dobogin
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Super Mario RPG
2023
Wait a goddamn minute. So you're telling me that back in 1996, Nintendo just went hog wild inventing a roster of funky little new Mario dudes for this game and then subsequently locked them in a basement and forgot they ever existed.
No one ever told me the Mario Universe had this many little geezers strolling around. This game just throws out new weirdos every five seconds and I love them all. Why aren't the supermodel wooden puppet with machine guns in his hands, the little popcorn boy who cries every two seconds or that one Toad with a beard and shades that's built like a brick shithouse series staples at this point. Where'd the shit-talking purple alligator go or the weird crow that's pretending to be a cloud? TELL ME NINTENDO. WHERE DID YOU PUT THEM!?
This game has actively ruined this series for me now, because the whole time I'm playing as fucking Birdo in Mario Party, I'll be thinking about how I can't play as Boshi, the blue Yoshi that has a voice that sounds like an AI replicating what it thinks a 70-year-old woman who's smoked 70 packs of cigarettes a day sounds like.
No one ever told me the Mario Universe had this many little geezers strolling around. This game just throws out new weirdos every five seconds and I love them all. Why aren't the supermodel wooden puppet with machine guns in his hands, the little popcorn boy who cries every two seconds or that one Toad with a beard and shades that's built like a brick shithouse series staples at this point. Where'd the shit-talking purple alligator go or the weird crow that's pretending to be a cloud? TELL ME NINTENDO. WHERE DID YOU PUT THEM!?
This game has actively ruined this series for me now, because the whole time I'm playing as fucking Birdo in Mario Party, I'll be thinking about how I can't play as Boshi, the blue Yoshi that has a voice that sounds like an AI replicating what it thinks a 70-year-old woman who's smoked 70 packs of cigarettes a day sounds like.
Sea of Stars
2023
Chrono Trigger is a bad game to spiritually succeed- not because I consider it insurmountable, but because there's not really anything to succeed. Its greatness mostly stems from an intangible combination of structure, pacing, and presentation instead of any single concrete gameplay or narrative hook. From a game design standpoint, the lessons to take away from Chrono Trigger aren't exclusive to JRPGs, as evidenced by the fact that New Game Plus, as a concept, is now a mainstay across a wide range of genres. Fortunately, Sabotage has a good track record here, considering The Messenger was a Ninja Gaiden clone that played nothing at all like Ninja Gaiden, and this game similarly manages to avoid feeling derivative. Chrono Trigger's combat was fun but not particularly deep or complex, and instead focused on trying to make fights feel dynamic and fast-paced by expanding on Final Fantasy's ATB system, a feat that it accomplished better than most actual action RPGs from its era. Sea of Stars opts for a more standard turn-based approach, and borrows inspiration from Chrono Trigger's fluid character positioning, the Mario RPGs' action commands, and, against all odds, Octopath Traveler's lock/break system, and it actually ends up working out great! There was clearly real thought put into how all of these ideas fit together in ways that might not be obvious at first. For example, the Koopa shell special move from Mario & Luigi is repurposed here, but the fact that enemies aren't in static positions means that using it requires foresight about how long it'll take to hit each one in order for it to be most effective. Underlining these three core mechanics is the fact that health and mana pools are both small, but easily replenished. You die in three hits but are revived automatically after a few turns, regenerate magic on using normal attacks, and can swap out party members freely. It's a really unique combat system where you really feel like your decisions cause the flow of battle to turn on a dime. Missing a single action command can, and often does, mean that your opponent's turn isn't skipped, which means he hits and kills you, which means you lose. And so, with this solid foundation in place, Sea of Stars then expands on its gameplay throughout the course of its runtime by doing... absolutely nothing. There aren't any status effects, every piece of equipment just boosts one of your stats, and enemy variety is extremely low. The only two things you can do to your opponents during your turn is damage them or delay their turns, which means the gameplay plateaus in complexity once you get all your party members about halfway in. It's a bizarre, extreme example of constructing a genuinely compelling set of mechanics, and then missing the landing and letting your game slip into the doldrums anyway. But it's not like it tried and failed here: the game isn't boring because of balance issues or some other oversight, instead it feels like the dev team came up with the battle system and then immediately gave up. And, even more strangely, this sentiment feels like it applies to every other area. The combat is great mechanically but battles are still bland. The pixel art is outstanding but there's pretty much zero optional content or NPC flavor dialog, meaning that locations look pretty but have no texture. The music is solid but the story is barebones (mostly comprised of endless Proper Noun namedrops that I haven't been given reason to care about) and characters have no personality, so none of the narrative beats feel memorable or climactic. What makes this game so uniquely disappointing is that it seems like every aspect of it that Sabotage actually gave a shit about turned out great, but they just put in zero effort everywhere else. In hindsight, I regret calling Signalis "rudderless," because by copying an existing experience you're at least going for something. This game feels like a rough sketch of a JRPG with only a few portions colored in and no apparent plan to fully capture the genre's likeness. And, really, that's about as far from Chrono Trigger as you can get.
Fire Emblem Engage
2023
Fire Emblem Engage is very clear about what it wants to be--a celebration of past Fire Emblem games. In a way, it strongly reminds me of Awakening, as it very much is an homage to it. Awakening was famously supposed to be the "last" Fire Emblem game with the series seeing diminishing sales even after going global with the The Blazing Sword (or just Fire Emblem in the West) and the previous game (New Mystery of the Emblem) not even being localized outside of Japan. As the planned last game of the serie, Awakening was about looking back, drawing heavily from the Archanea Saga, effectively being their homage and a sequel. Awakening also had several DLCs with heroes from previous games joining, albeit with less production value.
Engage's concept is very similar, even down to the gameplay loops and story beats (first few chapters are just straight up Awakening). But it also evokes other titles of the series. What Engage does really well is that it celebrates previous titles without feeling like a gimmick. The "Emblems" or the heroes of previous games, are not just mere cameos, some of them have active involvement in the story without feeling too out of place. Gameplay-wise, they are powerful enough to be respectful to their original games, but not game-breaking to the point they diminish the characters of Engage. In that sense, this balance is what impresses me the most. It is a game that positively makes the players want to look at older titles without feeling like its too much of pastiche of rehashed older titles. Three House was a great game but it did not make me want to play older titles again, but Engage does. That is the kind of difference and objective between this and its immediate predecessor.
Now, gameplay-wise, this is thankfully far above than Awakening, which was perhaps excessivly accessible at times, which came at the cost of its map designs and combat mechanics. Engage's maps are mostly interesting, with later maps throwing you new gimmicks that you have to adjust to (its worst map is actually the one they ripped straight from Awakening which was already the worst map in that game). The revamped combat, which features mechanics such as break (weapon triangle with much greater emphasis), smash (giving you an option to move enemies with careful positioning), much improved chain attacks and of course, the Emblem rings, there are so many nuances to master, yet it never feels too out of reach. Once again, it's the balance.
One place this game falls however is the character building. Specifically, the SP, which is the currency used to unlock equippable skills, come too little for each character, so even if it has actually a decent freedom for class system, skills are far too difficult to master. And with no actual New Game+, this is just worse for those who want to make overpowered characcters--the game itself (and the series that it's paying homage to) is not about that, but it is one less option. A similar issue was later patched in Three Houses, so who knows.
And there are the parts that are decidedly anti-Three Houses. Sominel, replacing the Monastary of the previous game, is a smaller place with not many meaningful activities to do. Most are skippable, and there is no real joy in seeing the place open up, or hanging out with your companions. On the other hand, those who did not like the arbitrary increase in playtime in Three Houses with its Monastary will be thankful that Somniel can be safely ignored for the most part.
Your characters also very much evoke Awakening for better or worse. While many of Three Houses characters had their back stories connected somehow, which made not only the support conversation but their actual story participation more interesting (usually in a tragic way), Engage's characters are mostly shallow anime 101 characters, with very few exceptions. This fits the game's overall mood, but it is also a letdown for people who got into the series with Three Houses or were waiting for the rumoured Genealogy remake.
Engage's concept is very similar, even down to the gameplay loops and story beats (first few chapters are just straight up Awakening). But it also evokes other titles of the series. What Engage does really well is that it celebrates previous titles without feeling like a gimmick. The "Emblems" or the heroes of previous games, are not just mere cameos, some of them have active involvement in the story without feeling too out of place. Gameplay-wise, they are powerful enough to be respectful to their original games, but not game-breaking to the point they diminish the characters of Engage. In that sense, this balance is what impresses me the most. It is a game that positively makes the players want to look at older titles without feeling like its too much of pastiche of rehashed older titles. Three House was a great game but it did not make me want to play older titles again, but Engage does. That is the kind of difference and objective between this and its immediate predecessor.
Now, gameplay-wise, this is thankfully far above than Awakening, which was perhaps excessivly accessible at times, which came at the cost of its map designs and combat mechanics. Engage's maps are mostly interesting, with later maps throwing you new gimmicks that you have to adjust to (its worst map is actually the one they ripped straight from Awakening which was already the worst map in that game). The revamped combat, which features mechanics such as break (weapon triangle with much greater emphasis), smash (giving you an option to move enemies with careful positioning), much improved chain attacks and of course, the Emblem rings, there are so many nuances to master, yet it never feels too out of reach. Once again, it's the balance.
One place this game falls however is the character building. Specifically, the SP, which is the currency used to unlock equippable skills, come too little for each character, so even if it has actually a decent freedom for class system, skills are far too difficult to master. And with no actual New Game+, this is just worse for those who want to make overpowered characcters--the game itself (and the series that it's paying homage to) is not about that, but it is one less option. A similar issue was later patched in Three Houses, so who knows.
And there are the parts that are decidedly anti-Three Houses. Sominel, replacing the Monastary of the previous game, is a smaller place with not many meaningful activities to do. Most are skippable, and there is no real joy in seeing the place open up, or hanging out with your companions. On the other hand, those who did not like the arbitrary increase in playtime in Three Houses with its Monastary will be thankful that Somniel can be safely ignored for the most part.
Your characters also very much evoke Awakening for better or worse. While many of Three Houses characters had their back stories connected somehow, which made not only the support conversation but their actual story participation more interesting (usually in a tragic way), Engage's characters are mostly shallow anime 101 characters, with very few exceptions. This fits the game's overall mood, but it is also a letdown for people who got into the series with Three Houses or were waiting for the rumoured Genealogy remake.
Pikmin 2
2004
The early hours of Pikmin 2 immediately bring to mind all the qualities one looks for in a sequel entry: refinement, expansion, and a maintaining of the spirit while also taking the series in new directions. The small changes Pikmin 2 presents to the core formula established by the first game radically shifts the player’s approach to gameplay in a multitude of refreshing and unexpected ways. The most notable one, to start, is the axing of the pendulous time limit suspended across the game in favor of a more relaxed goal of simply accruing a set amount of treasure before initiating the first credits roll. What this allows for is a shift in priorities for the player, focusing less on optimizing the gathering of items and maximizing the amount retrieved in a single day, creating instead the necessary time and space for the player to accrue resources and make preparations for the daunting challenges awaiting in the game's many caves.
Caves are the primary source of strategic challenge which was previously supplied by the overarching time limit in the prior game. Each one proposes an arduous trek to the bottom, prompting the player to dispatch all manner of enemy and obstacle along the way, most of which guard the various treasures you’ll need to reach the game’s ultimate goal. The narrow spaces and treacherous hazards encountered in these caves, including new, deadlier, environmental obstacles, make some of the later undertakings especially hardcore. It is, however, less the hazards and enemies themselves that supply the challenge, but the fact that you are unable to spawn new Pikmin while in the midst of any given spelunking venture. Like the first game, a philosophy of general leniency is employed to give players the space to make mistakes and still be able to recover from them. The game saves your progress after each floor, allowing you to reset without redoing the entire dungeon, which is especially beneficial in cases of the randomly-generated layouts rendering themselves unfavorable in certain sections of the game. Additionally, the longer caves often have rest levels, where you’re given the chance to restock on certain valuable resources, and even regain some of your lost troops in the case of specific rare flowers which can sprout additional Pikmin for you.
Perhaps most importantly, the nature of the caves engage the player in ways which more naturally instruct on combat—far more than the first game ever managed to. The forgiving nature and largely open spaces of the first Pikmin meant that even if you lost a significant portion of your troops in combat, you were never punished severely enough that you needed to alter your strategy. It was always viable to simply throw an entire army of Pikmin at a problem, and then recover from whatever losses were incurred. The overarching time limit of the game was the only disincentive to this tactic, but never enough that one would have to engage with combat in a more strategic manner. The limiting nature of the caves prevent this method outright, while their labyrinthian corridors encourage a more considered approach to enemies within the dwellings. The effectiveness of this methodology is evidenced by the introduction of the first of two new Pikmin types in the game’s very first cave, which boast an incredibly utilitarian array of combat-centric skills, in addition to being able to lift ten times the amount of any other Pikmin type.
Purple Pikmin are an insanely powerful asset you quickly learn to utilize effectively but sparingly, due to their precious nature. Unlike your primary Pikmin colors, the newly added Purple and White Pikmin have no means of multiplying ad infinitum, making them especially more valuable when obtained. The tradeoff for this (for Purples, anyway) is an incredible utility that allows you to mow through many enemies, and even bosses, with only a handful of fighters, due to the stun-locking property they possess when thrown. For many of the most common enemies, their existence is trivialized by the existence of Purple Pikmin, but the ability to clear out entire areas using only a small retinue of about eight to ten Pikmin is invaluable for navigating through the caves without losing large swaths along the way. Additional elemental enemies ensure that you can’t just steamroll past every challenge with only Purples in tow, while their lumbering disposition often puts them at risk when dealing with a larger number of enemies at once. While they’re ultimately a bit overtuned in their abilities—particularly when compared to their albino brethren—their incredibly powerful assets in tandem with their scarcity encourage more strategic considerations when entering a cave, especially as the levels and boss fights become increasingly more puzzle-like as the game goes on.
