Fire Emblem: Why Three Houses Works, While Engage Struggles 

There’s a lot of people who say only gameplay matters and Engage is the game that put that theory to the test.

Fun Fact: During lumeras first death scene my switch actually started going into sleep mode with the screen going dark that's how long that cutscene goes on it actually made me laugh a little at that death scene.

Byleth's lack of emotions is also linked to Sothis. Because in the opening dream Sothis is beginning to awake. Yes, Byleth had the dream before, but now it seems like it's different. Even in the Supports we see that later supports show Byleth being a bit more "human," smiling making jokes etc.

I played three houses 4 and a half times, meanwhile i still haven't finished engage even once

I would argue the character creation in Baldur's Gate actually *is* incorporated into the story: an illithid puts a tadpole into your brain, then the tadpole demands “Who Are You” and *that's* when you start creating your character; the tadpole is searching your psyche to figure out who exactly you are, and you're revealing it to them via character creation. It's very didactic.

Probably the biggest issue i have with Engage is the cast, especially on. The first 6 units you get in the game, 2/3 of the cast until Brodia, are the Stewards who's main personality trait is worshipping Alear, and Alfred's group who's main character traits are getting stronger. So when you first unlock supports, your chance to explore how deep these characters are, it feels like you're watching the same two conversations for an hour.

Fire Emblem games have a bad habit of bringing new and beloved mechanics forward from previous games without really understanding what made those mechanics work in context. Probably the most egregious example of this was the "offspring" mechanic - in Awakening, when two characters got strong enough support levels, sometimes their children from a post apocalyptic future version of the world came back in time to try and prevent that apocalypse - while this sounds a little silly on the surface, it was well integrated into the story and made your choices for who you built supports between feel like it carried a lot more weight. The next game in the franchise, Fates, decided to have a similar system, but instead of integrating the existence of these children into the overarching storyline, they were children that were essentially born during the events of the story and then raised in the "hyperbolic time chamber" pocket dimension that is your hub world; they're all suffering some deep-seated abandonment issues because your party members were spending months or years away from them in the real world for every battle they engaged in in the story. It just felt completely unnecessary and detached from the story and only there because it had been in the previous game. Engage I feel suffers a lot of the same issues, where the various hub activities and relationship building mechanics that made sense in the context of the Three Houses story just end up feeling tacked on when removed from the framework of Three Houses.

This is actually familiar to a lot of talks people had from the shift from Awakening to Fates. Similar Fates took the aspects people liked from Awakening and dialed them up to a 100 regardless if it made sense, aka Child units, supports, and tropes. Although when comparing Fates and Engage, Engage still feels like the radical change.

Yunaka's voice actress IS that good. Laura Post is extremely talented.

So here's my biggest gripe with the premise of Engage - the emblems. Why not make THEM the basis of the religion in the world? Have Alaer be an emblem from the start, but one that nobody knew existed. And (s)he doesn't exist within a ring, she just manifested. Then the rings can have a religious significance, and the old heroes be worshipped. We could see how the worship affects the characters etc. The Divine/Fell Dragon plot was kinda meh to begin with because it really didn't matter one bit. Heck, have the villains revive the antagonists from previous games. Have us fight the Black Knight, and the Death Knight and shit!

On my first playthrough, I just laughed about how awkward and long the first Lumera death scene was.

Engage finished development midway through 2021 according to various game classification boards, so even if the developers had been interested in adding 3 Hopes' Shez as an emblem, the timeline shows that simply would not have been possible. Also, the most canon Byleth's Emblem has in Engage is that they're from White Clouds/Part 1. He's not meant to represent any route in particular, which is why his special interaction with Nemesis in Ch 26 of Engage alludes that while Byleth knows who Nemesis IS, he also has not met him beforehand. This special treatment Byleth gets is due to the devs deciding that Three Houses' canon route is... up to each player to decide (which incidentally played a role in much of the discourse involving its plot and characters).

Engage made me realize that story in games does matter and is more or less important depending of which games you're talking about. Engage is not a bad game but with a compelling story like Three houses it would've been one of my favorite Nintendo games

One funny thing about Alear's "mom" dying......is that they did the exact same thing in Fates and people disliked it there too. So they learned nothing.

16:30 ih, you're definitely in the minority here as far as the fanbase is concerned. When the designs were first revealed, people DID NOT like the contrast between the red and blue hair, found the colors too bright and often made mocking comparisons to both Pepsi and Colgate. Someone even posted the design with darker shades of blue and red, which was generally better received. Right now, I wouldn't say people warmed up to the design, but rather their eyes adjusted to it

I have finished 3 Houses 4 times already. I have not finished Engage. Take that as you will.

One thing about the hubworlds. In Three Houses, you only NEED to explore once per month - if all you care about is the story beats the characters might give you. Which are often relevant to what's going to happen. After that you can just fight, do seminars or rest. In Engage, whenever you do a side mission... you are incentivized to go back to the Somniel to do all the chores again, because it resets. Meanwhile in Three Houses they go "okay want to fight? You can do 3 fights before the next time you decide what to do. No faffing about in the hub world first"

"I wish Ike and Michiah could interact" Us FE fans "They do wdym, there is a whole game with them as primary protags"

24:02 to that point I say: Shez. The main character of Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes is for me the best of these kind of Characters. You select a option just like with Byleth but Shez actually says the line. And I rather have that. Having the character at least say what you choose 1:1 is what I think should be a must. I don‘t like them to be mute while all others speak their heart out.

*The honest truth is pretty ugly.* *The Short Version:* Nintendo put a employee as the lead developer for the game who had no experience. A basic "Yes Man" who likes action games and not turn based tactics games, and was heavily influenced by Nintendo wanting to aim for a New Younger Audience which meant dumbing down the game, and making it flashier. *The Long Version:* If you read the "Ask the Developers" interviews that were released. The guy in charge (Tsutomu Tei), had never been a director of a game at IS before, and seemingly never discusses having any previous experience working on a FE game. So while I can't say what his previous role was, it doesn't seem to be significant enough to mention in his bio. If anything, just someone picked by Nintendo to lead the development. I'd link the Nintendo article, but RU-vid is pretty finicky with links these days. (Ask the Developer Vol. 8, Fire Emblem Engage Part 1, 2, and 3) Listening to the other two employees of Nintendo that were in the interview. Tei and the two mention wanting to "appeal to a broader audience" and saying that RPG mechanics such as the Awakening / Fates marriage system took too long to play out in the game. According to them it "wasn't fun" so they developed the Emblem Ring idea instead. With the goal of introducing the "fun elements" early on. I'll quote the Nintendo stooge "Higuchi: We wanted to introduce this fun element for players as early as possible. I felt that the fun of tactical RPG games wasn't as intuitive or immediate as that of action games." So basically you had Nintendo heavily influencing the game with employees who were more interested and familiar with Action games than tactics RPGs. Then from the games IS developer, "Tei: People often say that turn-based tactical RPGs seem difficult or too complicated... In fact, I’m not very good at them myself." Take of that what you will, I take it as even the new IS dev wasn't interested in making a Tactics game. Just taking orders and advice from his Nintendo handlers. "Tei: We had several candidates. We were looking for an artist whose design style would appeal to a broad audience - including younger players - as well as the ability to portray a variety of characters. Among the candidates, Mika Pikazo-san's drawings were colorful, vivid, and really popped! They were a perfect fit for the flashy direction we wanted for this title." So from that we can see the "broader audience" meant appeal to children. In spite of marketing toward long time fans, which makes no sense since new players and young players would not get any of the references. So basically they tried to do both and focused on the younger new audience by lying to the older one. As it would seem, the games development and design was all over the place. Trying to create a game for a new younger audience, while throwing a bone to the old players to make it seem like they were not being abandoned when they were. As for another section about their Artist choice that influenced the game in a bad way. Tei: "Well, I thought it'd be better to be upfront about the request. That said, there was one concern she had. Since she usually draws young characters, she was concerned about her confidence level in some of the character design." So to answer why all the characters were loli or V-tuber style. It's because that's the only style the artist knew, and he went with it. Also, it also turns out it was her idea to make toothpaste-chans hair color red and blue. As before Tei just went with whatever he was told, advised, or requested. From everything I have read, Tei should never be in charge of any product. Unless he was specifically chosen because he just follows orders and has no skill as a leader or director. "Tei: As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm not very good at strategy games myself, so during development, I hoped to create a game that even those like me would want to try out or find interesting."

