Warp staffs are one of those things I use to save at any cost because "maybe in the future I will need it" only for having it intact by the end of the game
I actually really do like Engage’s warp, because to me it’s another facet of the game’s gameplay-story integration. I think emblems deserve to be broken, but if the game had more maps with varying objectives, it would probably be better
Yea, engage is really good at making (most) of the emblems feel like tools worth waging war over. They are absolutely bonkers in the best way. Still. I wish they were a BIT better balanced. Just a tad.
Yeah, but Witch is a DLC class in Fates. So unless you downloaded that before the eShop shut down, there's no way to obtain the Witch's Mark. (That's assuming you're playing on a 3ds and not using an emulator.)
One thing they definitely missed in thracia is, being able to warp in Fog of War, yes hello Leif I will send you THERE "wait but we can't see?" WARP. not to mention how staves like warp, severely eat up your fatigue, which while in some cases can be invalidated by MILK uhhh stamina drinks, in some cases, it cannot. Very surprising to go a warp video without AND NOW I'LL USE THE WARP STAFF.
The part where you mention "I knew at that point that the game was over and going through it was mostly a formality" (paraphrasing) makes me realise how difficult it is to balance something like Fire Emblem. Maybe due to my poverty of interests I can't really name another game where the start is tough but halfway through I've outscaled the game and most of the time finishing it is, well, a formality. RPGs that depend on you grinding will just dial up the difficulty of every zone, and by amounts and degrees, such that you will eventually hit a wall by the time you're at the end if you're flying through the game.
Morrowind is one of the more extreme examples, you'll die to literal insects at first but with some time and dedication you can become a de facto god that nothing can even touch (partially because you're moving around at 9999mph)
4X games like Civilization tend to be like that. It's hard to find the difficulty settings where I can survive the early game, yet get a decent challenge out of the end game.
-Remove warp and similarly abusive things. -balance the game around class caps and design average stats in a way most characters meet them Here it is, you balanced FE lategame.
Azure Moon maps especially feel like they designed them around the Blue Lions not having a warper. Ch18 is the most infamous one, it's a HUGE map but the one boss, Cornelia, isn't that far from the player and is a relatively squishy mage.
@@mvjbass9561It’s funny how I played Blue Lions first and was very much against splitting up the classes, plus I didn’t use any of the teachers besides Shamir so I had no warp user. As soon as I did Silver Snow and used Manuela and Lynhardt to warp I noticed how maps were way worse. I mean in Blue Lions I did abused stride for a bunch of the mid to late game, but I still had to play the maps
@@mvjbass9561I wonder if this is because they didn't intend players to recruit from out of house on their first playthroughs. The Blue Lions don't have access to warp unless you recruit Linhardt or Lysithea, or get Hapi from the DLC.
3H really makes me like the map design of Engage even more because of this. Enemy commanders aren’t just there to stand in your way then die to one hit, but instead have multiple hp bars and a bunch of unique and interesting tools the player likely doesn’t have access to until they beat said commander. Add on that you don’t have many warp uses, warp is limited to five spaces, there is usually two or more commanders, and the Micaiah emblem isn’t available for most of the single commander maps, and they really had a field day making some of the best maps in FE as a whole. If only we didn’t have to fight the same four commanders upwards of four times each.
This video does make me realize part of the reason Rescue is my favourite utility staff instead; it’s a lot more in general like Warp is in Valentia, being a valuable utility tool to do fun things and can potentially save the life of a unit, but not something that can break the game like Warp can often do.
I always liked Shadows of Valentia's Warp the most, especially on maps where the enemies are split or the lava maps. The magic balance of HP cost makes it that much more interesting. Having the warpers in the last map to dodge the swamps to get to Jedah and Duma was a lifesaver, as well.
Beyond just the staves, Engage also has the Celica ring that comes with its own warp shenanigans. For example, one of the easiest ways of beating Camilla's DLC paralogue is using Celica to rapidly insert a high-Avo flying unit (hardened with Tiki's ability) into her range and then using one of the abundant Rescue staves (such as the one you can get from Tiki's paralogue) to help that unit get back to the main army alive. This way, the multiple health bars are completely negated because the trick involves pulling the boss into your army instead of throwing boss killers at them, and the permanent resource cost is just a single use of Rescue. Meanwhile, the effect is still a near-total skip of the whole map, even though the strategy does have more moving parts than a typical Warp-skip. In fact, Celica in general is a very interesting case for Warp. The ring lacks the damage potential of some of the others against many enemies, and the warp capability is limited to its highly committal Engage Attack. It cannot generally provide the classic skip-by-sudden-death due to multi-life bosses and its own poor combat power. In late-game paralogues (or with DLC enabled) it has to compete with other rings for deployment. Yet it's still a Rewarp that is available in the early and late game on any map you bring it to, with all the opportunities inherent therein.
I don’t particularly like Warp for the same reasons as you, but I love Rescue partially because you can use it as a Warp staff if you play very offensively. There’s much more of a risk ‘warping’ that way and getting it right is satisfying for me
I wish that thracia staves didn't have infinite range. It by itself would already take half of the reasons of why some maps are frustating to the point we want to skip them with warp, like Salem, Saias, Reinhardt, Raydrik, 24x. Also, it's weird that Engage implements the multiple health bars just so the player doesn't trivialize the "kill the boss" maps, but at the same time they add the group warp with Micaiah. I love Warp in echoes and I wish Irma was recruitable in Celica side and she had it just so it could help us in the swamp maps. I'm a casual player which the main challenge I do is keep everyone alive and get all the rewards of the maps, so I'm not that fond of warp being able to trivialize maps. But I can understand why people that play challenge runs like ironman or speedruns would love it.
I suppose the developers of Engage probably considered how players could trivialize Kill Boss Maps with Micaiah's group warp, but they likely figured that if you're able to strategize a way to take down three huge health bars off a super strong enemy in one turn, then you deserve the ability to cheese the map. That's my guess anyway.