Most of the initial boss fights encountered in the early game of Pikmin 2 are repeats of by now iconic bouts from the first game. Once again we are pitted against the likes of the Burrowing Snagret, the Beady Long Legs, and the Emperor Bulblax, all of whom appear easier than their prior incarnations. However, later caves build upon the familiar patterns of these previous encounters, giving us such harrowing challenges as the newly mobile Pileated Snagret, the mechanized Man-at-Legs, and infinitely-breeding Empress Bulblax. Each of these fights proves to be a worthy culmination of the respective gauntlets endured by the end of their caves, as well as the completely new bosses with entirely distinctive gimmicks to work out. A number of these fights unfortunately suffer from being repeated in later dungeons, usually with an additional gimmick which only succeeds in frustrating and complicating the fight, rather than adding an additional layer of strategy or challenge. The final boss thankfully avoids any irritating pitfalls, making use of every kind of element and hazard thus encountered for a truly climactic battle. The most memorable fight, however, comes not at the end, or even the bottom of any of the caves, but on the first level of the Submerged Castle, where you’ll almost certainly confront the infamous Waterwraith for the very first time. This adversary is less a test of player skill or combat prowess; it’s more an exemplar of well-engineered design intent on instilling blood-curdling fear through a musically-lead oppressive atmosphere and tension-torquing subversion. The effect is so successful that the specter of the Waterwraith hangs in the air, the anxiety creeping back in as you explore new caves, fearing it might drop unexpectedly from the ceiling again.
For all the ways in which the caves of Pikmin 2 reinvigorate and expand upon the philosophies established by the first game, they’re also the embodiment of the game’s most lackluster element. Because each cave is randomly generated from a predetermined set of repeating and interchangeable environments, the vast majority of visual renderings experienced in a playthrough end up feeling bland and indistinct. The overworld areas are not a particular reprieve either. Whereas the first Pikmin featured four bespoke and environmentally diverse areas to explore across its playtime, the main areas of Pikmin 2 are largely similar to one another, and lack any kind of memorable locales or set pieces. The layouts of these areas often push players towards a specific objective, hampering the open-ended sense of exploration these games otherwise engender. One of the core appeals of Pikmin, conveyed initially by the first game, is the shrunk-down perspective of a familiar world rendered fanciful by way of a humorously alien perspective; despite falling short in regards to the visual expectations for the game, Pikmin 2 still retains the innate charm and splendor of the series through clever writing and humorous commentary, inspired by the story’s conceit and real world analogues.
One of the most surprising factors of Pikmin 2 is its value as a work of satire. It’s not particularly deep in this regard, but the repeated emphasis on, and acerbic derision of, capitalist greed and exploitation, leads to a more thoughtful experience than one would initially expect. Its commentary goes beyond the simple dichotomy of rapacious executives and subjugated workers, taking into consideration the underlying imperialist foundation for Captain Olimar’s relationship to the Pikmin. The story goes like this: a foreign explorer is contracted by his employer to extract valuable resources and treasure from an uncolonized land, utilizing the labor of the native inhabitants and decimating the natural ecosystem in the process. While Pikmin 2 is ostensibly still a cozy game built around the aesthetic appeal of exploring naturally-presented environments, those weighty social critiques remain inescapable when considered beyond face value.
Is it ironic, then, that the “treasures” Captain Olimar pilfers upon his journey would often be considered relative junk to us? The first of these items found in the game is a Duracell branded battery, the first of many humorously identifiable objects recognized from our everyday life. Skippy peanut butter, Carmex lip balm, an old 7-Up bottle cap—these are but a handful of familiar items encountered when playing Pikmin 2. The resonant tangibility of these extant materials helps the sentiment of the game’s commentary feel more applicable, while maintaining a trademark sense of whimsy through playful naming schemes. The dialogue and character exchanges aren’t the only places where the writing of Pikmin 2 shines, though. The end of day diary entries from Olimar are supplanted here by a short correspondence letter from your boss, chronicling his plight in evading vicious loan sharks and hiding out underneath a bridge. Similarly, there is a treasure trove of detailed entries on every item you collect and enemy you defeat, building upon the zoological observations of the creatures you’ve encountered and postulating over the perceived purpose of every treasure you’ve come across. It makes for a nice break in gameplay, relaxing between days by reading up on all the things you’ve seen and filling out your perspective of the world through the lens of these wide-eyed explorers.
It is undeniable that Pikmin 2 achieves so much, and constantly delights and surprises with its many new additions and twists. It never feels quite as iconic and instantly understood as its predecessor, but in many ways it surpasses it through sheer mechanical ingenuity. The way it engages you to understand and appreciate the nuances of its systems, instructing and encouraging you to think more strategically without forcing you to suffer in the process; the way the sly contortions of the game’s writing leads to a far more satisfying thematic experience than one would ever expect from an otherwise guileless series; the way that such a seemingly benign decision like making the products you collect correlate with actual objects you see and use in life dramatically effects the immersive feeling of the game to an almost inexplicable degree. This feature in particular was removed for the recent Switch port of the game, so I felt even more assured when setting out to play the Wii version specifically, which still retains this (in my opinion) essential experience to the game. The general blandness plaguing the environments and occasional bullshit complicating later dungeon expeditions seem to hurt all the more, because had these pitfalls been avoided Pikmin 2 might just be the undisputed greatest game of its kind. But in spite of this, it’s still phenomenal, and appreciated even more for being so distinct from the game that came before it. You need not compare the two to appreciate how they both excel in different ways, but it’s nice to, just the same, as in doing so you unveil how flexible and wide-reaching an essential Pikmin experience can be.
Caves are the primary source of strategic challenge which was previously supplied by the overarching time limit in the prior game. Each one proposes an arduous trek to the bottom, prompting the player to dispatch all manner of enemy and obstacle along the way, most of which guard the various treasures you’ll need to reach the game’s ultimate goal. The narrow spaces and treacherous hazards encountered in these caves, including new, deadlier, environmental obstacles, make some of the later undertakings especially hardcore. It is, however, less the hazards and enemies themselves that supply the challenge, but the fact that you are unable to spawn new Pikmin while in the midst of any given spelunking venture. Like the first game, a philosophy of general leniency is employed to give players the space to make mistakes and still be able to recover from them. The game saves your progress after each floor, allowing you to reset without redoing the entire dungeon, which is especially beneficial in cases of the randomly-generated layouts rendering themselves unfavorable in certain sections of the game. Additionally, the longer caves often have rest levels, where you’re given the chance to restock on certain valuable resources, and even regain some of your lost troops in the case of specific rare flowers which can sprout additional Pikmin for you.
Perhaps most importantly, the nature of the caves engage the player in ways which more naturally instruct on combat—far more than the first game ever managed to. The forgiving nature and largely open spaces of the first Pikmin meant that even if you lost a significant portion of your troops in combat, you were never punished severely enough that you needed to alter your strategy. It was always viable to simply throw an entire army of Pikmin at a problem, and then recover from whatever losses were incurred. The overarching time limit of the game was the only disincentive to this tactic, but never enough that one would have to engage with combat in a more strategic manner. The limiting nature of the caves prevent this method outright, while their labyrinthian corridors encourage a more considered approach to enemies within the dwellings. The effectiveness of this methodology is evidenced by the introduction of the first of two new Pikmin types in the game’s very first cave, which boast an incredibly utilitarian array of combat-centric skills, in addition to being able to lift ten times the amount of any other Pikmin type.
Purple Pikmin are an insanely powerful asset you quickly learn to utilize effectively but sparingly, due to their precious nature. Unlike your primary Pikmin colors, the newly added Purple and White Pikmin have no means of multiplying ad infinitum, making them especially more valuable when obtained. The tradeoff for this (for Purples, anyway) is an incredible utility that allows you to mow through many enemies, and even bosses, with only a handful of fighters, due to the stun-locking property they possess when thrown. For many of the most common enemies, their existence is trivialized by the existence of Purple Pikmin, but the ability to clear out entire areas using only a small retinue of about eight to ten Pikmin is invaluable for navigating through the caves without losing large swaths along the way. Additional elemental enemies ensure that you can’t just steamroll past every challenge with only Purples in tow, while their lumbering disposition often puts them at risk when dealing with a larger number of enemies at once. While they’re ultimately a bit overtuned in their abilities—particularly when compared to their albino brethren—their incredibly powerful assets in tandem with their scarcity encourage more strategic considerations when entering a cave, especially as the levels and boss fights become increasingly more puzzle-like as the game goes on.
Most of the initial boss fights encountered in the early game of Pikmin 2 are repeats of by now iconic bouts from the first game. Once again we are pitted against the likes of the Burrowing Snagret, the Beady Long Legs, and the Emperor Bulblax, all of whom appear easier than their prior incarnations. However, later caves build upon the familiar patterns of these previous encounters, giving us such harrowing challenges as the newly mobile Pileated Snagret, the mechanized Man-at-Legs, and infinitely-breeding Empress Bulblax. Each of these fights proves to be a worthy culmination of the respective gauntlets endured by the end of their caves, as well as the completely new bosses with entirely distinctive gimmicks to work out. A number of these fights unfortunately suffer from being repeated in later dungeons, usually with an additional gimmick which only succeeds in frustrating and complicating the fight, rather than adding an additional layer of strategy or challenge. The final boss thankfully avoids any irritating pitfalls, making use of every kind of element and hazard thus encountered for a truly climactic battle. The most memorable fight, however, comes not at the end, or even the bottom of any of the caves, but on the first level of the Submerged Castle, where you’ll almost certainly confront the infamous Waterwraith for the very first time. This adversary is less a test of player skill or combat prowess; it’s more an exemplar of well-engineered design intent on instilling blood-curdling fear through a musically-lead oppressive atmosphere and tension-torquing subversion. The effect is so successful that the specter of the Waterwraith hangs in the air, the anxiety creeping back in as you explore new caves, fearing it might drop unexpectedly from the ceiling again.
For all the ways in which the caves of Pikmin 2 reinvigorate and expand upon the philosophies established by the first game, they’re also the embodiment of the game’s most lackluster element. Because each cave is randomly generated from a predetermined set of repeating and interchangeable environments, the vast majority of visual renderings experienced in a playthrough end up feeling bland and indistinct. The overworld areas are not a particular reprieve either. Whereas the first Pikmin featured four bespoke and environmentally diverse areas to explore across its playtime, the main areas of Pikmin 2 are largely similar to one another, and lack any kind of memorable locales or set pieces. The layouts of these areas often push players towards a specific objective, hampering the open-ended sense of exploration these games otherwise engender. One of the core appeals of Pikmin, conveyed initially by the first game, is the shrunk-down perspective of a familiar world rendered fanciful by way of a humorously alien perspective; despite falling short in regards to the visual expectations for the game, Pikmin 2 still retains the innate charm and splendor of the series through clever writing and humorous commentary, inspired by the story’s conceit and real world analogues.
One of the most surprising factors of Pikmin 2 is its value as a work of satire. It’s not particularly deep in this regard, but the repeated emphasis on, and acerbic derision of, capitalist greed and exploitation, leads to a more thoughtful experience than one would initially expect. Its commentary goes beyond the simple dichotomy of rapacious executives and subjugated workers, taking into consideration the underlying imperialist foundation for Captain Olimar’s relationship to the Pikmin. The story goes like this: a foreign explorer is contracted by his employer to extract valuable resources and treasure from an uncolonized land, utilizing the labor of the native inhabitants and decimating the natural ecosystem in the process. While Pikmin 2 is ostensibly still a cozy game built around the aesthetic appeal of exploring naturally-presented environments, those weighty social critiques remain inescapable when considered beyond face value.
Is it ironic, then, that the “treasures” Captain Olimar pilfers upon his journey would often be considered relative junk to us? The first of these items found in the game is a Duracell branded battery, the first of many humorously identifiable objects recognized from our everyday life. Skippy peanut butter, Carmex lip balm, an old 7-Up bottle cap—these are but a handful of familiar items encountered when playing Pikmin 2. The resonant tangibility of these extant materials helps the sentiment of the game’s commentary feel more applicable, while maintaining a trademark sense of whimsy through playful naming schemes. The dialogue and character exchanges aren’t the only places where the writing of Pikmin 2 shines, though. The end of day diary entries from Olimar are supplanted here by a short correspondence letter from your boss, chronicling his plight in evading vicious loan sharks and hiding out underneath a bridge. Similarly, there is a treasure trove of detailed entries on every item you collect and enemy you defeat, building upon the zoological observations of the creatures you’ve encountered and postulating over the perceived purpose of every treasure you’ve come across. It makes for a nice break in gameplay, relaxing between days by reading up on all the things you’ve seen and filling out your perspective of the world through the lens of these wide-eyed explorers.
