SHORT VERSION:
Fire Emblem Engage takes a lot of right steps when it comes to gameplay. A clunky UI and skill system don't stop Engage from bringing clarity and vision to the series' continued attempts to shift to a more active, player-turn driven experience as opposed to a turtling march to inevitable victory. That said, it boasts a story so genuinely poor that I am convinced I could write better in two hours with a gun pressed to the back of my head - and when your game is best enjoyed by skipping through your hours upon hours of cutscene and focussing purely on the gameplay, that is the point where I am close to calling you a failed Fire Emblem game, or perhaps a failed game as a whole.
LONG VERSION:
Wow, this gameplay is great! I wonder what the story will be like...?
This story is a genuine 1/10, and if I could give it a 0, I would.
Actually, I will.
This story is a genuine 0/10.
But before we get to that, let's talk the meat-and-bones--let's talk gameplay, because Fire Emblem: Engage brings lots of it and in ways that breathe life into a series that has long struggled with its identity and approach.
To understand what makes Engage so effective, we have to understand what made old Fire Emblem effective and what had been happening around that. Long ago in the days of the Gameboy Advance and the Gamecube, Fire Emblem's greatest units were the juggernauts--the units that could be thrown in on your turn and subsequently endure everything and kill a fair few of the baddies who'd come for their heads on the enemy's turn. This sort of turtling approach made for a slow, measured march to victory in most of these games - where a careless overreaching meant death, but a deft tactician could take measured risks and expedite the process of getting through a level. That is, until Fire Emblem: Fates sought to bring some change--with the introduction of enemies utilising powerful mechanics like Pair Up and skills that could grind down even your biggest tanks, there came a move to bringing Fire Emblem more towards a player turn oriented tactics game - where each turn presented is a puzzle to be figured out, and if you mess up, you may just see your entire team die screaming at the catastrophic results of your in-hindsight hilarious oversight.
This was considered, generally speaking, to be a good move--but I would argue it was imperfect in Fates. In Engage, that is no longer the case. Playing even on the Hard/Classic difficulty (which is by the series' own saying the 'standard' mode of play), every start of a turn is a delectable challenge to figure out. You cannot plot too far and too meticulously, because the game will keep dishing out curveballs that keep you on your tactical toes and that will ask--nay, demand--that you dig and dig deep into your bag of tricks and exhaust it all to survive, overcome and carry on through the war you're waging. It's honestly thrilling, and deeply rewarding when the chips fall your way.
There is a flipside to this.
Engage is constantly looking for new ways to prod and prickle your tactical brain, and it provides you with a litany of tools to tackle them--sometimes, perhaps, too many and in too clumsy a way. The UI has been improved a little, but the menus and the loading times you need to go through to unlock your options are honestly oppressive and sometimes block enjoyment from some of the elements just because its such a huge pain in the tail to try and get to them. For that matter, as rewarding as it is to make it through those tough player phases and on to the next challenge, so infuriating is it when a single missed roll (and you're going to have some clutch misses) or some enemy skill you overlooked among the immense army that came your way ruins your strategy. Of course, the by-now series staple Rewind feature helps mitigate this - but overreliance on the Rewind tended to take the wind out of my sails, especially since it most commonly demanded use not when my tactics proved faulty but when the random numbe generator decided to take my units for a spin and send a 96% chance to hit into the abyss.
Engage's gameplay is just what the title promises--Engaging. Despite its shortcomings in some areas, the end result is satisfying and tons of fun to play. With all that strength in gameplay, its time to talk about the reason that I give this game a mere 2/5 after all that praise.
The story, ladies and gentlemen, is not great.
In fairness, Three Houses aside, the story for Fire Emblem hasn't been great for many long years, never quite recovering from the nosedive of quality that FE11 represented - but this one truly shocks the senses. Every chapter offers a new low, every bit of the story you uncover is a new nugget of something you wish you'd never seen. Without getting into details, we have a clueless Mary Sue for a protagonist who is a literal God but totally humble and likeable about it, we dive balls-first into every poor trope that has featured in the Fire Emblem series (some of them multiple times, each worse than the last), we treat our villains so poorly that they come across like saturday-morning cartoon villains that aren't actually any fun to watch and the formulaic nature of the story repeats so often you'll have distilled it enough to write your phD thesis on "The dangers of applying formula in a story" by the time you're in Act 2.
