'The one thing I always wanted... staring me in the face all the while.'
Four years after Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019), Fire Emblem Engage set itself the task of being an anniversary game, one that would pay tribute to the entire franchise. A Herculean task, if ever there was one, and the title opted to simplify its development cycle by not retaining the core features of Three Houses. With a streamlined story, the team led by Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi sought to emphasise the gameplay, while the visuals were designed to appeal to a younger audience, either completely new to the series or having only experienced it after Fire Emblem Awakening (2012).
Overwhelming sub-systems and activities: a pacing issue
The player assumes the role of Alear, whose mission is to save the world from the threat of the dragon Sombron after a thousand years of slumber. As usual, the protagonist travels the continent and recruits companions as the adventure progresses. The big addition is the Emblem Rings, which allow a character to be linked to a past hero from the series. The game piles up its characters very quickly, to the point where it becomes difficult to keep up with the pace. In terms of gameplay, this is perhaps both the strength and the weakness of Engage. The title offers so many options for creating one's team that it can be overwhelming. With a generally harder difficulty, players are encouraged to take an active interest in pairing up Rings, thinking about the skills they want each character to inherit, and doing as many of the various activities on Somniel as possible.
Cold_Comfort pointed out that the stat boosts from meals or training sessions – which force the player to undertake a mini-game that becomes tiresome the second time around – give a significant advantage in combat, therefore compelling the player to complete them, at least in the early stages of the game. Only when one has reached the mid-game with enough Rings and characters unlocked can this phase be skipped. Certain combinations – at least in Hard mode – allow players to get through the dense waves of enemies without any major problems. Yunaka makes a perfect AVO tank, especially with the fog that Corrin can summon; in the second half of my playthrough, she was responsible for almost half the kills on every map.
If the player makes use of all the systems available in the game to customise their characters, it is possible to create teams capable of withstanding adversity in a wide range of situations. The game is less demanding on long-term planning, as it is possible to change classes without penalty – the experience curve remains the same. However, it compensates for this ease of management by making it extremely difficult to obtain money, the key to upgrading weapons. In my case, I felt compelled to take special care of Anna to make her very viable and to use her passive to accumulate gold. Similarly, the flexibility offered by the Rings is very enjoyable, but in a twist borrowed from Fire Emblem Heroes (2017), the Bond Rings have to be pulled in a gacha system. As a result, the game is constantly torn between conflicting choices that are sometimes sympathetic to the player, sometimes irritating, and sometimes tedious. Although most of the problems become less critical in the second half of the game, the early game is extremely unpleasant, as the player spends as much time on the Somniel doing insipid activities as fighting. For a title that was supposed to be all about tactics, this pacing is indicative of a serious deficiency.
A strong combat system
In terms of actual tactics, Engage is a perfectly enjoyable experience. The difficulty has been increased compared to Three Houses, and the map design tries to take advantage of the Emblem Rings, pushing the player to Engage to compensate for their numerical disadvantage. The title encourages one to be aggressive in order to take out enemies quickly, especially with the Break mechanic. This brings the Weapon Triangle back into focus, allowing characters with the wrong weapon to take on duels that would normally be avoided in previous games. The result of these features is that Engage is a much more player phase-focused experience, which proves to be very enjoyable. Some maps really shine with this design, requiring precision as the player progresses: Chapter 17, with a heavy atmosphere and a very open and dangerous terrain for the player to navigate, is arguably one of the best maps. In general, Engage requires a more conscientious approach to character positioning, and rewards creative ideas with the staves or, towards the end of the game, Byleth's Goddess Dance.
The form of the game: a abysmal writing
Enjoyable in combat, generally lacklustre during the Somniel downtime, the game is characterised by its highly variable technical quality and its abysmal writing. Most of the backgrounds are a simple image with a few camera movements as a cover: if Three Houses suffered from underwhelming performances, Engage doesn't even try to hide its shortcomings. Admittedly, some might point to the sumptuous combat animations and the fact that each map is fully modelled, so that the player can explore them after each chapter: this hardly makes up for the poorly staged dialogues and the fact that the explorable locations are largely uninteresting – the player can and should collect resources there, but it is more often a thankless task than a sequence suited to contemplation.
As for the writing, the game starts off surprisingly poorly and takes about ten chapters to gather momentum. The sheer number of characters means that some of them have to be dismissed very quickly, and their supporting dialogue doesn't help to give them depth. This is obviously a chronic issue in the Fire Emblem series, but Engage feels like every character has been built around one or two personality traits, and all dialogue has to revolve around them, in a very linear fashion from C-rank to A-rank. Some characters are more believable and coherent, but they can be counted on one hand – Ivy, Diamant, Citrinne or Yunaka, for example. The title never manages to find the right tone: it sometimes attempts flights of gravitas that immediately fall flat, as the world is so under-explored and uninteresting. The latest chapters have a few interesting moments, especially those involving Zephia, but otherwise Engage goes nowhere, following the same tired clichés of Japanese animation.
