For me, Engage did some things well gameplay-wise, but the story and characters were rather lackluster, to say the least. I personally think that while the Emblems only really work for this game, I'd like to see the Break system incorporated into future titles.

I played the game 2 times. One regular playthrough, my first one. And a second one where i skipped every cutscene and every support, even supports i didn't know yet. I was so INCREDIBLY uninterested in EVERY SINGLE character, it was bad. Needless to say that i didn't finish my second playthrough. Gameplay is incredibly good, but without story and characters to carry it, the game falls too flat for me. I am a story and characters guy, i need to be invested in those things to enjoy even the BEST gameplay. It wasn't my game.

Great job with this video man, must have been a gigantic undertaking!

My expectation was that the DLC would explain who Zero Emblem is. The DLC did not explain who Zero Emblem is. My headcannon is that it's Nell from Famicom Wars.

They defiantly put more focus to animation and combat in engage. If they can take that and do it with characters and story for the next one, it will be fantastic

-shows up in the chat pop-in- 'look Gary, there I am!'

Good video! I'm a gameplay-first sorta guy (I mean, I love Fates Conquest), so in theory Engage ought to be my jam--but honestly, I just couldn't do it. The maps and mechanics are strong, but they aren't Conquest-tier; not strong enough to make up for the absolute cringefest that is the writing and characters. The thing I love about Conquest is that it has a small cluster of very strong core mechanics, and it spends the campaign throwing out maps that increasingly demand player mastery of them. Engage, by contrast, has a *zillion* unconnected mechanics that shift from character to character based on who has what ring, and then either are or aren't on cooldown at any given moment. The ring powers just introduce too much for the player to keep track of relative to the value they add to the game, IMO.

I think Engage shows a sign that we could get new games and stories that take place in old worlds like Elibe and Tellius.

What I heard about the character designs is that the artist was not told what the game would be, only given vague instructions. That's why the characters don't look like they belong in each nation they're from, the artist never knew they would have to!

I seriously, SERIOUSLY want to give you props with this retrospective. Out of all the reviews I have seen in the past year, this retrospective is not only the most fleshed out and fair, but it is the most truthful review of Engage to date. I watched a 1 year later retrospective of Engage just a few days ago from another creator and all he said in that review was "Emblem rings good, story bad, best fire emblem game ever." The point is even thought the emblem ring gameplay is stellar, there are other gameplay elements that drag Engage down that many reviewers never touch upon and I am so glad that you do. Everything that you mentioned in your video I agree with one hundred percent. The only real thing from your positive section that I kind of wished you mentioned was how ugly the outfits are when you second seal a unit to a different class. The armor is so butt ugly in this game that there are some units like Diamant and Kegetsu who have such amazing designs that I can't bring myself to second seal them. The armor looks THAT BAD. I think the hero design is hands down the worst out of all of them and was the class I wanted to switch Diamant to, but I refused to make him look like a horse. I just hate it so much.

Great vid 👍🏽

How do you feel towards the localization of FE games in general? It bothered me when a support conversation was removed in fates and pivotal dialogue was removed in 3 houses and so many words in engage were change on how they mean.

