Fire Emblem Engage

 Switch
User Score
6.6

Mixed or average reviews- based on 822 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 451 out of 822
  2. Mixed: 154 out of 822
  3. Negative: 217 out of 822
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. YouJustKnow
    Jan 23, 2023
    0
    Engage is the epitome of soulless and only IntSys apologists will defend it out of brand loyalty.
  2. Yarelis
    Jan 23, 2023
    0
    Uhhhhhhhhggg nopes!! Dissapointed. 3H better. This game is…. Idk… sorry but no
  3. OnlyOneHere
    Jan 28, 2023
    0
    This game is extremely expensive. The greedy developers are charging $60 for a turn-based game made with Unity. Are you freaking kidding me? The Unity engine should only be used for indie and free-to-play games. Not even EA is that greedy to sell me a Unity game for $60. As a matter of fact, I don't remember the last time I spent $60 on a game made with Unity. It just goes to show howThis game is extremely expensive. The greedy developers are charging $60 for a turn-based game made with Unity. Are you freaking kidding me? The Unity engine should only be used for indie and free-to-play games. Not even EA is that greedy to sell me a Unity game for $60. As a matter of fact, I don't remember the last time I spent $60 on a game made with Unity. It just goes to show how extremely cheap and lazy Nintendo are. Imagine charging $60 for an indie quality game. The graphics are a joke. It literally looks like a mobile game. The physics are beyond horrible. When I pay $60, I expect top notch AAA quality. That is exactly what this game lacks. The combat is boring and repetitive. The story is garbage and the dialogue is cringeworthy.

    There is no multiplayer. So once you beat the story, there is literally not a reason to play this game again. Charging $60 for a game with no replay value is a cash grab. Remember when Nintendo used to brag about quality, to the point where they slapped a seal of quality on the cover of their games? They created that as a response for Atari's massive collection of shovelware, and now they have ironically become what they mocked. Nintendo is a multi-billion dollar company. There is no excuse for these cheapskates to sell shovelware made with Unity for $60. That's pathetic. I don't recommend this game at all, unless you want to support laziness.

    Edit: Turns out there is a so-called multiplayer. Why didn't they put it in the main freaking menu? Jesus Christ are these developers so irrational. The co-op is a joke. It's just taking turns using the same army. You could literally play any turn-based game and pass the controller to another player, or you could go to Twitch and ask viewers for choices if you want online. That is not multiplayer. The PvP is playing against AI. There is no real-time PvP so my point still stands, there is no multiplayer.    … Expand
  4. Casplink
    Jan 23, 2023
    0
    Decepcionado del juego ,muy mala trama ,personajes aburridos ,no lleno mis expectativas
  5. aefc
    Jan 23, 2023
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The game system is old-fashioned, the story is broken, and the characters are unappealing.
    A game of the lowest rank with no fun at all.    … Expand
  6. alcueid_814
    Feb 4, 2023
    0
    the vetical drawing of the game is too navie, and the plot is too bad!it’s a disaster
  7. sauhui
    Jan 27, 2023
    0
    剧情 人设都很幼齿 难度有所提升 主角很弱 重甲+老辛=无敌法拉利。火纹已经在二次元媚宅的路上越走越远了，仔细想想其实很多作品都这样了，比如最近的水星魔女，高达的幼齿化比火纹还厉害，只能说时代变了吧，我等已经不能理解现在的日本年轻人了
  8. Aeula
    May 20, 2023
    0
    The single worst entry in the fire emblem series.

    Worst plot. Worst art style. Worst main character. Worst setting. Worst theme. The engage mechanic is genuinely horrible. The weapon triangle was removed for a reason. Also why the hell do random voices yell the title of the game at you whenever you boot it up? A massive downgrade from Awakening, let alone three houses. I    The single worst entry in the fire emblem series.

    Worst plot.
    Worst art style.
    Worst main character.
    Worst setting.
    Worst theme.
    The engage mechanic is genuinely horrible.
    The weapon triangle was removed for a reason.

    Also why the hell do random voices yell the title of the game at you whenever you boot it up?

    A massive downgrade from Awakening, let alone three houses. I hope this isn't fire emblem's future.    … Expand
  9. TmatoCE
    Apr 2, 2023
    2
    Top 3 worst fire emblem. There is little strategy now, emblems are cool but they suck the skills aren't so powerful and I never used most special attacks because they were weaker than a normal attack.

