#just don't make my mistake an remember to boost your bonds with the emblems

[oh-cool-a-burning-sword]

Welp, I played and finished Fire Emblem Engage!

NGL, it's really, REALLY good.

Like the people who reviewed the game before it was released did not do it justice. (not that I cared for those reviews anyways). Sure the story is simple when compared to Houses, but that doesn't make it bad. Sure plot points are rather predictable if you've played past games, but their played out in more interesting ways.

Like while it was fairly obvious that Alear was related to Sombron. It was surprising that Lumera wasn't Alear's biological mother. Found family tropes aren't really common in FE games (since parents usually die). Yet the bond that Alear and Lumera shared, despite Alear being taught to kill divine dragons and Lumera's family dying because of the Fell Dragon... and said bond being so strong that she took years out of her own life to bring them back?

That, right there, is family.

And on the topic of Sombron and Lumera. There were already plenty of parallels before the game was even out. Lumera's name meaning light and Sombron's name meaning shadow, divine and fallen. But then you play the game and you find one more thing that they have in common. They both lost everything. In the final battle you find out that Sombron's people were killed and he was exiled to another world (aka Elyos). The difference is that Lumera found a new family in Alear and by the looks of it, moved on. While Sombron HAD someone at first, an Emblem from another world known as the Zero Emblem. Yet the Emblem vanished when Sombron was taken in by a village, and after that he decided to stay alone, pushing away people who genuinely cared for him like Veyle.

He's still obviously the villain. Even with that backstory, he hurt too many people, was willing to destroy a world just to get back to his own. Sombron killed his own kids because they were 'defects'. Because of his treatment, past Alear behaved like an emotionless puppet due to trauma and fear of being killed like his siblings. You can sympathise with a villain while still seeing them as the bad guy.

Same can be said for Zephia. She did so many horrible things, tried to erase the real Veyle, killed Marni, which honestly that scene brought tears to my eyes. When we learn her backstory, we find that she was also alone. She never got to know what Love really was until it was too late. Zephia wanted a family, a child, and she genuinely thought of the Hounds as her family. Hell in the scene where she and Griss were dying, she finds out that Griss truly saw her as a mother/sister. It does kinda make we wish that they could have joined us, but oh well.

Also glad that they actually gave an explanation as to why Alear and Veyle never turned into dragons. Past Alear gave their dragon stone to Veyle (which then breaks when Alear dies), and Veyle in a wake up event reveals that she buried her dragon stone. I would have liked to see how a Fell/Divine dragon hybrid would look like, however, as despite not being biologically related, Lumera giving her powers to Alear made them in part a Divine Dragon.

Then there's these little moments in the game that just makes it shine. Like meeting Fogado's retainers, aka Pandreo's hilarious reaction of 'Oh hey it's God... GOD!?'. King Morion (despite not lasting long) being revealed to absolutely loving both his kids was nice. I really thought that he wouldn't have been a good guy, but he was a sweetheart? I wish he lasted longer tho.

Honestly the whole Brodia fam is just great, I love them.

I like how if you get a game over during the final battle, you don't just get a game over screen, you get a bad ending. Alear loses their divine side, Veyle is under Sombron's control again and has Alear's emblem ring. Everyone dies. There's not really that many bad endings in FE games. At least as far as I'm aware? I mean there's the 'right' thing to do, finishing Grima off as Robin so that the Fell dragon's gone forever, choosing to side with neither Hoshido or Nohr to save everyone. But never an ending that straight up goes 'you fucked up big time'. Even Three Hopes, despite the fact that sure, recruiting Byleth is the 'right' decision, with the exception of Scarlet Blaze, there's no huge consequence for choosing to kill them (though the story just kinda... drops at the end so we never known what happens afterwards)

Granted it's a small scene and you get brought back to the fight soon after, but it's still really neat that they did that.

All in all I really enjoyed this game. It makes it abundantly clear that Engage was meant to be an anniversary title that got delayed. I can't wait for the next instalment which there's a 90% chance of being a Genealogy remake. We should find out about it in about 2-3 years since that seems to be the release pattern FE games have atm. Unless there's any delays.

I didn't get the DLC yet, but now I think I will. Just to see the side story we'll get and also to meet new Emblems/new Characters.

Oh and yes, I married Alfred.

#fire emblem #fire emblem engage #fe engage #this game is fun #you should play it #just don't make my mistake an remember to boost your bonds with the emblems #I'm glad that I overpowered my Alear so literally nothing could touch them #like... Sombron in his final form had a 0 hit percentage against Alear #because their avo was so high #though I also switched to normal early on because I was stuck #so that could be why #I also wonder if we'll get an engage character or two in this year's fallen banner #I mean #Corrupted Lumera #Past Alear #Evil Veyle #along with all the Emblems when controlled by the Fell Dragon #they'd all be neat candidates for Fallen Alts #that's probably why there's so many evil characters in Engage #lol