This review of Fire Emblem Engage is going to be a bit unorthodox compared to how I usually structure my reviews. Particularly, because I don’t want to make this review longer than intended. I’ll dive into the main criticisms I have for the game then head into what the game does well.
For starters, the game does not have a lot of room to experiment with classes. And by this I mean there is a high cost at 2.5k to buy a master and second seals, to change into other classes. However, if you buy the DLC then. These seals among other items and armory items are 30% off. I find the high cost to experiment more with classes to be a detriment. There are A LOT of classes to choose from and I would’ve liked the ease to switch between any of them. The cost for either is simply too high. At 2.5k each the game simply doesn’t throw enough money at you to buy seals at your leisure. Granted the game does give you free seals sometimes when you open chests or finish a chapter, but you cannot count on either of these instances when both options are not available upon completing a chapter. Sure you can get bonus money from receiving military funds from each nation. But using them on donations seems a far better investment. By donating to a country you can see a higher gold yield in fighting skirmishes there. So your return on investment is pretty good. Although, this isn't balanced well, because you can be out of money to buy other materials you may need to upgrade weapons, buy items, healing items like vulnaries or staves first. And then what are you left with in the end? Zero money.
This leads me to another point. If the high cost is an issue then surely the game has a solution or band-aid for it right? You’re right. Except you need to pay the expansion pass for the first wave in granting you a silver card which reduces all prices in item and armory shops by 30%. Which comes out to 1750 seal price each. Which is better than having to pay 2.5k. But, the fact you have to buy the DLC to access the silver card is not a band-aid solution. It enforces a policy of buying into the expansion pass to reduce the shop prices by 30% and granting you other emblems, stat boosting items, and more. And sure some might see it as a worthy investment since you get more than you wanted as a whole package with DLC waves too. Be that as it may, it still doesn’t excuse the fact the silver card is an item exclusive to the DLC. And as far as I know you cannot obtain a silver card in the base game.
My suggestions to tweak this would be to lower seals to 1750 or lower and increase gold rewards. Whether by completing in-game story chapters or skirmishes to give a flat rate. Sure you can go up against skirmishes that drop gold. But what about normal skirmishes? In my playthrough, I had to rely on a certain character due to her skill granting me a chance for bonus gold. An increase in gold rewards and a decrease in pricing for seals would be nice. Perhaps in a patch? Well let's wait and see. Moving on.
Inheriting sp skills are too expensive for some skills. It takes 1-3k skill points to build enough for one unit and even then you may only get to inherit 1 skill right at the endgame. Sure you could pay a small amount of sp for skills below 1000 or below 3000. However, other skills can cost 4-5k. Yes, there are ways to increase sp points by using emblem skills like Great Sacrifice, and other skills. Yet, the cost in higher tier skills is simply too much. How can I experiment with my classes when the skills I want cost too much? An easy way to remedy this could’ve been lowering sp skills and increasing sp gain to offset this weird imbalance between heavily priced sp skills and a low gain to increase sp points.
The story is subpar and has a lot of lows. When I mean the story is subpar and has a lot of lows I mean it. The game primarily holds the player into a fantasy world too entrenched in the nostalgia-bait nature of previous titles in the series from FE1->FE3H. Sure it's a new world with new characters and with their history. With stakes and consequences that do occur in the game. Nonetheless, The story relies too heavily on the divine dragon to solve every single problem throughout Elyos. I found the formula and other structures which I won’t go into too much detail about due to spoilers. Copy and paste throughout. And this is repeated again and again as you travel to each new area until you make a full circle back to your starting location once again in Elyos.
Granted there are moments I’ll give the story where I was surprised and didn’t expect, but having silly solutions you can see a mile away from teasing you early on, simply doesn’t work. When I look at a plot, especially in an early game, there will come a point where too many cards are shown where the next plot device such as villains/antagonists and revelations nearly becomes transparent to the naked eye. And while some may favor this approach like I do. The execution here leaves much to be desired.
As if I'm being held by the hand. Or fed breadcrumbs to a door where I can see what will happen next. I’m not all-knowing however, and I can’t predict everything, but I kid you not when you have a mysterious hooded person + another unknown character in the next following scene that doesn’t show a great amount of subtlety(And this is displayed pretty early on). There are also I would say two points during the endgame where I was shaking my head by introducing a trope I love, but poorly executed in a vain attempt to come back to the roots of where we started. And another issue where the problem could not be resolved without the divine dragon once again coming to save the day or figure out the solution to said problem/s.
Some suggested improvements I could think of off the top of my head I'll say later on the review.
