Game Review: Fire Emblem: Engage

 A real change of pace from the previous iteration of the series, and lacking some of the depth of plot and themes, but a fun game nonetheless.

In my opinion, every game needs a dating sim/romance component and a fishing minigame. Fire Emblem: Engage technically has both of these things. Alas, this is not enough a perfect game to make.

For some context, I came into Fire Emblem via Three Houses, and have since played Three Hopes, Engage and about half of Awakening. I am not deeply immersed in the lore, the vibe and the general themes of these games, and am mainly coming into as someone who loved Three Houses.

And... it's not as good a game as Three Houses.

I'll go onto the positives (of which there are plenty) in a moment, but I'm going to start by focussing on how different these two games are, because it is such an interesting contrast for me. Three Houses was intensely replayable, complex, political and deep, and a critical part of all of that, in my opinion, is that much of the tension, the drama and the conflict embedded in the game is prompted, enacted or realised by the human participants. Yes there are magic dragons, of course there are, but the problems you're trying to solve have very human causes. More than anything else, it's a game about a focussed geopolitical situation, in which you are closely involved with much of the power players in the disputes, and can take a role in guiding the situation as it develops. You have a hand in shaping the growth of the nobility of three countries in conflict, and a significant role in how that conflict plays out over the span of years. And this is the sort of very human drama I absolutely adore. Adri goes into more detail about some of what makes Three Houses great here, so I won't bang on about it, but suffice it to say, I found it weighty, thoughtful and complex, as well as a fun opportunity to go hit bad guys with swords.

Enter Fire Emblem: Engage, a very different beast. The conflict here is much more on a grand, mythical scale. You have much fewer choices, your backstory is intense from the get-go and you're pretty much instantly surrounded by people who agree with each other and are very on board with your dramatic, world-saving mission. The Fell Dragon - clue as to his good/evil alignment very much in the name - is the big bad introduced from the very beginning, and your protagonist is set on the path to defeating him instantly. Yes, you visit the countries of the new world you're embedded in, and yes, they have politics, but it is all very solvable in the way of any magical destined protagonist - you are literally holy to many of them, so of course they join your quest without qualms. And this is the heart of my problem with the game. There is very little in the way of human drama, the meaty, substantial stuff that makes me want to spam character interactions to unlock more of their support conversations. Where many of the Three Houses characters have relatively interesting backstories that get teased out in their support conversations with the protagonist and their classmates, in Engage, almost all of them are rendered down to one or two traits, simple silhouettes to the richer oil paintings of the previous game. And so their dialogue, all their character moments, end up feeling samey because they simply do not have that much to talk about, and nothing to have drama about. One of your first friends in the game is Alfred, crown prince of Firene, and despite maxxing out many of his support conversations, I learnt very little about him beyond his enthusiasm for muscles, exercise and particularly running. This is a man destined to lead one of the four nations of the world (and incidentally, a hilariously weedy little boy to be so obsessed with his own henchness).

And this lack of real substance stretches out wider across the game too. Where in Three Houses you have a home base in a monastery, and its rhythms dictate your actions and how you spend your time between missions in a way that requires balance - because you can only do so many things - Engage gives you none of that necessity of choice. You can do everything. And it's optimal to do everything (because much of it gives you small combat boosts or other minor benefits). But because it lacks that necessary economy, and because there is so much of it to get through, it feels like make-work in a way that Three Houses rarely did. There were times when I sat down to play Engage and the entire session was working my way through the various activities of your home base, just so I was ready to go into an encounter in my next session, and that is so dull, even for someone like me, who is prone to completionism and grinding.

It simply lacks the solid core of meaning that I was expecting from having played Three Houses and that was really sad.

However, I said I would talk about positives, and there are definitely plenty of those too.

What is going on with this outfit? We may never know

I say this with fondness - this game is batshit. The lore, the visuals, the styling, the character art, it's all bonkers. It has the silly-o-meter turned way up to eleven at all times, for no discernible reason. Which, if you go in expecting a deep political game, is a disappointing thing. But once you begin to accept what this game actually is and is trying to be, once you let go of those expectations... well it's a heck of a lot of fun. I spent my teenage years watching more Naruto and Bleach than any human really ought to, and Fire Emblem: Engage appeals to the same part of my brain that adored those shows. They are ridiculous, overblown and often nonsensical, even by their own presented logics, but they are intensely, constantly fun and they know themselves to be as ridiculous as they are. If you're willing to let go of your need for logic, sense and... well the basic fundamentals of grown-up story telling, they can be such a joyous ride, and by the time I got to the end, that was what I found with Engage.

