I went into Fire Emblem Engage expecting to dislike it after the absolute disaster Three Houses was and I am genuinely surprised at how great this game is as a whole.
Getting the obvious out of the way, this game looks pretty great. Unlike Three Houses, this game actually has the production value and visual effort of an AAA first party game. Models are better, animations are better, it handles it's aesthetic better, colour design is better, textures are better, character design is better and there's an actual diverse amount of areas you visit with unique architecture. It's actually shocking that this and Three Houses were in development at the same time considering how much more personality and identity this game has over it. The Switch doesn't do the visuals much justice what with the low frame rate and dynamic resolution but Three Houses had this problem much worse than Engage did.

Narratively, this game was never going for anything particularly amazing and it shows. There's not much depth or complexity in it's world setup or story beats as the plot of this game definitely boils down to "beat the evil dragon" for almost it's entirety. Even it's major plot reveals are obvious with how heavy handed the foreshadowing for them is. But the game wears it's heart on it's sleeve. It's really campy and the game doesn't take it's narrative too seriously making it just fun beyond anything else. This being said, I was engaged enough in the serious story moments; especially around the finale where it felt a lot like a Tokusatsu show.

Character wise, this game was a lot more consistent than Three Houses was. It didn't reach the same highs as Three Houses did with it's cast, but I think the consistency that it provided was far better. There were no actively terrible characters that I hated or disliked. At most, there were characters I was indifferent towards like Jade and Goldmary. Alear, however, was probably the game's highest point character wise. The disparity between Alear's status as a Divine Dragon Deity and their personality of just being a normal person made a lot of their interactions both in supports and the story very endearing along with making their actual character arc in the story compelling and easy to root for. Alear is humanized really well, especially compared to Byleth who had that as their entire character arc across FOUR stories and failed at it, and I was very happy that Alear wasn't silent.

Gameplay was probably the biggest improvement from the last game. From beginning to end, there's actual map design. Maps aren't rehashed and they stand out from each other both aesthetically and mechanically. This is especially true in the later portions of the game. The maps are challenging but fair and the reworked class system is much better for unit balance.
This being said, the game does have some growing pains in all it's success with it's gameplay. Namely that this game has very convoluted UI that it does nothing to attempt to help with navigating. Why is reclassing in the inventory screen? Why does it not tell you that it is? Why can you not look over the map before entering battle to help strategize? Aggro lines don't really do anything this time. They say who CAN be targeted but not who currently BEING targeted. And so on. The game is missing a lot of more or less essential quality of life compared to other SRPGs like it.

WHAT TOP 5 YOU SMOKIN ON KENDRICK BECAUSE MY TOP 5 IS
CANNONBALL
CANNONBALL
CANNONBALL
CANNONBALL
CANNONBALL