This is utterly fascinating as someone who is a long time fan of the fire emblem series! It’s so refreshing hearing these games, especially the modern ones, looked at from an outsider’s perspective. So much of Three Houses and Engage are building on MODERN mechanics that have built up as radical shifts in the Fire Emblem series since Awakening. Each installment since Awakening has gone to greater and greater lengths to experiment with the series, its most foundational mechanics, and its familiar story formula. Hearing how a NEW player to the series engages with these mechanics, story beats, and their expectations because of them is eye-opening to the absolute core of this beloved franchise of games. Namely its not JUST game mechanics, its not JUST story, its not JUST character or rpg elements. I think you said it best in that you liked Three Houses because of the SUM of its parts rather than any one part by itself. Engage fails to have those parts seamlessly move together. It doesn’t make it a bad game, but it does make it feel less like a good Fire Emblem game. Thank you for the awesome video, I’d love to see more if you ever engage more with the series!

Three Houses characters and Supports: Traumatized people who work through their trauma, and how they exist in the world Engage's characters and supports: We are vtuber moe-blobs, doing moe-blob things.

I have the opposite perspective - I played all FE games, except Three Houses, Engage and spin-offs - and I can agree with most points except one. Alear's design is nothing short of horrendous, both aesthetically and in the context of the world they're in. They look like christmas tree with so many clashing design elements that if anything made me appreciate simpler designs of previous main characters and realize why they worked. You can look at Fates characters for example and even without any context figure out which are from different countries or tribes, while in Engage if someone told me Yunaka and Hortensia are sisters, being a part of family circus, which Timerra is also a part of, I would believe it. If someone told me Bunet, Pandreo, Merrin and Panette are retainers of a royal family living in the desert land I would think my leg is being pulled - they don't have even a sliver of a tan on them and their outfits are terrible for desert environment. This is all over Engage, and it feels like characters were designed first, before anyone had any idea where to put them in the world. Everything else you pretty much nailed, though. That calendar system in 3H sounds very interesting, and I'm looking forward to eventually check it out.

Somniel serves as a great example of what I personally found is missing from Engage, that Three Houses has in spades: World building. Three Houses has such a deep backstory, which builds the world. And, from the world the people of the world are born. This is the source of tension. The Church, the Kingdom, the Empire all play major parts in the tension of the game. (The alliance is just there, just like Claude) But, engage has no world. No, a map isn't a world. Engage has a doughnut with four different glazings and a villain. Nothing in the story makes any sense. Which means the stakes don't make any sense. It's also not helped by "magical corrupted" standing in for humans. You fight Humans what? Once in all of Engage? I think the rather bland plot could have been aided a lot with an actual world that has a history - like Three Houses.

My thought on the bandit attack is that they were never supposed to run into Byleth and Jeralt. I think they were supposed to have the two other heirs killed, but most of all scare away the third professor, so that Jeritza would take over as the teacher for the Black Eagles. So, in a way I think maybe Edelgard being the one under attack in the turn back time scene is a bit of an oversight. Should have been Claud.

18:30 The intro to engage is a reference to an important scene in FE Awakening involving Lucina, Lucina tells a tale of her timelines future which has an extremely similar beat and choreography to the engage intro and both are “premeditations” of events to come. But like 99.99% of the references in engage, unless you played the older games then all of these references are go over your head and that is egregious, leaving you with a scene that isn’t trying to support its own narrative but instead piggybacking on your understanding of other, better scene that these are parodying. Makes you truly wonder why they left this game in the direction of someone who never designed tactics games, made the gameplay and design towards younger, newer player… but then made this an anniversary game with everything about its plot and main mechanics be a “Hey remember this dingus from fire emblem and the shadow boiled potato?”

Three Houses also had the benefit that instead of the game simply telling you that you commanded an army, it *gave* you an army to command. The battalion system made you the commander of an army often exceeding 1'000 soldiers (8 students plus one teacher, each equipped with the largest battalions makes 9 x 120 = 1'080). Engage tells you that you lead an army, but all you have is an armed friend group.

I Fully agree with every word. Signed a day 1 Fire Emblem fan.

Three Houses is quite the standout in regards to the Fire Emblem series as a whole. A common take I hear is that Three House fans are not Fire Emblem fans. - Prologue: "It was a dream/premonition" This has been occurring since Fire Emblem Awakening. I don't like it either but it's just a thing they do now. - "You are god" This is the worst incarnation of avatar circle-jerking they've ever done. - "Alear talking bad. Silent Byleth good." I don't agree with this take. Byleth talking in Three Hopes was much more preferable to being silent. Shez is a great example of the best of both worlds in this case: having both dialogue choices and them being spoken. Side-note: I can hardly consider Alear an avatar. They are very much just a lord that you can name. - The Divine Pulse This mechanic actually was introduced in the 3DS remake of FE Gaiden--Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. It was introduced to the player in a way similar to the Time Crystal in Engage as just a doodad someone gives you. - Lumera's 15 minute long death yeah. lol - Jeralt's death POV: You are a parent in Fire Emblem This is essentially a trope in the entire series where your parent will just eventually die. - Battle System Engage's maps are more condensed and it feels nicer than Three Houses. You pretty much covered all the good bits of Engage's gameplay. - "What are Emblems" They seem to be akin to AI Chatbots that are aware they aren't the original person. They also seem to be an amalgamation of the person they're based off of from various points in their life. (Or route in Byleth's case.) You can see examples of this being the case - "I wonder how Ike and Micaiah would have bonded" They're both in Radiant Dawn, which is a sequel to Path of Radiance. So you don't really need to wonder that much. - "Byleth's canon route" No, there are cases of him referencing things from other routes too. Like I said before, they feel like amalgamations, or more like the general *idea* of that person. - All games take place in the same universe Nope. Some games share the same universe, which you can see be the case in FE Awakening where you travel to the continent of Valm (FE Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia) and with Ike's descendant appearing in that game as well, though that one feels sort of iffy almost like it was just shoved in there with no reasoning. Excluding those, most of the games take place in their own universe or realm. - The social aspect This is unique to Three Houses. - The Hub Many veterans of the series do not like the hub areas. They are fine on a first playthrough but become very tiring on subsequent playthroughs, which they addressed in Engage by making the somniel smaller in scale. After playing the game for the nth time, you'll grow to hate it. Only FE Fates, Three Houses/Hopes, and Engage have a hub area. Fate's hub area can actually be attacked and acted as the PVP map for online play and you could customize the layout to your liking. It was also significantly smaller. Like, you would pretty much enter it for 1 minute and move on. You bring up how the monastery is better than the somiel as a hub area because it makes sense for them to go back there after every map, but not really. Even if it is in the center of the world map, it still takes significant time to travel back and forth. Three Hopes did this better by just having the hub area being a camp that your army picks up and moves with them. - Why are they dicking around Because Engage's story is just lighter in tone. That's pretty much it. The Somniel is a place for the player to dick around. - The calendar I don't mind it. It's not a plus or a negative to the game. This only appears in Three Houses. - "No clock or calendar, great that means I can 100% the supports!" You didn't *have* to do that. The boredom was all on you man. Not to mention the supports aren't very good in Engage. The calendar would not fix Engage's supports. The supports were gutted by the localization team as well. - "I couldn't S support Bernadetta as a female Byleth" This is normal. Engage is the only game to allow S supports regardless of gender. Every other game with S support mechanics only has one or two characters that will S support you regardless. - "Her S rank support was arbitrarily cut off without any warning or ability to know this was going to happen" I haven't played Three Houses in a while, but I'm pretty sure you can see [A B C S] in the support screen, so I'm not sure how much more clearer that could have been. - "You should do the DLC as soon as possible" You should absolutely not do this in Engage. You will cause skirmishes to scale up to their recruitment level and make your playthrough incredibly difficult should you engage in them. - "I don't care for the corrupted" Yeah no one really does. This enemy archetype exists to provide the player a faceless enemy to defeat. - Conclusion You should play the Tellius games. Start with Path of Radiance.

