Do you like Genshin? Do you like Vtubers? Do you like FEH? Here’s all of that!
So this is the supposedly latest "mainline" game in this franchise. I know Engage is allegedly a game celebrating
the 30th anniversary of FE, but that's even worse. Bold move celebrating the 30th anniversary of FE with a game that doesn't look like FE at all.
FE always looked like anime and followed the latest trends in artstyle etc, but all character designs still had a coherent theme. The medieval europe aesthetic was always a big influence. Even in a horny game like Fates (even the Hoshido desgins were coherent for the aesthetics of the nation). Ignoring the fanservice most designs looked decent (though there were some stinkers like Peri).
But Engage looks like it has no theme at all. It's just "fantasy" and goofy. The character designs are all over the place like they're all from different fantasy gacha games.
These designs seem like a perfect blend of every currrent day anime design trope and it just looks soulless as a result.
This artstyle is by far the worst the series has ever seen, and it makes me appreciate Three Houses, SoV, Path of Radiance etc. all the more. You know what actually bothers me the most, more than just disliking the aesthetics of the designs? All the women I see look like goddamn kids and suffer from same face syndrome. And my god, the 3D models in general look absolutely atrocious. Even the past lords look like shit in this game's style. Engage is certainly more colorful, but that's honestly it. The textures in Engage are another problem, they're mostly not there. The textures on everything are so flat. Everything looks so artificial because of it. FE3H was not a good looking game but I expected more from a game that released nearly 4 years later.
This game looks like a dollar store genshin that collabs with FE, but at least the Genshin characters look coherent for the themes and aesthetics of the nation they come from.
Colgate and friends look like a travelling circus. I remember when some pictures of this game leaked some time ago and people were 100% convinced that this was a chinese bootleg FE gacha, because of course they would.
Well, let's talk about the gameplay. It's FE so the gameplay was bound to be fun. People say that Engage is going back to its roots because the game "focuses more on the
tactical gameplay than the story, lore and characters". While it's true that Engage offers more variety in the tactical side of things, it still falls flat since the game is lacking some kind of balance. Thanks to the rings units are broken from the start. The problem is, to balance against this, you’d need to have absurdly difficult enemy units, who would invalidate all non-ring using characters and they didn't do that. Though, there are units/classes that are broken in general, so clearing maps wasn't really challenging. Engage offers average FE gameplay with some neat battle animation updates. There are some improvements, but also some step backs. But hey, at least we got weapon triangle back, right?
This is by far one of the easiest FE game I've played. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is fun but it's not "more challenging" than the past games in that regard. Also, Engage got new game modes and mechanics that are straight up from FEH and I'm not a fan.
The story...exists. Most FE stories aren't really all that unique but can still be enjoyed as political dramas on surface level for most of the time (I greatly enjoyed PoR, Thracia and 3H)
Engage's plot is the most vanilla, over the top anime story in this franchise and I mean this in a bad way. Yeah, it's even more "anime" than Fates. The story simply does not live up to previous installments in the series writing-wise.
Oh and Emblem heroes don't factor much into the plot at all, even Marth.
Also, I hate the "but FE was always anime!!!" argument. Yeah, no shit. Anime can have different genres, artstyle and a difference in tone and groundedness. Not every modern anime has to look like a generic moe harem isekai. Because you know, even "anime" can be serious. And it's not like the series cannot try to do that these days - see SoV and 3H. Now, I'm not against lighthearted plots in this franchise, but Engage's plot is just a joke that overstays its welcome way too long. It's been a while since I cringed so many times while playing a game.
The cast is also the most forgettable one. None of the characters felt unique or interesting in any way. Everyone here is meant to either be a laugh, a bland stereotype, or combination of the two. So, tiresome one-note gimmicks whose character profile never left the draft drawer but was put into the game anyway. Supports heavily focus on the character's gimmicks, which got annoying very fast. The supports are not engaging in any way. It's quantity over quality. All of them are very short, but I appreciate that they fully voiced all of them.
