Fire Emblem Engage (2023)

Fire Emblem has sure come a long way, hasn't it? If Engage wasn't conceived during the 30th anniversary of this long-running SRPG series, it sure as hell feels like it was. It attempts to provide fanservice, and to a certain extent expects you to have an appreciation for the series' past. In addition, Engage's gameplay feels like a clean distillation of the series' strategy roots, after several games that have flirted with everything from social sim to base building mechanics.

If you are coming off of 2019's Fire Emblem: Three Houses, then Engage may be a little jarring at first. Three Houses was an exciting step for the series, painting its most grounded and well-written set of world and characters. Fire Emblem has always thrived on the tension of its signature permadeath mechanic, but this tension is only effective when you truly get to know and love the characters. This is why I really consider Three Houses to be a huge success and the height of the franchise so far.

By contrast, Engage does not make a good first impression. The developers themselves have admitted that they wanted Engage's story to be simpler than Three Houses. But simple doesn't have to mean bland and generic, and unfortunately, Engage opts to engage in many of the most well-trodden clichés in anime and JRPGs. The characters are highly forgettable, even with their obnoxiously busy visual designs. The dialogue is also banal to a exhausting degree. There were a handful of bright spots--I enjoyed the sibling relationship between Panette and Pandreo, and a handful of other characters were at least likeable. However, the vast majority of the cast consists of uninteresting personifications of plain character tropes and nothing more.

The game even tries to capture some of your love through its introduction of "Emblems," the ghostly apparitions of protagonists from past games in the series. You'll get to fight alongside well-known heroes like Marth, Roy and Lucina, as well as heroes from more obscure Japan-only titles like Leif and Sigurd. But the game doesn't make a lot of space to utilize this concept to its fullest potential, and after the initial glow wears off, many of these characters feel very undercooked if you aren't familiar with the games they originate from.

All of this said, Engage makes it easy for you to block out all of this noise. You can pretty easily ignore the story and characters, and simply focus on the gameplay. And gameplay is where Fire Emblem Engage shines.

Where Three Houses leaned into the series' RPG side, Engage returns things to Fire Emblem's strategy basics. The weapon triangle returns after its removal in Three Houses, driving the game's focus away from maximizing your units' stats and equipment, and bringing greater importance to positioning and having the right units for each encounter. "Anime chess" has often been the best way to reduce Fire Emblem into a quick quip, and it feels truer than ever here.

One of the biggest complaints levied against Three Houses is regarding its map design. Engage goes above and beyond to correct this, with some really brilliant maps from beginning to end containing interesting gimmicks that recontextualize the core gameplay at each turn. You may think you have a working strategy for how to tackle the game, but then a map will introduce a new gimmick that forces you to rethink your approach. Highlights include a three-lane map where an avalanche occasionally displaces your team, an encounter with zombies in an abandoned temple, or a fight that splits your team up while an enemy lord shoots lazers at you. Engage also brings back maps from previous Fire Emblem games in special paralogue chapters that allow you to appreciate how each game has evolved and brought unique design choices to the table.

In addition to being a fanservice-y gimmick, emblems are also one of the game's major mechanics. Emblems can be paired up with any unit, and allow them to enter a powered-up state for a few turns that gives them access to special abilities, like Ike's Great Aether, or Marth's Lodestar Rush. Fighting with an emblem increases the character's affinity with that emblem, which then allows them to inherit special passive abilities that can be used without that emblem. It's brilliant stuff!

Alongside emblems are bond rings, which are obtained through the game's gacha system. These rings can be used on characters without emblems, and will provide stat boosts. While I was worried about the effect of this system on the game, I found to be inoffensive and easily ignored. The game is pretty generous with the currency you need to obtain new rings, and you can simply set it and forget it.

Harder to ignore is the Somniel, which is the game's answer to Three Houses' Garreg Mach Monastery. The Somniel is a castle that you can hang out in and spend time preparing for your next battle by performing activities such as working out, fishing, having dinner with your comrades or gifting them some horse manure. Unlike Three Houses, Engage does not feature many social sim mechanics or a calendar that you have to follow, so a lot of these activities are purely optional. You don't ever really have to step foot in the Somniel at all if you don't want to. However, when playing in Hard mode like I did, you'll want to squeeze every bit of power that you can, and I have to admit that it got tedious to repeat the same activities prior to every battle.