World-building is too simple. And doesn’t engage the player enough. Overworld map structure is indicative of this. When I mean world-building is too simple. I mean how the world of Elyos when looking at the map is just lazy writing in general. It's constructed as a circle and we get an early exposition of how the world came to be and the emblems. Another game that had a different shape was "Triangle strategy." For you guessed it triangle in the overworld map. Which upon looking at the overworld also conforms under a triangle. I had the same critique for that game but for different reasons. But that’s a story for another day. Back to Engage, we don’t get enough on the world’s politics if any. We don’t get much character background or relationship between each nation’s leaders and their current agenda beyond the early exposition again. When a leader is mentioned they are quickly forgotten for the sake of the plot and of course the main character's party to move on. I wanted to know more about Brodia’s lifestyle. Uh, any information on Firene’s king? Or another nation’s leader’s missing spouse or wife? Why aren’t pets used more in the lore? You just adopt then that's it? History of the emblems and more is given in the game, but what about any instances of emblem usage in the past? Like, show me past battles where so-so nations fought for an emblem. There is always discussion or mention of events a thousand years ago. What about flashbacks and more? Like seeing how Brodia attacks Elusia. Or Solm and Firene’s relationship? No deities? No unnatural events upsetting gods? Oh wait, never mind we need to worship the divine dragon. Who cares about all that other stuff? Let us pray to the divine dragon.
The game plays way too safe with copy-paste formulas. Not going to say exactly what they are in case of spoilers. But there is a rinse-and-repeat formula as you delve deeper into chapters. And I already said what I needed to say earlier in the story section. Honestly, the game would have benefited a lot more with more risks to the story and sequence of events that follow. As I continued on to each new nation, it quickly became apparent what will happen next. In a rinse-and-repeat fashion.
Recruits you come across throughout the game. Don’t test the main character enough. Due to their divinity. Should’ve deconstructed the divinity aspect. Made them have more flaws. Make them struggle and keep them from being so perfect. This ties back to the divine dragon solving everyone’s problems. I can remember moments in the game where the main character will falter, but guys don’t worry the power of friendship will make them overcome their failings so they can give us ideas and we just follow him/her. Don’t question it. He/she is the divine dragon! He/she can do it! We just need to follow them! We’ll beat everyone with him by our side! OH MY GOD, IT'S THE DIVINE DRAGON! FORGIVE MY CANDOR PLEASE. Oh, divine dragon? Please help us. Good lord, there is too much of this reverence and worship of the very ground he/she walks. This isn’t exactly what is said in the game, merely paraphrased.
Honestly, the game would have benefited a lot more if we didn’t worship the guy/lady and focused more on each character’s flaws. Give me someone who hates the divine dragon in our party, who will constantly butt heads. Heck, a rival or other divine dragon that is too casual and selfish and everything, not the main character. To be a foil. Make our new allies test the main character constantly. Leave our party, gather support against his idea to go with their idea. Give me moments when our divine dragon isn’t so divine. Despair in these scenes. Show the consequences of his flaws more. Make party members desert them or anything to make the divine dragon more than a goody-two-shoes out to save every nation and recruit everyone to their cause. I could list more, but I think you all get the picture. It’s like the developers stuck everything positive and can do no wrong with the main character, gave very slight flaws that could be easily overcome and BAM he/she can do it and solve your problem.
This is where the story, plot, and more start to fall apart and where the crevices become even larger to see the shallowness. All of the above tied together demonstrate a game where the main character is interconnected and used in such a way where they will solve numerous issues as you progress through the story. Again and again, we come upon a new solution from the one and only holy divine dragon!!! And sure I get the game is geared to be less so serious and more lighthearted compared to their predecessors. But its repetitive and overused. And honestly fails to capture my interest. Since I already know what will happen next. And because of my suspension of disbelief, being blasted into space.
Less incentive to see more support conversations. In part due to a lack of options in the hub. One meal? Come on… There are so many support conversations. And very little activities to create more bonding moments with my allies to unlock a new support rank. Sure I could grind endless skirmishes to get support conversations easily by auto-battling, but that’s not as efficient as manual control on every unit. And sure I could get quick supports with my main character and everyone else using gifts I could buy and find. But what about support conversations from one of my units to another? There is no quick way to see that. This could’ve been easily remedied if meal times were more than one time activities, every time you visited the Somniel after a battle. The fact you can only do one meal with two other units in your army is crazy. You have a lot of support logs for each unit.
