#fire emblem engage spoilers/

[frauleinandry]

finally finished engage. it was... certainly a game alright. what it did well, it did well, but when it did things badly, it did them badly, and unfortunately, the latter overshadows the former.

tl;dr I’d give it a 6.5/10 overall. the gameplay was solid but had a couple of really irritating aspects that dragged my overall experience down, and the less said about the story, the better.

so, let’s start with the plot, since that’s the worst thing. it’s... bad. very bad. and no, it’s not bad because it’s not a bleak tragedy filled with morally grey characters and interesting ethical conundrums. after three houses (which I love btw), I wanted a stupid, light-hearted game ala awakening. engage’s story also isn’t bad because it was made to be child friendly (although I do find that a dubious decision, given how much the game caters to old-school FE fans, and the typical themes that normally appear in fire emblem games). steven universe is a great example of a show that’s child friendly, yet still tackles some dark content. in fact, while I admit I only watched the first season, she-ra is also a good example of children’s media that handles very similar themes to engage.  

no. engage’s story sucks purely because it’s poorly executed. everything interesting about alear is dropped after like 3 chapters, the pacing is god-awful, none of the lore is utilised to its full potential, the characterisation is all over the place (*cough* zephia *cough*), and the dissonance between the genuinely awful stuff happening (like the near genocide of elusia) and the cartoonish dialogue and characterisation is jarring. for scenes like, say, lumera’s death, the game is trying to make me feel things, but it doesn’t, because there’s absolutely no substance or development behind anything. it’s like IS tried to make a family-friendly story without actually understanding how to do that, and the result is a hot mess.

like. there is a couple of parts that did stand out, such as alear being resurrected as a corrupted, the time travel stuff, sombron’s past, and the way lumera and alear’s adoptive relationship is treated like it’s just as important (if not even more so) than alear’s blood family. most of those elements are completely glossed over though except for the adoptive family stuff (which is one thing I think engage’s story actually gets right). like, sombron’s whole deal with him not caring about elyos because it’s not his homeworld is really interesting! why was it just an off-handed comment in the last chapter instead of a running theme of his character?!

ultimately, I think engage’s story would be significantly better if the game wasn’t trying to be serious. the premise is dumb!! let the game be silly! ditch the war stuff (initially, anyway), and just have it be alear’s goofy misadventures travelling through the kingdoms collecting rings. let ivy and her retainers essentially be team rocket. let the cutscenes be hammy. let lumera be mission control, and actually develop her relationship with amnesiac!alear. then, at around the midpoint of the game, introduce the four hounds, and have them be the knights of cerebus. alear’s almost collected all the rings, but then the hounds take over from ivy (who bore no genuine ill-will towards alear), and lure them into a lethal trap. they take most of the emblems, and lumera sacrifices herself to save the main character. 

*takes a deep breath in* okay, now that that ramble is done with, let’s move on to the characters. they’re... not great, either. most of them are just one trope, and that’s it? sure, fire emblem casts are always going to be a bit tropey, but in engage, 95% of the playable cast has one gimmick which completely defines their every interaction. like, the cast of awakening gets accused of this same thing, but every character also has a bit of something else to them. in engage though, outside of celine, what you see is what you get. like, none of the supports were offensive or anything, and a few were cute/funny, but nearly all of them had no substance. it also really doesn’t help that there’s no paired ending (and ergo no reason to get A-supports), and support grinding in this game is dreadful.

that’s a perfect segway to the next segment - the gameplay. while it’s polished, and there are a lot of things it does really well, it’s got a couple of major flaws which makes engage more of a birthright than it is a conquest. for one, grinding anything, in general, is awful. the game is clearly catered for either iron man runs or for the players to ditch units as they get better ones. while this is subjective, speaking as someone who likes to use all the units they can on a first playthrough to get supports/etc, keeping all my units usable was a pain in the goddamn ass. who on earth thought basing the skirmishes on your highest-level units was a good idea?! the only way to level up weaker units is via the arena, which has very limited uses. the same issues pop up with getting money/supports - since the former requires you to do skirmishes which you can’t complete with your weaker units, it ends up with you getting over levelled (and who wants that?). support points only building from adjacent units was also an awful decision - it was fine in the GBA games when each character could literally only max one support each, but not in a modern title (especially given how bland the cast is - they need all the screentime they can get).

