Finished on 8/26/2023
tl;dr its a functional game but man does it not stand out outside of having all of the other fire emblem guys here. The next game really needs to dial it back, retain some of the QoL features and have a more grounded vibe. Get a new translation team or a new writing room, maybe both. It looks more colorful than Three Houses. The best stuff is the DLC stuff but not the Fell Xenologue afaik, just the new emblem rings.
Fire Emblem…Engage!
(0. PROLOGUE:)
It's a game with so much Fire Emblem packed in, all for a game that barely feels like I'm playing Fire Emblem.
This game reminds me of so many other games, both from Fire Emblem and from other series, just by how much content is included in this game but also by how much better other games are at implementing new mechanics and evolving into this 'new generation of gaming', for better or worse. The rougher part is how much the Fire Emblem part comes from just stealing other aspects of previous titles, and only really toying around with a few aspects in ways I don't feel are as well executed here or worse, have become so memetically ingrained to how a Fire Emblem is supposed to play out that it becomes a laughing stock. Rather than remembrance of times of elation or intrigue regarding a particularly well set up chapter or an interesting character or a strong tenet of worldbuilding, I'm reminded more often of flaws privy to previous titles in the series. What Engage presents is a wonderful amalgamation of what the series has become- but doesn't provide an interesting solution as to what the series will do next. While it presents a myriad of different interactables and new features, I ended up not really wanting to toy around or mess with most of these as I figured much of it didn't actually matter. Other games do this as well obviously, including titles throughout Fire Emblem- not every part of the game has to tie back to the main story. Not every mechanic needs to be fine-tuned to be as balanced as possible, sometimes it pays to be a bit busted. However in Engage's case so much of its mechanics feel like they're... out of sync?
I never truly felt like I conquered the game, and some other FEs have made me feel similarly, but I've been interested in going back and tackling at later dates (maybe Thracia someday...). Here it just felt it was more worth it to not pay attention to certain mechanics post battle mechanics for a few battles, otherwise I'd just be wasting time in menus, management and minutiae for no reason. What's left is a main plot that feels like the weakest since...actually only since Revelations so it hasn't been too long but it left a lot to be desired.
Sometimes I dont wanna be Mr. Cynical, but on the other hand sometimes it's a lot more fun to just be a hater: I thought a lot of this game was fucking dumb and not in a fun sense. I need someone else to come in and pull in the reins on whatever writers and scenario staff is on these projects because dear god I felt embarrassed at times going through the main scenario of this. I don't know if it's a translation thing or if the original script is as bad or what but we're in dire need of some new material, Kaga help us.
The overall package might be a serviceable title, however after having played every other mainline Fire Emblem I just can’t help but feel as though most aspects of this were half baked.
(1. Engaging Mechanics)
(a. Engage!)
Firstly, the namesake of the game. Engage. It’s a neat mechanic and the primary function of this game, like 3H’s academia and Awakefates’ partnering and child minmaxing simulator (blah blah yeah FE4 had this we know). For each game in the series we have a rep, except for FE3 given its a sequel without a new MC -thought it would have been extremely brave of them to have put Kris in here. Units you deploy into battle can equip these and boost their stats and gain certain skills. After some time in battle you can ‘Engage!’ and activate certain other skills on top of take use of certain gimmicks that each ring holds.
Unfortunately some of these rings are blatantly better than others and much of how the rings’ customization either feel on one end, incredibly confusing or on the other end so vast in its customizability to the point of being overwhelming. You gain SP in battle with which you can purchase the skills off rings you have bonded with for long enough so that you can equip them when you switch to another ring. This gets to be so cumbersome I stopped bothering- this is a running trend. For certain units it got to the point where I didn’t see any actual use in switching up rings unless I got a new unit or reclaimed certain rings due to plot reasons.Some of the skills are so expensive that I decided to just keep certain rings on units where I felt they didnt need to diversify, like why should I ever not have Alcryst hold Lyn and keep all of her skills. Why shouldn’t I just keep Hector on Timerra when she just tanks literally everything with him and follows through with Sandstorm, every skill Hector has is too expensive to just let some other schmuck have it -Diamant got shafted in his growths- I have no other tank! Many of these Rings do have neat mechanics, and I WILL SAY I DID BUY THE EXPANSION PASS-
NOTE: I SHOULDA MENTIONED EARLIER I DID BUY THE EXPANSION PASS THIS FEELS PERTINENT TO THE DIFFICULTY CURVE OF THIS SRPG
But several of these rings do have neat mechanics- although its clear much of the best rings come from having bought the DLC. Several of these mechanics range from a counter from Ike’s Great Aether, having Micaiah drain her HP to 1 and heal all other allies to full HP, and having Lyn just fucking snipe from across the map. However, in the DLC you have Tiki who just gives units a second wind, Hector who tanks everything and has guaranteed follow ups, Chrobin who has a rally for all stats and Veronica from Heroes. Soren and Veronica’s inclusion in the DLC is so cool, but only because they’re like 2 of the other characters that have an attitude. It was incredibly refreshing having Soren come in and suddenly it felt like I was talking to a human, Veronica too tbh. Her mechanic is also really neat- on top of having an attacking staff like in FEH she can summon random units like in FEH from 1 of 4 colors but they vary in strength from 3 star weaklings to 5 star units based off the other rings.
(b. Divine Paralogues)
Perhaps to my disadvantage, oddly enough, I decided to tackle some of the 'divine paralogues' much earlier on. The first being Tiki’s is a map that constantly feeds you dragons and tough opponents as you get to the end. It’s a hard map but you get a pretty good ring out of it. Unfortunately for the next few maps and onward most of the game just felt a lot easier than I thought it was meant to be, as I went through more and more of these divine paralogues. I wanted to know when it was best to tackle these, and saw that people preferred them at much earlier levels, so sure enough I thought it best to do them earlier than later. What this meant was I had several rings that the game doesn't really account for.
These rings don’t break the game, necessarily, however I do feel like several maps were made much simpler or didn’t hit as hard because I had these rings at the ready. In this aspect I'm reminded of Xenoblade 2 and its handling of difficulty- I struggled here as well, due to the numerous flimsy tutorials, details not told to you and the much different combat system from XB1's. As I went through XB2 though, I grew to understand and eventually conquer most of the game's mechanics and grow my arsenal of blades (except Kos-Mos fuck that).
I also think that that game succeeds in its expansion pass by giving people a bunch of rare crystals and two of the strongest blades in game. Note that while these blades are incredibly strong I don't think they necessarily break anything- namely they just act as consistent and easy to use blades usable from the early game onward. You can continue to use, pull and customize other blades to your liking and go about the game as you please.
