My very first Fire Emblem game. And while it most definitely won't be my last, it most certainly should not have been my first.

Fire Emblem Engage is a complicated game in nearly every way. The gameplay (at least to me, a beginner) is incredibly layered and very heavy in the amount of things that must be taken into account with every move you make, and you are going to make a lot of moves. There is a novellas worth of text in this game just in the amount of tutorial windows that interrupt you in gameplay. To veterans of the series, this is likely no issue, but to a beginner, this is not only intimidating but also confusing. It is probably a good thing the game doesn't waste too much time easing the player into the mechanics simply because how long this series has been around as well as the sheer monotony of such a thing considering how deep the overall gameplay is here. But for the most part, when I can understand and decipher what is going on on my screen, Fire Emblem Engage is like nothing I have ever played before. It captures the stratagem of battle in glorious fashion that gives you that grand feeling of leading the charge of battle and making the necessary decisions to achieve victory. I'm afraid there's not much more I can say when it comes to the gameplay of this game because I'm so new to this sub-genre. Not only that, but I surmise this is quite the complex entry into this sub-genre as well so any insights of mine would be rather shallow.

But shallow (sans the gameplay) is what this game does best. Engage (as I will be further dubbing it) suffers from what I call character fatigue. It is just as it sounds. There are simply too many characters, few of which showcase anything worthwhile. There is the main cast of around six or seven people, and they are likely to stick around in your party for the majority of the game due to their prowess in battle so that's no issue, but the side cast is beyond exhaustive in the worst ways possible. I don't know the exact number but at the end of my playthrough I probably had some 30 characters in my roster. Only 12 of those were deployed per battle and I can't even name all of them let alone the outcasts that sat idle for my entire playthrough. And this is all not even counting the paralogues which I did none of. In some narratives this is not an issue. Take One Piece or Star Wars for example. These series have hundreds of characters all of which have their own niche fanbases and enough runtime to flesh them out. Engage has neither of these. Characters are introduced in a chapter, used in one battle, and then forgotten. That is the fate of more than half of the characters in this game. I'm not familiar with other Fire Emblem titles so I'm not sure if building a massive roster than meticulously selecting a party is a core mechanic, but even so, the characters should at least be interesting. Engage attempts this, but nearly every case falls short. Even the main character is a snore. The best way they can be described is business casual. Absolutely no personality whatsoever, and this goes for many of the side characters as well. They're either some twink in heavy armor or a silly waifu girl. There is very little in between. The emblems do have some intrigue to them, but if you are like me and have no fucking clue who they are at all because you didn't play all of the 20 some games of the franchise you're gonna be a little left out. The antagonist is also boring. Big evil guy who is big and evil and also he is big and evil. This wouldn't be so bad if the story were interesting but there's no luck there either.

The entire first half or so you just kind of run around and find people. That's about the gist of it. After you find enough people you lose a big fight and then you have to recuperate and become even stronger so you can beat the people you lost to and save the world etc etc. Not exactly engaging. I will say the last few chapters were sort of entertaining. Seeing Alear become an emblem was cool and Alear's speech about mending bonds at the end was actually rather well written, even though the narrative did next to nothing to service this theme. It's clear that Engage doesn't really have a story. I'm not sure if the series is known for thought out narratives but judging by the common conceptions about this game it is. And that makes this game all the more confusing to me. It certainly overstays it's welcome. For a game that doesn't take its narrative seriously it sure is loooooooooooooong. And I mean long. The game is on average a 40 hour venture and far too much of that is cringey dialogue and predictable storytelling that neglects it's (mostly) poorly designed characters and hardly managed to squeak out a serviceable ending.

I started playing this game probably a week after it came out, and only just finished it on the 10th. That's about a year and a half timespan. Once you put this game down, it is incredibly hard to pick back up again, especially after the 15th chapter or so. It got to the point for me where this game felt like a chore to play. I attribute this also to the dissolvent of the gameplay from my brain over time but this does not take away from the fact there is very little about this game that keeps you playing. Without an interesting story or characters to care about, Fire Emblem Engage slips away (at quite a brisk pace) from the mind of its player and the zeitgeist of gaming as a whole rather easily.

Fire Emblem Engage is nothing if not forgettable.