Lynsanity

Has the state of character and unit guides improved much since launch? Looking early on, I mostly found SEO scamming gaming sites and wikis that were primarily ad space. Really made me appreciate what Serenes Forest provides for Fire Emblem.

If you think about it Boucheron only joins on map 3, can't equip a ring until map 4, and starts with 300SP. (Vander and many later characters start with 500.) So 800 at ch8 isn't doing too bad. It took me about that long to get Alear to 1,000 without grinding, and they're available from ch1. Boucheron also has a foot-locked class and I find it hard to get him in as many encounters. Spamming for exp seems valid and you'll probably get there in the 3 maps before the soft deadline. Also I wouldn't worry about overleveling him since he'll be competing with some very strong recruits in the midgame. Oh yeah that's the other big implication with these seals, is you should pretty much never use a second seal before a master seal. That's just locking in 10 more lvls of unpromoted growths. Meanwhile you can switch between promoted classes from lvl 1. So I foresee lots of my units spending one instant in their promoted class before I switch them to the one I want, lol.

Also looking for this info. Currently at ch9 and facing the age-old question of how to use my master and second seals. If this were correct, I take it there would be no point demoting Vander to his base class either. Edit: OK, can confirm after diving into a few reddit threads. It's optimal to master seal as soon as possible. You are limited to buying 1 per chapter. From the sounds of it, it's actually difficult to train your early game units otherwise because later recruits are so powerful. Also Vandad starts at internal lvl 15 with those poor stats so there may be no saving him. This mechanic is such a departure from recent Fire Emblems it might deserve its own thread. Early promoting goes against every bone in my body, lol

Ok I found it, you have to go into a unit's Items menu, or Item Selection before a combat, and press X to switch the info from "In use" to "Performance". Why they hide it there is beyond me. This UI is going to take some getting used to. We've fallen so far from the 3DS touchscreen.

Am I blind or is there no way to see a weapon's weight in battle? I'm looking in unit details and it shows me the weight penalty on their stats, but no weight stat on the weapons in inventory. That seems.... limiting

Very interested in the pair of Etie and Boucheron since seeing their growths and personal skills. It's like they're meant to be reclassed into each other's classes lol. Axe fighter Etie and archer Boucheron, I may just try it. Etie's skill only seems useful on enemy phase, and there aren't that many opportunities to be an enemy phase archer. Boucheron's skill requires him to fight with other Backup classes. Unless he's stuck with a hand axe or always has someone to flank for him, it would be easier to proc with a good ranged class. But yes I'm aware they cover for the weaknesses of their base classes too. You like an axe attacker with high hit.

I mean, is there a support replaced entirely with "..."? Or a Soleil character with the flimsiest justifications for becoming suddenly into men in her S supports? (Not very salvageable source material there) My impression of this localization has resoundingly been "at least it's not another Fates." Fates gives me war flashbacks.

NoA twitter: "Fire Emblem engage might be a video game." FireEmblemJP: "Here is a rundown of every single Fire Emblem Engage player card customization option"

hissssssssss Stop making me go into the options to make your game playable please IS.

I'm most interested in inheritable skills since you get to keep those between reclassing and other emblem equips. They're tough to pick because you only get 2 on each unit. Here's the ones I'm most interested in grinding emblem supports just to get: Going by https://serenesforest.net/engage/pre-release/skills/ and not caring about DLC I'm going to be passing around Sigurd, Celica, Marth and Roy like crazy

"We didn't realize people were interested in learning more about this" seems to also be NoA's attitude towards the entire game.

I'm just now learning Chain Guard is a command, not a passive activation? This seems strange to me as I figured it was an enemy phase counterpart to Chain Attack. Instead you also have to commit to it on player phase if I'm getting this right. Maybe it was too good as a passive, or would actually get your qi adepts in trouble when there's multiple range attackers? I'm excited for all the utility footlocked classes are finally getting. It just seems like a lot of action economy placed on qi adepts in particular. They want to be healing, breaking bow/tome/dagger enemies, and setting up chain guard, but can only do 1 per turn.

Yes. Though I was already annoyed with it as far back as X and Y when it was set to "On" by default. I think difficulty easing things like this should always be opt-ins, not opt-outs.

Frankly I'm just glad Fire Emblem hasn't implemented an EXP share mechanic to keep all your units the same level. I'm scarred by my other favourite series, Pokemon, making Exp All mandatory and recently removing the "Set" battle style. The FE equivalent would be, idk, always prompting you to Turnwheel after every character loss, and auto-leveling even your benched characters. Of course series veterans will still be able to self-impose their own challenges. The only thing to discuss is how new players will ever find the same appeal of the series, if babying features are presented as the default playstyle. I always liken it to if a Mario platformer gave you invincibility and flight at the start of every level, unless you go into the settings and turn it off. That shouldn't be the default! But as long as game developers have these ideas of "people have less time to play video games now" or "we have to compete with mobile games", default settings will just keep getting easier and easier.

Story and characters both are going to be let down by typically awful English voice direction I think. I watched some localized cutscenes and support convos in the preview videos, and cringed through every one. Not only Saturday morning cartoon vibes, but also some wrong intonations in context. That's likely a step down from Three Houses which allowed most of its characters to sound pretty natural.