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itsbenedict · 5 months

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okay fine i played Fire Emblem Engage

That's where I've been for the past, like, week. It wasn't a great decision. I would call it a purchase made in a moment of weakness.

The conventional wisdom I've heard is "yeah the story and characters are Bad and Nothing, but the gameplay is really good", and that was kind of accurate to my experience. But it was... weirdly not as bad as I was expecting? It had some redeeming qualities, narratively! I enjoyed it more than, say, Fates by a mile.

It was still extremely stupid, though. Wow. It's not as actively infuriating as some recent FE has been, but it's certainly a completely braindead narrative.

You can open this readmore if you want to hear all about that.

So the plot of the game: there's an evil dragon man who wants to take over the world. He got sealed away a thousand years ago but now he's back and wants to take over the world. You Have To Stop Him. (There are epicycles to this, but all of them are dumb and very few of them matter.)

Toothpaste Lord, Alear, is the [son/daughter, in my game daughter] of the Divine Dragon, a very nice queen lady who the people of [setting] worship as a goddess. A thousand years ago she got mortally wounded sealing away the evil dragon man, and went to sleep for a thousand years to recover. Fast forward to now, and she wakes up, except she has amnesia and doesn't remember jack shit including her mother. This is concealing one (1) twist, which doesn't really affect anything, and mainly the amnesia is so that there's a reason for people to be constantly introducing concepts to her. Standard fare.

So she wakes up, and almost immediately, evil dragon man's zombie army is inexplicably invading the palace. He kills Divine Dragon queen mom in a very tragic scene where Healing Doesn't Work (at least they bother having the healer try, so points there) and she dies in your arms and there's like five solid minutes of poorly-paced anguish and angst over this character you've known for all of five minutes.

I want to stop and note- this is a beat this game fucking loves. The scene where a loved one dies tragically in someone's arms while delivering some inspiring last words happens- if my count is right- eight times in this god damn game, sometimes for the same character twice. They do it constantly, for characters that do not matter and you do not have any investment in. I'm halfway to thinking this is someone's fetish somehow- but more realistically it's just hack writing.

After that, the Prince of Somewhere shows up to save you, and you escape the palace and go on a journey to recruit allies and stop the evil dragon man. The journey involves traveling across four continents, each of which has a kingdom in it, which have two princes/princesses apiece, each of which have two loyal retainers apiece. Add the player and their own three loyal retainers for a total of 28 playable characters who are just there because they're On Your Side and otherwise have no investment in the conflict besides not wanting to get killed by zombie armies. There's eight other playable characters that have any other motivation at all, and most of them are bad.

(Actually that's not true. Two of the princesses have other motivations- they're princesses of Evil Cultistopia, which starts the game on evil dragon man's side, and they have a sort of journey to a face turn that would be kind of interesting if either of them were good characters. Evil Cultistopia's state religion is the worship of evil dragon man, except it's been a thousand years since he was sealed away so they're sort of just a normal country with a normal religion now. The idea of a country suddenly face-to-face with their god, who's asking them to wage war on the entire world with zombie armies, and it being politically impossible to not do that despite no one really wanting to do that? Cool idea! If only they fucking used or explored it in the slightest.)

Anyway, the big bad's evil plan is to gather the 12 Emblem Rings, macguffins that if collected together will grant INFINITE POWER. Again, standard stuff. But the rings in question are the central mechanical gimmick of the game, and the focus of the plot in and of themselves, and I have to talk about them because they're so dumb.

Each ring has the spirit of a protagonist of a previous Fire Emblem game in it!

Why? What are they doing here? How did they end up in magic rings? Do Not Ask Questions. They're here for fanservice reasons and we will be exploring precisely zero of the implications of their existence.

None of them are characters even slightly. They're there, they follow people around as stando powerghosts, they can talk and stuff- but like... Fire Emblem protagonists struggle with having personalities even at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. Every single one of them is reduced to vapid friendship speeches, even the ones that weren't already just a human collection of friendship speeches.

Most of the plot, such as it is, concerns the collection of these rings, and occasional dramatic turnabouts when the bad guys take the rings from you. Oh, shit!

Oh no! They took Marth! Y'know, Marth! That character, who had traits and stuff! Aren't you horrified that the bad guys have Marth now? Isn't it so sad that his hair is red? Please buy it when Alear is so, so crying about Marth getting kidnapped! They had such a close friendship, which you can tell from how the only thing they ever talked about was how close their friendship was!

(Also, every single one of these twelve non-characters has their own Paralogue chapter, where they encounter a random ancient ruin or fort or something on the map, and they're like "whoa! this random location looks weirdly like a fan-favorite plot-important map from my game! Let me spend eight seconds recapping its plot, and then challenge you to a duel here to Strengthen Our Bonds somehow!". They're all exactly the same and drag out the game way longer than it needs to be.)

It's all very stupid! I hate it terribly.

Which is why it's a shame that the Emblem Rings are the coolest fucking mechanic that's ever been in Fire Emblem.

You equip a ring to a unit- any unit- and they confer fucking busted abilities, like teleporting halfway across the map and nuking something, or making seven consecutive attacks, or getting tons of extra movement and movement actions so you can be anywhere when you need to be there.

One lets you do the "give four adjacent allies an extra turn" thing that Reyson let you do in FE9/10, except you can put it on anyone and not just a frail bird-man you have to keep out of danger. And since there's another actual Dancer in the game, you can bust the action economy wide open.

Here's this overpowered tanky flier who can't just divebomb enemy back ranks because she dies in one hit to arrows or wind magic! Oh, but she has the ring equipped that makes sure she survives attacks that would kill her unless her health is already low! Bye, giant wall of enemy mages!

Here's my armor knight who's an unstoppable brick wall! He's balanced by being so slow that you can't get him in position to use him reliably, but- oh, hey, here's the ring that just puts him on a fucking horse!

One just lets the unit equip healing staves even if they weren't magic at all before. You can staple utility roles that are normally balanced by making the unit itself shitty and fragile... to units that already kick ass normally. My assassin can heal people now! I am become the master of both life and death!

It's so goofy and lets you have so much fun with it. You can also inherit skills from Emblems to keep them after you swap the ring from someone else- so if you want someone to get the mounted unit post-combat reposition thing, just have 'em hang out with Sigurd a bit!

It's also, like... an effective bit of fanservice, because they put an inordinate amount of work into fleshing out the system. Every character gets a unique insane magic superhero outfit and color scheme and combat voice lines for when they merge with each of the twelve emblems. You can make anyone say "I fight for my friends" and "You'll get no sympathy from me!" by equipping Ike. It's bizarrely high-effort.

That's the good part, mechanically. The bad part, mechanically, is this thing called the Somniel- a magical floating island in the sky you can fast-travel to, which is just Garreg Mach again.

