As I stare down the barrel of a new Fire Emblem game, I am met with as much trepidation as I am excited. The baggage I have with this series is, at this point, tremendous. Yet, as I have completed this game with the credits rolling I am feeling... catharsis. I had never expected to have this feeling in a new Fire Emblem world again. Yet here I stand.

This is not a review of Fire Emblem Engage. It exists as a musing of an individual who has spent far too long playing a series, and learning to feel misery at its mere mention. Now, forced to grapple with the idea that the series is once again in a place that I am engaged as I was only once before, and am learning to appreciate a game for what it is, and not for what it isn’t.

Fire Emblem, for better or worse, became a high school hyperfixation for me. It was the only thing able to wrest me from endless replays of the Mother series. Not only was I able to completely entrench myself in the games and mechanics, but I had an entire history to dig through. My prior fascination was largely with a 3 game series, and with each game I had spent countless hours learning every second that each game had to offer. And now, I had a series of over 13 (at the time) games to spend my hours getting into. It was an absolute bounty of riches, of which I plundered time and again, regularly experiencing some of the most engaging and enriching tactical gameplay I had ever experienced. Oftentimes with interesting, engaging characters and stories that have stuck with me in ways that few RPGs had at that point in my life. This was my burgeoning era of learning to love RPGs, and this alongside The World Ends With You opened my horizons far beyond where they were before.

An important piece of this puzzle which I am not mentioning is how I learned to experience this series. While not my first game, Fire Emblem Awakening is what made me a Fire Emblem fan. I had not purchased it too close to launch, maybe 8 months after launch or so. My girlfriend at the time was a massive Fire Emblem fan, and I was trying to impress her by getting into one of her favorite series. By the time credits rolled, we had broken up, yet Fire Emblem remained.

I had approached the game as someone who had played other RPGs, and when given all these options to level up, change classes, learn skills, and build supports, I turned to the grind. This led to me playing Fire Emblem Awakening again and again, trying new marriage combinations, making the best units I possibly could, and trying the best combinations. As I write this now, I cannot help but feel pride for my Galeforce, Armsthrift, Limit Breaker, Vantage Dread Fighter Owain with maxed stats. It had become an obsession, and the free time granted by being an unmotivated, closeted, depressed teenager meant I was able to spend all the time in the world on this fantasy.

If you were to check my 3DS play clock you would see that I have more than 500 hours in Awakening alone, which makes it very possibly my single most played game of all time, comparable only to Final Fantasy XIV or EarthBound. The next step was, obviously, to get really into roleplaying Fire Emblem on Tumblr. An endeavor which resulted in me meeting my current fiance.

While Awakening was my introduction to Fire Emblem, I fell in love with it in a way that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the franchise. The kind of love which is sequestered away, almost entirely divorced from my enjoyment to the rest of Fire Emblem.

Nintendo had included Sacred Stones as a part of the 3DS ambassador program, a program which I had become a part of as an early adopter of the handhelf. I played, and enjoyed, the game around the time the program went live. I didn’t finish it at the time, but I went back and did, and it opened the door to the wider Fire Emblem series. It ignited the flame which would go on to define the following years for me. Playing through FE7 on the Wii U virtual console, then dipping my toes into fan translations and emulation to play the rest of the series. Genealogy and Path or Radiance became some of my favorites, as they are for many of classic Fire Emblem’s fans, and still loom tall over my view of the series. There were periods in which I would bounce from Fire Emblem game to Fire Emblem game, learning to love even the black sheep Gaiden, a game which I fought tooth and nail to get anyone around me to care about. A battle I lost valiantly until I suddenly won a few years later.

By the time I finished high school, I had not beaten every Fire Emblem game, but I had nearly all of them. The two greatest omissions are Thracia 776, of which the current Project Exile patch did not exist for, and Radiant Dawn, as I did not know how to mod my Wii to play Wii games the same way I did for Gamecube games. I mined the games and experienced the riches which Fire Emblem had to offer.

The drive to recreate the high that Fire Emblem so regularly gave me became so intense that I began turning to other strategy games, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, XCom. Each of them were unable to keep my attention. I was not a tactics fan. I was a Fire Emblem fan. A feeling which continues to the moment in which I’m writing this.

While on this journey, there were more new 3DS Fire Emblems to play. One left me exuberant, the other leaving me less so.

With the power of hindsight, it is easy to see Fire Emblem Fates as a creation made by those who had found success and had no idea how to possibly follow up on it. It is a messy game, created as the first Fire Emblem game while the series was still a strong going concern in an extremely long time, and trying to figure out what exactly about Fire Emblem Awakening had sparked such resonance among the wider gaming population. At the moment, I did not hate it. But, as I attempted to engage with it in a way somewhat reminiscent of Awakening, I grew a growing distaste for the game which grew over time. I, honestly, do not really want to talk more about Fates. If you are reading this, you are likely aware of the general reception around Fates among Fire Emblem fans. I believe I’ve made where I stand clear. It left me feeling sick and sad, and I grew frankly pessimistic towards a franchise I had emotionally invested in extremely over the past few years.