    Older games had some strategy, in this game you only have to run, because most maps have infinite reinforcement and that suck. I miss some things from previous games like secret shop, real    Top 3 worst fire emblem. There is little strategy now, emblems are cool but they suck the skills aren't so powerful and I never used most special attacks because they were weaker than a normal attack.

    Older games had some strategy, in this game you only have to run, because most maps have infinite reinforcement and that suck. I miss some things from previous games like secret shop, real coliseum... Mage got a downgrade, there is no mage triangle, now it's close and range. Almost every enemy use armor in this game so some characters with little damage are useless. Great weapons are not worth it, single attack are worse than double. I also dislike the break system, weapon triangle was ok there was no need for this break mechanic. I also dislike the extra life mechanic. You gotta kill 3 times some enemy and that doesn't add any difficulty just waste three units, a good fighting system wouldn't need it.

    Final boss has 0% hit on my main character, that's a joke I mean it was maxed but wth was that … Game doesn't give you enough resources. I only tried to upgrade s rank weapons the weren't great weapons(1 attack) and after farming a lot of hours didn't have enough so I gave up.

    I almost dislike every part of the game, the friendship conversations are soulless. A 4/10 is probably too high for this game    … Expand
  10. Toska123
    May 2, 2023
    0
    As a huge fan of the Fire Emblem series, this was an extremely disappointing entry. Here are the points I disliked the most:
    -Progression system holds your hand too much, it's too much trouble to get a character out of their predetermined role/jobs, so customization is extremely limited unless you are willing to grind for it.
    -Emblem rings are too powerful, even on harder difficulties.    As a huge fan of the Fire Emblem series, this was an extremely disappointing entry. Here are the points I disliked the most:
    -Progression system holds your hand too much, it's too much trouble to get a character out of their predetermined role/jobs, so customization is extremely limited unless you are willing to grind for it.
    -Emblem rings are too powerful, even on harder difficulties.
    -The story is incredibly bland, I am over 30 hours into this game and I literally couldn't care less about any of the dialogue.
    -The story is very repetitive. Go to a new kingdom, add a prince or princess to your squad along with their two retainers, fight a few monsters, maybe get a new ring, then move on. There's no nuance.
    -Whenever you get new characters, they simply outclass the ones you had before, meaning that the only unit that is even worth training at the very beginning is your main character. Literally everyone else will be replaced by stronger characters by the end of the game. Because of this, a bad progression system becomes completely useless.
    -The animations are re-used between different characters during dialogue sections. Normally, this wouldn't bother me. But they literally have one "girl animation set" and one "guy animation set" that get re-used between literally everyone, and it becomes extremely tacky very quickly. They should have at least created 2-4 animation sets for each gender...
    -The character personalities are incredibly bland. I didn't find myself connecting with nearly any of the characters like I have in previous games. Watching the character bond cutscenes in this one feels like a chore compared to previous games where I looked forward to every cutscene.
    -They got rid of weapon durability for some reason. One of the best parts of Fire Emblem is managing your limited resources inside and outside of combat. Taking that away makes this game lose an entire dimension to combat and the underlying strategic choices you make.

    Now, here are the things I liked about the game:
    -The combat is "don't broke, don't fix it". It's pretty much the same as Fire Emblem Three Houses as far as the actual combat goes, so the combat itself is still pretty solid. Just too bad that everything influencing your character progressions is terrible.
    -The graphics are actually pretty solid. I really liked the art and character designs in this game. It is really a shame that the story is so bad and the character personalities are so bland.