The game is decently long, and it took me 60 hours to complete. I did complete all of the available paralogues, optional side chapters that often reward you with new units or the ability to power up your emblems. There are also other battles that randomly appear on the world map that allow you to grind if you prefer to do that.

I should also mention that despite me not liking the character designs, this game's visuals are a huge improvement on Three Houses. Engage is colorful, crisp and full of great animations. I also enjoyed how you can walk around the battlefields freely after finishing a battle and appreciate the detailed environments. Performance is also pleasantly consistent.

I got a bit burnt out by Engage's last leg because of Hard mode and the repetitiveness of completing Somniel activities. Though, I admit that it is a bit of a self-inflicted wound, since the game allows you to lower the difficulty at any point. There are still things left for me to do, such as the Tower of Trials or the Fell Xenologue DLC, but after completing the main story, I feel that I've had my fill.

I skipped Fire Emblem Engage when it first came out, because I assumed that its underwhelming characters and focus on pandering to fans of past games was a recipe for disaster. But I was very pleasantly surprised to find a game that reminds me of the simple strategy fun that first drew me into the series all the way back in its 2003 GBA western debut. Engage still has some fluff of its own, but it's designed in a way that you can ignore most of the downsides if you want to. If you're like me and were holding back on this game, perhaps reconsider, because Engage is a wonderful celebration of Fire Emblem's history and gameplay, in equal measure.

12 hours in and I still can't remember any of my unit's names. Right now my names for them include "pretty prince," "old guy," "princess in a ridiculous dress," "archer girl" and "girl with stars in hair."

Also, hit my first major roadblock on Hard mode in Chapter 10. Let's see if I can overcome it without letting any of my units die, or if I wuss out and go to Normal.

I managed to just barely squeeze this one in before the new year happened so now I can say I beat it the same year it came out, lol. Be warned, I added some screenshots from my playthrough below and some do contain some minor spoilers if you wanna avoid those. They'll be tagged but I still felt it worth mentioning here.

I slept on Fire Emblem Engage on release because the ultra vibrant art style kind of put me off. It looked way too much like Genshin Impact, which clashed with what I felt the series's usual darker tone was. However, around a month ago my partner began playing more on the TV, which meant I needed a game I could comfortably play handheld next to them, so I ended up picking the game up from the thanksgiving sale to give it a whirl.

I still feel that the art style, while overall visually striking and pleasant to look at, was not a great fit for this game. It resulted in pretty much all the female characters having "same face syndrome". A lot of the character designs also just felt very distracting and weird. Why does Yunaka have stickers on her hair and face? Why does around half the character roster (mainly ones that appear early in the game) look like they're 13 years old? And why does the protag's hair look like a Colgate toothpaste tube? I endearingly named her Minty in honor of this, but it still was a very jarring design choice that I never really got used to. Some characters were also just so visually "loud" and grating to listen to that I refused to touch them when they joined my roster. For example, my least favorite character of the game, Hortensia. As you can see below, I benched her the second I got her. She didn't get to see a single battle because I had had more than enough of her whiny childlike attitude by the time she joined. Be warned, the text has some story spoilers.

HOWEVER...

I really implore fans of the series to not sleep on this game like I did. The tweaks and additions they made to the core Fire Emblem gameplay for this game result in what I firmly believe is the best iteration of the series's signature strategy. The new break system adds some much appreciated depth on top of the classic weapon triangle and the new weapon types like heavy weapons and martial combat scrolls give the player some really fun situational tools to play with. This of course isn't even touching on the emblems, which add an extra set of passive skills onto whatever unit they're equipped on as well as typically including a fancy (sometimes kind of OP) active ability that can be used a couple times per battle. Many maps also have unique gimmicks and hazards that can really throw a wrench into your plans (in a good way!). All of it comes together in a very great way that makes planning each turn of combat a lot of fun.

