Fire Emblem Engage started out quite polarizing. The initial screenshots were leaked many months before the official announcement, a rarity for Nintendo. At the time the rumors stated it was already done and waiting for a release window. This checks out because the pandemic messed up a lot of development schedules. The biggest single focus-point was the artstyle and the protagonists vibrant red/blue multicolor hair reminiscent of a switch Joy-con pair.
Later we'd find that the art design was done by Mika Pikazo who was previously known for her work on vTuber models. Engage really leans into the vTuber flare, with multicolored hair, wild accessories, asymmetric clothing and bright colors all around. This is roughly in the continuing the general trend of Fire Emblem really focusing on artists and the relevant "anime" styles of the time. This style really hits you the first time and is probably more controversial to people who aren't around that space. Pikazo's style is much more bold than its recent predecessors like Three Houses or Yusuke Kozaki's Awakening, Fates and Heroes.
Engage also adds a lot more in terms of visuals. While Three Houses was developed by Koei Tecmo on what would appear to be some variant of the Warriors engine, giving it a rather messy look, Engage is built on Unity and ditches the hordes of background characters for extremely sharp model with very high image quality. I think it's quite an improvement. This also extends to the animation which got a boost in fluidity. This is especially present in the new break mechanic where characters hit with opposing weapons in the weapon triangle drop their weapon for one turn. The physics making the sword or lance go flying really add to the perceived impact of the blows. This is also sold by the additional torquing of the body during animation. Although there are still odd parts. Characters themselves don't have real physics and so they can look boxed by invisible walls when they fall over and enemies that "escape" the battle have a very jarring animation seam where they roll out of the death animation. A little bit of rag-doll would have gone a long way. At least they finally got reverse-kinematics so characters will accurately bend their legs when standing on uneven ground like stairs. There's even some general environmental damage like fences getting knocked over that translates to the overhead view, but this effect is not used in frequently.
The battle environments are very detailed and to show this off you are allowed to wander around the field picking up items and talking to characters after battle. It let's you take in the art, but it's also not quite developed enough to be interesting as a gameplay mechanic as it feels like a chore walking around to pick up trivial items. The game even acknowledges this by letting you skip talking to characters and just giving you the reward bond fragments without needing to do any traversal but some better materials still require it.
This probably one of the main issues with Engage as a whole. There's a bunch of stuff you can do outside the core battles but none of it is very interesting. Somniel, the base between battles, is the hub of all this busy-work. You can run around and talk to people and do little things like event minigames or give people gifts for a slight boost in bond but it's mostly filler. You can sometimes gain items, exp or stat boosts but it's ultimately not enough to matter much and later on you'll probably just skip it. Three Houses at least gave you a little more even if it ultimately succumbed to the same issues (and required mandatory participation).
Side pieces aside the core game is good solid Fire Emblem. Battles work mostly the same as the Fates lineage, with the weapon triangle (but no durability). The new twist is the Emblem system which allows you to pair classic lords with units. These units gain skills and special abilities. Units can engage which gives you a couple turns of enhanced abilities plus a special attack which can be very powerful. I wasn't the biggest fan of this at first but it did grow on me. Enemies too can have these abilities which requires careful planning to make sure they don't instakill a squishy unit when granted extra movement range. The difficulty curve was really weird though. It start too easy (I played normal which was maybe a mistake), then got hard and then got easy again. Part of this is probably also due to the DLC content which brings additional units with Emblems so you can deck out your army. These chapters also provide lower level experience for training units you neglected and some powerful items. This is very different than the random battles you can find between story chapters. Random battles are usually a couple levels higher that where you are at, meaning they can be quite difficult especially around the time you start unlocking advanced classes. They also don't pay out very much in terms of gold either so you can't really use them to mine resources and get good weapons. It seems like they just wanted to push player away from grinds (and perhaps into the DLC). However by the end of the game you'll have enough strong units with strong weapons that it's pretty easy to coast to the end.
You also have the ability to rewind turns. I like this features as it takes some of the tedium out of losing a unit, especially since there are still some elements beyond your control. Unexpected re-enforcements in the rear ready to clobber your mages and healers? A lucky 1% critical hit that destroys your ordinarily agile unit? There's no shame in rewinding and trying the last turn or 2 again. It's also still possible to just have a bad party and need to reset anyway which I had to do once. However this ability also leads to the game's best moment where you have your emblems and time-rewinding dragon stone taken away. This really adds to the powerless feeling they try to evoke. Suddenly, messing up is a lot more steep. Unfortunately they don't commit to it for long enough, but it's an excellent moment in a game that largely isn't going too far outside the lines.
And that's really how the plot of the game is. It's cookie-cutter, it's generic. The dialog is fine, the voice acting is good (though it has weird mixing issues. I'm not a sound engineer so I don't can't articulate the problem but it characters can sound like they were recorded in a closet, and with COVID maybe they did), the music is good but none of it stands out. The bond conversations are as boring as ever and coming from 3 Houses that whole aspect feels like trimming than a core element of the game. There's also these weird pseudo-ASMR scenes of characters waking you up. I don't know why they are there, but it's an (optional) thing and doesn't provide any gameplay reward either.
I feel like overall the game was probably made on a budget and almost seems to exist to add to the Fire Emblem Heroes roster (also it's really weird it has the same general concept). It's not a bad game, far from it, it's a very good SRPG, and from the number of those I've played recently that's saying something. But it feels like a safe sequel to Fates that doesn't really have much of an identity beyond the protagonist with the Tide-pod hair. It doesn't try much new and it doesn't reach the heights of Three Houses. It does some things better, and it certainly has some polish but it's missing a little bit of something.
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