Engage always struck me as "Make the player character feel good about themselves" the game.

Having played every English released Fire Emblem, I notice that I'm more partial towards the games with more quality and detailed stories. I find the issue surrounding Fire Emblem's gameplay to story dilemma to be bland. Just because a game like Engage has the best gameplay in the series doesn't excuse its plot holes or its shallow characters. The same is true for Three Houses, it's fantastic themes and characters doesn't fully excuse the plot inconsistencies or the gameplay changes. Still, I'd rather have Three Houses, as it feels like a more complete experience compared to Engage. Engage, while a pretty good celebration of the IP itself, really did not feel like it deserved to be a mainline game, and I struggle to understand why the bomb was dropped so hard in nearly every department but the gameplay. Regardless, I hope they learn what makes both games work, as well as what doesn't, and create a new entry with the gameplay quality of Engage, and the character quality of Three Houses.

It always felt so weird how the story quality changed between engage and three houses, three houses isn't the best fe game but I still liked it and actually finished it multiple times but I still haven't bothered finishing engage once

I played Enage before Three houses. Having played Engage before made TH3 so much better. Having the choice of which side you fight on in way cooler than just being the good guy.

I only got into FE because of 3H. The part I loved the most was how close the character felt. Though the characters were still collections of tropes, they still expressed themselves and felt like real people. Despite how I like the mechanics of engage more, it falls flat before FE3H when we consider the whole package.

I’m saying this at the beginning of the video, so you may cover it later. But the reason I love three houses so much more than engage is: I give a crap about the characters, I know who they are. But three houses is kind of unique in fire emblem in it gives you less characters than normal Fire emblem games (assuming you don’t recruit everyone). Once I realized that engage gives you so many characters so often and expects you to replace your units all the time, I no longer cared about any of them. I could name maybe 5 characters from engage.

FE3H got fans new and old reinvigorated in the series and excited to revisit older entries with fresh new eyes. People loved Fire Emblem when 3H came out. Whether they were new fans who still preferred 3H upon visiting older games or not due to the visible intricacy of its world, the relevance of its characters, its lively voice acting, its beautifully grounded art direction, its exciting soundtrack, or its unique mechanics that both made battles more involved and exciting and told the story using its mechanics with incredible consistency, or if they found a new favorite among the older games because of the many reasons to like those too, 3H didn’t divide a fanbase into people who didn’t understand fire emblem and people who did, it gave people a gateway of a game that was greatly enjoyable to most people, with everything Fire Emblem is about to keep them interested in its past. Mostly, its developers and voice actors and creative team were just as passionate about the game as Fire Emblem fans were. It was made by a team consisting of big fire emblem fans-Koei-after all. It’s not wonder how they could tell just what everyone craved out of the genius FE format, and why 3H stuck the landing so well; it’s creators were among the audience. Fire Emblem Engage……displayed what it looks like when developers are driven by greed in the creation of something people are meant to resonate with, around, and enjoy. Say goodbye to careful detailing of things that make a game feel loved, and say hello to what is immediately, visually, corporate. People picked up on this immediately, and immediately the game dropped off in sales for those that were willing to give it a chance. If Engage wasn’t so grueling to audiences on its own, I would say Fire Emblem Heroes was Fire Emblem Engage’s worst flaw. 3H created a fanbase that loved Fire Emblem, Engage created a fanbase that felt like Fire Emblem hated them.

I think a lot of people were put off by how the protagonist of Engage looked when they were first revealed, particularly the hair. Like yeah, I understand there is a lore reason behind why they look like that. But even though Fire Emblem takes a lot of pages from anime design wise, it was never really *this* crazy. Like yeah, Hilda for example has pink hair, but that was basically as far as it went. I feel a lot of people thought the stark half and half colgate hair idea was a little too far the "silly and stupid looking" track, and thus didn't even give Engage a chance.

1:05:22 SPOILER FOR FIRE EMBLEM FATES- but they DID in fact do this with the Birthright route After a certain battle a cutscene plays and if you got to a certain support level with Kage (A if I remember correctly) he survives, otherwise he dies

Pokémon is an incredible litmus test for this formula as Pokémon’s story could be dog water but if the game is fun people will stan in. It took black and white YEARS to be appreciated for the story it was as a standout narrative in the franchise that they haven’t come close to trying since

Agree with basically all of your points except Cindered Shadows. I didn't think it was crazy hard myself, and I liked the background it gave to Geralt and Byleth's mother. Everything else, spot on. Engage probably was the more fun game mechanically (Even if 3H did a great job of validating durability through weapon arts), but in everything else, 3H is my game.

Geralts death was incredibly well done, and was forshadowed well in advance, so you as the player saw it coming. It happens at a dramatic moment, but does overpower the scene. Other things can still happen. The tears fall, Byleth has been noticably emotionless for alot of the game, and to see the tears fall, and then the rain start, cutting to the silhouette of the two was powerfull. It didnt need to be over the top and dramatic, it just needed to be somber and sad. And thats what it was. I actually regularly revisited Geralts grave every month, just before the capstone mission.

16:50 Yeah, the design is great.....if you wanna be compared to Colgate toothpaste colors. 23:15 I dunno I feel like Byleth would've been fine with full voice acting since they made it work in Three Hopes.....then again I suppose since that was made by a different company their standards are higher. 31:30 the funniest thing about this cutscene is the fact that Jeralt always wears a shield on his back whenever you see him in gameplay but the ONE time he needs it is when he dies, the irony. 35:40 Honestly having Claude's ending being the canon route is rather fitting. Though Dimitri's might be good as well since you take out Those Who Slither In the Dark without knowing from previous playthroughs. 52:00 What would've been cool is if you DO end your month early you get to save Monica from dying and being replaced with the assassin (I forgot her name). Now granted the only thing that would change of that would be Jeralt living. 57:30 I knew straight away with Clanne and Framme that this game was one big avatar jerk off. 1:08:40 It's sad when the one character with actual detail is the best one, Yunaka standards should've been the norm. 1:42:45 I agree if it had at least a great story, so much of this game wouldn't feel as bad compared to FETH. 1:44:13 That's the reason why people still argue about whether or not Edelgard was right in doing the war to begin with, maybe it's due to her shortened life span so she needed to act quickly even if there was a lot of death and her being called a tyrant by most of Fodlan. Engage was good but the story made it feel boring, hell the Fell Xenologue was my favorite with how grim the story is, though the ending part was kinda dumb with Nel doing something stupid to get through Rafal's ego.

