r/gaming • u/SaveADay89 • 10h ago

How is the new Fire Emblem?

I'm a big fan of the fire emblem games, but I will admit that I didn't like engage. I found the combat to be as engaging as ever, but the anime tropes and characters were really annoying. I liked 3H, though. My issues is that I heard the new one is heavily skewed towards the out of combat activities, particularly the social features. Is this true?

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78

u/nervendings_ 10h ago

I would say the two negatives I have are that the combat is pretty easy, even on hard difficulty. So a lot of the non-story related battles tend to feel mindless. And yeah the other negative is that there is a focus on social activities that can be great when its characters I like but a bore when its characters I do not like

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u/Cosmo_the_Cosmic_Cat PC 10h ago

Part 2 is a big difficulty jump over the part 1 routes

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u/nervendings_ 9h ago

Okay that’s great to know I’ll just keep at it

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u/Jediverrilli 7h ago

I finally started part 2 and I thought my characters were pretty good. It kicks your ass instantly. All the enemies have Silver Weapons and they hit like a truck.

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u/nervendings_ 6h ago

Sorta on topic but who is your fav main character so far?

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u/Jediverrilli 5h ago

Fabio is by far the funniest character. The Dietrich plot is low key a comedy. I liked Theodora the most out of the 4 main characters though.

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u/nervendings_ 4h ago

Dietrich is a comedy! Hilarious how many characters comment on his beauty. And Fabio is great. I haven’t gotten too far with Theodora yet but like what I’ve seen so far

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u/Jediverrilli 2h ago

It’s the thing I’ve noticed the most. Even the gods are like “oh man you are gorgeous”

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u/mephnick 9h ago

My major negative is that most characters recruited after reknown level 6ish are too far behind and basically useless..which basically invalidates half the cast on any given playthrough and roughly 1/3 of the cast in all playthroughs.

I love the game but you can really see they wanted to have all 8 paths and didn't rebalance the game when they had to ditch half of them

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u/lady_synsthra 9h ago

Damn, do the recruitable characters not level up or adjust at all when you get them?

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u/LiefKatano 9h ago

They do level up, it’s just in a weird way that has them typically (but not always…) end up a bit worse than if you recruited them earlier (which you can compare using routes where you do so).

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u/mephnick 9h ago

much worse

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u/mephnick 9h ago edited 9h ago

They do, but horrendously. Leveling growth is so much better.

If you recruit someone at level 25 they might have the strength of a level 8 character...which you can't fix because they are already level 25. It would actually be much better if you could recruit them at level 1.

It's so stupid I have to consider it's a bug. But I haven't heard anything about fixing it.

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u/Embyr1 9h ago

I've had Renown 7/8 units do well. Loretta on Cai's route especially quickly became my 3rd best unit for her ability to fly, have good speed and ability to use a Levin Sword well.

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u/mephnick 9h ago

Levin sword is basically a cheat code for any trash unit though

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u/fallenKlNG 9h ago

does levin sword scale by a unit's magic stat though? That's something I don't quite get so I'm not sure who exactly I should give it to

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u/mephnick 9h ago

I think it's supposed to but it seems good no matter who uses it lol

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u/LostRequiem1 9h ago

It feels that way because most enemies have “poor” RES and mage-type enemies are somewhat infrequent.

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u/mephnick 9h ago

Ah yeah that's probably it

And there's so much heavy armour in the game that it's useful to have regardless

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u/BarbarousJudge 8h ago

Levin Sword users often have the benefit of having better defense or avoid too. Even Speed most of the time so there much safer to use then some outright mages. My Alexandra with Levin Sword outclassed the damage of every mage I had in my 2 runs except Bonaventure and Tialla

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u/Arachnofiend 4h ago

I turned Dante into a Levin Sword Wing Rider because she is kinda just flatly inferior to the other mages and I figured if she had sword prof I could make her my dancer in part 3. Imagine my surprise when she turns into a pretty respectable unit just off the sheer power of that weapon

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u/Arachnofiend 4h ago

It also has similar Mt to Death lol it's just insanely cracked for no reason

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u/Kyajin 4h ago

Yes it uses magic stat. Similar to the Salamander (the ranged 'gauntlet')

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u/EccentricFan 7h ago

Yeah, one of my big complaints about basically the entire Fire Emblem series is difficulty problems that results from supporting permanent death. Because it's designed around fights being winnable without ever losing a single unit, the combat as a whole never feels dangerous. It's always a matter of whether you lose someone and instantly restart the battle or completely crush it. On casual, even that challenge is gone.

I'd love a difficulty option fully designed around playing casual but where winning at all was tough. Where you're going to lose units left and right no matter what you do, and it become a war of attrition and trying to manage your shrinking pool of troops to complete your goals for the mission.

My even bigger complaint about the series is also around permanent death. Since there's a large cast of a characters, who may or may not die at any given point in the story, their death and life will both always feel shallow. It's hard to get them to affect the story in any meaningful way because it branches out exponentially and becomes impossible to give each combination of events the writing it would need to feel well-written.

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u/Ha_eflolli Android 7h ago

Because it's designed around fights being winnable without ever losing a single unit, the combat as a whole never feels dangerous.

Except it's exactly the other way around, the Games are designed around the assumption that you DON'T reset when you lose a Character. That's like, half the reason you still keep getting new Recruits even super late into the Playthrough; so that they can fill up any potential gaps you have from anyone getting killed off prior.

It's hard to get them to affect the story in any meaningful way because it branches out exponentially and becomes impossible to give each combination of events the writing it would need to feel well-written.

