Fire Emblem has always been a series I’ve held close. As I’m sure I’ve said before, and I’m sure I’ll say again, I started with Shadow Dragon way back in 2008. I can’t say exactly what had me hooked. It was some blend of predictable yet challenging strategy married with resource management and genuine consequences for slipping up (assuming you didn’t just reset the game). At the time for me, there was just nothing like it, and even now, very little compares. It’s a series with its highs and lows, but through it all I’ve been playing, and quite frankly enjoying what’s been on offer to some degree even at the lowest points. So how does Engage fit into the picture?

Our story starts 1000 years before our story starts with the penultimate battle of a story that’s just coming to its end. It’s quite similar to Awakening’s opening with how it’s framed, with the caveat that this is a flashback in oppose to a premonition. You get to use the final boss man as a bit of a punching bag for learning the basics, before falling in a deep slumber for, you guessed it, 1000 years. When you eventually do wake up, you begin to be introduced to the world and its key players.

Our continent this time is a new one: Elyos. A doughnut-shaped land, it’s formed of four major powers, these being Firene, Brodia, Elusia, and Solm. Taking them at face value, you have the grassy country, the fire nation, the somewhat icy mountains, and the desert. On top of these, we have Lythos, a secluded island that sits in the middle of the doughnut that’s home to our protagonist and their mother, both of whom are divine dragons. Things aren’t exactly peaceful at the moment, but the most action at the time of waking up are minor skirmishes between Brodia and Elusia. Naturally, all that’s about to change.

I do like the prologue of the game, and it’s interesting to me in how it manages to setup the coming conflict by presenting what you can only assume to be a similar story’s conclusion. You get to see an antagonist, their motivation, and how you might hope to beat them. It’s not like it stops to explain everything to you, but the glimpse it gives you is enough to get you excited for what’s to come, and start putting pieces together as soon as the actual game gets going.

The core of Engage’s conflict comes from “Emblems”, spirits of notable warriors from various worlds confined within rings that, with the right power, can be summoned. To fans of the series, or angry Super Smash Bros players, many of these faces will be familiar. What you have on show is a gallery of famous faces, ranging from series favourite Marth, to beloved but less widely known characters like Sigurd. While you would be right in assuming Marth takes centre stage, I was really pleasantly surprised to see your more obscure characters get some real time in the light. Each of the 12 emblems is host to unique powers that I’ll talk a little more about later, but more importantly, they have the power to grant a wish to the holder of all the rings once every 1000 years. This is where your conflict comes from, and why your thousand-year slumber may not be so coincidental. Somebody’s after the rings, so obviously it’s your job to get to them first to add to your roster of powerful allies.

The Emblems play a significant part in the story, but they also serve as windows into their respective game worlds, either bringing up either a sense of nostalgia or intrigue depending on how you’ve engaged with them previously. These feelings come to a head when playing each Emblem’s paralogue map, representing pivotal moments of that character’s journey. They’re incredibly well-crafted maps in both their design, borrowing from popular maps from the series’ history, and in how they manage to present these important moments without really spoiling much of what happened. It’s a great balance that’s presented as a teaching opportunity for the protagonist, while just being brilliant fun to play and experience.

Through and through Engage comes across as a love letter to the franchise in the same way Generations was to Monster Hunter. It’s a marvellous celebration, and the plot makes a lot of sense when you view it through this lens. When you look at it in isolation though, it’s a little lacklustre. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a bad story, but it was in an especially unfortunate place having to follow the incredibly intricate and intertwined plot of Three Houses. The closest game I could compare it to is Fates, but that’s not as negative as some series veterans might think. Sure the plot of Fates is renowned for being a bit of a series low, but to me, its gameplay was among the best at the time of release. Engage is no different.

At its core, this is Fire Emblem. We’re not reinventing the wheel here, it’s your usual grid-based tactical RPG where you’ll take turns moving across a map with a set goal in mind. This is usually wiping out your opponent’s army, but it can also be things like surviving for so long, or even making an escape against an insurmountable foe. The maps themselves are really quite fun, and Engage borrows some aspects from its predecessors. Notable among these are unbreakable weapons and weapon refining trees to give you clear upgrade paths. On top of this, you have a limited-use do-over mechanic akin to Mila’s Turnwheel in Echoes or the Divine Pulse in Three Houses. I like this mechanic and how it allows you to both experiment with new strategy and not be punished too harshly for actions largely out of your control, such as missing a 98% hit chance.

There is more on offer of course, and Engage’s additions to the tried and tested TRPG formula are genuinely valuable. Much like with the game’s story, Emblems live at the centre of this. To use an Emblem, you have to equip their ring to your character of choice before the battle starts. Once that’s done, you’re free to summon your Emblem with the titular “Engage!” mechanic as and when you see fit, with the caveat that the summon will only last for three turns. After that, you’ll need to charge up your Engage Meter through combat or by ending your turn on specific tiles to use it again. With your Emblem summoned, you’ll gain a variety of bonuses that vary from Emblem to Emblem. Sigurd is an Emblem you get quite early on, and he’s one I used heavily throughout the game. When summoned, the character wearing his ring will get a colossal 10 movement, as well as a few new weapons and abilities. This 10 movement is entirely agnostic to the unit class, meaning I spent my game with a rocket-powered armoured unit, and loved every minute of it. Emblems also come with a once-per-Engage attack unique to them that can deliver explosive damage and provide incredible utility to get closer and run away from foes. The mechanic as a whole fits seamlessly into the existing formula, and really takes no effort get used to. There are aspects associated with Emblems that are a little less fleshed out though.

The predominant example of this is Tempest Trials. If you happen to play Fire Emblem Heroes, that name might sound familiar. Introduced in the hit mobile game, Tempest Trials are a mode where you bring your army through a trial of between three and seven maps where if they fall, they stay down for the remainder of your run. For completing a run, you get points, which will then reward you with the game’s premium currency, a rare unit, and a whole assortment of other goodies. The mode isn’t anything particularly standout, but it is something I enjoyed while playing for the accumulated rewards and how easy it is to just pickup and run through. Looking to Engage, we hit a lot of the same marks. You’re limited to three maps here, which are admittedly larger with far more enemies. You progress from map to map with units falling not returning to you until the trial is over. Unlike Heroes though, there’s no real incentive to play. You have no accumulated rewards, and the size of the maps make them feel like a slog. Your rewards are some stones that can make your Emblem’s weapons stronger, and a flat 50 experience points for everybody who made it to the end. There’s not even any stakes to losing; even when playing Classic mode, characters who die here will just be revived at the end. Tempest Trials are thankfully entirely optional, and doing my usual Hard/Classic first playthrough, I had no issues at all in not skipping them. I feel they’d have gotten more mileage out of mimicking a more unique game mode like Hall of Forms, where you train units from zero throughout the trial.

Sitting somewhere in the middle of the Engage mechanic and Tempest Trials, we have… Gacha! Now I’ll try to calm your anger, we’re not looking at Fire Emblem Heroes here, even if they share a game mode’s name. I actually have no issues in how this was implemented. As you unlock each of the 12 emblems, you also unlock a pool of lesser rings you can try to create. Each ring ranges from C rank to S rank, and offers stat bonuses or a relevant skill. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys using a large army, these are wonderful for giving your secondary crew a boost when all your Emblem Rings have been doled out. They’re by no means game-breaking and it’s all done using in-game currency. They just give your playthrough a bit of random flair, and it can just be nice to see your favourite character from an older game lending a helping hand.

Looking beyond the Emblems and all they bring with them, there’s a few other points of interest worth bringing up. Something that’s particularly important to me in a Fire Emblem game is a good balance of having the option to grind, and having experience as a limited resource. Traditionally my favourite titles in the series have been the linear ones, where experience is just another thing you have to manage alongside your weapon durability, item stocks, and the like. I won’t blame the games for this, but I find where I can grind freely, I will. It’s like having the option there removes the meaning behind the joyful suffering of the games I’ve come to love. Engage’s between-battle grinding has a few layers to it. The simplest grinding is at the arena. After beating a map, you get three battles in the arena with no consequences to losing. It’s free experience at no cost, but you’re hard-capped to those three battles. Then, you have a bit more complexity in the between-battle skirmishes that also pop up on beating a map. What gives these depth is that your rewards will vary based on how much you’ve invested in the region that battle is based in. You see in Fire Emblem Engage, you can pay some of your already-stretched battle funds to support any of the four regions as you move through them. As a divine dragon, this kind of support does make sense in-universe. The gist is that the more you invest in a region, the better your rewards will be for clearing out monsters that come their way. I really enjoy mechanics like this that ultimately add another layer of strategy. Do you use your funds now to upgrade your weapons and buy items, or do you go for the long term payoff by investing it? There’s no real right answer, and it gives you options in terms of the larger replayability of the game.

In what I’m fairly sure is a series first, Engage also gives you the option to choose how level up stats are distributed. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, they’re not letting you pick where the stats are going directly. Instead, we get the choice between fixed and random growth types. Random growths are what we’re used to. Characters and their current classes will have a percentage chance to gain a point in a given stat every level up. This might mean that an armoured unit will have a 60% chance to gain a point of defence. With random growths, it’s entirely possible to go ten levels without getting any defence points because you’ve been unlucky and hit that 40% chance of not getting a point each time. On the other hand, fixed growths will give your characters set level up stats based on who they are and what class they are. It’s great to have this as an option, even if I’m somebody who would generally stick to the traditional random level ups.

What’s particularly interesting here is how the game’s Maddening difficulty forces you to use fixed growth types for your first playthrough. It’s not difficult to see why either. In fixing your level up stats, you allow for a much more intricately designed hard mode. You’re far less likely to find yourself in a position where you physically can’t continue because your best unit just got no stat points three level ups in a row (it can happen!). It is a bit of a shame that this is forced on you instead of being presented as a warning message, but I can still understand the choice.

Graphically speaking, Fire Emblem Engage isn’t going to be a game that pushes the Switch to its limits, but I did want to at least give it a mention for just how much brighter it is when compared to recent entries in the series. This more-anime style to me really does look good, and makes the world one I’ve really enjoyed seeing. I don’t think either style is particularly bad, but it’s really refreshing coming from the darker and moodier Three Houses.

All things considered, Engage has come out as one of my favourite entries to the series, even if it’s not perfect. If you’re new to Fire Emblem and want the full package of interesting gameplay and compelling storytelling, I’d encourage you to start with Three Houses instead, and to come to this later. While I really did have a great time, it’s definitely in its gameplay Engage sets itself apart from its predecessors. The new mechanics blend in well with the established series norms, and add further levels of strategy to be utilised or not as you see fit. If you’re already a fan of the series, I can’t recommend this enough. Even if the story falls short, you’ll have a great time meeting some familiar faces, and perhaps an even greater time being introduced to some new ones. With further story content to come in the form of DLC, I’ll be looking forward to my return to Elyos down the line.