Everybody is here!
Jojo's Bizarre Fire Emblem Adventure is a resoundingly fun and engaging (pun intended) tactics experience that celebrates the most storied tactics series in the history of the medium of gaming. Probably not alone in this endeavour, I came into the series with my first entry being what is now one of my five favorite games of all time, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I'd read in publications and news blips that Engage would be a return to form for the series in that it would step away from what made Three Houses so unique, however part of me still held out hope that the experience would still be similar, and to a point it sort of is. Gone is the deep social elements and lively world of Garreg Mach, gone is the close relationships with your party members that supported your House Alleigance, gone is the political intrigue of three nations and a religious institution at war. Engage is a step away from what made Three Houses fun, not necessarily in a negative way.
To start out with what makes Engage good, what most people will likely cite is the return to the weapon triangle. I enjoy the diversity that this title requires a party to have. In the previous game I felt like I could stack up on physical swordsman and mages and make a bee-line towards the boss. In Engage, I found myself crafting a tightly knit and balanced party that had units of every subclass included. I had my frontline of Lords in Diamant and Alear (who I renamed Thorfinn,) my fliers in Ivy and Chloe, my mages in Celine and Pardeo, axe users in Panette and Merrin, and lastly bows represented by Alchryst and Fogado. Having my bases covered in combat gave each character their own use case for battle, lending these fights a greater strategic element that Three Houses really ever did, where I found spamming damage towards the end-goal was an easy victory. You spend a lot of time and effort in the skirmishes, paralogues, and main story battles grinding up resources to spend on your emblems and soldiers to make this machine work, and it can get a little busy, but overall I enjoyed the constant work to upkeep my party to have them at tip-top shape for the next story missions.
Combat was overall great, and just the right level of difficulty I look for in tactics games. I don't enjoy the titles that enforce stalling and terrain camping, but rather the ones that reward players for intelligently prepping and executing tactical maneuvers on the route to the map goal. This was decidedly the case with Engage, rarely did I feel like the levels were unfair as my plans were executed carefully and successfully with the tools I had been given. I enjoyed the maps for the most part in this regard too, however they don't strike me as memorable as those from Three Houses. There's no Gronder Field, no Fort Merceus, no Great Bridge of Myrddin, none of that. A lot of the maps feel a little flat which lends itself to more fair gameplay, yet perhaps less memorable moments and epic struggles. Maybe time will tell there but it wasn't long into Engage that I found myself longing for the times of yore in regards to map design.
Though it's no Garreg Mach, I did like the design of the Somniel. There's a lot to keep track of in terms of battle prep; stopping at the shops to update your weapons and inventory, polishing your rings and levelling up bonds to inherit skills between emblems and party members, exercising and cooking to inherit skills, and picking up materials that dropped on the ground that would help with all of the above. Outside of preparing for combat through these elements, that social liveliness was just... missing. I know that was the goal of this game, and the developers were very clear about moving away from that element in the previous title, but it's hard to not think of it. When I ran through the hub world I found little reason to check up on or converse with my fellow party members or emblems because their motives and/or personalities had so little to do with Alear. With Byleth, they were your friends and fellow countrymen, fighting a war that had consumed their families and friends. With Alear, often they were just kinda... people you barely knew.
The worst part of this game, and it breaks my heart after coming from Three Houses, was without a shadow of a doubt the characters. As many other reviewers have probably written about, the vast majority of non-emblem characters in this game (and even some of them too) look like they were designed for VTubers. Previous characters in the series look like they belong in a fantasy world such as Fire Emblem, or make some sense as real people within the universe. Trying to fight the Fell Dragon with Yunaka's black-star face tat, and running into Hortensia who looked like a walking candy cane had my suspension of disbelief at DEFCON 5. It felt impossible to get into the first 2/3rd's of this game because of how poorly done the character design was. Three Houses had a certain continuity and reason to how characters were drawn. Lady Rhea was an elegant leader designed in a gown of regality, whilst Lumera has some laughable proportions and absence of personality. Lady Edelgard had a regal villain-ness to her, Timerra is a walking Bocce Ball art project. I created a character tierlist for funsies before encountering the final boss of the characters in the game, and even after fifty hours I had to open the wiki to check who the characters like Citrinne and Lapis were because they all looked so samey.