Run around the same too-big 3D environment doing pointless bullshit between every map! Don't you want to go to every glowing spot on the minimap to collect the free items that spawned there? You might miss out on some Rare Fruit, which you can add as an extra ingredient in the fucking cooking system to increase the odds the dish will be higher-rarity! Surely you want to collect random wildlife from maps after you beat them so they can hang out in a pasture and generate random drops for you to collect between maps! Do the fishing minigame, which has two more steps than last time for no reason, in order to get Minced Fish and Bond Fragments! Spend the Bond Fragments to pull from the Bond Rings gachapon, to get jpegs of old-ass art assets of Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Game that you can equip for incredibly marginal stat bonuses! Watch your horribly-designed anime soldiers in their swimsuits going back and forth in the pool for extra support progress! Cram your inventory with literal horseshit because it looks exactly the same sparkling on the ground as the stuff you want! Play a rail shooter! Do some push-ups! Feed this stupid-looking dog thing to max out its affection meter for no benefit whatsoever! I hate you! I HATE you! I HATE YOU! 𝐈 𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔! DON'T DESIGN YOUR VIDEOGAME THIS WAY!! IT'S BORING AND SUCKS SHIT!!! I'LL PUNCH OFF YOUR LEGS!!!!!!!!!

...haaaaah. I need to calm down. It's just- it's so bad. It's so much extra development effort to create all these extraneous systems that you could've just not had and it would've been better. So many wasted manhours of effort put into building and polishing unfun time-wasting garbage because some suit thought "more features = more sales". I feel sorry for the devs that were forced to work on that!

...

Okay. Okay I think that's the end of the review. What else is there to say that I didn't say?

No, wait, right. I said the plot had redeeming qualities. I said it didn't piss me off as much as Fates. Okay. What are those redeeming qualities?

Well... first off, while the plot is braindead and tropey and nothing, it at the very least passes the bare minimum bar of the characters' actions making sense. It's not hard for their actions to make sense, since it's a dead simple goodguys-versus-badguys situation where the main villain is an evil dragon man with a zombie army, but so many things fail to clear this bar. The characters are almost never interesting, but rarely do they make me go "what the fuck are you talking about? why would you make that decision?", and after Fates and Three Houses that is a breath of fresh air.

Secondly: they're kind of smart about their antagonists. Evil dragon man is so obviously not a compelling character, just a force in the plot, that they don't bother putting him onscreen more than necessary. We mostly follow his Four Elite Generals that Fire Emblem big bads always have, except instead of elite generals they're just a bunch of fuckin' weirdos who've been tasked with babysitting his split-personality daughter. They get up to some infighting and have approximately believable motives and you get to kind of care about what's going on with them! The writer gave at least half a shit about what motivates the villains as people, despite the overarching villain being a stock evil demon king guy.

(In particular, there's this one really good death scene after you beat a couple of them- one of them has a heel face turn when they're dying, complete with yet another tragic dying-in-your-arms inspiring speech... and then after the heroes leave and pledge to always remember them, you get a scene where another one, who also got fatally wounded in the same battle, goes "so what was that all about. that sappy stuff was obviously bullshit. what gives, why betray the boss right at the end?" And they're like "yeah, no, i mainly did that to say fuck you to the boss for sending me on this suicide mission instead of rewarding me for my loyal service. but i figured if i was doing that i'd make up something more noble-sounding so they remember me fondly instead of as a petty asshole." Then they have a truly fucked-up conversation about their mommy issues before dying. It's a good scene!)

Thirdly, they do this really fun thing in the big climax before the final gauntlet, where... I mean, a lot of it is nonsense, but they're doing a fairly standard fakeout bit where the protagonist gets killed by the big bad but some kind of deus ex machina brings them back to life, right? But the way they do that, specifically, is... there's this character who did the zombie-army raising who eventually turns good and joins you, and while the protagonist is dying, she's like "hey, I have an idea- how about use your dark magics to bind my soul to my corpse as a zombie, and then just don't suborn my will?" And then they do that, and it works and it's kind of fucked up and makes everyone uncomfortable! A very cool moment. (Then a different deus ex machina brings you back as a ghost instead of a zombie and your hair turns completely blue, which I was hyped about purely for color scheme reasons since it's otherwise pretty stupid.)

I should probably also say something about the characters? They're usually a pretty big draw for Fire Emblem, and this game does go whole hog on having a large cast with lots and lots of support conversations. But, uh... they're mostly bad. The character designs are over-the-top and anime in a way that doesn't convey anything useful about them, and they tend to just be "character trait A meets incongruous character trait B and we will do the bare minimum to reconcile this". Pretty bad voice direction and dialogue pacing sucks a lot of the charm out of it, too. The fact that most characters are just there to Be A Character You Get and don't organically get involved in your quest doesn't help.

(There are a few that are functional- Yunaka's a good one, as one of the few that isn't just some prince's retainer and has a motive to be with the party. I like her "dark superassassin past but embarrassed about it" shtick, and her VA manages to make her cutesy catchphrases not annoying somehow. I don't know that anyone in the cast is above like a B-tier character, though.)

So... that's Engage. It wasn't ambitious, but it basically worked. It's not a game that has anything to say beyond "it is virtuous to be a really big fan of Fire Emblem, please go whale in the gacha", and it didn't have two brain cells to rub together- but it was pretty and fun and mostly didn't piss me off.

#game review #there's spoilers under the cut but you're not missing anything getting spoiled on this game

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fayesdiary · 10 months

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has anything been on your mind about Engage recently? I keep thinking about the fact that while we don't learn a ton about any of the countries, we learn a bit and, for most of them, can talk with the regular citizens on some of the maps...but not Elusia bc most of the people were killed off in Sombron's zombie apocalypse, and it just makes me wonder about what Elusia's people would have been like if survivors of the corrupted had appeared in the Elusia post-battle areas. Like, we can get some idea of what the other three countries were like from random NPCs, but not Elusia, and it's been haunting me a bit

Engage hasn't been in my mind as much lately because I'm too busy suffering through 3H and there's still no end in sight for that one, but on one hand I get why (especially because Sombron literally ate the only Elusian town we get to visit) and it is unnerving... but it's also a shame we get pretty much nothing about the Elusian commonfolk's lives.

Anyway, as to what I keep thinking about - I belive I've already mentioned this, but the fact that when Lumera finds Alear in Gradlon, there is seemingly no one accompanying her. What was she doing in Gradlon all alone?

And that got me thinking- by this point all of Lumera's loved ones are dead, Sombron seems undefeatable and she is the only Divine Dragon who's still alive.

My point is, she has little to no reasons to live by that point, and while I don't think she was actively suicidal... again, she was in Gradlon entirely by herself.

That's why she got so attached to Alear, I think. Not just out of sympathy for their plight, but because she could deeply relate to them despite the fact that, well. There's no way they don't have Divine Dragon blood on their hands.

So she goes back home in Lythos and invites Alear there and, well, we know how it goes from there. Lumera mentions having Alear as a child was her greatest joy and I honestly believe that's an understatement.

Lumera may have spent a thousand years giving Alear her life force and the means to come back from the dead twice, but Alear unkowingly gave her a reason to live those thousand years to begin with.

Their relationship is a lot more reciprocated than you'd think at first, and I just. Love them so much😭

Lumera may not have won the Best FE Parent Tournament but she's still best mom to me

#fire emblem #fire emblem engage #fe17 #fe17 spoilers #lumera #alear #my rambles #FEH talk #ask replies #loregoddess #a more polished post on the theory i already had before #i love them your honor

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alexissara · 8 months

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Fire Emblem Engage: One Year Later An Anniversary Of Mid

Fire Emblem Engage is now a year old and as a massive Fire Emblem fan I want to talk about it. Engage is a game I don't like and I am nothing if not a hater so I want to talk about it more about a year out since I think being a hater that goes beyond a boring critique of hair or anime bad is more valuable.

