Fire Emblem Engage: The other reason for my laziness in this topic because I'm supposed to be obligated to think about this pile of meh or something.
Anyways I wouldn't describe character balance as being particularly good outside of there being an overall lack of slam dunk characters. The lower end of things... is better than some but there's too much that I'd consider irredeemable. Anyways.
Alear: Weird and hard to rate fairly. Bizarrely the closest comparison I have is
Micaiah where getting good use out of them requires some lateral thinking around their perks of Rose Thorn 2.0, convoy access, and the only dragon typing you'll see until C22 because their combat is pretty mid otherwise. I think it works overall, even if I didn't make the arguable best use of it. 7/10.
Vander: So 40 HP to start with is actually a lot, turns out, and lets you get away with more than you should with those stats. Has a clear point of obsolencese and paladin is a very weak class in this game but it's hard to argue with the early game performance when you have so much incompetence going around. 5/10.
Clanne: So tomes are actually good in this game. Clanne... is less good. Middling bases, shaky offensive growths (and mixed offensive builds aren't really wonderful in general), bad personal but 75% of the cast has bad personals so whatever... I really don't see what he has to recommend him over literally any other tome user in the game. 3/10.
Framme: Early staff filler. You use her because staves are good and then you bench her once you get better options. Same score as Vander works. 5/10.
Alfred: What the fuck. I guess he's durable when he's not getting doubled by things but cavalry is a weak class tag and stat spread is pretty uninspiring. 2/10.
Etie: Early bow user. You use her because the game uses fliers early but above average strength as your only good stat doesn't really work out long term. 3.5/10.
Boucheron: You know I wouldn't be averse to the whole axe myrm thing he tries to do if his bases were more agreeable. As is... he's durable via HP but not to the extent that Vander is early (and not really more durable than Alfred when he's not being doubled either) and the poor luck stat is a flight risk unless you give him an engrave or a compact axe which nah. 2.5/10.
Céline: Better start than Clanne but still has a lot of the same issues. Her luck does make her a good candidate for some Divine Pulse staff nonsense but that doesn't come until Hortensia joins and, well. 4/10.
Chloé: One of the few glimpses of true earlygame competence. Offense can be a bit of an issue but she has a personal which can help with her issues there (gasp! An actually useful personal skill in Engage!) but being a flier is nice and the speed is screaming. Others can outdo her with class swapping but the ones that can join later and miss out on early Canter so I don't think I'd call them better. 7.5/10.
Louis: One of the other glimpses of true earlygame competence. Amazing defense and immunity to break are some pretty great boons early. Falls off once promotions start happening because he gets doubled by mages and explodes to them and enemy backups foil the concrete tanking thing (unless you give him Corrin. Don't give him Corrin.) but it's really hard to argue with that earlygame. 6/10.
Jean: Early staff filler except he joints like four and a half chapters later with nothing to show for it. Trying to leverage his personal is a pretty bad trap if you ask me, Engage not really the sort of game where it's worth messing around with that kind of project, the game shows a lot of teeth and it shows them very early. 2/10.
Yunaka: So daggers are actually pretty good in this game and thieves are the only ones that get to use them before promoting... too bad thief isn't a great class long term and Yunaka's stats aren't the greatest. Still probably better than whatever the hell Clanne is doing with his life. 5/10.
Anna: Oh look it's Boucheron with a worse start and a more convoluted gimmick. Either you suffer through 5 levels of axefighter with her and make her a radiant bow user, or you switch her to mage and have her do very little that Citrinne isn't already doing for you. No. 1/10. BUT SHE IS ONE OF THE TWO CHARACTERS WHO CAN MAKE SS DISHES IN THE SOMNIEL
Alcryst: Somewhat better than Etie and has a more useful personal. Still not really that great. 4.5/10.
Lapis: Lapis is better than what I intially kneejerked but she still suffers from being in a very weak class and needs two seals to really function as a PC, and that's not something I look kindly on unless you're bringing something truly useful to the table. Alear can do this, Lapis... doesn't really do anything that Chloé isn't already doing. 4/10.
Citrinne: Citrinne is also better than what I initially kneejerked and in her case it's somewhat significant? Mage Knight is pretty good for her, turns out, +3 speed on promotion plus +3 more against physicals once Chaos Style shows up is pretty nice. Too bad Ivy exists though but otherwise she's fine? 6/10.
Diamant: Aggressively mid. Basically Alear with some stat shuffling and without the stuff that makes Alear cool. 5/10.
