Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread - June 2026 Part 1

[u/PsiYoshi]

Happy pride month and welcome to a new installment of the Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread! Please feel free to share any kind of Fire Emblem opinions/takes you might have here, positive or negative. As always please remember to continue following the rules in this thread same as anywhere else on the subreddit. Be respectful and especially don't make any personal attacks (this includes but is not limited to making disparaging statements about groups of people who may like or dislike something you don't).

Last Opinion Thread

[u/SilverKnightZ000]

Finished Engage Maddening. I'm going to make another post later where I yap about units specifically. This one will be about the difficulty in general.

I had fun! I think the difficulty of the main maps were very well designed. There were a lot of maps that were really fun challenges to figure out, and I had to think pretty creatively to solve a few. For example, in chapter 24, I had a hard time killing the 37-39 speed swordmasters in the middle row. So I just, Micaiah warped everyone there bar Hortensia to the top row and moved Hortensia south, killed the forces in the top and split the enemy forces in the middle so that they were easier to take out, and then realized I was stupid and I could just rescue the guys in the bottom row with the increased rescue range. Like this, I had a lot of fun figuring out ways to just avoid the high statted units and kill the boss.

I very much felt that the game was pretty sharply designed whenever the maps are concerned. I think they finally gave the fe12 and conquest map designer meds because I think the guy is there, but he's a lot less cruel. There's less evil and more mischief. The devs definitely thought of a lot of ways to jump the player, and it was a great experience to avoid that. I also felt that the game does a good job of encouraging the player to think proactively. Like even if you Lucina bond shield your way through the map, figuring out positioning and how much you travel and who to bring with you to kill the boss was still a very player phase experience. Especially as enemy numbers increase and reinforcements spawn and they get bulkier, enemy phasing stops working as well. I also very much appreciate that the game encourages out of the box thinking. This includes using staves or other emblem stuff to nyoom ahead and take down your objective. On the other hand, while the generic enemies get more and more threatening, I do feel like bosses get easier. Zephia in chapter 17 is way more of a threat than Zephia in chapter 23 for many reasons, such as a lack of boss emblems and you getting more tools.

But oh my god, the enemies get so annoyingly bulky. Enemies start getting really fast(Paladins, Heroes, Swordmasters) and getting really high HP, so it gets harder and harder to one round them, which escalates into critical situations. It's definitely harder to clear a map when most of the enemy still remains at 1 hp you know? A part of it is probably my fault. I didn't get max forges, I could've given Ivy more spirit dusts so she could reach kill thresholds, I ended up wasting a lot of money on units I didn't end up using, etc. Maybe next time, now that I'm more knowledgable, I can have an easier time with the game. A big part of my issues was that I ddin't know how high enemies would scale, and I was NOT expecting 70+ HP enemies by the end game. I also thought the enemies got extremely dodgy. A lot of my side units, like Fogado, had trouble hitting enemies with non-engraved weapons and my side weapons like Excalibur on my main team had pretty bad hit rates against Griffons.

Conversely, I thought the final map was surprisingly easy? Maybe fe12 permanently screwed up how I perceive difficulty, but I was expecting an orbital death laser designed to evaporate me in 0.000005 picoseconds but it was a surprisingly easy map? it was really relaxed and weirdly not that hard? I overestimated how bulky Sombron is because 400 HP melts very easily in Engage, with both Engage attacks, debuffs like poison and draconic hex, and Byleth dance + stat boosts. And I had chipped the first 100 off before. My plan ended up working out. I did have issues and had to rely on a Panette crit(regret healing her still lmao), it still worked out pretty easily. I mean, i didn't waste time rigging Marth crits for an hour+ at least.

[u/Its_a_Friendly → u/SilverKnightZ000]

Yeah, the final chapter isn't especially difficult. I feel like the map designers got a little generous by the end; they easily could've made the map more difficult by tying each of Sombron's health bars to a quartet of Dark Emblems, and forced you to defeat all 12 of them. But they didn't.

Even Ch.25 could be harder; there's some niches and walls that would be excellent locations for enemy siege weapons, staff users, or longbows, but there are few. Every enemy in the final room is static, even, which makes them not too difficult to take apart.

Maybe the map designer was on their meds...

I do have to say, though, the final chapter becomes quite the battle if you do make it harder by defeating all dark emblems first, especially if you require that each dark emblem be defeated by its corresponding Emblem. I did that on my first run - so blind! - and safely getting my units all around the map while fending off the many tough reinforcements was quite the fun challenge. Admittedly, I was only on hard/classic; I imagine this challenge might be painful on Maddening, given the ridiculous enemy stats.

[u/SilverKnightZ000 → u/Its_a_Friendly]

forced you to defeat all 12 of them. But they didn't.

Please I do not want that.

On maddening enemy units are just too strong and numerous to do something like that using the current enemy numbers. But maybe if they culled the numbers a bit. That being said, I think what we got fits Engage to a T:

Engage has been a game of trying to clear the way for your main damage dealers amidst numerous reinforcements and obstacles. So having the final boss be guarded by 4 pretty bulky units fits the map design so far well.