Great video. I'm a somewhat "recent" fan of the series, too, having only played from Awakening onward. Three Houses had rather different vibes to the other Fire Emblem games I had played before, and there were lots of things that I missed from the prior series - but I really loved Three Houses, especially after being disappointed in Fates. I feel like Three Houses had some of the most interesting, rough around the edges characters in the series as far as my experience with it goes (or maybe it just feels that way after, again, being disappointed in Fates lol) Engage just rubbed me wrong right from the start with its lineup of legacy characters. I never managed to get the sour taste of fan service out of my mouth - every time I caught a reference I recognized, I just wished they had made a new, fresh story, like what Three Houses felt like.

I'm late to the conversation but thought I should put my 2 cents in this matter. One major difference between the two games is what role you, the player, the game puts you in. I'll use 2 other Fire Emblem entries from the 3DS as examples without putting any spoilers and boiling it down. In this comparison, I'll compare 3 Houses with Fire Emblem Awakening while Engaged will be compared with the entirety of Fates (Birthrights, Conquest, and Revelations). [I just finished writing this and my god I tried to sum everything up but to no avail.] - In the 3DS games you are given an avatar character to personalize, Robin the tactician for Awakening and Corrin the "divine" dragon from Fates. Aside from their looks, what they excel and struggle at stat wise, and birthdays, the story and narratives from both games have some similarities with the other games I'm comparing them with. Robin isn't the main protagonist in Awakening but part of a duo with the leading protagonist Chrom, he and to a greater extent you the player, are heavily depended on as the tactician but Robin has some personalities that doesn't make them another insert or blank slate character, they like bear meat of all things, always second guess themselves, and prioritizes other first for the greater benefit of Chrom's army. Byleth, in contrast, is a mercenary and teacher who practically raises, nurtures, and guides his students into becoming great knights. Byleth has only ever been with Jeralt but Robin's past is a mystery due to amnesia and we're never given any closure about it other than his mother fled with him as a child because she learned what Robin's fate would lead up to. -In Fates, Corrin is in a very complex situation of having 2 families at literal war with each other, the Kingdome of Nohr and Hoshido. Corrin is the 2nd to last youngest sibling, she's originally from the kingdom of Hoshido but was raised in the Kingdom of Nohr, both consist of 2 older brothers, 1 older sister, and 1 younger sister. There is another sister named Azura with deeper relations with Corrin but to sum it up without spoiling it, she's Corrin's foil where she was born in Nohr but raised in Hoshido. You spend at least 5 chapters to understand what it's like to be in the two kingdoms before you ultimately decide who you're going to side with, that's if you didn't buy both the other route via dlc when the games were still new or only chose 1 version which means your choice is already set in stone. Already this is way more complicated than Engage but it's not a bad start narratively speaking. You have the 2 major forces, family drama between the two kingdoms, and the moral dilemma of turning your sword against the family you didn't choose (there's also Revelation where you have a third option but I'm cutting it out entirely because it's dlc only, no longer available unless you have the special edition cartridge, and makes the story way more complicated than necessary). It's a ton to unpack but you're in the spotlight throughout the entire game with only a few breaks where the oldest sons take the lead for a bit. At the very least you know that your choice is going to result in more drama because Corrin is left wondering what would've happened if she chose her other family, continuously tries to reason to her former siblings why you picked the other side even trying to recruit them in vain, and expresses grief after seeing one of their former family members die. That's as best as I can put it because Fates also has a *TON* of critical negatives outside of the story and narrative. You're not just another dragon god because all of your other siblings are all descendants from their respective dragons, the Hoshidans followed the Dawn Dargon while the Nohrians followed the Dusk Dragon, but Corrin is unique for having dragon blood that isn't watered down throughout generations and for wielding the special sword that's said to lead the kingdom to prosperity and such and such. Meanwhile Alear is just god that woke up with a bad headache, not even full amnesia because after Corrin's rampage where she transformed into a dragon she remembered being abducted like it was a repressed memory. - I suppose the point of this is that there's an interesting pattern in how you put the characters you play as. While Awakening has its flaws and criticisms, putting your character just below someone else who sees you as an equal and often depends on you ends up leading to more interesting situations, sometimes simple in story but with enough complexity to help you feel more engaged with the rest of the characters and overall world. Meanwhile if your character is the center of everything with so many complications, it ends up just going all over the place with close to no consistency or continuity. That's what makes Engage and Fates struggle the most in its identity, it doesn't know how to tell the story it wants to tell other than just existing to keep the status quote of defeating the evil forces you're supposed to win against (at least Fates has 3 possible endings for how the war ends but still lackluster). Meanwhile Awakening and 3 Houses has a simple, yet slightly convoluted, story that's easy to digest but complex enough to reinforce why your actions matter; Awakening is about changing the future because you're both told and shown the horrors that will come within a given number of years while 3 Houses is about writing history, developing the future of Fodland after 5 years of constant war.

You are not callous for thinking, that Queen Lumera's death scene is awkward. With the scene being just a few minutes into the game, at that point I was thinking "Oh God, how bad is this game going to be"? It is almost like the game is patting itself on the back for having a "tragic" moment, not even realizing, that it is completely unearned. This scene would be as if you were watching Star Wars and instead of only the viewer not having a connection to Luke's family on Tatooine, uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are also strangers to Luke, but the acting is the same as in the movie. While the gameplay is good in Engage, the story just wanted to make me skip it at every point and no FE game going all the way back to the originals had ever made me want to do that.

Fun fact, Three Houses and Engage had difrent producers and writeing teams. Three Houses was mostly out sourced to the developers of Dynasty Wariors Koei Tecmo with some members of Intelligence Systems also haveing input mainly the members who worked on a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden called Fire Emblem Echoes shadows of Valentia and most of them didnt agree with the direction the main team was takeing Fire Emblem as while awakening saved the franchise it also took out alot of the fantasy drama earlier titles had for basic seasonal anime tropes and simplified plots Three Houses in a way was a return to form going back to tittles like Genology of the Holy War and the Telius dulology on gamecube and wii. The team that made Awakening and Fates didn't like this and Engage was made to basicly be the anti-three houses as they felt such a dark deep story with complex charicters and a traditionaly serious brave protagonist would be off puting to younger players and newcomers so they simplified as much as posible to apeal to what the belived to be the lowest comon denominator. Engage does have better combat gameplay and maps but theres no soul behind any of it. The story exists to sever the gameplay while in three houses the gameplay exists to help tell its stories

Engaged was a huge disappointment even in the Fire Emblem community. You're lucky though, because you can just play the series backwards. You have so many fun games to work through! 3Houses was very good, but it's very different from others

Three Houses was the first game to make me feel emotional, it was such a good game and still is. It's my favorite game of all time and it'll probably stay that way. Btw my first route was the Dimitri route.

Very gratifying to see someone else elucidate all the things I loved about Three Houses and all the reasons that Engage struggles in comparison to it. And hey, best of luck getting rid of your anachronistic vestigial monarchy.

This might come off as a very childish excuse, but I think the aesthetic for Engage is what puts me off from playing it. It's a little too anime for Fire Emblem, in my opinion. It's not like I didn't try, I got to the first paralogue before putting the game down and completely stopped. The characters didn't give a good first impression either. Honestly, they were kinda getting on my nerves with their constant Alear worship. Don't get me started on Lumera's death scene. That scene really ticked me off. Throughout that whole scene, I was just unfazed thinking, "Wow, she's dead already? It's only been a chapter? Man, they are really trying to get emotions out of you for a character you barely know anything about." I got more emotions from Jeralts' death, which isn't even half as dragged out or dramatic as Lumera's. I don't know, this might come off as stupid because I barely made any progress in the game, but these were my honest thoughts from what little I played. If I feel like I have to force myself to continue playing, then honestly, the game must not be for me.