My best boy Boucheron

There are also a lot of characters, and so inevitably, there's someone for everyone to love. I thought I'd found my absolute favourite within the first couple of chapters, and then even in the late game, someone came along to challenge that. Are they going to enter the hall of fame of my favourite video game characters of all time? Of course not, Alistair Theirin still exists. And they're not complex enough for that. But again, if you're willing to buy into the silliness, there is something there for almost anyone to love.

It is also, critically, still a Fire Emblem game in the mechanics. I have almost nothing to critique there - maybe the class changing could have been made a little smoother - but much to praise, especially in the return of the attack triangle, and the use of the break mechanic. If you attack an opponent with a weapon that beats theirs in the triangle - sword beats axe beats lance beats sword - then you cause them to "break" and prevent them from counter-attacking, which adds a whole extra dimension to your battle planning.

The use of backup characters is also an interesting addition - fighters with this designation can join in another character's attack from nearby, making positioning around the battlefield even more critical. 

And then, lest you worry I forgot about it, there's the "engage" part. If you've seen any of the trailers for the game, you'll have seen the absolute nostalgia-fest that is a core part of the entire package - you can summon heroes from previous Fire Emblem games and use them to help in the battles in this one. The in-game logic behind why this happens is... scant at best... but let's not examine too closely, because the benefits it brings to gameplay are brilliant. Do you pair up an emblem and a fighter who have similar skills, making them easier to use and boosting what they're already best at over time? Or do you use the emblems to iron out the weaknesses in your fighters? Do they stay with one character, building a strong relationship for better gains as the game goes on? Or do they move around, sharing their skills more widely and building a much more flexible team? The options are many, and it has a clear impact on how and who you play in every encounter. For an uncertain player, the game guides you towards certain emblem/character pairings, but they are by no means mandatory, and a huge part of the fun is in discovering how different pairings match up - some characters cause emblems to use different attacks or weapons, depending on their own skillsets and build.

The Emblems are also just undeniably cool

The emblems also have an economy built into them - you can engage them only for a certain number of turns, and only use their special attack once in that time, before having to refresh either by engaging in combat without them, or positioning yourself around the map to pick up the one-use effect to refill the emblem charge. So again this gives more decision - do you save up their big attacks for the boss of each encounter, or use them to make the journey to get their quicker and smoother?

That being said, the emblems do come with their own part of the busywork of continuing the game, and I got very bored very quickly of having characters polish the emblems' rings (behave) between each encounter. But unlike many other portions of the game, the busywork here at least feels integrated, and you can see the benefits of it in fairly short order, even if it's a little dull in the process.

And lest you think one needs to have played all the previous games to enjoy the emblems, that's absolutely not true. I'm sure it adds an extra dimension to them and their conversations with the protagonist, but even as someone with a limited knowledge of Fire Emblem lore, I found them a fascinating part of the game, even beyond their gameplay benefits. The role they play in the story, both for the protagonist, their allies and their enemies, is what makes the game stand out for me, and it brought a real tactical consideration that might have otherwise been lacking.

And so that's the dichotomy of Engage. In pure gameplay terms, it's incredibly fun and tactical, with a lot of thinking and planning needed to pull off the battles to the player's satisfaction. And if you're willing to drop your expectations and go in taking the very silly anime bullshit storyline on its own terms, it's light, enjoyable and pacey, even if not the most substantial. But as soon as you put any real scrutiny on the plot or characters, they simply cannot bear the weight, and it is very very hard at times not to engage that scrutiny. There are parts of the plot, especially towards the end game, that stretch credulity, and some character decisions that are occasionally baffling. The epilogue particularly had me scratching my head somewhat. The romance aspect, already very much a small part of most Fire Emblem games, is particularly downplayed here, and I think this is a weakness of the game. I wasn't sure for most of it if S-rank supports were even going to happen, if there was a romance component, and so when it eventually showed up, it felt very tacked on. There is also the problem that, if you definitely want to romance someone, you need to spoil yourself by looking up guides before making the critical decisions, as there's a distinct lack of clarity or frankly sense in who is, and is not, available (which I found out to my grave disappointment - I have simply headcanoned the outcome I got to be Not True because it displeased me so).

