The Last Day of June - Summary
The Last Day of June is a very short game - only 3-4 hours - so I left it to the end of the month and played it in a single sitting. Fair warning, it's a game about the loss of a loved one and processing grief and there's some twists in there that I might end up spoiling.

So, the premise of this game is quite simple. Not too long ago, Carl and his wife June were involved in a car accident that left Carl wheelchair bound and resulted in the deaths of June and their unborn baby. Carl is struggling to process this and deal with it when he discovers he can use June's paintings to jump back in time and rearrange how events that day played out for the subjects of the paintings in an attempt to construct a version of reality where June survives. As the story goes on, we watch Carl becoming increasingly depressed and frustrated as his attempts to save June consistently fail as the universe seems determined to make the crash happen.



So, the story is simple enough although I very much did like that little twist at the end. Its themes of remembrance and grief were very poignant and the story hit all the emotions it wanted to very well - entirely without real dialogue. The closest we get to dialogue are just intonations to convey the general idea of what is being communicated between people... oh and chilling screams of rage, pain and grief.

Mechanically there isn't a huge amount to the game. It's all about diving into the past and getting the focus characters to do different things to open new paths for each other and engineer the best case scenario. It actually reminded me a little bit of the puzzles in Life is Strange with some slightly different execution - arguably a little better execution.

Visually the game is stunning. Either everything was modelled to look painted, or someone went back over a lot of the models and painted over them to get an aesthetic to match the painting motif. It looks glorious. The jetty especially is stunning. The music was nice too, nothing too crazy or standout but it set the mood well and complimented every scene. The final song was my favourite and deserves special mention.

So yeah, beautiful and poignant game. I'm glad I finally got to actually playing it since I've owned it for ages.

Writing: 8/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Visuals: 8/10
Sound: 6/10
Total: 29/40

Yugioh: Duelists of the Roses - Part One
Here is a brief explanation of how this game ended up as my choice and what insanity there is ahead.

Our weird retelling of the War of the Roses begins in the 1480s where the houses of Lancaster and York are trying to decide who rules England through a war fought with card games. Desperate, a man named Simon summons me through time (or something) to help swing things in the Lancasters' (Red Roses) favour and salvage their failing war effort. Alas, the arrival of bizarrely Japanese-named "Seto" who looks suspiciously like a character from a card game franchise that will debut hundreds of years later lead to a sad surprise for Simon. I joined the side of the "bad guys" because I remember how fucking annoying Labyrinth terrain is.

Anyway, I chose the name Scale because I remember that your name influences your deck options to start with and I was pretty sure that one gets you dragons and dragons are cool. This did not work lmao. Either I misremembered or I needed to use all caps or something. It's fine though, it's easy enough to build something you actually like. By the time I was writing this, I had the beginnings of a mostly wind-attributed dragon/winged-beast deck. It isn't there yet, but it's good enough.

I played through the first five duels against Tea, Tristan and Mai who focus on fairy, warrior/beat-warrior and winged-beast specifically. The former and latter opponents being especially screwed because their mountain fields gave me boosts as well as them. It was fun though. I had forgotten how good the gameplay in this actually is. The music is also really good and the animation and visuals honestly holds up surprisingly well for such an old game. I'm looking forward to playing more.

Yugioh: Duelists of the Roses - Part Two
My quest to obtain all the Rose Cards (oh yeah, that's a thing) continued! And by that, I mean I spent the first hour of game time just repeatedly kicking Mai's ass (okay I lost once, shut up) to get the stuff I wanted for my deck and to promote something to a high enough rank to have it as my leader. So, by the end of that, my deck was pretty much set until I pick up some slightly more powerful loot from later opponents.

The way the deck works is simple enough, it makes use of mostly wind-attributed dragons and winged beasts since they can benefit from the same terrain and some of the same power-ups. My main sources of murder are Harpy's Pet Dragon (which can be powered up by Harpy Lady and Harpy Lady Sisters woo) and Thousand Dragon. Thousand Dragon is particularly hilarious because this game takes a queue from s1 of the anime and ignores how many cards actually work to make them fit into its unique gameplay mechanics. In the case of our geriatric dragon boy, you can summon him in two ways, the basic way is to fuse Time Wizard with a weak dragon. The other is to flip Time Wizard up, which automatically transforms every single dragon with less than 2400 atk on the field into a Thousand Dragon. So I can churn these things out like mad and then buff them with Mountain/Gust Fan/Dragon's Bead/Megamorph and proceed to brutally slaughter everything in front of me. When that doesn't work, I can very easily get Harpy's Good Boy to 4-5000 by applying buffs. So yeah, I made Harpy's Pet Dragon my deck leader, but the other option was Parrot Dragon which honestly would also have been fitting. Unfortunately, I couldn't make Thousand Dragon my leader because you don't actually get fusion cards in this game and therefore can't select them to add to the leader slot. Oh well.

Once that was done, it was time to proceed with what I can only loosely describe as the plot. Today's opponents were Mako, Joey and Shadi (who I had completely forgotten was a character). Mako, naturally, specialises in Fish and Sea-Serpents while the other two have more patchwork decks with Joey being more about buffing lots of different things and Shadi relying on fucking you over with his annoying Crush Field lines of terrain and damage spells. Crush terrain is bothersome because it destroys any monster on it with 1500 or more attack instantly. All three of them were outmatched though. Mako and Shadi were in big trouble when most of the battlefield suddenly became mountainous instead of their preferred terrain and poor Joey learned that it doesn't matter how many buffs you apply to weak monsters if your opponent applies the same number of buffs to stronger ones. That brings me to a total of 5/8 rose cards now because Mako doesn't earn you one.

This game continues to be very strange the more I think about it. Almost every opponent you face opens with dialogue giving you their "other" British name which for some I'm pretty sure is the name of an actual person. They usually also say that they're going to beat me into the ground before being thoroughly demolished. Honestly though, despite how incredibly weird and dumb the entire premise of this game is... I'm actually have a lot more fun than I thought I would? To my surprise, while the narrative is basically non-existent, the gameplay actually holds up and, despite not being a nostalgic person, the nostalgia is definitely hitting home too. I'm having a good time.

Yugioh: Duelists of the Roses - Part Three
Today was to be the last day of my partnership with the Yorkists or whatever we call them. I had three opponents left on the Red Rose side; Jasper Dice Tudor (lol) - who you may better know as Solomon or grandpa, Bakura (who I don't think they even bothered to give an English counterpart) and boss man Yugi/Henry the Somethingth - because, again, this game is insane. Poor gramps went down here just as easily as he did in the canon unfortunately for him. His strategy is to stall for time to get an Exodia win which doesn't really work when you're getting mauled from minute one apparently.

Next up was Bakura who was much more annoying. Not because he's hard to beat, but because he has a stupidly low deck cost because his battlefield is full of crush terrain and you can't duel someone with a deck cost lower than yours. So I made a throwaway deck real quick and then beat him by boxing him into a corner so he couldn't summon anything. Because nothing less than total dominance is acceptable for that dickhead. After that, it was time for the Yugi fight. He put up more of a fight than his allies, wiping out my field at one point and otherwise doing some damage, but he was boned once Mirror Wall came out and eventually fell to a bunch of beefed up Harpy Dragons.

At last then, it was time for the ritual to end the war... except this summoned this crazy guy with an indecipherable Welsh name who decided to end humanity or something. This is the only duel in the game that is legitimately challenging every single time because this guy is fucking busted. Why? Because his deck does two things. First, uses Berfomet and Gate Deerg to max his summoning power constantly so he can bring our loads of high power monsters. Second, buff those already strong monsters with Riryoku which halves your LP and adds it to that monsters attack. Which is mental. However, I stole Riryoku from his grave and did it back to him lmao. Combining that with Mirror Wall and an army of Thousand Dragons and he was eventually defeated as well. It was close though, I had 100 LP left.

Anyway, that saved the world and it was time to send me back through time. Thereafter the white roses lost to a subsequent invasion and were never seen from again... so basically me being there changed nothing except nearly ending the world. The outcome was the same regardless. Yes, that is really how this game ends. Because, as I remind you, it's story is just the actual war of the fucking roses which kind of locks the ending in.

But, did I have fun? Surprisingly, yes. While the story of the game is as dumb as it is almost non-existent, mechanically it is actually pretty fun. It combines the YGO card game with an almost Fire Emblem-esque grid system and makes use of terrain that buffs, debuffs or otherwise fucks with different monster types. So this makes for a surprisingly interesting and unique gameplay experience. The animation is definitely dated, but it still holds up well enough that it doesn't hurt my eyes or anything to play and for its time it was really solid. The music isn't anything groundbreaking, but it's also kind of a bop tbh. Certainly they could have done worse.

I'm going to do the New Game+ and do the Red Rose route as well now since it's so easy and short. Why not? I don't think I'll bother reviewing that though because nothing of any real consequence changes other than your opponents.


Writing: 2/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Visuals: 6/10
Sound: 6/10
Total: 22/40

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part One
I played through the first three chapters and the prologue today. So I've just now gotten up to the part where you unlock the Somniel and (I assume) the fishing mini-game.

So, in typical Fire Emblem fashion, you're thrown into a world very abruptly, with very little fanfare and a gradual trickle of information to get you to the base level of understanding. This was fine. I was very quickly introduced to some cool characters and got enough information to have a starting point - 1000 years ago Alear was injured in a war against the evil Fell Dragon and has just woken up. Suddenly, the Fell Dragon's minions also seem active again.

Here's where things get... eeeeeeh. While I have no issues with the little story I have experienced so far, some of the execution has felt really iffy. I was similarly irked at the beginning of Three Houses, but this is that but worse. Somehow this part of the game feels both like an extended prologue and like the pacing has been weirdly quick. Almost all of the information about combat that was given to me throughout the four battles I've done could easily have been provided to me in the actual prologue. Instead, the prologue itself basically only explains how Engaging works. It was very weirdly trickled out. I guess it was done because narratively it would have been weird for Emblem Marth to be explaining shit to an already experienced Alear with all his memories. But it just felt odd.

Even weirder was how Alfred, Etie and Boucheron are introduced. They kind of just show up in the middle of a battle because they were coincidentally there to ask for help dealing with Corrupted attacking Firene and the game just acts like this wasn't a really contrived happening. Not to mention the way that all their abilities get explained added to the extended prologue feeling. The battle itself also comes out of nowhere but that's fine, it was a surprise attack against the castle. I don't have complaints with that. This segment then culminates with a mysterious child(?) enemy appearing and killing Lumena. This scene should have been heartbreaking. The voice acting and dialogue were both fantastic here. However, I felt almost nothing because this sudden and unceremonious death happened to a character that I have known for about thirty seconds and it is hard to believe Alear being as upset as he was because he also has no memory of this woman. So even though she's his mother, she's a stranger to both him and the player. It was just weird. The fact that we mostly just bounced from fight to fight with minimal character interaction between at this point did not help with any of this.

But, now that the Somniel is unlocked I have high hopes that things will be better. I'll get to actually talk to characters and see them interact with each other before battle and the pacing isn't going to feel weird now that there will be extended character interaction and exploration (and fishing!) in-between. I assume. I hope.

As for the characters... I like them! I barely know them yet really, especially the trio from Firene. But, that being said, they all seem pretty likeable and/or cool so far. The character designs are all great so far and I think probably better than Three Houses overall. Although, there's the obvious weirdness with Altear (although I don't hate it as much as some people do) and... Lumena just looks like a recolour of Rhea. Then again, given how unceremoniously she was yeeted out of the story, I can understand why nobody wanted to put much effort in there. Vander, Framme, Clanne and Etie all look great though and Alfred and Boucheron are fine too. I think Alfred's design will grow on me more with time but I almost always hate those weird puffy medieval pants.

It's hard to comment on the characters themselves too much so early on, but I really like Vander, Clanne and Framme. The twins especially are adorable and very likeable and if anything happens to them I will burn everything down. I don't know enough about the Firene gang yet, but they seem nice enough. It's cool seeing Altear has more of an actual character than Byleth. He's an emotional and kind guy which is nice, but he'll still kick ass when he must. Marth and Sigurd (the Emblems I know so far) are there too I guess, but I'm glad they don't get too much screentime (so far). It's not their game.

Gameplay-wise, I was worried about the weapon triangle coming back. I think it's fine though in the end. It doesn't add loads of bonus damage or anything, it just prevents counterattacks which is neat. Otherwise it's more or less the same as Three Houses and I loved that combat, so no complaints here.

Visually the game looks great. I already said the character designs are good, but the environments look nice too. The castle always felt weirdly empty, but since we aren't actually intended to spend any time there, I guess it makes sense. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Somniel compares to expectations when I explore it next time. The music so far hasn't really wowed me, but it's been fine and it's still early days.

So... so far so good mostly. I'm enjoying the game and eager for more, but there's definitely been some stuff that has irked me about how the story has been executed so far. I suspect that will get much better now with the Somniel in play though.

idk if I should mention this or not, but Engage's story isn't really gonna be the highlight of the game, its main strength (imo anyway) is in the battles/maps. Engage's story certainly has its moments, but it's also a step down from Three Houses/Three Hopes and a few of the other plots in the series.

Nah said:

idk if I should mention this or not, but Engage's story isn't really gonna be the highlight of the game, its main strength (imo anyway) is in the battles/maps. Engage's story certainly has its moments, but it's also a step down from Three Houses/Three Hopes and a few of the other plots in the series.

Click to expand...

Blessedly, I'm not going into it expecting it to match Three Houses. Three House's is one of my favourite games, largely because of how good the story and characters are. It wouldn't be fair to go into Engage expecting it to be that good. My complaints so far aren't even with the story exactly though. It's just weirdly executed.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Two
I only played the one chapter tonight. Depending on sleep and stuff I'll possibly do more in the early morning.

Anyway, today I started off by exploring the Somniel. Most of it, including the fishing mini-game I still can't really access which is mildly annoying. It's also honestly kind of a mess to navigate. All roads lead back to the main plaza which is nice, but beyond that it's a tangle of winding, interconnected paths. Thank god for the fast travel option because I do not want to walk around to find people all the time in there. It is fairly pretty though. So that's something.

From there, it was time to head into Firene where we soon encountered a village that was under attack by Corrupted. Alfred's sister Celine and her two knights, Luis and Chloe, were defending the town but were greatly outnumbered. Naturally, we all jumped in to help, Alear activating Celine's emblem ring in the process (right now Vander has Sigurd attached). From there, it was quite easy for everyone to clear out the Corrupted, even with them gaining reinforcements. We learned from Celine during this mess that the further of kingdom of Elusia was invading Firene as well (and that some of them worship the Fell Dragon so there's probably a link there lol).

Shortly after the battle, Alear met a girl named Veyle when she saved him from a corrupted ambush. They didn't get to talk much though before she mysteriously vanished. Interesting. I must note here that her height, build and even skin tone look like a pretty solid match for the cloaked figure that killed Lumena. Very interesting.

Anyway, the next mission is to head to Firene's capital and castlte but I returned to the Somniel for the time being and left it at that. So far the story is fine and it does feel a little less rushed now that I can go back and forth between the plot and the Somniel between chapters. Once that place is finally full, it's going to feel much better. It's hard to say much about the characters though. As of yet, I don't know much more about any of them, especially the newly introduced ones. Celine, Luis and Chloe feel kinda meh right now especially, but seeing as they've only just been introduced, who knows?

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Three
I did two more chapters and a paralogue today, effectively clearing Firene as the group prepares to move on to Brodia.

As always, I started off by doing some Somniel exploring. Still no sign of fishing which has me a little concerned but all the vendors are available now. I can also access the arena to do training between missions and also the ring vault where I can polish rings to increase bonds and create lesser bond rings for those who aren't partnered with an Emblem Ring. So that's cool. I've met Sommie now too. It'll be interesting to see what happens with max Sommie friendship, but for now I'll happily take the fragments it drops.

Mission-wise, the party launched a counter-offensive to take back Firene Castle. There I saw a character named Zephia for the first time, but she didn't stick around and left the battle to her lieutenant. She probably shouldn't have because Alear and co curbstomped him and his forces, forcing them to retreat from the castle. From there, Queen Eve revealed the location of Firene's secret second Emblem Ring, so the group started heading that way.

Not before a paralogue visiting an under siege island village. Alear and his companions fought off and destroyed a bunch of corrupted that had appeared out of nowhere. In doing so, they met a young healer named Jean. He volunteered to join Alear's forces and Alear wasn't about to say no. Jean is a martial monk like Framme (to start with) and is yet another very cute character that is too good for combat... so I'll be using him a lot in combat. I suspect he's going to make a better healer long term than Framme, but that just means I can switch Framme to focusing on being a more combat-oriented class which, honestly, fits the character more. For now though, they'll be teaming up since Jean joins at lv 1.

After that, Alfred lead Alear and the squad into the mountains near Brodia's border to collect the next ring from the ruins there. However, when they get there, they find the ring is missing and the local area is overrun with bandits. They encountered Yunaka shortly after, who had stolen the ring and then later lost it to the bandits. Yunaka joined the group in taking out the bandits and reclaiming the ring. Feeling guilty for taking it to begin with, she then joined the team officially with the ring entrusted to her. She's not going to be keeping it though because I don't think she's going to be part of my main team. Especially if I can train a different thief.

Anyway, I got a lot more into the game this time than in previous sessions. I like Jean a lot and Yunaka's alright too. I'm excited to meet Brodian characters next.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Four
Today I played through all of the Brodia segment, the paralogue to get this game's version of Anna and about four of the skirmishes that pop-up in the overworld. I've also started the process of advancing/reclassing characters. So far I have advanced Alear, Celene and Alfred and reclassed Framme to be a Thief since she has the dex and speed for it and I don't really like Yunaka that much. As an added bonus though, the Emblem Ring she's paired with is the one I took from Yunaka so she gets to still be a solid healer too.

I've maxed out Alear's bond with Marth now as well as Vander's with Sigurd. But I find myself reluctant to change them up for some reason. Celene is still paired with Celica (and is a fucking powerhouse tbh) while Diamant and Alcryst are paired with Roy and Leif respectively.

Story-wise, the group made it into Brodia where they found the Elusian's were making moves already. After meeting with Alcryst, Lapis and Citrinne, Alear's group found themselves having to fight Princess Hortensia and her evil emblem to cross the bridge into the rest of Brodia's territory. This was a relatively easy success, but it is definitely worth noting that Hortensia's Emblem is fucking scary. From there, Alear and co. beat the invaders to the castle and were able to worn Diamant and his father, King Morion, about the incoming invasion. This attack was led by the elder Elusian princess, Ivy. Ivy was defeated and lost her ring (Leif), but a challenge had been set forth. Morion marched his army to confront Ivy and King Hyacinth at the Brodian/Elusian border but was defeated and captured by the opposing king to be used as a sacrifice for a ritual to empower the Fell Dragon. Hyacinth left Ivy behind to be a human sacrifice to stall Alear's group, but she and her companions were quickly defeated and fled the conflict altogether soon after. Unfortunately, the king was still in Hyacinth's hands, so Alear's army had to give chase.

Also during this time, we've seen a little more of Veyle. First, a solo segment where she was seen taking out a horde of corrupted and where it was revealed she is searching for her brother. Then, Alear encountered her in the middle of the snowstorm while chasing Hyacinth. She was quick to disappear again, but did give Alear directions.

So far, I'm definitely enjoying the game more now. The story is picking up steam now and Brodia introduced a bunch of characters that I like lot. I'm really fond of Diamant, Alcryst and Lapis and Anna, Citrinne, Amber and Jade all seem cool enough too. Morion himself is also a fun character, even if he's not playable. The story itself is a lot more straightforward than Three Houses and the world building isn't as deep, but I'm finding it plenty compelling regardless.

I'm enjoying that most weapons do not break and the magical well is a nice addition. I've also unlocked leisure activities (and the fishing game!) now which is helping make time spent at the Somniel feel a bit more engaging. The customisable outfits are nice too.

As far as the gameplay goes, I've found getting used to the weapon triangle plenty easy and I'm enjoying the combat quite a bit. But I am finding that I'm not really a fan of how levels and classing works in engage compared to Three Houses. It's more complicated than it needs to be and feels messy. It's also trickier to shift classes around and experiment.

The visuals continue to be solid and I got my first banger of a track from the OST (excluding the opening song which is great) in the second battle against Ivy and her retainers.

Currently, I'm mostly using a team of Alear, Vander, Clanne, Framme, Alfred, Celeste, Luis, Jean, Diamont and Alcryst with Etie and Lapis as alternates switching in sometimes. I suspect that with two more nations + Veyle wandering around though that my final lineup will be different still.

So far, so good!

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Five
After some more fucking around in the Somniel, it was time to give chase. Alear and friends followed the Elusians to Destinea Cathedral further into Elusia in order to retrieve King Morion. Unfortunately for them, they arrived too late. The King's blood had been consumed by Sombron and all that was left was a particularly nasty corrupted. On top of that, Hotensia and her retainers were also present as well as King Hyacinth.

The party fought their way through the assembled enemies, putting Morion to rest (it was an Alcryst and Diamant combo that did it too oof) and then driving off Hortensia and her friends. From there it was a simple march to reach Hyacinth and to defeat him, even with Emblem Lyn at his beck and call. Diamant was ready to avenge his father, but the hooded girl from the Ring Vault appeared to save him and was revealed to be - what a shock (note: sarcasm) Veyle. However, she apparently had no memory of Alear. Going by a later scene with her and also prior ones, either she's got two people in her head or she's being mind-controlled. Hyacinth didn't get to enjoy a much longer life though because Sombron appeared shortly after and ate him. With Sombron, Veyle and Veyle's personal retinue - her "Hounds" - present and going on the attack, Alear's regiment was forced to flee... but not before Veyle stole all of their Emblem Rings and the Time Crystal.

This was the most intense battle of the game as of yet by far. Without the ability to rewind time or use emblem rings, the objective was simply for Alear and co to escape alive... while fighting against corrupted versions of their Emblems that would respawn upon defeat as well as the Hounds. Luckily, Ivy showed up with her retainers, Zelkova and Kagetsu - the former of whom had managed to steal back the time crystal and the rings for Lyn and Lucina. This was just enough help for everyone to escape and Ivy's crew then joined up with Alear's faction.

After this, I mostly spent time doing some chilling at the Somniel, upgraded Luis and Jean's classes to General and High Priest and then did a few skirmishes and a special Lucina Paralogue to unlocke her max Bond level for Alear. Then, the assembled heroes headed into the desert region of the Queendom of Solm where they met Prince Fogado and his retainers Bunet and Pandreo and helped them fight off some corrupted to rescue a village before continuing towards the capital.

So, the section at the Cathedral is my favourite part of the game so far. It was narratively really well done. Morion's death was handled much better than Lumena's and actually had some impact. While the Veyle twist was obvious it didn't feel contrived for Alear to not have noticed and the subsequent theft of the Emblem rings and desperate escape through the Cathedral grounds was a great darkest hour moment with a faint glimmer of hope provided by Team Ivy. The gameplay itself felt really good here too - quite intense honestly even on normal difficulty. I can only imagine how nightmarish it would be on Maddening. The music for this segment was also really good.

As far as new characters go, I don't like Bunet or Pandreo that much but Fogado is great. He's genuinely quite funny and very likeable. I've also realised too little, too late that I actually really like Lapis too. I'll just use her on a subsequent playthrough though probably. At this point, my final team is slowly starting to take shape which is exciting. Just have to get through Solm and then probably get Hortensia's crew out of Elusia. Right now I'm mostly using Alear, Vander, Clanne, Framme, Celine, Alfred, Luis, Diamant and Alcryst. I'm probably going to be switching Vander out for Fogado going forward. Then it'll be either Alfred or Clanne being replaced by Ivy. Probably Clanne honestly. I really like him a lot but he doesn't add as much to the team as Celine or Ivy as a caster and he's starting to fall behind in level (sort of). Alfred probably won't be far behind though since there's bound to be some cool characters still to be met. If I can though, I'm planning to keep Alfred, Clanne and Zelkova all kept at a reasonable level to switch in and out as needed.

I'm getting into the good shit now.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part six
I spent a decent amount of time just going around the Somniel doing stuff as always. I've unlocked everything it can offer at this point I think - strength training, cooking, trials (which I have yet to do actually whoops), the ring vault and arena, leisure at the pool, orchard or stable, wyvern riding, all the stores (including the flee market stall), the magic well and, most importantly, the fishing mini game. I've gotten a lot more used to the layout though. I still think it's a bit unnecessarily winding, but I've got a routine now.

After that, next up was Emblem Lynn's Paralogue. This might have been a mistake and I think I was probably under-levelled for it. Suffice to say that this was definitely the hardest fight I have done so far. The large numbers of ranged enemies were troublesome and the mages with Bolgenone equipped were extremely dangerous for basically everyone on my team. On top of that, Lynn herself could snipe my guys from across the map or summon a bunch of duplicates for huge chain attacks. This was the first time I really had to have the Time Crystal put in work otherwise I'd have lost at least one of my units. In the end though, I won with no deaths.

From there, it was onwards to the story again where Fogado introduced Alear and his allies to Queen Seforia. These two are great. I love their personalities, so I was hype to meet Timerra soon after when Seforia sent Alear her way to get access to her ring. I was not disappointed, Timerra is goofy in a good way and every bit as cool as her mother and brother too. I also quite like her retainers, Panette and Mirren. Anyway, Alear helped Timerra's group take out a bunch of bandits and corrupted that were troubling an oasis village. They couldn't stay there long though, because they got word that Solm's palace was under attack.

Alear and co. rushed back and headed into the palace to find that there was actually only one intruder, Hortensia. She had the queen hostage and was threatening to kill her but was less doing it out of any real desire to go through with it and more because she's stressed-out teenager who just lost her evil dad, whose friends were stuck back with her new evil overlord and whose sister had just defected. In short, Hortensia was having a grief-stricken mental breakdown and clutching onto the faint, fragile hope that claiming all the rings would return her life to normal. In the end, thanks in part to Seforia being a Grade A badass, she couldn't go through with it and Ivy was able to talk her down. When I saw Hortensia's design, I did not expect I would end up liking her as much as I do. She might actually be one of my favourites. Anyway, that was also the unfortunate point the actual invasion kicked off and three of the Hounds (Zephia, Marni and Mauvier) broke in with an army and took control of Hortensia's mind to boot.

The invasion attempt went poorly for the Hounds though as they were quickly and thoroughly defeated by Alear's forces and driven away, allowing them to face down and subsequently free Hortensia who, thanks to words from Alear and Ivy, joined the Somniel - although a tad reluctantly out of fear for the safety of her retainers and friends, Goldmery and Rosado. Again... Hortensia is a surprisingly good character. She also turned over the Emblem Ring she had - Byleth's. Now that made me hype. Especially when I found out he passively boosts ally exp, can use a one-off multi-person buff/dance combo, increases the odds of hitting and changes his engage weapon depending on the class he's attached too. As always, Byleth is cool as hell.

To close off, I got to see Veyle again in a cut-scene. Sure enough, Evil!Veyle ran out of steam and ceded control to Nice!Veyle who was very confused as to why she was in the desert now and not the snowy mountains. It seems that while the evil one doesn't really get to keep the memories of what happened while she was out either, the nicer one is completely clueless as to what's going on.

Anyway, pending any surprises, I think I might have my final roster now. It was indeed time for old man Vander to retire. He'd been a powerhouse and a tank through most of the game, but at this point his damage output is starting to drop-off and his ability to tank enemy attacks is basically gone. The only real strength he has now is movement and Alfred and Fogado both have him beat there too. Clanne is also out unfortunately. He's just thoroughly outcompeted as a magic user by both Celine and Ivy (and honestly, probably Hortensia too). Celine's evasion is better and her damage is the best of them all it seems. Ivy meanwhile isn't quite as heavy a hitter as Celine but is stronger than Clanne with only slightly worse evasion (but better defences) and the added bonus of being able to heal as well. I really like both Vander and Clanne as characters, but I only have so much room and it was getting increasingly likely they'd just die this way anyway. As a pleasant surprise though, Alfred gets to stay because the game has started letting me cap off at twelve combatants in fights. So, the current line-up is:

Alear (Divine Dragon) ft Lucina
Framme (Thief)
Alfred (Avenir)
Celine (Vidame)
Louis (General) ft Byleth
Jean (High Priest)
Diamant (Lord)
Alcryst (Lord)
Timerra (Sentinel) ft Ike
Fogado (Sentinel)
Panette (Berserker)
Ivy (Lindwurm)

I'm at around the half-way point now I think, maybe a bit over. So far, so good.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Seven
Before I got into any story stuff today, I did my usual rounds at the Somniel and then properly visited the Tower of Trials there for the first time. This has some online play options, but I focused on the offline and participated in a Tempest Trial. Essentially, three battles in a row with no breaks or healing in between. No resource expenditure or deaths are permanent and units who participated earn rewards at the end. Of course, each round gets progressively harder. The first round was quite easy but in the second and third it started getting trickier - especially because the maps forced me to split my team up. In the end, Luis dropped to a monster (until post-trial anyway, thankfully) but he and Framme were kind of the MVPs. Luis tanked a ridiculous number of attacks before falling and Framme's personal passive ability turns her and Alear into nightmares to hit at all while they're next to each other - especially on tiles that grant avoidance buffs. Anyway, I got some exp and some items to buff stats with later which was cool.

Following that, it was time to get back to the story. Following Timerra to Solm's eastern fortress, they found the place being attacked by corrupted that were leaking some sort of awful miasma everywhere that buffed them and debuffed Alear's group. In the middle of all that, a dancer called Seadall had gotten his hands on the ring by pure chance and was holed up in the central chamber. Alear and co. fought their way through to rescue Seadall and he joined the party. His ring, Emblem Corrin, isn't too powerful but she does have neat field control that clears miasma and changes terrain depending on the class she's paired with. With Seadall, she created obstruction ice. Now paired with Alfred (for the time being), she creates water tiles that reduce avoidance.

Anyway, the party cleared out the ruins and then encountered nice!Veyle. She was extremely confused and concerned when she found her new friends did not trust her at all and even accused her of killing people - Lumena included. She fled before things could get any worse, Alear's group not risking chasing her in case of a trap. Afterwards, she ran into Griss and lamenting that she couldn't just hang out with her dad (Sombron) in a chill way instead of him demanding violence of her. Griss realised which version of Veyle he was talking to and manipulated her into heading to Firene to "clear things up."

I left the main story there for today though. Instead, I did one of the three emblem paralogues that were waiting for me - Ike's. I went into this very concerned after how dangerous Lyn had been. Luckily for me though, the fortess defence style battle against Ike proved to be quite a bit easier since I could mostly just hold my position and let enemies trickle in towards me. Ike himself then proved vulnerable to bows and ranged attacks to Alcryst and Ivy (fused with Lynn) with some help from a spear toss from Alfred broke through enough of his HP that Alear could use Lucina's big move to finish him off and earn the reward.

I left it there for the most part after that. I'm eager to get more master seals for the rest of my team and I'm curious about the new Somniel activity that appeared - fortune telling with Seadall. I did not see that coming. Unfortunately though, that's only available at night and I was too impatient to wait for that and kept missing proper night when using the rest function to make time move. Welp. Oh well, we're really here for the fishing anyway.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Eight
I went through my usual Somniel rounds with a twist this time, I actually had access to Seadall's fortune telling? Not entirely sure what the benefit to it was, but whatever works. After that, it was right into the story stuff.

The party got wind of Elusian ships moving on Firene, so they made their way to the Azure Coast to cross to Flora Port. Meanwhile, Rosado and Goldmary managed to steal the containing emblem Eirika (and also Ephraim?) from underneath the Hound's noses and also fled towards the Azure Coat. The two groups met up there and ended up fighting a pursuing party of Sombron's soldiers led by Marni and Mauvier. The "Elusian" forces were fairly easily defeated then and Hortensia was reunited with her retainers who joined Alear's forces. After this fight, it was back to Somniel briefly because I was able to advance the rest of my active combatants (and a few others) to their higher levelled classes. Hype. Good thing too because the next fight was a lot rougher.

Alear's forces arrived at Flora Port to find the place on fire. They also ran into Veyle there... and learned that there was a second personality engineered by Zephia in her head committing atrocities while the real Veyle just wanted to help people and find her brother. Veyle also had the nature of her blackout confirmed at this moment and was rightfully disturbed. Unfortunately for her, Zephia triggered a switch to Evil!Veyle and thus began a gruelling battle against Veyle, all four hounds, a "resurrected" Corrupted version of King Hyacinth and a corrupted wyrm that was causing trouble. All while navigating a burning village.

My intend had been to divide and conquer with Alear, Framme, Timerra, Bogado, Jean and Celise taking on half of the enemy forces including the wyrm, Zephia and Hyacinth while Luis, Alfred, Ivy, Panette, Diamant, and Alcyrst would deal with the other half including Marni and Maunier. Then they would all be able to converge on Veyle, whom I assumed would be the biggest threat.

Unfortunately, I made some errors. Firstly, I forgot to account for the Hounds, Veyle and Hyacinth's Emblem Rings completely changing how some of them played. Secondly, I accidentally sent Panette with the first group and left the second understaffed. Whoops. Things only got rougher from there when the wyrm and eventually Zephia also made for the second group. I had to play extremely carefully to avoid creating a situation where a character dying couldn't be avoided but eventually the second group were able to pull through and spent a couple of turns recovering. Meanwhile, the first group had a much easier time since half their targets decided to go after the other team instead. The closest they came to a problem was when Zephia made a brief stop over to try and zap them a few times before leaving to fuck up the other group and Hyacinth joining the fray thereafter and even that wasn't nearly as daunting as what the other group dealt with. Nonetheless though, eventually the wyrm was killed, the hounds were driven off and it was just down to Veyle and a handful of corrupted... and Veyle ended up actually being much easier to deal with than Zephia or Hyacinth. She managed to use her big engage move on Alear - who still had well over half his HP afterwards - and was then subsequently bodied getting dogpiled by Alear, Framme, Alfred and Panette.

During the fight, Leif's ring was recaptured when the fake Hyacinth died and afterwards, Veyle managed to regain control of her body long enough to trick Zephia into handing over Sigurd's ring before tossing it to Alear as the Hounds forces retreated. This earned her a bitch slap from Zephia, but it's not like they can really hurt her since she shares her body with the other Veyle. It was an admirable play and has given Alear and co even more motivation.

Now the Somniel's army has seven rings to the Elusians' five and are preparing to invade.

I took this chance to reshuffle who had what ring. Luis with Byleth has been fun, but his biggest problem has been enemies being out of his reach. Now I have him paired with Sigurd so he has an extra five movement and that won't be an issue. We'll see how I feel about that over time. I then shifted Byleth to Jean. Byleth's biggest ability is a supportive one that works great when the character that uses it is in the middle of a group of allies (allowing as many to move twice as possible). Jean is typically in a fairly central position to best do his job as healer and it would be a great ability for him to use on a round where he doesn't have to heal. I gave Leif back to Alcryst so the warrior/ring pairings are now:

Alear with Lucina
Framme with nobody for now. I'll probably put Micaiah back with her for a bit after reclaiming her but I feel like she might be better suited to Lucina or Marth (when he's reclaimed anyway).
Alfred with Corrin
Celise with nobody until I get Celica back
Jean with Byleth
Luis with Sigurd
Diamant with nobody until I reclaim Roy
Alcryst with Lief
Timerra with Ike
Fogado with nobody. He's the unit right now who most often has turns where he doesn't have anything to do, so I might give him Michaiah when she's back so Framme can focus on being the deadly assassin she's turned out to be. Alternatively, it might be possible to recruit Veyle later so I could switch him out and give her Michaiah instead. We'll see.
Panette with Eirika/Ephraim
Ivy with Lynn

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Nine
Once the Sominel rounds were done, it was time for another of the Emblem paralogues. This time, Emblem Byleth's, which was a mission reminiscent of when Edelgard raided the Holy Tomb in Three Houses. Alear's forces had to defend a pretty much identical tomb from Byleth and his fabrications, earning greater rewards the fewer crystals were destroyed. The biggest problem faced here was that Byleth had a bunch of monks cast Warp to send his guard out to one side of the map as he was flanked and then headed off to one side himself to cause problems. Still though, he was a much easier foe to deal with than Lyn was and in the end he was the only one left and promptly taken down with a good old-fashioned dog-piling.

After that, the story continued. Alear's army headed northwards via sea towards Elusia. Before they could make it to land though, they encountered a small Elusian fleet under the command of a High Priest called Lindon. This was a fair bit tougher to deal with than the paralogue was because I managed to somehow end up with the exact wrong combination of units on each side of the map. I think if the squads had been arranged differently it would have gone much easier. In the end though, Alear was able to convince Lindon to switch sides and join the Somniel's army and together they then took out the rest of the Elusian group before heading to Givre Port.

Meanwhile, Zephia was preparing to use the helmet created by Sombron on Veyle to dampen her better half. Mauvier was not thrilled by this idea, as he was pretty attached to the nicer Veil, but was dispatched to Givre to support Marni who was heading out there to face-off with Alear and co. Zephia promised Mauvier she wouldn't do anything to Veyle before he got back, but I'm not sure I believe her. Once the other two were gone, Zephia talked to Griss one-on-one about this supposed brother of Veyle's - a brother than Sombron claimed to have killed himself shortly before being sealed away. In other words, 90% chance that Alear is Veyle's brother and was actually originally Sombron's child not Lumena's. Calling it now.

Anyway, at Givre Port, Alear found the place pretty much empty and abandoned with only corrupted behind. Sombron now demanding more food was devouring Elusian citizens and turning them into Corrupted as a result. That was when Marni and Mauvier appeared and a battle broke out in the abandoned, miasma-filled city. The early stages of this fight weren't much of a problem, but things got trickier with Mauvier and Marnin themselves in play. In the end though, it came down to being basically just them in a battle of attrition which they could not keep up with - although Marni constantly using Roy's Engage ability to set shit on fire resulted in Alcryst and Jean barely making it out. Marni and Mauvier fled again, although not before Mauvier let slip that Veyle was in danger.

With that fight done, Michaiah and Roy's rings were reclaimed. I gave Roy back to Diamant pretty much immediately and for now Michaiah is back with Framme until I get a more suitable option for her. Things are heating up now with Alear's army moving deeper into Elusia towards the castle there.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Ten
Once the usual Somniel stuff was done, it was paralogue time. There's quite a lot of these sitting around waiting for me, but I only did Sigurd's this time. This one was a little different again. Alear had to first take control of a fortress and lower a bridge before being able to confront Sigurd himself. Honestly, this was another fairly easy one compared to some of the previous Emblem paralogues - in particular, Lyn's remains the only one to be an actual nightmare. Sigurd's nastiest warriors weren't even mandatory to fight because they just hung out in the same spot in the back corner of the map and Sigurd's own damage output was a fair bit less than some of the other emblems. So it wasn't too hard for any of the melee units to manage him and in the end he was defeated.

After that, it was into the story where Alear's army was preparing to storm the Elusian castle. Meanwhile, inside, Zephia discovered Marni and Mauvier had lost two more rings and brutally punished them before taking her leave with Veyle - who, naturally, she had already used the helmet on despite Mauvier's protests. She left Griss behind with Emblem Celica to test Alear and stall for time.

This fight wasn't exactly hard by conventional standards, but it was definitely tricky. Much of the map was shrouded in darkness and I didn't have gear for that equipped because I didn't expect it to be an issue within a castle. So it was hard to know exactly what the enemy was doing. On top of that, Griss himself spent the first several rounds teleporting all over the place to hound (ha) Alear's forces before eventually settling in at the back of the room. Still, once the Corrupted had been cleared out and he was surrounded, Griss was defeated. Before he fled though, he revealed that I was correct and that Alear is, in fact, Veyle's brother and Sombron's child.

Alear was despondent for about thirty seconds but perked right back up thanks to support from Emblem Sigurd and his other allies, especially with the revelation that thanks to Lumena's efforts he possessed divine dragon power as well as fell. It was then that Mauvier appeared and warned those assembled that Sombron and Veyle were headed back to Lythos and volunteered to take them to the fell dragon so Alear could help Veyle.

I'm not feeling overly well and I have stuff to do tonight, so I'm leaving it there for now to get some rest.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Eleven
I didn't do anything much this time. First, I reclassed Alear into a Wyvern Rider. He reached his cap for Divine Dragon and it was time to either reclass or restart another round as that one, but it turns out Wyvern Rider didn't reduce any of his stats and improved several while also providing a more useful passive. So I figurd, why not?

After that, Ijust wrapped up my rounds of the Somniel and then did Leif, Corin and Eirika's paralogues. Corin's paralogue was the easiest so far. Her terrain fuckery made very little difference in the end since I avoided the worst of it. After that it was just taking out her soldiers. Eirika posed a bit more of a threat, but wasn't too much harder.

Leif, however, proved to be the most challenging paralogue since Lyn's. He didn't quite reach her level, but he definitely made me work. The major problem with Leif is that he has numerous ballista on his map that could do huge damage at a great distance. This was particularly problematic for Ivy and the newly airborne Alear who were vulnerable to such weapons. In the end, I had to play very incrementally to avoid getting shot to shit by the ballista. It was probably the single longest battle I've had thus far, but careful play did lead Alear to victory in the end. That and Panette being an absolute beast and taking out what I'm fairly sure was over half the enemy units on her own. She's both a fun character and a powerhouse.

So, that was it for this time. Next time it'll be back to the story fairly quickly although I do still have two more paralogues waiting for me and I can only assume a Marth one coming up at some point too once he's reclaimed.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Twelve
Story time!

Following Mauiver's lead, Alear's group boarded a ship to head for Lythos. They were also joined by Marni who was there a tad more reluctantly. Along the way, Mauvier explained that Veyle had slept for most of the past thousand years in a special temple, only to awaken to find all the people she'd known dead. She'd gone back to her father, Sombron, who was disappointed in her lack of bloodlust and inability to summon Emblems and thus had Zephia screw with her head and create the other Veyle. Marni apparently had no idea how messed up Veyle's history was. Speaking of Marni, we got her backstory too. She had been abandoned as a child and left with the Fell Dragon's church where she finally found herself praised serving as one of the Four Hounds, basically living for Sombron's praise from there on.

The party reached Lythos Castle and were immediately confronted by Zephia and Griss. Zephia claimed she was going to forgive Mauvier and Marni, but Mauvier called her on her bullshit. Evil Veyle then showed up to taunt Alear and the defector hounds causing Marni to make a sudden attack towards the headgear that was keeping the true Veyle at bay, although she was barely able to crack it. Zephia then killed Marni and from there it was fucking on because Mauvier was pissed.

The battlefield itself was pretty small, but that actually meant it necessitated more cautious play. It was constantly being flooded with more enemies and Zephia and Griss were a constant threat on the horizon. Still, once the corrupted Wyrm was out of the way and most of the lesser foes dealt with, it became much easier to clear them out. Griss was defeated by Alfred, Mauvier, Ivy, Alcryst and Framme while Zephia was handled by Alear, Celine, Loius and Diamant. Unfortunately, they fled instead of dying so they'll be fought again at a later date. That just left the evil Veyle who managed to do some damage to Timerra before she was taken down by Timerra, Alear and Panette.

Having lost, Veyle was able to take control again for a moment thanks to the damage Marni had done to her helmet and passed Marth's ring to Alear once more. However, Sombron then took that moment to show up and attempted to kill Veyle. Alear jumped in the way and was seemingly killed by the blast again and the evil Veyle took control once more seeing that. However, in some sort of limbo (which was fucking beautiful as a side note) Alear was able to talk to the real Veyle and encourage her to fight back one more time. Veyle took control again, finished what Marni had started by destroying the helment for good and then used her Fell powers to revive Alear as a Corrupted.

Unfortunately, it was too late to do anything about Sombron. He had taken the power of the twelve rings, grown to an insane size and power and raised his old nation of Gradlon from beneath the waves to begin work on opening a portal to new worlds to conquer. The building was rushed by Corrupted as this continued, forcing the party to fight their way through them to reclaim the rings and escape. Resummoning all the rings drained the power Veyle had put into Alear though and it seemed he would die for real (as if pfft). Luckily, the Emblems pooled their power to perform The Miracle - a one time ability turning Alear into the living Thirteenth Emblem using the ring Lumera had given him and restoring him to life (I shit you not, they call him the Fire Emblem).


For the next step, the Somniel army needs to destroy the Fell Shards preventing them from getting to Sombron and confronting him. But hey, Veyle and Mauvier are in the team now so I guess that's everyone. Here's where the classes and rings are now:

Alear - Wyver Rider - Marth
Veyle - Fell Child - Michaiah
Mauvier - Royal Knight
Framme - Thief - Lucina
Alfred - Avenir - Corrin - Might reclass him though cause he's at max. We'll see.
Celine - Vidame - Celica - No chance in hell of reclassing her. vidame is too good.
Louis - General - Sigurd
Jean - High Priest - Byleth
Diamant - Successeur - Roy - He's nearly at max. Might be a swordmaster soon depending on how it compares.
Alcryst - Tireur d'élite - Leif
Timerra - Picket - Ike
Fogado - Cupido
Ivy - Lindwurm - Ivy


Side note: It was really weird that Alear seemed surprised to hear that other worlds exist with him explicitly knowing they do through most of the story thanks to the Emblems.

Fire Emblem: Engage - Part Thirteen
No story content this, it was just catching up on paralogues and screwing around on the Somniel. So, I had Roy, Celica and Marth's paralogues to get through. Technically I have one more after that, Alear's, but I'm saving that for the moment. Honestly, none of these were particularly challenging either. The toughest of them was Roy because he had a hate-on for Veyle and was trying very hard to kill her speciifcally, but even then it wasn't that hard to avoid that and finish him off. I was worried that Celica was going to be a problem and bounce around all over the map but she only used Warp Ragnarok the standard one time and used it to teleport right into the danger zone, doing hardly any damage in the process. Marth's was pretty standard affair with little of note happening at all.

Now, I have been trying not to compare this game to Three Houses too much through this. I've drawn some comparisons here and there, especially early on, since I want to try and focus on Engage as its own game. But it is ultimately part of a franchise and it does come directly after Three Houses, one of my favourite games I've ever played. So I feel like with almost all of the paralogues done now, it's a good time to talk about something that I find disappointing. In Three Houses, the paralogues were not essential to the main story by any means, but they all had narrative significance. You got to learn more about the characters and the world by participating in them as well as just unlocking cool rewards. Engage does not do this. It's paralogues are almost all just trials against the Emblems to remove the level ten bond cap. At this point, only the ones to recruit Jean and Anna have had any narrative significance at all - and only because they let you recruit characters who you can later get to learn about through supports and reading their reference book information. Maybe the Alear paralogue will break the mould, but it's a shame that the others have been like this. It's not the reason why the world of Elyos is less developed than Fodlan but it absolutely makes this disparity very plain for the player to see.

Other than the paralogues, the only major developments have been a lot of Veyle supports and having Panette reach max and then reclass into Paladin which has been great. Now she's still a tank but her avoidance has gone up as well. Her Strength has dropped a bit, but she's still an absolute monster of a unit anyway.

The last thing to comment on today, the Engage+ forms all look cool as hell.