The Worst Part of Fire Emblem Engage 

It’s no wonder I couldn’t connect with the characters much unlike past games. I also hate looking at Alear’s hair. To make it bearable, I named him Pepsiman, and I’ll call the girl Aquafresh.

The red and blue mixed eyes and hair seem taken directly from a Mary Sue character design guide

They look more like cosplayers, probably to bait cosplayers into advertising for them, than soldiers and warriors.

The first AI Generated fire emblem game

I give more leeway to designs in something with an anime or cartoonish artstyle but that only goes so far. Seems like JRPGs and even anime/manga in general just keeps going further and further with busy designs and they all start to blend in together perhaps because it creates a sort of overload with what you process.

20 seconds in, my first reaction was: wtf are those designs, they look like done by some amateur that didn't know when to stop adding elements to the characters

It's not just the designs, but the artstyle itself. It makes the characters all look like Vtuber rejects. Even the ones from older games. Just compare the Three Houses characters to what they used to look like.

Can't believe this is Fire Emblem now.

I couldn't quite put my finger about what I found so offputting about this game but you just nailed it.

I usually love fe games but was immediately turned off by the new art style and character design. It looks so generic and like a bunch of different fan OCs mashed together. When I heard other critiques of the game I'm glad I didn't waste money on it.

Worst character design in the whole series. It looks like the game tries to appeal to the tiktok youth. It's embarrassing. I can't fathom that any long term fan if the series is looking at this tragedy and thinks to himself "this is peak optics, I need to get my hands on". The character design is what kept me from playing. And since I can't get over it, I might not touch it for a long time, if ever

The character designs for Fire Emblem Engage were in fact designed by a famous Japanese V-tuber artist and designer.

I never thought id not want to buy a fire emblem game because of the art direction. but this games trying its best to make it that way.

FE3H > FEE

After Rosado, I just played the game on mute and read the rest of the way out with my own music playing from a speaker. LOL

Brother, I love listening to you. You're so wise. God bless.

The character design on the lead is so bad I thought it was fake for a long time. I never thought I'd see a Fire Emblem game that made me appreciate the character design of Dorcas.

i believe the main character designer actually *did* make vtuber models at one point so yeah them looking like vtubers is accurate XD also i wanna say it was in an interview but that same character designer also wanted to have designs that were easy and fun to cosplay so that also explains things

Some of the designs aren't bad but theses aren't fire emblem characters 😭

I just finished the game and totally agree with the general consensus - great gameplay, but man, by the end I as so weary of the plot and characters. I cared about them a little bit - but by the end I was skipping dialogue

This is probably why Yunaka is so popular to most people. Her design is still as over the top as everyone else but it kinda makes sense as she is putting on an act to hide her past as an assassin. Her supports are actually some of the only ones that I didn't cringe too hard at. Same goes for Alfred, that Celine support completely changes how you view his character and makes me respect him more as a character.

How would you compare this to 3 houses

A lot of the times I don't remember story plots in my fav movies. I like them for the characters and esp dialogue

I've said this a lot, and you've basically nailed everything I hate about this game. Perhaps the only characters who I actually find interesting are Sombron and his children. I think part of it is because they're mostly portrayed as competent villains, in part because defects are disposed of. Sombron actually has a decent dragon design and he, alongside Evil Veyle, do such a good job at being evil. But something about Veyle's design just clicks with me. With Alear, I think what really made them for me was Chapter 11 and Past Alear, even if the story does not hold up for those chapters.

Agreed, this game was so cringe, play it only for the gameplay 🤷🏾‍♂️

I've disliked the character designs of the Fire Emblem series ever since Fire Emblem Awakening. Up until Radiant Dawn the designs were quite reserved, and while they always had a very clear anime aesthetic, there was a certain realism to them that fit the serious nature of the games' stories.

lol I got a Pepsi ad before this video

As a veteran FE Fan since Fates I fully agree with you. I bought this game after playing Triangle Strategy and man it was rough. I couldn't bring myself to complete it. Speaking of Alear, it is clear that the story was written for Female Alear and not male Alear. The female version actually looks like a Fire Emblem protagonist, has decent voice acting and the plot makes more sense with her in mind. They should have dropped male Alear to be honest. Unpopular opinion I actually really like most of the FE Avatars and each of them have great potential if given the effort to write them as actual characters. I wish Fire Emblem would drop this Avatar supposed to be you vs generic industry standard protagonist tug of war and fully develop it's main avatar lords like with Shez and Byleth in Three Hopes. Alear has some much wasted potential just like Corrin in Fates.

