Those expecting Fire Emblem Engage to be a continuation of the brilliance of Fire Emblem: Three Houses will need to temper that hope. The game, developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo, is actively at odds with a lot of what made Three Houses special. Instead, Fire Emblem Engage is a return to the series' roots in a way that feels like one step forward and two steps back, resulting in something that is nevertheless great, albeit in a more dated way.
Fire Emblem Engage follows the story of Alear, a divine dragon awoken from a thousand year slumber to find the continent of Elyos in dire straits. The threat of an evil force - the Fell Dragon - has begun to permeate the society of each country, and the once idyllic peace the amnesiac Alear helped establish is now crumbling at the seams. If that narrative sounds generic, it is, painfully so at times. For all of the great world and character building that Three Houses demonstrated the series can bring to life, Engage has pretty much none of it.
In fact, for the first dozen hours of gameplay, it's uniquely hard to even care about the story of Fire Emblem Engage at all. It's nice to see the returning characters of past games in the form of Emblem Rings - more on that later - but even their bond conversations are rarely more than a blip of a paragraph that just comments on war or friendship. The main cast is among the most two-dimensional in recent memory, and too many early story beats attempt to play at emotion for characters who barely have names yet.
It's especially frustrating because Fire Emblem Engage tries to make these characters' backstories and interactions a crucial element of off-battlefield gameplay. The Somniel, the hub city that characters can return to, is painfully dull, with half-baked systems that reward various items or unit experience but feel like a chore to interact with. It's necessary to gain edges in battle, so it's unfortunately pretty much a required part of the Engage experience, but thankfully combat helps make up for this in a big way.
Fire Emblem Engage is perhaps the series' finest combination of battle elements ever. Combat has returned to being more difficult on average. The Engage system mitigates this somewhat thanks to the Emblem Rings, which can be swapped around to characters and give them access to a bonded state that combines their abilities with a hero of Fire Emblem lore. Combat still requires extremely careful planning, however, with patience being a virtue for all but the most aggressive tactical lineups.
Fire Emblem Engage combat also an incredible diversity in unit compositions. Because the bond system in the Emblem Rings allows their s to learn weapon classes they didn't naturally have access to, there are a huge number of possibilities available to Alear. If players want an army of ranged combatants that are protected by a few heavies in massive armor, that's doable. If players want to mount up and assemble a fleet of horse and pegasus cavalry, that's viable as well.
So much of the fun in Fire Emblem Engage is tied to the Engage and Emblem Ring system that it's also easy to forget the combat is simply well-designed. Maps are varied, with missions that have side options like recruiting an on-field allied unit or evacuating villagers. Enemy army compositions change frequently and require different metholodogies to defeat. The rock, paper, scissors of Fire Emblem games of old returns here and is still simple in theory but nuanced in practice.
There's really no end to the greatness of Fire Emblem Engage's combat. The problem is pretty much everything surrounding it. For as much as the tactical prowess of Engage is a leap forward for the series as a whole, the rest of it feels like a few measured steps backwards. Beyond the plodding story - which does ittedly get better at the mid-way point - the game doesn't look very good, its music is forgettable, and nearly every system that isn't intrinsically connected to how much damage a unit does on the battlefield is underdeveloped.
That unique relationship - the extreme imbalance between a near-perfect combat system and a deeply flawed story and world - makes Fire Emblem Engage feel like it couldn't quite settle on what it wanted to be. It should perhaps be viewed as the template for which future Fire Emblem games can emulate combat from, and a clear example of why even the best tactical RPG still needs to craft a compelling setting to house its satisfying decision-making.
Ultimately, Fire Emblem Engage is an excellent game that contains one of the finest tactical systems in recent memory, and it's well worth a look for that reason. Just don't expect to much about Elyos once the journey ends.
Fire Emblem Engage releases on January 20, 2023 for Nintendo Switch. Screen Rant was provided with a digital code for the purpose of this review.
Source: Nintendo of America/YouTube