First let's talk about where I place it in the overall series.

I am going to dive into things in a lot of detail down below. Obviously everything is subjective, blah, blah, your reading my opinions, I don't really care about being "objective" so take what you want out of this. The TLDR though is that Engage is a game that fails in every single way, there is not one thing that it is particular amazing at but it is not the worst at any particular thing either. It's a text book mid game but in some ways I like it less then things I think are worse because the squandering of some decent concepts.

Designs

Mika is an extremally talented artist with a wonderful sense of design but even she questioned why they were hiring her to do a Fire Emblem game. While I like some of the designs of the characters as general characters designs but their almost all bad character designs for story telling, for explaining a deeper sense of character, for fitting into a war setting, for fitting a diverse range of ages or bodies, etc. I don't mind Alear's hair, I think red and blue hair makes sense, that's the enemy phase and ally phase colors, it's not terrible but the outfit is a bit too white. The designs in general are simply great designs for a silly little person but not great for the wider depth of characters not creating characters you could see doing a war. If the tone was different I could see these working but it need to lean far more into comedy or cheese then it does. I really don't have a lot to say here but it kinda just had to be the first thing to address. I like them more than the average person but I still don't love them. Like Etie is supposed to like be buff and stuff but she is a twig. Saphir is supposed to be pretty old but she looks fairly young. Mika's style simply doesn't blend well with Fire Emblem despite me loving Mika's work prior to this.

Story

This is the most often critiqued part of the Fire Emblem Engage experience that even people who love it typically concede and for good reason. The story of this game is a fairly simple and basic story structure. Hero awakes and must do their fate, mother dies, protag cries, they go on a journey to collect the plot items, they collect plot items but OH NO THE ENEMY HAS PUT A WRENCH IN IT! Then they build themselves back up, collect the items and murder the big bad. Along the way you get some angsty zombie stuff but it's cheap emotions, kids complicated relationships to their parents, a theme which you'd think maybe is one of the grander themes but really isn't touched on with Sombron and Alear/Vayel despite Sombron being the main baddy.

Alear has a minor story arc, Alear is scared but then Alear isn't scared only Alear basically always stepped up so the gameplay and the story don't intgrate well here, if Alear even had one map of running away when she shoulda fought and that is why they lost emblem rings or something it would have more solidly locked in "oh Alears character flaw is that she runs away but now she knows to stay and fight" or it could have been a contrast and been like "it's a good thing that Alear knows when to run" and separate Alear from other lords in the series.

The games plot is deeply uncurious aiming for the most simple solutions down to the point where Vayel doesn't have an evil second personality [which I mean is ableist but they still make you think that] it's actually mind control evil second personality. It turns out Vayle and Alear is just goddy good Fell Dragons and all the other ones were totally naturally evil and okay to kill I guess. Vayel could have had an edge to her, there could have been redemption for the "evil" part of Vayel that would be a far more complicated set of emotions and more interesting then no one needs to forgive her because actually every bad thing she did to everyone was evil mind control and every good thing is the real her.

Then there is the DLCs plot which almost makes Engages main plot look good taking you to an everyone is dead AU where everyone is fucked up cuz their zombies I guess or they just are like this in this world but also it only is interested in exploring the lords and the "good" versions of the bad quad with an addition of two new characters. Theirs an obvious twist villain but they try and just red herring you to think it's the girl twin instead of the boy twin who is more clearly evil by showing Nel do some things that seem evil out of context. It's fairly boring, it doesn't engage what it wants to hard enough, it presents it in some fucking awful map designs and it's place in the plot being able to show up before you met the vast majority of the characters actual selves means it's possible you come in with both an army that isn't fun to do the maps with and without a good set of emblem rings but you also have no idea why it should be shocking to see a character like this. It mostly makes me wish that they had instead of making this all DLC worked some of the complicated relationships between characters into the actual plot of the game and had some more fell dragons that were a bit more complicated but redeemable potential party members.

Thematically and politically I am at a loss at what it wants to say, it doesn't even seem to want to say like war is bad or something basic like that. The only recurring theme is like parent dies and that's sad and that is like true for most people and their parents but it's not a particularly well done version of that theme. It's not really about the bounds of friendship and love because like idk there is so few scenes where people overcome things with the power of friendship of love. Like there is some tension between evil coded country and the others but like those are resolved by the future queen having a divine dragon kink and will be good because she worships the good god.

Characters

Fire Emblems cast is kind of like the cast of a Disegea game, which I typically enjoy only not over the top enough nor in a game with a tone consistently silly enough to justify the wild over the top energy of the characters. Characters all have bits and this is true of many fire emblem games but it is more rare for basically every single character to have a bit that is pretty definitive to them rather than a character trait. They are designed and written like a vtuber in a lot of ways, their meant to be cute, for you to find your fav and for you to hyper focus on that one. Only unlike a Vtuber you can't hop on and invested dozens of hours a week watching Yunaka shout Zappy as she murders someone in a video game and banters with chat.

There is a layer of depth to the characters that explain why a character is like this TM but these things typically come at the end of an A rank support which leaves you to assume "This girl sure does talk a lot about tea" if your not rushing to A with someone or if you RNG into one where ya she's mostly just talking about Tea. Again there are characters that are like this in other Fire Emblem games but few characters get the cool join situations, the cool moments in the story to really make you invest that deeply into them since the game is really focused on these lords and doesn't have a lot of interesting recruiting given every character is a lord or a servant of a lord. Not to mention that depth is usually not that deep like it's more like finding a foot bath in what you found thought was just someone spilling water rather then going into a hot tub of complex lore, character drama, and passion.

I did enjoy the characters for my time with them like a light hearted kids animated show where I go "aww these guys are fun" but like one of those I don't really think about the characters after. I enjoy when I see art of Yuanaka or the Racket of Solm fan art, I go "Oh I like those girls, their neat" but I never feel like "OMG Yes, let's fucking go!!!!!" like I do for many other characters in many other pieces of art.

Then in terms of the villains Sombron is paper then with a random new motive at the very end that is utterly uninteresting. The four hounds are fun enough characters since their allowed to be a little complicated but their also as an enemy on a map over staying their welcome for the amount of times you put swords into their bodies lealthy. The four hounds then feel under cut by the "good" versions of them that exist in the DLC which are basically what if they were boring, they are the good versions. Evil Vayel as mentioned earlier is boring because she's just mind control evil and not a real person. There is very few enemy of the map type enemies to think about and the ones that do exist are paper thin, your not going to get a stand off with a commander that you feel complicated feels about having to kill here.

Then we got to get into the endings, the lack of paired supports give everyone a static boring ending unless Alear wanted to give them a special friendship bracelet which totally doesn't mean romance HAHAHA alear doesn't want to date children or married men HAHAHA pay no attention to the man behind the mirror. It strips agency from the player, the translation no romos several romances with Alear that should be totally fine anyway, their just extremely poor at creating a sense of what you did to the world after you saved it because the world was perfect basically except Sombron was a dick. The characters don't feel like they grew in their little ending bits for the most part it's kidna like they went on to do what you'd expct them to do.