For starters I love how the game looks. The battle animations are well done, the gameplay is fun, the map designs feel good. Building characters is easy and fun, and emblems to me add a great new mechanic to battles I just unfortunately have so many issues that while I love engage and will do more play throughs (at the time of writing I only recently completed my first) far from a favorite. One: emblems. It’s not necessarily that they make the game too easy themselves, it’s the fact they’re too easy because no one else but you has them. Sure sometimes we fight ivy, veyle the hounds etc using them but they don’t often feel like a threat with them since they stay in one spot, giving you time to plan around them, and at that point they’re the equivalent of a generic boss with a prf weapon. The emblems don’t make bosses that threatening since while ivy sniping you with Lyn sounds scary at first, it’s ivys attack stat. Just bait it with a tanky unit, and she can only use the attack once anyways so it really doesn’t matter. I feel like the idea of Sombron with the dark emblems was so cool! Emblems of all the bosses and villains from past series? Cool! Till you see they’re just generic enemies and an idea shoo horned into the litteral final battle of the game. Maybe if dark emblems were brought up sooner, fleshed out more, and given to the bosses after we get out emblems back, it would have been a really cool fix Character writing; I agree that character motivations are weird. Diamant really is like the only One with a motivation. Sure he just gives us the emblem ring cause god said so big then the Elusian army kidnap his father. He now his stakes to join us to save his father. Then when his father is killed his motive changes to avenging his father. Great! Ivy and hortensia too. They join to avenge their father and reclaim their kingdom. The issue is that the rest of the characters all feel like they’re written to be comedic in some way. They have one personality trait, rosado being cute and loving art, Chloe likes fairy tales and weird food, Alfred likes muscles. With Alfred it’s a real shame because most of his character is hidden behind ONE support with his sister. If you just miss it, you miss most of his character. Yunaka being bubbly and trademarking hiya papaya for fe fans to spam and think it’s funny (joking) timerra singing about meat, Merrin being some girl obsessed with big collecting bugs, Fogado and his retainers being the equivalent of frat boys, with pandreo being a party animal priest who howls. And these all sound like exaggerations but for some of them that really is most of their character and it’s disappointing. Sure in three houses we had chatacters like lysithea and lindhardt with their sweets and napping quirk, but they were much more than that. Lysithea was a part of an experiment and lindhardt was extremely intelligent, even playing a role in the ashen wolves dlc. You can have quirky characters but they need something to make them stick. Towards the end game the lords just feel like characters to give an audience reaction. “oh no!” “Divine one” kinda just standing there to react. Deigns wise, they feel too modern. Zelkov and yunaka get VR headsets when engaged, diamant straight up has Jordon’s on in his somniel outfit. It clashes with the medivel theming the series has, and that this game is still trying to go for. I feel they’re over designed too. Rosado looks great, but then his wyvern is all decorated and makes looking at him in battle a little muddled. But then you reclass them and they look a little more generic since like three houses they’re designs are only used in one class but at least In three houses I could toggle them to keep their designs in any class that wasn’t mounted. Personally hortensia was the straw that broke the canals back when it came to designs in this game. It’s a shame because some designs are great, personally Solm has some of my favs but even then they feel like they’re over doing them and being flashy for the sake of it. None of the designs looked uniformed and while yes diffrent kingdoms will have different fashion, three houses still let the characters rep their kingdoms and homes, and still looked unified with each other. Just some thoughts. Engage is by no means a bad game. Far from it. It is definitely fun at the very least and looks amazing. But man even going in with a more open mind I was still a bit disappointed with a lot of aspects of it.

Anna is my favorite character just for "ANY CUSTOMERS?"

I might be able to put up with the largely terrible character designs if the story was very very good. Knowing that not even writing is any good means this just isn't worth my money or time. I'm sure I'd probably enjoy the tactical combat but that's just not enough for me. I very much hope we see a return to form for this series. Great video.

I just wish they brought back the assassin class. It's one of my favorites.

At the time the game was released and I watched youtubers playing it I struggled for weeks if I should or shouldn't buy it for myself. I finally did to get over my grief that the Xenoblade chronicles 3 journey was over and I had a few weeks fun with it. I restarted over and over and over because of the overload of characters and the randomness about all of it. I put it down and never finished it. And I don't think I ever will. Even if there are characters that I like, they don't have any screen time or relevance to the story at all. It's a meme that the game has Engaged as its title and theme when you as the player (or better me correctly) can't engage with the world, characters, story ect at all. Gameplay is good and I don't play games with bad gameplay mechanics but it's definitely not all. I really enjoyed your review and agree completely with you (with Jane even more lol) If anything is to be learned by the game than it is Bouche is more than his two colours 😂❤

My spine hurts when I remember how hard I cringed at the (spoilers) Zephia/Griss death scene. GOD IT WAS SO BAD. AND IT JUST WOULDN'T END 😭 I did enjoy experiencing this game as you streamed but man was I chugging haterade a lot of the time, lol

I noticed it says you have 850 hours played for Three Houses? Respect. Thats nuts Haha The most confirmed time Ive ever dumped into a single game is maybe 250 hours into X-Com2 and 200 into Triangle Strategy and Witcher 3.

The most fun for the DLC Story is play it as soon as possible on normal, it is a really good very difficult difficulty while being fair and not frustrating, minus the infinite rewinds it is like a good implementation of a Maddening+ difficulty doing it this early on normal. Afterwards you can create a master save so you don't need to replay the DLC story over and over again and able to use the DLC characters and classes on repeat playthroughs.