So if you're in it for people, for meaningful plot and complex dynamics, this isn't the game for you. But if you want a silly romp that will make you feel like a twelve-year-old again, absolutely play it, and you'll have a grand old time in the process. And if you want it purely for the Fire Emblem gameplay and mechanics? You're in major luck, because those, they have absolutely nailed. For me personally, it gets a lower rating because I am above all a characters person, but don't let that put you off if you have other priorities.

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The Math

Highlights: Genuinely interesting mechanics both old and new, interesting new feature of the emblems, extremely fun

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

Reference: Fire Emblem: Engage [Nintendo, 2023]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea

Diverging Paths and Cinnamon Rolls: Adri plays Fire Emblem: Three Houses

My first playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the latest edition in the long-running tactical JRPG saga, involved what,  it seems to be agreed, is the most boring route of this complicated branching story. I started off following my gut instincts in the game's initial choices, and quickly realised I was on the most complicated moral pathway. Trying to keep myself as unspoiled as possible while also figuring out how to avoid locking myself into 40 hours of lawful evil misery, when faced with an (admittedly extremely signposted) choice to that effect, I took a deep breath and broke away from the character who asked me. When you do so, the game switches into a narrative that takes you away from the tried-and-tested Fire Emblem strategy of being the silent strategist to a protagonist Lord and into something else. The second act of Three Houses that I first experienced was emptier, but at the same time more centred on me and my remaining crew of misfits, who have now defected from their own homeland, and about how I fit into a mystery that I barely had a grip on even before the whole thing went pear-shaped. Battles between ancient gods, mysterious ageless allies and their hidden inhuman enemies, the rise and fall of magical dynasties supported by hereditary "crests", political schisms and massacres, and, of course, a cool magical sword? It's all a ride, and the sense that other events and tragedies were playing out with the rest of the students was enough to hook me in for another run. And then another, and, well, here we are at the beginning of route 4 and I still can't say I'm close to done with this fragmented adventure of an RPG.

Fire Emblem puts you in the shoes of a mysterious mercenary with little memory of their past, and apparently not a lot of perspective on how weird that is. After they and their father have a chance meeting with three young people being chased by mercenaries, Byleth (to give them their default name) ends up travelling back to Garreg Mach monastery, home of the head church of the continent of Fodlan and site of an officer's academy which trains elites from the continent's three rival political forces. As soon as Byleth arrives, they are inexplicably appointed to a vacant professor position and asked to choose one of the school's three classes - each linked to a different country - and to guide the endearingly unbalanced group of nobles and prodigies through their education. In combat terms, this plays out basically the same as the eight-six Fire Emblem games before it, though with some evolution in how the class system works to account for the fact that this is magic school, and your students can be whoever they want to be (as long as they want to be, uh, child soldiers). Between battles, you roam the grounds of the monastery talking to people, fishing (ugh), lining up endless matchmaking lunches, entering tournaments and going on (thankfully very chaste) sauna dates all so the kids can get better at fighting. And, unless you find yourself on the church route, you'll also grow closer to the leader of your house and aligning with their goals: Edelgard, the driven and talented heir to an ancient empire; Dimitri, orphaned prince seeking answers to the events which killed his family; and Claude, laidback schemey boi with a mysterious past. In the game's first act, a general camraderie exists between all the houses, but a war is brewing and by the time this erupts in the second act, things between Edelgard, Dimitri and Claude are rather different.

One of these characters is the most dangerous child in the game

The Lords might be the drivers of the biggest plot action, but beyond them there's a whole cast of kids with a myriad of personal disasters and dysfunctions going on, many of which initially stem from the ridiculous pressures of being nobles in a declining hereditary magic caste, and from the trauma of getting pulled into increasing conflict across the continent. Some of the biggest surprises were the characters whose initial personality traits were most annoying: who would have thought this would be the game that got me invested in the incurable skirt-chaser, or the lazy one who won't help out unless it aligns with their goals? In standard Fire Emblem fashion, you get to know your students through their opening up to Byleth and their fellow classmates via "supports", where standing next to each other in battle and going on the aforementioned lunch dates and sauna visits builds bonds between characters that make them better at killing things. Off the field, getting support levels unlocks support conversations, which can be anything from ridiculous slapstick to emotional confessions and even plot-enriching nuggets of information about the characters and their lives. This, my friends, is where the relentless shipping begins, and if you're actively pursuing support conversations then the endgame will become an outright parade of characters expressing their undying devotion to one another as they grow close and begin to make plans for their lives after the war.