It is undeniable that Pikmin 2 achieves so much, and constantly delights and surprises with its many new additions and twists. It never feels quite as iconic and instantly understood as its predecessor, but in many ways it surpasses it through sheer mechanical ingenuity. The way it engages you to understand and appreciate the nuances of its systems, instructing and encouraging you to think more strategically without forcing you to suffer in the process; the way the sly contortions of the game’s writing leads to a far more satisfying thematic experience than one would ever expect from an otherwise guileless series; the way that such a seemingly benign decision like making the products you collect correlate with actual objects you see and use in life dramatically effects the immersive feeling of the game to an almost inexplicable degree. This feature in particular was removed for the recent Switch port of the game, so I felt even more assured when setting out to play the Wii version specifically, which still retains this (in my opinion) essential experience to the game. The general blandness plaguing the environments and occasional bullshit complicating later dungeon expeditions seem to hurt all the more, because had these pitfalls been avoided Pikmin 2 might just be the undisputed greatest game of its kind. But in spite of this, it’s still phenomenal, and appreciated even more for being so distinct from the game that came before it. You need not compare the two to appreciate how they both excel in different ways, but it’s nice to, just the same, as in doing so you unveil how flexible and wide-reaching an essential Pikmin experience can be.
Donut County
2018
Cute little puzzle game with a nice art style, relaxing soundtrack, and humorous writing that's easily digested in a single sitting. It scratches that innate destructive itch one gets by helping to demolish a town through the use of remote controlled, all-consuming holes. The satisfaction of clearing an area of all its objectives is an admittedly simple, but still fulfilling, pleasure, rounded out by a cast of charming animal characters brought to life through playfully sardonic characterizations. The narrative structure of learning about all these characters and the destruction wrought upon them through gameplay-focused flashbacks is clever, but the relative quick completion of the levels means that these dialogues often interrupt the pacing of the game in the process. Overall, Donut County is brief, but charming and satisfying to complete. More than worth the couple dollars I spent to play it, but hard to know if it'll be worth playing again. Maybe if I'm ever looking to kill another couple hours sometime with something simple and relaxing. This will surely hit the spot.
Pikmin
2001
Pikmin, as a concept, is largely taken for granted nowadays. While not quite the juggernaut franchise akin to Mario or Zelda, Pikmin ranks respectably amongst Nintendo’s most beloved IPs, carving out a distinct style of gameplay for itself that remains relatively unique within the wider sphere of gaming as a whole. And that’s been true for Pikmin since its inception; few games have so succinctly conveyed their appeals and ethos out the gate as elegantly as the initial Pikmin game. The laid-back, exploration-based approach to resource management and survival-style gameplay is excellently complimented by an affable sci-fi set up and, of course, the adorable yet disposable capabilities of the titular Pikmin themselves. Coming in only three varieties for their debut, the relative simplicity of their power set is in keeping with the game’s straightforward introduction to the world and its objectives. The strengths of each respective Pikmin are self-evident, quickly conveyed to you through very brief tutorial sections evenly spaced across the early sections of the game. The transition of gameplay from the initial instructional area to the game proper is rather seamless, giving you the space to learn the intuitive mechanics before measuring up against the challenge of ensuring your survival within the allotted days.
The arbitrary time limit was a mechanic quickly abolished in the series going forward, recognized by most for the better. But a devoted minority still clamor for its return, and that’s because it was a very functional and appreciated challenge proposed for this initial entry. It only works because of how forgiving it ultimately is. 30 ship parts in 30 days is immensely achievable even if you’re beset by tragic setbacks and totally unproductive sessions. An experienced player can complete the game in less than 10 days if they play optimally enough, and that’s because with proper planning you’re able to obtain multiple ship parts in a single day. This optimizing of time and resource management leads to the greatest senses of accomplishments in Pikmin, as there is no better feeling than splitting your forces and ending the day with multiple parts returned to your ship, further softening that hard time limit the game starts you out against. Similarly, the survival of your Pikmin is a system of optimization and management the game is quite forgiving with, as you can very easily sacrifice large squadrons of Pikmin to powerful enemies but still come out positive at the end of the day if you’re managing to grow as many as you’re losing. This is especially important as combat is where the game is perhaps the least forgiving. There’s no real tutorial for the various encounters you have to deal with, so optimal strategies for preserving the lives of the Pikmin you enlist to defeat enemies is not always apparent. What’s worse is that the Pikmin themselves are dumb as hell, and have zero sense of self preservation around hostile environments and enemies. They’re also inclined to just get stuck against a wall when following you, and thus can easily be left behind at the end of the day due only to their own innate stupidity. The lack of command options over the Pikmin greatly limits just how much you can direct your vast units around and at various obstacles and enemies, but a modicum of leniency is certainly earned for a first stab at a concept like this, particularly considering how successful the presentation is otherwise.
Pikmin’s greatest strength, ultimately, though, is its brevity. Again, that straightforward and succinct premise and execution leads to a smooth gameplay experience that is achievable to complete in a single session. But more likely, you’re bound to break up the experience over the course of several days to a week, as the clean breaks in gameplay between days provide an easy respite that allows you to easily step away for a while, leading to a kind of mirrored experience in playing the game as Olimar is experiencing his survival on a day-by-day basis. This means that the game retains an incredible sense of pacing whether you’re working through each day as quickly as possible, or ambling along at a more protracted pace, which the game more than allows for with its very generous time limit. In many ways, Pikmin is a hard game to talk about, because so much of what works about it is so instinctively evident, it’s hard to put into words. The cozy offerings of a familiar world rendered alien and wondrous simply by shrinking our perspective to that of a garden insect is a tried and true premise. Combine that with real-time strategy and survival game mechanics, as well as a very cohesive art style and creature designs to match the fantastical setting of the game, and you’ve got a winning formula primed and ready for an iterative series to build off of. For as much as the later games added to and refined from the original Pikmin, though, the first game remains a paragon of design, as it never commits to more than the straightforward objective of the game can handle, and executes its mission quickly and satisfactorily in a way that engenders repeat playthroughs. Getting more objectives cleared in a single day while losing as few Pikmin as possible is just appealing enough an incentive to throw yourself at the game again and again, immersing yourself in the world more and more as you get better at optimizing your multitasking and time management to repair your ship as quickly as possible. In this way, the game is self-perpetuating, making its central mechanics the reason to keep playing and replaying it.
The arbitrary time limit was a mechanic quickly abolished in the series going forward, recognized by most for the better. But a devoted minority still clamor for its return, and that’s because it was a very functional and appreciated challenge proposed for this initial entry. It only works because of how forgiving it ultimately is. 30 ship parts in 30 days is immensely achievable even if you’re beset by tragic setbacks and totally unproductive sessions. An experienced player can complete the game in less than 10 days if they play optimally enough, and that’s because with proper planning you’re able to obtain multiple ship parts in a single day. This optimizing of time and resource management leads to the greatest senses of accomplishments in Pikmin, as there is no better feeling than splitting your forces and ending the day with multiple parts returned to your ship, further softening that hard time limit the game starts you out against. Similarly, the survival of your Pikmin is a system of optimization and management the game is quite forgiving with, as you can very easily sacrifice large squadrons of Pikmin to powerful enemies but still come out positive at the end of the day if you’re managing to grow as many as you’re losing. This is especially important as combat is where the game is perhaps the least forgiving. There’s no real tutorial for the various encounters you have to deal with, so optimal strategies for preserving the lives of the Pikmin you enlist to defeat enemies is not always apparent. What’s worse is that the Pikmin themselves are dumb as hell, and have zero sense of self preservation around hostile environments and enemies. They’re also inclined to just get stuck against a wall when following you, and thus can easily be left behind at the end of the day due only to their own innate stupidity. The lack of command options over the Pikmin greatly limits just how much you can direct your vast units around and at various obstacles and enemies, but a modicum of leniency is certainly earned for a first stab at a concept like this, particularly considering how successful the presentation is otherwise.
Pikmin’s greatest strength, ultimately, though, is its brevity. Again, that straightforward and succinct premise and execution leads to a smooth gameplay experience that is achievable to complete in a single session. But more likely, you’re bound to break up the experience over the course of several days to a week, as the clean breaks in gameplay between days provide an easy respite that allows you to easily step away for a while, leading to a kind of mirrored experience in playing the game as Olimar is experiencing his survival on a day-by-day basis. This means that the game retains an incredible sense of pacing whether you’re working through each day as quickly as possible, or ambling along at a more protracted pace, which the game more than allows for with its very generous time limit. In many ways, Pikmin is a hard game to talk about, because so much of what works about it is so instinctively evident, it’s hard to put into words. The cozy offerings of a familiar world rendered alien and wondrous simply by shrinking our perspective to that of a garden insect is a tried and true premise. Combine that with real-time strategy and survival game mechanics, as well as a very cohesive art style and creature designs to match the fantastical setting of the game, and you’ve got a winning formula primed and ready for an iterative series to build off of. For as much as the later games added to and refined from the original Pikmin, though, the first game remains a paragon of design, as it never commits to more than the straightforward objective of the game can handle, and executes its mission quickly and satisfactorily in a way that engenders repeat playthroughs. Getting more objectives cleared in a single day while losing as few Pikmin as possible is just appealing enough an incentive to throw yourself at the game again and again, immersing yourself in the world more and more as you get better at optimizing your multitasking and time management to repair your ship as quickly as possible. In this way, the game is self-perpetuating, making its central mechanics the reason to keep playing and replaying it.
Big unique arcade machines are their own exterior ‘attract modes’ — and Racer’s is all machine design: a big pod racer with throttle controls, it’s an inviting contraption to be sure.
The mechanics of the game also fit the context of use for this arcade simplicity — like many fast and frenzied future racers, it is a game of boost management and not expending your craft by over-performing or careening too fast through the turns. It has a sharp minimally used mechanic too, turning the craft to either side to fit through narrow enclaves.
The game doesn’t expand mechanically, so much as the levels become longer and more narrow as they go along. There is some rubber-banding but if you’re really ahead or really behind any given race is really over already, Mario Kart rules may not apply.
This leaves a minimal risk/reward or whether you’ll boost through every straightaway or create your own opportunities with varied cut-away hidden paths.
There is enough invention in the crafts to give the game its own identity among Wipeouts and F-Zeros but where it lacks imagination is in the cast of pod racers. The vehicle designs are nicely differentiated but it really feels like you can just choose between Anakin and whatever shape of Alien you want. In this way, it’s a very slight and limited game, despite crafts having differentials along several levels from their acceleration to their air breaking.
It all moves fast enough. It does need a few more tricks and to use more the ones it has. Because I’ve played it a handful of times, at arcades and on Dreamcast, I spent about 95% of the game unaware of other racers, which sunk a few of my earlier memories of it being nicely competitive.
Still, the tracks express their themes well. There’s everything you get in a racer. Don’t laugh but there’s even a beach course. These use Star Wars thematics as track and background details, to useful enough effect.
The game was a fun outside release when licensed games used to also often be surprise non-sequiturs to their main branches of games. It suits the bill of advertising one of Phantom Menace’s fun new features and toys they would have to sell, but your mileage may very on if the play and design has really held up all these years.
The mechanics of the game also fit the context of use for this arcade simplicity — like many fast and frenzied future racers, it is a game of boost management and not expending your craft by over-performing or careening too fast through the turns. It has a sharp minimally used mechanic too, turning the craft to either side to fit through narrow enclaves.
The game doesn’t expand mechanically, so much as the levels become longer and more narrow as they go along. There is some rubber-banding but if you’re really ahead or really behind any given race is really over already, Mario Kart rules may not apply.
This leaves a minimal risk/reward or whether you’ll boost through every straightaway or create your own opportunities with varied cut-away hidden paths.
There is enough invention in the crafts to give the game its own identity among Wipeouts and F-Zeros but where it lacks imagination is in the cast of pod racers. The vehicle designs are nicely differentiated but it really feels like you can just choose between Anakin and whatever shape of Alien you want. In this way, it’s a very slight and limited game, despite crafts having differentials along several levels from their acceleration to their air breaking.
It all moves fast enough. It does need a few more tricks and to use more the ones it has. Because I’ve played it a handful of times, at arcades and on Dreamcast, I spent about 95% of the game unaware of other racers, which sunk a few of my earlier memories of it being nicely competitive.
Still, the tracks express their themes well. There’s everything you get in a racer. Don’t laugh but there’s even a beach course. These use Star Wars thematics as track and background details, to useful enough effect.
The game was a fun outside release when licensed games used to also often be surprise non-sequiturs to their main branches of games. It suits the bill of advertising one of Phantom Menace’s fun new features and toys they would have to sell, but your mileage may very on if the play and design has really held up all these years.
By now, it’s very common knowledge that Battle Network 2 is universally superior to its predecessor in just about every regard. Technically speaking, we’re dealing with all the same qualifications here, but it’s clear Capcom and co. learned a lot from the rough patches of the first game and sought to improve the experience tenfold. The biggest improvements come from the refined UI of the Battle System and the navigability of the net. The often cryptic directions the game gives you can still be an issue, but the distinct renderings of the various areas within the net make surveying it for some kind of objective far less painful. The improved Battle System manifests in the form of many optimized small changes. Notably, the appearance of chip codes on the select menu itself, a permanent “Run” option from battle, a refined “Add” option which maintains the increased chip amount for the remainder of the battle, and small details such as enemy names being displayed at the start of combat now. Additionally, I felt an increased access to a variety of chips with similar codes being made available, making it easier for the player to optimize their folder and build more synchronous strategies to get through their folder faster in battle. I can’t be certain this is truly the case, but regardless, by the end I had a selection of chips I felt I could suit more to differing playstyles than I think anything in the first game ever managed to offer.
