Fire Emblem Engage
Finished this up a bit ago. It's good... great even! The map design is excellent, the gameplay is still Fire Emblem-y while the Emblems give it a cool new twist, and the Emblems themselves manage to be distinctive in ways that aren't just "huge numbers!". "Paralogue hell" is definitely a balance issue (and one that gets even worse if playing with the DLC!) where the game isn't sure if you ran a bunch of maps on the side before the current plot map and unlocked even bigger stat bonuses, but probably not an easily fixed one... I know Three Houses has a similar issue in C8/9/10 of White Clouds where, for the Lions & Deer (and Eagles if you do lots of recruitment I suppose), they dump a zillion Paralogues on you that feature major power upgrades with the side effect of the plot missions getting indirectly nerfed. I liked it enough to start up a replay on Maddening with the intent of using an entirely different endgame team very quickly, although maybe I'll put it on hold if I get an urge to do Octopath Traveler II first.
My final team was the characters I listed before + the final two recruits (who weren't trustworthy and thus did not get Emblem Rings, but did get some Horse Manure). I mostly stuck to "canon-ish" Emblem choices... went with Alear+Lyn, Framme+Byleth (no paralogue, pure support), Alfred+Marth, Celine+Corrin, Boucheron+Leif, Chloe+Eirika, Yunaka+Micaiah, Diamant+Roy, Alcryst+Lucina, Fogado+Sigurd, Timerra+Ike, and Pandreo+Celica.
But the plot... woof. I won't say it's irredeemable, as it does have a few moments I rather liked, and a few others that at least had potential even if being badly underwritten. And I grew to like *some* of the characters (e.g. Alfred, Yunaka, Alcryst, Fogado; maybe some of the late recruits to to the extent they can be untangled from the dumb plot they're stuck in), although the game doesn't help itself by having some of its weakest characters show up first (Clanne & Framme!). I think the most obvious game of comparison plot-wise is Sacred Stones, which also featured a rather underwritten setting, but was much more coherent tonally. Some thoughts...
* Maybe this will come out more during my replay when I use the Elusian crew and see their supports, but Elusia was WILDLY underwritten if you only watch plot scenes. We don't learn *much* about Grado or Plegia, but we learn enough. The best we get is Ivy & Hortensia's conversation in C14, where Ivy says that Elusia is basically the Fell Dragon's country now. Okay, fine, but... let's explore that, then. Which leads into the next problem...
* Given the general light tone, I'd rather they have kept it and let the player decide whether this was Real Fightingzs or if it was FE Fates-style "play combat" where Corrin is somehow sparing everyone. Instead, C17, C19, and C20 directly suggest that messed up major massacres are going on. Which... okay, fine, I actually prefer that, acknowledging death, but they proceed to immediately forgot about it and not address it at all. Sure, there were towns threatened by monsters in FE8, but that was small towns in the middle of nowhere. Apparently Sombron depopulated an entire CITY?! With it implied he may have eaten more? And there wasn't some sort of revolt or mass refugee crisis? Okay, of course there wasn't, but point is, it changes the tone for the villains. It makes the more forgiving, understanding tone the narrative takes with the Hounds a lot harder to credit if they're aiding in a massacre of their own citizens. But the narrative seems to promptly forget this even happened, nor even use it for an interesting purpose, like as a justification for some big power-up for Sombron a la Awakening. Like in...
* Chapter 21. ARGHHHHHHHHHHH! THIS CUTSCENE WAS SO, SO, SO STUPID! And I say this as someone who would be 100% fine with Alear dying and losing the rings. A good narrative needs setbacks, it needs terrible things to happen so that the heroes can overcome it anyway. But... it was so, so badly sold! This is a plot about control of Emblem Rings. Everyone wants them and the plot hinges on their control. How... HOW can you just have Sombron get the rings for no reason?! Killing Alear might have gotten ALEAR's ring, but all of them?! And while I didn't mind this in Octopath Traveler, this is a case where everyone else mysteriously vanishing for the cutscene rings totally discordantly. GRAHHHH. Here's the very simple fanon fix: just do the Ike vs. the BK battle except rigged to lose. If you absolutely have to sell this plot point, Sombron goes Super Saiyan because he had killed all of those people for some big evil ritual here a la Awakening, and Alear has to go Super Saiyan back or whatever, and everyone else stands aside because Alear says it's too dangerous or something. Then you 1v1 Sombron IN SYSTEM as a callback to the Prologue. The cutscene just made... zero sense, especially with how it's not clear why Sombron doesn't keep on trying to kill Veyle. Was that breath attack he used a one-time thing or something?! Doubtful... shouldn't he want to keep going? If the writers had taken my suggestion, then Super-Alear could have inflicted some big wound on Sombron that forces him to retreat or the like, and he gets the rings via a magic spell. There, problem solved, weakly. That would still suck, but... bah.