Amber: Very strong but as mentioned before cavalry is a weak class tag and he'd be better off as anything else so he has the same problems as Lapis and as such, gets the same score. 4/10.
Jade: Louis who is worse at everything that matters and sports low luck at a time when enemies start packing steel weapons. Which is actually a concern instead of a complete joke since IntSys finally learned to not make them ridicuously heavy and also gave them +5 crit because
. Anyways Jade bad. 2/10.
Ivy: Tomes good. Staves good. Flying good. Ivy is the only one of two characters who gets all three. She joins at the point where people start missing out on early Canter and the stat spread is merely good (outside of DEX/LCK but who cares after C14, Ivy probably makes the best use of an Academy engrave) but those are the only real problems. Anyways Engage isn't the sort of game that lends itself to a high score cieling but I think Ivy does hit that cieling. 8/10.
Kagetsu: Hello, yes, it's Stat God Kagestu, here to wait patiently until he can reclass into something that isn't swordmaster and then kill everything. Fortunately he doesn't have to wait that long. 7/10.
Zelkov: Generally better stats than Yunaka, but joins at a point where thief dagger use is less attractive. Probably worth the same score. 5/10.
Fogado: Generally the best radiant bow user unless you want to baby Anna (you don't want to baby Anna) but since the radiant bow has 19 mt this is actually a pretty good niche. Not terribly impressive outside of this as he sports the same offensive issues seen on Chloé but hey. 5.5/10.
Pandreo: Then you get this guy who's basically just Bishop Pent except you can reclass him into something with a better tome rank if you want. 7.5/10.
Bunet: Um. At least you don't have to baby him so he's maybe better than Anna? Maybe? There really isn't anything good to say about him, the clear loser among the Solm retainers. 1.5/10.
Timerra: Well crit debuffing is nice and she's fine on her join map... just so many issues longterm. I haven't really seen a way to get milage out of her outside of Sandstorm procs and the problem with that is that you're relying on *proc skills* which is not a wonderful place for a character to be in. But that's still nicer than what I said about Alfred so. 4/10.
Panette: Panette is a character where I saw the glass jaw before the ridicious strength stat and reclassing/emblem potential and wound up making an unfair initial assessment because she's actually pretty good once you work around those issues. 7/10.
Merrin: Kagetsu with worse stats but starts off in an actually good class. It roughly balances. 7/10.
Hortensia: See Ivy, except swap the staff/tome ranks and give her a speedy but physically frail and low damage stat build. You're here for the staff cheese though. 7.5/10.
Seadall: So I said there was only so high the rating cieling can go for Engage characters and Ivy hit that cieling.
I lied.So normally the problems that plague single-refresh dancers is that 1) they tend to be low move, 2) they tend to be liabilities when caught by enemies, and 3) you're simply optimizing your existing action economy instead of actually improving it, so if you mess up and the worst cast scenario under 2 happens, well, maybe you should've fielded someone else in that slot instead. Seadall's... not as good at avoiding 2 as 3H dancers can be but makes up for that by virtue of the fact that
you just got a pair of boots lying in one of Solm Castle's doodad drawers, the fact that you can buy Canter for everyone and it may as well be a free skill for him, and the fact that an engaged character's actions tend to be more valueable than an unengaged character's actions so the action economy optimization is
better than "give your best character another action" is in other games. It's ridiculous and even if you, like me, didn't actually use him it should be painfully obvious to see why he's great. 9/10.
Rosado: I vaguely recall doing the math and found that his bases were disappointingly close to a level 20/1 Chloé, which isn't helped by his decision to be an axe/spear person to start off with. I also distinctly recall him being unable to oneshot the corrupted wyrm that exists to be an Eirika engage attack tutorial on Hard mode. Needless to say these were not great impressions. 4/10.
Goldmary: Okay physical filler and hero is a perfectly fine class to exist in, so better than Rosado, for all that I like him far better. 5/10.
Lindon: Solid magic filler with some crit build potential. Far worse life choices to make, certainly. 6/10.
Saphir: Okay physical filler character with an iffy personal skill. 4.5/10.
Mauvier: Pile of solid stats, wants a better class to be in than Royal Knight because good grief that thing. 5/10.
Veyle: Oh look, it's dragon typing and it's just in time for Alear to get peak magical vtuber powers so someone else can use Byleth for the rainbow instruct/dance, that's nice. 6/10.
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