much to my chagrin i actually really like this gacha. first of all, the 3d models make it almost impossible for me to come back to love nikki since the clothes can adapt depending on what nikki is wearing, like a tshirt being tucked into shorts or a hair accessory changing places depending on the hairstyle, not to mention the ability to freely pose nikki. it's not perfect of course, but feels a lot more flexible than the 2d dress up games by that alone.

anyway, this is the only gacha game to really hold my attention for more than a year. it has the typical trappings of the genre, and is even scummier in that regard, with a battle pass and items that are exclusively behind a paywall and the vip system that awards goodies based on how much money you've spent (granted, love nikki had the last two as well, but at least the vip system in shining doesn't gatekeep f2ps from qol features lol). it sounds like an f2p nightmare (i have not and will never spend money on this game), but i found this game fairly generous with its giveaways of premium currency (i think it also helps that, since the actual stats of clothing barely matters after a certain point, you can summon on a banner purely based on aesthetic preferences and no pressure to keep up with some sort of meta). maybe i just have bad past experience but i don't feel as at the mercy to the dripfeed here as i did with other gachas ive played. i still won't recommend the game for this since it is still a gacha game that uses lots of predatory tactics to get players to spend money, but that's just customary for the genre

the actual dress up part is good. again, pretty flexible, and a lot of the clothes are really detailed and fun to play around with. the makeup is fun to customize as well, though obtaining makeup isn't as easy or cheap as clothes unfortunately. the music is also great, though i wish i could freely select which one to have playing in the wardrobe--only the music playing on your main screen (based on your background) will play, which is a bit of a shame.

this used to be my all time favorite game, and while it has its charms, it definitely feels hard to recommend now that the sequel exists, which improves on most of the common sore points this game has.
i ended up writing more than anticipated, so the tl;dr is: the game is slow to start, but the gameplay picks up once you get more characters. the boss battles are the most fun due to the underdog glory you can get with them, even if they can be easy when you know how to break the game. the characters and their stories are the biggest flaw and what make progressing through the campaign a hard sell due to how repetitious they are and the lack of meaningful character interaction or story overlap. the graphics and soundtrack are aces. all in all... play the sequel lol it improves on a lot of things this game got right and struggled with.
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its main weaknesses are how the eight stories, the main draw of the game, coexist. they're all sort of isolated from each other, a consequence of the very open design of progression and it not expecting you to have certain/any party members with you, so during story beats your teammates all evaporate temporarily while the actual character in focus takes center stage and befriends completely different companions in their story. repeat for 4 chapters across 8 stories, and that's the whole campaign. it does not help that every chapter is structured in the exact same way, so this game can get tiring to binge if you're trying to stay invested in the story. i do like the cast, but didn't find a lot of their stories super interesting and a lot of them could be boiled down to some pretty stock RPG archetypes without much else going on. the way all eight stories are connected is very loosely hinted at through each story (some more than others) and the proper pieces are revealed in eight giant text dumps during the final dungeon, which is definitely anti-climactic....
(while the sequel still doesn't fully mend the issue with characters being mostly alone in their individual stories, i found that it improves on the characters/stories/character interaction/plot that connects everything together much more elegantly than this one, so if that part disappointed you in this game, but you're still willing to give it a shot, please consider the sequel!)

the gameplay is the best part as octopath's battle system has a lot of neat gimmicks that make it fun to strategize in, though it can also be really easy to break once you know the tricks. the combat is very slow to start, as your team will be very inflexible and weak with only one traveler, but it definitely picks up once you recruit the others and unlock secondary classes. the difficulty trends on the easier side, with a few bosses near the latter half of some characters' stories posing some actual challenge and the true final boss completely disrespecting your time and patience. in my opinion outside of prep for said true final boss, you never have to grind, which is a big plus in my books when it comes to jrpgs. the "recommended level" each chapter is assigned is nonsense, and i hate to see people write the game off as grindy because they can't meet these high level suggestions.
the bosses are the highlight of the experience and one of the reasons why i fell in love with it originally, as they're these massive threats that feel real good to triumph (especially if you go into them way under the recommended level, which i believe are intentionally high to make players feel good when they beat a boss earlier than the game seemingly expected). when you fail, you're moreso encouraged to work smarter not harder. so rather than bash your head in the wall trying to boost your parties levels, you can instead try reapproaching the battle with a different strategy or class setup for your team. or hell, if it's too much you can always just pause the story and do a different chapter, and then come back when you feel ready.

and lastly, the presentation is quite top-notch. i know the hd2d look is very overdone in this day and age, but i found it a pretty novel look for the game at the time it was released. and the music is simply incredible, from relaxing town themes to intense battle music that gets you energized to fight.

