TL;DR: Listen, Fire Emblem series is a joke in terms of story writing. It's almost unbelievable that this game celebrates 30 years of this mid franchise. Engage had EVERYTHING to be the best Fire Emblem ever, but the writers threw it all down the drain for the sake of the gameplay.

Engage looks like a fangame. It doesn't even look like it was made by professionals. I played almost all FE games believing that a great game would come, like I tried other franchises that didn't like at first but I liked it later, but Fire Emblem seems to be an eternal average. I still give it a relatively high rating because I REALLY enjoyed the beginning of the game, I was really looking forward to it.

it fails miserably to deliver a good, consistent story. I'm not even gonna talk too much about the apalling worldbuilding, I'm going to focus on the bad writing. At first I was surprised, the story at the beginning was amazing, however, as soon as the prologue ended, again, another FE game went to hell. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's 2023 and this series still has outdated writing. It feels like I'm watching some generic 2005 anime. The problem with the narrative in this series is because they create a narrative for the gameplay, they actually don't want to tell you a story. They've started to change this mindset a bit in Three Houses, but it's still BAD. It's a lot of time spent on gameplay and eventually becomes repetitive, making it all a dragging game. THE STRUCTURE IS LOATHSOME, DISGUSTING

DUDE YOU'VE LIKE 15 MIN OF SIMPLE DIALOGUES THEN YOU GO TO 50 MIN REPETITIVE GAMEPLAY, AND YOU CONTINUE THIS SHIT THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME. The writers seem like amateurs. It's poorly written.
bro I swear, the villains in this game don't even know what they're fighting. I SWEAR TO YOU, THE GAME PRESENTS THE ANTAGONISTS, ONE OF THEM EVEN BASICALLY KILLS THE OTHER CHARACTER'S DAD, BUT THE GAME 30 MINUTES LATER PUT THAT ANTAGONIST CHARACTER AS PLAYABLE AND A GOOD-GUY AND THE EXCUSE IS LIKE "haha my father died too it's all right now I'm on your side"

IT DOESNT END HERE

THERE'S TOO THAT SCENE WHERE THE CHARACTER LITERALLY HATES YOU AT FIRST, LACKS YOU WITH EDUCATION AND IS AN ASSHOLE, BUT SUDDENLY JOINS YOUR TEAM (YES LITERALLY OUT OF NOWHERE, THERE'S NOT EVEN 1 SINGLE TALK FROM THIS CHARACTER, SHE JUST JOINS YOUR PARTY AND THEN AFTER THE BATTLE "haha xD I'm sorry" there was nothing more to it than that, dudes just used 1 single dialogue to say she's sorry.

It
Does
Not
End
Here.

ONE OF THE VILLAINS WHO IS A GIRL LITERALLY KIDNAPS THE QUEEN OF A KINGDOM, PUTTING HER IN THREAT OF DEATH FOR SOME DISGUSTING REASONS OF WRITING STUPIDITY, AND THEN WE'VE TO FIGHT 50 MINUTES AGAINST HER THEN AT THE END OF ALL OF THIS SHIT SHE'LL BECOME A PLAYABLE CHARACTER AND THE QUEEN WILL SAY: "xDxD please help the Divine Dragon save the world! This is your punishment!"

It
Does
Not....


On other points: the gameplay is the best in the franchise. Ironically, this Fire Emblem still manages to be the best in many ways among all the others. You see how bad this franchise is when even a mediocre game like this manages to outperform many others.

The soundtrack is spectacular. This one is arguably the best in the series. I shall research more about the composers. It presents beautiful leitmotifs with a pure and well harmonic orchestra. I'll definitely be adding several songs to my playlist and I pity songwriters so good working in a bomb like this one.

Artistic direction is good, the artist is very good. It won't be a very welcome game in the west, I know why but I don't know how to explain it well. One of the reasons is because there's no marriage system.

Framme Best Girl.


In conclusion, fuck this franchise of assholes, dumbasses, intelligent systems it's your fault you incompetent
🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

After I recently played VideoVerse and also having listened to them on The Back Page Podcast I knew that I could trust Lucy Blundell’s writing.

In a way this game has passed me by but I will also admit here that the title conjured up something in me that put me off. It wasn’t thinking about one night stands themselves but when videogames attempt to be sexy, more often than not it’s a miss, sometimes cringe and potentially offensive.
This title is not.

One Night Stand is a very short experience but one that encourages you to try it again to discover the different outcomes your decisions can make, surprising revelations and ultimately rack up a selection of different endings.

Each of these are full of wonderful writing, full of realistic and relatable notes. If there is any moment of cringing it is something you have opted to see. There are very few characters involved as you’d expect and the main being the woman you have found yourself awake next to - even their name is a spoiler.
She can be funny, sweet or even cold but again, feels real.

Replaying the story you can skip text and the options are quite diverse considering the, almost, one room setting. These retries also gave me a light feeling of a good detective game, discovering evidence and piecing separate dialogue together with a mental red string that not only painted a much fuller picture than I could visually see but one with some good “ah ha” and “oh shit!” moments.

Speaking of what I could see visually, I love the art style. A simple pencil sketch looking feel that gave me Hotel Dusk vibes. Great facial expressions from your one-night stand and lots of brilliant details within the room that again enhances the feeling that this story is not purely fiction.

In the end however, I feel a little conflicted about this title. It is smartly written, beautifully presented and executed well but whilst I do not dislike short games playing the same short game over and over made me feel contradictory views of wanting more but also finding getting the last few endings more of something like busy work than the mild detective feel I had gotten earlier.
An argument could be made to just get a few endings and put it down when you feel you’ve seen enough variation, but having a screen full of blank squares you know you can fill, boxes you can check - it’s hard to do that when you know the effort, at least in terms of time, is so low.

I enjoyed my initial ending with this game, I played it “as if” it was me and was pleased. It made me want to see more of the world and that is good.
I enjoyed doing things I would definitely not, going for things I felt were possibly the stupidest decisions and having a good laugh at them.
The writing carries this game and it is definitely worth a play considering it's about the price of a coffee - ultimately I’m just not sure that this format of short with a dozen endings is my vibe compared to long with a few endings, but that is fine. There is space for all types of storytelling and I’m happy that we get to experience them.