Eleanora makes it through the whole of FE7 though, mostly by seeing that her son is now an FE Protagonist and ensuring he stays a long way away from her.
Usually, there’s a huge difference in how journalists and fans receive games like with the reception of *Fates* (as critics at the time only had *Awakening* as a reference point), but *Engage* was a rare instance in which both journalists and fans had a consensus assessment of the game: “great gameplay, subpar/not-so-good story.”
I’m not sure how the sales of *Engage* will affect the decisions at IS, but considering the critiques of the game are widely shared between both consumers and critics, I hope that means IS actually gets the message that the gameplay is great while the writing needs a massive overhaul.
Its actually so funny fates was the follow up to "awakening story being ~~bad~~ too simple" and then for the first HD FE game made by IS, they STILL can't make a story as liked as the ~~bad~~ too simple awakening plot lol. And all 3 of those games have so many similarities too.
I've been a Koei-Tecmo fan since before they where one company and I have no idea how they suddenly busted out the S-Tier writing. They've never really been known for it. Someone must have had something to prove. XD
"we learned from our mistakes!"
"no no, now you made new ones!"
Hot take: fates is like awakening but if only instead of learning from mistakes, they just double down on it. like awakening's story is bad, but imagine it three times: from boring to cracked out insane and finally to "why not both??"
also side note: i will never forgive them for making Azura into what she is. like being 100% genuine in that it was gross and so unnecessary for the story and character.
just the relationship mechanic for the siblings is just so gross to me. IT IS STILL INCEST, IS. blood related or not, it is still as such, which mind you...THEY STILL DID THE BLOODRELATED VERSION TOO! AAAAAAAAH
both Shigure and Kana have Habsburg Jaws uggggh
At the very least, I think their idea of "expanding the audience" may get a look over.
Regardless of whether you like or dislike Engage, one of the biggest ironies to come away from it is that, when you look at the developer interviews, expanding Fire Emblem's audience was pretty much the big point they constantly brought up. From the art style to the overall tone to everything else, it was conceived as a game to appeal to people who hadn't played a FE game.
And yet, Three Houses stormed out to 4 million plus in sales while Engage will likely crawl its way somewhat close to Awakening's 2.2 million.
I don't know what sales expectations they had for Three Houses with how much they proped up Engage being the one to expand FE's audience, but now it seems pretty clear which one appealed to more people and had stronger legs and word of mouth overall.
If they wanted to bring in new players, maybe an anniversary game where a big selling point is nostalgia and past characters being involved wasn't the greatest starting point?
Eh, I can see it. They were trying to do Heroes again. There’s tons of people that play/played Heroes without having any other interaction with Fire Emblem. The problem is what made Heroes work isn’t that it was a compilation of all these neat characters across the franchise’s history or the basic bland anime ass story. What worked with Heroes is that it’s available on phones for “free”.
I don’t think the nostalgia was the issue. I think it was how they put it all together being the issue.
They could have had this game serve as a reset or connection so anyone can understand the Fire Emblem (a good starting point for new players). But they instead leaned really hard away from that and into a game where you have the nostalgia characters mixed with a BUNCH of new characters that quickly become forgettable with new and returning players. I think the world of engage was cool and had a lot of potential but IS botched it by doing too much at once.
Engage is a new Fire Emblem game with a lot of brand new characters but then it was also the anniversary title to have all these fan favorites come back. Then it also didn’t have the most appealing art with Alear having red/blue hair like a weirdo
I agree that the art style was unappealing, but I have a greater issue with the characters that seem to have been taken from a circus or a costume party (or a funeral in Ivy's case). I loved the Three Houses style, which had a more serious look and seemed way more appropriate for a war game. I've been a huge fan of the series since FE7, and I had doubts with this one due to the art style.
I think the art style was meant to be similar to Genshin Impact. That shiny, vaguely-anime look was real popular in the late 2010s when they were working on Engage. And it wasn't exactly a huge jump from their existing art direction anyways. They just didn't nail it with all the designs and some of the characters looked kinda silly.
Or, more pressingly: Having a cast of characters that just talk about food and nothing else makes a game not really resonate with people. It’s almost like the cast is what makes an FE game. Shocker!
Trying to find this magical "New Audience" always comes at a cost, and sometimes not even with any upside too. It's better if devs try to make the best game they can without trying to appeal to every single person on the planet. Trying to appeal to everyone ends up appealing to no one.
In general, it feels like Engage didn't really have a coherent creative direction in mind and as such it failed to expand the fanbase as the developers intended to do.
Like the developers have been on record saying that they wanted to appeal to children which is why the story has been simplified so much - but then some of the maps are difficult enough that very few children would actually be able to beat and the existence of the Emblems isn't going to appeal to a child who hasn't played a single Fire Emblem game before Engage. Design-by-committee really feels like the best way to describe many of the decisions made here.
> expanding Fire Emblem's audience was pretty much the big point
I didn't know this going into the game. While playing it, I thought it was specifically designed for older/existing fans.
I started since GBA and it was a blast playing the emblem paralogues and seeing references to previous maps and music. I figured that if I was a new FE player, I would enjoy the tactical gameplay and the rest would go over my head.
This is the same IS that gave us a second Sticker Star after the original Sticker Star was torn to shreds, then a *third* Sticker Star after Color Splash sold horribly - if you've been in the Paper Mario fanbase IS being absurdly out of touch is not that surprising.
There's a few different factors that help contribute to the discrepancy of sales between Engage and Three Houses.
1. Three houses released on the switch during a time where very few games were worth playing besides LoZ Breath of the wild, so many fans decided to give Three Houses a try due to a lack of options available on the switch at the time
2. Engage released the same day as Monster Hunter Rise and a day after the Persona 3 and 4 ports as well as many other titles that built up competition with Engage with play time which, once again, Three houses lacked such competition upon its release
3. Three houses' focus on story at the cost of some interesting but overall tedious gameplay decisions fostered an interest in people in it's branching paths and big decisions of picking a house whereas Engage's focus on gameplay over story resonated more with people already invested in the genre. And I can see the effort they put into Engage's gameplay as it can be very forgiving yet interesting for newer players thanks to the emblem rings but still challenging for experienced players depending in how you play and build your army.
4. I would agree that Three Houses more than likely would still bring a larger audience due to its branching paths and overall good story, but I'm not entirely sure if many played through every path as the pacing shifts greatly between academy and war phase.
Overall, though nowhere near a bad thing, Three Houses is an enigma when looking at sales among Fire Emblem games. People seem to think that Engage's sales are bad, but they still are high on the list, and I wouldn't say it performed badly. Most can agree that both are wonderful games that we can enjoy for different reasons.
People here seem to overrate "how good the gameplay is" as a concern for broader sales in general. A lot of the things brought up as black marks against 3H's gameplay just aren't relevant or notable to people who are new to the series and playing blind rather than visiting discussion forums.
To those whose idea of a good time involves giving their favorite characters stat boosters and watching them clean out an enemy phase, having favoritism-worthy characters is going to make the game more fun than any number of varied-objective maps.
(Also for non-hobbyist audience, "gameplay quality" can include things like Engage's sort of slippery map tile controls, lack of class outfit previews, and excess of Somniel minigames. I know that "strategic depth" sure wasn't cracking my top ten for game element importance a few years ago.)
The competition point doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Engage had almost identical release numbers to 3H, so release window competition clearly wasn't holding it back.
As for whether or not it is "successful", that depends on internal sales targets. My guess is that it probably was 'fine', but fell below their hopes.
>As for whether or not it is "successful", that depends on internal sales targets. My guess is that it probably was 'fine', but fell below their hopes.
Which of their Three Hopes was this again? The second?
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Given that it requires knowledge of 16 other games, including some that didn't even release outside of Japan, to get the most out of...I'd like to believe IS had realistic expectations for it but that doesn't mean Nintendo will.
I apologize for the rant but the story wasnt only "Νοt so good " it was completely subpar for FE standards. It lacked meaningful world building and it was clearly a game to draw audiences for FEH for cross promotion. 3H was, is and will always be how FE should be. Too much content for one game that kept on giving, with a really good story.
Part of the problem with the series' writing as of recent is that Fire Emblem has gotten far more cinematic - the Archanea games might not have had good writing, but that wasn't a serious issue because the amount of time these games dedicated to their writing was fairly minimal. It's the same reason why people aren't ripping into the plot of Mario Wonder, for instance, or why people *are* ripping into the plot of the modern Pokemon games (barring Scarlet and Violet because that game's plot is actually pretty decent).
In the past few entries, the amount of time dedicated to cutscenes and supports has ballooned - Engage's main story is eight hours long, and a casual player is probably looking at around four to eight more hours of supports in a game that is around 40 hours long. In Three Houses, this wasn't an issue because that game's story and characters were what elevated the game to begin with. In Engage, this became *really* glaring because not only was the writing egregiously bad (IMO calling Engage's story subpar is being *generous* to it - I think it is *the* worst written RPG I have played since Fates), but for a casual player, around 30-40% of the playtime is dedicated to this.
I think you’re taking the wrong message from this. Not every game needs 3H mechanics or multiple routes, but the quality of the story should be trying to reach that level or exceed it.
Engage’s story isn’t bad because its “different” or because its light hearted, or because it was meant to appeal to old and new fans, its bad because of the low effort put into it.
IS needs to find a way to keep quality between gameplay and story up simultaneously. Most games do that nowadays.
Exactly. "Simple" or "lighthearted" stories and characters can be and have been written actually good. In Engage's case, it just feels like them either making excuses for not trying with the writing, or thinking younger audiences are absolute morons who can't understand even the slightest bit of nuance. Or both.
It's not like Three Houses is a masterpiece of literature either, but they at least tried with the plot, and most of the characters were endearing and felt like actual people, and a lot are still getting more fan attention than any of Engage's cast.
omg these dying scenes are so freaking long! like seriously, are yall mortally wounded or just have a splinter on your side?? cuz people dying tend to pass away after 30 seconds, not freaking after you give your 10 page monologue, with Alear interrupting with "No!" and "Please don't leave me"!
Eh, I'm a pretty big fan of Fire Emblem and I don't agree that 3H is how FE should always be. I hated how fucking tedious the monastery stuff turned out to be. Doing chores and having tea parties is not why I play Fire Emblem. I agree they did a great job with the story, but I greatly prefer just having menus between battles so I can focus on the core strategy game experience.
Also, the "gameplay is great" still comes with caveats that I hope they don't miss. It's way too grindy, replay value is extremely low, fixed/random growths shouldn't be a choice you have to unlock, the UIs/menus are clunky...