Another new feature which distinguishes the personalization of the combat in Battle Network 2 is the introduction of the Style Change function. Early on, Mega Man is given the ability to change his appearance and abilities based on the playstyle the player has prioritized up until that point. Each style comes with a random element attached which effects the performance of Mega Man’s buster attack. You’re able to collect multiple styles throughout the game, swapping around and leveling up which you enjoy best, or is most suited to your current situation. This is a really great new feature which incentivizes and rewards the player for engaging in combat in different ways, ensuring a unique experience tailored to the individual’s particularities and strengths. The only thing from the first game’s Battle System I could even possibly miss is the full healing you’d get after each encounter. It made slogging through that game’s horrendous dungeon designs less punishing at least. Luckily, they didn’t simply take it away and force you to stuff healing chips into your folder for 2. The addition of Sub Chips as an additional resource you can use outside of combat ensures you can always heal up if you ever get low on health, as well as allowing you to dispel enemy encounters for a while or repeat certain encounters if you’re searching for a particular enemy to fight. Both of these features were continued in the next game as well, proving their significance in further refining the Battle Network experience.
Narratively, Battle Network 2 expands on the scope of the first entry by spreading the conflict across a greater expanse of locales. The world of Battle Network opens up for the first time here, starting with the second dungeon, which takes you out of the familiar location of ACDC Town and Dencity and into the rural scenery of Okuden Valley. This varying of locations is an essential element of the series building upon the strong impressions of a lived-in world established by the first game. It’s important in helping us invest further in the denizens of this world, as we continue to familiarize ourselves not just with the recurring characters, but the places they inhabit and effect, too. It’s especially important for this entry, which aims to amp up the tension of the latest cyber threat by involving multiple other countries in the sweep of its effect. The increasing grandiosity of Battle Network’s story doesn’t necessarily register in full, especially as its central villain remains completely obscured until the game’s very final moments, dumping some hackneyed backstory after the final fight has concluded in order to drum up some kind of contrived purpose for the antagonistic force to perpetuate to begin with. They kind of did this in the first game as well with Dr. Wily’s backstory dump, but he was at least a constant presence in the game with intermittent cutscenes sprinkled throughout. Gospel is a far more nebulous threat, although the opponent Navis are generally superior in both design and combat to the first game’s cast of villains. The various dungeons, much like the vastly-improved net, are far more enjoyable here, with no particular puzzles proving intolerably frustrating. The final scenario before the endgame sees you going on a ludicrous fetch quest back and forth across the net, which alone tests the player’s remaining patience for the game by this point, but everything preceding it is totally reasonable, leaving this one untenable area mostly forgivable.
If the first Battle Network was a promising new IP that reinvented the philosophy of Mega Man, but suffered from poor design elements that constantly hindered the experience of the gameplay itself, then Battle Network 2 is the first complete realization of those innovative conceptions without insanely detrimental flaws. The expansion of the world in tandem with the refinement of the Battle Systems demonstrate incredible progress in the shaping of what elements made the first game so endearing, while the increased customization provided by the Style Change system and increased chip variety ensure a unique experience for every player, and every playthrough. The back half of the game is tainted slightly by an excruciatingly lengthy and tedious backtracking sequence, as well as an ending that narratively carries little weight. Some obtuse solutions persist throughout the early game as well (the invisible item fetch quest in the second scenario immediately springs to mind), as well as a bizarrely offensive depiction of international travel as instinctively predatory, also stand out as frustrating experiences, but by and large the game expands and improves upon the enticing groundwork of the first game. A robust amount of post-game content compels me to further explore the enthralling gameplay of Battle Network 2 now that the main game has reached its conclusion, which itself is all the indication needed to demonstrate how much of a drastic improvement this sequel is over its progenitor.
Another new feature which distinguishes the personalization of the combat in Battle Network 2 is the introduction of the Style Change function. Early on, Mega Man is given the ability to change his appearance and abilities based on the playstyle the player has prioritized up until that point. Each style comes with a random element attached which effects the performance of Mega Man’s buster attack. You’re able to collect multiple styles throughout the game, swapping around and leveling up which you enjoy best, or is most suited to your current situation. This is a really great new feature which incentivizes and rewards the player for engaging in combat in different ways, ensuring a unique experience tailored to the individual’s particularities and strengths. The only thing from the first game’s Battle System I could even possibly miss is the full healing you’d get after each encounter. It made slogging through that game’s horrendous dungeon designs less punishing at least. Luckily, they didn’t simply take it away and force you to stuff healing chips into your folder for 2. The addition of Sub Chips as an additional resource you can use outside of combat ensures you can always heal up if you ever get low on health, as well as allowing you to dispel enemy encounters for a while or repeat certain encounters if you’re searching for a particular enemy to fight. Both of these features were continued in the next game as well, proving their significance in further refining the Battle Network experience.
Narratively, Battle Network 2 expands on the scope of the first entry by spreading the conflict across a greater expanse of locales. The world of Battle Network opens up for the first time here, starting with the second dungeon, which takes you out of the familiar location of ACDC Town and Dencity and into the rural scenery of Okuden Valley. This varying of locations is an essential element of the series building upon the strong impressions of a lived-in world established by the first game. It’s important in helping us invest further in the denizens of this world, as we continue to familiarize ourselves not just with the recurring characters, but the places they inhabit and effect, too. It’s especially important for this entry, which aims to amp up the tension of the latest cyber threat by involving multiple other countries in the sweep of its effect. The increasing grandiosity of Battle Network’s story doesn’t necessarily register in full, especially as its central villain remains completely obscured until the game’s very final moments, dumping some hackneyed backstory after the final fight has concluded in order to drum up some kind of contrived purpose for the antagonistic force to perpetuate to begin with. They kind of did this in the first game as well with Dr. Wily’s backstory dump, but he was at least a constant presence in the game with intermittent cutscenes sprinkled throughout. Gospel is a far more nebulous threat, although the opponent Navis are generally superior in both design and combat to the first game’s cast of villains. The various dungeons, much like the vastly-improved net, are far more enjoyable here, with no particular puzzles proving intolerably frustrating. The final scenario before the endgame sees you going on a ludicrous fetch quest back and forth across the net, which alone tests the player’s remaining patience for the game by this point, but everything preceding it is totally reasonable, leaving this one untenable area mostly forgivable.
If the first Battle Network was a promising new IP that reinvented the philosophy of Mega Man, but suffered from poor design elements that constantly hindered the experience of the gameplay itself, then Battle Network 2 is the first complete realization of those innovative conceptions without insanely detrimental flaws. The expansion of the world in tandem with the refinement of the Battle Systems demonstrate incredible progress in the shaping of what elements made the first game so endearing, while the increased customization provided by the Style Change system and increased chip variety ensure a unique experience for every player, and every playthrough. The back half of the game is tainted slightly by an excruciatingly lengthy and tedious backtracking sequence, as well as an ending that narratively carries little weight. Some obtuse solutions persist throughout the early game as well (the invisible item fetch quest in the second scenario immediately springs to mind), as well as a bizarrely offensive depiction of international travel as instinctively predatory, also stand out as frustrating experiences, but by and large the game expands and improves upon the enticing groundwork of the first game. A robust amount of post-game content compels me to further explore the enthralling gameplay of Battle Network 2 now that the main game has reached its conclusion, which itself is all the indication needed to demonstrate how much of a drastic improvement this sequel is over its progenitor.
Final Fantasy IV
2021
This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy IV is the first entry into the SNES console for the franchise and it makes a fantastic impression. You’ve got war, love, friendship, dedication, repentance, and everything that you’d expect of a Final Fantasy title based on what you’ve experienced with the last 3 titles. From inspiring acts of heroism, to crazy strong adversaries, Final Fantasy IV gives you everything.
The narrative in this story starts with an interesting premise. Your king turns out to be evil and you decide to stand up against him. While on this path you make several allies, some who join you for a time, and some who aid you when you need them. By the end of the game you have 5 party members that all fill a specific role. Overall the game gives you about 6 characters that end up leaving your party and 5 characters that are permanent by the end of the game. The characterization of each party member is better for some and not so great with others. Cecil is the repentant Dark Knight who early in the game becomes a Paladin. Rosa is the White Mage who is in love with Cecil and (when she’s not separated from the party) stays by his side to the very end. Kain is a very vapid character. He’s supposed to be Cecil’s best friend but ends up spending the majority of the game working for the enemy due to mind control (more on that later). Rydia starts off as a whiny child who eventually grows into a more confident and powerful Summoner (and grows up due to time dilation shenanigans). Edge is a Ninja introduced late in the game and is the leader of a fallen kingdom known as Eblan. His character is head over heels for Rydia and tends to (physically) bounce around. Each of these characters have interesting and unique designs. I just wish we had more time with them to define their personalities. We get Rosa early in the game only to lose her, then we find her much later in the game. Once we do, she’s an invaluable asset. Until then you are stuck having to deal with several interchangeable characters that have their own agendas.
Tellah is obsessed with finding his daughter and upon discovering that she’s been killed by Golbez he then swear vengeance against him and marches off and leaves the party. When you get separated from several party members via an attack on the ship by Leviathan, you lose Rydia, Rosa, and Edward. Edward is the prince of Damcyan and lover of Tellah’s daughter. He joins you to help you defeat Golbez only to leave the party after Leviathan’s attack. You wash up on the shores of Mysidia a town you had sieged at the beginning of the game and (somehow) convince them to help you because you’re really really sorry that you killed their people and stole their precious crystal of light. You meet Porom and Polom, they help you for a bit and then they die. You reconnect with Cid, he helps you for a while, and he dies. You meet Yang, he helps you for a time and then dies. Except, none of these characters (except for Tellah who ends up dying when he casts Meteor to defeat Golbez) actually die. For one contrivance or another these characters all survive. Cid literally jumps out of the airship and falls to his death so he can explode the whole leading from the underworld (more on that later) to the overworld. But somehow he survives and is able to help you a few times more afterwards. I don’t have problems with characters going away and coming back but when you kill of a character they need to stay dead. And while we’re on the topic of character death. Not every character needs to go out in a grand act of heroism. None of these characters are “killed” by the villains. I’m willing to forgive Porom and Polom sacrificing themselves and being brought back because they turned themselves into stone and their master came and restored them later. A bit obvious of a plot point but not as indefensible as “killing” off 5 characters and bringing them all back. Even Tellah makes an appearance from the grave by the end of the game.
Now let’s talk about Golbez and Kain. For the majority of the game Golbez is the villain. He rules over the four elemental lords and is on a mission to gather all 8 crystals (4 of light and 4 of darkness). Golbez mind controls Kain three times before you find out that Golbez himself is being mind controlled by the actual villain of the game. Having a “real villain” once the main villain has been stopped isn’t new to this series. That was the done in FFIII. There’s not an issue with that inherently but at least the main villain of FFIII was his own person up until his death. Golbez being mind controlled by Zemus (the real main villain who is of an alien race called the Lunarians) feels like a cheap way to undercut the fact that Golbez has committed several atrocities throughout this narrative. The redeeming factor of this is the fact that they allow for Golbez to be remorseful without expecting the world to forgive him despite it not being his fault. They’re able to avoid undercutting the weight of his actions while still addressing them. His choice to exile himself and stay with the Lunarians is fitting for the character. I still would have preferred Golbez just being a villain in league with Zemus. There was plenty of narrative reason for this. Golbez being Zemus’ son being one of the main reasons.
This game introduces some new and innovative gameplay design. Namely the Active Time Battle (ATB) system. Previously in Final Fantasy you would select all of your team’s actions, the enemy would have preselected actions, and then based on the character’s stats a turn order would play out in which each character would do their selected actions. ATB changes this by giving each character a timer. When the timer fills up that character gets to conduct an action. Most actions are taken as soon as they are selected. I did notice, however, that some actions (namely high level spells and summons) take longer to conduct. A spell like Firaga has the character standing there for an undeclared amount of time casting the spell. The only other action that seems to have a delay is Kain’s Jump action but that makes sense. I don’t think strong spells taking longer to cast is a bad thing. I just wish we were told how long it takes for the character to cast said spell or summon. I’m personally not a fan of ATB but I don’t think it’s a bad system.
Something new they introduce in this game is the black chocobo. These birds can fly over water. You ride it to where you want to go and it stays put when you get off of it. When you get back on it the bird will automatically take you back to the chocobo forest that you found it. It’s a neat feature that is sadly underutilized. It only demands use one time in the game. We get a hovercraft for the first time here too. It’s interesting in its implementation as you need it to access a few dungeons. We also get three different airships. Each one is effectively meant for the three different maps you get to explore. You get an airship that eventually gets a hook designed to pick up the hovercraft to carry it to a late game dungeon. You get an airship that allows you to travel between the underworld and the overworld (as well as fly above lava. This one gets used probably the most. Then lastly we get the Lunar Whale. It’s an aircraft designed to carry our heroes between the planet and the moon. You also use it to travel around the moon. The Lunar Whale is also equipped with a healing station which we also saw in FFIII. Changing between ships is a bit cumbersome but it’s not that bad since there’s a central point in which you change between the ships.
The job system in this game is back to being static only this time you have no choice in what roles your characters fill. Cecil is a Dark Knight and has a good early game multihit move that costs HP to use. Then fairly early on in the game you undergo a trial and Cecil is transformed into a Paladin. He loses the multihit attack and gains some basic white magic along with the ability to protect party members from damage. While it is nice having the ability to create your own party composition and customize characters to the style you want to fill. Having characters with fixed attributes allows the game to present you with unique challenges that require you to play to your character’s strengths and weaknesses. This is well implemented as each area and boss is designed with this in mind. Also every character you meet is a different class with little overlap. This system also helps define the characters better as it gives them more uniqueness. Another nice touch is that we get to experience characters learning spells by leveling up for the first time. Up until now you’ve had to purchase and teach spells to your magic wielding characters. It’s nice not having to budget gil to make sure your mages are properly equipped along with having to buy equipment for them as well but on the other hand this game gives you a large abundance of gil so it really wouldn’t have made a difference. As far as leveling goes I should mention that I don’t spend a lot of time grinding (except for in FFII because of obvious reasons). I did however feel compelled to level grind at two points in the game. I read in patch notes that they lowered the exp given by enemies overall and I don’t think that served the game well. One of two moments in the game that I found myself level grinding are right after Cecil becomes a Paladin and his level is reset to 1, and in the endgame where my party was about 5-10 levels short of being able to handle the dungeon without having to explore to get treasure, warp out to heal, and then rush to the end to save resources for the boss. I spent a collective 2 hours on level grinding which I don’t believe is inherently bad. I do believe that the developers choosing to reduce exp gain which potentially caused this need to grind levels to be problematic.
