As I stare down the barrel of a new Fire Emblem game, I am met with as much trepidation as I am excited. The baggage I have with this series is, at this point, tremendous. Yet, as I have completed this game with the credits rolling I am feeling... catharsis. I had never expected to have this feeling in a new Fire Emblem world again. Yet here I stand.
This is not a review of Fire Emblem Engage. It exists as a musing of an individual who has spent far too long playing a series, and learning to feel misery at its mere mention. Now, forced to grapple with the idea that the series is once again in a place that I am engaged as I was only once before, and am learning to appreciate a game for what it is, and not for what it isn’t.
Fire Emblem, for better or worse, became a high school hyperfixation for me. It was the only thing able to wrest me from endless replays of the Mother series. Not only was I able to completely entrench myself in the games and mechanics, but I had an entire history to dig through. My prior fascination was largely with a 3 game series, and with each game I had spent countless hours learning every second that each game had to offer. And now, I had a series of over 13 (at the time) games to spend my hours getting into. It was an absolute bounty of riches, of which I plundered time and again, regularly experiencing some of the most engaging and enriching tactical gameplay I had ever experienced. Oftentimes with interesting, engaging characters and stories that have stuck with me in ways that few RPGs had at that point in my life. This was my burgeoning era of learning to love RPGs, and this alongside The World Ends With You opened my horizons far beyond where they were before.
An important piece of this puzzle which I am not mentioning is how I learned to experience this series. While not my first game, Fire Emblem Awakening is what made me a Fire Emblem fan. I had not purchased it too close to launch, maybe 8 months after launch or so. My girlfriend at the time was a massive Fire Emblem fan, and I was trying to impress her by getting into one of her favorite series. By the time credits rolled, we had broken up, yet Fire Emblem remained.
I had approached the game as someone who had played other RPGs, and when given all these options to level up, change classes, learn skills, and build supports, I turned to the grind. This led to me playing Fire Emblem Awakening again and again, trying new marriage combinations, making the best units I possibly could, and trying the best combinations. As I write this now, I cannot help but feel pride for my Galeforce, Armsthrift, Limit Breaker, Vantage Dread Fighter Owain with maxed stats. It had become an obsession, and the free time granted by being an unmotivated, closeted, depressed teenager meant I was able to spend all the time in the world on this fantasy.
If you were to check my 3DS play clock you would see that I have more than 500 hours in Awakening alone, which makes it very possibly my single most played game of all time, comparable only to Final Fantasy XIV or EarthBound. The next step was, obviously, to get really into roleplaying Fire Emblem on Tumblr. An endeavor which resulted in me meeting my current fiance.
While Awakening was my introduction to Fire Emblem, I fell in love with it in a way that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the franchise. The kind of love which is sequestered away, almost entirely divorced from my enjoyment to the rest of Fire Emblem.
Nintendo had included Sacred Stones as a part of the 3DS ambassador program, a program which I had become a part of as an early adopter of the handhelf. I played, and enjoyed, the game around the time the program went live. I didn’t finish it at the time, but I went back and did, and it opened the door to the wider Fire Emblem series. It ignited the flame which would go on to define the following years for me. Playing through FE7 on the Wii U virtual console, then dipping my toes into fan translations and emulation to play the rest of the series. Genealogy and Path or Radiance became some of my favorites, as they are for many of classic Fire Emblem’s fans, and still loom tall over my view of the series. There were periods in which I would bounce from Fire Emblem game to Fire Emblem game, learning to love even the black sheep Gaiden, a game which I fought tooth and nail to get anyone around me to care about. A battle I lost valiantly until I suddenly won a few years later.
By the time I finished high school, I had not beaten every Fire Emblem game, but I had nearly all of them. The two greatest omissions are Thracia 776, of which the current Project Exile patch did not exist for, and Radiant Dawn, as I did not know how to mod my Wii to play Wii games the same way I did for Gamecube games. I mined the games and experienced the riches which Fire Emblem had to offer.
The drive to recreate the high that Fire Emblem so regularly gave me became so intense that I began turning to other strategy games, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, XCom. Each of them were unable to keep my attention. I was not a tactics fan. I was a Fire Emblem fan. A feeling which continues to the moment in which I’m writing this.
