Fire Emblem Engage Nintendo Switch Review - Is It Worth It? 

It's going to be fantastic!!!!!

so much so. a bit like SMT vs persona. i admin that p5r is the better game overall to smt5, but the way smt5 introduce more open zones in its later parts is just freaking great, meaning SMT5 is excellent himself. P5R thought is probably better than excellent.

I think it’s a bit of a betrayal and a super weird move to move away from what’s been a staple in Fire Emblem since Awakening, the game that single handedly revived the series.

It looks the same like Three Houses to me.

This game to be personally looks great but I understand if the 'die hard' fe fans probably won't like it terribly too much

It really did, I couldn't even power through the other routes because it was such a chore to go through the game again with how focused it was on the monestary. It's nice the first time around, but it just gets in the way too much, I was so burned out on the game I didn't even finish the dlc.

@@Smuggers. I did manage to beat all routes, but like you i didn't have the willpower to go back for the DLC.

You can teleport

@@oliverquach9614 it has more to do with the amount of time required in the monetary each mission and how much of a drag it is in getting back into maps than anything else.

@@Smuggers. You can skip the monastery and go straight to the missions.

My thing is if I have no investment in the character by having some agency in their development then for me the permadeath challenge kinda goes as I don’t care about the characters. Sucks to lose a pawn with good stats but I won’t feel any lose beyond that.

Im gonna be honest engage is soooo much better than awakening

@@gamesboy123able I planned on getting it regardless, FE is one of my favorite franchises! I just had a hard time understanding all the different reviews saying stripping back features as a good thing. Thanks for the input! I am still pretty excited about the release.

@@gamesboy123able Have you finished Engage?

The game will still have support conversations.

I agree. I don't care if there are a lot of em or not, I just want to get to know these characters. some of my favorite interactions are ones that give you more about the characters. Stuff like Gaius and Maribelle from awakening or Bernadetta and Alois from 3 houses. I've always thought of supports as a way to worldbuild or develop characters. I don't think it needs the depth of three houses because frankly the amount of world building in 3 houses was insane, but if they do all end up being fluff I'll be kind of sad

I think this game will still give the characters personality

@@crimsonstormsurge My worry is the presentation reminds me of Fates. Many over-the-top tropes and fluff as supports if the trailers and this review are indicative of the story side of things

@@naruconas2334 it was absolutely overwhelming. I loved things from awakening more like when finding out Frederick will pick up all the pebbles in front of chrome lol

@@naruconas2334 bruh stop bitching. go out and get to know real life people

lmao deep 🤣

They also look ridiculously OP.

@@prawiraagung4011 No other fire emblem game deeply explored individual characters’ motives/interests/conflicts as Three Houses. Whether you personally found the supports and convos PROFOUND is irrelevant.

they should make story deeper with dlc

@@prawiraagung4011 u obviously didnt play or read lore of three houses

This is how I feel! From the grittiness of PoR and RD, to the school life of 3H, I love every single game for being completely unique yet keeping the core gameplay in place. Intelligent Systems are (IMO) the best in the business in creating tactical RPGs.

This is the only correct answer in the pile of 'WAHH FE IS NOT TO MY LIKING SINCE AWAKENING WAHH' . The recent games in the series really experiment and innovate novel experience, so I am so glad they're taking it in new directions compared to predecessors. If I want 'authentic' I would go back to play on emulator.

​@@roseflamingo8102Fire emblem fans are whiny brats

Yeahhh. Typical female behavior. That’s what the SIMS or Animal Crossing is for.

no one is forcing you to collect every blue item or fish or watch all supports or talk to every character, you can skip all of those, thats wasting your own time. you can even opt out of doing any monastery at all if you really want to. you can just to an aux or a paralogue battle or skip straight to the main missjonn

@@alpha_c. But I enjoyed all that stuff and the benefits that came with it. But like I said it's just that it took so long that sometimes I wouldn't even be able to get a battle in. It wasn't the end of the world or a huge frustration but a bit of a " wow that was a lot of stuff... I didn't even get around to a battle tonight"

@@beauvogames some of that stuff is literally a waste of time tho and has no reward. like getting every blue item and watching every support and talking to every character. most blue items will be useless or a lost item for someone who’s not even in your house. and there’s no reason to fish unless you are doing cringe profxp farming or you need it for a meal