I want to see what everyone has to offer. If the developers were worried about stat buffs you get from 1 meal, then make every consecutive meal after that give no bonuses. Heck, give me meal tickets based on how I do after each battle to spend in the cafe. That way I don’t use precious meat/vegetable ingredients if you want. Meal tickets for wiping every unit. Meal tickets for grabbing all chests, meal tickets for not losing any unit while on a map, meal tickets for recruiting all units possible on a map, etc. I could list at the top of my head. The real meat of the game is in the supports and I dearly loved watching the ones I wanted to see. So it’s a shame you can’t spend more time with your fellow allies with one meal. Arena doesn’t even help matters since it's randomized and you can only do 3 battles. And here’s the kicker: sometimes the selected unit you want to train with will select a unit to train against where they have no support conversations with. Good lord...
Spoilers abound for past FE characters from their respective games in paralogues. Some spoil more than others. I did not appreciate a big spoiler drop without any warning after ch 3 story battle, in my honest opinion. There is a point, especially in a post-chapter 3 battle where a character from an earlier titles spoils something from their respective game. I haven’t personally played that Fire Emblem entry. So I was incredibly frustrated. Since I was already careful, not playing the mobile game, I actively avoided reading in the wiki, and the internet on spoilers of past games. Only for the newest game to blurt it out. Unforgivable. Especially in a story cutscene. I was looking forward to playing that specific game in the near future in a blind playthrough. So my feelings were soured by this.
Some paralogues spoil some events from their respective games. Via dialogue. Since I haven’t even played every title in the series it’s unreasonable to assume every newcomer will play every game. Especially since some old games can only be played via fan translations and the rest via emulation or buying in their respective digital stores. To be transparent. I have not played FE4, FE5, Marth games, Fates, or Valentia. The rest I have played.
For the paralogues I think that are safe they are FE7 and FE3H.
Paralogues somewhat spoilery? I feel this can depend on the person if they don’t mind or do mind certain aspects. But the paralogues are FE6 & FE8.
For paralogues that do spoil some important elements from their games, they are FE Awakening and FE9 - FE10.
I understand Engage has main characters from past titles and will utilize them to some degree within the game. However I did not expect huge spoiler bombs. All I ask is a simple indicator or warning on the screen to let me know about information related to their respective games and if they have anything concerning their plot, character, or more. And prepare myself to avoid those important pertinent details. Fire Emblem Engage gives no warnings about this. For titles I haven’t played, I did not play their respective paralogues in fear of something spoiling me of their plots, story, important details in regards to their character, etc. I’d rather find out what happens in their respective games.
Granted some do not mind spoilers. This is fine. On the other hand, some are more sensitive to that type of information. Like me. Case in point, Players who like to dive into games completely blind and semi-blind players who do not mind certain aspects of a game to know.
OST for music isn’t a high bar here. The music in the game isn’t all that memorable outside of perhaps a handful of tracks. There are too many melodies or tunes that I find didn’t mesh well with the scenes or tried too hard to be epic and moving with the orchestral instruments. But it fails to capture me in the spirit during the game.
2 early game characters did not endear me at all. Why? Fan-club and their devotion to the divine dragon. They were watching the main character wake up and talk to him/her is a red flag. The fact you get these two characters right at the beginning of the game did not help matters at all. I didn’t want to label them as fanboy and fangirl of the divine dragon since I didn’t see their supports yet… But when I did and granted, I didn’t see all the support logs and I’m sure they have other qualities outside of a fan club for the divine dragon. But seeing these conversations where they’re trying to garner more fans for the Divine Dragon fan club shows how there is a weird devoted fan aspect to the main character. This also extends to mostly every character I've met/recruited in the game so far to worship them to varying degrees.
Which is kinda disturbing to a degree. These matters don’t help at all when the game includes wake-up events when you sleep at the Somniel where characters will go into your room where the main character sleeps and talk your ear off. It's more divine dragon worship, sometimes it's about prayers, sometimes it's about them and sometimes conversations will continue on and on back to how to serve the divine dragon. As if the man/woman is something to be gawked at with conversations in an art museum. I found this aspect of the game creepy and honestly the game could’ve done without it. This is also me watching as many as I could to find any redeeming factors and I can only say it's better here by a small margin than in FE3H tea events. Since they can talk about their lives. And you learn more about the character a bit. But the fact they talk to him/her and pray while they're sleeping only to wake up to no one's surprise why. Each time is frankly weird and again not right. Let them sleep for goodness sake, man. I wouldn’t want someone to talk my ear off when I’m trying to sleep…
Don’t like how the DLC/NSO seems geared to incentivize consumers to pay for membership/DLC. For the DLC if you buy it now you get stat items, 30% off in item/ armor shops, emblem rings and more in the coming waves along with story content. NSO online features two modes you cannot play without going online, seeing deployment rankings, and other stuff you couldn’t use without being online. And while this can be remedied using a 7 day free trial of NSO. What if you already did use the 7-day free trial on an earlier game?
