It should come as no surprise by now to hear that I am a massive fan of the Fire Emblem series. I’m not exactly a full completionist of the series, as I’ve only played each of the installments released since Awakening on the 3DS in 2013, but I think my enthusiasm for the franchise is noteworthy enough that I can consider myself a solid fan of these fun, exciting, and often strange tactical SRPGs (strategy role-playing games).
So, I was, of course, hyped as heck when Fire Emblem Engage was announced last year. Another mainline Fire Emblem game for the Switch is only a few short months away. Gimme, gimme, gimme! My excitement and anticipation only rose as it quickly became clear that this new game would be diverged from some of the established concepts from the previous installment in the franchise, Fire Emblem Three Houses. For various reasons (some of which I’ll touch on in this article), Three Houses didn’t wow me, so I was eager for Engage to suck me right back into this world and gameplay system that ate up all my free time back in high school.
I pre-ordered the game, booted it up on day one, and was not disappointed in the slightest. In fact, it isn’t hyperbole to say that Fire Emblem Engage managed to even exceed my expectations.
The core idea of the game is a celebration of the Fire Emblem series, meant to coincide with the recent anniversary. As such, Engage doesn’t even attempt to hide its franchise influences, wearing the fanservice proudly. Giant generic dragon man trying to destroy the world? Check! Plucky heroes and unlikely nobility thrust into conflict to save the world? Check! Just about every other silly anime-esque cliché and trope you can imagine? Double check! I mean, they even squeeze in a legitimate late-game time travel plotline (though it’s actually shockingly subdued and fairly logical for a time-traveling plot beat).
On top of this, the main characters of every single past Fire Emblem return in the form of Emblem Rings, manifesting as ghostly but friendly specters that can bond (or, ahem, ENGAGE!) with your playable units to form strong fusion bonds with near-limitless potential. Then, you can even find additional support items engraved with traits from over a hundred memorable characters from across the series. And don’t even get me started on the cheeky nods and references to past events and games. Engage is stuffed to the gills with fanservice…
…which honestly makes it quite surprising that it is still the most new-player friendly Fire Emblem game in the series. Awakening was also a good start, but Engage brings with it a bevy of quality-of-life features and improvements that other installments lack. It also isn’t bogged down by throwing too many choices and purchase options at you like Fates, hours of slow tutorials and wordy dialogue scenes like Three Houses, or by just being a bad game like Echoes (I’m mostly kidding, please put the torches down).
Let’s get the clearest fact about Engage out of the way first. No other mainline Fire Emblem game is anywhere near as fun to play as this one, on a functional level. When it comes to gameplay and combat mechanics (obviously the bulk of a SRPG like Fire Emblem), Engage stands uncontested at the top. Every battle is breezy and exhilarating, managing to introduce so many new fun mechanics and ideas without losing sight of the tried-and-true formula. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be playing a mainline Fire Emblem game again, and especially one this addicting.
A lot of this game’s longevity and addictive gameplay loop comes from the staggering amount of customizability. Each of your units has base stats and special proficiencies, but they can still learn any class you choose. Every character can also bond with every Emblem Ring, thus learning an additional pool of skills and abilities. While this can sometimes be overwhelming, taking the time to master these systems will result in you forming a diverse, multi-talented team capable of taking down any foes thrown your way!
But what fun would it be to face down the hordes of evil without an eclectic band of heroes on your side to choose from. Thankfully, in typical Fire Emblem tradition, Engage brings a fresh pool of units for you to utilize, culminating in one of the wackiest and most diverse unit pools in the series.
The stylings of the characters in this game might not be for everyone, but I loved them. I came to love basically every single playable character in this game, and even the ones that I didn’t have space for on my main team. I was a big fan of trusty, reliable, and not particularly bright Prince Alfred. I loved tanking all incoming damage and retaliating with indomitable force with the stoic author Jade. S-Rank relationships are available to your playable character, so I ended up marrying the swordmaster Lapis, who grows potatoes on a small farm and fights bears in her free time. And my close friends know my favorite character is easily the precocious and excitable young steward Framme, who eagerly punches bandits, warlords, and giant demon dragons right in the face.
Support conversations are a big part of recent Fire Emblem games, and Engage does not disappoint. In fact, thanks to full voice acting and the wild and wacky personalities of many of the cast members, Engage might very well have the funniest and most memorable support conversations in the series. I liked the one where Goldmary and Etie argue over who gets the last bit of food at dinner, the one where Zelkov espouses in theatrical manner the splendor of Tylenol (no kidding, though obviously the brand name isn’t used), or the one where Alfred burns his tongue on hot curry and runs off screaming. Of course, there are also plenty of deep, thought-provoking, and even emotional support conversations to be found as well.
This isn’t even to touch on the Bond Conversations, which are an entirely separate mechanic. See, at certain levels of growth with a particular Emblem Ring, your chosen unit unlocks a short conversation. These are usually just two to four sentences long, but are still played out before you and fully voiced, and there are 3 scenes for each pairing. The mind-boggling part is realizing that all 35 playable units can bond with all 19 Emblem Rings. If you’re not one for numbers, that means that there are a whopping 5,320 lines of voiced dialogue to discover in these Bond Conversations, for you completionists out there. These scenes might be short, but there’s still funny, insightful, nd worth watching!
