Fire Emblem Engage
An Emblem Ring Circus
Nintendo and Intelligent Systems’ Fire Emblem franchise predates most strategy roleplaying game franchises that have released in North America such as Shining Force, although the Big N didn’t release any entry of the franchise overseas until the Game Boy Advance era, and it became popular enough for most future installments to see light outside the Land of the Rising Sun. However, there were many elements that made the series inaccessible to casual gamers such as the above-average difficulty and the permanent death of units, although the franchise would be somewhat more forgiving towards mainstream gamers with the release of Fire Emblem Awakening for the Nintendo 3DS. While future installments would retain this optionality, many would attempt to bring the series in different directions such as Echoes, and Fire Emblem Engage on the Nintendo Switch would continue to deviate from the tactical RPG norm.
Engage focuses on a male or female protagonist with the default name Alear, an incarnation of the Divine Dragon in human form, and his allies, who retrieve Emblem Rings letting them use the powers of past Lords from the franchise eventually battle the Fell Dragon Sombron. While the narrative has reasonable flesh, its execution leaves much to desire, given the countless asinine scenes that plague the game alongside the multiverse aspect rarely making for good storytelling (with some exceptions), although as with prior entries, there is an epilogue showing the fates of each character after the player completes the game, and the potential for plot variations.
The translation doesn’t help. While coherent, grammatically sound, and free of spelling errors, the writing is simply abominable, with the translators seeming oblivious to the fact that Engage is supposed to be a fantasy game, and consequentially, many dialogue choices really out of place such as executing “pinkie swears”, “BAM!”, “Go us!”, and Nintendo of America’s apparent favorite acronym, “OK” instead of actually spelling out “okay”. The lip movement also often deviates from the dialogue during story scenes, and whenever the game gives simple voice clips, like when Alear talks to allies on Somniel, they rarely match with the actual dialogue. Overall, the localization is in many instances a new wooden spoon standard for the series.
Alear has a good sense of style and fashion, and is ready to kick some tail.
Those who have played prior entries will acquaint themselves easily to the game mechanics, starting with the choice of difficulty and ability to make permadeath optional, accommodating to newcomers or veterans. Like prior games, Engage adopts a chapter-based structure, with one story-based battle, maybe a second immediately following the first. At the outset of each battle, the player can select and arrange units on the battlefield in fixed positions, which can be somewhat critical particularly if certain portions of the player’s characters are far from one another or in different closed-off corridors.
Players can outfit their characters with different weapons and consumables, the latter of which can further be critical in certain situations, especially late-game. They can also outfit units either with Emblem Rings obtained throughout the storyline or lesser rings derived from them that provide small stat increases, and which they can meld on Somniel. Whenever units execute attacks in battle with Emblem Rings equipped, they gain bondage with them, unlocking passive abilities that they can acquire in the same chamber on the floating island using special points, and characters can utilize the rings' Engage mode for a few turns, providing increased stats, a special weapon, and a limit break-esque attack. There’s also a minor system where any unit can “polish” an overused Emblem Ring to gain some affinity as well.
Signature elements from previous Fire Emblems return such as the Weapon Triangle, where swords beat axes, which beat spears, which beat swords. There are also other Rochambeau exploitations such as arrows beating skyborne units, magic besting heavily armored opponents, close-ranged attacks being effective against bowmen, and new to Engage, fist attacks trumping offensive magicians, and knife wilders. Characters still level up through proportional experience gained from attacking enemies, naturally increasing their stats, and are promotable when they reach Level 10, though waiting until the max level of 20 is a better time to do so to maximize stats, since there are late-game areas that will really tax the player even when maxing base and promoted levels.
Which he certainly can.
Other returning elements include the “danger zone” players can bring up to determine the areas on a battlefield where enemies can move and attack their units, and the combat forecast to determine the outcome of a one-on-one engagement, which even shows who attacks and deals whatever damage when. Most supplemental leveling occurs in skirmish or training battles on the dot-connected overworld, the game luckily showing the recommended level for them and story battles. Players can also “rewind” segments of battles with a time crystal and restart a battle with experience retained if the enemy obliterates all their units, although this doesn’t retain money and items acquired before death.
