Why Did Fire Emblem Engage Fall Off?

between January 20th and March 31st and Counting digital sales Nintendo's recent report on their fiscal year earnings shows that Fire Emblem engage has sold around 1.61 million units where 430 000 of those came straight from Japan pretty good numbers given the game's been out for 10 weeks by that point right well yes in a vacuum they are good the catch is though that the game is still trailing hard behind three houses as a bit of context the first solid data we got about three houses sales came from a document containing Nintendo's financial highlights up until September 30th of 2019 given that the game released back in July 26th this meant that they had one week less nine compared to engages 10 to gather data and despite being a little bit behind the game had sold by then 2.29 million units with 480 000 coming from Japan the fact that its Japanese sales are closer to three houses by a similar time frame also matches up with the fact that engages pre-orders in comji more than double doubled its predecessor and Counting digital sales which sadly aren't available for us this meant the game was set to and most likely did have a far bigger launch counting both physical and digital and I say most likely because shortly after launch engages sales took a big nosedive and have long since vanished from the charts both in Japan and North America meaning engage had a very front loaded launch and has long since stopped selling enough copies worth charting an aspect worth considering is also that the context both games ended up releasing on couldn't have been more different three houses was first announced in a fire emblem direct back in 2017 was officially revealed on E3 2018 got a new huge trailer in E3 2019 and released just one month later in July in what was the switch's third year a time where there weren't many huge releases it would be directly competing with Pokemon sword and shield for example launched five months after three houses and got post launch support with which lasted seven months up until February 2020. not to mention it was also pre-coveted pandemic meaning people were in a better situation financially to afford the game and it would later get some free marketing through by less inclusion in Smash in 2020 to boot by comparison Fire Emblem engage was officially revealed post-pandemic in September 2022 got four main trailers between November and January of the next year launched shortly in January of 2023 in the switch's seventh year just three months after Nintendo's other big main release Pokemon scarlet and violet got three months of post-launch additions and faced some competition from other key launches like Advanced Wars reboot Camp February's Kirby's Return to Dreamland DX and had tears of the Kingdom looming it was more difficult to justify spending 70 on this game when there was more to choose from and look forward to not to mention smash's DLC is long over and it wouldn't be getting any free advertising from it compared to its predecessor so all in all it would be hard to claim engage in three houses got even near the same amount of Spotlight given how different the gaming landscape looked for each case but what I think is the biggest takeaway from the market context was that whatever momentum three houses had over engaged by release time was just that regardless if three houses was more hyped up engage still had a stronger initial launch where it treated the same than I supposed the most we could say would be that engage could have had a far bigger launch but that's not really the point I wanted to focus on it's the aftermath of release even though I talk about the staying power of engage I think it would be right to acknowledge that first and foremost that three houses was just in a better place in the market through more certain Economic Times less competition after launch more outside support in cameos with Smash and a more stretched out DLC path engage started extremely hot hotter than three houses but sales basically peaked early and have been in a cooldown ever since meanwhile three houses was more sustained and if I had to make an educated guess I would say it was positively affected by replayability and Word of Mouth this video as a result will discuss the effects of replayability and word of mouth and how both games are affected by it while also speaking about my personal experience with engage both as a content creator and Enthusiast of fire emblem I've gotten really into sales history for the series as of late mainly because some current videos in the pipeline like my last one about fe3's commercial dominance have had Parts focusing on sales and how they got there this next part is based on my experience talking about both three houses and engage and if you're not relatively new to Fire Emblem and or engage isn't your first Fe game then this probably won't come off as a shocker 3H and engage are both really interesting case studies of the power of replayability and Word of Mouth the first question I ask myself is honestly is it right to consider engage a commercial failure relative to the other games's success it broke past 1 million in sales globally and is the fourth best-selling Fire Emblem game currently I comment on this because we don't know if this was what engage had shot shot for as far as intelligent systems and Nintendo are concerned but I can't imagine the massive cliff fall that had its next couple months be a desired outcome it's also here where I should mention that at the end of the day engage to me feels like it was treated like a game in an extremely competitive and fluid industry where a new title is hot and Popular until its time passes so Publishers can focus on the next game I can understand people feeling disconnected with all these three houses connections when in truth three houses feels like its relevance for years was an outlier more than anything that being said intelligent systems made