3 houses the warp healers were my main healers. Lindhart Manuela etc all broken. Trained them in warp while byleth got the defeats for exp. Story maps double warp rescue dance combo to just beat the enemy boss as soon as possible. I love the warp ability but it makes the game so trivial. Even a short warp of 3 can be hax in the right set up like going to a wall and warping straight in behind enemy lines with your tank
I really like Engage becuase it feels designed to intensively jump toward the boss. A lot of the other games leave the choice to you, like "do I want to feel like a cheater or do I want to intentionally hold back?". Engage made warping really fun & sorta its own form of strategy
I'm a big fan of the Warp staff simply for breaking clerics away from being 100% healbots, but the staff is far from without problems. The biggest hurdle is the fact most FE maps have a linear structure for completion and the side objectives don't provide a compelling enough decision to prioritize using Warp over its power as a chapter skip button. I've been doing a goofier Shadow Dragon playthrough and Warp is a lot more fun when you use it for things like putting an armor knight on a distant choke point where they can fight with little risk while enjoying the burst of mobility. You could do some interesting map set ups like having a seize/defeat the boss map which also has its own version of Alcatraz that you're going to pass by which takes up 1/3 of the map. It's surrounded by water with a single bridge, there are archers which are risky for fliers and can chip on units crossing the bridge as they approach whatever unit the bridge guard is that functions as a secondary boss. However, the units inside that are guarding a potential recruit and valuable treasure are manageable for a bulkier brute forcing the bridge is possible, but you can also Warp in a unit to get the valuables while your cavalry takes the long way to the main objective.
I recently played through echoes for the first time after getting back into fe with engage and I love the way warp works in echoes. It's a really useful tool for getting slower units to catchup or to just yeet a cav towards the badguy but it never feels cheesy. not having deployment limits means that you're going to have units in play who don't do a whole lot and warp allows you to both help get those units to a spot where they can contribute, and gives your healers something to do if there's nobody they need to heal, absolutely love echoes warp
I really like Warp in Engage the multiple HP bars making me feel better about just using Warp for side objectives or bailing out a bad situatuon since it isn't a win button as often.
I very rarely use them, but moving Hector, a thief, or a flyer to side objectives was always fun, especially after promotion to start decking scrubs with their new weapon type(s)
So far, my favorite ever use of Warp was my first playthrough of 3 Houses. I went Crimson Flower and was doing a full recruit of everyone I could. I got to the Derdriu map and the was Hilda, right in the middle, threatening to get herself killed. I managed to figure out a way to use warp+stride and some dancing to get all the side objectives and finish off Claude by turn 2, completely avoiding confronting Hilda, cause I really didn't want to kill her.
I enjoy Rescue in Awakening and especially Fates. It can technically be used to help with one turn clears and other "skips" but it's often more difficult to plan and figure out how to do it with Rescue because of the limitation of needing to position your staff user to pull off a good Rescue chain. More importantly, it has many other uses that make for very interesting positioning-based tactics. Using it to move a unit out of a dangerous position into a safe position is very interesting. You can use it to bail yourself out of a misplay, an unlucky series of bad hit rolls, or you can even intentionally plan a strategy the involves a unit going into a dangerous location to complete an objective and then Rescue them back to safety.
Using Warp in Gaiden/Echoes always made me feel like I was just playing the game instead of cheating, I’m glad I have an idea as to why that is now lol
A funny way of balancing warp could be to let it be infinite range, but you have to sacrifice a character every time you use it. The LTCers could still go nuts with it, but you would lose the feeling of playing sub-optimally if you didn't want to warp-skip a map.
I know other people have said it better than me but it really feels like the map creators for Three Houses were designing around some cool Rout maps and then all of the maps were Kill the Boss for story reasons. A noticeable amount of maps (beats me how many) give you a boss to kill in the center and spawn you on a side and Warp gets you there in 1 or 2 turns and then 3/4s of a map that would be interesting is ignored. Notable examples of this to me are the Cornelia map, the White Clouds Remire Map, the Dimitri Paralogue, and most of Scarlet Blaze (I haven't played most of these in a while tho)
I like 3H and New Mystery Warp the most. 3H has reusable Warp for every chapter, so its fun to treat them like puzzle as how to cheese the game the hardest. New Mystery has the resource management mechanic too. On Maniac Mode you only get 1 Warp and 1 Rescue early on and on Maniac Mode you burn through them a lot to save people and accomplish side objectives.
In my FE8 0% growths LTC, I definitely struggled with having enough Warp uses. But that might just be because of the 0% restriction. Certainly it affects Warp range pretty substantially.
I tend to play devil's advocate on these analysis videos, but for this one the only thing I can say is I agree without exception to all of your points.
I would say that engage’s warp staves are very close to being great. Without Micaiah you have to be more creative with your warp/rewarp uses. It also helps that you do get so good offensive units with rewarp capabilities such as Ivy or a magically trained Chloe or Anna who can utilize it to position themselves better. When not using them to skip levels they also have very practical defensive applications, one example being when I played Chapter 23 in my Ironman run and was forced to retreat my frozen units with warps, rewarps, and rescues. The main issue is that in the chapters you have Micaiah you can basically warp skip a large portion of levels and the game gives you plenty of warp and rewarp staves to work with. I would say that the main levels that can be warp skipped with Micaiah are chapters 9, 10 (to a certain degree), 20, 21, 23 (this one is a bit more involved), 24, and 25 excluding paralogues. There are probably a couple of maps that can be skipped without Micaiah using warp that I have found such as in the final room of chapter 15 to allow for Seadall’s escape and chapter 18 by getting Ivy to defeat the boss as well as get the speed wing. There are probably quite a few other levels that are made much quicker with warping but I have yet to explore utilizing warp in those stages as well as take into account limited uses.
