Fire Emblem: Engage is the best Fire Emblem game in years. At least since Radiant Dawn was released for Wii in 2007. If you prefer a tactical strategy focused on “transporting” soldiers and sharing saunas, you might disagree.
And what do you know? it is perfectly acceptable. It is documented that he was on the way until Fire Emblem reawakened in his 3DS awakening. The focus on the social aspect of the game has created a whole new fan base and brought the franchise to life. It was necessary, but felt a little overdone in 2019’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses. For my taste, both its story and gameplay were cut too heavily by repetitive and mostly irrelevant school activities.
Fire Emblem: Engage is not a perfect 180. Let’s call it 165. Your feelings for Engage are won on the Battle Grid. With me they won.
That’s a good thing, because the story isn’t great. Fel The character Arya awakens from her 1,000-year slumber when her dragon seal is broken (long slumbers are always divisible by her 10, like microwave cooking time). Alear is a Divine Dragon, and she thinks the Fell Dragons always want to achieve one thing. must be Why can’t they never break the seal and think, “Now I want to start scuba diving”?
On his way to the Fell Dragon, Alear faces a handful of charismatic villains and meets dozens of allies in 26 story-driven battles. The plot goes as expected, with few surprises along the way. However, this doesn’t mean the story doesn’t work. Not bad. Only sparse. pushes you into battle. Now, that and finding an excuse to be able to “fight” a legendary hero from Fire Emblem’s past.
The main hook is that the Fell Dragon cannot be defeated by standard run-of-the-mill Elyos heroes. Alear must summon Emblem. This is done via rings that can be assigned to selected fighters. How and when you use your rings is a key part of the revamped gameplay. For example, should Ike’s abilities be used to completely overwhelm tank units, or to make up for weaker character shortcomings? Either way, you can’t rely on heroes all the time. They only activate for a few rounds and then need to be recharged. Thankfully, there are areas on the battlefield that speed up the recharging process.Many fans will remember Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE without masks due to its floating look and lack of total control.
With the DLC currently available, there are over 10 Emblems that can be assigned the unique skills needed to achieve victory, especially on Hard Mode and above. Rings can be exchanged before battle. The more characters use a particular emblem, the more skills and buffs they gain. Once you learn an emblem’s skill, you can inherit and keep that emblem even if you’re not using it. So even if the pairing doesn’t seem to make sense, it makes sense to pair with emblems to get certain skills.
Of course, those who are not engaged in emblems will not be left out in the cold. You can purchase character bond rings from the original game for each emblem through her gacha system that can be assigned to her party members. It doesn’t have any special skills or fancy animations, but it does offer some stat perks. And hey, it’s Nepheny!
This is mostly handled at a place called Somniel. This is a floating island where Arya and her companions can rest between battles. There are many things to do here, none of which are as invasive as those at her Three Houses school. However, it doesn’t help much. We are doing various activities to deepen friendship with everyone. There’s an exercise mini-game that provides minor stat boosts in combat. You can play some online girlfriend multiplayer games for various rewards. You can change clothes, tell the future, polish all your rings, swim, take a nap, and more. Of course you can also go fishing. Always with fishing.
This is mostly unnecessary, but at least it’s faster. A quick wrap of items and socializing takes about 10-15 minutes, so you’ll be right back in combat, whether it’s an experience item skirmish, a new emblem paralog, or actually progressing through the game. I completely gave up on minigames. This wouldn’t have been the case if it included something more useful, like Path of Radiance or a way to quickly level up characters like Radiant Dawn.
Goldmarie understands what I’m saying.
What I liked more was the post-combat segment where you could run around the battlefield to talk to teammates, pick up items, or adopt animals (of course, in Somniel’s case, each animal in the field had a specific item). After an intense battle, it felt soothing to explore the battlefield and talk to the combatants.. I’d love to see Base/Somniel pushed into these segments in future games.
Some elements of classic Fire Emblem are still (or returning) in Engage. Weapon triangles are back, but with the addition of a break system that can disarm enemies so they can’t counterattack subsequent attacks that round. You have the option of permadeath, but if someone dies you also have the option to set the clock back one by one, which makes permadeath pointless (not to mention that you can save the game at any point during the battle ). You may be able to recruit enemy soldiers by talking to them on the battlefield.
As for the battlefield, the graphics look like an enhanced version of layouts like Shadow Dragon or Path of Radiance. More importantly, it seems that more thought has been put into how maps control the flow of battle. Most of them, especially paralogs, are very smart and never repeat themselves. Unlike some recent Fire Emblem games, winning isn’t all about luring out a few enemies at once and slowly making your way to a boss.
That’s the key to the success of Fire Emblem Engage. The focus is on combat, not side stuff, and combat is explosive. Unfortunately, have you fallen too far behind to use Anna or any of the other characters?Fix it in your second or her third playthrough. After playing for the first time, I’ve always enjoyed playing FE games on higher difficulties with fully respected Permadeath. I haven’t been forced to do this since Shadow Dragon (despite the different houses in Three Houses), but I certainly will here.
If you disagree with me and prefer more socializing, that’s totally cool. But for us longtime fans, it’s nice to know that we don’t have to rely on entries from 15 years ago.
Well, unless we finally get the Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn remasters Nintendo gamers have been craving.
