Fire Emblem Engage

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1 (with some online elements)

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Review:

Fire Emblem Engage is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG released on Nintendo Switch in 2023. Positioned as something of a series tribute, Engage’s protagonists are able to use magical rings to summon the spiritual assistance of the heroes from prior games in the series, with these helper characters augmenting your own heroes’ abilities and granting special moves.

However, while Fire Emblem Engage is something of a celebration of the Fire Emblem series, I can’t help but feel like this is something smaller and less ambitious than the previous major entry in the mainline series, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Gone are the three concurrent plot lines. Gone is the intricate party management and “dating game” elements (you still have party management and character relationships, but this is more in line with prior entries in the Fire Emblem series). And I also feel like this game’s story is far more disposable generic fantasy fare than the epic multifaceted tale that Fire Emblem: Three Houses had. What’s worse, the use of the series’ classic heroes somehow manages to feel more “fanservicey” here than what we saw in Fire Emblem Warriors, and that was a non-canon game designed specifically for fan-service!

In one area at least, Fire Emblem Engage is definitely an improvement over Three Houses – the visuals in this game are markedly better, while maintaining the same basic style. It’s still nothing I would describe as impressive, but Fire Emblem Engage’s 3D visuals and pleasant-looking, colorful, and feature some really well-designed anime-style 3D characters with detailed character models with some subtle cel-shading effects.

When it comes to the soundtrack, this game’s music is mostly pretty good, but the game’s Opening Theme, Emblem Engage! seems really out of place with the series’ tone and this game’s overall tone as well. The rest of the soundtrack here is a decent smattering of instrumental themes, but there’s nothing anywhere near as stirring or iconic as Fódlan Winds from Three Houses. Rounding out the sound is the voice acting, which is… not great. I suppose the voice actors are doing their best with the sub-par writing they’ve been given here, but overall I feel like the voice acting here is too cheesy to take this game’s characters and story all that seriously.

This brings us down to the gameplay, and thankfully this is one area where Fire Emblem Engage fares quite well. While it’s unfortunate to lose the intricate party-building elements we had in Three Houses, what remains is a focus on the Turn-Based Strategy-RPG battles, and those are as good as ever here, with Engage marking the return of the “weapon triangle” mechanic that was absent in Three Houses, as well as bringing back the (optional, here) permadeath mechanic that the series is known for, along with a limited ability to rewind moves to try different approaches in battle.

However, the highlight of Fire Emblem Engage is clearly the Engage mechanic itself, which allows you to equip your characters with the aforementioned rings to enhance their abilities with the spirits of Fire Emblem characters from previous games in the series. Not only does this give you the ability to enable brief bursts of power and special abilities at key points in a battle, but it also allows players to augment their characters with the assist heroes that they feel will most benefit that character.

As a result, the core Strategy-RPG gameplay of this game definitely feels like it has taken on an important new element here, though it’s not always clear the best way to make use of this new ability. And while I don’t feel like this makes up for the loss of so many major elements from Three Houses, the Engage system does at least give this game something unique that makes it well worth playing even if you’ve already thoroughly played through Three Houses.

In the end, I know I’ve spent a lot of this review comparing Fire Emblem Engage to Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but it’s kinda’ hard not to, since Three Houses was not only the last major entry in the series, but a huge, epic, ground-breaking one. By comparison, Engage definitely feels like a far less significant entry in the series, but it is still a top-notch Turn-Based Strategy-RPG, and one that has its own strong qualities that serve it well. If you’re a fan of this genre, this is definitely well worth getting, even if it isn’t quite the must-have game that Three Houses was.

tl;dr – Fire Emblem Engage is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG that loses a lot of the character interaction and party-building elements featured in the prior game, Three Houses. However, in its place we have the return of some important strategic elements in combat, as well as a new Engage mechanic that provides even more customization and expanded combat options, as well as the extremely fan-servicey use of classic characters from throughout the Fire Emblem series. This still feels like a far less significant game than Three Houses was, but it is nevertheless a solid experience well worth playing for any fan of the genre.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Strategy Game

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