If you asked me what I thought of this whole modern anthology of Fire Emblem, I’d probably say something like “it kinda sucks but its so weirdly compelling im gonna keep playing them until i die”
I replayed Awakening last year, and it showed to me that its maximalist approach to revitalizing the series has aged like milk - both in gameplay and tonally.
Fates: Conquest shows a team who genuinely has the skills to improve this framework, but the series was then tossed to another team for Three Houses; the game receiving an improvement in tone, but generally rolling its gameplay innovations back. The qualities and content of each entry feels like a dice roll, but that’s probably the most compelling part; you could probably make a masterpiece if you mashed these games together. And while I’m truly hoping one day we’ll see that to fruition, I think we all knew this wouldn’t be the game the moment that trailer dropped. Instead we all thought
“is that a toothpaste girl”
PRESENTATION
The infallible strangeness that Intelligent Systems keeps trying to turn their war simulator into a poppy smash hit is not lost on me, but some things take higher priority in that discussion. This game contains a toothpaste girl. She is somewhere in here. It’d be punching below the belt to bully this design, but it feels like one of those designs that could only exist in lighting that compliments them, and her 3D model doesn’t make me feel anything. Sucks that Mika Pikazo was brought in as lead artist for the game that ditched illustrated portraits, because the game doesn’t get to play to her strengths. The overconfidence in its 3D also bleeds into the game’s map presentation - barely any of your party members have immediately readable key-poses, with toothpaste girl’s hair colours being the only relief from this frustration. This combined with some poor colour choices for the game’s four enemy range indicators resulted in me playing most of the game fully zoomed in.
Even the battle animations–the main part of the aesthetics I’ve seen praise for–have their own polish issues, their slick movements almost always undermined by bad camerawork. Sharp jump cuts before attacks land already result in busy visuals, but where it’s most obvious is how it clashes with the game’s readily available x2 speed button - making even the most basic attack animations unreadable.
And while this game’s art design isn’t a complete loss–there’s some wonderful cutscenes here and there–what surprised me the most was a soundtrack that’s just...not good? These games don’t like worldbuilding very much, so Awakening’s accordion-romanticism, and the Scot-Noir broodings of Fates: Conquest do a lot to enrich their worlds - it’s only natural this out of touch J-Rock leaves the game feeling toneless. With notable composers such as Takeru Kanazaki and Hiroki Morishita still present, I would never want to blame the individual creatives on the project, because you can tell this modern direction for the series has a lot of corporate influence.
Story
We could talk about this game’s plot, but that’d require it to have one of its own; it’s more of a greatest clips montage edited in Sony Vegas with a ton of colour aberration and dubstep. We could also talk about how the crossover element here feels misguided - the broadly personified protagonists of the series were made to be reactive, rather than interactive, so they all feel like uncharismatic brick walls here. This game did nothing to fanservice me as a follower of the series, but more importantly (to the developers), it did nothing to sell me on the characters I hadn’t played the games of. The villain here isn’t even the storyline, it’s really the scriptwork. Early on into the game, a character is mortally wounded, and as they die in your hands, they spend their last moments explaining that they are not dying because they were shot by a big evil magic orb, but because of some high concept lore machinations. In their dying moments, they hand you a macguffin.
At the climax of this scene, toothpaste girl does a “pinky promise” with this person, which despite making me instantly burst out laughing, is in fact a choice! A choice made by the Tetsuya Nomura impersonator you hire for your kid’s birthday party, sure, but it does paint her as someone who is emotionally stunted and clings onto childish mannerisms. But toothpaste girl takes on her role as goddess-worshiped-by-everyone-in-the-world in strides, is immediately complimented as “humble” and “human” by everyone she meets, and is also apparently just the greatest tactician in the world! This is at least partially the fault of a vision messied by corporate; the director of the game noting in interview that Nintendo asked them to tone down the worldliness of toothpaste girl. Where’s the censorship controversy about that, huh, gamers???