@@alpha_c. Yeah, I totally agree that a bunch of the interactions are literally going to go nowhere since you're never going to recruit every single student from every single house into your house. But when you're picking up blue items you don't always know what it's going to be / whether it's for your house or a character you want to recruit. So unless you're playing with a guide, you're still kind of encouraged to do this whole "do everything approach" and like I said I still find it fun, it was just way too time consuming and imbalanced with the battles and then as you rightly say, the payoff for a lot of that extra time can at points be almost pointless

Three houses have simp fans. Adults that act and speak like children

was awakening one that started romance and children's tho lmfao

I get what youre saying but i think awakening is kinda the start of that trend. Almost all older FE games have very little going on between each level. So while Awakening does have less than 3H, both have more than most of the series

The best system was tellius games imo, and those aren't even my favorite in the series

@@ericx6969 nope. Genealogy was the one started children, and is still the best one in this regard.

@@leaffinite3828 Frankly Path of Radiance has a lot more stuff going on in between chapters than Awakening, unless you specifically support grind

On one hand, I'm glad I don't feel the need to talk to 40 different characters each month, on the other hand it would have been nice to see Engage characters perspective on events.

@@blook741 The way I see it, it's taking the same route as Trails of Cold Steel, which is a very good thing.

As someone who hasn't played it yet, same.

I’ve played all of them since awakening and sadly I’ve only ever truly LOVED awakening. 😞

naaah its good they focus on it but when you give a story like this..? most ppl like me just cant finish it if you play with statues with no emotion or whatever in them sadly.

@@larsstavenuiter424 Well, I didn't finish the game either so I guess you're right lol

Good question

...it's not. Engage's story is not. Well, maybe Fell Xenologue, but that's it. It had potential, too.

I think its to add in Zion's credit, as the original only had PJ

I enjoyed the social hub but what kept me engaged was how I could create my own little army and tweak their classes and weapons. So it looks like it has improved and I'm very excited.

Which is unfortunate.. seems like they poured more effort into the gameplay instead of the actual characters.. and at this point.. prob even the story may be lackluster too

The reviews I’ve seen that even mention the story say that it’s generic. Chosen one with amnesia fights evil god-like monster. And that the roster is wide but shallow. The character development is pretty bad. :(

That's disappointing. Personally, I don't really care if there's a lot of support as long as they're interesting. And beyond the combat most of the other games are still interesting character dramas.

I don't think I'll be dissapointed even tho I think 3 houses/3 hopes are games I'll be more likely to go back to, like Fodland raised the bar to an extent that I'll remember characters long after I've put down the game and want to know more about the world. (Be nice to get games set in Dagda or Almyra some day.) But it's unfair to expect that level of story telling to be maintained all the time, so I'm cool with an outing where the world is just a backdrop for some fun maps.

To be fair, Fire Emblem isn't a social sim franchise. Until Three Houses, the 15 previous games did not have social sim elements beyond some supports (which changed from game to game. They were either exhaustive like Fates, or pretty basic like Radiant Dawn and everything in between). I'm worried some % of new players want Fire Emblem to become a social sim when that's not really something core to Fire Emblem. I think people who like social sims should buy social sims, not tactical rpgs, but that's just me. To the millions of players who did not like the social sim elements, these features really bogged down the game (especially on multiple playthroughs). The game forced the player to engage in the monastery and the monthly activities to optimize their playthrough, and this added about 10+ hours of busy work each time that just became tedious and repetitive. Not doing so would handcuff you, especially on harder difficulties. This really affected the replay value of the game, and I'm actually thankful they scaled this back considerably. They really had to. It's fine for the first 30 hours, but it just outstays its welcome, especially in a game that was designed for players to play all 4 routes which took about 50 hours each to complete. I get through the older games in about 18-25 hours with the same number of combat chapters - that's the time savings by not having the social sim.

3 houses is a dating sim.

@@Katie-hb8iq Oh yes, all of that is completely true! I actually only got into 3 houses at all because it wasn't as much like past games and more in line with the type of games I tended to play, wich I completely understand is not reflective of the series as a whole. I really actually loved the tactical game play in 3 Houses but I think I liked it mixed with the other things as well. I am very much not the main demographic for the Fire Emblem series as a whole though, but I do still hope I enjoy Engage!

@@Katie-hb8iq The main thing with the social sim aspects of 3H is it added depth and a sense of care between the characters. I ended up actually liking my characters during my playthrough and ended up loving the small things that happened to them. made progression feel like it lead somewhere, however they definitely needed to tone it down a few notches. I liked it, but it got too boring to read so much dialogue over and over again. My fear is they'll strip away the chance to get to know your characters in exchange for gameplay, because that would mean characters are bland and the replay value is decreased.

