The PROBLEM with Fell Xenologue - A Disappointed Analysis of Maddening

should you buy the Fel xenolog DLC if you're just here for the tldr of my opinion or I suppose the tldw since you're watching then long story short it's gonna be a big fat no but if you want to hear a little bit about the why and hear me break it down and basically review the whole thing then stick around and listen or skip to the parts you want to hear about in the time stamps below also while you're down there maybe leave a like And subscribe I'm pretty close to hitting the big 20K and we've got some exciting content on the horizon that you really don't want to miss also before I start if you want to take a minute or two to hear me out I wanted to talk about a few things regarding the channel if you don't care that's also cool that's what the timestamps are for so you can go ahead and Skip ahead if you want but I promise I'm going to be quick anyways the channel has had a lot of Fire Emblem Focus since its Inception and that's not going anywhere there's still going to be a lot of fire emblem on the channel but it's never only been about fire emblem in the coming weeks you might start to see some videos on other games that I want to cover in a review style historically these videos didn't really perform very well for me and I know a lot of you might not be very interested but the YouTube algorithm heavily punishes branching out so I'd be really grateful if you guys would take some time out of your day to support these when they do come out that's it the channel isn't dying I'm not going anywhere Fire Emblem is still going to be around I just want to share some more of the other games I play with you guys as a little teaser for those of you who stuck around there's going to be some octopath 2 stuff and some Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection stuff and I'll leave it at that anyways with that out of the way let's get started on some of the good things about the DLC which are the story and characters shocker I know right I didn't expect it either the characters here aren't just some one note gimmick they're actually integral to the story they have a backstory and they develop along the way as they tackle their past issues and insecurities for a story that's written in only six chapters this was actually pretty good and all I'm left with is the thought of why the hell they didn't do this for the main game or at least give us this story instead of what we got we are sent to an alternate universe in this one where the Allure there has died during the last major conflict as well as the kings and queens of the other countries that we know about instead we are left with all the Royals that we have grown to love or hate For Better or For Worse as well as Nell and nil who are two fell dragons who have fought against sombron and are trying to do the right thing I won't spoil the plot further than that for those who want to experience it because I personally hate spoilers and would hate anyone to get spoiled by my own content without a spoiler warning but all I will say is that I think the conflict leading up to this and Nell and nil's stories are far more interesting than anything we had in the base game and I would have loved to experience that as the main story and then have this as the DLC rather than what we actually got sometimes I honestly don't really understand what intelligent systems is trying to do and I feel like trying to understand them over the last 20 years or so has just given me more headache than otherwise should have so I just don't try anymore but this would have been an actually good story with decently written characters to pursue as an anniversary game instead of The Quirk Mania show we ended up getting as our main story there's not really much else to say about it since a lot of the faces are familiar and all the characters are basically the opposite of what their singular character trait was in the base game but here it feels less invasive than it did there and a lot of them have a tiny bit more substance to them in addition to said reversed trait the Four Winds for example are honestly kind of endearing and I enjoyed their company but the Royals still kind of sucked for the most part though seeing reverse all Christian diamont was kind of funny and gave me a chuckle I will admit that in comparison to the main game though this is Miles better but I don't think it's anything Earth shattering or top tier in terms of the story or the writing quality we still have a ways to go for that unfortunately for some reason I can never really remember if the music is any good or not but from what I recall there were some reused tracks alongside the new ones and I don't recall it being bad though I have some major PTSD from the final map music because I was listening to it for probably about 15 hours and I'd like to never hear it again thank you very much outside of that I'm just gonna tack this onto the music section quickly because it's going to be brief and I have no idea where else to put it but there isn't really an improvement to the visual or graphical Fidelity of the DLC it's still the same game as engage it still looks nice and the animations are still fantastic but they're just not getting better they're not getting worse either now let's get to the meat and potatoes of this video and probably the longest segment and probably the majority of this video as well and that's talking about the gameplay I'm Gonna Come out and say it right out the gate maddening fell xenolog is the closest I've ever come in my 20 years of Fire Emblem of just giving up on playing a map and no it actually was not chapter three but before I get to that let's talk about it overall I'm sure you all know by now that you get nil and Nell as two new units that trigger a game over if they die because they're treated like a leer as Lords and I'm sure you also already know that nil is just a walking liability that gets one shot by almost everything and now is just excessively mediocre as a unit so she won't contribute much outside of dragon class emblem Synergy you also get three of the four wins alongside this and with that you are up to an eventual five units that are all Force deployed and if we include a leader that's six but ilir is treated a little bit differently and I'll talk about that in a bit this is going to comprise the majority of your roster alongside