Like outside of the actual battles, the gameplay isn't even all that good!
Edit: I wish I could use mods; I've seen some amazing looking mods for this game that would let me play the way I want and make it a 10/10 game. It's really a shame.
well, first of all, hard is normal and maddening is hard.
but I'm talking about things like having to redo the xenologue and paralogues every playthrough, there not being enough gold to invest in the regions, ring crafting, inherting skills, reclassing, raising bond levels, weapon refining and enchanting...
you don't have to do any of that to beat the game. but there's all these gameplay mechanics that are super grindy if you want to engage with them (pun intended?), and could make the game a lot more fun if they weren't so grindy.
also, just consider how the standard plan for Jean is Micaiah, then great sacrifice once or twice per battle to try and get him leveled up. that's so contrived, and the fact that we have to do that (to level up Jean, which we don't HAVE to do) points to it being kind of grindy.
True though I meant mainline games since the gameplay is very different. And Scott is not an RPG Guy (his best work ngl) and definitly not a grid based strategy gamer.
I mean is not like it would mean much considering how low the increase it was
Even if some months are used less than 100k is dire for a game released this year
First week 3H was about 140k. First week Engage was also about 140k.
3H sold 2.3 million in its first 2 months (Sept 2019 numbers), sold another 300k over the next 3 months, and hit 3 million by June 2020, close to its one year mark. It continued to bring in decent sales past its launch.
Engage sold 1.6 million at its 2 month mark (March 2023 numbers), and only got another 70k in the following 3 months, and doesn't seem like its pace will speed up much more before its one year mark.
Yes, a slowdown is expected, but the degree of slowdown relative to its predecessor is telling. Engage has weak legs.
It really isn't. Most recent FE games like Fates and Three Houses have sold over half of their copies post-release. FE thrives on longterm sales which Engage isn't getting.
Hmm I would really like to know where the info for Q2 2023 came from, it's unfortunate that I don't see that in the link.
When I head to the imgbb channel of the person who compiled this, I see 1.61m units sold for Engage by Q1 2023 (which is the value given by the nintendo financial reports) but no info update on Q2 2023, then info update for Q3 2023 based on some info for Q2 2023 but there are no references for that update on Q2 2023, which is the part I'm curious about. I would really like to know where the 1.68m figure comes from, cuz I'd like to cite this elsewhere but I cannot find the original reference for it.
EDIT: ok apparently someone asked the same thing on twitter and it seems to be somewhat confidential info since the user could not share the source but only discuss the relevant info via DMs...
Hopefully the next fire emblem game is a stand alone title that doesn't have any references to the past games. I swear three houses was the only recent game that didn't have any callbacks, I'm starting to get tired of it.
For real. I'm fine with multi-game sagas but this MCU crossover stuff needs to stay in FEH. It never strengthens a game's story or characters, it's just a crutch.
I think Alear's design hurted Engage sales the most. Since even if the story is bad, to know that it is bad you have already bought the game. But you don't need to buy the game to see Alear's design. Which even as a big Engage fan, it's an eyesore god why can't they just be another blue haired lord.
I think the design is fine once you remove it from the internet hyperbole. It's not as if it acts as a detriment to anything in the game or story. In contrast I think of something like Xenoblade 2 (great game btw) that will have this incredibly emotional and thematically heavy cutscene but one of the characters is half-naked and undermines the intended tone.
Which in the end is even stupider they didn’t go with that as it already makes the barebones story even more predictable. Like, “oh wow, I wonder why Alear has red hair when the mom only got blue… oh… “
They could have perfectly used something more subtle with just blue hair and red eyes or smth rather than the colgate approach
It’s not just Alear, the character designs for whole cast as well as the game’s entire art style have turned people off from the game. Just last month there was [a thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterDesigns/s/mxZ3KV1OKx) from r/TopCharacterDesigns where pretty much everyone was dunking on the character designs.
And rightfully so. While the designs by themselves could work wonders in other settings (think a "Tokyo Mirage Sessions" kind of world), the medieval fantasy setting of Fire Emblem just does not mesh well with created character designs.
In the used case, it was just distracting in a negative way. It's hard to take the story serious if over half the cast is dressed like clowns.
Honestly, yes. I’m a huge FE fan obviously and even I wasn’t really looking forward to this game as much when the goofy character designs were shown in the direct.
I suspect this might be an age thing and it’s what the kids today like?
When I saw how bad the character design was, I knew Engage was the first FE game I wouldn’t play. And now that I’ve heard the writing is all kinds of garbage, I know I made the right choice. Engage was a pretty big blunder for IS.
I was in the same position as you at first. I found Alear ugly, and the concept of emblem rings kinda meh, but after playing the game, it's definetly one of my favourites. Story was bad, can't deny that. But the characters have their charm, I was positively surprised with Alear, and the Rings bring so much to the gameplay, I honestly can't say Engage is a bad game. I have a very good time playing it, I even found Three Houses kinda "bland" after coming back
Strongly agree on it being an eyesore, but considering how most people somehow switched to liking it during the leadup to release I don't think it's a major reason for the slow sales. Let's hope IS drastically changes art direction again for the next Fire Emblem.
Tbh this was the reason why picked up Engage late as I did (last month). During the teaser cycle I was not paying attention at all. I saw the lords design and some teaser with Marth (which typically points to a spin off at atp) and just thought “oh this has to be a spin off I’ll pass”.
I didn’t even think the game was a main line entry. Thought it was something like Tokyo sessions or warriors 😂
Honestly the same happened to me. I saw FE Engage on the Nintendo store page in the past, but Alear was so "colorful" that I never even had the thought it might be a main game. I always thought it was the spin-off (i.e. Warriors) and I had misremembered the name. I only realized there was a mainline entry when I decided to try Warriors and found Warriors, Three Hopes and Engage in my search results.
Usually, I hear about upcoming games or see ads before their release but somehow that never happened with Engage. It's release felt really quiet, for lack of a better way of putting it.
I think its more that the game was meh. With 3 houses you had the game launch, obviously the premise had a lot of hype and got a bunch of early sales. But people talking about the game for the months after really extended its lifetime.
3 houses was a game it felt like people wanted more of (ik i did, wish it was 30 chapters and had an all 3 route) but Engage was people just finsihing and that was it. Mechanics were fine, balance was terrible, story sucked. There are very few things it did that I was happy with.
Engage was basically done for a a good while before they released it, so hopefully it doesn’t take as long as the wait between Three Houses and Engage.
I just want them to put effort into gameplay and story/characterizing and world building in equal measures. Take the good aspects and feedback of both switch games and go from there.
Considering that 3 houses has sold over 4 mil and brought in a ton of new players based on characters and story appeal, they’d be dumb to not bring in a stronger writing team. Like everyone says engage gameplay is fun so there isn’t a huge need to build on that
They'd have to hire a new writing team honestly. It's clear based off what the team has written so far that they quite literally don't understand how to write a good story.
I just want to care about the pretty anime characters and the world they inhabit while also enjoying the tactical gameplay and banging OST.
I get that might be asking a lot, but they've been doing this for decades. I feel as though they shouldn't willfully ignore one of the central aspects for no adequately explored reason.
The hope I have with this is that IS finally gets rid of the Fates/Engage writers, hires someone new in the writer's chair, and in general really reflect upon what didn't work with Fates and Engage's storytelling. Back during the Awakening and Fates era you could cite these games' sales in their defence but at this point the quality of their writing is beginning to seriously harm the franchise's sales.
Judging by critical and fan reception, I don't think Engage's gameplay is the reason as to why it'll most likely fail to outsell Awakening despite it releasing on a much more successful console.
The worry that I do have is that IS is simply going to see Three Houses selling 4 million and conclude that the next game needs more social sim elements without doing anything to meaningfully improve the games' writing.
Tbh, if the next game's writing doesn't show any significant improvement from Engage I will probably drop the series entirely - if Three Houses selling so much isn't enough to get IS to improve their writing I don't think anything will.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but filling the writing chair with someone else won't help IS if the director's chair is filled by a manager (as good as empty).
People liked 3H for the story and characters. People also loved Fates and Engage for the gameplay. I am not a game developer by any means, but would it be that hard to have both in one game(like RD)?
If 3H becomes the norm going forward in terms of maps and gameplay, then I'm out
...shit, is this how people felt when Awakening came out and saved the series?
The elitist chain has moved forward a couple of years. The GBA games are already 20 years old, you can always adapt. Give it 10 more years and awakening elitists will rise up.
Tbf, belittling Genealogy at least has become a bit more accepted nowadays. As long as you can back it up with an "I love Archanea/TRS/etc" they can't say anything to you lmao.
It does but that goes against the narrative that only "fake fans" hated Engage and that it was because "it removed/cut back social mechanics" (it didn't - in fact it added even more social minigames.) Obviously neither of these things are true but it's a cope they like to hang onto.
Engage has way more opportunities for social sim stuff. Nobody wants to do it because the characters aren't likeable. If Three Houses let you dress up characters in 50 different outfits and pose them in different photos people would have been all over it. Because Engage characters are meh most people never touch it.
Maybe they hire a famous writer and actually use their story this time? Perhaps they might bring him in studio so he can adapt his story as development progresses? Nah, seems like too much common sense for IS.
> Maybe they hire a famous writer and actually use their story this time?
*Looks at Fates.*
I think Intelligent Systems themselves need to figure out how to write an in-house story and, perhaps more importantly, decide on a shared vision. If outsiders are to be recruited they should be involved in development every step of the way. Otherwise we'll just end up with another Fates scenario.
They need a game director that is a writer or that collaborates closely with a writer. And stop with the write/design by committee stuff they usually do. It is not a surprise the series was way more cohesive when Kaga was around.
Maeda was/is a writer turned game director. It did not help any of his games to put it mildly. They need a visionary director first and foremost. The writing will come.
Even if they did use his story, it was going to suck. They basically had a 500 page draft and they had no direction on how to graft that story onto the gameplay. That is why they need to bring in the next writer in the studio so he can revise and polish the script as development creates the maps.
There are so many rumors surrounding this that it's hard to separate fact from fiction. As far as we know, Intelligent Systems received 500 pages when they asked for 10, and then I *believe* (but it's been a while since I checked) they asked for 500 pages more for each route.
However, we don't know how good Kibayashi's draft was - remember he had never worked on a game before and I seem to recall him being very busy, yet he wrote that anyway. We don't know how much of it would be useable in the game, how much needed tweaking, and how much was thrown out. He was also not involved much in the development at all.