I enjoy Warp in Gaiden/Echoes and TH. I have a hoarding problem so having spells that have infinite use based on HP and recharges after battle respectively, I feel more secure in using it. I’m always worried I will over use it and not have the staff when I really need it. However, I am learning to be more liberal with my staff use. Michaiah made it more fun, not gonna lie. Mauvier jump scaring me with the AOE Warp in Ch19 was strong way to understand Augment. Then CH25 Augment came in clutch on the final rush to Lumera.
I tend to agree with you on most points, and for the remaining ones, it mostly comes down to "I haven't played that game 😅". In general, I'd agree that echoes has one of the most compelling iteration of it. And it sometimes feels missing from the Tellius games. Maybe you could make a video about saves and rewinds mechanics present across the most modern games and FE4, (maybe also how some fangames/hackroms spin it). I think it's an interesting idea to help correct a dumb mistake from having to restart the whole map, but it's never been executed that well. I think it would be an interesting topic and discussion.
My first and only FE11 playthrough was on Hard 5, and I mostly didn't warp skip, but I was very glad to have the option when I did take it b/c that game is bonkers difficult (I mean, I did that to myself, intentionally, but still). That is the sense in which I appreciate the "skip map" aspect of Warp. And it works well in Shadow Dragon b/c it is basically available the whole game, and the bosses in the chapters where you don't have Warp take forever to kill anyway lol. That being said, if I were to replay the game and git gud at it, I do think I'd find the all-or-nothing of either don't engage with the map, or slog through a brutal map, to be increasingly a drag. In that respect I prefer the design of FE12 (fwiw, my only playthrough of FE12 was on Lunatic, not Lunatic Reverse, b/c I am slightly less than maximally insane).
I like the idea of warp helping your low move combat units get into some action. But who are we kidding? Make the rich richer. Give your high movement units more movement. I love cav emblem...😮💨
It's so funny because since awakening was my first game and my second was fe4 I never really felt an incentive to use warp to just skip the boss. I usually just use it if I screwed up and placed a unit in a bad place or to get some sort of objective.
I love the fe8 warp balance, you have a bunch of options, but none of them are "the best" so it makes it fun to decide who you will use, the game also has a few maps where 1 warp isn't enough, in my latetest run where I lost myrh, some bosses like riev, morva and lyon gave me a pretty hard time since they have so much attack and defense
Usually I find myself ignoring warp, so I can't comment much on it, but I really appreciate it on FE8. I absolutely hate playing chapters 19 and 20 the normal way, so I'm really, really glad it exists there. You mentioned how better map design could solve this kind of problem, but looking at the community's opinions on these maps, they're not really disliked, at least not in comparison to how I feel in relation to them. This is unrelated to warp in particular, but while FE6's 11A is loved by the community, I think it's awful map design. I, like most, love CQ's chapter 10, but I have friends who think it's the worst thing ever made. What I'm trying to say here is that even a well-designed map isn't going to be pleasant to every player, so I think the option to skip it is very valuable. As for the point about it allowing someone to completely skip the rest of the game, I think the real problem here is hammerne. Without it, warp is very limited. Now, I like hammerne and the possibility of combining hammerne and any weapon, so in this case I think the way to go would be to just reduce warp's use number, but at 3 it can still be abused (9 uses), and at 2 it feels too limited (5 uses), so I have no real solution. A reduced base number of uses for warp also feels punishing to someone who doesn't have hammerne, or wants to use it elsewhere for whatever reason.
I think your fe8 example is actually a good example of why I don't love the warp staff as a tool for skipping annoying maps. People are always going to find different maps frustrating, and thus, want a skip tool for different maps. For You fe8 warp is great because it lets you skip the map you don't like (darkling woods), but say my least favorite map is ephraim 14 or Village of silence, then I'm out of luck. So I think if the design intent of warp is to let players skip the maps they don't like, it doesn't really work unless the maps you find frustrating are the select few that warp allows you to skip. Hammerne is definitely part of the problem but in shadow dragon you still have up to 21 warps before hammerne. And even with just 5 warps in fe8 you could still skip at least 4 maps of the remaining 6 (19, final, and 17 only require one warp use each).
I think in engage, the maps are actually deliberately designed to make you use warp. After you reacquire micaiah, there's a sudden shift in the map design where you're faced with larger swarms of enemies than you've been dealing with. Things like infinite reinforcements don't exist on earlier maps, and there's just a generally high enemy density. When the game puts this amount of pressure on the player, it seems inevitable that they would want to end the map using whatever means necessary, and the game has just conveniently handed them the solution. The player has already had their fun using corrin and ike to hold off enemy advances; now is the time to be aggressive, and take the fight to them.
Warp in Shadow Dragon is broken. I remember warping to the boss and seizing on the last few chapters, and sometimes beating that chapter on 1 turn.. On my 2nd playthrough, I decided to not use warp that way.
I've never really used Warp staves much in my playthroughs of any game (I liked killing all the enemies for more exp.). The only time I actually used warp effectively was Chapter 25 of Engage , warping my entire army into the central corridor with Micaiah/Hortensia, Seadall and Goddess Dance. very satisfying skip in my opinion.
Rescue is the right power level for a staff for me. Pulling units back instead of launching them forward greatly changes how you can use it and I think the staff itself still adds a lot of fun gameplay to the series. Fates still has recuse cheese, but it isn't immediately accessible to the player without the right tools and set up. Skipping conquest endgame, for example, requires some really demanding skill and stat requirements that a first time player probably does not have access to. In addition, if you want to use rescue like a warp staff, it involves moving your staffer away from your dancer, which can limit your ability to get multiple uses of it in a turn. This isn't always relevant, but it adds just enough wrinkles for me.