For whom is this game?
If incestuous themes do not seem to be present – I did not notice any in my playthrough – the sexualisation of young characters along Japanese idol model and the latent paedophilia surrounding the character of Anna are cause for concern: some dialogues have been modified in the Western localisation, but at its core the game is embedded in a cultural aesthetic that contributes to the banalisation of behaviours and representations. The title is obsessed with the question of motherhood, echoing the recent wave of games inspired by post-Abe family policies. All these choices correspond to a Japanese vision that is still shaped by the JK business and the idol industry; one would like to agree with Masafumi Monden's words: 'Emphasizing sweetness, demureness and femininity without hinting at sexual allure or seeking the objectifying male gaze serves to repudiate the stereotyped representation of femininity as passive, compliant and powerless against the sexual objectification of women' [1], but the swimwear and the characters waking Alear up without their consent do not help in this regard. As a result, characters such as Rosado and Etie appear as stand-ins to fill the gender nonconformity quota. It is impossible to take the game seriously, and it is hard to ignore these elements when the player is forced to spend hours on the Somniel.
What remains after sixty hours of Fire Emblem Engage? Some very creative maps that are genuinely satisfying to solve; hours of frustrating preparation between missions; a desire to get through the dialogue as quickly as possible; and, inevitably, a game whose maximalist approach requires too much effort and time to be truly accessible to newer players. Fates (2015) and Three Houses had divided players, old and new, over game design choices. The idea of having different routes or the activities of Garreg Mach were not to everyone's taste: this is the common lot of concepts that radically change the formula of a series. Engage also has its own innovations and twists, but they seem shrouded in a heavy cynicism: was the title designed to provide Heroes with new characters to populate the banners? Everything feels disjointed, as if Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi had no desire to craft a coherent experience from start to finish. As long as one considers gameplay to be the primary purpose of a Fire Emblem game, it is possible to find value in it; however, it seems to me that Engage is a step in a creatively dubious direction and one that prompts me to abandon the adventure that this series represented.
__________
[1] Masafumi Monden, ‘Being Alice in Japan: performing a cute, ‘girlish’ revolt’, in Japan Forum, vol. 26, no. 2, 2012, p. 282.
Four years after Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019), Fire Emblem Engage set itself the task of being an anniversary game, one that would pay tribute to the entire franchise. A Herculean task, if ever there was one, and the title opted to simplify its development cycle by not retaining the core features of Three Houses. With a streamlined story, the team led by Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi sought to emphasise the gameplay, while the visuals were designed to appeal to a younger audience, either completely new to the series or having only experienced it after Fire Emblem Awakening (2012).
Overwhelming sub-systems and activities: a pacing issue
The player assumes the role of Alear, whose mission is to save the world from the threat of the dragon Sombron after a thousand years of slumber. As usual, the protagonist travels the continent and recruits companions as the adventure progresses. The big addition is the Emblem Rings, which allow a character to be linked to a past hero from the series. The game piles up its characters very quickly, to the point where it becomes difficult to keep up with the pace. In terms of gameplay, this is perhaps both the strength and the weakness of Engage. The title offers so many options for creating one's team that it can be overwhelming. With a generally harder difficulty, players are encouraged to take an active interest in pairing up Rings, thinking about the skills they want each character to inherit, and doing as many of the various activities on Somniel as possible.
Cold_Comfort pointed out that the stat boosts from meals or training sessions – which force the player to undertake a mini-game that becomes tiresome the second time around – give a significant advantage in combat, therefore compelling the player to complete them, at least in the early stages of the game. Only when one has reached the mid-game with enough Rings and characters unlocked can this phase be skipped. Certain combinations – at least in Hard mode – allow players to get through the dense waves of enemies without any major problems. Yunaka makes a perfect AVO tank, especially with the fog that Corrin can summon; in the second half of my playthrough, she was responsible for almost half the kills on every map.
If the player makes use of all the systems available in the game to customise their characters, it is possible to create teams capable of withstanding adversity in a wide range of situations. The game is less demanding on long-term planning, as it is possible to change classes without penalty – the experience curve remains the same. However, it compensates for this ease of management by making it extremely difficult to obtain money, the key to upgrading weapons. In my case, I felt compelled to take special care of Anna to make her very viable and to use her passive to accumulate gold. Similarly, the flexibility offered by the Rings is very enjoyable, but in a twist borrowed from Fire Emblem Heroes (2017), the Bond Rings have to be pulled in a gacha system. As a result, the game is constantly torn between conflicting choices that are sometimes sympathetic to the player, sometimes irritating, and sometimes tedious. Although most of the problems become less critical in the second half of the game, the early game is extremely unpleasant, as the player spends as much time on the Somniel doing insipid activities as fighting. For a title that was supposed to be all about tactics, this pacing is indicative of a serious deficiency.