still, outside of that, most of it is pretty good! I was worried the emblems were going to completely destroy the difficulty, but they were balanced perfectly. enough to turn the tides in your favour, but not enough to make everything a cakewalk. emblem ike, lyn, and byleth were probably my MVPS - tanks are a rare luxury in such a player-phase-focused game, and byleth’s utility is just too good. speaking of difficulty, I’ve got to say, this was the first FE game I’ve found genuinely challenging in a while, which is great! i love three houses, but it’s a bit of a cakewalk, especially on a new game plus. engage though consistently kept me on my toes. the map designs were pretty good on the whole too - while they weren’t quite conquest tier, they’re some of the best in the franchise. I admit I still dislike the character art style, but the animations were a huge improvement compared to prior games. the map visuals were neat too - clear, concise, and with none of the murkiness that plagued the 3DS games/three houses.

I do have a couple of other pain points though. I found the somniel infinitely more tedious than the monastery - the rewards are worse, and the way you need to go to it after every map if you want to maximise its potential is a pain in the ass. at least you only really need to visit garreg mach once per month. tbh I think the base camp in three hopes actually did things best - good rewards, a simple layout, and bonus worldbuilding/character stuff that was completely optional. sommie is great though - he’s the best mascot character I’ve seen in a looooooooong time. one of the other dampeners was how player-phase-centric it was. this is purely subjective, but given how many reinforcements appear in this game, I wish there were more than two useful tanks. finally, I think the soundtrack was very generic by fire emblem standards. the music is normally brilliant, but I can’t think of a single song that stuck with me. 

[princess-ali-rose]

Sommie seems to be going through it

[duthea]

obsessed with this family dynamic

[bearofohu]

chrom you literally will not stop talking about your husband and you've spent the last 1000 years spooning him in an emblem ring the fact that chrom thinks they're being sneaky is sending me

[krazieka2]

FE Engage Alfred comics. Spoilers if you haven't gotten his A supports with Celine!

And with this, I think we've hit the end of my fire emblem twitter art queue! Posts will now get much more sporadic as my preferred method of fandom is to hide under a rock until I have art to share, thank you for the understanding.

[nemirutami]

“I forgive you.”

[edelgard-more-like-baedelgard]

Obsessed with Ivy being introduced like this but then you recruit her and discover she's the worlds biggest pathetic lesbian failwife

[mariaashby64]

I swear I I’ll get some art done *soon*.

Apparently I’ve been FE deprived and am enjoying this game way too much. Also these supports sure have been something.

Pt 2

[benisasoftboi]

Engage is so funny

[ghost-pocky]

HE IS AS TALL AS A LOAF OF BREAD AND WEIGHS AS MUCH AS TWO PEACHES

[fataltwelves]

no one likes a reject

[1ilkenzo]

I'm so excited to play Fire Emblem Engage tomorrow AGFDHGVjksdgt

[emblemxeno]

If we're being honest, I got a lot of issues with Ingrid because I feel like she has the wrong character development

Her support with Dedue is realizing that she shouldn't apply her negative view of Duscur onto every Duscurian indiscriminately

That kind of thing works for Oboro because Nohrians really did kill her parents

But, Duscurians didn't actually cause the death of Lambert or Glenn, so her development should've been to learn that all those years of hatred were misdirected, and she hated them for no reason

It also didn't help that Dimitri states multiple times that Duscur didn't commit the crime, and Ingrid is still ignorant about it

I have this unhinged hatred of the Faerghus Four as a concept because every time, it's like they're consciously refusing to acknowledge the importance of Dedue in Dimitri's life in the present "Oh, these are Dimitri's childhood friends. Of course, they're close." Yeah, sure.... They're totally closer to Dimitri than Dedue is in the present.... *Internal screaming*

Combining these because my answer to both is similar!

