A Tactics Game and TTRPG Blog
 Heya! Happy new Zelda and impending Street Fighter launch! Lots of gaming to do. Today, we're covering Fire Emblem: Engage on the Nintendo Switch, released January 2023. Engage is the newest tile-based tactics game from Intelligent Systems following 2022's Fire Emblem: Three Hopes. Fire Emblem: Engage is a tactics, all-star game where the worlds of the series crossover in this pocket world. The protagonists of each game is worshipped as great heroes and sources of power. You play as the Divine Dragon, a great deity awoken from a long slumber to fight the revived Fell Dragon, akin to the early game's 'defeat the Shadow Dragon' story. So let's get into Engaging our Emblem Ring transformation. All-Stars Tactics TransformationsTo quickly preface, Fire Emblem Engage is a very silly game. It's the first traditional tactics game for the series that focuses heavily on crossover material. Previous crossover games dabbled in other genres like the gacha mobile Fire Emblem Heroes, musou-style Fire Emblem Warriors on the WiiU, and Shin Megami Tensei crossover featuring idols Tokyo Mirage sessions #FE.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions was foretelling Engage with super saiyan Marth Engage follows in a similar manner with a world that worships the idea of the Fire Emblem protagonists. The spirits of 12 great heroes is stored in the Emblem Rings and worshiped across the continent of Elyos. A select few god-like figures can 'unlock' the power of Emblem Rings and allow anybody to summon one of the spirits. Players control Alear (their default name), a Divine Dragon able to use the Emblem Rings and very recognizable blue/red split hair. Alear is reawakened after they defeated the big ole Fell Dragon 1000 years ago. Turns out, Fel Dragon's back! Go and assemble the Emblem Rings to defeat the Fell Dragon once again.  Thank you Ghost Marth This main plot goal keeps steady through the game. Alear travels the world, meeting the nobility of each kingdom in their quest to gather the twelve Emblem Rings. Some of the nobility are aligned with the Fell Dragon and use corrupted Emblem Rings against Alear's army. Let's talk on gameplay! Tactics - Rock, Paper, Flier-unitsThe core of Fire Emblem tactics layer has stayed steady in its long history since the NES. You control a roster of units on tile-based maps, taking an action with all units before passing to the enemy's turn. When a unit attacks, the defending unit gets to counter. If a unit is fast enough they get to attack again, and if a unit is lucky they get a critical hit! The series is best known for its weapon triangle system, like this blog's lil banner! Spear beats sword, sword beats axe, axe beats spear. The weapon triangle extends on a game by game basis with weapons (tomes, bows, etc.) and unit-types (mounted, fliers, armored).  More characters should talk game mechanics in-universe Weapon triangle dictates advantage over another weapon gives a bonuses for attacks like damage, accuracy and so on. When certain weapon targets a specific unit-type (bows against fliers, axe unit's hammer against armored), the bonuses were drastically increased even to 1-hit killing. So proper accounting of weapon triangle was key for gameplay flow.. to a point. Depending on the game, a player could ignore portions of the weapon triangle (like the sword-axe-spear trio) and focus on building raw stats instead. Don't have to really worry about weapon triangle if your armored unit only takes 1-3 damage a hit, or your sword unit is so fast all spear units can't touch them.  Armored & Flier units are full defined by being really good stat monsters Engage instead reinforces the weapon triangle and says 'pay attention or don't get a turn' with its new Break mechanic! Simply Slap Your Opponent's Weapon AwayWhen a unit initiates combat (ie. player unit on player turn) and damages a unit they have triangle advantage over, the defending unit can't attack back! In short, you steal a turn from the enemy unit. It's a really interesting innovation on the standard planning of a Fire Emblem game.  FISTS BEAT BOOK, NERD Louis, your first armored unit, is an absolute wall against any physical fighter and packs an absolute punch back. In prior games, you could have a unit like Louis solo chunks of physical fighters (barring anti-armor hammers wielders). Not the case with Engage! Any axe units initiating combat against Louis will cause a Break and prevent his counter. On the reverse, a frailer unit like the player avatar, Alear, can take a swing as a sword unit at axe units without receiving damage! This, especially, makes boss units much funner to plan around. Boss units across the series have an elevated stat spread that could kill player units through very few hits. This often meant swarming a boss with the whole army in a single turn or using heavily overleveled units to use the tried and true 'overwhelm with raw stats' tactic.  