Dungeons have seen a massive improvement in this title. I think this game does dungeons the best out of the series so far. The dungeons include lots of twists and turns and secret passages that lead to treasure and sometimes nothing at all. Doors almost always have a purpose even if it’s a single treasure chest but pathing is never guaranteed to see a reward. Another interesting mechanic I came upon is casting the spell “Float” on your team to make them avoid taking damage from lava that’s on the ground. This status effect also makes your characters immune to ground spells like “Quake.” Dungeons have interesting boss fights, each with unique mechanics. Some bosses retaliate to being hit by a spell while some are effectively immune to damage unless their sprite is in a specific position. This is a nice way of changing up the battle monotony and making full use of the ATB system. This also requires you to strategize instead of setting up your party’s strongest moves and then auto-battling through. I found some of the bosses in this game to have the most challenging battle mechanics I have faced thus far.
The last thing I want to touch on here is the music. This soundtrack has some gems but overall feels the least inspired of the series. I know the first two games are very repetitive and this game isn’t like that but I find some of the tracks to be interesting but entirely too short. The battle theme has a good, catchy tune but it loops way too soon and leaves me wanting for more. My favorite tracks in this one are “Battle with the Four Fiends,” “Welcome to our Town,” and “Mystic Mysidia.” Some tracks that are worth noting include “Dancing Calcabrena,” “The Lunarians,” and “Battle 2” (which I prefer over “Battle 1”). The tracks that are good are great but the rest just didn’t quite land for me. I don’t think any of the tracks were bad by any means but it just didn’t land for me this time.
Square so far has set (in my mind) a high standard of quality for this series. Final Fantasy IV, while not perfect, meets those expectations. The innovation of a brand new and innovative battle system demands praise. The presentation of the game is well executed. Even though this won’t go down as my favorite Final Fantasy, it has left a lasting impression.
The narrative in this story starts with an interesting premise. Your king turns out to be evil and you decide to stand up against him. While on this path you make several allies, some who join you for a time, and some who aid you when you need them. By the end of the game you have 5 party members that all fill a specific role. Overall the game gives you about 6 characters that end up leaving your party and 5 characters that are permanent by the end of the game. The characterization of each party member is better for some and not so great with others. Cecil is the repentant Dark Knight who early in the game becomes a Paladin. Rosa is the White Mage who is in love with Cecil and (when she’s not separated from the party) stays by his side to the very end. Kain is a very vapid character. He’s supposed to be Cecil’s best friend but ends up spending the majority of the game working for the enemy due to mind control (more on that later). Rydia starts off as a whiny child who eventually grows into a more confident and powerful Summoner (and grows up due to time dilation shenanigans). Edge is a Ninja introduced late in the game and is the leader of a fallen kingdom known as Eblan. His character is head over heels for Rydia and tends to (physically) bounce around. Each of these characters have interesting and unique designs. I just wish we had more time with them to define their personalities. We get Rosa early in the game only to lose her, then we find her much later in the game. Once we do, she’s an invaluable asset. Until then you are stuck having to deal with several interchangeable characters that have their own agendas.
Tellah is obsessed with finding his daughter and upon discovering that she’s been killed by Golbez he then swear vengeance against him and marches off and leaves the party. When you get separated from several party members via an attack on the ship by Leviathan, you lose Rydia, Rosa, and Edward. Edward is the prince of Damcyan and lover of Tellah’s daughter. He joins you to help you defeat Golbez only to leave the party after Leviathan’s attack. You wash up on the shores of Mysidia a town you had sieged at the beginning of the game and (somehow) convince them to help you because you’re really really sorry that you killed their people and stole their precious crystal of light. You meet Porom and Polom, they help you for a bit and then they die. You reconnect with Cid, he helps you for a while, and he dies. You meet Yang, he helps you for a time and then dies. Except, none of these characters (except for Tellah who ends up dying when he casts Meteor to defeat Golbez) actually die. For one contrivance or another these characters all survive. Cid literally jumps out of the airship and falls to his death so he can explode the whole leading from the underworld (more on that later) to the overworld. But somehow he survives and is able to help you a few times more afterwards. I don’t have problems with characters going away and coming back but when you kill of a character they need to stay dead. And while we’re on the topic of character death. Not every character needs to go out in a grand act of heroism. None of these characters are “killed” by the villains. I’m willing to forgive Porom and Polom sacrificing themselves and being brought back because they turned themselves into stone and their master came and restored them later. A bit obvious of a plot point but not as indefensible as “killing” off 5 characters and bringing them all back. Even Tellah makes an appearance from the grave by the end of the game.
Now let’s talk about Golbez and Kain. For the majority of the game Golbez is the villain. He rules over the four elemental lords and is on a mission to gather all 8 crystals (4 of light and 4 of darkness). Golbez mind controls Kain three times before you find out that Golbez himself is being mind controlled by the actual villain of the game. Having a “real villain” once the main villain has been stopped isn’t new to this series. That was the done in FFIII. There’s not an issue with that inherently but at least the main villain of FFIII was his own person up until his death. Golbez being mind controlled by Zemus (the real main villain who is of an alien race called the Lunarians) feels like a cheap way to undercut the fact that Golbez has committed several atrocities throughout this narrative. The redeeming factor of this is the fact that they allow for Golbez to be remorseful without expecting the world to forgive him despite it not being his fault. They’re able to avoid undercutting the weight of his actions while still addressing them. His choice to exile himself and stay with the Lunarians is fitting for the character. I still would have preferred Golbez just being a villain in league with Zemus. There was plenty of narrative reason for this. Golbez being Zemus’ son being one of the main reasons.
This game introduces some new and innovative gameplay design. Namely the Active Time Battle (ATB) system. Previously in Final Fantasy you would select all of your team’s actions, the enemy would have preselected actions, and then based on the character’s stats a turn order would play out in which each character would do their selected actions. ATB changes this by giving each character a timer. When the timer fills up that character gets to conduct an action. Most actions are taken as soon as they are selected. I did notice, however, that some actions (namely high level spells and summons) take longer to conduct. A spell like Firaga has the character standing there for an undeclared amount of time casting the spell. The only other action that seems to have a delay is Kain’s Jump action but that makes sense. I don’t think strong spells taking longer to cast is a bad thing. I just wish we were told how long it takes for the character to cast said spell or summon. I’m personally not a fan of ATB but I don’t think it’s a bad system.
Something new they introduce in this game is the black chocobo. These birds can fly over water. You ride it to where you want to go and it stays put when you get off of it. When you get back on it the bird will automatically take you back to the chocobo forest that you found it. It’s a neat feature that is sadly underutilized. It only demands use one time in the game. We get a hovercraft for the first time here too. It’s interesting in its implementation as you need it to access a few dungeons. We also get three different airships. Each one is effectively meant for the three different maps you get to explore. You get an airship that eventually gets a hook designed to pick up the hovercraft to carry it to a late game dungeon. You get an airship that allows you to travel between the underworld and the overworld (as well as fly above lava. This one gets used probably the most. Then lastly we get the Lunar Whale. It’s an aircraft designed to carry our heroes between the planet and the moon. You also use it to travel around the moon. The Lunar Whale is also equipped with a healing station which we also saw in FFIII. Changing between ships is a bit cumbersome but it’s not that bad since there’s a central point in which you change between the ships.
The job system in this game is back to being static only this time you have no choice in what roles your characters fill. Cecil is a Dark Knight and has a good early game multihit move that costs HP to use. Then fairly early on in the game you undergo a trial and Cecil is transformed into a Paladin. He loses the multihit attack and gains some basic white magic along with the ability to protect party members from damage. While it is nice having the ability to create your own party composition and customize characters to the style you want to fill. Having characters with fixed attributes allows the game to present you with unique challenges that require you to play to your character’s strengths and weaknesses. This is well implemented as each area and boss is designed with this in mind. Also every character you meet is a different class with little overlap. This system also helps define the characters better as it gives them more uniqueness. Another nice touch is that we get to experience characters learning spells by leveling up for the first time. Up until now you’ve had to purchase and teach spells to your magic wielding characters. It’s nice not having to budget gil to make sure your mages are properly equipped along with having to buy equipment for them as well but on the other hand this game gives you a large abundance of gil so it really wouldn’t have made a difference. As far as leveling goes I should mention that I don’t spend a lot of time grinding (except for in FFII because of obvious reasons). I did however feel compelled to level grind at two points in the game. I read in patch notes that they lowered the exp given by enemies overall and I don’t think that served the game well. One of two moments in the game that I found myself level grinding are right after Cecil becomes a Paladin and his level is reset to 1, and in the endgame where my party was about 5-10 levels short of being able to handle the dungeon without having to explore to get treasure, warp out to heal, and then rush to the end to save resources for the boss. I spent a collective 2 hours on level grinding which I don’t believe is inherently bad. I do believe that the developers choosing to reduce exp gain which potentially caused this need to grind levels to be problematic.
Dungeons have seen a massive improvement in this title. I think this game does dungeons the best out of the series so far. The dungeons include lots of twists and turns and secret passages that lead to treasure and sometimes nothing at all. Doors almost always have a purpose even if it’s a single treasure chest but pathing is never guaranteed to see a reward. Another interesting mechanic I came upon is casting the spell “Float” on your team to make them avoid taking damage from lava that’s on the ground. This status effect also makes your characters immune to ground spells like “Quake.” Dungeons have interesting boss fights, each with unique mechanics. Some bosses retaliate to being hit by a spell while some are effectively immune to damage unless their sprite is in a specific position. This is a nice way of changing up the battle monotony and making full use of the ATB system. This also requires you to strategize instead of setting up your party’s strongest moves and then auto-battling through. I found some of the bosses in this game to have the most challenging battle mechanics I have faced thus far.
The last thing I want to touch on here is the music. This soundtrack has some gems but overall feels the least inspired of the series. I know the first two games are very repetitive and this game isn’t like that but I find some of the tracks to be interesting but entirely too short. The battle theme has a good, catchy tune but it loops way too soon and leaves me wanting for more. My favorite tracks in this one are “Battle with the Four Fiends,” “Welcome to our Town,” and “Mystic Mysidia.” Some tracks that are worth noting include “Dancing Calcabrena,” “The Lunarians,” and “Battle 2” (which I prefer over “Battle 1”). The tracks that are good are great but the rest just didn’t quite land for me. I don’t think any of the tracks were bad by any means but it just didn’t land for me this time.
Square so far has set (in my mind) a high standard of quality for this series. Final Fantasy IV, while not perfect, meets those expectations. The innovation of a brand new and innovative battle system demands praise. The presentation of the game is well executed. Even though this won’t go down as my favorite Final Fantasy, it has left a lasting impression.
Fire Emblem Engage
2023
This review contains spoilers
Being the second Fire Emblem game to release on the Switch, and with its predecessor, Three Houses, being a nominal departure for the series in both gameplay and narrative, the reception of Engage seems to be somewhat split within the community. Many are currently labeling it as another Fates, meaning poor story and characters, but great gameplay and map design. The series has certainly evolved as it has gained popularity, the recent opening up of the fanbase in the face of what could have been an untimely conclusion has led Intelligent Systems to make appeals towards certain narrative and character tropes series veterans may continue to struggle with. The increasing “anime-ification” of Fire Emblem has ratcheted up with each entry since Awakening, culminating now in what some consider an overly dramatic, cliche-riddled narrative populated by a lifeless cast of overly designed characters more suitable for cereal mascots than European-inspired nobles at war. But it’s important to remember that Fire Emblem has always been this to an extent. Even from the beginning, its origins in high fantasy and Shonen-style scenarios and characters were prominent and appealing aspects of the series. Even by what some consider the series’ narrative peak in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, melodrama and iterative genre tropes are highly appreciated elements fans look forward to as a core part of the Fire Emblem experience alongside the unique and mechanically compelling tactical gameplay the series pioneers. That being said, Engage does not begin all too auspiciously, and instead seems to affirm the frustrated criticisms lobbied towards the series’ uninspired repetition of vapid character archetypes, rehashed doomsday plots, and braindead narrative twists all too common to the genre by now.
Let’s start with the protagonist, Alear (or Toothpaste-chan, as I’ve seen some lovingly call them). As the central figure of Engage, and the first aspect of the game we’re put in control of, Alear is our first impression of this latest Fire Emblem entry, and at first blush they appear to embody the worst of everything the post-Awakening Lords have come to represent. The trouble with a player-insert avatar is that they often demand a certain degree of ambiguity so that the player may project onto them whatever personality they see most fitting. This was at its most extreme when the feature was first implemented, not only allowing you to name the protagonist (as all subsequent entries have also done) but to customize their entire look and sound as well. They try to get around this issue in Awakening by putting Robin (the avatar character) in the backseat for most of the game, having the alternate lord Chrom take the helm for the majority of the narrative. Alear is not quite the same as Robin—you can’t change their design, as much as you might wish to make it anything else—but they do share one played-out trait that really frustrates early attempts to connect with the character: amnesia. This old warhorse of a character trope has been around longer than gaming itself, but it’s still utilized as a lazy means of keeping the audience in the dark about certain pre-story details by essentially “blanking the slate” of the main protagonist without good reason beyond narrative convenience. It hurts the character in question more often than not because it leaves them with no personality, no backstory or interests, things which then have to develop over the course of the game instead. Unlike Awakening, Alear does eventually achieve some distinguishing characters and agency of their own, but it takes a long time and a lot of contrived reveals to garner some proper sympathy. I suppose that’s not entirely true, as there’s a scene quite early on where the voice actors for the character (more so the male variant than the female, but I’ll get to that) get to express a lot of emotion over a devastating familial death. Again, not a very original scenario, even just within Fire Emblem, but the acting sells it more than the cliched writing can, and if you’re down for some bombastic melodrama it’s compelling enough to start.