The presentation is appalling, too. Series veterans will at this point have gotten used to the rudimentary 3D-models taking on one of five poses to give a general indication of their mood while visual-novel style textboxes fly by, but by God, Fire Emblem Engage truly takes the cake. Though the pre-rendered cutscenes are gorgeous, the game (still running on the Musou engine used for FE3H in 2019 and FE:W in bloody 2017) is ugly as sin, and this merrily extends to the visual novel scenes. Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn--none of these had pretty 3D models that could tell a story and convince you, but they knew they didn't and therefore stuck to visual novels that allowed the player's imagination to fill in the gaps.
Engage allows you not a thing.
Engage will beat you over the head with a 15-minute long scene that is comprised of 5 characters stood in a circle discussing things, followed by the entrance of the villain as if a joyless Team Rocket has just showed up, followed by... 15 more minutes now comprised of 5 characters stood across from 2 characters, all ferociously chatting waffle at each other. All of it means sweet fuck-all as your candy-sweet, wouldn't-harm-a-fly party chats at the villains who, honestly, come across as a five-year-olds attempt at a gang of evildoers. Cute, but utterly uninteresting.
I would talk more about how disappointing the 'Emblems' are--old characters from the series returning as spiritual guides in this fan-service focused anniversary title--but I will leave it here: As a 20-year veteran of the series and indeed fan, my fan is feeling a little unserviced. An utter waste of ideas. If your best throw at a villainous Emblem was not to delve into the rogue's gallery of Fire Emblem's long history of nemeses but instead Marth BUT RED, then you clearly do not understand the first thing about what people like.
This is a bumbling, amateurish, downright embarrassing piece of kids' theatre pawned off as a Triple-A experience where hours worth of your entertainment is meant to be derived from the story.
There is so bad it's good--and sometimes, this is that--but mostly, this is so bad it's horrible.
I am giving this two stars for some genuinely excellent Fire Emblem gameplay, but with a story this shit, it should be thanking its lucky stars that I give it any bloody points at all.
Fire Emblem Engage takes a lot of right steps when it comes to gameplay. A clunky UI and skill system don't stop Engage from bringing clarity and vision to the series' continued attempts to shift to a more active, player-turn driven experience as opposed to a turtling march to inevitable victory. That said, it boasts a story so genuinely poor that I am convinced I could write better in two hours with a gun pressed to the back of my head - and when your game is best enjoyed by skipping through your hours upon hours of cutscene and focussing purely on the gameplay, that is the point where I am close to calling you a failed Fire Emblem game, or perhaps a failed game as a whole.
LONG VERSION:
Wow, this gameplay is great! I wonder what the story will be like...?
This story is a genuine 1/10, and if I could give it a 0, I would.
Actually, I will.
This story is a genuine 0/10.
But before we get to that, let's talk the meat-and-bones--let's talk gameplay, because Fire Emblem: Engage brings lots of it and in ways that breathe life into a series that has long struggled with its identity and approach.
To understand what makes Engage so effective, we have to understand what made old Fire Emblem effective and what had been happening around that. Long ago in the days of the Gameboy Advance and the Gamecube, Fire Emblem's greatest units were the juggernauts--the units that could be thrown in on your turn and subsequently endure everything and kill a fair few of the baddies who'd come for their heads on the enemy's turn. This sort of turtling approach made for a slow, measured march to victory in most of these games - where a careless overreaching meant death, but a deft tactician could take measured risks and expedite the process of getting through a level. That is, until Fire Emblem: Fates sought to bring some change--with the introduction of enemies utilising powerful mechanics like Pair Up and skills that could grind down even your biggest tanks, there came a move to bringing Fire Emblem more towards a player turn oriented tactics game - where each turn presented is a puzzle to be figured out, and if you mess up, you may just see your entire team die screaming at the catastrophic results of your in-hindsight hilarious oversight.