Speaking of which, money can be very hard to come by throughout the game, which can be taxing considering most things such as weapons and items, donating to various regions of the game world to increase goodies acquired from battles and increase the rate of skirmishes, and refining weapons with ores commonly acquired, tend to be expensive, and an increased rate of monetary rewards would have been welcome. A frequent need to grind exists as well, even on the lowest difficulty settings, and as mentioned, even at maxed levels, endgame battles can be somewhat tedious, and perhaps would be absolute nightmares on advanced settings.
In the end, those who swear to the signature series gameplay will likely enjoy it, and plenty options exist to speed up battles significantly, but aspects such as the difficulty spikes and consequential grinding for both money and experience somewhat bring down the experience. Other issues include the strength/weakness system seeming not to make much difference in late-game battles, along with the endless enemy reinforcements that the computer often sends whenever the player advances far enough across a battlefield. Minor issues include the frequent intersection of the danger zone with other range indicators in battle, and overall, while the mechanics do their job, things don’t always fare smoothly.
The combat forecast can be really helpful at times.
Control has its issues as well. While the game’s structure is fairly linear and advancing to the next plot point is scarcely problematic (though I maybe had to look online to find the portal to the final battles), and there are options to outfit all selected units before battle with the best equipment and rings, the sequences in between battles, particularly when exploring post-battle areas and performing various tasks on Somniel, can be fairly tedious, needlessly padding the game in addition to the aforementioned grinding. Auto-dashing during these sequences is also absent, and post-battle, the game doesn’t indicate which characters present hold shards necessary for utilizing the ring system. In the end, the developers could have made some effort to increase Engage’s user-friendliness.
The sound is one of the better aspects of the game, except for the voicework, which is undoubtedly some of the absolute worst Nintendo of America has ever hemorrhaged. It’s painful to listen to, with lots of miscasting such as Etie, who looks like a young girl, sounding like a grown adult, and the voices of the non-heterosexual characters give meaning to the phrase “go woke, go broke”. Thankfully, players can turn the volume of the voices all the way down to avoid subjection to its myriad horrors. The music, luckily, is significantly better, aside from an awful opening English theme song (which has a much better rendition during the ending credits), although players can expect to hear the death music and its respective opening gong tons of times, so aurally, Engage doesn’t totally fall flat on its face.
The visuals largely do their job, with a nice cel-shaded style that shines most during the FMVs, with vibrant colors and pretty environments as well, though the hiccups of most three-dimensional graphics exist such as occasional slowdown and choppiness, popup of character models, jaggies, pixilation of environmental textures, and such.
I don't know; how do you sound like a grown woman?
Finally, the game is fairly long, if needlessly so, with an ending playtime in my experience between forty-eight to seventy-two hours, even with attack animations reduced to their simplest forms and pretty much giving up on most of the plot late-game by skipping most cutscenes, and while there exists some lasting appeal in the form of in-game Achievements, the different difficulties, and the slight potential for narrative variations, odds are many players won’t want to go through the game again, though series veterans would likely relish in doing so.
Ultimately, Fire Emblem Engage is more enjoyable and playable than series of entries of yore prior to Awakening, given the general good game mechanics and solid audiovisual presentation, but largely missteps in terms of its needless padding (which includes a combination of grinding and the gameplay between battles), terrible voice acting, and especially its horrible story and writing, and ends up one of the more average entries of a franchise that has largely been inconsistent in terms of quality, even with its contemporary installments. Though it does have safeguards against frustration for series newcomers such as the ability to retain experience after defeat, Engage ends up fumbling, and there are many other superior strategy RPGs within and without the series.
This review is based on a playthrough on Casual Mode and Normal difficulty on a copy borrowed by the reviewer.
Score Breakdown
The Good
The Bad
General good gameplay mechanics.Decent music.Nice cel-shaded visuals.
Feels needlessly padded..Awful voice acting.Horrid plot and writing.
The Bottom Line
One oef the more average series entries.
Platform
Nintendo Switch
Game Mechanics
6.0/10
Control
5.0/10
Story
4.0/10
Localization
2.5/10
Aurals
7.5/10
Visuals
7.0/10
Lasting Appeal
6.5/10
Difficulty
Variable
Playtime
48-72 Hours
Overall: 5.5/10