Honestly, I wanted to like engage. But the story and characters were so... Bland that despite the gameplay i couldnt bother myself to keep playing. Cause there just didn't feel like any point to. I don't care about these people and events, I don't want to see more of them. And keep in mind, this was someone who was able to get through birthright and Revelation. Yeah. Engage sits well below those for me because at LEAST the characters feel cool and good. Even if the story is lacking, the supports are good. Don't know how anyone will ever be able to complain about awakening's story after engage. ... That all said though, I did kinda like Diamant. He looked pretty dang cool. .... Also, it isn't the dragon protagonists that are the problem, it's the effort put into them. Make us a GOOD dragon protagonist please. It could be so compelling done right.

FE Engage plays really well. For me, the biggest problem is that the character designs don't necessarily fit the characters they're used for. I really like most of their designs tbh, but that's more because I also subscribe to vtuber content than anything else.

The main thing to note is that everyone will have opinions, both good and bad about different aspects of any game in a franchise, especially one like Fire Emblem. While I did not like Engage as a whole, I will say that I did enjoy the gameplay and graphics shown and the beauty of the setting was great to see. However, for each positive, I enjoyed, I could not shake off a dislike for other aspects like the story presentation and the character designs and writing. I was just unable to enjoy the story because it often felt like a lot of the sections of the story tried to move the plot while also disregarding the characters themselves. For example, the player and Alear barely bond with Lumera or Veyle, and yet the game tries to convince the player that they did or when it tries to make the villains sympathetic near their death scenes. Then you have the character writing itself where the characters have personalities but a sizeable portion of them struggle to have growth in their supports as many supports would rather delve into the quirk of a character rather than show who they are as people with some exceptions like Yunaka and Hortensia. Then you have the character designs that look overly flashy and overdone with a barrage of colors and accessories that rarely tell the audience who they are or where they come from as representatives of their nation. My main issue boiled down is that Engage has decent ideas but the execution of those ideas needed more time to function. Anyone can like what they want but when a certain portion of the fanbase is saying the same critiques on a game, there is merit to all critiques and praises of said game, even if they are subjective. Hope you all have a great day.

I am a story and character guy and that is why i felt bored with Engage after Chapter 9 or 10....I don`t disagree with the gameplay portion, but in my opinion characters are the thing that FE does better than most turn-based SRPGs.

Having no game+ really killed the game for me. This was one of the first fire emblem game I felt like it was a chore to finish. While the game has good animations and gameplay, the characters and story were lackluster and it kept me from enjoying it since I lack any sort of motivation to continue it since i felt bored playing it. The characters were very one dimensional and a lot of the supports really failed to make me care for them especially in first impressions so many characters introductions were not good for example Celine I wanted to get to know her but almost every support I got from her she wouldn’t shut up about tea. I gave up trying to learn her due to her supports being bad the worst part she actually has a good support….in A which by that point I do not care for her. Many of these characters felt out of place with their design. Also for me it seems like the emblem rings were an afterthought many of these characters felt hollow they didn’t really feel like themselves only a small fragment of their personality got explored. It sucked cause for many of these characters they didn’t have voice acting until the mobile game and now they can actually speak and it’s not that interesting. Overall i found engage to be disappointing it has an amazing gameplay but due to the boring story and characters it drags it down

$40 + $30 DLC is still too much for a game I know Im going to be skipping all the story cut scenes after an hour or two. I do appreciate this very thorough review though. It confirms a lot of my suspicions about the game and things Ive heard about here and there that have scared me away from it until now. Someday Ill get it because I love FE …but not yet, too much in my backlog and Unicorn Overlord is a month away. lol

41:58 It’s funny that you would say that because all of engage maps are based on/inspired by older games’ designs, chapter 11 is very reminiscent of Thracia chapter 7, Engage ch. 6 introducing Micaiah with a map that feels exactly like RD ch.3 and Engage chapter 4? What game other than gaiden would split your units apart that far just to teach you about celicas warp. engage is supposedly an anniversary game but only shows love to the series through its maps

Love the game. Best mechanics and maps since fe10.

