Name: Fire Emblem Engage
Item: Fire Emblem Engage
Rating: 7
Author: robiu013

**Fire Emblem Engage** is only the second (and perhaps last) mainline Fire Emblem game on the Switch. Not that the franchise has been slacking off on the console. They still gave us a fully translated port of the very first original Fire Emblem game from 1990 and 2 beat 'em up Warriors spin off games. But nevertheless with the line up of 3DS FE games just dropping every 2 years, I did find the release of Engage to be taking it's time quite a bit given Three Houses is a 2019 game.

Speaking of Three Houses, **does Engage dethrone it as the go-to FE Switch game?**

Well, for starters the graphics look pretty good. The campaign is a linear story spreading across 26 main chapters with a bunch of paralogues and side quests which make up for a 40+ hours game experience if you semi-rush it. The game is still a turn-based strategy where through positioning and your knowledge of the units' strenghts and weaknesses plow through the oponnent's army's lineup across a diverse selection of maps. The map design is absolutely an upgrade from the previous game which to a larger part depended more on unit-based strategies and rarely mixed things up too radically with other mechanics.

Meanwhile when you are not duking it out on the battlefield you can return to the Somniel - a floating fortress which much like the Gareg Mach in Three Houses allows for exploration, bonding with the individual soldiers, purchases of new equipment and upgrades for your units or just lets you look through your achievements you collected playing the game.

The gameplay distinguishes itself from it's predecessors with the "**Engage**" mechanic, which functions as a power up and mid-battle class change for the user. Story-wise the idea is that Emblem rings grant your characters their knowledge and skills by teaming up with them - each Emblem ring contains the spirit of a hero from a previous Fire Emblem game and grants the equipped character their fighting style and special abilites. Much like it's predecessors from all the way back to the 3DS era the game comes with multiple difficulty settings and allows for permadeath to be turned on or off.

But to to return to the big bolded question above: **No, it does not.**

To be honest in quite a number of ways I have been a little bit dissapointed with Engage. First of all Engage is a step back for the franchise to the 3DS era games in a handful of ways. As mentioned above there is only one linear story path. There is no calendar and the bonding activities and exploration in the Somniel are in many ways a dumbed down version of the Gareg Mach from the previous game. There is no calendar-based planning for the development of your units. The class system is reduced to only 2 tiers: the base class and the advanced one. Granted you can still use Second Seal items to reclass characters, if you deem another class more interesting or better suited for a character. But in order to do that you will at times have to pair them up with Emblem rings to increase their skill level with certain weapon types they might initially be incapable of using.

But I guess the biggest killer of enjoyment for me with this game is that **the story and characters just weren't doing it for me**. Heck, this is Fire Emblem at it's most anime yet... and don't get me wrong. I like anime. I like stuff like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Satoshi Kon, Monster, Death Note, Legend of the Galactic Heroes. But this is like the Fairy Tail, Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia kind of anime. No offense to fans of those, I like my fair share of fighting shounen too, it's just not what I want from my Fire Emblem games. The story is cookie cutter: white dragon good, purple dragon bad. Collect the 12 emblem rings to pummel purple dragon with them. There is a bunch of plot twists you can smell coming from miles away. The world building feels like a Super Mario hub world: you have some level 1-1 green fields and hills, a beach level, a snowy area and Bowser's castle with lava pits. I don't know, the whole world of Elios to me just feels like they wanted to turn their gacha mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes into a main game with the whole emblem ring mechanic serving as a selling point to bring back all the fan favorite characters from previous games. There's also some content that just makes me feel uncomfortable in the way some of my least favorite anime do. Like the wake up calls you get after going to bed in the Somniel (which is not a necessary mechanic by the way, just bonus content you can choose to ignore as I did). No thanks Fire Emblem, I have p\*rn for that. Thank you very much.

Anyway, I guess I'm being dramatic. Fire Emblem Engage is still a solid Fire Emblem game, that offers a lenghty campaign with pretty good map design to switch things up. If you like Fire Emblem or tactical RPGs there is still a good chance you will enjoy this. Personally, there's just a handful of things that rub me the wrong way with this game and I will probably never recommend this over Three Houses, but that still doesn't mean this not recommendable as "further reading".