And yes, I know, there's the ring theft in C10 too, but that is at least better hinted at narratively by Marth saying it's a bad idea to go into the Cathedral or fight, and the "oh no our Draconic Time Crystal was stolen" excuse. We don't even get that in C21.
* This is more a nitpick, but the C22 plot seems incomplete? The Emblems C. Alear creates are all silent & red, which is fine, but then they just... get better, because? I guess maybe it was Alear's resolve to be a good dragon, but that was already true. Before you say it was the miracle, the miracle could only happen AFTER the Emblems "got better" I presume, so it feels like this is missing a step. Also, if this was a novel or a Final Fantasy game or something, then physical Alear totally should have stayed dead and you'd have Emblem Alear to talk with as the equivalent, but that'd be it. Go make Veyle the new corporeal main character or whatever. I'm not actually complaining on this count because gameplay considerations come first and yoinking your stat-boostered MC would be considered rude by some audiences, but if that was less a concern...
* Can I rant about my personal least favorite support in the game? (Well, of those I've seen.) I don't care, I'm giving myself permission anyway. Alear / Veyle B SUCKS. It is one of those plot points that retroactively makes other plot points worse if you think about it.
Now, sometimes supports have weird lines seemingly contradictory to the plot/characters, and the best response is to just shrug and say it was a local joke or mistake, don't take it too seriously. Unfortunately, this support hinges on a fairly major plot point. Worse than your average nonsensical plot hole support, it's thematically contradictory.
In this support, we're told that Alear and Veyle met each other Just Once in the past timeline. It doesn't sound like a particularly intense meeting, either; it sounds like the sole thing Alear did was give Veyle the dragonstone and say some sweet nothings. However, this meeting was just so moving and inspiring that Veyle knew her big sibling would always be there for her. Aww, isn't that sweet! And now they're together again and will always help each other.
Except… except this is awful! It changed a slightly cliche but powerful (it's a cliche for a reason) plot point about friends reuniting after a long gap into a plot point about how blood ties are absolutely unshakeable even between essentially strangers. Now. There may be a game to do that in (Awakening?), but I'd argue that it is not this game, because we precisely DO have a plot point about a terrible, distant father for Veyle! I'm not faulting her for looking for kindness & support wherever she could find it, but picking blood relatives is clearly not necessarily the play. (Also, let's be real, I suspect there's some siscon fanservice here for the JP audience in to that.) Why couldn't they just stick to Alear & Veyle being close friends & supporters, except rather than being separated by going to different colleges or whatever, it's near-death amnesia? It makes Veyle come across as far, far more pathetic than narratively intended to be clinging to "that person who I talked to literally once" rather than "my old best friend & sibling." (But of course, the writer didn't think it was pathetic, they thought it was inspiring.) I hate it.
So yeah I have more to say about this one support than all the rest combined. Alas.
* While on that note, this may be more fanon-possibilities than an actual complaint, but it's a little too bad they made Sombron just another openly abusive dad who doesn't care about his kids. Based on what we see elsewhere, the door was open to making him a different kind of toxic, like an evil family-values type. Despite the fact that Zephia is essentially mind-controlling Veyle, she still takes orders from Veyle. That's interesting - it suggests that even the lowest of Sombron's children, the defect, can order around everyone else, even when they have to be brainwashed to do so. That would seem to fit with a Sombron who considered himself & his brood some sort of superior lifeform. But that's not actually true - Sombron doesn't care and considers his kids mere tools, means to an end. I think it would have been more interesting if they'd made Sombron the type who genuinely cares about his family, but in a very controlling and using kind of way - we're awesome and if we work together under my leadership, we will conquer everything etc. Rebelling from THIS kind of dad is a little harder, since he wants you on his side and considers you an asset, even if in a cynical way. And that also makes such a rebellion all the more rewarding - it's much easier to rebel from a dad actively trying to push his kids away. We also never see Sombron & Lumerra on the same screen at once, or ever hear what the two thought about each other, despite allegedly fighting a war 1,000 years ago. It would have been an obvious plot point to mine - maybe Sombron just wanted to escape this world at first, but after losing too many kids to Lumerra and her allies, he wanted revenge on her first, because how dare you kill my kids. That's the kind of understandable-but-still-evil villainous motive that helps spice things up. Sombron should have held grudges about his dead kids, rather than not caring about them.