This ties back into the classes. But this time I’ll focus on NSO. Since you had to pay or use a limited 7-day free trial to access online components like coop with another partner and challenge maps in relay trials, Battle against other players on edited maps in outrealm trials, profile cards you can’t send unless you’re online and deployment rankings, so if you want to access these features. You better cough up the money to Nintendo. Certainly, they have a right to manage how they price their downloadable content and pricing their online functionality. It just grinds my gears to see content that could’ve been available for others, being withheld until you cough up money for the company. Especially for online features. Can you imagine if Nintendo only allowed you to use your amiibos for a game. Only if you are currently an NSO subscriber? I love Nintendo, but sometimes some of their decisions leave me shaking my head at times. Anyway, moving on
Villains are flat garnering weak sympathy to think of them as human when they’re not. To expand on this, some scenes showcase the villains and demonstrate their power to a decent degree. However, without going into too specific detail. The execution of their villainous ways leaves much to be desired. I could not help but feel their actions in some maps can be terrifying. But on other maps leave me puzzled since they can do this extent using their power, so why don’t they do it again? This ties back into the plot and how the divine dragon will overcome everything if we listen to them.
I also did not like one villain who kept being a broken record saying the first letter “F” with the last letter “Y” in nearly all the scenes when they would come up. Come on man, don’t guilt trip me with that word. It does not work at all. And it is incredibly repetitive to continue using that word as if the player will miraculously forgive every single one of your atrocities. Granted not all villains fit this mold and I found some more than others who rise above this occasion. However, it does not excuse the fact the villains could’ve been more compelling. I get the point the developers were trying to make with the characters, but it just seems short. Give us scenes making them more human. Give me scenes showing the struggle and demonstrate their villainous ways without remorse. That's all I have to say for my critique of the game. Now let's move onto what the game does well to offset the boatload of criticism i've talked about so far.
The game is a wonderful return to classic Fire Emblem revitalizing the weapon triangle with a "break" system in place. Making enemies feel challenging even on normal. The overworld is gorgeous and I had fun using the free camera to inspect the whole world and see what nooks and crannies our main party could potentially travel to.
A large number of recruits even towards the endgame are fleshed out with full support conversation logs you can see. Out of my whole playthrough, I only completed 1 character support conversation. The rest I was only to get a small-decent chunk for my army alone.
Love the no durability of weapons. So I can keep on using them without fear of them breaking down on me. Except for staves of course, those you will need to buy again.
The voice acting is pretty good. A good majority of the cast has a decent amount of range throughout the game and I didn’t find any bad voice acting at all.
The emblems are really powerful and I love using them throughout my playthrough. Never gets old attaching a lord or not lord on a unit and letting them go attack a decent army against them. Only for my unit to emerge wounded, but still okay. There are various powers in each emblem and I used each of them to their fullest effect throughout my playthrough.
I had fun splitting my armies and designating whichever unit needs an emblem more. And a lot of maps give you the option to split your armies two ways or three ways. The combat is enjoyable to try out different strategies. Thankfully there’s quite a bit of good map design here to give players much freedom to do what they want. Especially when you have resources on that map that could turn the tide of battles like cannons or ballista. Some maps have interesting gimmicks, so those were pretty cool to play in.
I am impressed at the level of polish here, not just in animations and support conversation scenes. But the cutscenes, stills, artwork and opening. The background and colors used throughout the game are vivid and varied. And I have no complaints in seeing every color of the rainbow here. I also had no slowdown, bugs, glitches, or crashes throughout my playthrough and pretty much every battle and more were smooth.
For what it’s worth. I did enjoy some good story beats as I progressed through the game, and there were a couple of surprises I didn’t expect. Some paralogues, at least the ones I finished, were a very nice touch in seeing my old favorites come back to life(in Emblem form) and fighting on their maps from their respective games filled my nostalgia with great joy.
I feel the game is worthy of playing, if you’re still hungry for more Fire Emblem. And despite my long critique of the game above.