Some of the choices for this game’s design were clearly inspired from Fates, like the royal/retainer characters and even the story beats in some cases were just…too much. I hope the next new game can bring the very cool new mechanics to a much richer world with a better story cause Engage seriously was lacking when it came to lore and even geography. Maybe if they use class rings instead of emblems and the “engage attack” is like a class based ultimate or combat art/spell.

Great vid, I agree with your thoughts. I really enjoyed the combat, animations and the mechanics of the game. I just got so annoyed with the writing. Every character fangirling over the MC every other sentence just got annoying.

On the Hounds; the fact this game introduced a reason for bosses to survive battles (those health bar stones… things) and then didn’t just have certain bosses flee the battle when they hit their final health bars, is kind of baffling. They could even have used Nealucci to introduce this, as he flees before you kill him only to be offed by Zephia for his cowardice. Heck, I don’t like invoking Matsuno to put other titles down, but his titles since the 1990s had the function where bosses who needed to live for longer storylines would trigger retreats before they hit 0 HP. How does nobody else do this (and I’d say this for TriStrat too, where bosses need to be taken down but live or die based on story importance…)? Even FFXII did this; Gameplay And Story Integration isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but when you implement it that’s more interesting to me. And with retainers: it’s not like they didn’t exist even in the Archanea games (what’s a Christmas Cavalier Due for, right?!) but there wasn’t this whole “every lord king has two special snowflake buddies to help them” until Fates. There’s more naturalistic ways to have associates or randos come in (heck, FE8 had L’Arachel accompanied by Dozla and Rennac, but it didn’t feel like a formula there; they were also motivated by different things there). It can make the world feel smaller… I’d say the same for how 3H had nearly nobody that wasn’t a student or Academy Staff member be playable; the fact we couldn’t recruit enemies or NPCs on various maps, even if they weren’t given the same privileges in gameplay, is jarring to me and it’s a shame we haven’t had a bigger world (can we please have more than three or four, five at best, countries on the continent again?)

It gets a lot of hate but i really enjoyed it, if only it had a good story with an interesting setting.

I have a good chunk of hours into the game but never finished it, even after probably 5 attempts. The early To mid game is really fun. There’s a good fe game buried under all the bullshit. But the late game suffers when every unit has a ring and the combat becomes a skill fest, and those transformation designs are terrible. Ringless runs are more fun lol

Engage was lacklusted in terms of the story, but holy sh*t, it was the best FE in terms of gameplay by a mile! And also map design was superb! I really enjoyed every single battle I've played. I hope next FE takes all the new stuff from Engage and adds Three Houses levels of story to it

it's funny, nintendo kept delaying this game for years just for ppl to still not be ready for it when it finally came out

This game had a lot of bad side but the gameplay was really good sadly and luckily with this title we can realise than even if animations & gameplay are greats they don't wheight much in front of good a storyline and nice written characters ( 3Houses was still really good in these both domains ), but this game doesn't have only flaws they added break weapon systeme, engage skills, tried to balance speed and was really fun, sadly for me his biggest flaw was to be released after 3houses who was amazing if we could i would just add engage new fighting features and their animation to 3houses you wouldn't need more.

I’ll accept the Ivy… criticism, so long as you don’t turn around to Camilla and say “Now, THAT is what you should do.” Because Ivy has by far the superior personality, and if she wasn’t so over-designed it would be all: “Camilla? Never even knew her…”

11:40 it’s sommie

Firts Fe game I ever played and its a banger foh sure, the combat and systems OooooFF

Is it possible that they didn't focus on story so much there was a lot complain about focusing too much in story and base stuff in f3h and they just want to play combat. That's why fee has very good combat but feeling lack in other feature.

Awesome video as always! This is a topic that I've worried about because 3 Houses was such a great step after Fates... and then we got Engage lol. As much as I think the gameplay has a lot of mechanical depth, the game has always been about the characters for me. I don't feel excited when an Engage character gets a great level up, or sad when they die, I just want them to shut the hell up lol. Hopefully IS learns the right lessons from this game and they can't ignore the massive drop in sales either

Damn all the builds shown in the video looks so much fun. Even though I have 300 hours by now I always spammed the strong ones. This kinda inspired me to branch out more!

almost 300h in triangle strategy damn ☠️

Good video Titanium from,Gabe P.s. Treehouse is to blame on Localization on supports Yunaka And Laura Post is amazing!