While on this journey, there were more new 3DS Fire Emblems to play. One left me exuberant, the other leaving me less so.
With the power of hindsight, it is easy to see Fire Emblem Fates as a creation made by those who had found success and had no idea how to possibly follow up on it. It is a messy game, created as the first Fire Emblem game while the series was still a strong going concern in an extremely long time, and trying to figure out what exactly about Fire Emblem Awakening had sparked such resonance among the wider gaming population. At the moment, I did not hate it. But, as I attempted to engage with it in a way somewhat reminiscent of Awakening, I grew a growing distaste for the game which grew over time. I, honestly, do not really want to talk more about Fates. If you are reading this, you are likely aware of the general reception around Fates among Fire Emblem fans. I believe I’ve made where I stand clear. It left me feeling sick and sad, and I grew frankly pessimistic towards a franchise I had emotionally invested in extremely over the past few years.
Then there is Echoes, a game announcement which had left me so excited. It stands as a swan song to the 3DS, and my youth. I got my copy of the game on the same day as my high school graduation party. I played it on the precipice of approaching college, gaining some sense of diet adulthood. Gaiden had become one of my absolute favorite Fire Emblem games, so seeing the game come back with a beautiful art style, wonderful gameplay, and just all around adapting a game I loved back as an NES RPG filled me with an almost indescribable feeling. The best remakes are ones which return to games which take big swings and have big ideas, but do not necessarily totally work out. This is one of those. I loved every minute of it. Living in a world in which individuals know and care about Alm and Celcia still fills my heart with an indescribable joy.
Despite Echoes being a game which filled me with such joy, it is also just a remake. Fire Emblem is no stranger to remakes, they have happened many times before, and the contents of remakes does not necessarily point toward the future of the series. While there certainly are parts of Echoes which informed specifically Three Houses, what I loved about Alm and Celica’s journey was not a guiding star in a series that had made its recent fortunes on character relationships and creating popular characters.
In the lead up to Three Houses, it initially boded poorly in terms of what I wanted. Those feelings never subsided throughout the lead up to release. I had become pretty set on the idea of skipping it on release. With Fates being what it was, and the trailers being what they were, I had resigned myself to the pain that Fire Emblem was no longer for me. While there was fun to be had, it ultimately failed to be the ‘righting of the ship’ which I needed from Fire Emblem. I reviewed Three Houses a good while ago, go read that review for more details on my feelings.
So here I am. Waiting for the release of Engage. The game’s early showings made specific notes of the emphasis on older Fire Emblem characters returning. While self-congratulatory, they managed to do it. This fan who had learned to almost exclusively love the newer games was interested in a new Fire Emblem, for whatever that was worth. At the very least, it had me intrigued, and it was released at a time in which I was looking for another game to play. The fates aligned, and there I was once again purchasing a new Fire Emblem game on launch day.
I was specifically slow at first, taking my time getting into the game. I found the return to Fire Emblem’s traditional structure appreciated given Three Houses having such a different structure. After playing for a few chapters, and enjoying it, once I began getting more and more emblems, the feelings which were initially stoked by Awakening were once again burning. The Emblem mechanic was a genius way to give significant player agency in how even two units of the same class play with one another. Instead of rewarding play based on raw grinding outside of the standard chapter to chapter gameplay, I was able to develop interesting bond pairings using the generously given bond currency the game provides. The feeling of creating broken units while still adapting to the chapter to chapter gameplay was an absolutely perfect blend, perfectly melding both of the kinds of gameplay which I had learned to love. Limited resource chapter to chapter gameplay mixed with interesting yet interchangeable character growth for unit progression are not antithetical to each other, they can stand together proudly and create a game which manages to thread the needle. They did it. They made a Fire Emblem for me.
At the time of writing, Fire Emblem Engage is the first wholly new Fire Emblem I truly feel good about playing since this series has etched itself deeply into my soul. I have finished the final boss by utilizing the bond pairings and engages to finish the game by absolutely destroying the final boss. I feel as though I’m on a mountaintop, truly enraptured by this new experience. The only thought I have is playing it again. God dammit, they did it.