This was considered, generally speaking, to be a good move--but I would argue it was imperfect in Fates. In Engage, that is no longer the case. Playing even on the Hard/Classic difficulty (which is by the series' own saying the 'standard' mode of play), every start of a turn is a delectable challenge to figure out. You cannot plot too far and too meticulously, because the game will keep dishing out curveballs that keep you on your tactical toes and that will ask--nay, demand--that you dig and dig deep into your bag of tricks and exhaust it all to survive, overcome and carry on through the war you're waging. It's honestly thrilling, and deeply rewarding when the chips fall your way.
There is a flipside to this.
Engage is constantly looking for new ways to prod and prickle your tactical brain, and it provides you with a litany of tools to tackle them--sometimes, perhaps, too many and in too clumsy a way. The UI has been improved a little, but the menus and the loading times you need to go through to unlock your options are honestly oppressive and sometimes block enjoyment from some of the elements just because its such a huge pain in the tail to try and get to them. For that matter, as rewarding as it is to make it through those tough player phases and on to the next challenge, so infuriating is it when a single missed roll (and you're going to have some clutch misses) or some enemy skill you overlooked among the immense army that came your way ruins your strategy. Of course, the by-now series staple Rewind feature helps mitigate this - but overreliance on the Rewind tended to take the wind out of my sails, especially since it most commonly demanded use not when my tactics proved faulty but when the random numbe generator decided to take my units for a spin and send a 96% chance to hit into the abyss.
Engage's gameplay is just what the title promises--Engaging. Despite its shortcomings in some areas, the end result is satisfying and tons of fun to play. With all that strength in gameplay, its time to talk about the reason that I give this game a mere 2/5 after all that praise.
The story, ladies and gentlemen, is not great.
In fairness, Three Houses aside, the story for Fire Emblem hasn't been great for many long years, never quite recovering from the nosedive of quality that FE11 represented - but this one truly shocks the senses. Every chapter offers a new low, every bit of the story you uncover is a new nugget of something you wish you'd never seen. Without getting into details, we have a clueless Mary Sue for a protagonist who is a literal God but totally humble and likeable about it, we dive balls-first into every poor trope that has featured in the Fire Emblem series (some of them multiple times, each worse than the last), we treat our villains so poorly that they come across like saturday-morning cartoon villains that aren't actually any fun to watch and the formulaic nature of the story repeats so often you'll have distilled it enough to write your phD thesis on "The dangers of applying formula in a story" by the time you're in Act 2.
The presentation is appalling, too. Series veterans will at this point have gotten used to the rudimentary 3D-models taking on one of five poses to give a general indication of their mood while visual-novel style textboxes fly by, but by God, Fire Emblem Engage truly takes the cake. Though the pre-rendered cutscenes are gorgeous, the game (still running on the Musou engine used for FE3H in 2019 and FE:W in bloody 2017) is ugly as sin, and this merrily extends to the visual novel scenes. Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn--none of these had pretty 3D models that could tell a story and convince you, but they knew they didn't and therefore stuck to visual novels that allowed the player's imagination to fill in the gaps.
Engage allows you not a thing.
Engage will beat you over the head with a 15-minute long scene that is comprised of 5 characters stood in a circle discussing things, followed by the entrance of the villain as if a joyless Team Rocket has just showed up, followed by... 15 more minutes now comprised of 5 characters stood across from 2 characters, all ferociously chatting waffle at each other. All of it means sweet fuck-all as your candy-sweet, wouldn't-harm-a-fly party chats at the villains who, honestly, come across as a five-year-olds attempt at a gang of evildoers. Cute, but utterly uninteresting.
I would talk more about how disappointing the 'Emblems' are--old characters from the series returning as spiritual guides in this fan-service focused anniversary title--but I will leave it here: As a 20-year veteran of the series and indeed fan, my fan is feeling a little unserviced. An utter waste of ideas. If your best throw at a villainous Emblem was not to delve into the rogue's gallery of Fire Emblem's long history of nemeses but instead Marth BUT RED, then you clearly do not understand the first thing about what people like.
This is a bumbling, amateurish, downright embarrassing piece of kids' theatre pawned off as a Triple-A experience where hours worth of your entertainment is meant to be derived from the story.
There is so bad it's good--and sometimes, this is that--but mostly, this is so bad it's horrible.
I am giving this two stars for some genuinely excellent Fire Emblem gameplay, but with a story this shit, it should be thanking its lucky stars that I give it any bloody points at all.