Another take on Fire Emblem Engage: some spoiler-free thoughts

Fire Emblem Engage released on January 20, 2023, and it took me a month of going back and forth from it to fully complete it. With my final playtime clocking in at around 55 hours, I have some thoughts I would like to express. Please note that while this write-up is to compile my thoughts on the game now that I have finished it, it will still remain spoiler-free for the benefit of those yet to beat it.

Without further ado, this is my take on Fire Emblem Engage.

Three Houses vs Engage – something for everyone at this point

There are a few points of contention I want to address about the game immediately. The title’s producer, Genki Yokota, noted how games with branching paths might be too overwhelming for some players, so the team decided to focus on a linear storyline this time around.

It goes without saying that this is at a complete contrast with Three Houses, a game I still have yet to finish all paths in, but one I already have over 250 hours in. The reason for this design change was to make a simpler storyline, resulting in it being much more accessible for newcomers.

The decision to use past heroes from the long-running series as the Emblem Ring mechanic came about when discussing the past installments’ marriage system, and how to integrate such a system in a more casual fashion that would also allow for experimentation. This is where replay value comes into play for Fire Emblem Engage.

Regarding both points, I find it interesting that Fire Emblem Engage manages to bring together many elements that both newer and veteran Fire Emblem fans will enjoy. This includes but is not limited to the map traversing, the home/hub world, the use of the classic weapon triangle and the ever-popular support conversations.

There is something every fan of the series can appreciate here, and that’s no surprise when the game itself is an anniversary title for the series, despite COVID pushing the game back from its originally intended release date.

It also remains pretty entertaining that the Emblem Ring mechanic is basically the series’ take on JoJo stands. That’s something that will always remain brilliant.

Quantity over quality in every way

Fire Emblem Engage tries to juggle a lot of elements – too many if you ask me. The Somniel as a home world is more refined, with less necessary activities players have to commit to doing each and every visit. These activities are optional and quite a contrast from the overwhelming amount available in Three Houses’ Monarchy. But the Somniel is much more disappointing, for a number of reasons.

• The fishing game is useless when you adopt just one cat, who will drop fish after each and every battle.
• I completely forgot about the Somniel pet’s existence, since it is so out of sight on the map. It remained a feature I never even wanted or needed to interact with.
• The same issue applies for the literally unexplained Tower of Trials and Relay Tickets, also hidden as a feature at the very bottom of the Somniel map.
• Horse manure being the main gift option you will end up holding onto is funny once, useless in the long term.
• The fortune teller feature is super-unnecessary. I would have rather seen it linked to how the game’s post-credits scene plays out, exploring the lives your allies and units lead after the events of the game. It could have even gone further in hinting at which characters could get paired up together, but that was completely omitted from the game anyway.
• Bond Ring characters function too much like a gacha game. It’s off-putting and completely unnecessary, especially at the late-game stage when you have all the Emblem Rings compiled.

My biggest gripe is with the sheer amount of support conversations the game contains. It could not be any more obvious that it is a case of quantity over quality for this aspect alone. Director Tsutomu Tei said there are about 1,300 conversations involving just the Bond Ring characters.

I ended up completely ignoring the conversations, since they left far too much to be desired. They are monotonous, repetitive and lacking in depth. They should have been scrapped, as they do little to honour past icons of the series; a simple resource requirement could have instead been used to unlock higher bond levels instead of this tedious progression system.

Story woes, combat highs and a bit of disappointment trickled in here and there

With regard to how frequently Engage’s story has come under fire, I can understand why. Its story beats are way too samey across the game, with an overarching narrative continuously looping. It usually consists of Alear meeting a new royal character to obtain more Emblem Rings, and the action calls for the Royals’ parents becoming hostages and needing Alear and company to rescue them.

Even when all the Ring characters are brought together, certain key characters tend to come and go far too often. For the sake of not going into any spoilers, I won’t say any more on that for now.

While a select few characters can range from being likeable to downright lovable, the default tends to be one-dimensional characters you will feel mostly indifferent towards. That said, I have genuinely lost sleep over Diamant and Alcryst, both of whom had just a smidge more going for them narrative-wise over everyone else, striking my emotional core with their significance to the plotline. It doesn’t hurt that Alcryst is just male Bernadetta, and Diamant is voiced by Junichi Suwabe.

While there are some characters that I was immediately drawn to for their character design alone, and some who had notably deeper conversation chains compared to the rest of the cast, nowhere in this story does the narrative manage to get as good of a balancing as, let’s say, Azure Moon’s perfect interweaving of all its core characters. Even the most minor unit in that Three Houses’ House had some level of substance to their involvement with the events of the route path, making for arguably the best route in the game.

In the end, Fire Emblem Engage’s story ends up playing out as a poor man’s Fire Emblem Awakening. But that’s enough about how poor its story is, have you seen its gameplay? It really is incredible. It’s challenging, maps have more requirements to complete this time round, and the terrains and overall level design are far and away superior over Three Houses.

Design-wise it’s even had a boost in presentation style – all unit types and our very own characters are animated in their portraits, the “optimize all” button is a godsend for even swifter battle deployment, and loading screens come with cute retro-styled units running across them — but only if you have them recruited and they are in your active army frontline.

I really did enjoy many of the game’s quality of life changes that improve staple aspects of the series. Firstly, the player character Alear is fully voiced here, making them feel much more relatable and appealing for a nice change. The attention to detail during mid-battle gameplay has numerous improvements. Environments actually get destroyed whenever an attack lands on both foes and allies, the terrains allies stand or float over are now accurately represented during the fight, and the Engage abilities are never a bore to use.

You use them sporadically, and the mechanic is very customisable, allowing you to shape your units exactly as you would like. The ability to inherit skills was an especially exciting function to play around with. Not to mention the Break and Smash mechanic being especially fun, both to pull off and fight against.

The animations are gorgeous all around. It’s especially lovely to see so many familiar faces from the series as a whole in HD. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for the soundtrack, which is rather lacklustre. Fire Emblem Engage’s music is surprisingly unimpactful — a strange thing to say for a series whose music has often come in for high praise.

That’s a wrap

There’s a lot more I could say about Fire Emblem Engage, but much of it would be me echoing Trent from hereon, but I am in full agreement on just saying “it could have been much better”.

With half of the Expansion Pass now being available, with the first pack obtainable as soon as the game dropped, it’s a shame to see Fire Emblem Engage being yet another game leaning on DLC for long-term engagement. In my opinion, it’s not a great look, and doesn’t give me enough reason to go back to the game.

I should say thanks to Fire Emblem Engage for gifting us with the Four Hounds though – they are easily my favourite part of the game.

Experience it for yourself exclusively on the Nintendo Switch.

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