In my opinion, it showcases how 3H's writing philosophy is ultimately shoddy in its foundation. The backstories, supports, and character-to-character dialogue itself is great in theory, but execution it clashed with what both FE usually tries to do and what 3H desperately wants to do.

FE typically has characters join chapter to chapter, with important ones having plot moments, while side characters fall to the background once their designated chapter is up. But this isn't at the cost of character interaction, pre-established relationships, and the micro-to-macro worldbuilding precisely because they're not overly important. You can have canon romances, friendships, familial relationships, etc. because that's all supplemental side material.

3H was written in a way in which the characters were all connected to its grandiose world, to the point where Fodlan itself can be almost considered a character. Multilayered backstories that infer key points in the narrative, each character no matter how trivial having opinions on how the world works, shifting dynamics, etc.

The problem though is that these two philosophies clash already at base, but also run into the problem of FE's gameplay integrated story elements.

None of the Faerghus Four can meaningfully comment on their relationship with Dimitri during a story cutscene because they can die. Ingrid can't meaningfully change her perspective on Dedue or Duscur beyond her supports because she can die. Therefore, all you get are (admittedly pretty good) supports, the monastery dialogue, and other tidbits intentionally disconnected from one another so as not to be important enough to write around potential death. The comments they do get in cutscenes were intentionally written in a way to be surface level and easily replaced. Look at the FEdatamine site for example, where conclusions are reached by Byleth, the lord, the unkillable retainer, and other important story figures, with numerous possible instances of "if X character is alive they comment this, but if X character is dead this line is skipped."

That is proof of how sloppy 3H's writing is in foundation when you think about it long enough. The game that has such an intricate world, thorough details, and fascinating story beats, is actually extremely bad at delivering a story, especially an FE story. Being the judgmental and petty cunt that I am, 3H gets a pass most of the time a) most don't care or bother to care about actual stuff like this and b) the game has the aesthetics of being a down to earth, gritty, serious narrative. The foundational issues don't matter when you have Edelgard yapping about "THE CREST SYSTEM", dark character circumstances, and intriguing mysteries to solve in part 1.

People want the appearance of sophistication, especially after Awakening and Fates bent a lot of rules to fuck around with their respective stories. It's why Engage, despite not having nearly as many basic issues at conveying its plot and is actually extremely good at being a Fire Emblem story (e.g. more character being able to actually die, pre-established relationships, chapter to chapter joining, not nearly as much centering on Alear as the ultimate decider on a character's fate compared to Byleth), is panned because... why? Its bright aesthetic? Its good dragon vs evil dragon plot? Its softer or humorous moments?

Hell, even its call backs to past FE games is called cheap, soulless, or a gateway to gacha (one video I saw even described it as something like "when art becomes obligation" or some such nonsense), despite it LITERALLY being the prime anniversary title. The main character is the Fire Emblem, and the writers-through Lumera-wish a happy birthday to Fire Emblem!!! What about that is lacking heart and soul?

But yeah, again, I preface that I'm a judgmental asshole who proudly proclaims that the audience (at least the western one) has for years been too obsessed with yearning for darker serious aesthetics of FE's past (despite said past being wackier than they remember), that when a new game has them in overflowing spades, the many fundamental video game writing issues do not matter as much anymore.

Aesop for the day: Serious tones and aesthetics are not automatically better than lighter, heartfelt, or funny ones. You still have to write well for a story to be good.

EDIT: Funny enough this is also why Three Hopes is a more comfy environment for the Fodlan cast's in terms of tangible development, because the things the writers want to do with that game's story complements its gameplay. Because KT is better at making Warriors plots than FE plots.

[sparkvamp]

behold my worst creation yet

[bearofohu]

the most two dads shit ive ever seen. im physically disintegrating and dying etc goodbye forever

[shokuheshi]

rival princes!!! watched their supports and i already love them i’m a big fan of serious stressed and tired character has one person who makes them break out laughing and relax