a handful of units from your base game that you can bring along with you the catch your base game units will be at fixed levels and stats and won't be able to gain any EXP well actually all the units in the DLC are like this and they scale up from chapter to chapter the one thing that isn't fixed is that any base game unit you will have will be able to use skills that they've inherited as well as carry forward their bond levels with rings or bracelets unfortunately you can't do any of that stuff for the five DLC characters so they suck by comparison sure a unit like Celestia is good in chapters two and three while Nell can survive a round or two and be decent support but that's about it I guess we're kind of lucky that permadeath isn't a thing in this game mode as well otherwise it would be very infuriating trying to do deathless clears with these units anyways if it seems like I jumped a bit all over the place it's because I did but the bottom line is that the implementation of the four wins Nell and nil seems to be quite a bit half-assed gameplay wise as they're all stuck at Bond level 1 and can't inherit any skills despite having the SP to do so if you look at their profiles in game I have to wonder if this really was intentional or if they just got lazy and didn't want to code it or didn't test the game which honestly that's kind of what it feels like we'll never truly know but I can't say it's not janky or a bit weird one other thing that I find weird is the axis you have to your inventory every map your inventory resets and every unit has a set inventory you can trade around stuff or store it in your convoy to access during the map but let's say you want to use a Levin sword for example well you're out of luck because only Celine has it and if like me you're trying to give it to Celestia well the force deployed 5 can't even trade in the pre-battle menu which is so bad why they restricted some of the most basic functions of the game from these units is beyond me and I can't put my finger on it aside from it just being bad design if you're gonna make the game difficulty unbalanced which I'm about to get to don't make it worse by just having regular quality of life features taken away as well it's not clever to have me Convoy funneling my units basic weapons on turn one of a battle it's just an engineered inconvenience at this point and it's not fun now elephant in the room time let's talk about the map design and the difficulty I might be saying something controversial here but I'm gonna be completely honest with you all I think every map in the fell xenolog on maddening is doable by playing the way the developers intended you to play it having said that though I firmly believe that they didn't test and balance these difficulties because Normal is an absolute joke of a difficult see where you can probably just Auto Battle all the maps and you'd be fine hard is a pretty rough challenge but it's doable and maddening is borderline impossible unless you're playing perfectly you know what you're doing the RNG rolls in your favor or you choose every map by not playing it the way the developers intended you to the point I'm trying to make is the maps are solvable and while you might not like me saying this it's about refining your strategy thinking outside the box a little and maybe using units and Rings skills or bracelets that you hadn't really used before for example we've all spammed the Lin ring to death in the base game but here she's even better because mulligir has corrupted weapon Effectiveness and every enemy in the game is corrupted by proxy that also makes Erica a ring that I didn't really use in the base game one of the best emblems in this game because she gives you access to Sea gland and this will rip through every enemy in the game in one round if you put it on a fast character like Marin or kagetsu trust me Marin was my MVP on every single map there are also things like Soren's assigned decoy that are amazingly good here because it forces enemies to stay away from your weak units I'm looking at you nil and Target your tanks or combat units instead Veronica's summon hero is also nice to give you some extra Firepower for your restricted roster for a few turns and the three houses bracelet combos are still really strong of course base game stuff like sea doll dancing and putting the pilot ring on one of your units are still incredibly useful but the point I'm trying to make is that it's all still doable even on maddening if you're willing to bash your head against the titanium wall for long enough it will start to death that is until you reach the Final Chapter now it's been over a week since I finished beating the Final Chapter on Madden and I've been so burned out from my attempts that I haven't been able to make a video among other reasons but I won't get into those the Final Chapter took me three full days of attempts I was a broken man I was ready to quit I was even ready to shower off the sweaty gamer stench go outside and be a productive member of society but the True Villain inside me said that if I can't conquer this challenge how the hell am I going to rule the world one day and so I kept at it and eventually I found a solution the problem is I don't think I did it the way the developers intended you to play this map either despite me killing the boss at the top of the map where he is supposed to end at and without having his damage reduction tiles to keep it short this map is rough and I've yet to see someone do it in the exact order that they wanted you to the boss moves around the map to bottom left middle bottom right top right top left and then top Center as he does that he slowly destroys the map which basically just deletes the tile underneath you and one shots any unit standing on them foe or friend along the way he also summons reinforcements and does aoes that you shouldn't stand on otherwise you're gonna take 42 fixed damage and that's going to kill most of the units in the game because fixed stats are a great idea he won't ever directly attack you but he counters for a lot of damage for ninety percent of the map he's also on a tile that provides a minus 50 damage and crit debuff to any unit engaging him in combat so as to try to make you do no damage well intelligent system items do I have news for you you failed because the players are smarter and learned how to one turn this and cheese It