Fire Emblem Engage is a great strategy game, but can’t quite match Three Houses

videogameschronicle.com:

It’s hard to tell if Fire Emblem Engage will please the most passionate fans, or annoy them.

The game, which serves as an anniversary special for the franchise, brings back protagonists from across the series and delivers nostalgia with both barrels, but by gutting large parts of what made Fire Emblem: Three Houses such a hit, it might feel like a bit of a missed opportunity for fans who wanted to spend some more time with old friends.

While Fire Emblem Engage’s combat kept us happily playing almost every side mission and skirmish throughout the game’s lengthy campaign, the heart of the franchise, the characters, often feel like one-dimensional approximations of great RPG heroes. Add this to the sheer number of characters the game tries to deal with and Fire Emblem Engage begins to feel very crowded.

Playing as the Divine Dragon, a red & blue haired protagonist that can be either male or female, you awake decades after a battle that saw you fight alongside Marth, Ike, and other Fire Emblem favorites thanks to the Emblem Rings. These rings contain the spirit of those heroes and serve as a power-up during combat.

Once awake, you meet a group of characters that have been watching over you while in your eternal sleep, and it’s not long before they’re forced to join you on the quest to reunite the Emblem Rings after they’re stolen. Thus begins a gap year across the regions in order to get them all back, before their power falls into the wrong hands.

From a narrative perspective, the opening hours are frantic and jam-packed with exposition. The pacing is inconsistent as Fire Emblem Engage goes from introducing a new character with every new line of dialogue to simple tutorial fights that last way beyond the point where the intended