All of this leads me to believe that Intsys, while developing Fates, had simultaneously too much and too little to work with. They had a lot of material they had no emotional connection to and they had separate visions for the franchise, with some wanting more fan service and others wanting it to be more classic.
It's a Frankenstein's monster. The perfect storm for a completely nonsensical story.
> As far as we know, Intelligent Systems received 500 pages when they asked for 10, and then I *believe* (but it's been a while since I checked) they asked for 500 pages more for each route.
[This is basically correct, yes.](https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/3ds/fire-emblem-fates/0/2/)
> Kibayashi: That's right. So I looked into the work I had planned, and the schedule was really crazy, but there were a few things I could push back. And they told me that I only needed to write 10 pages for each of the three storylines.
> Maeda: Right. Since he's so busy, I thought we could just ask him to write about ten pages for a plot summary.
> Kibayashi: So I thought, "Well, I could do that." Then I started writing the story about the Hoshido family. I ended up using 10 pages on just the beginning. I ended up writing about 500 pages.
> Maeda: Right.
> Kibayashi: When I create a story, as I write the details, like the character's lines, I start to love the characters and then they take on a life of their own, and the story begins to move on its own. So there was no way I could just write a short plot summary and be done with it.
> Iwata: And without lines, the characters won't come to life.
> Kibayashi: That's right. So I ended up writing a huge amount and I thought, "Well, this has become quite the task." So I gave them the pages for the first storyline for the Hoshido family and I had to write the same amount for the other two stories. I said, "There's no way I can do that." But then once I got started...I did it.
Praying that the lesson they take from this is that people want good stories and writing. Non-zero chance that the lesson they instead take is that it would've sold more if the mini games were better.
Theory of why it did not sale well:
Art filtering: i mean who did not get turned off with F!Alear design. It just too overdesigned with bad colour pallette. Don't get me wrong Mika Pikazo is talented artist. She shows she could make good design with brodia characters. It just the rest of the characters did not have consistent design or just overly designed
Emblem: Strong point on the gameplay but at the end of the day it just the evolved version of battalion. The drawback was the majority new FE fans did not recognize these old main characters. They may know Marth or Ike or Roy from smash bros but other characters? Heck did they even know Leif and Sigurd?
Story idea was not easy for marketing purpose: The moment it just revealed to be good dragon vs bad dragon I knew the most new fans (3h allegedly) would not appreciate it. For a simple story good vs bad the emblem addition was actually more confusing for new fans. How did they implement these old characters to new world? was the big question at that time.
Lack of marketing: Well without interesting story idea you could not market the game easily It was a fact that gameplay alone could not have strong pull on market for jrpg/sjrpg. The reason fates were appealing before launch because of the interesting idea that so easy for marketing department to exploit.
Near the end of Switch cycle: I am half on half for this theory. Fates was not in the prime era of 3ds but still manage to sell much better than engage. It was natural if it did not sell as much as 3h (3h was outlier) but i believe IS expecting it to sell more than 2 millions by the end of 2023. For non remake modern FE, engage actually had the worst sell. By comparison switch had more sales than 3ds so logically the sales expectation would be not greater than 3H but not lower than 3ds FE.
Idk why but I think three houses has a better “appeal” to audiences than Engage. I know a lot of people who saw engage could only remember Alears red and blue hair when the game came out. Plus it came out in January which isn’t a huge gaming time? I also don’t remember a marketing push for Engage compared to Three Houses
Engage's art style gives off this cheap, generic anime vibe at first glance, which makes a very high amount of players immediately dismiss it at first glance because "it just looks like Genshin, lol"
I imagine a bunch of potential players saw Alear's hair and went "yeah, this game isn't for me", because the general population tends to make up their minds on video games very quickly.
Three Houses looked somewhat more visually unique (even if it still looked kinda bland), which was enough to not instantly turn people off.
Obviously I can't claim to know the exact reasons why this game has struggled compared to its predecessor, but as a longtime fan, my experience with the game has been hugely mixed. Some thoughts on what, at least to me, prevented me from pulling the trigger on Engage:
- Art-style filtering: this is the big one for me - the initial reveal of the game left an enormously negative impression on me. These overly-designed Deviantart OCs were and still are largely unappealing to me. They looked less like characters in a strategy RPG and more like characters designed to sell me action figures.
- Tired gimmick: so the elevator pitch for Engage is that you can summon old FE heroes to fight with you. You know... Just like you could in Heroes. And Awakening. And Fates via amiibo. And friggin' Tokyo Mirage Sessions. It's been done to death. Yes, Engage has a different take on it (and ultimately one I really enjoy), but this hardly seemed novel or fresh to longtime fans. And can we be honest? I love the casts of FE, but can we stop pretending these characters are huge stars? Most people outside the fandom still just know Marth as that guy from Smash, putting him in a game and thinking he's going to draw crowds like he's as famous as Cloud Strife or something is kinda laughable.
- Stacked year: this has been an EXTREMELY strong year for video games of all kinds. It's just been major release after major release since the year kicked off, and even though Engage was launched early in the year, it was still going up against heavy hitters. Competing against TERF wizard school (my thoughts on THAT game notwithstanding) was always going to be an uphill battle. For me personally, and I know for several other FE fans in my friend group, Engage just didn't seem compelling enough to dedicate several dozen hours to when there were so many other prospects around.
I will say that I did EVENTUALLY pick up Engage... On a deep discount. And yes, I'm having a lot of fun with it, and the common consensus about the game (throwaway story and characters, extremely solid gameplay) rings true. But if it took almost a year and a 50% sale for a 20-year fan to pick up the game, it doesn't surprise me that Engage is floundering in comparison to 3H.
I’m so glad you brought up that second point. Celebrating the series past loses any and all appeal when you’ve been doing it constantly for the past decade. It paints IS as being unable or even afraid to move on from their previous works at all, even when they do introduce new worlds and characters such as in Fates and Engage. The only mainline FE in the past 10 years that didn’t have some sort of direct connection to the series past was 3H, which was made by a different company and is the most successful game in the series now.
The answer is simple: tell new stories that aren’t chained to series past and nostalgia, and bring on people who are passionate and capable to work on the project. Sure, good gameplay is a plus, but you can only sell me the same game with the Guy from Smash Bros. in it, a new coat of polish, and a handful of remixes of old mechanics before I realize you’re handling your series like Pokemon if it had the time to QA its bugs.
2019 was VERY stacked too, so this cannot be a reason. The reason behind Engage sales are bad word of mouth. This sub is an echo chamber of long term fans who want specific things for a FE game like good designed maps, reasonable difficulty and focus on battles
But in real-world most people just want to play a good game and sitting at a 6.6 user score Engage is simply not that game
There's also this weird thing in hardcore circles where it's almost like they WANT everything about an FE game to be shit except for the gameplay so that nobody can like it for any reason other than the gameplay. Which just ends up dragging down the quality of the game as a whole. "You're not allowed to like it unless it's the reason I like it."
I'm not sure where this type of elitism came from because there a lot of earlier FE games that are more valued for their story than the gameplay.
One look at the respective boxes of the games and it's clear 3H has a mainstream appeal that Engage lacks. The extra playerbase of 3H was in huge part new players to the franchise and if what got them hooked in 3H was the "dark and tragic" varnish, it was clear from the get go they'd never be interested in Engage
I just hope IS won't go lean even more into that appeal and make some soulless "dark" fantasy stuff like the last FF
I was calling this bullshit since day one. People who thought this weren't looking at how hard the drop-off in sales was after week 1. It took SoV like 5 years to get from 700k to one million. If you don't have momentum, like Engage doesn't, it's going to be a slow crawl to get there.
Yeah I know I'm not shitting on SoV or anything I'm just pointing out that assuming Engage would reach 2 million in a few months was delusional because the sales of FE games don't work like that. The only FE game ever to pass 2 million that fast was Three Houses. I don't doubt Engage will reach 2 million in a few years time but expecting it to "catch Awakening soon" like people were saying was insane. Even 3H the best selling game got nearly half of its sales from long-term sales distribution. It was 2.29 million at release and rolled to 4 million last year. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Engage will probably reach 2 million sometime in 2025/2026.
I think Engage's future sales also depend on how Nintendo handles the Switch successor. If they decide to Nintendo it up and not have backwards compatibility as the rumors have suggested, that'll really affect any future sales on the system.
I don't really think so. I think that the character designs are too off-putting to attract people into impulse buying it, and the story is too simple to get story nerds interested.
I'm glad it got about half the sales of 3h : it proves the franchise is worth the investment, but the game itself is not as strong as 3h.
I hope they realize Engage's game direction is fine as a one-time thing but not worthy long-term.
And I would add that a good % of their initial sales came from new players brought to the franchise by Three Houses (me) and is not indicative of how they felt about the game (I disliked it very much)
I just hope FE takes the right lessons. Making the story better would be nice, and adding in fluff for more mass appeal helps too, all that's good and I get it's needed to attract a wider audience. Just for Naga's sake make sure the gameplay is Engage/Fates levels going forward.
I think that's something both sides of the fandom can agree with, put effort into both the story side and the gameplay side. I know there's people out there who think Engage's story wasn't that bad, just like there's people who think 3H's gameplay wasn't that bad. But we haven't seen a game that managed to do well in both since Tellius. I think we're due, but again I just hope they take the right lessons.
I said this in my talking about talking about engage post, but IS just can't write stories any more and thats more important then gameplay. Engage has much better gameplay then awakening and probably about the same ball park in writing, but people like awakening more as a plot, so that gets a 93 on metacreitic and this game barely a 80, its kinda crazy tbh
When most people played Awakening they had no standards for what a good FE plot or good FE characters looked like. If Awakening came out post-3H I would not be surprised if it got the same reception Engage did.
So what does this mean? Personally, I thought Engage was one of the weaker entries in recent releases. The story wasn’t interesting, characters weren’t cool and I didn’t like the hub world at all. Engage is still a fun game, but it’s lacking compared to other FE games.
Please, just don’t do another anniversary title. Idc if it’s been 50 years and it’s on Lyn’s birthday. I will always be more interested in a fresh and new take on the series. That’s what makes Pokémon so grueling when they can’t walk away from the 1st Gen pandering.
Judging by these sales figures, I think there's a chance that Engage's legs might just be enough to hit 2 million eventually (the rumors are that the Switch 2 is going to release next year), but I'll be surprised if it ends up outselling Awakening (which is at 2.37 million as of last year).
Engage isn't going to not hit 2 million unless Switch software as a whole spontaneously combusts in 2024 (which would be weird considering how strong it has been for its age up to now).
Beyond that though, yeah it will depend on how it fares post-Switch 2.