Then there is Echoes, a game announcement which had left me so excited. It stands as a swan song to the 3DS, and my youth. I got my copy of the game on the same day as my high school graduation party. I played it on the precipice of approaching college, gaining some sense of diet adulthood. Gaiden had become one of my absolute favorite Fire Emblem games, so seeing the game come back with a beautiful art style, wonderful gameplay, and just all around adapting a game I loved back as an NES RPG filled me with an almost indescribable feeling. The best remakes are ones which return to games which take big swings and have big ideas, but do not necessarily totally work out. This is one of those. I loved every minute of it. Living in a world in which individuals know and care about Alm and Celcia still fills my heart with an indescribable joy.

Despite Echoes being a game which filled me with such joy, it is also just a remake. Fire Emblem is no stranger to remakes, they have happened many times before, and the contents of remakes does not necessarily point toward the future of the series. While there certainly are parts of Echoes which informed specifically Three Houses, what I loved about Alm and Celica’s journey was not a guiding star in a series that had made its recent fortunes on character relationships and creating popular characters.

In the lead up to Three Houses, it initially boded poorly in terms of what I wanted. Those feelings never subsided throughout the lead up to release. I had become pretty set on the idea of skipping it on release. With Fates being what it was, and the trailers being what they were, I had resigned myself to the pain that Fire Emblem was no longer for me. While there was fun to be had, it ultimately failed to be the ‘righting of the ship’ which I needed from Fire Emblem. I reviewed Three Houses a good while ago, go read that review for more details on my feelings.

So here I am. Waiting for the release of Engage. The game’s early showings made specific notes of the emphasis on older Fire Emblem characters returning. While self-congratulatory, they managed to do it. This fan who had learned to almost exclusively love the newer games was interested in a new Fire Emblem, for whatever that was worth. At the very least, it had me intrigued, and it was released at a time in which I was looking for another game to play. The fates aligned, and there I was once again purchasing a new Fire Emblem game on launch day.

I was specifically slow at first, taking my time getting into the game. I found the return to Fire Emblem’s traditional structure appreciated given Three Houses having such a different structure. After playing for a few chapters, and enjoying it, once I began getting more and more emblems, the feelings which were initially stoked by Awakening were once again burning. The Emblem mechanic was a genius way to give significant player agency in how even two units of the same class play with one another. Instead of rewarding play based on raw grinding outside of the standard chapter to chapter gameplay, I was able to develop interesting bond pairings using the generously given bond currency the game provides. The feeling of creating broken units while still adapting to the chapter to chapter gameplay was an absolutely perfect blend, perfectly melding both of the kinds of gameplay which I had learned to love. Limited resource chapter to chapter gameplay mixed with interesting yet interchangeable character growth for unit progression are not antithetical to each other, they can stand together proudly and create a game which manages to thread the needle. They did it. They made a Fire Emblem for me.

At the time of writing, Fire Emblem Engage is the first wholly new Fire Emblem I truly feel good about playing since this series has etched itself deeply into my soul. I have finished the final boss by utilizing the bond pairings and engages to finish the game by absolutely destroying the final boss. I feel as though I’m on a mountaintop, truly enraptured by this new experience. The only thought I have is playing it again. God dammit, they did it.

Uh oh! It appears you read to the end of one woman’s self indulgent reflection on a series which has caused her psychological damage in such a way that only an improperly aged individual watching a horror movie should. Since you made it this far, my review of Fire Emblem Engage is:

Me and my boywife just killed my dad with our bond, an inherently queer experience

I've started this first sentence about 6 or 7 times but have found myself completely incapable to give a strong introduction. I find that giving introductions complaining about giving introductions is a way to just put words onto a page to give me enough time to get a cognizant, half decent point together.

Writing something cognizant and half decent of Elden Ring is difficult due to the fact that, in its already brief release window, people far smarter, far dumber, far more skilled, and far worse than me at this game have already smattered the internet with their 'takes' and 'opinions'. What is my take? If you want to condense it down into its smallest form, it is that this game is great! I loved it. I really did. It consumed my life in a way few pieces of media can. I had not felt so enamored by a game since, funny enough, when I first tried Bloodborne around 15 months ago. Since then, I tried Dark Souls, but fell off after getting lost. That’s roughly the extent of my soulsborne experience. A complete run of Bloodborne, a failed run of Dark Souls, and credits seen on Elden Ring.

When I said before I became enraptured in this video game, there is another side to that coin. In the week since I have beaten it, I have felt nothing but hollow since seeing the credits. Despite that, I have not gone back to try and finish loose ends. I am done with Elden Ring, at least for the time being. I do not need it anymore. I purposefully ejected the game from my PS5 upon completion. I wanted closure, finality. What a strange feeling, so sad it was over, and despite completely being able to return on my own terms, I opt not to. I want to do something else, something lower investment, yet still distracting to fulfill my need for escapism. Why did I choose to be this way? I’m not sure.

