alear is somehow worse than corrin in every way, the dialog is insufferable, the cutscene animations vary between bad mocap and sfm porn in quality, and the majority of the cast is just as one note as the fates/awakening characters but with even less appealing designs. the only positives in this game are the map design and the in battle animations, which are both surprisingly good, but still far from the best the series has to offer and the emblem system makes the act of playing the game trivial. everything else is just a testament to the fact that fire emblem has been on a downward spiral since the release of awakening. the kusakihara directed games seem to be the only ones we can expect to do anything right in terms of characters and story, but even then based on the two games we've gotten they aren't that great aside from the one that is based on an existing game.
speaking of the existing games, it's also very frustrating to me how flanderized or just completely mishandled the emblems are. for a title that was initially an anniversary project you'd think they'd show a small amount of respect to the source material they're supposedly celebrating, but instead they decide to drag the legacy characters down to the level of the modern franchise in terms of writing and characterization to the point where the filler voice lines from the gacha game are better representations of these characters

i'm sure if you started with modern fire emblem and don't care for the older titles you'll enjoy this game but i absolutely hate it, and i would've preferred fire emblem to die with new mystery than become whatever the hell it is now. hopefully we'll eventually get a title that recaptures what the series used to be outside of remakes of what it used to be, but based on the trajectory of intelligent system's other rpg series, i sincerely doubt it.

addendum: i went back and finished the game, here is my review with my thoughts after not abandoning it halfway through

"jfc Etie's gremlin ass should fold me like she's King from Tekken" I say with no stutter

Today is not the day I write a normal review... word y'all got to understand these character designs got what I'm inclined to call the "goofy drip" and I think it's a fantastic combo. I can just give an OP emblem to my favorite low-tier husbandos and waifus for maximum profit and my brain is tricked into thinking "Holy moly. I'm a brilliant tactician!"

Maybe I'll write normal thoughts after all, because you may be wondering... what elevates this to a 5 stars. I mean, the gameplay is great just like Fates which I consider a subpar FE. The story is worthless unlike Sacred Stones, one of my favorites FE. My number one game is Shadows of Valentia, a game whose presentation and art direction can make Engage envious. Is there no rhyme or reason!!

But ackshually I think Engage does an awesome job at compensating for any shortcoming it has. The honest to god run of the mill supports are entertaining through the excellent voice cast (very few industry big names), an excellent soundtrack y'all are sleeping on, game is also removing what made Three Houses stray too far from an optimal Fire Emblem experience in my opinion. And I dont know, I could nitpick Engage all day but my feelings stay unchanged. I thought I'd be more mad at the lack of paired endings but the fans got that covered thankfully... the lack of overall romance is one of the many traits defining this vibe of everybody just having casual fun. I'm fond of this vibe. This is the post-covid era of Fire Emblem and we're celebrating buckos.

I try to look for the right words that convey my love for Engage and what I can say is that it's endearing how most of its cast have already fulfilled their goals in life and you're seeing them at their prime with minimal issues. I know its not a word but bear with me. What I'm trying to say is seeing characters argue about stealing potatos in flashy stylish outfits basking under a bright sun sitting around a campfire on a hill with a good prospect of their future...its good. They committed to that. In fact the story was not cheesy enough. Remove the extra layer of war crimes, make it a goofy war.

Ugh...

Okay-- so, on one hand, this game plays extremely well. Engage's interpretation of the weapon triangle and the titular "Engage" mechanic make combat a blast. Maps are cleverly designed and the battle animations are incredible. The hub world is also fun, and overall, the game has a very rewarding loop that's hard to walk away from.

Unfortunately, I actively dislike everything else. The story is rough and the supports feel AI written. I went in with low expectations given many reviews explicitly stated this game was more focused on tactics, and I still found myself feeling disappointed by the narrative.

I know very well that not every FE game prioritizes story, but there's absolutely a way to have a lighter stakes journey that doesn't take itself too seriously. Instead, we get a plot that echoes the beats of an epic fantasy tale without giving us any reason to care.

Despite my issues with Engage, I am still enjoying the game. My advice is to skip the cutscenes, give everyone sunglasses, and have fun with the incredible tactics.

TLDR: Help, I miss Garegg Mach so much...

Before this starts, let it be known that I was one of the people skeptical and shitting on this game on announcement. This was beaten on Hard/Classic

Pros
- The gameplay, I cannot stress enough how good the gameplay is, couple this with the stellar map design and its perfection, the map objectives are nicely varied and even if some share an objective the way the map is designed will make sure you approach every single one in a different way.
- The new mechanics and the balancing of classes allows literally every single class to fulfill their niche in a way the other games didn't allow. Infantry units have access to chain attack, Cavalry units have the usual highest movement, Flying units are unaffected by terrain, Armored cannot be inflicted with Break (a status that can straight up prevent you from countering), Healers have either access to all Tome/Arts/Staff weapons at once or Chain Guard with both options being extremely useful and not to mention that staves are much more potent here. All this allows for an extremely varied team composition which is miles better than the Wyvern Lord.exe shenanigans of 3H.
- Emblem Rings, I thought at first these would break the game but turns out they're surprisingly balanced, couple this with the enemy being able to use them allows both you and opponent to change the tide of the battle which makes bosses genuine threats. Speaking of, giving bosses extra health bars makes them feel like actual bosses so kudos to that.
- This might just be me but I quite enjoyed the cast, almost all of them are likable, not to say I didn't dislike some of them or flat out not care: there are a few like that but its a really solid cast overall in my opinion, with some having surprising depth in supports. Artstyle be damned they're great.
- This isn't really a pro but the story wasn't anything too special. HOWEVER I did see a lot of people throw around it being Fates level and I'm sorry I could not disagree more. Its a coherent and consistent story. I also quite enjoyed the final stretch of the game, it is simply a nice simple story that has its moments, definitely not whatever you hear being thrown around online about comparing it to Fates. Lastly, I say this as a major 3H fan: not every game in the series needs to follow 3H, making that the basis for every game onwards is a horrendous idea and a big reason why I ignored all the "its not 3H 2" reviews.
- The music FUCKS harder than usual
- The voice acting for both JP and EN is pretty damn good, the EN especially but if 3H was anything to go by, I probably should've see that coming.
- Immense replayability due to the way fixed and random growths work allowing you to use a different set of characters for your next playthrough, almost all of them can be made viable to varying degrees. Some are still better than others but that shouldn't stop you.
- The animations, good lord the animations.
- Yunaka and Panette :)
- You can adopt an infinite number of cats and dogs :)

