I feel like the general discourse on this game being “gameplay good, story bad”, while somewhat true, often becomes extremely reductionist and dismissive of all the complex things (both good and bad) going on that make the game.

The story is built on false motivations, convoluted plots, and predictable twists, but it also has really interesting underlying themes which could have made it incredible with the right execution. Thematically the story deals with progeny being forced to respond to their parent’s actions (good or bad), which makes it a distinctively Fire Emblem story. There is even a hint of an interesting discussion to be had about a seemingly false dichotomy between Divine Dragons and Fell Dragons or the nature of the Emblems. The problem arises when these ideas of child abuse and manipulation, found family, children being forced to take over their kingdoms too soon etc. meets the happy-go-lucky tone of the characters and the thoughtless plot. So many of the serious moments are immediately undercut by abhorrently quirky characters like Hortensia or Griss acting like they do. There is always tonal dissonance between what is going on in the main story and the character interactions and gameplay you have in the Somniel. This isn’t a new problem in FE (even Three Houses had this to a lesser extent in the second half of the story), but the over-the-top nature of both the story (being too dramatic) and the characters (being too wacky) in different directions amplifies the problem. Engage’s greatest sin isn’t that it’s story is “simple” or “cheesy” or “cliched”, it is that a lot of different smaller things combine to make an absolute mess. A convoluted time travel element, muddling villain motivations, contrivances, multiple death scenes without actual consequences, being forced to fight the same villains (Four Hounds) multiple times, flimsy attempts to sympathize with all the villains - all of this contributes to maybe the worst FE story that otherwise had at least some potential.

It’s jarring how much I like and dislike the characters at the same time. These are without a doubt my least favorite character designs in the series. The designs are either over the top like Pannette and Hortensia, or seem too derivative like Alfred and Fogado. There’s definitely many things to like in this cast and some of the Support conversations are really good (Ivy and Alcryst, Framme and Diamant, all of the conversations between siblings, all of Anna's or Yunaka's supports), but so much of their personalities and dialogues are often one-note and way too cartoonish for a Fire Emblem story. When so many of the support conversations are based entirely on a character’s quirk, that means there are too many supports that should have been reduced. This is obviously not a unique problem to Engage, but again is more egregious than other games like Awakening. The fact that the Emblems themselves have extremely watered down personalities and only brief conversations, though understandable, doesn’t help either.

Alear in isolation have a pretty okay personality, and ironically it’s either the plot or the other characters that drag Alear’s character down. The amount of pandering to Alear is the most egregious I’ve seen in the series so far (even Kris is FE 12 wasn’t as bad, and that’s saying something). I have no inherent problem with a self-insert character, for example Robin is a really great character who feels like they belong in the world of Awakening. I don’t even have an inherent problem with the story revolving around Alear rather than a lord. But when every fucking character worships you quite literally and when a minigame involves you waking up to all the characters in love with you, that becomes an issue. It would have been so much more interesting if Alear would have experienced a burden from everyone’s expectations, or found it hard to relate to their status as a deity, but all they do is laugh it off seemingly humbly but continue to invoke their own importance when the plot requires. And because the story is so focused on Alear, it means that the lords from Firene, Solm, Brodia, and Elusia are not afforded time to shine or any sort of character development.

But even with the worst story and mediocre characters, this game is redeemed by everything else being near-perfect. The core gameplay of a Fire Emblem game is maybe the most fun and balanced I have experienced. The art and animation presentation are gorgeous. The soundtrack and voice acting are generally great. The contrast of strategic complexity between Engage and Three Houses is night and day. Engage makes up for everything Three Houses lacked - interesting maps with good side objectives, diverse chapters, unique skills in the form of class skills and Emblems that make every member of your army distinct, the weapon triangle. Customization more than ever offers replayability and not just game-breaking builds.

Combat is initiative focused which is always a good thing for FE games. But it is also incredibly supportive of reactionary playstyles with Emblem abilities like Eirika’s skills, or Lyn’s Doubles, or Ike’s Great Aether, or using Corrin’s Veil of Fog with thieves. Engage allows every class and Emblem combination you can think of to be viable and fun to use, much more than other games like Awakening or Three Houses which heavily prefer some classes over others. Thankfully Alear is not an overpowered avatar who invalidates all other unit functions. Additions like Chain Attacks and Chain Doubles or the Break mechanic add to the strategic complexity in positioning and overall gameplay, without being game-breaking like Awakening’s Pair Up mechanic. And since these mechanics are available to enemies as well (including Emblems in a lot of chapters), this means that these mechanics never feel overpowered but you feel rewarded when your tactics intelligently use them. Knives are a welcome addition that make thieves a combat viable class, Chain Guarding does similar improvements to the healer class, and the variety of staves combined with Micaiah’s Emblem, makes it really fun to use support staff strategies that are not just warp-skipping. Usually subpar classes like Armored Knights and Archers receive massive glow ups and increased utility with Emblems.