but as stated earlier, i think the sequel improved on both the best parts of this game and the parts it struggled in. that's not to say this game is totally worthless as i still found it an engaging enough rpg to play through front to back twice, and without it we would have never gotten the improved sequel. so yeah :]

currently on chapter 20, less than 10 chapters away from finishing, and i am really enjoying it so far. don't wanna be absolute right now since you can never be too sure if a game is going to dramatically nosedive in quality (or even get much better), but yeah from what i've seen so far, this is a keeper.
it's on the easy side, and it's pretty easy to juice up units to send to the wolves and delete half the map on enemy phase (though, perhaps in future playthroughs i'll seek higher difficulties). however, it feels cozy in a way. it has a lot of fundamental features you'd expect in a fire emblem without any crazy frills--just as solid of a fire emblem game as you can get.
the story isn't exactly a selling-point to me for fe at all, but i do like the story and especially the worldbuilding of this game. it does help you stay motivated to keep playing through the game more than usual once you get invested. ike is also a really cool protagonist.
the way the "base" is handled, or the place you go to in between battles, is something i wish would return in future fire emblems. namely, the "info" conversations between ike and other characters in the army, often relating to current events in the story. they differ from supports in that way, and i think these kinds of "filler" conversations help flesh out the fodder cast by having them weigh in on what's happening in the story rather than have their characterization isolated in select supports--a thing modern fire emblem kind of struggles with (plus, these are much easier to access than supports, so the cast is likely to leave a good impression through these in your first playthrough, whereas relying on supports for characterization means you have to hope you see "the right support" that actually expands the character).

its easiness and commitment to basic fe mechanics makes it pretty beginner friendly. definitely a great starter game for those new to fe--it's such a shame that this game is so hard to access nowadays without emulation (this game is almost 20 years old and no rerelease! wow!).

this game was released during that weird era before three houses where intelligent systems seemingly had zero confidence in anything fire emblem-related selling if it didn't involve their two golden geese on the 3ds + marth who gets a legacy pass in (which, given the state the series was in leading up to awakening, it's understandable, but still strange to look back in hindsight). as a result we're left with a rather bland playable roster that only covers 3 different games. two other characters can be unlocked outside of the story that represent two different games but it feels too little too late (also, i have heard that celica plays exactly like marth, which made me not want to bother unlocking her). more characters with different playstyles are available as dlc, which is also massively disappointing tbh
the gameplay is warriors-type gameplay with fire emblem elements, and it's perfectly alright in that front, complete with the repetition that comes with the genre
the story... well at the end of the day it's meant to just be a cute crossover, but there are some parts of the story that just recreate moments from the other games (like, there's a part where rowan falls off a very shallow cliff and the opening cutscene of awakening is recreated when chrom and lissa find him) and it's just..... so awkward, and dare i say it's a bit cringe. maybe some will get a kick out of that type of fanservice, but it was not doing it for me. would not recommend playing for the story lol
if you like warriors games and the cast of 3ds fire emblem you might get something out of this.

i loooove vocaloid a lot and the track list introduced me to a lot of great hits, and even some of the songs commissioned for the game are pretty good. the rhythm gameplay itself is decent, kind of basic but more than playable and even kind of fun
most unfortunately, it's a live service gacha game. i really don't care for any of the ocs, and the constantly rotating events and new songs being added kind of annoyed me with their frequency. this feels more like a game that you pick up when you feel like it rather than a daily commitment, and i guess i just disliked coming back to this game occasionally and having to catch up on several newly added songs that i felt obligated to play through twice on the two highest difficulties. and besides the rhythm game, there is REALLY not much else to do here, which makes it a pretty boring game after a few days of committed play. maaaaybe i'll come back to it another year, but idk

this game disappointed me because it is the only mobile game where i was actually invested in the story. i really loved seeing the world from octopath traveler expanded--i finished the stories up to master of all before retiring the game
even though i'd like to attempt picking it up again to see the rest of the stories, i am stopped by the fact that it's a gacha--a fairly scummy and very grindy gacha at that.
if i weren't so stubborn with reading story summaries outside of their original contexts, i'd just do that, but instead i'll just be grumbling about how cool this game could have been if it weren't a phone game
eight character battles were so cool too 😔

this is my favorite game ever. the travelers are more interesting as a whole than the previous game, and the ways all of their stories tie into the climactic final chapter feels more intentional and interesting. the music, like its predecessor, is simply incredible and one of my favorite video game osts of all time.
the combat, the original octopath's #1 strength, is pretty much unchanged. if it ain't broke don't fix it, and it was far from broken. the new latent power system adds an extra wrinkle in battle strategies without being overpowered or game-breaking, however there are some ways that you can trivialize battles (such as hired help).
the game is still not perfect of course. like the last game, the travelers don't interact with each other in the individual traveler stories outside of isolated travel banters that comment on events that were just watched. the crossed path stories are certainly nice, and there is an actual cutscene that depicts all eight of them interacting (plus a proper conclusion to their whole adventure!), but the other seven travelers' absence when playing through one storyline can get pretty distracting. so, if that aspect disappointed you in the original, the sequel might not be able to win you over. i also wish the difficulty was customizable. mainly because the game can get dummy easy once you figure out how to break it, which can be a bit of a shame, so i guess i would like a way in-game to make certain fights more difficult or encourage different strategies.
i could go on and on about about the good and the bad of this game, but that's all the important stuff. please play it if you love rpgs!! it's an amazing beautiful time!!!