I’ve seen this plot pitched as a sugary saturday morning cartoon romp, but it sorta just lacks the humanity for me to see it as sincere - a key trait to loving that style. That’s not even to mention the even more obvious contrast: how this plot is driven by tragedy without moments of relief. It’s an e10+ war game, but it’s still a war game - we’re out here playing tactics ogremon red and blue version.
But…I know and you know that this sort of analysis isn’t going to get us closer to understanding why people like these games. Talk to any Fire Emblem fan–and don’t grit your teeth too hard thinking about that, I did it for you–and they’ll tell you they like these games for literally one thing.
It’s the gameplay.
The gameplay is alright, I played on hard classic and had a good time with it. The real standout here is Break: a new system where if you win the weapon triangle RPS, you knock your opponent’s weapon out of their hands until you hit them again, or your turn ends. Making it easier to play your turn damageless enables this game’s goals as being a more aggressive Fire Emblem; encouraging you to stand your ground and make confident offensive plays, so you can wade through the onslaught of enemies. There are also secondary roles tied to classes; grounded offense units have Backup, the ability to join other teammate’s attacks, for example. Armored units are the real winners here, they’re given an immunity to break, which makes them the most interesting to pilot they’ve been in years. The cherry on top here are the Emblems, which exist on the same wavelength of Pop game design as supers in a fighting game. They’re all flashy comeback mechanics that give you buttons that are fun to click and make the good numbers happen, but I also love how they’re very flexible if you use them to prop up a unit’s flaws, or play to one's strengths. I like how they their big fuck-off buttons don’t necessarily feel congruous with each other either; they’re like giant puzzle pieces that you have to attach a million microscopic ones onto to complete the picture. The way that Emblems can flexibly be moved between units makes this the most prep-centric Fire Emblem I’ve played!!! yes i love nerd shit :)
But for all of this to work, the map design’s gotta be strong. And it does start rock solid, lots of well placed secondary objectives like running thieves to keep you on pace. But Emblems, for all I like about them, definitely ripple out negatively into the game’s balance - this game mostly runs on “defeat the boss” win conditions, so every boss needs to have multiple health bars to counter Emblems. It made me feel like a badass to kill them in a single turn the first time I did it, but when I realized the map design heavily enables this playstyle, it started stagnating pretty quick. That’s when Chapter 17 rolls around, where you face down six bosses on a single map, with knights and dragons creeping in between. Not only that, but one of those bosses was a huge knowledge check for me - being a mage knight with both massive defense and res made me unable to kill him in one turn, all while another boss was barreling for me. I had to carefully exploit break, and position my backups around him in a way that didn’t get them killed by a combination of the two bosses attacking me. It’s genuinely a series highlight chapter to me, so it’s a shame it doesn’t last; you spend the rest of the game fighting those same bosses in different, smaller orders. Not only does this fail to progress the challenge of how you play around bosses, it’s also just…lame. Significantly less cool. And the developer’s priorities were different from mine, because the last 4 chapters of the game instead introduce stage hazards that border on being gag levels at times.
While playing this game, I ended up thinking “maybe if I’m having this little fun with a Fire Emblem, it’s time to graduate to maddening” quite a bit, but then I ran into another problem
…This is the most prep heavy Fire Emblem
Once you’re finished with a map, go ahead and run around its overworld for a few minutes picking up items. Then load into Somniel–the game’s Monastery–and play a bunch of minigames to activate surprisingly noticeable temporary stat upgrades for the next mission. Lastly, remember to read those 650+ supports (that’s over twice as many as Three Houses!), and 1300+ bond conversations. While the Monastery system and how it clashes with the replayability of Three Houses is definitely worth critique, and on paper, Somniel does sound better–being entirely optional and not attached to a calendar–it’s easy to see why Somniel misses the point of Monastery. Simply put, every decision I make trickling down from a bigger macro decision made it at least feel like I was playing a video game while I was in the Monastery, and Somniel feels like I’m doing mobile game dailies. It’d be a lie to pretend hard classic was difficult enough to require those temporary buffs, but I can only imagine the looming frustration of losing in Maddening, and thinking “I should’ve played that fucking fishing minigame”... That isn’t even commenting on some minor issues, such as how Emblem customization is managed from 2 rooms in Somniel that have a 10 second loading screen between each other, making me wish the whole place was just a menu. I only started enjoying the game at all when I started doing some self care; choosing to not interact with a lot of its frustrating mechanics, but… if I’m playing this for the gameplay, and even the gameplay loop is awkward, what am I even left with?
