A profoundly disappointing experience, Intelligent Systems has displayed that they have the capability to make the peak of strategy RPG gameplay (Fates: Conquest) and that they still have the writers to make even an afterthought of an NES game's story good with lively characters and interestingly explored motivations and relationships (Shadows of Valentia) and has decided to discard all that quality to phone it in for a game that lacks both of these aspects. Coming out after Three Houses doesn't help, a game that pushed the series' character writing and support conversation quality to the next level.
In terms of story, the game I'd consider just below Awakening's, the world they craft is extremely poor and the four kingdoms are given traits that ultimately don't matter in the grand scheme of the narrative since the plot is solely focused on the conflict between the divine dragon side and the fell dragon side, which ruins a lot of the characters motivations since its never illustrated, for example, why Diamant is different from his father, except that Diamant wants to end the constant invasions from Brodia's end. However, King Morion is beloved by everyone, and no one can say any wrong about him as a person nor as a ruler, the same applies to every other currently ruling character in the world which completely deflates every character's aims and goals of trying to make the world a better place when it's already idyllic with only the extremely recent threat of the corrupted meaning anything in the grand scheme of the world.
The plot itself is incredibly weak, with an absolutely poor execution on even simple topics, topics the series has explored before even in it's very first incarnation and succeeded more than this game does. I'm not opposed to the game having simple writing, simple themes, simple characters but this game is no Dragon Quest, there is an almost negative charisma emanating from some of the scenes and dialogue that happen throughout the story with some laughably terrible moments like introducing a character in one chapter and giving them a """tragic""" death in the next chapter only a few minutes later. On a note unrelated to the game's quality, it's completely baffling to me how much leeway is given to this game because it's not attempting to make anything more than the sentai monster of the week that it is, this is a series about heroic fantasy in the context of war and has always managed to hold a level of decorum about it even in the worst stories like Fates.
The characters are especially disappointing in this game, for me a pillar of the series ever since Genealogy has always been to expand side characters through meaningful side conversation which the support system was brilliant for, maybe even being my favourite aspect of the series, and Engage absolutely guts the system, with meaningless drivel that even the tropiest of characters in other games at least topped in quality. This might even be the only Fire Emblem game where I simply did not care about most of the supports in the game, most of them feeling like a waste of my time and an exercise in demolishing any character potential a character might have had. The characters aren't just simple walking cliches played straight, they're worse than that because of the aforementioned problems with the world, but they don't even get to be meaningfully involved with each other with paired endings, an aspect of the series present since Genealogy, being absent which isn't simply shippers not being catered to, but there were paired endings in previous games that weren't just marriage related which bolstered those games' commitments to forging ironclad lifelong bonds through said games' conflicts, something this game barely feels like it does.
On a slightly related note, the hub in this game is absolutely terrible, the characters within never have anything interesting to say at all, something the Three Houses hub was great at. The gameplay in the hub is also atrocious, the place is shit to navigate with functions you'll be returning to frequently being behind separate doors with loading screens resulting in a very clunky experience that makes doing anything in the hub a chore, on top of the dogshit minigames. Who really asked for a timing minigame for temporary buffs? Or a shitty rail shooter?
The level design of the maps are okay at best, while there are some interesting objectives and ideas here and there, they are few and far between as a whole. I wasn't expecting something like the series' highs after seeing footage of the Engage mechanics, but the maps here never hit anything distinctive for me, aside from one chapter. The Engage aspect of the gameplay is a mixed bag, on one hand its fun to steamroll through enemies with your super powered bankais, but most of the game just does not account for these superpowers. For reference I played on Hard Mode, because Fire Emblem games historically have not done the highest difficulty very well with very few exceptions, and I did not have trouble at all past chapter 11 or so, save for doing paralogues under the recommended level. The paralogues are generally where the bulk of the interesting map design stems from, except that most of these mechanics and good design is jacked wholesale from previous games anyway, regardless of whether that is intentional because of the anniversary nature of the game I just think its really sad that the game's best ideas are just from older games.
Finally, I take umbrage with how the game handles the anniversary aspect of it, which bleeds into every aspect of the game. The best way to illustrate my frustration with it is Awakening which was also an anniversary game, and one with a lot more dignity than this game. Engage performs very blatant and in your face pandering that just feels like a mobile gacha game, as opposed to Awakening which relegated overt references to previous games to design aspects or very specific callbacks that worked, whereas Engage is content to just throw out previous game references raw and hope people will bite, which they probably did, but there's just no dignity or elegance to how the game handles its legacy, down to having a fucking gacha of all things.