Then there is the emblem rings which are given fairly shallow interactions that range to them being pretty out of character to them saying a one line joke to them saying "remember that thing from my game." The shallow level of interaction with the rings is really unfortunate but also fortunate because it meant they didn't write a ton of these characters. They still feel like they should have beena bigger deal and been a bit more involved in the plot as well as having some deeper relationships with characters.

Also you get two fucking dragons on your team both of whom can't turn into dragons, there are these hot older women who are capable in battle but can't get recruited for the cause because I guess their not young and fuckable, there is so little interest in the world of this game outside of lords and their servants [which is a flaw in a lot of modern FE], why the literal child soldiers like Anna, there is a lot of frustrating character choices that could have been done better.

Presentation

I think the graphics are good, I think they look pretty, I like bright colors in my eyeballs and it works for me. I think graphically it's a clear step up from houses, the places look very beautiful. They make a fairly uninspired choice of diving the game into 5 themed regions with a kinda similar design principle across the maps Flower, Mountainy, Evily snow, Sand, really evil. This does take away from a kinda unquie feeling to each place you go but they don't look bad.

Music wise, the opening theme is dumb, I like it but it's corny and clearly gonna be divisive but it suits the game that it is for. As music in the game goes though it's fine, it's a fine soundtrack of fine songs that are fine. Only a few songs are really bangers though and a lot of the music doesn't stand out to me a year later I can basically just think the opening theme and the engaging an emblem remix. I am actively trying to recall another song as I write this and I end up just getting the Three Houses Monastery music in my head instead.

The animations I will simply give full marks too, the animations after many years after the GBA finally don't look bad. Crits look cool, the engage attacks look cool, there is some coolness to be had there where the more real and grounded animations since Gamecube were never my favorite. Great job engage, I hope the series keeps it up.

Gameplay

People talk about Fire Emblem Engage's gameplay being the best in the series but it really isn't and it's not like stunning SRPG design in general. Perhaps if your looking for a challenge the maddening experience is some sort of revolution but the average player of any video game will be playing on the "normal" mode which is by default the intended mode. The game features mechanics that one might think is for grinding but utterly fail at that, the loading screens between managing things make the act of building characters tedious and annoying, the mini game gameplay that optimize maps is awful, the way you can spend resources for cosmetics that you can't use in battle is awful, the lack of little touches to the smithing system like being able to alter or name your weapons is bad. These are all gameplay, these aren't the maps but there part of playing the game and while you can in future runs maybe ignore most of these things you will likely experience some of these and some things were stream lined with patches but these patches will go away and eventually getting supports between characters will go back to being fairly annoying.

Then we can talk about the beloved maps and engaging. The gameplay using the skill system is utterly flawed with the SP being so poorly distributed makes building characters utterly prone to accidently wasting SP and not being able to get a build on that character that will feel good for the rest of the run. This effects gameplay in maps as does the fact you only have two slots for said skills making for fairly small amounts of build possibilities for the wide swath of options you get especially if you get the DLC. The map design doesn't present the fun diverse set of objectives an SRPG is capable of with most maps being kill the boss or kill all the things. They do present different little map gimmicks and they do make some of the maps good but the maps fail in the biggest way that a map can in an SRPG which is to be narratively uninteresting.

I could make a whole article about the sin to the world that is Xenologue 5 which is a top contender for worst map in all of Fire Emblem. In general the Xenolouge maps really are a perfect exercise and exposing the magic of the pretty lights of Engage and going "Oh this game is awful".

It's boring to fight the same 4 dudes. Your so rarely put up against someone new and neat and the characters you are fighting don't grow much until their about to actually die. The repeating four hounds fights creates a dissonance where your people permanently die if they lose in battle but you can't get the kill on these people your doing 1000 flashy attacks on. If you can enjoy a map in isolation perhaps these maps are good, great even but it doesn't fix the issues.

The Bonus Content TM

I talked about the stuff in gameplay but I want to reiterate that the bonus parts of the game are in fact a part of the gameplay.

First off we got costumes which are utterly frustrating even outside of being locked to the hub world. The clothes are gender locked where boys where boy clothes and girls where girl clothes expect Rosado who is a special femboy and in no way a dirty tranny we make fem boys not dirty transgenders in Fire Emblem [this is sarcasm, I am trans] who gets to wear girl clothes. Never mind Jade wearing more masculine clothes in her casual outfits if she had to chose between a butler or a maid outfit clearly she'd pick to be a kawaii maid. The only kind of gender deviation being allowed in the random costumes even for Alear being the femboy fetishist at IS's pet project is pretty pathetic. Also pathetic is the gender lock applying to the amiibo lord costumes which in addition are also even more limited only being wearable by lord characters and only lords of the right gender even if Lucina clothes are mens wear their only for women and very special bloodline women. Then all of this taking resources simply damages the game further.

The mini games include a Rhythm game with no Rhythm as if Fire Emblem has no amazing songs to be playing a work out mini game to. We have a flight sim on rails shooter thing but no enemies or added depth. A fishing game that is a fishing mini game. These are boring to passable but they all give you benefits from doing them so if you wanted to truly optimize you'd need to do them between every map.

Then there is the "interactive" bonus elements talking to people at Somnel and post map, inviting people to dinner, sending people to do an activity together. I've avoided comparing this game to Three Houses until this point but I have to here, Three Houses and Engage started development at roughly the same time so Engage had many more years in development but each and every one of these things are far less in depth then in Houses. There is no voice acting for these sections, unlike houses where every map you have new voiced interactions with every character some of which are dynamically tied to choices you made you get mostly rotating lines with a few people interjecting a text box of almost nothing of value. There is no special bonus conversations for sending people to work together who might have something to say to each other. The meals and creepy bed time interactions are voiced but the interaction between characters is very limited and the lines are pretty repetitive only working with an RNG system of if the food is shit or not which is only annoying. The bedtime interactions of someone waking you up are totally RNG based meaning a character you hate might come wake you up and you have to here about the Alpaca hero and they change when you raise up supports with them meaning each special voiced interaction with sleeping requires you to go out of your way to do something of no value to hope you RNG into the character you like saying a few words less you accidently support them and miss a piece of dialogue. It feels cheap, it feels bargain basement, it feels undercooked.

The grinding here kinda feels like it wishes it was Scared Stones but the pay off for climbing the grind in this game isn't exclusive post game characters, exciting special weapons but some orbs for an optional upgrade system randomly given to you so maybe you can upgrade the weapon you want but maybe not. The bound rings gacha is not an indepth system that is fun to play with. It's just another place where things feel super under cooked despite the long development cycle on this game.

Final Thoughts

Talking about the game I actually feel a lot more negative on it then when I put together the little list at the top or when I wrote an Anniversary of mid, I kinda just feel like actually it's just bad but like it's probably mid and not bad and I am just impassioned writing all my complaints. This is a game that had a ton of potential but I feel squandered it at every opportunity.

I wish I liked Engage, I Wish I liked Fates, but if this is the direction that IS is taking their games when their the primary devs of Fire Emblem I am just not gonna buy IS developed Fire Emblem games because ultimately I got way more physic damage playing these games then I got joy. Fire Emblem is my favorite game series, the one I would say I am actually part of the fandom of and I want to love every new entry, to be hype, to fall in love, to gamble on my phone for little jpegs but I'm just not here with this.