choices for engage that I believe contributed to this drop-off that were controllable unlike things like release delays the pandemic and competition and that's what I want to focus on for this video engage was an anniversary title that has its moments of self-indulgence is deliberately smaller in scale and scope than what came before and often reminds us how far this Series has come since 1990 so I'm not gonna lie scrutinizing the this game has felt challenging at times because often I've wondered if I've set my expectations too high on a game that never seemed intended to be closely compared to three houses or any other previous title but I don't think pulling punches really benefits this or any other IP at all as long as you're reasonable with what you have to say just because this game set out for a more casual story and character premise that leans closer to Fire Emblem Warriors than previous titles doesn't exempt it from how that premise was executed a simple story doesn't mean it can only be delivered simply or unseriously and at the same token an ambitious premise can sometimes flop an execution completely and for gameplay it is clear is tried extremely hard and succeeded in delivering an exceptional experience in this regard so why not just be honest about its faults as well I mean I paid like 90 bucks Canadian for this game plus the DLC so I will be pretty negative in this video but it's because I want the best for the series I know I'm not the first person to say this in fact a lot of my peers thought the exact same thing but this was what I said at the end of my first engagement play through like I feel like a lot of Fire Emblem players are new and they might have only played three houses before and there's a an ass ton of like notoriety behind that game I don't know if that's gonna be like good for the longevity and like the memorabil memorability of this game I guess I don't think this game is gonna have that much staying power in terms of like Fire Emblem games I will get back to this clip but for context it was mostly in reference to engage's story and characters really not being able to leave a strong lasting impression on players I will elaborate more on this and how it more closely relates to the power of Word of Mouth but first I want to go over replay value because engage is a game after all by the way engage was designed having less replay value compared to its predecessors was going to be an L intelligence systems was destined to take on this one unlike Blazing Sword Sacred Stones Fates and three houses this is a one route game unlike genealogy of the holy war and Awakening this is a one route game without a second generation of units replayability he plays a huge role in the lifespan of a game not to point out the obvious but one of fire emblem's strongest characteristics as a series is how unique your own playthrough can be to anyone else's how each run you make can be taken in a different way how a unit death can greatly change the story of your run how creative you can be by challenging yourself in your next run by restricting units under some fun rule Fire Emblem by its Inception was meant to be replayable it's not even joking one of its founding principles Fire Emblem and replayability have taken some interesting directions more recently it has adopted the multiple Roots aspect encouraging you to replay them to see new characters chapters and perspectives this greatly carried three houses as relevancy because not only did it let you start the game in any route you wanted it would influence your perspective on the second playthrough you'd want to play the third one to round it out and there was also a fourth route that people got surprised by I guess even if the academy Arc was the same each class brought different character interactions and viewpoints to the same events going on it was never done in the series before 4 to this scale and kept even the early game fresh three houses has biased storytelling also spurred a lot of heated character and story discussion but It ultimately fell into word of mouth and assisted in sustaining the game for years but what about games that may not have had as much heated debates on characters and story what about games with less divisiveness in its multiple Roots what about single story games like Awakening and the Telly's duology these games are easy to replay I understand that whoever is watching this right now has their own tolerance to HUB worlds in Fire Emblem but no matter how you cut it Hub areas seem to be the Mainstay of the series moving forward and while the first playthrough is tolerable and fun and novel it's undeniable that having to go back and commit any amount of time to not actually playing the chapter Maps themselves will be less and less tolerable as time goes on HUB area activities just get redundant by Design and the novelty of them have diminishing returns Hub areas can absolutely exist and there's no better example than in radiant Dawn's Base Cam amps and Fates is my castle Rd set the groundwork for bases and gave you everything you needed for unit progression and provided characterization through base conversations my castle took this and Awakenings Barracks 2 and gave us the best user experience you could really ever need it provided unique bass customization you could streamline unit and character progression in whatever way you wanted you could place your Armory shop and Forge next to each other could easily sift through inventories and menus and everything else was largely optional supports were already really easy to grind in this game and all the essentials weren't just an Arm's Reach but load times weren't a factor at all everything was readily available by excellent use of the 3DS's screens you could zip around and turn exit shops go to the mess hall prison and be on your way this is all to say that these Hub areas respected your time completely this meant the shortest amount of time between