Cons
- While I appreciate the game having the limited gold like previous titles which made them challenging and encouraged resource management, it feels extremely weird here due to the sheer amount of options you're able to spend the gold on but never having enough to do it all, feels like an oversight honestly. Spending money to boost the level of a Kingdom to the max is absurd for the amount the game gives you (there are 4 Kingdoms). Again, this did not impact my enjoyment nor does it affect the actual gameplay but it just made feel like I wasted 20,000 gold on raising each kingdom to LV 2. Your other option is to use Anna who mind you, have to second seal into a class shes actually good in and rely on her luck stat to get money.
- Skirmishes, especially on Hard mode are insane with all the enemies just straight up charging at you AND scaling to Alears level no matter the area, making it extremely challenging to even survive or attempt to raise a weaker unit, its also one of the few ways to make extra gold and even then you barely get any which is made even more tedious due to Gold Corrupted being rare.
- Tempest Trails are awful and not worth it unless you have the patience. Those being the only way to power up Engage Weapons does not help one bit.

All in all, the cons barely affect the pros of it. Absolutely incredible game and I cannot recommend it enough to longtime FE fans, easilly the most fun I've had in FE in a good while. Calling this game a love letter to the franchise is an understatement.

Making a new review because my original got deleted (made a joke about k)
I'm finished. The gameplay and maps are consistently stellar and satisfying, and the story is intentionally campy. Many will compare it to the mess that is fates, but the camp here is by full intent and not meant to be serious, so I tolerate it more. The hub's far more optional and thus less of a slog than the monastery was for me, but the supports drag hard. They're very small and I find it hard to be attached to the cast. I like them, mostly, but they are every trope the "FE has never had a plot" bozos reduce this series to. While the story's goof is funny to me, these supports make me feel very little. I overall do find the game a stellar loop, though the onslaught of paralogues by midgame has stalled my progression. Nothing is intrusive. I like this quite a bit. It is a mickey mouse ass game with phenomenal tactical gameplay, yet mickey mouse by intent. This is what disconnects it from the insuffrability of Fates (not Conquest) for me, but any real layer to the story or world isn't there either. I'd like more layers, but camp is enjoyable if intentional. The OST is particularly good too. I initially didn't click then I hit Bright Sandstorm and I creamed.
All of the creepy shit that the localization team cut is good, but also, why was that allowed in general?
EDIT 3/23/2023, I beat this game on Hard. Love it even more. Bumping it up a half star, it was also a sort of comfort to cope with the loss of my father. Just a distraction from the world.

I wanted to write a review about this game for over a month at this point but always find myself not feeling fully committed.

At first I felt like I didn't want to go all in with the hate because truthfully speaking I speak rather caustically about any game I play, including those I enjoy, and I truly do want to have a more positive mindset when it comes to game criticism.

However, seeing the amount of "opinions" about this game on twitter that range from painfully ignorant to just boldface lying has put me in a position where I feel like I need to let loose and just be the asshole I am meant to be about this utterly corporate, hollow and soulless product.

Fire Emblem Engage is easily the Marvel Movie equivalent of a Fire Emblem game in the worst possible ways possible and I can only look at some of the defenses for it as by people who consume product endlessly without actually considering what it is that they're taking in.

"The story is bad but that's ok because all Fire Emblem stories are bad," is not just a bad argument but just a flat out untruth that dismisses the nuanced stories of games like Genealogy of the Holy War, a game whose first half is entirely focused on political grabs for power that bring the protagonist into conflict with those he deemed allies and results in a twist that I still find incredibly impactful even a year after playing it.

It also dismisses the game preceding Engage, Three Houses which while not perfect, has had enough intrigue about itself that people are still debating which of the paths was the "morally correct" one. If a game can still generate discussion nearly five years after its release, it must have some sort of value.

Hell, Shadow Dragon which I just played this last month has better story telling than we get in Engage. People really want to try and say that Fire Emblem plots are bad have just not played the fucking series at this point. That's not even an elitist angle, I've only played maybe 6 to 8 games in this series, but even I can tell that the idea that "all Fire Emblem stories are bad is bullshit"

So, what is wrong with Engage's story? I know I just vented about the honestly moronic argument being made for it so what exactly is the flaw? In truth the basic premise isn't so much the problem but rather the delivery.

The game has a simplistic "defeat the Evil Kingdom and the Evil Dragon in charge of the Kingdom", but the problem simply lies in the fact that the game does not get the player to give a single fuck about it. Even in other FE games where the "defeat Evil Dragon" setup is in place, the intrigue is made through the character reactions to Fire Emblem's inherent themes like the suffering of war, loss, and hope. However, Engage's characters are... not characters to put it as nice as I can. They are a bunch of traits stitched together that don't make up a nuanced individual. Even those that I liked like Alcryst barely felt like people.

So when you put these non-characters, with a simplistic plot, does that automatically make it bad? No. A good example of this I think is Final Fantasy V. That game is relatively simple in how its story is presented and the characters don't wind up having a severe level of depth, but what makes it work is how it uses its humor and light-heartedness to sort of be a self-parody, making it a whimsical entertaining ride from start to finish (Even then FFV still has actual character beats that feel genuine and well written regardless).

Engage appears to have this trait at the start but by the time you reach the second country the plot tries to take itself seriously and... it doesn't work.

The plot being flat, the characters being flat, and no real sense of self-awareness or witty self-parody results in Engage being an extremely dull experience, which is what I would say if the final third of the game didn't piss me off nearly as much as it did.

To sum up my thoughts on the narrative, I want to quote a friend of mine more versed in Fire Emblem than myself, "Engage doesn’t just have a simple plot. It’s a simple plot full of simple characters told in a simple way with simple themes conveyed through simple expression" - @fortayee, 2023

Onto the gameplay, it starts off relatively ok before falling off the deep end hard after you visit Solm.

The game has barely any objective variety with 20 Main Story Chapters being Defeat Boss maps, 5 being Rout Maps (which includes maps where you start with a different objective only for it to become a Rout Map), and 2 Escape Maps.

