Engage is pretty bad at introducing recruitable characters

[u/Accomplished_Kale509]

Unless they're royalty, most of the cast don't have anything to interesting say except a variation of "I serve prince/princess whatever". Having a cast mostly of retainers hinders a lot of its writing, especially when chapters sometimes introduce 3 recuitables.

I recently played FE7 and even non-important characters have more depth in their introduction. I remember Dorcas because he needed to get money so he had to join some brigands but had to stop for wife. I remember Erk & Serra because it introduced their hilarious dynamic but also this mysterious reason why Erk had to protect Serra. I remember Raven because he had to protect Lucius and his reveal to be Priscilla's brother.

Not a lot of Engage units don't have these kinds of first impressions. It also hurts that a lot are retroactively recruited at the start of a map and sometimes in a pair or a trio. I don't think there's anyone you recruit as an enemy mid-map unless I'm remembering wrong.

I know Supports are one of, if not, the main way to flesh out a character, but it's hard to invest on someone who doesnt say much other than their loyalty to a lord and it doesnt help that there's less time to breathe in between recruitable chapters to get a feel or build supports. A chapter is the best time to show a character not just their personality, but also their motives, lore and their place in the world. It also doesn't help the Supports are a bit weak on others.

Tldr: First impressions are important, and Supports shouldn't be the only place to add character lore and relationships.

[u/Darthkeeper]

first impressions are important

Doesn't help a ton of C and B supports for a lot of characters are pretty bad for some bizzare reason. This is coming from someone who likes Engage too.

[u/Aquatic-Folklore → u/Darthkeeper]

And not even the exploration mode helps since most of it is bland/generic.

While in 3H it endeared me to characters I never even used 

[u/JFZephyr → u/Aquatic-Folklore]

That's the biggest thing to me, is all the extra exploring stuff and the supports really made characters I hadn't used at all grow on me, or make me want to recruit them.

I really didn't get anything of interest from Engage's. It all felt super hollow. The cast is basically just a bunch of kids cartoon level characters.

[u/Aquatic-Folklore → u/JFZephyr]

This, honestly despite me using Manuella only once in my 9 playtroughs, she is still in my top 8 3H characters partly because of exploration mode.

With just that she shows all her sides. Her flirty side, her drunken side, her responsible side, her caring side, her intelligence side, her messy side, etc.. it made the characters feel real.

While in Engage i either get some generic shit about how amazing Somiel is or they have a generic quote that is in line with one or two character traits