this is three houses' polar opposite in that it succeeds in places 3H struggled with and vice versa. 3H's story, while by no means perfect, had a lot of ideas it wanted to explore and put in greater focus in its world building. engage's story reads more like fire emblem mad libs (probably fitting since it was an anniversary game originally) and has a very unambitious and unconvincing setting. 3H had some dull meandering sections in between some underwhelming maps while engage has fluff sections that can easily be skipped and some really fun maps and gameplay systems that make the experience both challenging and fun. you get the idea
i get why people might not find this game appealing because of its weak story, but as someone who definitely does not play for story, i really love engage. it's one of the most fun fire emblem games i've played. the emblem ring fanservice might seem strange at first, but they really are some cool macguffins that actually FEEL as valuable as they do in the story because of how much they can change the tide of battle. and plus, it's just cool to see some characters rendered in crispy HD.
the character designs can definitely be garish and bizarre (mika pikazo has a wonderful style, though it does clash with the expected Look of fe characters), and it's unfortunate that pretty much all characterization is shoved into supports (meaning, if you want to learn more about a character rather than their main gimmick, you just have to hope you encounter The Right Support). however, the presentation and animations during battle are second to none. the ways characters move when attacking or dodging (or even parrying depending on how much an attack was going to hit, which is a great detail) or doing a critical hit is super dynamic and full of personality. it reminds me of the gba battle animations everyone loves so much but done in 3d. i think that presentation, plus the uber saturated color palette, helps make the game have more staying power for me, which is something 3H's more subdued graphics and colors lacked (apologies for comparing 3H and engage when theyre so different, 3H and engage are just adjacent to each other in the game series lineup so i can't help myself).
all around, very good and fun! an fe game is something special when i feel compelled to replay it a bunch

a pretty easy fire emblem game, even if you don't do any grinding (in general, it's recommended that you don't do any grinding missions in fe unless you're in a pinch). perfectly solid and playable just like the rest of gba fe. i do like the character designs here a lot more, likely thanks to the painterly style of wada sachiko and a nice use of color. everyone has a slightly unique flavor to them without feeling samey or boring, which i felt like a lot of the elibe games' characters struggled with.

the main friend group is really charming and probably my favorite out of the big three persona games. i also really loved the overarching mystery--make sure you go in as blind as possible when playing. however i cannot stand the dungeon crawling, mainly because i hate how claustrophobic the hallways feel and the angle of the camera (i really hate feeling like something is behind me, and the intentionally eerie way the camera is placed just makes that fear worse). so unfortunately it's because of that that i cannot return to it like i can with other rpgs that have a different structure to their challenges. but it's still a really great game!

cute game. the style and graphics are great, not to mention the music. the combat is kind of a hard sell in my opinion and i can see why people might not stick to the game because of that. for one, it takes you a pretty long time for you to be able to capture monsters in this monster collecting rpg, so your starting team across multiple playthroughs is pretty samey until about an hour or two into the adventure (!). second, the combat feels kind slow, and once you gain more party members, it's more of a battle of making sure to keep them alive during boss encounters rather than fighting the actual boss, because i found that before you get a command to make everyone defend, none of your party members have any semblance of self-preservation.
i shelved the game during the final boss encounter due to another issue i have with the game. now, i might have missed this (but i feel like this should not be a thing that is missable), but i don't think there is a spell or item that lets you leave a dungeon. i'm at the end of the long ass final dungeon, lose because of the problems with the combat (the sluggish movement and speed of doing actions and suicidal teammates, felt more unfair than challenging), so i want to exit the dungeon to use all the money i got cutting through the dungeon to upgrade equipment and restock items, but i can't without manually going back through the dungeon and THEN doing it all over again. uh... yeah...
so, my plans to return and finish the game will be when i mentally prepare myself to do that, but i feel like it shouldn't be this way. unfortunate...
still, if it werent for stuff like that that makes playing the game kind of tedious, i'd love this game a lot more. i really like the story and characters and the monsters are super cute :,)

i wish i liked it as much as a lot of other people do. the game's visuals and character designs are top notch, hidari is just in a league of his own in terms of style and aesthetic. but man this is definitely not an fe game i'd come back to and it's mostly the maps. yes, they are pretty directly lifted from the original gaiden, but that's the main hindrance. i recall them being really big and open with your units not having a lot of movement to traverse through it. combined with the more antiquated and unconventional mechanics (which are by no means a bad thing, i like spell lists and such), the gameplay doesn't really meet the gold standard its art style has set.
also kind of unfortunate that a lot of female characters get damsel'd in some point of the story. faye has such a cute design but damn it feels like her only personality trait is liking alm. her support conversation with silque was kind of painful ngl.
again, pretty game, but there are definitely better games to turn to in the series.