Honestly, the only reason I played this game is because I love Fire Emblem and wanted to give this game a chance. I enjoy FE gameplay, but even good gameplay can get tedious and boring if I don't care about the rest of the game. After finishing a map, I got rewarded with more over the top anime crap and meh characters. I was just not invested enough because of that and hated my time with it as a result. See, I love plenty of gameplay-focused games. The issue is that Engage isn't structured like a gameplay-focused game, it's structured like a game with a shit story featuring shitty characters. Does it give you a rough outline of a story to then let you play freely with no distraction? No. It's not a dungeon crawler, it's not XCOM, it's a very classic FE game with tons of character introductions and interactions that are wasting your time, they're just bad. I can't just admit the game's writing is so shit that it's better to skip every cutscene and call that "gameplay-focused", it's clearly a failure and not the intended experience. That was the worst experience I had with a FE game.
The only interesting thing about Engage are the past lords but if I want to see them I just play their games, where they look decent and not like...this. They're also not even able to
interact with each other or are all that relevant in the story, so whats the point of this "celebration"? That you'll point at your favorite lords and clap? That's what FEH is for. This game that shoves in generic anime designs, gags, lines, acting, same baby face women, and non fitting outfits and other elements is for me the worst FE game. I hope the next one will be better, because this was very disappointing after FE3H's big success. I understand that Engage is supposed to be a goofy and lighthearted "celebration" of this franchise, but why is it mainline? And why is it done so bad? There are many other and better ways to celebrate this franchise that I came to really love. But not like this. It's nothing more than a soulless cashgrab.
(The game leaked a few days ago, so I had the chance to play it early.)
So this is the supposedly latest "mainline" game in this franchise. I know Engage is allegedly a game celebrating
the 30th anniversary of FE, but that's even worse. Bold move celebrating the 30th anniversary of FE with a game that doesn't look like FE at all.
FE always looked like anime and followed the latest trends in artstyle etc, but all character designs still had a coherent theme. The medieval europe aesthetic was always a big influence. Even in a horny game like Fates (even the Hoshido desgins were coherent for the aesthetics of the nation). Ignoring the fanservice most designs looked decent (though there were some stinkers like Peri).
But Engage looks like it has no theme at all. It's just "fantasy" and goofy. The character designs are all over the place like they're all from different fantasy gacha games.
These designs seem like a perfect blend of every currrent day anime design trope and it just looks soulless as a result.
This artstyle is by far the worst the series has ever seen, and it makes me appreciate Three Houses, SoV, Path of Radiance etc. all the more. You know what actually bothers me the most, more than just disliking the aesthetics of the designs? All the women I see look like goddamn kids and suffer from same face syndrome. And my god, the 3D models in general look absolutely atrocious. Even the past lords look like shit in this game's style. Engage is certainly more colorful, but that's honestly it. The textures in Engage are another problem, they're mostly not there. The textures on everything are so flat. Everything looks so artificial because of it. FE3H was not a good looking game but I expected more from a game that released nearly 4 years later.
This game looks like a dollar store genshin that collabs with FE, but at least the Genshin characters look coherent for the themes and aesthetics of the nation they come from.
Colgate and friends look like a travelling circus. I remember when some pictures of this game leaked some time ago and people were 100% convinced that this was a chinese bootleg FE gacha, because of course they would.
Well, let's talk about the gameplay. It's FE so the gameplay was bound to be fun. People say that Engage is going back to its roots because the game "focuses more on the
tactical gameplay than the story, lore and characters". While it's true that Engage offers more variety in the tactical side of things, it still falls flat since the game is lacking some kind of balance. Thanks to the rings units are broken from the start. The problem is, to balance against this, you’d need to have absurdly difficult enemy units, who would invalidate all non-ring using characters and they didn't do that. Though, there are units/classes that are broken in general, so clearing maps wasn't really challenging. Engage offers average FE gameplay with some neat battle animation updates. There are some improvements, but also some step backs. But hey, at least we got weapon triangle back, right?
This is by far one of the easiest FE game I've played. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is fun but it's not "more challenging" than the past games in that regard. Also, Engage got new game modes and mechanics that are straight up from FEH and I'm not a fan.
The story...exists. Most FE stories aren't really all that unique but can still be enjoyed as political dramas on surface level for most of the time (I greatly enjoyed PoR, Thracia and 3H)
Engage's plot is the most vanilla, over the top anime story in this franchise and I mean this in a bad way. Yeah, it's even more "anime" than Fates. The story simply does not live up to previous installments in the series writing-wise.
Oh and Emblem heroes don't factor much into the plot at all, even Marth.