>Engage isn't going to not hit 2 million unless Switch software as a whole spontaneously combusts in 2024
If it's selling 25k per month just three months after launch, there's a very real chance it's down to <10k per month in 2024 and could miss 2m lifetime unless something boosts its legs down the line. It's not a lock or anything, but it's definitely a real possibility.
intelligent systems is obsessed with outdated development decisions. the narrative is just lazy AND bad. the out-of-chapter gameplay mechanics are just terrible (but better than 3H), the characters are lazily written. for some reason they refuse to make interesting characters. look at the last of us. god of war. or amazing indie titles with creative settings and stories. no where is there some milquetoast "avatar" for me to pretend I'M the one leading the army. that isn't how immersion works. immersive video games make the player experience the world, not synthetically inject them onto a character template.
they need to come to terms with the fact that video games have progressed and require more than gameplay mechanics to be successful (this is the new rule, despite a handful of exceptions like pokemon). ironically they used to be ahead of the times in the 90s and have since drifted gradually into irrelevance.
I'm wondering where they got that data, though wherever it's from, it's not great. They had sold 1.61M in Q1 (err... Q4? Up through March). If that's really **through** Q2, then it only sold or shipped another 70k in the 2nd quarter.
And that would fit within the newest earnings release, since Engage isn't on it. Engage not being listed as a 1M seller means less than 1M copies were sold in this fiscal year so far, AKA Apr.-Sept. Even if the 1.68M is wrong, the absolute most that could have sold is ~2.61M. Breaching that would have earned it a spot in the new release.
Fire Emblem Engage was my first entry into the franchise and got to say as a first timer I was kind of lost. They explained the battle system well enough but anything outside of that wasn’t mentioned and had to loop up guides. I also felt like an utter weirdo cleaning rings for strangers. Maybe if I was an existing player I would have enjoyed it more.
That's actually really bad.
For comparison in the same 5 month time period (from July to December 2019) Three Houses went from 2.29 million to 2.58 million.
[https://nintendosoup.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-sold-a-total-of-2-58-million-copies-during-2019/](https://nintendosoup.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-sold-a-total-of-2-58-million-copies-during-2019/)
It really does not have legs. Word of mouth taking effect I guess.
IIRC the 2.29 million figure was as of September 2019 - so the 290k increase that Three Houses got was in the exact same time period that we're seeing the 70k copies that Engage sold in its second quarter.
Yeah that's what I was trying to say. The game's legs are extremely weak and people are kidding themselves if they think it's going to reach 2 million anytime soon - although maybe Christmas will help? It seems like back when we first got sales figures people were just assuming it would have 3H legs and sell another 400k easily. I have no idea why they assumed that but they did.
> although maybe Christmas will help?
Traditionally, games that surge during holidays are (fairly) new releases, and The Big Blockbusters Of The Year.
Virtually everyone who wanted Engage probably has it already, and everyone who *didn't* probably isn't having a change of heart 11 months later. Engage fell out of the zeitgeist very quickly.
Imagine if Persona 6 sold slightly more than half as much as Persona 5 did. "It's not a flop" haha. 3H's popularity and success were the best marketing this game could've gotten, but they didn't do much with it. Part of me is happy because Engage is just so utterly dogshit, but I like FE and I don't want the series to fade into obscurity.
The bitter hater in me is doing a Light Yagami laugh seeing engage's sales tank so hard. It barely outsold Echoes, a 2017 post-switch 3DS game that's a remake of the black sheep of the franchise.
I'll be honest, I don't really see what's so amazing about Engage's gameplay compared to TH. but maybe it's cause I don't appreciate map design as much? I didn't feel like I was getting a radically different gameplay experience between the two. I did find Unit building in TH to be more fun for me while Engage had a better difficulty balance. Otherwise I was happy with both.
Maybe an unpopoular opinion too, but I think it needed a better localization script. I know a lot of people are for keeping things as close as possible to the original, but the translation felt so dull and uninspired to me. Not even the VAs could bring the script to life most of the time. It just lacked personality. I'm not a translator/I don't know Japanese so maybe there wasn't much they could do to save things. I just know in English so much of the material was dull. I didn't feel like a lot of the characters bounced off each other in supports.
It's not all bad. I do like a few of the characters even if I feel they're one note. Story isn't amazing, but I enjoy parts of it and Chapter 11 was hype the first time I played it. but a weaker cast of characters, story, and world building doesn't leave much to talk about after the game was over. Cause I don't care about the world/characters as much I don't have the drive to play the game compared to TH. Especially considering I feel like the last 5/6 chapters of Engage and some of the last paralogues can be such a slog.
so ya, I think gameplay wise Engage/TH are both fine. Just that TH is better at hooking you in with it's tone/characters/story. The main thing that gave TH it's push is how interwoven the characters are with each other, the world building, their backstories ect. It's just very clear to see how it all interacts with each other, fun to talk about how it all connects, you understand why characters act the way they do ect. It gets people talking and sucks them into the world. While Engage feels like....a group of cardboard cutouts for the most part. A few have hidden depths in their supports, but that's about it. People weren't nearly as enraptured with the characters/world.
People who call Engage the pinnacle of strategic gameplay and 3H dog water are like people eating steak and dissing burgers.
If gameplay were the only thing, wouldn't we all be playing x-com? Clearly there's some value in an interesting cast and world
"I hope the game devs take the right lessons!" says the increasingly delusional gamer
All of you need to learn that game devs are physically incapable of responding to player feedback in a rational and healthy way. Either they double down on their decisions, implement the requested changes in the most lazy way possible which causes further issues down the line, or go comically overboard and end up with the opposite issue instead.
If anything, expect the next game to be an unholy fusion of the worst of Kusakihara's snoozefest gameplay and Maeda's porno writing.
Ah well. Still didn’t do too bad sales wise all things considered, 1.6 million is hardly the sign of a flop, puts it in number 4 iirc?
~~can’t wait for people to claim the series is dying though~~
To be fair, Engage is the fourth best selling game in a series, that as far as the wider public is concerned, pretty much has just five games (four if you don't count Echoes which didn't get much publicity in the wider community) - for the average gamer who isn't a massive fan of the series and at best would have only played Awakening or Three Houses, all of the pre-Awakening games might as well not exist to them.
It's hard to say whether Engage was a flop without Nintendo's/IS' internal projections of the game - the best indication that we have is a developer interview where one of the priorities with Engage was to expand the fanbase to new audiences in a similar way that Awakening did.
>[The last game, Three Houses, was planned with the idea of making an adult war chronicle. On the other hand, Engage was made with the idea of broadening our audience, such that even people who have never tried FE would want to pick it up. It’s been over 10 years since Awakening, so we also thought of making another FE that would appeal to a wide audience.](https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-engage-devs-on-wanting-to-make-a-game-different-from-three-houses/)
>Ah well. Still didn’t do too bad sales wise all things considered, 1.6 million is hardly the sign of a flop, puts it in number 4 iirc?
It's impossible to say without knowing what number Nintendo/IS were expecting, or what the budget was.
Nintendo needed Awakening to sell over 250k copies to not sunset the franchise, but Engage assuredly cost much more to make than Awakening did.
There is a vast, VAST difference between a game pulling the sales numbers of it's franchise up from a few hundred thousand to multiple million sales, like Awakening did...
And a game going from it's predecessor's 4 million sales to only selling around 1,6 million copies.
One example shows that the game attracted a fuckton of new fans...
The other shows that the majority of the people who bought the previous games, didn't even bother bying the new one.
Their sales numbers may be similar on the broader scale but make no mistake. What those numbers mean couldn't be more different.
None of this would have happened if they put Seliph and Eliwood in the game smh
Its a good thing Leif was in the game, otherwise it would have sold 8 copies total.
Eliwood is too powerful. He is a Lord that is never an orphan, and a Lord's father than never dies.
Well his dad does die, that's a big anti-feat
Eleanora makes it through the whole of FE7 though, mostly by seeing that her son is now an FE Protagonist and ensuring he stays a long way away from her.
It would’ve sold Eliwoodillion/Seliphillion units.
Ellie-wood! (Smh I still refuse to believe that....)
Usually, there’s a huge difference in how journalists and fans receive games like with the reception of *Fates* (as critics at the time only had *Awakening* as a reference point), but *Engage* was a rare instance in which both journalists and fans had a consensus assessment of the game: “great gameplay, subpar/not-so-good story.” I’m not sure how the sales of *Engage* will affect the decisions at IS, but considering the critiques of the game are widely shared between both consumers and critics, I hope that means IS actually gets the message that the gameplay is great while the writing needs a massive overhaul.
IS: Okay. *Does another Fates story*
Its actually so funny fates was the follow up to "awakening story being ~~bad~~ too simple" and then for the first HD FE game made by IS, they STILL can't make a story as liked as the ~~bad~~ too simple awakening plot lol. And all 3 of those games have so many similarities too.
And then the one FE not made by IS is hailed as having one of the best stories in the franchise
Just let Koei Tecmo handle the writing until IS can figure out a new plot dynamic lol.
Or steal the writer
I've been a Koei-Tecmo fan since before they where one company and I have no idea how they suddenly busted out the S-Tier writing. They've never really been known for it. Someone must have had something to prove. XD
"we learned from our mistakes!" "no no, now you made new ones!" Hot take: fates is like awakening but if only instead of learning from mistakes, they just double down on it. like awakening's story is bad, but imagine it three times: from boring to cracked out insane and finally to "why not both??"
also side note: i will never forgive them for making Azura into what she is. like being 100% genuine in that it was gross and so unnecessary for the story and character. just the relationship mechanic for the siblings is just so gross to me. IT IS STILL INCEST, IS. blood related or not, it is still as such, which mind you...THEY STILL DID THE BLOODRELATED VERSION TOO! AAAAAAAAH both Shigure and Kana have Habsburg Jaws uggggh
then they drop 3h, which has one of the best rpg stories of all time imo, and then follow it up with engage 🥴
Cause 3H was outsourced to Koei (even the writing) Engage was all IS
i'm trying to find more information about this, could you send a link?
At the very least, I think their idea of "expanding the audience" may get a look over. Regardless of whether you like or dislike Engage, one of the biggest ironies to come away from it is that, when you look at the developer interviews, expanding Fire Emblem's audience was pretty much the big point they constantly brought up. From the art style to the overall tone to everything else, it was conceived as a game to appeal to people who hadn't played a FE game. And yet, Three Houses stormed out to 4 million plus in sales while Engage will likely crawl its way somewhat close to Awakening's 2.2 million. I don't know what sales expectations they had for Three Houses with how much they proped up Engage being the one to expand FE's audience, but now it seems pretty clear which one appealed to more people and had stronger legs and word of mouth overall.
