I thought 7 had a good story. 6 has a decent one as well but the support conversations are atrocious. I guess that's what happens when you have 60 characters and half of them are throwaway ones that no one ever uses
Wouldn't 6 having bad support convos be on the fan translators that wrote them? I'm guessing you meant 7 and 8 and not 6 and 7?
I don't think the story itself is that bad. It's the writing that's the problem. The line-to-line dialogue is just awful.
I don't know how much of that is the liberties they took with translations... playing with JPN voice acting on its clear there's some wide swings in terms of translations going on (the jist is the same, but sometimes a lot of intention is getting cut).
The game opens with your character being "badass" by struggling to 2v1 a basic grunt with the help of Marth, Hero King of Legend. I don't think the translation issues are the main problem.
That said, Fire Emblem is a weird one because the games do have some odd translation changes in some situations, but also need to have aggressive translation/localization because the devs just love to have the main character unironically pick out child brides, so it's really hard to know what liberties are being taken for what reason.
I ate an engineer
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Units that get bonuses to Avo or debuff enemies with -Hit:
Zelkov (-10 hit to attackers)
Goldmary (-20 hit to males)
Framme (+10 avo to her/Alear if next to Alear)
Lapis (+10 avo if next to ally)
Pandreo (+3 avo for each enemy/ally within 2 spaces)
Merrin (+5 avo to her and nearby female allies if two female allies within 2 spaces)
Saphir (+20 Avo while hp <50%)
According to a guide I read online, enemies in Engage max out at 196 Hit, so if you can get to 196 Avo you're basically untouchable.
You get 2 AVO per point of SPD and 1 more AVO per 2 points of LCK, so a faster class can get you to 80-100 AVO to start. 30 from Marth, 30 from Weapon Agility, and then make up the rest with Personal Skills, Weapon Engraving, and in a pinch bonuses for high Support levels.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Man Goldmary got RNG screwed for me.
Not even that her growths are bad she just had a string of bad level ups.
Hovering around a 140 rating when my team average is 160.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
My RNG gave me an Anna with way better Str than Mag, so I had no issues just keeping her in physical classes.
My RNG gave me an Anna with way better Str than Mag, so I had no issues just keeping her in physical classes.
I haven't fielded Anna yet because I can't convince myself to put a 12-year old into battle. Same with the Healer kid. In my headcannon, they're learning to be shop and medical assistants back at base. Maybe when they're older they can participate in battle.
Like yeah, the others are "anime 18" teenagers, so that's not much better. Of course, I only have one adult character in Vander, and he can't solo anything. At least the main roster isn't literal children. Those two don't even have the "I'm actually a 1,000 year old dragon" schtick to hide behind.
MNC Dover on
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Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Almost the entire cast, including the emblems, are child soldiers. Jean isn't even a teenager so he was instantly benched. Anna got a pass because Anna are from some story and setting transcending legion of Anna.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Chapter 23 spoilers:
Thinking about where I want my final Engraves to end up. Thinking the S-rank weapons + Alear's stuff, but an argument can certainly be made for putting +Crit Engraves on Killer weapons for more consistency.
Marth - Liberation
Sigurd - Brionac
Celica - Nova
Miciah - Cinquedea
Roy - Georgios
Leif - Fragarach
Lucina - Caladbolg
Lyn - Lendabair
Ike - Ukonvasara
Byleth - Divine Fist Art
Corrin - Carnwenhan
Eirika - Venomous
Fire - Wille Glanz
The problem is no one really wants Celica, which is basically just -1 Mt for -1 Wt. I don't know who would really appreciated 50 Dodge.
I still love that in the first FE Warriors game Anna has attacks involving more Annas showing up. Like one has them wheeling a bunch of ballistae up to bombard enemies.
Thinking about where I want my final Engraves to end up. Thinking the S-rank weapons + Alear's stuff, but an argument can certainly be made for putting +Crit Engraves on Killer weapons for more consistency.
Marth - Liberation
Sigurd - Brionac
Celica - Nova
Miciah - Cinquedea
Roy - Georgios
Leif - Fragarach
Lucina - Caladbolg
Lyn - Lendabair
Ike - Ukonvasara
Byleth - Divine Fist Art
Corrin - Carnwenhan
Eirika - Venomous
Fire - Wille Glanz
The problem is no one really wants Celica, which is basically just -1 Mt for -1 Wt. I don't know who would really appreciated 50 Dodge.