Also, I hate the "but FE was always anime!!!" argument. Yeah, no shit. Anime can have different genres, artstyle and a difference in tone and groundedness. Not every modern anime has to look like a generic moe harem isekai. Because you know, even "anime" can be serious. And it's not like the series cannot try to do that these days - see SoV and 3H. Now, I'm not against lighthearted plots in this franchise, but Engage's plot is just a joke that overstays its welcome way too long. It's been a while since I cringed so many times while playing a game.
The cast is also the most forgettable one. None of the characters felt unique or interesting in any way. Everyone here is meant to either be a laugh, a bland stereotype, or combination of the two. So, tiresome one-note gimmicks whose character profile never left the draft drawer but was put into the game anyway. Supports heavily focus on the character's gimmicks, which got annoying very fast. The supports are not engaging in any way. It's quantity over quality. All of them are very short, but I appreciate that they fully voiced all of them.
Honestly, the only reason I played this game is because I love Fire Emblem and wanted to give this game a chance. I enjoy FE gameplay, but even good gameplay can get tedious and boring if I don't care about the rest of the game. After finishing a map, I got rewarded with more over the top anime crap and meh characters. I was just not invested enough because of that and hated my time with it as a result. See, I love plenty of gameplay-focused games. The issue is that Engage isn't structured like a gameplay-focused game, it's structured like a game with a shit story featuring shitty characters. Does it give you a rough outline of a story to then let you play freely with no distraction? No. It's not a dungeon crawler, it's not XCOM, it's a very classic FE game with tons of character introductions and interactions that are wasting your time, they're just bad. I can't just admit the game's writing is so shit that it's better to skip every cutscene and call that "gameplay-focused", it's clearly a failure and not the intended experience. That was the worst experience I had with a FE game.
The only interesting thing about Engage are the past lords but if I want to see them I just play their games, where they look decent and not like...this. They're also not even able to
interact with each other or are all that relevant in the story, so whats the point of this "celebration"? That you'll point at your favorite lords and clap? That's what FEH is for. This game that shoves in generic anime designs, gags, lines, acting, same baby face women, and non fitting outfits and other elements is for me the worst FE game. I hope the next one will be better, because this was very disappointing after FE3H's big success. I understand that Engage is supposed to be a goofy and lighthearted "celebration" of this franchise, but why is it mainline? And why is it done so bad? There are many other and better ways to celebrate this franchise that I came to really love. But not like this. It's nothing more than a soulless cashgrab.
(The game leaked a few days ago, so I had the chance to play it early.)
11 Comments
i still stand by the only positive of this game was the leak that warned us of its arrival telling us that fe4 was getting a remake. really great review
W
Great review. The second I saw those leaked images back in, like, June or July I felt like I knew exactly what kind of game this would be. Here we are, 7 or so months later, it's exactly what I expected.
the designs are themed around french fashion btw
I can't agree with everything, at least for now. Three Houses was just ok gameplay-wise and the level design of Engage is by FAR better. So at least Engage is better to me in some aspect that make a Fire Emblem game great.
3H was easy in difficult too, and in maddening the difficulty wasn't really interesting because it uses some stupid trick.
I haven't finish Engage yet but I do have some similar complain (difficult is too easy rn and emblems are broken).*
Yeah the story and characters are shitty but at least there is something interesting here. Awakening was bad in litteraly everything except OST and QoL. This game is more like Fates maybe ?
I still find the review a bit harsh for a 3H lovers because 3H have a lot of flaws (the boring hub, average story that would have been better in one big path, bad and repetitive level design except few maps) and talking only about success and then take down Engage.. it feels unfair. I think 3H is a good game despite it flaws. I don't know for engage, but at least it's fun somehow.
Maybe I will need more time to have a definitive opinion, I do agree that something isn't right in the head of the developpers.
One more shitty story after Awakening and Fates and this chara-design that doesn't make sense..
They said that they chose these chara-designer to content everybody.. I don't know if we are just some old annoying guys but it's a big nope for me.
I'm with you about the fact that I really hope that the next FE isn't like that.
Awakening and Fates were already too much for me in the weeb + waifu + cheaty plot + fanserv' department, all this coating doesn't make sense anymore in Engage.
It's not even like I only want the old formula like my favorites FE games (from 4 to 10), but they have to find a balance here and I think they probably won't make it.
The hub is a bad idea but 3H and Engage does have it, they don't know how to make a good story anymore (Awa/Fates/Engage are bad, 3H was tedious and Echoes was pretty decent for what it was), same for chara-design, all those persona social-aspect too.
