Fire Emblem Engage experience

There are not many strategy series that have 16 sequels (plus five spin-offs), and some parts are sold in millions of copies. Of course, this is not a coincidence, I don’t need to introduce fans to the qualities of the legendary Fire Emblem series for a long time. For beginners, I’ll try to simplify it this way: imagine Game of Thrones designed as a story-driven non-linear turn-based strategy game (much like, say, XCOM) full of action-packed cutscenes. and to pay as much attention to the development of relations between characters outside the battlefield as to the strategic battles themselves. After the very successful Three Houses and the very successful Three Hopes, we now have a rather quirky subtitled sequel Interaction that combines popular characters from the series’ history and tests modern elements for a brand new series such as the gacha system.

Warrior (or warrior, the choice is yours) Alear awakens from a thousand-year slumber in which he lost most of his memories. Thus, the continent called Elios, its inhabitants and events are more or less new to him, as they are to you. But he doesn’t have much time to get his bearings because the country is facing increasing attacks from the undead army. Some say that this is due to the return of the demonic Fallen Dragon, against which all the peoples of the continent must unite. Alear will play a vital role in this fateful battle, primarily due to his unique talent to awaken the souls of the legendary warriors of past eras, enclosed in magical “emblem” rings. The story seems a little less political and a little more traditional than in the previous parts of the series, however, the seemingly simple plot is full of unexpected twists and turns, where it is not entirely clear who can actually be trusted and who is pulling the strings.

Fire Emblem Engage quickly immerses you in the story and gameplay, thanks in part to the seemingly simple plot. This way, without having to go through any lengthy training at a military academy or anything like that, you will immediately join the fight against the advancing undead armies upon your awakening. Almost from the very beginning of the game, you also get access to your flying castle called Somniel, which is the base where you can spend time between fights – there is an opportunity to improve your equipment, work on the relations of individual fighters in your army, as well as create and strengthen magic rings containing the souls and abilities of legendary fighters from past parts of the series. On the world map, you have the opportunity to choose another main story mission or, on the contrary, collect additional resources, fighters and experience in one of the side missions/battles.

I really didn’t think I’d be writing this line in 2023: Graphically, the Switch game looks just fine. The creators at the Japanese studio Intelligent Systems made excellent use of their experience from Three Houses and relied on the fact that many story sequences offer relatively static backgrounds and character close-ups. Thanks to this, they offered both in unusually high resolution and smoothness by Switch standards, so that the game during some transitions looks absolutely beautiful even on a two-meter 4K TV. At the same time, a very expressive color palette helps a lot, making deep green meadows or glowing magical effects look absolutely amazing. The strong impression of the film is enhanced by high-quality sound, led by excellent dubbing. The music is a bit of a matter of taste, for example, I personally don’t need rock music in a fantasy game, but I have to admit that dynamic music responds to the action of combat in an exciting way (it scales and adds instruments when you get a strong attack, or vice versa sharply drops in intensity and arrangement when one of your characters is on the brink of death).

Graphically, the game looks great on the Switch.

The more detailed and immersive the carefully crafted story sequences are, the more you can be confused by a certain drop in resolution or detail when you get into some of the game’s passages, such as when you freely explore a 3D location after fighting to collect loot and talk with the survivors. This is where you’ll run into classic console performance flaws, where characters are somewhat blocky and models in the distance sometimes bounce awkwardly. However, the game still retains a beautiful art style, and its core is of course the gameplay, which owes nothing to the tradition of the series. You can choose from three difficulty levels (Normal, Hard, and Maddening), and even on the lowest setting, a wrong decision can cost you the life of your favorite character. However, separately, you can set up a casual or classic approach to death, where the characters actually stay dead or simply exit the current battle after being defeated to return to the next one.

The core of the combat system is two mechanics: on the one hand, the traditional “rock-paper-scissors” or swords-spears-axes, backed up, of course, by significant bonuses / penalties for infantry, cavalry and aircraft against each other. You must consider the diversity of your army, the types of enemy units, and the (sometimes destructible!) terrain of the battlefield. The second key mechanic is magical emblem rings that you can put on any character in your army. The character can then summon the spirit of the warrior (or warrior) contained in the ring to fight in pairs. From time to time, this can be further enhanced by activating the “interaction” mode, in which both characters merge into one mythical creature, combining abilities and offering unusual attacks – for example, such a teleport to anywhere on the map with the release of a devastating spell. “on landing” more or less works like a smaller nuclear bomb.

While the presence of heroes from past parts of the series (in the form of summoned spirits of “emblem” warriors) refers to the past, in your castle you will also find a room for forging magic rings that can indicate the future of the series – based on gacha mechanics. In theory, this could be a test for developers or publishers to see if they can afford to release Fire Emblem based on this monetization model in the future (similar, for example, to the live-service Japanese RPG Genshin Impact, which makes over a billion dollars). dollars per year). However, in the case of Enage, this mechanic is not tied to money in any way – the raw material for the gacha lottery (in which you randomly draw new auxiliary rings with the motifs of past heroes in the series) is the energy that you collect in each battle. So in this version, the mechanic is harmless to the game and offers a fun distraction between battles. But judging by what we’ve been through so far (the first eight chapters, about ten hours of gameplay), it seems that the combat itself is the focus of this part of the series, while building relationships between characters seems to take a back seat to compared to the third. Houses. Despite this, or precisely because of this, the game is as addictive as the best parts of the series, and it will be very difficult for fans to tear themselves away from it.

Fire Emblem Engage launches for Nintendo Switch on Friday, January 20th.