Fire Emblem Engage

Fire Emblem Engage is a 2023 tactical role-playing game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is the seventeenth installment in the Fire Emblem series and follows Alear, a dragon in human form, who awakens from a thousand-year slumber and quickly becomes embroiled in a conflict with the forces of the Fell Dragon Sombron. Alear travels the land of Elyos gaining allies while fighting against the armies of the rival Kingdom of Elusia and Sombron’s resurrected undead forces; the player controls and maneuvers Alear’s army in these battles.

One of the core parts of both the setting and the gameplay are twelve magic rings that contain phantasmal copies of characters from previous Fire Emblem games. Characters wearing these “Emblem Rings” can “Engage” to gain vast power from summoning and merging with these phantoms. Both Alear and Sombron seek to gain control of the rings; possession of all twelve will allow a feat of immense magic to be performed. Engage is set on the continent of Elyos, a land divided into five regions: Lythos, Firene, Brodia, Elusia, and Solm. Lythos is a central holy land reserved for the Divine Dragon and their attendants.

The realms of Firene, Brodia, and Solm largely cooperate with each other, while the kingdoms of Brodia and Elusia are on hostile terms, fighting frequent skirmishes over their borderlands. Most citizens of Firene, Brodia, and Solm revere the Divine Dragon as their deity, while most Elusians worship the Fell Dragon. Dragons live in human form the vast majority of their long lifespans, with only a select few capable of transforming into a classic draconic form, and even then doing so only rarely, an aspect similar to other games in the Fire Emblem series.

Alear, a dragon, is awoken from a one-thousand-year slumber. They have amnesia, and only vague memories of fighting against Sombron one thousand years ago with the aid of Emblem Marth, and are told they were wounded in the struggle. It quickly becomes apparent that Sombron is recovering, too, as his allies enter Lythos to capture its Emblem Rings: undead known as Corrupted and an army from the Kingdom of Elusia. An unknown young woman working with the invasion force kills the Divine Dragon, Lumera, leaving only her child Alear to take on her mantle as the Divine Dragon.

While others are surprised to learn that the supposedly childless Lumera had a successor, adherents quickly accept Alear as the new Divine Dragon. Fire Emblem Engage is a tactical role-playing game. Players control the main character whose name and gender can be specified at the start of the game; by default, the main character’s name is Alear. The player controls Alear and their allies through a series of battles as the plot advances; there are also optional “skirmish” battles and “Paralogue” side missions if the player wants to further strengthen their team. 

In-between these story battles, the player can have their characters relax and engage in social activities with each other. New characters will regularly join Alear’s team as the game progresses; these characters have their own personal starting statistics (stats), stat growth rates, and unique personal skill. Each character has a specific set of other characters they can gain “support levels” with. As their support level increases, units unlock conversations and increased bonuses when fighting nearby in battle. The battles feature a grid map, similar to a large chessboard, where both the characters under player control and enemy units are laid out.

The flow of the game is turn-based, with the game alternating between a player phase where player units move and act and an enemy phase where hostile units move and act. The maps feature a variety of pathways and obstructions. As an example, rivers are impassable to ground-based units and only traversable by flying units. Other terrain grants defensive bonuses; for example, fortresses give an occupying unit an evasion boost and regenerate a portion of the unit’s health at the start of the turn. Units have a character class which determines their available weapon types, movement capabilities, and affects the growth of their personal stats. 

For example, an armored class might have low movement and slow speed, but have a high defense stat allowing them to take little damage from enemy physical attacks. Characters are equipped with weapons, magical tomes, and other items by the player which the characters use to attack hostile units or heal friendly units. Magical staves allow characters who can use them to perform other utility actions such as creating temporary obstructions on the map or warping units across long distances. When a unit is commanded to engage in combat, the stats of both the attacker and defender are compared to determine how powerful and accurate the attacks are.

The game features a “weapon triangle” seen in earlier games of the series: swords have advantage over axes, lances have advantage over swords, and axes have advantage over lances. Two new mechanics are Chain Attacks, which allow certain classes to chip in and help an ally’s attack on a nearby foe, and Chain Guards, which allow certain support classes to completely nullify an attack on an adjoining ally. In addition to three difficulty levels, Engage has both a “Classic” and a “Casual” mode the player selects from. In Classic mode, if a character falls to 0 HP and is defeated, they are lost forever, never to be deployed again. In Casual mode, defeated characters are only unavailable for the remainder of the map, but will be restored for later chapters of the story.