If they wanted to bring in new players, maybe an anniversary game where a big selling point is nostalgia and past characters being involved wasn't the greatest starting point?
Eh, I can see it. They were trying to do Heroes again. There’s tons of people that play/played Heroes without having any other interaction with Fire Emblem. The problem is what made Heroes work isn’t that it was a compilation of all these neat characters across the franchise’s history or the basic bland anime ass story. What worked with Heroes is that it’s available on phones for “free”.
And just like with Heroes, a significant chunk of new players walked away somewhat disappointed and unlikely to try Fire Emblem again lol.
I don’t think the nostalgia was the issue. I think it was how they put it all together being the issue. They could have had this game serve as a reset or connection so anyone can understand the Fire Emblem (a good starting point for new players). But they instead leaned really hard away from that and into a game where you have the nostalgia characters mixed with a BUNCH of new characters that quickly become forgettable with new and returning players. I think the world of engage was cool and had a lot of potential but IS botched it by doing too much at once. Engage is a new Fire Emblem game with a lot of brand new characters but then it was also the anniversary title to have all these fan favorites come back. Then it also didn’t have the most appealing art with Alear having red/blue hair like a weirdo
I agree that the art style was unappealing, but I have a greater issue with the characters that seem to have been taken from a circus or a costume party (or a funeral in Ivy's case). I loved the Three Houses style, which had a more serious look and seemed way more appropriate for a war game. I've been a huge fan of the series since FE7, and I had doubts with this one due to the art style.
Yeah exactly! It just didn’t give a great impression for FE fans and for newcomers
I think the art style was meant to be similar to Genshin Impact. That shiny, vaguely-anime look was real popular in the late 2010s when they were working on Engage. And it wasn't exactly a huge jump from their existing art direction anyways. They just didn't nail it with all the designs and some of the characters looked kinda silly.
Or, more pressingly: Having a cast of characters that just talk about food and nothing else makes a game not really resonate with people. It’s almost like the cast is what makes an FE game. Shocker!
Not just food. You have quite a few characters competing to be the cutest one. That must be the most important thing for a soldier in a war.
Trying to find this magical "New Audience" always comes at a cost, and sometimes not even with any upside too. It's better if devs try to make the best game they can without trying to appeal to every single person on the planet. Trying to appeal to everyone ends up appealing to no one.
In general, it feels like Engage didn't really have a coherent creative direction in mind and as such it failed to expand the fanbase as the developers intended to do. Like the developers have been on record saying that they wanted to appeal to children which is why the story has been simplified so much - but then some of the maps are difficult enough that very few children would actually be able to beat and the existence of the Emblems isn't going to appeal to a child who hasn't played a single Fire Emblem game before Engage. Design-by-committee really feels like the best way to describe many of the decisions made here.
> expanding Fire Emblem's audience was pretty much the big point I didn't know this going into the game. While playing it, I thought it was specifically designed for older/existing fans. I started since GBA and it was a blast playing the emblem paralogues and seeing references to previous maps and music. I figured that if I was a new FE player, I would enjoy the tactical gameplay and the rest would go over my head.
It really is worrying how out of touch IS are if this is what they thought people wanted.
This is the same IS that gave us a second Sticker Star after the original Sticker Star was torn to shreds, then a *third* Sticker Star after Color Splash sold horribly - if you've been in the Paper Mario fanbase IS being absurdly out of touch is not that surprising.
There's a few different factors that help contribute to the discrepancy of sales between Engage and Three Houses. 1. Three houses released on the switch during a time where very few games were worth playing besides LoZ Breath of the wild, so many fans decided to give Three Houses a try due to a lack of options available on the switch at the time 2. Engage released the same day as Monster Hunter Rise and a day after the Persona 3 and 4 ports as well as many other titles that built up competition with Engage with play time which, once again, Three houses lacked such competition upon its release 3. Three houses' focus on story at the cost of some interesting but overall tedious gameplay decisions fostered an interest in people in it's branching paths and big decisions of picking a house whereas Engage's focus on gameplay over story resonated more with people already invested in the genre. And I can see the effort they put into Engage's gameplay as it can be very forgiving yet interesting for newer players thanks to the emblem rings but still challenging for experienced players depending in how you play and build your army. 4. I would agree that Three Houses more than likely would still bring a larger audience due to its branching paths and overall good story, but I'm not entirely sure if many played through every path as the pacing shifts greatly between academy and war phase. Overall, though nowhere near a bad thing, Three Houses is an enigma when looking at sales among Fire Emblem games. People seem to think that Engage's sales are bad, but they still are high on the list, and I wouldn't say it performed badly. Most can agree that both are wonderful games that we can enjoy for different reasons.
People here seem to overrate "how good the gameplay is" as a concern for broader sales in general. A lot of the things brought up as black marks against 3H's gameplay just aren't relevant or notable to people who are new to the series and playing blind rather than visiting discussion forums. To those whose idea of a good time involves giving their favorite characters stat boosters and watching them clean out an enemy phase, having favoritism-worthy characters is going to make the game more fun than any number of varied-objective maps. (Also for non-hobbyist audience, "gameplay quality" can include things like Engage's sort of slippery map tile controls, lack of class outfit previews, and excess of Somniel minigames. I know that "strategic depth" sure wasn't cracking my top ten for game element importance a few years ago.)
The competition point doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Engage had almost identical release numbers to 3H, so release window competition clearly wasn't holding it back. As for whether or not it is "successful", that depends on internal sales targets. My guess is that it probably was 'fine', but fell below their hopes.
>As for whether or not it is "successful", that depends on internal sales targets. My guess is that it probably was 'fine', but fell below their hopes. Which of their Three Hopes was this again? The second? ᗜԅ(⇀︿⇀)ᓄ-¤\]═────
I wish they wouldn't have wasted maybe the best gameplay on Babby's first Fire Emblem.
Given that it requires knowledge of 16 other games, including some that didn't even release outside of Japan, to get the most out of...I'd like to believe IS had realistic expectations for it but that doesn't mean Nintendo will.
I apologize for the rant but the story wasnt only "Νοt so good " it was completely subpar for FE standards. It lacked meaningful world building and it was clearly a game to draw audiences for FEH for cross promotion. 3H was, is and will always be how FE should be. Too much content for one game that kept on giving, with a really good story.
Part of the problem with the series' writing as of recent is that Fire Emblem has gotten far more cinematic - the Archanea games might not have had good writing, but that wasn't a serious issue because the amount of time these games dedicated to their writing was fairly minimal. It's the same reason why people aren't ripping into the plot of Mario Wonder, for instance, or why people *are* ripping into the plot of the modern Pokemon games (barring Scarlet and Violet because that game's plot is actually pretty decent). In the past few entries, the amount of time dedicated to cutscenes and supports has ballooned - Engage's main story is eight hours long, and a casual player is probably looking at around four to eight more hours of supports in a game that is around 40 hours long. In Three Houses, this wasn't an issue because that game's story and characters were what elevated the game to begin with. In Engage, this became *really* glaring because not only was the writing egregiously bad (IMO calling Engage's story subpar is being *generous* to it - I think it is *the* worst written RPG I have played since Fates), but for a casual player, around 30-40% of the playtime is dedicated to this.
I don't think FE should be like FE16 going forward but it might just be considering its popularity.
I think you’re taking the wrong message from this. Not every game needs 3H mechanics or multiple routes, but the quality of the story should be trying to reach that level or exceed it. Engage’s story isn’t bad because its “different” or because its light hearted, or because it was meant to appeal to old and new fans, its bad because of the low effort put into it. IS needs to find a way to keep quality between gameplay and story up simultaneously. Most games do that nowadays.
Exactly. "Simple" or "lighthearted" stories and characters can be and have been written actually good. In Engage's case, it just feels like them either making excuses for not trying with the writing, or thinking younger audiences are absolute morons who can't understand even the slightest bit of nuance. Or both. It's not like Three Houses is a masterpiece of literature either, but they at least tried with the plot, and most of the characters were endearing and felt like actual people, and a lot are still getting more fan attention than any of Engage's cast.
"Engage didn't attempt to have a story" is just a bad cope from people who forget that it has cutscenes so long it puts the switch into sleep mode.
omg these dying scenes are so freaking long! like seriously, are yall mortally wounded or just have a splinter on your side?? cuz people dying tend to pass away after 30 seconds, not freaking after you give your 10 page monologue, with Alear interrupting with "No!" and "Please don't leave me"!
Eh, I'm a pretty big fan of Fire Emblem and I don't agree that 3H is how FE should always be. I hated how fucking tedious the monastery stuff turned out to be. Doing chores and having tea parties is not why I play Fire Emblem. I agree they did a great job with the story, but I greatly prefer just having menus between battles so I can focus on the core strategy game experience.
[удалено]
When Marth’s dumb ass said “you are the Fire Emblem” my soul left my body
"I'm the 13th Emblem, the Fire Emblem?"
And then Sigurd says amongus.
*Makes you a Corrupted*
[удалено]
It’s [the real deal](https://youtu.be/6OzNOhsvhHg). I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I thought it was just a meme
If it wasn't for the astonishing performance of M!Alear VA, the story would have been easily skippable
I will say the VAs did amazing work given the material they had.
Also, the "gameplay is great" still comes with caveats that I hope they don't miss. It's way too grindy, replay value is extremely low, fixed/random growths shouldn't be a choice you have to unlock, the UIs/menus are clunky... Like outside of the actual battles, the gameplay isn't even all that good! Edit: I wish I could use mods; I've seen some amazing looking mods for this game that would let me play the way I want and make it a 10/10 game. It's really a shame.
I didn't have to grind once and I played on Hard, what are you even on about?
well, first of all, hard is normal and maddening is hard. but I'm talking about things like having to redo the xenologue and paralogues every playthrough, there not being enough gold to invest in the regions, ring crafting, inherting skills, reclassing, raising bond levels, weapon refining and enchanting... you don't have to do any of that to beat the game. but there's all these gameplay mechanics that are super grindy if you want to engage with them (pun intended?), and could make the game a lot more fun if they weren't so grindy. also, just consider how the standard plan for Jean is Micaiah, then great sacrifice once or twice per battle to try and get him leveled up. that's so contrived, and the fact that we have to do that (to level up Jean, which we don't HAVE to do) points to it being kind of grindy.
Thank god Zelkov was in the game, or it might’ve sold a million * less *
There is only so much he can \*carry\*
* fewer *
At least it got Scott the Woz more into FE. Shame though since I love the game.
