While it wasn't officially marketed as one, Engage feels very much like an anniversary title, one that celebrates the whole 30+ years of the franchise while also introducing a brand new cast to get attached to

Engage's big new addition to the series are the Emblem Rings. Each ring holds a main character from across the whole series. From Marth and Sigurd to Corrin and Byleth, each main entry has a representative here. While there may be some disappointment over certain selections, like Alm not being represented while Eirika at least has her twin Ephraim with her, each game has been represented fairly for the most part, with every character getting beautiful full 3D models and voice acting to represent them. It's a huge difference seeing the love and care Micaiah got in Engage compared to the strange artwork she got in Awakening for example.
Each ring can be equipped to any character, allowing for some skills to be shared over, like Sigurd allows Canter to be used by any unit using him. When using an Emblem Ring you can also Engage with them, where the unit and Emblem become one and get full access to the Emblem's weapons as well as a unique special attack that references the game they are from. Like Engaging with Celica means you can use Warp Ragnarok allowing you to warp like the witches in Gaiden/Echoes and deliver a powerful magic attack.
Each Emblem's inventory is also beautifully representative of the game they come from and as you increase your bond rank with each Emblem, you can eventually gain access to their signature legendary weapon. Marth's inventory starts with a Rapier like he does in Shadow Dragon but eventually you can gain access to his Falchion and my gosh it is so cool seeing all these weapons updated and modelled on an HD console.

On the surface, these Emblem Rings sound and look incredibly powerful, and they are, but somehow Intelligent Systems managed to beautifully balance the maps around their inclusion. Even with all 12 rings in hand, the game never becomes a cakewalk, often maintaining a steady challenge. This is help by skills being more limited and scaled back, like Canter is no longer on every mounted unit and has to passed on through Sigurds skillset, and bosses now carry revival stones meaning they can't just be swept away by one or two powerful attacks meaning you need to engage in these encounters prepared and that means having at least some Emblem Rings available to use. Emblem Rings can only be used for 3 turns while Engaged before needing to be recharged for use which means you can't just burn through them, you have to carefully select when is best to use them in the situation you're currently in.

As mentioned earlier, you can bond with the Emblem Rings and these lead to mini conversations with each one. These are small one sentence back and forths that can include some nice references from each character. It would have been nice to have a little more depth from each conversation but as every Emblem Ring has a support set with every single playable character, I can understand why they are short and sweet.

The next bit of celebratory stuff to gush over are the bond rings. Bond Rings are like basic Emblem Rings. These only give a few small stat boosts when equipped while a handful of S Rank rings come with skills. Acquiring these require summoning them through RNG and a special in game bond crystal currency which is fine, but what is cool about them is that every Emblem Ring has a set of 10 Bond Rings to collect, each with their original artwork for the character (or remake artwork) and have little descriptions about each character that unlock as you collect each rank of their rings. It is unfortunate that some characters selected seem to based solely off which ones had artwork available (looks over at Shadow Dragon not including Palla, Catria, and Est because Shadow Dragon/New Mystery does not have any artwork for them) but for the most part, these lists are organised in a way where important characters are top and bottom of the list and it's nice seeing little details like the Elincia S rank ring coming with her personal skill Mercy.

And the gushing of references to older titles doesn't stop there because each Emblem Ring gets their own Paralogue battle to allow for their Bond Rank to push past level 10. THESE ARE PEAK CARE AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL. Every single map comes from the characters original game. Lucina has Arena Ferox for example and talks about how she remembers fighting her father there, Ike has the defence map from Path of Radiance after he takes command of the Greil Mercenaries for the first time. These maps include remixed music from the original game, often a melody of several songs, like Marth's includes Trouble and Together We Ride, and they sound fantastic. The maps are also set up in such a way that it feels like you're playing something from the original game, like the Thracia one has its ballistae hit so much harder, or the Celica one includes enemies that can summon more enemies just like Gaiden/Echoes. Unfortunately there is limitations due to Engage's mechanics, so Micaiah's map lacks ledges that Radiant Dawn had and Sigurd's map is only a small portion of a full FE4 map but otherwise these are lovingly recreated, often including enemy units that reference characters from the original map and my gosh it is such a treat for fans like myself who have played every game in the series.

