"Are you ready for your gacha lessons?"

Genshin gulped.

Fate/Grand Order nodded.

Arknights shuddered.

Blue Archive blinked nervously.

"Yes 英雄伝説 閃の軌跡: Northern War-sensei", they said in unison.

There's so much I could say about this game, and it did, indeed, teach me a lot. Perhaps I could talk about how drummed-up controversies affect our perception of games, perhaps I could talk about how expectations of "uh it's Oscarbait AAA stuf it's going to be 'good' standard good great even" can make things seem less appealing - after all if you know something is just boilerplate good, then you know, why bother?

I could talk about the modern 2 hour video essay, how they serve often to give a person a wikipedia summary of a game and prepackaged opinions so they can take part in Discourse. I can talk about people complaining about emotional manipulation, about The Gamer Struggles, about all that.

None of it matters in the face of the primacy of experience. Of going through a massive work of art like this yourself. How did this get made. How did this get made with a AAA budget. How is it twice the length of The Last of Us One. How is it all killer no filler. How does it manage to tell a story of such violence, emotional vulnerability, and depth. I don't know. People and the discourse around it could not tell me.

A masterpiece. Play it if you liked the first game. Play the first game to play this game. This will be an enduring, all-time classic.

Its a way more enjoyable version of fes.
I don't like the music as much l do think its worse.
The atmosphere is different but l still like it a lot.
The anime cutscenes are better but yukari's attempted awakening is way better in fes.
The fucking ending scene in reload had me bawling my eyes out. Like it way more.
the little interludes for the male party members are really good too koromaru best boy.

Fire Emblem Engage. Got really, really into Fire Emblem right before its release, playing much of the series in a feverish pitch with this game's release being the climax. Was it worth it? Sure was. One of my favorite Femblems.

Gameplay? Fantastic. The difficulty of the Maddening mode has hands-down the best difficulty pacing in the series; they really got it with this one. It's enough of a toothy challenge right off the bat that always feels hard enough, and it keeps pace with you even as you gain more and more tools to deal with its challenges. It contrasts with Three Houses Maddening, which is comically difficult in the beginning with your do-nothing scrub kids until they grow into their own and it gets much easier. Pretty great last maps, though. It also contrasts with Conquest's Lunatic difficulty, which punches your face in from the start and every mission is a fight for your life. Yeah, Conquest is pretty great, too.

The systems of simple character customization with emblem ring skills and the emblems themselves were really fun. I was worried that the game would be a juggernaut-fest of steamrolling the enemy with superpowered transforming emblem units (this can still happen but only if you really know what you're doing), but was pleasantly surprised at just how fun the emblem engaging mechanics were. The series fanservice was pretty nice, too, having the player take on some of the hardest maps from the old games.

Other production value things - great soundtrack with its dynamic battle themes, excellent animation with throwbacks to GBA battle animations, the previous peak of the series, and some really nice optimization. The game actually runs well on the switch, which is a real shocker.

What I didn't like as much is pretty much what everyone else didn't like, the story and the character designs. The story is Fine, it's a campy Marvel story that I was checked out of and kind of enjoyed the villain's motivations metaphorically as a Femblem gamer who just like me fr. It had hype moments, so what more could I ask for. Oh, I know - less text. The game had so much text and said so little with it! Man!

The character designs. Many will kvetch that they are too "anime," too "weeby," because, well, Fire Emblem has never been animesque! Anyway, Mika Pikazo's art owns, and I like some of the really exaggerated designs. Seeing Celine flip around in a giant poofy onion dress and platform shoes is the funniest and best thing. The problem is, there's no cohesion. Like, none. No one looks like they live where they're from, no one looks like they inhabit the same world, and nothing looks real. They feel like a bunch of gacha game character designs slapped together, and that's pretty much how they were made - IS asked Pikazo to just go and design 50 characters and bada-bing-bada-boom here we go. Bring us back to Echoes... or at least, Thracia...

Anyway, great strategy RPG

Is and will always be my favorite game of all time. The gameplay, the story, the graphics, the propaganda for the military industrial complex; it’s all just perfect. The only thing that could be more fun than this game is making a dumb gimmick account as something to do when I’m bored during work and getting a surprisingly high amount of clout amongst a community I mostly chose not to engage with. Thanks for 10,000 likes.
Also, Fidel Castro is like the rawest video game character of all time and I wish he was real so fucking much.