Fire Emblem Engage, Elden Ring, and stubborn acts of perseverance

 I've been thinking a lot lately about how I approach video games, about how I bend them to my will so that I can create the "right" kind of experience. It brings to mind my first playthrough of Elden Ring, where I had a very particular idea of how the game was supposed to be played and stuck to that ideal slavishly, even as the game heaped more and more options upon me. It also applies to my recent 200+ hour playthrough of Fire Emblem Engage, which I have now—mercifully—finished as of tonight. 

As soon as Engage presented me with a list of difficulty options, I knew that I was going to go for the hardest difficulty. I'm a veteran, after all. I have played and finished a version of every Fire Emblem in the main series aside from the fourth and fifth entries, which only have limited fan translations. I have expressed on many occasions that Fire Emblem is at its best when adhering to its classic formula of limited resources and permanent deaths for your fallen allies. Every decision means something. Every movement carries tension. At any moment, you could lose one of your trusted allies and you have to make the choice of whether or not you try again, or you carry on. Of course, for me, the choice is always simple. I won't let anyone die. Well, not yet, at least.

Fire Emblem Engage has some of the best gameplay and strategy in the entire series. I don't say this lightly. Reception for this game has been mixed, especially by those expecting more of the simulation aspects and political machinations of Fire Emblem Three Houses. This is certainly not that. Engage is much more silly, more colorful. Despite that, its gameplay is significantly more complex. Whereas Three Houses focused intensely on customization and the development of your characters through the training they received at Garreg Mach Monastery, Engage presents you with a series of characters with disparate strategic niches who can be outfitted with Emblem Rings to either enhance their existing strengths or cover their weaknesses. The crucial difference here is that you need to decide which characters get which Emblem Rings—and that choice is a big part of what makes the strategy of Fire Emblem Engage so satisfying.

I played Engage on Maddening difficulty, which proved to be so much more of an ordeal than I ever expected it to be. I had to put every ounce of strategic knowhow to use and even then, found myself spending multiple hours on just about every mission past the first few. It was exhausting enough that even though I found myself enjoying the game immensely, I had to take breaks after each session because it wasn't what I'd call a relaxing experience. Fulfilling, sure, but not relaxing. 

In between sessions, I regularly played Elden Ring for the second time since it came out a little over a year ago. This time felt so much more exciting for me because I was playing it in relay fashion with a friend. We would assign each other weapons and spells and take turns conquering various bosses. Some sessions were very short and some took several hours. Some weapons ended up being a lot more fun and powerful than we expected, but of course, others didn't quite live up to our expectations. We also had to reconcile our different approaches to the game. I tend to prefer forgoing a shield for two-handing or dual-wielding weapons and tend not to put too much stock in armor at all since I'd rather just be able to dodge more effectively. My friend, on the other hand, is a much safer player, and focused on getting a shield with as much stability as possible during his first playthrough.

In the early stages of our relay run, we focused on assigning each other play styles that might be new and unusual to us, but we naturally started to shift toward our preferred methods over time, especially as bosses got harder and harder. The joy of exploration and experimentation in the early- to mid-game gave way to some brutally grueling sessions that were mostly just hours of slamming into a brick wall of a tough boss with a weapon that one of us just wasn't that comfortable with. Again, these sessions were often fulfilling, but not usually relaxing. 

So it was that over the past month or so, I relegated a lot of my free time to playing games that were stressing me out. I didn't go into either of these experiences with the intent of this happening, but once I was in, I certainly wasn't going to shut it down. In the past week or so, most of our Elden Ring sessions were taking yet another stab at the gauntlet of difficult bosses at the end of game. At the same time, I was making attempts at the final two missions of Fire Emblem Engage, both of which clocked in at around four hours.  

The thing is, I could have made both of these experiences significantly less stressful for me. I could have lowered the difficulty of Fire Emblem at any time. I could have loosened the limitations I was setting on our Elden Ring run as well, but I'm always so concerned about preserving the purity of the experience. It's hard to say if it's worth it. I'm very glad that I've finished both of these games, but I'm absolutely going to be taking it easy for a little while going forward. I don't want to spend 200 hours on the next game I play, no matter how much I like it.

I have done some reading from time to time

I've been meaning to chronicle the books I've been reading for a long time, but I've never really gotten around to it. I think a big part of why I haven't so far is because I just don't feel qualified to evaluate them on a meaningful level compared to something like video games, for which I have incomparable amounts of context. Having said that, though, I've always enjoyed reading and have seldom made it a big priority after high school. Over the past year or so, I've mostly read a bunch of Stephen King, but I have interspersed my King marathon with a couple of other titles as well. I'm going to take this opportunity to get us up to speed and maybe I'll write about each book I read going forward as well.

Although I read a few books here and there before starting my Stephen King marathon, I definitely hold it responsible for rekindling my interest in reading in general. The idea to do it at all came directly from a podcast called Just King Things, which discusses all the works of the author in chronological order. I'm a big fan of this kind of thing in general. I've watched some TV shows I wouldn't have otherwise rewatched if not for podcasts popping up about them, so why not do that for books as well? Also, Stephen King is absurdly relevant culturally. As I've made my way through his catalog, I'm continuously shocked to learn "oh, wow, so he wrote that too, huh?" So far, I've read Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, Rage, Night Shift, and The Stand. After that last one, I had to take a break for a while.

I haven't loved every single book of his I've read, but I've gotten a lot out of a few of them. I liked Carrie a lot more than I expected to—and actually found that I generally preferred it to the movie. Two moments in the book are much more gripping than in the film and those are the climactic encounter Carrie has with her mother and the chilling ending. Since King is popularly known for not knowing how to end his stories, it's interesting that I loved how he ended his first popular work.

'Salem's Lot didn't always hold my attention, but I was surprised to learn that after all these years, I never knew it was a vampire story. It's much less about the vampires and more about the town and its population of stock characters. This will come to define King's work as a whole, I'm coming to find out. Even so, there is something highly readable about this kind of story, even if it's not necessarily what I'd always prefer. The Shining has somewhat more developed characters, which makes sense given Jack Torrance's descent into madness. I watched the Kubrick film as a companion piece and very much enjoyed it too, although they tackle the story from fairly different angles.

Rage is a sophomoric school shooter story that has mercifully become unpublished at King's own request. He wrote it in his teen years and this is clear from the text. There is a sense of morbid wish fulfillment as the protagonist holds his high school class hostage. It's clear King imagined a scenario in which this might happen and then simply wrote to it, with no clear end goal in mind for what it means thematically beyond nihilism. 

Night Shift is a massive collection of short stories that I can't even begin to summarize here, but I'll note that it's staggering how many idea fragments King had and how many of them have now been developed into bigger pieces. One of these short stories eventually became The Stand. Another is Children of the Corn. Even among these relatively inconsequential pieces, I found I recognized a lot of them, like Lawnmower Man. Despite not all of these being classics, I found most of them fairly enjoyable. I'm curious to see how I end up feeling about his other short story collections.

I also read The Stand: Complete and Uncut Edition, because it's now the only version you can buy. At a staggering 1200 pages, it was quite the ordeal to get through, especially since I never got to a point where I could say I loved it. At times, I liked it just fine, but at many other points, I was pretty disinterested—occasionally, I didn't like it much at all. I've heard that the story was pitched initially as an American Lord of the Rings. I can't say I agree. It's a weird hodgepodge of elements that don't necessarily work all that well together. It works best in its initial phase as a terrifying pandemic story. Given recent events, I wasn't super thrilled to start the book in the first place, but it effectively captures the mounting dread of a mysterious plague. After this all happens, it seems like King isn't super sure where to go with the story and starts implanting visions into the minds of his characters to get them to travel across the country to ally with The Dark Man or an ancient woman named Mother Abigail. This is the part of the story that's supposed to be like modern fantasy, but it just never really worked for me, especially once the survivors make their way to their destinations and start "rebuilding civilization." No one's motivations make a lot of sense and the story just kind of falls apart in the end.

I'll put together a post of the non-Stephen King stuff I've read in a future update.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line and the mountain of other games I'm working on

 

It's been a slow month for completing games. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but I have to admit I always start to feel a little antsy when I'm juggling multiple titles and not making meaningful progress toward finishing any of them. I always like to move on to the next thing, but my habits have shifted a little in the last year or so. I've really become enamored with replaying games I enjoyed a few years ago. Part of this was spurred on by the Steam Deck, but it's more than that. Since a bit before Elden Ring came out, I've really gotten into the Souls speed-running and challenge-running community. I replayed Sekiro and I replayed Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition. Much more recently, I've been replaying Elden Ring remotely with a friend. We've been swapping back and forth, assigning each other new weapons and spells after every boss kill. That's been a ton of fun. On top of that, I started a Sorcery-only playthrough in my own time.

This is all to say that I'm doing it to myself. I'm sabotaging my progress. It's not because I feel like I need to complete an arbitrary number of games or anything, but more just that I want to move on to new games that are waiting in the wings. There's Octopath Traveler II and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty waiting for me. Trails to Azure just came out. Meanwhile, I'm deep into a playthrough of Fre Emblem Engage on Maddening, a difficulty level that absolutely lives up to its name. Although I'm close to the end, there's no telling just how many more sessions that will take to finish. Every stage is a protracted military campaign.

Because I felt like I didn't have enough of these titles to manage all at once, I decided impulsively to pick up Dead Cells again due to the new Castlevania DLC. I've had a really good time with that because I can just pick it up and play a run in less than an hour. I think that's something I've been craving in between these epic-length RPGs I've been playing.

Theatrhythm is accessible and can be played in short bursts too, but the catch is that it has a ton of content in it. By my count, there are over 300 songs in this thing and more coming in DLC all the time. I've now finished every song in the base roster on Ultimate difficulty. I originally had ambitions to start tackling them on Supreme as well, but that may have to wait. Whittling down my hefty Now Playing list is kind of my priority at the moment, especially since I'm reaching the conclusion on a few of these.

Final Bar Line isn't exactly radically different from previous entries in the series despite now appearing on a platform without a touch screen, but it's a lovely revisit to a whole pile of games that have fantastic soundtracks. I was pleased to see Final Fantasy Tactics and even more niche titles like Final Fantasy Record Keeper or Mystic Quest, even if I have PTSD from how addicted I was to the former title about six years ago. 

I bought the Season Pass for the game, so I'm definitely going to keep returning to it to play the DLC as it arrives. I may even give Supreme a legitimate shot once I feel like I don't have so many other games to try.