So yeah, Engage does a fantastic job at celebrating the series history but is also the 17th entry in the series and has its own original stuff to dive into as well. The story goes down the traditional Fire Emblem route of "evil dragon is awakening and must be stopped" which, while lacking the depth of something like Three Houses, I feel is fine for a title like this. It's simple, good fun and well voice acted with a handful of strong moments even if it fails to hit some of the heights of earlier titles. There's moments that seem to feel like reimaginings or references to older games. Like the start feels very Awakening, the bulk of it involving collecting the rings feels similar to Sacred Stones in a way, a lot of stuff surrounding Elusia's dynamics feel like a simpler Conquest arc, and Chapter 11 feels like it would fit right in with the Manster escape stuff from Thracia. By the end the story feels like a special crossover episode of something like Digimon or Power Rangers. There's a lot of talk of the power of bonds and stuff, and honestly it's something that's mostly just good fun rather than anything to analyse and take apart. Like it's just nice seeing all these Emblems together and I love how the final battle goes, it's something long time fans will really appreciate, and I think that's fine for a game like this.
Would've loved a bit more depth to the continent of Elyos itself but I did find a lot to love about Elusia at least to the point it's up there with some of my favourite Fire Emblem nations.

The new cast are a fantastic bunch too. Again, they're lacking the depth Three Houses brought but there's plenty to love about them from their supports and stuff. It feels like a more traditional FE in that sense as the story mostly focuses on the main royal from each nation and other characters pop up for their introduction and quickly fade out. Still, as I said there's plenty to love from Chloé and her love for folk food and fairy tales, or Hortensia and her persona she puts on in an attempt to be the princess she's expected to be and live up to her mother, or Ivy and Diamant whose kingdoms have been constantly at war learning how to forge a better relationship between their nations. There's a lot of good stuff here with the cast and it's great seeing them confide in the Emblems you give them and seeing those Emblems reminisce about their own lives. It was nice seeing Ike reflect on his days as a mercenary with Timerra or Byleth trying to guide Hortensia through her growth as a character.

Speaking of the new cast, I have a lot of love for the new protagonist Alear. It's hard to call them an "avatar character" because really all you're doing is picking a form and name for them, everything else is a fully fleshed character and I think how you view these kinds of characters going into the game can affect your perception and opinion of them. Alear is fantastic, they find the whole Divine One worshipping weird and awkward, are scared of the Corrupted and are very earnest in trying to be a good person. A lot of the late game story helps contextualise a lot of stuff surrounding Alear and it helps make them more endearing. The VA for the female Alear was a standout performer and helped sell the character to me even in moments where the story wasn't quite hitting what it was trying to convey.

There's a lot of new gameplay stuff in Engage too. The Somniel is like a reduced in scope Monastery but with just as many features. Visiting it between battles is entirely optional (thankfully handy for future playthroughs) and you'll probably want to visit it semi-regularly for the shops, stat boosts from meals and exercising, forming bond rings, and the arena. A lot of the other stuff is mostly just fun downtime stuff like fishing, changing costumes, and the wyvern ride minigame. It's small enough to make a little routine out of and speak to characters but I think Warriors: Three Hopes did it best with the base camp hub, that one felt like the Tellius camps brought to life and would be my preferred option in future titles.
Post battle you get to walk around the battlefield and talk to allies. These are nice for a little bit of world building, seeing stuff like Firene Castle in the background of an early Chapter is great for picturing how the nation is laid out in your head. I do wish the characters had more unique dialogue for these though, a lot of them say the same two or so lines. There's some maps like Chapter 17 where all the Firenese characters have unique lines about what happened and that is exactly what I wanted more of, just a little bit more depth for how these characters feel about what they're seeing.

