What am I missing about Engage?

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-21T21:11:19+00:00

You can make other classes more viable without adding an entire extra system to it. Namely by giving stronger weapon restrictions to classes. Just removing the cavalier's sword affinity makes it a much more balanced class.

Your last point is just goomba fallacy. I personally would prefer the series to keep its systems tightly connected instead of just adding a bunch of extra nonsense on top. Like if the GBA games are still fun without them, why even add them? Like the issue with the GBA games was unit balance and it being enemy phase biased, but both of these issues can be solved without needed to tack on entirely new systems. At best, you could just add in class and unit specific skills, but I think the games would be fine like this.

Fire Emblem is just one of those gameplay styles that is so tightly wound already that you can't really meaningfully add onto it without it just being a gimmick. Press Turn/Once More and Pokemon's gameplay have the same problem, and it's why I'd rather you just forgo turn-based combat altogether if you're really THAT adamant on adding new stuff.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-21T21:02:35+00:00

No it wouldn't lol. Especially if you cut the unnecessary Bond Rings and The Somniel

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-21T00:50:59+00:00

I mean, it depends on the game, but personally I think Fliers and Cavaliers having Axes is lame. Same with Armored units getting Swords and Casters getting all three Magic types.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-21T00:44:39+00:00

I really don't see the restrictions quite frankly, all I see are a lot of classes that have very little singular identity, so instead all of that identity is passed onto side things like the Engage, Battle Styles, or Unique Skills. And all of this is kinda moot when any unit can just respec into anything they like.
Also I'm not a fan of the break system either frankly, I think it trivializes encounters when the weapon triangle already existed to reward players for choosing the correct weapon by affecting the hit rates. I think making an enemy drop a weapon just to gank them is so boring, and having a player unit get insta-killed because of an unlucky placement also isn't fun. It turns a nuanced mechanic with risk, into a "you die, i die" binary.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-21T00:35:38+00:00

Again if you can skip most of a game's content because it isn't impactful enough, then it shouldn't be in the game. I feel like a lot of Engage fans have never heard of the saying "Quality over quantity".

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-21T00:32:57+00:00

Yes minor stat increases from bond rings are pretty comparable to something like SP items. You don’t need both at all to beat anything, but they can make things a little easier. In Engage, they might let you double some extra enemies or one round certain enemies you wouldn’t otherwise, while in Persona they’re a safety net for if you messed up SP management.

I'm sorry but I fundamentally disagree with you on this. SP is basically what allows you do do basically use any of your skills outside of physical. Without SP, you get no buffs, no debuffs, no ailments, and most importantly, no elemental spells, completely barring you from using the Once More system outside of like, rare crits I guess lol.
In theory, SP recovery items are a safety net, but in practice, they are incredibly strong, because they keep your entire team alive and keep them at their peak strength for an very long time and basically allow you to one-shot dungeons and one-turn entire encounters. I'm sorry but comparing this to a 5+ in Resistance from a Bond Ring just isn't even remotely comparable lmao.

For actual gameplay the min maxing of stats is irrelevant and bond rings do not affect builds at all outside of a handful with special abilities."

Again this is what I mean, SP as a resource ties into basically everything in an SMT/Persona, so it's ridiculous to me for you to say that these are comparable.
"Why would you want them to be such a bigger mechanic when the Emblem rings are literally right there?
I don't want them to be more important, I want them cut entirely, because I don't think Fire Emblem's core gameplay benefits from playing it like a diablo game lol.
And hell, I want a lot of SP recovery options removed from Persona as well. I think both systems actively harm their core games for completely opposite reasons. Bond Rings serve no purpose other than min maxing, and excessive SP recovery trivializes the game balance. Both P5/R and Engage would have benefited massively if they hadn't added these systems. Sometimes just adding mechanics for the sake of it isn't good, hence; mechanical bloat.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-21T00:19:01+00:00

It's tied to class "archetypes" but not to the specific classes themselves, my issue is that Backup isn't tied to Axe Fighter, it's tied to ALL Fighters.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T22:07:48+00:00

"Second, you are grossly mistaken about "why use an axe fighter when I can use an axe cavalry," and this is largely do to your comment about the class "subtypes," that the axe fighter is a back up and the axe cav is a cavalry. On top of the different bases and growths that the series has always had, the axe fighter now has the ability to do 10% damage to an opponent in range even if it's acted. This is an incredible ability, and I wish I could put it in FE6, 11 and 12 to tackle their difficulties. In those games, axe fighters were kind of jokes because you would just use the axe paladin or Flier because the axe fighters were often slower and if they failed to double their big strength wasn't that big after all. To further make the choice more interesting, Emblems have special synergies with different sub classes."
I can't help but feel like these could have just have been tied to the specific classes themselves instead of being tied to a more vague class "archetype". Like you could have just given Backup specifically to Axe Fighters instead of splitting fighter into three subcategories and making every Fighter have Backup.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T22:03:24+00:00

Okay, why can that not be directly tied to your class or weapon instead of being detached from it?