Maps the way Hub areas are structured right now with three houses and engage and even three hopes which was an improvement to houses is by Design never going to reach that same level of convenience these areas are huge and while they have fast travel you still need to sift through menus and load times until Fire Emblem lets us have that same bird's eye perspective in Hub areas like Fates did they will never be as fast all Hub areas even Fates had casual time waster activities that yes were optional but in engage even the necessary activities were needlessly annoyingly long need to grind the arena you have to listen to the same Arena intros over and over and over again want early game stat boosts like strength and skill do time consuming workout activities until you lose your patience and just spend gold on tonics or go eat thankfully the game made ux improvements like bringing skill inheritance directly to the arena area instead of the Ring chamber but for another example want to experiment with end game builds eventually you're going to have to grind very painfully slow fishing just for more Bond fragments three houses also had new game plus a game mode so fun and smart for the multi-root game that it was that I made a video explaining just how much more fun the game becomes with it even though engage was a one route experience it absolutely does not mean it didn't need new game plus broken end game builds with the highest level of SP costs taking extremely long time to grind and when playing on maddening SP and bond fragment grinding is even more difficult as you don't have skirmishes to grind on a new game plus would have been greatly beneficial just to even go through the game one more time with already invested units to re-experience the game with so much more power in build skills support and bond levels Bond fragments and SP could be carried over three houses made the most out of this because it essentially fast tracked you to new content while letting you play around with units and giving you the chance to Green text your stats the fact that engage has nothing like this really sucks and makes replaying the game less enticing engages like I said a single root experience without a second generation to help bolster replayability this inherently isn't bad in fact for the most part in Fire Emblem this is usually how it was I don don't have any expectations that the next game will have multiple routes but you can see how much of an impact this makes for replayability but on a micro level three houses and Fates benefited from things like new paralogs and new character interactions that came from those paralogs new unit progression ideas all these things that greatly bolster A Game's staying power three houses has other Roots let you start with an entirely new set of characters each with their own unique set of attributes and interactions with other characters I strongly believe this was a great Boon to the game's replay value this was unprecedented for the series to be done at this scale and unlike Fates this didn't require separate games to experience mileage will vary with people's experience going through the academy Arc again and people's enjoyment on the class system will also vary But ultimately these gave players reasons to go back don't get me wrong I feel very similarly about the monastery activities like the somniel activities in fact in my opinion the Samuel is just an improvement but I will touch on that later the weakest part of three houses replayability was having to go back to the monastery every route Garrick mock absolutely does not get a pass for this despite the topic being about engage this section on replayability will be making a lot of comparisons to three houses and Fates and for the record my argument against the Samuel would be the same with the monastery but to me that just makes Hub areas being that much more of a glaring issue that it's happened twice in a row three if you count three hopes its effective replayability versus perceived replayability perceived replayability are replay features and concept things like a diverse class system multiple routes a second generation of units branching story paths and endings you know the hot marketing stuff whereas effective replayability is how those Concepts actually play out in reality revisiting the monastery over and over again got tiresome because the game forces you to re-experience the same lengthy content three to four times to get the full experience the novelty of the class system dwindles as yes a unit can be reclassed to virtually anything else but its end game builds strips a lot of individuality to them and in my experience a lot of builds end up being the same anyway perception promises three to four roots with unique stories and while that's true the game recycles a ton of maps this is where New Game Plus really helps bolster effective replayability but mileage and tolerance for repeating a lot of three houses content is going to vary and three houses burnout was a real thing but the thing is in the case with these two games quality effective replayability matters far less than the quantity of perceived replayability in regards to the staying power of a game the fact that it's there to begin with is what matters you can hate replaying three houses but the fact is you're replaying three houses this contributes to its lifespan Word of Mouth fear of missing out and most importantly sales engage is still replayable because you can build units in different ways the second time around you can play on a harder difficulty you can do draft runs or you can do challenge runs but that is standard replayability for the series and nothing unique to engage but the minutia the in-between chapter grind of these switch games tanks replay value and engage doesn't have the multiple routes or New Game Plus to fall back on to get the player base to buy in in my opinion one may think just ignore the samniel the thing is