Gotta Engage Them All!

The release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses was a marquee event for the long running series and served to take the notoriety of the franchise to the next level. So it goes without saying the next game in the series that would follow such a title would have a hard time living up to its lofty expectations.

To that end, when FE: Engage was first revealed, I had my concerns as the main selling point seemed to be with these rings that housed the spirits of other heroes from previous FE entries and to be frank, it looked more like a gimmick to me than anything else. Despite my concerns, as a long time fan of the series, I was eager to check out the game and see how it would stack up against Three Houses.

With our powers combined!

MSRP: $59.99
Price I’d Pay: $59.99
Platform: Switch
Voice Over: Japanese/English
Played: 50~ hours

Waking from a thousand year slumber, Alear is quickly thrust into a conflict against the Fell Dragon Sombron and his forces. In order to defeat the evil threat, Alear sets out to an unfamiliar world to collect the rings housing the emblems of mighty heroes to borrow their power.

In terms of pure plot and story, I found the one presented in Engage to be rather predictable and uninteresting. This was due not only because of the story beats themselves but with the characterization of the main cast which did not endear themselves to me very well despite many of them having great designs. This extended to the various extra scenes that can be viewed by raising the bond/support level between characters which was a bit odd since support conversations are usually one of my favorite elements of Fire Emblem but here, I found myself feeling bored and eager to skip through them. I am not entirely sure why I felt this way- perhaps it’s the writing of the conversations or how one-dimensional many of the characters came off but I can count all the characters I actually liked on one hand with room to spare which is a shame indeed.

As this is a linear story without any branching paths or alternative endings at all, it also lacked the replayability presented in Three Houses which is yet another point where it compares unfavorably to its predecessor.

The visual improvements, while not extreme, are noticeable.

However, not all is doom and gloom as the visual fidelity is a step up in quality, both in the details on the character models and more fluid animations during combat cutscenes.

Where the biggest improvements lie is actually in the gameplay and customization where Engage shines the brightest.

The aforementioned rings containing emblems of heroes not only allows for the units equipped with them to benefit from various passive stat bonuses and unique skills but also gives them the power to “Engage” and change forms for a few turns. In these ascended forms, the unit gets access to unique weapons and a variety of other passive skills, including a super move that can have varying effects from completely annihilating a group of enemies in one fell swoop or healing all allies in a wide area.

Engaging the right unit at the right time can change the course of a losing battle and I often spent hours moving the various available emblem rings around with the different characters to mix and match. In certain situations, I would use them to enhance the unit’s innate strength to the next level and in other cases, I would be picking them out to shore up some weaknesses to make certain units more balanced.

Each additional emblem offers more options in battle.

One example is equipping a ring that allowed my thief unit to create an area of fog to increase the avoidance stat even further to make sure they’re even more difficult to hit as they are very squishy. Another was equipping my flying unit with a defensive boost against bows so they could fly around the battlefield without having to worry about being one-shotted by a powerful bow wielding unit.

I could also level the bond level between the units and the emblems themselves to increase their performance and unlock the ability to purchase various skills using SP but I found the grind for SP to be prohibitively slow until after post game which is a shame as mixing and matching skills on top of rings/classes would have made for even greater customization. There is also the issue with how difficult it is to level up a character that’s been left behind as skirmishes all scaled with my level and story mission could not be repeated so once a character was behind in the levels by 5-7, they were often just benched for the rest of the playthrough which is a shame. Something like a “Party EXP” that I could use to bring up lower level characters would have been much appreciated.

Once I was actually on the battlefield, everything was pretty familiar but with the weapon triangle making a return, I had to be more careful in moving my units around as even if I did have the statistical advantage, the wrong weapon match up could often mean death for those caught out in the open. Luckily, there is an ability to turn back time to previous turns in case of some poor tactical choices or plain bad luck which made my playthrough on Classic (permadeath mode) much more palatable.

The combat encounters can last quite a while but there are various quality of life settings to hurry things along if desired.

Fire Emblem: Engage falters as a follow up to what I consider to be the best the series has to offer thus far. However, despite its failings with its lackluster story and characters, the deep customization and enjoyable combat makes it one well worth experiencing anyway.

Fun Tidbit: As each new emblem opens up new possibilities in strategy and party composition, it’s a shame that so many of them are locked behind paid DLC.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.