Against All Odds due to DLC skills that you gave us like reprisal or crit stacking which calculates the total damage first and then subtracts the 50 from it for some odd reason see what I mean by untested or unbalanced they couldn't even bother to make their final boss stupidly overpowered by changing the reduction to 100 anyways for me personally I tried over and over to move along with him kill all the units in the way and at some point he just ends up moving faster generating reinforcements too fast and I couldn't keep up so I decided to play it not as intended I rescue skipped it to the top left corner on like turn four slowly killed everything that came at me because everything aggroes when you get to that section and waited until he got to the top of the map this isn't how the devs intended and for some reason he completely skipped the phase where he destroys the top left of the map he just goes He beelines it right to the center and left that open but this is a solution that I came up with on my own I didn't have any help with it and I'm proud of my clear nonetheless it's not really cheesing the map I did Kill almost every enemy on the map the only one he got to absorb was all Christ which gave him Luna which was more trouble than I would like to admit because that causes one shots too oh my goodness I have so many complaints about this final map I'm just relieved that it's over a final map should not be unfair it should not be reliant on RNG or perfect play either there should be room for mistakes and there should be room for a little bit of breathing room on maddening and not none at all it should and honestly it does I'm gonna give them credit for this one you can bring a variety of units to tackle the map it not just my setup I've seen other people do it in various ways in the long form with other units but I've been playing fire emblem for a long time I'm getting old these bones don't work like they used to I'm not the best or the smartest player out there but I beat it and if I can you can do it too overall though I don't think maddening is overtuned like some people are saying rather I think our units and our access to tools are undertoned and that's just a design and implementation flaw rather than anything else and it ends up making the game tedious over it being playable or in enjoyable I think if the four wins and the two Lords that they gave us were a little bit better if they had access to bond levels if they had access to skill inheritance that would make things easier maybe not easier but I think fairer is the word to use for maddening because they really just feel like a walking liability on maddening and contribute very little one last thing and I want to mention the final nail in the coffin in regards to DLC for me at least personally is how these units translate to the main game the whole reason that the DLC is nice is because it gives you five extra units to play your main campaign with but when you get these units they're already promoted and they're at level one which means they'll be vastly overpowered compared to your main roster instead of scaling based on the chapter you complete the felt xenolog on it does feel like they intended you to clear this later on in the main campaign and that's why you got these units early but come on intelligent systems if you're on the base game maddening which prior to DLC waves was very nicely balanced you'll note that this completely ruins the balance and the difficulty which I've come to slowly appreciate as not being a good thing if that wasn't enough you need to replay feld's analog on every new playthrough to get these units instead of it being a separate one-off instance like cindered Shadows was for three houses and this just makes it a tedious step that you need to do in a bit of a slog for every time I want to replay the game if I want to use the DLC units barriers like this to having fun should not really be part of your integration again a lot of this is integration and implementation and game balance and this is stuff like the DLC rushed out very quickly and I get it engages hype fizzled out very quickly we've noticed that from views on our channels and just YouTube hype in general but you didn't I mean you could have taken a little bit more time to just refine it and figure it out and fix it the base game was brilliant gameplay wise I don't understand why we got this mess luckily the one silver lining The Shining beacon in the sky is that you can choose the difficulty of Fels analog separate from base game so once you've cleared it on maddening just replay it on normal for every new file and spare yourself the headache listen you've already proven yourself to be an elite gamer of the highest level and no one is going to come hounding you for it in the single player RPG unless you're a self-proclaimed masochist or you just use the internet overall I honestly don't think this DLC is worth 30 dollars based on the feld's analog alone now there might be an argument to be made that we have seven other DLC maps that are pretty fun to play for the most part and the bracelets they give you can be used in the main game immediately too which again lots of fun fact are there but unless you like replaying the game over and over and you really love engage this DLC isn't worth it for the average player who's going to do one or maybe two playthroughs and call it a day for engage I think you can safely just watch the scenes and supports on YouTube if you really want to know what they are and you really aren't missing out on much so don't let the fomo get to you that's about it for this video I hope to have one of my non-fire emblem videos out later this week so keep your eyes peeled for that and I'll see you all there very soon peace

Channel: LinkKing7

Views: 11,565

Keywords: Chrom, Veronica, Wave 3, DLC, Fire Emblem, Engage, Fire Emblem Engage, Fire Emblem Switch, FE17, Ivy, Gameplay, Review, Positives, LinkKing7, LinkKing, TheLinkKing, Mekkah, Faerghast, Alear, Mechanics, Music, Fire Emblem Engage OST, Engage OST, Fire Emblem Engage Guide, Forging guide, SP Gain, Choops, Game Review, Spoiler Free, Yunaka, Meme, Analysis, FE Engage, Tier List, Maddening, Best Units, Classes, Builds, Jean, Gameplay Analysis, Fell Xenologue, Final Chapter, One Turn, Nil, Nel, Zelestria

Id: wxTk5xKLKow

Length: 18min 10sec (1090 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 23 2023