you can't ignore the samniel's core activities without making the gameplay experience objectively harder I don't want to go on a no-somniel challenge run of engage it doesn't feel good to Simply leave resources on the table in a game that is constantly conditioning you to make the most of them but I don't want to waste my time with boring minigames or dialogue I can't skip sometimes I want to challenge myself in the next playthrough but sometimes I don't want my playthrough experience to be harder I just want to play Fire Emblem but I need to spend time in the summon yell I need to forge my weapons in the somniel I need to sit through the same lines for entire campaigns in the somnia I need to do chores insomnia I have honestly grown so wary of these Hub areas personally characters don't even have interesting things to say about the world going on at least with the monastery finding the characters was worthwhile to see what their thoughts were on what just happened last chapter because the writing tried to invest you in what was going on but engages cast and world is so disconnected from the already boring story that I've never once gone out of my way to listen to a character's input on what just happened the complicated thing is as Fire Emblem introduces unique gameplay defining mechanics these Hub areas need to expand on those ideas so much of three houses is instructing gameplay Loop had to do with Monastery activities that cost Professor points and it was on the player to manage it meal Hall gardening choir tea time Arena the sauna Etc three houses had Battalion so a battalion Guild was required this system wasn't Perfect by any means fishing for example operated outside this economy and was exploitable for grinding Professor rank engage had the Rings and core thumbnail activities had to do with them Arena ring chamber activities and skill inheritance but none of those core activities needed a hub world for those things to to exist nor do I think they actively benefited from it but to give engage actual credit the thumbnail is a noteworthy gameplay improvement from the monastery the streamlining and time efficiency of getting key tasks done is better there's a lot less to manage and there's no limited resource gauges to think about the fact that the Samuel can become a repeatable process of Arena inheritance meal Hall Farmhouse and Plaza or less tasks depending on the player's routine is just an improvement over three houses's load times multiple tasks to get items skills and motivation points and its various shops and its redundant fetch quests and so on it is inevitable that a new Fire Emblem game not based on remakes is going to introduce a core mechanic that will be expanded on in its hub area but my biggest hope is that they return to form with something as convenient customizable social and simple as my castle and I say this with my whole chest I want them to give me a bird's eye view perspective option or if that can't happen at least let me skip virtually everything I would ever want or let me just build the Hub area and myself give players the option to interact with the tools in the hub menu via a system without these areas being blocked behind loading screens Fates happened in like 2014 or something and it's so good and that's it for replayability but there's another part that I want to cover the story and characters the second reason I think engage fell out of relevancy quickly was because it was uncharacteristically for the series completely forgettable discussing the story is a bit tricky because I'm definitely not about to argue that the explicit reason for the game's fall off was because the story was bad but conversely I do believe that three houses's success had to do with its narrative Design Story and character writing engage didn't write itself to the point of killing itself off but it isn't an effective part of the sales pitch in my opinion also just as a heads up I am going to be critical of the story here and there and if you happen to really enjoy the story then I'll be honest this part of the video might not resonate with you and that's okay it's evident I'm not a fan of the game's writing but if you happen to be then I'm happy that you got enjoyment out of it back to the clip I mentioned earlier the reason I said this was because as I was playing through engage and experiencing the story I kept coming back to the opinion that engages story is unremarkable boring and and makes weird unnecessary risks that make it worse a lot of people only play Fire Emblem like once or twice and in my experience when people talk about old games they often don't talk about any specific map over and over again for example when people talk about fe4 are they referring to chapter 5's gameplay or what happens to the characters in chapter 5. whenever ethi 7 or fe8 are brought up it's basically always about something that happened with the characters or the story back to engage's case we find people having discussions about the felxenolog's story and characters yes will you find character essays on people like yunaka Ivy or alchrist absolutely it's not like there's absolutely zero things redeemable about the writing in fact I've made a couple videos on the supports in this game and I'm a decent fan of story relevant characters like Hortensia and Veil but on a macro level it's undeniable that engage does not have anything close to the character discourse of previous games developer interviews mentioned they wanted a character-driven story with alir as the main focus but at the same time they wanted the story to serve mostly as a means to get you from one map to the next it certainly came off that way in practice but that combination does not make for a strong memorable impression being a high priority this plus the lack of anything interesting or new the lack of relevance to non-royal characters there's literally only two character paralogs and it's Anna and John in the early