I think Engage presented cool new ideas like the Break System which I think is great and should return but in general I fear this direction. I'd love to see something akin to Engage skills with some flashy over powered stuff. I like how these these interact with the core mechanics and I think their fun additions to the formula.

I just hope this one year anniversary set of thoughts is enough to free me of my Engage demons and I can just never think about it again and go onto playing fan games, rom hacks and replaying older games I enjoy along with new Indie SRPGs leaving this behind to simply exist for the people who love it.

If you enjoyed this look back at Fire Emblem Engage and you want to help me play more Fire Emblem or other SRPGs then Patreon and Ko-fi are a great way to support me so I can afford to talk about queer art and stuff.

#fire emblem #Fire Emblem Engage #FE #fe17 #Engage #IS #intelligent systems

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magicalgirlmelee · 1 year

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Magical Girl Bracket

Written list under the cut

Polls will be posted later this week

Madoka Kaname from Puella Magi Madoka Magica vs. Valerie Amaranth from Magical Warrior Diamond Heart

Arisugawa Himari from KiraKira☆Pretty Cure A La Mode vs. Sora Harewataru from Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure

Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail vs. Cocona Cocomine from Flip Flappers

Yugi Muto from Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters vs. Ahiru from Princess Tutu

Zatanna Zatara from DC Comics vs. Koyuki Himekawa from Magical Girl Raising Project

Ben Tennyson from Ben 10 vs. John Constantine from DC Comics

Doremi Harukaze from Magical DoReMi vs. Momoko Akatsutsumi from Powerpuff Girls Z

Andromeda Shun from Saint Seiya vs. Max Owen from Magical Boy

Luz Noceda from The Owl House vs. Jem from Jem and the Holograms

Momozono Love from Fresh Pretty Cure! vs. Ruru Amour from HUGtto! Pretty Cure

Mari Maya from Samurai Flamenco vs. Madoka Aguri from Doki Doki! Pretty Cure

Tinker Bell from the Pixie Hollow movies vs. Ryuko Matoi from Kill la Kill

Flora from Winx Club vs. Aelita Schaeffer from Code Lyoko

Himeno Awayuki from Pretear vs. Amu Hinamori from Shugo Chara!

Danny Fenton from Danny Phantom vs. Ayumu Aikawa from Is This is a Zombie?

Luluco from Space Patrol Luluco vs. Homura Akemi from Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Ichigo Motomiya from Tokyo Mew Mew vs. Undine Wells from Sleepless Domain

Marinette Dupain-Cheng from Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir vs. Chocola Meilleure from Sugar Sugar Rune

Shirayuki from Snow White with the Red Hair vs. Myoudouin Itsuki from Heartcatch Pretty Cure!

Adrien Agreste from Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir vs. Dante from Devil May Cry

Minami Maki from Majitora vs. Alear from Fire Emblem Engage

Sally Yumeno from Sally the Witch vs. Talia from Lolirock

Korra from The Legand of Korra vs. The Guardian of the Veil from W.I.T.C.H.

Kiana Kaslana from Honkai Impact 3rd vs. Hotaru Tomoe from Sailor Moon

Utena Tenjou from Revolutionary Girl Utena vs. Steven Universe from Steven Universe

Atsuko Kagari from Little Witch Academia vs. Meimi Haneoka from Saint Tail

Anne Boonchuy from Amphibia vs. Adora from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Laura from Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure vs. Anthy Himemiya from Revolutionary Girl Utena

Star Butterfly from Star vs. the Forces of Evil vs. Hoshina Hikaru from Star☆Twinkle Pretty Cure

Chibiusa Tsukino from Sailor Moon vs. Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho

Rose Lalonde from Homestuck vs. Sakura Kinomoto from Cardcaptor Sakura

Iris from Lolirock vs. Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon

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raxistaicho · 1 year

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Ya’ll need Alear!

Fire Emblem Engage DLC Spoilers under the cut!

Before the Fell Xenologue came out, I saw a lot of smugness from the anti-Edelgard community here on Tumblr. Since the pre-release marketing for the Xenologue seemed to imply that Alear dying was what caused the bizarre and hostile behavior from the royal characters and their countries, the Xenologue was viewed as a refutation of Crimson Flower’s message that humanity can come together and chart their own course without the guidance of gods.

The actual events of the Xenologue’s story doesn’t really support this interpretation in any way. Dialogue from the other characters confirms the Firenese of the alternative world were always mirror opposites of their main world counterparts. The countries of the alternate world weren’t the same as their main world counterparts before changing and degrading into their ruined states when Alear died: they were always just different and weird, and Alear died too recently (the Royals were all alive to know their Alear) for their death to have caused such sweeping changes to the four countries.

The only negative result of the Alt-world Alear dying was that it broke the unity of their coalition of allies, but given we later learn they all died and were resurrected as Corrupted, it’s impossible to say how much of it was them losing Alear’s guidance and how much of it was just them Coming Back Wrong.

So yeah, nothing from the Fell Xenologue implies that Elyos losing their Divine Dragons, in and of itself, would cause society on the continent to collapse. The fall of societies is always more complicated than that, especially when you’ve got a Fell Dragon on the loose killing the leaders and replacing them with enslaved zombies.

And in any case, even if it was true that Elyos required Divine Dragons to guide them, it wouldn’t change the fact that Fodlan certainly did not, nor would it change the fact that what Rhea was doing in Fodlan was not playing the role of a gentle protector and object of unity. Far from it, in fact. People have complained about Edelgard taking no issue with Alear, but the reality is Alear’s the sort of religious figure Edelgard wouldn’t be upset about, given they make no commandments and do nothing to impress their will upon the people.

#Fire Emblem Three Houses #fire emblem engage #dlc #spoilers #edelgard discourse #edelgard positive #Edelgard von Hresvelg

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asha-mage · 1 year

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Does anyone else ever just randomly remember that Alear briefly became a zombie in Engage, and you can make a solid case that he ends up basically a lich at game's end? (His Ring being his phylactery, his spirit possessing his own corpse with Emblem Magic).

Engage was so wild on so many levels I sometimes still can't believe it was a real game.

#I really should play the Fell Xenolouge #Once I get through more of my backlog #Fe:E #FE: Engage #Fire Emblem Engage #Engage #Alear #Engage Spoilers

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doodlesandbooks · 5 months

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A quick edit of my stupid zombie idea! :D

#alear #fire emblem engage #fe engage #fire emblem #f!alear #m!alear #zombie au #fell xenolouge

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fireemblems24 · 2 years

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Fire Emblem Engage 21 - 23

Spoilers for FE Engage beneath the cut. This game doesn't have the deepest cast, but all of them are pretty enjoyable and there's less that are just a single gimmick like in the old days.

Let me guess who the boss is for Ch 21. Some of the hounds?

Sombron trying to revive Atlantis is certainly a new villain motivation. Oh, now we're back to the typical stuff. He wants to invade other worlds also.

So I don't think we get Marni as a unit, but pretty sure we get Mauvier. And now sobstory incoming for Marni. She dead.

I really hope Griss doesn't get a last second sob story. I want him to just be an unhinged psychopath.