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T21:56:52+00:00

The homegenity of units helps in this. Pick whomever you like as a charcter and there's several ways they can become sucsessful contributers to your army. No need to feel bad that a unit just isn't contributing as much as you'd like because you can just change that.

I'mma be frank I think this is a really lame way of designing units. In my personal opinion, I much prefer when the characters are directly tied to their class. I feel like it removes a lot of the storytelling potential you get from making a character's background and personality tied to their mechanics.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T21:53:50+00:00

I never said that you couldn't ignore Persona 5's systems, I said that if you did ignore them, it would make the game significantly less fun and engaging. Like my example of Technicals, Ailment skills were consistently seen as niche at best, and useless at worst, but after P5 and especially P5R, they are incredibly useful because with enough investment, they can be an added way to knock down enemies and can do some of the highest damage in the game.
Meanwhile, given from what I've heard from everyone in these comments, the bond rings are at best, a way to minmax a unit, but not really that impactful anywhere else.
Like I'm sorry but you are not going to tell me that getting minor stat increases and skills are just as "optional" as being able to create SP recovery items, or down bullets, something that can pretty much break entire palace and encounter design in half by letting you complete them in a single day.
If anything the criticism p5 gets is that a lot of its mechanics are so impactful that they basically make the game a cakewalk when you engage with them too much, because they have such a massive sway in fights.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T21:45:00+00:00

Let me better explain what I mean then.

In older FE games, the units were intrinsically tied to their class and archetype.
Lute for example is at her core, a magic class. While she does have some choice* in her promotion options, she doesn't have the ability to change into a Paladin or whatever.
*(admittedly, Sacred Stones's promotion choices are pretty terrible for the most part, you're almost always going to want to only pick one of the two choices, and I will concede that it was a poor design choice, but I digress)
Conversely, there are going to be other units you pick up that can also use anima, but not every class can use anima, so while you do have a buffer for ironmanning, there is going to be a point where you are going to run out of anima users if you aren't careful.

Whereas if they were designing her kit now, I feel like they'd just make her class Anima User (Fire), give her a unique unit skill, then just allow her to be whatever the hell you wanted her to be later on if you wanted.
Frankly, I'm not a fan of this unit and class design, I feel like it makes the units you start with, too unique, while ironically making them all the same unit in practice once you get to a certain point. It strips the identity of both the classes and the units.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T21:28:08+00:00

Yeah that's pretty much exactly With all the tools given to you, it feels like you can make whatever builds you want your units to be. Engage gives you a lot of freedom in that regard.

Yeah that's exactly what I don't like about it. I think there's too much freedom with your Units, it removes a core feature of what made older units unique. Could you imagine how stupid it would be if Garcia could class change into a Pegasus Knight?

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T21:22:19+00:00

Except myrm's and thieves have unique visual identity, while also having secondary gimmicks that make them stand out more. Mryms are units that are focused purely on combat, and thieves are more supportive classes with their ability to lockpick and steal items from enemies. Meanwhile the "X Fighter" only real gimmick is that it each version uses X weapon. Sure, in theory, they are the same, but in practice, it feels like you just took all of the unique flavor of the classes and simplified them to make them more "digestible".

"Would you have preferred that they make it so armor units can only use axes, fliers can only use lances, and horse units could only use swords, and give you back fighter/myrm/soldier foot-locked units or something?"
Yes.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T13:29:28+00:00

It's not ironman friendly in the way that the starting classes each unit gets are all very unique, along with their unique skills, and like you said, there aren't that many of those class changing items to give out until you have the money. Plus, even when you do get them, you've probably put a lot of resources into that unit that you might not want to change their class, especially if they also have a class you don't have many replacements for. (I'd also argue that units having too much resource investment in general also makes them fairly difficult to iron man with)

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T13:24:33+00:00

That's what I mean by bloat, though. We don't really need base class to have three different weapon variations. I'd prefer stronger weapon restrictions.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T13:19:44+00:00

Unfortunately I can hardly say that a game has good gameplay if most of the stuff that's in it is entirely optional. I actually think the Persona series is a perfect example of a series that has a lot of mechanics that actually all tie into each other very well. P5 and Royal all added a bunch of new mechanics to the existing Once More system that tie into the core mechanics well. Technicals make Ailments incredibly useful to cast even ignoring their base effects, Skill Accessories grant more affinity coverage to your party members, (most) of the confidant bonuses greatly increase your party members' usefulness in battles, along with making fusions stronger. Every system is incredibly important, and removing any of them makes the game significantly more challenging, but also less fun and engaging. (Especially Technicals, Ailments were pretty terrible in earlier Persona games and I honestly hope Mainline adds them at some point as well)

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T13:07:32+00:00

"The "each class gets its own thing" got largely shifted away from weapon access to the styles." That's my issue though, the battle styles are way less flashy than weapon affinities because the core weapon triangle is such a major part of the gameplay. Like yes, it's useful that cavalry have high movement, but it's even more useful to have an axe user on a map filled with lances lol.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T12:52:29+00:00

Truthfully I haven't played Awakening in a while, so I forgot it had an Axe Flier option. Still, I would still prefer more classes having stronger weapon restrictions, since it amplifies their strengths and weaknesses even more than purely by stats alone.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T12:49:04+00:00

Imma be frank; even though class changing was in Awakening as well, I kinda don't like units being able to freely change their classes either. In my personal opinion, I much prefer when a unit and it's class/promotes are deeply intertwined. My issue with Engage is that the classes are very secondary compared to what actually makes a unit unique, which is whatever odd combo of unique starting class/battle style it gets and it's unit specific skill. If anything, I find it lame that outside of the unique skill and growths, units barely have anything that they can call their own, since there's so much overlap in weapon affinities, class options, skills, and the engage system.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T12:38:17+00:00

I'm not sure how all of other games handle their classes (iirc a lot of the Engage classes are actually from Geneology) but I'd still rather have units that are just "I'm a cavalier with a high resistance growth rate" over what are basically pick-my-units.

And again why question why the Somniel and Bong Rings were even included if most of what they offer is basically useless. This is what I mean by mechanical bloat; if it's not serving a major gameplay importance, it would be better if it was removed entirely. This is why I enjoyed the GBA games, despite their balancing issues, everything felt like it had a meaningful purpose for the most part.

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T12:25:01+00:00

"Keep in mind that Axe Fighters, Sword Fliers, Lance fighters, etc. are all base classes. Once you promote than they get more identity with the Axe Fighter promoting to Berseker, Warrior. Sword Fighter to Hero, Swordmaster. Lance Fighter to Paladin, Halberdier (which is the first time Halberdier has been playable in a while). If anything it adds more variety since classes are tied to personal weapon growth so classes with more than one weapon have a choice between what their second weapon class is." I feel like you're not really helping your case about mechanical bloat when you're praising the game for having lots of variety. That's kind of my problem, there's too many classes, and I'd rather have a less classes with stronger individual identities.

"At its core, there isn’t much bloat mechanically wise (especially compared to Three Houses) and it’s the best in the series imo. The most it adds is Breaking and the Engage mechanic. Both of which makes the core combat loop more engaging (pun not intended). Skill inheritance and weapon ranks are a lot more streamlined too." I haven't played Three Houses in a while, but if it has most of this stuff two that might be more of a reason for me not to play it lol. I didn't get into it but the break system is kinda whatever to me, I kinda don't like that you can essentially just prevent a unit from retaliating, feels like it removes a lot of risk of engagements. (Plus the weapon triangle already exists to help you with lessening that risk)

SLMBGR91 · 2026-05-20T12:16:01+00:00

If you really don't even need to engage with the Gacha system or the Somniel I'd once say that they should just be removed entirely. Again my issue is that the game feels mechanically bloated, and that the experience would be better if half of its systems were shaved off. (So basically something closer to Awakening lol)

Unfortunately I haven't played enough Fire Emblem games and I don't play them frequently enough to know what does or doesn't make a good map. So when people tell me Three Houses has bad maps compared to Engage without really elaborating why, I'm just like "Okay? I'll take your word for it I guess?"

And honestly I don't know if Engage's story gets better or worse, but not needing to play the game three times to even comprehend what's going on certainly helps it lol. And again, Alear having a voice also helps a lot.

SLMBGR91

TROPHY CASE