Dodge is probably best on a flyer or Mage. They'll usually be the ones most likely targeted for staff abilities so it's a sure why not thing.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Thinking about where I want my final Engraves to end up. Thinking the S-rank weapons + Alear's stuff, but an argument can certainly be made for putting +Crit Engraves on Killer weapons for more consistency.
Marth - Liberation
Sigurd - Brionac
Celica - Nova
Miciah - Cinquedea
Roy - Georgios
Leif - Fragarach
Lucina - Caladbolg
Lyn - Lendabair
Ike - Ukonvasara
Byleth - Divine Fist Art
Corrin - Carnwenhan
Eirika - Venomous
Fire - Wille Glanz
The problem is no one really wants Celica, which is basically just -1 Mt for -1 Wt. I don't know who would really appreciated 50 Dodge.
Only engraving I bothered with was Lyn on Chloe's Killer Lance.
My RNG gave me an Anna with way better Str than Mag, so I had no issues just keeping her in physical classes.
I haven't fielded Anna yet because I can't convince myself to put a 12-year old into battle. Same with the Healer kid. In my headcannon, they're learning to be shop and medical assistants back at base. Maybe when they're older they can participate in battle.
Like yeah, the others are "anime 18" teenagers, so that's not much better. Of course, I only have one adult character in Vander, and he can't solo anything. At least the main roster isn't literal children. Those two don't even have the "I'm actually a 1,000 year old dragon" schtick to hide behind.
Ironically, Tiki is literally a child in Engage. No 1,000 year old shenanigans
Alear: no sense of right or wrong
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
I've been super busy all week and haven't been able to block off a large enough chunk of time to do the last chapter, and have instead been spinning my wheels doing skirmishes for gold and SP in my fleeting spare moments.
I might be almost ready to be done with the game, especially with Octopath 2 coming out.
Yeah, I don’t think the game needed 12 extra chapters to unlock the back half of emblems’ levels. The remakes of older maps from the origin game is cute, but the game is already fairly meaty. I can’t imagine having run skirmishes for anything.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Which is not to say I didn't enjoy this game immensely. The combat is A+ and I don't think I minded the story as much as most people. I have a high tolerance for sentimental anime schlock, after all.
All right, I'm back to where I was before my corrupted saves and even one chapter ahead. In addition, I did a lot better this time around, including Chapter 17 where previously I lost 2 characters but this time none. Been a bit paranoid about doing some actions in the Somniel that may have written bad data to the save and I am using a bunch of the save slots. No corruption so far...
3ds: 4983-4935-4575
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
edited February 2023
Finally pulled the trigger on finishing the game. Ended up enjoying it beginning to end.
A simple shonen story about found family and the friends you met along the way. Sure! Wasn't looking for anything complicated or dark after Three Houses' "you can't be happy no matter what route you pick" edgelord suffering festival.
Did a bit of post-game Support grinding at the Somniel. Not sure I have the patience to see all the Supports. Especially with an unopened copy of Octopath Traveler 2 yelling at me, plus all the shows I've neglected watching entirely the last month.
E: I'm at 140 hours played, for reference/comparison. Chapter 21 story battle was 4 hours by itself for me.
Sigurd trial, wow. Those 2 super beefed up casters were by far the hardest part (on Hard, one of the casters has 3 crystals, meaning you have to kill him 4 times, and he has nearly 50 hp). Then after you defeat both, you get a measly 3k gold. The game really fails at rewards sometimes.
TelMarine on
3ds: 4983-4935-4575
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Sigurd trial, wow. Those 2 super beefed up casters were by far the hardest part (on Hard, one of the casters has 3 crystals, meaning you have to kill him 4 times, and he has nearly 50 hp). Then after you defeat both, you get a measly 3k gold. The game really fails at rewards sometimes.
That's a George Mallory type challenge. Totally optional, just to see if you can.
Yeah, there are a lot of things in the Emblem trials that are references to the original games and in older games there were a lot of situations you were just supposed to avoid some super enemy. Byleth's challenge is also wacky, there are entire groups of enemies who ignore you completely.
Anyway, a big effortpost on the gameplay/mechanics of Engage, because I've been thinking about it a good bit. Everything is from the perspective of Hard Classic with the DLC unlocked.