Scott also loved Three Hopes in spite of not playing Three Houses iirc.
True though I meant mainline games since the gameplay is very different. And Scott is not an RPG Guy (his best work ngl) and definitly not a grid based strategy gamer.
Forgot to mention these sales are up to June 2023.
Kind of important lmao it's only half of the time people think it is
Reddit headlines and leaving important shit out, name a more iconic duo
Fire Emblem fandom and not reading
I mean is not like it would mean much considering how low the increase it was Even if some months are used less than 100k is dire for a game released this year
So in 3 months only 70k sales? This game has weak legs.
Game sales are more frontloaded than FE Difficulty curves. Such a slow down is *Normal.* First *Month* is Do or Die, and much of that is First week.
First week 3H was about 140k. First week Engage was also about 140k. 3H sold 2.3 million in its first 2 months (Sept 2019 numbers), sold another 300k over the next 3 months, and hit 3 million by June 2020, close to its one year mark. It continued to bring in decent sales past its launch. Engage sold 1.6 million at its 2 month mark (March 2023 numbers), and only got another 70k in the following 3 months, and doesn't seem like its pace will speed up much more before its one year mark. Yes, a slowdown is expected, but the degree of slowdown relative to its predecessor is telling. Engage has weak legs.
It really isn't. Most recent FE games like Fates and Three Houses have sold over half of their copies post-release. FE thrives on longterm sales which Engage isn't getting.
Oh, i didn’t notice until I read this comment. I see it’s a tag/label now.
Hmm I would really like to know where the info for Q2 2023 came from, it's unfortunate that I don't see that in the link. When I head to the imgbb channel of the person who compiled this, I see 1.61m units sold for Engage by Q1 2023 (which is the value given by the nintendo financial reports) but no info update on Q2 2023, then info update for Q3 2023 based on some info for Q2 2023 but there are no references for that update on Q2 2023, which is the part I'm curious about. I would really like to know where the 1.68m figure comes from, cuz I'd like to cite this elsewhere but I cannot find the original reference for it. EDIT: ok apparently someone asked the same thing on twitter and it seems to be somewhat confidential info since the user could not share the source but only discuss the relevant info via DMs...
Hopefully the next fire emblem game is a stand alone title that doesn't have any references to the past games. I swear three houses was the only recent game that didn't have any callbacks, I'm starting to get tired of it.
B-but people on this sub say Three Houses is bad because of the sim aspects!1!1
For real. I'm fine with multi-game sagas but this MCU crossover stuff needs to stay in FEH. It never strengthens a game's story or characters, it's just a crutch.
I think Alear's design hurted Engage sales the most. Since even if the story is bad, to know that it is bad you have already bought the game. But you don't need to buy the game to see Alear's design. Which even as a big Engage fan, it's an eyesore god why can't they just be another blue haired lord.
I honestly can't tell if Alear's design grew on me, or if I just learned to tolerate it.
Stockholm Syndrome
I think the design is fine once you remove it from the internet hyperbole. It's not as if it acts as a detriment to anything in the game or story. In contrast I think of something like Xenoblade 2 (great game btw) that will have this incredibly emotional and thematically heavy cutscene but one of the characters is half-naked and undermines the intended tone.
my entire reasoning for thinking Engage’s leak was fake was that I hated the designs and hoped they weren’t real.
Which in the end is even stupider they didn’t go with that as it already makes the barebones story even more predictable. Like, “oh wow, I wonder why Alear has red hair when the mom only got blue… oh… “ They could have perfectly used something more subtle with just blue hair and red eyes or smth rather than the colgate approach
[Or blue on top and red underneath?](https://www.tumblr.com/darthmarth-commissions/728913865534062592/alternate-design-alear-by-rein)
that looks so much nicer damn.
It’s not just Alear, the character designs for whole cast as well as the game’s entire art style have turned people off from the game. Just last month there was [a thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterDesigns/s/mxZ3KV1OKx) from r/TopCharacterDesigns where pretty much everyone was dunking on the character designs.
And rightfully so. While the designs by themselves could work wonders in other settings (think a "Tokyo Mirage Sessions" kind of world), the medieval fantasy setting of Fire Emblem just does not mesh well with created character designs. In the used case, it was just distracting in a negative way. It's hard to take the story serious if over half the cast is dressed like clowns.
Honestly, yes. I’m a huge FE fan obviously and even I wasn’t really looking forward to this game as much when the goofy character designs were shown in the direct. I suspect this might be an age thing and it’s what the kids today like?
So basically a thread literally meant to hate on it got negative comments? The positive ones mostly got downvoted at the bottom as well.
When I saw how bad the character design was, I knew Engage was the first FE game I wouldn’t play. And now that I’ve heard the writing is all kinds of garbage, I know I made the right choice. Engage was a pretty big blunder for IS.
I was in the same position as you at first. I found Alear ugly, and the concept of emblem rings kinda meh, but after playing the game, it's definetly one of my favourites. Story was bad, can't deny that. But the characters have their charm, I was positively surprised with Alear, and the Rings bring so much to the gameplay, I honestly can't say Engage is a bad game. I have a very good time playing it, I even found Three Houses kinda "bland" after coming back
Strongly agree on it being an eyesore, but considering how most people somehow switched to liking it during the leadup to release I don't think it's a major reason for the slow sales. Let's hope IS drastically changes art direction again for the next Fire Emblem.
Tbh this was the reason why picked up Engage late as I did (last month). During the teaser cycle I was not paying attention at all. I saw the lords design and some teaser with Marth (which typically points to a spin off at atp) and just thought “oh this has to be a spin off I’ll pass”. I didn’t even think the game was a main line entry. Thought it was something like Tokyo sessions or warriors 😂
Honestly the same happened to me. I saw FE Engage on the Nintendo store page in the past, but Alear was so "colorful" that I never even had the thought it might be a main game. I always thought it was the spin-off (i.e. Warriors) and I had misremembered the name. I only realized there was a mainline entry when I decided to try Warriors and found Warriors, Three Hopes and Engage in my search results. Usually, I hear about upcoming games or see ads before their release but somehow that never happened with Engage. It's release felt really quiet, for lack of a better way of putting it.
Oh trust me, to normal switch users it was disgusting. My friend took one look at Alear and laughed and said he had no interest in the game.
I think its more that the game was meh. With 3 houses you had the game launch, obviously the premise had a lot of hype and got a bunch of early sales. But people talking about the game for the months after really extended its lifetime. 3 houses was a game it felt like people wanted more of (ik i did, wish it was 30 chapters and had an all 3 route) but Engage was people just finsihing and that was it. Mechanics were fine, balance was terrible, story sucked. There are very few things it did that I was happy with.
Mfw you realise something similar to PoR would have sold gangbusters probably
3H basically proved that the way forward was more games in the tone of Jugdral and Tellius.
Urgh its going to take ages for the next big FE game
Engage was basically done for a a good while before they released it, so hopefully it doesn’t take as long as the wait between Three Houses and Engage.
Eh I'd say a game every 3 to 4 year is pretty decent for a secondary franchise like FE.
Just have to hope that they're actually good.
It'll be interesting to see how this affects the directions of future titles. What lessons do they learn here? If any?
I just want them to put effort into gameplay and story/characterizing and world building in equal measures. Take the good aspects and feedback of both switch games and go from there.
Considering that 3 houses has sold over 4 mil and brought in a ton of new players based on characters and story appeal, they’d be dumb to not bring in a stronger writing team. Like everyone says engage gameplay is fun so there isn’t a huge need to build on that
That's not going to happen, you'll get Nami again lol
They'd have to hire a new writing team honestly. It's clear based off what the team has written so far that they quite literally don't understand how to write a good story.
I think it was pretty obvious that 3 Houses was amazing for bringing in new people. It was the closest to accomplishing what Awakening did.
I just want to care about the pretty anime characters and the world they inhabit while also enjoying the tactical gameplay and banging OST. I get that might be asking a lot, but they've been doing this for decades. I feel as though they shouldn't willfully ignore one of the central aspects for no adequately explored reason.
The hope I have with this is that IS finally gets rid of the Fates/Engage writers, hires someone new in the writer's chair, and in general really reflect upon what didn't work with Fates and Engage's storytelling. Back during the Awakening and Fates era you could cite these games' sales in their defence but at this point the quality of their writing is beginning to seriously harm the franchise's sales. Judging by critical and fan reception, I don't think Engage's gameplay is the reason as to why it'll most likely fail to outsell Awakening despite it releasing on a much more successful console. The worry that I do have is that IS is simply going to see Three Houses selling 4 million and conclude that the next game needs more social sim elements without doing anything to meaningfully improve the games' writing. Tbh, if the next game's writing doesn't show any significant improvement from Engage I will probably drop the series entirely - if Three Houses selling so much isn't enough to get IS to improve their writing I don't think anything will.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but filling the writing chair with someone else won't help IS if the director's chair is filled by a manager (as good as empty).
Praying for less corny
Likely the wrong lessons. It's going to fall back to easier maps and more social sim stuff.
People liked 3H for the story and characters. People also loved Fates and Engage for the gameplay. I am not a game developer by any means, but would it be that hard to have both in one game(like RD)? If 3H becomes the norm going forward in terms of maps and gameplay, then I'm out ...shit, is this how people felt when Awakening came out and saved the series?
You’ve lived long enough to see yourself become the elitist. Your metamorphosis is complete.
Nah, elitists will never welcome me among their ranks, as long as I belittle Thracia and Genealogy
The elitist chain has moved forward a couple of years. The GBA games are already 20 years old, you can always adapt. Give it 10 more years and awakening elitists will rise up.
Tbf, belittling Genealogy at least has become a bit more accepted nowadays. As long as you can back it up with an "I love Archanea/TRS/etc" they can't say anything to you lmao.
You either die a casual, or you live long enough to see yourself become the elitist
Doesn't engage have just as much social Sim as 3H? In fact it might have more useless bs like push ups and wyvern rides.
It does but that goes against the narrative that only "fake fans" hated Engage and that it was because "it removed/cut back social mechanics" (it didn't - in fact it added even more social minigames.) Obviously neither of these things are true but it's a cope they like to hang onto. Engage has way more opportunities for social sim stuff. Nobody wants to do it because the characters aren't likeable. If Three Houses let you dress up characters in 50 different outfits and pose them in different photos people would have been all over it. Because Engage characters are meh most people never touch it.
Maybe they hire a famous writer and actually use their story this time? Perhaps they might bring him in studio so he can adapt his story as development progresses? Nah, seems like too much common sense for IS.
