like a star, like a firefly

Trailer for the last wave of Engage DLC!

Intriguing stuff, and I like the look of the new twins. :3 It's coming way sooner than I expected, too, on 5th April -- just two weeks away! Part of me finds it a bit concerning that all the game's DLC is getting belted out so fast; on the other hand, Engage had supposedly been finished for over a year before release and only got delayed this much due to the pandemic messing things up everywhere, so it makes sense that they're able to release the DLC this quickly after the base game.

Just as well I bought the DLC and got started on it when I did, then! I cleared Tiki's map last night, and I'm thinking of alternating between the divine paralogues and the regular Emblem paralogues I've got for the time being; in fact, I might wait til this last DLC wave drops before I even think of progressing the main story again!

What does it say about me when I see the teasers leading up to the next wave of Engage DLC dropping and giggle at Robin actually having feet?

... probably just that I'm easily amused by silly things, to be fair. Still, I can never forget how everyone in Awakening had pegs for legs due to the devs underestimating the 3DS's capabilities at the time. ^^; (I also still haven't forgotten people going "OMG they have feet!" when Fates was first announced!)

I haven't bought the DLC yet, but will probably do so pretty soon. This third wave is probably the least relevant to my interests, though, unless there's other things and/or free updates along with it that haven't been announced yet.

The good thing about Engage having a photo mode is that when characters I ship don't stand close enough together in their support conversations or other actual interactions to make decent icons out of them, I still have the ability to more-or-less make my own food.

The "food" here (this specific icon [or more accurately the version of it I had at the time of making this post; the lighting on the character models was a bit weird-looking]) might not be the best, but hey, it's something.

Got Fire Emblem Engage!

First impressions will come later as I've only just beaten Chapter 2's map so far, but for now I'll just say that the OP song is shounen as heck and kind of charming for it.

Picked girl!Alear, by the way.

Turn rewind mechanics like Mila's Turnwheel and Divine Pulse are a quality-of-life feature that 100% deserve to be a part of modern Fire Emblem games.

Ever spent a long time on a single map, only for something to go horribly wrong right at the end? I hated having to start the entire map over from scratch when that happened while playing the older games, especially when it rendered the long time I'd already spent on it totally wasted. Having turn rewind in such circumstances helps save that time, and really, nowadays players shouldn't be forced to restart from scratch just because one thing went wrong near the end of an otherwise well-enough-played map; things don't have to be the same now as they were 20+ years ago.

Moreover, I think people who are completely against turn rewind don't have much empathy for players who, y'know, have lives outside of playing games and therefore don't necessarily have tons of free time to bash their heads over and over on one map in one game. That's why I've believed for a good while now that Casual mode also very much has a right to exist in this series, and I say that as someone who still plays on Classic!

I can understand people thinking Three Houses gives a tad too many uses of Divine Pulse, but that's the only concession I'll make. Turn rewind is a good thing, I'm glad it's confirmed to be coming back in Engage, and I hope it stays in every new FE game going forward.

And to anyone who is violently allergic to it being a thing: don't bloody use it then! It's optional, for crying out loud!

New Fire Emblem Engage trailer!

I literally just saw it now, so I'm still processing a lot of it, but I'm feeling hype all the same!

The new Pokémon games release in just a couple of days now, too. I hope my copy of Violet arrives soon!

I love that Hopes has lots of new supports between pairs of characters who didn't previously get supports together in Houses, including some pairs that fans (myself included in some cases) had been wanting for years.

Still, there'll always be some potential that gets missed, because that's inevitable when we've got so many characters in a big fully-voiced script like this... so I just felt like throwing together a list of character pairs that didn't support in either game that I personally would've really liked to see. This isn't a criticism of the games' support choices at all -- just a "this would've been neat" sort of thing.

( Does it count as spoilers to list off some supports we didn't get? Also mentions a couple of supports that do happen in the game )

For the record, I went ahead and spoiled myself on who supports whom in Hopes around the time I was finishing my SB run, though I naturally didn't spoil myself on the conversations themselves.

While there's a good number of conversations between Houses/Hopes characters I'd love to see that will probably never happen outside of fanfic (whether or not that fanfic currently exists), there's one in particular that I've suddenly got a bit of a hankering for.

( Spoilers for Scarlet Blaze; CW for mentions of CSA and human experimentation that may-or-may-not get discussed further )

I'd have a go at writing the fic myself, but I don't know how well I could pull it off...

Just reached the final chapter in the Scarlet Blaze route of Three Hopes! Finally! \o/

I'm also finally free from support-grinding hell! I've unlocked every single support conversation I can in this route! Grinding so much for those honestly started to get a bit tedious towards the end, especially when a certain latecomer has so many, but I'm glad I did get 'em all. It means I've only got one or two loose ends to tie up before I go into the final battle.

It's been a ride, that's for sure -- especially in the last couple of chapters!

Aiming to finish SB Chapter 12 today tomorrow, heatwave be damned. Just need to finish another paralogue and spend all my activity/training points beforehand.

( Late-game mechanic talk; brief mention of major story spoilers )

Just cleared SB Chapter 10! \o/

Those in the know are free to take bets before looking under the cut...

( Major spoilers for Three Hopes )

Hopefully I can start picking up the pace a bit playing the rest of the route, now there's getting to be less grinding for supports outside of a few characters.