engagement farming, pt. 6
Did you know that in addition to being the funny number in the American calendar, April 20th is Lucina Fireemblem's birthday? It's true! In honor of that, and also it being Monday, the day where I do this anyway, today we will be continuing Engagement Farming, our ongoing series in which we play through Fire Emblem Engage. I did three whole chapters tonight so there's a lot to cover! Let's begin.1
Three chapters tonight! We're finally getting some story happening. So you may recall that the Elusian King Hyacinth challenged the King of Brodia to a battle? You will be shocked to learn that this was a trap, and the wizard kingdom did some wizard bullshit, kidnapped the king, and used his blood in a ritual to revive the Fell Dragon temporarily (presumably long enough for him to get all of the Emblem Rings). In order to buy us some time, King Hyacinth sends his daughter and heiress Princess Ivy on a suicide mission (also as punishment for how we defeated her last time) to fight us; looks like she's secretly been a worshipper of the Divine Dragon this whole time (whereas the rest of the wizard kingdom worships the Fell Dragon, I guess? this may be dangerous apostasy, we'll find out eventually). She wanders off when we don't execute her; don't worry, we'll be recruiting her soon.
Anyway. We're too late to stop the ritual so we have to kill the Zombie King of Brodia and also try to kill Hyacinth; Hyacinth is saved by some plot magic, and then the Fell Dragon appears and eats his blood, too. Seems like he just likes eating kings? Maybe he's not such a bad guy after all. Meanwhile it turns out that Veyle, the little girl we keep running into out on the road, is actually the Fell Dragon's daughter, but she claims never to have seen us before, so maybe there's two of them? This one has different colored eyes, also. Anyway, she steals the stone that lets us rewind time, and also all our Emblem Rings, and we're left with no choice but to retreat. Then, just as the retreat is looking hopeless (narratively), Ivy and her retainers show up and give us the time rewind stone back and also two Emblem Rings. It's not the ones we lost but it's not nothing, y'know?
So, none of this is particularly surprising, narratively, but it's very easy to imagine a world where this story continued as just a "let's collect all the emblems and keep beating up bad guys", with no real sense that the bad guys are a threat to us, narratively speaking.2 And while I am pretty sure I complained that our mom dying felt extremely unearned as an emotional beat, this bit? Losing all the Emblems we've been hanging out with and spending resources on? That feels like a loss, both in terms of assets--these guys make my army way stronger!--and in terms of "wow, we have been hanging out with these guys and now they got brainwashed by an evil dragon". Yeah, I'd be upset too! It works! We're on the run, we don't know how we're going to get our friends back. The stakes are personal now. I am finally, eleven chapters in, invested.
So let's talk maps. The first chapter of the night, Chapter 9, Ivy's suicide mission, is interesting in that it's kinda not. It's a straightforward kill-the-boss mission, and she has no special gimmicks. The map design invites us to split our army into two flanks to fight our way to the plateau she's on, and while they get some reinforcements if we're slow (which I very am), this feels very much like a battle we were meant to win. I suspect it wouldn't be hard to finish this one very quickly by luring her off her plateau by moving a flier into her range and just surrounding her. Maybe one day I'll try some LTC playthroughs of Fire Emblem, but it is not this day.
Chapter 10 gives us a little warning that we'll be fighting multiple battles before we were allowed to return to our magic castle in the sky; it's a boss fight where we have to fight past a magic ballista, then bust down a door, and then fight the Zombie King of Brodia, and then there's a long corridor where King Hyacinth uses Emblem Lyn to rain arrows down upon us from afar. It has the feeling of a final boss chapter but without the difficulty of it (it would be way harder if Hyacinth stayed in the back and made us come to him), and once again I think that's the point here. It feels climactic but . . . this isn't the end.
Then we jump right into Chapter 11. No chance to change our army (but we did get to promote a unit beforehand), and it is interesting, having had the turn rewind mechanic this whole time, starting a map without it. The goal here is to move through the woods and get our protagonist to one of two escape hexes; there are enemies on all sides and we've gotta move, and you can really feel the loss of the Emblems here.3 This one wasn't as hard as it could have been, but there were a few points when I was worried that I'd be restarting the map before Ivy showed up with the rewind button. In order to discourage us from hanging out and grinding, four bosses with three hitbars and Very Strong attacks show up at the same time Ivy does to chase us off the map.
Escape maps are fun. I enjoy the challenge of having to move the whole army to a destination while being chased by enemies; there is a pressure to move fast enough to stay ahead of the guys chasing you, and the need to keep someone in the rear to fend off the ones who do manage to catch up, and then you need to make sure the rearguard can keep up with the main force, and . . . it's fun. This one does a good job of making you feel powerless without being an ass-kicker of a map, which is nice.
These three maps feel like they have really sold the marriage of gameplay and story: our battle against Ivy feels like she is comically under-supported; the battle against the Zombie King and King Hyacinth has that big climactic feeling but also the sense that this can't be everything; and then this last one we are surrounded and don't have our most powerful tools and just have to work to survive.
And so I am really looking forward to seeing what comes next, but for now, my excellent good friends, I will leave it there. Our army is on its way to Solm, the desert kingdom, where we will presumably make some new friends and figure out how to go about getting our friends back. I will see you next week, friends; take care of yourselves.
Wait, shit, I should have been saying "let's engage" this whole time.↩
This is basically the plot of Dragon Age: Inquisition, after all.↩
We don't lose the DLC Emblems, which kind of makes sense since they're different things but also feels a little silly at the same time. It would have been nice if someone commented on this, but also it's DLC, I don't think they generally comment on DLC things in the story.↩