I wanted to write a review about this game for over a month at this point but always find myself not feeling fully committed.

At first I felt like I didn't want to go all in with the hate because truthfully speaking I speak rather caustically about any game I play, including those I enjoy, and I truly do want to have a more positive mindset when it comes to game criticism.

However, seeing the amount of "opinions" about this game on twitter that range from painfully ignorant to just boldface lying has put me in a position where I feel like I need to let loose and just be the asshole I am meant to be about this utterly corporate, hollow and soulless product.

Fire Emblem Engage is easily the Marvel Movie equivalent of a Fire Emblem game in the worst possible ways possible and I can only look at some of the defenses for it as by people who consume product endlessly without actually considering what it is that they're taking in.

"The story is bad but that's ok because all Fire Emblem stories are bad," is not just a bad argument but just a flat out untruth that dismisses the nuanced stories of games like Genealogy of the Holy War, a game whose first half is entirely focused on political grabs for power that bring the protagonist into conflict with those he deemed allies and results in a twist that I still find incredibly impactful even a year after playing it.

It also dismisses the game preceding Engage, Three Houses which while not perfect, has had enough intrigue about itself that people are still debating which of the paths was the "morally correct" one. If a game can still generate discussion nearly five years after its release, it must have some sort of value.

Hell, Shadow Dragon which I just played this last month has better story telling than we get in Engage. People really want to try and say that Fire Emblem plots are bad have just not played the fucking series at this point. That's not even an elitist angle, I've only played maybe 6 to 8 games in this series, but even I can tell that the idea that "all Fire Emblem stories are bad is bullshit"

So, what is wrong with Engage's story? I know I just vented about the honestly moronic argument being made for it so what exactly is the flaw? In truth the basic premise isn't so much the problem but rather the delivery.

The game has a simplistic "defeat the Evil Kingdom and the Evil Dragon in charge of the Kingdom", but the problem simply lies in the fact that the game does not get the player to give a single fuck about it. Even in other FE games where the "defeat Evil Dragon" setup is in place, the intrigue is made through the character reactions to Fire Emblem's inherent themes like the suffering of war, loss, and hope. However, Engage's characters are... not characters to put it as nice as I can. They are a bunch of traits stitched together that don't make up a nuanced individual. Even those that I liked like Alcryst barely felt like people.

So when you put these non-characters, with a simplistic plot, does that automatically make it bad? No. A good example of this I think is Final Fantasy V. That game is relatively simple in how its story is presented and the characters don't wind up having a severe level of depth, but what makes it work is how it uses its humor and light-heartedness to sort of be a self-parody, making it a whimsical entertaining ride from start to finish (Even then FFV still has actual character beats that feel genuine and well written regardless).

Engage appears to have this trait at the start but by the time you reach the second country the plot tries to take itself seriously and... it doesn't work.

The plot being flat, the characters being flat, and no real sense of self-awareness or witty self-parody results in Engage being an extremely dull experience, which is what I would say if the final third of the game didn't piss me off nearly as much as it did.

To sum up my thoughts on the narrative, I want to quote a friend of mine more versed in Fire Emblem than myself, "Engage doesn’t just have a simple plot. It’s a simple plot full of simple characters told in a simple way with simple themes conveyed through simple expression" - @fortayee, 2023

Onto the gameplay, it starts off relatively ok before falling off the deep end hard after you visit Solm.

The game has barely any objective variety with 20 Main Story Chapters being Defeat Boss maps, 5 being Rout Maps (which includes maps where you start with a different objective only for it to become a Rout Map), and 2 Escape Maps.

Adding on the paralogues brings it up to a whopping 34 Defeat Boss Maps, and 6 Rout Maps (not accounting for DLC because I'm not spending an additional thirty dollars for characters like Camilla and the Fire Emblem Heroes one).

The early to midgame maps were pretty, pardon the pun, engaging (I played on Hard Casual), though I couldn't really think of anything standout. After Chapter 16 though the quality definitely begins a sharp decline.

Chapter 16 is a funny map and begins the trend of encouraging turtling tactics. Instead of trying to make interesting plays, given the sheer amount of both bosses and bosses with the ability to use Engage attacks, you might as well just concentrate all of your forces in one area and take the map excessively slow as you tackle each obstacle one at at a time.

