The roughly seventy hours we spent in the company of Alear and the colorful cast of Fire Emblem Engage essentially confirmed our initial impressions: the new title developed by Intelligent Systems for Nintendo Switch is simply fantastic to play, but the narrative, which struggled to get off the ground in those first few hours, never took off. It has to be said that Fire Emblem has never been a particularly memorable series from this point of view, with a few obedient exceptions; In this sense, it would undoubtedly have been appropriate to follow in the footsteps of the previous Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which with its fierce developments and multiple branches, had been acclaimed by the public and critics. For some reason, the Japanese developer preferred to focus on the gameplay.
In our Fire Emblem Engage Review You will find out if and to what extent this very particular and controversial choice had an impact on our evaluation.
Then, somewhere, beneath that veneer of B-movie fantasy, there's also an interesting story, with some ideas that may not be particularly original, but unusual enough. We fall into the clichés of the genre, between blood ties, amnesia, revelations and millennial pigs who want to conquer the multiverse here too: the problem is that Fire Emblem Engage this history It is told clumsily, with childish dialogue - which the Spanish localization desperately tries to revive - and lazy shots in the scenes that precede and follow the confrontations, in which the most important characters discuss or comment on the events.
The direction is static, not to say sloppy, and there is an overwhelming gap between these pedestrian scenes and the splendid ones. kinematics in computer graphics, filmed much better and decidedly more dynamic, which represent the highlights of the story and which unfortunately can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
This doesn't mean that Fire Emblem Engage is an experience to forget, if only because it has a very respectable cast. We repeat it, more convinced than before, now that we have completed the game: in this colorful fantasy context, the eccentric style of illustrator Mika Pikazo It works very well and perfectly characterizes the characters who will join Alear's cause or who will oppose him on the battlefield. The different perspectives express the characters, lineages and cultures to which the numerous secondary characters that we will recruit in our army belong, since one of the main themes mentioned in the adventure is precisely the importance of putting aside differences and joining forces against a common enemy. .
Unlike previous Fire Emblems, where the players' counterparts were silent and without a precise identity, Engage revolves around the figure of Alear, a kind of messiah (male or female, the choice is yours) who awakens after a thousand years to save the Elyos from the return of Sombron, the Evil Dragon.
Most secondary characters have few lines in the main campaign, mostly entrusted to the representatives of the kingdoms that make up Elyos and who will be linked to Alear, but the usual conversations of financial, which are unlocked by having the different units participate in battles, help to better deepen our knowledge not only of the secondary characters, but also of the Emblems. The latter, who as you probably know are the protagonists of the previous Fire Emblems, have a leading role in the story, but the references to the titles from which they come are pure fanservice and will almost certainly be missed by those who have not experienced those games. .
It's a shame that Intelligent Systems has overlooked this aspect of its flagship brand. Our impression, in fact, is not that the Japanese developer tried and failed, but that he didn't really want to commit to the fiction: You get the feeling that this story exists only to justify the gameplay... which fortunately is tremendously exciting.
The Fire Emblem Engage combat system
The return to a combat system More stylized and intuitive, it should not make you think of a bland and anachronistic Fire Emblem, especially when compared to Three Houses with its sometimes even excessive sophistication. This time Intelligent Systems has calibrated the learning curve almost perfectly, introducing the player to the multiple dynamics of the game progressively throughout the almost thirty chapters that make up the campaign. Initially it may seem that battles are based solely on the properties of the battlefield and the relationship between weapons, much more important than in the past, due to the Brecha, a condition imposed by buffed weapons that prevents the enemy from counterattacking on the next turn, as the first emblems unlocked grant their holders relatively immediate abilities.
As the chapters pass and the other Emblems are found, one becomes clear lots of mechanics, often inspired by the other titles in the series. We can make the most appropriate example with the Emblem of Corrin, the protagonist of Fire Emblem Fates, who can use Dragon Vein to give positive or negative properties to the map spaces.
