Pretty mid-tier Fire Emblem, but a mid-tier Fire Emblem is going to be one of the best games of any given year. I've seen people make a big fuss about how bad this game's story is, and it's certainly......not good. Very children's cartoon-esque, and really the game is too long to justify it being around for so long, like there are clearly points where the story is pushing itself to be relevant. But what's more apparent to me than the story coming off Three Houses is how unbalanced this game is. Infinite reclassing and infinite grinding a la Awakening are back, and some units are very obviously pretty broken. This definitely hurts Engage like, as a strategy game.

That being said, this game is basically the pinnacle of "junk food" Fire Emblem. It's not something you have to think deep about on the lower difficulties, and it's not something with a story for like, adults, but damn is it fun to play around with and break. By the end of the game, your units will probably be so powerful that they'll feel like superheroes. The minigames and home base activities are a lot of fun even if they don't mean anything. The engage rings offer a ton of additional customization and player freedom. Fire Emblem really has just never offered anywhere close to this much unit customization. The rewind system here is also super generous, which adds to this game's "junk food"-like quality.

The maps here slap too. I really appreciate how small they are, it makes this perfect for bite sized gameplay. Sans Conquest, probably the best since....New Mystery or Path of Radiance I guess? They're just full of fun little gimmicks and never feel unfair.

Not a fan of the art style at first, but it did somewhat grow on my by the end. Unfortunately a downgrade from how Three Houses looks, which isn't the only attribute I'd say about this game, but it is fun in its own right.

The haggling is more of a gimmick than you'd probably expect (the game really doesn't feel like it expects you to pay full price, though it's designed in such a way that I'm sure some unwitting kids certainly did), and doesn't add that much to this. The game kinda cheaps out on Rusty having any kind of an actual tragic background too.

But! The baseball minigames are actually a lot of fun! Think WarioWare meets Wii Sports or something. Lots of twitch reflexes, specifically with baseball visual cues. They're surprisingly kinda difficult too, or at least some of them! Shame the motion controlled ones don't work too well on a handheld, but like, they nailed the feel and the timing windows here.

Impressions 1 hour in: Wow, this performance is terrible.
Impressions 15 hours in: Okay now that I'm used to the bad performance this is kind of awesome.
Impressions 45 hours in: Okay, actually this game ends up getting pretty repetitive after a while though it's still a ton of fun.

If Game Freak were a more technically competent developer, this would be heralded as Pokemon's Breath of the Wild moment, I think. The world is vibrant and chalk full of stuff to explore, and dare I say even bloated at time. I still ended up kind of loving this, just off the strength of Pokemon combat alone. Which is as strong as ever here. 65 hours of strategizing and statistical analysis that kids can to sure is fun to me, and I mean that completely unironically. It's just the perfect thing for my brain to unwind with. The most ambitious Pokemon game....ever, and while that ambition doesn't always pay off, I'd take that over whatever the hell Sword and Shield is any day of the week.