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

Fire Emblem Engage, executed for committing a mortal sin of appealing to the "modern anime" audience. These negative reviews are undeserving honestly. At worst, FE Engage tells a campy story with some hit-or-miss character designs. At best, if you're a die-hard FE fan who has always loved the tactical combat the series have provided so far, Engage exceeds the expectations a fan may have for its gameplay and delivers fun, "engaging" systems with the Emblems and the myriad of activities to do at the Somniel. I recommend playing on Hard/Classic. I heard that the Maddening difficulty still has the tradition of being absolute bullshit.

Don't have much more to say. I mostly enjoyed my experience with this game. Buy it for the gameplay, not for the story/characters. I'm sure those who are critical of Engage's narrative will have their "dark" and "mature" stories about war in the next mainline FE where they can continue having countless reddit discussions over. For now though, while I can't say the plot impacted me, it sure did make me laugh with how melodramatic and silly it is. It's literally a story my 14-year-old self would write and claim that it's "deep." Not sure about you, but I found it pretty amusing. This may be the best 3/5 game I've ever played.

While it wasn't officially marketed as one, Engage feels very much like an anniversary title, one that celebrates the whole 30+ years of the franchise while also introducing a brand new cast to get attached to

Engage's big new addition to the series are the Emblem Rings. Each ring holds a main character from across the whole series. From Marth and Sigurd to Corrin and Byleth, each main entry has a representative here. While there may be some disappointment over certain selections, like Alm not being represented while Eirika at least has her twin Ephraim with her, each game has been represented fairly for the most part, with every character getting beautiful full 3D models and voice acting to represent them. It's a huge difference seeing the love and care Micaiah got in Engage compared to the strange artwork she got in Awakening for example.
Each ring can be equipped to any character, allowing for some skills to be shared over, like Sigurd allows Canter to be used by any unit using him. When using an Emblem Ring you can also Engage with them, where the unit and Emblem become one and get full access to the Emblem's weapons as well as a unique special attack that references the game they are from. Like Engaging with Celica means you can use Warp Ragnarok allowing you to warp like the witches in Gaiden/Echoes and deliver a powerful magic attack.
Each Emblem's inventory is also beautifully representative of the game they come from and as you increase your bond rank with each Emblem, you can eventually gain access to their signature legendary weapon. Marth's inventory starts with a Rapier like he does in Shadow Dragon but eventually you can gain access to his Falchion and my gosh it is so cool seeing all these weapons updated and modelled on an HD console.

On the surface, these Emblem Rings sound and look incredibly powerful, and they are, but somehow Intelligent Systems managed to beautifully balance the maps around their inclusion. Even with all 12 rings in hand, the game never becomes a cakewalk, often maintaining a steady challenge. This is help by skills being more limited and scaled back, like Canter is no longer on every mounted unit and has to passed on through Sigurds skillset, and bosses now carry revival stones meaning they can't just be swept away by one or two powerful attacks meaning you need to engage in these encounters prepared and that means having at least some Emblem Rings available to use. Emblem Rings can only be used for 3 turns while Engaged before needing to be recharged for use which means you can't just burn through them, you have to carefully select when is best to use them in the situation you're currently in.

As mentioned earlier, you can bond with the Emblem Rings and these lead to mini conversations with each one. These are small one sentence back and forths that can include some nice references from each character. It would have been nice to have a little more depth from each conversation but as every Emblem Ring has a support set with every single playable character, I can understand why they are short and sweet.

The next bit of celebratory stuff to gush over are the bond rings. Bond Rings are like basic Emblem Rings. These only give a few small stat boosts when equipped while a handful of S Rank rings come with skills. Acquiring these require summoning them through RNG and a special in game bond crystal currency which is fine, but what is cool about them is that every Emblem Ring has a set of 10 Bond Rings to collect, each with their original artwork for the character (or remake artwork) and have little descriptions about each character that unlock as you collect each rank of their rings. It is unfortunate that some characters selected seem to based solely off which ones had artwork available (looks over at Shadow Dragon not including Palla, Catria, and Est because Shadow Dragon/New Mystery does not have any artwork for them) but for the most part, these lists are organised in a way where important characters are top and bottom of the list and it's nice seeing little details like the Elincia S rank ring coming with her personal skill Mercy.

And the gushing of references to older titles doesn't stop there because each Emblem Ring gets their own Paralogue battle to allow for their Bond Rank to push past level 10. THESE ARE PEAK CARE AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL. Every single map comes from the characters original game. Lucina has Arena Ferox for example and talks about how she remembers fighting her father there, Ike has the defence map from Path of Radiance after he takes command of the Greil Mercenaries for the first time. These maps include remixed music from the original game, often a melody of several songs, like Marth's includes Trouble and Together We Ride, and they sound fantastic. The maps are also set up in such a way that it feels like you're playing something from the original game, like the Thracia one has its ballistae hit so much harder, or the Celica one includes enemies that can summon more enemies just like Gaiden/Echoes. Unfortunately there is limitations due to Engage's mechanics, so Micaiah's map lacks ledges that Radiant Dawn had and Sigurd's map is only a small portion of a full FE4 map but otherwise these are lovingly recreated, often including enemy units that reference characters from the original map and my gosh it is such a treat for fans like myself who have played every game in the series.

So yeah, Engage does a fantastic job at celebrating the series history but is also the 17th entry in the series and has its own original stuff to dive into as well. The story goes down the traditional Fire Emblem route of "evil dragon is awakening and must be stopped" which, while lacking the depth of something like Three Houses, I feel is fine for a title like this. It's simple, good fun and well voice acted with a handful of strong moments even if it fails to hit some of the heights of earlier titles. There's moments that seem to feel like reimaginings or references to older games. Like the start feels very Awakening, the bulk of it involving collecting the rings feels similar to Sacred Stones in a way, a lot of stuff surrounding Elusia's dynamics feel like a simpler Conquest arc, and Chapter 11 feels like it would fit right in with the Manster escape stuff from Thracia. By the end the story feels like a special crossover episode of something like Digimon or Power Rangers. There's a lot of talk of the power of bonds and stuff, and honestly it's something that's mostly just good fun rather than anything to analyse and take apart. Like it's just nice seeing all these Emblems together and I love how the final battle goes, it's something long time fans will really appreciate, and I think that's fine for a game like this.
Would've loved a bit more depth to the continent of Elyos itself but I did find a lot to love about Elusia at least to the point it's up there with some of my favourite Fire Emblem nations.

The new cast are a fantastic bunch too. Again, they're lacking the depth Three Houses brought but there's plenty to love about them from their supports and stuff. It feels like a more traditional FE in that sense as the story mostly focuses on the main royal from each nation and other characters pop up for their introduction and quickly fade out. Still, as I said there's plenty to love from Chloé and her love for folk food and fairy tales, or Hortensia and her persona she puts on in an attempt to be the princess she's expected to be and live up to her mother, or Ivy and Diamant whose kingdoms have been constantly at war learning how to forge a better relationship between their nations. There's a lot of good stuff here with the cast and it's great seeing them confide in the Emblems you give them and seeing those Emblems reminisce about their own lives. It was nice seeing Ike reflect on his days as a mercenary with Timerra or Byleth trying to guide Hortensia through her growth as a character.

Speaking of the new cast, I have a lot of love for the new protagonist Alear. It's hard to call them an "avatar character" because really all you're doing is picking a form and name for them, everything else is a fully fleshed character and I think how you view these kinds of characters going into the game can affect your perception and opinion of them. Alear is fantastic, they find the whole Divine One worshipping weird and awkward, are scared of the Corrupted and are very earnest in trying to be a good person. A lot of the late game story helps contextualise a lot of stuff surrounding Alear and it helps make them more endearing. The VA for the female Alear was a standout performer and helped sell the character to me even in moments where the story wasn't quite hitting what it was trying to convey.

There's a lot of new gameplay stuff in Engage too. The Somniel is like a reduced in scope Monastery but with just as many features. Visiting it between battles is entirely optional (thankfully handy for future playthroughs) and you'll probably want to visit it semi-regularly for the shops, stat boosts from meals and exercising, forming bond rings, and the arena. A lot of the other stuff is mostly just fun downtime stuff like fishing, changing costumes, and the wyvern ride minigame. It's small enough to make a little routine out of and speak to characters but I think Warriors: Three Hopes did it best with the base camp hub, that one felt like the Tellius camps brought to life and would be my preferred option in future titles.
Post battle you get to walk around the battlefield and talk to allies. These are nice for a little bit of world building, seeing stuff like Firene Castle in the background of an early Chapter is great for picturing how the nation is laid out in your head. I do wish the characters had more unique dialogue for these though, a lot of them say the same two or so lines. There's some maps like Chapter 17 where all the Firenese characters have unique lines about what happened and that is exactly what I wanted more of, just a little bit more depth for how these characters feel about what they're seeing.

Battle wise this is up there with the best of Fire Emblem. I've already mentioned the Engage mechanics and revival stones but there's other stuff to go through. Characters now have a type of sorts to their classes. For example Monks have a Chain Guard technique that allows them to take chip damage for allies one space around them. Some classes come with the Backup type that performs similarly to the attack pair ups from Awakening/Fates but in a much better in my opinion. Backup types can perform chain attacks when near an ally and rather act like a second full attack, a chain attack does smaller damage and at 80% accuracy so it's great for additional damage but not as substantial as the pair ups in Awakening/Fates. You can pull off a lot of damage if you line up your characters correctly, and my gosh how the enemies can punish you with it if you try to block off areas from them. The new break mechanic is also neat. Attacking with weapon triangle advantage now causes the opponent to drop their weapon for one phase of combat meaning they can't counterattack. It's a neat mechanic that isn't too intrusive and good for allowing disadvantaged weapons to get an attack in without fear of a counter.
Enemies in this game are also more aggressive than most FEs. Bosses in particular now will move and attack when in range or sometimes after a certain amount of turns. It's really good at keeping you on your toes, pushing you to be a bit more proactive in your strategy or risk being overwhelmed.
While objectives diversity is lacking (most maps are defeat boss objectives with one escape map and one sort of defence map) the more aggressive enemies can push you on the back foot, forcing you to hold your ground for a few turns before pushing out. The Ike paralogue in particular for me was a good example of feeling like a defence map without actually being one.
Fog of War has also been changed mechanically. Now you can't enter spaces you can't see in meaning you can't bump into unseen enemies while moving which is nice. FoW maps also include lighttable torches like the cave chapter in Radiant Dawn that can also be extinguished by the enemy. It helps make these maps feel a bit more dynamic and a bit less unpredictable.
Desert maps are another that have gone under a change. Instead of all desert tiles slowing your units to a crawl, now only certain tiles will slow you down so you can either push through the sand or take the long way round. It's another nice change that helps mitigate some of the frustrations these maps have caused in previous titles.
The maps themselves are also very well designed with no repeat maps showing up. There's a great visual variety between them as well which is really nice.

All of the mechanics and map design add up to one of the best Fire Emblem games from a gameplay standpoint. The game felt balanced throughout and I managed to complete my first playthrough without any grinding and without using any of the dlc emblems. Some of the Paralogues that opened up had higher recommended levels than the story ones at points and I challenged myself to push through them despite being underleveled and I found them to be very challenging but doable and fun.

Another thing I enjoyed was how limited things are in this game. Gold is tough to come by, units are weapon locked to two things max, skill points are hard to come by, deployment spaces are low for a lot of the game. I had to be careful with my money, plan what skills I wanted ahead of getting them, constantly switch up my characters as some fell off and new exciting ones appeared. It's working within these limitations that makes Fire Emblem so much fun for me and makes me excited for doing more playthroughs because I can experiment with different characters I didn't use and different ring combinations and that is so exciting.

Of course the music is fantastic as usual. Apart from the remixes from across the series, the new music is great with the Solm battle maps in particular being some of the catchiest themes ever. I don't think the final map music quite lives up to the extraordinary highs we've had since Awakening but nonetheless it's still a great one and one thematically fits this adventure very well.

Ultimately this was a fantastic experience. I think people who have played some of the previous games will get the most fun out of this as seeing the characters and references to the older games is really nice. The story does lack depth and has its flaws, like most FE titles, but the gameplay is up there with some of the best in the series.
I think the best way to sum this title up is: this is Fire Emblem heritage.

Simply incredible. The gameplay was some of the most fun I’ve had with a Switch title in years. With such an extensive lineup of unique characters, swapping through them each chapter never got repetitive. There’s something extremely rewarding about clearing a chapter and watching closely as your units become more and more powerful. I knew I was untouchable once Merrin was avoiding nearly every attack and hitting a critical almost every turn. That satisfaction continued to be engaging until the final moments. While the story isn’t the greatest written narrative in gaming, its overall messages were clear and captivating. I thoroughly enjoyed watching over Alear and the rest of the cast and look forward to seeing what the DLC adds to this installment.

May 9th: I updated my score. Roughly two months later and the flaws are starting to come back to me. Not that the game is bad, it’s still very good and one I would recommend to any SRPG fan, but the gameplay being the sole carrier of an RPG is not a good look. Hopefully since this was supposed to be more of an anniversary title it was meant to be lighter on everything else, but we need the next game to outshine in every single way.

Look, this is my first modern Fire Emblem game so there is some bias to my fondness for this game. The modern additions to this game are great, though I'm sure many of those features are not so new to this franchise.

As someone familiar with a lot of the older heroes of Fire Emblem, I really enjoyed the summoning/ring system this game features. There are a few duds in terms of ability and I wish there was one more to make late game roster full of ringed units but these complaints are quite minor.

The tried and true gameplay of this franchise is still here and still quite good. If you aren't a fan of that tactical/rock-paper-scissor style gameplay, this won't change your mind in that department.

Story wise, it's what you'd expect. It's a little weak and the overall characters aren't the most interesting. When you have so many characters though and summons, there are good characters but you've got SO MANY that they all start to feel like generic sword person #10 at times with ones that you might not be using as much, if ever.

If you like these games, it's a solid entry in the franchise. If you're not high on these games though, I don't think this is going to do anything to change your mind, especially with a weaker story.

ive listened to bright sandstorm every day for the past 11 months since this game released, and i can confidently say that its my favourite FE battle theme ever.
the rest of this game's soundtrack is pretty neat, but holy shit does bright sandstorm and its variations just completely mog the shit out of everything else.

such a radiant theme to go alongside some of my favourite FE maps of recent memory (ch13's night village is so fucking good OH MY GOD)
i especially like this dual-mix - 1:26 is just PURE LUDOKINO-BUMPS: https://youtu.be/3ag9GtZI17U?si=DSXmMViAJmD1xz6c
ive listened to it so much i can literally pick out all the instruments in both calm and fiery now 😭😭😭😭

((is it just me or does FE map music hit harder on maddening/lunatic modes exclusively??? i swear, it makes me feel like a master tactician or something 😭😭))

anyways i just wanted to have a late night ramble about this game, i truly and utterly love it so much - goofy plot and all. of course, theres always things i strongly wish it did better, but i could say the same for all FE titles. i just love this series so much, man. please play this game, its the coziest feel-good experience ever.

Man i love Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is cool. Fire Emblem has also never been this good.

After the success of Three Houses, i'm sure the last thing anybody expected after the next game is a colorful, corny game that doesn't seem to take itself too seriously. And honestly, i'm glad. Three Houses is great, i love Three Houses, but damn i wouldn't want it to be the future of the series. So here comes Engage, proving once and for all that Intelligent Systems constantly changes up the series, even when the previous entry had a winning formula. But enough about Three Houses, that's not relevant here. What is relevant is Fire Emblem Engage and how it's so good i think it's retroactively hurting my ability to play the older Fire Emblems a bit.

Much like how Metroid Dread is peak Metroid and Azure Striker Gunvolt 3, Fire Emblem Engage is peak Fire Emblem. For the first time in the series, the Weapon Triangle actually matters and that's an insane thing to say when you consider that it's been a central mechanic of the series since 1996. In Genealogy of the Holy War, the Weapon Triangle provides insane bonuses to whoever wins the interaction. So let me correct my previous statement: the Weapon Triangle in Engage actually matters for the right reasons. In every previous iteration, the Weapon Triangle merely provided stat bonuses, whether to an insane degree (FE4) to a miniscule (FE5). Fates took it a step further by having every weapon be a part of it but the principles were the same: winner gets higher hit and avo, loser gets less. In this game, those stat bonuses are gone, instead replaced by the Break mechanic, which is an insanely good mechanic. Now having WTA means you stop the enemy from counter-attacking for one interaction. That seems broken but it allows for the game to be the most player-phase focused game in the series. It allows weaker units to get in kills without fear of being countered. It allows axe-units to....suck relatively less than in other games in the series. And most importantly, the enemy can do the same thing, so it's something you have to account for. The Weapon Triangle in this game allows for actual strategy and not "let me put the swordmaster on the choke point".

The quality of the Weapon Triangle enhances the quality the maps. The map design across the game is really damn good, even if it dips here and there. It is in fact so good that the worst map in the game is still better than most maps in the series. Other ways the maps are enhanced by mechanics is the introduction of Class-Types, which are arguably more important than the Classes themselves. Mystic-Types can ignore avo bonuses, Covert units double their own avo bonuses, Armored units can't be broken which means they are finally good for the first time in the series, they actually have a niche. In addition, the low movement across the board for all units means nobody really falls behind. While low movement seems like a negative, execution is what matters, because honestly it's going to suck so hard when the next Fire Emblem game gives Cavaliers big movement again.

The gameplay still isn't done, because then there is the most advertised mechanic in the game: the Emblems. The Emblems are so conceptually broken in combat, yet everything in the game comes together to make them balanced. Emblems allow you to do massive AoE attacks, retaliation free attacks, multiple attacks, etc. My favorite is Emblem Corrin, because equipping her on Alear allows Alear to use any Dragon Vein tile, making Alear one of the best Lords gameplay-wise.

All of this comes together to create the most gameplay-story integrated game in the series. Yeah, the funny anniversary game integrates it's story to it's gameplay better than the rest of the series. It's why Ch.17 is one of the hardest chapters in the series and i don't just mean in terms of difficulty. It's also one of the three Fire Emblem games to actually acknowledge permadeath.

Speaking of story, i know some people went into this expecting Three Houses 2 or some shit. How they did that when the game opens up with a 4Kids opening, i have no clue but here's the thing about Engage's story: it's actually one of the better ones and it's all about intent. From the developers themselves, Engage's #1 priority was to be a fun SRPG. They accomplished that. Because of that intent, Engage's narrative weight is very light. If you're wondering what i mean by that, i mean that Engage didn't necessarily need to have a good story. The fact that it's actually pretty decent all things considered is more of a bonus. To compare, Three Houses had a heavier narrative weight, so that game had an obligation to tell a "good story". Whether or not you think it succeeded is up for debate but i will say this about Engage's story: it's the one game in the series that is allowed to get with some of the usual bad tropes found in the series. Hell, it lacks any of the bullshit that brought down the previous stories. There's no dumb cult bullshit like in Judgral or the funny Blood Pact in Radiant Dawn but again, it's all about intent.

As far as the characters go, they are pretty fun. Alear is unironically my favorite Lord in the series, she's fully of personality and i even like how she reacts to the Corrupted the same way i react to the unholy demons of the inferno known as "wasps". Yunaka is also another personal favorite of mine, Ivy's character is very surprising, the Solm royals are based, etc. There's a lot to go on. They are unfortunately held back by the rather slow Support grind. It's not as bad as in FE6 and it's still way better than the absolute slog that is Personality statchecks in Persona 5 but considering how quickly they could build in Awakening and onwards, it is a bit of an odd step back. Doesn't help that Skirmishes are harder than the game itself, you will fight for your life if you do them. So bringing up weaker units later is difficult, which also means grinding Supports is difficult. A shame.

Music bangs, i don't think i need to say anything there.

Fire Emblem Engage is peak Fire Emblem. It clears the entire series but the real question is how does it compare to Sparks of Hope, the best SRPG. Honestly? Very close. I'd give the smallest edge to Sparks of Hope because of the sheer versatility of that game. But Engage is a damn good game, it goes hard, and i do consider it peak fiction. I want to replay it immediately but i did spend nearly a week on the final battle because life and i really need to finish that Zelda-thon before Tears of the Kingdom comes out. But one day i shall be back. Yes i shall be back. When Wave 2 of the DLC drops.

Edit: Wave 2 wasn't supposed to drop today God damn it

I'll start with the good, which is the fact that this game is absolutely gorgeous, and the gameplay's great. Most of the maps are pretty good, and the combat improvements are wonderful. I liked Three Houses' combat system, but I'm glad they brought back the weapon triangle. Break is also a pretty interesting mechanic and the engage mechanic, while absolutely broken at times, is always fun to use. This game feels like it should the blueprint for FE going forward gameplay-wise.

Then there's everything else.

I have no idea what happened, but in terms of story, characters and writing, this is easily the worst in the franchise (from what I've played) and a huge step back from Three Houses. The main premise of the plot feels like it came straight out of a Musou/Warriors game in the worst way possible, the tone is half saturday morning cartoon half anime political thriller (it's as terrible as it sounds), the characters are incredibly lifeless and unbelievably boring, and the writing is laughably bad. This is all incredibly shocking especially after Three Houses, which absolutely nailed those things imo. I still remember Three Houses' cast (Black Eagles forever). I'm going to be shocked if I remember any of the characters in this game by the end of next week.

As I said, the gameplay's fantastic but the absolutely awful, bottom-of-the-barrel...everything else makes this my least favorite Fire Emblem game I've played.

TL;DR: Listen, Fire Emblem series is a joke in terms of story writing. It's almost unbelievable that this game celebrates 30 years of this mid franchise. Engage had EVERYTHING to be the best Fire Emblem ever, but the writers threw it all down the drain for the sake of the gameplay.

Engage looks like a fangame. It doesn't even look like it was made by professionals. I played almost all FE games believing that a great game would come, like I tried other franchises that didn't like at first but I liked it later, but Fire Emblem seems to be an eternal average. I still give it a relatively high rating because I REALLY enjoyed the beginning of the game, I was really looking forward to it.

it fails miserably to deliver a good, consistent story. I'm not even gonna talk too much about the apalling worldbuilding, I'm going to focus on the bad writing. At first I was surprised, the story at the beginning was amazing, however, as soon as the prologue ended, again, another FE game went to hell. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's 2023 and this series still has outdated writing. It feels like I'm watching some generic 2005 anime. The problem with the narrative in this series is because they create a narrative for the gameplay, they actually don't want to tell you a story. They've started to change this mindset a bit in Three Houses, but it's still BAD. It's a lot of time spent on gameplay and eventually becomes repetitive, making it all a dragging game. THE STRUCTURE IS LOATHSOME, DISGUSTING

DUDE YOU'VE LIKE 15 MIN OF SIMPLE DIALOGUES THEN YOU GO TO 50 MIN REPETITIVE GAMEPLAY, AND YOU CONTINUE THIS SHIT THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME. The writers seem like amateurs. It's poorly written.
bro I swear, the villains in this game don't even know what they're fighting. I SWEAR TO YOU, THE GAME PRESENTS THE ANTAGONISTS, ONE OF THEM EVEN BASICALLY KILLS THE OTHER CHARACTER'S DAD, BUT THE GAME 30 MINUTES LATER PUT THAT ANTAGONIST CHARACTER AS PLAYABLE AND A GOOD-GUY AND THE EXCUSE IS LIKE "haha my father died too it's all right now I'm on your side"

IT DOESNT END HERE

THERE'S TOO THAT SCENE WHERE THE CHARACTER LITERALLY HATES YOU AT FIRST, LACKS YOU WITH EDUCATION AND IS AN ASSHOLE, BUT SUDDENLY JOINS YOUR TEAM (YES LITERALLY OUT OF NOWHERE, THERE'S NOT EVEN 1 SINGLE TALK FROM THIS CHARACTER, SHE JUST JOINS YOUR PARTY AND THEN AFTER THE BATTLE "haha xD I'm sorry" there was nothing more to it than that, dudes just used 1 single dialogue to say she's sorry.

It
Does
Not
End
Here.

ONE OF THE VILLAINS WHO IS A GIRL LITERALLY KIDNAPS THE QUEEN OF A KINGDOM, PUTTING HER IN THREAT OF DEATH FOR SOME DISGUSTING REASONS OF WRITING STUPIDITY, AND THEN WE'VE TO FIGHT 50 MINUTES AGAINST HER THEN AT THE END OF ALL OF THIS SHIT SHE'LL BECOME A PLAYABLE CHARACTER AND THE QUEEN WILL SAY: "xDxD please help the Divine Dragon save the world! This is your punishment!"

It
Does
Not....


On other points: the gameplay is the best in the franchise. Ironically, this Fire Emblem still manages to be the best in many ways among all the others. You see how bad this franchise is when even a mediocre game like this manages to outperform many others.

The soundtrack is spectacular. This one is arguably the best in the series. I shall research more about the composers. It presents beautiful leitmotifs with a pure and well harmonic orchestra. I'll definitely be adding several songs to my playlist and I pity songwriters so good working in a bomb like this one.

Artistic direction is good, the artist is very good. It won't be a very welcome game in the west, I know why but I don't know how to explain it well. One of the reasons is because there's no marriage system.

Framme Best Girl.


In conclusion, fuck this franchise of assholes, dumbasses, intelligent systems it's your fault you incompetent
🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

Engage is one of the best anniversary projects I've ever seen and a truly beautifully passionate love letter to Fire Emblem. Engage feels like a modern take on a game I would've played on the GBA back in the day and I mean that in the best way possible.

Sure I could talk about how it is a return to form for the series with the combat system being much more of the focus instead of the social elements, but so many people have talked about that so there's no point, but don't get me wrong though, the combat is incredible (Arguably the best it has ever been thanks to the additions of the Emblems, the Break mechanic and the triumphant return of the iconic Weapons Triangle) I could also talk in depth about how much more enjoyable the map designs are compared to other recent entries. However those are not the reasons I love the game as much as I do, no that is because of the story which seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I thought the story was thoroughly incredible despite what people say.

Engage's story is best described as a Tokusatu styled 90s shounen anime all about how nothing is impossible with the power of your friends and family by your side. Yeah it's simplistic and dated and more 'childish' and nowhere near as dark or mature (Though there certainly are some dark and emotional moments), but not every story has to be a gritty war epic about the nature of morality so Redditors can have 200+ comment chain political arguments about who is 'right' just to validate their own personal beliefs to be a good story. Honestly sometimes you just want a feel good, wholesome story about the unbreakable bonds of friendship and family and that's exactly what Engage excels at and the fact the cast of characters are just a bunch of eccentric goofballs and they have fantastic chemistry with each other certainly helps as well.

Engage is so ridiculously cheesy, but genuinely earnest and passionate about its message that it is just as endearing as it is cheesy. I cried multiple times and I teared up even more, not even because I was sad most of the times, but because I was just so happy and constantly smiling ear to ear while playing.

Everything about Engage from the cheesy opening anime theme song to the literal Super Sentai roll call in preparation for the final boss battle just gave me this massive nostalgic feeling like I was a kid again watching Power Rangers before school or 4Kids anime on Saturdays. As a game by itself it is still very good, but as an anniversary title and celebration of the series as a whole, it is truly a work of art.

I’m going to have to agree with the postulation I’ve seen that Engage is a confused game because it clearly is. The fanservice elements with the emblems are weirdly implemented and old school FE fans clearly weren’t going to be too hot on the upped cliché anime shenanigans. The game’s weak narrative is at odds with itself, most notable when it comes to its villains, who are mainly all cardboard cutout psychopaths who eat puppies and kick babies, but then as they lie dying they try to give them the most unearned and nonsensical sob stories imaginable that doesn’t gel at all with the personalities they had up till that point. The main cast are all paper thin and it really sank in for me how checked out I was with them when it I just started skipping support conversations, which I had never done in the previous FE games I played. The protagonist worship is also rather gag-inducing in the most insipid dime-store light novel way. It’s such an utter stark contrast to Three House’s fantastic cast and enthralling narrative despite any missteps it may have had. (I’m also kinda salty that Engage clearly got more of a budget than TH did.) The character design also sucks as they all look sameface gacha characters. The Somniel was also mainly grinding busywork that I also checked out on like midway through the game and I hate how most of the early game units are so much worse than later game units. Ultimately though, it’s still a Fire Emblem game, and the core of Fire Emblem is still a lot of fun so I did enjoy my time with Engage, but like with Shadow Dragon, I’m not really going to go to bat for it any time soon. I just really hope it’s not going to be the future of the series, because Three Houses is my favorite and there’s room for improvement there.

Looking at the characters and listening to them talk filled me with so much bile that I couldn't play to the second map. This could be Thracia 2, Kaga could swear on his collection of erotic male-male age gap literature that this makes the game design in every other TRPG look like Wargroove, and I would not pick it back up. Anyone equating this to Conquest because they both have good gameplay and bad writing should be forced to spend eight hours a week at an art museum until they show some flickering of aesthetic sensibility. It's not even horny.

I'm one of the few who really enjoyed the fun, more laid-back campy story in this game. Gameplay is also absolutely goated. Break Mechanic is such a fun thing to experiment with, and the emblem rings absolutely give you new ways to tackle bosses, which I ended up finding to be super fun to deal with. It helps that the game is also incredibly casual friendly, so it makes for a perfect first FE game, which is pretty much what they were going for with this game.

All we need is a New Game+ and I'd very much believe this game is almost perfect for me. I've seen a lot of hate being given to this game, alongside mixed opinions, but I'm a happy minority, and that's fine. If you're okay with a fun story about exploring the world, alongside amazing gameplay/story integration, as well as the amazingness that is Sommie, then I highly recommend this game.

Finished on 8/26/2023

tl;dr its a functional game but man does it not stand out outside of having all of the other fire emblem guys here. The next game really needs to dial it back, retain some of the QoL features and have a more grounded vibe. Get a new translation team or a new writing room, maybe both. It looks more colorful than Three Houses. The best stuff is the DLC stuff but not the Fell Xenologue afaik, just the new emblem rings.

Fire Emblem…Engage!

(0. PROLOGUE:)

It's a game with so much Fire Emblem packed in, all for a game that barely feels like I'm playing Fire Emblem.
This game reminds me of so many other games, both from Fire Emblem and from other series, just by how much content is included in this game but also by how much better other games are at implementing new mechanics and evolving into this 'new generation of gaming', for better or worse. The rougher part is how much the Fire Emblem part comes from just stealing other aspects of previous titles, and only really toying around with a few aspects in ways I don't feel are as well executed here or worse, have become so memetically ingrained to how a Fire Emblem is supposed to play out that it becomes a laughing stock. Rather than remembrance of times of elation or intrigue regarding a particularly well set up chapter or an interesting character or a strong tenet of worldbuilding, I'm reminded more often of flaws privy to previous titles in the series. What Engage presents is a wonderful amalgamation of what the series has become- but doesn't provide an interesting solution as to what the series will do next. While it presents a myriad of different interactables and new features, I ended up not really wanting to toy around or mess with most of these as I figured much of it didn't actually matter. Other games do this as well obviously, including titles throughout Fire Emblem- not every part of the game has to tie back to the main story. Not every mechanic needs to be fine-tuned to be as balanced as possible, sometimes it pays to be a bit busted. However in Engage's case so much of its mechanics feel like they're... out of sync?
I never truly felt like I conquered the game, and some other FEs have made me feel similarly, but I've been interested in going back and tackling at later dates (maybe Thracia someday...). Here it just felt it was more worth it to not pay attention to certain mechanics post battle mechanics for a few battles, otherwise I'd just be wasting time in menus, management and minutiae for no reason. What's left is a main plot that feels like the weakest since...actually only since Revelations so it hasn't been too long but it left a lot to be desired.
Sometimes I dont wanna be Mr. Cynical, but on the other hand sometimes it's a lot more fun to just be a hater: I thought a lot of this game was fucking dumb and not in a fun sense. I need someone else to come in and pull in the reins on whatever writers and scenario staff is on these projects because dear god I felt embarrassed at times going through the main scenario of this. I don't know if it's a translation thing or if the original script is as bad or what but we're in dire need of some new material, Kaga help us.
The overall package might be a serviceable title, however after having played every other mainline Fire Emblem I just can’t help but feel as though most aspects of this were half baked.

(1. Engaging Mechanics)

(a. Engage!)
Firstly, the namesake of the game. Engage. It’s a neat mechanic and the primary function of this game, like 3H’s academia and Awakefates’ partnering and child minmaxing simulator (blah blah yeah FE4 had this we know). For each game in the series we have a rep, except for FE3 given its a sequel without a new MC -thought it would have been extremely brave of them to have put Kris in here. Units you deploy into battle can equip these and boost their stats and gain certain skills. After some time in battle you can ‘Engage!’ and activate certain other skills on top of take use of certain gimmicks that each ring holds.
Unfortunately some of these rings are blatantly better than others and much of how the rings’ customization either feel on one end, incredibly confusing or on the other end so vast in its customizability to the point of being overwhelming. You gain SP in battle with which you can purchase the skills off rings you have bonded with for long enough so that you can equip them when you switch to another ring. This gets to be so cumbersome I stopped bothering- this is a running trend. For certain units it got to the point where I didn’t see any actual use in switching up rings unless I got a new unit or reclaimed certain rings due to plot reasons.Some of the skills are so expensive that I decided to just keep certain rings on units where I felt they didnt need to diversify, like why should I ever not have Alcryst hold Lyn and keep all of her skills. Why shouldn’t I just keep Hector on Timerra when she just tanks literally everything with him and follows through with Sandstorm, every skill Hector has is too expensive to just let some other schmuck have it -Diamant got shafted in his growths- I have no other tank! Many of these Rings do have neat mechanics, and I WILL SAY I DID BUY THE EXPANSION PASS-

NOTE: I SHOULDA MENTIONED EARLIER I DID BUY THE EXPANSION PASS THIS FEELS PERTINENT TO THE DIFFICULTY CURVE OF THIS SRPG

But several of these rings do have neat mechanics- although its clear much of the best rings come from having bought the DLC. Several of these mechanics range from a counter from Ike’s Great Aether, having Micaiah drain her HP to 1 and heal all other allies to full HP, and having Lyn just fucking snipe from across the map. However, in the DLC you have Tiki who just gives units a second wind, Hector who tanks everything and has guaranteed follow ups, Chrobin who has a rally for all stats and Veronica from Heroes. Soren and Veronica’s inclusion in the DLC is so cool, but only because they’re like 2 of the other characters that have an attitude. It was incredibly refreshing having Soren come in and suddenly it felt like I was talking to a human, Veronica too tbh. Her mechanic is also really neat- on top of having an attacking staff like in FEH she can summon random units like in FEH from 1 of 4 colors but they vary in strength from 3 star weaklings to 5 star units based off the other rings.

(b. Divine Paralogues)

Perhaps to my disadvantage, oddly enough, I decided to tackle some of the 'divine paralogues' much earlier on. The first being Tiki’s is a map that constantly feeds you dragons and tough opponents as you get to the end. It’s a hard map but you get a pretty good ring out of it. Unfortunately for the next few maps and onward most of the game just felt a lot easier than I thought it was meant to be, as I went through more and more of these divine paralogues. I wanted to know when it was best to tackle these, and saw that people preferred them at much earlier levels, so sure enough I thought it best to do them earlier than later. What this meant was I had several rings that the game doesn't really account for.

These rings don’t break the game, necessarily, however I do feel like several maps were made much simpler or didn’t hit as hard because I had these rings at the ready. In this aspect I'm reminded of Xenoblade 2 and its handling of difficulty- I struggled here as well, due to the numerous flimsy tutorials, details not told to you and the much different combat system from XB1's. As I went through XB2 though, I grew to understand and eventually conquer most of the game's mechanics and grow my arsenal of blades (except Kos-Mos fuck that).
I also think that that game succeeds in its expansion pass by giving people a bunch of rare crystals and two of the strongest blades in game. Note that while these blades are incredibly strong I don't think they necessarily break anything- namely they just act as consistent and easy to use blades usable from the early game onward. You can continue to use, pull and customize other blades to your liking and go about the game as you please.

On the contrary, these expansion pass maps for Fire Emblem feel incredibly weird to have on top of other paralogues, giving you so much XP in the process. In something like Xenoblade I don't think anyone minds dominating enemies- sure there's a sort of elation to figuring out weird or difficult fights in rpgs but Xenoblade bosses are rarely...'cerebral?' they mostly just act around for the story and have that MMO raid type vibe, you get the idea. In Fire Emblem though, much of the appeal comes from the careful considerations regarding your team, their equipment, their skills, the map, the kinds of enemies, etc. While I feel like parts of these are present here, I think there's so many new trinkets and gimmicks that its just too easy to hit ‘optimize rings/items’ and just stick with whatever you're given. After a while, once you’ve stuck with certain rings you just don't even bother switching things up.
Sidenote: I do really wish there was a set mechanic where you can just preset certain items that you always want certain units to get so you don’t have to optimize some times and go into a map only to realize that Alcryst didnt get the longbow and got the minibow thanks IntSys.

I just think that it would have been smart for the divine paralogues to have not given EXP or taken some measures to not completely overpower you for the rest of the game, idk. Maybe only unlock at the near end of the game? Maybe not scale to the party’s level? It just feels like a sloppy way to add these guys in. Also man, some of those maps took an eternity to finish.

(c. new Units)
It feels like you're constantly getting new units that are clearly better than what you had before. That early game feels so weird in hindsight and like a completely different game because all your units were just that bad. It feels like Radiant Dawn with its Dawn Brigade levels of 'I guess these guys are my party'. Yunaka I tried getting you to work but dear god someone fucked up your numbers because a later dude just works so much better.
Perhaps this is Int Sys's way of combating earlier FE-mindset that favors keeping a consistent party meanwhile later units that are already promoted get left to the wayside? But I always figured most of these units were supposed to act as replacements in case you had a unit die, the only drawback being that it lacked as much investment? Here it feels like you're supposed to get a 'feel' for each of these waves of party members but I know my ass is not using anyone other than these royals that are clearly some of the best units. Still it was kinda nice to just switch out who i was using for a while, like using Merrin over Yunaka for a few maps but still it felt like there was a clear bias towards all the royalty units. Not helped that these royalty units have unique classes that seem like they’re supposed to stick to, and switching to any other class robs you of the class skills inherent to that royalty class, some of which are really good! But like, I wanted to have a normal Halberdier and maybe a Paladin? Nah instead I get a uh, ‘Succeseur’ and a ‘Landwurm’. Idk, party composition just didn’t feel all that satisfying this time around outside of using Lindon for whatever reason (props to the conversation between him and Veronica where she exclaims ‘she regrets the day she gets summoned by the Order of Heroes’, I actually chuckled for once in the game).
It feels like Engage has the Fates issue of having all of your sibling units be these extremely powerful units that you HAVE to use, because why wouldn’t you have Xander or Takumi. But at least even these units dont get these unique promotes and you can kinda just go wacky making Camilla a berserker or something for some reason.

II. Maps

Alright I’ll come clean and say it. I don’t know the first thing about map design, I know! I know! I’ve played all the Fire Emblems but I still don’t really understand it! What I will say is that while I don’t have the basic understandings of map design, I’ll brazenly and foolheartedly say that I think it’s generally an overvalued thing in the series in several aspects.
I dont know, I just never minded Fire Emblems with generally simpler map designs, although many of these are from much simpler times or have other aspects that I feel overtake the need for gimmicky map layouts. I like Genealogy a lot, I felt it had good maps but less from a tactical standpoint and more from a consistency and scale standpoint. Echoes: Shadow of Valentia has these horridly simple maps and gets regularly lambasted because of it but I’d much prefer these kinds of map alongside the neat little dungeon exploring action segments any day of the week over stuff like Thracia’s litany of brutal maps. Fates Conquest I think has the best medium, having a large amount of gimmicky maps but interspersing them with some simple ones to ease out the experience, it’s a wonder most people point to Chapter 10 as a highlight in the franchise.
With regards to Engage what I will say is that I think map-wise many of them do come out the better end of things, having neat things to watch out for and a lot of playthings to work with. What I don’t particularly like is how often the maps feel like they rely on throwing an absurdly large number of reinforcements down your throat upon hitting a certain threshold.
How come so many of the maps are predicated on this "What if we just summoned a bunch of dudes"? I don't often yell in frustration but I got so pissed nearing the end of Chapter 21, as you near the boss of a fairly simple map but once you reach the backroom, the map just decides to spawn like 12 units on all sides. What's frustrating is that its already a map that's just constantly sending out guys from all sides and that's it. There's no other element to the fight; it's a complete war of attrition if you don’t just beeline it to the boss. This just happened so often by the end of the game it started feeling farcical, hell it even bled into the divine paralogues. Tiki’s map is pretty rough with it but holy fucking hell Camilla your map took 2 hours just because they poured in from everywhere. Was the boss that hard? Nah, it just took fucking forever getting to her. It really sucks too because I think some of the maps had neat ideas by the end but this one aspect just kept popping up like a bad habit. I guess it’s to teach you to not split up your party? I don’t know.

Fire emblem maps can be hit or miss throughout the series but generally I don't mind when games have weaker maps if I find the overall gameplay or the story to fill in the gaps in basic or straightforward maps. Although with Engage, despite having some interesting maps it didn’t really have much of a backbone when it came to the scenario or the characters but I’ll get to that later. Thracia was a game of similar feeling when I left it- a fairly rough time with strong maps throughout- but I did come to enjoy its story and its attempt to tell this side story from Genealogy, of an ousted Prince from Leonster come to restore his family and kingdom’s honor while liberating the nation that stole it. Here, you can have a map with miasma or cannons or anything but I'm just wondering why the hell im fighting the same fucking goons over and over and over again. Also I had a REALLY hard time telling certain opponents apart- the shift to 3D comes with certain unforeseen costs. Obviously, this isn't too bad with flying units or mage or horseunits but like sometimes the Heroes really look like Warriors or Armored units or even Great Knights idk maybe im blind.

The maps overall are fine, but only up to a certain point where some of them really overstep their boundary in what just feels like wasting my time. Don’t show me the exit only to start throwing pots and pans once I’m a foot away from the door.


III. Story, Cast and Vibes

The writing is just absolutely abysmal. I know "ha ha Fire Emblem when it has a bad story!" but it was genuinely frightening when the best slice of dialogue in the entire game was from the expansion pass.

(a. I don’t like hanging out with your friends Alear)
Most of the conversations are just fine, but it reeeally depends on who you have on board. Sometimes there's winners but other times it's just this morass of skipping dialogue that these games always get into. I started thinking about Yakuza and its sidestories- once you've played a Yakuza or two you get the general idea of how it might play out. Typically on my end, this might lead to some text skimming if I don't feel as though the substory is particularly interesting and that's fine, each of these games has at least 50+ substories to go through for a series with 8 mainline entries + spinoffs. But usually there's a bunch that have intriguing premises and rewards and setups so it's always nice to take a break and see what you can get on your plate. Back in Fire Emblem it just....feels like I never left. And god do I want out. It was so lovely when three houses dropped and people at the time were just like "Man! Some of these three houses dialogues do not end amicably!" and I think that's great! Sometimes you just hang with some guy and the vibes go awry! It felt pretty refreshing to see character interactions that just felt like acquaintanceships, especially once you get to the end credits and certain units just have paired endings as friends.

Here…I’m sorry I don’t find the cast all that interesting but I’d have to get really into how fast the tone of this game starts feeling jarring. From the very get-go once Alear wakes up you’re constantly barraged by characters that compliment and suck your dick because you are the Divine Dragon. Cool! I think? Not really! I echo back to the sentiment I had with the beginning feeling jarring because so many of your starting party members just are not interesting outside of really liking that you're the Divine Dragon. After the halfway points certain characters get shown and I ended up having a few characters I liked but nothing really grabbed my attention. A lot of these guys just feel like the Awakefates “here’s my main quirk!” for several conversations and I really don’t wanna waste my time reading over what may or may not shed one layer of this character. Yeah maybe Seadall has some interesting conversations but why should I bother when he might just say something similar in another conversation with another party member, why should i bother with any of these conversations? Why should I bother with most dialogue in this game. It might be a bit harsh for me just not care about most of this dialogue but to be quite honest rarely does the game present itself in a way where it seems like something interesting could happen.

I think it’s mostly the cutscene/animations. Just something about seeing the same characters appear at the same places in the Somniel doing the same animations all the while rarely doing anything that could fire neurons or stem from usual path, I didn’t really want to take the chance and skim through several lines of dialogue for maybe. I don’t know, maybe I just got burnt out too fast and I didn’t give most of the guys a chance, I'm sure there’s interesting nuggets here and there but I didn’t really have any incentive or desire to further explore characters that seemed like milquetoast from the get. Awakening and Fates also has this issue to certain degrees although I’ll give props to Fates Conquest for having a whole cast of just weirdos. Like yeah now I’ll pay attention now that the characters in question are psychopaths and maladjusted soldiers. Here’s the most interesting unit is…idk Panette? Seadall? You’d have to put a gun to my head.


What’s rough is that it feels like this bleeds out into the Engage characters as well. Here, because each of the games' representatives is the protag or a secondary protag/character most of the interaction just feels like the same dialogue but interspersed with "hey this was the place where that really meaningful event happened..." followed by "we will now trust ourselves even more. with you by my side we will be the strongest ever heroes foreverer" I really wanna stress how boring most of the dialogue in this game is. Most of the intrigue just came from how much more interesting previous games were.

(b. Story! or actually cutscene direction- the story is so who cares i didn't feel like talking about most of it. Alear is the son of the villain big whoop, could you at least plagiarize a better fire emblem)

Earlier Fire Emblems could get away with low budget storytelling by having just the usual visual novel portrait do most of the action, and maybe having the in-game models do limited actions to supplement certain scenes or motions. Here we have the first game in the series without portraits and we get to see cutscenes flow with the characters, but unfortunately most of them just…stand there. Like the high budget stuff is fine obviously but whenever we’re out of that mode we have scenes where the characters are just standing there and reacting with generic motions. I couldn’t help but laugh every now and then as villains just stood around gloating like 10 feet from our entourage and I just wanted one of them to take the initiative and attack them. This happens all the time with media, the guy that’s clearly open to be shot but no one takes advantage- its fine. But here it just feels so weird to see the same cultist evildoers just standing around and the heroes are just kinda standing there having a casual conversation? There’s no like.. ambushed! or… surprised! stance or…’hesitant’? stance, it just seemed like our characters just shook their heads and stood in place usually as the main villains just did their piece. It feels incredibly flaccid. Also man I really don’t like the villains here, you fight them so often and it rarely feels like I want to fight them. Not because I felt sympathetic or heartfelt fighting them but because I was wondering when the fuck they’d just die. Nobody really dies in this game, or it sure doesn’t feel like it outside of one chapter. A place gets burnt in one chapter separate from that but even that didn’t feel all that dire. I felt like I was fighting Danganronpa characters rather than some re-imagining of the four fangs from Blazing Blade.

Granted, there is an impressive amount of variety in certain text, even if its only for short conversations between the rings and for certain story moments.

It's kinda odd I like a lot of the designs here and I don't think I'd mind the change to a more light hearted tone but a part of me wonders why the hell this was even put in a medieval setting to begin with? Why not just make this the first modern feeling Fire Emblem? I feel like the series could benefit from shedding away these overdone medieval locales and time period. Just make it like Final Fantasy and do some weird fusion of diesel/steam-punk with fantasy elements and weaponry. I had wished when this game first leaked that this was the fire emblem to have taken us to the modern age. I know it'd be fucky having modern day tech alongside stuff like cavalry and archers but who cares. I don't care if guns exist alongside the dude with a ring that summons some dude.

(C. Somniel)

It’s kinda weird writing this segment out because it feels like it ties into a lot of the main issues I have with all the other parts of the game. The somniel is the rest stop after each battle for you to maintain so many aspects and manage all of these things…! Don’t go here every chapter! Maybe every two!

Maybe if I delved deeper into research I could find some use for some of these things but like did my enjoyment of the game stem from having not sent a bunch of money to some country for more bond fragments? Probably not.

Also by the way where the hell is all the money in this game anyway? You get like 50,000 G at chapter 20 something and its like where the fuck was all this hiding. Like I didn’t really need gold that much anyway but where the hell is it?

Do I need to fish? Did petting Crungett (the little cat thing) mean all that much? Did I even need new non-emblem bond rings? Well alright I did like Olwen’s Dire Thunder. I wish more of these were readily available but it didn't really feel like it mattered.

I really regret spending as much time as I did early on here, I don’t even know what most of these side things are meant for. Did I really need to get all of the bright shiny spots on the map? nah.

It plays a lot like the Monastery in Three Houses or the base with Lilith in Fates but it felt so weirdly unnecessary. It’s not terrible but after the halfway point I just didn’t want to spend anymore time there except to check on skills and sp, rather than train in the arena or anything. I started thinking about Fallout 4’s settlements and before long I wanted to stop thinking about most things about this game (alright it's not that bad but I really didn’t give a shit about sorting what pets are on the farm or wyvern riding. I'm sorry, Engage).


IV. The last section

(a.) Just pettiness at this point the review is already this long fuck it, its 1am,

Ah man i didnt even talk about how fucking stupid skirmishes are. I didn’t remember or realize that there’s a difference between skirmishes and training battles

Why have rings for certain important figures in each game but then have some of those guys come back and have a second ring? Like how come the Three Houses group get a ring for each of the three house leaders but then there's a single ring that has all of them bundled together, thats a waste of three of the eight slots each game gets.

I’ll give the final boss props, matching the emblems to their respective villains that have been summoned is kinda neat but them not being named by their actual names is so stupid, like 8 of these Dark Engage rings are called like ‘Dark Dragon’ or “Fallen King’ (also like why do these evil engages have weird ass stat distributions and weapons; why does Veld’s engage ring go on a fucking bow knight he was a bishop??)

Man. I kinda wish they had remixed some new music for the divine paralogues. I don't remember the Corrin/Fates remix because I got to Camilla and I just wanted it to be a remix of Alight (Storm). Also why is it called the trial of genealogy when its the map for Leif from Thracia 776 are they fucking stupid?

No one fucks in this story. Like yeah obviously no one has nudity in these games but like you get the pact ring near the end of the game and that's what our romance is? You go through the credits of the game and there’s only two endings for each character and the second one is only based on whether or not you decided to give them the ring lmao. 3H spoiled us on interesting epilogues. Also like why the fuck is the special CG so similar looking to the one in 3H? It kinda scared me checking and wondering whether or not they just straight up reused the same ‘soft purple evening’ outlook from that game but there’s minute differences. I also like that you go into some of these endings for characters that are clearly like “we CANNOT have this kid/your sister marry you what the fuck” but instead of having the ‘pact’ ending be anything where Alear connects or supports their future going forward, the problematic choice character just fucks off and does whatever they were gonna do divorced of your epilogue. Like yeah, good choice dummy. (I chose Ivy, she’s okay) (I wish she could keep the glasses on at all times)


(b.) A discussion about fan service
The idea of 'Fan Service' is one that's been long tied to games and feels incredibly prescient over the medium as a whole (albeit not exclusive). The idea of watching a new announcement and suddenly its this ‘new project’ but what if, we had this returning character from an older game! And it crosses over into this media franchise! And so on and so forth.
It's commonplace by now but even with as jaded as I sound with this- its always fun to see what's been tied to what even if someone loosely. I started thinking about Fire Emblem X SMT, a game that was announced at the opportune time for me, having just gotten into Fire Emblem through Awakening and was playing through SMT4. To my dismay this turned out to become something much different than what 14 year old me imagined- some idol based rpg where the characters have Awakening and Shadow Dragon stands and fight with a Persona like system. I was disappointed at the revelation but so many years later I can respect that it kind of has this neat personality to it. I still haven't played it, mind you- I do own a copy but I’ll get to it probably before I die. I can harp over that game’s lack of variety in who they chose to represent the ‘stands’ or what not but 1) again i haven't played it and 2) it being relegated to mostly arachnea does lend itself to some kinda intrigue like oh shit they’re pulling deep cuts like Bord and Cord. It's placement in a separate, human universe alongside these SMT mechanics feels slightly more...real, I guess. It's adherence to themes and elements of the idol industry, while an extremely different flavor from both the general western fantasy themes and Fire Emblem (and SMT somewhat) as a whole- make for a fairly unique concept which I feel gives it some room to stand.
But with Engage I don't feel this strong connection to Fire Emblem- even with all these references and ties to other games in the series I only barely feel that energy I do with other games in the series. Hell, part of what I enjoyed about Fire Emblem games prior was that much of those callbacks were so 'museum'-like in their presence I was a lot more interested in seeing what the other FEs offered. Part of why I went and played Fire Emblem 4 was because FEH had a chapter back in 2018 that played the first few map themes during the mission.
This isn't to say that the depiction of every other game in the franchise into Engage is inherently terrible or anything but I don't get this desire or heart-swelling playing many of these maps that I figured were supposed to make me feel back to when I played all these other games. There are brief moments of pointing out certain neat details that hearken back to these games but that’s about it.
Here, while all of the fanservice is tied into the mechanics and the story of Engage, it's such a bizarre concept that I can't really immerse myself into its presence. It's one thing for a gacha game- some free mobile app where you're just able to gather all of these characters and snowball from there over the course of 6 years and build out interactions, have all these characters and alternate outfits, new storylines each year and you just put that to the side for 15 minutes a day or something. Not a particularly amazing game but I'm glad its lasted as long as it had and built out all these weird storylines.

I think my main fear is if I'm just growing out of the series- but that doesn't feel like the case, I think the overall gameplay loop and design decision behind the core of Fire Emblem is incredibly addicting and engaging. Late last year I got and played through the beginning of Tactics Ogre Reborn. A great game for what I've played, but incredibly dry, I haven't put as much into it as I'd like despite this. I just know Fire Emblem way more and I enjoy the kind of specialized unit pseudo party composition that FE brings rather than the hiring units style of other tactics games. FE just tends to have this sauce that I really like for the most part even at most of its derivative moments.

Also!! Fuck isometric viewpoints!! I’m tired of seeing them!! Sorry Devil Survivor fans!! I don't like trying to guess what direction the d-pad is gonna take me when there is no top right button!!

I really hope the next game is just mind-bendingly different. Maybe part of it is I'm growing out of the series but so much of this feels like been there, done that. I'm so tired of these support conversations with the same animations, this same kinda world, these same archetypes and plot twists and elements. This game feels more incestuous than Awakening, Fates and the entirety of the Jugdral games despite not actually having any, this might be the most surprising plot detail in Engage. I really want a game that's just able to stand out- and I felt like that's what Three Houses was doing, which I look back on a bit more fondly now despite some of the issues surrounding it. I guess I'm just thinking about how it feels like the last 'normal' feeling Fire Emblem in the series was Fates?? Echoes is great but a remake and has much of these action-adventure segments, Three Houses has this Persona/Harry Potter-esque feeling that I feel overshadows the actually tactical aspect of FE and then this which almost feels like a return to form in some ways but so many of its annoying gimmicks just hampered my enjoyment. Engage is cloyingly Fire Emblem.

Ah, I’m not even sure where to begin. As a very long time fan of the series, my excitement for this game could not be contained. This came in the form of checking obsessively for updates and news since the initial Reddit leaks around June of 2022. From that leak, we learned that this game was intended to release during the Fire Emblem 30th anniversary but was delayed.
Knowing that information, the expectation that this game would properly honor the long legacy of well-crafted games that FE has offered in the past 30 or so years weighed very heavy (partly cause I’m a complete sucker for fanservice in the form of nostalgia bait lol).
I have a lot of thoughts, so I’ll try to structure this in a way that makes sense.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Before the game released, I had my eyes constantly peeled for information about characters/ gameplay mechanics as they slowly came to light over the months until its release and my outlook stayed consistently mixed.
The art style was unique, straying far away from FE’s generally more gothic style. I would be inclined to call it more ‘anime’ but then I remember that FE has been anime from the start. Probably a better comparison is that Vinland Saga and Love Live! are both anime but with distinctively different styles. Engage’s character design style is quite vtuber-esque, which makes sense as the character designer makes vtubers in the first place.
One thing I did dislike was how youthful all the characters looked and how old a supposedly 45-year-old Vander looked closer to 60 instead. I feel as though a lot of the characters look “same-y” with most of the main cast of girls having similar faces and body types. This is something I hoped would be helped with each of them having unique and interesting personalities. I had the same issue with how the ‘emblems’ or heroes from games past, however I suppose that’s to be expected when translating old designs with varying artists over the years into a common art style.
To appeal to veterans of the series, one thing that was emphasized was the effort put into things such as battle mechanics, returning maps and, ring gacha, and of course, emblems featuring iconic protagonists from past games. A little disappointed in the decision to not include Alm along with Celica since they are a lord duo much like Eirika and Ephraim, who were both included in base game. Felt the same in the case of Eliwood, Hector and Lyn from Blazing Blade (FE7).
Before release, day 1 DLC was announced at the Game Awards 2022. This DLC would be four waves and cost a whopping $29.99 (jeez!). Wave 1 would feature the very popular three lords from FE16 in their academy attire available as usable emblems. Aside from my general distaste for day 1 DLC, the announcement … was not a good look, but also not a surprise since it is increasingly common with games nowadays. In the past, DLC hasn’t been handled very well in the series, mostly being used to host easy money, item or exp farming maps in the ‘newemblem’ games Awakening (FE13), Fates (FE14), and Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (FE15). In the case of FE16, the DLC was mostly costume content and the Ashen Wolves extra storyline that took about a year to come out, which, in my opinion, took way too long.
That being said, I purchased the DLC day 1 like a good little player hoping that it’s handled much better than before, even if my expectations for that are low (lol).

CHARACTERS
In this game, you are the Divine Dragon Alear (or any other name you so choose) and have recently awaken from a slumber that lasted for tens of generations. Upon your awakening, the stewards that were tasked with overseeing you are very much shocked and honored to be in your presence, as most of the characters are when they find out you are the Divine Dragon. It was very cute at first but the constant fangirling got a bit old. Here’s a fun drinking game: take a shot every time you hear “Divine Dragon.”
Alear starts the game as cowardly but finds their resolves after a few major turns of events in the story It was nice seeing them develop the traditionally brave and unyielding personality as expected of a lord. The change seemed a bit abrupt, but the new personality was a very appreciated development.
As far as the other characters, it’s really a mixed bag. In their supports with Alear, some characters feel one note and rather “trope-y” or just straight up forgettable. However, there is a certain handful with complex personalities or are simply enjoyable to be around. Pandreo’s constant AWOOOs never fail to make me crack a smile.

MAIN STORY/TONE
I won’t get too much into this as it would be better for people to experience it for themselves but, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. The story is not good. Laughable at times, really. The more serious, if you can even call it that, scenes are presented so terribly it’s hard not to cackle out loud. Aside from the comically “villainous” band of clowns that feel like they were featured in a 4Kids animation, the twists and big reveals in the story are more than predictable and honestly not that interesting in first place. And the ones that were not expected seem so off the wall. Even the canon deaths in cutscenes had 0 emotional impact and lasted way too long. I really did try to give this story many, many chances but it managed to ping pong between comical and straight up nonsensical.
This … is probably the thing I’m most disappointed about. Especially since multiple games in the past have had such rich and nuanced stories with memorable parts that still have left an impact on me. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the “light dragon good and purple dragon bad” formula but the motives behind … everything seems too random and convoluted.

GAMEPLAY AND MECHANICS
The combat in this game is fun; it’s easy to see that this is where a lot of focus was placed during development.
The weapon triangle is back after taking a hiatus for FE16. Properly following the triangle rewards the player with a ‘break’ to the enemy which forces them to drop their weapon and does not allow them to attack until the end of the turn. This is easily exploitable, allowing players to absolutely destroy map bosses on a single turn. This is negated by the revival stones that some of them hold which gives them an extra health bar. This is similar to the multiple health bars that certain beast encounters had in FE16 albeit on a smaller scale.
I still have very mixed feelings about the break mechanic. On one hand, its good to reward new players for following the weapon triangle but on the other, it makes boss encounters a bit of a cakewalk.
The enemy AI seems generally smarter. They can properly utilize the same mechanics, allowing them to chain attack, chain guard, use terrain and movement type to their advantage too. This can get tricky at times with bad unit placement but honestly I think it’s part of the thrill.
Time rewind, or action rewind, seems to have become a permanent feature in FE after its initial introduction as Mila’s Turnwheel in FE15. This is great for players who need to rethink their unit’s position or to reroll on some less than favorable RNG. The location this time is hidden in the menu during battle, out of the way for those who do not want to see or use it.
The abundance of skills available via the emblem rings make for units that are more customizable than ever before. I do think since the game encourages you to rotate rings across units, there are too many skills to keep up with at times which is a bit overwhelming.
Though the UI is quite modern now, there are a few things that do need to make a comeback. The menu is so compact, it’s quite easy for things such as the bond conversations and the support conversations to get lost. There is no longer an icon that notifies the player when there is new activity there, making it very easy to forget to do them.
It is my understanding that the Somniel is supposed to feel rather grand and spacious, however it did feel a little too big at times.
The paralogues are fun. It’s nice to see the return of old maps in an updated form. It’s even cooler that Alear can walk around said maps after battle. The amount of detail placed into each is more than admirable.

SOUNDTRACK
Here is where this game REALLY shines. Amazing remixes of old tracks as well as new ones using motifs from the opening song.
Personally, not a fan of the opening song as it gives vibes more akin to Sonic or Saturday morning cartoons, but its fine.
Really hoping some time in the near future there will be uploads online of the soundtrack so I can listen to it more carefully. A shame that it did not come included with the Divine Edition of the game.

BONUS – DIVINE EDITION / AMIIBO FUNCTIONALITY / DLC CONTENT
I of course needed to get my grubby little hands on the Divine Edition the moment it was up for preorder, and I was very luckily able to get it before it sold out. The edition comes with the game in a regular plastic game case, a steelbook with the same outer design, one medium sized poster, a set of 12 holographic cards of the emblems featured in the base game and a very nice and heavy artbook. It’s … fine. A little disappointed it didn’t come with the soundtrack like the special editions for FE15, FE16 and FE: Warriors did. The art cards and poster are fine but overall, the contents are underwhelming other than the artbook. Felt about the same when receiving the FE14 special edition back in 2014.
Amiibo functionality makes a return but not in the same way it did in FE14 and FE15. Each scan grants the player one music ticket and one costume ticket which they can later use to unlock clothing modeled after emblems in the game. I’m not sure why but the cap the scan amiibo within a 24 hour period is 5 which is odd. If someone has all 11 of the FE amiibo released as of Jan 2023, it’d take them an entire three days to scan all of them just for some tickets. As far as the actual outfits and music, they’re pretty cool. The only thing that disappoints me is that the costumes are gender locked as well as by certain units. This is a little disappointing considering that the emblems when engaged have unisex outfits. But I suppose it was easier from a development standpoint.
As of writing this review, only one wave out of four has released. This included some costumes available for units to wear in the Somniel as well as Tiki and the FE16 trio in the form of emblem bracelets.

(p.s. Don’t forget to grab the Silver Card on Tiki’s map xoxo)

FINAL THOUGHTS
There was a lot of love put into this game, and I could tell the devs had fun with it too. Though some things about this game doesn’t fit my tastes, I hope it’s attractive enough for new players to want to play it, then maybe play some other entries too. I won’t hark on about how other games in the series blow this one out of the water. Honestly, variation in quality is something that should be expected of a nearly 33-year-old game series. Thankfully it now has the opportunity to keep improving and taking risks as it has been doing for some years now.
FE means a lot to me, it’s my favorite JRPG series for a reason. I'll always have very high expectations for it.
It makes me very happy that the previously niche little title has grown into one of Nintendo’s biggest selling IPs after a very close brush with death. Cannot wait for what’s in store next time.

Playtime: 48:33

To me, Fire Emblem Engage feels like one small step forward and three steps back which is unfortunate because i've had a long and close history with this series through many of its ups and downs and I really felt like they were onto something special with three houses. This being said, Engage is a strong contender for the best gameplay in the entire series and was still good fun overall, I just had to grit my teeth through a LOT of the story and character moments.

I could make this an extremely lengthy review going into all of the things this game does wrong and right but I don't think its worth it - for the most part, this is just a pretty fine fire emblem game with a major central gimmick (summoning 'emblems' of previous FE heroes), everything else is about what I would expect from this series by now. The main thing I do want to hone in on is the groan-worthy story and characters, which play into just about every trope and cliche imaginable. Engage's story and dialogue are so unimaginative and generic even for a fire emblem game, which only feels worse because of how the series had started to reinvent itself somewhat with Echoes & Three Houses, both games I really like. There are characters whom I very much took a liking to such as Jade, the 'iron wall' of defense who is actually a relaxed author who likes to meditate. I also like Timerra & Fogado (though tbf fogado is basically just Claude) for their upbeat and playful personalities. Yunaka & Diamant stole the show as units and ended up absolutely mowing down enemies with 0 trouble. Supports are really short now but that's likely because of just how many of them there are along with new 'bond' conversations with emblems - I was not a fan and ended up skipping quite a lot of these, they just don't do much for me. Engage does also have some good to see diversity in its cast in terms of race, age, personalities etc - but what I can't get over is its shockingly bad character designs. I call this the 'Genshin Impactification' of fire emblem with its over-designed, V-tuber looking cast that to me, just feel completing lacking in cohesion and appeal. Three Houses did such an amazing job with its art direction and making its character designs make sense for the type of character they were portraying and where they came from - the same just can't be said for Engage and that's really to its detriment, its just a total amalgamation of ideas.
Oh yeah also, how is Vander supposed to be old but looks about 30 with his hair dyed white and how is Saphir actually only 35 yet looks about 50, what's going on?

Anyway the game, despite its flaws and its largely lackluster and anti-climatic storyline, does manage to be really quite fun! The emblem/engage mechanic for all of its upkeep and setup ends up adding a huge and much needed layer of depth and variety to combat, creating interesting tactical scenarios and strategies. Playing it on hard especially meant carefully planning out every move to optimise my units and my turns. The maps are comparatively large and open with just enough restriction to keep it intense and the difficulty curve and progression felt just right. The somniel and its lame minigames and level of micromanagement for little reward was a bit of a drawback because I just want to get back to the good stuff but its necessary to get the full experience and keep the advantage in its levels.

Definitely a disappointment but from what I had seen of the game, it wasn't that surprising and I also didn't pay for this game (I got it with a gifted voucher) so I don't feel like it was a waste. I'm still glad to have played it but this direction of fire emblem really doesn't do a lot for me. Though its meant to be 'classic' in style and a celebration of the series, its actually a wild change of tone and aesthetic that I do not vibe with at all - genuinely preferred the three houses musuo to this but that game was honestly not bad!