On the contrary, these expansion pass maps for Fire Emblem feel incredibly weird to have on top of other paralogues, giving you so much XP in the process. In something like Xenoblade I don't think anyone minds dominating enemies- sure there's a sort of elation to figuring out weird or difficult fights in rpgs but Xenoblade bosses are rarely...'cerebral?' they mostly just act around for the story and have that MMO raid type vibe, you get the idea. In Fire Emblem though, much of the appeal comes from the careful considerations regarding your team, their equipment, their skills, the map, the kinds of enemies, etc. While I feel like parts of these are present here, I think there's so many new trinkets and gimmicks that its just too easy to hit ‘optimize rings/items’ and just stick with whatever you're given. After a while, once you’ve stuck with certain rings you just don't even bother switching things up.
Sidenote: I do really wish there was a set mechanic where you can just preset certain items that you always want certain units to get so you don’t have to optimize some times and go into a map only to realize that Alcryst didnt get the longbow and got the minibow thanks IntSys.
I just think that it would have been smart for the divine paralogues to have not given EXP or taken some measures to not completely overpower you for the rest of the game, idk. Maybe only unlock at the near end of the game? Maybe not scale to the party’s level? It just feels like a sloppy way to add these guys in. Also man, some of those maps took an eternity to finish.
(c. new Units)
It feels like you're constantly getting new units that are clearly better than what you had before. That early game feels so weird in hindsight and like a completely different game because all your units were just that bad. It feels like Radiant Dawn with its Dawn Brigade levels of 'I guess these guys are my party'. Yunaka I tried getting you to work but dear god someone fucked up your numbers because a later dude just works so much better.
Perhaps this is Int Sys's way of combating earlier FE-mindset that favors keeping a consistent party meanwhile later units that are already promoted get left to the wayside? But I always figured most of these units were supposed to act as replacements in case you had a unit die, the only drawback being that it lacked as much investment? Here it feels like you're supposed to get a 'feel' for each of these waves of party members but I know my ass is not using anyone other than these royals that are clearly some of the best units. Still it was kinda nice to just switch out who i was using for a while, like using Merrin over Yunaka for a few maps but still it felt like there was a clear bias towards all the royalty units. Not helped that these royalty units have unique classes that seem like they’re supposed to stick to, and switching to any other class robs you of the class skills inherent to that royalty class, some of which are really good! But like, I wanted to have a normal Halberdier and maybe a Paladin? Nah instead I get a uh, ‘Succeseur’ and a ‘Landwurm’. Idk, party composition just didn’t feel all that satisfying this time around outside of using Lindon for whatever reason (props to the conversation between him and Veronica where she exclaims ‘she regrets the day she gets summoned by the Order of Heroes’, I actually chuckled for once in the game).
It feels like Engage has the Fates issue of having all of your sibling units be these extremely powerful units that you HAVE to use, because why wouldn’t you have Xander or Takumi. But at least even these units dont get these unique promotes and you can kinda just go wacky making Camilla a berserker or something for some reason.
II. Maps
Alright I’ll come clean and say it. I don’t know the first thing about map design, I know! I know! I’ve played all the Fire Emblems but I still don’t really understand it! What I will say is that while I don’t have the basic understandings of map design, I’ll brazenly and foolheartedly say that I think it’s generally an overvalued thing in the series in several aspects.
I dont know, I just never minded Fire Emblems with generally simpler map designs, although many of these are from much simpler times or have other aspects that I feel overtake the need for gimmicky map layouts. I like Genealogy a lot, I felt it had good maps but less from a tactical standpoint and more from a consistency and scale standpoint. Echoes: Shadow of Valentia has these horridly simple maps and gets regularly lambasted because of it but I’d much prefer these kinds of map alongside the neat little dungeon exploring action segments any day of the week over stuff like Thracia’s litany of brutal maps. Fates Conquest I think has the best medium, having a large amount of gimmicky maps but interspersing them with some simple ones to ease out the experience, it’s a wonder most people point to Chapter 10 as a highlight in the franchise.
With regards to Engage what I will say is that I think map-wise many of them do come out the better end of things, having neat things to watch out for and a lot of playthings to work with. What I don’t particularly like is how often the maps feel like they rely on throwing an absurdly large number of reinforcements down your throat upon hitting a certain threshold.
How come so many of the maps are predicated on this "What if we just summoned a bunch of dudes"? I don't often yell in frustration but I got so pissed nearing the end of Chapter 21, as you near the boss of a fairly simple map but once you reach the backroom, the map just decides to spawn like 12 units on all sides. What's frustrating is that its already a map that's just constantly sending out guys from all sides and that's it. There's no other element to the fight; it's a complete war of attrition if you don’t just beeline it to the boss. This just happened so often by the end of the game it started feeling farcical, hell it even bled into the divine paralogues. Tiki’s map is pretty rough with it but holy fucking hell Camilla your map took 2 hours just because they poured in from everywhere. Was the boss that hard? Nah, it just took fucking forever getting to her. It really sucks too because I think some of the maps had neat ideas by the end but this one aspect just kept popping up like a bad habit. I guess it’s to teach you to not split up your party? I don’t know.
Fire emblem maps can be hit or miss throughout the series but generally I don't mind when games have weaker maps if I find the overall gameplay or the story to fill in the gaps in basic or straightforward maps. Although with Engage, despite having some interesting maps it didn’t really have much of a backbone when it came to the scenario or the characters but I’ll get to that later. Thracia was a game of similar feeling when I left it- a fairly rough time with strong maps throughout- but I did come to enjoy its story and its attempt to tell this side story from Genealogy, of an ousted Prince from Leonster come to restore his family and kingdom’s honor while liberating the nation that stole it. Here, you can have a map with miasma or cannons or anything but I'm just wondering why the hell im fighting the same fucking goons over and over and over again. Also I had a REALLY hard time telling certain opponents apart- the shift to 3D comes with certain unforeseen costs. Obviously, this isn't too bad with flying units or mage or horseunits but like sometimes the Heroes really look like Warriors or Armored units or even Great Knights idk maybe im blind.
The maps overall are fine, but only up to a certain point where some of them really overstep their boundary in what just feels like wasting my time. Don’t show me the exit only to start throwing pots and pans once I’m a foot away from the door.
III. Story, Cast and Vibes
The writing is just absolutely abysmal. I know "ha ha Fire Emblem when it has a bad story!" but it was genuinely frightening when the best slice of dialogue in the entire game was from the expansion pass.