Basic Combat: It's Fire Emblem, so it's pretty good. Character specific skills to vary wildly from being unremarkable to being extremely valuable, especially on the character/class specific lord skills. Weapons seem to be nicely balanced this go around, although it could just be DLC but it felt like you got good ranged melee weapons super early and so you could always kill enemy mages on their phase without much hassle. Break is a good system but I think a little underutilized/weak: combined with the ubiquitous range weapons, the number of situations where an enemy can counterattack for significant damage and you can't soften them from range and you can't one shot them and you can't switch up the order you're attacking so the more durable person gets a hit in first is very, very small and in most of those situations it's because you're physically attacking an armored unit with a Spear or Tomahawk and they're immune to break anyway. The time crystal is alright; I thought 10 uses was too much in most situations and when you're confident you can just use it to rig the RNG, but I do think having a lot of charges is useful when you are trying to pick apart a specific pod or boss that charges forward.
I think the heavy usage of enemies with life crystals is a pretty good thing since it solves the problem old FE had where boss units had to be parked in place and hit with a very specific units because being overstatted means they'd take no damage or turbomurder units. Bosses would be the best people to break, except on hard you can usually not die to a bosses counterattack and will never ever ever ever ever want to let them survive a turn anyway so you can sorta just facetank. Fell Dragon Wyrms or whatever are completely annoying and serve no purpose in the game (or narrative!), they're just a beef gate that maybe requires you to use a Seraph Robe on your squishiest casters because they do piercing damage or blow an engage attack or two.
Emblem Stuff: Emblems are cool because they let you do a lot of powerful stuff (mostly player-phase focused) that would normally take a ton of effort or game knowledge to do, and allow you access to a lot of powerful effects to control the battlefield. They are also an interesting direction to take weapon proficiencies and skill development, but I'm not sure it worked out that well (more on that later). They also kind of keep you at a baseline level of competence, because just engaging to access emblem weapons and skills will usually keep up with whatever you're doing until the lategame, where legendary weapons or upgraded silver stuff will outclass the emblems themselves. Most of the emblems are pretty good and there's a good mix of emblems to support all types of units, whether it's facetanking on enemy phase, AoE nukes, or battlefield support. The timing of 3-4 rounds of uptime with one super attack per engage works out pretty nicely to where it isn't quiiiiite once per mission per emblem, but still feels meaningful to use them, especially if you aren't dawdling. That said, I think that the game really can't handle having 12-14 person squads who all have emblems available because your safe damage output, stats, and battlefield control is far beyond what the enemies can bring to bear. Corrin Emblem in particular deserves a mention for dropping enemies ~7 levels worth of stats on hit with Draconic Hex and being able to easily lock down enemies so their pods trigger but can't hit you, which is just nuts. The DLC emblems also feel very P2W, with Tiki offering better growths and a 30% discount on everything while Edelgard offers basically +12 str and bonus effects on hits even while not engaged and breaks the action economy, while also giving your whole army +20% EXP via a skill.
Skills and Classes: The skill and class system this time around kinda sucks! You're kind of supposed to promote early for growths, but weapon skills are locked behind emblem levels, which are a chore to grind out and have pretty bad availability depending on where you are in the plot (unless you have the DLC emblems, which you always keep and smooth that out for you). As far as skills go, I don't think the skill point idea is bad but the balance is very wacky, making the a single expensive out of reach of even overlevelled endgame units, let alone having two, and that's without picking up growth boosting skills from the DLC emblems. Because of that, I didn't experiment with things too much, but there are some obvious standout broken things; vantage wrath tanking is probably still viable, especially with Roy emblem, Canto is nuts for breaking the maps wide open and also giving everybody secret +2/+3 movement which is silly, Speedtaker is an easy way to make sure all your units can double the boss by the end of the map, etc. I do wish that some of the more basic skills were more +damage than +hit/-avoid, because this is not a game where you have to deal with too many high hit enemies.
The maps: When they're good, they're great; chapter 11 and 17 are really impressive, and in general whenever the bosses or enemies get to abuse emblem-like abilities against you it feels really nailbiting and like you did something really smart when you manage to beat it. The game is also pretty adept at using a lot of varieties of timer, whether it's the soft timer of a thief or the hard timer of waves of zero-EXP reinforcements, which made it surprising when a very, very lategame mission actually had a hard turn limit instead of just reinforcements. A lot of missions have fun little gimmicks, which is always a Fire Emblem staple, but there are plenty of generic breather missions even in the lategame. The divine paralogues are also pretty clever as representations of the games they came from, with Sigurd's map and it's big set of castle reinforcements, or Leif's really really annoying staff + ballista spam, or Byleth's warp spam army all getting a huge grin out of me.