I hope my review still gets you to buy the game. My intention is never to gatekeep it. But merely to inform others what I feel could’ve been done better, with evidence, and move on from there. And while Fire Emblem Engage is an all right experience for me. Other’s out there rate the game higher than me and that's fine. That's their experience of what the game means to them and that’s fair. I have loved the series since starting with Awakening, and while I haven’t played the rest in the franchise, it is still a favorite of mine in the turn-based genre. I’m just disappointed at the potential this game could’ve been and held solid throughout. And while I still have those feelings, it does not discourage me from telling every soul I can to buy games in the franchise to keep it afloat. And I encourage anyone who has bought Fire Emblem Engage, to play to the end(if you can). Make your own voice heard on what your experience is for Engage. And type out your thoughts. Doesn’t even have to be as long as this. Short impressions are perfectly acceptable.
Anyway, that’s enough for me. This review got too long for my liking. But I feel I needed to type out what I wanted to say.
7/10
Edited: Due to 1.2 version adding more recreational activities. Thereby allowing you to boost supports between units. So I did a strikethrough on those sections in my review.
For starters, the game does not have a lot of room to experiment with classes. And by this I mean there is a high cost at 2.5k to buy a master and second seals, to change into other classes. However, if you buy the DLC then. These seals among other items and armory items are 30% off. I find the high cost to experiment more with classes to be a detriment. There are A LOT of classes to choose from and I would’ve liked the ease to switch between any of them. The cost for either is simply too high. At 2.5k each the game simply doesn’t throw enough money at you to buy seals at your leisure. Granted the game does give you free seals sometimes when you open chests or finish a chapter, but you cannot count on either of these instances when both options are not available upon completing a chapter. Sure you can get bonus money from receiving military funds from each nation. But using them on donations seems a far better investment. By donating to a country you can see a higher gold yield in fighting skirmishes there. So your return on investment is pretty good. Although, this isn't balanced well, because you can be out of money to buy other materials you may need to upgrade weapons, buy items, healing items like vulnaries or staves first. And then what are you left with in the end? Zero money.
This leads me to another point. If the high cost is an issue then surely the game has a solution or band-aid for it right? You’re right. Except you need to pay the expansion pass for the first wave in granting you a silver card which reduces all prices in item and armory shops by 30%. Which comes out to 1750 seal price each. Which is better than having to pay 2.5k. But, the fact you have to buy the DLC to access the silver card is not a band-aid solution. It enforces a policy of buying into the expansion pass to reduce the shop prices by 30% and granting you other emblems, stat boosting items, and more. And sure some might see it as a worthy investment since you get more than you wanted as a whole package with DLC waves too. Be that as it may, it still doesn’t excuse the fact the silver card is an item exclusive to the DLC. And as far as I know you cannot obtain a silver card in the base game.
My suggestions to tweak this would be to lower seals to 1750 or lower and increase gold rewards. Whether by completing in-game story chapters or skirmishes to give a flat rate. Sure you can go up against skirmishes that drop gold. But what about normal skirmishes? In my playthrough, I had to rely on a certain character due to her skill granting me a chance for bonus gold. An increase in gold rewards and a decrease in pricing for seals would be nice. Perhaps in a patch? Well let's wait and see. Moving on.
Inheriting sp skills are too expensive for some skills. It takes 1-3k skill points to build enough for one unit and even then you may only get to inherit 1 skill right at the endgame. Sure you could pay a small amount of sp for skills below 1000 or below 3000. However, other skills can cost 4-5k. Yes, there are ways to increase sp points by using emblem skills like Great Sacrifice, and other skills. Yet, the cost in higher tier skills is simply too much. How can I experiment with my classes when the skills I want cost too much? An easy way to remedy this could’ve been lowering sp skills and increasing sp gain to offset this weird imbalance between heavily priced sp skills and a low gain to increase sp points.
The story is subpar and has a lot of lows. When I mean the story is subpar and has a lot of lows I mean it. The game primarily holds the player into a fantasy world too entrenched in the nostalgia-bait nature of previous titles in the series from FE1->FE3H. Sure it's a new world with new characters and with their history. With stakes and consequences that do occur in the game. Nonetheless, The story relies too heavily on the divine dragon to solve every single problem throughout Elyos. I found the formula and other structures which I won’t go into too much detail about due to spoilers. Copy and paste throughout. And this is repeated again and again as you travel to each new area until you make a full circle back to your starting location once again in Elyos.
Granted there are moments I’ll give the story where I was surprised and didn’t expect, but having silly solutions you can see a mile away from teasing you early on, simply doesn’t work. When I look at a plot, especially in an early game, there will come a point where too many cards are shown where the next plot device such as villains/antagonists and revelations nearly becomes transparent to the naked eye. And while some may favor this approach like I do. The execution here leaves much to be desired.
