It's nice to start the year with a delightfully satisfying release from a classic series. Intelligent Systems seems to have learned just about every important lesson they needed to after Three Houses, making this a much more technically sound and tactically interesting title. And that's speaking as someone who liked Three Houses well enough to finish it three times.
The most striking improvement is the presentation. Not only is the rendering cleaner and more stable, but the models and animations and shading and skyboxes, etc. There's a fullness to the appearance and feel of the game this time around that makes it look like the Nintendo first party title it is. FMV cutscenes are plentiful and gorgeous and they seem to have figured out their in-game cutscene systems giving the bulk of the main story more life and weight.
On the downside, the story being presented here has some writing issues. Namely that the dialogue can get pretty corny and I don't feel that the main character gets enough development in the begninning. It's still entertaining enough in a 90s anime sort of way early on and actually pretty well paced, so you can ignore that if you have a little heart. Also — while scattered — there are some moments in the main narrative that are genuinely interesting and the optional bonding conversations are often charming and funny, as usual.
What I was really happy to see, however, was the care and attention put into the combat scenarios. I played on hard and there was a nice consistency to the difficulty. When I went in underprepared it was tricky but doable, leading to some pretty novel tactics on my part. When I theory crafted and honed my party's builds, I was rewarded with the satisfaction of a confident victory — so long as I didn't get careless.
The balance this time around took the opposite approach of Three Houses. There, unit strengths and weakness were downplayed, making more matchups viable with high enough stats. Sword had a base advantage against Axes, but an axe wielder 5 levels over would still probably win. In Engage, you might win if your unit intiates, but on defense they won't even be able to make a followup attack.
Engage introduces a system that I believe is new to the series (I'm not as well versed as I'd like to be), where hitting a unit with their weakness on the weapon triangle(+) will "break" them, disallowing them to make the series standard followup attack for that combat round and whoever attacks them next. I won't go into all of the tactical implications, but it added a subtle layer of depth that the series has needed for quite some time without becoming the "center" of all viable strategies.
The other (in my mind) major change was in how assisted attacks work. Only units with a specific trait (mainly the figther-type classes) can directly contribute to their teammates attacks and it's a standardized value that seems to be dictated entirely by who initiated and who the target is. Conversely, there's more flexibility in who can pile on via unlockable skills, and the enemy units can use this system too (which, if memory serves is new). Bond level bonuses are also more subtle, only contributing directly to hit/avoid chance as far as I could tell. Overall, for me this made death starring your units up into a slow, marching blob much less necessary and thus I felt free to move my units more dynamically.
That last point is further enhanced by the much more creative encounter design in Engage. I won't claim these are the greatest Strategy RPG levels made, and memory tells me that Fates: Conquest was more devious, but most of the levels do a good job of layering environment hazards, traps, and threatening enemies onto tactically interesting map layouts. Many had memorable concepts to them that made them stick in the mind better. You weren't just entering Desert City Battlefield Template #2, you were fighting through a cluttered port storage yard in the dark while a wave of fliers posed to invade from the sea.
Paired with the wonderful music that dynamically changed as it zoomed down to individual battles as they happened and it really was a treat. The less tactically interesting levels also benefitted from the highlights, as with the pacing of the game they served as good cooldown sections.
That brings us to the metagame and progressions elements of the game. I've already made my peace with the series now seemingly permanent inclusion of procedural level grinding missions. It is still a little annoying that I can risk overlelling some characters when I'm trying to get the weaker ones up to par for the main missions, but the aforementioned balance changes help a lot on this front. There's also a "Trial Tower" mode that seems to exist to provide levelled challenges outside of the main story, and even includes network co-op play and a mode to battle copies of other people's armies.
I haven't gotten around to trying any of it, yet, but it sure seemed interesting.
Oh, right. I've forgotten to mention the gameplay change that game is named after. The Emblems and their "engage" abilities. This mechanic definitely becomes one that your strategies will revolve around, and thankfully it does so in a way I found exciting but not overused. I feel it'd be to many words here to explain its function in-depth, but the short of it is that it gives your units bursts of additional abilities that can let you pull off some really nifty stuff. And what makes it especially fun is that it rarely plays out like an instant-win button. They more provide options you might not have had but they come with their own risks. And even when they don't, their inherit time limits mean you can find yourself in hot water a few turns down the road if you're still in the thick of it when that time is up.
They're also just very visually pleasant and the nostalgia factor of including old heroes is nice.
There's more I could say on the gameplay, but I'm probably already too in the weeds as it stands, so I'll wrap up with a mention of the "life sim" mechanics available between missions. They're far more optional and less time consuming than the last three games, but technically there's about as many as 3H. So for people who enjoy that as a brian break between battles or as a way to get more screentime with the cast, it still serves its role.
Overall, Fire Emblem Engage was a worthy entry in long running series that exceeded my modest expectations and was consistently.... engaging.... from start to end. I highly recommend to any fans of strategy RPGs, however I can't speak to how interesting it would be for newcomers to the genre.