That said, when the maps are bad, they're really bad. The fact that enemies act in XCom style pods is really obvious in some missions to the point the best strategy is to burn crystal charges just to see how which enemies trigger when you go past what point on the map, and certain maps turn into a slog with continuous reinforcements, Camilla's being the worse offender since it's constant flying reinforcements as you walk down a winding ground only path; it could be interesting, but it just feels like a stat check/will you rush her with your own fliers to cheese check. Skirmishes and the tower maps are uniformly terrible, with the enemy and your units being plopped down at random and the enemy AI set to suicidally aggro, to the point that you can only reasonably clear them if the map lets you set up some sort of choke point (which isn't usually necessary in this player-phase focused game) or if you're already too strong for the plot. And on that note, the game balance does get very, very easy lategame as you just get too much power and too many options to be at serious risk. The final boss fight is also terrible.
The everything else: Everything about getting doodads after missions, the Somniel side activities, training in the Arena, levelling emblems, applying skills, checking your/enemy stats during combat, etc. is all clunky and feels like a step back for the franchise. I decided to get everybody to level 20 with their emblem for the final mission and it took over thirty minutes of mindlessly going into arena fights (which don't even let you see the units equipped emblem, for some reason?), you can't easily tab between units or screens basically anywhere in a way that you definitely could in older games, cooking is a huge stat boost per mission but somewhat clunky, resource grinding is pointless and would be very tedious given the need to RNG a specific map and RNG the drops afterwards, etc. Skill acquisition was the "least" clunky, but even then it'd be nice if I could filter for "skills I can learn" on units so I don't have to tab through like 15 different emblems to see what's available per each unit. The ball was tremendously dropped here, I think, especially with no real justification for this degree of filler side material.
I ate an engineer
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
So I gave the level 50 Tempest Trials a go. Few things:
Enemies don't rush you like in Skirmishes
Enemies don't attack you unless they have a chance to hit and damage you
Enemies occasionally have bonus exclusive skills
This made them VERY tedious to get through. You couldn't just kill everyone on the enemy turn with counters. You had to kill them one by one on your turns. There might be a better way to do this, but. I may just call it done enough.
Goldmary really is a succubus isn't she. A bit psycho, and a little slutty.
3ds: 4983-4935-4575
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
As far as Skirmishes go. Outside of the general complaint of them needing some kind of variance in level I think it would have also helped if they had more variety.
Like why not have more missions where you have to save villagers and you get increased rewards for doing it.
This would have added more variety and also helped the game's terrible economy.
Goldmary really is a succubus isn't she. A bit psycho, and a little slutty.
A lot of the female designs in Awakening are oversexualized in a weird way, but I definitely think the weirdest one is that Goldmary's chest is literally double sized in her default outfit, but she uses the standard female model in all of her costumes.
Goldmary really is a succubus isn't she. A bit psycho, and a little slutty.
A lot of the female designs in Awakening are oversexualized in a weird way, but I definitely think the weirdest one is that Goldmary's chest is literally double sized in her default outfit, but she uses the standard female model in all of her costumes.
Goldmary really is a succubus isn't she. A bit psycho, and a little slutty.
A lot of the female designs in Awakening are oversexualized in a weird way, but I definitely think the weirdest one is that Goldmary's chest is literally double sized in her default outfit, but she uses the standard female model in all of her costumes.
hoo boy not in her engage modes they don't
To be clear I was referring to her costumes around the base, I never actually used her in combat missions.
I ate an engineer
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
The combination of absolute confidence at cooking et al. with space cadet personality having no filters in telling everyone she happens upon how great she is at everything was marvelous. One of the more unique characters I've seen created lately. Thoroughly enjoyable Supports.
The combination of absolute confidence at cooking et al. with space cadet personality having no filters in telling everyone she happens upon how great she is at everything was marvelous. One of the more unique characters I've seen created lately. Thoroughly enjoyable Supports.
Yeah I tend to love characters who are obsessed with being perfect and can actually back it up. It's a nice foil to the more common trope of characters who lack confidence but are secretly geniuses.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
The combination of absolute confidence at cooking et al. with space cadet personality having no filters in telling everyone she happens upon how great she is at everything was marvelous. One of the more unique characters I've seen created lately. Thoroughly enjoyable Supports.