* I actually don't mind too much Sombron's "real plot." It's basically about as narratively compelling as Krelian having an extremely, extremely complicated and evil plan to find the Wave Existence. Just... why hide it? And why have all the worry about Sombron invading countless worlds as some BS raise-the-stakes thing? I rather liked the Sombron that just wanted the heroes to leave him alone, while the heroes insisted that he face justice. I would have entirely dropped the threat of invading other worlds, and had a scene of Sombron basically saying "Later nerds" while a frustrated Zephia manages things back on Elyos without guidance or leadership.
* Or actually, even better. The best part of the lategame plot - which is still nothing special, to be clear, but is at least interesting and resonant - was C24, the time travel chapter. Past Alear is one of the more interesting villains the game has and giving them a moment in the sun was solid, so hey, I'm ending on a positive note! Now. Time travel does weird things for your setting and tends to not make tons of sense, but if you're gonna do it, Engage is the right place given a light tone and already having the Draconic Time Crystal be a plot point. So... and here we get more into the realm of fan rewrites... but damn, I wish they'd chucked, like, the other last 6-7 chapters in the trash and just expanded C24. Go full 7th Saga or Final Fantasy 8, have the entire back part of the game be time travelling back to 1,000 years ago and seeing that conflict. The conflict in the modern day just isn't very interesting or sensical, so make lemonade from your lemons with an excuse for a totally different situation. It would also be an excuse to see Lumera again (and maybe even throw in some Rhea-esque dark side) and throw out some insane plot twists. Maybe Gradlon was just a normal country and the idea of it being evil was made-up, and the reason it sunk was (insert crazy magic superweapon action that happens here). We know Sombron had lots of kids; that is an excuse to be fighting lots of Dragon-typed enemies that have Emblem Rings, even copies of Emblem Rings we already have. If taking the above advice on Sombron's personality, also humanize Sombron a little. We can also see Sombron becoming angry and/or distant as his children perish one-by-one, especially if taking my advice above about having him care about this, at least in the past. There's plenty of stuff that could have been done that would have been interesting as a matter of pure gameplay. And then various plot hooks could have been added to the countries in the present that'd be explained by plot twists in the past. Hell, even if the PCs eventually return to the present (more Xenosaga III Disc 1 style), they could have brought something a little more sensible from the past like knowledge or a missing Emblem Ring rather than the whole strange Fell Dragon crystal excuse. Sigh.
* Did I say I was ending on a high note? Nope, just kidding. This one isn't huge or anything, but there's one part of the ending that was extra-dumb. Alear tries to summon Marth for old time's sake and fails. Okay, fine. But then... the rings all glow and say "Our bonds can be reforged time and again, whenever you desire. You need only say the word." What!!! If that was true, then why didn't it work?! Like... pick one, game, either it's wistful melancholy of the departure of a treasured friend, or it's a happy reunion after a fake parting. You somehow settled on the unhappy middle where the friend is still around but is, like, hiding for the lulz instead. It'd be like if Final Fantasy X ended with Yuna sighing about Tidus being gone, and the camera cutting to Tidus hiding under the couch but not revealing himself.
EDIT: Oh, and one other thing.
The game kinda totally forgets about the opening movie. I don't think you should be stuck with whatever the animators came up with, but frankly the opening movie seemed to hint at more interesting stuff - a more explicitly evil Alear with a shit-eating grin that is affected by Lumera somehow, and blue & red Alear fighting Sombron w/ the crew. While nihilistic Alear was okay too, I'd have been down for some villain Alear as well, to make either their redemption (if they choose to get better) or Lumera's awkwardness (if she brainwashed him somehow with magic) more dramatically interesting. Also, if we're doing the Big Time Travel Plotline back to when there were, y'know, presumably people in Gradlon rather than just zombies, then that'd actually be an excuse to have the modern-day crew there for the big showdown rather than having the movie just be a total lie. Alas.
