[NSW] Fire Emblem Engage

[briareos_kerensky]

Fire Emblem got a lot of attention lately, with Heroes driving a lot of profit on mobiles, and Three Houses getting favourable reviews from both fans and critics, leading to a decent action spin-off.
So, what do you do for the new console game? Turn the anime dial up to 11, of course.
This kinda reminds me of Xenoblade, that went from the serious look of Chronicles X to a more mainstream approach for Chronicles 2. I liked the anime-like look of XB2 because it fit well with the rest of the world, but here in Fire Emblem Engage, not so much. The character designer, Mika Pikazo, is an excellent artist, but its style is hard to translate to 3D graphics, and so a lot of his peculiar flare is lost in the game.

And even in the original art, I'm not particularly fond of how a lot of the characters look, starting from your avatar, with his (or her) red/blue hairs. Of course it's meant to recall the Switch's standard Joycon colours (at least at launch), but wouldn't it be cooler for hair colour to change based on which Joycons you had attached? Just don't show your avatar's face in pre-rendered cutscenes like Fates on the 3DS.

The story trails the art's turn to anime, and so far it's a very standard fare of the Shadow Dragon doing nasty stuff to the world and your avatar waking up after a thousand years sleep with much of their memory gone. Cue in early tragic event, glimpses of a dire past, and you have the story that feels taken from a generic, dime-in-a-dozen, fantasy anime that nowadays litter every season and I'd either just watch the first episode or skip entirely.
I guess at least it's not an isekai.

And then there's Marth. I personally hate Marth, I know he's the first FE lord, but he's also one of the blandest, and I think he makes every Fire Emblem he's in worse.

But why Marth would be there anyway? Well, the main gimmick in Engage is that party members can summon spirits of heroes from all over the FE mythos, and fuse with them for a temporary power-up. And I'll ditch Marth's summon at the first chance I get. I know Roy and Ike are present, so I'll gladly take them over blue prince here.

Aside from that, Engage makes some very welcome changes compared to Three Houses: weapons are not perishable (YES!), though some like healing staves seem to be; classes have once again been remixed; the weapon triangle comes back in full force; and it seems that microing the party outside battles is much less intensive.
After every battle you can freely explore the area to collect spoils, and I know there's a bit of base building, though I haven't unlocked it yet. Controls during these segments feel less floaty than Three Houses, and overall controlling your avatar feels more precise.

Battles haven't seem much rework, but now when you select a character, you move them directly, without moving the cursor and then issuing the move order. The old method still pops up if you insist in trying to cross an impassable tile. This change makes battles a tad faster, though I'm still getting completely used to it. Other than that, you've got the usual array of units like lancers, pegasus riders, archers, mages, and cavalry units (that unfortunately don't seem to get Canto); sort-of new is the monk, a class that uses staves to heal and bare hands to fight.

Technically the game looks much better than Three Houses, though you can still see some rough textures during talky scenes; I think part of the graphical engine comes from Breath Of The Wild, the grass looks very similar. Battle animations have been spruced up a little bit and while weapon fighters look the usual, barehand fighters got some incredibly dynamic animations, and so far they are the best among what you see during showdowns.

[briareos_kerensky]

I've been playing a bit more, not really bringing the story forward, but completing skirmishes for gold and paralogues for new characters.

One thing I've noticed is the interface is not as snappy as you'd think it'll be, esepcially in battles: it seems there's a split-second delay between button presses, and this led to many instances of moving characters one step farther or shorter than wanted. Maybe I'm imagining things or I just can't get around the new movement method, I don't know.
The last story chapter I've played introduced a new sub-type of weapons: there are heavy variants of swords/axes/lances (and there will probably be for bows and tomes too) that knock back units one tile, but cannot counter and even if you start the attack, the enemy strikes first. Didn't really see their usefulness in the battle they were introduced, I could simply kill opponents with normal weapons instead.
Same goes for daggers, used by thieves: they are low-power ranged weapons with the ability to inflict status ailments like poison, but poison itself is detrimental for you (as you need to carry units through a battle where you are at a numerical disadvantage), while you seek to outright kill enemies with attacks, and (so far) there are no maps where you have one/two units were you have to wittle down opponents at range. Posion could be good against units with high HPs but those also come with high defence and negate low-power weapons like bows and daggers entirely.