The combat.
The combat is alright, I played it on hard mode classic, and had a good time with it. But like, dude. DUDE!! Every time I read someone call this game a “return to form”, I feel like I have temporal insanity!!!! This game’s idea of fun is herding your sheep, rolling for gacha pulls, and giving your fav 11 year old a wedding ring!!!!
I could probably pump out a graphic like this:
PRESENTATION: 60
STORY: 30
GAMEPLAY: 65
OVERALL: 51.666666666667
but it’d be a disservice both to understanding why people like this game, and why I don’t like it. Fans of this game have gracefully chosen to appreciate it for the best parts of its vision, shielding it out of what I can only assume to be genuine empathy, which kinda owns. But when I put it down, it felt like this game’s loop demands your immersion into its world, and trying to play it the way I did is something it rejects.
These fuckin’ Fire Emblem fans, dude, I watch them perfectly cleaning the dirt off a burger they pulled out of a dumpster, and I try to mirror them and just get stale ketchup all over my hands.
…So. Is Engage worth playing? I probably won’t have the most time-withstanding take on the game, but I’ll tell you what I know for sure
you should probably not buy the new nintendo game just to be in on the conversation with your friends
you’re thinking of “getting into fire emblem” and you haven’t even cleaned ur room today??? say it aint sooooo 😱😱😱😱
I replayed Awakening last year, and it showed to me that its maximalist approach to revitalizing the series has aged like milk - both in gameplay and tonally.
Fates: Conquest shows a team who genuinely has the skills to improve this framework, but the series was then tossed to another team for Three Houses; the game receiving an improvement in tone, but generally rolling its gameplay innovations back. The qualities and content of each entry feels like a dice roll, but that’s probably the most compelling part; you could probably make a masterpiece if you mashed these games together. And while I’m truly hoping one day we’ll see that to fruition, I think we all knew this wouldn’t be the game the moment that trailer dropped. Instead we all thought
“is that a toothpaste girl”
PRESENTATION
The infallible strangeness that Intelligent Systems keeps trying to turn their war simulator into a poppy smash hit is not lost on me, but some things take higher priority in that discussion. This game contains a toothpaste girl. She is somewhere in here. It’d be punching below the belt to bully this design, but it feels like one of those designs that could only exist in lighting that compliments them, and her 3D model doesn’t make me feel anything. Sucks that Mika Pikazo was brought in as lead artist for the game that ditched illustrated portraits, because the game doesn’t get to play to her strengths. The overconfidence in its 3D also bleeds into the game’s map presentation - barely any of your party members have immediately readable key-poses, with toothpaste girl’s hair colours being the only relief from this frustration. This combined with some poor colour choices for the game’s four enemy range indicators resulted in me playing most of the game fully zoomed in.
Even the battle animations–the main part of the aesthetics I’ve seen praise for–have their own polish issues, their slick movements almost always undermined by bad camerawork. Sharp jump cuts before attacks land already result in busy visuals, but where it’s most obvious is how it clashes with the game’s readily available x2 speed button - making even the most basic attack animations unreadable.