Another aspect is the localization was butchered deliberately and gloated on by one of them on the project. If the dialogue sounded bad, that's partially why and likely might not have had much to do with what was actually in Japanese to avoid using pronouns and other pointless changes. The designs definitely are a far cry from what has been seen in the series prior, but you could tell it might head this direction in more recent games, but even this was extreme. I've noticed a lot of Japanese artists now focus on the cute factor and making designs as busy as possible, over detailing emphasizing the work put into, I suppose. Like you said, they are so busy you can't get a sense of what they are wearing or how it relates to the character. Everyone looks like they are nobility or money is no factor if they can afford tailored outfits, armor and hairstyles. You have no sense of culture they stem from other than your generic variety. Maybe they just went overboard with this game for whatever reason.

There are some character designs I liked. Louis, Zephia, Ivy, Diamant, and Citrinne. And every character has a good moment if you dig for it. Although it is hard to ignore that most characters have their hobby be their personality. Even for the light hearted standard it was annoying. And I liked the English voice casting although some scenes could have been better directed.

I have always found Fire Emblem designs overly elaborate, so cranking that knob even higher would not have been my choice.

absolutely awful designs

Great review, I agree completely. Something you touched on was the voice acting. I'm used to bad voice acting especially for jrpgs, but coming off of Three Houses is a major disappointment. The difference between the voices of the lords for Three Houses and the royals of this game is like night and day, they need to get the voice coordinator who did Three Houses and stick with them.

You enjoyed the gameplay, but is it really any better than past games?? Big make or break before you'd ever recommend this

the vtuber stuff is actually true,as the character were all design by a vtuber artist,don't ask me why they choose them,but they did and that explains a lot about the design

Here’s my theory for the next Fire Emblem game. It’s called Fire Emblem Crusade and it’s an anime fantasy version of the Third Crusade. But it’s four kingdoms teaming up to reclaim the Holy Isle from the Salhaldian Caliphate, and the main character is a young scout (male or female) from an order of mages and knights that once protected the Holy Isle, who are mostly neutral. The character designs looks like the anime version of a mixture Harry Potter Characters and Dragon Age characters. My other theory for the next Fire Emblem Game is called Fire Emblem Guild. It’s the story of a young squire (male or female) helping a young prince reclaim his empire with the help of the various guilds based on the classes of Fire Emblem. The character design are a mixture of Warcraft 3 and Legend of Dragoon.

I will definitely say though, the gameplay is some of the best of the modern fire emblem games. If we had this kind of gameplay with the story team of say Three Houses, you would have a fantastic game

Yeah playing through it now. A lot of the character designs are incredibly obnoxious and a decent amount of them are pretty annoying as characters especially most of the male characters. Very weak writing all around. Game play is good though I'm not really a big fan of the emblem thing. Mechanically and conceptually I like it but I think they should leave the multiverse stuff with Heroes. Maybe if they actually fleshed out this games setting they could of been guardian spirits or ancient heroes native to the world.

The character designs really do bother me. It just doesn't feel like it's going for the medieval look. I like Pannete as a character but her design really feels out of place. The fell twin characters are probably my favorite because they're very unique units and are interesting characters but unfortunately are DLC. And are the only characters who turn into dragons. 😑

I appreciate this video. I just got this game on sale and I’m playing through it now. And I’m having all these same thoughts about the characters, which brought me to this video. Now for context, I’m in my early 40’s. So I assume I’m not the intended demographic this game is being marketed to. For further context, my introduction to Fire Emblem was way back in 1996 with Genealogy of the Holy War, which I consider to be one of the best games in the series as far as story and characters. I’ve played FE 4-10 and Three Houses. These Engage characters are annoying the crap out of me. And they all (so far, I’m only at chapter 8) seem creepy. Like I’m suspicious of how ‘kawaii’ most of the characters are. Because I’m early in the game, I’m hoping that these guys are gonna have some depth added to them as the story progresses. But it seems that hope is too much. I’m wondering why Intelligent Systems decided to go in this direction. I feel like Three Houses was generally considered a successful entry in the games, with a few quirks. It had great character development and a decent mix of character types. I thought tea time was an odd mechanic, but I saw lots of gamers really loved it and wanted to have pet-able animals (and characters.) I guess IS leaned into that group.