(a. I don’t like hanging out with your friends Alear)
Most of the conversations are just fine, but it reeeally depends on who you have on board. Sometimes there's winners but other times it's just this morass of skipping dialogue that these games always get into. I started thinking about Yakuza and its sidestories- once you've played a Yakuza or two you get the general idea of how it might play out. Typically on my end, this might lead to some text skimming if I don't feel as though the substory is particularly interesting and that's fine, each of these games has at least 50+ substories to go through for a series with 8 mainline entries + spinoffs. But usually there's a bunch that have intriguing premises and rewards and setups so it's always nice to take a break and see what you can get on your plate. Back in Fire Emblem it just....feels like I never left. And god do I want out. It was so lovely when three houses dropped and people at the time were just like "Man! Some of these three houses dialogues do not end amicably!" and I think that's great! Sometimes you just hang with some guy and the vibes go awry! It felt pretty refreshing to see character interactions that just felt like acquaintanceships, especially once you get to the end credits and certain units just have paired endings as friends.
Here…I’m sorry I don’t find the cast all that interesting but I’d have to get really into how fast the tone of this game starts feeling jarring. From the very get-go once Alear wakes up you’re constantly barraged by characters that compliment and suck your dick because you are the Divine Dragon. Cool! I think? Not really! I echo back to the sentiment I had with the beginning feeling jarring because so many of your starting party members just are not interesting outside of really liking that you're the Divine Dragon. After the halfway points certain characters get shown and I ended up having a few characters I liked but nothing really grabbed my attention. A lot of these guys just feel like the Awakefates “here’s my main quirk!” for several conversations and I really don’t wanna waste my time reading over what may or may not shed one layer of this character. Yeah maybe Seadall has some interesting conversations but why should I bother when he might just say something similar in another conversation with another party member, why should i bother with any of these conversations? Why should I bother with most dialogue in this game. It might be a bit harsh for me just not care about most of this dialogue but to be quite honest rarely does the game present itself in a way where it seems like something interesting could happen.
I think it’s mostly the cutscene/animations. Just something about seeing the same characters appear at the same places in the Somniel doing the same animations all the while rarely doing anything that could fire neurons or stem from usual path, I didn’t really want to take the chance and skim through several lines of dialogue for maybe. I don’t know, maybe I just got burnt out too fast and I didn’t give most of the guys a chance, I'm sure there’s interesting nuggets here and there but I didn’t really have any incentive or desire to further explore characters that seemed like milquetoast from the get. Awakening and Fates also has this issue to certain degrees although I’ll give props to Fates Conquest for having a whole cast of just weirdos. Like yeah now I’ll pay attention now that the characters in question are psychopaths and maladjusted soldiers. Here’s the most interesting unit is…idk Panette? Seadall? You’d have to put a gun to my head.
What’s rough is that it feels like this bleeds out into the Engage characters as well. Here, because each of the games' representatives is the protag or a secondary protag/character most of the interaction just feels like the same dialogue but interspersed with "hey this was the place where that really meaningful event happened..." followed by "we will now trust ourselves even more. with you by my side we will be the strongest ever heroes foreverer" I really wanna stress how boring most of the dialogue in this game is. Most of the intrigue just came from how much more interesting previous games were.
(b. Story! or actually cutscene direction- the story is so who cares i didn't feel like talking about most of it. Alear is the son of the villain big whoop, could you at least plagiarize a better fire emblem)
Earlier Fire Emblems could get away with low budget storytelling by having just the usual visual novel portrait do most of the action, and maybe having the in-game models do limited actions to supplement certain scenes or motions. Here we have the first game in the series without portraits and we get to see cutscenes flow with the characters, but unfortunately most of them just…stand there. Like the high budget stuff is fine obviously but whenever we’re out of that mode we have scenes where the characters are just standing there and reacting with generic motions. I couldn’t help but laugh every now and then as villains just stood around gloating like 10 feet from our entourage and I just wanted one of them to take the initiative and attack them. This happens all the time with media, the guy that’s clearly open to be shot but no one takes advantage- its fine. But here it just feels so weird to see the same cultist evildoers just standing around and the heroes are just kinda standing there having a casual conversation? There’s no like.. ambushed! or… surprised! stance or…’hesitant’? stance, it just seemed like our characters just shook their heads and stood in place usually as the main villains just did their piece. It feels incredibly flaccid. Also man I really don’t like the villains here, you fight them so often and it rarely feels like I want to fight them. Not because I felt sympathetic or heartfelt fighting them but because I was wondering when the fuck they’d just die. Nobody really dies in this game, or it sure doesn’t feel like it outside of one chapter. A place gets burnt in one chapter separate from that but even that didn’t feel all that dire. I felt like I was fighting Danganronpa characters rather than some re-imagining of the four fangs from Blazing Blade.
Granted, there is an impressive amount of variety in certain text, even if its only for short conversations between the rings and for certain story moments.
It's kinda odd I like a lot of the designs here and I don't think I'd mind the change to a more light hearted tone but a part of me wonders why the hell this was even put in a medieval setting to begin with? Why not just make this the first modern feeling Fire Emblem? I feel like the series could benefit from shedding away these overdone medieval locales and time period. Just make it like Final Fantasy and do some weird fusion of diesel/steam-punk with fantasy elements and weaponry. I had wished when this game first leaked that this was the fire emblem to have taken us to the modern age. I know it'd be fucky having modern day tech alongside stuff like cavalry and archers but who cares. I don't care if guns exist alongside the dude with a ring that summons some dude.
(C. Somniel)
It’s kinda weird writing this segment out because it feels like it ties into a lot of the main issues I have with all the other parts of the game. The somniel is the rest stop after each battle for you to maintain so many aspects and manage all of these things…! Don’t go here every chapter! Maybe every two!
Maybe if I delved deeper into research I could find some use for some of these things but like did my enjoyment of the game stem from having not sent a bunch of money to some country for more bond fragments? Probably not.
Also by the way where the hell is all the money in this game anyway? You get like 50,000 G at chapter 20 something and its like where the fuck was all this hiding. Like I didn’t really need gold that much anyway but where the hell is it?
Do I need to fish? Did petting Crungett (the little cat thing) mean all that much? Did I even need new non-emblem bond rings? Well alright I did like Olwen’s Dire Thunder. I wish more of these were readily available but it didn't really feel like it mattered.
I really regret spending as much time as I did early on here, I don’t even know what most of these side things are meant for. Did I really need to get all of the bright shiny spots on the map? nah.