Bosses have health crystals, meaning they have multiple health bars! But with Break mechanics, bosses can be managed with strategic use of your units. Weaker units can not only take advantage of the free attack after a Break, but can also be the ones that cause the Break. Even the frailest units become powerful support to others with the ability to defang an enemy. Diplomacy Has Failed! Team, Engage Up! Begin transformation sequence! Along with inventory and class management, each unit can be assigned a Bond Ring or Emblem Ring. Bond Rings are provide minor stat buffs or small bonus skills. Emblem Rings provide a similar initial bonus, but are tied to the titular Engage mechanic. When a unit Engages, they summon one of the 12 (19 with DLC) Emblem spirits and do a cool transformation sequence to take on physical traits and weapons of the character. Take on Marth's cool blue hair or Ike's murder hammer he totally used to cheat the Black Knight duel.  Engage outfits all have this white regalia and sick wing effects For three turns while Engaged, the unit gains unique skills, weapons, and special attacks drawing upon that character's popular image in Fire Emblem. Sigurd's Engage toolset invokes him being the first mounted spear protag by giving 5 movement (doubling infantry movement!) and cool spears. Lucina's Engage draws on the central Pair Up mechanics of Awakening to allow a unit to defend adjacent allies or swarm a target with support attacks of your whole army. The Engage mechanic gives a big power surge to the player that really reinforces the game's central theme: celebrate the series by remembering (and using) cool ideas of the prior games. Turn the tides and superhero transform into the Hero King Marth and win the day.  Very glad Celica gets the spotlight for Echoes representation Certain encounters also give major boss units their own Emblem Rings to use against the player. They're scary! The Engage bonuses are just as potent as on player units (sometimes stronger with enemy only buffs). There's a puzzle-esque element of unraveling the enemy forces so the incoming big Engage Attack doesn't kill the poor target the enemy chooses.  Damn, they SURE do. Load Bearing Permadeath MechanicsFire Emblem: Engage continues the series staple of permadeath as an optional core mechanic. You can choose Classic mode for typical permadeath or Casual (still a bad name!) mode for units to 'revive' after a map's completion. Permadeath continues to be an odd aspect of Fire Emblem. Fundamentally, I think the series has never been good at writing or creating systems in response to a unit's death. It never feels meaningful to have a unit's death stick apart from a light end-of-game eulogy. On the other hand, my motivation with the fundamental tactics layer relies on permadeath as a balancing mechanic. Enemy army composition is often a puzzle for the player to take out units without taking massive damage in counters, especially with the new Break mechanic. This dynamic cracks whenever I rely on Casual mode to revive a unit later.  Boucheron is a man built to perish very easily in the starting chapters So I often play on Casual when available but treat it as I'm playing on Classic. If a map springs a surprise and kills a unit 45 minutes in, I have an escape valve to not completely waste that half hour. The series understands the contradictions of this dynamic and continues to implement turn rewinds, starting in Fire Emblem Echoes. Turn rewinds is a great salve to give a player grace in undoing tactical errors and only lose a minute or two as opposed to full map progress. Fire Emblem has always been a series I associate with save states since my earliest days of GBA romhacks, so turn rewinds are a natural fit to that idea. That said, I still believe turn rewind should be given unlimited use in the series. Running out of turn rewinds returns to the issue of player death feels really unfulfilling to let stick or wasting 30+ minutes on non-progress.  Let me eat the Draconic Time Crystal hard candy So let's talk about beats outside a turn with the game's story! It's.. present! A World of Broad StrokesThe world of Engage uses broad archetypes to define the kingdoms and characters. The continent, Elyos, is a big outer ring of 4 countries with an inner island country. They are as follows:
