Fire Emblem Engage (2023)

I'm about 9 hours in so far, but only on chapter 6 because I keep getting caught up in the optional content, haha. I don't think I realized just how much I missed the "pre-Three Houses" simple approach to training units until I started playing this. It really puts into perspective just how much extra fat Three Houses has with the monastery. I love Three Houses's story very much, but I simply can't deal with the slog of the first part of the game a second time in order to replay and see other routes, despite my many attempts to.

Engage feels bare-bones in comparison, but it's a good thing I think, at least for me. I like being able to guide my units' class growth without hyper-micromanaging their weapon proficiencies and supports. There's also some very nice quality of life tweaks here to unit management for those who have been following the series for a while, as well as many neat additions to the core combat system that help it feel fresh.

I'd complain it's too easy so far (I'm playing on Normal difficulty with Classic mode), but I'm still so early in the story that that doesn't feel like a fair judgement to make just yet. Instead, I think my main issue is that the support conversations, and by extension the majority of the unit roster thus far, feel incredibly bland. Everyone gets along incredibly well with in moments of meeting and there's no tension in the overall story. It feels less like we're on a quest to stop the Fell Dragon and more like we're on a cross-country road trip, picking up friendly hitchhikers along the way. There's just too many smiles, sunny days, and tea parties. We're at war guys! People are dying! I hope things start to take a bit of a darker turn because I don't see the characters feeling like much more than cardboard cutouts without some sort of catalyst.

On one final note, this game is absolutely gorgeous on the OLED switch. The colors are brilliant and the models/lighting seem to be of very high quality. I enjoy the character designs well enough too, but the artstyle feels maybe a bit too much like Genshin Impact, to the point where many characters have the same face copy pasted between them. But again, it's easily the best looking Fire Emblem game so far, so I don't wanna come down on it too hard.

User-friendly mod tools are starting to come online for this game, so it looks like it's just about time for me to dust off my spreadsheets and get back to work on my rebalance of the campaign!

Even if Engage isn't exactly my favorite Fire Emblem, I'm still pretty excited to take everything I learned from modding Three Houses and apply it to something new. Plus, so many skills and classes in the base game being mediocre means there's a ton of opportunity to come up with creative replacements.

I'm currently playing through this game as my FIRST ever Fire Emblem game - decided to do my first playthrough on Maddening/Classic and I am SO entirely glad I have. I've become obsessed with this game, and think it is a wonderful place to get into the series!

Sure, I don't get the references with the Emblems - BUT I actually think it'll make going back and playing those OG games that much sweeter. Having those "OH SO THAT'S WHERE THEY ARE FROM" moments are going to be so cool.

If you like strategy RPGs - this game is a must. The story is a fun little Saturday morning cartoon with some really fun twists. It's the Marvel movie of srpg's and that's a good thing! Only on Ch. 16 so please no spoilers! Been doing each Paralogue ASAP as well and that's been INSANELY difficult - highly recommend!

This game really grew on me. It's not like I hated it at the start but I just didn't like it very much. I'm trying to figure out what's making me enjoy it more recently, and it's definitely not the story or the characters, so I guess it's the battles and the chill activities to do in-between them. By chill activities I don't mean the strength training, fishing, and wyvern riding because if these didn't give out bond fragments I would have been done with them ages ago.

I'm now in the final act, and if I finish the game this week, I think that would be a personal record.

Finished this finally! I think it's probably one of the weaker Fire Emblems I've played, with empty character writing, lackluster character art, boring character/class customization, zero worldbuilding, rote dominant strategies, endless reinforcement spam, and a story that spends quite a lot of time saying nothing.

All that said, it's still got solid Fire Emblem tactical play at its core, there's a half dozen or so great maps, and the special abilities tied to the summonable legacy characters are pretty fun to mess around with. It's a competent, safe iteration on the narrative and design ethos of the 3DS games, and that's fine. But I hope it doesn't mean the series has abandoned the messy ambition of Three Houses.

(also, this lady can consistently get critical hits 100% of the time and it rules)