It plays a lot like the Monastery in Three Houses or the base with Lilith in Fates but it felt so weirdly unnecessary. It’s not terrible but after the halfway point I just didn’t want to spend anymore time there except to check on skills and sp, rather than train in the arena or anything. I started thinking about Fallout 4’s settlements and before long I wanted to stop thinking about most things about this game (alright it's not that bad but I really didn’t give a shit about sorting what pets are on the farm or wyvern riding. I'm sorry, Engage).
IV. The last section
(a.) Just pettiness at this point the review is already this long fuck it, its 1am,
Ah man i didnt even talk about how fucking stupid skirmishes are. I didn’t remember or realize that there’s a difference between skirmishes and training battles
Why have rings for certain important figures in each game but then have some of those guys come back and have a second ring? Like how come the Three Houses group get a ring for each of the three house leaders but then there's a single ring that has all of them bundled together, thats a waste of three of the eight slots each game gets.
I’ll give the final boss props, matching the emblems to their respective villains that have been summoned is kinda neat but them not being named by their actual names is so stupid, like 8 of these Dark Engage rings are called like ‘Dark Dragon’ or “Fallen King’ (also like why do these evil engages have weird ass stat distributions and weapons; why does Veld’s engage ring go on a fucking bow knight he was a bishop??)
Man. I kinda wish they had remixed some new music for the divine paralogues. I don't remember the Corrin/Fates remix because I got to Camilla and I just wanted it to be a remix of Alight (Storm). Also why is it called the trial of genealogy when its the map for Leif from Thracia 776 are they fucking stupid?
No one fucks in this story. Like yeah obviously no one has nudity in these games but like you get the pact ring near the end of the game and that's what our romance is? You go through the credits of the game and there’s only two endings for each character and the second one is only based on whether or not you decided to give them the ring lmao. 3H spoiled us on interesting epilogues. Also like why the fuck is the special CG so similar looking to the one in 3H? It kinda scared me checking and wondering whether or not they just straight up reused the same ‘soft purple evening’ outlook from that game but there’s minute differences. I also like that you go into some of these endings for characters that are clearly like “we CANNOT have this kid/your sister marry you what the fuck” but instead of having the ‘pact’ ending be anything where Alear connects or supports their future going forward, the problematic choice character just fucks off and does whatever they were gonna do divorced of your epilogue. Like yeah, good choice dummy. (I chose Ivy, she’s okay) (I wish she could keep the glasses on at all times)
(b.) A discussion about fan service
The idea of 'Fan Service' is one that's been long tied to games and feels incredibly prescient over the medium as a whole (albeit not exclusive). The idea of watching a new announcement and suddenly its this ‘new project’ but what if, we had this returning character from an older game! And it crosses over into this media franchise! And so on and so forth.
It's commonplace by now but even with as jaded as I sound with this- its always fun to see what's been tied to what even if someone loosely. I started thinking about Fire Emblem X SMT, a game that was announced at the opportune time for me, having just gotten into Fire Emblem through Awakening and was playing through SMT4. To my dismay this turned out to become something much different than what 14 year old me imagined- some idol based rpg where the characters have Awakening and Shadow Dragon stands and fight with a Persona like system. I was disappointed at the revelation but so many years later I can respect that it kind of has this neat personality to it. I still haven't played it, mind you- I do own a copy but I’ll get to it probably before I die. I can harp over that game’s lack of variety in who they chose to represent the ‘stands’ or what not but 1) again i haven't played it and 2) it being relegated to mostly arachnea does lend itself to some kinda intrigue like oh shit they’re pulling deep cuts like Bord and Cord. It's placement in a separate, human universe alongside these SMT mechanics feels slightly more...real, I guess. It's adherence to themes and elements of the idol industry, while an extremely different flavor from both the general western fantasy themes and Fire Emblem (and SMT somewhat) as a whole- make for a fairly unique concept which I feel gives it some room to stand.
But with Engage I don't feel this strong connection to Fire Emblem- even with all these references and ties to other games in the series I only barely feel that energy I do with other games in the series. Hell, part of what I enjoyed about Fire Emblem games prior was that much of those callbacks were so 'museum'-like in their presence I was a lot more interested in seeing what the other FEs offered. Part of why I went and played Fire Emblem 4 was because FEH had a chapter back in 2018 that played the first few map themes during the mission.
This isn't to say that the depiction of every other game in the franchise into Engage is inherently terrible or anything but I don't get this desire or heart-swelling playing many of these maps that I figured were supposed to make me feel back to when I played all these other games. There are brief moments of pointing out certain neat details that hearken back to these games but that’s about it.
Here, while all of the fanservice is tied into the mechanics and the story of Engage, it's such a bizarre concept that I can't really immerse myself into its presence. It's one thing for a gacha game- some free mobile app where you're just able to gather all of these characters and snowball from there over the course of 6 years and build out interactions, have all these characters and alternate outfits, new storylines each year and you just put that to the side for 15 minutes a day or something. Not a particularly amazing game but I'm glad its lasted as long as it had and built out all these weird storylines.
I think my main fear is if I'm just growing out of the series- but that doesn't feel like the case, I think the overall gameplay loop and design decision behind the core of Fire Emblem is incredibly addicting and engaging. Late last year I got and played through the beginning of Tactics Ogre Reborn. A great game for what I've played, but incredibly dry, I haven't put as much into it as I'd like despite this. I just know Fire Emblem way more and I enjoy the kind of specialized unit pseudo party composition that FE brings rather than the hiring units style of other tactics games. FE just tends to have this sauce that I really like for the most part even at most of its derivative moments.
Also!! Fuck isometric viewpoints!! I’m tired of seeing them!! Sorry Devil Survivor fans!! I don't like trying to guess what direction the d-pad is gonna take me when there is no top right button!!
I really hope the next game is just mind-bendingly different. Maybe part of it is I'm growing out of the series but so much of this feels like been there, done that. I'm so tired of these support conversations with the same animations, this same kinda world, these same archetypes and plot twists and elements. This game feels more incestuous than Awakening, Fates and the entirety of the Jugdral games despite not actually having any, this might be the most surprising plot detail in Engage. I really want a game that's just able to stand out- and I felt like that's what Three Houses was doing, which I look back on a bit more fondly now despite some of the issues surrounding it. I guess I'm just thinking about how it feels like the last 'normal' feeling Fire Emblem in the series was Fates?? Echoes is great but a remake and has much of these action-adventure segments, Three Houses has this Persona/Harry Potter-esque feeling that I feel overshadows the actually tactical aspect of FE and then this which almost feels like a return to form in some ways but so many of its annoying gimmicks just hampered my enjoyment. Engage is cloyingly Fire Emblem.
tl;dr its a functional game but man does it not stand out outside of having all of the other fire emblem guys here. The next game really needs to dial it back, retain some of the QoL features and have a more grounded vibe. Get a new translation team or a new writing room, maybe both. It looks more colorful than Three Houses. The best stuff is the DLC stuff but not the Fell Xenologue afaik, just the new emblem rings.