We can’t talk about Alear without talking about their design, however, which, if nothing else, certainly leaves an impression as no other Lord has before. The split design of their hair and eyes, one half red the other half blue, is a culmination of the growing extremity design philosophy of characters has been gaining since the 3DS era. As mentioned earlier, these more modern/fantastical character designs have always existed to one degree or another (brightly-colored hair, for instance, is hardly an innovation of recent games), but there’s no denying that Engage has taken it to new levels of incredulity, with Alear not even being the worst of the bunch. I’ll admit, the look grew on me over the course of the game. I suppose it’s hard to be totally unagreeable to anything you’ve spent more than 90 hours with on some consistent basis, but it also helps that there was eventually a narrative purpose for the garish dual appearance of the character. As far as costuming goes, generally I think it’s good across the board. Most maintain their ties to the European-inspired wear of the Medieval period the series takes large swaths of its inspiration from. There are some, of course, that significantly clash with the otherwise tame looks of the rest of the cast, but Alear’s outfit (at least in their base class) works, with some exceptions in the female design. There’s definitely a bias as I personally played through the game with Male Alear, but almost everything about Female Alear’s character puts me off greatly. The lifeless expression of her eyes, the physics-defying floor length hair, the plainness of the voice actresses’ performance, and her disproportionate bust all seem geared towards appealing to certain anime archetypes that, if not outright infantilizing, are designed to make the character appear as impressionable as possible without simply making a sexually-attractive husk. The vocal performance to me comes across more as poor direction (and more on a scene-to-scene basis rather than across the board) but everything else feels very intentional and slighted, which is a shame.
One last note for Alear before talking about the game itself: their identity. They are, as we learn very early on, a Divine Dragon. Dragonic protagonists are again, not new to Fire Emblem, so alongside the amnesia hook this introduction feels egregiously uninspired. The narrative doesn’t especially help in fleshing out this dynamic over the course of the game, even as we learn more and more what being a Divine Dragon means (or what it doesn’t mean). Alear’s “dragon-ness” doesn’t even amount in a transformation of any kind, it’s merely an excess to bestow a divine aura onto an otherwise very humanoid character so as to artificially elevate their importance. There are some interesting themes proposed with this dynamic, however, mostly through certain support conversations if you happen to come across them. Alear effectively becomes the figurehead of the region’s religion upon their revival, being both prayed to and worshiped by many of the people they call their companions. It’s a conflicting dynamic that highlights significant shades of Alear’s ongoing identity crisis, but it only ever manifests in fits and starts. In the wider scope of the story, it’s just another narrative sop to give the protagonist a faux grandeur in lieu of properly compelling writing. It makes me long for the days of the prior Lords, leaders who either carved their legacies out of sheer will or were tasked with rising to the occasion against the tides of overwhelming conflict. Fortunately, Engage does fulfill this wish, albeit through perhaps unexpectedly literal means. All those great Lords of the previous games, the iconic leaders who have impressed their legend upon the fans for more than thirty years? They’re all here, in the form of a ridiculously powerful new mechanic which serves as the game’s chief gimmick: Emblem Rings.
Here’s where the game gets good. The Emblem Rings are very powerful tools that allow you to summon the powers of previous Fire Emblem Lords to overwhelm your enemies in ways Fire Emblem traditionally isn’t designed to do. As an example, Sigurd, one of the first Emblems you receive, gives any character an extra five movement when activated, along with one extra movement passively. When paired with units already equipped with high mobility, this becomes insanely powerful insanely fast. Sigurd is only one of many Emblems which give your characters an incredible power boost while harkening back to the whole of Fire Emblem’s history. In order to unlock their full potential, you must also participate in various Paralogue Chapters where you fight the associated Emblems on a map calling back to significant chapters from their own games. Some translate to Engage better than others (with a handful feeling like either an incredibly poor choice based on the lack of comparable mechanics between games, or just like a lazy copy and paste from one to the other), but the reverence for the series in its entirety is very welcome, alongside the potent potential the power of the rings demonstrate over the course of the game. The Emblems are also the chief means by which you acquire skills for your characters, inheriting them from the Emblems based on how high your support is with each and at the cost of an accumulating currency called SP. This is one of several new resources Engage tasks you with managing without properly tutorializing you on, despite how much of the earlier chapters are taken up by lengthy explanations of basic systems and interactions well-established to the series by now. There are some other new mechanics that help further distinguish the gameplay for this entry, such as the supportive Backup units and Break additions to the returning Weapon Triangle, but the fatal combination of invasive explanations of basic features and an often overwhelming amount of information on screen which obscures certain systems which are neglected by tutorials leads to an incredibly frustrating experience until their obtuse understandings can eventually be untangled.
All of this is compounded by the sheer mass of extra crap the game throws at you to manage at the main hub of the game, The Somnial. It’s basically a secluded fortress in the sky where all the characters can relax and interact between battles, safe and secluded from the ongoing conflict below. This feature, and many of the life-sim aspects that accompany it, are clearly a holdover from the previous game, Three Houses, which put a lot more investment into the social elements of the game above that of its tactical RPG origins. I did not partake in most of them, simply because they are not aspects that appeal to me in a Fire Emblem game. For those I could ignore without relative consequence, this was fine. I can’t care that much about optional features so long as they remain that. Optional. I didn’t need to do any strength training to give myself a temporary stat boost, I didn’t need to have my fortune told or to play any fishing minigames. I didn’t need to make meals with other characters or go swimming to boost my supports. These features, while wholly unnecessary, did not impede my experience of the game. However, several features tied themselves directly to aspects of the Somniel, and thus in order to interact properly with the main mechanics of the game, demand additional time and attention. The more these features integrated with central components of the main gameplay, the more attention they took away from progressing the story and actually partaking in the battles themselves. Things like Weapon Forging, which has existed in the series since Path of Radiance, now requires materials in addition to money. You can get these materials either by wandering around the battlefield after a fight, or as drops from particular animals you can adopt for a farm back at the Somniel. Since only one type of animal produces these vital resources, there’s no sense in creating a variety of animals to foster there, thus rendering the mechanic an overly complex means of generating materials you never needed prior to this to achieve the same results.
The mechanic that was most frustrating to try and discern here, though, was the implementation and earning of SP alongside another new resource, Bond Fragments. These two materials are the necessary means by which you grind up supports with the Emblem Rings to then inherit their unique skills afterwards. Being the main, central mechanic of the game, you’re going to want to interact with these features, as they’re going to be the main way you distinguish and customize how your characters play over the course of the game. So why, then, is it presented so obtusely without any concrete explanation of how you earn these vital resources and where to implement them? It is not at all apparent even in the brief segments it’s slightly explained, and was the chief source of ire for me during the bulk of my gameplay. Once I did learn where all this information is displayed, and how to easily access and navigate the requisite menus to redeem these myriad scattered resources, it became a lot more rewarding. However, that doesn’t erase the literal hours I wasted just trying to understand these features on face value, and how needlessly complex they were made by the inundation of new currencies to manage between battles. It’s to a point where I was often spending just as much time preparing for the next chapter as I was playing the chapters themselves, and this was with me spending as little time as I felt I could at the Somniel between fights. At that point, it’s no longer a space to breathe and recuperate between lengthy and demanding segments of gameplay; it’s as much a feature of the game as the battles themselves, and an incredibly tedious one at that.
Which brings me to the purpose of the Somniel as a whole: a sanctuary, for both the players and the characters, to collect themselves between demanding stretches of gameplay. This is another innovation that has existed in the series since Path of Radiance, but only since Three Houses has it become a location all its own. In previous games, this space of relief was a Base Camp, a traveling locale which never distracted from the progression of the narrative while still allowing you the time and space to manage your various inventories and character supports before launching into the next section of tactical deployment. In Three Houses, the story demanded a central location for all the various activities to take place in, so the Base Camp was adapted into a more definitive space for the various social activities to take place in. This shift actually began back as early as Awakening, with the furnishing of the Barracks, and Fates, with “My Castle” becoming a fully customizable base of operations which also utilized the 3DS’s StreetPass feature. The difference when it comes to Engage, however, is that the adventure never felt interrupted by these features, and their presence was never a distraction. Because the Somniel is a bonafide location not just extent without various navigable menus, and is also an in-narrative space defined as being totally separate from the world we’re traveling across, the immersion of the troupe supposedly traveling across the entire continent of Elyos in search of the twelve Emblem Rings is constantly broken by casual returns to this totally serene sky palace detached from the conflict developing below. It’s especially distracting when the narrative turns up the tension and urgency of the conflict, looking to lead the drama right into the next chapter, only for you to zoom off because you have some gardening to attend to or your chibi-dog pet needs petting for more resources.
A lot of this could be allayed simply by not having the Somniel exist. Base Camps were a perfectly fine concept that allowed you to manage resources and character interaction without breaking the flow of the narrative while supplying the player a much-needed break between chapters. The best part is they already have this in Engage. The exploration of the battlefield, gathering resources and talking to characters, is not only a welcome build on the template first provided in Path of Radiance, but also allows you to do most of the things you’d want to do between chapters. Character supports, inventory management, buying new weapons, all can be done while taking a short break on the field you just conquered. I really liked walking around the maps with a new perspective, seeing the space we just spend a great deal of effort to overcome with a new, relieved perspective was very additive to the core gameplay experience I found. Unfortunately, you can’t manage everything from this space, and important core mechanics such as Weapon Forging and Skill Inheritance can only take place in the Somniel, thus rendering the ability to manage aspects in the field lesser by comparison, but also making it yet another tedious activity to manage between battles that ultimately amounts to little more than banal resource gathering.
I do enjoy the managing of units and skills and stats it should be said, however. In point of fact, the minutiae of assembling units to be as optimized in their roles is one of the most enjoyable aspects of any Fire Emblem game for me. As the series has developed, we’ve been given more and more tools to make characters as ridiculously strong as we’d like, and Engage ups that ante further with the Emblem Rings. These, in combination with Skill Inheritance (effectively allowing you to mix and match the best qualities of multiple Emblems at once) and unlimited reclassing, opens the way for some truly disgusting strategies. What this also means is that unlike in earlier games, where characters are locked into a particular class, you can make any character as powerful as you’d like, in any capacity you’d like. There’s something to be said in losing the designated identity of a character by radically altering their base presentation, i.e. turning an axe unit into a mage, for instance. But the trade off is the ability to use the characters you like regardless of how well they’re initially set up to succeed, as well as a nigh unlimited potential of combinations ensuring that no two playthroughs will be the same. The balancing of the various classes is definitely uneven—there are just straight up inferior advanced classes to a notable handful which just dominate the late game completely—but that’s certainly a minor critique of a system that is otherwise very flexible towards utilizing whomever you want for your adventure.
And boy howdy, do you have some options. “Too much of a good thing,” is how I would describe the rate at which Engage throws new units at you. There are 36 total characters you can have by the end of the game, and a whopping 28 of them are given to you before the halfway point of the story. These units are usually deployed three at a time, which not only inundates you with new characters to use and determine their value, but hinders your usage of already established units thanks to the decreased deployment of maps with recruitable characters. There’s also far less going out of your way to recruit optional characters. The two units recruitable from side chapters are available almost immediately, while two additional characters can be recruited by talking to them in a couple of later maps. These latter two are appreciated for reviving this feature of mid-map recruitment, as well as for the characters themselves being of an older disposition (thus injecting some much-needed variety amongst the cast), but their arrival comes so late as to dampen the overall effect of their conclusion, sadly. The excess of characters is still an issue, however, particularly because of how front-loaded they are and the limited ability to utilize everyone at any given time. Very quickly, you will have to decide which of your units you will just stop investing in, and as a result, stop caring about too, because if you’re not using a character, you’re not creating any supports with other units, and due to the nature of the story revolving around the Lords of the region almost exclusively, after the non-royal characters are introduced they’re basically dropped from the narrative. For some, though, this is probably a good thing, because there are a number of characters in Engage who test the limits of my tolerance for cutesy, bold, or outright obnoxious characterizations.
The typical means by which Fire Emblem characters are given “personality” is by assigning them one or two distinctive quirks and making all their interactions about that specific thing. So, for example, Louis, your starting armored unit in Engage, is a people-watcher who likes tea. All of his support conversations are about these two things, with a little bit of backstory injected surrounding his family grape farm. It’s very simple, almost two-dimensional some would say, but for all the interactions that need to be scripted for the branching support conversations of any given two units, a stock approach to characterizations is not the most unreasonable compromise. Not all can be as inoffensively simple as Louis, however, and when combined with some of the most brash character designs ever conceived for a Fire Emblem game, the extremity of it all is just simply too much to endure. The chief offenders are largely denizens of Elusia, a country which begins as an antagonistic force against the heroes before slowly being redeemed over the course of the game (another writing faux pas we will return to). Where the previous kingdoms of Firene and Brodia showcase a strong central theming amongst the cast (Brodia in particular stands out with its consistent dark red color palette between characters and gem-themed character names tying back to the county’s primary industry, not to mention the impeccable overall design of its Lord Diamant being one of the best looking characters in not just the game but the entire series), Elusia’s cast is quite garish and at odds with itself. There’s a mix of sinister color palettes and cutesy kawaii aesthetics in characters like Hortensia, whose candy-colored, mouse-ear-shaped hair belies the glee with which she partakes in systematic murder, and Rosado, who's literally just a femboy with cat ears. I don’t mean that in any kind of pejorative sense, he’s just shockingly out of place in the rest of the cast, even considering how totally detached similar characters are from more traditional Fire Emblem depictions. Characters from Solm have a similarly unconventional philosophy to their design, but at least in the case of Timerra, the heiress to the kingdom, her bubbly personality and ball-coated costume encapsulates an eccentricity that, while loud, it not out of sync with prior characterizations in the series.