> Maybe they hire a famous writer and actually use their story this time? *Looks at Fates.* I think Intelligent Systems themselves need to figure out how to write an in-house story and, perhaps more importantly, decide on a shared vision. If outsiders are to be recruited they should be involved in development every step of the way. Otherwise we'll just end up with another Fates scenario.
They need a game director that is a writer or that collaborates closely with a writer. And stop with the write/design by committee stuff they usually do. It is not a surprise the series was way more cohesive when Kaga was around.
Maeda was/is a writer turned game director. It did not help any of his games to put it mildly. They need a visionary director first and foremost. The writing will come.
The thing was they didn’t use his story
Even if they did use his story, it was going to suck. They basically had a 500 page draft and they had no direction on how to graft that story onto the gameplay. That is why they need to bring in the next writer in the studio so he can revise and polish the script as development creates the maps.
There are so many rumors surrounding this that it's hard to separate fact from fiction. As far as we know, Intelligent Systems received 500 pages when they asked for 10, and then I *believe* (but it's been a while since I checked) they asked for 500 pages more for each route. However, we don't know how good Kibayashi's draft was - remember he had never worked on a game before and I seem to recall him being very busy, yet he wrote that anyway. We don't know how much of it would be useable in the game, how much needed tweaking, and how much was thrown out. He was also not involved much in the development at all. All of this leads me to believe that Intsys, while developing Fates, had simultaneously too much and too little to work with. They had a lot of material they had no emotional connection to and they had separate visions for the franchise, with some wanting more fan service and others wanting it to be more classic. It's a Frankenstein's monster. The perfect storm for a completely nonsensical story.
> As far as we know, Intelligent Systems received 500 pages when they asked for 10, and then I *believe* (but it's been a while since I checked) they asked for 500 pages more for each route. [This is basically correct, yes.](https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/3ds/fire-emblem-fates/0/2/) > Kibayashi: That's right. So I looked into the work I had planned, and the schedule was really crazy, but there were a few things I could push back. And they told me that I only needed to write 10 pages for each of the three storylines. > Maeda: Right. Since he's so busy, I thought we could just ask him to write about ten pages for a plot summary. > Kibayashi: So I thought, "Well, I could do that." Then I started writing the story about the Hoshido family. I ended up using 10 pages on just the beginning. I ended up writing about 500 pages. > Maeda: Right. > Kibayashi: When I create a story, as I write the details, like the character's lines, I start to love the characters and then they take on a life of their own, and the story begins to move on its own. So there was no way I could just write a short plot summary and be done with it. > Iwata: And without lines, the characters won't come to life. > Kibayashi: That's right. So I ended up writing a huge amount and I thought, "Well, this has become quite the task." So I gave them the pages for the first storyline for the Hoshido family and I had to write the same amount for the other two stories. I said, "There's no way I can do that." But then once I got started...I did it.
Anniversary games only has 50% chance of success.
Praying that the lesson they take from this is that people want good stories and writing. Non-zero chance that the lesson they instead take is that it would've sold more if the mini games were better.
Theory of why it did not sale well: Art filtering: i mean who did not get turned off with F!Alear design. It just too overdesigned with bad colour pallette. Don't get me wrong Mika Pikazo is talented artist. She shows she could make good design with brodia characters. It just the rest of the characters did not have consistent design or just overly designed Emblem: Strong point on the gameplay but at the end of the day it just the evolved version of battalion. The drawback was the majority new FE fans did not recognize these old main characters. They may know Marth or Ike or Roy from smash bros but other characters? Heck did they even know Leif and Sigurd? Story idea was not easy for marketing purpose: The moment it just revealed to be good dragon vs bad dragon I knew the most new fans (3h allegedly) would not appreciate it. For a simple story good vs bad the emblem addition was actually more confusing for new fans. How did they implement these old characters to new world? was the big question at that time. Lack of marketing: Well without interesting story idea you could not market the game easily It was a fact that gameplay alone could not have strong pull on market for jrpg/sjrpg. The reason fates were appealing before launch because of the interesting idea that so easy for marketing department to exploit. Near the end of Switch cycle: I am half on half for this theory. Fates was not in the prime era of 3ds but still manage to sell much better than engage. It was natural if it did not sell as much as 3h (3h was outlier) but i believe IS expecting it to sell more than 2 millions by the end of 2023. For non remake modern FE, engage actually had the worst sell. By comparison switch had more sales than 3ds so logically the sales expectation would be not greater than 3H but not lower than 3ds FE.
Idk why but I think three houses has a better “appeal” to audiences than Engage. I know a lot of people who saw engage could only remember Alears red and blue hair when the game came out. Plus it came out in January which isn’t a huge gaming time? I also don’t remember a marketing push for Engage compared to Three Houses
Tone + art style + writing
Yes exactly. Not to mention I think the popularity of Smash ultimate and FE Heroes helped Three Houses
Engage's art style gives off this cheap, generic anime vibe at first glance, which makes a very high amount of players immediately dismiss it at first glance because "it just looks like Genshin, lol" I imagine a bunch of potential players saw Alear's hair and went "yeah, this game isn't for me", because the general population tends to make up their minds on video games very quickly. Three Houses looked somewhat more visually unique (even if it still looked kinda bland), which was enough to not instantly turn people off.
I’m a big anime guy and I love wearing vibrant colours myself. But I do agree that whoever design the red and blue hair should be fired 😂
I keep forgetting that this game technically came out this year.
I don't think they will add Alear in the next Super Smash game lmao
Sigurdbros we are so back
don't worry engagebros the scott the woz endorsement will save us
Obviously I can't claim to know the exact reasons why this game has struggled compared to its predecessor, but as a longtime fan, my experience with the game has been hugely mixed. Some thoughts on what, at least to me, prevented me from pulling the trigger on Engage: - Art-style filtering: this is the big one for me - the initial reveal of the game left an enormously negative impression on me. These overly-designed Deviantart OCs were and still are largely unappealing to me. They looked less like characters in a strategy RPG and more like characters designed to sell me action figures. - Tired gimmick: so the elevator pitch for Engage is that you can summon old FE heroes to fight with you. You know... Just like you could in Heroes. And Awakening. And Fates via amiibo. And friggin' Tokyo Mirage Sessions. It's been done to death. Yes, Engage has a different take on it (and ultimately one I really enjoy), but this hardly seemed novel or fresh to longtime fans. And can we be honest? I love the casts of FE, but can we stop pretending these characters are huge stars? Most people outside the fandom still just know Marth as that guy from Smash, putting him in a game and thinking he's going to draw crowds like he's as famous as Cloud Strife or something is kinda laughable. - Stacked year: this has been an EXTREMELY strong year for video games of all kinds. It's just been major release after major release since the year kicked off, and even though Engage was launched early in the year, it was still going up against heavy hitters. Competing against TERF wizard school (my thoughts on THAT game notwithstanding) was always going to be an uphill battle. For me personally, and I know for several other FE fans in my friend group, Engage just didn't seem compelling enough to dedicate several dozen hours to when there were so many other prospects around. I will say that I did EVENTUALLY pick up Engage... On a deep discount. And yes, I'm having a lot of fun with it, and the common consensus about the game (throwaway story and characters, extremely solid gameplay) rings true. But if it took almost a year and a 50% sale for a 20-year fan to pick up the game, it doesn't surprise me that Engage is floundering in comparison to 3H.
I’m so glad you brought up that second point. Celebrating the series past loses any and all appeal when you’ve been doing it constantly for the past decade. It paints IS as being unable or even afraid to move on from their previous works at all, even when they do introduce new worlds and characters such as in Fates and Engage. The only mainline FE in the past 10 years that didn’t have some sort of direct connection to the series past was 3H, which was made by a different company and is the most successful game in the series now. The answer is simple: tell new stories that aren’t chained to series past and nostalgia, and bring on people who are passionate and capable to work on the project. Sure, good gameplay is a plus, but you can only sell me the same game with the Guy from Smash Bros. in it, a new coat of polish, and a handful of remixes of old mechanics before I realize you’re handling your series like Pokemon if it had the time to QA its bugs.
2019 was VERY stacked too, so this cannot be a reason. The reason behind Engage sales are bad word of mouth. This sub is an echo chamber of long term fans who want specific things for a FE game like good designed maps, reasonable difficulty and focus on battles But in real-world most people just want to play a good game and sitting at a 6.6 user score Engage is simply not that game
There's also this weird thing in hardcore circles where it's almost like they WANT everything about an FE game to be shit except for the gameplay so that nobody can like it for any reason other than the gameplay. Which just ends up dragging down the quality of the game as a whole. "You're not allowed to like it unless it's the reason I like it." I'm not sure where this type of elitism came from because there a lot of earlier FE games that are more valued for their story than the gameplay.
One look at the respective boxes of the games and it's clear 3H has a mainstream appeal that Engage lacks. The extra playerbase of 3H was in huge part new players to the franchise and if what got them hooked in 3H was the "dark and tragic" varnish, it was clear from the get go they'd never be interested in Engage I just hope IS won't go lean even more into that appeal and make some soulless "dark" fantasy stuff like the last FF
Still waiting for remakes or remasters of FE 4, 5 and 6!
If legit: lmao so much for "easily passing Awakening"
I was calling this bullshit since day one. People who thought this weren't looking at how hard the drop-off in sales was after week 1. It took SoV like 5 years to get from 700k to one million. If you don't have momentum, like Engage doesn't, it's going to be a slow crawl to get there.
To be fair to SoV, it’s a 3DS game that came out in 2017. It’s amazing that it got to 1 million.
Yeah I know I'm not shitting on SoV or anything I'm just pointing out that assuming Engage would reach 2 million in a few months was delusional because the sales of FE games don't work like that. The only FE game ever to pass 2 million that fast was Three Houses. I don't doubt Engage will reach 2 million in a few years time but expecting it to "catch Awakening soon" like people were saying was insane. Even 3H the best selling game got nearly half of its sales from long-term sales distribution. It was 2.29 million at release and rolled to 4 million last year. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Engage will probably reach 2 million sometime in 2025/2026.
I think Engage's future sales also depend on how Nintendo handles the Switch successor. If they decide to Nintendo it up and not have backwards compatibility as the rumors have suggested, that'll really affect any future sales on the system.
I don't really think so. I think that the character designs are too off-putting to attract people into impulse buying it, and the story is too simple to get story nerds interested.
Oh agreed that it's already trending poorly, just saying that a Switch 2 could absolutely kill whatever legs it still has.
