Fire Emblem Engage Review – Tactical Paradise

Fire Emblem Engage is a game that will captivate you and leave you thinking about nothing else for days or weeks. Compared to the equally addictive turn-based strategy games like XCOM, Fire Emblem has one additional weapon: a focus on characters and story, including dozens of lengthy cutscenes and hundreds of dialogues. Engage doesn’t offer multiple campaign/story options like the previous installment in the series (Three Houses), but it can actually suit many players – even then the story campaign will save you dozens of hours of time. Engage’s biggest selling point is its focus on complex gameplay, full of polished mechanics, layers, and variables that make every battle the same. All this is supported by a significantly improved design. Fans of the series will not be disappointed if they live up to their expectations.

• Platform: Switch
• Publication date: 01/20/2023
• Producer: Intelligent Systems (Japan)
• Genre: turn-based role-playing strategy
• Czech localization: Not
• Multiplayer: asynchronous
• Data to download: 15 GB
• Game time: 40+ hours
• Price: 1499 CZK (Nintendo)

An unexpectedly funny story

If you fell in love with the previous installments (and especially Three Houses) mainly because of the story, you need to tune in to a slightly different wave for Engage, because this time the creators went in a different direction, where some missing elements are balanced by nice bonuses or changes. on other fronts. As I mentioned, there is only one campaign, and the story is more or less linear (unless you count character deaths on “Classic” difficulty, where of course your success in battles depends on which of your group makes it to the end) . At the same time, the story is much less political and much more traditional fantasy about fighting an evil dragon. Nevertheless, the creators have found room for a lot of interesting twists, especially when it comes to who your ally or enemy really is or will remain – all sorts of betrayals and unexpected alliances are par for the course.

The Elyos Continent and its four peoples have lived in peace for a thousand years, but now undead soldiers are beginning to roam the landscape, and rumors are circulating of the resurrection of the Fallen Dragon, the enemy of all life. Fortunately, the positive part of the prophecy is also beginning to come true, and the hero (or heroine, the choice of character is up to you) Alear awakens from a thousand-year sleep to lead the united nations of the continent into a decisive battle. combat. But first, he has to collect twelve magical Emblem rings, in which the souls of ancient warriors from other worlds live (each of them is the hero of one of the previous Fire Emblem games). Thus begins your adventurous journey through four warring countries, where you will gradually gain and lose allies, and on the other hand, the army of the Fallen Dragon will also prepare for a decisive clash.

The linear story is less political and more traditional fantasy.

Although the plot itself sounds very traditional and predictable, its highlight is actually very well-written characters, countless series of betrayals and unexpected alliances, and most importantly – completely unexpected for me – an extraordinary dose of humor that really brought me to my knees. many times. It seems that Western translators wanted to avenge the censorship of many romances between characters compared to the Japanese original (mainly due to concerns that many characters look too young), the game’s dialogue literally explodes with modern phrases and creative humor, where especially the sudden adoration of some your group members towards you or some of the first encounters will make you laugh like some other games. It also helps a lot with the completely excellent English dub that can’t compete with the most expensive JRPG games today. In short, while the story is straightforward, it will entertain you in both senses of the word.

Extremely deep gameplay

As the sixteenth installment in a million-seller series, it’s clear that this turn-based strategy game with strong RPG elements is doing something very well. Namely, the combat system, which the creators improve and enrich for each part. This time around, its core is a return to the “weapon trinity”, which is a rock-paper-scissors style system only carried over to swords-spears-axes (and additionally martial arts-magic-archery-knives). The relationship of these weapons with each other on the battlefield is so strong that if you underestimate it, you can literally lose half of your characters in one move, where you will be hit by the “correct” enemy units. The fact that it’s actually very easy to die adds tension to every battle and turn.

But of course, there are many other layers built on top of this core – whether it’s leveling up your characters, upgrading your gear, learning new abilities, or tossing magic rings between characters. The central ‘interaction’ mechanic allows you to summon a ghost from your ring to fight alongside the ring-wearer, or even a ring-bearer with a ‘spirit emblem’ can combine into one creature for special strikes. Along with multiple levels and profession classes, these rings allow you to mix up countless combos on the battlefield, where even after dozens of hours of play, you’ll have a hard time remembering exactly what each character and ability does.

Emblem rings allow you to mix countless combinations on the battlefield.

Thankfully, this is a turn-based strategy game, so you have as much time to think as you want. You can also view help for individual items in your arsenal. Difficulty settings are very diverse, including whether your characters should actually die and disappear from the game after being defeated, or return to the next battle. There’s even an option to have your units play the entire turn automatically (in the style of the “Auto Chess” genre), which is sometimes a welcome relief, especially since the AI ​​of your allies and enemies is in very good shape. level. The greatest pleasure (and confidence) is, of course, to do each movement independently. Especially in the second half of the game, where it drags on a little, it can sometimes happen that an otherwise competent AI leads to the strongest attack on the weakest opponent (or unnecessarily sends a group in two directions).

You enter the battles from the “overworld” map, where you can also select additional battles and the so-called paralogic mission. Plus, you can return to your flying castle at any time, where you’ll find plenty of free time activities for character interaction, learning, and pure fun. However, online modes are asynchronous, so battles with friends or random online players do not take place in real time, but by summoning their armies. The markedly improved graphics over the previous installment are also very smooth by Switch standards, with the game running at 30fps more or less quite reliably (handheld mode only drops the resolution down to 720p).