Compared to earlier entries like Shadow Dragon or even something like Sacred Stones, it never feels like it is ever beneficial to spread out your party to multitask obstacles because the sheer amount of enemies along with Engage attacks being particularly devastating just doesn't encourage that kind of play.

This turtling trend continues for pretty much the rest of the game, with Chapters 17 and 25 feeling like the only exceptions, with 25 finally actively punishing the player for doing so.

This isn't really helped by the fact that the back half of this game is filled with Fates like gimmicks that result in levels being less interesting or just plain annoying to progress through.

Every level involving a Fell Shard made me groan because it either meant that the mechanic would involve removing what was making the Chapter interesting like Chapter 23's Meteors which basically made the interesting setup of vast narrow pathways become a giant open map instead, or Chapter 22 where you have to gather all the Emblem Rings only for the map to become a Rout map anyway.

I think my least favorite of the Chapters easily goes to Chapter 24, not just because it involves time travel but also because of the avalanche mechanic being both annoying and trivial.

You wanna beat the map (without just warp skipping), it's simple. Instead of taking your army through the three separate lanes, just turtle them all up in one lane and move them up and down when the avalanches come. Oh, that's forgetting that the chapter also has a time limit. 2 Chapters away from Endgame and the game suddenly feels like implementing a mechanic that will never be relevant again outside of DLC (if it becomes relevant in the DLC in the first place). It's not even really a challenge it just feels... pointless.

Honestly that's the apt word to describe Engage, it's pointless.

Mechanically it doesn't really push the series forward in any real meaningful way. The Emblems are a neat concept but they're never going to return in any future game, if anything they're really just the FE equivalent to Pokemon's current usage of transformation gimmicks that are picked up for one game and then dropped for the next generation. The class change system isn't really anything new, I honestly hazard to think of anything meaningful at all that this game provides.

Nostalgia? I guess, I mean the Emblem Paralogues are easily the best parts about this game, but that's more to the credit of the original games more than anything.

It can't be the characters, because they're not characters at all.

The gameplay is just standard modern FE...

So what gives this game the excuse for being so... nothing.

That's not even going on the 30 dollar DLC, which again is absolutely horrid how they're handling it. It's the same problem I had when Pokemon Sword & Shield did it. For a game that is so unconsidered in my opinion, making additional content that you cannot buy separately from each other for 30 dollars is ridiculous.

I should not have to pay for Camilla or the Heroes one if I want to have Soren or Edelgard. Also, locking the Silver Card behind DLC is also a dick move too.

What else can I foam at the mouth about? The Somniel?

Like the rest of the game it's pointless, and while I know someone will say "well the Monastery in Three Houses is also pointless", I'd argue at least the Monastery fed into what that game was about. The Somniel feels like a complete afterthought, especially considering you can use a lot of its functions on the world map anyway.

Being real I just cannot write a concrete review on this game. It frustrates me too much for me to not just start barking like a rabid dog whenever I see it or discussion about it. I'm honestly hoping it'll get me put down like Old Yeller, bullet to the fucking brainstem.

That infuriation stems from the desire for a better product and to not just be placid and eat up this corporate schlock like it's pig slop. Three Houses, like it or not, was at least doing something interesting, compared to this fucking mess.

I think to me, the moment where my hatred for this game was ensured was after the aforementioned Chapter 22.

The plot does bla bla bla, it's not really interesting but then Alear becomes an Emblem. The Fire Emblem.

And I guess something snapped, something inside of me.

It was a realization, that if it hadn't done it by the time of Fire Emblem Fates, that Fire Emblem had truly jumped the shark.

Not only that, but to have Marth, the guy who carries his version of the Fire Emblem with him for two entire games (and two remakes), be the one who makes that statement... god it's just so awkward and stupid.

And then of course all the times the game would suddenly redeem villains for no reason only to kill them off, which includes the main antagonist... I don't know I think I just fucking died inside.

Can you tell this isn't a review? This is just me spewing out everything because I've been needing to explode about this game for so long but held back.

Fire Emblem Engage is the Modern Fire Emblem game. It is exactly the soulless trashy game that people used to claim Awakening was, it is the endpoint where there is simply no true creative juices left. My only hope is that the next Fire Emblem game is not as nearly as rife with the corporate MCU Filmesque energy as this one was.


Positives:
The music was fine, especially the remixes of classic tracks.
Visually it is very pretty (even if I hate most of the character designs)

Good night Backloggd. I need to just lie down for a while.