And while this game’s art design isn’t a complete loss–there’s some wonderful cutscenes here and there–what surprised me the most was a soundtrack that’s just...not good? These games don’t like worldbuilding very much, so Awakening’s accordion-romanticism, and the Scot-Noir broodings of Fates: Conquest do a lot to enrich their worlds - it’s only natural this out of touch J-Rock leaves the game feeling toneless. With notable composers such as Takeru Kanazaki and Hiroki Morishita still present, I would never want to blame the individual creatives on the project, because you can tell this modern direction for the series has a lot of corporate influence.
Story
We could talk about this game’s plot, but that’d require it to have one of its own; it’s more of a greatest clips montage edited in Sony Vegas with a ton of colour aberration and dubstep. We could also talk about how the crossover element here feels misguided - the broadly personified protagonists of the series were made to be reactive, rather than interactive, so they all feel like uncharismatic brick walls here. This game did nothing to fanservice me as a follower of the series, but more importantly (to the developers), it did nothing to sell me on the characters I hadn’t played the games of. The villain here isn’t even the storyline, it’s really the scriptwork. Early on into the game, a character is mortally wounded, and as they die in your hands, they spend their last moments explaining that they are not dying because they were shot by a big evil magic orb, but because of some high concept lore machinations. In their dying moments, they hand you a macguffin.
At the climax of this scene, toothpaste girl does a “pinky promise” with this person, which despite making me instantly burst out laughing, is in fact a choice! A choice made by the Tetsuya Nomura impersonator you hire for your kid’s birthday party, sure, but it does paint her as someone who is emotionally stunted and clings onto childish mannerisms. But toothpaste girl takes on her role as goddess-worshiped-by-everyone-in-the-world in strides, is immediately complimented as “humble” and “human” by everyone she meets, and is also apparently just the greatest tactician in the world! This is at least partially the fault of a vision messied by corporate; the director of the game noting in interview that Nintendo asked them to tone down the worldliness of toothpaste girl. Where’s the censorship controversy about that, huh, gamers???
I’ve seen this plot pitched as a sugary saturday morning cartoon romp, but it sorta just lacks the humanity for me to see it as sincere - a key trait to loving that style. That’s not even to mention the even more obvious contrast: how this plot is driven by tragedy without moments of relief. It’s an e10+ war game, but it’s still a war game - we’re out here playing tactics ogremon red and blue version.
But…I know and you know that this sort of analysis isn’t going to get us closer to understanding why people like these games. Talk to any Fire Emblem fan–and don’t grit your teeth too hard thinking about that, I did it for you–and they’ll tell you they like these games for literally one thing.
It’s the gameplay.
The gameplay is alright, I played on hard classic and had a good time with it. The real standout here is Break: a new system where if you win the weapon triangle RPS, you knock your opponent’s weapon out of their hands until you hit them again, or your turn ends. Making it easier to play your turn damageless enables this game’s goals as being a more aggressive Fire Emblem; encouraging you to stand your ground and make confident offensive plays, so you can wade through the onslaught of enemies. There are also secondary roles tied to classes; grounded offense units have Backup, the ability to join other teammate’s attacks, for example. Armored units are the real winners here, they’re given an immunity to break, which makes them the most interesting to pilot they’ve been in years. The cherry on top here are the Emblems, which exist on the same wavelength of Pop game design as supers in a fighting game. They’re all flashy comeback mechanics that give you buttons that are fun to click and make the good numbers happen, but I also love how they’re very flexible if you use them to prop up a unit’s flaws, or play to one's strengths. I like how they their big fuck-off buttons don’t necessarily feel congruous with each other either; they’re like giant puzzle pieces that you have to attach a million microscopic ones onto to complete the picture. The way that Emblems can flexibly be moved between units makes this the most prep-centric Fire Emblem I’ve played!!! yes i love nerd shit :)
But for all of this to work, the map design’s gotta be strong. And it does start rock solid, lots of well placed secondary objectives like running thieves to keep you on pace. But Emblems, for all I like about them, definitely ripple out negatively into the game’s balance - this game mostly runs on “defeat the boss” win conditions, so every boss needs to have multiple health bars to counter Emblems. It made me feel like a badass to kill them in a single turn the first time I did it, but when I realized the map design heavily enables this playstyle, it started stagnating pretty quick. That’s when Chapter 17 rolls around, where you face down six bosses on a single map, with knights and dragons creeping in between. Not only that, but one of those bosses was a huge knowledge check for me - being a mage knight with both massive defense and res made me unable to kill him in one turn, all while another boss was barreling for me. I had to carefully exploit break, and position my backups around him in a way that didn’t get them killed by a combination of the two bosses attacking me. It’s genuinely a series highlight chapter to me, so it’s a shame it doesn’t last; you spend the rest of the game fighting those same bosses in different, smaller orders. Not only does this fail to progress the challenge of how you play around bosses, it’s also just…lame. Significantly less cool. And the developer’s priorities were different from mine, because the last 4 chapters of the game instead introduce stage hazards that border on being gag levels at times.