    Overall, extremely disappointed with this one. It's still fire emblem, so it's not a "bad" game. But compared to other fire emblem games, this may be the worst of all time.    … Expand
  11. GeekCharming
    Jun 8, 2023
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. When it was announced, I was really excited to see what the next generation of Fire Emblem would bring coming off of 3H. The game looked great, at least I thought it did, better than 3H. I got the game late a birthday gift a few months ago and I'm gonna be honest: I can't finish this game. I've invested 50+ hours and have about 4 chapters left until the end but I just can't bring myself to keep going. My issues have been building up over time and I definitely plan to elaborate my gripes below.
    1. The animation in cutscenes feels cheap. I know FE never prided itself on having perfect graphics but it's very jarring when a group of characters are talking about how they need "to rush to the next objective" and all you get from that is a black screen and running sounds before they're all standing around said objective. Character repeat the same 4 animations to express their body language and/or mood and it never stood out to me as bad in previous titles but in this game it's hard not to notice. 2. The maps, although pretty to look at, don't feel well-designed. Too many maps introduce constant reinforcements that feel more like a punishment to players who want to take their time and strategize. Some of the objectives towards rhe end chapters feels so artificially difficult and frankly unfun to play. Some maps introduce a darkness mechanic where you can't tell just how many foes are lurking in the dark. It's a cool concept until you're given a very awkward way to bring in light (temporarily) as well as enemies having ways of warping your characters directly to them, isolating a party member and taking them out. How that information could have been communicated to the player is beyond me but it's still not fun to have happen.
    3. The story is as generic as it gets. The game itself feels very fan-servicey with it being an anniversary title but it was pretty boring to see the obvious "plot twist" at least 8-10 chapters before it happening and the characters making a big deal about it. (Veyle says she's looking for her brother. Veyle being Sombron's "only" child. Whose color pallete resembles Velye? Oh yeah, Alear. Alear is Sombron's child? Who could have possibly guessed that!)
    4. Character Bloat. I know that since the game introduces permadeath, they need a staggering amount of characters to make sure players have a lot of resources. Regardless, the vast majority of these characters have their one chapter introduction and are never heard from again aside from support conversations. The game starts you with a cast of characters and wastes no time shoving more and more at you nearly every chapter which is nice until you have 30+ characters with as much depth as a kiddie pool and only 12 slots to commit to using. The "main cast" tends to favor the lords from every area you visit seeing how they're the only ones who make an appearance in cutscenes and this might be my personal issue but I didn't end up using any of them in my playthrough. 5. Gating off character development to ring proficiency/character class change in general. There comes a point in the story where you lose all of your rings and if you don't have your character's classes changed by then it's a LONG haul before you can get that specific ring/proficiency back. Why that was the design from the get-go is beyond me. Also character class upgrades, after the initial master seal, you spend the rest of the game resetting their level to 1 once they hit max. I did maybe 4 or 5 optional side battles and felt bored with my team already being at their final state way before the game is even close to being over. (Why is there no Assassin for example??? Yunaka stays a theif the whole game???) I know this review probably comes off as more nitpicky than an actual critique but that's because I've never had these exact issues in a previous FE game before. None of my issues have been involved of the character designs, I really think this game does a good job of showing us a wide variety of appearances from the various regions and how that affects things like their clothing and mannerisms. I really love how they fleshed out the weapon triangle, breaking enemies for free damage felt SO good. The Engage system was a really cool addition, I really liked how each character has their own transformation with the Emblems and the combat animations with their signature attacks felt incredibly powerful too. I wanted to like this game but I can't bring myself to finish it after so many gripes so I figured now would be my opportunity to submit my review among the sea of reviews here and leave this as my goodbye to Fire Emblem Engage.    … Expand
  12. Mr_Fear
    Feb 2, 2023
    1
    - Less Classes
    - Less Weapons
    - Shallow Characters
    - Shallow Plot
    - No Meaningful Downtime Activities - No Meaningful Supports
    - No Player Choice
    - Lolis Everywhere (Pedo Bait)
    - The Break Mechanic which makes playing defense / counter attacker is no longer viable.

    The only thing you could say was better is the graphics, which is not high on the list of importance in a FE game.
  13. gun661
    Feb 1, 2023
    4
    For a review of the story, see the many other reviews. Considering gameplay: Messy balancing and tedious, undercooked gameplay parts ruin potential fun.

    Many other games, even indie games, either have good balancing or clever options to adjust difficulty, not so Fire Emblem : Engage, regrettably. "Normal" and "Hard" difficulty quickly evolve into "send arbitrary unit forward and let    For a review of the story, see the many other reviews. Considering gameplay: Messy balancing and tedious, undercooked gameplay parts ruin potential fun.

    Many other games, even indie games, either have good balancing or clever options to adjust difficulty, not so Fire Emblem : Engage, regrettably.

    "Normal" and "Hard" difficulty quickly evolve into "send arbitrary unit forward and let it 1-hit-KO any enemy" snoozefests. To raise difficulty, you have to restart the game completely.

