Fire Emblem engage is a game of opposites, quite like its colgate-influenced protagonist.
I am a sucker for tactics RPGs. I will spend hours tinkering away at characters, concocting builds that pique my interest or fit my idea of a character's aesthetic. I also genuinely love the tense trade-off between tactical efficiency and narrative connection that these games allow for when a permadeath mode is available: Do I want to win this battle at all costs, or does a swift victory require a sacrifice too heavy to carry? This tradeoff, it seems, is one that Engage is not interested in.
While Engage's tactics are incredibly satisfying, flashy and fun to experiment with, it gives you very little reason to care about you doing so. While the story of Engage has been derided thoroughly already, I think a part of the discussion that goes underserved is how actively it encourages you to disconnect from its cast of characters in favor of enhancing the puzzle element of Engage's battles.
Let me explain. Engage tosses many mechanics at you to allow you to tweak your characters to your heart's content. Emblem Rings with special powers, class changes, engraving weapons, you name it - Engage begs you to spend its plethora of resources and currencies on various stat upgrades and abilities. That is great: I spent the better part of the early game ranking up my favourite, usally sub-par characters to see if I could turn bronze to gold. For a while, this loop paid off - I saw my faves grow and dominate the battlefield.
Then, Engage picks up the pace and decides it wants to be meaner. Enemies hit harder and take fewer damage. Bosses get not two, but three healthbars. Even the slightest mixup and positioning leaves your character dangerously exposed to a one or two-hit kill. Suddenly, experimentation with what I wanted my characters to do had to make way for what felt like a process of optimizing for what the game demanded of me. I couldn't see my characters as the imperfect warriors they were, instead having to treat them as insufficient game pieces. Pair this with incredibly lackluster story development and support scenes and my mechanical and narrative attachment to Engage's units was wavering.
Don't get me wrong, the mechanics of Engage are great. Maps will throw interesting scenarios at you, challenging you to think of new ways to use your units or plan out your movements around the level. In the beginning, they are also incredibly snappy. There's no downtime of moving characters around without decisions to make, or situations in which you have to dogpile units on a tanky enemy. This starts to become more frequent in later levels, however, when risk is high enough to warrant slow, plodding play and juggling aggro lines. Again, the sheer gaminess of Engage was rearing its head.
Now, I still rate this game quite well. While Engage is a game, it is a damn good one. If you go into it knowing you will get a beautiful, uncompromising puzzlebox of fantasy tactics, you will be satisfied. I was just hoping for something to attach to. I suppose I will have to go and find a different emblem ring to wear.
I am a sucker for tactics RPGs. I will spend hours tinkering away at characters, concocting builds that pique my interest or fit my idea of a character's aesthetic. I also genuinely love the tense trade-off between tactical efficiency and narrative connection that these games allow for when a permadeath mode is available: Do I want to win this battle at all costs, or does a swift victory require a sacrifice too heavy to carry? This tradeoff, it seems, is one that Engage is not interested in.
While Engage's tactics are incredibly satisfying, flashy and fun to experiment with, it gives you very little reason to care about you doing so. While the story of Engage has been derided thoroughly already, I think a part of the discussion that goes underserved is how actively it encourages you to disconnect from its cast of characters in favor of enhancing the puzzle element of Engage's battles.
Let me explain. Engage tosses many mechanics at you to allow you to tweak your characters to your heart's content. Emblem Rings with special powers, class changes, engraving weapons, you name it - Engage begs you to spend its plethora of resources and currencies on various stat upgrades and abilities. That is great: I spent the better part of the early game ranking up my favourite, usally sub-par characters to see if I could turn bronze to gold. For a while, this loop paid off - I saw my faves grow and dominate the battlefield.
Then, Engage picks up the pace and decides it wants to be meaner. Enemies hit harder and take fewer damage. Bosses get not two, but three healthbars. Even the slightest mixup and positioning leaves your character dangerously exposed to a one or two-hit kill. Suddenly, experimentation with what I wanted my characters to do had to make way for what felt like a process of optimizing for what the game demanded of me. I couldn't see my characters as the imperfect warriors they were, instead having to treat them as insufficient game pieces. Pair this with incredibly lackluster story development and support scenes and my mechanical and narrative attachment to Engage's units was wavering.
Don't get me wrong, the mechanics of Engage are great. Maps will throw interesting scenarios at you, challenging you to think of new ways to use your units or plan out your movements around the level. In the beginning, they are also incredibly snappy. There's no downtime of moving characters around without decisions to make, or situations in which you have to dogpile units on a tanky enemy. This starts to become more frequent in later levels, however, when risk is high enough to warrant slow, plodding play and juggling aggro lines. Again, the sheer gaminess of Engage was rearing its head.
Now, I still rate this game quite well. While Engage is a game, it is a damn good one. If you go into it knowing you will get a beautiful, uncompromising puzzlebox of fantasy tactics, you will be satisfied. I was just hoping for something to attach to. I suppose I will have to go and find a different emblem ring to wear.