This one I'm purely adding to what you said, but it feels especially weird considering the Games already figured that shit out too, so it's not like those two states are mutually exclusive - Whenever a Non-Protagonist Character is too important to the narrative to outright remove when killed, they just say they got too injured to keep fighting going forward, so that they can still appear in Cutscenes while also getting removed from your Roster.

Although I will say, Path of Radiance actually DID do this, there's several Chapters in the Game where some Dialogue does actually differ depending on if specific Characters are still alive or not.

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u/EccentricFan 6h ago

Except it's exactly the other way around, the Games are designed around the assumption that you DON'T reset when you lose a Character. That's like, half the reason you still keep getting new Recruits even super late into the Playthrough; so that they can fill up any potential gaps you have from anyone getting killed off prior.

I guess I haven't heard any interviews to speak to what they used for tuning/balancing the game, so you may be right. Though I'd wager very heavily that's an extremely uncommon way to play.

This one I'm purely adding to what you said, but it feels especially weird considering the Games already figured that shit out too, so it's not like those two states are mutually exclusive - Whenever a Non-Protagonist Character is too important to the narrative to outright remove when killed, they just say they got too injured to keep fighting going forward, so that they can still appear in Cutscenes while also getting removed from your Roster.

Although I will say, Path of Radiance actually DID do this, there's several Chapters in the Game where some Dialogue does actually differ depending on if specific Characters are still alive or not.

Yeah, it's an interesting problem that a lot of games struggle with when you get large rosters even if those members can't die. It's very common that many are optional recruits, and even if they aren't it can be hard to give enough focus to every member of the roster. It's a matter of opinion, but my favorite way to handle tactical games that need large numbers of units for gameplay is to just have generic units to supplement the roster. They don't need any lines, or to impact the story in any way beyond introducing the reason for having mercenaries, or summons, or whatever story excuse you have for them.

That allows balancing and gameplay design to require as large a roster as necessary while still allowing the story to stay focused on a smaller core of characters.

It shouldn't actually be necessary, since I'm seen plenty of games that use side characters of limited importance effectively. But it seems games with large rosters of playable characters have a strong tendency to mess it up. I guess it's probably me just being a lot less forgiving of shallow development when it's someone you're supposed to be spending a ton of time with during the game rather than someone you just run into occasionally.

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u/ThePowerOfStories 5h ago

I really like the approach some games take of having multiple parallel teams to explain the cap on team size, align with time pressure in the story, and let you use all your units. So, I assign these folks to my A team and send them off to the deadly dungeon, those folks to my B team and play through the forbidden forest, and the new recruits plus a ringer white mage to operation kitten rescue to level up some.

1

u/argnsoccer PC 7h ago

Yeah, I think the amount of characters and ways they are recruited is perfect in something like sacred stones. You can get a bunch post game to play around with, but you can miss getting pupils potentially or recruiting certain characters so a death is still really important. I had 9 billion characters in Engage and just couldn't care about any of them really. And also bc Eirika and Ephraims paths mean you end up with different characters/team you focus on

1

u/SwizzGod 10h ago

Funny I don’t play but a friend of mine said it’s less focus on the social stuff that’s what he likes about it

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u/bassboyjulio182 10h ago

It’s less than the previous Fire Emblem but still a fair amount compared to your standard tactics game

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u/SwizzGod 10h ago

Gotcha. Like I said I don’t play but if that’s par the course for the series, why would people complain about it. I mean that’s the game right?

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u/vezwyx 9h ago

Three Houses was a gigantic leap in the social aspects of Fire Emblem. Building relationships between your characters is something that's had a minor role in the series for a while, but that was built out into taking up half of the game for Three Houses, and it's not something that everyone appreciated.

"Less social sim than Three Houses" is therefore bringing the game closer to traditional FE, but there's a lot of room for systems that some series veterans aren't particularly interested in. The battles in FE have been a gold standard in tactical turn-based RPGs for a long time, so it makes sense that people who are drawn to that gameplay specifically could be turned off by this newer focus on mechanics/systems that really have nothing to do with that

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u/Tiernoch 7h ago

I've been playing FE since the first official release in English, I can deal with the increased social aspects but it is frustrating that the map designs really are not that great in stretches.

If I only had three houses to compare I would consider it a step up, but Engage had great map design which is a big frustration to see that not continued.

I also do not care for getting rid of the weapon triangle, but a lot of that is also that I'm just not a huge fan of how the TH/FW handles weapons and classes (a class upgrade getting access to a new weapon used to feel amazing).

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u/Tiernoch 7h ago

It's less than three houses but more the ratio is still skewed way more towards the social side than any previous title.

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u/Iggy_Slayer 10h ago

If by social stuff we're talking support and character stuff yeah there's less of it in this game, waaaay less.

But if we're talking out of combat stuff in general, meaning things like picking up items around town or doing your weekly chores (basically anything but missions)...there's an insane amount of that in this game. Like an 80/20 ratio in favor of non combat.

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u/SaveADay89 10h ago

Yeah, I just mean non combat. I only care about combat in FE.

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u/BrandonLart 8h ago

I did not find the combat too easy, although the non-story battles did become mindless by the end.

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u/FireVanGorder 8h ago

Neither of these things is true for chapter 2 and 3, but chapter 1 is the longest by far, especially if you’re doing all 4 routes

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u/GrouchyMembership876 9h ago

This critique only really applies to part 1, the game ramps up difficulty after. With the social aspect I kinda agree , so I only recruit characters I enjoy and get attached to so I wont let them die