I actually prefer Alear's character over Byleths silent protag ***in concept***. Seeing the characters have their own dreams, fears, problems and how they solve it is fun for me to watch, where i find silent protags a lost potential, and why i prefer 3 hopes Byleth as he has a more distinct personality The only issue is engage's story overall sucks, alear falls into one of the many characters whose personality i do not care for much.

I play Mario for the gameplay not the narrative or character development but when I play Fire Emblem it's the story and the characters I value more than the gameplay

To comment on the complexity thing. I believe that 3h is one of the best games to get in to FE with even with how different it is to traditional FE games as the game does a really great job at introducing the mechanics and hooking u with the story

I am a fan of the Fire Emblem series as a whole, so I want to add my perspective, though I ultimately agree with what you said. With that said, one of the issues with Engage in my mind is that it is to Fire Emblem what Wish is to Disney. Which means referencing plot points from previous titles in indirect ways. For instance, the random Alear is the child of the big bad is a reference to Gaiden; its remake, Shadows of Valentia; and Fates. Sombron's title as Fell Dragon is a reference to Grima from Awakening. So on and so forth. Hell, it directly borrows maps from previous titles. I think this leads to issues with the narrative, as the game tries to balance its more original ideas with the stuff from previous titles, making the plot more messy as a result. Three Houses, while borrowing concepts from Genealogy of the Holy War; namely magic bloodlines and their associated weapons; it borrows the calendar and related mechanics from Persona, and so show the series trying something very different from what it typically does. Combined with the multiple routes, and you get a plot that has one main thematic through line that isn't messed with in some way, even with the different routes. In essence, Engage has two big goals: reference previous titles in various ways and a theme of found family. I would say it tries to use the former to prop up the latter, which does lead to issues with those not well-versed in the series being confused. For instance, the moniker of Fell Dragon is likely meant to refer to a dragon that is made through the use of Divine Dragon blood, human blood, and something known as a Thanatophage; a bug responsible for the Risen, a zombie capable of wielding weapons (which the Corrupted are likely a reference to). This is what previous Fell Dragon Grima was, though he had no ability to do Emblem Ring shenanigans. So the plot gets very easily lost, especially given that this reveal was not in Awakening, but in the post-game of Shadows of Valentia. So that is not really as well known. Engage wants to do a lot, but in attempting to juggle everything, leaves out some of what draws people in (the pairings at the end of the game, for instance) and barely is able to keep it up. It still does so, but looks incredibly clumsy while doing so. (Also, just as a minor point, but the fact you specifically brought up Ike and Micaiah as the example of previous protagonists interacting, given that they did, mostly by trying to kill each other)

Im pretty late to this video but the community needs videos like this and players like you who provide new insight to a series with a small but diehard fanbase. I enjoyed the video

I have a quote from a game that seems to have burrowed into my deep memory. "There are many ways we can do it, and the choice is yours" That's from the opening of Morrowind, when you are presented with your option on how to create your character - of which there were many. I always liked the in-medias Res type creation sequences.

Why are we afraid of "complicated"? Why do we look down on audiences like that? Game of Thrones is not an easy TV series, and yet it's probably the last good TV show we had - and it ended poorly because... it stopped being complicated. Sure, sometimes we want pulp fiction which is easy to follow along with, but even pulp fiction that stands the test of time was coherent to some degree. I got into Fire Emblem because of Three Houses being what it was. Heck look at the debate the game sparks, the Edelgard VS Dimitri crowds etc. And yet, who bothers to talk about Engage? It was just... there. It wasn't even a simple story, because it tried to be deep... it was just a game.

As a hard core Fire Emblem Fan, I agree. Engage was lack luster for me. There was some great ideas and nostalgia but it didn't hold up. I returned it after beating everything, while Three Houses I still have and replay.

Bro you need to play fire emblem awakening you would really be mad about engage

Not all fire emblems happen on the same world as far as we know, there are several games that do take place on the same place, like Archeanea and Zofia/Rigel, as well as another game.

Engage's opening is also extra awkward if you played Awakening, which most FE fans have, it was the last introduction wave game before 3 Houses came out... its just the opening of Awakening but worse. Actually, a lot of Engage can be described that way. And that's saying something because Awakening is not my favorite game in the franchise.

Well here’s something that incidentally happens when most of your opponents are zombies, undermining the tragedy of war. They’re not having the conflict weigh on them, so they are just hanging out. The reanimated just know how to wield weapons, likely not prepare any kind of timely action against the good guys. I do generally dislike mindless entities in games, mostly because even early game boss units tend to feel like a person in the world of the game, unless the effect is deliberate and powerful such as a scene with Orson in FE8.

This is a great video by all accounts and I pretty much agree with everything in it. But man you could have not chosen a worse time to upload this video! Right now the online consensus in the FE community is “3H is a complete gameplay and narrative mess”, while also pointing out “Engage was a secret masterpiece this whole time?!” It’s just a cycle now where 3H is the popular game to hate on. The same thing happened with FE Echoes (the game before 3H) when 3H initially released people hated FE Echoes but now post engage it is looked back on fondly. Eventually I feel the next FE game will come out and people will move on from bashing 3H towards bashing engage instead. But I have to reiterate: This was a great video that was well presented and paced well, and I can’t wait to see what comes next from you!

45:00 "There's so much to do but there's no reason to actually fo it. " Yea, this is how I felt about this game. The somniel kinda reminded me of when Awakening had the babies from the future, and then Fates brought that same mechanic back. But it felt off, because it wasn't relevant to its context like in Awakening. Idk, Engage is just kinda meh for me

Re: bandit plan It was a theory among Edelgard's fanbase later confirmed by Three Hopes that the bandit attack was meant to scare off the teacher Byleth took over for. Edelgard planned to have Jeritza (aka her subordinate) be the new teacher which would allow her more freedom to move in the shadows so to speak. Several clues from different characters make one think that she lead the others to Jeralt and Byleth knowingly but that is up to debate. Anyway, I don't think Kostas was any real danger to three superhumans lol Great analysis, I really enjoyed the video.

I am with you. I have never played a Fire Emblem game until Three Houses. That was my first experience in the series and I had thought that it was something common among the games, I did not know it was something the development team did something new. I loved almost the entire supporting cast of characters. That is very rare to find in a game. The multiple play throughs are rewarding to see the different perspectives and some events and dialogue options that would otherwise be unknown to you. The only thing I disagree with your overall view of the DLC of Three Houses is that, I play nearly all my games on the hardest difficulty. So the DLC with the fixed leveling just meant I had to rethink the positioning and routes of my allies. Sure it took many attempts at clearing the endgame of the side quest, but it was worth it. Happy is my favorite of the new characters. Sorry you didn't dig Petra, she is my top tier waifu. I was so impressed by Three Houses that I purchased Engage thinking it would follow a similar formula. I heard not so great things about it and now you have confirmed those concerns. I have not even touched the game and I bought it the day it was released. I may eventually get around to playing it, but for now I enjoy replaying Three Houses over and over again.