On Emblems, the magical rings that allow party member to merge with charactgers from previous Fire Emblems: Marth is the blandest of them all, with no particularly interesting strenghts; he gets three swords with different affinities, but every other Emblem I've gathered has some other feature that makes them interesting. Sigurd's allow to skewer multiple enemies in a line and dramatically increases movement range. Micaya's allow any user to use staves and can heal everyone on the map (but her HP drops to 1). Celica is an engine of destruction, as she can teleport near enemies and deliver a spell that so far has one-shot every enemy and boss I've tested it on; yes, you are teleporting a mage in the midst of an enemy group, but in a pinch (and you're playing the non-permadeath mode) it's an unbelievably strong ability.

As for maps, so far no particular standout. I like maps are better represented during fight cutscenes, though the camera at times screws up a bit if it's zooming in close to windmills or other complex structures.

The thing I'm starting to actively dislike are the characters. You avatar in male form is naive, whiny, weak-willed, and at times insufferable. I really preferred the avatars in previous games: they didn't had many lines and you could fill in the blanks.
Not that the rest of the cast is much better. Just met one character that at first was cool but then he jumped, entered a dogeza pose mid-air, and planted his forehead on the ground to apologise. I get anime stereotypes and all, every Fire Emblem had a few "strange" characters, but they were the exception and still had their "normal human" moments, here their personality is defined by their stereotype and nothing more. And, darling, no matter how much you threaten me, I can't really take you seriously when you have pink drill hairs, a bright blue/white striped dress, and a star sticker on your cheek. Plus you'll probably end up in my party, everyone seems to forgive assassins and thieves of national treasures like it's nothing.
And for the love of WhateverYouWant, why are characters training in modern-day sweatshirts and skin-tight yoga pants?
Visually this game is all over the place, and when Emblems stand beside characters from this game, you can appreciate how their design is simpler yet more consistent with the rest of this standard fantasy setting. And also more bearable...again, I cannot find any character that I like either in personality or visually, which is very strange considering I've never disliked any of the characters in previous Fire Emblems; yes, I ignored some mostly due to their function, but not dislike.

[Golgo]

Terrific first imps, Briareos!

[briareos_kerensky]

Well, whaddayakno, decent looking characters with a decent personality! After the party reaches the second nation (FE Engage's world is divided in five countries) some more classic-looking Fire Emblem characters join and also give some more tactical flexibility during battles.
The story takes a more serious tone as well, and I didn't really expect the events of chapter 11.
Overall, though, the writing is a notch or two below previous games (depending on which you compare Engage to), and I feel characters haven't been fleshed out as well as in Three Houses, and they are somewhat on part with Awakening or Fates, though the initial party never goes past having their personality defined by a single personality trait that is repeated through all support conversations.

Also finally got some promotion items, thoguh so far they are scarce, most of them are bought, and gold to buy items is scarce. The last point prompted me to bring Anna along because she has the chance of getting 500g per kill, though it's rather rare.
As a unit, Anna starts as an axe wielder and she's not particularly great, though I reclassed her to an axe cavalier and spent some time levelling up. She' now a decent cavalry unit, but not quite on par with other story-relevant characters.

There are more classes than ever before, ranging from the classics (pegasus riders, knights, lancers, mages, archers, etc.) to some new ones, like wolf riders. Like Three Houses there don't seem to be hard level caps, I had a unit reach level 20 and still get some experience.
So far I've got Master Seals (promote to advanced classes) and Second Seals; the latter allow you to change a character's base class and acquire some more proficiencies and skills, and for example I changed my avatar's class to swordman. This also changed his uniform, and now he looks less...well, Genshin-Impacty.

Some standout units are Chloe, the first unit I promoted to an advance class: she now has enough speed to double-hit most enemies with a steel lance, and for a flier has good defence and evasion rates to boot.
Give Louis the RIng Of The Holy Knight and you have an armoured knight moving like a cavalry class before getting to advanced classes.
Of the three mages I have now, I'm focusin on Citrinne, mostly because of her looks. The usefulness of mages is highly dependent on the ring they have equipped, and as the game continues, you have to be much more mindful of their positioning, so no more spamming Celica's special...although you do get a Rescue staff.

I've also come to terms with the interface: it's my fault, but when you move a character they walk around with their animation, so it's not as snappy as moving the cursor where you want and have units move there at their speed without your intervention. It's not as snappy as previous games, but probably it's because I'm so used to that movement method...I'll see if that can be changed in the options.

[small edit] The only base class that goes past level 20 is thief (apparently there's no assassin class), the rest cap at 20. And the Mage Knight's horse have small witch hats on them.
There's the option to switch between classis and modern movement method, as well as the option to increase movement speed to make things go faster.