Adding on the paralogues brings it up to a whopping 34 Defeat Boss Maps, and 6 Rout Maps (not accounting for DLC because I'm not spending an additional thirty dollars for characters like Camilla and the Fire Emblem Heroes one).

The early to midgame maps were pretty, pardon the pun, engaging (I played on Hard Casual), though I couldn't really think of anything standout. After Chapter 16 though the quality definitely begins a sharp decline.

Chapter 16 is a funny map and begins the trend of encouraging turtling tactics. Instead of trying to make interesting plays, given the sheer amount of both bosses and bosses with the ability to use Engage attacks, you might as well just concentrate all of your forces in one area and take the map excessively slow as you tackle each obstacle one at at a time.

Compared to earlier entries like Shadow Dragon or even something like Sacred Stones, it never feels like it is ever beneficial to spread out your party to multitask obstacles because the sheer amount of enemies along with Engage attacks being particularly devastating just doesn't encourage that kind of play.

This turtling trend continues for pretty much the rest of the game, with Chapters 17 and 25 feeling like the only exceptions, with 25 finally actively punishing the player for doing so.

This isn't really helped by the fact that the back half of this game is filled with Fates like gimmicks that result in levels being less interesting or just plain annoying to progress through.

Every level involving a Fell Shard made me groan because it either meant that the mechanic would involve removing what was making the Chapter interesting like Chapter 23's Meteors which basically made the interesting setup of vast narrow pathways become a giant open map instead, or Chapter 22 where you have to gather all the Emblem Rings only for the map to become a Rout map anyway.

I think my least favorite of the Chapters easily goes to Chapter 24, not just because it involves time travel but also because of the avalanche mechanic being both annoying and trivial.

You wanna beat the map (without just warp skipping), it's simple. Instead of taking your army through the three separate lanes, just turtle them all up in one lane and move them up and down when the avalanches come. Oh, that's forgetting that the chapter also has a time limit. 2 Chapters away from Endgame and the game suddenly feels like implementing a mechanic that will never be relevant again outside of DLC (if it becomes relevant in the DLC in the first place). It's not even really a challenge it just feels... pointless.

Honestly that's the apt word to describe Engage, it's pointless.

Mechanically it doesn't really push the series forward in any real meaningful way. The Emblems are a neat concept but they're never going to return in any future game, if anything they're really just the FE equivalent to Pokemon's current usage of transformation gimmicks that are picked up for one game and then dropped for the next generation. The class change system isn't really anything new, I honestly hazard to think of anything meaningful at all that this game provides.

Nostalgia? I guess, I mean the Emblem Paralogues are easily the best parts about this game, but that's more to the credit of the original games more than anything.

It can't be the characters, because they're not characters at all.

The gameplay is just standard modern FE...

So what gives this game the excuse for being so... nothing.

That's not even going on the 30 dollar DLC, which again is absolutely horrid how they're handling it. It's the same problem I had when Pokemon Sword & Shield did it. For a game that is so unconsidered in my opinion, making additional content that you cannot buy separately from each other for 30 dollars is ridiculous.

I should not have to pay for Camilla or the Heroes one if I want to have Soren or Edelgard. Also, locking the Silver Card behind DLC is also a dick move too.

What else can I foam at the mouth about? The Somniel?

Like the rest of the game it's pointless, and while I know someone will say "well the Monastery in Three Houses is also pointless", I'd argue at least the Monastery fed into what that game was about. The Somniel feels like a complete afterthought, especially considering you can use a lot of its functions on the world map anyway.

Being real I just cannot write a concrete review on this game. It frustrates me too much for me to not just start barking like a rabid dog whenever I see it or discussion about it. I'm honestly hoping it'll get me put down like Old Yeller, bullet to the fucking brainstem.

That infuriation stems from the desire for a better product and to not just be placid and eat up this corporate schlock like it's pig slop. Three Houses, like it or not, was at least doing something interesting, compared to this fucking mess.

I think to me, the moment where my hatred for this game was ensured was after the aforementioned Chapter 22.

The plot does bla bla bla, it's not really interesting but then Alear becomes an Emblem. The Fire Emblem.

And I guess something snapped, something inside of me.

It was a realization, that if it hadn't done it by the time of Fire Emblem Fates, that Fire Emblem had truly jumped the shark.

Not only that, but to have Marth, the guy who carries his version of the Fire Emblem with him for two entire games (and two remakes), be the one who makes that statement... god it's just so awkward and stupid.

And then of course all the times the game would suddenly redeem villains for no reason only to kill them off, which includes the main antagonist... I don't know I think I just fucking died inside.

Can you tell this isn't a review? This is just me spewing out everything because I've been needing to explode about this game for so long but held back.

Fire Emblem Engage is the Modern Fire Emblem game. It is exactly the soulless trashy game that people used to claim Awakening was, it is the endpoint where there is simply no true creative juices left. My only hope is that the next Fire Emblem game is not as nearly as rife with the corporate MCU Filmesque energy as this one was.


Positives:
The music was fine, especially the remixes of classic tracks.
Visually it is very pretty (even if I hate most of the character designs)

Good night Backloggd. I need to just lie down for a while.

shit game
hate the v-tuber art style
hate the overall style as well
main character looks ass
don’t care if it’s an anniversary title, the fanservice is garbage
time wheel again
embarrassing plot and characters
the opening song is worse than the worst seven deadly sins opening

game looks unironically like it was developed with ai tools

Three Houses was not what I had envisioned when I imagined Fire Emblem on Switch. Now this, this absolutely is and it does an incredible job. Instead of Three Houses, this one took notes from Fire Emblem Fates instead. Thankfully unlike that game and Three Houses this one only has one story, and since it's a Fire Emblem Anniversary game it's a simpler back to roots story. It's really really refreshing to be excited for a Fire Emblem game from announcement to release, feel like this is the one and it is. It's one of if not my favorite Fire Emblem game now.

The changes to the formula all work in the game's favor. Trading priests for Monks allows your healers to have additional utility they didn't before, be it either blocking or fists. While they aren't incredible options, they're still options I for sure got use out of in the early game. A whole new mechanic is the Break system which also came into play more often early on but was a very welcome addition to further emphasize the weapon triangle which otherwise tended to get ignored as things went on. And it still does but when it comes into play you feel it a lot more as it saves or screws you. There's a counter to this too with Knights not being breakable and these new mechanics are all little things that improve the game. You can even have all your friends pound a unit at once...or have them do it to you if you try to juggernaut, so that won't work here anymore. The best one is the bosses, where they have more than one healthbar so you can't just beat them with a single powerful attack, often times you have to coordinate your team to take them down. Bosses also often move which is unusual for Fire Emblem so you have to be on your guard. And then when you beat a map you get to walk around the map and it's like "This is where I just fought and it feels really cool especially if it's an Emblem Paralogue, like you're walking through history.

These incredible mechanics aren't the only thing, there's also the new characters and music that are great. The story is mostly serviceable with only a few parts I'd say are bad but nothing ever reaches Fates levels of bad writing at least. Oh what else to say I could go on all night about this one.

I suppose the flaws: The Somiel is a step up from the Monastery for sure but there's a lot of stuff here that either felt pointless like the fitness minigames or felt unneeded like fishing (even if that is also better than 3H). These only earn Bond Fragments for the in-game gacha which also felt pointless. The only downside in gameplay is the game throws reinforcements to push you to the boss but sometimes it feels absolutely relentless about it to where it gets a bit excessive. But you have 9 rewinds a chapter so all's fair in love and war I suppose.

I was surprised I let some units die this time and that I put thought into "are they worth the rewind/restart" and even realizing that sometimes the answer was no. Honestly, as I learn more about the metagame I'm honestly thinking about playing through Engage again sometime on Maddening and trying new units and classes. This game is that fun. If there's any Fire Emblem you wanna come back to or even try for the first time, it's this one.

Celine is the best by the way.

I might edit this and go more in-depth and detailed when I finish the game, but this is after about 25 hours of gameplay time and over halfway through the main story so I feel pretty confident in my opinions on the game right now.

The more I play Engage, the more I enjoy it and I honestly just don't understand the hate at all, this is not even close to being the worst FE title let alone the worst game ever in general. Even the story is nowhere near as bad or offensive as people make it out to be, it's just very dated and simplistic.

If you can get past the extremely flamboyant, V-tuber, modern anime character designs (Personally I like a lot of them as they're very vibrant and colorful, but I get why they're not everyone's cup of tea), this is the most "classic" feeling Fire Emblem game post-Awakening with the most polished and arguably the best gameplay the series has ever had.

I'm very happy to see the iconic weapons triangle return and I love the new additions with the break and smash mechanics and of course the whole gimmick of Engaging with Emblems which you'd think would be overly OP, but since the entire game was designed around it and even enemies can Engage as well it is pretty well balanced and the game will really give you a challenge even on normal, but the one thing I honestly do miss is weapon durability.

I think a lot of the disappointment just comes from people who were expecting this game to be like 3H and don't get me wrong, I love 3H, it's great in its own way, but it is a Persona game in disguise with a Langrisser combat system. Nearly nothing about that game feels like Fire Emblem. It was a cool experiment, but I wouldn't want every future Fire Emblem to be like that and I'm very happy Engage actually feels like a real Fire Emblem game.

Engage feels like a true love letter to the series past (Which makes sense considering it is an anniversary title), I especially see so much influence and inspiration from the GBA titles everything from the animations to the over-world map making a return to the stripped down and more simplistic support events (Note: Most of the characters don't have a lot of depth, but I still find them likable and charming enough, however Alear is the best protagonist Fire Emblem has had in years) and even the very old-school 90s-like narrative with a classic tale of good vs evil, a band of heroes traveling around various kingdoms to collect magical artifacts to stop an evil dragon complete with a very campy 4Kids sounding Saturday morning cartoon dub and that really makes me feel nostalgic.

Also want to mention how much I love the side mission Paralogues which let you re-live iconic battles and maps from the classic games even with remixes of that game's music as well.

I also want to say that I am not a fan of the Somniel. Glad they cut down the Monastery-like content (Despite actually enjoying it in 3H for the most part), but I would've been happier if they removed it all together because while raising the Guardian Spirit, adopting animals, working out and eating meals with your friends are all cute side activities they feel like inconsequential fluff that could easily be skipped entirely if you wanted to and I think it was developed like that on purpose due to the criticisms of many people saying the Monastery parts of Three Houses went on for too long. The main thing that your base offers which is mandatory is the shops and smithy where you can buy new equipment and upgrade it.

One last thing to note, the animations and cut-scenes are very smooth and look better than ever thanks to the improved graphical fidelity and I haven't had a problem with the performance overall yet which is a miracle considering most newer games run horribly on the Switch.

Overall if you got into the series with 3H or 3H is your favorite in the series you'll probably be disappointed because Engage is nothing like it and in a way kind of dated, but if you've been a long-time fan and prefer old-school FE compared to the more modern titles I think you'll be pleasantly surprised and satisfied with Engage.

A profoundly disappointing experience, Intelligent Systems has displayed that they have the capability to make the peak of strategy RPG gameplay (Fates: Conquest) and that they still have the writers to make even an afterthought of an NES game's story good with lively characters and interestingly explored motivations and relationships (Shadows of Valentia) and has decided to discard all that quality to phone it in for a game that lacks both of these aspects. Coming out after Three Houses doesn't help, a game that pushed the series' character writing and support conversation quality to the next level.

In terms of story, the game I'd consider just below Awakening's, the world they craft is extremely poor and the four kingdoms are given traits that ultimately don't matter in the grand scheme of the narrative since the plot is solely focused on the conflict between the divine dragon side and the fell dragon side, which ruins a lot of the characters motivations since its never illustrated, for example, why Diamant is different from his father, except that Diamant wants to end the constant invasions from Brodia's end. However, King Morion is beloved by everyone, and no one can say any wrong about him as a person nor as a ruler, the same applies to every other currently ruling character in the world which completely deflates every character's aims and goals of trying to make the world a better place when it's already idyllic with only the extremely recent threat of the corrupted meaning anything in the grand scheme of the world.

The plot itself is incredibly weak, with an absolutely poor execution on even simple topics, topics the series has explored before even in it's very first incarnation and succeeded more than this game does. I'm not opposed to the game having simple writing, simple themes, simple characters but this game is no Dragon Quest, there is an almost negative charisma emanating from some of the scenes and dialogue that happen throughout the story with some laughably terrible moments like introducing a character in one chapter and giving them a """tragic""" death in the next chapter only a few minutes later. On a note unrelated to the game's quality, it's completely baffling to me how much leeway is given to this game because it's not attempting to make anything more than the sentai monster of the week that it is, this is a series about heroic fantasy in the context of war and has always managed to hold a level of decorum about it even in the worst stories like Fates.

The characters are especially disappointing in this game, for me a pillar of the series ever since Genealogy has always been to expand side characters through meaningful side conversation which the support system was brilliant for, maybe even being my favourite aspect of the series, and Engage absolutely guts the system, with meaningless drivel that even the tropiest of characters in other games at least topped in quality. This might even be the only Fire Emblem game where I simply did not care about most of the supports in the game, most of them feeling like a waste of my time and an exercise in demolishing any character potential a character might have had. The characters aren't just simple walking cliches played straight, they're worse than that because of the aforementioned problems with the world, but they don't even get to be meaningfully involved with each other with paired endings, an aspect of the series present since Genealogy, being absent which isn't simply shippers not being catered to, but there were paired endings in previous games that weren't just marriage related which bolstered those games' commitments to forging ironclad lifelong bonds through said games' conflicts, something this game barely feels like it does.

On a slightly related note, the hub in this game is absolutely terrible, the characters within never have anything interesting to say at all, something the Three Houses hub was great at. The gameplay in the hub is also atrocious, the place is shit to navigate with functions you'll be returning to frequently being behind separate doors with loading screens resulting in a very clunky experience that makes doing anything in the hub a chore, on top of the dogshit minigames. Who really asked for a timing minigame for temporary buffs? Or a shitty rail shooter?

The level design of the maps are okay at best, while there are some interesting objectives and ideas here and there, they are few and far between as a whole. I wasn't expecting something like the series' highs after seeing footage of the Engage mechanics, but the maps here never hit anything distinctive for me, aside from one chapter. The Engage aspect of the gameplay is a mixed bag, on one hand its fun to steamroll through enemies with your super powered bankais, but most of the game just does not account for these superpowers. For reference I played on Hard Mode, because Fire Emblem games historically have not done the highest difficulty very well with very few exceptions, and I did not have trouble at all past chapter 11 or so, save for doing paralogues under the recommended level. The paralogues are generally where the bulk of the interesting map design stems from, except that most of these mechanics and good design is jacked wholesale from previous games anyway, regardless of whether that is intentional because of the anniversary nature of the game I just think its really sad that the game's best ideas are just from older games.

Finally, I take umbrage with how the game handles the anniversary aspect of it, which bleeds into every aspect of the game. The best way to illustrate my frustration with it is Awakening which was also an anniversary game, and one with a lot more dignity than this game. Engage performs very blatant and in your face pandering that just feels like a mobile gacha game, as opposed to Awakening which relegated overt references to previous games to design aspects or very specific callbacks that worked, whereas Engage is content to just throw out previous game references raw and hope people will bite, which they probably did, but there's just no dignity or elegance to how the game handles its legacy, down to having a fucking gacha of all things.

Fire Emblem Engage is the series indulging in its vices at its worst, and I really hope that this isn't the vibe going forward because this is my favourite video game series, and its really sad to see the future I envisioned at my most cynical after Awakening and Fates actually coming true following two other excellent entries in the series that regained all my good will back.

from what i had initially played of engage, i did not at all enjoy it. i went into it with very few expectations based on the direction the series took outside of remakes after path of radiance, but still found myself largely disappointed. i found the cast and dialog mostly insufferable, the actual story itself some of the worst the series has to offer, and the flanderization of legacy characters almost insulting. however, i have a lot of friends with varying levels of experience with fire emblem saying it got good, whether that be solely the gameplay for some or the story for others. i decided to give the game another shot and finish it, hoping that at least one of thoses two camps would be right and i came out kind of disappointed in both repects, though i do have a much higher opinion of the game than i did before

in terms of story, it just gets worse. as the game goes on the already frustratingingly shallow plot continues to spiral downward, taking a break around the solm arc to catch its breath before going even faster down the shitter with everything afterwards. it's not awakening level where it's bad out of being largely boring with nothing of note ever happening and it doesn't get to being fates levels of balls to the wall bad until close to chapter 20, it's just a badly written story in a way that feels frustrating and ultimately like it was written for children. this doesn't feel like a game from the same series that had the battle of belhalla, the battle with emperor rudolf, or (even as sloppy as the writing in three houses is) the final confrontations between dimitri and edelgard. instead we get a 7 minute death scene ending in a pinky promise, or moments that have potential but just aren't able to work for me because they involve characters that everything else has lead me to be unable to stand. it especially doesn't help that i found most of the impotant characters and especially the villains to be some of my least favorite characters. usually in a fire emblem game with a boring cast, there's a really cool cast of villains to at least make things interesting half of the time or at the very least one main character who i like seeing on screen. binding blade absolutely comes to mind for me here with elffin, bern's generals, and (with the context of the manga) zephiel being some of the standout characters for me in that game and some of my favorites in the series despite the other characters around them, but in engage the lords and villains are all either really annoying, really boring, or a frustrating mixture of both and it makes the main conflict and narrative even weaker as a result.

speaking of characters i can't stand, boy there sure are a lot of them. the style of writing here is largely taking a few character traits or quirks and just running with those constantly which is already a style i don't like, but my dislike of them mostly comes down to me not liking those specific character traits, which is pretty apparent when i can't get myself to enjoy fan favorites like yunaka at all. there's also the emblems, which are all just flanderized versions of their original counterparts, with sigurd and ike being some of the more frustrating ones. there are exceptions, such as roy and eirika being just completely mischaracterized and micaiah, lucina, corrin, and byleth not having much to actually flanderize, but i wouldn't say those are positive exceptions. regardless of this lower standard of character writing, the only characters i'd say are actually flat out bad are veyle and alear. veyle is just radiant dawn blood pact levels of bad writing without any of the minor things about the blood pact that made you think "oh neat" and wrapped into an unappealing design who shows up constantly. likewise, alear also invokes a lot of fire emblem's history with sloppy writing, most specifically the my units. like most my units, they are the absolutely most important character on screen at any given time and everybody on your side has to revere them like they're some kind of god, and intelligent systems decided that instead of maybe writing my units a little differently that they would double down on the isssues these characters had and they were going to double down hard. now your my unit is literally a god who almost everyone worships or at least reveres in some capacity, not to mention that their entire personality boils down to "good-doer mary sue with a dark side" like you'd find in self insert works on fanfiction.net in the early 2000s. it honestly got super frustrating seeing a rare scene i thought was actually good just for alear to show their ugly mug and for me to lose interest completely. on a more positive note, i found myself liking a lot more characters to the level i usually do for fire emblem in this game than i ever did in awakening or fates. i wouldn't say they're the best characters ever but lapis, zelkov, goldmary, and fogado are a few standouts to me, with rosado, alcryst, and kagetsu also having a lot of things i enjoyed about them. the game definitely gets a bit more consistent with better characters as it goes, backloading most of the worse ones to firene and just sprinkling one or two stinkers into the later regions, but it can lead to long stretches with no one you actually like having anything to say depending on what you like character wise. while i think engage hits much lower lows with its characters than awakening and fates ever did, it also hits much higher highs than they did too which i guess means i surprisingly like engage's cast more than those two.

if the story just ended up getting worse for me, how about the gameplay?

it's pretty good i guess!

i definitely wouldn't put it up with new mystery or thracia gameplay wise, but it's definitely much better than awakening or three houses in that department. i'd probably place it somewhere below blazing blade and path of radiance, making it one of the better entries in the series gameplay wise in my opinion. the actually gameplay systems definitely work for what engage is. i find myself not really caring about break and no weapon durability is a little boring to me but with everything else about engage being the way it is, i much prefer being able to just jump in with minimal inventory management. the weapon triangle actually returning is very welcome, and the emblems are very fun in the same way that new mystery letting you move insane distances on its maps was fun. because of this, in sections of the game where you have no emblems or very few emblems it can be a bit boring and the game seems very intent on removing the main aspect of what makes actually playing it compelling in that regard, but the map design kinda makes it okay? i've never been too huge on the "conquest is good because it has really good map design" bandwagon that most people seem to be able to agree on, and i find myself feeling the same way about the idea that engage also has really good map design. neither game has bad map design at all, i'd say in a lot of areas they have really solid map design, i just don't think they're the peak of the series like some would allege. engage also had a lot of moments where i needed to put the game down before i was at all willing to start another map if only because i wasn't finding the gameplay enough to push me through to another cutscene i wasn't going to enjoy, but that mostly started cropping up towards the latter end of the game.
on a more minor note gameplay wise, the somniel sure is a thing i guess. i don't like the hub worlds fe has started to do but at least now it's rather unintrusive, at least compared to the complete and utter slog and narrative disaster that the monastery was. if i had my way the hubs just wouldn't be a feature, but i'm willing to take what wins i can when it comes to the social sim aspects fire emblem has leaned into.

i also thought i'd quickly touch on the music, as well as the graphics. music wise, there's very few games in this series with soundtracks i go out of my way to listen to. i only really listen to music from the jugdral titles, the three remakes, and some of three houses and even then they're far from my favorite game soundtracks. likewise, engage is just pretty okay. there's some neat parts of the ost but largely it's not one i found myself super invested in but i didn't find myself bored by it either. in terms of the graphics, while i still think the GBA games are the best looking in the series, engage definitely gets close with the battle animations and there's a lot that are really cool. the models themselves are just okay though, but they would probably be better with a different art style. on the other hand everything about the non-battle animations can only be described as laughably bad. they have this uncanny way of moving that invokes amateur SFM porn and overdramatic mocap acting and it just sucks to look at. it's genuinely baffling to me that on one hand we have the best battle animations the series has seen in almost 20 years but at the same time we're given the most low quality animations for cutscenes and dialog, but i guess it's better than nothing.

overall i think the largest thing keeping me from overall enjoying fire emblem engage is the simple fact that i am not the type of person to value gameplay over story in any type of rpg. to me, gameplay in an rpg serves to lead into and provide context for story moments to elevate it in a way that non-interactive media simply couldn't accomplish. there's plenty of rpgs i loved that i couldn't get into gameplay wise, whether it be xenogears or vagrant story or smt2. engage, however, doesn't have a good or, for lack of a better term, engaging story which leaves the gameplay very little to work with and elevate. you could argue that i'm able to just skip the cutscenes and story elements and just play the game, but at that point why i am playing engage over any other fe game? in any other genre this would be something i could look past completely, but due to the way i approach and enjoy the rpg genre as a whole i find engage an experience that i could've done without. i can understand a decent amount of the hype around this game but it isn't for me and even after giving it a second chance i find it indicative that echoes, three houses, and any future remakes are just detours on the direction that seems to be maeda's vision for this series post-awakening, and i can't say that excites me.
in terms of the series at large, unless there's any reason to believe this direction is changing i'm probably not going to be keeping an eye on it much longer outside of news in regards to remakes. i still love most of the older titles and it's a dear series for me but i can see that fire emblem has shifted to a much different audience than it used to appeal to and for now, i think engage is going to be where i get off of the wild ride that shouzo kaga started.

so long and thanks for all of the memories, you weird bastards at intsys

I couldn't have imagined a Fire Emblem game with more freeform team building than the ones with infinite reclassing, but here we are. Maybe the meta just isn't solved yet, but it blows my mind that there are finally real trade-offs instead of "just use wyvern riders" or "throw your best guy into the mix and skip turn". I was itching to replay the game before I even made it to the final map.

Story-wise, it's not campy enough, actually. I need the other nobles to pop up even more often and laser the villains with the power of friendship. I need multiple extended transformation sequences with poofy skirts for everyone. I need special attack animations that put Trails S-Crafts to shame. The 60th anniversary game had better double down.

the gameplay is pretty great objectively. but the story/art/music/character design/writing/dialogue is such a downgrade from 3h that it makes me feel deeply aware that i'm rapidly hurtling toward the heat death of the universe every second i spend playing it. like, the rest of it is so unequivocally bad that i feel myself growing exponentially dumber the longer i play it. sure, i may become a tactical genius by the endgame, but what's the use when this is all over and i have the mental capacity of a bowl of soup?

If you asked me what I thought of this whole modern anthology of Fire Emblem, I’d probably say something like “it kinda sucks but its so weirdly compelling im gonna keep playing them until i die”
I replayed Awakening last year, and it showed to me that its maximalist approach to revitalizing the series has aged like milk - both in gameplay and tonally.
Fates: Conquest shows a team who genuinely has the skills to improve this framework, but the series was then tossed to another team for Three Houses; the game receiving an improvement in tone, but generally rolling its gameplay innovations back. The qualities and content of each entry feels like a dice roll, but that’s probably the most compelling part; you could probably make a masterpiece if you mashed these games together. And while I’m truly hoping one day we’ll see that to fruition, I think we all knew this wouldn’t be the game the moment that trailer dropped. Instead we all thought
“is that a toothpaste girl”

PRESENTATION
The infallible strangeness that Intelligent Systems keeps trying to turn their war simulator into a poppy smash hit is not lost on me, but some things take higher priority in that discussion. This game contains a toothpaste girl. She is somewhere in here. It’d be punching below the belt to bully this design, but it feels like one of those designs that could only exist in lighting that compliments them, and her 3D model doesn’t make me feel anything. Sucks that Mika Pikazo was brought in as lead artist for the game that ditched illustrated portraits, because the game doesn’t get to play to her strengths. The overconfidence in its 3D also bleeds into the game’s map presentation - barely any of your party members have immediately readable key-poses, with toothpaste girl’s hair colours being the only relief from this frustration. This combined with some poor colour choices for the game’s four enemy range indicators resulted in me playing most of the game fully zoomed in.
Even the battle animations–the main part of the aesthetics I’ve seen praise for–have their own polish issues, their slick movements almost always undermined by bad camerawork. Sharp jump cuts before attacks land already result in busy visuals, but where it’s most obvious is how it clashes with the game’s readily available x2 speed button - making even the most basic attack animations unreadable.
And while this game’s art design isn’t a complete loss–there’s some wonderful cutscenes here and there–what surprised me the most was a soundtrack that’s just...not good? These games don’t like worldbuilding very much, so Awakening’s accordion-romanticism, and the Scot-Noir broodings of Fates: Conquest do a lot to enrich their worlds - it’s only natural this out of touch J-Rock leaves the game feeling toneless. With notable composers such as Takeru Kanazaki and Hiroki Morishita still present, I would never want to blame the individual creatives on the project, because you can tell this modern direction for the series has a lot of corporate influence.

Story
We could talk about this game’s plot, but that’d require it to have one of its own; it’s more of a greatest clips montage edited in Sony Vegas with a ton of colour aberration and dubstep. We could also talk about how the crossover element here feels misguided - the broadly personified protagonists of the series were made to be reactive, rather than interactive, so they all feel like uncharismatic brick walls here. This game did nothing to fanservice me as a follower of the series, but more importantly (to the developers), it did nothing to sell me on the characters I hadn’t played the games of. The villain here isn’t even the storyline, it’s really the scriptwork. Early on into the game, a character is mortally wounded, and as they die in your hands, they spend their last moments explaining that they are not dying because they were shot by a big evil magic orb, but because of some high concept lore machinations. In their dying moments, they hand you a macguffin.
At the climax of this scene, toothpaste girl does a “pinky promise” with this person, which despite making me instantly burst out laughing, is in fact a choice! A choice made by the Tetsuya Nomura impersonator you hire for your kid’s birthday party, sure, but it does paint her as someone who is emotionally stunted and clings onto childish mannerisms. But toothpaste girl takes on her role as goddess-worshiped-by-everyone-in-the-world in strides, is immediately complimented as “humble” and “human” by everyone she meets, and is also apparently just the greatest tactician in the world! This is at least partially the fault of a vision messied by corporate; the director of the game noting in interview that Nintendo asked them to tone down the worldliness of toothpaste girl. Where’s the censorship controversy about that, huh, gamers???
I’ve seen this plot pitched as a sugary saturday morning cartoon romp, but it sorta just lacks the humanity for me to see it as sincere - a key trait to loving that style. That’s not even to mention the even more obvious contrast: how this plot is driven by tragedy without moments of relief. It’s an e10+ war game, but it’s still a war game - we’re out here playing tactics ogremon red and blue version.
But…I know and you know that this sort of analysis isn’t going to get us closer to understanding why people like these games. Talk to any Fire Emblem fan–and don’t grit your teeth too hard thinking about that, I did it for you–and they’ll tell you they like these games for literally one thing.

It’s the gameplay.
The gameplay is alright, I played on hard classic and had a good time with it. The real standout here is Break: a new system where if you win the weapon triangle RPS, you knock your opponent’s weapon out of their hands until you hit them again, or your turn ends. Making it easier to play your turn damageless enables this game’s goals as being a more aggressive Fire Emblem; encouraging you to stand your ground and make confident offensive plays, so you can wade through the onslaught of enemies. There are also secondary roles tied to classes; grounded offense units have Backup, the ability to join other teammate’s attacks, for example. Armored units are the real winners here, they’re given an immunity to break, which makes them the most interesting to pilot they’ve been in years. The cherry on top here are the Emblems, which exist on the same wavelength of Pop game design as supers in a fighting game. They’re all flashy comeback mechanics that give you buttons that are fun to click and make the good numbers happen, but I also love how they’re very flexible if you use them to prop up a unit’s flaws, or play to one's strengths. I like how they their big fuck-off buttons don’t necessarily feel congruous with each other either; they’re like giant puzzle pieces that you have to attach a million microscopic ones onto to complete the picture. The way that Emblems can flexibly be moved between units makes this the most prep-centric Fire Emblem I’ve played!!! yes i love nerd shit :)

But for all of this to work, the map design’s gotta be strong. And it does start rock solid, lots of well placed secondary objectives like running thieves to keep you on pace. But Emblems, for all I like about them, definitely ripple out negatively into the game’s balance - this game mostly runs on “defeat the boss” win conditions, so every boss needs to have multiple health bars to counter Emblems. It made me feel like a badass to kill them in a single turn the first time I did it, but when I realized the map design heavily enables this playstyle, it started stagnating pretty quick. That’s when Chapter 17 rolls around, where you face down six bosses on a single map, with knights and dragons creeping in between. Not only that, but one of those bosses was a huge knowledge check for me - being a mage knight with both massive defense and res made me unable to kill him in one turn, all while another boss was barreling for me. I had to carefully exploit break, and position my backups around him in a way that didn’t get them killed by a combination of the two bosses attacking me. It’s genuinely a series highlight chapter to me, so it’s a shame it doesn’t last; you spend the rest of the game fighting those same bosses in different, smaller orders. Not only does this fail to progress the challenge of how you play around bosses, it’s also just…lame. Significantly less cool. And the developer’s priorities were different from mine, because the last 4 chapters of the game instead introduce stage hazards that border on being gag levels at times.

While playing this game, I ended up thinking “maybe if I’m having this little fun with a Fire Emblem, it’s time to graduate to maddening” quite a bit, but then I ran into another problem
…This is the most prep heavy Fire Emblem
Once you’re finished with a map, go ahead and run around its overworld for a few minutes picking up items. Then load into Somniel–the game’s Monastery–and play a bunch of minigames to activate surprisingly noticeable temporary stat upgrades for the next mission. Lastly, remember to read those 650+ supports (that’s over twice as many as Three Houses!), and 1300+ bond conversations. While the Monastery system and how it clashes with the replayability of Three Houses is definitely worth critique, and on paper, Somniel does sound better–being entirely optional and not attached to a calendar–it’s easy to see why Somniel misses the point of Monastery. Simply put, every decision I make trickling down from a bigger macro decision made it at least feel like I was playing a video game while I was in the Monastery, and Somniel feels like I’m doing mobile game dailies. It’d be a lie to pretend hard classic was difficult enough to require those temporary buffs, but I can only imagine the looming frustration of losing in Maddening, and thinking “I should’ve played that fucking fishing minigame”... That isn’t even commenting on some minor issues, such as how Emblem customization is managed from 2 rooms in Somniel that have a 10 second loading screen between each other, making me wish the whole place was just a menu. I only started enjoying the game at all when I started doing some self care; choosing to not interact with a lot of its frustrating mechanics, but… if I’m playing this for the gameplay, and even the gameplay loop is awkward, what am I even left with?

The combat.
The combat is alright, I played it on hard mode classic, and had a good time with it. But like, dude. DUDE!! Every time I read someone call this game a “return to form”, I feel like I have temporal insanity!!!! This game’s idea of fun is herding your sheep, rolling for gacha pulls, and giving your fav 11 year old a wedding ring!!!!

I could probably pump out a graphic like this:
PRESENTATION: 60
STORY: 30
GAMEPLAY: 65
OVERALL: 51.666666666667
but it’d be a disservice both to understanding why people like this game, and why I don’t like it. Fans of this game have gracefully chosen to appreciate it for the best parts of its vision, shielding it out of what I can only assume to be genuine empathy, which kinda owns. But when I put it down, it felt like this game’s loop demands your immersion into its world, and trying to play it the way I did is something it rejects.
These fuckin’ Fire Emblem fans, dude, I watch them perfectly cleaning the dirt off a burger they pulled out of a dumpster, and I try to mirror them and just get stale ketchup all over my hands.
…So. Is Engage worth playing? I probably won’t have the most time-withstanding take on the game, but I’ll tell you what I know for sure


you should probably not buy the new nintendo game just to be in on the conversation with your friends
you’re thinking of “getting into fire emblem” and you haven’t even cleaned ur room today??? say it aint sooooo 😱😱😱😱

DAMN SOLID fundamentally, BUT the cluttered menus and half-hearted focus on repetitive back & forth home-base bullshitting, with its 'you can pet the dog' tier of shallow gameplay interactions are a hard disconnect and mighty fine distraction from the otherwise COOL and ENGAGING rpg action you're ACTUALLY here for.

goes without saying, but the thing's narrative and quirky character set dressing are obviously a bit lacking as well. shit's cute yeah (Rosado an ez mvp), but you'd think something that seeks to be simply FUN in appeal would at least also be concise and quick to the point. The storyline beats of this one though - for as basic as they are - play out totally straight, and real unabridged like for no REAL benefit as its all on the level of just some simple power rangers ass drama.

Like this shit's SHALLOW and CORNY. You'd WISH it leaned into that more! And just REVELED in the DUMB FUN of it all! What with you cartoonishly summoning THA FLANDERIZED LEGENDS FROM THE PAST and earnestly preaching about SAVING THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD from the ONE source of conflict. Come on... it should write itself... For how much considered contemplation the GAME takes to actually play and get through, the story being so superficial yet still presented as SERIOUS BUSINESS feeeeels like a misstep. owell!

STILL THO that actual gameplay IS smart enough to carry. There's a lot of clever additions that iterate on the map clicking, decision make-y goodness nicely. The map design kinda rocks, and you're inspired to think in some fun and varied ways alongside a good challenge the whole way through (provided you don't fiddle too much with the extracurricular, grind-potential bullshit the thing unfortunately also provides...). It juuuust gets to feel a bit overly long near the endgame, and you'd wish more of the busywork and shallower elements were cleaned up a tad.

engage together!! fire emblem forever!!!11

For my first playthrough I only did the main story on Normal. I'll watch supports, and do all paralogues on my 2nd pt on Hard.

My first impressions on the gameplay after a first playthrough are that the micro-combat is some of the best in the series owing to the Emblem mechanic, and the creative scenarios in some boss encounters (like look at Ch.19 Mauvier). The macro map design and creativity, however, is mostly average. The maps are like, GBA-PoR tier except maybe more polished, is how I see it. There wasn't nearly as much creative maps as I would have hoped so all things considered I can't say this is one of my favourites for the gameplay when Thracia, Conquest and Radiant Dawn (still my top 3 games in the series) provided me more interesting situations more often (even at the cost of some bad maps).

I think my favourite map is the one where Timerra joins actually? Reminds me of some of my favourite Thracia, Conquest and GBA maps.

I'll see if harder difficulties and paralogues change my mind, when I tackle them on my 2nd playthrough.

Don't care to comment on writing and presentation at this time