For our third “Unforgettable Gaming Levels” article, we’ll be looking at the fantastic Act Two climax of Fire Emblem Engage!
After suffering a horribly demoralizing defeat at the end of Act One, you’ve finally managed to scrounge up an assortment of Emblem Rings and joined hands with another nation for your army against the Fell Dragon Sombron. So, with heads held high, you return to the nation of Firene where your journey began…only to find its port town in flames.
The villains haven’t been resting on their laurels during your Act Two struggles, and now they’ve all come out in full-force to take you down. Their strength equals your own, and your evenly matched armies are set to battle in the blazing ruins of the once prosperous port town.
Cue the incredible and unique music track that only plays in this one level, and you’re ready to jump into what may be one of the hardest, longest, and most satisfying chapters of any Fire Emblem game!
(THE MUSIC IN QUESTION FOR THOSE CURIOUS)
Fire Emblem Engage is easily one of the most aggressive entries in the Fire Emblem franchise when it comes to how it wants you to ‘engage‘ (heh) with the gameplay mechanics. While you can certainly move slow and steady and still achieve success, you are really rewarded for pursuing the enemy on your Player Phase, with a lot of skills and weapon effects triggering based on enemies you kill via initiation.
A big part of this has to deal with the Engage system itself, wherein your chosen character forms a magical bond with the spirit of a past Fire Emblem hero in order to achieve a heightened, but brief, state of power. The Engage Status brings with it a plethora of amazing buffs and special moves, but it only lasts for a short amount of turns. The more aggressive you are in pushing forward, the more you can push the system to the limit before the time runs out and the ability to enter the Engage Status goes on a lengthy cooldown (of course, special glowing spots on the map expediently replenish your Engage bar if you stand on them).
What makes the Engage Status so extremely wonderful, though, is that the enemies can utilize it too! As long as an enemy commander is paired with an Emblem Ring (with their own creepy dark versions of beloved heroes), they can enter their own temporary state of being Engaged and charge toward your allies! And, just like with your own forces, enemy commanders who have become Engaged gain a whole plethora of frightening skills and deadly special moves they can dish out on you!
Alongside this, Fire Emblem Engage finally proved that a Fire Emblem game can have worthwhile boss battles outside of a final showdown! They did this through the ingenious implementation of Revival Stones, which is just a fancy way of saying ‘multiple health bars‘. Gone are the days of slowly fencing in the stationary armor general on a throne who can’t counter, or the big bad wyvern boss who dies to a single arrow strike. Now, bosses have anywhere from one to FOUR revival stones that need destroyed first, massively extending both the length and challenge of boss fights.
Now, in a normal level, what these means is that you and your team would fight your way through an army of baddies, and then have a pulse-pounding showdown against an Engaged enemy commander boss at the end. After some tough strategizing and a close call or two, you’d claim victory and be on your way back to your home base to celebrate.
Not so with “Chapter 17 ~ Serenity in Ruin“. No, in this level, you have to deal with SIX bosses in one map!
The entire enemy army has come out in full force for this battle of the ages. The corrupted and mind-controlled King Hyacinth, the Four Hounds of Sombron (Zephia, Mauvier, Marnie, and Griss), and the Fell Dragon’s own daughter and leader of the army, Veyle. And, of course, they are each packing their own Emblem Rings allowing them to enter the Engaged Status. Also, they’ve got an army of over 25 additional generic soldiers, plus a highly-damaging dragon mini-boss on their side!
The odds are not even remotely in your favor…but that’s basically what makes the level so fun!
Anyone who has played a Fire Emblem game before knows that a single level can take over an hour to complete, especially if you’re prioritizing both routing the enemy and also minimizing (or outright preventing) allied casualties. At the same time, a typical level doesn’t throw six entire boss battles at you, so it’s no surprise to realize that a playthrough of “Serenity in Ruin” on even the easiest difficulty can take over two hours. And yet, somehow, that time just flies!
It is immensely satisfying to play and complete this mission, from both a narrative and a gameplay perspective. Nowhere else in Fire Emblem Engage are you asked to deal with this much at once, and yet slowly but surely you piece together the proper strategy to cut through the enemies and start whittling their numbers down one by one. Plus, it feels really good to finally deal a decisive blow to the baddies after spending all of Act Two running scared, and you get to finally wipe the smirk off of Veyle’s unsettlingly creepy face!
The enemy advantage ins undeniable. Griss can teleport to a fellow enemy soldier for a surprise attack, and Marnie can light a large chunk of spaces on fire for a damaging debuff to your team. Mauvier can heal his allies if you don’t kill them fast enough, you are unable to attack Hyacinth with weapon triangle advantage thanks to his passive ability, and Zephia can move upwards of eleven spaces across the map at a moment’s notice! Then you’ve got Veyle in the back, who can attack four times at once, score crits with ease, and deals bonus damage to dragon units (of which your mission-critical protagonist happens to be)!
But, with each small victory, you slowly push back against the enemy tide and reclaim ground in this ruined port town, which serves as a somber but motivational callback to first visiting here right at the start of your journey. With each enemy general down, the daunting task of claiming victory in this battle feels just a little less impossible. It’s a nice jolt of hype each time you take down a boss and they lament their defeat before slinking away, tails between their legs. In the post-battle cutscene, you even reclaim some of your old Emblem Rings, and the possibility of ending the war for good seems to be in sight!
(Of course, Act Three has got some crazy plot twists still to come that really shake up how this journey ends, but that’s neither here nor there.)
To conclude, “Serenity in Ruin” is one of the most memorable missions in any Fire Emblem game, and yet another feather in the cap of Fire Emblem Engage, one of the best gaming releases of 2023!
The Contrarian Corner 