The resources are also generally restricted without being prohibitive, which is always a good indicator for me in an FE game being balanced and encouraging resource management. There is no dearth of character experience to be gained even if you only play the main story, but if you want to overlevel in skirmishes their levels scale with you to provide a challenge. Unit additions are trickled to you throughout the story (which I prefer much more than the outright availability like in Three Houses) and a smaller cast means characters are never redundant. Even the removal of weapon durability, which I thought I would hate, is balanced by gold and forging materials being limited so that you can’t equip everyone with fully forged silver weapons in spades. If you want to completely break the resource economy you can, just like any other FE game since Sacred Stones, but you really don’t need to nor are encouraged to by the game.

There’s definitely things about general gameplay I don’t like - the gacha mechanics of getting Bond Rings, the activities in Somniel (though they are at least reduced in playtime and are largely optional as compared to Three Houses), the options interface and battle prep interface being kind of bad etc. I still don’t agree with the inclusion of a rewind mechanic, but again it's up to you to use it how you want. All these are generally nitpicks to what is overall an immensely satisfying core gameplay.

In general, Fire Emblem Engage offers more of a storytelling platform through its gameplay rather than its actual plot. You will find more satisfaction in discovering a unique combination of Emblems with different units, or remember how you perfectly set up a chain attack to defeat a boss. For this reason Chapter 11 has become one of my favorite chapters in the entire series for its integration of gameplay and storytelling. But this sort of cohesion is very hard to find in the rest of the game, which if the story was even half as good as its gameplay would have made Engage the best game in the series.

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.

I've got to be honest at first I was a bit scared to play the game at first due to the story as I'd seen online that it was a bit lacklustre, nevertheless I gave the game a try and I enjoyed my time with it quite a lot.
Biggest mistake I made was setting the game to hard as it really beat me up in some sections. I really loved the music, especially the song that plays when you open the game, most anime opening opening ever and the song at the ending credits was also really good. The combat was one of the highlights of the game and had a lot of interesting ways to strategize, plus it's super satisfying. The charaters from the first two regions were pretty cringey, but I was pleasantly surprised by the characters in the later chapters of the game. The game was a bit disjointed on how it introduced some content so I missed some things or noticed them very late into my playthrough. But by far the biggest let down for me was the intreactions between other characters - the characters just don't really have endings with eachother like in Three Houses, which was one of my favorite bits of that game as the relationships that formed were very cute and you were a sort of a match maker.
My second completed fire emblem entry, it was overall pretty good but lacked the charm Three houses has.

Like everyone else said, great gameplay, terrible story and characters.

The graphics are great for a Switch game, the animations improved a lot and everything is overall much prettier to look at.
Unfortunately, all of this is often ruined by the weebification of the character design.

This is not only reflected on the visual design of the characters, but also in how they're written and voiced. Every dialogue is extremely cringe or excessively melodramatic, making it impossible to take anything seriously.
This is especially disappointing after Three Houses, which had one of the best stories among the Fire Emblem games.

This game is saved entirely by its great gameplay, mixing classic Fire Emblem with new balanced mechanics that never feel underperforming or busted.
The same can't be said for the gameplay outside the actual maps. The Somniel is a terrible hub with no personality, and ends up being a place where you run around doing boring chores between every level.

- Take ores from the dogs
- Take the reward from the well and put some more weapons in it
- Do the social gatherings to increase support level (only for boosts because I skipped most of the cringe support dialogues)
- Go to the arena to train
- Take the shards from the achievements
- Eat to get stat boost

All of this separated by various loading screens, which made it even more frustrating.

It's very rare for a game to have such a big margin between the good and the bad. In some moments I felt like giving it 4.5 stars, and as soon as a cutscene started the score in my mind would lower to 3.0.

I try to keep game comparisons to a minimum when writing a review because I think it’s only fair to judge art by its own merits, but there was only one thing on my mind while playing Engage. That it was just Fates again.

Gameplay wise this is a fantastic experience. Not only is the map design quite solid but the Emblem Rings provide some of the craziest and fun tools the series has ever offered. The flexibility at play is almost unmatched, and the good news is that they did not sacrifice a challenging experience this time around, because the difficulty modes cover the wide spectrum of player skill very well. What I really admire about Engage is how easy it is to customize your own experience without sacrificing a healthy dose of challenge. The game is (mostly) balanced around you having the crazy Emblems powers, and will frequently match you against those same powers in a way many other developers wouldn’t dare. The beauty of it is that you don’t have to engage with this mechanic if you don’t want to. Emblem Rings are stashed into it’s own little menu and the player is given full freedom to use the mechanic as much or as little as they want to. “If you don’t like, don’t use it” is a tired argument point for any game balance topic but I am always happy to see developers actually giving the player a chance not to use their overpowered mechanics.

The story is complete garbage in a way where sadly I don’t have too much to say on it. This game will test you on your belief that gameplay rules above all, if you are one of those types, and your real opinions on that issue will probably color your entire experience.

Bad story aside, Engage is without a doubt a really fun and well-designed game. It strikes well the balance between giving you crazy and powerful tools while providing interesting challenging obstacles that are consistently fun to overcome. It is up there as one of the best gameplay experiences of the entire series that makes it worth a playthrough. It also looks and sounds really good, that helps too.
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I am an avid Conquest defender and Engage is cut from the same exact cloth, but there are sadly some points that clearly put the former above the latter in terms of quality for me.

-Both Fates and Engage have some of the worst stories in the medium, but Fates actually tried telling a story. Engage feels like it's not even trying for the first half, with the barest justifications to actually having a plot, only to fall completely into the worst overdone cliches of the genre during the last few hours. In my opinion, this is the worst of both worlds, the premise and initial setup is fucking boring, if not downright rotten, so there is nothing to chew on in terms of potential. But when the stakes are actually raised it falls into the same writing pitfalls as the rest of the series. Fates had an interesting premise with a lot of potential, only to become a complete trainwreck on execution. Engage's story is a complete bunch of nothing, only to fall into the same exact problems that made Fates that much of a trainwreck. I think it only doesn't hurt as much for most people because NO ONE expected anything out of Engage after the initial trailers. For this reason I consider Engage has an even worse story than Fates, Conquest in particular, but your mileage will vary.

-Engage sadly has one of the blandest casts in the entire series. Every FE has been able to squeeze a reasonable amount of likeable or interesting characters to follow but Engage is such a complete nothing in the characterization front. This is partly fault of the complete lack of world building, characters spawn with almost no backstory or context behind them and the few supports that explore anything behind them are buried under the inmense amount of supports that just add NOTHING to the table. There are still enough decently charming characters to fill out your team, I have a particularly soft spot for the Brodian royals, but the overall quality of this cast is fucking dire. I think this is the worst cast since Binding Blade. Fates, especially Conquest, wasn't this bad either. But the fact every support conversation is now voiced might be the reason why the bad nothingburguer support conversations this team really loves writing stand out so much more now.

-The most damming thing about the game is that not even the amazing gameplay is flawless. Conquest stands high and above with the best map design the series has ever seen, with few maps I would state were outright bad. Engage, while having really solid maps overall, and in my opinion, the best earlygame of the entire series, has full stretches of mediocre ones during the Solm arc and parts of the endgame that water down the entire experience. The game balance is also nowhere near as solid. Are the Emblems astoundingly well balanced for what they are? Absolutely, and I think their contribution to how fun they make Engage cannot be overstated. But we are talking about full map healing (which is rechargeable!) as early as Chapter 6 among the dozens of tools the game gives you. I think it’s impossible to fully account for all the possibilities they created here and that shows in the game balance. I can see the argument this makes Conquest better designed too, but they are pretty even for me.

Hopefully IS hires some fucking writers next time because it is seriously getting embarrassing how bad the storytelling of their recent games is.

Characters outside of story and core gameplay, good. Story, abysmal. Music, fine until you realize every level theme is the engage theme in a different rendition. Engaging, cool in concept but felt like it shouldn’t have been as vital as it was even on normal difficulty. The game was a solid 3/5 until I hit the big Alear reveal that I won’t mention, but the game spiraled so hard from that point forward that a point was lost in all that nonsense both story and level design wise.

In short, apologize to Fates now.