Fire Emblem…Engage!
(0. PROLOGUE:)
It's a game with so much Fire Emblem packed in, all for a game that barely feels like I'm playing Fire Emblem.
This game reminds me of so many other games, both from Fire Emblem and from other series, just by how much content is included in this game but also by how much better other games are at implementing new mechanics and evolving into this 'new generation of gaming', for better or worse. The rougher part is how much the Fire Emblem part comes from just stealing other aspects of previous titles, and only really toying around with a few aspects in ways I don't feel are as well executed here or worse, have become so memetically ingrained to how a Fire Emblem is supposed to play out that it becomes a laughing stock. Rather than remembrance of times of elation or intrigue regarding a particularly well set up chapter or an interesting character or a strong tenet of worldbuilding, I'm reminded more often of flaws privy to previous titles in the series. What Engage presents is a wonderful amalgamation of what the series has become- but doesn't provide an interesting solution as to what the series will do next. While it presents a myriad of different interactables and new features, I ended up not really wanting to toy around or mess with most of these as I figured much of it didn't actually matter. Other games do this as well obviously, including titles throughout Fire Emblem- not every part of the game has to tie back to the main story. Not every mechanic needs to be fine-tuned to be as balanced as possible, sometimes it pays to be a bit busted. However in Engage's case so much of its mechanics feel like they're... out of sync?
I never truly felt like I conquered the game, and some other FEs have made me feel similarly, but I've been interested in going back and tackling at later dates (maybe Thracia someday...). Here it just felt it was more worth it to not pay attention to certain mechanics post battle mechanics for a few battles, otherwise I'd just be wasting time in menus, management and minutiae for no reason. What's left is a main plot that feels like the weakest since...actually only since Revelations so it hasn't been too long but it left a lot to be desired.
Sometimes I dont wanna be Mr. Cynical, but on the other hand sometimes it's a lot more fun to just be a hater: I thought a lot of this game was fucking dumb and not in a fun sense. I need someone else to come in and pull in the reins on whatever writers and scenario staff is on these projects because dear god I felt embarrassed at times going through the main scenario of this. I don't know if it's a translation thing or if the original script is as bad or what but we're in dire need of some new material, Kaga help us.
The overall package might be a serviceable title, however after having played every other mainline Fire Emblem I just can’t help but feel as though most aspects of this were half baked.
(1. Engaging Mechanics)
(a. Engage!)
Firstly, the namesake of the game. Engage. It’s a neat mechanic and the primary function of this game, like 3H’s academia and Awakefates’ partnering and child minmaxing simulator (blah blah yeah FE4 had this we know). For each game in the series we have a rep, except for FE3 given its a sequel without a new MC -thought it would have been extremely brave of them to have put Kris in here. Units you deploy into battle can equip these and boost their stats and gain certain skills. After some time in battle you can ‘Engage!’ and activate certain other skills on top of take use of certain gimmicks that each ring holds.
Unfortunately some of these rings are blatantly better than others and much of how the rings’ customization either feel on one end, incredibly confusing or on the other end so vast in its customizability to the point of being overwhelming. You gain SP in battle with which you can purchase the skills off rings you have bonded with for long enough so that you can equip them when you switch to another ring. This gets to be so cumbersome I stopped bothering- this is a running trend. For certain units it got to the point where I didn’t see any actual use in switching up rings unless I got a new unit or reclaimed certain rings due to plot reasons.Some of the skills are so expensive that I decided to just keep certain rings on units where I felt they didnt need to diversify, like why should I ever not have Alcryst hold Lyn and keep all of her skills. Why shouldn’t I just keep Hector on Timerra when she just tanks literally everything with him and follows through with Sandstorm, every skill Hector has is too expensive to just let some other schmuck have it -Diamant got shafted in his growths- I have no other tank! Many of these Rings do have neat mechanics, and I WILL SAY I DID BUY THE EXPANSION PASS-
NOTE: I SHOULDA MENTIONED EARLIER I DID BUY THE EXPANSION PASS THIS FEELS PERTINENT TO THE DIFFICULTY CURVE OF THIS SRPG
But several of these rings do have neat mechanics- although its clear much of the best rings come from having bought the DLC. Several of these mechanics range from a counter from Ike’s Great Aether, having Micaiah drain her HP to 1 and heal all other allies to full HP, and having Lyn just fucking snipe from across the map. However, in the DLC you have Tiki who just gives units a second wind, Hector who tanks everything and has guaranteed follow ups, Chrobin who has a rally for all stats and Veronica from Heroes. Soren and Veronica’s inclusion in the DLC is so cool, but only because they’re like 2 of the other characters that have an attitude. It was incredibly refreshing having Soren come in and suddenly it felt like I was talking to a human, Veronica too tbh. Her mechanic is also really neat- on top of having an attacking staff like in FEH she can summon random units like in FEH from 1 of 4 colors but they vary in strength from 3 star weaklings to 5 star units based off the other rings.
(b. Divine Paralogues)
Perhaps to my disadvantage, oddly enough, I decided to tackle some of the 'divine paralogues' much earlier on. The first being Tiki’s is a map that constantly feeds you dragons and tough opponents as you get to the end. It’s a hard map but you get a pretty good ring out of it. Unfortunately for the next few maps and onward most of the game just felt a lot easier than I thought it was meant to be, as I went through more and more of these divine paralogues. I wanted to know when it was best to tackle these, and saw that people preferred them at much earlier levels, so sure enough I thought it best to do them earlier than later. What this meant was I had several rings that the game doesn't really account for.
These rings don’t break the game, necessarily, however I do feel like several maps were made much simpler or didn’t hit as hard because I had these rings at the ready. In this aspect I'm reminded of Xenoblade 2 and its handling of difficulty- I struggled here as well, due to the numerous flimsy tutorials, details not told to you and the much different combat system from XB1's. As I went through XB2 though, I grew to understand and eventually conquer most of the game's mechanics and grow my arsenal of blades (except Kos-Mos fuck that).
I also think that that game succeeds in its expansion pass by giving people a bunch of rare crystals and two of the strongest blades in game. Note that while these blades are incredibly strong I don't think they necessarily break anything- namely they just act as consistent and easy to use blades usable from the early game onward. You can continue to use, pull and customize other blades to your liking and go about the game as you please.