Fire Emblem Engage is the series indulging in its vices at its worst, and I really hope that this isn't the vibe going forward because this is my favourite video game series, and its really sad to see the future I envisioned at my most cynical after Awakening and Fates actually coming true following two other excellent entries in the series that regained all my good will back.
In terms of story, the game I'd consider just below Awakening's, the world they craft is extremely poor and the four kingdoms are given traits that ultimately don't matter in the grand scheme of the narrative since the plot is solely focused on the conflict between the divine dragon side and the fell dragon side, which ruins a lot of the characters motivations since its never illustrated, for example, why Diamant is different from his father, except that Diamant wants to end the constant invasions from Brodia's end. However, King Morion is beloved by everyone, and no one can say any wrong about him as a person nor as a ruler, the same applies to every other currently ruling character in the world which completely deflates every character's aims and goals of trying to make the world a better place when it's already idyllic with only the extremely recent threat of the corrupted meaning anything in the grand scheme of the world.
The plot itself is incredibly weak, with an absolutely poor execution on even simple topics, topics the series has explored before even in it's very first incarnation and succeeded more than this game does. I'm not opposed to the game having simple writing, simple themes, simple characters but this game is no Dragon Quest, there is an almost negative charisma emanating from some of the scenes and dialogue that happen throughout the story with some laughably terrible moments like introducing a character in one chapter and giving them a """tragic""" death in the next chapter only a few minutes later. On a note unrelated to the game's quality, it's completely baffling to me how much leeway is given to this game because it's not attempting to make anything more than the sentai monster of the week that it is, this is a series about heroic fantasy in the context of war and has always managed to hold a level of decorum about it even in the worst stories like Fates.
The characters are especially disappointing in this game, for me a pillar of the series ever since Genealogy has always been to expand side characters through meaningful side conversation which the support system was brilliant for, maybe even being my favourite aspect of the series, and Engage absolutely guts the system, with meaningless drivel that even the tropiest of characters in other games at least topped in quality. This might even be the only Fire Emblem game where I simply did not care about most of the supports in the game, most of them feeling like a waste of my time and an exercise in demolishing any character potential a character might have had. The characters aren't just simple walking cliches played straight, they're worse than that because of the aforementioned problems with the world, but they don't even get to be meaningfully involved with each other with paired endings, an aspect of the series present since Genealogy, being absent which isn't simply shippers not being catered to, but there were paired endings in previous games that weren't just marriage related which bolstered those games' commitments to forging ironclad lifelong bonds through said games' conflicts, something this game barely feels like it does.
On a slightly related note, the hub in this game is absolutely terrible, the characters within never have anything interesting to say at all, something the Three Houses hub was great at. The gameplay in the hub is also atrocious, the place is shit to navigate with functions you'll be returning to frequently being behind separate doors with loading screens resulting in a very clunky experience that makes doing anything in the hub a chore, on top of the dogshit minigames. Who really asked for a timing minigame for temporary buffs? Or a shitty rail shooter?
The level design of the maps are okay at best, while there are some interesting objectives and ideas here and there, they are few and far between as a whole. I wasn't expecting something like the series' highs after seeing footage of the Engage mechanics, but the maps here never hit anything distinctive for me, aside from one chapter. The Engage aspect of the gameplay is a mixed bag, on one hand its fun to steamroll through enemies with your super powered bankais, but most of the game just does not account for these superpowers. For reference I played on Hard Mode, because Fire Emblem games historically have not done the highest difficulty very well with very few exceptions, and I did not have trouble at all past chapter 11 or so, save for doing paralogues under the recommended level. The paralogues are generally where the bulk of the interesting map design stems from, except that most of these mechanics and good design is jacked wholesale from previous games anyway, regardless of whether that is intentional because of the anniversary nature of the game I just think its really sad that the game's best ideas are just from older games.
Finally, I take umbrage with how the game handles the anniversary aspect of it, which bleeds into every aspect of the game. The best way to illustrate my frustration with it is Awakening which was also an anniversary game, and one with a lot more dignity than this game. Engage performs very blatant and in your face pandering that just feels like a mobile gacha game, as opposed to Awakening which relegated overt references to previous games to design aspects or very specific callbacks that worked, whereas Engage is content to just throw out previous game references raw and hope people will bite, which they probably did, but there's just no dignity or elegance to how the game handles its legacy, down to having a fucking gacha of all things.
Fire Emblem Engage is the series indulging in its vices at its worst, and I really hope that this isn't the vibe going forward because this is my favourite video game series, and its really sad to see the future I envisioned at my most cynical after Awakening and Fates actually coming true following two other excellent entries in the series that regained all my good will back.