I really *WANT* to like this game but I just don’t. The gameplay is excellent but the lack of a strong story or interesting characters ruins the experience for me. Three Houses gave us a rich story and characters that are still discussed passionately to this day, people got tired of Engage’s cast on their first playthroughs. I just don’t know how you’re able to fall off that hard.

This game need new games+

You don't have to do the pushups to be "optimal" since the stat boost it gives does not stack with tonics/meals. Great video though.

Engage is my first FE game and my introduction to the FE series and I absolutely loved it. I was going through a tough time in my life, and the game really helped me as a welcome distraction because I would always lose track of time while playing. However, as a "new" fan of the series, reading mean comments about it especially those comparing it to Three Houses is what's keeping me from engaging from the community. To the point that I refuse to read any comments about the game because I know it's probably negative. It seems like in general, "if you hate engage = cool" / "if you like engage = you have low standards". TO EACH THEIR OWN, but I really don't think Engage is deserving of all the hate. I'm going to play Three Houses soon and I know I would love it as well but for what it's worth, I would always treasure Engage and my happy moments with the game.

Germany, Japan, Egypt, and America all have very different looks to what they wear, so it makes way more sense for opposing countries to be different in style in games as well.

100% bad design. The trailer got me like: wtf... Every character in the trailer looks from a diferent game. And then there are characters from all the games in the mix, making this issue even worse

underrated video, underrated game, not perfect but i can't front watching your live playthroughs reminded me how complex the gameplay really is and tbh for me the story isn't great but ain't bad either. love your coverage overall and looking forward to your coverage of Unicorn Overlord & 100 heroes

Wow you’re the first person I’ve seen have some real issues with the character design in fire emblem. I’m not on social media besides KZfaq. So I tend to miss a lot of things like this. I find it funny my two favorite FE games are the ones with the worst plots in this game and Fates. I do enjoy the Saturday Morning Cartoon like plot regardless of its issues. My main thing is that I wanted more . Characters are very enjoyable, despite being very basic at times. Music is best in the series to this point. Gameplay is the most fun I’ve had since fates. I can’t get enough of it. This game as a whole issues included is just fun. I find myself going back to it every few months, like fates. I haven’t touched 3 houses since 2021. As much as I enjoy 3 houses, I didn’t it as much as these two games. Maybe I’m just contrary as an fire emblem fan.

Its*

3:09 "all art is subjective HOWEVER MY OPINION MEANS MORE AND IT'S OBJECTIVE WHEN I SAY IT" You couldn't even keep yourself from contradictions for even 10 seconds wow. That's impressive.

While the gameplay is good, the story and characters are less interesting to me than the previous games. It feels less epic. Maybe I was spoiled with Fates and Three Houses, but I wish it had multiple routes to justify replaying it.

This is the first FE game I have beaten and have absolutely no desire to go back to. The somniel was like Gareg Mach x1000. It became so repetitive and tedious that it almost made me quit the game entirely. If I hadn’t been flying around everywhere for my honeymoon, I probably never would have beaten this game.

Well wishes to your mother! I love Engage, it has issues with its writing, but I adore the gameplay and designs Are the designs too busy? Well yes, yes they are sometimes. But I still think there’s a lot to love here, and I hope elements of the art style here are carried over for future entries

I have such an unpopular opinion about this game. I agree with the criticisms but something inside me just can't hate this game or focus on the negatives, story wasn't the best sure (I'd still argue it's better than Fates and Awakenings stories) but the gameplay was easily the best in the entire series, and I didn't hate the characters either, simple? Yeah, but simple doesn't mean bad. In the end, it's not perfect but I still really enjoy this game, i hope future games improve upon the gameplay

I completely love Fire Emblem Engage. Some of my favorite character designs and character builds was a blast. The colors were so vibrant and alive and just was right up my alley (definitely subjective but I’m on the positive end on character designs 😅) also I never cared for any fire emblem story to be honest (shadow of Valentia was ok) but I hold this up there with Awakening and Shadows of Valentia as some of my favorite Fire Emblem games