And, like, I buy Mauvier's behavior because we had a lead up to it. But Marni's been nothing but an unrepentant killer. Having a hard time caring at all about any of this. I want Alfred, Ivy, and the other rulers back.

I'm trying also to take this seriously that everyone here is chit-chatting instead of trying to kill each other lamo. Like, bitch!Veyle has tortured Marth and we're just watching her. (and Zephia and Griss).

Aw, man, I thought we were going to get Marth back :(

Alear's getting a Disney Death I see. Poor Alfred's so stressed. And Veyle, but I can't bring myself to care about her yet.

Are we losing the rings again? Aw, come on. 😭 Alear, you fucked up. I'm amazed Sombron didn't just wipe out Alear and co tbh. This is a bigger L than ch 10. At least Veyle is actually planning on killing all the heroes bc it's about time someone tried to actually kill each other in a cut scene.

Is this when Deus ex machina steps in? Because we lost the rings. Alear's dead. Veyle's evil again. And she's about to murder everyone else.

Oh, that's actually kinda cool. Alear's coming back as a corrupted. So not Deus ex machina. Since this was already established (Deus ex machina incoming to revert Alear back to human from a zombie).

Zombie!Alear didn't last long. Good voice acting though. It's obvious she'll come back. Which, that means she had two deaths in back-to-back chapters. Impressive? Is this the "miracle" thingy the emblems talked about once? Lamo. This plot. I swear. Ah, and the mom's ring.

But, hey, gotta say it's nice there's real consequences for what she does.

OMG her hair is all blue. Does it stay that way? Is it bad that I don't want it too? I'll miss the Pepsi and Colgate look.

Alear's the Fire Emblem. This is both ridiculously cheesy but also kinda awesome. I wasn't even looking for the "Fire Emblem," but I never would've guessed it was the MC lamo. All the past lords are simping. Do I get Alear as a ring though? Can I give it to Alfred?

The goofy hair is still here!! Yessss.

Alfred and Veyle's C support was hilarious. Mostly because of Alfred. Also, don't give him spicy food lol.

After some suggestions, I put Lyn on Alcryst and lamo. Alcryst + Brave Bow + Alacrity is just disgusting.

The hottest man in this game is Sigurd. This is an unarguable fact.

Is it me, or does Veyle build support REALLY fast?

Ok, but can you imagine your parents tell you that you have no choice, you must be X's retainer. And you expect some boring, stuffy, stuck-up noble - but instead - it's Alfred. 😅 I've seen people describe him as a "human golden retriever" and honestly, they're not wrong.

Ok, guys, I'm about to S-Support Alfred. The ring said it's your "trusted partner," so it might not be explicitly romantic, but as long as it's good, it'll stay my #1 ship in this game.

OMG, that was really cute. 🥰🥰🥰🥰 Alfred essentially says he wants to be more than friends and gives Alear an embroidery piece that's basically a Firene royal engagement rite. Alear says she's felt that way about him since she first saw him. She puts the ring on his finger, and he straight up says "I love you." Shit's pretty explicit and furthers my "devs wanted you to pick Alfred" propaganda. 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

So do the two hounds finally die?

Kinda annoyed Veyle replaced the royals, ngl. She's probably the only character I dislike, meanwhile Ivy and Alfred are my two favorites and Diamant and Timerra are both solid.

So the Hounds ARE finally dying. Finally. But why is Zephia helping us? Telling us about other shards? Also, why is Madonna/whore complex the character talking more than Alear now?

This last minute throw at sympathy for these two is wasted. Like, they were one-note evil before this, lamo. Even the game is like "this makes no sense, please ignore it" with Zephia's dialogue. I'd rather hear Amber talk more about alpacas.

Lamo, Alfred is surrounded by lava and he's like "look, a flower, isn't that amazing!" I love him.

More time wasted on the 2 hounds, though Griss faking dead so he can enjoy the pain is on point. Not even Timerra got this much dialogue.

#fire emblem #fire emblem engage #fe engage #fe17

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gascon-en-exil · 1 year

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In your opionion is there things that Engage did better than 3 Houses or things they did worse than 3 Houses ? if that is the case, which one and why ?

Those are two different questions, and ones that people have been bandying about online for months now. I thought for about five minutes about turning this into a video prompt, but there's already plenty exactly like this on YouTube - plus I'm currently working on way too much as it is.

What FE16 does better than FE17:

In general, character work - I say in general because there are characters I like in Engage and characters I very much don't in Houses, but the more substantive supports and other side interactions in the latter help the cast stand out more. They're also broken up more, so it's easier to focus on the groups you enjoy.

Non-Avatar queerness - So much lovely subtext, so many paired endings. I've done multiple videos centering around them, even. I said in a video a few months back that I dislike how so many of Engage's non-Avatar supports end with bland affirmations of friendship, which in combination with the lack of endings really kills the potential of pairings like Fogado/Bunet and Timerra/Merrin. Dimidue though? When their A support pivots around the word "friend" you just know that it's a euphemism, and that they'll be calling each other that mid-coitus that evening. Throw in around a dozen other pairings who've gotten big based on subtext and you've got a bunch to choose from.

Cozy life sim elements - The Somniel may be more streamlined and its loading screens slightly less agonizing, but the monastery better nails the feel of a persistent hub area - even if its coziness kind of undercuts the tone of the game's second half. This isn't something I'm really into, but I know a lot of fans get into stuff like gardening and fishing and tea time, and the calendar system and (weird) time progression does make Houses feel more like a life sim in contrast to the Somniel and its randomized character loadouts. Also, Engage has way more to grind for if you want to see everything, which is annoying. This is in contrast to...

100% Completion - It may be something only I care about, but Houses goes above and beyond any other mainline FE if you're a completionist. Of course there's the support logs and event gallery and such (features Engage doesn't even manage correctly), but there's also the in-game journal which provides a ludicrous but still doable 100% target in the form of watching a whole bunch of bars fill up very slowly over dozens of playthroughs. This requires so many spreadsheets to keep organized - love it!

What FE17 does better than FE16:

Story originality - Yes, really. Houses's story is three variations on the series standard plot, plus one other option - side with the conqueror -that Fates came up with first. Engage is the least politically-interested game in the series, and it barely even teases at a mundane war between nations before it's back to fighting zombies and collecting rings. Original doesn't necessarily mean good, but at least Engage knows exactly what kind of story it's trying to tell and what it can feasibly expect to do.

Tangible, linear worldbuilding - Engage isn't as ambitious, but it's more successful thanks to more traditional FE worldbuilding tools like talking to NPCs around the world as opposed to gathering them all in hub. The single story also helps keeps everything orderly and easy to understand, rather than going for an unreliable narrator + mystery box approach across multiple routes and half-assing the execution.

The Avatar - No contest here. Alear is an actual character with an identifiable arc, and while it's not the most compelling thing in the world it's leagues ahead of anything Byleth can claim. Byleth is a blank vessel for the player (and also Sothis for a while, lending them some facsimile of a character in the form of her reactions) with a ludicrously contrived backstory to justify why they are the way they are; Alear has fears and development and a backstory that's coherent even if it relies on a fair amount of cliché. Also, even in localization Alear as a god complex fantasy is undeniable, whereas Houses bends over backwards to act like a main source of its appeal isn't teacher-student sex. Speaking of -

Avatar queerness - Again, no contest - not that I especially care. Byleth's same-sex S rank options are limited, while Alear can give their not!engagement ring to every character regardless of gender, a huge step up in open-ended self-insert romance that gets mostly overlooked because they can also give the ring to preteens.