 The world tapestry is sick. I'd love to have this on the wall These are pretty broad themes you expect out of a typical medieval setting, relying on a unique spin on execution to make the idea seem novel. In the case of Fire Emblem: Engage, the broad themes mostly stay shallow especially in comparison to prior games like Fire Emblem: Three Houses. A major friction of the prior Three Houses is that the three nations have fundamentally differing governing bodies. A standard kingdom supporting the Church, a powerful empire, and a loose council nation of nobles. The different governments create interesting power struggles when the timeskip war breaks the loose peace. In the world of Engage, all the countries follow a mirrored template: a ruling figure, two heirs, two retainers to each heir.  Brodia has my favorite visual aesthetic, but they never really do much with their whole 'they love War bit' The main difference is primarily just environment art and statements from the nobles saying out loud 'this is what our country is about'. It creates a jarring feeling that each country is not just perfunctory writing, but fully only for gameplay setup to a distracting degree. A major factor is just writing time. With only a few chapters allotted to each country, the cutscenes are dedicated to introducing one of the three major nobility characters or resolving a major plot beat for the country. Then, the two heirs of the country join the merry crew for the next location. Elusia does get an exception as the antagonist country but has a similarly shallow vibe to how people live in the snow country. Fire Emblem does have a history with overly cartoonish villains who revive the evil dragon for 'reasons' and Elusia reinforces that cartoonish nature.  The Elusian nobles, while cute in isolation, are jarring as the people threatening annihilation of the continent With all that said, the grand strokes the countries paint are in service to defining the characters who live within, and boy there are some real quirky ones. A Crew of Archetype Weirdoes SCARED MAN APPROACHING (Blur not an edit) Fire Emblem characters, especially in the 3DS era, tend to focus on a defining character trait as a baseline for their writing. Standout characters, like Owain in Awakening, had really loud & dorky character traits that made his support conversations a blast to read as he interacted with normal people. His sword hand twitches.. With Engage, the oddball characters come in frequent and often. I would say the game's writing strength lies in setting up punchlines with the cast bouncing their incredibly cursed habits against one another in the support conversations. Some of my notable favorites of the army:
Your army is full of so many weirdoes There's an interesting contrast with how self-sustaining the eccentric characters tend to be compared to more standard characters. Rule of good writing dictates a contrast between characters helps make things more dynamic, but with the previously mentioned issues in worldbuilding the grounded characters have little to latch onto for their motivations. Jean, an early optional character, is one of the few grounded characters I really enjoy. He's the apprentice to a small village doctor and joins Alear's army to help people across the continent. His support conversations focus on stress of his duties as a doctor amidst war. His anxiety about the time sensitive nature of his work is a really fun look at the stresses a typical person would have in the world. Jean is also just a great lil guy with a absurd stat growth, so there's no reason to not use him well into the game.  Jean is just a lil guy The recent Fire Emblem games haven't avoided their share of 'one quirky trait' characters, but Engage is an interesting look into when the balance of absurd and normal writing has an uneven balance. As someone who adores diving into the daily life in support conversations in games like Scarlet Nexus, I would love to see more balanced character writing into the series. A Bold Era of Post-Launch Patches (And DLC)Before talking on meta management, a bit of a tangent is needed. Fire Emblem: Engage was a January release in 2023. Since then, multiple patches for balance and 4 paid DLC waves have dropped. I played a short amount in January but played primarily in April & May, though I didn't buy any DLC. Though, those patches have made major changes to gameplay loop!  There are some characters I really adore from prior games in there.. but money.. Minor content DLC to single-player RPGs is not novel to Engage, but it's always been a mysterious quirk to modern Fire Emblem. The incentives baked into the paid DLC was compromised at best: make the process of grinding easier with this $2.50 USD bonus map. Want to get a unique skill tied to a DLC class? Cough up $3.00. Engage sits in a similar odd spot. You can currently obtain 7 additional Engage Rings through DLC, a massive player power level surge as the 12 main story Emblem Rings are slowly drip fed to you. The current curated pace of the story could be cracked open if you're willing to obtain the Season Pass. It's weird! I'll admit, if I were to replay Engage soon I'd pick up the DLC for repeat playthroughs cause I am having a blast. But the specter of the DLC does hang over my current playthrough (especially with major plot beats restricting Engage Rings).  