For my take with over 400 hours in it, the gameplay is spectacular, some of the best in the series. It’s an anniversary game, so it takes gimmicks from all the other titles and uses them in interesting ways that can make each build unique even if every unit is in the same class. The story is pretty cheesy, basically your classic shounen anime, but that’s to be expected from an anniversary game that’s supposed to make callbacks to previous titles. Of course it’s a tropey, feel-good story, it’s supposed to be, it exists to celebrate the series, not pose thought-provoking discussions like 3 Houses or Path Of Radiance. The story is fine for what it’s going for. The characters are a mixed bag. Generally speaking, the character writing is good, but the character design is bad. Each character is unique, and while some of them can be one-note or tropey, their uniqueness keeps things from feeling to similar during supports without different characters. It’s also nice that the support conversations don’t carry on too long, they say what they need to, give some information and growth, but don’t overstay their welcome like some support convos from other recent titles. The designs though are just wild. Apparently they hired a third party studio for the character designs, but forgot to tell that studio what themes they were going for with each character outside of “it’s an anniversary game”, so that’s why we got these wack designs for so many characters.

Watched entire video yet I still feel like engage is bottom 5 FE game unfortunately for just lotsa reasons

I love FEE tho it's not perfect. I play this game over 200 hours.

I love Engage, it has some of the best gameplay, combat and maps in the series. I found the characters lovable too. I want more games like this instead of 3H

I think the simplest way to put it for that end bit in the video, why people have stated away from it? Clashing stories and a unappealing aesthetics will deter others away no matter how good your gameplay is. I enjoyed parts of the gameplay, and disliked -- no, let me recant that. I hated this story so much, that after I finished the game, streaming it to my boyfriend, I deleted it off the Switch. I genuinely am so tired of being gaslit by others how this is secretly a "good" story or that my standards are "Too high". Like no, we are not doing this. Most FE games generally have better set up story wise, with generally more nuanced characters. This was just not it. It was visually repulsive from an aesthetics stand point. The story was just... I'm not going into my rant. I have too many dark urges when I think of this game's story and characters. I genuinely feel bad my boyfriend got this for me last V-Day. When you gift things to your significant other, you tend to expect it is to their taste or something they'd enjoy. He, who can be a real weeb. Even he disliked it. This game was kinda nothing. The Xenologue writing was awful too. One of my friends tried to defend that shit and I was like, "We don't defend bad writing around these parts." I think the best, objective thing I can say about this game? It deserved a better writer, the women who wrote it might have saved FE with Awakening. But this isn't FE Awakening. This isn't even the divisive Fates. This isn't a Spin off. This is a main entry, by a character who threw her notes at this, and somehow has way less soul each attempt. It strikes me as if she doesn't care, and is doing it because she thinks everyone will just buy everything despite the awful writing quality, which has sadly been a case. Like give the series some new writers who actually care about characterization. Make me care about the war effort. I don't care about this match maker bs. I don't want a weird circus act acting as my army. "I just want a fleshed out world with god characters that are fighting for something we the player can believe in. It's why so many loved the Telius games. This is not rocket science." Tl;dr "Bad Aesthetic and Story can turn people away from decent gameplay innovations. The cringe outweighs the good."

I actually really enjoy the flashy character designs and artstyle especially over 3H. The story started out strong but deflated for me as the game went on and while I think this is the best gameplay of the series I do thin there are some design decisions that are very questionable like taking away half of your rings for half the game and the endless barrage of high level reinforcements near the end. The Fell Xenologue highlights the game's major weaknesses on both fronts

I actually really like parts of engages story, mostly everything connected to Alears is actually interesting, and would it not be for the stupid setup with time travel, chapter 24 would be my favourite chapter story wise, for how it depicts past Alear. It also kind of makes me wish, that the game‘s plot was set in the past, but that would be a completely different game. Also, Lumera‘s death is still better than Mikoto in Fates, because, at least, Lumera has one pretty memorable gameplay moment (basically jumpscaring you with sigurd), before she gets killed. Thinking about it, basically everything Engage borrows from Fates is executed better here, than in Fates. Not that this is a high bar, because Fates is still the worst FE, story wise.

Engage was rushed and lazy. I think it is good, that it didn't passed with community.

I liked the design, and I had a rattattouie moment with the gameplay as it took me to my happy place of Awakening, yes I am an awakening baby, sorry

The story has (almost) never been Fire Emblem's strong point. Since the DS/3DS episodes I don't have too much hope in that regard... I don't know if the developers want to keep it simple to reach everyone or at least the youngest or if it's more laziness... I recently played a Fire Emblem made by fans: Vision Quest ( based on the game Sacred Stone) and my god it's better written! I find that a bit sad... Besides, I'm really impatiently waiting for Nintendo to decide to remake Fire Emblem 4 with a more adult storyline! Anyway, great video and I 100% agree with you !