As for the content outside of the core story battles, it's much more in line with how the series was prior to Three Houses, which was a big plus for me. The monastery was kind of a slog imo, so I was very happy to see a return to the simpler "hub world" areas in this game. It's not perfect, because there's still some time wasters like resource gathering that never really felt like they paid off, but for the most part it just provides some tools to squeeze in some extra training and boost supports between units. This means you can jump back into the main battles much faster.

There are some negatives still, in the form of some head-scratchingly poor game design choices. For example, the Fire Emblem games usually include some extra optional battles in addition to the main story ones. In this game, these work in a "skirmish" system much like they did back in Awakening. As you progress through the story, enemies will randomly appear at various locations you've already cleared and you can choose to fight them for extra training. They worked great in the past, so you'd think they could just do the same here and call it a day, but nope. Someone decided it'd be a great idea for them to scale with your strongest unit, rather than based on the story location they actually appear in like they used to. This means that if you're playing on classic mode (permadeath) and you want to train up a unit that fell behind, there's a very real chance they'll get killed off by the swarm of powerful enemies that all bum rush at your units every time it's their turn to move. If the enemy AI worked like story battles and waited until you approached to aggro it'd probably be fine, but since they all rush at you from the start it quickly becomes difficult to keep them from stampeding your weak units. As a result, I felt forced into leaving lower performing units benched entirely, even if I liked them.

/rant.

I also have some gripes about the length of the main story battles near the end of the game. It makes sense that as you progress through the game, the complexity of the battles would increase and you'd have longer battles as a result, but the last five-ish battles of the game constantly flood the battlefield with reinforcements, which only serve to artificially extend the playtime of the map without adding much depth. I think a strategy game is operating at its best when the player can plan around known quantities and mechanics. This doesn't mean well-placed RNG and unexpected events can't add some flavor of course, but when you start just throwing wave after wave of reinforcements at me when I just want to move to the other side of the map and kill the boss, it gets tiring very quickly. Below I've added an image of my map playtimes for the final three maps as shown when you finish the game. I blurred out some spoilery characters who happened to be my MVPs on those chapters. But you can see they took a LONG time compared to what I have come to expect from past games in the series. And so much of that time was dealing with reinforcements rather than actually dealing with the obstacles presented by the particular map and/or boss of the level. Again, the maps are still very fun and there's some fantastic mechanics in there that are new to the series, I think. But wayyy too much enemy reinforcement spam.

And finally...the story. Whew boy, there's a lot to say but I'll try not to extend this review too much. To summarize my thoughts in brief, the story comes across as a garbage fanservicey retreading of Fire Emblem Awakening's plot. Many big story beats from that game are straight lifted out and dumped into this one with very little respect for the setup they had that made them work originally. That was already annoying, but it doesn't help that nearly the entire cast comes off as a bunch of good-hearted morons. Everyone is way too friendly with each other from the get-go, even when they have very very very good reasons not to be. Some of the support dialogues make a poor attempt to tackle the friction which should exist between some of the crew, but they never felt like they did it justice. A lot of the characters also lean hard into prominent anime tropes, and this makes for a lot of very cringey and weird interactions between them. It's rarely awful but can often be off-putting for the ones who lean harder into it. There are some gems in there though! I really liked a bunch of the characters who appear during the Brodia segment of the game and honestly wished they got more of the spotlight than they did.

I also actually don't mind the fanservicey nature of the emblems much. It was very neat seeing a bunch of iconic characters I've come to like over the years pop up again and work together with the new cast. It never felt overbearing to me, and actually results in some endearing scenes near the end of the game. As I have only played (most of) the US releases of the games, there were some emblem characters I recognized but hadn't played the respective games of, and I still had a good time getting to know them a bit from their depictions here. It also makes for good motivation to play the other games of the series, so don't be put off if you have never touched the franchise before. The game is pretty friendly to newcomers, though some of the later battles can get a bit tough if you're playing on Classic mode, which is how I almost always recommend to play these games, regardless of your difficulty selection.

Fire Emblem Engage is a worthwhile entry in the series without a doubt, but if you enjoy the games more for their plots than their gameplay, I could see it being quite a letdown. It comes off as contrived and very cliche. However, the battles which make up the core gameplay of the game are straight fire. Really great stuff there, and I'm hoping many of the new mechanics and tools make a comeback in whatever the series has planned next. Thanks for giving my thoughts a read and happy new year!