game and extremely light World building and lore for the most Bland and uncreative Fire Emblem world in the series and what you have is a very unimpressive and forgettable experience I'd say the story is at its best when it explores the concept of family and what that means for characters like alir Hortensia Veil and the hounds but unfortunately that doesn't come close to the majority of the tale it's not even notoriously divisive enough like Faith's ideas to talk about Fates had a lot of plot devices which are not inherently bad and ideas to drive the story forward which you could talk about but engage feels so inoffensive by Design you can't even do that Faith was a risky and ambitious story that in my opinion fell flat but that stuck in people's minds this is all all to say that when it comes to the story I found that I someone who talks about Fire Emblem stories and characters for a majority of my time on this platform have a really hard time recommending it or even just praising It Word of Mouth and fear of missing out plays a big role in sustainability for Fire Emblem games and it's clear that three houses naturally stayed relevant in people's minds because of how big the game was and how invested people got into the story and characters but when you remove that as part of engage's lifespan or experience of course it's going to fall by the wayside so many people saw three houses for the first time or heard about it first from others either passively or literally as a recommendation to play a lot of folks who never typically play RPGs let alone something as niche as an srpg got into this game three houses got the smash treatment which definitely helped popularize and sustain the game even longer but unit performance lists or tier lists will only be appealing to fans who were hardcore enough to care those discussions will not leave the niche and nobody outside of those communities will understand and if a unit being better than another is controversial you don't even need to have played a fire emblem game to experience any story you can watch someone else play silently and you are instantly able to contribute to the conversation the thing is engage was designed around the idea that this could be the first Fire Emblem game for a lot of people and the premise that the story will be simple to understand for a younger audience to cling on to is fine I guess but my question is is how much Simplicity is too much there's so many instances where I as a player was left wondering if I'm even supposed to take the plot seriously at all am I supposed to be invested or aren't I some argue that the story is actually a parody that it is a form of self-referential and meta camp but even though I disagree the fact that it's even part of the conversation speaks volumes of engage's presentation of story and characters just because this story aims to sit on its Laurels and has moments of self-indulgence and celebration and makes dozens and dozens of nods to its history that doesn't mean it can't try to take itself more seriously or put some effort in because there's instances where it does it is clear that the writers can write compelling moments in this game but engage Ops to settle for tired cliches that even newcomers of Fire Emblem should recognize or see coming unless they've literally never watched any anime any TV played a jrpg or read any fiction ever in their life ever claiming that I'm just not the target audience this time around because engage tried to appeal to a younger demographic that clearly isn't me just to dismiss anyone over their teenage years of criticizing it is something I very much disagree with because this Series has basically always made appeals to a younger demographic anyway let's not pretend that this series was ever rated anything higher than T fe7 was rated E and was extremely easy for my teenage self to latch onto and it was until many years later that I realized just how much depth the writers actually packed into it literally every game in the series especially post kaga and fe6 has fun Fantastical colorful designs and pretty simple concepts for its is rated E or t audience to follow along with but then again every game has nuances that you may have missed the first time around in my opinion engage carries itself by these safe by the Numbers tropes while also not providing Nuance to the level of past Fire Emblem titles that were also marketed towards teens two engages credit a lot of the cast is elevated by support conversations so at least that content has had its intended purpose executed solidly well this makes it challenging for me to even recommend playing engage as a first Fire Emblem game over others to my peers some of whom are in their teens in the same local gaming communities as me these days I actually recommend them buying three houses over engaged because that way I know they're most likely going to be invested in everything that game has to offer on a first playthrough characters Story gameplay The Big Three engages chapter gameplay is without question its greatest strength it's honestly probably the best gameplay experience in the series or at least top three to me and maddening is so so balanced to be a good challenging and fun time that even if you swapped the recruitment orders of units and emblems you are going to have an extremely positive experience anyway which is mind-blowing to me I just think Fire Emblem as a series is more than the sum of its parts to me story and characters matter more in this series than in other IPS it always has yes at the end of the day this is a game and engage is a wonderful gameplay experience but I think it's evident from sales and general Sentiments of engage that I've seen and felt that that alone in this era of Fire Emblem is not enough [Music]

Channel: Faerghast

Views: 147,714

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Id: MEDjlHoI4Do

Length: 27min 21sec (1641 seconds)

Published: Tue May 23 2023