Commence! Box art pose!! Leaks of the game have been popping up since June of 2022 showing that the game was near, if not was, complete for a few years by time of launch. A common process for developer teams when games complete before launch day is to shift them to other projects, or shift them to DLC & Expansions. Which, hey sure, I'd rather the team have continued work as opposed to the game industry tendency for end-of-project layoffs. Thankfully, the team didn't only do heavy work on DLC. They added a well!  This well also ties to all the DLC content! This well fundamentally changes how easily the player can experiment with major gameplay systems. There are likely other smaller balance changes that are invisible to me, but it is interesting how the game I put down in January became a much funner game when I picked it back up months later. The landscape of modern games and online connectivity means games can have an ever changing form. A complaint someone had about balance might not exist anymore when I played! A lot of this introspection comes tangent to this article from Patrick Klepek about reviewing Jedi: Survivor (Waypoint forever, I'll miss y'all). What does it mean for your experience of a game to disappear with the magic of a patch? It feels better that, well, the game is better but there are plenty of people who completed a different Engage before the balance patches. They're not suddenly wrong about their experience, and many could miss out on patches through any number of reasons. Modern games is an odd beast.  There's DLC for a Sommie outfit. Very tempted. So, let's talk about the systems I did experience! Strategy - The Somniel's Benchwarming BusinessThe management layer of Engage is where I found the most friction with the game. Between maps, the player is given access to a world map to transition to the next chapter, complete optional combat maps, or return to the Somniel hub area for unit management. Generally speaking, there's a lot of flexibility in the management due to tons of free grinding given to the player. If you really resonate with a character that has awful stats, you can spend as much time as you want bringing them to parity. Buuuut you also have heavy incentive to absolutely not burn time on weak units.  Suggested levels alone makes the world map implementation a success Maps in Engage come with tough unit caps of 8-10 units per combat encounter. You are also constantly given new units each chapter, sometimes given 3 in a whole group. Very quickly, the game goes from introducing new archetypes of units to overlapping previous unit archetypes with better starting resources (better stats, different Personal skill, etc.) So, you make the hard call to bench older units for the rest of the playthrough. Sorry Clanne, new varsity league tome users dropped in. On the upside, your benched units have a life in the Somniel hub. Doing what? Helping you fish and do situps. Panzer Dragoon But Sommie Is There Tactics game, A major complaint of the previous Fire Emblem: Three Houses was that upkeep between chapters felt tedious in the hub management area. They.. didn't avoid the same issues in this game. The Somniel hub continues to reinforce that Engage is a very silly game. Tasks in the Somniel range from resource gathering, managing unit supports, playing minigames for small bonuses, and taking care of a weird dog in the basement grotto. I love my weird basement dog, Sommie.  You can name Sommie whatever you want. That's a Chorby lookin' lad Aside from petting Sommie, the tasks of the Somniel can feel like a list of chores to hit between every fight. Playing every minigame could squeeze out bits of stat optimization like doing situps for +2 HP on Alear. Resource gathering requires scavenging the whole Somniel for errant metal bits. Engage seems to understand part of these tasks could be streamlined for the player. Some Somniel tasks have streamlined options to auto-pick units like with support rank grinding. Tedious tasks like resource gathering don't and should have implemented options to automatically handle. Please, give me a 'collect all' resource gathering button. All these Somniel tasks also refresh often and constantly. Depending on optional grinding a player does, the Somniel could refresh several times and exponentially expand how long the player goes without progressing the plot. You have to actively tune out major upkeep tasks to keep a steady pace of plot.  There are soooo many points of interest on the Somniel My main thought is that the Somniel as a 3D environment starts to add extra menus and navigation time which drags pace over the course of Engage's campaign. I would prefer if handling tasks was handled under a tight menu system or compressed into smaller sprite maps like the 3DS games. Here's to hoping that a game with full feedback of Three Houses & Engage works to reduce how much time is spent doing idle tasks. The Engage Ring Bottleneck (On Launch Month)Outside doing your 50th pushup sessions for temporary stat buffs, major unit management comes in the form of class and skill management. Every unit has 1 personal skill, pushing them toward a certain playstyle, and 2 blank skill slots. The blank skill slots can be filled with skills inherited from Emblem Rings using a units reserve of Skill Points (SP for short). SP passively builds by using a unit often in battle, faster if they have an Emblem Ring equipped. Unfortunately, SP gain rate is gruelingly slow from combat. The major skills with the more drastic (and thus more fun) effects cost 1000+ SP. Alear, my avatar unit that is required for every single chapter battle, could barely push 1500 SP after 14 chapters.  Taunted by those 2000 SP skills across the Emblems.. This is made more complicated with the aforementioned frequent benching incentive. A new unit could come in with better stats AND more SP than older units, even those who've fought on every map to that point. This creates a really harsh punishment for experimenting 'wrong' or buying any smaller stat buffing skills. Or it did at launch. That cool well I mentioned in the DLC & Patch section? Added another task in the Somniel where you could throw in equipment and get random equipment back next time you return. With enough thrown in, the well spits out skill books which lets you throw 100 or 500 SP at a unit.  Along the 500 SP Novice books, the Well also lets you get a ton of other strong equipment. Truly an odd thing to add later. So current Engage is relatively trivial to grind SP on! The well's a good way to address the balance oversight, but the issue of slow SP grinding is still present. By the time the well was patched in, many people had already completed Engage's main story and describe a really stingy management game. But, hey, maybe being busy for a few months was a good thing for me! The experimenting of the Emblem skills is very fun with skill books, giving a flexibility to make a unit into whatever gimmick unit you want (barring bad stat growths). With the well, I do find the Emblem Inheritance system a good iteration upon the Three Houses skill training management. Keep it up Intelligent Systems! In The End, An Odd Balancing ActFire Emblem Engage is a conundrum of a game to evaluate as a whole. It innovates on the Fire Emblem tactics loop in a really powerful way that feels will stick past this entry. In the same breath, I hope the storytelling work done in this game is a one-off and writing style of Three Houses is allowed to continue in the next entry in the series. A recent game development twitter post helped solidify my full thoughts on Fire Emblem Engage:  The emblem ring Engage mechanics show a great attention of meshing tactics gameplay to a theme of 'superpowered units' the game presents. It draws on a celebration of an all-stars game when you summon the Ike ring to defend against a whole battalion. It rules! But I also experienced a barely by the books story unfold with limited hooks to keep engaged beyond meeting some fun weirdoes across the continent. There's something to be said about perfunctory stories for enabling gameplay (as an avid roguelite liker), but Engage often sets up very telegraphed plot twists hour after hour to its detriment. That said! If you are a 'gameplay is king' type tactics person, Fire Emblem Engage is a best-of-show for the series. Those that love to replay the games will find some great deep systems to engage with especially pushing through 'Maddening' difficulty. Production timelines do indicate that Fire Emblem Engage was likely produced during the production of Three Houses so it's hard to say if this game is the definitive vision going forward. Fire Emblem: Three Hopes, a recent release from 2022, continued the complex leaders writing of Three Houses. So the next Fire Emblem could very well the deep character focus of Three Houses and the gameplay innovations of Engage! We'll have to wait and see. Till next time on Triangles, Tactics & Tabletop, Kupo! Pet your Sommies. 
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AboutTriangles, Tactics, and Tabletop, Kupo! is a blog discussing thoughts on tactics games and tabletop rpgs I've played. Archives
May 2023
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed