Fire Emblem Engage Part 4: Chapters 9-12

Welcome to the fourth part of my blog entry series chronicling my playthrough of Fire Emblem Engage. This entry will deal with what could be considered the "Elusia arc" of the game- Chapters 9-11. 

Be warned- this blog entry, and all subsequent ones in the series, will include significant plot spoilers, so do not view it if you do not want to be spoiled.

Without further ado, let us resume the series.

Chapter 9

This chapter takes place on the border of Brodia and Elusia. King Morion heads out to fight King Hyacinth without the help of a ring, and it goes about as poorly as one might expect. While Hyacinth almost loses to Morion, he pulls out Lyn's ring and defeats Morion, abducting him. He orders Ivy to stay behind and hold off their pursuers without her ring, as punishment for losing a ring that Sombron gifted her.

The goal is simple- get to the east end of the map and defeat Ivy- and while the goal is to save Morion, there isn't any pressure to defeat Ivy quickly. Instead, you see Diamant's other retainer, Jade, under attack, and must talk to her with Diamant or Alear to recruit her.

There are two side routes to reach Ivy, but each one has several armored enemies. One thing I find frustrating about this game compared to other Fire Emblems is that many enemies are rather resilient, making it difficult to kill them in one round. In any case, I chose to go the center route.

Ivy is faced at the end, and while she no longer has her ring, she's still not to be taken lightly, as she has two health bars and magic that can take down your armored units.

Once defeated, Ivy asks Alear to finish her off, but Alear refuses, knowing that Hyacinth was willing to leave her to die. Ivy grudgingly accepts Alear's mercy, warning Alear that Hyacinth is going to sacrifice Morion to restore Sombron to full power, then leaves. During the conversation, she implies she has no true loyalty to Sombron- unlike her father, she doesn't call the Fell Dragon "Lord Sombron"- and states that she considers Alear her "deity" before quickly backpedaling.

As a note regarding honorifics, one thing I like about Engage is how they translate "-sama." In most games, it's literally translated as "Lord" or "Lady," even when referring to royals(who are typically addressed by their titles by people from other countries, who use a different honorific). However, in Engage, the retainers call their lieges "Prince" or "Princess," which is a less literal but more context-appropriate translation.

Veyle shows up again to greet Alear. When Alear shows Veyle her ring, Veyle appears to nearly lose control of herself and almost steals it, but recovers and quickly runs off. Diamant has no desire to pursue Veyle when his father is in danger, and Alear agrees, although she's worried about Veyle.

I watched some more support conversations. One of the few truly interesting one is Citrinne and Yunaka's C Rank conversation, in which Citrinne confronts Yunaka over the latter being an assassin, demands the truth about why Yunaka was intersted in a gathering of Brodian nobles and warns Yunaka that she'll show her no mercy if she tries anything. It's an unusually tense and serious support, although by all indications, it will turn out that Yunaka was trying to help all along.

Chapter 10

The army tracks Hyacinth down to the cathedral. Ominously enough, Marth warns you that it's best to prepare, since you won't be able to return to Somniel for some time.

On the way into the cathedral, Marth warns Alear that this will be dangerous, but she insists on going in anyway. Once they're inside, they realize that they're too late- Hyacinth sacrificed Morion to Sombron, and reanimated Morion as an undead. At this point, Morion's sons want to avenge their father, and the doors close behind them, trapping them inside.

As is common in Fire Emblem,  while you begin the map talking to the boss, he turns out to be on the opposite side once the battle begins. In order to get to Hyacinth, you have to climb some stairs, defeat Hortensia and her retainers, break through a door, defeat Morion and then face him.

First things first, there's the matter of Hortensia and her retainers. I approached this by drawing out the nearest foes and defeating them, dividing my forces as appropriate. Hortensia herself is trickier; she doesn't attack until she's close enough to use her Freeze staff, after which she sics her forces on your immobilized unit. After some trial and error, I realized that the best way was to do a two-pronged assault, baiting her into targeting a magically resistant unit. Of course, when reinforcements arrive- an archer on each side- I have to deal with both at once, but it isn't too difficult.

Incidentally, I noticed something around this time. In previous chapters, Celine had retreated from battle upon being reduced to 0 HP (with the implication that her wounds are too grave for her to fight again), but from around this point, losing all her health results in her dying, indicating that she's no longer essential to the story the same way her brother and Diamant are. I may go into details about how narrative-essential characters complicate permadeath, but that's a topic for another blog post.

After Hortensia is defeated, the party must break down the door. Upon opening the door, Marth warns you that Hyacinth can attack at range with his Engage ability. Of course, Morion comes first, but while he has a fair amount of health, he isn't too hard once he's broken.

Hyacinth is a bit trickier, though, since he's a deadly hand-to-hand combatant with Engage abilities. Curiously enough, while he creates illusionary copies of himself, they often get left at the north end of the room. Unfortunately, he came after my units with a monk that was using the Chain Guard command on him, which causes damage to be redirected to the monk and reduced, so I had to take out the monk first.

After being defeated, Hyacinth is terrified, at which point Sombron arrives. Sombron needs more of the "sovereign blood" that was used to revive him and turns on the nearest source- Hyacinth- and devours him, much to Hortensia's horror.

Before long, the hooded individual arrives and reveals herself as Veyle, before stealing the Draconic Time Crystal and the Engage Rings. This would imply that Veyle had deceived Alear, but when Alear protests, Veyle claims she and Alear never spoke, implying that the "Veyle" they met earlier was a split personality. Veyle is joined by four of her followers- Zephia, Griss, Marni and Mauvier- who are known as the Four Hounds.

The party, in a desperate situation, is forced to flee.

Chapter 12

The chapter begins almost immediately, and you are forbidden from returning to the Somniel. Two-part maps can be frustrating, since you usually cant prepare, and may not be able to save(for example, all of Fire Emblem Fates' final maps and one two-parter midway through Revelation).  The good news in this case is that you can save and do battle preparations. The bad news is that you not only can't go to the Somniel, but you also can't change out the units that you used, unlike in most other two-part maps.

This map is an escape map- Alear must get to one of two tiles on the southern end of the map, which requires fighting your way though the enemies to get there. At the north end, there's Veyle and several other Corrupted, all of whom are two powerful to defeat. Veyle also has two dragon-like enemies with her, which, like the Demonic Beasts from Three Houses, occupy four squares. It's nice to see those sorts of enemies return, but I dout that they have the Demonic Beasts' mechanics, which forced players to make good use of gambits.

Of course, getting to the southern end is easier said than done, since among the Corrupted, several have the Emblem rings, as well as the special abilities within them. This results in scenarios such as a Corrupted with Emblem Sigurd racing across the map to stab a cavalry unit with Ridersbane, Emblem Celica teleporting and casting Ragnarok on your Armor Knight, or Emblem Micaiah freezing the unit at the back of the pack.

I struggled with this map because not only do you not have the Emblems, but you can't use the Draconic Time Crystal, meaning that you can't undo if you make a mistake or lose a unit.

After you advance past a certain point on the map, Veyle decides that the Corrupted aren't good enough and sics the Four Hounds on you, each of whom has three health bars and an Emblem ring. Luckily for you, Ivy comes in with her retainers, joining your cause and giving you back your Draconic Time Crystal, as well as the Emblem rings for Lyn and Lucina. As good as it was to have the Draconic Time Crystal back, in most of my attempts, I'd lost a unit by this point.

You're not out of the woods yet, since the Four Hounds start closing in and you have three turns to escape before they catch up to you.

Once the army gets to safety, a tense conversation ensues, with Alcryst still upset over the role Ivy played in his father's death, but Diamant being willing to keep things civil. Alear deeply regrets losing the rings and is reluctant to flee, but accepts Lyn and Lucina framing it as a tactical retreat, as well as how they note that Lumera wanted her to learn when to run away. Alear swears to learn from her mistakes and so proceeds to the Queendom of Solm, the kingdom to the southeast of Elyos and the last area.

Back on the Somniel, I saw a few more support conversations- Etie's B rank conversation with Celine and C rank conversation with Alfred involved her trying to train with a weighted teacup. Yunaka and Citrinne's B support was more interesting, with Yunaka going into more detail about her past- an assassin took her in and taught her his skills, using her for his job. Citrinne acknowledges what Yunaka has gone through but doesn't yet sympathize with her. Their conversation is cut short, and I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

Chapter 12

The heroes find themselves lost in the desert, but are saved by the arrival of a friendly stranger named Fogado, captain of the Sentinels, and his two companions. Fogado escorts the heroes to safety, but then they're called into action to help some travelers who are under attack from Corrupted.

You can only deploy seven units for this mission, whereas previous missions gave you ten, although you do get Fogado and his retainers at the start. In many Fire Emblem games, the number of units you can field per mission gradually grows over time, but the number of units in your army grows even more quickly, assuming you don't lose any. It allows those doing "ironman" runs- those who don't reload if they lose a unit- to replace units they lose, but the amount of choice can be overwhelming to those who don't play Classic, let alone ironman runs. On the non-gameplay front, it's obviously more difficult to write such a large roster of characters, which is why many of Engage's characters are one-note compard to Three Houses, which had a relatively small cast.

The mission is simple at first glance, but there are two complications. First is the desert terrain, particularly the quicksand that hinders the movement of any units caught in it. Second is the reinforcements- with the worst part being that it's a rout map. It can be rather frustrating to kill all but a few of the enemies, only for more enemies to arrive and you to have to kill them before you can finish the mission.

The battle isn't all that significant to the storyline, and after it's done, Fogado escorts the others to the castle. It turns out that none of the royals present have met the prince or princess of Solm, and they wonder why.

The answer isn't revealed yet, but Ivy, Diamant and Alfred are surprised when a guard calls Fogado "Prince," and Fogado reveals that he is the prince of Solm.

Elsewhere, Veyle is pleased that the heroes went to Solm, hoping that they will help her get Solm's ring, too. She, having been "awake" for too long, gives orders to Zephia, implying that her "good" and "evil" personalities are separate.

I saw Alear's B support with Celine, which reveals a more practical side to her. It's an interesting look at her character, but it and the unlocked page involve a bit too much telling, rather than showing.

My thoughts so far

The game's getting noticeably more challenging, and I considered turning the difficulty down to Casual. That option was unavailable to me, due to the difficulty menu being unavailable, but I persevered and eventually While I appreciated the idea of seeing your Emblems turned against you, I found it frustrating to have to play through the mission without the Draconic Time Crystal, especially on Classic.

I ultimately gave up and switched the difficulty down to Normal for Chapter 12. Perhaps I could have gotten through on Hard if I'd persisted, but I decided it wasn't worth the effort. Part of the reason I was able to play Three Houses on Maddening was because it was easier, and part of it was because I enjoyed Three Houses more and felt more motivated to get through it.

Still, I haven't given up on Engage yet, and plan to see it through to the end, although I'm not sure whether or how often I will replay it.