And that's why I'm good with Fire Emblem up to Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.

Just beat this game. The voice acting, music, writing, story, character design were all horrendous. Gameplay was maybe a 7/10 and I feel even that's being slightly generous.

My man Vander is one of the better designed characters in my opinion,could cut through steel with just a glare.Edit also idk if it’s just me but Clanne as a Mage knight plus levin sword completely nukes everything.

The character designs were something I just eventually glossed over - as in, my eyes literally glazed over and I focused on what was being said and the voice acting (I used Japanese audio). At this point, because of how upfront the designs are, it's almost beating a dead horse to call them incohesive and outlandish. However, I don't really agree that the characters are shallow. They're not entirely rounded nor realized, but they definitely talk about more than just their one distinctive quirk in the conversations. For example, when Pandreo and Vander talk about the parties, Pandreo goes into the history of the religion as it relates to their setting (that they're more freespirited and less religious) and how this has led to difficulties of finding new followers. It's not the deepest you could delve into the topic, but it's also not one-note and the support conversations overall were at least enough to keep me interested in learning more about the characters.

I think a vtuber character designer worked on some of the designs.

pretty much, the game is just mid and ruined by just leaning too much into being random, ppl saying FE is always this don't know the series at all same to writing inpart by localizers playing moral high ground and ruining characterization with their western writing,its just a game to skip

when the kookiest looking character is somehow the least kooky of the engage cast

Thank you!!!! I have felt so crazy trying to articulate why this game’s story and characters are tragically awful. It’s been bizarre seeing this game being praised so heavily by the community. I guess they played too much 3 Houses and wanted a change? This game is very much so the anti-3H. But for me, Three Houses is one of my favorite games of all time and this game just completely flopped for me. Fun gameplay, but I expect more from an FE release.

Honestly the design of the character is the least of this game issue. I found the game to be very mediocre and un memorable. While gameplay is fun, the story is meh. The design of the characters are a bit weird but I can tolerate it however how the characters are written is what I have a huge issue with. These characters don’t feel like characters they feel like anime tropes. The writing for these characters were not good many of them felt like their tropes then actual characters. Many of the support they don’t grow.

JRPG characters have been one dimensional for a while. Granted, other games may mash aspects of different archetypes together while adding an affinity for junk food, small animals, origami, or the game's cooking/crafting systems. It seems like Engage dropped the pretense of trying to conceal that and just went full anime to the lowest common denominator. It also looks like it was caught up in the full anime checklist. Get rid of VN content. Stop the waifu harems. The game seems waifu heavy. Might be an unpopular opinion. I might have reached gaming boomer status. Speaking of, are you going to look into the Metroid Prime remaster?

Tbh, while a lot of them are not so great, i find there are some real gems in the supports, particularly with Ivy, Mauvier, Citrinne, and Yunaka. As for the designs, i think most of them are fine. There are only a few that seem weird, like Panette, Celine, Rosado, and Alear. And maybe Ivy but i am a bit conflicted on that. But for the most part, the designs are pretty fitting for the characters, it is just more vibrant and colorful. The story is definitely the weakest part, gotta agree there. It is bad when FE Awakening has a better story.

