Today, various media outlets shared their previews for Fire Emblem Engage, which releases in 2 weeks. Back in December, a few outlets already shared their previews, but not on this scale.
In no particular order…
Note: Here’s a playlist of all the featured previews.
GameXplain
GameXplain actually has 3 videos; this one seems the meatiest.
The video begins with the game’s title screen. The background appears to be in the Divine Dragon’s Castle and it’s where a lot of stuff happens at the beginning.
Then we see some familiar cutscenes, like Alear waking up to Framme and Clanne, being rescued by Lumera’s dragon form, etc. Plus part of a support conversation between Alear and Framme, presumably.
The previews all seem to show footage from up to Chapter 8 or so. Still, please be advised there are some mild spoilers.
Last week, many media outlets and YouTubers unloaded their previews of Three Houses for eager fans to sink their teeth into. At the time, I was away on a secret mission (trapped in a waterlogged sports building), so I wasn’t able to follow all the coverage. But now that I’m back, let’s get right to it!
There’s no better place to start than the very beginning. If you’re curious, Gamereactor shared the game’s opening movie. Within, there are a mixture of scenes we’ve seen and others that are new. Because there’s a lot to cover, I won’t go through every single scene–just two of the more notable ones.
Around the 0:15 mark, a few crests can be seen flying around. The first three ones are Seiros, Blaiddyd and Riegan (the crests of the three house leaders), then most of the other crests follow. Unless I missed something, a few crests are absent–most notably Gautier, but also Cichol. The final crest is the protagonist’s Crest of Flames.
Later, around the 0:42 mark, there’s a character we haven’t seen before–a bearded, slightly tanned male–riding alongside some soldiers. From his general appearance, especially his dark hair and yellow-ish clothes, some fans suspect that he’s a relative of Claude’s, perhaps his father even?
Moving on, GameXplain uploaded the first cutscene. Unlike recent titles that begin in media res, Three Houses seems to start with the war between Seiros and Nemesis a thousand or so years ago. More precisely, it occurs in the imperial year 91, on the Tailtean Plains, in what is now Faerghus territory.
The battle proceeds like you’d expect, then the game-changing moment occurs. A golden blade–the Sword of Creation–comes flying from the sky, burning the nearby soldiers. The blade was thrown by Nemesis, who comes to retrieve it. Around this time, weird glowing red spots appear throughout the battlefield.
If you’re a Nintendo fan and have been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ll need to know that Fire Emblem Three Houses got a ton of coverage at E3 2019, and has since, been receiving favorable reviews from gaming sites since then. Within the past 24 hours, the English web site has gone up for the game, and many powerful game reviews have shared their dozen+ hour long gameplay feelings with the web. Their videos are of varying lengths and their sites can bring you all over the web, but fortunately, I’m here to consolidate what’s been released so far, to make your lives a bit easier as fans like me, who don’t have the game yet, but crave more knowledge.
Please note, all information listed below, will be my interpretations of each reviewer’s review, and any words used will not reflect my opinions of what is seen. Please excuse any confusing grammar.
GameXplain brings in a point of view from a Black Eagle’s perspective, sharing right off the bat that there’s plenty of thought that needs to go into picking what feels comfortable for you to play with between the three houses, from personality to gameplay feel. They express how things start off a tad slow, more implying that it’s different from a traditional Fire Emblem game that throws battles at you left and right. Additionally, the mock-weapon triangle system through skills that simulate a triangle feels good. The biggest change feels with Magic, in that you no longer buy tomes, and more or less learn new spells or enhancements to older spells to keep them relevant as the game goes on.
The character supports feels pretty good; better than expected, but one thing about the characters is that the “extra character” that you can recruit from a different house, there’s two ways to go about it. One method lets you borrow a character that brings their story but not gain exp, which is still good if you need the help, and the other method allows you to outright recruit another unit as long as you follow a certain path for criteria, like focusing teaching a certain weapon type.
GameXplain did a 2 hour stream of the now released Japanese version of Echoes, which you can see here.
Derrick shows off the new prologue of the game, where Alm and friends are kids assisting Mycen fight off some invaders, before Celica goes on her own way to begin her training as a Priestess. Afterwards, the stream kicks into the video we saw from the original trailer announcement.
Fast forward to the present; the new village mechanics are shown. Similar to Shin Megami Tensei IV, there are static images of characters to talk to, which can include townspeople offering hints or even your own allies sharing their backstories.