Perhaps Elusia stands out so much more because of their initial characterization as a corrupted nation bent on reviving the Fell Dragon, only to be later swayed by the upstanding principles of the primary cast, ultimately joining them in the process. This heel-turn character redemption happens repeatedly throughout Engage, to a point that even at the very end previously heinous villains are revealed to have possessed a tragic backstory which put them on this path to begin with, somehow justifying their total absence of morality up until that point? It usually boils down to something totally asinine like “I always wanted a family of my own, and this crew of objectively evil cohorts was the only place I felt like I belonged.” There’s no space for antagonists to simply be unredeemable, and the constant recycling of these same handful of opponents makes for an often lackluster conflict on the field, as defeating them feels fruitless after you’ve already done it in the three previous chapters. While the alternative of one-off bosses that were basically just mindlessly evil thugs to defeat wasn’t necessarily better, it did provide a variety that Engage can sometimes lack. The consistent presence of the villains does at least benefit the build of the narrative, flawed as it may be. Although the early segments are bogged down by cliched foundations, the evolution of the story finds something of a compelling rhythm as things go along. The familiar trope of a tragic paternal figure falling plays out several times again, but like with Male Alear, the vocal performance is more often compelling enough to sell the melodrama effectively, and lays a good emotional bedrock for their compulsion to continue the fight as the story rolls along. Over the course of the game, I found myself becoming strangely endeared to otherwise contrived narrative twists, forecasted much too openly, and yet still effective thanks to the investment the writing puts into the characters up until that point. It’s basically like a stereotypical soap opera, predictable and overly dramatic, but entertaining and pulpy with a heavy dependance on how capably the actors can sell corny writing. With that kind of mentality, it’s easier to swallow a lot of the dumb contrivances that pop up towards the end, but even I was rolling my eyes with the brief time travel excursion, evil twins, and three different resurrections that take place.
So far, I’ve been intensely critical of the game, but I want to take the time to highlight some of the stand out moments I had while playing, because, in spite of all these critiques, I enjoyed Engage. Quite a lot, actually. It comes down to the gameplay more than anything, as others have more succinctly surmised, and although it took a while to figure everything out, the various systems at play allow for Engage to be one of the most tactical entries in the entire franchise. The Emblem Rings obviously lead to most of the fun with all of this, but there’s one segment about a third of the way in that really turns the expectations of the gameplay on its head. Chapter 11, “Retreat,” sees the power of the Emblem Rings turned against you. All the insanely overpowered abilities you've coveted this whole time are suddenly, and without warning, ripped away and are now weapons of the enemy. All you can do is as the chapter title tells you. Retreat. It’s a tense chase down to the end of the map, stifled by the excess of flying enemies barreling towards you faster than you can run, as well as a creeping band of powerful troops at the back slowing you down with a Freeze staff if you’re not moving carefully. It’s a tough trial made even tougher by the removal of the Time Crystal mechanic, which up until now allowed you to turn back turns if you ever made a mistake. For this chapter, it’s like the old school. If you screw anything up, it’s back to the beginning. This is where the game really started to pick up for me. The helplessness of losing your main tools of destruction demanded a shift towards a more defensive playstyle for a large part of the game. I was able to appreciate how subsequent maps were designed around these more thoughtful tactics, and how going forward you were really having to consider every asset at your disposal to properly clear the increasingly difficult objectives. Chapter 17, “Serenity in Ruin,” felt like the ultimate test of my skills up to that point. It took every resource I had available just to save from dying. Some very careful positioning to stay out of range of intensely powerful bosses and enemies, as well as strategic usage of the few Emblems I had managed to get back by that point for maximum efficacy. It was a brutal fight, made all the tougher by the multiple Revival Stones the various bosses were equipped with, meaning that rushing down a boss to clear a map was rarely a viable option in Engage.
There are some other minor things I could complain about, like the stupidly pointless difficulty of optional skirmishes and their ridiculous fog of war surprises, but there are also minor additions I could praise as well, like the increased viability of three-range weapons such as Thunder Tomes and Longbows, or the support viability of Qi Adept units and their Chain Guard abilities. There’s a lot of smaller aspects in Engage that tip the scale in both directions, while the real weight lies in the hit-or-miss characters and story in tandem with the vastly customizable approach to tactical gameplay provided by the reclass system and mixing and matching of Emblems and inherited skills. The gameplay will always matter more to me than the narrative, which has rarely been especially deep or nuanced throughout the series’ history. Engage by no means should get a pass for its seemingly endless contrivances, and my god do I wish they just simplified the presentation of some of these systems so they weren’t so frustratingly obtuse even for a veteran like myself, but I can’t deny how much fun I was having by the end with some ridiculously overtuned units and a decent cast of characters I found genuinely compelling in large part due to some commendable voice acting across the board. The dispersal of characters should have been less front-loaded to be sure, and their recruitment shouldn’t have been a hindrance on the deployment of my own units as well, but perhaps if I ever do a run where I allow characters to die (what some might argue to be an authentic Fire Emblem experience) then the ratio of inherent units could prove to be a boon depending on the difficulty. As with most of the recent entries, Engage does not amount to be an especially challenging experience, even on the median difficulty, but it does incentivise you to think more strategically as the game goes on, with a number of chapters memorably forcing you into relatively compromised positions requiring a bit more forethought than the usual gungho mentality can often afford. I was very satisfied by the end, and found the potential for replayability quite enticing, even after sinking nearly 100 hours into a single playthrough, which is an endorsement I’ll happily echo without amending any of the due criticisms already lodged.
Let’s start with the protagonist, Alear (or Toothpaste-chan, as I’ve seen some lovingly call them). As the central figure of Engage, and the first aspect of the game we’re put in control of, Alear is our first impression of this latest Fire Emblem entry, and at first blush they appear to embody the worst of everything the post-Awakening Lords have come to represent. The trouble with a player-insert avatar is that they often demand a certain degree of ambiguity so that the player may project onto them whatever personality they see most fitting. This was at its most extreme when the feature was first implemented, not only allowing you to name the protagonist (as all subsequent entries have also done) but to customize their entire look and sound as well. They try to get around this issue in Awakening by putting Robin (the avatar character) in the backseat for most of the game, having the alternate lord Chrom take the helm for the majority of the narrative. Alear is not quite the same as Robin—you can’t change their design, as much as you might wish to make it anything else—but they do share one played-out trait that really frustrates early attempts to connect with the character: amnesia. This old warhorse of a character trope has been around longer than gaming itself, but it’s still utilized as a lazy means of keeping the audience in the dark about certain pre-story details by essentially “blanking the slate” of the main protagonist without good reason beyond narrative convenience. It hurts the character in question more often than not because it leaves them with no personality, no backstory or interests, things which then have to develop over the course of the game instead. Unlike Awakening, Alear does eventually achieve some distinguishing characters and agency of their own, but it takes a long time and a lot of contrived reveals to garner some proper sympathy. I suppose that’s not entirely true, as there’s a scene quite early on where the voice actors for the character (more so the male variant than the female, but I’ll get to that) get to express a lot of emotion over a devastating familial death. Again, not a very original scenario, even just within Fire Emblem, but the acting sells it more than the cliched writing can, and if you’re down for some bombastic melodrama it’s compelling enough to start.
We can’t talk about Alear without talking about their design, however, which, if nothing else, certainly leaves an impression as no other Lord has before. The split design of their hair and eyes, one half red the other half blue, is a culmination of the growing extremity design philosophy of characters has been gaining since the 3DS era. As mentioned earlier, these more modern/fantastical character designs have always existed to one degree or another (brightly-colored hair, for instance, is hardly an innovation of recent games), but there’s no denying that Engage has taken it to new levels of incredulity, with Alear not even being the worst of the bunch. I’ll admit, the look grew on me over the course of the game. I suppose it’s hard to be totally unagreeable to anything you’ve spent more than 90 hours with on some consistent basis, but it also helps that there was eventually a narrative purpose for the garish dual appearance of the character. As far as costuming goes, generally I think it’s good across the board. Most maintain their ties to the European-inspired wear of the Medieval period the series takes large swaths of its inspiration from. There are some, of course, that significantly clash with the otherwise tame looks of the rest of the cast, but Alear’s outfit (at least in their base class) works, with some exceptions in the female design. There’s definitely a bias as I personally played through the game with Male Alear, but almost everything about Female Alear’s character puts me off greatly. The lifeless expression of her eyes, the physics-defying floor length hair, the plainness of the voice actresses’ performance, and her disproportionate bust all seem geared towards appealing to certain anime archetypes that, if not outright infantilizing, are designed to make the character appear as impressionable as possible without simply making a sexually-attractive husk. The vocal performance to me comes across more as poor direction (and more on a scene-to-scene basis rather than across the board) but everything else feels very intentional and slighted, which is a shame.
One last note for Alear before talking about the game itself: their identity. They are, as we learn very early on, a Divine Dragon. Dragonic protagonists are again, not new to Fire Emblem, so alongside the amnesia hook this introduction feels egregiously uninspired. The narrative doesn’t especially help in fleshing out this dynamic over the course of the game, even as we learn more and more what being a Divine Dragon means (or what it doesn’t mean). Alear’s “dragon-ness” doesn’t even amount in a transformation of any kind, it’s merely an excess to bestow a divine aura onto an otherwise very humanoid character so as to artificially elevate their importance. There are some interesting themes proposed with this dynamic, however, mostly through certain support conversations if you happen to come across them. Alear effectively becomes the figurehead of the region’s religion upon their revival, being both prayed to and worshiped by many of the people they call their companions. It’s a conflicting dynamic that highlights significant shades of Alear’s ongoing identity crisis, but it only ever manifests in fits and starts. In the wider scope of the story, it’s just another narrative sop to give the protagonist a faux grandeur in lieu of properly compelling writing. It makes me long for the days of the prior Lords, leaders who either carved their legacies out of sheer will or were tasked with rising to the occasion against the tides of overwhelming conflict. Fortunately, Engage does fulfill this wish, albeit through perhaps unexpectedly literal means. All those great Lords of the previous games, the iconic leaders who have impressed their legend upon the fans for more than thirty years? They’re all here, in the form of a ridiculously powerful new mechanic which serves as the game’s chief gimmick: Emblem Rings.
Here’s where the game gets good. The Emblem Rings are very powerful tools that allow you to summon the powers of previous Fire Emblem Lords to overwhelm your enemies in ways Fire Emblem traditionally isn’t designed to do. As an example, Sigurd, one of the first Emblems you receive, gives any character an extra five movement when activated, along with one extra movement passively. When paired with units already equipped with high mobility, this becomes insanely powerful insanely fast. Sigurd is only one of many Emblems which give your characters an incredible power boost while harkening back to the whole of Fire Emblem’s history. In order to unlock their full potential, you must also participate in various Paralogue Chapters where you fight the associated Emblems on a map calling back to significant chapters from their own games. Some translate to Engage better than others (with a handful feeling like either an incredibly poor choice based on the lack of comparable mechanics between games, or just like a lazy copy and paste from one to the other), but the reverence for the series in its entirety is very welcome, alongside the potent potential the power of the rings demonstrate over the course of the game. The Emblems are also the chief means by which you acquire skills for your characters, inheriting them from the Emblems based on how high your support is with each and at the cost of an accumulating currency called SP. This is one of several new resources Engage tasks you with managing without properly tutorializing you on, despite how much of the earlier chapters are taken up by lengthy explanations of basic systems and interactions well-established to the series by now. There are some other new mechanics that help further distinguish the gameplay for this entry, such as the supportive Backup units and Break additions to the returning Weapon Triangle, but the fatal combination of invasive explanations of basic features and an often overwhelming amount of information on screen which obscures certain systems which are neglected by tutorials leads to an incredibly frustrating experience until their obtuse understandings can eventually be untangled.
All of this is compounded by the sheer mass of extra crap the game throws at you to manage at the main hub of the game, The Somnial. It’s basically a secluded fortress in the sky where all the characters can relax and interact between battles, safe and secluded from the ongoing conflict below. This feature, and many of the life-sim aspects that accompany it, are clearly a holdover from the previous game, Three Houses, which put a lot more investment into the social elements of the game above that of its tactical RPG origins. I did not partake in most of them, simply because they are not aspects that appeal to me in a Fire Emblem game. For those I could ignore without relative consequence, this was fine. I can’t care that much about optional features so long as they remain that. Optional. I didn’t need to do any strength training to give myself a temporary stat boost, I didn’t need to have my fortune told or to play any fishing minigames. I didn’t need to make meals with other characters or go swimming to boost my supports. These features, while wholly unnecessary, did not impede my experience of the game. However, several features tied themselves directly to aspects of the Somniel, and thus in order to interact properly with the main mechanics of the game, demand additional time and attention. The more these features integrated with central components of the main gameplay, the more attention they took away from progressing the story and actually partaking in the battles themselves. Things like Weapon Forging, which has existed in the series since Path of Radiance, now requires materials in addition to money. You can get these materials either by wandering around the battlefield after a fight, or as drops from particular animals you can adopt for a farm back at the Somniel. Since only one type of animal produces these vital resources, there’s no sense in creating a variety of animals to foster there, thus rendering the mechanic an overly complex means of generating materials you never needed prior to this to achieve the same results.
