Fire Emblem Engage: Nintendo's new tactical role-playing hook

 We have a new instalment of Nintendo's flagship tactical role-playing saga, Fire Emblem Engage, and the same question on our minds: Is it worth it? It's a nice question that raises many others depending on where you stand: Is the price justified, is it different from the previous offering "Three Houses", is it a good entry point for newcomers to the genre and/or the series? It has some opponents on Switch, such as Triangle Strategy, that target the same audience, so it's worth thinking about it.

Now, for those who don't know what Fire Emblem is about? In general terms, it's a turn-based game, where we face the machine on a sort of grid board, with units moving across the board.

Fire Emblem Engage: Nintendo's new tactical role-playing hook

Each with their own unique properties in terms of how many squares they can move, health points before they die, and so on. In that sense it's the usual RPG stuff, with the addition of being able to move around the battlefield and having an attack range that is generally between one or two squares around each character.

In that sense it is similar to other titles in the genre. Where it differs is in such things as the ability to choose the right weaponry for the context of the fight. Some weapons are better for fighting against others. So deciding whether your character will attack with a sword or an axe makes a difference.

Fire Emblem Engage: Nintendo's new tactical role-playing hook

We also have to take into account the range of the enemy unit when choosing both the target and the weapon to use. Because when we choose to attack a certain character. If we are in their attack range, they can return some of the damage, so there is a risk component to every offensive.

We will usually have to be careful when positioning our units, a key component of our strategy as one false move will result in losing those we have neglected the next turn. Over the course of the series, this would have meant losing our character forever, but fortunately, the current instalments have included an option to avoid perma-death for those who prefer a more enjoyable game. This option, like the difficulty, is selected at the start of the title along with the gender and name of our main character, allowing us to tweak how we want to play a little to our liking.

Diving in a little deeper
One of the new features in Fire Emblem Engage is the appearance of Emblem Rings, artefacts that players will acquire throughout the story, allowing our units' stats to rise when equipped with them, as well as providing new abilities. Each ring, in turn, is associated with a character from the long history of the saga that veteran fans will immediately recognise, such as Marth, Ike or Roy, who act as a sort of spirit of each ring with whom the wearer can merge to acquire even more abilities. For how they are painted in the story, they could have been more special. However, as a piece of equipment, they provide yet another edge to the customisation of the units.

Speaking of customisation, between missions, we will be able to access a magical and sacred place called Somniel. Here, we will have the opportunity to supply our army with weapons and items, form bonds with our units as if it were a Stardew Valley-style title, upgrade our equipment, or perform extra activities in the Tower of Challenges, located south of the map once we have advanced in the story. It turns out to be the perfect place to drop a change between skirmishes, making sure that we have benefits in the next fight.

The graphical quality is impeccable. It's not quite up to par with Nintendo's top titles but it more than does the job and maintains a cohesive art style based on Japanese anime. The animations in battles are extremely exciting, while the scenes between fights do their job without much fuss or bother. On the other hand, the music fits the situation perfectly, switching between quieter or livelier versions of the same theme depending on whether we're in an engagement or simply moving units. It also changes according to whose turn it is, a classic aspect of past iterations of the series.