A strong combat system
In terms of actual tactics, Engage is a perfectly enjoyable experience. The difficulty has been increased compared to Three Houses, and the map design tries to take advantage of the Emblem Rings, pushing the player to Engage to compensate for their numerical disadvantage. The title encourages one to be aggressive in order to take out enemies quickly, especially with the Break mechanic. This brings the Weapon Triangle back into focus, allowing characters with the wrong weapon to take on duels that would normally be avoided in previous games. The result of these features is that Engage is a much more player phase-focused experience, which proves to be very enjoyable. Some maps really shine with this design, requiring precision as the player progresses: Chapter 17, with a heavy atmosphere and a very open and dangerous terrain for the player to navigate, is arguably one of the best maps. In general, Engage requires a more conscientious approach to character positioning, and rewards creative ideas with the staves or, towards the end of the game, Byleth's Goddess Dance.
The form of the game: a abysmal writing
Enjoyable in combat, generally lacklustre during the Somniel downtime, the game is characterised by its highly variable technical quality and its abysmal writing. Most of the backgrounds are a simple image with a few camera movements as a cover: if Three Houses suffered from underwhelming performances, Engage doesn't even try to hide its shortcomings. Admittedly, some might point to the sumptuous combat animations and the fact that each map is fully modelled, so that the player can explore them after each chapter: this hardly makes up for the poorly staged dialogues and the fact that the explorable locations are largely uninteresting – the player can and should collect resources there, but it is more often a thankless task than a sequence suited to contemplation.
As for the writing, the game starts off surprisingly poorly and takes about ten chapters to gather momentum. The sheer number of characters means that some of them have to be dismissed very quickly, and their supporting dialogue doesn't help to give them depth. This is obviously a chronic issue in the Fire Emblem series, but Engage feels like every character has been built around one or two personality traits, and all dialogue has to revolve around them, in a very linear fashion from C-rank to A-rank. Some characters are more believable and coherent, but they can be counted on one hand – Ivy, Diamant, Citrinne or Yunaka, for example. The title never manages to find the right tone: it sometimes attempts flights of gravitas that immediately fall flat, as the world is so under-explored and uninteresting. The latest chapters have a few interesting moments, especially those involving Zephia, but otherwise Engage goes nowhere, following the same tired clichés of Japanese animation.
For whom is this game?
If incestuous themes do not seem to be present – I did not notice any in my playthrough – the sexualisation of young characters along Japanese idol model and the latent paedophilia surrounding the character of Anna are cause for concern: some dialogues have been modified in the Western localisation, but at its core the game is embedded in a cultural aesthetic that contributes to the banalisation of behaviours and representations. The title is obsessed with the question of motherhood, echoing the recent wave of games inspired by post-Abe family policies. All these choices correspond to a Japanese vision that is still shaped by the JK business and the idol industry; one would like to agree with Masafumi Monden's words: 'Emphasizing sweetness, demureness and femininity without hinting at sexual allure or seeking the objectifying male gaze serves to repudiate the stereotyped representation of femininity as passive, compliant and powerless against the sexual objectification of women' [1], but the swimwear and the characters waking Alear up without their consent do not help in this regard. As a result, characters such as Rosado and Etie appear as stand-ins to fill the gender nonconformity quota. It is impossible to take the game seriously, and it is hard to ignore these elements when the player is forced to spend hours on the Somniel.
What remains after sixty hours of Fire Emblem Engage? Some very creative maps that are genuinely satisfying to solve; hours of frustrating preparation between missions; a desire to get through the dialogue as quickly as possible; and, inevitably, a game whose maximalist approach requires too much effort and time to be truly accessible to newer players. Fates (2015) and Three Houses had divided players, old and new, over game design choices. The idea of having different routes or the activities of Garreg Mach were not to everyone's taste: this is the common lot of concepts that radically change the formula of a series. Engage also has its own innovations and twists, but they seem shrouded in a heavy cynicism: was the title designed to provide Heroes with new characters to populate the banners? Everything feels disjointed, as if Tsutomu Tei and Kenta Nakanishi had no desire to craft a coherent experience from start to finish. As long as one considers gameplay to be the primary purpose of a Fire Emblem game, it is possible to find value in it; however, it seems to me that Engage is a step in a creatively dubious direction and one that prompts me to abandon the adventure that this series represented.
__________
[1] Masafumi Monden, ‘Being Alice in Japan: performing a cute, ‘girlish’ revolt’, in Japan Forum, vol. 26, no. 2, 2012, p. 282.