I've played three houses 3 times and I'm on my fourth currently. I got halfway through engage and still haven't finished it. I do think as far as just a game goes engage is a good game but it unfortunately doesn't hold a candle to three houses

1:16:10 in the defense of Three houses, in Fire Emblem as a series most characters tend to have romantic endings with people of the opposite sex, with very few exceptions, and about the same amount of vaguely *implied* romantic relations between people of the same sex. Essentially in the previous 2 FE games where you could choose your main character's sex, you were also choosing what sex your spouse would be, opposite to your own (unless you marry the one granted bi-sexual for each sex in Fates). Three Houses was quite progressive in this, with several female characters being bi-sexual, and 1 bi-sexual man (3 if you include post-release updates and DLC). Bernedetta, and a few other characters, only swing one way, which can be "hypocritical" in some cases where characters who do not want to marry Byleth will still have paired romantic implied endings with members of the opposite sex anyway. You're not their type I guess.

So as someone that's played pretty much the entire series their is a bit of context I feel would help, and that is that FE may be 1 franchise but it's not a "constant" franchise. As an example let me say a few things about Thracia 776, the fifth game in the franchise. In Thracia there are no support conversations, weapons have durability but you can very rarely buy anything instead you can "capture", lowering your stats but if you "kill" a until with Capture you instead grab them and can raid their inventory for what you want, all stats for everyone is capped at 20 so stat differences work differently, and storywise it was made to take place in a single year during FE4's story constricting what it could do. FE likes to really change how it works, both gameplay and story. Which often makes it hard to recommend games to people. Liking Three Houses does not mean you'll like Engage, or Fates, or Tellius, and so on. Because they all have different focuses and structures and mechanics. From how you described liking the characters, the romance, and changing how each characters ending works I'd recommend Awakening if you want another FE game. It has some flaws you listed here but it's a great game with a lot of focus on characters and bonds and changing your fate. Quick note on that, Awakening had a bad reputation in some hardcore parts of the fandom, especially Reddit, but ignore them they are just being elitist without any real justification like 2/3rds of the time. I'll also say avoid the first 5 games as that was before support conversations became a thing.

I'll be honest, I think Awakening handled their zombies alot better. They have them not as a army, but as a force of nature. They roam the lands, they no purpose, they are the dead that seek to bring only more death. Hell they even have a connection to the anti war message in the game, they are from a time where war consumed everything, where conflict has literally left the world as a wasteland before even the final boss showed up, they just put the final nail in the coffin.

Btw if you're curious about the pronunciation of Alear, there's audio of pretty much every playable character saying there name on the cutting room floor.

Spectacular work.

I had the opposite impression of Dimitri on my first playthrough. “Holy Kingdom, eh? Sounds interesting, count me in!”

The whole summoning heroes from other worlds is a mechanic that was introduced in fire emblem heroes (their mobile ip). That game also pretty much establishes that there's infinite universes, and that every person's individual playthrough is all equally canon

The whole complaint about Bernadette soured this somewhat. It’s not arbitrary. It’s the character’s sexuality . How are you supposed to know? Because the massive majority are straight. Honestly, the “romance anybody you want” that Engage did was the final straw for me. It cemented that even something as cord to characters as sexual preference was up to the player. The cast feels like it has minimal personality beyond Alear.

This was super interesting! It’s nice to hear an opinion on this matter who isn’t a long time or hard-core fire emblem fan. I just wanted to mention some things that are often discussed within the community. A big one is many old timers hate avatars, and hub worlds. The only one that hasn’t been seen incredibly negative was Fates castle. Personally i find the monastary repetitive and I have a habit of just wasting time because I loose my train of thought on what of the many things I wanted to do. Avatars is an interesting one I personally like it for the customization options in gameplay but many don’t like it from a story perspective. One comment I found interesting is you liking Alear’s design I don’t like it their hair looks like plastic and the art style shift I think was one of the largest factors because it made Engage start of bad footing with the community and Three Houses fans. Another couple things to note you already briefly touched on this at the beginning but some Engage’s oddities are just standard Fire Emblem gameplay. Like Saphir joining so late is what’s called a replacement unit to replace someone who died. About the difficulty of the DLCs this problem really occurs because Engage and Three Houses is all about character and unit customization and the DLCs rip that away from you making the maps far more difficult than they really should be. I personally found it stupid on their part to rip the customization away from the player. I think another aspect that made Engage loose a lot of interest in the community was the lack of new game plus. Another aspect is the lack of limitation to customization. In three houses and fates there was a lot of effort put into altering class lines training weapon ranks and in fates case supports. Engage seemingly has too little and too many restrictions on class changing and build design at once. Class are really easily to slot anyone in without much thought at all but skills are only limited to two flexible slots hampering goofy builds. The Emblems do bring their own skills but it isn’t nearly as flexible compared to Fates and Three Houses. Overall I think it was a bad start followed by a weak story with good gameplay that was’t repayable that really hurt Engage.

I personally like the main character not to be an extension of one's self. When it comes to characters that are meant to represent you as the person playing the game, it almost always leads to mary-sue situations where the main character can do absolutely no wrong. Or can't make a bad decision. It often makes the story feel worse to me. Engage does a poor job of telling a story *in general,* so this difference isn't really shown very well here, but in other titles outside of fire emblem, I prefer when the main character has their own personality and does their own things, provided that they go through a proper arc of character development. The fact that Ike is my favourite fire emblem lord, and he *is* one such character, along with path of radiance and radiant dawn being my favourite games in the whole series, I think it makes a lot of sense.

I've played 5 FE games before Three Houses and Engage. ( 9 If you count all fate route separate and Warriors). Can't say I fully hate engage ( especially if I have over 200 hours, and can kind of get addicted to battling portion of the gameplay), but It does have a lot of problems that I do hate and almost made me quit this series entirely. Some of the problems include: A not so great story that only kind of picks up towards the end ( has a lot of ideas, lore, and potential but instead went for a lazy/simple particular route) , Having clothing and accessories, but it can only use in the hub world ( unlike Fates and Three Houses ), A lack of options of building up supports before an update kind of fix it+ receiving support points in battle only on your turn in a game with 40 plus characters, You can't sell everything you have, normal mode being easy, No one doesn't have anything interesting to say in the hub world compared to Three houses as you're going along the story, the fortune telling system seems pointless ( I heard it's supposed to help you with support, but it keeps praying me with characters that doesn't have supports with each other ), The game censors quite a few things ( Something I felt nintendo was not doing as much, but decided to bring it back to this game.)There's also unlocking classes being linked to your engage progression but I don't fully remember how that worked. I also had people trying to defend this game saying because TH was made by different team and most of these problems weren't problems in the old game were not in the original game, but if that's their way saying they don't want nintendo taking notes/good ideas from previous games and does want them to improve upon the next games, then so be it. To be Fair, The good thing I can say about Engage is that the battling portion of the gameplay is by far the best in the series, It looks pretty damn good, Some support are enjoyable ( I could even say some are better than the main story itself ), and the some of the mini games in the hub are enjoyable, But I feel like the game could have been so much better

As someone who also has only played these two titles, I completely understood your critiques and I personally had a lot less fun with Engage because of the narrative dissonance throughout, whereas playing the role of a teacher was very rewarding, I had reason to want to help my students grow and succeed and to protect them

Didn’t expect a FE video from this channel but happy to watch

7:54 You actually said it correctly the first time, there were apparently cut voice lines that say Alear’s name out loud. 9:58 Correction: Byleth has only had the dream about the opening battle multiple times, them meeting Sothis was actually the first occurrence.