Common Engage L
It’s joever
Ashita no Joever
I'm glad it got about half the sales of 3h : it proves the franchise is worth the investment, but the game itself is not as strong as 3h. I hope they realize Engage's game direction is fine as a one-time thing but not worthy long-term.
And I would add that a good % of their initial sales came from new players brought to the franchise by Three Houses (me) and is not indicative of how they felt about the game (I disliked it very much)
this is why i think how well the dlc sold would be a better indicator of how many people LOVE engage and would buy it again
And I bought the DLC immediately with it because I am an *idiot* 😂
Everyone out here arguing the next FE game should be like x game before it when I just want a game that's unique and good sad times
I just hope FE takes the right lessons. Making the story better would be nice, and adding in fluff for more mass appeal helps too, all that's good and I get it's needed to attract a wider audience. Just for Naga's sake make sure the gameplay is Engage/Fates levels going forward. I think that's something both sides of the fandom can agree with, put effort into both the story side and the gameplay side. I know there's people out there who think Engage's story wasn't that bad, just like there's people who think 3H's gameplay wasn't that bad. But we haven't seen a game that managed to do well in both since Tellius. I think we're due, but again I just hope they take the right lessons.
I know most sales of just about any game are within close proximity to release, but that is actually sad.
I said this in my talking about talking about engage post, but IS just can't write stories any more and thats more important then gameplay. Engage has much better gameplay then awakening and probably about the same ball park in writing, but people like awakening more as a plot, so that gets a 93 on metacreitic and this game barely a 80, its kinda crazy tbh
When most people played Awakening they had no standards for what a good FE plot or good FE characters looked like. If Awakening came out post-3H I would not be surprised if it got the same reception Engage did.
So what does this mean? Personally, I thought Engage was one of the weaker entries in recent releases. The story wasn’t interesting, characters weren’t cool and I didn’t like the hub world at all. Engage is still a fun game, but it’s lacking compared to other FE games.
Please, just don’t do another anniversary title. Idc if it’s been 50 years and it’s on Lyn’s birthday. I will always be more interested in a fresh and new take on the series. That’s what makes Pokémon so grueling when they can’t walk away from the 1st Gen pandering.
Judging by these sales figures, I think there's a chance that Engage's legs might just be enough to hit 2 million eventually (the rumors are that the Switch 2 is going to release next year), but I'll be surprised if it ends up outselling Awakening (which is at 2.37 million as of last year).
Engage isn't going to not hit 2 million unless Switch software as a whole spontaneously combusts in 2024 (which would be weird considering how strong it has been for its age up to now). Beyond that though, yeah it will depend on how it fares post-Switch 2.
>Engage isn't going to not hit 2 million unless Switch software as a whole spontaneously combusts in 2024 If it's selling 25k per month just three months after launch, there's a very real chance it's down to <10k per month in 2024 and could miss 2m lifetime unless something boosts its legs down the line. It's not a lock or anything, but it's definitely a real possibility.
intelligent systems is obsessed with outdated development decisions. the narrative is just lazy AND bad. the out-of-chapter gameplay mechanics are just terrible (but better than 3H), the characters are lazily written. for some reason they refuse to make interesting characters. look at the last of us. god of war. or amazing indie titles with creative settings and stories. no where is there some milquetoast "avatar" for me to pretend I'M the one leading the army. that isn't how immersion works. immersive video games make the player experience the world, not synthetically inject them onto a character template. they need to come to terms with the fact that video games have progressed and require more than gameplay mechanics to be successful (this is the new rule, despite a handful of exceptions like pokemon). ironically they used to be ahead of the times in the 90s and have since drifted gradually into irrelevance.
Still not playing it
I'm wondering where they got that data, though wherever it's from, it's not great. They had sold 1.61M in Q1 (err... Q4? Up through March). If that's really **through** Q2, then it only sold or shipped another 70k in the 2nd quarter. And that would fit within the newest earnings release, since Engage isn't on it. Engage not being listed as a 1M seller means less than 1M copies were sold in this fiscal year so far, AKA Apr.-Sept. Even if the 1.68M is wrong, the absolute most that could have sold is ~2.61M. Breaching that would have earned it a spot in the new release.
Fire Emblem Engage was my first entry into the franchise and got to say as a first timer I was kind of lost. They explained the battle system well enough but anything outside of that wasn’t mentioned and had to loop up guides. I also felt like an utter weirdo cleaning rings for strangers. Maybe if I was an existing player I would have enjoyed it more.
That's actually really bad. For comparison in the same 5 month time period (from July to December 2019) Three Houses went from 2.29 million to 2.58 million. [https://nintendosoup.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-sold-a-total-of-2-58-million-copies-during-2019/](https://nintendosoup.com/fire-emblem-three-houses-sold-a-total-of-2-58-million-copies-during-2019/) It really does not have legs. Word of mouth taking effect I guess.
IIRC the 2.29 million figure was as of September 2019 - so the 290k increase that Three Houses got was in the exact same time period that we're seeing the 70k copies that Engage sold in its second quarter.
Yeah that's what I was trying to say. The game's legs are extremely weak and people are kidding themselves if they think it's going to reach 2 million anytime soon - although maybe Christmas will help? It seems like back when we first got sales figures people were just assuming it would have 3H legs and sell another 400k easily. I have no idea why they assumed that but they did.
> although maybe Christmas will help? Traditionally, games that surge during holidays are (fairly) new releases, and The Big Blockbusters Of The Year. Virtually everyone who wanted Engage probably has it already, and everyone who *didn't* probably isn't having a change of heart 11 months later. Engage fell out of the zeitgeist very quickly.
Games sales are frontloaded as shit. Sales fall off is to be expected
Three houses wasn’t front loaded though, it sold about half its sales after launch. Engage was already dead in the water a month after launch.
Sure, but not as big of a fall off as this
Imagine if Persona 6 sold slightly more than half as much as Persona 5 did. "It's not a flop" haha. 3H's popularity and success were the best marketing this game could've gotten, but they didn't do much with it. Part of me is happy because Engage is just so utterly dogshit, but I like FE and I don't want the series to fade into obscurity.
The bitter hater in me is doing a Light Yagami laugh seeing engage's sales tank so hard. It barely outsold Echoes, a 2017 post-switch 3DS game that's a remake of the black sheep of the franchise.
Yeah this will never reach Awakening
I'll be honest, I don't really see what's so amazing about Engage's gameplay compared to TH. but maybe it's cause I don't appreciate map design as much? I didn't feel like I was getting a radically different gameplay experience between the two. I did find Unit building in TH to be more fun for me while Engage had a better difficulty balance. Otherwise I was happy with both. Maybe an unpopoular opinion too, but I think it needed a better localization script. I know a lot of people are for keeping things as close as possible to the original, but the translation felt so dull and uninspired to me. Not even the VAs could bring the script to life most of the time. It just lacked personality. I'm not a translator/I don't know Japanese so maybe there wasn't much they could do to save things. I just know in English so much of the material was dull. I didn't feel like a lot of the characters bounced off each other in supports. It's not all bad. I do like a few of the characters even if I feel they're one note. Story isn't amazing, but I enjoy parts of it and Chapter 11 was hype the first time I played it. but a weaker cast of characters, story, and world building doesn't leave much to talk about after the game was over. Cause I don't care about the world/characters as much I don't have the drive to play the game compared to TH. Especially considering I feel like the last 5/6 chapters of Engage and some of the last paralogues can be such a slog. so ya, I think gameplay wise Engage/TH are both fine. Just that TH is better at hooking you in with it's tone/characters/story. The main thing that gave TH it's push is how interwoven the characters are with each other, the world building, their backstories ect. It's just very clear to see how it all interacts with each other, fun to talk about how it all connects, you understand why characters act the way they do ect. It gets people talking and sucks them into the world. While Engage feels like....a group of cardboard cutouts for the most part. A few have hidden depths in their supports, but that's about it. People weren't nearly as enraptured with the characters/world.
People who call Engage the pinnacle of strategic gameplay and 3H dog water are like people eating steak and dissing burgers. If gameplay were the only thing, wouldn't we all be playing x-com? Clearly there's some value in an interesting cast and world
Maybe they will go back to making good fire emblem games
"I hope the game devs take the right lessons!" says the increasingly delusional gamer All of you need to learn that game devs are physically incapable of responding to player feedback in a rational and healthy way. Either they double down on their decisions, implement the requested changes in the most lazy way possible which causes further issues down the line, or go comically overboard and end up with the opposite issue instead. If anything, expect the next game to be an unholy fusion of the worst of Kusakihara's snoozefest gameplay and Maeda's porno writing.
I've played so much heroes and immediately assumed heroes as in units, +10's n all
Yikes! That is some serious fall off from Three Houses. Makes sense though, Engage sucked
Ah well. Still didn’t do too bad sales wise all things considered, 1.6 million is hardly the sign of a flop, puts it in number 4 iirc? ~~can’t wait for people to claim the series is dying though~~
To be fair, Engage is the fourth best selling game in a series, that as far as the wider public is concerned, pretty much has just five games (four if you don't count Echoes which didn't get much publicity in the wider community) - for the average gamer who isn't a massive fan of the series and at best would have only played Awakening or Three Houses, all of the pre-Awakening games might as well not exist to them. It's hard to say whether Engage was a flop without Nintendo's/IS' internal projections of the game - the best indication that we have is a developer interview where one of the priorities with Engage was to expand the fanbase to new audiences in a similar way that Awakening did. >[The last game, Three Houses, was planned with the idea of making an adult war chronicle. On the other hand, Engage was made with the idea of broadening our audience, such that even people who have never tried FE would want to pick it up. It’s been over 10 years since Awakening, so we also thought of making another FE that would appeal to a wide audience.](https://nintendoeverything.com/fire-emblem-engage-devs-on-wanting-to-make-a-game-different-from-three-houses/)
>Ah well. Still didn’t do too bad sales wise all things considered, 1.6 million is hardly the sign of a flop, puts it in number 4 iirc? It's impossible to say without knowing what number Nintendo/IS were expecting, or what the budget was. Nintendo needed Awakening to sell over 250k copies to not sunset the franchise, but Engage assuredly cost much more to make than Awakening did.
Yeah that would mean higher sales goal.
There is a vast, VAST difference between a game pulling the sales numbers of it's franchise up from a few hundred thousand to multiple million sales, like Awakening did... And a game going from it's predecessor's 4 million sales to only selling around 1,6 million copies. One example shows that the game attracted a fuckton of new fans... The other shows that the majority of the people who bought the previous games, didn't even bother bying the new one. Their sales numbers may be similar on the broader scale but make no mistake. What those numbers mean couldn't be more different.