Not only were they designed poorly, but they were written poorly. Now Three Houses is not the poster child for good character writing in party based games, that's probably Mass Effect 1-3, but the tropey characters worked to create an ensemble of friends and foes I found myself passionate for. There were arcs in that game spanning from beginning to end that had me genuinely interested in the life and times of my Garreg Mach peers & constituents. There is none of that in Engage, not just because there are characters that bark every time you select them in combat or say "Hiya-Papaya" but because they weren't given the time of day to be interesting. I chose to romance Chloe simply because she annoyed me the least out of any romanceable option, not because she had any enderaing qualities like I felt Dorothea (my first romantic pairing in Three Houses) did. Tired.
The story in Engage is passable, and honestly I'll give the devs credit. It's hard to write an "everybody is here" story and have it come off as plausible or good, and they do a decent effort at that. If the elements in between rounding up the emblems and fighting the big bad were cleaned up this title could have been much better, but so much of the early-mid story was just so... meh. The villains are not very engaging (gah there it is again,) and your reasons at the beginning for embarking in war aren't too motivating.
It's a shame Fire Emblem Engage has to follow such an incredible title in Three Houses, and maybe I should stop trying to chase that dragon, but it's hard to not compare the two. Why should I not hold Engage to higher standards when I know that Intelligent Systems is capable of something so much better from a complete standpoint? They nailed the gameplay, if only they could have followed through with the characters and story.
I've given it a hard time, but I would recommend Fire Emblem Engage to fans of the series and tactics games overall. It's a feelsgood nostalgia trip through one of the most storied franchises in gaming and tickels enough of my fun braincells to pump as much time and effort into playing it as I did. I liked my time with it, however when it comes to vacations and time to fill, I'll probably option to replay Three Houses instead.
"If people are willing to work for it, any bond can be brought back to life. And that's what I'll do, every single time, for however long it takes!"
- Alear
P.S.: This review was written at 2:00 AM on a work night, apologies if the typo bug got to me.
Jojo's Bizarre Fire Emblem Adventure is a resoundingly fun and engaging (pun intended) tactics experience that celebrates the most storied tactics series in the history of the medium of gaming. Probably not alone in this endeavour, I came into the series with my first entry being what is now one of my five favorite games of all time, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I'd read in publications and news blips that Engage would be a return to form for the series in that it would step away from what made Three Houses so unique, however part of me still held out hope that the experience would still be similar, and to a point it sort of is. Gone is the deep social elements and lively world of Garreg Mach, gone is the close relationships with your party members that supported your House Alleigance, gone is the political intrigue of three nations and a religious institution at war. Engage is a step away from what made Three Houses fun, not necessarily in a negative way.
To start out with what makes Engage good, what most people will likely cite is the return to the weapon triangle. I enjoy the diversity that this title requires a party to have. In the previous game I felt like I could stack up on physical swordsman and mages and make a bee-line towards the boss. In Engage, I found myself crafting a tightly knit and balanced party that had units of every subclass included. I had my frontline of Lords in Diamant and Alear (who I renamed Thorfinn,) my fliers in Ivy and Chloe, my mages in Celine and Pardeo, axe users in Panette and Merrin, and lastly bows represented by Alchryst and Fogado. Having my bases covered in combat gave each character their own use case for battle, lending these fights a greater strategic element that Three Houses really ever did, where I found spamming damage towards the end-goal was an easy victory. You spend a lot of time and effort in the skirmishes, paralogues, and main story battles grinding up resources to spend on your emblems and soldiers to make this machine work, and it can get a little busy, but overall I enjoyed the constant work to upkeep my party to have them at tip-top shape for the next story missions.
Combat was overall great, and just the right level of difficulty I look for in tactics games. I don't enjoy the titles that enforce stalling and terrain camping, but rather the ones that reward players for intelligently prepping and executing tactical maneuvers on the route to the map goal. This was decidedly the case with Engage, rarely did I feel like the levels were unfair as my plans were executed carefully and successfully with the tools I had been given. I enjoyed the maps for the most part in this regard too, however they don't strike me as memorable as those from Three Houses. There's no Gronder Field, no Fort Merceus, no Great Bridge of Myrddin, none of that. A lot of the maps feel a little flat which lends itself to more fair gameplay, yet perhaps less memorable moments and epic struggles. Maybe time will tell there but it wasn't long into Engage that I found myself longing for the times of yore in regards to map design.