    The highest difficulty, "Maddening", provides challenge but completely messes with the game's balance and gameplay systems:
    - Your units gain experience slower. In effect, the characters you start with trail behind pretty quickly while progressing through the story. Every single new character that regularly joins your party is stronger right out of the box. Thus, you're pushed to constantly replace older characters with new characters, eliminating choice and any attachment you had to these characters.
    - The base game offers no relevant options to let older characters catch up (disregarding inconvenient and overcomplicated cheesing strategies)
    - But wait, there's a DLC that comes with a skill that let's your characters gain 20% more experience! The drawback: I had to completely restart the game again to profit from this skill's effect.
    - So I restarted the game again with the DLC and let my units gain 20% more experience. Difficulty again: Maddening. And yes, this time my older units stayed relevant. Regrettably, by chapter 10-11, supposedly difficult missions, my party was again completely dominating, smashing enemies the story wanted me to escape from, eliminating any challenge and immersion again...
    - So yes, I could think about what limitations I could set for myself to have a balanced game, and restart the game a third time... but honestly, I find daily chores to be more fun than this.
    - In summary, this game seems more like a very fiddly sandbox you need to extend (buy DLC) and tune very carefully to not ruin any fun. Even then, the toolbox feels way too clunky.

    - Most of the combat is limited to simple unit movement with simple "rock-paper-scissor" tactics. Varied tactics like "Gambits" in "Fire Emblem: Three Houses" have been dumbed down and only play a minor role later in the game.

    Interface problems, contributing to a lot of fiddling and confusion:
    - For example, if you want to change a characters' skills you need to access its inventory first... Yet, you can't equip a ring via the inventory. For that, you must access a different interface via the main menu...
    - Yet again, not all options to interact with rings can be found in this one menu. For some options, you must visit the "Ring Chamber", adding more loading times.
    - In the "Ring Chamber", you can inherit skills from a ring. Yet sometimes, you need more training with that ring. For that, you must visit the "Arena", adding more loading times.
    - To get to the next mission you have to leave the hub and load the world map (more loading times). From the world map, you can access the next mission (more loading times).

    Undercooked yet relevant hub activities which get tedious way faster than the hub activities of "Fire Emblem: Three Houses":
    - While in the hub (the "Somniel"), you can interact with the game's mascot to get bonus materials. You can feed it (loading times) or pet it (loading times). To access either menu, you leave the previous pet or feeding menu (more loading times) while you wait for long, unskippable animations to finish...
    - There's a couple of tedious and undercooked mini games you can play in the hub to get relevant materials after each mission. These mini games (like pressing "A" to do push ups) overstay their welcome the first time you're playing them. But to get materials the games nudges you into wasting your time again and again with these mini games, since it takes a good amount of time doing each of them.
    - The interaction with characters, especially the Emblem heroes, can be likened to talking with theme park mascots.    … Expand
  14. NinoCortex22
    Jan 22, 2023
    0
    Not for me.... too much forced included. Sorry. System of "romance" made me sick. and the animations, NEVER
  15. Mogmog000
    Jan 24, 2023
    1
    Poor character design.
    Too many event movies, poor pacing.
    Engage system is unnecessary.
    DLC is expensive.
  16. Plumbo2000
    Jan 22, 2023
    3
    People are overhyping the gameplay. It doesn't suck but it's nowhere near good enough to make up for how bad the story, characters, music, worldbuilding and dialogue are. Also it has a major flaw in that the units are badly balanced and tend to be either amazing or immediately benched, if you get any satisfaction from raising your units up this is not the Fire Emblem game for you.
    It's    People are overhyping the gameplay. It doesn't suck but it's nowhere near good enough to make up for how bad the story, characters, music, worldbuilding and dialogue are. Also it has a major flaw in that the units are badly balanced and tend to be either amazing or immediately benched, if you get any satisfaction from raising your units up this is not the Fire Emblem game for you.
    It's just a thoroughly boring experience that tries to posit itself as the new mainline entry whilst giving you nothing but shallow garbage and leaning on nostalgia for older, better games as a crutch.
    They should take the Break mechanic and put it into a real FE game, because this half-assed garbage is going to be forgotten in a month. Engage is going the same way as Fates where people are blinded during the honeymoon period and then realise shortly afterwards that the game was thoroughly disappointing. Intelligent System seriously need to get their act together and show that 3H wasn't an outlier and that they can make Fire Emblem games that take themselves seriously and stand on their own merits rather than leaning on self-references and parodying itself.