That's why I'm glad that the level design is good, I really thought that they didn't remember how to make an interesting map. Even if I've seen better maps in Thracia or Radiant Dawn obviously.
If they chose a stupid chara-design for FE4 remake I don't know if I will survive.
This comment is really unstructured I'm really sorry about that, haha.
Ps : About the gacha/FEH aspect I think it will be a one time thing as this is an anniversary game.
3H was easy in difficult too, and in maddening the difficulty wasn't really interesting because it uses some stupid trick.
I haven't finish Engage yet but I do have some similar complain (difficult is too easy rn and emblems are broken).*
Yeah the story and characters are shitty but at least there is something interesting here. Awakening was bad in litteraly everything except OST and QoL. This game is more like Fates maybe ?
I still find the review a bit harsh for a 3H lovers because 3H have a lot of flaws (the boring hub, average story that would have been better in one big path, bad and repetitive level design except few maps) and talking only about success and then take down Engage.. it feels unfair. I think 3H is a good game despite it flaws. I don't know for engage, but at least it's fun somehow.
Maybe I will need more time to have a definitive opinion, I do agree that something isn't right in the head of the developpers.
One more shitty story after Awakening and Fates and this chara-design that doesn't make sense..
They said that they chose these chara-designer to content everybody.. I don't know if we are just some old annoying guys but it's a big nope for me.
I'm with you about the fact that I really hope that the next FE isn't like that.
Awakening and Fates were already too much for me in the weeb + waifu + cheaty plot + fanserv' department, all this coating doesn't make sense anymore in Engage.
It's not even like I only want the old formula like my favorites FE games (from 4 to 10), but they have to find a balance here and I think they probably won't make it.
The hub is a bad idea but 3H and Engage does have it, they don't know how to make a good story anymore (Awa/Fates/Engage are bad, 3H was tedious and Echoes was pretty decent for what it was), same for chara-design, all those persona social-aspect too.
That's why I'm glad that the level design is good, I really thought that they didn't remember how to make an interesting map. Even if I've seen better maps in Thracia or Radiant Dawn obviously.
If they chose a stupid chara-design for FE4 remake I don't know if I will survive.
This comment is really unstructured I'm really sorry about that, haha.
Ps : About the gacha/FEH aspect I think it will be a one time thing as this is an anniversary game.
Based review
I strongly disagree about it being a bad anniversary game or a 'Soulless cashgrab' if anything I'd say this is one of the best anniversary celebrations of a series I've ever seen. It's like the Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger of Fire Emblem, hell the heroes even use rings to summon the and essentially henshin with past FE protagonists in the same way Gokaiger does. Honestly Engage feels like a genuine passionate love-letter to the series and captures everything Fire Emblem has been about and stood for since the beginning as far as I'm concerned. I mean I find it hard to believe you missed the whole message of the game in chapter 21/22 where Marth quite literally calls Alear THE FIRE EMBLEM. The whole message is Alear embodies the spirit of Fire Emblem and Alear as a character is basically Fire Emblem the game series personified. It's why they were written in a way to where they have various little things in common with almost every one of Fire Emblem's past protagonists. Yeah the game did start out goofy in the beginning, but it massively picks up by the 3rd act and the story of various royalty and heroes from all around the world banning together to stop an evil dragon with the power of friendship and familial bonds is the most Fire Emblem story to ever be told. Yeah it might not be 3H tier 'dark' and 'mature' writing, but 3H was barely a Fire Emblem game to begin with. It was a Persona game with a Fire Emblem skin and a Langrisser battle system.
Oh yeah and the gatcha aspect is entirely optional. Like I do not see the point of making such a big deal about something you could completely skip if you wanted to. It's not like it is intrinsic to the game design and makes it unplayable with out extremely minor stat boost those rings give you lmao
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I know I'm a bit late to the conversation but thank you for putting into words why this game is such an absolute abomination :D I was frankly quite surprised that it was generally so well received. It's good to know there are people out there who feel the same about this "celebration of Fire Emblem" :D
@Gloominary I'm glad you enjoyed my review! I was initially also really surprised, but then I realized that Engage is filled with poor anime tropes and character stereotypes that are really popular among weebs. From the exaggerated designs to the cringe-inducing dialogue, it's all there lol. As someone who finds these elements off-putting, I just couldn't enjoy Engage. Let's hope the next installment in the series takes a different approach ^^
Thalheim
1 year ago