Understanding of FE's camp appeal - The above only underlines how much better Engage can be when it comes to the campy and the tasteless. From the ridiculous outfits to the Emblem stuff being compared to Saturday morning cartoons or Power Rangers or such to Zephia/Zelestia to the AU dragon incest wank nonsense, Engage wears its silliness on its sleeve. Houses doesn't totally lack that element, with stuff like the Proper Conduct Tournament and Manuela's...everything, basically, but like the teacher-student fetish it's hidden beneath this veneer of respectability that begins to grate after a while. Most of that is probably just overcorrection for the poor response to that sort of content in Fates, but it obviously didn't stick...not even for Fódlan content in Heroes. Look at the new duo Cathmir, and tell me these characters still aren't being sold on sex appeal aimed primarily at straight men.

Handling of characters of color - Not something I discuss often, but it has to be said. Solm is as developed of any of the other main four nations of Elyos, with just about as much of a role in the story and a presence in gameplay (i.e. you spend around half a dozen chapters there). There are still some oddities, like how the royals and NPCs are all dark-skinned but the retainer characters aren't, but compared to the various periphery nations of Fódlan it's a real standout and actually feels like a part of the world. Sreng is a plot device in Hopes, and even less than that in Houses. Duscur, Brigid, and Dagda basically only exist in relation to Dedue, Petra, and Shamir respectively. Even Almyra, from which we get two playable characters including one of the lords, barely appears at all, and most of Claude's Almyran heritage is left out of his writing because he spends the whole game disguising his identity.

Standard gameplay - I play on Normal and freely abuse time rewinding so my opinion here isn't going to be held in any regard, but go check out anywhere Engage is being discussed online and you'll see tons of tier lists and comparisons of builds and chapters and Emblems and whatever else. You know, the things that people ordinarily talk about when it comes to FE, and not -

Less enabling of toxic fandom elements - The inbuilt faction drama in a faux-serious war story, the continued growth of the anti phenomenon first seen when Fates was current, and a years-long global pandemic fostered endless division and conflict that persists to this day. It somehow even continues a year after the release of Hopes, now in the form of bashing Engage because it didn't sell as much (while still talking about its gameplay way more than I could ever bother, go figure) and IS is being more conservative with its Heroes appearances. There's still pointless nonsense to argue about here - like the aforementioned incest wank - but there's far less of it in a linear story that doesn't encourage players to latch as hard onto their favorites.

Non-100% replay value - Related to the gameplay, if you're not going for all the supports/bonds/achievements there's much more variety you can pull out of repeat playthroughs of Engage via the standard ways to mix up your runs in FE: using different characters, allocating resources differently, limiting yourself in certain ways etc. Houses's gameplay is so freeform and has such clear best options that for replays you're relying on the story...and there's exactly four stories. Worse, White Clouds is almost the same regardless of house, and there's a bunch of crossover content among the Part II routes as well, even Crimson Flower, which leads to it all feeling quite repetitive even if the narratives technically go to different places.

Nostalgic throwbacks - Not only the Emblems, but also the many legacy paralogues. These were a fun element of Awakening and Fates's DLC, and it's nice to see them brought back here with a bunch of callbacks for fans of those older games. Houses has...its batch of DLC classes all coming from Awakening, and the Archanean regalia appearing as random drops. Oh, and probably the least notable playable version of Anna ever.

Absurdly cute mascot factor - Could have talked about this under the camp factor, but some players get really into how adorable Sommie is. It's a fount of memes and goofy videos if nothing else. Is IS taking notes from Pokémon?

And yet I still prefer FE16 overall, because it better caters to my specific interests (gay stuff that doesn't involve Avatars, spreadsheets). The years of fandom toxicity are unfortunate, but I've grown accustomed to laughing at it when it amuses me and ignoring it when it doesn't.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #FE17 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Fire Emblem Engage

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real-fire-emblem-takes · 11 days

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Young Grima Anon back at it again, with something a bit different.

Has anyone else noticed that Alear is sort of like a reverse Grima? Allow me to explain. From what little we know of Grima we know it was created by a violent and very much insane man, and although his little notes in those ruins state it was putting violent thoughts in his head I'm inclined to distrust that because that guy was making a zombie army to try and kill people long before he made Grima, so we can assume Grima was likely something at the very least neutral in nature, I like to think they were kind but that's just head canon. And we of course know what eventually happens to Grima, by the time of Echoes it seems to distrust humans but it isn't outright aggressive, it only attacks when Alm, Celica and the rest of the Valentia crew run up to it weapons drawn, so self defence against the first humans it's seen in centuries can be claimed, and by the time of awakening Grima, for all its posturing and boasting, if it's heroes lines can be trusted, honestly just seems depressed, and heroes recontextualises its actions, horrific as they are, as less the actions of a conquerer and more, as Alucard put it in the Castlevania TV show "the longest suicide note in history", because to Grima, life, even its own, are worthless, because its only ever seen life be cruel, without knowing the true, beautiful nature of it.

Whereas Alear seems to be the exact opposite of Grima. Alear may be kind by nature but they started off, from what we've seen as an emotionless weapon just wanting to survive but always expecting to die and drifting through life as such, but the moment Alear is offered kindness by Lumera, they begin to change, slowly at first, but after they kill Sombron for the first time it's like the floodgates break and release the true Alear for a brief moment, before Sombron backstabs them. And the Alear we play and see, even if they are missing the memories of their past is only better for it, they're happy, they're in control, they have people that love them and trust them and that they love and trust back and most importantly, they really do want to live, because to them life is beautiful.

Anyways, thanks for listening to my ramblings, until we meet again.

👀

#fe #fire emblem #grima fire emblem #alear fire emblem #story takes #fe17 #fire emblem engage #fe13 #fire emblem awakening

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yanderefairyangel · 9 months

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Little theory time.

Alright so, people have been asking themselves what Alear meant by

Many people have concluded she was refering to Rafal and Nel... however, here is several things that weakens this hypothesis

Obviously, even if Alear was talking about Nel and Rafal they are different/separated people from the version that Alear and Veyle migh have lost and they hail from a world where they aren't close relative with their Alear

Past Alear has 0 special dialogue with the twins

We learn from Past Alear the existence of at least 4 siblings that are higlighted but the portraits don't match : Rafal and Nel aren't twins, and they as well and Nil and Rafal's twins are all older then Alear since Rafal and Nel wear their pact ring in the ring finger making them over 18 year old and since twins are of the same age, this means that Nil and Rafal's twin are also older then Alear so there is no younger sibling. Other problem is that it makes 4 older sibling instead of just 2 and that Nel is still older then Rafal whereas Alear talking about their brother before their sister might indicate that the brother is older then the sister

In the jpn version Alear says "onisama" and "oneesama" and while jpn rarely likes to use plural forms, the conjuction being singular seems to infer that Alear had only two older siblings : the brother and the sister.

Sombron's reaction is limited to this

And I know that in the English version, the localization interpreted his reaction towards Nel as him recognizing her as one of his dead children... but in JP, it's not really the case.