On the contrary, these expansion pass maps for Fire Emblem feel incredibly weird to have on top of other paralogues, giving you so much XP in the process. In something like Xenoblade I don't think anyone minds dominating enemies- sure there's a sort of elation to figuring out weird or difficult fights in rpgs but Xenoblade bosses are rarely...'cerebral?' they mostly just act around for the story and have that MMO raid type vibe, you get the idea. In Fire Emblem though, much of the appeal comes from the careful considerations regarding your team, their equipment, their skills, the map, the kinds of enemies, etc. While I feel like parts of these are present here, I think there's so many new trinkets and gimmicks that its just too easy to hit ‘optimize rings/items’ and just stick with whatever you're given. After a while, once you’ve stuck with certain rings you just don't even bother switching things up.
Sidenote: I do really wish there was a set mechanic where you can just preset certain items that you always want certain units to get so you don’t have to optimize some times and go into a map only to realize that Alcryst didnt get the longbow and got the minibow thanks IntSys.
I just think that it would have been smart for the divine paralogues to have not given EXP or taken some measures to not completely overpower you for the rest of the game, idk. Maybe only unlock at the near end of the game? Maybe not scale to the party’s level? It just feels like a sloppy way to add these guys in. Also man, some of those maps took an eternity to finish.
(c. new Units)
It feels like you're constantly getting new units that are clearly better than what you had before. That early game feels so weird in hindsight and like a completely different game because all your units were just that bad. It feels like Radiant Dawn with its Dawn Brigade levels of 'I guess these guys are my party'. Yunaka I tried getting you to work but dear god someone fucked up your numbers because a later dude just works so much better.
Perhaps this is Int Sys's way of combating earlier FE-mindset that favors keeping a consistent party meanwhile later units that are already promoted get left to the wayside? But I always figured most of these units were supposed to act as replacements in case you had a unit die, the only drawback being that it lacked as much investment? Here it feels like you're supposed to get a 'feel' for each of these waves of party members but I know my ass is not using anyone other than these royals that are clearly some of the best units. Still it was kinda nice to just switch out who i was using for a while, like using Merrin over Yunaka for a few maps but still it felt like there was a clear bias towards all the royalty units. Not helped that these royalty units have unique classes that seem like they’re supposed to stick to, and switching to any other class robs you of the class skills inherent to that royalty class, some of which are really good! But like, I wanted to have a normal Halberdier and maybe a Paladin? Nah instead I get a uh, ‘Succeseur’ and a ‘Landwurm’. Idk, party composition just didn’t feel all that satisfying this time around outside of using Lindon for whatever reason (props to the conversation between him and Veronica where she exclaims ‘she regrets the day she gets summoned by the Order of Heroes’, I actually chuckled for once in the game).
It feels like Engage has the Fates issue of having all of your sibling units be these extremely powerful units that you HAVE to use, because why wouldn’t you have Xander or Takumi. But at least even these units dont get these unique promotes and you can kinda just go wacky making Camilla a berserker or something for some reason.
II. Maps
Alright I’ll come clean and say it. I don’t know the first thing about map design, I know! I know! I’ve played all the Fire Emblems but I still don’t really understand it! What I will say is that while I don’t have the basic understandings of map design, I’ll brazenly and foolheartedly say that I think it’s generally an overvalued thing in the series in several aspects.
I dont know, I just never minded Fire Emblems with generally simpler map designs, although many of these are from much simpler times or have other aspects that I feel overtake the need for gimmicky map layouts. I like Genealogy a lot, I felt it had good maps but less from a tactical standpoint and more from a consistency and scale standpoint. Echoes: Shadow of Valentia has these horridly simple maps and gets regularly lambasted because of it but I’d much prefer these kinds of map alongside the neat little dungeon exploring action segments any day of the week over stuff like Thracia’s litany of brutal maps. Fates Conquest I think has the best medium, having a large amount of gimmicky maps but interspersing them with some simple ones to ease out the experience, it’s a wonder most people point to Chapter 10 as a highlight in the franchise.
With regards to Engage what I will say is that I think map-wise many of them do come out the better end of things, having neat things to watch out for and a lot of playthings to work with. What I don’t particularly like is how often the maps feel like they rely on throwing an absurdly large number of reinforcements down your throat upon hitting a certain threshold.
How come so many of the maps are predicated on this "What if we just summoned a bunch of dudes"? I don't often yell in frustration but I got so pissed nearing the end of Chapter 21, as you near the boss of a fairly simple map but once you reach the backroom, the map just decides to spawn like 12 units on all sides. What's frustrating is that its already a map that's just constantly sending out guys from all sides and that's it. There's no other element to the fight; it's a complete war of attrition if you don’t just beeline it to the boss. This just happened so often by the end of the game it started feeling farcical, hell it even bled into the divine paralogues. Tiki’s map is pretty rough with it but holy fucking hell Camilla your map took 2 hours just because they poured in from everywhere. Was the boss that hard? Nah, it just took fucking forever getting to her. It really sucks too because I think some of the maps had neat ideas by the end but this one aspect just kept popping up like a bad habit. I guess it’s to teach you to not split up your party? I don’t know.
Fire emblem maps can be hit or miss throughout the series but generally I don't mind when games have weaker maps if I find the overall gameplay or the story to fill in the gaps in basic or straightforward maps. Although with Engage, despite having some interesting maps it didn’t really have much of a backbone when it came to the scenario or the characters but I’ll get to that later. Thracia was a game of similar feeling when I left it- a fairly rough time with strong maps throughout- but I did come to enjoy its story and its attempt to tell this side story from Genealogy, of an ousted Prince from Leonster come to restore his family and kingdom’s honor while liberating the nation that stole it. Here, you can have a map with miasma or cannons or anything but I'm just wondering why the hell im fighting the same fucking goons over and over and over again. Also I had a REALLY hard time telling certain opponents apart- the shift to 3D comes with certain unforeseen costs. Obviously, this isn't too bad with flying units or mage or horseunits but like sometimes the Heroes really look like Warriors or Armored units or even Great Knights idk maybe im blind.
The maps overall are fine, but only up to a certain point where some of them really overstep their boundary in what just feels like wasting my time. Don’t show me the exit only to start throwing pots and pans once I’m a foot away from the door.
III. Story, Cast and Vibes
The writing is just absolutely abysmal. I know "ha ha Fire Emblem when it has a bad story!" but it was genuinely frightening when the best slice of dialogue in the entire game was from the expansion pass.