Totally, there's tons of players that just don't use warp! That's part of why I like Gaiden's version, it's an unlimited resource so everyone uses it once they unlock it, and how you use it is always an interesting decision :)
There are very few games in the series that I feel have side objectives or map gimmicks designed with Warp in mind. Engage does a pretty good job with it after you get access to Warp after Chapter 14, it's just that the side objectives here aren't usually worth the effort in the first place. - Chapter 15 is an Escape map, if you took it too slow and the Warriors are at your tail you can Warp Seadall to end the map. - Chapter 16 has the Water to slow you down and a flow of reinforcements from behind and the Wyrms being a threat in general incentivise you to converge your army in the center to deal with them, so it can be a bit of a pain to reach the guy gunning for the village in time. - Chapter 17 is somewhat of a breather in terms of warping, but after that it's time for Sigurd's and Leif's paralogues, conveniently you're supplied with a second Warp staff right after beating the chapter. - Chapter 18 also has a thief escaping with treasure in the opposite direction of your main objectives, defeating the Boss and recruiting Lindon. Enemy density makes it difficult to send off a flier to catch him. - Chapter 19 Mauvier is the one Warp skipping you, giving you a taste of what's to come with Micaiah, basically - Chapter 20 is Griss' Hide and Seek, Fog of War and the stat inflation on the enemies slow you down enough that reaching the two thieves at the same time can be quite difficult. - Chapter 21 wants you to go back and forth between both alternating waves of reinforcements to avoid being overwhelmed. - Chapter 22 becomes a breeze if you have a unit bulky enough to just be warped in a group of enemies to collect all the Emblems in one go while the rest of your Army spreads out to other locations in the meantime - Chapter 23 has Freeze staves all over the place, so a Warp/Rewarp works wonders to dodge critical situations in a pinch. - Chapter 24 has a turn limit and waves of avalanches that push you back. - Chapter 25 has like a billion waves of reinforcements all rushing you paired with Lumerra comprimising your positioning. The entire design of this chapter screams at you to skip it, and with it being the last chapter before Endgame, you might as well, so I don't even have a problem with it. - Chapter 26 has you defeat all the Dark Emblems, so if you still have Warps left over, might as well get the correct Emblem over there to get that conversation. I think IntSys finally has a grasp on how to properly design maps around the tools the player has available, it's been that way with Fates to a degree as well, and they kinda dropped the ball in terms of map design with Three Houses, but I've never been as liberal in my use of limited ressources as I have in Engage, the game is really good at leading the player into a certain approach to a map without shoving it down your throat like other games do it a lot.
I've always found the "well if you don't like it, don't use it" argument for Warp to be ridiculous. It oughtn't fall to the player to balance the tools they're given, it ought to fall to the designer to make sure each tool is as balanced as it could be, or at least make the maps interesting in design enough so that the player's immediate thought isn't to just press A to win. While I do agree largely with your thoughts on Warp in Engage, I'd at least like to posit that, IMO, it's still better than most of the other games with Warp because Engage's map design makes it so that even if you don't choose to Warpskip, the maps are still enjoyable (XS and Keb are currently doing an Anything Goes LTC which basically turns the game into FE5 2.0, and the clears STILL manage to be really interesting and cool). This IMO is leagues better than games like FE1/11, FE3, or FE5 who also have extremely powerful Warps but also have some god-awful maps that make me immediately want to not play them. These games become less enjoyable on subsequent playthroughs, which I really dislike.
Echos: easily the best. I really don't like kill boss chapters anways so I'm fine with warp in other kinds of objectives. I felt like engage wasn't too bad and I super enjoyed warp ragnorok. 3 houses is worse than shadow dragon to me. Especially with newgame+ you can start the game with warp lysithia and proceed to beat the game in an hour.
I feel like you ignore FE8 having an infinite grind spot in your videos too much. I know you don't use it, and nobody who wants it to be even remotely challenging won't either, but when they designed the game, they didn't expect you to prepare a staff user for warp, since you could just train it after you got warp.
I love spamming B rank Warp with lachesis who has C rank staffs. :P
Oh damn, you're right, its return for lachesis lmao
Now that I understand Warp better, I can now enjoy not-playing Fire Emblem to the fullest!
I could slog through this map... or I could use the WARP STAFF!
Boss maps:we have our entire army ready to defeat you
Old man with staff: how cute
Old men with staves, truly the most powerful fe characters
@@actuallizard especially after arena spam. The main lord getting max level? Meh. The old man getting max level to be your healer and attacker? Yeah
@@actuallizard ???: amateurs.
Old men with staves: what was that?
Emblem Micaiah: amateurs.
Warp staffs are one of those things I use to save at any cost because "maybe in the future I will need it" only for having it intact by the end of the game
I actually really do like Engage’s warp, because to me it’s another facet of the game’s gameplay-story integration. I think emblems deserve to be broken, but if the game had more maps with varying objectives, it would probably be better
Yea, engage is really good at making (most) of the emblems feel like tools worth waging war over. They are absolutely bonkers in the best way.
Still. I wish they were a BIT better balanced. Just a tad.
Warp is kind of in Fates: Witches gain it in the form of a Skill
Yeah, but Witch is a DLC class in Fates. So unless you downloaded that before the eShop shut down, there's no way to obtain the Witch's Mark.
(That's assuming you're playing on a 3ds and not using an emulator.)
I could watch the whole video.
OR I COULD USE THE 17:44 STAFF!
One thing they definitely missed in thracia is, being able to warp in Fog of War, yes hello Leif I will send you THERE "wait but we can't see?" WARP.
not to mention how staves like warp, severely eat up your fatigue, which while in some cases can be invalidated by MILK uhhh stamina drinks, in some cases, it cannot.
Very surprising to go a warp video without AND NOW I'LL USE THE WARP STAFF.
It's a classic joke but I figure people may have heard it enough lmao
Thracia 776: You think you can bulls*** ME? No, *_I_* bulls*** *_YOU!_*
"Or I could use the *Warp* staff!"