My biggest issue with engage is how little I cared about anything in that game. Didn’t care for the story characters or the supports. They all felt like a chore and frankly made me want to just finish the game just to get it over with. Another thing to me that engage kinda of annoyed me is the first impression. Engage might have one of the worst first impressions when starting a game even before the game came out there already people who decided to drop it since it just didn’t look appealing which fair enough marketing wasn’t good for engage. I think one of the biggest issue with engage it suffers from an identity crisis. Despite being an anniversary game, it has no idea who they want to cater to whether it’s newcomers or veterans so they did a awkward mixture where they tried to incorporate both but they kinda half assed it in a way for both sides. It’s one of the reasons why discussions for engage has been very critical and why people feel like it didn’t leave an impact to the game. While it’s not a bad game it could be considered a disappointment especially if people expected it to be like 3H. Now engage could still exist but at the same time they needed to change the story and characters a bit more so people would care about them

As someone who came from Fire Emblem 8 on the gba. Can't wait to see your thoughts. 👁 👁

I've kept playing Three Houses happily. I gave up on Engage super quickly. I just looked up the character interaction cutscenes, laughed along to them, and priceeded to forget the game even existed. I'm a "story first" kind of gamer, so going from the beautiful angst of 3H to Engage's stupidity was... Disappointing and discouraging.

Have I told you that I learned ability to reset the calendar in 3 houses insert months what’s your opinion on that availability?

This was a very good analysis and spot on to the general perception at large. Three Houses has great story and more importantly compelling world building that makes you care about the characters and situation you find yourself in on top of having great game play. Engage I would argue that while it has good or even above average game play and map design is severely let down but its train wreck of a narrative and lack of focus or direction.

Great analysis. This really sums up a lot of my frustrations with Engage. For an anniversary title its rather disappointing how it treats the legacy characters. Anyway you should play the Tellius games (emulate them, physical copies are wildly expensive). I think you'd gel well with Ike and his story.

the late recruitment of several characters in Engage is because of Classic mode. Classic mode in Three houses is so completely unbalanced because you have your party you've trained, if you recruit people late you have them somewhat leveled, but when you're 5 chapters in to the war phase and someone dies, you can't just replace them with someone else, you're other party members are 7-30 levels behind whoever just died depending on when you recruited them, meaning you have to grind someone against enemies stronger then themself, the only exceptions are Lysithea Lorenz and Ashe depending on your route which you generally only get 1 of if you didn't recruit them, otherwise your highest level you last recruited is Seteth at level 23 in non crimson flower or Jeritza at 27 in crimson flower, (who the kind of people who play classic iron man often don't use because he's "dlc") which even then, is assuming you *only* lose 1 unit while not resetting for up to 8 chapters. otherwise the most balanced route for playing classic how it is intended is silver snow because you get 2 free level 21s, and you're only just now able to recruit hilda at level 23. Compare this to engage (or any other fire emblem game for that matter) and you lose a character and you have the option to either use a unit you recruited from a chapter or 2 ago, or wait for the next chapter to probably get someone decent. Late recruits generally range from existing on a casual playthrough/with resets because your existing army outclasses them, to being the only reason you're able to finish an iron man on classic because they're made to make it harder to soft lock yourself from everyone dying. The only time late recruits have ever bothered me in the past have been when they're forced on you, which admittedly happens with the last 2 characters in Engage with them adding 2 more unit slots than the previous maps, but at least they're not straight up forcing you to deploy new units on the last chapters like... some games **looks at 7 forced deployments in Radiant Dawn endgame** The issue isn't that you get 4 characters late, it's that they're treated like any other characters you have gameplay-wise despite 2 of them literally showing up in like 1 cutscene prior just to show they exist and you have no time to get their supports, that in my opinion, aren't even that great to begin with. In older games the late game characters typically exist in the story from much earlier, and you have limited supports to begin with and late game characters gain their supports faster. So by taking the "Everyone gets a bunch of supports from the start" mentality from Three Houses, as well as the classic fire emblem recruitment beats, they make it bad. Instead of taking notes from awakening and fates where some characters literally have like 2 or 3 support options they were like "how about those 2 characters you recruited on the super close to the last chapter get 16 C-A supports" making it not even feel worth going for In my opinion, I prefer that we get characters split up instead of whenever you want to recruit them in general. I think it worked for Three houses, but I stated why I don't think it works with how it's implemented, so I won't repeat it. I actually think the recruitment order for engage causes the player to actually have the opportunity to use whoever they want while getting to try how every unit feels due to the player starting with several mediocre characters and then finding a bunch of better units where you have to decide if they're worth switching out, which is something a lot of older games don't do well, having a ton of great units right from the start and everyone you find being just far enough behind your likely slightly over leveled units to not be worth training. The only issue with Lindon and Saphir specifically is they just so happen to be the last units who don't add extra slots, I've had 13 slots that I've had to slowly filter out my party for between 30 characters, by the time Rosado and Goldmerry roll around that's probably gonna be people's last permanent member change if even that, but at least you've seen those 2 since the early game and saw how they worked against you, but then these 2 random old people show up with very little existence prior it's just like "oh, well, I don't really want to get rid of anyone." Lindon is actually a very good unit if you train him right, and Saphir is... at least pretty decent, but those 2 characters are literally the only ones with no real part in the story and they're just there in case your units died. TLDR; in Engage, the last 4 units recruitment time isn't the issue, it's their number of supports and the lack of motivation the game gives you to want to know who specifically Lindon and Saphir are. Late recruits have a gameplay purpose for classic mode mainly and engage just executed it poorly. and this comment was way too long to address one small thing you said, 1:35:00 into the video but here we are

This was a very interesting video. I hope you look into some more fire emblem games and decide to make videos on them to hear what your thoughts on them are. I especially recommend the dawn duology since they’re known for being the best written fire emblem games of all. But will warn you the protagonists of those two games (Ike and Miciah) are not at all avatars like you described enjoying Byleth being. They are very distinct characters who make most of their decisions without player input, but still put the player in charge of battle tactics.

For me, Engage feels like it was just trying to capitalize on the trend of franchises throwing all their characters into one thing and the makers of Engage didn't put any thought into it. Personally, my least favorite Fire Emblem games are the ones that reference main characters from previous games. It just feels like a cheap way to build excitement for the game and that the devs don't have any confidence in the strength of the characters they made for the current game. I also find that the Fire Emblem games with wholly unique casts of characters are better written.

yea i wonder how ike and micaiah would get along. damn if only they made an entire game about that. you could have ike and micaiah start off on opposite sides of a war that's outside of their control and then unite them in the final part against a common enemy or something. that would be so epic. too bad old fe games aren't actually real and you can't buy them.

I think that Alear being the head of a religion could have been very interesting, especially considering they haven't been involved in it at all. There's a lot of alienation in being deified and this would especially be impactful in a young amnesiac character who now has the hopes and dreams of not just a nation, but an entire religious sect on their shoulders. Alear is, no matter how unintentionally, othered, and touching more on insecurity or even resentment to this position and the horrifying reality that their every action is going to influence and shape an entire generation of people that come after them would have been so, so interesting of an arc. The snippets where we see this possible direction could have gone I feel had potential, although that might also be because I played with f!Alear and I quite liked her vocal performance. It's just a lot of wasted potential for conflict and commentary and that's worse than if the game was just memes.