It must be said that the Variety of objectives, maps and conditions. is truly exemplary, and perhaps the most extensive in the history of the Intelligent Systems series. We also play to find out what else awaits us in the next mission, and if the objective is usually quite linear (defeat the bosses or reach the exit), in most cases it has to be reached by detours: the weather conditions they get in the way. unfavorable ones, such as fog that obscures vision or snow that slows movements, and obstacles such as miasmas, which protect enemies and must be dispelled or avoided. the entrance of reinforcement, which often catches players from behind, in the middle of the mission, may seem unfair or unfair, but it always keeps players on their toes and in the hands of a valid strategist can represent a source of additional experience points.
The reality is that Fire Emblem Engage is a title much more challenging than in the past, and for several reasons. We played it on the Hard level with no permadeath: the moment of a review collides with a healthy dose of masochism, as exhilarating as it is, but the game only allows you to turn it down at a later point. Still, we had to reach the Dragon Timestone on more than one occasion and sometimes even restarted the games.
La Chronostone Dragon It is an artifact that allows us to turn back time in battle and return to a turn that perhaps caused the premature death of a unit. On Hard difficulty it can only be used a certain number of times, while on Normal the Time Stone can be used infinitely and, in any case, the game does not end immediately after Alear's death: the player can use the Time Stone Time to go back or restart the mission choosing whether or not to keep the experience points obtained and, therefore, the progress made despite the Game Over. In any case, at least on Hard, you never get the feeling that the game is unbalanced or that the developer is overwhelming the player with sheer brute force: careful choice of units, moves or Emblems often makes the difference between victory and the defeat. .
Despite this, even on Normal the game remains moderately challenging, with a lineup of enemies that are far more numerous and stronger than the few units the player can deploy on the field. Therefore, it is essential to calculate the passive abilities of classes and characters, taking advantage of synergies to overwhelm enemies before they overwhelm us:AI is satisfactory and tends to surround units disadvantaged in terms of weapons or remaining HP, often targeting healers and archers, who cannot counterattack at close range.
Fire Emblem Engage was a rewarding strategic experience for me difficulty levels that we have experienced, and we dare not imagine what delicious torment Madness can be, especially when we consider that the campaign dispenses gold drop by drop and upgrading our army's equipment seems very difficult, if not impossible, despite all the features . Available: There's little point in having the ability to buy or upgrade weapons right away if you don't have the money to do so.
The game is designed to force us to micromanage resources, to decide whether we want to spend those few gold on upgrading a weapon - which we can still rotate between different units - or on the scoreboard. Donate, which practically multiplies other resources, such as the ingredients for the canteen or the minerals needed by the blacksmith, but which sometimes comes across as being too stingy. Some campaign missions reward the player for the achievement with large sums of money, but it is almost cheating: it is better to be thrifty and tactical than to fight long skirmishes on the Elyo map for a handful of coins.
Game variety
Il dreamy is one of the semi-successful aspects of Fire Emblem Engage, probably designed to establish continuity with the previous title in the series for Nintendo Switch: the idea of a headquarters that can be explored in third person is attractive and accentuates the role-playing dynamics with the possibility of interacting directly with our companions and undertaking various mini-games, from the usual fishing to training, through a kind of shooter on the back of a wyvern, but it is clear that the absence of the Persona-style component of Three Houses has influenced the creation of the new center.
Honestly, we didn't miss that part of the gameplay - in Three Houses it tended to drag down the experience between one mission and another - but Somniel, at the same time, suffers from a certain redundancy and many features, such as the Arena or the Hall of Emblems, force the player to perform a repetitive series of actions interspersed with not very short loading times.
Therefore, there is a strong discrepancy between this RPG component, which seems forced into the game structure, and the naked gameplay on the battlefield. However, once you have entered the order of ideas, you feel much less the weight of the Somniel and the turns become almost automatic, also because you are too focused on the construction of the characters, which is not limited to the canonical. class system and promotions, since Emblems are also in the stack. Each ring can be used by each character, and each ring grants a certain number of skills, which are doubled once completed. Appendices, that is, the specific secondary missions.
So we have twelve Emblems, plus extras like the already announced DLC, and twenty Bond levels for each Emblem, which will be multiplied by a thirty characters who can potentially learn each skill, then it's up to the player to decide which one to equip in the limited individual slots. The synergies, as you can imagine, are countless and the right combination of passives, emblems and lesser rings can result in a host of different builds.