The part where you mention "I knew at that point that the game was over and going through it was mostly a formality" (paraphrasing) makes me realise how difficult it is to balance something like Fire Emblem. Maybe due to my poverty of interests I can't really name another game where the start is tough but halfway through I've outscaled the game and most of the time finishing it is, well, a formality. RPGs that depend on you grinding will just dial up the difficulty of every zone, and by amounts and degrees, such that you will eventually hit a wall by the time you're at the end if you're flying through the game.
ALL JRPGS
Morrowind is one of the more extreme examples, you'll die to literal insects at first but with some time and dedication you can become a de facto god that nothing can even touch (partially because you're moving around at 9999mph)
Breath of the Wild is also definitely like that.
4X games like Civilization tend to be like that. It's hard to find the difficulty settings where I can survive the early game, yet get a decent challenge out of the end game.
-Remove warp and similarly abusive things.
-balance the game around class caps and design average stats in a way most characters meet them
Here it is, you balanced FE lategame.
I feel like 3H warp is kind of indicative of how the maps are just not designed for the tools the player has access to.
Yeah the kill single boss maps don't make a lot of sense in a game with warp and stride lol
Azure Moon maps especially feel like they designed them around the Blue Lions not having a warper. Ch18 is the most infamous one, it's a HUGE map but the one boss, Cornelia, isn't that far from the player and is a relatively squishy mage.
@@mvjbass9561It’s funny how I played Blue Lions first and was very much against splitting up the classes, plus I didn’t use any of the teachers besides Shamir so I had no warp user. As soon as I did Silver Snow and used Manuela and Lynhardt to warp I noticed how maps were way worse. I mean in Blue Lions I did abused stride for a bunch of the mid to late game, but I still had to play the maps
@@mvjbass9561I wonder if this is because they didn't intend players to recruit from out of house on their first playthroughs. The Blue Lions don't have access to warp unless you recruit Linhardt or Lysithea, or get Hapi from the DLC.
3H really makes me like the map design of Engage even more because of this. Enemy commanders aren’t just there to stand in your way then die to one hit, but instead have multiple hp bars and a bunch of unique and interesting tools the player likely doesn’t have access to until they beat said commander. Add on that you don’t have many warp uses, warp is limited to five spaces, there is usually two or more commanders, and the Micaiah emblem isn’t available for most of the single commander maps, and they really had a field day making some of the best maps in FE as a whole. If only we didn’t have to fight the same four commanders upwards of four times each.
This video does make me realize part of the reason Rescue is my favourite utility staff instead; it’s a lot more in general like Warp is in Valentia, being a valuable utility tool to do fun things and can potentially save the life of a unit, but not something that can break the game like Warp can often do.
as a wise man once said "I could play this map normally" *T-POSE*
"OR I COULD USE THE WARP STAFF"
Surprised you didnt mention Warp Ragnarok in Engage, you get it pretty early and its a powerful move
I love your analysis! I gotta add though “OR I COULD USE THE WARP STAFF”
I always liked Shadows of Valentia's Warp the most, especially on maps where the enemies are split or the lava maps. The magic balance of HP cost makes it that much more interesting. Having the warpers in the last map to dodge the swamps to get to Jedah and Duma was a lifesaver, as well.
Beyond just the staves, Engage also has the Celica ring that comes with its own warp shenanigans. For example, one of the easiest ways of beating Camilla's DLC paralogue is using Celica to rapidly insert a high-Avo flying unit (hardened with Tiki's ability) into her range and then using one of the abundant Rescue staves (such as the one you can get from Tiki's paralogue) to help that unit get back to the main army alive. This way, the multiple health bars are completely negated because the trick involves pulling the boss into your army instead of throwing boss killers at them, and the permanent resource cost is just a single use of Rescue. Meanwhile, the effect is still a near-total skip of the whole map, even though the strategy does have more moving parts than a typical Warp-skip.
In fact, Celica in general is a very interesting case for Warp. The ring lacks the damage potential of some of the others against many enemies, and the warp capability is limited to its highly committal Engage Attack. It cannot generally provide the classic skip-by-sudden-death due to multi-life bosses and its own poor combat power. In late-game paralogues (or with DLC enabled) it has to compete with other rings for deployment. Yet it's still a Rewarp that is available in the early and late game on any map you bring it to, with all the opportunities inherent therein.
Wow, Echoes #1 in a gameplay mechanic! You heard it here folks. Finally, vindication.
Gaiden is kind of GOATed tbh
The Clive warp in echoes to enemy phase wipe the army was extremely satisfying.
I don’t particularly like Warp for the same reasons as you, but I love Rescue partially because you can use it as a Warp staff if you play very offensively.
There’s much more of a risk ‘warping’ that way and getting it right is satisfying for me
I wish that thracia staves didn't have infinite range. It by itself would already take half of the reasons of why some maps are frustating to the point we want to skip them with warp, like Salem, Saias, Reinhardt, Raydrik, 24x.
Also, it's weird that Engage implements the multiple health bars just so the player doesn't trivialize the "kill the boss" maps, but at the same time they add the group warp with Micaiah.
I love Warp in echoes and I wish Irma was recruitable in Celica side and she had it just so it could help us in the swamp maps.
I'm a casual player which the main challenge I do is keep everyone alive and get all the rewards of the maps, so I'm not that fond of warp being able to trivialize maps. But I can understand why people that play challenge runs like ironman or speedruns would love it.
I suppose the developers of Engage probably considered how players could trivialize Kill Boss Maps with Micaiah's group warp, but they likely figured that if you're able to strategize a way to take down three huge health bars off a super strong enemy in one turn, then you deserve the ability to cheese the map. That's my guess anyway.
I think engage devs wanted to make both you and the bosses strong but when miccy warp and byleth dance are a thing it's not simple😅
3 houses the warp healers were my main healers. Lindhart Manuela etc all broken. Trained them in warp while byleth got the defeats for exp. Story maps double warp rescue dance combo to just beat the enemy boss as soon as possible.
