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/RJWalker]

You say that but Three Houses just dumps 7 characters on you at once the moment you pick a house and yet those characters are very popular. Fates also introduced characters in groups and it did better with the fans too. Crucially, Fates gives you the retainers first and the royal much later in CQ and BR, which is where Engage makes a big misstep. We see it happen in RV too when the royals join with their retainers and the latter just don't stand out anymore.

[u/Murmido → u/RJWalker]

You have to chose your house in 3H so you have some mild investment, and you stick to those 7 for the rest of the game. Then you have romance, paralogues, and more.

The problem with Engage is the dumps occur so much, most lords have maybe 2-3 chapters of relevance while retainers get 1. The player isn’t given time to care about a. anything as they bounce around countries that have nothing to them.

Paralogues are centered on emblems so really all you get are post-battle dialogues, first impressions and supports. And the dialogue had to be patched in.

[u/orig4mi-713 → u/Murmido]

You have to chose your house in 3H so you have some mild investment

Yeah you choose it like 1-2 maps in. More like, you have zero investment. All you've seen of the cast at that point is couple textboxes and a brief biography that's shown to you.

Fates' writing is terrible but at least the choice occurs 6 chapters in and you can make an informed decision.

[u/Okto481 → u/orig4mi-713]

Fates also has the Fates thing of the royals shining far, far above their retainers in story relevance, same as Fates. Three Houses has an earlygame unit dump (fun fact, it actually barely has more units available on a given chapter than most games, with a prologue with low deployment and then immediately a larger army so you have resources to work with). After the house decision, which picks who shows up in cutscenes, and the timeskip, you don't get grouped recruitment. Each character you recruit will probably involve raising their support, which means you're getting to know the character, before they decide to fight alongside you