The word complete rings so hollow in this game’s context. There is so much I have not done. Bosses I tried, and failed, only to never return to. Roughly around the time I beat Morgot, I essentially rushed through the rest of the game. I was not exploring. I was not stopping to smell the roses. I was trying to finish the game. I was ready to be done. Is that the game’s fault? I’m not entirely sure. I’m reminded of a bountiful Thanksgiving feast at a family gathering. There are foods you love, and the foods you tolerate. The beginning of the meal is always the best. You have purposely saved your appetite for this meal, and you start right away loving almost every bite. The mashed potatoes are better than they have ever been, the corn casserole is once again fantastic, and each bite is better than the last. There is even some food you hate, but it’s the one that your really nice aunt brought, so you get a small-but-not-too-small portion on your plate and eat it, just because you knew it would make her happy. Despite having a delightful meal with your family, you reach a point in which you are ready to be done. The green beans, lovingly created by your grandmother, have gone uneaten. Not because of dislike, but because you simply could not have another bite. I’m sorry grandma. Maybe next year.

It feels obvious to me that Elden ring will stand as one of the most important video games to be created, certainly will be heralded as a highlight of the 2020 decade in gaming and will influence countless games in the future. As Dark Souls defined the 2010s in video games, so too will Elden Ring. Probably. I do not make video games, and can make claims such as this from the outside looking in. This perhaps could well be the most impossible video game of all time. This unicorn of an experience, one that we can only be graced with once FromSoftware inevitably decides to add a 2 on the end. Such as Zelda revolutionized the open world (which FromSoftware obviously took certain levels of inspiration), yet nobody has ever created a true piece to rival it in its depth and excitement, perhaps Elden Ring will stand atop a similar platform. Alone, cold, and constantly shunning shallow imitators. Perhaps I will be wrong. And that’s okay. Making predictions is stupid. Perhaps I should cut this entire paragraph.
I realize now that I have talked around the video game itself. I have not discussed builds, play mechanics, how I thought it felt. Do you care? You, reading this, probably played it already. You had your cool Strength Faith build in which you used sick incantations. You really struggled on Mohg in particular. That’s really cool, and I’m glad you had a positive experience playing this game. Conversations like that are best left to discords and people who get paid to write about video games for a corporation. I have no interest in that.

I’m writing this in the middle but am putting it at the end. I’ve decided not to score whatever this is. It is not a review. I prefer to think of it as a diary, a look into how I feel surrounding this game at this particular moment roughly 1 week since I beat it. I generally like scoring because it gives me an outlook later on for how I felt about a game in the moment. A score is too simple, too commercial. Elden Ring is a game I beat. One I will very likely return to someday. A game that I have spent countless hours discussing and ruminating on. Good night, Elden Ring.

The original Metroid II is a more important video game, and honestly a better game for the sheer atmosphere the black and white graphics grant it. However, Samus Returns is more than a remake of the most underrated mainline Metroid game. It's a mission statement from developers that made it their mission to resurrect the series and make it kick even more ass than it did before, and that's certainly worth a lot in my eyes.

Is it better than Super, Fusion, or Zero Mission? Nah, but the addition of the parry being such a good thing for the combat was a genuine shock, and the presentation throughout does a great job of modernizing the series in a world full of imitators.

The only genuine knock I have against the game is the fact that its on the 3DS. This control scheme in combination with the high difficulty made this thing a real pain to play through on actual 3DS hardware. It might just be me, but I can't imagine the damn thing was built for this sort of game and I found myself wishing that I could just sync a Switch pro controller and play that way.

In any case, I'm overjoyed that this game helped pave the way for Dread and that we'll be getting a bigger, badder follow-up to this impressive first outing.

Open world game with above-average storytelling, that's biggest problem is the tedium of it's open-world template design, which felt dated-on-arrival coming out at the same time as a true groundbreaker like Breath of the Wild.

After a shaky start, I think the combat comes into it's own about a third of the way through, although I would have much preferred the game to take the naughty dog route of having large, open linear areas. The sidequests add nothing to the game and open-world traversal and side activites are just not interesting. The game is best played running from main quest to main quest.

My short, 1 sentence funny backloggd review of Nier Automata is as follows: those robots sure are feelin some sorta way.
For my real experiences:
I wanted this game around launch, but didn't feel like paying $60 for it. I found out my roommate my freshman year of college had the game, and he let me borrow it. I got about halfway through Route A, loved it, and my roommate proceeded to sell it without asking me. I would've paid whatever Gamestop paid him for it. I didn't feel like paying $45 for a new copy on Amazon. So I stopped playing.
I later bought the game, and let it sit on my shelf for awhile. I picked up Route A when I was really bored one time, and beat it, and proceeded to get busy, so I stopped for about 16 months.
I picked it up again after I beat Persona 5 Royal. I started from the beginning, deciding a fresh playthrough was the best option. Replaying Route A was fun, and the rest of the game was beaten in short order. I played it during quarantine, at the end of the semester with little work left, and had yet to find a job for the summer. I was depressed the whole time played it. At the time of writing, I finished the game about 10 minutes ago. It was pretty good.