Yeah I tend to love characters who are obsessed with being perfect and can actually back it up. It's a nice foil to the more common trope of characters who lack confidence but are secretly geniuses.
Her Support with Boucheron is a good example of this.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
One of my low-key faves is Zelkov.
What if there was a person who's autistic hyperfixation was *everything*?
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I don't know how much of that is the liberties they took with translations... playing with JPN voice acting on its clear there's some wide swings in terms of translations going on (the jist is the same, but sometimes a lot of intention is getting cut).
That said, Fire Emblem is a weird one because the games do have some odd translation changes in some situations, but also need to have aggressive translation/localization because the devs just love to have the main character unironically pick out child brides, so it's really hard to know what liberties are being taken for what reason.
Zelkov (-10 hit to attackers)
Goldmary (-20 hit to males)
Framme (+10 avo to her/Alear if next to Alear)
Lapis (+10 avo if next to ally)
Pandreo (+3 avo for each enemy/ally within 2 spaces)
Merrin (+5 avo to her and nearby female allies if two female allies within 2 spaces)
Saphir (+20 Avo while hp <50%)
According to a guide I read online, enemies in Engage max out at 196 Hit, so if you can get to 196 Avo you're basically untouchable.
You get 2 AVO per point of SPD and 1 more AVO per 2 points of LCK, so a faster class can get you to 80-100 AVO to start. 30 from Marth, 30 from Weapon Agility, and then make up the rest with Personal Skills, Weapon Engraving, and in a pinch bonuses for high Support levels.
Not even that her growths are bad she just had a string of bad level ups.
Hovering around a 140 rating when my team average is 160.
I haven't fielded Anna yet because I can't convince myself to put a 12-year old into battle. Same with the Healer kid. In my headcannon, they're learning to be shop and medical assistants back at base. Maybe when they're older they can participate in battle.
Like yeah, the others are "anime 18" teenagers, so that's not much better. Of course, I only have one adult character in Vander, and he can't solo anything. At least the main roster isn't literal children. Those two don't even have the "I'm actually a 1,000 year old dragon" schtick to hide behind.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Marth - Liberation
Sigurd - Brionac
Celica - Nova
Miciah - Cinquedea
Roy - Georgios
Leif - Fragarach
Lucina - Caladbolg
Lyn - Lendabair
Ike - Ukonvasara
Byleth - Divine Fist Art
Corrin - Carnwenhan
Eirika - Venomous
Fire - Wille Glanz
The problem is no one really wants Celica, which is basically just -1 Mt for -1 Wt. I don't know who would really appreciated 50 Dodge.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Dodge is probably best on a flyer or Mage. They'll usually be the ones most likely targeted for staff abilities so it's a sure why not thing.
Only engraving I bothered with was Lyn on Chloe's Killer Lance.
Sigurd, too.
Alear: no sense of right or wrong
I might be almost ready to be done with the game, especially with Octopath 2 coming out.
Wing Tamer SPD 45 LCK 53 = 90 + 26 = 116 AVO
Swordmaster SPD 49 LCK 37 = 98 + 18 = 116 AVO
Wolf Knight SPD 45 LCK 34 = 90 + 17 = 107 AVO
Griffin Knight SPD 49 LCK 35 = 98 + 17 = 115 AVO
Thief SPD 42 LCK 30 = 84 + 15 = 99 AVO
Alear - 1 SPD = 2 AVO (105)
Hortensia - 1 SPD 2 LCK = 3 AVO (119)
Kagetsu - 2 SPD 1 LCK = 5 AVO (121)
Merrin - 2 SPD 1 LCK = 4 AVO (111)
Chloe - 3 SPD = 6 AVO (121)
Zelkov - 1 LCK + (-10 Hit) = 10 AVO (109)
Skills: AVO 30 +
Sword/Lance/Bow 30 AVO
Knife/Tome 15 AVO
AVO Targets (0-1-2 Skills):
Alear - 92 - 62 - 32 = S. Lyn + E. Alear
Hortensia - 78 - 48 - 33 = S. Micaiah + E. Lucina
Kagetsu - 76 - 46 - 16 = S. Marth + E. Leif
Merrin - 86 - 56 - 26 = S. Lucina + E. Sigurd
Chloe - 76 - 46 - 16 = S. Eirika + E. Corrin
Zelkov - 88 - 58 - 43 = S. Byleth + E. Micaiah
Sync Stats:
Marth - 4 SPD = 8 AVO (+20 AVO while Engaged/w Rapier)
Micaiah - 6 LCK = 3 AVO
Lucina - 4 SPD 6 LCK = 11 AVO
Lyn - 5 SPD + 10 SPD = 10 AVO (30 AVO)
Byleth - 3 SPD 12 LCK = 12 AVO
Eirika - 10 LCK = 5 AVO
Engraves:
Micaiah 40 AVO
Lucina 30 AVO
Sigurd 20 AVO
Fire 20 AVO
Corrin 10 AVO
Byleth 10 AVO
Leif 10 AVO
Marth 5 AVO
E: Not sure if I'll do all of that before I'm content to stop playing, but it's good to have a plan just in case.