Though it's no Garreg Mach, I did like the design of the Somniel. There's a lot to keep track of in terms of battle prep; stopping at the shops to update your weapons and inventory, polishing your rings and levelling up bonds to inherit skills between emblems and party members, exercising and cooking to inherit skills, and picking up materials that dropped on the ground that would help with all of the above. Outside of preparing for combat through these elements, that social liveliness was just... missing. I know that was the goal of this game, and the developers were very clear about moving away from that element in the previous title, but it's hard to not think of it. When I ran through the hub world I found little reason to check up on or converse with my fellow party members or emblems because their motives and/or personalities had so little to do with Alear. With Byleth, they were your friends and fellow countrymen, fighting a war that had consumed their families and friends. With Alear, often they were just kinda... people you barely knew.
The worst part of this game, and it breaks my heart after coming from Three Houses, was without a shadow of a doubt the characters. As many other reviewers have probably written about, the vast majority of non-emblem characters in this game (and even some of them too) look like they were designed for VTubers. Previous characters in the series look like they belong in a fantasy world such as Fire Emblem, or make some sense as real people within the universe. Trying to fight the Fell Dragon with Yunaka's black-star face tat, and running into Hortensia who looked like a walking candy cane had my suspension of disbelief at DEFCON 5. It felt impossible to get into the first 2/3rd's of this game because of how poorly done the character design was. Three Houses had a certain continuity and reason to how characters were drawn. Lady Rhea was an elegant leader designed in a gown of regality, whilst Lumera has some laughable proportions and absence of personality. Lady Edelgard had a regal villain-ness to her, Timerra is a walking Bocce Ball art project. I created a character tierlist for funsies before encountering the final boss of the characters in the game, and even after fifty hours I had to open the wiki to check who the characters like Citrinne and Lapis were because they all looked so samey.
Not only were they designed poorly, but they were written poorly. Now Three Houses is not the poster child for good character writing in party based games, that's probably Mass Effect 1-3, but the tropey characters worked to create an ensemble of friends and foes I found myself passionate for. There were arcs in that game spanning from beginning to end that had me genuinely interested in the life and times of my Garreg Mach peers & constituents. There is none of that in Engage, not just because there are characters that bark every time you select them in combat or say "Hiya-Papaya" but because they weren't given the time of day to be interesting. I chose to romance Chloe simply because she annoyed me the least out of any romanceable option, not because she had any enderaing qualities like I felt Dorothea (my first romantic pairing in Three Houses) did. Tired.
The story in Engage is passable, and honestly I'll give the devs credit. It's hard to write an "everybody is here" story and have it come off as plausible or good, and they do a decent effort at that. If the elements in between rounding up the emblems and fighting the big bad were cleaned up this title could have been much better, but so much of the early-mid story was just so... meh. The villains are not very engaging (gah there it is again,) and your reasons at the beginning for embarking in war aren't too motivating.
It's a shame Fire Emblem Engage has to follow such an incredible title in Three Houses, and maybe I should stop trying to chase that dragon, but it's hard to not compare the two. Why should I not hold Engage to higher standards when I know that Intelligent Systems is capable of something so much better from a complete standpoint? They nailed the gameplay, if only they could have followed through with the characters and story.
I've given it a hard time, but I would recommend Fire Emblem Engage to fans of the series and tactics games overall. It's a feelsgood nostalgia trip through one of the most storied franchises in gaming and tickels enough of my fun braincells to pump as much time and effort into playing it as I did. I liked my time with it, however when it comes to vacations and time to fill, I'll probably option to replay Three Houses instead.
"If people are willing to work for it, any bond can be brought back to life. And that's what I'll do, every single time, for however long it takes!"
- Alear
P.S.: This review was written at 2:00 AM on a work night, apologies if the typo bug got to me.