I’m glad we got a game like this after the last two. I know some people care less about the gameplay side of things but as someone who enjoys it it’s been sorely missed with how well designed/balanced this game is.

For me the insane level of avatar worship made me want to throw up and second when I first got to the part in Brodia I wanted to throw up again. The writing, characters and overall world building is so unbelievably bad it is down right insulting. I mean fk when I watch baby shark with my niece I feel like it has better writing and characters then engage... Overall if this is what Fire emblem is gonna be going forward I am done with the series. Hopefully we get something that respects it's player base in the future. Also side note: making the protag a dragon and not be able to turn into a dragon is just the dumbest, laziest idea ever fking stop it I.S

Somniel is fantastic because it is completely separate to the story and world, it should and just needs to be a roaming home base.

I hope they steer away from this all-offense unrealistic and puzzle like pure numbers take on strategy. It limits the amount of realistic strategies you can employ. I guess it works for a game with such a flat world and characters and nonsensical story, and I understand why people like it and probably wouldn’t call it poorly made, but once I heard the directors say they thought tactics games weren’t “intuitively fun” and thought they needed to make it the way it is to “expand their audience”, the reason this game fell totally flat in every aspect both story and gameplay for me began to make sense. I desperately hope this is a one-off flop and they learn from Engage’s poor reception.

Many of the character designs are pretty awful or at least don't belong in a fire emblem game.

I love this pastel little fever dream of a game. 3 houses set the standard for MODERN fe stories. Engage set the standard for gameplay. Period.

For the next FE game, just please don't give the main protag design to a Vtuber. That's the main thing that sticks in my brain, she looks like Ronald McDonald...

the game is too anime, and that's saying something as FE is a very anime series, and I am an anime fan. I just look at half the designs and they strike me as the kind of thing people make up that don't like anime and are making designs simply to make fun of it.

I think the first half of the game sets a bad impression. The jokes dont land to well, the firene characters are the weakest to me, and once you actually get 4+ rings it really opens. It took me a year to finish it, but i zoomed through the later third and loved it

Pretty good video, but it is a shame you can't pronounce "Alear" properly.

Nobody will ever convince me this game has good english dub

It's only legacy was making FEH worse.

While I would agree that the character designs were uniquely dramatic for a FE game, they were much closer to the direction FE art style has been going than you give them credit for. If you look at the change from the GBA era to Tellius, then from Tellius to the 3DS era, Engage's design seems like more of a natural conclusion than Three Houses. Comparing to Three Houses as some pinnacle of character design also feels really weird when it was so bland. Put them in the same class and without the portrait icons you need to zoom way in to try to tell them apart based solely on their hairstyle and slight variations in stature. In Tellius, 3DS, and engage characters in the same class are immediately identifiable because of unique color schemes per character. Hot take here but if Three Houses didnt drop during the world situation that it did, becoming many people's first FE game, I doubt the overall community would look as favorably on it.

Really, the longer I played the game and analyzed the story of Fire Emblem Engage, as well as put up with the people that crap on this game, the more I actually began to honest to god believe that the story and characters are ACTUALLY good. But hey, it’s just matter of perspective.

As a long time Fire Emblem fan I lost interest in the franchise after Three Houses. There were too many JRPG mechanics, too much story and not enough battles. I put around 90 hours into my Hard/Classic playthrough and there were only around 20 chapters. Even though I enjoyed the game I was burnt out and didn't want to play it again or another like it. If you're saying I can just skip all of the story and have great gameplay I'm actually interested again.

if you paid attention to the story, you would realize it is really good and actually would enjoy it, everything you said about the writing and story showcases you did not pay attention whatsoever because everything gets explained to why things happen and no, the villain group is not evil for the sake of being evil either.

You were pessimistic and negative the whole video.

Objectively, all of the character designs are visually incredibly great. Three Houses was very poorly designed in every aspect.

Never even finished that game, what a disappointment. I’m glad people who are super into the gameplay of FE games got one for them, but for me if you don’t have good characters and a good story your game isn’t for me. It seems I’m not alone since this game fizzed out in like a month while people STILL talk about 3 houses.