Did a bit of post-game Support grinding at the Somniel. Not sure I have the patience to see all the Supports. Especially with an unopened copy of Octopath Traveler 2 yelling at me, plus all the shows I've neglected watching entirely the last month.
E: I'm at 140 hours played, for reference/comparison. Chapter 21 story battle was 4 hours by itself for me.
That's a George Mallory type challenge. Totally optional, just to see if you can.
Basic Combat: It's Fire Emblem, so it's pretty good. Character specific skills to vary wildly from being unremarkable to being extremely valuable, especially on the character/class specific lord skills. Weapons seem to be nicely balanced this go around, although it could just be DLC but it felt like you got good ranged melee weapons super early and so you could always kill enemy mages on their phase without much hassle. Break is a good system but I think a little underutilized/weak: combined with the ubiquitous range weapons, the number of situations where an enemy can counterattack for significant damage and you can't soften them from range and you can't one shot them and you can't switch up the order you're attacking so the more durable person gets a hit in first is very, very small and in most of those situations it's because you're physically attacking an armored unit with a Spear or Tomahawk and they're immune to break anyway. The time crystal is alright; I thought 10 uses was too much in most situations and when you're confident you can just use it to rig the RNG, but I do think having a lot of charges is useful when you are trying to pick apart a specific pod or boss that charges forward.
I think the heavy usage of enemies with life crystals is a pretty good thing since it solves the problem old FE had where boss units had to be parked in place and hit with a very specific units because being overstatted means they'd take no damage or turbomurder units. Bosses would be the best people to break, except on hard you can usually not die to a bosses counterattack and will never ever ever ever ever want to let them survive a turn anyway so you can sorta just facetank. Fell Dragon Wyrms or whatever are completely annoying and serve no purpose in the game (or narrative!), they're just a beef gate that maybe requires you to use a Seraph Robe on your squishiest casters because they do piercing damage or blow an engage attack or two.
Emblem Stuff: Emblems are cool because they let you do a lot of powerful stuff (mostly player-phase focused) that would normally take a ton of effort or game knowledge to do, and allow you access to a lot of powerful effects to control the battlefield. They are also an interesting direction to take weapon proficiencies and skill development, but I'm not sure it worked out that well (more on that later). They also kind of keep you at a baseline level of competence, because just engaging to access emblem weapons and skills will usually keep up with whatever you're doing until the lategame, where legendary weapons or upgraded silver stuff will outclass the emblems themselves. Most of the emblems are pretty good and there's a good mix of emblems to support all types of units, whether it's facetanking on enemy phase, AoE nukes, or battlefield support. The timing of 3-4 rounds of uptime with one super attack per engage works out pretty nicely to where it isn't quiiiiite once per mission per emblem, but still feels meaningful to use them, especially if you aren't dawdling. That said, I think that the game really can't handle having 12-14 person squads who all have emblems available because your safe damage output, stats, and battlefield control is far beyond what the enemies can bring to bear. Corrin Emblem in particular deserves a mention for dropping enemies ~7 levels worth of stats on hit with Draconic Hex and being able to easily lock down enemies so their pods trigger but can't hit you, which is just nuts. The DLC emblems also feel very P2W, with Tiki offering better growths and a 30% discount on everything while Edelgard offers basically +12 str and bonus effects on hits even while not engaged and breaks the action economy, while also giving your whole army +20% EXP via a skill.