I've been very disappointed by the recent FE character outfits because the generic classes look are SO GOOD! Fates did a great variation of European armors, mixing a bit of Roman and sometimes giving lavish details making them look a bit like 40k armors. Meanwhile all of the norhian units look very generic. Rinse and repeat with Engage, but with a little more of trash v tuber models... That on looks, on characters... I feel pretty much every fe game has bad story and at best it can have glimpses of hope to de good, so I don't expect much with this. And I must say, all the salvageable parts of this FE come after chapter 10 and they're sparsely distributed. After this we start getting characters with actually interesting supports and some interesting spins to established FE tropes. Like, every game since Awakening has done an MC fake out death, but in Engage it had this very cool and morbid twist. I just like the story as silly as is. Now then, a thing that really bothers me about the story is cinematic scene choreography. Why having cinematics if the models are always going to be that stiff? Everyone is just standing awkwardly while someone is getting stabbed. Use more CGs, they're beautiful and convey better the situation.

I have several issues with the character designs. They often feel cluttered, lack cohesiveness and the major issue for me:all characters look identical (face wise). 1. Clutter- Not every character suffers from this issue. Citrinne's outift actually looks quite nice, Clanne and Framme have good base designs,yunaka's design is nice and simple and does a good job of portraying her fake and real persona. However then we have characters like Alear, Hortensia, Rosado, Veyle, Sombron,fogado, who all have weird cluttered designs. My main focus is that of Hortensia and Alear. Starting with Hortensia: She's way too colorful. She has way too many bright colors that fight for your attention. If they wanted so badly to show off her cuteness they should have stuck to one primary color and have other colors to compliment and emphasize the primary. Not to mention her hair and her dress fight each other too. They're both far to large and once again pull the viewers eyes all over the place. They try to make her iconic by have her have a large/strange young girla haire style but also have her have a poofy dress that covers her loer half and her hands. Have one or the other. Not both. Especially not with those colors. Alear is a bit more simple. His clothing is actually a good choice but the details feel super overdone, especially in his advanced class. And then his two different hair and eye colors once again clutter the design. 2. Cohesion: this one is easier for me to describe. Just look at fogado. He is a from a desert Queendom...yet is wearing feathered long-sleeved clothing. His retainers are white as heck despite living...in a desert...a place known for tanning people. His retainers are also overdressed. His outfit doesn't even remotely tie into his sister's whose outfit is more desert safe than his. Heck, even Seadall's outfit is far more desert appropriate then his. Or look at Ivy, her outfit makes no sense for the princess of a kingdom covered in snow. Her legs are exposed to the bare elements and is her chest. She's dying from frostbite. Ironically Hortensia looks better equipped for the cold. Her retainers are supposed to be from different countries/worlds, yet are not even dressed to even show that they're aligned with Elusia. Same issue with Rosado and Goldmary. The only characters who probably have cohesive designs are the brodian Characters and the Firene characters in my opinion. And finally 3.Samw face syndrome: unless you're an old fart, or an adult in this game, you're sharing the same face with every other character it seems. Males all have the same face unless its lindon or Mauvier. Females all share the same damn face unless your name is saphir. It becomes noticeable after the first hour and it never really goes away for me. This isn't even to start with the fact thay most of them are boring and one note as hell

Ive played every FE games including the J only ones. This had my fav designs, but just a retread of the plot of Awakening but worse. The writing is bad even in Japanese. Its jist a fun mechanics 30th anniversery FE smash brothers. My second Fav designs is FE Fates.

I wouldn't buy the game just for the egregious changes to the localization. U.S. localization staff have been getting even worse about outdo censoring anything they don't like, inserting their politics, removing gender and outright mocking customers. The level of butchering here is even worse than Awakening and Fates. And it's worse because no one closed their wallet despite how bad it got. People need to stop giving their enemy their money. The left dominates media because people can't learn to say "No" when they infest their media. The left will never cave and purchase anything made by their enemy. Their efforts to boycott their opposition is in almost complete unison. Meanwhile, everyone else throws their money at the left even when they openly admit they hate you, hate your lifestyle, hate your values and hate your family. Even if FE: Engage is fun to play, stop giving them your money. How bad do things need to get before you say no?

Just get tactics ogre or triangle strategy instead

The characters look awful this is just a Genshin clone.

I can see why they considering replacing these hacks with AI.