Best girl? Maybe?

As I noted, the route I picked meant I knew very little about some of the characters, especially the house leaders: I had picked up on some of the inner motivations of Edelgard, but very little concrete information about why she made the alliances she did and what her end goal was for the Adrestian Empire. Dimitri and Claude remained near total unknowns, and the inner politics of their countries generally a mystery. Key issues in the first half of the game, such as the identity of the Death Knight who shows up as a terrifyingly overpowered enemy who only attacks if you attack him first, remained beyond my grasp. Instead, the game kept me hooked based on the the personalities and the growth of the students I had at my command, particularly those who had defected from their homeland and were now horrified at the prospect of going up against their old allies, as well as some of those I had pulled from their respective houses in gentler times and who now found themselves leaving their old leaders behind to follow me, the inexplicably charismatic former "professor". It was, in short, a route that let me care exclusively about the little guys on my team, and put their choices and trust at the heart of the decisions I took.

... oh Petra, sweetie

The fact that Fire Emblem all but requires multiple playthroughs to gain any hold on its events, and the diverging timelines that come with those playthroughs, means that Three Houses laughs in the face of canon interpretation, even on an individual level. The tiny text-based epilogues given to each recruited character at the end of the game are slight, but they speak to radically different futures for the characters involved, all depending on their closest support (I told you there was shipping) and the fate of their homelands. Characters you don't recruit all too often end up on the other side of a battlefield, and there's nothing you can do in that timeline but cut them down. In my second playthrough, with Dimitri's, I thought I'd made my peace with the deaths of many of the characters I'd been closest to in the first. But when Raphael, the big goofy brawler from Claude's house, ended up being an inevitable enemy in a battle I didn't even want to fight, I found myself desperately hoping for negotiation options that didn't exist.

The recruitment system of Three Houses really spotlights the fact that most of these kids could be fighting on either side with equal fervour, and while these are mechanics of convenience, they also add a sense of futility and frustration to the battles in the second half. As a die-hard Paragon in every game that will let me be one, Fire Emblem almost lets me win, but there's inevitably a catch somewhere. I can't save everyone - and the selective mysteries solved in each route mean that the endings I secure for characters in one playthrough are reversed as soon as I reload for another go. I know that, in one timeline, childhood friends turned war buddies Sylvain and Felix, kindred opera spirits Dorothea and Manuela, and cinnamon roll duo Annette and Mercedes all live happily ever after in queer romantic bliss; but next time around, Felix ends up wandering as a lone mercenary - only occasionally stopping in to Dorothea's opera to longingly lock eyes across a crowded hall - Annette and Sylvain marry alternative cinnamon rolls, and Manuela disappears into the mists of history because I never recruited her. In a third timeline, I marry Dorothea and I ascend as the fantasy Pope with my best girl at my side. In every timeline, these are my babies, and there's an emotional tug to pulling them out of one life path and onto another that only a game like this can really deliver.

The weight of relationships coupled with the near-requirement of exploring different options sets this apart from most emotionally weighty games I've played (because, sure, I could play Mass Effect trilogy as a Renegade and romance someone different, but... I won't) and the fact that its all delivered within the confines of a bunch of pretty well-trodden Fire Emblem tropes makes me wonder how many potential feelings I've been missing in other JRPG series over the years. Give or take a few more well-rounded queer options (unfortunately, a couple of the same-sex endings for a male Byleth involve outright queer-baiting, as do some of the final student relationships) the configuration of tropes in Fire Emblem are enough to make me want to go around forever to figure out all of its permutation - with one exception. I still haven't managed to steel myself for that maybe-lawful-evil run that I steered myself away from in the first place, and having now seen this path from all other angles, I'm not sure when I'll be able to steel myself for the final piece of the puzzle and carve a path through my former allies for the sake of game completion. If you want a video game that brings all of the good pain, and you're sympathetic to some of the archetypes of this type of series, Fire Emblem is an experience that gives a ton of great content (and ships!) to chew on

This is all going to be fine! Ahahaha!

Posted by: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.