Felt like this game was a celebration of past Fire Emblem heroes, which is nice. The maps and battles were great, and maybe a handful of characters were great, but overall didn't enjoy the story too much.

Bright Sandstorm has made a home in my unmanaged list of "Favorite Battle Themes" so the game's got that going for it.

Overall, the game is okay. I'm a pretty casual Fire Emblem fan and I thought the game was fine, but there's a lot left to be desired.

Figured I might as well give this a little review since this is the version I got.

Mostly got this version for the artbook. To say I'm a huge sucker for concept art books would be an understatement; I bought the Octopath Traveler and collector's edition of the Pokémon Sword and Shield guidebooks just for the 30 or so pages of concept art in each one, and got myself the Xenoblade 2 artbook, despite being entirely in Japanese. This one certainly doesn't disappoint; each character has their own page, and has their Somniel outfits and all other in-game outfits on display too. Some of the character artwork honestly looks better than how they're rendered in-game lol (Like, Diamant, Jade, and Kagetsu, for example, look like completely different characters). For such a comprehensive artbook that includes pretty much everything in the game, from the environments, to the classes, to the cutscene renders, even all the weapons, it's strange that the Emblems didn't have full concept art included; all they got were black-and-white facial profiles. I know plenty of official art of them already exists, but it would be nice to see Pikazo's take on them in here, she's an incredible artist. Biggest gripe with the artbook, though, is the dimensions of it, but that's more of a me thing; it doesn't fit on my shelf with the spine facing outwards like my other artbooks do, so I have to display it with the spine facing up, and it looks really awkward next to the others.

Conversely, I've never really been a poster guy, but this one looks so cool that I had to put it up. The poster's art is the artwork for this webpage, just without the Engage logo. Finally adds some spice and color to my boring, peanut-butter-colored walls.

I would be using the steelbook case, but it clashes too much with the rest of my game shelf, so I keep the game in its regular case when it's not in my Switch (which is rare nowadays, since I still actively play the game).

The art cards are also pretty cool, and even have that MtG foiling treatment where they pringle to all hell and back. Just wish they didn't fingerprint so easily, god damn. Great to use as a forensics tool.

Very good strategic gameplay. Decent if admittedly lackluster story. (I think it's fine but I get that other people might be wanting.)

I really like how bosses are handled in this game. Most map objectives are "defeat boss", which I liked in Tactics Ogre and I liked here as well. Bosses rooted in one place are also the exception rather than the norm, which I like as a way of making you always be wary of them. Also helping is the "revival stone", mechanic - basically the bosses having however many equally-long health bars. It sounds like it has the potential to be annoying but I can appreciate the staying power it gives the bosses - killing them in one full turn is still possible, but you'll definitely need multiple units for it and it's more of a commitment. And it feels really satisfying when you manage to deplete all of their health bars in one turn; each health bar being normal-sized helps. I'd say I only really got annoyed with revival stones when there were multiple units on the field with them, moreso when they otherwise were generic, but those moments are super rare, mercifully.

I think the main weakness of the gameplay is the unit building - specifically, how restrictive it is. You get exactly two slots for skills of your choice - and (at least before version 1.3) you had extremely limited SP to purchase skills with, leading to easy decision paralysis. Another potential annoyance is that there are some unique and potentially useful skills on bond rings, but using them means that you have to completely give up the generally-more-useful engage rings. Understandable, maybe, but still kind of restrictive for my tastes. (Also class skills kinda suck, though I do appreciate how the "activation skills" - things like Luna and Ignis - are restricted to special classes. Makes them feel fancier and exclusive like they used to... but they also don't have cool animations...)

Finally, I want to talk about the story. It exists. It's not the very best story, and I can see why it would be easy to be disappointed with it after Three Houses, which at the very least tried to be more ambitious with it (and I think is generally accepted to have been more successful with it than, say, Fates). There are still, however, pieces of the story that I liked a lot - some of them are, admittedly, most likely because they hit a weak point for me, but I really like the villain. Without getting into spoilers, I think he evokes some more unique emotions. He commits the cardinal sin of "you only learn about him five seconds before you punch his face in" but in spite of that those five seconds make him fairly memorable, I think! It's not a masterpiece by any means but I still genuinely think it was enjoyable enough to not make me want to skip through every story scene just to get to gameplay faster.

Played on Maddening/Classic

Loved every minute. Actually sad it's finished.

Masochist like Griss so I'm going to ironman the next run

If I could only play one game this year, this would be it.

This is overall a great Collector's Edition and all the items and goodies included were great and very high quality. And in case you're wondering... Yes, it does include the game.
The artbook was gorgeous, thicc and filled with tons of pictures and concepts about the world and its characters. The steelbook is beautiful and makes the game feel premium and unique, besides it looks great when displaying it on your shelf/collection. Finally the coloured cards and the poster are cool add-ons to have to round up this edition.
The one thing I truly missed was not having the soundtrack of the game but aside from that everything else was outstanding.