Fire Emblem Engage is only the second (and perhaps last) mainline Fire Emblem game on the Switch. Not that the franchise has been slacking off on the console. They still gave us a fully translated port of the very first original Fire Emblem game from 1990 and 2 beat 'em up Warriors spin off games. But nevertheless with the line up of 3DS FE games just dropping every 2 years, I did find the release of Engage to be taking it's time quite a bit given Three Houses is a 2019 game.Speaking of Three Houses, does Engage dethrone it as the go-to FE Switch game?Well, for starters the graphics look pretty good. The campaign is a linear story spreading across 26 main chapters with a bunch of paralogues and side quests which make up for a 40+ hours game experience if you semi-rush it. The game is still a turn-based strategy where through positioning and your knowledge of the units' strenghts and weaknesses plow through the oponnent's army's lineup across a diverse selection of maps. The map design is absolutely an upgrade from the previous game which to a larger part depended more on unit-based strategies and rarely mixed things up too radically with other mechanics. Meanwhile when you are not duking it out on the battlefield you can return to the Somniel - a floating fortress which much like the Gareg Mach in Three Houses allows for exploration, bonding with the individual soldiers, purchases of new equipment and upgrades for your units or just lets you look through your achievements you collected playing the game. The gameplay distinguishes itself from it's predecessors with the "Engage" mechanic, which functions as a power up and mid-battle class change for the user. Story-wise the idea is that Emblem rings grant your characters their knowledge and skills by teaming up with them - each Emblem ring contains the spirit of a hero from a previous Fire Emblem game and grants the equipped character their fighting style and special abilites. Much like it's predecessors from all the way back to the 3DS era the game comes with multiple difficulty settings and allows for permadeath to be turned on or off.But to to return to the big bolded question above: No, it does not. To be honest in quite a number of ways I have been a little bit dissapointed with Engage. First of all Engage is a step back for the franchise to the 3DS era games in a handful of ways. As mentioned above there is only one linear story path. There is no calendar and the bonding activities and exploration in the Somniel are in many ways a dumbed down version of the Gareg Mach from the previous game. There is no calendar-based planning for the development of your units. The class system is reduced to only 2 tiers: the base class and the advanced one. Granted you can still use Second Seal items to reclass characters, if you deem another class more interesting or better suited for a character. But in order to do that you will at times have to pair them up with Emblem rings to increase their skill level with certain weapon types they might initially be incapable of using.But I guess the biggest killer of enjoyment for me with this game is that the story and characters just weren't doing it for me. Heck, this is Fire Emblem at it's most anime yet... and don't get me wrong. I like anime. I like stuff like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Satoshi Kon, Monster, Death Note, Legend of the Galactic Heroes. But this is like the Fairy Tail, Demon Slayer, My Hero Academia kind of anime. No offense to fans of those, I like my fair share of fighting shounen too, it's just not what I want from my Fire Emblem games. The story is cookie cutter: white dragon good, purple dragon bad. Collect the 12 emblem rings to pummel purple dragon with them. There is a bunch of plot twists you can smell coming from miles away. The world building feels like a Super Mario hub world: you have some level 1-1 green fields and hills, a beach level, a snowy area and Bowser's castle with lava pits. I don't know, the whole world of Elios to me just feels like they wanted to turn their gacha mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes into a main game with the whole emblem ring mechanic serving as a selling point to bring back all the fan favorite characters from previous games. There's also some content that just makes me feel uncomfortable in the way some of my least favorite anime do. Like the wake up calls you get after going to bed in the Somniel (which is not a necessary mechanic by the way, just bonus content you can choose to ignore as I did). No thanks Fire Emblem, I have p*rn for that. Thank you very much.Anyway, I guess I'm being dramatic. Fire Emblem Engage is still a solid Fire Emblem game, that offers a lenghty campaign with pretty good map design to switch things up. If you like Fire Emblem or tactical RPGs there is still a good chance you will enjoy this. Personally, there's just a handful of things that rub me the wrong way with this game and I will probably never recommend this over Three Houses, but that still doesn't mean this not recommendable as "further reading".

Fire Emblem Engage

Fire Emblem Engage

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robiu013

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