I disagree, the character designs are fun and I think they're personalities are nice

Sure some of the design of the characters is a little much but I would take that over the bland boring unsexy characters you see in most western games nowadays. Also maybe the translation studio rewrote some lines which were too edgy for the "modern audience" in the west. Already happened a few times even in remakes.

Those who dress the most are the most shallow. What else is new?

No no no- it’s the story falling apart come chapter 22 easily.

That’s funny, the character designs were the one thing I really liked about “FE: Engage”.

A shame, the story could have been so much more. I know about the bad translations, I switched to japanese but even then the story is virtually the same with the difference that now the characters don't speak to each other like autistic redditors, instead they are just autistic. Seriously, if I hear one more fucking sentence about tea from that princess I will switch from casual to classic and feed her to the wyvern knights. The gameplay is stellar, I have to point that out. As a fan of tactics and RPGs this is heaven. The animations are amazing, the camera angles are great and there is weight behind the weapon. Thankfully reclassing characters switches them into more normal outfits, so if you guys have a problem with that I suggest doing so. That won't change the support outfits... but oh well. I really enjoy the levelling and the fact that best perks are tied to the emblems and I don't have to reclass 10 times to gather the best abilities to survive a maddening run. Going back to characters. The English voices suck. It's just not in the same league or even sport compared to Japanese professionals. Alfred, the blonde prince, is the biggest problem for me. In English he sounds, well, like a sissy and a dumbass. In Japanese he sounds way more mature, especially during the battle. He is ready to kill and protect his comrades in arms instead of having room temperature IQ. There are few ok ENG voices, like Yunaka, Merrin (that wolf knight) and Vander but the rest is just, meh. I was thinking about it and if we got a game with Three Houses levels of lore and story, combined with graphical and gameplay levels of Engage that would be perfect Fire Emblem. Apparently the next one will be a remake using Engage engine and it will focus on the story of Sigurd. He looks awesome in this game so I can't wait. Now excuse me, I have to go haya Yunaka's papayas.

I disagree. Especially with the point about m!Alears voice acting.

I think it's on par with modern anime/manga in general. I usually don't like manga because of it... But I let it pass for fire emblem just because I don't care about FE story... I play it just for the tactical combat.

Fire Emblems after Fates is 💩

Vander destroys this entire arguement

I have very mixed feelings on this. I agree there are numerous characters that are obnoxious in both personality and design; however, there is an equal amount of characters that I absolutely love and enjoy using. Engage was my first fire emblem game and then shortly after I played three houses. In three houses a majority of the characters I found absolutely boring, lifeless, and did not care about them at all. The combat in engage far exceeds that of three houses plus we're not stuck waiting on a calendar to get into the next mission. Either way, even though the characters in engage are more vibrant and different I prefer their design to all the characters looking boring it makes each unit stand out more instead of well these are my generic mages, these are my generic fighter units, etc. I hope in the future they keep a bit more of the anime design so the characters feel more unique. Sure they can make the designs less vtuber but I want more memorable characters. I do adore Hortensia though she is my main support and Ivy is best girl I love having a flying mage. Looking forward to some of the new dlc characters though.

I just started FE because of that character design, it is literally peak character design for me.

Rosado is the worst character in my opinion.

Most of the character designs look fine to me, but I agree the main character looks ridiculous. The personalities are 1-dimensional, too. Really lazy and phoned-in writing effort.

Honestly, with the game going for a heavy anime aesthetic with the designs of the characters and the very light-hearted story, I feel you could do a lot worse. Really, I enjoyed the story and characters because I just care about being entertained, not always trying to gauge some deep philosophy. Honestly, if I wanted to play a game mostly for the story, I would play Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The criticisms about the story and characters I can understand, but I enjoyed myself regardless of the shallowness, and heck, Alear's design actually has relevance to the plot, but even then, I actually grew to love the design since I like abstractness.

you can understand from these videos who is and isnt an anime fan

Funny how people hate on these designs comparing them to 3H, when everyone hated 3H before it came out. People shitting on Caspar and Dimitri's hair and the very essence of the school setting was compared to the Persona series. Also, can we stop saying that "the characters look like Vtubers" as derogatory. If you dislike them, its ok, but it just a lazy argument