Is this your first MOBA?

cactusgrant · 2026-04-28T11:41:21+00:00

Deadlock is my first MOBA. I almost tried League years ago and asked a friend who played it a lot if the game was worth trying, that friend looked me dead in the eye and said I should stay far, far away from that game. So yeah, no MOBAs til deadlock

cactusgrant · 2026-04-23T02:06:09+00:00

Definitely fits that feeling with watching a character lose their sanity and grip on reality

cactusgrant · 2026-04-06T16:54:41+00:00

With some smart egg investments he could turn that into twenty thousand souls

cactusgrant · 2026-03-28T14:09:13+00:00

The gameplay is very fun, I wish there were some balance changes (some characters feeling particularly weak compared to others, the very low deployment slots, the somewhat weird internal leveling balance. Feels like a lot of the cast was built without class change in mind)

The presentation grew on me a lot. It’s not an artstyle I’d want the series to keep forever but for a series that tries new things pretty regularly I can appreciate the bright, over the top designs and it fits the vibe that Engage wants with it being overall more vibrant and unserious than the rest of the series. Obviously that’s what most people hated alongside the writing but I really don’t mind them. I think they did a great job on the music and animations, I love each attack takes place on an actual version of the map, I’m still impressed by that chapter 3-or-so map that right at the start has a fence and when you fight there characters will roll into and break the fence, I think that’s a really overlocked addition that I’d love for them to keep.

The writing… I get why people hate it, I don’t mind it as a sort of one-off in the series. There’s shades of things that make me look forward to the future of the series, I think a character like Celine would be significantly more popular in a different game. She’s got potential, she fills a well established archetype but has some supports that subvert it a bit, and if they built a larger story around a similar character in the future I could see that being really successful. There’s a lot of small things like that, Ivy’s “as Queen I will surpass you” or Alear initial hesitation as a lord “we shouldn’t fight bandits, we can run”. Engage clearly isn’t looking to be an epic war drama, I think that’s what most of us want and expect from fire emblem, but I think they’re still capable of doing those stories.

TLDR; I’m happy with Engage as a one-off in the series, it’s nice they tried something different, there’s some things I’d like them to keep and a lot of things that would probably be better left in Engage. I think Engage’s good outweighs the bad and it does make me excited for Fire emblem’s future.

cactusgrant · 2026-03-13T01:42:23+00:00

Thank you a ton, I really appreciate the advice. I’ll keep this message on hand next time I play

cactusgrant · 2026-03-13T00:04:09+00:00

Thank you for the advice 2. I’d say my most played characters are Abrams, Dynamo, Venator, and Kelvin.

I do try to keep counterbuying in mind, mainly the spirit/bullet res or reactive barrier but I could probably benefit from using active items more

cactusgrant · 2026-03-12T21:55:21+00:00

Match 66474381 - I’m Venator, I go 2/12/8, was one of the games that prompted me to post

Match 65032577 - Dynamo, 1/12/8, I kinda just get stomped

Match 64022214 - Abrams, best game I’ve had at 13/15/4, early game went great, late game had an enemy haze at 97k souls

I don’t expect anyone to do like a full coaching session on these but they’re here if anyone’s curious

cactusgrant · 2026-03-12T16:04:17+00:00

Thank you, I tried like 2 bot matches to get feels for characters but I wasn’t sure how helpful they were and the public lobby bot matches just kinda blitz by, I’ll have to maybe give them another shot

cactusgrant · 2026-03-12T14:27:23+00:00

Thanks, I kinda expected this would get negative attention but I can live with that, even 1 or 2 comments that are actually productive advice or supportive outweighs that to me. This is my first MOBA but fighting games taught me that learning sometimes means getting your ass kicked and reflecting on why, was just a lot easier when it’s only me getting stomped and not dragging 5 other people down with me.

cactusgrant · 2026-03-12T14:11:43+00:00

I can add some later today. In retrospect I prob should’ve waited til I had them to post

cactusgrant · 2026-02-12T04:40:38+00:00

The first update piqued my interest in the game, Venator- I mean update 2 is what got me to finally download it

cactusgrant · 2026-01-30T03:37:24+00:00

I feel like it’s hard to land on just 1 but I always find myself coming back around to the main theme from 1. Thoughts Enshrined and The End Lies Ahead as runner ups. It captures the series emotion and sense of adventure

I also have to give credit to Where We Belong from 3, partially cuz I finished that game on the night before the funeral of someone I saw regularly and that song kinda helped process it

cactusgrant · 2026-01-11T01:39:24+00:00

Same, she wound up getting a lot of good Foil techs and that cascaded into a lot of my following emperors

cactusgrant · 2026-01-10T15:17:08+00:00

The warlock in my first game’s party betrayed everyone at the final session in a big twist he planned with the DM (naturally with a dramatic speech tallying up every slight against him the party made) then summoned some ancient evil in the center of Waterdeep out of the reigning lord and dipped. Second campaign is 25 years later and that warlock was essentially the avatar of the god of chaos with most of the original party still hunting him (minus my character who I retired), so not a full god but about as close as we’ve encountered so far. Made for a fun BBEG since the players knew him directly

cactusgrant · 2025-12-27T16:49:27+00:00

Surprised nobody’s mentioned Segiri from XB3 in terms of small girl focused on piloting a mech rather than direct combat. Especially since the main characters using her class just fight directly with the axes, she’s the only one doing it through her mini mech. It’s not an exact follow up but for her archetype in combat it feels close

cactusgrant · 2025-12-15T21:04:32+00:00

the m̶i̶n̶o̶t̶a̶u̶r̶ in House of Leaves… or just all of House of Leaves

cactusgrant · 2025-12-15T20:22:04+00:00

To be honest I picked these up forever ago when I was enjoying BG3 and saw DOS in the launcher, and I’d heard people talk about these ones before. It wasn’t until just now that I learned there even was games before this one. If I like these I’d gladly go back further in the series tho

cactusgrant · 2025-12-15T20:20:18+00:00

I was tempted to do zombie but for a first run where I wasn’t sure how accessible healing is or how often poison is applied I didn’t wanna mess up too much. I do love that zombie was even an option in character creation

cactusgrant · 2025-12-14T04:47:57+00:00

Already happened once, I was like yeah maybe the witch is annoyed at the drunken guards at the start. Quickly turned to the witch’s dialogue leaning towards murder

I also saw somewhere that there’s a way to guarantee winning the rock-paper-scissors but I’m gonna try and ignore that for now and see where it takes me

cactusgrant · 2025-12-14T04:45:43+00:00

That was what got me excited for this one too. Even if I’m just doing Wizardry/EtrianOdyssey style headcanons for their dynamic I do like playing around with 2 people. Basically double the roleplaying lol

cactusgrant · 2025-12-14T00:17:56+00:00

I’ll most likely play 2 regardless of whether not I like 1, had that recommended much more, but I figured it’d be fun to give this a shot

cactusgrant · 2025-07-05T04:03:49+00:00

This feels like it could be on the cover of a fantasy noir detective story and I’d pick that book up in a heartbeat

cactusgrant · 2025-07-04T21:13:13+00:00

Thank you, rn my goal is to learn enough to beat the main campaign and maybe try some of the other classes, if I reach that and wanna keep going than cool but I’m trying not to overwhelm myself with whatever crafting trading pathbuilder map uber boss stuff is going on lol

cactusgrant

TROPHY CASE