He says "kizama wa" which means "you are..."

To which Nel respond by saying "I am a Fell dragon child from another world... where I am your daughter, Father".

The introduction as Fell dragon child is basically the game's equivalent of reminding us that all the Fell dragon happens to be this man's spawn in one way or another and at the same time that she isn't that Sombron's, but the one who is rotting in Zombie land.

Nel's answer and semantically speaking, her question regarding the "her" of this world reinforces the idea that it is more of an inferred guess on Nel's part since we know that Nel and Rafal have no idea on whether or not they had another version of them in Elyos. Especially as Sombron's reaction towards Rafal is limited to "There should be no other survivor of my children" and euh... we can't really say that Nel and Rafal counts when they come from another world where things weren't the same, can we ?

Moreover, Alear's line to their other self is different.

遠い昔に、置いてきた何かが... 取り戻せるような。

It's like I can claim back....something that I left behind long ago.

Here is the difference between losing something and lefting behind/abandonning something

The difference is all in the intent. When you lost something, it means you leave something but not deliberately, this happen despite your own wishes, you don't wish the thing you lost was lost. However when you leave something behind, this mean you left this thing on purpose, it was a deliberate choice, a decision you made out of awareness and not something happening despite your will.

置いて/oite means to place, put, set, to leave something, to leave it behind . It's very different from lost, it can even mean "abandon". In chapter 10, when Alcryst resist the order of leaving, he uses this words in the context of Marth suggest they leave saying " And abandoning Father there ?"

If it was translated literaly, normally it would be 遠い昔に、失ったきた何かが... 取り戻せるような。instead

Either way, Past Alear's lack of reaction creates a problem cause to say that you lost something, you need to at least be concious of it. The one way that Nel and Rafal might still have analogue siblings to Alear is that they are siblings that Alear never meet so... how could Alear ever feel that they lost them if they never knew them ? That makes the bit about "abandoning them" even more nonsensical.

And finally... the fact that the game does nothing with it. I mean, you do get the twins back but... do the story does anything with them ? Nope. On one side, they have to point out constantly the difference between the 2 Elyos to avoid plot holes (kof, kof, Rafal knowing Xenobron's plan, kof), on the other they have 0 plot relevance within the story : they don't have much to say on the exploration maps other then "oh in my world, the statue on the left was on the right " or "What ? no I am not seasick", in the bad ending they are just as dead as the other, they don't have a credit illustration... oh, and the romance option. It seems that basically whatever this line was about didn't carried out...

However... I have been thinking about another line, Isekai Alear told Alear.

旅路の全てを苦しみ、悩み、楽しみ、そして・愛してください

"May you suffer, worry, enjoy and love on your journey"

And then it came to me something very, very interesting....

I already spoke about it, how I think that Alear and Isekai Alear are actually the片割れ of the same soul with the one we choose being born a Fell dragon and the other one a Divine one right ? well, for some reason, even though Nel and Rafal are the one summoning Alear, it's actually Isekai Alear that tasks Alear with saving their beloved person. Isekai Alear is conscious that Alear exist (unlike the other people of both Elyos) and they are actually meeting, aware of their nature and also... remember that Alear is able to use their power because they are the same person as their alternate self, who even give them their remaining power to beat Rafal off the head. And Alear and Isekai Alear, while being different, are part of the few people who have a similar personality.

So I think that when Alear speaks about calming their own anxiety and getting something they leave behind back... it's actually because they are reflecting/sharing the feelings of their other self. I mean, just look at Alear's dialogue with Fell Nil !

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Alear's eagerness to answer ? Being tormented of leaving something behind ? Getting back something you abandonned ?!

That's what Isekai Alear did !

They promised Nel to come back with a pinky promise and they failed their promise (kof, kof like our Alear) and would our Alear have lost a Nel and a Rafal, Isekai Alear did so too and even left this world dying in Rafal's hand.

Also, I need to precise it but Japanese rarely use subjects and instead limit it to using the verbs with the conjuction indicating the subject... but it can lead to ambiguous meaning.

so it's possible that by "what I left behind" Alear means what I=Isekai Alear left behind. After all when we are greeted by Nel, Nel says it had been quiet a long time since Isekai Alear died.

And it would actually link with Isekai Alear telling Alear to 愛して. "Get back Nel and Rafal and love them in my stead", "fufill the promise I wasn't able to hold", "get back the one that I abandon to a world of dread"...

The something Alear felt they would get back is indeed Rafal and Nel but this time, not a double of their potential but dead regardless half siblings that they apparently never met, but rather this Nel and Rafal that they get back in the stead of Isekai Alear

And if we look deeper into what Isekai Alear tells Rafal it becomes obvious

...あの人は、世界を救えと言わなかった。

大切な人たちを救ってと言っていた。

全て滅ぶことを知りながら、あなたの救済を願っていた。

私はそれを伝えます。戦うことで、倒すことで。

あなたを愛する人がいるということを！

... that "person" didn't aske me to save the world. But to save the people they treasured.

Even though they/I knew that everything would perish, they/I prayed for you to be saved.

I will prove you that. By fighting you, by defeating you. That there is "someone" who loves you !

the switch between "they" refering to "ano hito" and "aisuruhito" and the I is following the ambuiguity that can be created by japanese when you do not precise who is the subject, that I was refering to about the previous sentence. Depending on if you take "ano hito" as the subject or choose a new one, the meaning will be different. However, in this context it actually is the same as Isekai Alear tasked Alear with being their replacement, to do what they couldn't do : save Rafal and Nel. Besides the "love" that is evocated here is meant to echo this one sentence told by Isekai Alear when they asked Aleat so save their "precious one"/loved one, 大切な人たち. The part "aisuru hito" is actually echoing with what Isekai Alear told Alear : 愛して.

Alear in this fight speaks as if those were their feeling because meeting with Isekai Alear, as they are the same person/existence, fragment of the same soul, they share this wish in that moment. Alear might hence have spoken of getting back what they abandonned in reference to how they interiorized the wish of their other self and carry out their wish in their stead

So like I said about Rafal carriying Nil's wishes to the point it became his own, Alear ended up sharing their wish with their alter ego, and this become even more clear when Isekai Alear shares their power with Alear, Alear answer that they will grant Alear's wish to stop Rafal

And finally, the flowers. Isekai Alear offers two flower to Nel, a red and a blue windflower. Echoing with Lumera's favorite flower being white windflower, the windflower in flower language generally mean "don't leave me, don't abandon me, I don't want to lose you"

That's just a theory but I find it very sweet that even in the afterlife, Isekai Alear still loved Nel and Rafal so much they would seek out help from another version of themselves

By the way, this theory has at least 99% chance of being wrong or having the FEH iteration of Nel and Rafal forget all the differencies that have been established about Elyos and XenElyos and therefore make every post i made so far wrong about it, especially when there is high chance that Rafal gets flanderized as a jerk or a sweet lover or both and Nel breathing only for ship tease with Alear....

#fire emblem #fire emblem engage #fe engage #fell xenologue #feh dread is watching over the Fell twins #at least Veyle said defect so maybe there is still a slight snowflake chance in hell I nailed it ?#also fun fact but Isekai Alear also use a lot of hiragana compared to regular Alear #like they say watashi in hiragana

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