The most exciting Fire Emblem of the last decade.
The Fire Emblem Engage feels like it has sneaked up on me. It’s only been three months since the initial announcement until the game arrived, and I feel like I’ve learned very little in that time. By that I mean I went into the game relatively blindly, and I’m happy to say that I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. But we’re confident that this is the best feeling we’ve had about a new Fire Emblem game in the last decade.
The first thing I want to talk about, and also the most hesitant thing among people online, is Somniel: Engage’s Garreg Mach Monastery equivalent to Three Houses. In Three Houses, the classroom-focused Abbey gameplay lost its appeal long before the game ended, but it’s all too essential for the long-term growth of units, largely drab and monotonous. It was a tough task and felt a little too intrusive. Ignored. In contrast, Engage’s Somniel is relentlessly skippable while also being more explicit about its direct benefits. Rather than focusing on long-term growth that becomes apparent hours into the game, Somniel’s mini-games provide units with temporary bonuses that immediately affect their next battle. Participating in a mini-game will give you a minor stat buff for your next battle, and stopping by the kitchen for dinner will give you a special healing item that’s a bit better than your normal wounded. It’s a balancing act that makes side activities clearly worthwhile, but not so necessary that you feel like you’re missing out by ignoring them.
But Fire Emblem Engage isn’t just about alleviating the weaknesses of its predecessor. It also brings a lot of innovations to gameplay to give combat a new twist. The biggest change so far is a complete overhaul of the weapon triangle, which is back after a brief absence from Three Houses. The basic idea of the Weapon Triangle is still the same: swords against axes, axes against spears, and spears against swords, but the advantages have changed significantly. In past games, weapon advantage increased stats, making it easier to hit targets and deal extra damage. These stat changes have been completely replaced by a new stat effect called Break.
If you attack your opponent with advantage, a break will be applied and you will be able to completely prevent counterattacks until the next turn. This means that any unit, regardless of its strength, can attack affected targets without fear of reprisal, giving a greater incentive to act more aggressively in combat. is that sitting and waiting for enemies to come at you is pretty dangerous, as they have an equal chance to apply the break to your own units as well. Care must be taken not to put yourself in a position where the enemy can take advantage of you, as this can put you at a disadvantage.
And the enemy will definitely take advantage of you. The enemy AI this time around seems smarter than ever. Early in the game’s first combat, enemy units that were already right next to me were carefully repositioned to make sure they were standing on terrain where they could more easily evade my attacks before attacking me. I’ve never seen Fire Emblem’s AI this smart. Apart from smart positioning, the AI always tries to take advantage of my mistakes. Swarming units gave break first and always went out of their way to target units that could be killed that turn. Even with the generous rewind feature that comes standard with Fire Emblem, I wasn’t sure my strategy would work, and I often found myself starting over entire chapters. I played on Hard difficulty, so I can’t guarantee that the AI will be just as smart on Normal, but I was very happy to get the challenge I was looking for.
Engage also brings a lesser-known innovation with the introduction of Emblem rings. Emblem rings take the form of protagonists from previous Fire Emblem titles and act as anthropomorphic equipment that grants units stat boosts and additional skills. It fills different niches in combat, such as Micaiah of Dawn and Sigurd of Crusade Lineage, which gives every unit ridiculous mobility. Emblems always grant the user some passive abilities, but their strongest skills are only when you engage with them.
Engaging with an Emblem will fuse your unit with it, giving them fancy outfit changes and legendary weapons from the Emblem’s original game. Using Emblems is very powerful and often an ace to take down the most difficult enemies in the game. A balancing factor that keeps emblems from being too strong is the cooldown after the engagement expires. Once the Engage Meter is depleted, it can only be recharged by active combat (or healing for clerics). If you want to engage Emblems on a regular basis, you need to make sure your units are getting a healthy combat balance each turn. Also, the faster you want your unit’s meter to charge, the more danger you have to put it in. Overall, Fire Emblem Engage skews the risk/reward calculations it does in favor of aggressive tactics that fight opponents head-on.
In addition to the major emblems you can engage with, there are also minor emblem rings representing sub-characters from past games available through the gacha system. These Emblems cannot be engaged and offer much less advantage in combat, but they are worth enough to make sure you have at least one for each unit. Duplicate Minor Emblems can be merged to create higher rarity rings that provide higher stat boosts. Some S Tier Rings offer unique skills not available elsewhere. Unfortunately, in this pre-release era with no information about these rings online, it felt like I was taking a big gamble whenever I decided to merge some rings. It felt like a complete waste of time to spend so many resources to get an S tier ring and end up with a dud because there was no way to know if I had the skill. This should be a lot less frustrating if you can check the fanmade wiki to know which rings are worth investing in, but without that information you’re better off resorting to random gachapur whims.
The part of Engage that I think is most likely to let people down is its main story. The plot is pretty straight forward and spends very little time on world building. This is reminiscent of his old GBA games where writing was given little emphasis. Also, characters often act with little more motivation than simply following the script. If you enjoyed the fact that Three Houses has enough lore to fill a textbook, you probably won’t be pleased with how what was taken on feels.Engage’s character cast is one of my favorites in the entire franchise It’s a shame, honestly. The game’s supporting dialogue goes a long way in fleshing out the units from multiple angles, and almost every character has something more interesting going on than the single anime trope that defines them.
This is best seen in her recurring character Anna, who is reimagined as a child separated from her family. but she also struggles with anxiety about being separated from her family and often talks about how she resents being treated like a child. , but it’s used as a foundation for building more interesting characters instead of becoming whole characters like in previous games. So, the only characters I didn’t find something I loved were those who didn’t stay on the battlefield long enough to unlock the support dialogue.
There’s a lot more to say about Engage, but there’s a lot more we can’t cover in our limited preview. Right from the start of the game, I was completely engrossed in how much I was enjoying it and that energy has not abated. But for now, I’m more excited about Fire Emblem than I’ve been in a long time.