Actually, on that note, it might be time to talk about another of Engage‘s biggest strengths, which is its voice acting. Utilizing a smattering of industry professionals, and a large roster of voice actors with either minimal credits or no Fire Emblem experience, Engage manages to craft a memorable, entertaining, and consistently high-quality vocal performance across the board. The jokes land twice as hard, the quips and one-liners are twice as quotable, and the dramatic moments are twice as effective as they would’ve been in the hands of a less competent voice cast. This is one of my new favorite English game dubs, for sure.
And since we’re on the subject of audio quality, I can’t go a Contrarian Corner article without mentioning something’s soundtrack. Par for the course for this series, Engage has an excellent soundtrack full of incredible tunes and banging earworms. There’s hardly a dud track in the entire collection. I especially love how Engage puts extra emphasis on leitmotifs and central musical themes, creating unique soundscapes for different regions of the world and remixing them while inside of those regions. The main theme is also a bop.
My favorite tracks that I’d recommend checking out would probably be PREPARATIONS, TEAR STREAKED, and ENFORCER OF KNOWLEDGE.
Another frequently underrated area in which Engage deserves as much praise as possible is in regards to its animation quality. Whether that be the quaint little character animations during your free time between battles, or the utterly gorgeous fully-animated cutscenes that play in pivotal story moments, Engage does not slouch in this department. In particular, the flashy and evocative combat animations are crisp, fluid, and highly-detailed, sometimes feeling as if they were expertly choreographed straight from stylized motion capture. You won’t want to skip fight animations in this Fire Emblem game, I assure you.
Following in the vein of Fates, you have a home base that you return to after battle, in order to give you a breather between battles. The single best thing about your base, The Somniel, is that every single thing about it is quick, painless, and usually optional. Unlike a game like Three Houses, you won’t spend hours at a time during busywork. Even actively participating in the side activities (like fishing, wyvern riding, dog petting, strength training, etc.) only take thirty minutes at the absolute most. It strikes that perfect balance of being acceptable substantial without wasting your time or slowing the game’s pace to a crawl.
Alright, so we’ve gone around a few circles here talking about all of the game’s positives. A lot of the points I’ve mentioned above are pretty safe claims even the haters of this game would agree with. But, the number one aspect of this game that has come under fire and intense bellyaching online is the story…and I honestly just can’t agree with the loud vocal hate towards it.
Engage doesn’t even remotely attempt to hide what it’s trying to accomplish with its story. The plot is simple, straightforward, inspired by anime, and exceptionally earnest to the point of being slightly cheesy. It’s not trying to tell some grand and sweeping military epic filled with twists, turns, political intrigue, a million characters, worldbuilding deeper than the ocean trenches, and with enough answered questions to fill a hundred spinoffs. That’s not what Engage is trying to do. It’s telling a simple story, and it’s telling it very well.
It’d be one thing to prefer a more complex story, and thus dislike Engage‘s plot. However, as per usual internet ineptitude, this weirdly twisted idea has surfaced that a simple story is inherently a bad one, and a complex story is inherently a good one. There’s this discourse trying to argue that because a plot is straightforward and to the point, that it is somehow braindead filler for children. These people likewise argue that a story that is apparently “deep” and “complex” is suddenly the greatest gift the world of storytelling has ever seen.
Here’s the issue with that. In every imaginable universe, I would gladly take a simple story executed well, to a complex story executed poorly. This is, of course, exactly the situation Engage finds itself compared to the previous mainline entry in the series, Three Houses.
And, honestly, that’s where a surprising amount of my love for Engage comes from. Defying expectations, Engage does not double-down on the precepts established by Three Houses. Rather, it almost actively ignores them in favor of returning to a traditional style of presentation and storytelling that every pre-Three Houses game in the series utilized. In my eyes, this is only beneficial, but I’m not blind to the fact that I’m in the minority here.
See, Three Houses, to me, has a fundamental flaw with it’s worldbuilding, wherein the story often feels like it was written by someone who took a Fantasy Lit class in college and only slightly remembers what they learned. To be sure, Three Houses is bursting at the seams with the core fundamental of worldbuilding: Names. People have names, towns and cities and countries have names, ancient wars and forgotten relics have names, religious concepts and local legends have names. There’s no dearth of names in the world of Three Houses.
The trouble is that the worldbuilding effectively starts and stops there. Characters will make absolutely sure you know who their third uncle twice removed is…but why? What do I, as the player, get from knowing this? How does this flesh out the story? And, see, this wouldn’t be a problem on its own. Overzealous worldbuilding can be exhausting, but more power to the people who like that stuff. The issues is that Three Houses neglects its own gaping plot holes, unanswered questions, and leaps in logic, all in favor of expanding this bustling (but ultimately lacking) world.
Engage‘s story didn’t disappoint me. I knew what I was going into, and I got what the game promised to deliver to me.
Three Houses‘ story DID disappoint me. I thought I knew what I was going into, only to be delivered significantly less than what was promised. Did the game maybe promise too much? Probably, but that’s still the game’s fault.
All that aside, this is not a review of Three Houses. This is a review of Engage, so I’ll draw this article to a close.
Fire Emblem Engage is an incredible return to form for the Fire Emblem franchise, and I hope the series continues in this direction for years to come. There was hardly a single thing I didn’t enjoy in this fresh, familiar, and fun return to form. Whether you’re a longtime fan of the franchise, or have never even heard of Fire Emblem before and are interested in taking a peak at what you’ve been missing, Engage is a perfect place to start. You won’t regret this lengthy, exceptional journey!
9.5/10
But hey, that’s just my opinion!
The Contrarian Corner 