Skills and Classes: The skill and class system this time around kinda sucks! You're kind of supposed to promote early for growths, but weapon skills are locked behind emblem levels, which are a chore to grind out and have pretty bad availability depending on where you are in the plot (unless you have the DLC emblems, which you always keep and smooth that out for you). As far as skills go, I don't think the skill point idea is bad but the balance is very wacky, making the a single expensive out of reach of even overlevelled endgame units, let alone having two, and that's without picking up growth boosting skills from the DLC emblems. Because of that, I didn't experiment with things too much, but there are some obvious standout broken things; vantage wrath tanking is probably still viable, especially with Roy emblem, Canto is nuts for breaking the maps wide open and also giving everybody secret +2/+3 movement which is silly, Speedtaker is an easy way to make sure all your units can double the boss by the end of the map, etc. I do wish that some of the more basic skills were more +damage than +hit/-avoid, because this is not a game where you have to deal with too many high hit enemies.
The maps: When they're good, they're great; chapter 11 and 17 are really impressive, and in general whenever the bosses or enemies get to abuse emblem-like abilities against you it feels really nailbiting and like you did something really smart when you manage to beat it. The game is also pretty adept at using a lot of varieties of timer, whether it's the soft timer of a thief or the hard timer of waves of zero-EXP reinforcements, which made it surprising when a very, very lategame mission actually had a hard turn limit instead of just reinforcements. A lot of missions have fun little gimmicks, which is always a Fire Emblem staple, but there are plenty of generic breather missions even in the lategame. The divine paralogues are also pretty clever as representations of the games they came from, with Sigurd's map and it's big set of castle reinforcements, or Leif's really really annoying staff + ballista spam, or Byleth's warp spam army all getting a huge grin out of me.
That said, when the maps are bad, they're really bad. The fact that enemies act in XCom style pods is really obvious in some missions to the point the best strategy is to burn crystal charges just to see how which enemies trigger when you go past what point on the map, and certain maps turn into a slog with continuous reinforcements, Camilla's being the worse offender since it's constant flying reinforcements as you walk down a winding ground only path; it could be interesting, but it just feels like a stat check/will you rush her with your own fliers to cheese check. Skirmishes and the tower maps are uniformly terrible, with the enemy and your units being plopped down at random and the enemy AI set to suicidally aggro, to the point that you can only reasonably clear them if the map lets you set up some sort of choke point (which isn't usually necessary in this player-phase focused game) or if you're already too strong for the plot. And on that note, the game balance does get very, very easy lategame as you just get too much power and too many options to be at serious risk. The final boss fight is also terrible.
The everything else: Everything about getting doodads after missions, the Somniel side activities, training in the Arena, levelling emblems, applying skills, checking your/enemy stats during combat, etc. is all clunky and feels like a step back for the franchise. I decided to get everybody to level 20 with their emblem for the final mission and it took over thirty minutes of mindlessly going into arena fights (which don't even let you see the units equipped emblem, for some reason?), you can't easily tab between units or screens basically anywhere in a way that you definitely could in older games, cooking is a huge stat boost per mission but somewhat clunky, resource grinding is pointless and would be very tedious given the need to RNG a specific map and RNG the drops afterwards, etc. Skill acquisition was the "least" clunky, but even then it'd be nice if I could filter for "skills I can learn" on units so I don't have to tab through like 15 different emblems to see what's available per each unit. The ball was tremendously dropped here, I think, especially with no real justification for this degree of filler side material.
Enemies don't rush you like in Skirmishes
Enemies don't attack you unless they have a chance to hit and damage you
Enemies occasionally have bonus exclusive skills
This made them VERY tedious to get through. You couldn't just kill everyone on the enemy turn with counters. You had to kill them one by one on your turns. There might be a better way to do this, but. I may just call it done enough.
Like why not have more missions where you have to save villagers and you get increased rewards for doing it.
This would have added more variety and also helped the game's terrible economy.
A lot of the female designs in Awakening are oversexualized in a weird way, but I definitely think the weirdest one is that Goldmary's chest is literally double sized in her default outfit, but she uses the standard female model in all of her costumes.
hoo boy not in her engage modes they don't
To be clear I was referring to her costumes around the base, I never actually used her in combat missions.
The combination of absolute confidence at cooking et al. with space cadet personality having no filters in telling everyone she happens upon how great she is at everything was marvelous. One of the more unique characters I've seen created lately. Thoroughly enjoyable Supports.
Yeah I tend to love characters who are obsessed with being perfect and can actually back it up. It's a nice foil to the more common trope of characters who lack confidence but are secretly geniuses.
Her Support with Boucheron is a good example of this.
What if there was a person who's autistic hyperfixation was *everything*?