Uh oh! It appears you read to the end of one woman’s self indulgent reflection on a series which has caused her psychological damage in such a way that only an improperly aged individual watching a horror movie should. Since you made it this far, my review of Fire Emblem Engage is:
Me and my boywife just killed my dad with our bond, an inherently queer experience
This is not a review of Fire Emblem Engage. It exists as a musing of an individual who has spent far too long playing a series, and learning to feel misery at its mere mention. Now, forced to grapple with the idea that the series is once again in a place that I am engaged as I was only once before, and am learning to appreciate a game for what it is, and not for what it isn’t.
Fire Emblem, for better or worse, became a high school hyperfixation for me. It was the only thing able to wrest me from endless replays of the Mother series. Not only was I able to completely entrench myself in the games and mechanics, but I had an entire history to dig through. My prior fascination was largely with a 3 game series, and with each game I had spent countless hours learning every second that each game had to offer. And now, I had a series of over 13 (at the time) games to spend my hours getting into. It was an absolute bounty of riches, of which I plundered time and again, regularly experiencing some of the most engaging and enriching tactical gameplay I had ever experienced. Oftentimes with interesting, engaging characters and stories that have stuck with me in ways that few RPGs had at that point in my life. This was my burgeoning era of learning to love RPGs, and this alongside The World Ends With You opened my horizons far beyond where they were before.
An important piece of this puzzle which I am not mentioning is how I learned to experience this series. While not my first game, Fire Emblem Awakening is what made me a Fire Emblem fan. I had not purchased it too close to launch, maybe 8 months after launch or so. My girlfriend at the time was a massive Fire Emblem fan, and I was trying to impress her by getting into one of her favorite series. By the time credits rolled, we had broken up, yet Fire Emblem remained.
I had approached the game as someone who had played other RPGs, and when given all these options to level up, change classes, learn skills, and build supports, I turned to the grind. This led to me playing Fire Emblem Awakening again and again, trying new marriage combinations, making the best units I possibly could, and trying the best combinations. As I write this now, I cannot help but feel pride for my Galeforce, Armsthrift, Limit Breaker, Vantage Dread Fighter Owain with maxed stats. It had become an obsession, and the free time granted by being an unmotivated, closeted, depressed teenager meant I was able to spend all the time in the world on this fantasy.
If you were to check my 3DS play clock you would see that I have more than 500 hours in Awakening alone, which makes it very possibly my single most played game of all time, comparable only to Final Fantasy XIV or EarthBound. The next step was, obviously, to get really into roleplaying Fire Emblem on Tumblr. An endeavor which resulted in me meeting my current fiance.
While Awakening was my introduction to Fire Emblem, I fell in love with it in a way that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the franchise. The kind of love which is sequestered away, almost entirely divorced from my enjoyment to the rest of Fire Emblem.
Nintendo had included Sacred Stones as a part of the 3DS ambassador program, a program which I had become a part of as an early adopter of the handhelf. I played, and enjoyed, the game around the time the program went live. I didn’t finish it at the time, but I went back and did, and it opened the door to the wider Fire Emblem series. It ignited the flame which would go on to define the following years for me. Playing through FE7 on the Wii U virtual console, then dipping my toes into fan translations and emulation to play the rest of the series. Genealogy and Path or Radiance became some of my favorites, as they are for many of classic Fire Emblem’s fans, and still loom tall over my view of the series. There were periods in which I would bounce from Fire Emblem game to Fire Emblem game, learning to love even the black sheep Gaiden, a game which I fought tooth and nail to get anyone around me to care about. A battle I lost valiantly until I suddenly won a few years later.
By the time I finished high school, I had not beaten every Fire Emblem game, but I had nearly all of them. The two greatest omissions are Thracia 776, of which the current Project Exile patch did not exist for, and Radiant Dawn, as I did not know how to mod my Wii to play Wii games the same way I did for Gamecube games. I mined the games and experienced the riches which Fire Emblem had to offer.
The drive to recreate the high that Fire Emblem so regularly gave me became so intense that I began turning to other strategy games, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, XCom. Each of them were unable to keep my attention. I was not a tactics fan. I was a Fire Emblem fan. A feeling which continues to the moment in which I’m writing this.
While on this journey, there were more new 3DS Fire Emblems to play. One left me exuberant, the other leaving me less so.