Battle wise this is up there with the best of Fire Emblem. I've already mentioned the Engage mechanics and revival stones but there's other stuff to go through. Characters now have a type of sorts to their classes. For example Monks have a Chain Guard technique that allows them to take chip damage for allies one space around them. Some classes come with the Backup type that performs similarly to the attack pair ups from Awakening/Fates but in a much better in my opinion. Backup types can perform chain attacks when near an ally and rather act like a second full attack, a chain attack does smaller damage and at 80% accuracy so it's great for additional damage but not as substantial as the pair ups in Awakening/Fates. You can pull off a lot of damage if you line up your characters correctly, and my gosh how the enemies can punish you with it if you try to block off areas from them. The new break mechanic is also neat. Attacking with weapon triangle advantage now causes the opponent to drop their weapon for one phase of combat meaning they can't counterattack. It's a neat mechanic that isn't too intrusive and good for allowing disadvantaged weapons to get an attack in without fear of a counter.
Enemies in this game are also more aggressive than most FEs. Bosses in particular now will move and attack when in range or sometimes after a certain amount of turns. It's really good at keeping you on your toes, pushing you to be a bit more proactive in your strategy or risk being overwhelmed.
While objectives diversity is lacking (most maps are defeat boss objectives with one escape map and one sort of defence map) the more aggressive enemies can push you on the back foot, forcing you to hold your ground for a few turns before pushing out. The Ike paralogue in particular for me was a good example of feeling like a defence map without actually being one.
Fog of War has also been changed mechanically. Now you can't enter spaces you can't see in meaning you can't bump into unseen enemies while moving which is nice. FoW maps also include lighttable torches like the cave chapter in Radiant Dawn that can also be extinguished by the enemy. It helps make these maps feel a bit more dynamic and a bit less unpredictable.
Desert maps are another that have gone under a change. Instead of all desert tiles slowing your units to a crawl, now only certain tiles will slow you down so you can either push through the sand or take the long way round. It's another nice change that helps mitigate some of the frustrations these maps have caused in previous titles.
The maps themselves are also very well designed with no repeat maps showing up. There's a great visual variety between them as well which is really nice.

All of the mechanics and map design add up to one of the best Fire Emblem games from a gameplay standpoint. The game felt balanced throughout and I managed to complete my first playthrough without any grinding and without using any of the dlc emblems. Some of the Paralogues that opened up had higher recommended levels than the story ones at points and I challenged myself to push through them despite being underleveled and I found them to be very challenging but doable and fun.

Another thing I enjoyed was how limited things are in this game. Gold is tough to come by, units are weapon locked to two things max, skill points are hard to come by, deployment spaces are low for a lot of the game. I had to be careful with my money, plan what skills I wanted ahead of getting them, constantly switch up my characters as some fell off and new exciting ones appeared. It's working within these limitations that makes Fire Emblem so much fun for me and makes me excited for doing more playthroughs because I can experiment with different characters I didn't use and different ring combinations and that is so exciting.

Of course the music is fantastic as usual. Apart from the remixes from across the series, the new music is great with the Solm battle maps in particular being some of the catchiest themes ever. I don't think the final map music quite lives up to the extraordinary highs we've had since Awakening but nonetheless it's still a great one and one thematically fits this adventure very well.

Ultimately this was a fantastic experience. I think people who have played some of the previous games will get the most fun out of this as seeing the characters and references to the older games is really nice. The story does lack depth and has its flaws, like most FE titles, but the gameplay is up there with some of the best in the series.
I think the best way to sum this title up is: this is Fire Emblem heritage.

Engage is one of the best anniversary projects I've ever seen and a truly beautifully passionate love letter to Fire Emblem. Engage feels like a modern take on a game I would've played on the GBA back in the day and I mean that in the best way possible.

Sure I could talk about how it is a return to form for the series with the combat system being much more of the focus instead of the social elements, but so many people have talked about that so there's no point, but don't get me wrong though, the combat is incredible (Arguably the best it has ever been thanks to the additions of the Emblems, the Break mechanic and the triumphant return of the iconic Weapons Triangle) I could also talk in depth about how much more enjoyable the map designs are compared to other recent entries. However those are not the reasons I love the game as much as I do, no that is because of the story which seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I thought the story was thoroughly incredible despite what people say.

Engage's story is best described as a Tokusatu styled 90s shounen anime all about how nothing is impossible with the power of your friends and family by your side. Yeah it's simplistic and dated and more 'childish' and nowhere near as dark or mature (Though there certainly are some dark and emotional moments), but not every story has to be a gritty war epic about the nature of morality so Redditors can have 200+ comment chain political arguments about who is 'right' just to validate their own personal beliefs to be a good story. Honestly sometimes you just want a feel good, wholesome story about the unbreakable bonds of friendship and family and that's exactly what Engage excels at and the fact the cast of characters are just a bunch of eccentric goofballs and they have fantastic chemistry with each other certainly helps as well.

Engage is so ridiculously cheesy, but genuinely earnest and passionate about its message that it is just as endearing as it is cheesy. I cried multiple times and I teared up even more, not even because I was sad most of the times, but because I was just so happy and constantly smiling ear to ear while playing.

Everything about Engage from the cheesy opening anime theme song to the literal Super Sentai roll call in preparation for the final boss battle just gave me this massive nostalgic feeling like I was a kid again watching Power Rangers before school or 4Kids anime on Saturdays. As a game by itself it is still very good, but as an anniversary title and celebration of the series as a whole, it is truly a work of art.