The thing that still disappoints me the most about Engage is the lack of moral complexity recent FEs have had. The first instance I saw this was notable was in the chapter Dark Emblem where the antagonists starting using Emblems against you and I thought to myself: wait, if there are Dark Emblems... shouldn't they include Emblems of past antagonists... and that would've provided a more richer and complex story Engage could've had. You could also wield the Emblems of past antagonists and they reveal their side of the story of why they had to do what they did and give their perpsective of the events on Engage, and why they believe Sombron should be stopped. Go even further and have the antagonist Emblems interact with the heroic Emblems and have them not liking to work with each other but both sides understand they have to in order to stop the current threat. But NOPE. Instead, the battle is a generic good vs evil showdown with the antagonist Emblems showing up in the final chapter with the heroes going against them as generic Corrupted with fancy weapons spouting off vague statements that they've seen them before and they'll beat them again. Now I can understand to a certain degree why they didn't choose to cast VAs for the antagonists Emblems, but it's still VERY noticable once you think about it and once you hear Sombron's reasons why he did what he did, AFTER THE FINAL BATTLE IS OVER, it sours the whole experience ever further and makes the overall experience that is Fire Emblem Engage main game... lackluster. ...Fell Xenolouge does provide more moral complexity for the main antagonist's actions, but the execution of how they did gameplay is so much worse than it was for Cindered Shadows' gameplay that it's VERY noticable and is a different kind of disapointment compared to their original respective games.

One thing I found Engage boring in my opinion is Alear as a main. Alear felt like a copy of Corrin but less gullible. If we doing a like comparing and contrasting between TH and Engage, TH has the lore, background, the struggle,motives and the development but the gameplay feels to easy but challenge other than casual. On the other hand, Engage has better mechanics and gameplay but has lack lore, background and development.

Blue lions is the best house and the best route

"You arent the center of the universe and the time does not revolve around you" You know...despite having the creator diety and god of time potara fusioned into your soul...

Great video on these games. Im a lifelong fire emblem diehard and to me 3H was the evolotion of the series i wanted where engage was a mix of regression but did have some fresh ideas. I could not disagree more on alears visual design. They are an eyesore, a busy abomination that i pray does not encourage intelligent systems to do more character designs like this.

37:00 “Fire Emblem’s Combat doesn’t need any tweaking at this stage". What do you mean when referring to tweaks? The emblems? The map design? Because if so, those are not tweaks. Those are integral parts to a gameplay for a fire emblem game. Tweak make it sound like a small quality of life change. Regardless, assuming 37:13: "Engage adds more tactical flexibility, but nothing that couldn’t be adjusted in any other way”. In what other way? The best of gameplay mechanics in fire emblem are those designed in consideration with other mechanics and aspects of the gameplay. The emblems and other mechanical additions (such as the forging system and break system) to engage are not "small adjustments", they are game changers. Despite being such powerful abilities in your disposal, the map design is designed in such a way to accentuate all of those abilities, without folding backwards and creating an easy experience. Maddening Engage is very well designed considering the tools at your disposal. Engage's methods of adding tactical flexibility are NOT easily replicated without fundamentally changing the game around them. The map design and the emblems where made to complement one another. Taking one out means the other suffers greatly. 37:18. "What it needs is another hook...Hence why [3h] focused itself around more social sim aspects". I would argue 3h chased social sim aspects to the complete detriment of gameplay and map design. Both are aspects which this review glossed over heavily. 3h has horrible map design for anything outside the white clouds main maps. Despite 3h having less powerful tools in comparison to the emblems in engage, the map design still folds itself over backwards, unprepared for those abilities. Instead relying on ambush re-inforcements, map re-usage to comedic levels, and stat-bloated enemies. Maddening was lazily designed, to the point of creating a soft-lock via battle before dawn. I overall felt like you skimmed too quickly on the gameplay and map design of both games and as such, skimmed over the glaring issues on both fronts regarding 3h. 1:09:36 Actually, Yunaka’s voice actress is Laura Post. The same voice actress for Catherine in Three houses. Yunaka’s actress is doing all those different voices herself. 1:02:25. Regarding the supports which end at seemingly random letter ranks. I actually think that was a great change. There are some character interactions that do merit the existence of a support between the two, but not enough to to A. Stuff like Lorenz and Ferdinand. More shoot-the-shit supports which display a funny interaction between the two, but not much more than that. But seeing as the support ended early, instead of potentially running the joke into the ground via an additional support that did not need to exist. By contrast, X + supports are for conversations that NEED more than 3 to reach a proper solution. If they narrowed it down to 3, it would negatively affect the support quality. Both are additions I would really like to be brough back. I overall agree with your criticisms regarding engage stories. It is very poorly written. I also agree with your criticisms regarding the lack of paired endings. That was a boneheaded exclusion I do believe 3h is far better than engage when it comes to story and character writing. But Engage has far better map design, gameplay mechanics, and replayability. Edit: 48:05. The problem is that the explore function overpowers everything else. In this mode you get Motivation points (meals, gifts, lost items, etc). Money (selling rare fish, spamming the arena. Stat boosters (via the greenhouse) Support points Buying stuff that is only available via exploration. Thanks to it being such a strong option, one is pushed to explore 3+ times per month/chapter, grinding the pace of the game to a screeching halt. Rest is damn near useless. Your unit’s motivation only fills up +50, making it inferior to spamming gifts/meals to renew motivation. Renewing the sword of the creator this way is undesirable, as it is better to find materials via skirmishes, which also give exp. and mastery points. 51:49 The whole ‘NEED TIME CONSTRAINTS TO CREATE TENSION. YOU CAN NOT DO EVERYTHING AT ONCE’ I understand this logic. However, I feel that 3H’s way of creating limitations was haphazard and In theory, the overarching limitation is good. Fire Emblem is no stranger to limiting the player, forcing them to get creative with the system. But the monastery is the worst of both worlds. Too rigid to create interesting options in subsequent playthroughs, and too free to create tension. The limitations placed in 3H felt like I needed twice the effort for half the reward. Constantly eating meals and buying gifts to refuel motivation. Constantly re-fighting the arena for money. All for builds which end up too homogenous and do not stand out properly when playing the maps. Your example of Flayn was honestly very poor. In-game, Seteth is damn near having a heart attack. Everyone is in a fuss. You tracked down where Flayn could have been hidden. But because doing that now means losing on the following weeks' worth of resources, it is a terrible idea to save Flayn ASAP. Instead, you fall back and do your tutoring sessions, get valuable resources, all the while Seteth is having a heart attack. This would have played out far better if, assuming you do that story mission early, the following weeks still happened. The threat is dispelled, now we can go back to normal doing our errands for the month, and at the end, we transition into the following month back on course. I feel that the calendar system’s “You have limited time before x mission" gets unbelievable when it comes to armies invading you (like the chapters where the empire invades the monastery in chapter 14 of Azure moon and verdant wind respectively). It starts getting unbelievable when an army--any army, is approaching Garrech Mach, but they ALWAYS arrive at the end of the month. Not a day sooner. My criticism is not that there is a week’s worth to prepare for an attack. My criticism is that every attack happens at the end of the month. It would have been a bit more understandable if the attack landed, say, at the end of week 1. Or even in the middle of a week. The attack happens, you win, and THEN you have the rest of the month to prepare for the following month. Instead, it feels ‘gamey’ for lack of a better word, that all attacks on garrech mach happen on the same date.

I cannot add much more to the conversation than all the other commenters have already written, but there are two things I want to say: 1. Who the characters end up marrying if they have multiple A supports isn't random. You need a set number of support points to reach the next support level. Even once you've reached A, the game will still continue to count. The characters end up with the person they have the highest support, aka the highest number of support points, with. I always managed to get exactly the pairings I wanted, even without bothering to count. 2. Since you seem to enjoy the social sim aspects and the calendar system of Three Houses, I think you might enjoy the Persona series (the modern games: 3, 4 and 5).

😅Second note the Fell Dragon returning over and over was a recurring storyline in Fire Emblem. Several generations apart had to stop the Fall Dragon from returning and destroying the world. You would have had to play DS/3DS games to know this.