With the power of hindsight, it is easy to see Fire Emblem Fates as a creation made by those who had found success and had no idea how to possibly follow up on it. It is a messy game, created as the first Fire Emblem game while the series was still a strong going concern in an extremely long time, and trying to figure out what exactly about Fire Emblem Awakening had sparked such resonance among the wider gaming population. At the moment, I did not hate it. But, as I attempted to engage with it in a way somewhat reminiscent of Awakening, I grew a growing distaste for the game which grew over time. I, honestly, do not really want to talk more about Fates. If you are reading this, you are likely aware of the general reception around Fates among Fire Emblem fans. I believe I’ve made where I stand clear. It left me feeling sick and sad, and I grew frankly pessimistic towards a franchise I had emotionally invested in extremely over the past few years.
Then there is Echoes, a game announcement which had left me so excited. It stands as a swan song to the 3DS, and my youth. I got my copy of the game on the same day as my high school graduation party. I played it on the precipice of approaching college, gaining some sense of diet adulthood. Gaiden had become one of my absolute favorite Fire Emblem games, so seeing the game come back with a beautiful art style, wonderful gameplay, and just all around adapting a game I loved back as an NES RPG filled me with an almost indescribable feeling. The best remakes are ones which return to games which take big swings and have big ideas, but do not necessarily totally work out. This is one of those. I loved every minute of it. Living in a world in which individuals know and care about Alm and Celcia still fills my heart with an indescribable joy.
Despite Echoes being a game which filled me with such joy, it is also just a remake. Fire Emblem is no stranger to remakes, they have happened many times before, and the contents of remakes does not necessarily point toward the future of the series. While there certainly are parts of Echoes which informed specifically Three Houses, what I loved about Alm and Celica’s journey was not a guiding star in a series that had made its recent fortunes on character relationships and creating popular characters.
In the lead up to Three Houses, it initially boded poorly in terms of what I wanted. Those feelings never subsided throughout the lead up to release. I had become pretty set on the idea of skipping it on release. With Fates being what it was, and the trailers being what they were, I had resigned myself to the pain that Fire Emblem was no longer for me. While there was fun to be had, it ultimately failed to be the ‘righting of the ship’ which I needed from Fire Emblem. I reviewed Three Houses a good while ago, go read that review for more details on my feelings.
So here I am. Waiting for the release of Engage. The game’s early showings made specific notes of the emphasis on older Fire Emblem characters returning. While self-congratulatory, they managed to do it. This fan who had learned to almost exclusively love the newer games was interested in a new Fire Emblem, for whatever that was worth. At the very least, it had me intrigued, and it was released at a time in which I was looking for another game to play. The fates aligned, and there I was once again purchasing a new Fire Emblem game on launch day.
I was specifically slow at first, taking my time getting into the game. I found the return to Fire Emblem’s traditional structure appreciated given Three Houses having such a different structure. After playing for a few chapters, and enjoying it, once I began getting more and more emblems, the feelings which were initially stoked by Awakening were once again burning. The Emblem mechanic was a genius way to give significant player agency in how even two units of the same class play with one another. Instead of rewarding play based on raw grinding outside of the standard chapter to chapter gameplay, I was able to develop interesting bond pairings using the generously given bond currency the game provides. The feeling of creating broken units while still adapting to the chapter to chapter gameplay was an absolutely perfect blend, perfectly melding both of the kinds of gameplay which I had learned to love. Limited resource chapter to chapter gameplay mixed with interesting yet interchangeable character growth for unit progression are not antithetical to each other, they can stand together proudly and create a game which manages to thread the needle. They did it. They made a Fire Emblem for me.
At the time of writing, Fire Emblem Engage is the first wholly new Fire Emblem I truly feel good about playing since this series has etched itself deeply into my soul. I have finished the final boss by utilizing the bond pairings and engages to finish the game by absolutely destroying the final boss. I feel as though I’m on a mountaintop, truly enraptured by this new experience. The only thought I have is playing it again. God dammit, they did it.
Uh oh! It appears you read to the end of one woman’s self indulgent reflection on a series which has caused her psychological damage in such a way that only an improperly aged individual watching a horror movie should. Since you made it this far, my review of Fire Emblem Engage is:
Me and my boywife just killed my dad with our bond, an inherently queer experience