The game, however, is smart and doesn't make all the emblems available to Alear in the first few hours of the campaign. History gives them and takes them away repeatedly, and that's what they serve minor rings which are randomly extrapolated from gacha-style emblems: they make up for the lack of emblems when you have fewer units than can be deployed in battle. The progression is balanced and for a certain period of time you only have certain emblems. This change imposes new approaches and a reversal of established habits: we went from crushing enemies with blows from Marth and Ike, to thinking more tactically with less linear Emblems, such as those of Byleth and Erika.
It is a really ingenious system, which also rewards the rotation of the rings between the characters, so that everyone learns everything for the simple pleasure of varying strategies. Of course, on Insanity difficulty it would probably be suicide to trust Ike's ring to a featherweight like little wizard Clanne, but the combination is possible and who knows, maybe someone won't like the image of a brat crushing his enemies with a hammer. . You can discover a world of possibilities in Test tower, an online mode that allows you to collaborate with other players in the Relay or challenge your favorite teams in the Altrotempo trials, but also take on single-player challenges called Tempesta trials.
This also makes us think about the variety of combinations not only in playability, but also in aesthetics. Characters can fuse for a certain number of turns with the spirits of the Emblems, and in doing so, they not only gain new abilities, but also a new, more ethereal appearance. Although each Emblem has a specific outfit union Which doesn't change much from character to character, the artists at Intelligent Systems basically designed every possible combination of 3D models, which is an impressive job in itself.
Fire Emblem Engage, graphically, is a real gem and there is not much to add. Not only in the 3D modeling, which is precise and detailed, but also and especially in the animations, which are very fluid, agile, precise and spectacular. Regarding the latest Fire Emblem in 3D, we have returned to the visual virtuosity of the first titles, with very scenic critical shots and direction that works better in the fight scenes, with effective zooms and dynamic shots, than in the narrative interludes. That's all there is to say. only disappoints little variety of enemies, which are mostly Aberrations - practically zombies - of all flavors, and even the monsters, that is, the mini-bosses that take up more space and require a little more effort to defeat, all belong to the same species, with few variations color.
We play Fire Emblem Engage both on TV and on the go, and the performance - even in terms of power consumption, so to speak - were always excellent, with very rare, if not imperceptible, slowdowns occurring especially in the more geometrically complex scenarios, and especially during zooms over the battle scene in the preloaded 3D scenery that we imagine tends to put more strain on Nintendo's hardware. Our 49" panel always gave us a clean, sharp image, with no unsightly irregularities, while in portability the Intelligent Systems title is clear and legible, as well as particularly vivid and bright on the Switch's OLED screen.
In short, there is nothing to complain about graphically, while in the sound section we can highlight the presence of dubbing in English and Japanese, which also completely changes the song in the introductory cinematic. We played primarily in English and found the vast majority of the voices to be spot on, but this is obviously a personal preference and we have no doubt that anime fans may find the Japanese voices more appropriate. like we said the lyrics are translated into Spanish. We enjoyed it too colonna sonora: It's not among the most memorable in the series, but it has value, accompanies the battles with style and effectively organizes the original songs that reference past Fire Emblems and the Emblems that represent them.
Conclusions
Holygamerz.com 8.5 Readers (27) 7.9 your voteFire Emblem Engage is perhaps the pinnacle of the Intelligent Systems series, for better or worse: the narrative has reached the proverbial bottom of the barrel, while the gameplay has reached unthinkable heights. The Nintendo title entertained us like crazy, involving us in over-the-top missions with a variety of characters, situations and combinations that will make fans happy, and this aspect made us willingly tolerate the terrible dialogue and very obvious plot twists of a story. which, with such a colorful and well-characterized cast, could have said much more. Needless to say, we highly recommend it to turn-based strategy lovers and anime fans.
PRO
- Probably the best side of Fire Emblem gameplay
- The default difficulty is challenging, but never frustrating.
- Long life, varied and beautiful to look at.
AGAINST
- The story is very banal and some of the dialogue is terrible.
- The Somniel could have been designed better
- The distribution of resources is not very well calculated