I love the warp ability but it makes the game so trivial. Even a short warp of 3 can be hax in the right set up like going to a wall and warping straight in behind enemy lines with your tank
Another banger by lizard
I really like Engage becuase it feels designed to intensively jump toward the boss.
A lot of the other games leave the choice to you, like "do I want to feel like a cheater or do I want to intentionally hold back?".
Engage made warping really fun & sorta its own form of strategy
I'm a big fan of the Warp staff simply for breaking clerics away from being 100% healbots, but the staff is far from without problems. The biggest hurdle is the fact most FE maps have a linear structure for completion and the side objectives don't provide a compelling enough decision to prioritize using Warp over its power as a chapter skip button. I've been doing a goofier Shadow Dragon playthrough and Warp is a lot more fun when you use it for things like putting an armor knight on a distant choke point where they can fight with little risk while enjoying the burst of mobility.
You could do some interesting map set ups like having a seize/defeat the boss map which also has its own version of Alcatraz that you're going to pass by which takes up 1/3 of the map. It's surrounded by water with a single bridge, there are archers which are risky for fliers and can chip on units crossing the bridge as they approach whatever unit the bridge guard is that functions as a secondary boss. However, the units inside that are guarding a potential recruit and valuable treasure are manageable for a bulkier brute forcing the bridge is possible, but you can also Warp in a unit to get the valuables while your cavalry takes the long way to the main objective.
I recently played through echoes for the first time after getting back into fe with engage and I love the way warp works in echoes. It's a really useful tool for getting slower units to catchup or to just yeet a cav towards the badguy but it never feels cheesy. not having deployment limits means that you're going to have units in play who don't do a whole lot and warp allows you to both help get those units to a spot where they can contribute, and gives your healers something to do if there's nobody they need to heal, absolutely love echoes warp
I really like Warp in Engage the multiple HP bars making me feel better about just using Warp for side objectives or bailing out a bad situatuon since it isn't a win button as often.
I very rarely use them, but moving Hector, a thief, or a flyer to side objectives was always fun, especially after promotion to start decking scrubs with their new weapon type(s)
I could watch another video, or i could watch the warp staff (video)
So far, my favorite ever use of Warp was my first playthrough of 3 Houses. I went Crimson Flower and was doing a full recruit of everyone I could. I got to the Derdriu map and the was Hilda, right in the middle, threatening to get herself killed. I managed to figure out a way to use warp+stride and some dancing to get all the side objectives and finish off Claude by turn 2, completely avoiding confronting Hilda, cause I really didn't want to kill her.
I enjoy Rescue in Awakening and especially Fates. It can technically be used to help with one turn clears and other "skips" but it's often more difficult to plan and figure out how to do it with Rescue because of the limitation of needing to position your staff user to pull off a good Rescue chain. More importantly, it has many other uses that make for very interesting positioning-based tactics. Using it to move a unit out of a dangerous position into a safe position is very interesting. You can use it to bail yourself out of a misplay, an unlucky series of bad hit rolls, or you can even intentionally plan a strategy the involves a unit going into a dangerous location to complete an objective and then Rescue them back to safety.
Using Warp in Gaiden/Echoes always made me feel like I was just playing the game instead of cheating, I’m glad I have an idea as to why that is now lol
I could like, subscribe, and share this excellent video.
OR I COULD USE THE WARP STAFF
JK did both
A funny way of balancing warp could be to let it be infinite range, but you have to sacrifice a character every time you use it. The LTCers could still go nuts with it, but you would lose the feeling of playing sub-optimally if you didn't want to warp-skip a map.
I know other people have said it better than me but it really feels like the map creators for Three Houses were designing around some cool Rout maps and then all of the maps were Kill the Boss for story reasons. A noticeable amount of maps (beats me how many) give you a boss to kill in the center and spawn you on a side and Warp gets you there in 1 or 2 turns and then 3/4s of a map that would be interesting is ignored.
Notable examples of this to me are the Cornelia map, the White Clouds Remire Map, the Dimitri Paralogue, and most of Scarlet Blaze (I haven't played most of these in a while tho)
Hi Lizard!
I've never enjoyed the skip map argument. If the maps aren't fun, then... well, why are we playing the game in the first place?
I like 3H and New Mystery Warp the most. 3H has reusable Warp for every chapter, so its fun to treat them like puzzle as how to cheese the game the hardest. New Mystery has the resource management mechanic too. On Maniac Mode you only get 1 Warp and 1 Rescue early on and on Maniac Mode you burn through them a lot to save people and accomplish side objectives.
In my FE8 0% growths LTC, I definitely struggled with having enough Warp uses. But that might just be because of the 0% restriction. Certainly it affects Warp range pretty substantially.
I tend to play devil's advocate on these analysis videos, but for this one the only thing I can say is I agree without exception to all of your points.
I would say that engage’s warp staves are very close to being great. Without Micaiah you have to be more creative with your warp/rewarp uses. It also helps that you do get so good offensive units with rewarp capabilities such as Ivy or a magically trained Chloe or Anna who can utilize it to position themselves better. When not using them to skip levels they also have very practical defensive applications, one example being when I played Chapter 23 in my Ironman run and was forced to retreat my frozen units with warps, rewarps, and rescues. The main issue is that in the chapters you have Micaiah you can basically warp skip a large portion of levels and the game gives you plenty of warp and rewarp staves to work with. I would say that the main levels that can be warp skipped with Micaiah are chapters 9, 10 (to a certain degree), 20, 21, 23 (this one is a bit more involved), 24, and 25 excluding paralogues. There are probably a couple of maps that can be skipped without Micaiah using warp that I have found such as in the final room of chapter 15 to allow for Seadall’s escape and chapter 18 by getting Ivy to defeat the boss as well as get the speed wing. There are probably quite a few other levels that are made much quicker with warping but I have yet to explore utilizing warp in those stages as well as take into account limited uses.
I'm guessing someone else mentioned this but I didn't see it, so: in FE7 and 8, there's a minimum Warp range of 5.
I never do any warp skipping strategies cause it always feels like I’m cheating myself out of playing a map
I enjoy Warp in Gaiden/Echoes and TH. I have a hoarding problem so having spells that have infinite use based on HP and recharges after battle respectively, I feel more secure in using it. I’m always worried I will over use it and not have the staff when I really need it. However, I am learning to be more liberal with my staff use. Michaiah made it more fun, not gonna lie. Mauvier jump scaring me with the AOE Warp in Ch19 was strong way to understand Augment. Then CH25 Augment came in clutch on the final rush to Lumera.
I could watch this video…….OR I COULD USE THE WARP STAFF!
I tend to agree with you on most points, and for the remaining ones, it mostly comes down to "I haven't played that game 😅". In general, I'd agree that echoes has one of the most compelling iteration of it. And it sometimes feels missing from the Tellius games.
Maybe you could make a video about saves and rewinds mechanics present across the most modern games and FE4, (maybe also how some fangames/hackroms spin it). I think it's an interesting idea to help correct a dumb mistake from having to restart the whole map, but it's never been executed that well. I think it would be an interesting topic and discussion.
My first and only FE11 playthrough was on Hard 5, and I mostly didn't warp skip, but I was very glad to have the option when I did take it b/c that game is bonkers difficult (I mean, I did that to myself, intentionally, but still). That is the sense in which I appreciate the "skip map" aspect of Warp. And it works well in Shadow Dragon b/c it is basically available the whole game, and the bosses in the chapters where you don't have Warp take forever to kill anyway lol. That being said, if I were to replay the game and git gud at it, I do think I'd find the all-or-nothing of either don't engage with the map, or slog through a brutal map, to be increasingly a drag. In that respect I prefer the design of FE12 (fwiw, my only playthrough of FE12 was on Lunatic, not Lunatic Reverse, b/c I am slightly less than maximally insane).
I like the idea of warp helping your low move combat units get into some action.
But who are we kidding? Make the rich richer. Give your high movement units more movement. I love cav emblem...😮💨
Warp video!
It's so funny because since awakening was my first game and my second was fe4 I never really felt an incentive to use warp to just skip the boss. I usually just use it if I screwed up and placed a unit in a bad place or to get some sort of objective.
I love the fe8 warp balance, you have a bunch of options, but none of them are "the best" so it makes it fun to decide who you will use, the game also has a few maps where 1 warp isn't enough, in my latetest run where I lost myrh, some bosses like riev, morva and lyon gave me a pretty hard time since they have so much attack and defense
the fun of Fire Emblem for me is making wicked plays and optimizing playthroughs, the warp staff is integral to that
Usually I find myself ignoring warp, so I can't comment much on it, but I really appreciate it on FE8. I absolutely hate playing chapters 19 and 20 the normal way, so I'm really, really glad it exists there.
You mentioned how better map design could solve this kind of problem, but looking at the community's opinions on these maps, they're not really disliked, at least not in comparison to how I feel in relation to them. This is unrelated to warp in particular, but while FE6's 11A is loved by the community, I think it's awful map design. I, like most, love CQ's chapter 10, but I have friends who think it's the worst thing ever made. What I'm trying to say here is that even a well-designed map isn't going to be pleasant to every player, so I think the option to skip it is very valuable.
As for the point about it allowing someone to completely skip the rest of the game, I think the real problem here is hammerne. Without it, warp is very limited. Now, I like hammerne and the possibility of combining hammerne and any weapon, so in this case I think the way to go would be to just reduce warp's use number, but at 3 it can still be abused (9 uses), and at 2 it feels too limited (5 uses), so I have no real solution. A reduced base number of uses for warp also feels punishing to someone who doesn't have hammerne, or wants to use it elsewhere for whatever reason.
CQ?
I think your fe8 example is actually a good example of why I don't love the warp staff as a tool for skipping annoying maps. People are always going to find different maps frustrating, and thus, want a skip tool for different maps. For You fe8 warp is great because it lets you skip the map you don't like (darkling woods), but say my least favorite map is ephraim 14 or Village of silence, then I'm out of luck. So I think if the design intent of warp is to let players skip the maps they don't like, it doesn't really work unless the maps you find frustrating are the select few that warp allows you to skip.
Hammerne is definitely part of the problem but in shadow dragon you still have up to 21 warps before hammerne. And even with just 5 warps in fe8 you could still skip at least 4 maps of the remaining 6 (19, final, and 17 only require one warp use each).
@@auraguard0212 Fates, Conquest.
Dr. Staff Bot Or How I Learned To Stopped Worrying And Love The Warp.
I think in engage, the maps are actually deliberately designed to make you use warp. After you reacquire micaiah, there's a sudden shift in the map design where you're faced with larger swarms of enemies than you've been dealing with. Things like infinite reinforcements don't exist on earlier maps, and there's just a generally high enemy density. When the game puts this amount of pressure on the player, it seems inevitable that they would want to end the map using whatever means necessary, and the game has just conveniently handed them the solution. The player has already had their fun using corrin and ike to hold off enemy advances; now is the time to be aggressive, and take the fight to them.
I could play this map or I could use the warp staff
I do indeed warp across fire emblem
Y'know, I could watch this 18 and a half minute video. Or I could use the WARP STAFF!
Micaiah warping is fun leave her alone smfh!!!
Warp in Shadow Dragon is broken. I remember warping to the boss and seizing on the last few chapters, and sometimes beating that chapter on 1 turn.. On my 2nd playthrough, I decided to not use warp that way.
Fe Fates does not have warp, but it does have the witch-exclusive warp skill which is actually rewarp
Someone can just use the Warp Staff.
I've never really used Warp staves much in my playthroughs of any game (I liked killing all the enemies for more exp.). The only time I actually used warp effectively was Chapter 25 of Engage , warping my entire army into the central corridor with Micaiah/Hortensia, Seadall and Goddess Dance. very satisfying skip in my opinion.
I could make a normal comment or i could the WARP STAFF!
Rescue is the right power level for a staff for me. Pulling units back instead of launching them forward greatly changes how you can use it and I think the staff itself still adds a lot of fun gameplay to the series. Fates still has recuse cheese, but it isn't immediately accessible to the player without the right tools and set up. Skipping conquest endgame, for example, requires some really demanding skill and stat requirements that a first time player probably does not have access to. In addition, if you want to use rescue like a warp staff, it involves moving your staffer away from your dancer, which can limit your ability to get multiple uses of it in a turn. This isn't always relevant, but it adds just enough wrinkles for me.
And then there's me, who doesn't wanna use up resources in an RPG so Warp just wait in the convoy for eternity. Just in case I do need it later
Totally, there's tons of players that just don't use warp! That's part of why I like Gaiden's version, it's an unlimited resource so everyone uses it once they unlock it, and how you use it is always an interesting decision :)
There are very few games in the series that I feel have side objectives or map gimmicks designed with Warp in mind. Engage does a pretty good job with it after you get access to Warp after Chapter 14, it's just that the side objectives here aren't usually worth the effort in the first place.
- Chapter 15 is an Escape map, if you took it too slow and the Warriors are at your tail you can Warp Seadall to end the map.
- Chapter 16 has the Water to slow you down and a flow of reinforcements from behind and the Wyrms being a threat in general incentivise you to converge your army in the center to deal with them, so it can be a bit of a pain to reach the guy gunning for the village in time.
- Chapter 17 is somewhat of a breather in terms of warping, but after that it's time for Sigurd's and Leif's paralogues, conveniently you're supplied with a second Warp staff right after beating the chapter.
- Chapter 18 also has a thief escaping with treasure in the opposite direction of your main objectives, defeating the Boss and recruiting Lindon. Enemy density makes it difficult to send off a flier to catch him.
- Chapter 19 Mauvier is the one Warp skipping you, giving you a taste of what's to come with Micaiah, basically
- Chapter 20 is Griss' Hide and Seek, Fog of War and the stat inflation on the enemies slow you down enough that reaching the two thieves at the same time can be quite difficult.
- Chapter 21 wants you to go back and forth between both alternating waves of reinforcements to avoid being overwhelmed.
- Chapter 22 becomes a breeze if you have a unit bulky enough to just be warped in a group of enemies to collect all the Emblems in one go while the rest of your Army spreads out to other locations in the meantime
- Chapter 23 has Freeze staves all over the place, so a Warp/Rewarp works wonders to dodge critical situations in a pinch.
- Chapter 24 has a turn limit and waves of avalanches that push you back.
- Chapter 25 has like a billion waves of reinforcements all rushing you paired with Lumerra comprimising your positioning. The entire design of this chapter screams at you to skip it, and with it being the last chapter before Endgame, you might as well, so I don't even have a problem with it.
- Chapter 26 has you defeat all the Dark Emblems, so if you still have Warps left over, might as well get the correct Emblem over there to get that conversation.
I think IntSys finally has a grasp on how to properly design maps around the tools the player has available, it's been that way with Fates to a degree as well, and they kinda dropped the ball in terms of map design with Three Houses, but I've never been as liberal in my use of limited ressources as I have in Engage, the game is really good at leading the player into a certain approach to a map without shoving it down your throat like other games do it a lot.
I've always found the "well if you don't like it, don't use it" argument for Warp to be ridiculous. It oughtn't fall to the player to balance the tools they're given, it ought to fall to the designer to make sure each tool is as balanced as it could be, or at least make the maps interesting in design enough so that the player's immediate thought isn't to just press A to win.
While I do agree largely with your thoughts on Warp in Engage, I'd at least like to posit that, IMO, it's still better than most of the other games with Warp because Engage's map design makes it so that even if you don't choose to Warpskip, the maps are still enjoyable (XS and Keb are currently doing an Anything Goes LTC which basically turns the game into FE5 2.0, and the clears STILL manage to be really interesting and cool). This IMO is leagues better than games like FE1/11, FE3, or FE5 who also have extremely powerful Warps but also have some god-awful maps that make me immediately want to not play them. These games become less enjoyable on subsequent playthroughs, which I really dislike.
i think Echoes was the best balance. Infinite uses but limited range.
Echos: easily the best. I really don't like kill boss chapters anways so I'm fine with warp in other kinds of objectives. I felt like engage wasn't too bad and I super enjoyed warp ragnorok.
3 houses is worse than shadow dragon to me. Especially with newgame+ you can start the game with warp lysithia and proceed to beat the game in an hour.
I tried watching the video, BUT I CAN'T HEAR YOU, OVER MY WARP STAFF
Lachesis can't even use warp before promotion! :^(
worp
I could make an actually original comment...
OR I COULD USE THE WARP STAFF
I feel like you ignore FE8 having an infinite grind spot in your videos too much. I know you don't use it, and nobody who wants it to be even remotely challenging won't either, but when they designed the game, they didn't expect you to prepare a staff user for warp, since you could just train it after you got warp.
Wait...is that how you pronounce Hammerne?
That's how I say it but I have no idea if it's correct. How do you say it?
@@actuallizard I say it like how they test reflexes at the doctor's office...hammer-knee.
Not gonna lie- I don’t like warp! I like clearing as much a I can so that I don’t get owned later.
Good warp-up, I mean… wrap-up!
never used warp in my playthroughs, and will continue on to now use warps. Unless you're tryna do a speed run whats the point? just play the game
dude fix your speech impediment