The mechanic that was most frustrating to try and discern here, though, was the implementation and earning of SP alongside another new resource, Bond Fragments. These two materials are the necessary means by which you grind up supports with the Emblem Rings to then inherit their unique skills afterwards. Being the main, central mechanic of the game, you’re going to want to interact with these features, as they’re going to be the main way you distinguish and customize how your characters play over the course of the game. So why, then, is it presented so obtusely without any concrete explanation of how you earn these vital resources and where to implement them? It is not at all apparent even in the brief segments it’s slightly explained, and was the chief source of ire for me during the bulk of my gameplay. Once I did learn where all this information is displayed, and how to easily access and navigate the requisite menus to redeem these myriad scattered resources, it became a lot more rewarding. However, that doesn’t erase the literal hours I wasted just trying to understand these features on face value, and how needlessly complex they were made by the inundation of new currencies to manage between battles. It’s to a point where I was often spending just as much time preparing for the next chapter as I was playing the chapters themselves, and this was with me spending as little time as I felt I could at the Somniel between fights. At that point, it’s no longer a space to breathe and recuperate between lengthy and demanding segments of gameplay; it’s as much a feature of the game as the battles themselves, and an incredibly tedious one at that.
Which brings me to the purpose of the Somniel as a whole: a sanctuary, for both the players and the characters, to collect themselves between demanding stretches of gameplay. This is another innovation that has existed in the series since Path of Radiance, but only since Three Houses has it become a location all its own. In previous games, this space of relief was a Base Camp, a traveling locale which never distracted from the progression of the narrative while still allowing you the time and space to manage your various inventories and character supports before launching into the next section of tactical deployment. In Three Houses, the story demanded a central location for all the various activities to take place in, so the Base Camp was adapted into a more definitive space for the various social activities to take place in. This shift actually began back as early as Awakening, with the furnishing of the Barracks, and Fates, with “My Castle” becoming a fully customizable base of operations which also utilized the 3DS’s StreetPass feature. The difference when it comes to Engage, however, is that the adventure never felt interrupted by these features, and their presence was never a distraction. Because the Somniel is a bonafide location not just extent without various navigable menus, and is also an in-narrative space defined as being totally separate from the world we’re traveling across, the immersion of the troupe supposedly traveling across the entire continent of Elyos in search of the twelve Emblem Rings is constantly broken by casual returns to this totally serene sky palace detached from the conflict developing below. It’s especially distracting when the narrative turns up the tension and urgency of the conflict, looking to lead the drama right into the next chapter, only for you to zoom off because you have some gardening to attend to or your chibi-dog pet needs petting for more resources.
A lot of this could be allayed simply by not having the Somniel exist. Base Camps were a perfectly fine concept that allowed you to manage resources and character interaction without breaking the flow of the narrative while supplying the player a much-needed break between chapters. The best part is they already have this in Engage. The exploration of the battlefield, gathering resources and talking to characters, is not only a welcome build on the template first provided in Path of Radiance, but also allows you to do most of the things you’d want to do between chapters. Character supports, inventory management, buying new weapons, all can be done while taking a short break on the field you just conquered. I really liked walking around the maps with a new perspective, seeing the space we just spend a great deal of effort to overcome with a new, relieved perspective was very additive to the core gameplay experience I found. Unfortunately, you can’t manage everything from this space, and important core mechanics such as Weapon Forging and Skill Inheritance can only take place in the Somniel, thus rendering the ability to manage aspects in the field lesser by comparison, but also making it yet another tedious activity to manage between battles that ultimately amounts to little more than banal resource gathering.
I do enjoy the managing of units and skills and stats it should be said, however. In point of fact, the minutiae of assembling units to be as optimized in their roles is one of the most enjoyable aspects of any Fire Emblem game for me. As the series has developed, we’ve been given more and more tools to make characters as ridiculously strong as we’d like, and Engage ups that ante further with the Emblem Rings. These, in combination with Skill Inheritance (effectively allowing you to mix and match the best qualities of multiple Emblems at once) and unlimited reclassing, opens the way for some truly disgusting strategies. What this also means is that unlike in earlier games, where characters are locked into a particular class, you can make any character as powerful as you’d like, in any capacity you’d like. There’s something to be said in losing the designated identity of a character by radically altering their base presentation, i.e. turning an axe unit into a mage, for instance. But the trade off is the ability to use the characters you like regardless of how well they’re initially set up to succeed, as well as a nigh unlimited potential of combinations ensuring that no two playthroughs will be the same. The balancing of the various classes is definitely uneven—there are just straight up inferior advanced classes to a notable handful which just dominate the late game completely—but that’s certainly a minor critique of a system that is otherwise very flexible towards utilizing whomever you want for your adventure.
And boy howdy, do you have some options. “Too much of a good thing,” is how I would describe the rate at which Engage throws new units at you. There are 36 total characters you can have by the end of the game, and a whopping 28 of them are given to you before the halfway point of the story. These units are usually deployed three at a time, which not only inundates you with new characters to use and determine their value, but hinders your usage of already established units thanks to the decreased deployment of maps with recruitable characters. There’s also far less going out of your way to recruit optional characters. The two units recruitable from side chapters are available almost immediately, while two additional characters can be recruited by talking to them in a couple of later maps. These latter two are appreciated for reviving this feature of mid-map recruitment, as well as for the characters themselves being of an older disposition (thus injecting some much-needed variety amongst the cast), but their arrival comes so late as to dampen the overall effect of their conclusion, sadly. The excess of characters is still an issue, however, particularly because of how front-loaded they are and the limited ability to utilize everyone at any given time. Very quickly, you will have to decide which of your units you will just stop investing in, and as a result, stop caring about too, because if you’re not using a character, you’re not creating any supports with other units, and due to the nature of the story revolving around the Lords of the region almost exclusively, after the non-royal characters are introduced they’re basically dropped from the narrative. For some, though, this is probably a good thing, because there are a number of characters in Engage who test the limits of my tolerance for cutesy, bold, or outright obnoxious characterizations.
The typical means by which Fire Emblem characters are given “personality” is by assigning them one or two distinctive quirks and making all their interactions about that specific thing. So, for example, Louis, your starting armored unit in Engage, is a people-watcher who likes tea. All of his support conversations are about these two things, with a little bit of backstory injected surrounding his family grape farm. It’s very simple, almost two-dimensional some would say, but for all the interactions that need to be scripted for the branching support conversations of any given two units, a stock approach to characterizations is not the most unreasonable compromise. Not all can be as inoffensively simple as Louis, however, and when combined with some of the most brash character designs ever conceived for a Fire Emblem game, the extremity of it all is just simply too much to endure. The chief offenders are largely denizens of Elusia, a country which begins as an antagonistic force against the heroes before slowly being redeemed over the course of the game (another writing faux pas we will return to). Where the previous kingdoms of Firene and Brodia showcase a strong central theming amongst the cast (Brodia in particular stands out with its consistent dark red color palette between characters and gem-themed character names tying back to the county’s primary industry, not to mention the impeccable overall design of its Lord Diamant being one of the best looking characters in not just the game but the entire series), Elusia’s cast is quite garish and at odds with itself. There’s a mix of sinister color palettes and cutesy kawaii aesthetics in characters like Hortensia, whose candy-colored, mouse-ear-shaped hair belies the glee with which she partakes in systematic murder, and Rosado, who's literally just a femboy with cat ears. I don’t mean that in any kind of pejorative sense, he’s just shockingly out of place in the rest of the cast, even considering how totally detached similar characters are from more traditional Fire Emblem depictions. Characters from Solm have a similarly unconventional philosophy to their design, but at least in the case of Timerra, the heiress to the kingdom, her bubbly personality and ball-coated costume encapsulates an eccentricity that, while loud, it not out of sync with prior characterizations in the series.
Perhaps Elusia stands out so much more because of their initial characterization as a corrupted nation bent on reviving the Fell Dragon, only to be later swayed by the upstanding principles of the primary cast, ultimately joining them in the process. This heel-turn character redemption happens repeatedly throughout Engage, to a point that even at the very end previously heinous villains are revealed to have possessed a tragic backstory which put them on this path to begin with, somehow justifying their total absence of morality up until that point? It usually boils down to something totally asinine like “I always wanted a family of my own, and this crew of objectively evil cohorts was the only place I felt like I belonged.” There’s no space for antagonists to simply be unredeemable, and the constant recycling of these same handful of opponents makes for an often lackluster conflict on the field, as defeating them feels fruitless after you’ve already done it in the three previous chapters. While the alternative of one-off bosses that were basically just mindlessly evil thugs to defeat wasn’t necessarily better, it did provide a variety that Engage can sometimes lack. The consistent presence of the villains does at least benefit the build of the narrative, flawed as it may be. Although the early segments are bogged down by cliched foundations, the evolution of the story finds something of a compelling rhythm as things go along. The familiar trope of a tragic paternal figure falling plays out several times again, but like with Male Alear, the vocal performance is more often compelling enough to sell the melodrama effectively, and lays a good emotional bedrock for their compulsion to continue the fight as the story rolls along. Over the course of the game, I found myself becoming strangely endeared to otherwise contrived narrative twists, forecasted much too openly, and yet still effective thanks to the investment the writing puts into the characters up until that point. It’s basically like a stereotypical soap opera, predictable and overly dramatic, but entertaining and pulpy with a heavy dependance on how capably the actors can sell corny writing. With that kind of mentality, it’s easier to swallow a lot of the dumb contrivances that pop up towards the end, but even I was rolling my eyes with the brief time travel excursion, evil twins, and three different resurrections that take place.
So far, I’ve been intensely critical of the game, but I want to take the time to highlight some of the stand out moments I had while playing, because, in spite of all these critiques, I enjoyed Engage. Quite a lot, actually. It comes down to the gameplay more than anything, as others have more succinctly surmised, and although it took a while to figure everything out, the various systems at play allow for Engage to be one of the most tactical entries in the entire franchise. The Emblem Rings obviously lead to most of the fun with all of this, but there’s one segment about a third of the way in that really turns the expectations of the gameplay on its head. Chapter 11, “Retreat,” sees the power of the Emblem Rings turned against you. All the insanely overpowered abilities you've coveted this whole time are suddenly, and without warning, ripped away and are now weapons of the enemy. All you can do is as the chapter title tells you. Retreat. It’s a tense chase down to the end of the map, stifled by the excess of flying enemies barreling towards you faster than you can run, as well as a creeping band of powerful troops at the back slowing you down with a Freeze staff if you’re not moving carefully. It’s a tough trial made even tougher by the removal of the Time Crystal mechanic, which up until now allowed you to turn back turns if you ever made a mistake. For this chapter, it’s like the old school. If you screw anything up, it’s back to the beginning. This is where the game really started to pick up for me. The helplessness of losing your main tools of destruction demanded a shift towards a more defensive playstyle for a large part of the game. I was able to appreciate how subsequent maps were designed around these more thoughtful tactics, and how going forward you were really having to consider every asset at your disposal to properly clear the increasingly difficult objectives. Chapter 17, “Serenity in Ruin,” felt like the ultimate test of my skills up to that point. It took every resource I had available just to save from dying. Some very careful positioning to stay out of range of intensely powerful bosses and enemies, as well as strategic usage of the few Emblems I had managed to get back by that point for maximum efficacy. It was a brutal fight, made all the tougher by the multiple Revival Stones the various bosses were equipped with, meaning that rushing down a boss to clear a map was rarely a viable option in Engage.
There are some other minor things I could complain about, like the stupidly pointless difficulty of optional skirmishes and their ridiculous fog of war surprises, but there are also minor additions I could praise as well, like the increased viability of three-range weapons such as Thunder Tomes and Longbows, or the support viability of Qi Adept units and their Chain Guard abilities. There’s a lot of smaller aspects in Engage that tip the scale in both directions, while the real weight lies in the hit-or-miss characters and story in tandem with the vastly customizable approach to tactical gameplay provided by the reclass system and mixing and matching of Emblems and inherited skills. The gameplay will always matter more to me than the narrative, which has rarely been especially deep or nuanced throughout the series’ history. Engage by no means should get a pass for its seemingly endless contrivances, and my god do I wish they just simplified the presentation of some of these systems so they weren’t so frustratingly obtuse even for a veteran like myself, but I can’t deny how much fun I was having by the end with some ridiculously overtuned units and a decent cast of characters I found genuinely compelling in large part due to some commendable voice acting across the board. The dispersal of characters should have been less front-loaded to be sure, and their recruitment shouldn’t have been a hindrance on the deployment of my own units as well, but perhaps if I ever do a run where I allow characters to die (what some might argue to be an authentic Fire Emblem experience) then the ratio of inherent units could prove to be a boon depending on the difficulty. As with most of the recent entries, Engage does not amount to be an especially challenging experience, even on the median difficulty, but it does incentivise you to think more strategically as the game goes on, with a number of chapters memorably forcing you into relatively compromised positions requiring a bit more forethought than the usual gungho mentality can often afford. I was very satisfied by the end, and found the potential for replayability quite enticing, even after sinking nearly 100 hours into a single playthrough, which is an endorsement I’ll happily echo without amending any of the due criticisms already lodged.