As someone who only truly got into Fire Emblem with Three Houses, I was scared off of playing this at first, as people complained about it not really lining up with what people liked about that game. After finally trying it for myself, I am very pleased with the experience and wish I'd just bought it when it came out. Its strategy gameplay is really enjoyable, and its blend of characters new and old has enough colorful charm to make it a great time that has me ready to give some of the series's older entries another try.

That gameplay felt even better than what I enjoyed in the other two Fire Emblem games I've completed (Three Houses and Awakening). This entry’s unique feature is the "Emblems” representing characters from past Fire Emblem games, which both allies and enemies can wield to gain abilities from those characters. This mechanic adds a fun extra dimension to battles, as any character can theoretically hold any Emblem to flesh out their kit in a different way, and the abilities really need to be respected when wielded by an opponent. Of course, this is all on top of the core Fire Emblem gameplay—I’m not an expert on this series or genre, but it felt rock-solid to me here.

The characters here may not have top-notch video game writing, but some of them do have fun personalities and cute designs. I especially liked the princess sisters Hortensia and Ivy, who are introduced relatively early on and end up playing a major role as the plot develops. “Emblem" characters like Marth were integrated into the story in a way that made sense, sort of feeling like Sages in a Zelda or something. I thought the story was fine, decently-paced and able to hold my attention with its more serious character moments, even if some other moments felt a bit too predictable or forced.

A common complaint about Three Houses was that it had a lot of fluff around the missions, asking the player to roam around the home base and interact with the characters a lot. I really enjoyed that stuff in that game, and there's a partial attempt to replicate it here, but in this game it did feel like fluff to me. Luckily, you can do most of the important stuff from menus on the world map, so I was able to blaze through most of the game efficiently while not missing out on support conversations or important RPG stuff.

Overall, I personally really recommend this game and found that it satisfied my craving for an accessible strategy game with fun gameplay and characters. Whichever direction the series leans into in the future, I think that based on these last two games, I should be onboard for quite a while.

The game is mechanically really good, the emblems concept is neat and a lot of fan service for long time fans, the engage mechanic is pretty neat where you get a set of bonuses for x number of turns. Maps are varied and interesting and they are faster pace, encourage aggression than other fire emblem games. Without going into spoilers the emblems do play a part on the story and I like how the game is not scared of putting you in dire situations.

The game falls flat on the story story side of things, the story is not particularly interesting and is specially hard to live up to after three houses. Paralogues, side missions that you normally play on other fire emblem games to know more about the story of characters (and I forget if you actually get any in game benefits other than better support rank), are extremely boring on this one. There is no story and it is a battle from one of the emblems games that will help you strengthen your bond. That's it, they going at what may have happened on the map but if you didn't play the game it is all very ambiguous and uninteresting. The plus side is that the benefits mechanically of completing them are very strong.

Characters in my opinion were not very interesting, I found it hard to care about most of them, and all of them were one note, I know most fe games have characters with a very strong personality and that's their whole thing, but at least their dialogue and their stories make them interesting. Here I got sick about hearing 3 or 4 characters just talk about tea everytime. They tried to recapture The school feel from three houses, but while in that game I would actually try to talk to everyone, on this one it was a shore, I much rather have slipped this section and just jump to the next, but you need to come here to train, level up emblems, upgrades, get more Shard, the game basically forces you to come get after every battle even if it tells you you don't have to. The class system also felt underwhelming, I felt like too many choices just made the game less interesting and classes should have been a bit tighter with tighter requirements.

Overall the game is really good mechanically but the story it's weak point, you may or may not enjoy it depending on how much you like each aspect

[ENG] If there was any game that takes the cake for dumbing down years of a built foundation in order to appeal to a younger audience, it'd be this game. This game is unironically one of the worst releases of 2023, let alone a disgrace and a slap to the face of those who stuck with this franchise way before 2010. Do note, I basically played this game on an emulator on day 1, since I thought it wouldn't be that bad, but boy, was I wrong. For starters, the story. Around I'd say the 15 minute mark in the starting paralogue scene you'll probably hear the term "fell dragon." Sounds familiar, don't you think? The story is essentially a rehash of Awakening's plot, but this time, the writers overdosed on LSD and basically made the dialogue that of an anime abridged parody. Speaking of writing, the writing in this one has probably got to be one of the most cringeworthy pieces of dialogue in a franchise like this. About I'd say 60-75% of this game's dialogue is basically just really unfunny humor that just makes you want to smash your head against a wall. The cast & aesthetic I would say is whatever I guess, but it just feels like it would fit more in a Pokemon game rather than a tactical JRPG. The rest of the game is fine, but does it really matter all that much if there's no story to attempt to keep you interested? There is a reason why this game fell off hard in the months after its release, but if this is the future of the franchise moving on forward, then in a way, I'm very sad & disappointed to see the childhood franchise that I loved back then now turn into some fanservice bullcrap. Highly recommend avoiding it, but unless you really need your fire emblem fix, I recommend just to go play anything before three houses (exclude fates) and SoV & Awakening.

[RUS] Если бы существовала какая-либо игра, которая претендует на то, чтобы свести на нет годы построенного фундамента, чтобы привлечь более молодую аудиторию, то это была бы эта игра. Эта игра однозначно является одним из худших релизов 2023 года, не говоря уже о позоре и пощечине тем, кто придерживался этой франшизы задолго до 2010 года. Обратите внимание, я в основном играл в эту игру на эмуляторе в первый день, так как я думал, что все будет не так уж и плохо, но, боже мой, я ошибался. Для начала история. Примерно на 15-й минуте в начальной сцене парагога вы, вероятно, услышите термин «падший дракон». Звучит знакомо, вам не кажется? История, по сути, представляет собой перефразировку сюжета «Пробуждения», но на этот раз сценаристы приняли передозировку ЛСД и в основном превратили диалог в сокращенную пародию на аниме. Говоря о написании, сценарий в этом, вероятно, должен быть одним из самых неприятных диалогов во франшизе, подобной этой. Примерно, я бы сказал, что 60-75% диалогов в этой игре — это просто очень несмешной юмор, от которого просто хочется разбить голову о стену. Я бы сказал, что актерский состав и эстетика - это то, что я думаю, но мне кажется, что это больше подходит для игры про покемонов, а не для тактической JRPG. В остальном игре хороша, но разве это так важно, если нет истории, которая могла бы заинтересовать вас? Есть причина, по которой эта игра сильно упала в течение нескольких месяцев после ее выпуска, но если это будущее франшизы, то в некотором смысле мне очень грустно и разочаровано видеть франшизу детства, которую я любил. То сейчас превратились в какую-то фан сервисную чепуху. Настоятельно рекомендую избегать этого, но если вам действительно не нужно исправление огненной эмблемы, я рекомендую просто поиграть во что-нибудь до трех домов (исключая судьбу) и SoV & Awakening.

[NOR] Hvis det var nye spill som tar kaken for å fordumme år med et bygget grunnlag for å appellere til et yngre publikum, ville det vært dette spillet. Dette spillet er ironisk nok en av de verste utgivelsene i 2023, enn si en skam og et slag i ansiktet til de som holdt fast ved denne franchisen før 2010. Vær oppmerksom på at jeg i utgangspunktet spilte dette spillet på en emulator på dag 1, siden jeg trodde det ikke ville være så ille, men gutt, tok jeg feil. For det første, historien. Rundt jeg vil si 15-minutters-merket i startparalogscenen vil du sannsynligvis høre begrepet "felle drage." Høres kjent ut, synes du ikke? Historien er egentlig en Renas av Awakenings plot, men denne gangen overdoserte forfatterne LSD og gjorde i utgangspunktet dialogen til en animer forkortet parodi. Apropos skriving, skrivingen i denne må nok være en av de mest grusomme bitene av dialog i en franchise som dette. Omtrent Jeg vil si at 60-75 % av dialogen i dette spillet i utgangspunktet bare er uhyggelig humor som bare får deg til å ønske å slå hodet mot en vegg. Besetningen og estetikken vil jeg si er hva jeg enn antar, men det føles bare som om det passer mer i et Pokémon-spill i stedet for en taktisk JRPG. Resten av spillet er bra, men spiller det så stor rolle hvis det ikke er noden historie å prøve å holde deg interessert i? Det er en grunn til at dette spillet falt hardt i månedene etter utgivelsen, men hvis dette er fremtiden til franchisen som går videre, så er jeg på en måte veldig trist og skuffet over å se barndoms serien jeg elsket den gang nå forvandle seg til nye fanservice bullcrap. Anbefaler på det sterkeste å unngå det, men med mindre du virkelig trenger å fikse brann emblemet ditt, anbefaler jeg deg å spille hva som helst før tre hus (ekskluder skjebner) og SoV & Awakening.

What I liked: Visually stunning, technically good, engaging (yes, pun inteded) combat.

What I didn't like: Story is a mess, underdeveloped cast, in-game interactions were poor.

Note that I don’t say “pros” or “cons”, as I think for this game, those could be pretty much exchangeable depending on what you expect from this game.

I think what happened here is a lot of us played Three Houses and wanted this game to be a follow up in terms of dynamics. However, the result is... different.

The social aspects of the game get pushed |into the background, and with that we lose some flavor. The Somniel was a boring chore, it is a lame follow-up to the academy thingy in Three Houses - which I understand not everyone liked and wasn't necessarily a Fire Emblem thing before that game. Therefore, I can see a lot of divided opinions in if this is an enhancement or not. Personally I would preferred the game to be closer to Three Houses.

On other side, it is a call to its roots - as a strategy game it delivers a lot of fun! Very addictive. I appreciate the weapons don’t break anymore; I definitely won’t miss that part. The Emblems also add a lot of crazy combinations that you can try yourself.

The mechanics are a little bit obscure at first (well, that is very Fire Emblem indeed), but once you get that all cleared up you get the best of the strategy aspects of the game.

I still recommend it – just be aware that 3H and this game are different in many things so it is better to know it beforehand.

So my choice to get this game was admittedly pretty random. I do like to go into games with very little prior knowledge. I aim to get the full fresh experience untainted by too much information about where the game is going. This has made it kind of hard to find games to play in the past to an extent (I mean, I guess. My backlog is never very low), but it can be tough to know if I want to invest in a new game without knowing a bit more about it. I think this has paid off with some titles really well and I'm super glad I went in without knowing much. There have been times I might not have even given a game a chance if I'd done more research and I ended up quite pleased with it when I actually just played it. Fire Emblem: Engage is a great example of where my proclivity has served me poorly. See, the only Fire Emblem game I've played before was the first one (at least, the first one with a NA release) on handheld. I liked it a lot for its time, though I didn't get super far into it and always wanted to get back to it or another game in the series. This year I felt that itch and just as I was thinking about it, I heard about this game coming out and thought why not.

I write that very long paragraph to preface the fact that this title looks to be one of the worst ones in this voluminous series to jump into like that, which I may have known with even some cursory research. The game is clearly aiming at fan service with the engage system that lets you call on characters from the previous games in the Fire Emblem series to give you buffs, special attacks, and to be your friend. I recognized a surprising number of these characters just from seeing fan art over the years, and from when they were being added to Smash or something, but needless to say, the fan service didn't really land given I have no meaningful history with any of them. While that appeal falling flat likely has a lot to do with why I didn't enjoy it, I'm fully aware that's more on me for picking this up on such a whim.

That said, I certainly don't have a lot positive to say about the rest of the game's merits. The story is honestly pretty crap. I've heard this one is on the low-end in that regard for the series, which is good to know, but I didn't enjoy it. I appreciated some of the character designs, but I found most of the characters dull and one-dimensional, usually reducible to a quirk or two that they will rant about in most of their conversations. For instance, Timerra was probably one of my favorites—and she was really overpowered in combat—but basically all she ever talked about was eating meat. Like get a life, sheesh. Alear too, while I kind of appreciated the goofy-ass red and blue design (though omg, it constantly looked like she was going cross-eyed), she was one of the most boring protagonists I've ever seen, silent protagonists included. Maybe this was to give you a sort of blank slate so you could kind of self-insert, but I could not tell you pretty much a single thing about her because she was as boring as a rock and not even a jagged interesting rock, but a boring rock.

While I don't have much to say about it, I didn't find the gameplay especially engaging either, pun intended. I've heard some of the consensus on this game is that it's weak on story but strong on gameplay and I don't really see even that going for it. I thought I'd heard this series could be very difficult so I didn't bother with a higher difficulty and maybe I should've because the whole game just felt super trivial and a lot of fights were more a chore to get through than an engaging challenge. I still enjoyed it to an extent, but I certainly wouldn't praise the game for its combat.

Now, all that said, I weirdly didn't find I hated the game. I mostly played it a bit before bed while watching TV. That's not typically how I'd play a game with so much narrative in it, but I have a hard time just watching most TV these days and feel like I need something to do with my hands and this filled that need quite well so I did appreciate it for that. But I very rarely found myself just wanting to play the game by itself and that's...not great.

Perhaps the best I can say for the game is that, while I'm not sure exactly why, I might consider giving another game in the series a try. One reason just being that I've heard this entry didn't get a very glowing reception even among fans of the series, so maybe it wasn't a good pick even aside from the fan service aspect. I could also see it being a lot more enjoyable if the story/characters were better and I've heard they generally are in other titles. I'm not sure I'll ever get around to it, but I'm at least willing to keep the series in mind for another try some day, but I don't know that I'd recommend this one even to fans of the series.

As a big fan of the series, this game is mostly disappointing. I was surprised to find out that it was made in parallel with Three Houses by a different team, because at times it feels like it's striving to be the antithesis of that game. As compared to 3H:

Good things:

Map design -> 3H's big failing was the lack of map variety and the boring empty maps with rout objectives. Engage definitely succeeds in making the layout more interesting and giving you variation in objectives.

Animations -> they're better in the sense that they loop more smoothly but there's rarely anything super interesting happening on the screen Neutral things:

Difficulty -> the main story is actually hard, which is surprising given how infantilised the rest of the game is. 3H probably needed a difficulty between hard and maddening whereas Engage probably needs one between normal and hard.

Emblem rings -> it was cool to see some of these old characters in 3D for the first time but the game never does anything interesting with them. They could just have easily been 12 new characters. And it just rubs in that barely any of their games can easily/legally be played. Bad things:

World building -> special mention to this game for having the absolute worst world building I've ever encountered

Story/storytelling -> again it's hard to put into words how lazy the story is and how poorly conceived a lot of the cutscenes and story beats are

Class system

Class designs

Character customisation and movesets

Character design overall

Voice acting

Supports

Music

Interface and menus

Mini games

Performance -> lags when there are a lot of enemies on screen, which is most of the time. Constant clipping even in pre-rendered cutscenes. Amazing that this game was apparently sitting "finished" for years and they were just happy with it.

Can't comment on the DLC because by the time I reached the end I had no desire to experience any more.

Fire Emblem Engage is one of the greatest Tactical JRPGs I've played. The story may be its biggest slip, but the rest of the experience more than makes up for a very entertaining game.

From its opening cutscene to how well it runs, from beginning to end, it's very noticeable that this is one of the most beautiful games on the Switch. The environments are a bit empty, but it's all very colorful, charming, sometimes bleak and, overall, inviting! Character designs are great, the Somniel looks pleasant and comforting, the arenas feel grand and even the overworld map is amazing.

The cast of characters pleased me right from the start! They're definitely tropey and a bit cliche, but I loved most of them, their usefulness in battle, their backstories and little support/bond conversations. I got attached to them. From Citrine's questioning of Yunaka's past, to Goldmary and Panette's weird cooking lessons. You'll definitely find your favorite and there are A LOT of them. Maybe more than it should, I think.

But it's hard not to talk about the cast without touching upon the dialogues. And I'll be frank: it's obnoxious! The story is your basic "good vs evil" shonen, with a few predictable twists here and there. It's not great, but it's fine. There were some genuine epic moments, in fact. But when it comes to its writing? It's bad.

The presentation during conversations doesn't help either. When you have bad writing + bad character interaction scenes, you end up turning some story bits into shallow moments. There's no impact in places screaming for it! It's a major flaw, but one that I was gladly able to look past.

Especially since what holds FE Engage together is definitely its perfect combat system. It's easy to get into, never gets too complicated, it's challenging without being frustrating (fuck classic mode, tho), the arenas are stimulating, combat animations look amazing, objectives are nice and the whole loop is just super addictive. Once you're done with it, it's hard to let go!

I loved the Engage system and its celebration of the franchise. Character progression was certainly satisfying, as well. The only things that bothered me were how hard it was to acquire SP and Gold and how tiresome it became to inherit skills, having to swtch emblem rings constantly. Other than that, it was incredible. Especially boss fights on arenas with weird terrain effects. I think it will be hard to go back to past instalments after experiencing this level of refinement.

And last, but not least, the soundtrack is superb! It's thrilling, calming, ominous and quite epic. Remixes of old FE themes that played during some paralogues were fantastic. And what about Somniel's songs? Simply remarkable! I don't think there's a single song I didn't like. Just wish I could listen to it on Spotify or something.

Fire Emblem Engage is my 3rd and favorite game in the series, so far. It has almost everything you need for a good JRPG: great cast, perfect battle system, charming world and an excellent soundtrack.

It's a shame that they dropped the ball on the story. With the right writing, better dialogue presentation and an overall deeper plot, this could be one for the ages.

I understand how somethings in it can make you ignore it, but trust me, don't let it.

I thought I was eating pizza but it turned out to be plastic

Have you ever been playing a game and found a way to turn on invincibility mode? Engage has some of the most remarkable innovations in the series, but they fundamentally break the game's balance. Worse, its story is nonsensical.

The DLC furthers this issue; your characters gain an absurd volume of stats and abilities from emblems. As a consequence, I was left feeling overpowered beyond what was reasonable. And my enemies felt like pebbles as I moved across the map to the end goal.

The biggest offender is that every character using emblems, has access to every weapon type. This undermines the compositional choices you are forced to make in other games. Imagine a Pokémon game in which every one of your characters had a type advantage.

Furthermore, Emblem weapons undermine the normal weapons and the transformations undermine the class system. So you are left feeling like you are playing a mindless mobile game.

The introduction of past characters is too much.

The Emblem system can potentially be something special, but all it does here is take away focus from the main cast. The emblems make the story less grounded because there are so many, and their implementation needs improvement. It is so rare that supporting characters appear in the main story after they join.

Evolutions are dead, and the level system is confusing

Previous games gave characters unique looks as they levelled their class. The desire to please everyone has taken the sharp meaningful identities of each character and blurred them.

Way too formulaic

The entire game, first you meet a royal, you fight, and eventually, they and their retainers join your team. Gone are the chance encounters with travellers. People are no longer living their own lives. Instead, everything revolves around the main characters.

What is going on with characters just walking up to each other... the feeling of being in a battlefield is just gone. The cutscenes make no sense, people are teleporting all over the place.

Lack of meaningful character arcs, or anything of that nature

Devs now seem to be confused, it's cool when interesting characters are given a reason to fawn over your character in the game, It is not cool because the characters are fawning over your character. "Oh, you're the divine dragon... let me just mindlessly worship the ground at your feet."

The game specs into the: "everyone is hot", but falls short.

The outfits you receive in the game lack any depth. The characters look cool, but you have no meaningful way to interact. This game wanted both a massive volume of characters and incredible strategic depth. As a consequence, it lacks character depth or personality in that system of combat.

Poor art

It is with a heavy heart, that I say this game is a pale imitation of the mobile game fire emblem heroes, which at least has incredible art. Heroes has incredible renderings, some of the best in gaming, of both beautiful men and women. Engage is leaning on that, but it is far too cautious. The key frames in this games story are very rare and embarrassing when they appear, japan has troves of talented artist, why aren't you using them?

Still, it's okay

With all this said, the game manages a few redeeming points: animations are amazing, the same fire emblem gameplay is here so it's got a pretty high floor of enjoyment, there is depth to the systems even if they are somewhat lacking full consideration, sound effects are spectacular. Overall, a 7/10 podcast game.

Engage will disappoint those looking for a serious FE Game, it will also disappoint those looking for a less serious game, or even deep gameplay. Long term fans of the series should expect disappointment. Although following Three Houses on anything but a new console was always going to be difficult.