(a. I don’t like hanging out with your friends Alear)
Most of the conversations are just fine, but it reeeally depends on who you have on board. Sometimes there's winners but other times it's just this morass of skipping dialogue that these games always get into. I started thinking about Yakuza and its sidestories- once you've played a Yakuza or two you get the general idea of how it might play out. Typically on my end, this might lead to some text skimming if I don't feel as though the substory is particularly interesting and that's fine, each of these games has at least 50+ substories to go through for a series with 8 mainline entries + spinoffs. But usually there's a bunch that have intriguing premises and rewards and setups so it's always nice to take a break and see what you can get on your plate. Back in Fire Emblem it just....feels like I never left. And god do I want out. It was so lovely when three houses dropped and people at the time were just like "Man! Some of these three houses dialogues do not end amicably!" and I think that's great! Sometimes you just hang with some guy and the vibes go awry! It felt pretty refreshing to see character interactions that just felt like acquaintanceships, especially once you get to the end credits and certain units just have paired endings as friends.
Here…I’m sorry I don’t find the cast all that interesting but I’d have to get really into how fast the tone of this game starts feeling jarring. From the very get-go once Alear wakes up you’re constantly barraged by characters that compliment and suck your dick because you are the Divine Dragon. Cool! I think? Not really! I echo back to the sentiment I had with the beginning feeling jarring because so many of your starting party members just are not interesting outside of really liking that you're the Divine Dragon. After the halfway points certain characters get shown and I ended up having a few characters I liked but nothing really grabbed my attention. A lot of these guys just feel like the Awakefates “here’s my main quirk!” for several conversations and I really don’t wanna waste my time reading over what may or may not shed one layer of this character. Yeah maybe Seadall has some interesting conversations but why should I bother when he might just say something similar in another conversation with another party member, why should i bother with any of these conversations? Why should I bother with most dialogue in this game. It might be a bit harsh for me just not care about most of this dialogue but to be quite honest rarely does the game present itself in a way where it seems like something interesting could happen.
I think it’s mostly the cutscene/animations. Just something about seeing the same characters appear at the same places in the Somniel doing the same animations all the while rarely doing anything that could fire neurons or stem from usual path, I didn’t really want to take the chance and skim through several lines of dialogue for maybe. I don’t know, maybe I just got burnt out too fast and I didn’t give most of the guys a chance, I'm sure there’s interesting nuggets here and there but I didn’t really have any incentive or desire to further explore characters that seemed like milquetoast from the get. Awakening and Fates also has this issue to certain degrees although I’ll give props to Fates Conquest for having a whole cast of just weirdos. Like yeah now I’ll pay attention now that the characters in question are psychopaths and maladjusted soldiers. Here’s the most interesting unit is…idk Panette? Seadall? You’d have to put a gun to my head.
What’s rough is that it feels like this bleeds out into the Engage characters as well. Here, because each of the games' representatives is the protag or a secondary protag/character most of the interaction just feels like the same dialogue but interspersed with "hey this was the place where that really meaningful event happened..." followed by "we will now trust ourselves even more. with you by my side we will be the strongest ever heroes foreverer" I really wanna stress how boring most of the dialogue in this game is. Most of the intrigue just came from how much more interesting previous games were.
(b. Story! or actually cutscene direction- the story is so who cares i didn't feel like talking about most of it. Alear is the son of the villain big whoop, could you at least plagiarize a better fire emblem)
Earlier Fire Emblems could get away with low budget storytelling by having just the usual visual novel portrait do most of the action, and maybe having the in-game models do limited actions to supplement certain scenes or motions. Here we have the first game in the series without portraits and we get to see cutscenes flow with the characters, but unfortunately most of them just…stand there. Like the high budget stuff is fine obviously but whenever we’re out of that mode we have scenes where the characters are just standing there and reacting with generic motions. I couldn’t help but laugh every now and then as villains just stood around gloating like 10 feet from our entourage and I just wanted one of them to take the initiative and attack them. This happens all the time with media, the guy that’s clearly open to be shot but no one takes advantage- its fine. But here it just feels so weird to see the same cultist evildoers just standing around and the heroes are just kinda standing there having a casual conversation? There’s no like.. ambushed! or… surprised! stance or…’hesitant’? stance, it just seemed like our characters just shook their heads and stood in place usually as the main villains just did their piece. It feels incredibly flaccid. Also man I really don’t like the villains here, you fight them so often and it rarely feels like I want to fight them. Not because I felt sympathetic or heartfelt fighting them but because I was wondering when the fuck they’d just die. Nobody really dies in this game, or it sure doesn’t feel like it outside of one chapter. A place gets burnt in one chapter separate from that but even that didn’t feel all that dire. I felt like I was fighting Danganronpa characters rather than some re-imagining of the four fangs from Blazing Blade.
Granted, there is an impressive amount of variety in certain text, even if its only for short conversations between the rings and for certain story moments.
It's kinda odd I like a lot of the designs here and I don't think I'd mind the change to a more light hearted tone but a part of me wonders why the hell this was even put in a medieval setting to begin with? Why not just make this the first modern feeling Fire Emblem? I feel like the series could benefit from shedding away these overdone medieval locales and time period. Just make it like Final Fantasy and do some weird fusion of diesel/steam-punk with fantasy elements and weaponry. I had wished when this game first leaked that this was the fire emblem to have taken us to the modern age. I know it'd be fucky having modern day tech alongside stuff like cavalry and archers but who cares. I don't care if guns exist alongside the dude with a ring that summons some dude.
(C. Somniel)
It’s kinda weird writing this segment out because it feels like it ties into a lot of the main issues I have with all the other parts of the game. The somniel is the rest stop after each battle for you to maintain so many aspects and manage all of these things…! Don’t go here every chapter! Maybe every two!
Maybe if I delved deeper into research I could find some use for some of these things but like did my enjoyment of the game stem from having not sent a bunch of money to some country for more bond fragments? Probably not.
Also by the way where the hell is all the money in this game anyway? You get like 50,000 G at chapter 20 something and its like where the fuck was all this hiding. Like I didn’t really need gold that much anyway but where the hell is it?
Do I need to fish? Did petting Crungett (the little cat thing) mean all that much? Did I even need new non-emblem bond rings? Well alright I did like Olwen’s Dire Thunder. I wish more of these were readily available but it didn't really feel like it mattered.
I really regret spending as much time as I did early on here, I don’t even know what most of these side things are meant for. Did I really need to get all of the bright shiny spots on the map? nah.
