the dlc one.

 

[Midorikawa]

Perusing reddit since the release of Engage has made me dislike Three Houses, and realize just how flawed it was, and overrated. I just beat Engage on Sunday and I loved it. And it has made me want to replay all FE Games. The poor game's characters and story are getting thrashed on thanks to Three Houses, and it is souring my love for three houses.

 

[TheCapsFan]

Perusing reddit since the release of Engage has made me dislike Three Houses, and realize just how flawed it was, and overrated. I just beat Engage on Sunday and I loved it. And it has made me want to replay all FE Games. The poor game's characters and story are getting thrashed on thanks to Three Houses, and it is souring my love for three houses.

I don't deny that Three Houses has flaws, especially with its gameplay, that Engage largely addresses. Initially, playing on Normal mode for a first run, I felt the combat was way too easy and similar to Three Houses in that it gives you a lot more tools than you need, but after playing a bit more and also playing the tempest trials a bit, the combat has definitely grown on me. Figuring out the best skills & ring combos for each unit is a lot of fun and even though it feels like you are overleveled sometimes for the main story chapters, you'll also get the ring paralogues that offer a bit more challenge, and the skirmishes are consistently higher-leveled than you.

But at the same time everything else about Engage reminds me so much of Fates that sometimes it can be a turnoff, and I found Fates (Birthright) to be obnoxiously overdone with boring characters & predictable story, and (again in Birthright) not having interesting enough gameplay to push me to complete it (though I eventually did). Three Houses' world lore is super interesting to me and although the characters can be too trope-y at parts, I feel like I had more connection with them than I do with any of Engage's characters, save for like maybe Yunaka.

I have a feeling that when all is said and done with Engage, I might still not know exactly where I stand on it.

 

[Midorikawa]

I don't deny that Three Houses has flaws, especially with its gameplay, that Engage largely addresses. Initially, playing on Normal mode for a first run, I felt the combat was way too easy and similar to Three Houses in that it gives you a lot more tools than you need, but after playing a bit more and also playing the tempest trials a bit, the combat has definitely grown on me. Figuring out the best skills & ring combos for each unit is a lot of fun and even though it feels like you are overleveled sometimes for the main story chapters, you'll also get the ring paralogues that offer a bit more challenge, and the skirmishes are consistently higher-leveled than you.

But at the same time everything else about Engage reminds me so much of Fates that sometimes it can be a turnoff, and I found Fates (Birthright) to be obnoxiously overdone with boring characters & predictable story, and (again in Birthright) not having interesting enough gameplay to push me to complete it (though I eventually did). Three Houses' world lore is super interesting to me and although the characters can be too trope-y at parts, I feel like I had more connection with them than I do with any of Engage's characters, save for like maybe Yunaka.

I have a feeling that when all is said and done with Engage, I might still not know exactly where I stand on it.

Engage is way better written than Birthright. I think too many people take Engages plot more serious than it takes itself. When it decides to be serious it does it well but at no point does it attempt to be super serious like three houses.

And it’s plot doesn’t leave questions or plot holes galore. And for once we are actually shown stuff instead of told.

 

[TheCapsFan]

Finished Engage a bit ago, and it really picked up for me towards the end! I found the final chapter or two to be very interesting as you get a bit more information about the motivations and lore behind Sombron, the main villain of the game. I felt like they wrapped things up nicely and the final few chapters were a lot of fun to navigate through.

I've also started playing the DLC. I'm playing this on hard mode rather than normal (which is what I played my main playthrough in) and holy crap is the difficulty a step up from the normal mode. I've been told that the DLC in hard mode is tougher than the main story in hard mode, but coming from normal mode it certainly is a lot tougher. I'm only on Chapter 3, but the levels are pretty tough so far, what with trying to keep Nil alive while also constantly getting caught up to by enemies coming at you from behind.