Review: Fire Emblem Engage
by Moises Espinal
After the success of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, fans of the franchise were eagerly anticipating the next mainline installment, expecting even bigger and better things. When Engage's trailer was released, showing an "interestingly" designed main character and the inclusion of previous main lords, many, including myself, were skeptical about the direction the game was looking to take. As a hardcore fan of the series who had enjoyed Three Houses and its DLC more than thoroughly, I knew I had to experience the latest developments of the franchise for myself no matter what. And while the game's apparent weaknesses prior to its launch were 100% its biggest shortcomings, I have to say, its strengths were a lot more pronounced as well. Although it's brutally rough in a couple of areas, Fire Emblem Engage is built on quite the sturdy foundation and that'll be explored here.
Enjoyability: 11/12
Playing this game for the first time on Maddening will be an absolute blast for any seasoned Fire Emblem players. The difficulty options understand the game well enough to actually feel fair at all levels. It's hard to miss with the Fire Emblem formula so the amount of fun players will have generally comes down to how the mechanics are implemented; Engage does not disappoint in this area. The Engage mechanic was amazing to work with since there were so many ways to mix-and-match them with the different characters to get slightly different bonuses. The game throughout its entirety felt perfectly challenging and like a true test of strategy. But once you start feeling really comfortable in the early-ish to mid-game, you start to get faced with some of the Emblem Hero paralogues which are definitely a rude awakening in terms of immediate difficulty in comparison to main story missions. That doesn't make them any less engaging, though. Just a slight bit more frustrating. The Somniel felt less alive than the monastery from Three Houses, but that was never a major factor in my enjoyment of that game anyway so I just did the few things that gave me bonuses and kept it moving. Those few things do stretch out to quite a lot of time between chapters, though, as any type of customization is done through Somniel. As fun as the actual maps are, getting to improve your characters ever so slightly between chapters is actually very satisfying in its own way so there's always something to keep your interest.
Gameplay: 11/12
The gameplay goes hand-in-hand with the general enjoyability because if you enjoy the core Fire Emblem gameplay, you'll enjoy this game. Rings are a welcome addition in terms of being able to customize your units further, even if getting specific ones you want can be very difficult due to the RNG nature of getting them (I never got Olwen's Dire Thunder). Inheriting skills is also the best it has ever been - even with the limited resources you get in Maddening. Even just being able to get Canto or Dual Assist on a select few characters completely changed the course of my experience. I could imagine that on lower difficulties the ability to get any skill you want is only made easier, making the experience more fun and diverse from person-to-person. And that's pretty much what Fire Emblem has completely designed itself around - being random while also giving players a say in their units' development. Each Emblem Ring having different effects based on the type of unit is another example of this allowed experimentation within the game. You can have 4 different effects with Celica's Warp Ragnarok, allowing for multiple strategies just based off the character you have it on. The only gameplay complaint that I had was that I felt that not all Emblem Rings were created equally in terms of on-field utility so some like Roy's felt vastly less impactful than others, but you would still need to carry them anyway in case of a need for boosted damage or a one-off Bond attack. Some rings slightly make up for this by allowing you to make interesting builds based around their personal skills, but it definitely requires a lot more effort whereas other rings are broken right out of the box.
Atmosphere: 9/12
Hmmmm, at the very least, the music is really good? The Fire Emblem franchise doesn't exactly have the most captivating environments, preferring to focus on map design (usually) and gameplay. Even then, the different locations tend to at least have some kind of distinct personality to them. In Engage, none of the kingdoms in the game have that strong of a presence to them other than maybe Solm. Most of the individual battle maps are fine; but once you explore them post-battle, seeing them in a 3D landscape gives off a feeling of emptiness. Even the best explorable towns near the sea feel relatively empty. No boats. Few NPCs. Effectively, no feelings of life aside from the random animals you can bring back with you. The mood of the game is also partly defined by its lack of urgency, but that's a sin of the newer Fire Emblem games that don't force players to go to the next story chapter immediately. Even in some of the more intense sections of the game's story, you have the liberty to do other paralogues or skirmishes and usually those will take priority just for the extra EXP or forging materials.
Design: 11/12
What I really appreciate about the game's design is how the game is broken up into two halves that really switch up everything you've come to know about the game. Every Emblem that you have grown accustomed to using is suddenly inaccesible at a pivotal moment that introduces one of the coolest back-to-back chapters ever in a Fire Emblem game. As mentioned earlier, paralogues opening up provides other key points of changing the game's pace so the game never feels stale with just the main story maps. They provide a higher level of difficulty and unique map design that actively encourages trying out different strategies. One thing that's definitely appreciated is that they don't go away even after progressing through the story because if I can't beat a map right away (which means I haven't beaten it after spending a dozen hours on it), I can progress the plot and excitedly wait until I can try the level again with a few power boosts as a difference. And although you'll see lots of the same win conditions among the main story maps, gameplay-wise, they do tend to ask for very different kinds of strategies due to the map layouts which is just really good for variety's sake. You will encounter a few chapters, though, that are relatively boring in terms of what they ask you to do.
Direction: 8/12
You give players a new unit/new mechanic to play with and most players are going to be motivated enough to continue playing in any Fire Emblem game. That's the beauty about Engage specifically. You keep getting new toys to play with because of the inclusion of Emblem Rings which means you're getting something of substance almost every chapter for a large stretch of the game. I will say that the character list is definitely not the strongest of the franchise so that by itself may not be as good of a reward for continued playing compared to the usual. The beauty of Fire Emblem is that you can play at your own pace and with any playstyle you want. You can turtle some hard maps and two-turn others and they are both equally valid strategies and can be as fun as one another when they are successful. Even when I was stuck in the endgame, the game always made me want to come back just thinking of what else I could do. Now, what never made me all that excited to keep playing was the plot. The plot leaves much to be desired and at no point did the dire stakes ever hit me until that mid-way point of the game. However, my enjoyment there was mostly because of those chapters' gameplay. There's a few stand-out moments here and there, but collectively it's not too strong. It's all easy to overlook because of the gameplay, but if a strong narrative is an absolute must for you...Engage isn't the best place to look.