    You're better off buying Conquest, 3H, the GBA era or the Tellius games.
    The one thing Engage does right is shoving old characters in your face and reminding you that there are better Fire Emblem games you could be playing.    … Expand
  17. Rottencucumber
    Jan 24, 2023
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I am getting tired of the FE plot now. Because the Engage story was so childish, I was able to tell clearly the issue now. That 'I am the child/vessel of Final Boss???' setting has been used 4 times in a row now. They really have to stop using that setting now, because now it's becoming so predictable. Also I am not liking how most female characters faces look the same except for the hairstyle,eye and some tattoo. I actually tested myself by covering their hair and putting on grayscale. I could not tell who they where. Plus they all got babyfaced from previous FE games, I thought I was dating a minor during the pact ring confession scene. Please don't do that.… Expand
  18. DaliaMarth
    Jan 23, 2023
    0
    Muy decepcionante, personajes aburridos, historia muy mala, y el sistema de romance tanto versión japonesa como en inglés dan terror. Se les pasó la mano.
  19. NinjaCockStudio
    Feb 4, 2023
    0
    Mickey ass maps bruh I played this game for 3 hours and the nasty sus shi got me wanting to blow my brains out.
  20. Amama
    Feb 12, 2023
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Pathetic excuse for a game. Please don't buy this laggy hunk of trash.. play a real game… Expand
  21. Ihateminors
    Jan 21, 2023
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This game is complete garbage. The game is a shameful rehash of Awakening with the same gameplay mechanics, god awful support cutscenes that were written by a 3 year old who just learned how to speak, and story that is nonexistent because people didn’t like morally grey characters but instead like green dragon = good and purple dragon = bad. The voice acting is utterly laughable when compared to three houses. The game is just genshin impact with the surplus of child units and character designs. If you want an actually fun fire emblem game then play heroes because that is what this game is but free with a possibility of a lifelong gambling addiction instead of 60 dollars for a game that is so broke for ideas that they have to have characters from games never released outside of Japan.… Expand
  22. halksin
    Jan 23, 2023
    0
    Decent game plagued by bigoted localizers. The script was greatly changed, with several LGBTQ+ romantic interactions removed.
    They do not deserve your money.
  23. Willwick9000
    Mar 31, 2023
    0
    You need 12 individual amiibo to access all content. Disgusting Nintendo…
  24. DolphinReviews
    Jan 25, 2023
    0
    Awful. Anime is cringe as always. Turn based combat is outdated and dumb. Nintendo is Sintendo.
  25. TruthSeaker
    Aug 11, 2023
    1
    Absolute failure.
    After phenomenal Three Houses, they decided to go with a weird and questionable V-Tuber route while ditching storytelling and characters alltogether.
    Balance is also completely broken if you decide to do at least a little bit of resource/SP farming.
    Even a decent combat system couldn't save this snoozefest of a game.
  26. turbo_dweeb
    Aug 24, 2023
    4
    this game is a sh*t poopy game and the characters act like f*cking youtubers that make videos for r*tarded infants with ere*tile dysfunton. 4 out of ten poopy game dissapointment
next
Page:

Awards & Rankings

51
#51 Best Switch Game of 2023
2
#2 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2023

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
80

Generally favorable reviews - based on 129 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 102 out of 129
  2. Mixed: 27 out of 129
  3. Negative: 0 out of 129
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jan 24, 2024
    80
    Hogwarts Legacy is definitely a beautiful-looking game that doesn't have a groundbreaking story, but does have a beautiful world, a fun combat system, broomstick flying, and of course an incredible amount of side quests and missions. [Issue#325]
  2. Gamereactor Spain
    Oct 16, 2023
    80
    It’s a title where difficulty isn’t just about advancing mission after mission but doing so with as few casualties as possible. This makes Engage the perfect gateway to the series, as well as a handful of good memories for those already familiar with it. A game which perfectly balances periods of action with quiet, enjoyable interludes in which to chat with other characters, play minigames and try out new weapons.
    Read full review
  3. Pocket-lint
    Jun 23, 2023
    90
    Fire Emblem Engage is a superb strategy game that has taken a major technical leap forward, graphically superior to its predecessor in every meaningful way.It tells a well-meaning story that still manages to pack in a few surprisng twists, and while its social features are a little extraneous this time, it's still super relaxing to fall into its world.Multiplayer expands things even further, leaving us confident that the future is very, very bright for this excellent series.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »