I played this game for the first time through a draft format and had a good bit of fun with it! I think the last few maps can be especially draining if you don't know about micaiah + warp/rewarp to skip through them quickly, but once I found how broken that was the experience got a lot better for me. There's a lot of cool options and plenty of units to play around with and throw them on, so maybe a draft wasn't the ideal starting point, but regardless I think the emblems are a great system to keep any units relevant and ensure you have the power to get through any map!

While I do think there's better written entries, I don't think the writing is all as bad as people say. I'm not gonna lie as an FE4 fan and say I was fully engaged at the end of the day, but it still has some nice moments and I think the characters in supports manage to not be as reliant on their One Trope as some other entries when you get them to higher ranks. That being said, there are a few that from the random C ranks in arena fighting I got to check out who make it seem like it's a bit of a roulette on how hard they rely on their weird personality trait, so it could be a tiny bit of a grab bag.

Running around the somniel is fun, but for your own sanity unless you're a minmax freak don't partake in every activity after every mission, it gets so tiring.

This game didn’t leave a very good impression on me at all and it continued to get worse as the game went on. The gameplay is fantastic and so fun but I value games for their story and Engages story is just short of abysmal. I think I liked about two characters with the rest being cringey weird and bizarre but not in a good way. The story had nothing interesting going for it, with a lot of the story beats being pathetically lacklustre, dragged out and again, bizarre. Worst villains, main character, cast and story I’ve ever experienced in an FE game.

I would have ranked higher up if it weren’t for the sour taste the last 2 chapters left in my mouth when I returned a year later to finish it. They constantly spam enemy reinforcements close to your units as a way of penning you into loads of turns just to drag out gameplay. This was especially frustrating as I could kill enemies with no problem, but because of the sheer amount of them they whittled me down in time and destroyed any enjoyment I had in the first hour.

Overall my least favourite FE game, the gameplay is fun but I can get that elsewhere in other games.

While the writing does feel like a step down (especially many of the support conversations), the game feels great to play. Lots of customisation options for units, and the further use of Emblems is a cool addition. I am also a sucker for "Oh, a reference I understand" which the game has quite a bit of.

It also had possibly the funniest title drop I've seen in a game.

Colgate-chan fights on.

Fire Emblem Engage. Got really, really into Fire Emblem right before its release, playing much of the series in a feverish pitch with this game's release being the climax. Was it worth it? Sure was. One of my favorite Femblems.

Gameplay? Fantastic. The difficulty of the Maddening mode has hands-down the best difficulty pacing in the series; they really got it with this one. It's enough of a toothy challenge right off the bat that always feels hard enough, and it keeps pace with you even as you gain more and more tools to deal with its challenges. It contrasts with Three Houses Maddening, which is comically difficult in the beginning with your do-nothing scrub kids until they grow into their own and it gets much easier. Pretty great last maps, though. It also contrasts with Conquest's Lunatic difficulty, which punches your face in from the start and every mission is a fight for your life. Yeah, Conquest is pretty great, too.

The systems of simple character customization with emblem ring skills and the emblems themselves were really fun. I was worried that the game would be a juggernaut-fest of steamrolling the enemy with superpowered transforming emblem units (this can still happen but only if you really know what you're doing), but was pleasantly surprised at just how fun the emblem engaging mechanics were. The series fanservice was pretty nice, too, having the player take on some of the hardest maps from the old games.

Other production value things - great soundtrack with its dynamic battle themes, excellent animation with throwbacks to GBA battle animations, the previous peak of the series, and some really nice optimization. The game actually runs well on the switch, which is a real shocker.

What I didn't like as much is pretty much what everyone else didn't like, the story and the character designs. The story is Fine, it's a campy Marvel story that I was checked out of and kind of enjoyed the villain's motivations metaphorically as a Femblem gamer who just like me fr. It had hype moments, so what more could I ask for. Oh, I know - less text. The game had so much text and said so little with it! Man!

The character designs. Many will kvetch that they are too "anime," too "weeby," because, well, Fire Emblem has never been animesque! Anyway, Mika Pikazo's art owns, and I like some of the really exaggerated designs. Seeing Celine flip around in a giant poofy onion dress and platform shoes is the funniest and best thing. The problem is, there's no cohesion. Like, none. No one looks like they live where they're from, no one looks like they inhabit the same world, and nothing looks real. They feel like a bunch of gacha game character designs slapped together, and that's pretty much how they were made - IS asked Pikazo to just go and design 50 characters and bada-bing-bada-boom here we go. Bring us back to Echoes... or at least, Thracia...

Anyway, great strategy RPG

For better or worse, Fire Emblem is a formative part of who I am. The works we choose to Engage™ with in our youth tends to form a basis of our media literacy and in which initial appreciation for art stems. The ideas and themes we are first exposed to are inherently novel after all. With little else to compare with, these stories are earnestly received as they are indulged in. We have yet to form the necessary experiences to be critical, let alone know of contempt. And so, we view these early works that we are exposed to undeservedly favourably. This insidious phenomenon that retroactively becomes seen as nostalgia is something I must overcome! I like to think I have grown much since my youth. I can do it now! I am strong enough! It is time for me to condemn the naive joys of my past and see them as what they truly are so that I may live solely in the present. I will not shy away at the edge of dawn. It is time to destroy Fire Emblem, this puppy love of mine. This latest entry shall serve as a perfect target of my ire.

However, before I can get to condemning Engage™, there is necessary context that must be considered. It is not just a standalone iterative sequel after all. It is the celebratory title! It would seek to present itself as the ultimate culmination of an anthology. A statement of the series in its whole. The final destination of a long journey. If it dares to lay claim to such lofty dominion, then it elicits proper scrutiny. We will not just judge Fire Emblem Engage™ by what it is, but also, on what it isn’t. What it could have been. What it SHOULD have been!

Fire Emblem history, to me, is comprised of three distinct eras. The ‘Kaga Saga’, the first of which, having a particularly distinctive creative direction. Serving as the foundational ethos for all the future games to come, these early games were experimental in nature. More willing than most to utilise the unique qualities of videogames as a medium to tell its stories. Most infamously, Fire Emblem sought to embed a real sense of loss into its players by having characters permanently die should they fall during gameplay. That these characters with unique face, motivations and statistical significance would live and die through your hand was meant to instill a personal connection with Fire Emblem’s world. Such means of connection being only feasible through this uniquely dynamic aspect of video games.

And so, Fire Emblem was initially conceived to be a series about using games as a means of storytelling. A cohesive blend of gameplay with a narrative it wished to convey.

I have not played any of those games from that era. I am a fake fan, a poser, a revisionist. There is much to discuss of these entries that I have not the capacity or experience to do so. Instead, the games that I will elaborate upon comprise the second of these three Fire Emblem eras. That which I shall dub as the era of ‘Sanitation’. You see, that previous visionary ethos of character death was too successful. Most players were found unwilling to see the characters in which they are made to feel responsible for die, and instead of Engaging™ with this creative vision, would simply reset chapters until everyone survived. Creative intent clashed with the reality of a player’s actions. As these games had the ultimate purpose of seeking commercial success over making artistic statements, concessions were made to make the design of these games more tailored for the preferences of its general audience.

Yet even after the sanitation that ensued, alternative creative avenues were still sought to be explored, and though dulled, much remained of the original design philosophies post transition. Permadeath was kept, but instead of being a vestigial idea that players ignored, was retained explicitly because it was expected players would seek to circumvent it. If players were unwilling to let these previously expendable characters die, then why not encourage this behaviour? And so, these side characters became more integral and more significant within their stories. Fire Emblem was revised and recontextualized to be a series about the bonds we cultivate. This change of perspective inspired the most formative feature of this second generation, the support system.

Young me was enamoured by this concept! This method of storytelling I indulged in with earnestly, novel to me then as it was. Each character no matter how seemingly humble or insignificant would be given unique characterization through multiple conversations with others among the cast, conversations that had to be sought out by an invested player. Each of these conversations would in turn give you a tidbit of nuance of their character and the circumstances in which they exist. As you weave together these microstories you would unravel the nature of entire worlds. An understanding of why characters are the way they are, the rationale behind their actions, the material circumstances in which conflict is born. From this understanding you would find these simplistic stories are not as straightforward as they initially appear. The unique traits of videogames as a medium were still being utilized to tell stories. This time though through the ability to obfuscate details and dispense them piecemeal as a prize for the curious to seek.

Fire Emblem had adapted to its audience. It had become a series about story telling as a puzzle. It sought to exploit a player’s desire for discovery and willingness to Engage™ with character analysis and interpretation. Whilst deliberately echoing and iterating on past tropes and story beats from previous entries in which to contrast and compare against.

However no one, not even curious children with little responsibility, have the time to seek out all these support conversations individually. Instead, this support system deliberately or not, encouraged a certain type of Engagement™. Rather than spending 100s of hours repeating playthroughs just to see a few additional lines of text, these support conversations would be found much more readily accessible online in compilations on dedicated fan-sites. This centralization of resources became a hub of traffic. Communities formed around them, and so Fire Emblem had become more than just a series of games, it had become a culture in of itself.

Fire Emblem was now more than just the media it was sold as. It had become an outlet for discussion and critique. A way in which we can Engage™ with others who shared a passion for a niche media franchise. It had developed to become a cult, otherwise known as a fandom. An avenue of endless pontification about its characters, the ways it should be played and our individual experiences.

This second era of Fire Emblem would also not produce the requisite quota of milk deemed satisfactory to its masters. And so, the series was called away to be culled. Rather than go out quietly however, it was given one final mercy. A swansong game in which the series could be laid neatly to rest. And so, we entered the final and ongoing era of Fire Emblem: “Purpose (Id)”.

At the time I had wished Fire Emblem Awakening would have been the end of the series. It was so antithetical to what I was used to. A corrupted and revenant corpse of something I once loved. Tight deliberate mechanical design and maps were discarded in favour of a game that encouraged you to simply grind out your characters to become unkillable juggernauts. A cast of realistic and considered characters that defined the nature of the world they lived in had been replaced by one-note caricatures. Romantic pairings, which were once reserved for those with unique chemistry were now omnipresent for every and any male and female combination. All this just to enable the kids of these pairings to join your army in a mockery of one of the most incredible narrative twists of a previous entry of the series (that I hadn’t played).

Nostalgia is an insidious phenomenon. The very same spell that had captivated my younger self I was now resentful of others experiencing. My love after all was targeted towards something tangible, real, meaningful while that of these new fans was not. I would not have the Revelation™ for quite some time that this love was derived from the same source. That willingness to see the best qualities of something without a frame of reference in which to compare.

Seemingly equally confused by the financial success of Awakening as I, it’s producers immediately sought to ascertain as to the reason why through a curious application of market research. The next game in the series was released as a set of two, appealing to the separate expectations of newer fans as well as that of the ostracised veterans. It was a reactionary bid seeking to retain as much audience as it could. A final third game in the set would seek to reconcile the rift between these two audiences.

It was enough to temper me. Although it was apparent the prose and tone of Fire Emblem had been irrevocably changed forever there was something here that I could still latch onto. Fire Emblem may no longer have the capacity anymore to tell grounded or even coherent tales but as a mechanical object this iteration was unsurpassed. These embedded gameplay systems in which I was intimate with still persisted. I was content. Ready to move on and accept maybe what I saw in Fire Emblem wasn’t real. Just a naïve interpretation of the past. But then a beautiful tragedy occurred.

Three Houses. What a miserable chore to play! The antithesis of Fates: Conquest. Any vision it had for its gameplay either as artistic statement or as mechanical toy failed to manifest in a satisfactory way. And yet this game would leave me elated. It was perfect in a way that truly mattered. For it contained that aspect of Fire Emblem which I had thought was lost forever. What this lacked as a tactile game experience it more than made up through its quality of its narrative and its method of delivery. Yes, experiencing it all is a nightmare. Important details are scattered across four separate playthroughs and hundreds of optional and slowly dispensed dialogue events that no one with respect to their time is going to see all of it. But this was exactly how it should be! This was the Fire Emblem of my youth that I remembered. The antiquated method of storytelling from my nostalgia. Story as puzzle dispensed piecemeal. It was perhaps even better than it was in the past as there was no primary perspective of its story to cling to as ‘correct’. These different perspectives and the audience’s preconceptions would lead to extrapolating different interpretations from its details. Pictures that would be incompatible with those assembled by others. This lack of consensus on whose was ‘correct’ would facilitate endless debate, inspiring discussion and ultimately critical engagement with its story characters and themes. The tragedy of three houses is that it seemingly vindicated my nostalgia. That nostalgia I am now resolved to kill.

This preamble does not end on Hope™. There is one final game to discuss. The most integral and influential game to the future of the series. Fire Emblem makes money now. Lots of it. It is now a covetous cash cow. One of its games alone has surpassed the revenue of the rest of the series combined. That game is Fire Emblem Heroes and it is a drain upon all the goodwill of the series. Decades of character discussion, interpretations, fan translations of the many games that were never released internationally, are commodified, and then consumed by this beast. Three Houses was not made in-house and it shows. It was an outsourced project to keep the fanbase Engaged™ as the next direction of Fire Emblem was developed. The existence of Heroes means all future characters in the series are now designed for you to imprint upon so that they may be resold back to you in the most exploitatory way that is somehow still legal. That is the preconception for Fire Emblem Engage.

Fire Emblem that I had once viewed as a benevolent deity of storytelling had degenerated into a fell dragon needing to be slain. The fandom cultivated out of a shared love and passion was being used and preyed upon by that which it sought to enshrine. Was this always the series’ ultimate intention? The end goal of any corporate ip? It matters not, I have gathered all the necessary context needed. It is time to slay a degenerative dragon. I am ready to let go of the past. I am ready to kill this nostalgia within myself. I need to let go.

Resolution burning bright I would find little to dissuade this righteous fury within the opening acts. The world of Lythos is contrived to hell, deliberately so. There is no ambition here nor desire to tell a story that reflects upon or contrasts against a living world. Every creature here is an automaton, a faux imitation only resembling life. Vtuber avatars frolic about a story where conflict is abhorred, yet its root cause is never sought. A mandate of heaven is seen as absolute and unchallenged, as the cast indulge in a luxury resort above the clouds above an uninvolved populace. A zodiac of Fire Emblems past have their status cemented as commodities. Trinkets to flaunt and collect serving to establish the authority of a supposedly divine deity. The irony of how these emblems parallel a recurring theme of the series involving twelve ‘dead lords’ is not lost upon me.

Yet as the chapters go by, I find my resolve wavering. When your expectations start at the bottom of a ravine, it leaves the only direction left to climb. These caricatures clearly made to serve as an asset pack for a gacha game, slowly wear me down through a consistent message that concludes many of their story arcs. That we should not allow one’s past to define one’s future. I listen to this message because deep down it is something I want to hear. I am made to believe there is something salvageable and sincere beneath an ugly veneer. That I am wrong to judge Engage on what the series used to be. I should accept it on what it is and seeks to become.

I disengage. Yes, these characters do not compare as the ones in the gilded memories of the past or even that of the prior game, but there are aspects to like here. Templates in which I can extrapolate depth and nuance. Details to discover in which I can discuss and share with others. I can fix them! Both through gameplay and narratively. I am even provided the tools to do so. The game facilitating the means to combine traits taken of previous games to these characters. I can take ownership. Ascribe to them my own meaning. Is this not the culmination of what Fire Emblem is about? That ultimately we the audience are the arbiters of its story?

And so at journey’s end I hesitate. I find that I cannot will myself to kill this creature after all. There is a part of me still contained within. A part I still love. A sword wavers with conviction shattered. All I need is any reason, and I’ll let you go. Give me nothing even, be unrepentant and we can still live in peace. Arcadia can exist. Humans can live at peace with dragons.

The creature looks deep into my eyes. It sees shattered resolve, an extended hand. It sees only sovereign delusion. It rejects me thus, “I did it for Zero Emblem” uttered defiantly with no shame or remorse. This phrase is pure nonsense. A meaningless string of words that not even its speaker can decipher. It is not intended to be satisfactory nor received well. Even the most earnest of readings would find these words ring hollow. It is a proclamation of intent. A dismissal of peace. The game is telling me that I am wrong about it. That I am seeing something that was never there. That this was always a completely unserious farce and that I am foolish for seeing otherwise. A dagger reached for to provoke my reaction.

I can only oblige and stab it through the heart. We both always knew this was the only way this could possibly end. The beast is slain and I am free to move on. Thankyou for letting me go.

Fire Emblem is a series about the myriad ways in which we Engage™ with media. It has grown and adapted in response to how it has been perceived. It is a series that only still exists and thrives in the present because of the community that has formed around it. It would have us believe that it owns us because it sired that which we love. But we owe it nothing. This love is ours to shape and ours to reclaim.

I hate that I love these games so much.

“A world riven by pride, Repaired at last. And now its makers can be at rest, Our vision come to pass.”

(I recommend Engage to only Fire Emblem’s biggest fans. I recommend it to Its biggest haters. I recommend it to no one in between. It has absolutely succeeded in being the culmination of the series. As a mechanical object it is best in class. As a thesis statement of the series as a whole, it is a perfect tragedy. There is some genuine care here buried underneath a shallow exterior. Yet there is no way to save it. The game’s premise and the purpose on which it came to exist is antithetical to love. But there is closure to be had in laying it to rest)

Pros-
Good gameplay, emblems actually add a lot
Map design is actually pretty good
Cons-
I don't care about any character here
Unit balance is shit
Feels too limiting in some aspects (Money) while other things are way too open (Class system)
Story.
Music is some of the most forgettable in the entire series

Ok so fire emblem engage haf some big shoes to fill coming of three houses. In my opinion it did some stuff better and some worse.

The story for one. Its a cute little story but it can get generic at some points. The characters are usually pretty one note and havent got anything to do with the story if their not a big main character. Zelkov and lindon my goats tho. I wished some characters were more in the story but with the absolute load of characters that exist within the game i think its fair to say that not all of them needed to be developed and implemented more

Coming to the actual gameplay side of the game. Its probably the best combat ive seen so far in any of the fire emblem games i played. Weapons thank god dont break anymore like in three houses, (I guess after breath of the wild they just had to implemeng it in that game to) which makes my life significantly easier. The Weapon triangle is back and its better than ever, you can achieve breaks on an opponent by using certain weapons which is cool. My only real gripe about this is that hand to hand fighters are essentially op considering they break like 3 weapons and i dont think they can be broken at least i havent seen a moment in my playthrough where it happened.

Theres again a wide variety of classes. They are scaled really well with each other and no class really outshines the rest. Same with the difficulty it scales really well as the game progresses, and no moment seemed impossible to overcome. (I played on classic and hard btw).

The main element of the game however are the emblems. The 12 characters of the other 12 main fire emblem games plus seven more if you have the dlc. They are the main elements of fights in the game amd can give your characters a significant boost in strength and other abilities, most of the time giving them additional weapons. Every emblem has an ultimate Special move aswell. Those range from simple attacks to healing moves or letting your unit move another turn. I wouldnt consider any of the emblems really overpowered, except Soren but hes dlc so we wont worry about him.

In short fire emblem engage is a fun fire emblem game, with great combat and game elements, however leave a lot to be desired in terms of story and characters.

Also this is my first review where i actually tried to make an effort and review the game so cool ig.
And with that im giving this game a 7/10