As if I'm being held by the hand. Or fed breadcrumbs to a door where I can see what will happen next. I’m not all-knowing however, and I can’t predict everything, but I kid you not when you have a mysterious hooded person + another unknown character in the next following scene that doesn’t show a great amount of subtlety(And this is displayed pretty early on). There are also I would say two points during the endgame where I was shaking my head by introducing a trope I love, but poorly executed in a vain attempt to come back to the roots of where we started. And another issue where the problem could not be resolved without the divine dragon once again coming to save the day or figure out the solution to said problem/s.
Some suggested improvements I could think of off the top of my head I'll say later on the review.
World-building is too simple. And doesn’t engage the player enough. Overworld map structure is indicative of this. When I mean world-building is too simple. I mean how the world of Elyos when looking at the map is just lazy writing in general. It's constructed as a circle and we get an early exposition of how the world came to be and the emblems. Another game that had a different shape was "Triangle strategy." For you guessed it triangle in the overworld map. Which upon looking at the overworld also conforms under a triangle. I had the same critique for that game but for different reasons. But that’s a story for another day. Back to Engage, we don’t get enough on the world’s politics if any. We don’t get much character background or relationship between each nation’s leaders and their current agenda beyond the early exposition again. When a leader is mentioned they are quickly forgotten for the sake of the plot and of course the main character's party to move on. I wanted to know more about Brodia’s lifestyle. Uh, any information on Firene’s king? Or another nation’s leader’s missing spouse or wife? Why aren’t pets used more in the lore? You just adopt then that's it? History of the emblems and more is given in the game, but what about any instances of emblem usage in the past? Like, show me past battles where so-so nations fought for an emblem. There is always discussion or mention of events a thousand years ago. What about flashbacks and more? Like seeing how Brodia attacks Elusia. Or Solm and Firene’s relationship? No deities? No unnatural events upsetting gods? Oh wait, never mind we need to worship the divine dragon. Who cares about all that other stuff? Let us pray to the divine dragon.
The game plays way too safe with copy-paste formulas. Not going to say exactly what they are in case of spoilers. But there is a rinse-and-repeat formula as you delve deeper into chapters. And I already said what I needed to say earlier in the story section. Honestly, the game would have benefited a lot more with more risks to the story and sequence of events that follow. As I continued on to each new nation, it quickly became apparent what will happen next. In a rinse-and-repeat fashion.
Recruits you come across throughout the game. Don’t test the main character enough. Due to their divinity. Should’ve deconstructed the divinity aspect. Made them have more flaws. Make them struggle and keep them from being so perfect. This ties back to the divine dragon solving everyone’s problems. I can remember moments in the game where the main character will falter, but guys don’t worry the power of friendship will make them overcome their failings so they can give us ideas and we just follow him/her. Don’t question it. He/she is the divine dragon! He/she can do it! We just need to follow them! We’ll beat everyone with him by our side! OH MY GOD, IT'S THE DIVINE DRAGON! FORGIVE MY CANDOR PLEASE. Oh, divine dragon? Please help us. Good lord, there is too much of this reverence and worship of the very ground he/she walks. This isn’t exactly what is said in the game, merely paraphrased.
Honestly, the game would have benefited a lot more if we didn’t worship the guy/lady and focused more on each character’s flaws. Give me someone who hates the divine dragon in our party, who will constantly butt heads. Heck, a rival or other divine dragon that is too casual and selfish and everything, not the main character. To be a foil. Make our new allies test the main character constantly. Leave our party, gather support against his idea to go with their idea. Give me moments when our divine dragon isn’t so divine. Despair in these scenes. Show the consequences of his flaws more. Make party members desert them or anything to make the divine dragon more than a goody-two-shoes out to save every nation and recruit everyone to their cause. I could list more, but I think you all get the picture. It’s like the developers stuck everything positive and can do no wrong with the main character, gave very slight flaws that could be easily overcome and BAM he/she can do it and solve your problem.
This is where the story, plot, and more start to fall apart and where the crevices become even larger to see the shallowness. All of the above tied together demonstrate a game where the main character is interconnected and used in such a way where they will solve numerous issues as you progress through the story. Again and again, we come upon a new solution from the one and only holy divine dragon!!! And sure I get the game is geared to be less so serious and more lighthearted compared to their predecessors. But its repetitive and overused. And honestly fails to capture my interest. Since I already know what will happen next. And because of my suspension of disbelief, being blasted into space.