While playing this game, I ended up thinking “maybe if I’m having this little fun with a Fire Emblem, it’s time to graduate to maddening” quite a bit, but then I ran into another problem
…This is the most prep heavy Fire Emblem
Once you’re finished with a map, go ahead and run around its overworld for a few minutes picking up items. Then load into Somniel–the game’s Monastery–and play a bunch of minigames to activate surprisingly noticeable temporary stat upgrades for the next mission. Lastly, remember to read those 650+ supports (that’s over twice as many as Three Houses!), and 1300+ bond conversations. While the Monastery system and how it clashes with the replayability of Three Houses is definitely worth critique, and on paper, Somniel does sound better–being entirely optional and not attached to a calendar–it’s easy to see why Somniel misses the point of Monastery. Simply put, every decision I make trickling down from a bigger macro decision made it at least feel like I was playing a video game while I was in the Monastery, and Somniel feels like I’m doing mobile game dailies. It’d be a lie to pretend hard classic was difficult enough to require those temporary buffs, but I can only imagine the looming frustration of losing in Maddening, and thinking “I should’ve played that fucking fishing minigame”... That isn’t even commenting on some minor issues, such as how Emblem customization is managed from 2 rooms in Somniel that have a 10 second loading screen between each other, making me wish the whole place was just a menu. I only started enjoying the game at all when I started doing some self care; choosing to not interact with a lot of its frustrating mechanics, but… if I’m playing this for the gameplay, and even the gameplay loop is awkward, what am I even left with?
The combat.
The combat is alright, I played it on hard mode classic, and had a good time with it. But like, dude. DUDE!! Every time I read someone call this game a “return to form”, I feel like I have temporal insanity!!!! This game’s idea of fun is herding your sheep, rolling for gacha pulls, and giving your fav 11 year old a wedding ring!!!!
I could probably pump out a graphic like this:
PRESENTATION: 60
STORY: 30
GAMEPLAY: 65
OVERALL: 51.666666666667
but it’d be a disservice both to understanding why people like this game, and why I don’t like it. Fans of this game have gracefully chosen to appreciate it for the best parts of its vision, shielding it out of what I can only assume to be genuine empathy, which kinda owns. But when I put it down, it felt like this game’s loop demands your immersion into its world, and trying to play it the way I did is something it rejects.
These fuckin’ Fire Emblem fans, dude, I watch them perfectly cleaning the dirt off a burger they pulled out of a dumpster, and I try to mirror them and just get stale ketchup all over my hands.
…So. Is Engage worth playing? I probably won’t have the most time-withstanding take on the game, but I’ll tell you what I know for sure
you should probably not buy the new nintendo game just to be in on the conversation with your friends
you’re thinking of “getting into fire emblem” and you haven’t even cleaned ur room today??? say it aint sooooo 😱😱😱😱
ikissgirls
1 year ago