I'm one of those Classic Mode, no deaths allowed kind of players.
The most striking improvement is the presentation. Not only is the rendering cleaner and more stable, but the models and animations and shading and skyboxes, etc. There's a fullness to the appearance and feel of the game this time around that makes it look like the Nintendo first party title it is. FMV cutscenes are plentiful and gorgeous and they seem to have figured out their in-game cutscene systems giving the bulk of the main story more life and weight.
On the downside, the story being presented here has some writing issues. Namely that the dialogue can get pretty corny and I don't feel that the main character gets enough development in the begninning. It's still entertaining enough in a 90s anime sort of way early on and actually pretty well paced, so you can ignore that if you have a little heart. Also — while scattered — there are some moments in the main narrative that are genuinely interesting and the optional bonding conversations are often charming and funny, as usual.
What I was really happy to see, however, was the care and attention put into the combat scenarios. I played on hard and there was a nice consistency to the difficulty. When I went in underprepared it was tricky but doable, leading to some pretty novel tactics on my part. When I theory crafted and honed my party's builds, I was rewarded with the satisfaction of a confident victory — so long as I didn't get careless.
The balance this time around took the opposite approach of Three Houses. There, unit strengths and weakness were downplayed, making more matchups viable with high enough stats. Sword had a base advantage against Axes, but an axe wielder 5 levels over would still probably win. In Engage, you might win if your unit intiates, but on defense they won't even be able to make a followup attack.
Engage introduces a system that I believe is new to the series (I'm not as well versed as I'd like to be), where hitting a unit with their weakness on the weapon triangle(+) will "break" them, disallowing them to make the series standard followup attack for that combat round and whoever attacks them next. I won't go into all of the tactical implications, but it added a subtle layer of depth that the series has needed for quite some time without becoming the "center" of all viable strategies.
The other (in my mind) major change was in how assisted attacks work. Only units with a specific trait (mainly the figther-type classes) can directly contribute to their teammates attacks and it's a standardized value that seems to be dictated entirely by who initiated and who the target is. Conversely, there's more flexibility in who can pile on via unlockable skills, and the enemy units can use this system too (which, if memory serves is new). Bond level bonuses are also more subtle, only contributing directly to hit/avoid chance as far as I could tell. Overall, for me this made death starring your units up into a slow, marching blob much less necessary and thus I felt free to move my units more dynamically.
That last point is further enhanced by the much more creative encounter design in Engage. I won't claim these are the greatest Strategy RPG levels made, and memory tells me that Fates: Conquest was more devious, but most of the levels do a good job of layering environment hazards, traps, and threatening enemies onto tactically interesting map layouts. Many had memorable concepts to them that made them stick in the mind better. You weren't just entering Desert City Battlefield Template #2, you were fighting through a cluttered port storage yard in the dark while a wave of fliers posed to invade from the sea.
Paired with the wonderful music that dynamically changed as it zoomed down to individual battles as they happened and it really was a treat. The less tactically interesting levels also benefitted from the highlights, as with the pacing of the game they served as good cooldown sections.
That brings us to the metagame and progressions elements of the game. I've already made my peace with the series now seemingly permanent inclusion of procedural level grinding missions. It is still a little annoying that I can risk overlelling some characters when I'm trying to get the weaker ones up to par for the main missions, but the aforementioned balance changes help a lot on this front. There's also a "Trial Tower" mode that seems to exist to provide levelled challenges outside of the main story, and even includes network co-op play and a mode to battle copies of other people's armies.
I haven't gotten around to trying any of it, yet, but it sure seemed interesting.
Oh, right. I've forgotten to mention the gameplay change that game is named after. The Emblems and their "engage" abilities. This mechanic definitely becomes one that your strategies will revolve around, and thankfully it does so in a way I found exciting but not overused. I feel it'd be to many words here to explain its function in-depth, but the short of it is that it gives your units bursts of additional abilities that can let you pull off some really nifty stuff. And what makes it especially fun is that it rarely plays out like an instant-win button. They more provide options you might not have had but they come with their own risks. And even when they don't, their inherit time limits mean you can find yourself in hot water a few turns down the road if you're still in the thick of it when that time is up.
They're also just very visually pleasant and the nostalgia factor of including old heroes is nice.
There's more I could say on the gameplay, but I'm probably already too in the weeds as it stands, so I'll wrap up with a mention of the "life sim" mechanics available between missions. They're far more optional and less time consuming than the last three games, but technically there's about as many as 3H. So for people who enjoy that as a brian break between battles or as a way to get more screentime with the cast, it still serves its role.
Overall, Fire Emblem Engage was a worthy entry in long running series that exceeded my modest expectations and was consistently.... engaging.... from start to end. I highly recommend to any fans of strategy RPGs, however I can't speak to how interesting it would be for newcomers to the genre.
I'm one of those Classic Mode, no deaths allowed kind of players.
cdmcgwire
1 year ago