The thing here is that the character rosters for every FE game before Echoes (excluding Gaiden and perhaps Genealogy) were all designed to account for the distinct possibility that you would end up losing some units over the course of your playthrough. It’s why most of the characters you recruit in the midgame and lategame end up being pre-promotes; they’re there to fill out any of the empty spaces left in your party if you got one of your mainstays killed. Both Echoes and Three Houses took an approach closer to that of a traditional RPG - the same few characters you start the first proper chapter with are probably the same few characters that you’ll be taking with you into the final chapter. They boast the smallest playable character rosters in the series, which gives them much more room to expand those characters, with the issue being that if you go and get one of them killed, it hits your gameplay performance incredibly hard because recruitment in Three Houses is such a huge chore if you’re not snatching up a teacher. On a related note, this was likely why the Turnwheel was introduced in Echoes, because resetting a map after losing one of the only 18-odd units you’ll be getting for that army is pretty fucking exhausting.

Awaening is pretty good though story wise, atleast until 18 ish

It isnt, look at metacritic

@@minecraftotalwarpress F5

@@minecraftotalwar it has an 82 on metacritic and most of the bad reviews wanted it to be like three houses. 82 is still pretty good

@@minecraftotalwar Since when is an 82 a bad score? Most of the bad reviews were upset Engage wasn't Three Houses 2.0 anyway

You really shouldn't care how a game is received, only how you feel about it yourself. If a game is good, enjoy it and screw what other people say.

I wish more people thought like this. Pretty sure there are... however as the game has just launched recently you have the people making noise over how it's not Three Houses 2.0... Yet those same people could barely do one playthrough of that game without getting bored. The problem with people now days is it's a "raising bar" of expectations where they want bigger and better things... and expect to get it. It's like a Rose Garden... searching for a rose better then the last one you saw and comparing 2 different roses as if they were the same kind of rose... with ever raising expectations eventually... that Beautiful Lavish Rose Garden will look to the person visiting it like a Garden of Weeds... never finding that flower that was the pinnacle of absolute perfection. I think the ever rising bar is as unfair as the ever crazy high expectations parents "can" have for their children to be better then they were instead of treating them as their own person. The same thing applies to games and everything else in real life. For me... I don't place a bar very high. If it's beautiful, fun, stirs my emotions... I love it. Fire Emblem Engage does that without needing the overly complex structure of Three Houses.

@@chriswinfrey3744 well said. Thank you for such a nice compliment. I couldn’t agree more with your assessment. I liken this to Final Fantasy or Street Fighter. Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is a very different animal than Street Fighter IV. While both are quite similar. Ultra Street Fighter IV is 3D instead of 2D for 3rd Strike. They should be appreciated on their own merit. Final Fantasy VII vs. Final Fantasy X… which is better? I say both.

Return to form? Three houses was one of the most successful fire emblem games of all time lol

@@rufusrupo I never said it wasn’t. All I’m saying is that this game is much more similar to the older games, with more of a focus on combat than Three Houses. I never said Three Houses was bad; it’s just different than previous Fire Emblems, which is what it was meant to be.

@@rufusrupo3Houses was successful but nothing like the og games

update?

I would love the GameCube and Wii versions. 🥰

*P-L-E-E-E-A-S-E-!-!-!-!"*

NO! Clown World doesn't want it.

Is that pointless war over yet?! Nope...

Sickman, sickman, sickmaaaaaaan!

I feel the same but every review I've seen says the stories horrible. I really wish we could go back to the gba FE or gamecube

@@SK-do5rv Don't trust reviewers. Trust the fans of the new and old games

@@SK-do5rv Its going to be the same as all the others. Good but not great. You dont really play FE for story. Or really any Nintendo game for that matter lol

@@theolong6689 xenoblade chronicles? Why is it a sin to want better stories not just basic fantasy stuff?

@@Ratorss Oh yea good point xenoblade all had good stories. I personally liked all the FE stories for the most part. Zelda also has a very interesting method of story telling. So much of it is told through the environment and world rather than dialogue and cutscenes. Similar to the souls series and I personally love that form of story telling. But its just not going to be winning any awards for story telling like God of War. Still good though.

i do lol but I started playing before they introduced classic. i also don't reset if i wasn't using a character because 🤷🏻 and if I don't want a red possible recruit I just kill them for exp lmao

Or to put short it's pretty much Fire emblem Fates 2: single route edition, as most things it does is pretty much just taken from Fates.

I am pretty sure you can...

yea you can, its confirmed, but english localization censored most of it