Spoilers abound for past FE characters from their respective games in paralogues. Some spoil more than others. I did not appreciate a big spoiler drop without any warning after ch 3 story battle, in my honest opinion. There is a point, especially in a post-chapter 3 battle where a character from an earlier titles spoils something from their respective game. I haven’t personally played that Fire Emblem entry. So I was incredibly frustrated. Since I was already careful, not playing the mobile game, I actively avoided reading in the wiki, and the internet on spoilers of past games. Only for the newest game to blurt it out. Unforgivable. Especially in a story cutscene. I was looking forward to playing that specific game in the near future in a blind playthrough. So my feelings were soured by this.
Some paralogues spoil some events from their respective games. Via dialogue. Since I haven’t even played every title in the series it’s unreasonable to assume every newcomer will play every game. Especially since some old games can only be played via fan translations and the rest via emulation or buying in their respective digital stores. To be transparent. I have not played FE4, FE5, Marth games, Fates, or Valentia. The rest I have played.
For the paralogues I think that are safe they are FE7 and FE3H.
Paralogues somewhat spoilery? I feel this can depend on the person if they don’t mind or do mind certain aspects. But the paralogues are FE6 & FE8.
For paralogues that do spoil some important elements from their games, they are FE Awakening and FE9 - FE10.
I understand Engage has main characters from past titles and will utilize them to some degree within the game. However I did not expect huge spoiler bombs. All I ask is a simple indicator or warning on the screen to let me know about information related to their respective games and if they have anything concerning their plot, character, or more. And prepare myself to avoid those important pertinent details. Fire Emblem Engage gives no warnings about this. For titles I haven’t played, I did not play their respective paralogues in fear of something spoiling me of their plots, story, important details in regards to their character, etc. I’d rather find out what happens in their respective games.
Granted some do not mind spoilers. This is fine. On the other hand, some are more sensitive to that type of information. Like me. Case in point, Players who like to dive into games completely blind and semi-blind players who do not mind certain aspects of a game to know.
OST for music isn’t a high bar here. The music in the game isn’t all that memorable outside of perhaps a handful of tracks. There are too many melodies or tunes that I find didn’t mesh well with the scenes or tried too hard to be epic and moving with the orchestral instruments. But it fails to capture me in the spirit during the game.
2 early game characters did not endear me at all. Why? Fan-club and their devotion to the divine dragon. They were watching the main character wake up and talk to him/her is a red flag. The fact you get these two characters right at the beginning of the game did not help matters at all. I didn’t want to label them as fanboy and fangirl of the divine dragon since I didn’t see their supports yet… But when I did and granted, I didn’t see all the support logs and I’m sure they have other qualities outside of a fan club for the divine dragon. But seeing these conversations where they’re trying to garner more fans for the Divine Dragon fan club shows how there is a weird devoted fan aspect to the main character. This also extends to mostly every character I've met/recruited in the game so far to worship them to varying degrees.
Which is kinda disturbing to a degree. These matters don’t help at all when the game includes wake-up events when you sleep at the Somniel where characters will go into your room where the main character sleeps and talk your ear off. It's more divine dragon worship, sometimes it's about prayers, sometimes it's about them and sometimes conversations will continue on and on back to how to serve the divine dragon. As if the man/woman is something to be gawked at with conversations in an art museum. I found this aspect of the game creepy and honestly the game could’ve done without it. This is also me watching as many as I could to find any redeeming factors and I can only say it's better here by a small margin than in FE3H tea events. Since they can talk about their lives. And you learn more about the character a bit. But the fact they talk to him/her and pray while they're sleeping only to wake up to no one's surprise why. Each time is frankly weird and again not right. Let them sleep for goodness sake, man. I wouldn’t want someone to talk my ear off when I’m trying to sleep…
Don’t like how the DLC/NSO seems geared to incentivize consumers to pay for membership/DLC. For the DLC if you buy it now you get stat items, 30% off in item/ armor shops, emblem rings and more in the coming waves along with story content. NSO online features two modes you cannot play without going online, seeing deployment rankings, and other stuff you couldn’t use without being online. And while this can be remedied using a 7 day free trial of NSO. What if you already did use the 7-day free trial on an earlier game?