[briareos_kerensky]

Some more impressions.

First, I reclassed my avatar from Swordman to his standard class of Dragon Child, only to discover that no matter which class you move to, you start from level 1. Changing classes will decrease/increase some stats a couple of points depending on a class' base stats, but the overall experience to move between levels is the sum of all a character's classes, so I have a powerful character that needs to kill all the enemies on the map to get a sliver of EXP, at least on story maps.

Story maps don't scale, but skirmishes do, and I think it's based on the number of maps you cleared in total. Skimishes are engaging due to powerful enemies, story missions have the best maps but I can solo them with pretty much any character I have. Well, I could, but that would take a whole lot of time, so I simply steamroll on base enemies with level 10 adanced classes.

I have limited myself in skirmishes though, they aren't all that engaging and most of them don't really have monetary rewards. The good thing is that skirmishes don't deplete your weapons, so I guess these two aspects balance themselves out.

[briareos_kerensky]

I think I'm close to the end, after the rather obvious plot twist heralding the third act of the story and pretty much all characters I use reaching level 40 (20 levels of base class + 20 levels of advanced class), the maximum possible unless I use a Second Seal to respec them to...something. At first there seems to be a large variety of classes, but in reality a class might be doubled or tripled based on weapon proficiency, so you have Sword Paladins, Lance Paladins, and Axe Paladins, instead of a single Paladin class (usually proficient in lances and swords).

About the story...well, it gets darker and less prone to joke characters, but it's still kinda lame, clicheed, and uninteresting. And even in what should have been dramatic moments, writers drop the ball with overly long scenes that remove any sense of urgency from that story moment. Introducing characters just before killing them with one or two lines about how they were abandoned as a child doesn't make me care about their deaths, it makes me wonder why that character was even there.
But probably I'll write more about the story once I complete the game when I have the full picture, although it's the one part of Fire Emblem Engage I dislike the most...but here's another tidbit: the English localisation removes almost any trace of romance between your avatar and other characters; like in Three Houses you get a ring to give to your special someone, and in all past Fire Emblems what that ring meant was pretty obvious. Here? Most characters of the opposite sex become your best friend, ally, supporter, fan, or any sort of relationship but love, even when the Japanese voices clearly say that. Not the first time, it won't be the last, but it's always disappointing seeing translators going for the lowest minimum denominator that won't upset the majority of people playing.
Oh well.

Back to game proper, I don't have much left to say. It's a classic Fire Emblem that almost harkens back to The Sacred Stones (GBA) in structure, as you can engage in skirmishes to grind for experience, but you have limited access to promotion items and classes aren't that varied, nor characters become absolute powerhouses that can solo an entire map. Well, unless it's your avatar, I've soloed the last two maps (chapter 23 and 24) taking minimal damage and killing every enemy in a single turn. The only thing pushing you to use other characters is the number of enemies before the objective and how large maps are.

You get more emblems as the game goes on, but I've found only a few of them really useful. Lucina is a big disappointment, she has some nice defence skills but she has middling offence. Leif and Roy are middle of the road, like Marth. Lyn here uses a bow (because there aren't that many Lords using anything other than swords), and she's has a pretty useful long-range attack that unfortunately hits dimishing returns as enemies and your normal weapons are upgraded while Emblem weapons aren't.
Ike is fun to use: he starts with a hammer and an axe instead of a canonical sword, and he's meant to dive into the battle and do massive damage. He can use Great Aether, which increases the bonded character's defence and resistance but stops counterattacks from one turn, only to trigger an area attack all around Ike which also heals based on damage done. Pair Ike with a cavalry unit, send them in the midst of the map, and see enemies either defeated or greatly weakened. Like Lyn, unfortunately, this tactic becomes less and less useful as the game goes on as Emblem weapons can't quite keep up with enemy scaling.

[briareos_kerensky]

Game completed. Overall, meh. One of the Fire Emblems I've njoyed the least, considering all western releases since Blazing Sword.
Some closing thoughts.

Technical aspects
Graphics are good, a definite step-up from Three Houses. Engage still uses some tricks pioneered in TH to lighten load on the Switch and shorten loading times (like the half-dome maps used as backgrounds for cutscenes), but everything feels less rushed and more technically competent. All characters have their own colour palette and very distinct appearance, and it's easy to discern which characters are which on the map at any zoom level. The interface is clean and intuitive, and works well both docked and mobile. Maybe on the TV it looks a bit clumsy and large, but readability is excellent either way and it's always clear where inputs will bring you (the radial menu before battles in TH was nice, but imprecise).
Japanese voices are OK but I must say that your avatar's male voice make him more wimpy than he already is, though the VA himself is capable of much more.
The music is a strange mix of remixes of classic Fire Emblem tunes and new tracks that I sill don't know if I like or not: most of them start with an epic choir crescendo that sets the tone of the track, but then most of them go into synthetic sounds that feel alien to both what the track was playing before and the game itself.