It plays a lot like the Monastery in Three Houses or the base with Lilith in Fates but it felt so weirdly unnecessary. It’s not terrible but after the halfway point I just didn’t want to spend anymore time there except to check on skills and sp, rather than train in the arena or anything. I started thinking about Fallout 4’s settlements and before long I wanted to stop thinking about most things about this game (alright it's not that bad but I really didn’t give a shit about sorting what pets are on the farm or wyvern riding. I'm sorry, Engage).
IV. The last section
(a.) Just pettiness at this point the review is already this long fuck it, its 1am,
Ah man i didnt even talk about how fucking stupid skirmishes are. I didn’t remember or realize that there’s a difference between skirmishes and training battles
Why have rings for certain important figures in each game but then have some of those guys come back and have a second ring? Like how come the Three Houses group get a ring for each of the three house leaders but then there's a single ring that has all of them bundled together, thats a waste of three of the eight slots each game gets.
I’ll give the final boss props, matching the emblems to their respective villains that have been summoned is kinda neat but them not being named by their actual names is so stupid, like 8 of these Dark Engage rings are called like ‘Dark Dragon’ or “Fallen King’ (also like why do these evil engages have weird ass stat distributions and weapons; why does Veld’s engage ring go on a fucking bow knight he was a bishop??)
Man. I kinda wish they had remixed some new music for the divine paralogues. I don't remember the Corrin/Fates remix because I got to Camilla and I just wanted it to be a remix of Alight (Storm). Also why is it called the trial of genealogy when its the map for Leif from Thracia 776 are they fucking stupid?
No one fucks in this story. Like yeah obviously no one has nudity in these games but like you get the pact ring near the end of the game and that's what our romance is? You go through the credits of the game and there’s only two endings for each character and the second one is only based on whether or not you decided to give them the ring lmao. 3H spoiled us on interesting epilogues. Also like why the fuck is the special CG so similar looking to the one in 3H? It kinda scared me checking and wondering whether or not they just straight up reused the same ‘soft purple evening’ outlook from that game but there’s minute differences. I also like that you go into some of these endings for characters that are clearly like “we CANNOT have this kid/your sister marry you what the fuck” but instead of having the ‘pact’ ending be anything where Alear connects or supports their future going forward, the problematic choice character just fucks off and does whatever they were gonna do divorced of your epilogue. Like yeah, good choice dummy. (I chose Ivy, she’s okay) (I wish she could keep the glasses on at all times)
(b.) A discussion about fan service
The idea of 'Fan Service' is one that's been long tied to games and feels incredibly prescient over the medium as a whole (albeit not exclusive). The idea of watching a new announcement and suddenly its this ‘new project’ but what if, we had this returning character from an older game! And it crosses over into this media franchise! And so on and so forth.
It's commonplace by now but even with as jaded as I sound with this- its always fun to see what's been tied to what even if someone loosely. I started thinking about Fire Emblem X SMT, a game that was announced at the opportune time for me, having just gotten into Fire Emblem through Awakening and was playing through SMT4. To my dismay this turned out to become something much different than what 14 year old me imagined- some idol based rpg where the characters have Awakening and Shadow Dragon stands and fight with a Persona like system. I was disappointed at the revelation but so many years later I can respect that it kind of has this neat personality to it. I still haven't played it, mind you- I do own a copy but I’ll get to it probably before I die. I can harp over that game’s lack of variety in who they chose to represent the ‘stands’ or what not but 1) again i haven't played it and 2) it being relegated to mostly arachnea does lend itself to some kinda intrigue like oh shit they’re pulling deep cuts like Bord and Cord. It's placement in a separate, human universe alongside these SMT mechanics feels slightly more...real, I guess. It's adherence to themes and elements of the idol industry, while an extremely different flavor from both the general western fantasy themes and Fire Emblem (and SMT somewhat) as a whole- make for a fairly unique concept which I feel gives it some room to stand.
But with Engage I don't feel this strong connection to Fire Emblem- even with all these references and ties to other games in the series I only barely feel that energy I do with other games in the series. Hell, part of what I enjoyed about Fire Emblem games prior was that much of those callbacks were so 'museum'-like in their presence I was a lot more interested in seeing what the other FEs offered. Part of why I went and played Fire Emblem 4 was because FEH had a chapter back in 2018 that played the first few map themes during the mission.
This isn't to say that the depiction of every other game in the franchise into Engage is inherently terrible or anything but I don't get this desire or heart-swelling playing many of these maps that I figured were supposed to make me feel back to when I played all these other games. There are brief moments of pointing out certain neat details that hearken back to these games but that’s about it.
Here, while all of the fanservice is tied into the mechanics and the story of Engage, it's such a bizarre concept that I can't really immerse myself into its presence. It's one thing for a gacha game- some free mobile app where you're just able to gather all of these characters and snowball from there over the course of 6 years and build out interactions, have all these characters and alternate outfits, new storylines each year and you just put that to the side for 15 minutes a day or something. Not a particularly amazing game but I'm glad its lasted as long as it had and built out all these weird storylines.
I think my main fear is if I'm just growing out of the series- but that doesn't feel like the case, I think the overall gameplay loop and design decision behind the core of Fire Emblem is incredibly addicting and engaging. Late last year I got and played through the beginning of Tactics Ogre Reborn. A great game for what I've played, but incredibly dry, I haven't put as much into it as I'd like despite this. I just know Fire Emblem way more and I enjoy the kind of specialized unit pseudo party composition that FE brings rather than the hiring units style of other tactics games. FE just tends to have this sauce that I really like for the most part even at most of its derivative moments.
Also!! Fuck isometric viewpoints!! I’m tired of seeing them!! Sorry Devil Survivor fans!! I don't like trying to guess what direction the d-pad is gonna take me when there is no top right button!!
I really hope the next game is just mind-bendingly different. Maybe part of it is I'm growing out of the series but so much of this feels like been there, done that. I'm so tired of these support conversations with the same animations, this same kinda world, these same archetypes and plot twists and elements. This game feels more incestuous than Awakening, Fates and the entirety of the Jugdral games despite not actually having any, this might be the most surprising plot detail in Engage. I really want a game that's just able to stand out- and I felt like that's what Three Houses was doing, which I look back on a bit more fondly now despite some of the issues surrounding it. I guess I'm just thinking about how it feels like the last 'normal' feeling Fire Emblem in the series was Fates?? Echoes is great but a remake and has much of these action-adventure segments, Three Houses has this Persona/Harry Potter-esque feeling that I feel overshadows the actually tactical aspect of FE and then this which almost feels like a return to form in some ways but so many of its annoying gimmicks just hampered my enjoyment. Engage is cloyingly Fire Emblem.