This ties back into the classes. But this time I’ll focus on NSO. Since you had to pay or use a limited 7-day free trial to access online components like coop with another partner and challenge maps in relay trials, Battle against other players on edited maps in outrealm trials, profile cards you can’t send unless you’re online and deployment rankings, so if you want to access these features. You better cough up the money to Nintendo. Certainly, they have a right to manage how they price their downloadable content and pricing their online functionality. It just grinds my gears to see content that could’ve been available for others, being withheld until you cough up money for the company. Especially for online features. Can you imagine if Nintendo only allowed you to use your amiibos for a game. Only if you are currently an NSO subscriber? I love Nintendo, but sometimes some of their decisions leave me shaking my head at times. Anyway, moving on
Villains are flat garnering weak sympathy to think of them as human when they’re not. To expand on this, some scenes showcase the villains and demonstrate their power to a decent degree. However, without going into too specific detail. The execution of their villainous ways leaves much to be desired. I could not help but feel their actions in some maps can be terrifying. But on other maps leave me puzzled since they can do this extent using their power, so why don’t they do it again? This ties back into the plot and how the divine dragon will overcome everything if we listen to them.
I also did not like one villain who kept being a broken record saying the first letter “F” with the last letter “Y” in nearly all the scenes when they would come up. Come on man, don’t guilt trip me with that word. It does not work at all. And it is incredibly repetitive to continue using that word as if the player will miraculously forgive every single one of your atrocities. Granted not all villains fit this mold and I found some more than others who rise above this occasion. However, it does not excuse the fact the villains could’ve been more compelling. I get the point the developers were trying to make with the characters, but it just seems short. Give us scenes making them more human. Give me scenes showing the struggle and demonstrate their villainous ways without remorse. That's all I have to say for my critique of the game. Now let's move onto what the game does well to offset the boatload of criticism i've talked about so far.
The game is a wonderful return to classic Fire Emblem revitalizing the weapon triangle with a "break" system in place. Making enemies feel challenging even on normal. The overworld is gorgeous and I had fun using the free camera to inspect the whole world and see what nooks and crannies our main party could potentially travel to.
A large number of recruits even towards the endgame are fleshed out with full support conversation logs you can see. Out of my whole playthrough, I only completed 1 character support conversation. The rest I was only to get a small-decent chunk for my army alone.
Love the no durability of weapons. So I can keep on using them without fear of them breaking down on me. Except for staves of course, those you will need to buy again.
The voice acting is pretty good. A good majority of the cast has a decent amount of range throughout the game and I didn’t find any bad voice acting at all.
The emblems are really powerful and I love using them throughout my playthrough. Never gets old attaching a lord or not lord on a unit and letting them go attack a decent army against them. Only for my unit to emerge wounded, but still okay. There are various powers in each emblem and I used each of them to their fullest effect throughout my playthrough.
I had fun splitting my armies and designating whichever unit needs an emblem more. And a lot of maps give you the option to split your armies two ways or three ways. The combat is enjoyable to try out different strategies. Thankfully there’s quite a bit of good map design here to give players much freedom to do what they want. Especially when you have resources on that map that could turn the tide of battles like cannons or ballista. Some maps have interesting gimmicks, so those were pretty cool to play in.
I am impressed at the level of polish here, not just in animations and support conversation scenes. But the cutscenes, stills, artwork and opening. The background and colors used throughout the game are vivid and varied. And I have no complaints in seeing every color of the rainbow here. I also had no slowdown, bugs, glitches, or crashes throughout my playthrough and pretty much every battle and more were smooth.
For what it’s worth. I did enjoy some good story beats as I progressed through the game, and there were a couple of surprises I didn’t expect. Some paralogues, at least the ones I finished, were a very nice touch in seeing my old favorites come back to life(in Emblem form) and fighting on their maps from their respective games filled my nostalgia with great joy.
I feel the game is worthy of playing, if you’re still hungry for more Fire Emblem. And despite my long critique of the game above.
I hope my review still gets you to buy the game. My intention is never to gatekeep it. But merely to inform others what I feel could’ve been done better, with evidence, and move on from there. And while Fire Emblem Engage is an all right experience for me. Other’s out there rate the game higher than me and that's fine. That's their experience of what the game means to them and that’s fair. I have loved the series since starting with Awakening, and while I haven’t played the rest in the franchise, it is still a favorite of mine in the turn-based genre. I’m just disappointed at the potential this game could’ve been and held solid throughout. And while I still have those feelings, it does not discourage me from telling every soul I can to buy games in the franchise to keep it afloat. And I encourage anyone who has bought Fire Emblem Engage, to play to the end(if you can). Make your own voice heard on what your experience is for Engage. And type out your thoughts. Doesn’t even have to be as long as this. Short impressions are perfectly acceptable.
Anyway, that’s enough for me. This review got too long for my liking. But I feel I needed to type out what I wanted to say.
7/10
Edited: Due to 1.2 version adding more recreational activities. Thereby allowing you to boost supports between units. So I did a strikethrough on those sections in my review.