Story & characters
Oh, I hate both of them.
Engage starts off with a much lighter tone than any other Fire Emblem to mind, maybe Tokyo Mirage Session excluded, and characters seem out of a fantasy anime that I won't even bother watching the first episode. Then it pivots into a darker storyline, but the bad guys never really feel like a threat, and the story itself plays out without any big surprises.
The first group of characters never goes past a one-dimensional personality trait, while the ones joining later are a bit more complex in their backstory and how they relate to each other. Still, it's a far cry from what Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses did with their cast.
During the final part, one story cutscene tries to ham it up real nice, but unfortunately the attempt comes off as bad, and not even hilarious.
Also, can we please stop having characters on their deathbeds talking for half an hour like they don't have mortal wounds?
I have already complained on how the English translation deals away with romance between you and most of the other cast, but then the game stumbles hard during the ending: it's common for Fire Emblems to pair up the cast at the end based on their relationship status, and Engage only has single stories. Booooh, Fire Emblem Engage, booooh!

Game Mechanics
The main mechanic is, of course, to engage with an Emblem, a character from previous Fire Emblem games. Engaged characters gain special attacks and special weapons relevant to the Emblem, along a buff to some of their stats. The engaged status lasts for 5 turns and must be recharged by either attacking enemies or resting in one of the many "power tiles" present in all maps. It's never hard to find enough meter for engang with an Emblem, and most maps last 10 turns or less, and characters spend most of their time during missions in this enhaced state. The only really limited resource is an Emblem's special attack, because it can be used only once per transformation.

The weapon triangle, snubbed in Three Houses, makes a comeback with a new break mechanic: hit an enemy with a weapon weakness with enough force and it'll drop the weapon, removing counters for that fight, and one thereafter. This applies to you too, but the longer you play, the higher the damage threshold is, and more units immune to break appear, and you tend to kill units outright rather than making a tactical use of the break mechanic.

Unit selection for promotions is limited, ever since Awakening there has been much more choice. This wouldn't be that bad if classes were more different between each other, especially for cavalry: there isn't much difference between Great Knights and Paladins, and the one thing that tells the two classes apart, the special skill, is of dubious usefulness: even mages get pretty sturdy, and you don't really need to safeguard them against many attacks.

The AI can be pretty stupid: for example launching armoured units (typically weak against magic) with great weapons (pwerful weapons with low to-hit chance and always strike after the opponent) against mages, resulting in the attacking unit dead without anything done. Or going for dummies Emblem Lyn can summon, even if there are units with 1 HP right next to them.
I really appreciate weapons without limited use, it makes inventory micromanagement infinitely easier, and balance between weapons tends to be better. You also use steel and silver weapons because you don't have to save them for that enemy, an enemy that will never appear even when facing the final boss.

After chapter 11 you can partake in Tempest Trials (a lot of terminology and some aspects are taken from Fire Emblem Heroes), a gauntlet of three maps of varying difficulty to gather items to upgrade Emblem weapons. Done it only once, unless you want to grind these trials themselves, there's very little incentive to do so, the characters and weapons you get during the story are more than enough to carry you through the story, skirmishes, paralogues, and even DLC content. Maybe they are more relevant in harder difficulty modes.

Some of the later story maps and all the DLC maps are interesting to play, but it's nothing that hasn't been attempted before, and I can't think of any really standout locations.

A few changes to the formula aren't particularly good.
Anna is playable here, and she all her battle lines and character interactions are about selling items and making a profit, but in FE Engage she never runs a shop. Usually Anna's shop is full of exotic weapons and special items, all in limited numbers; here those are available in the standard shops, often in unlimited quantities.
Chests can be opened without keys by all characters, greatly downplaying the usefulness of thieves. The game realizes this and the thief class is categorised as "special" and doesn't have an advanced version.
I think movement restrictions have been downgraded as well, for example sandy maps don't encumber calvalry and heavy units as they used to do.

There is no NG+ at the moment, reloading the clear save brings you just before the last mission with some extra money and upgrade materials.
If you want a Fire Emblem on Switch, go for Three Houses.